The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chantry House, by Charlotte M. Yonge
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Title: Chantry House
Author: Charlotte M. Yonge
Release Date: January, 2005 [EBook #7378]
[This file was first posted on April 22, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, CHANTRY HOUSE ***
Credit
Transcribed from the 1905 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
CHANTRY HOUSE
CHAPTER I--A NURSERY PROSE
'And if it be the heart of man
Which our existence measures,
Far longer is our childhood's span
Than that of manly pleasures.
'For long each month and year is then,
Their thoughts and days extending,
But months and years pass swift with men
To time's last goal descending.'
ISAAC WILLIAMS.
The united force of the younger generation has been brought upon me
to record, with the aid of diaries and letters, the circumstances
connected with Chantry House and my two dear elder brothers. Once
this could not have been done without more pain than I could brook,
but the lapse of time heals wounds, brings compensations, and, when
the heart has ceased from aching and yearning, makes the memory of
what once filled it a treasure to be brought forward with joy and
thankfulness. Nor would it be well that some of those mentioned in
the coming narrative should be wholly forgotten, and their place
know them no more.
To explain all, I must go back to a time long before the morning
when my father astonished us all by exclaiming, 'Poor old James
Winslow! So Chantry House is came to us after all!' Previous to
that event I do not think we were aware of the existence of that
place, far less of its being a possible inheritance, for my parents
would never have permitted themselves or their family to be
unsettled by the notion of doubtful contingencies.
My father, John Edward Winslow, was a barrister, and held an
appointment in the Admiralty Office, which employed him for many
hours of the day at Somerset House. My mother, whose maiden name
was Mary Griffith, belonged to a naval family. Her father had been
lost in a West Indian hurricane at sea, and her uncle, Admiral Sir
John Griffith, was the hero of the family, having been at Trafalgar
and distinguished himself in cutting out expeditions. My eldest
brother bore his name. The second was named after the Duke of
Clarence, with whom my mother had once danced at a ball on board
ship at Portsmouth, and who had been rather fond of my uncle.
Indeed, I believe my father's appointment had been obtained through
his interest, just about the time of Clarence's birth.
We three boys had come so fast upon each other's heels in the
Novembers of 1809, 10, and 11, that any two of us used to look like
twins. There is still extant a feeble water-coloured drawing of the
trio, in nankeen frocks, and long white trowsers, with bare necks
and arms, the latter twined together, and with the free hands,
Griffith holding a bat, Clarence a trap, and I a ball. I remember
the emulation we felt at Griffith's privilege of eldest in holding
the bat.
The sitting for that picture is the only thing I clearly remember
during those earlier days. I have no recollection of the disaster,
which, at four years old, altered my life. The catastrophe, as
others have described it, was that we three boys were riding cock-
horse on the balusters of the second floor of our house in Montagu
Place, Russell Square, when we indulged in a general melee, which
resulted in all tumbling over into the vestibule below. The others,
to whom I served as cushion, were not damaged beyond the power of
yelling, and were quite restored in half-an-hour, but I was
undermost, and the consequence has been a curved spine, dwarfed
stature, an elevated shoulder, and a shortened, nearly useless leg.
What I do remember, is my mother reading to me Miss Edgeworth's
Frank and the little do Trusty, as I lay in my crib in her bedroom.
I made one of my nieces hunt up the book for me the other day, and
the story brought back at once the little crib, or the watered blue
moreen canopy of the big four-poster to which I was sometimes lifted
for a change; even the scrawly pattern of the paper, which my weary
eyes made into purple elves perpetually pursuing crimson ones, the
foremost of whom always turned upside down; and the knobs in the
Marseilles counterpane with which my fingers used to toy. I have
heard my mother tell that whenever I was most languid and suffering
I used to whine out, 'O do read Frank and the little dog Trusty,'
and never permitted a single word to be varied, in the curious
childish love of reiteration with its soothing power.
I am afraid that any true picture of our parents, especially of my
mother, will not do them justice in the eyes of the young people of
the present day, who are accustomed to a far more indulgent
government, and yet seem to me to know little of the loyal
veneration and submission with which we have, through life, regarded
our father and mother. It would have been reckoned disrespectful to
address them by these names; they were through life to us, in
private, papa and mamma, and we never presumed to take a liberty
with them. I doubt whether the petting, patronising equality of
terms on which children now live with their parents be equally
wholesome. There was then, however, strong love and self-
sacrificing devotion; but not manifested in softness or cultivation
of sympathy. Nothing was more dreaded than spoiling, which was
viewed as idle and unjustifiable self-gratification at the expense
of the objects thereof. There were an unlucky little pair in
Russell Square who were said to be 'spoilt children,' and who used
to be mentioned in our nursery with bated breath as a kind of
monsters or criminals. I believe our mother laboured under a
perpetual fear of spoiling Griff as the eldest, Clarence as the
beauty, me as the invalid, Emily (two years younger) as the only
girl, and Martyn as the after-thought, six years below our sister.
She was always performing little acts of conscientiousness, little
as we guessed it.
Thus though her unremitting care saved my life, and was such that
she finally brought on herself a severe and dangerous illness, she
kept me in order all the time, never wailed over me nor weakly
pitied me, never permitted resistance to medicine nor rebellion
against treatment, enforced little courtesies, insisted on every
required exertion, and hardly ever relaxed the rule of Spartan
fortitude in herself as in me. It is to this resolution on her
part, carried out consistently at whatever present cost to us both,
that I owe such powers of locomotion as I possess, and the habits of
exertion that have been even more valuable to me.
When at last, after many weeks, nay months, of this watchfulness,
she broke down, so that her life was for a time in danger, the lack
of her bracing and tender care made my life very trying, after I
found myself transported to the nursery, scarcely understanding why,
accused of having by my naughtiness made ray poor mamma so ill, and
discovering for the first time that I was a miserable, naughty
little fretful being, and with nobody but Clarence and the housemaid
to take pity on me.
Nurse Gooch was a masterful, trustworthy woman, and was laid under
injunctions not to indulge Master Edward. She certainly did not err
in that respect, though she attended faithfully to my material
welfare; but woe to me if I gave way to a little moaning; and what I
felt still harder, she never said 'good boy' if I contrived to
abstain.
I hear of carpets, curtains, and pictures in the existing nurseries.
They must be palaces compared with our great bare attic, where
nothing was allowed that could gather dust. One bit of drugget by
the fireside, where stood a round table at which the maids talked
and darned stockings, was all that hid the bare boards; the walls
were as plain as those of a workhouse, and when the London sun did
shine, it glared into my eyes through the great unshaded windows.
There was a deal table for the meals (and very plain meals they
were), and two or three big presses painted white for our clothes,
and one cupboard for our toys. I must say that Gooch was strictly
just, and never permitted little Emily, nor Griff--though he was
very decidedly the favourite,--to bear off my beloved woolly dog to
be stabled in the houses of wooden bricks which the two were
continually constructing for their menagerie of maimed animals.
Griff was deservedly the favourite with every one who was not, like
our parents, conscientiously bent on impartiality. He was so bright
and winning, he had such curly tight-rolled hair with a tinge of
auburn, such merry bold blue eyes, such glowing dimpled cheeks, such
a joyous smile all over his face, and such a ringing laugh; he was
so strong, brave, and sturdy, that he was a boy to be proud of, and
a perfect king in his own way, making every one do as he pleased.
All the maids, and Peter the footman, were his slaves, every one
except nurse and mamma, and it was only by a strong effort of
principle that they resisted him; while he dragged Clarence about as
his devoted though not always happy follower.
Alas! for Clarence! Courage was not in him. The fearless infant
boy chiefly dwells in conventional fiction, and valour seldom comes
before strength. Moreover, I have come to the opinion that though
no one thought of it at the time, his nerves must have had a
terrible and lasting shock at the accident and at the sight of my
crushed and deathly condition, which occupied every one too much for
them to think of soothing or shielding him. At any rate, fear was
the misery of his life. Darkness was his horror. He would scream
till he brought in some one, though he knew it would be only to
scold or slap him. The housemaid's closet on the stairs was to him
an abode of wolves. Mrs. Gatty's tale of The Tiger in the Coal-box
is a transcript of his feelings, except that no one took the trouble
to reassure him; something undefined and horrible was thought to wag
in the case of the eight-day clock; and he could not bear to open
the play cupboard lest 'something' should jump out on him. The
first time he was taken to the Zoological Gardens, the monkeys so
terrified him that a bystander insisted on Gooch's carrying him away
lest he should go into fits, though Griffith was shouting with
ecstasy, and could hardly forgive the curtailment of his enjoyment.
Clarence used to aver that he really did see 'things' in the dark,
but as he only shuddered and sobbed instead of describing them, he
was punished for 'telling fibs,' though the housemaid used to speak
under her breath of his being a 'Sunday child.' And after long
penance, tied to his stool in the corner, he would creep up to me
and whisper, 'But, Eddy, I really did!'
However, it was only too well established in the nursery that
Clarence's veracity was on a par with his courage. When taxed with
any misdemeanour, he used to look round scared and bewildered, and
utter a flat demur. One scene in particular comes before me. There
were strict laws against going into shops or buying dainties without
express permission from mamma or nurse; but one day when Clarence
had by some chance been sent out alone with the good natured
housemaid, his fingers were found sticky.
'Now, Master Clarence, you've been a naughty boy, eating of sweets,'
exclaimed stern Justice in a mob cap and frills.
'No--no--' faltered the victim; but, alas! Mrs. Gooch had only to
thrust her hand into the little pocket of his monkey suit to convict
him on the spot.
The maid was dismissed with a month's wages, and poor Clarence
underwent a strange punishment from my mother, who was getting about
again by that time, namely, a drop of hot sealing-wax on his tongue,
to teach him practically the doom of the false tongue. It might
have done him good if there had been sufficient encouragement to him
to make him try to win a new character, but it only added a fresh
terror to his mind; and nurse grew fond of manifesting her
incredulity of his assertions by always referring to Griff or to me,
or even to little Emily. What was worse, she used to point him out
to her congeners in the Square or the Park as 'such a false child.'
He was a very pretty little fellow, with a delicately rosy face,
wistful blue eyes, and soft, light, wavy hair, and perhaps Gooch was
jealous of his attracting more notice than Griffith, and thought he
posed for admiration, for she used to tell people that no one could
guess what a child he was for slyness; so that he could not bear
going out with her, and sometimes bemoaned himself to me.
There must be a good deal of sneaking in the undeveloped nature, for
in those days I was ashamed of my preference for Clarence, the
naughty one. But there was no helping it, he was so much more
gentle than Griff, and would always give up any sport that
incommoded me, instead of calling me a stupid little ape, and
becoming more boisterous after the fashion of Griff. Moreover, he
fetched and carried for me unweariedly, and would play at
spillekins, help to put up puzzles, and enact little dramas with our
wooden animals, such as Griff scorned as only fit for babies. Even
nurse allowed Clarence's merits towards me and little Emily, but
always with the sigh: 'If he was but as good in other respects, but
them quiet ones is always sly.'
Good Nurse Gooch! We all owe much to her staunch fidelity, strong
discipline, and unselfish devotion, but nature had not fitted her to
deal with a timid, sensitive child, of highly nervous temperament.
Indeed, persons of far more insight might have been perplexed by the
fact that Clarence was exemplary at church and prayers, family and
private,--whenever Griff would let him, that is to say,--and would
add private petitions of his own, sometimes of a startling nature.
He never scandalised the nursery, like Griff, by unseemly pranks on
Sundays, nor by innovations in the habits of Noah's ark, but was as
much shocked as nurse when the lion was made to devour the elephant,
or the lion and wolf fought in an embrace fatal to their legs.
Bible stories and Watt's hymns were more to Clarence than even to
me, and he used to ask questions for which Gooch's theology was
quite insufficient, and which brought the invariable answers, 'Now,
Master Clarry, I never did! Little boys should not ask such
questions!' 'What's the use of your pretending, sir! It's all
falseness, that's what it is! I hates hypercriting!' 'Don't
worrit, Master Clarence; you are a very naughty boy to say such
things. I shall put you in the corner!'
Even nurse was scared one night when Clarence had a frightful
screaming fit, declaring that he saw 'her--her--all white,' and even
while being slapped reiterated, 'HER, Lucy!'
Lucy was a kind elder girl in the Square gardens, a protector of
little timid ones. She was known to be at that time very ill with
measles, and in fact died that very night. Both my brothers
sickened the next day, and Emily and I soon followed their example,
but no one had it badly except Clarence, who had high fever, and
very much delirium each night, talking to people whom he thought he
saw, so as to make nurse regret her severity on the vision of Lucy.
CHAPTER II--SCHOOLROOM DAYS
'In the loom of life-cloth pleasure,
Ere our childish days be told,
With the warp and woof enwoven,
Glitters like a thread of gold.'
JEAN INGELOW.
Looking back, I think my mother was the leading spirit in our
household, though she never for a moment suspected it. Indeed, the
chess queen must be the most active on the home board, and one of
the objects of her life was to give her husband a restful evening
when he came home to the six o'clock dinner. She also had to make
both ends meet on an income which would seem starvation at the
present day; but she was strong, spirited, and managing, and equal
to all her tasks till the long attendance upon me, and the
consequent illness, forced her to spare herself--a little--a very
little.
Previously she had been our only teacher, except that my father read
a chapter of the Bible with us every morning before breakfast, and
heard the Catechism on a Sunday. For we could all read long before
young gentlefolks nowadays can say their letters. It was well for
me, since books with a small quantity of type, and a good deal of
frightful illustration, beguiled many of my weary moments. You may
see my special favourites, bound up, on the shelf in my bedroom.
Crabbe's Tales, Frank, the Parent's Assistant, and later, Croker's
Tales from English History, Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, Tales of
a Grandfather, and the Rival Crusoes stand pre-eminent--also Mrs.
Leicester's School, with the ghost story cut out.
Fairies and ghosts were prohibited as unwholesome, and not unwisely.
The one would have been enervating to me, and the other would have
been a definite addition to Clarence's stock of horrors. Indeed,
one story had been cut out of Crabbe's Tales, and another out of an
Annual presented to Emily, but not before Griff had read the latter,
and the version he related to us probably lost nothing in the
telling; indeed, to this day I recollect the man, wont to slay the
harmless cricket on the hearth, and in a storm at sea pursued by a
gigantic cockroach and thrown overboard. The night after hearing
this choice legend Clarence was found crouching beside me in bed for
fear of the cockroach. I am afraid the vengeance was more than
proportioned to the offence!
Even during my illness that brave mother struggled to teach my
brothers' daily lessons, and my father heard them a short bit of
Latin grammar at his breakfast (five was thought in those days to be
the fit age to begin it, and fathers the fit teachers thereof). And
he continued to give this morning lesson when, on our return from
airing at Ramsgate after our recovery from the measles, my mother
found she must submit to transfer us to a daily governess.
Old Miss Newton's attainments could not have been great, for her
answers to my inquiries were decidedly funny, and prefaced sotto
voce with, 'What a child it is!' But she was a good kindly lady,
who had the faculty of teaching, and of forestalling rebellion; and
her little thin corkscrew curls, touched with gray, her pale eyes,
prim black silk apron, and sandalled shoes, rise before me full of
happy associations of tender kindness and patience. She was wise,
too, in her own simple way. When nurse would have forewarned her of
Clarence's failings in his own hearing, she cut the words short by
declaring that she should like never to find out which was the
naughty one. And when habit was too strong, and he had denied the
ink spot on the atlas, she persuasively wiled out a confession not
only to her but to mamma, who hailed the avowal as the beginning of
better things, and kissed instead of punishing.
Clarence's queries had been snubbed into reserve, and I doubt
whether Miss Newton's theoretic theology was very much more
developed than that of Mrs. Gooch, but her practice and devotion
were admirable, and she fostered religious sentiment among us,
introducing little books which were welcome in the restricted range
of Sunday reading. Indeed, Mrs. Sherwood's have some literary
merit, and her Fairchild Family indulged in such delicious and
eccentric acts of naughtiness as quite atoned for all the religious
teaching, and fascinated Griff, though he was apt to be very
impatient of certain little affectionate lectures to which Clarence
listened meekly. My father and mother were both of the old-
fashioned orthodox school, with minds formed on Jeremy Taylor,
Blair, South, and Secker, who thought it their duty to go diligently
to church twice on Sunday, communicate four times a year (their only
opportunities), after grave and serious preparation, read a sermon
to their household on Sunday evenings, and watch over their
children's religious instruction, though in a reserved
undemonstrative manner. My father always read one daily chapter
with us every morning, one Psalm at family prayers, and my mother
made us repeat a few verses of Scripture before our other studies
began; besides which there was special teaching on Sunday, and an
abstinence from amusements, such as would now be called Sabbatarian,
but a walk in the Park with papa was so much esteemed that it made
the day a happy and honoured one to those who could walk.
There was little going into society, comparatively, for people in
our station,--solemn dinner-parties from time to time--two a year,
did we give, and then the house was turned upside down,--and now and
then my father dined out, or brought a friend home to dinner; and
there were so-called morning calls in the afternoon, but no tea-
drinking. For the most part the heads of the family dined alone at
six, and afterwards my father read aloud some book of biography or
travels, while we children were expected to employ ourselves
quietly, threading beads, drawing, or putting up puzzles, and listen
or not as we chose, only not interrupt, as we sat at the big,
central, round, mahogany table. To this hour I remember portions of
Belzoni's Researches and Franklin's terrible American adventures,
and they bring back tones of my father's voice. As an authority
'papa' was seldom invoked, except on very serious occasions, such as
Griffith's audacity, Clarence's falsehood, or my obstinacy; and then
the affair was formidable, he was judicial and awful, and, though he
would graciously forgive on signs of repentance, he never was
sympathetic. He had not married young, and there were forty years
or more between him and his sons, so that he had left too far behind
him the feelings of boyhood to make himself one with us, even if he
had thought it right or dignified to do so,--yet I cannot describe
the depth of the respect and loyalty he inspired in us nor the
delight we felt in a word of commendation or a special attention
from him.
The early part of Miss Newton's rule was unusually fertile in such
pleasures, and much might have been spared, could Clarence have been
longer under her influence; but Griff grew beyond her management,
and was taunted by 'fellows in the Square' into assertions of
manliness, such as kicking his heels, stealing her odd little
fringed parasol, pitching his books into the area, keeping her in
misery with his antics during their walks, and finally leading
Clarence off after Punch into the Rookery of St. Giles's, where she
could not follow, because Emily was in her charge.
This was the crisis. She had to come home without the boys, and
though they arrived long before any of the authorities knew of their
absence, she owned with tears that she could not conscientiously be
responsible any longer for Griffith,--who not only openly defied her
authority, but had found out how little she knew, and laughed at
her. I have reason to believe also that my mother had discovered
that she frequented the preachings of Rowland Hill and Baptist Noel;
and had confiscated some unorthodox tracts presented to the
servants, thus being alarmed lest she should implant the seeds of
dissent.
Parting with her after four years under her was a real grief. Even
Griff was fond of her; when once emancipated, he used to hug her and
bring her remarkable presents, and she heartily loved her tormentor.
Everybody did. It remained a great pleasure to get her to spend an
evening with us while the elders were gone out to dinner; nor do I
think she ever did us anything but good, though I am afraid we
laughed at 'Old Newton' as we grew older and more conceited. We
never had another governess. My mother read and enforced diligence
on Emily and me, and we had masters for different studies; the two
boys went to school; and when Martyn began to emerge from babyhood,
Emily was his teacher.
CHAPTER III--WIN AND SLOW
'The rude will shuffle through with ease enough:
Great schools best suit the sturdy and the rough.'
COWPER.
At school Griffith was very happy, and brilliantly successful, alike
in study and sport, though sports were not made prominent in those
days, and triumphs in them were regarded by the elders with doubtful
pride, lest they should denote a lack of attention to matters of
greater importance. All his achievements were, however, poured
forth by himself and Clarence to Emily and me, and we felt as proud
of them as if they had been our own.
Clarence was industrious, and did not fail in his school work, but
when he came home for the holidays there was a cowed look about him,
and private revelations were made over my sofa that made my flesh
creep. The scars were still visible, caused by having been
compelled to grasp the bars of the grate bare-handed; and, what was
worse, he had been suspended outside a third story window by the
wrists, held by a schoolfellow of thirteen!
'But what was Griff about?' I demanded, with hot tears of
indignation.
'Oh, Win!--that's what they call him, and me Slow--he said it would
do me good. But I don't think it did, Eddy. It only makes my heart
beat fit to choke me whenever I go near the passage window.'
I could only utter a vain wish that I had been there and able to
fight for him, and I attacked Griff on the subject on the first
opportunity.
'Oh!' was his answer, 'it is only what all fellows have to bear if
there's no pluck in them. They tried it on upon me, you know, but I
soon showed them it would not do'--with the cock of the nose, the
flash of the eyes, the clench of the fist, that were peculiarly
Griff's own; and when I pleaded that he might have protected
Clarence, he laughed scornfully. 'As to Slow, wretched being, a
fellow can't help bullying him. It comes as natural as to a cat
with a mouse.' On further and reiterated pleadings, Griff declared,
first, that it was the only thing to do Slow any good, or make a man
of him; and next, that he heartily wished that Winslow junior had
been Miss Clara at once, as the fellows called him--it was really
hard on him (Griff) to have such a sneaking little coward tied to
him for a junior!
I particularly resented the term Slow, for Clarence had lately been
the foremost of us in his studies; but the idea that learning had
anything to do with the matter was derided, and as time went on,
there was vexation and displeasure at his progress not being
commensurate with his abilities. It would have been treason to
schoolboy honour to let the elders know that though a strong, high-
spirited popular boy like 'Win' might venture to excel big bullying
dunces, such fair game as poor 'Slow' could be terrified into not
only keeping below them, but into doing their work for them. To him
Cowper's 'Tirocinium' had only too much sad truth.
As to his old failing, there were no special complaints, but in
those pre-Arnoldian times no lofty code of honour was even ideal
among schoolboys, or expected of them by masters; shuffling was
thought natural, and allowances made for faults in indolent despair.
My mother thought the Navy the proper element of boyhood, and her
uncle the Admiral promised a nomination,--a simple affair in those
happy days, involving neither examination nor competition. Griffith
was, however, one of those independent boys who take an aversion to
whatever is forced on them as their fate. He was ready and
successful with his studies, a hero among his comrades, and
preferred continuing at school to what he pronounced, on the
authority of the nautical tales freely thrown in our way, to be the
life of a dog, only fit for the fool of the family; besides, he had
once been out in a boat, tasted of sea-sickness, and been laughed
at. My father was gratified, thinking his brains too good for a
midshipman, and pleased that he should wish to tread in his own
steps at Harrow and Oxford, and thus my mother could not openly
regret his degeneracy when all the rest of us were crazy over Tom
Cringle's Log, and ready to envy Clarence when the offer was passed
on to him, and he appeared in the full glory of his naval uniform.
Not much choice had been offered to him. My mother would have
thought it shameful and ungrateful to have no son available, my
father was glad to have the boy's profession fixed, and he himself
was rejoiced to escape from the miseries he knew only too well, and
ready to believe that uniform and dirk would make a man of him at
once, with all his terrors left behind. Perhaps the chief drawback
was that the ladies WOULD say, 'What a darling!' affording Griff
endless opportunities for the good-humoured mockery by which he
concealed his own secret regrets. Did not even Selina Clarkson,
whose red cheeks, dark blue eyes, and jetty profusion of shining
curls, were our notion of perfect beauty, select the little naval
cadet for her partner at the dancing master's ball?
In the first voyage, a cruise in the Pacific, all went well. The
good Admiral had carefully chosen ship and captain; there were an
excellent set of officers, a good tone among the midshipmen, and
Clarence, who was only twelve years old, was constituted the pet of
the cockpit. One lad in especial, Coles by name, attracted by
Clarence's pleasant gentleness, and impelled by the generosity that
shields the weak, became his guardian friend, and protected him from
all the roughnesses in his power. If there were a fault in that
excellent Coles, it was that he made too much of a baby of his
protege, and did not train him to shift for himself: but wisdom and
moderation are not characteristics of early youth. At home we had
great enjoyment of his long descriptive letters, which came under
cover to our father at the Admiralty, but were chiefly intended for
my benefit. All were proud of them, and great was my elation when I
heard papa relate some fact out of them with the preface, 'My boy
tells me, my boy Clarence, in the Calypso; he writes a capital
letter.'
How great was our ecstasy when after three years and a half we had
him at home again; handsome, vigorous, well-grown, excellently
reported of, fully justifying my mother's assurances that the sea
would make a man of him. There was Griffith in the fifth form and a
splendid cricketer, but Clarence could stand up to him now, and
Harrovian exploits were tame beside stories of sharks and negroes,
monkeys and alligators. There was one in particular, about a whole
boat's crew sitting down on what they thought was a fallen tree, but
which suddenly swept them all over on their faces, and turned out to
be a boa-constrictor, and would have embraced one of them if he had
not had the sail of the boat coiled round the mast, and palmed off
upon him, when he gorged it contentedly, and being found dead on the
next landing, his skin was used to cover the captain's sea-chest.
Clarence declined to repeat this tale and many others before the
elders, and was displeased with Emily for referring to it in public.
As to his terrors, he took it for granted that an officer of H.M.S.
Calypso, had left them behind, and in fact, he naturally forgot and
passed over what he had not been shielded from, while his hereditary
love of the sea really made those incidental to his profession much
more endurable than the bullying he had undergone at school.
We were very happy that Christmas, and very proud of our boys. One
evening we were treated to a box at the pantomime, and even I was
able to go to it. We put our young sailor and our sister in the
forefront, and believed that every one was as much struck with them
as with the wonderful transformations of Goody-Two-Shoes under the
wand of Harlequin. Brother-like, we might tease our one girl, and
call her an affected little pussy cat, but our private opinion was
that she excelled all other damsels with her bright blue eyes and
pretty curling hair, which had the same chestnut shine as Griff's--
enough to make us correct possible vanity by terming it red, though
we were ready to fight any one else who presumed to do so. Indeed
Griff had defended its hue in single combat, and his eye was treated
for it with beefsteak by Peter in the pantry. We were immensely,
though silently, proud of her in her white embroidered cambric
frock, red sash and shoes, and coral necklace, almost an heirloom,
for it had been brought from Sicily in Nelson's days by my mother's
poor young father. How parents and doctors in these days would have
shuddered at her neck and arms, bare, not only in the evening, but
by day! When she was a little younger she could so shrink up from
her clothes that Griff, or little Martyn, in a mischievous mood,
would put things down her back, to reappear below her petticoats.
Once it was a dead wasp, which descended harmlessly the length of
her spine! She was a good-humoured, affectionate, dear sister, my
valued companion, submitting patiently to be eclipsed when Clarence
was present, and everything to me in his absence. Sturdy little
Martyn too, was held by us to be the most promising of small boys.
He was a likeness of Clarence, only stouter, hardier, and without
the delicate, girlish, wistful look; imitating Griff in everything,
and rather a heavy handful to Emily and me when left to our care,
though we were all the more proud of his high spirit, and were fast
becoming a mutual admiration society.
What then were our feelings when Griff, always fearless, dashed to
the rescue of a boy under whom the ice had broken in St. James'
Park, and held him up till assistance came? Martyn, who was with
him, was sent home to fetch dry clothes and reassure my mother,
which he did by dashing upstairs, shouting, 'Where's mamma? Here's
Griff been into the water and pulled out a boy, and they don't know
if he is drowned; but he looks--oh!'
Even after my mother had elicited that Martyn's HE meant the boy,
and not Griff, she could not rest without herself going to see that
our eldest was unhurt, greet him, and bring him home. What happy
tears stood in her eyes, how my father shook hands with him, how we
drank his health after dinner, and how ungrateful I was to think
Clarence deserved his name of Slow for having stayed at home to play
chess with me because my back was aching, when he might have been
winning the like honours! How red and gruff and shy the hero
looked, and how he entreated no one to say any more about it!
He would not even look publicly at the paragraph about it in the
paper, only vituperating it for having made him into 'a juvenile
Etonian,' and hoping no one from Harrow would guess whom it meant.
I found that paragraph the other day in my mother's desk, folded
over the case of the medal of the Royal Humane Society, which Griff
affected to despise, but which, when he was well out of the way,
used to be exhibited on high days and holidays. It seems now like
the boundary mark of the golden days of our boyhood, and unmitigated
hopes for one another.
CHAPTER IV--UBI LAPSUS, QUID FECI
'Clarence is come--false, fleeting, perjured Clarence.'
King Richard III.
There was much stagnation in the Navy in those days in the reaction
after the great war; and though our family had fair interest at the
Admiralty, it was seven months before my brother went to sea again.
To me they were very happy months, with my helper of helpers,
companion of companions, who made possible to me many a little
enterprise that could not be attempted without him. My father made
him share my studies, and thus they became doubly pleasant. And oh,
ye boys! who murmur at the Waverley Novels as a dry holiday task, ye
may envy us the zest and enthusiasm with which we devoured them in
their freshness. Strangely enough, the last that we read together
was the Fair Maid of Perth.
Clarence and his friend Coles longed to sail together again, but
Coles was shelved; and when Clarence's appointment came at last, it
was to the brig Clotho, Commander Brydone, going out in the
Mediterranean Fleet, under Sir Edward Codrington. My mother did not
like brigs, and my father did not like what he heard of the captain;
but there had been jealous murmurs about appointments being absorbed
by sons of officials--he durst not pick and choose; and the Admiral
pronounced that if the lad had been spoilt on board the Calypso, it
was time for him to rough it--a dictum whence there was no appeal.
Half a year later the tidings of the victory of Navarino rang
through Europe, and were only half welcome to the conquerors; but in
our household it is connected with a terrible recollection. Though
more than half a century has rolled by, I shrink from dwelling on
the shock that fell on us when my father returned from Somerset
House with such a countenance that we thought our sailor had fallen;
but my mother could brook the fact far less than if her son had died
a gallant death. The Clotho was on her way home, and Midshipman
William Clarence Winslow was to be tried by court-martial for
insubordination, disobedience, and drunkenness. My mother was like
one turned to stone. She would hardly go out of doors; she could
scarcely bring herself to go to church; she would have had my father
give up his situation if there had been any other means of
livelihood. She could not talk; only when my father sighed, 'We
should never have put him into the Navy,' she hotly replied,
'How was I to suppose that a son of mine would be like that?'
Emily cried all day and all night. Some others would have felt it a
relief to have cried too. In more furious language than parents in
those days tolerated, Griff wrote to me his utter disbelief, and how
he had punched the heads of fellows who presumed to doubt that it
was not all a rascally, villainous plot.
When the time came my father went down by the night mail to
Portsmouth. He could scarcely bear to face the matter; but, as he
said, he could not have it on his conscience if the boy did anything
desperate for want of some one to look after him. Besides, there
might be some explanation.
'Explanation,' said my mother bitterly. 'That there always is!'
The 'explanation' was this--I have put together what came out in
evidence, what my father and the Admiral heard from commiserating
officers, and what at different times I learned from Clarence
himself. Captain Brydone was one of the rough old description of
naval men, good sailors and stern disciplinarians, but wanting in
any sense of moral duties towards their ship's company. His
lieutenant was of the same class, soured, moreover, by tardy
promotion, and prejudiced against a gentleman-like, fair-faced lad,
understood to have interest, and bearing a name that implied it. Of
the other two midshipmen, one was a dull lad of low stamp, the other
a youth of twenty, a born bully, with evil as well as tyrannical
propensities;--the crew conforming to severe discipline on board,
but otherwise wild and lawless. In such a ship a youth with good
habits, sensitive conscience, and lack of moral or physical courage,
could not but lead a life of misery, losing every day more of his
self-respect and spirit as he was driven to the evil he loathed,
dreading the consequences, temporal and eternal, with all his soul,
yet without resolution or courage to resist.
As every one knows, the battle of Navarino came on suddenly, almost
by mistake; and though it is perhaps no excuse, the hurly-burly and
horror burst upon him at unawares. Though the English loss was
comparatively very small, the Clotho was a good deal exposed, and
two men were killed--one so close to Clarence that his clothes were
splashed with blood. This entirely unnerved him; he did not even
know what he did, but he was not to be found when required to carry
an order, and was discovered hidden away below, shuddering, in his
berth, and then made some shallow excuse about misunderstanding
orders. Whether this would have been brought up against him under
other circumstances, or whether it would have been remembered that
great men, including Charles V. and Henri IV., have had their moment
de peur, I cannot tell; but there were other charges. I cannot give
date or details. There is no record among the papers before me; and
I can only vaguely recall what could hardly be read for the sense of
agony, was never discussed, and was driven into the most oblivious
recesses of the soul fifty years ago. There was a story about
having let a boat's crew, of which he was in charge, get drunk and
over-stay their time. One of them deserted; and apparently
prevarication ran to the bounds of perjury, if it did not overpass
them. (N.B.--Seeing seamen flogged was one of the sickening horrors
that haunted Clarence in the Clotho.) Also, when on shore at Malta
with the young man whose name I will not record--his evil genius--he
was beguiled or bullied into a wine-shop, and while not himself was
made the cat's-paw of some insolent practical joke on the
lieutenant; and when called to account, was so bewildered and
excited as to use unpardonable language.
Whatever it might have been in detail, so much was proved against
him that he was dismissed his ship, and his father was recommended
to withdraw him from the service, as being disqualified by want of
nerve. Also, it was added more privately, that such vicious
tendencies needed home restraint. The big bully, his corrupter,
bore witness against him, but did not escape scot free, for one of
the captains spoke to him in scathing tones of censure.
Whenever my mother was in trouble, she always re-arranged the
furniture, and a family crisis was always heralded by a revolution
of chairs, tables, and sofas. She could not sit still under
suspense, and, during these terrible days the entire house underwent
a setting to rights. Emily attended upon her, and I sat and dusted
books. No doubt it was much better for us than sitting still. My
father's letter came by the morning mail, telling us of the
sentence, and that he and our poor culprit, as he said, would come
home by the Portsmouth coach in the evening.
One room was already in order when Sir John Griffith kindly came to
see whether he could bring any comfort to a spirit which would
infinitely have preferred death to dishonour, and was, above all,
shocked at the lack of physical courage. Never had I liked our old
Admiral so well as when I heard how his chief anger was directed
against the general mismanagement, and the cruelty of blighting a
poor lad's life when not yet seventeen. His father might have been
warned to remove him without the public scandal of a court-martial
and dismissal.
'The guilt and shame would have been all the same to us,' said my
mother.
'Come, Mary, don't be hard on the poor fellow. In quiet times like
these a poor boy can't look over the wall where one might have
stolen a horse, ay, or a dozen horses, when there was something else
to think about!'
'You would not have forgiven such a thing, sir.'
'It never would have happened under me, or in any decently commanded
ship!' he thundered. 'There wasn't a fault to be found with him in
the Calypso. What possessed Winslow to let him sail with Brydone?
But the service is going,' etc. etc., he ran on--forgetting that it
was he himself who had been unwilling, perhaps rightly, to press the
Duke of Clarence for an appointment to a crack frigate for his
namesake. However, when he took leave he repeated, as he kissed my
mother, 'Mind, Mary, don't be set against the lad. That's the way
to make 'em desperate, and he is a mere boy, after all.'
Poor mother, it was not so much hardness as a wounded spirit that
made her look so rigid. It might have been better if the return
could have been delayed so as to make her yearn after her son, but
there was nowhere for him to go, and the coach was already on its
way. How strange it was to feel the wonted glow at Clarence's
return coupled with a frightful sense of disgrace and depression.
The time was far on in October, and it was thus quite dark when the
travellers arrived, having walked from Charing Cross, where the
coach set them down. My father came in first, and my mother clung
to him as if he had been absent for weeks, while all the joy of
contact with my brother swept over me, even though his hand hung
limp in mine, and was icy cold like his cheeks. My father turned to
him with one of the little set speeches of those days. 'Here is our
son, Mary, who has promised me to do his utmost to retrieve his
character, as far as may be possible, and happily he is still
young.'
My mother's embrace was in a sort of mechanical obedience to her
husband's gesture, and her voice was not perhaps meant to be so
severe as it sounded when she said, 'You are very cold--come and
warm yourself.'
They made room for him by the fire, and my father stood up in front
of it, giving particulars of the journey. Emily and Martyn were at
tea in the nursery, in a certain awe that hindered them from coming
down; indeed, Martyn seems to have expected to see some strange
transformation in his brother. Indeed, there was alteration in the
absence of the blue and gold, and, still more, in the loss of the
lightsome, hopeful expression from the young face.
There is a picture of Ary Scheffer's of an old knight, whose son had
fled from the battle, cutting the tablecloth in two between himself
and the unhappy youth. Like that stern baron's countenance was that
with which my mother sat at the head of the dinner-table, and we
conversed by jerks about whatever we least cared for, as if we could
hide our wretchedness from Peter. When the children appeared each
gave Clarence the shyest of kisses, and they sat demurely on their
chairs on either side of my father to eat their almonds and raisins,
after which we went upstairs, and there was the usual reading. It
is curious, but though none of us could have told at the time what
it was about, on turning over not long ago a copy of Head's Pampas
and Andes, one chapter struck me with an intolerable sense of
melancholy, such as the bull chases of South America did not seem
adequate to produce, and by and by I remembered that it was the book
in course of being read at that unhappy period. My mother went on
as diligently as ever with some of those perpetual shirts which
seemed to be always in hand except before company, when she used to
do tambour work for Emily's frocks. Clarence sat the whole time in
a dark corner, never stirring, except that he now and then nodded a
little. He had gone through many wakeful, and worse than wakeful,
nights of wretched suspense, and now the worst was over.
Family prayers took place, chill good-nights were exchanged, and
nobody interfered with his helping me up to my bedroom as usual; but
there was something in his face to which I durst not speak, though
perhaps I looked, for he exclaimed, 'Don't, Ned!' wrung my hand, and
sped away to his own quarters higher up. Then came a sound which
made me open my door to listen. Dear little Emily! She had burst
out of her own room in her dressing-gown, and flung herself upon her
brother as he was plodding wearily upstairs in the dark, clinging
round his neck sobbing, 'Dear, dear Clarry! I can't bear it! I
don't care. You're my own dear brother, and they are all wicked,
horrid people.'
That was all I heard, except hushings on Clarence's part, as if the
opening of my door and the thread of light from it warned him that
there was risk of interruption. He seemed to be dragging her up to
her own room, and I was left with a pang at her being foremost in
comforting him.
My father enacted that he should be treated as usual. But how could
that be when papa himself did not know how changed were his own ways
from his kindly paternal air of confidence? All trust had been
undermined, so that Clarence could not cross the threshold without
being required to state his object, and, if he overstayed the time
calculated, he was cross-examined, and his replies received with a
sigh of doubt.
He hung about the house, not caring to do much, except taking me out
in my Bath chair or languidly reading the most exciting books he
could get;--but there was no great stock of sensation then, except
the Byronic, and from time to time one of my parents would exclaim,
'Clarence, I wonder you can find nothing more profitable to occupy
yourself with than trash like that!'
He would lay down the book without a word, and take up Smith's
Wealth of Nations or Smollett's England--the profitable studies
recommended, and speedily become lost in a dejected reverie, with
fixed eyes and drooping lips.
CHAPTER V--A HELPING HAND
'Though hawks can prey through storms and winds,
The poor bee in her hive must dwell.'
HENRY VAUGHAN.
In imagination the piteous dejection of our family seems to have
lasted for ages, but on comparison of dates it is plain that the
first lightening of the burthen came in about a fortnight's time.
The firm of Frith and Castleford was coming to the front in the
Chinese trade. The junior partner was an old companion of my
father's boyhood; his London abode was near at hand, and he was a
kind of semi-godfather to both Clarence and me, having stood proxy
for our nominal sponsors. He was as good and open-hearted a man as
ever lived, and had always been very kind to us; but he was scarcely
welcome when my father, finding that he had come up alone to London
to see about some repairs to his house, while his family were still
in the country, asked him to dine and sleep--our first guest since
our misfortune.
My mother could hardly endure to receive any one, but she seemed
glad to see my father become animated and like himself while Roman
Catholic Emancipation was vehemently discussed, and the ruin of
England hotly predicted. Clarence moped about silently as usual,
and tried to avoid notice, and it was not till the next morning--
after breakfast, when the two gentlemen were in the dining-room,
nearly ready to go their several ways, and I was in the window
awaiting my classical tutor--that Mr. Castleford said,
'May I ask, Winslow, if you have any plans for that poor boy?'
'Edward?' said my father, almost wilfully misunderstanding. 'His
ambition is to be curator of something in the British Museum, isn't
it?'
Mr. Castleford explained that he meant the other, and my father
sadly answered that he hardly knew; he supposed the only thing was
to send him to a private tutor, but where to find a fit one he did
not know and besides, what could be his aim? Sir John Griffith had
said he was only fit for the Church, 'But one does not wish to
dispose of a tarnished article there.'
'Certainly not,' said Mr. Castleford; and then he spoke words that
rejoiced my heart, though they only made my father groan, bidding
him remember that it was not so much actual guilt as the accident of
Clarence's being in the Navy that had given so serious a character
to his delinquencies. If he had been at school, perhaps no one
would ever have heard of them, 'Though I don't say,' added the good
man, casting a new light on the subject, 'that it would have been
better for him in the end.' Then, quite humbly, for he knew my
mother especially had a disdain for trade, he asked what my father
would think of letting him give Clarence work in the office for the
present. 'I know,' he said, 'it is not the line your family might
prefer, but it is present occupation; and I do not think you could
well send a youth who has seen so much of the world back to
schooling. Besides, this would keep him under your own eye.'
My father was greatly touched by the kindness, but he thought it
right to set before Mr. Castleford the very worst side of poor
Clarence; declaring that he durst not answer for a boy who had
never, in spite of pains and punishments, learnt to speak truth at
home or abroad, repeating Captain Brydone's dreadful report, and
even adding that, what was most grievous of all, there was an
affectation of piety about him that could scarcely be anything but
self-deceit and hypocrisy. 'Now,' he said, 'my eldest son,
Griffith, is just a boy, makes no profession, is not--as I am afraid
you have seen--exemplary at church, when Clarence sits as meek as a
mouse, but then he is always above-board, frank and straightforward.
You know where to have a high-spirited fellow, who will tame down,
but you never know what will come next with the other. I sometimes
wonder for what error of mine Providence has seen fit to give me
such a son.'
Just then an important message came for Mr. Winslow, and he had to
hurry away, but Mr. Castleford still remained, and presently said,
'Edward, I should like to know what your eyes have been trying to
say all this time.'
'Oh, sir,' I burst out, 'do give him a chance. Indeed he never
means to do wrong. The harm is not in him. He would have been the
best of us all if he had only been let alone.'
Those were exactly my own foolish words, for which I could have
beaten myself afterwards; but Mr. Castleford only gave a slight
grave smile, and said, 'You mean that your brother's real defect is
in courage, moral and physical.'
'Yes,' I said, with a great effort at expressing myself. 'When he
is frightened, or bullied, or browbeaten, he does not know what he
is doing or saying. He is quite different when he is his own self;
only nobody can understand.'
Strange that though the favoured home son and nearly sixteen years
old, it would have been impossible to utter so much to one of our
parents. Indeed the last sentence felt so disloyal that the colour
burnt in my cheeks as the door opened; but it only admitted
Clarence, who, having heard the front door shut, thought the coast
was clear, and came in with a load of my books and dictionaries.
'Clarence,' said Mr. Castleford, and the direct address made him
start and flush, 'supposing your father consents, should you be
willing to turn your mind to a desk in my counting-house?'
He flushed deeper red, and his fingers quivered as he held by the
table. 'Thank you, sir. Anything--anything,' he said hesitatingly.
'Well,' said Mr. Castleford, with the kindest of voices, 'let us
have it out. What is in your mind? You know, I'm a sort of
godfather to you.'
'Sir, if you would only let me have a berth on board one of your
vessels, and go right away.'
'Aye, my poor boy, that's what you would like best, I've no doubt;
but look at Edward's face there, and think what that would come to
at the best!'
'Yes, I know I have no right to choose,' said Clarence, drooping his
head as before.
''Tis not that, my dear lad,' said the good man, 'but that packing
you off like that, among your inferiors in breeding and everything
else, would put an end to all hope of your redeeming the past--
outwardly I mean, of course--and lodge you in a position of
inequality to your brothers and sister, and all--'
'That's done already,' said Clarence.
'If you were a man grown it might be so,' returned Mr. Castleford,
'but bless me, how old are you?'
'Seventeen next 1st of November,' said Clarence.
'Not a bit too old for a fresh beginning,' said Mr. Castleford
cheerily. 'God helping you, you will be a brave and good man yet,
my boy--' then as my master rang at the door--'Come with me and look
at the old shop.'
Poor Clarence muttered something unintelligible, and I had to own
for him that he never went out without accounting for himself.
Whereupon our friend caused my mother to be hunted up, and explained
to her that he wanted to take Clarence out with him--making some
excuse about something they were to see together.
That walk enabled him to say something which came nearer to cheering
Clarence than anything that had passed since that sad return, and
made him think that to be connected with Mr. Castleford was the best
thing that could befall him. Mr. Castleford on his side told my
father that he was sure that the boy was good-hearted all the time,
and thoroughly repentant; but this had the less effect because
plausibility, as my father called it, was one of the qualities that
specially annoyed him in Clarence, and made him fear that his friend
might be taken in. However, the matter was discussed between the
elders, and it was determined that this most friendly offer should
be accepted experimentally. It was impressed on Clarence, with
unnecessary care, that the line of life was inferior; but that it
was his only chance of regaining anything like a position, and that
everything depended on his industry and integrity.
'Integrity!' commented Clarence, with a burning spot on his cheek
after one of these lectures; 'I believe they think me capable of
robbing the office!'
We found out, too, that the senior partner, Mr. Frith, a very crusty
old bachelor, did not like the appointment, and that it was made
quite against his will. 'You'll be getting your clerks next from
Newgate!' was what some amiable friend reported him to have said.
However, Mr. Castleford had his way, and Clarence was to begin his
work with the New Year, being in the meantime cautioned and lectured
on the crime and danger of his evil propensities more than he could
well bear. 'Oh!' he groaned, 'it serves me right, I know that very
well, but if my father only knew how I hate and abhor all those
things--and how I loathed them at the very time I was dragged into
them!'
'Why don't you tell him so?' I asked.
'That would make it no better.'
'It is not so bad as if you had gone into it willingly, and for your
own pleasure.'
'He would only think that another lie.'
No more could be said, for the idea of Clarence's untruthfulness and
depravity had become so deeply rooted in our father's mind that
there was little hope of displacing it, and even at the best his
manner was full of grave constrained pity. Those few words were
Clarence's first approach to confidence with me, but they led to
more, and he knew there was one person who did not believe the
defect was in the bent of his will so much as in its strength.
All the time the prospect of the counting-house in comparison with
the sea was so distasteful to him that I was anxious whenever he
went out alone, or even with Griffith, who despised the notion of,
as he said, sitting on a high stool, dealing in tea, so much that he
was quite capable of aiding and abetting in an escape from it. Two
considerations, however, held Clarence back; one, the timidity of
nature which shrank from so violent a step, and the other, the
strong affections that bound him to his home, though his sojourn
there was so painful. He knew the misery his flight would have been
to me; indeed I took care to let him see it.
And Griffith's return was like a fresh spring wind dispersing
vapours. He had gained an excellent scholarship at Brazenose, and
came home radiant with triumph, cheering us all up, and making a
generous use of his success. He was no letter-writer, and after
learning that the disaster and disgrace were all too certain, he
ignored the whole, and hailed Clarence on his return as if nothing
had happened. As eldest son, and almost a University man, he could
argue with our parents in a manner we never presumed on. At least I
cannot aver what he actually uttered, but probably it was a revised
version of what he thundered forth to me. 'Such nonsense! such a
shame to keep the poor beggar going about with that hang dog look,
as if he had done for himself for life! Why, I've known fellows do
ever so much worse of their own accord, and nothing come of it. If
it was found out, there might be a row and a flogging, and there was
an end of it. As to going about mourning, and keeping the whole
house in doleful dumps, as if there was never to be any good again,
it was utter folly, and so I've told Bill, and papa and mamma, both
of them!'
How this was administered, or how they took it, there is no knowing,
but Griff would neither skate nor go to the theatre, nor to any
other diversion, without his brother; and used much kindly force and
banter to unearth him from his dismal den in the back drawing-room.
He was only let alone when there were engagements with friends, and
indeed, when meetings in the streets took place, by tacit agreement,
Clarence would shrink off in the crowd as if not belonging to his
companion; and these were the moments that stung him into longing to
flee to the river, and lose the sense of shame among common sailors:
but there was always some good angel to hold him back from desperate
measures--chiefly just then, the love between us three brothers, a
love that never cooled throughout our lives, and which dear old
Griff made much more apparent at this critical time than in the old
Win and Slow days of school. That return of his enlivened us all,
and removed the terrible constraint from our meals, bringing us
back, as it were, to ordinary life and natural intercourse among
ourselves and with our neighbours.
CHAPTER VI--THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION
'But when I lay upon the shore,
Like some poor wounded thing,
I deemed I should not evermore
Refit my wounded wing.
Nailed to the ground and fastened there,
This was the thought of my despair.'
ABP. TRENCH.
Clarence's debut at the office was not wholly unsuccessful. He
wrote a good hand, and had a good deal of method and regularity in
his nature, together with a real sense of gratitude to Mr.
Castleford; and this bore him through the weariness of his new
employment, and, what was worse, the cold reception he met with from
the other clerks. He was too quiet and reserved for the wilder
spirits, too much of a gentleman for others, and in the eyes of the
managers, and especially of the senior partner, a disgraced,
untrustworthy youth foisted on the office by Mr. Castleford's weak
partiality. That old Mr. Frith had, Clarence used to say, a
perfectly venomous way of accepting his salute, and seemed always
surprised and disappointed if he came in in time, or showed up
correct work. Indeed, the old man was disliked and feared by all
his subordinates as much as his partner was loved; and while Mr.
Castleford, with his good-natured Irish wife and merry family, lived
a life as cheerful as it was beneficent, Mr. Frith dwelt entirely
alone, in rooms over the office, preserving the habits formed when
his income had been narrow, and mistrusting everybody.
At the end of the first month of experiment, Mr. Castleford declared
himself contented with Clarence's industry and steadiness, and
permanent arrangements were made, to which Clarence submitted with
an odd sort of passive gratitude, such as almost angered my father,
who little knew how trying the position really was, nor how a
certain home-sickness for the seafaring life was tugging at the
lad's heart, and making each morning's entrance at the counting-
house an effort--each merchant-captain, redolent of the sea, an
object of envy. My mother would have sympathised here, but Clarence
feared her more than my father, and she was living in continual
dread of some explosion, so that her dark curls began to show
streaks of gray, and her face to lose its round youthfulness.
Lent brought the question of Confirmation. Under the influence of
good Bishop Blomfield, and in the wave of evangelical revival--then
at its flood height--Confirmation was becoming a more prominent
subject with religious people than it had probably ever been in our
Church, and it was recognised that some preparation was desirable
beyond the power of repeating the Church Catechism. This was all
that had been required of my father at Harrow. My mother's
godfather, a dignified clergyman, had simply said, 'I suppose, my
dear, you know all about it;' and as for the Admiral, he remarked,
'Confirmed! I never was confirmed anything but a post-captain!'
Our incumbent was more attentive to his duties, or rather recognised
more duties, than his predecessor. He preached on the subject, and
formed classes, sixteen being then the limit of age,--since the idea
of the vow, having become far more prominent than that of the
blessing, it was held that full development of the will and
understanding was needful.
I was of the requisite age, and my father spoke to the clergyman,
who called, and, as I could not attend the classes, gave me books to
read and questions to answer. Clarence read and discussed the
questions with me, showing so much more insight into them, and
fuller knowledge of Scripture than I possessed, that I exclaimed,
'Why should you not go up for Confirmation too?'
'No,' he answered mournfully. 'I must take no more vows if I can't
keep them. It would just be profane.'
I had no more to say; indeed, my parents held the same view. It was
good Mr. Castleford who saw things differently. He was a
clergyman's son, and had been bred up in the old orthodoxy, which
was just beginning to put forth fresh shoots, and, as a quasi-
godfather, he held himself bound to take an interest in our
religious life, while the sponsors, whose names stood in the family
Bible, and whose spoons reposed in the plate-chest, never troubled
themselves on the matter. I remember Clarence leaning over me and
saying, 'Mr. Castleford thinks I might be confirmed. He says it is
not so much the promise we make as of coming to Almighty God for
strength to keep what we are bound by already! He is going to speak
to papa.'
Perhaps no one except Mr. Castleford could have prevailed over the
fear of profanation in the mind of my father, who was, in his old-
fashioned way, one of the most reverent of men, and could not bear
to think of holy things being approached by one under a stigma, nor
of exposing his son to add to his guilt by taking and breaking
further pledges. However, he was struck by his friend's arguments,
and I heard him telling my mother that when he had wished to wait
till there had been time to prove sincerity of repentance by a
course of steadiness, the answer had been that it was hard to
require strength, while denying the means of grace. My mother was
scarcely convinced, but as he had consented she yielded without a
protest; and she was really glad that I should have Clarence at my
side to help me at the ceremony. The clergyman was applied to, and
consented to let Clarence attend the classes, where his knowledge,
comprehension, and behaviour were exemplary, so that a letter was
written to my father expressive of perfect satisfaction with him.
'There,' said my father, 'I knew it would be so! It is not THAT
which I want.'
The Confirmation seemed at the time a very short and perfunctory
result of our preparation; and, as things were conducted or
misconducted then, involved so much crowding and distress that I
recollect very little but clinging to Clarence's arm under a strong
sense of my infirmities,--the painful attempt at kneeling, and the
big outstretched lawn sleeves while the blessing was pronounced over
six heads at once, and then the struggle back to the pew, while the
silver-pokered apparitor looked grim at us, as though the maimed and
halt had no business to get into the way. Yet this was a great
advance upon former Confirmations, and the Bishop met my father
afterwards, and inquired most kindly after his lame son.
We were disappointed, and felt that we could not attain to the
feelings in the Confirmation poem in the Christian Year--Mr.
Castleford's gift to me. Still, I believe that, though encumbered
with such a drag as myself, Clarence, more than I did,
'Felt Him how strong, our hearts how frail,
And longed to own Him to the death.'
But the evangelical belief that dejection ought to be followed by a
full sense of pardon and assurance of salvation somewhat perplexed
and dimmed our Easter Communion. For one short moment, as Clarence
turned to help my father lift me up from the altar-rail, I saw his
face and eyes radiant with a wonderful rapt look; but it passed only
too fast, and the more than ordinary glimpse his spiritual nature
had had made him all the more sad afterwards, when he said, 'I would
give everything to know that there was any steadfastness in my
purpose to lead a new life.'
'But you are leading a new life.'
'Only because there is no one to bully me,' he said. Still, there
had been no reproach against him all the time he had been at Frith
and Castleford's, when suddenly we had a great shock.
Parties were running very high, and there were scurrilous papers
about, which my father perfectly abhorred; and one day at dinner,
when declaiming against something he had seen, he laid down strict
commands that none should be brought into the house. Then, glancing
at Clarence, something possessed him to say, 'You have not been
buying any.'
'No, sir,' Clarence answered; but a few minutes later, when we were
alone together, the others having left him to help me upstairs, he
exclaimed, 'Edward, what is to be done? I didn't buy it; but there
is one of those papers in my great-coat pocket. Pollard threw it on
my desk; and there was something in it that I thought would amuse
you.'
'Oh! why didn't you say so?'
'There I am again! I simply could not, with his eye on me!
Miserable being that I am! Oh, where is the spirit of ghostly
strength?'
'Helping you now to take it to papa in the study and explain!' I
cried; but the struggle in that tall fellow was as if he had been
seven years old instead of seventeen, ere he put his hand over his
face and gave me his arm to come out into the hall, fetch the paper,
and make his confession. Alas! we were too late. The coat had been
moved, the paper had fallen out; and there stood my mother with it
in her hand, looking at Clarence with an awful stony face of mute
grief and reproach, while he stammered forth what he had said
before, and that he was about to give it to my father. She turned
away, bitterly, contemptuously indignant and incredulous; and my
corroborations only served to give both her and my father a certain
dread of Clarence's influence over me, as though I had been either
deceived or induced to back him in deceiving them. The unlucky
incident plunged him back into the depths, just as he had begun to
emerge. Slight as it was, it was no trifle to him, in spite of
Griffith's exclamation, 'How absurd! Is a fellow to be bound to
give an account of everything he looks at as if he were six years
old? Catch me letting my mother pry into my pockets! But you are
too meek, Bill; you perfectly invite them to make a row about
nothing!'
CHAPTER VII--THE INHERITANCE
'For he that needs five thousand pound to live
Is full as poor as he that needs but five.
But if thy son can make ten pound his measure,
Then all thou addest may be called his treasure.'
GEORGE HERBERT.
It was in the spring of 1829 that my father received a lawyer's
letter announcing the death of James Winslow, Esquire, of Chantry
House, Earlscombe, and inviting him, as heir-at-law, to be present
at the funeral and opening of the will. The surprise to us all was
great. Even my mother had hardly heard of Chantry House itself, far
less as a possible inheritance; and she had only once seen James
Winslow. He was the last of the elder branch of the family, a third
cousin, and older than my father, who had known him in times long
past. When they had last met, the Squire of Chantry House was a
married man, with more than one child; my father a young barrister;
and as one lived entirely in the country and the other in town,
without any special congeniality, no intercourse had been kept up,
and it was a surprise to hear that he had left no surviving
children. My father greatly doubted whether being heir-at-law would
prove to avail him anything, since it was likely that so distant a
relation would have made a will in favour of some nearer connection
on his wife's or mother's side. He was very vague about Chantry
House, only knowing that it was supposed to be a fair property, and
he would hardly consent to take Griffith with him by the Western
Royal Mail, warning him and all the rest of us that our expectations
would be disappointed.
Nevertheless we looked out the gentlemen's seats in Paterson's Road
Book, and after much research, for Chantry House lay far off from
the main road, we came upon--'Chantry House, Earlscombe, the seat of
James Winslow, Esquire, once a religious foundation; beautifully
situated on a rising ground, commanding an extensive prospect--'
'A religious foundation!' cried Emily. 'It will be a dear delicious
old abbey, all Gothic architecture, with cloisters and ruins and
ghosts.'
'Ghosts!' said my mother severely, 'what has put such nonsense into
your head?'
Nevertheless Emily made up her mind that Chantry House would be
another Melrose, and went about repeating the moonlight scene in the
Lay of the Last Minstrel whenever she thought no one was there to
laugh at her.
My father and Griffith returned with the good news that there was no
mistake. Chantry House was really his own, with the estate
belonging to it, reckoned at 5000 pounds a year, exclusive of a
handsome provision to Miss Selby, the niece of the late Mrs.
Winslow, a spinster of a certain age, who had lived with her uncle,
and now proposed to remove to Bath. Mr. Winslow had, it appeared,
lost his only son as a schoolboy, and his daughters, like their
mother, had been consumptive. He had always been resolved that the
estate should continue in the family; but reluctance to see any one
take his son's place had withheld him from making any advances to my
father; and for several years past he had been in broken health with
failing faculties.
Of course there was much elation. Griff described as charming the
place, perched on the southern slope of a wooded hill, with a broad
fertile valley lying spread out before it, and the woods behind
affording every promise of sport. The house, my father said, was
good, odd and irregular, built at different times, but quite
habitable, and with plenty of furniture, though he opined that mamma
would think it needed modernising, to which she replied that our
present chattels would make a great difference; whereat my father,
looking at the effects of more than twenty years of London blacks,
gave a little whistle, for she was always the economical one of the
pair.
Emily, with glowing cheeks and eager eyes, entreated to know whether
it was Gothic, and had a cloister! Papa nipped her hopes of a
cloister, but there were Gothic windows and doorway, and a bit of
ruin in the garden, a fragment of the old chapel.
My father could not resign his office without notice, and, besides,
he wished Miss Selby to have leisure for leaving her home of many
years; after which there would be a few needful repairs. The delay
was not a great grievance to any of us except little Martyn. We
were much more Cockney than almost any one is in these days of
railways. We were unusually devoid of kindred on both sides, my
father's holidays were short, I was not a very movable commodity,
and economy forbade long journeys, so that we had never gone farther
than Ramsgate, where we claimed a certain lodging-house as a sort of
right every summer.
Real country was as much unknown to us as the backwoods. My father
alone had been born and bred to village life and habits, for my
mother had spent her youth in a succession of seaport towns,
frequented by men-of-war. We heard, too, that Chantry House was
very secluded, with only a few cottages near at hand--a mile and a
half from the church and village of Earlscombe, three from the tiny
country town of Wattlesea, four from the place where the coach
passed, connecting it with the civilisation of Bath and Bristol,
from each of which places it was about half a day's distance,
according to the measures of those times. It was a sort of
banishment to people accustomed to the stream of life in London; and
though the consequence and importance derived from being raised to
the ranks of the Squirearchy were agreeable, they were a dear
purchase at the cost of being out of reach of all our friends and
acquaintances, as well as of other advantages.
To my father, however, the retirement from his many years of
drudgery was really welcome, and he had preserved enough of country
tastes to rejoice that it was, as he said, a clear duty to reside on
his estate and look after his property. My mother saw his relief in
the prospect, and suppressed her sighs at the dislocation of her
life-long habits, and the loss of intercourse with the acquaintance
whom separation raised to the rank of intimate friends, even her
misgivings as to butchers, bakers, and grocers in the wilderness,
and still worse, as to doctors for me.
'Humph!' said the Admiral, 'the boy will be all the better without
them.'
And so I was; I can't say they were the subject of much regret, but
I was really sorry to leave our big neighbour, the British Museum,
where there were good friends who always made me welcome, and
encouraged me in studies of coins and heraldry, which were great
resources to me, so that I used to spend hours there, and was by no
means willing to resign my ambition of obtaining an appointment
there, when I heard my father say that he was especially thankful
for his good fortune because it enabled him to provide for me.
There were lessons, too, from masters in languages, music, and
drawing, which Emily and I shared, and which she had just begun to
value thoroughly. We had filled whole drawing-books with wriggling
twists of foliage in B B B marking pencil, and had just been
promoted to water-colours; and she was beginning to sing very
prettily. I feared, too, that I should no longer have a chance of
rivalling Griffith's university studies. All this, with my sister's
girl friends, and those kind people who used to drop in to play
chess, and otherwise amuse me, would all be left behind; and, sorest
of all, Clarence, who, whatever he was in the eyes of others, had
grown to be my mainstay during this last year. He it was who
fetched me from the Museum, took me into the gardens, helped me up
and down stairs, spared no pains to rout out whatever my fanciful
pursuits required from shops in the City, and, in very truth, spoilt
me through all his hours that were free from business, besides being
my most perfect sympathising and understanding companion.
I feared, too, that he would be terribly lonesome, though of late he
had been less haunted by longings for the sea, had made some way
with his fellows, and had been commended by the managing clerk; and
it was painful to find the elders did not grieve on their own
account at parting with him. My mother told the Admiral that she
thought it would be good for Mr. Winslow's spirits not to be
continually reminded of his trouble; and my father might be heard
confiding to Mr. Castleford that the separation might be good for
both her and her son, if only the lad could be trusted. To which
that good man replied by giving him an excellent character; but was
only met by a sigh, and 'Well, we shall see!'
Clarence was to be lodged with Peter, whose devotion would not
extend to following us into barbarism, where, as he told us, he
understood there was no such thing as a 'harea,' and master would
have to kill his own mutton.
Peter had been tranquilly engaged to Gooch for years untold. They
were to be transformed into Mr. and Mrs. Robson, with some small
appointment about the Law Courts for him, and a lodging-house for
her, where Clarence was to abide, my mother feeling secure that
neither his health, his morals, nor his shirts could go much astray
without her receiving warning thereof.
Meanwhile, by the help of an antiquarian friend of my father, Mr.
Stafford, who was great in county history, I hunted up in the Museum
library all I could discover about our new possession.
The Chantry of St. Cecily at Earlscombe, in Somersetshire, had, it
appeared, been founded and endowed by Dame Isabel d'Oyley, in the
year of grace 1434, that constant prayers might be offered for the
souls of her husband and son, slain in the French wars. The poor
lady's intentions, which to our Protestant minds appeared rather
shocking than otherwise, had been frustrated at the break up of such
establishments, when the Chantry, and the estate that maintained its
clerks and bedesmen, was granted to Sir Harry Power, from whom,
through two heiresses, it had come to the Fordyces, the last of
whom, by name Margaret, had died childless, leaving the estate to
her stepson, Philip Winslow, our ancestor.
Moreover, we learnt that a portion of the building was of ancient
date, and that there was an 'interesting fragment' of the old chapel
in the grounds, which our good friend promised himself the pleasure
of investigating on his first holiday.
To add to our newly-acquired sense of consideration and of high
pedigree, the family chariot, after taking Miss Selby to Bath, came
up post to London to be touched up at the coachbuilder's, have the
escutcheon altered so as to impale the Griffith coat instead of the
Selby, and finally to convey us to our new abode, in preparation for
which all its boxes came to be packed.
A chariot! You young ones have as little notion of one as of a
British war-chariot armed with scythes. Yet people of a certain
grade were as sure to keep their chariot as their silver tea-pot;
indeed we knew one young couple who started in life with no other
habitation, but spent their time as nomads, in visits to their
relations and friends, for visits WERE visits then.
The capacities of a chariot were considerable. Within, there was a
good-sized seat for the principal occupants, and outside a dickey
behind, and a driving box before, though sometimes there was only
one of these, and that transferable. The boxes were calculated to
hold family luggage on a six months' tour. There they lay on the
spare-room floor, ready to be packed, the first earnest of our new
possessions--except perhaps the five-pound note my father gave each
of us four elder ones, on the day the balance at the bank was made
over to him. There was the imperial, a grand roomy receptacle,
which was placed on the top of the carriage, and would not always go
upstairs in small houses; the capbox, which fitted into a curved
place in front of the windows, and could not stand alone, but had a
frame to support it; two long narrow boxes with the like infirmity
of standing, which fitted in below; square ones under each seat; and
a drop box fastened on behind. There were pockets beneath each
window, and, curious relic in name and nature of the time when every
gentleman carried his weapon, there was the sword case, an
excrescence behind the back of the best seat, accessible by lifting
a cushion, where weapons used to be carried, but where in our
peaceful times travellers bestowed their luncheon and their books.
Our chariot was black above, canary yellow below, beautifully
varnished, and with our arms blazoned on each door. It was lined
with dark blue leather and cloth, picked out with blue and yellow
lace in accordance with our liveries, and was a gorgeous spectacle.
I am afraid Emily did not share in Mistress Gilpin's humility when
'The chaise was brought,
But yet was not allowed
To drive up to the door, lest all
Should say that she was proud!'
It was then that Emily and I each started a diary to record the
events of our new life. Hers flourished by fits and starts; but I
having perforce more leisure than she, mine has gone on with few
interruptions till the present time, and is the backbone of this
narrative, which I compile and condense from it and other sources
before destroying it.
CHAPTER VIII--THE OLD HOUSE
'Your history whither are you spinning?
Can you do nothing but describe?
A house there is, and that's enough!'
GRAY.
How we did enjoy our journey, when the wrench from our old home was
once made. We did not even leave Clarence behind, for Mr.
Castleford had given him a holiday, so that he might not appear to
be kept at a distance, as if under a cloud, and might help me
through our travels.
My mother and I occupied the inside of the carriage, with Emily
between us at the outset; but when we were off the London stones she
was often allowed to make a third on the dickey with Clarence and
Martyn, whose ecstatic heels could be endured for the sake of the
free air and the view. Of course we posted, and where there were
severe hills we indulged in four horses. The varieties of the
jackets of our post-boys, blue or yellow, as supposed to indicate
the politics of their inns, were interesting to us, as everything
was interesting then. Otherwise their equipment was exactly alike--
neat drab corduroy breeches and top-boots, and hats usually white,
and they were all boys, though the red faces and grizzled hair of
some looked as if they had faced the weather for at least fifty
years.
It was a beautiful August, and the harvest fields were a sight
perfectly new, filling us with rapture unspeakable. At every hill
which offered an excuse, our outsiders were on their feet, thrusting
in their heads and hands to us within with exclamations of delight,
and all sorts of discoveries--really new to us three younger ones.
Ears of corn, bearded barley, graceful oats, poppies, corn-flowers,
were all delicious novelties to Emily and me, though Griff and my
father laughed at our ecstasies, and my mother occasionally objected
to the wonderful accumulation of curiosities thrust into her lap or
the door pockets, and tried to persuade Martyn that rooks' wings,
dead hedgehogs, sticks and stones of various merits, might be found
at Earlscombe, until Clarence, by the judicious purchase of a basket
at Salisbury, contrived to satisfy all parties and safely dispose of
the treasures. The objects that stand out in my memory on that
journey were Salisbury Spire, and a long hill where the hedgebank
was one mass of the exquisite rose-bay willow herb--a perfect
revelation to our city-bred eyes; but indeed, the whole route was
like one panorama to us of L'Allegro and other descriptions on which
we had fed. For in those days we were much more devoted to poetry
than is the present generation, which has a good deal of false shame
on that head.
Even dining and sleeping at an inn formed a pleasing novelty, though
we did not exactly sympathise with Martyn when he dashed in at
breakfast exulting in having witnessed the killing of a pig. As my
father observed, it was too like realising Peter's forebodings of
our return to savage life.
Demonstrations were not the fashion of these times, and there was a
good deal of dull discontent and disaffection in the air, so that no
tokens of welcome were prepared for us--not even a peal of bells;
nor indeed should we have heard them if they had been rung, for the
church was a mile and a half beyond the house, with a wood between
cutting off the sound, except in certain winds. We did not miss a
reception, which would rather have embarrassed us. We began to
think it was time to arrive, and my father believed we were climbing
the last hill, when, just as we had passed a remarkably pretty
village and church, Griffith called out to say that we were on our
own ground. He had made his researches with the game keeper while
my father was busy with the solicitor, and could point to our
boundary wall, a little below the top of the hill on the northern
side. He informed us that the place we had passed was Hillside--
Fordyce property,--but this was Earlscombe, our own. It was a great
stony bit of pasture with a few scattered trees, but after the flat
summit was past, the southern side was all beechwood, where a gate
admitted us into a drive cut out in a slant down the otherwise steep
descent, and coming out into an open space. And there we were!
The old house was placed on the widest part of a kind of shelf or
natural terrace, of a sort of amphitheatre shape, with wood on
either hand, but leaving an interval clear in the midst broad enough
for house and gardens, with a gentle green slope behind, and a much
steeper one in front, closed in by the beechwoods. The house stood
as it were sideways, or had been made to do so by later inhabitants.
I know this is very long-winded, but there have been such
alterations that without minute description this narrative will be
unintelligible.
The aspect was northwards so far as the lie of the ground was
concerned, but the house stood across. The main body was of the big
symmetrical Louis XIV. style--or, as it is now the fashion to call
it, Queen Anne--brick, with stone quoins, big sash-windows, and a
great square hall in the midst, with the chief rooms opening into
it. The principal entrance had been on the north, with a huge front
door and a flight of stone steps, and just space enough for a gravel
coach ring before the rapid grassy descent. Later constitutions,
however, must have eschewed that northern front door, and later
nerves that narrow verge, and on the eastern front had been added
that Gothic porch of which Emily had heard,--and a flagrantly modern
Gothic porch it was, flanked by two comical little turrets, with
loopholes, from which a thread-paper or Tom Thumb might have
defended it. Otherwise it resembled a church porch, except for the
formidable points of a sham portcullis; but there was no denying
that it greatly increased the comfort of the house, with its two
sets of heavy doors, and the seats on either side. The great hall
door had been closed up, plastered over within, and rendered
inoffensive. Towards the west there was another modern addition of
drawing and dining rooms, and handsome bedchambers above, in Gothic
taste, i.e. with pointed arches filled up with glass over the sash-
windows. The drawing-room was very pretty, with a glass door at the
end leading into an old-fashioned greenhouse, and two French windows
to the south opening upon the lawn, which soon began to slope
upwards, curving, as I said, like an amphitheatre, and was always
shady and sheltered, tilting its flower-beds towards the house as if
to display them. The dining-room had, in like manner, one west and
two north windows, the latter commanding a grand view over the green
meadow-land below, dotted with round knolls, and rising into blue
hills beyond. We became proud of counting the villages and church
towers we could see from thence.
There was a still older portion, more ancient than the square corps
de logis, and built of the cream-coloured stone of the country. It
was at the south-eastern angle, where the ground began sloping so
near the house that this wing--if it may so be called--containing
two good-sized rooms nearly on a level with the upper floor, had
nothing below but some open stone vaultings, under which it was only
just possible for my tall brothers to stand upright, at the
innermost end. These opened into the cellars which, no doubt,
belonged to the fifteenth-century structure. There seemed to have
once been a door and two or three steps to the ground, which rose
very close to the southern end; but this had been walled up. The
rooms had deep mullioned windows east and west, and very handsome
groined ceilings, and were entered by two steps down from the
gallery round the upper part of the hall. There was a very handsome
double staircase of polished oak, shaped like a Y, the stem of which
began just opposite the original front door--making us wonder if
people knew what draughts were in the days of Queen Anne, and
remember Madame de Maintenon's complaint that health was sacrificed
to symmetry. Not far from this oldest portion were some broken bits
of wall and stumps of columns, remnants of the chapel, and prettily
wreathed with ivy and clematis. We rejoiced in such a pretty and
distinctive ornament to our garden, and never troubled ourselves
about the desecration; and certainly ours was one of the most
delightful gardens that ever existed, what with green turf, bright
flowers, shapely shrubs, and the grand beech-trees enclosing it with
their stately white pillars, green foliage, and the russet arcades
beneath them. The stillness was wonderful to ears accustomed to the
London roar--almost a new sensation. Emily was found, as she said,
'listening to the silence;' and my father declared that no one could
guess at the sense of rest that it gave him.
Of space within there was plenty, though so much had been sacrificed
to the hall and staircase; and this was apparently the cause of the
modern additions, as the original sitting-rooms, wainscotted and
double-doored, were rather small for family requirements. One of
these, once the dining-room, became my father's study, where he read
and wrote, saw his tenants, and by and by acted as Justice of the
Peace. The opposite one, towards the garden, was termed the book-
room. Here Martyn was to do his lessons, and Emily and I carry on
our studies, and do what she called keeping up her accomplishments.
My couch and appurtenances abode there, and it was to be my retreat
from company,--or on occasion could be made a supplementary drawing-
room, as its fittings showed it had been the parlour. It
communicated with another chamber, which became my own--sparing the
difficulties that stairs always presented; and beyond lay, niched
under the grand staircase, a tiny light closet, a passage-room,
where my mother put a bed for a man-servant, not liking to leave me
entirely alone on the ground floor. It led to a passage to the
garden door, also to my mother's den, dedicated to housewifely cares
and stores, and ended at the back stairs, descending to the
servants' region. This was very old, handsomely vaulted with stone,
and, owing to the fall of the ground, had ample space for light on
the north side,--where, beyond the drive, the descent was so rapid
as to afford Martyn infinite delight in rolling down, to the horror
of all beholders and the detriment of his white duck trowsers.
I don't know much about the upper story, so I spare you that. Emily
had a hankering for one of the pretty old mullioned-windowed rooms--
the mullion chambers, as she named them; but Griff pounced on them
at once, the inner for his repose, the outer for his guns and his
studies--not smoking, for young men were never permitted to smoke
within doors, nor indeed in any home society. The choice of the son
and heir was undisputed, and he proceeded to settle his possessions
in his new domains, where they made an imposing appearance.
CHAPTER IX--RATS
'As louder and louder, drawing near,
The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.'
SOUTHEY.
'What a ridiculous old fellow that Chapman is,' said Griff, coming
in from a conference with the gaunt old man who acted as keeper to
our not very extensive preserves. 'I told him to get some gins for
the rats in my rooms, and he shook his absurd head like any
mandarin, and said, "There baint no trap as will rid you of them
kind of varmint, sir."'
'Of course,' my father said, 'rats are part of the entail of an old
house. You may reckon on them.'
'Those rooms of yours are the very place for them,' added my mother.
'I only hope they will not infest the rest of the house.'
To which Griff rejoined that they perpetrated the most extraordinary
noises he had ever heard from rats, and told Emily she might be
thankful to him for taking those rooms, for she would have been
frightened out of her little wits. He meant, he said, to get a
little terrier, and have a thorough good rat hunt, at which Martyn
capered about in irrepressible ecstasy.
This, however, was deferred by the unwillingness of old Chapman, of
whom even Griff was somewhat in awe. His fame as a sportsman had to
be made, and he had had only such practice as could be attained by
shooting at a mark ever since he had been aware of his coming
greatness. So he was desirous of conciliating Chapman, and not
getting laughed at as the London young gentleman who could not hit a
hay-stack. My father, who had been used to carrying a gun in his
younger days, was much amused, in his quiet way, at seeing Griff
watch Chapman off on his rounds, and then betake himself to the
locality most remote from the keeper's ears to practise on the rook
or crow. Martyn always ran after him, having solemnly promised not
to touch the gun, and to keep behind. He was too good-natured to
send the little fellow back, though he often tried to elude the
pursuit, not wishing for a witness to his attempts; and he never
invited Clarence, who had had some experience of curious game but
never mentioned it.
Clarence devoted himself to Emily and me, tugging my garden-chair
along all the paths where it would go without too much jolting, and
when I had had enough, exploring those hanging woods, either with
her or on his own account. They used to come home with their hands
full of flowers, and this resulted in a vehement attack of botany,--
a taste that has lasted all our lives, together with the hortus
siccus to which we still make additions, though there has been a
revolution there as well as everywhere else, and the Linnaean system
we learnt so eagerly from Martin's Letters is altogether exploded
and antiquated. Still, my sister refuses to own the scientific
merits of the natural system, and can point to school-bred and
lectured young ladies who have no notion how to discover the name or
nature of a live plant.
On the Friday after our arrival the noises had been so fearful that
Griff had been exasperated into going off across the hills,
accompanied by his constant shadow, Martyn, in search of the
professional ratcatcher of the neighbourhood, in spite of Chapman's
warning--that Tom Petty was the biggest rascal in the neighbourhood,
and a regular out and out poacher; and as to the noises--he couldn't
'tackle the like of they.' After revelling in the beauty of the
beechwoods as long as was good for me or for Clarence, I was left in
the garden to sketch the ruin, while my two companions started on
one of their exploring expeditions.
It was getting late enough to think of going to prepare for the six
o'clock dinner when Emily came forth alone from the path between the
trees, announcing--'An adventure, Edward! We have had such an
adventure.'
'Where's Clarence?'
'Gone for the doctor! Oh, no; Griff hasn't shot anybody. He is
gone for the ratcatcher, you know. It is a poor little herdboy, who
tumbled out of a tree; and oh! such a sweet, beautiful, young lady--
just like a book!'
When Emily became less incoherent, it appeared that on coming out on
the bit of common above the wood, as she and Clarence were halting
on the brow of the hill to admire the view, they heard a call for
help, and hurrying down in the direction whence it proceeded they
saw a stunted ash-tree, beneath which were a young lady and a little
child bending over a village lad who lay beneath moaning piteously.
The girl, whom Emily described as the most beautiful creature she
ever saw, explained that the boy, who had been herding the cattle
scattered around, had been climbing the tree, a limb of which had
broken with him. She had seen the fall from a distance, and hurried
up; but she hardly knew what to do, for her little sister was too
young to be sent in quest of assistance. Clarence thought one leg
seriously injured, and as the young lady seemed to know the boy,
offered to carry him home. School officers were yet in the future;
children were set to work almost as soon as they could walk, and
this little fellow was so light and thin as to shock Clarence when
he had been taken up on his back, for he weighed quite a trifle.
The young lady showed the way to a wretched little cottage, where a
bigger girl had just come in with a sheaf of corn freshly gleaned
poised on her head. They sent her to fetch her mother, and Clarence
undertook to go for a doctor, but to the surprise and horror of
Emily, there was a demur. Something was said of old Molly and her
'ile' and 'yarbs,' or perhaps Madam could step round. When
Clarence, on this being translated to him, pronounced the case
beyond such treatment, it was explained outside the door that this
was a terribly poor family, and the doctor would not come to parish
patients for an indefinite time after his summons, besides which, he
lived at Wattlesea. 'Indeed mamma does almost all the doctoring
with her medicine chest,' said the girl.
On which Clarence declared that he would let the doctor know that he
himself would be responsible for the cost of the attendance, and set
off for Wattlesea, a kind of town village in the flat below. He
could not get back till dinner was half over, and came in alarmed
and apologetic; but he had nothing worse to encounter than Griff's
unmerciful banter (or, as you would call it, chaff) about his knight
errantry, and Emily's lovely heroine in the sweetest of cottage
bonnets.
Griff could be slightly tyrannous in his merry mockery, and when he
found that on the ensuing day Clarence proposed to go and inquire
after the patient, he made such wicked fun of the expectations the
pair entertained of hearing the sweet cottage bonnet reading a tract
in a silvery voice through the hovel window, that he fairly teased
and shamed Clarence out of starting till the renowned Tom Petty
arrived and absorbed all the three brothers, and even their father,
in delights as mysterious to me as to Emily. How she shrieked when
Martyn rushed triumphantly into the room where we were arranging
books with the huge patriarch of all the rats dangling by his tail!
Three hopeful families were destroyed; rooms, vaults, and cellars
examined and cleared; and Petty declared the race to be
exterminated, picturesque ruffian that he was, in his shapeless hat,
rusty velveteen, long leggings, a live ferret in his pocket, and
festoons of dead rats over his shoulder.
Chapman, who regarded him much as the ferret did the rat, declared
that the rabbits and hares would suffer from letting 'that there
chap' show his face here on any plea; and, moreover, gave a grunt
very like a scoff; at the idea of slumbers in the mullion rooms (as
they were called) being secured by his good offices.
And Chapman was right. The unaccountable noises broke out again--
screaming, wailing, sobbing--sounds scarcely within the power of cat
or rat, but possibly the effect of the wind in the old building. At
any rate, Griff could not stand them, and declared that sleep was
impossible when the wind was in that quarter, so that he must shift
his bedroom elsewhere, though he still wished to retain the outer
apartment, which he had taken pleasure in adorning with his special
possessions. My mother would scarcely have tolerated such fancies
in any one else, but Griff had his privileges.
CHAPTER X--OUR TUNEFUL CHOIR
'The church has been whitewashed, but right long ago,
As the cracks and the dinginess amply doth show;
About the same time that a strange petrifaction
Confined the incumbent to mere Sunday action.
So many abuses in this place are rife,
The only church things giving token of life
Are the singing within and the nettles without -
Both equally rampant without any doubt.'
F. R. HAVERGAL.
All Griff's teasing could not diminish--nay, rather increased--
Emily's excitement in the hope of seeing and identifying the sweet
cottage bonnet at church on Sunday. The distance we had to go was
nearly two miles, and my mother and I drove thither in a donkey
chair, which had been hunted up in London for that purpose because
the 'pheeaton' (as the servants insisted on calling it) was too high
for me. My father had an old-fashioned feeling about the Fourth
Commandment, which made him scrupulous as to using any animal on
Sunday; and even when, in bad weather, or for visitors, the larger
carriage was used, he always walked. He was really angry with Griff
that morning for mischievously maintaining that it was a greater
breach of the commandment to work an ass than a horse.
It was a pretty drive on a road slanting gradually through the
brushwood that clothed the steep face of the hillside, and passing
farms and meadows full of cattle--all things quieter and stiller
than ever in their Sunday repose. We knew that the living was in
Winslow patronage, but that it was in the hands of one of the Selby
connection, who held it, together with it is not safe to say how
many benefices, and found it necessary for his health to reside at
Bath. The vicarage had long since been turned into a farmhouse, and
the curate lived at Wattlesea. All this we knew, but we had not
realised that he was likewise assistant curate there, and only
favoured Earlscombe with alternate morning and evening services on
Sundays.
Still less were we prepared for the interior of the church. It had
a picturesque square tower covered with ivy, and a general air of
fitness for a sketch; indeed, the photograph of it in its present
beautified state will not stand a comparison with our drawings of
it, in those days of dilapidation in the middle of the untidy
churchyard, with little boys astride on the sloping, sunken lichen-
grown headstones, mullein spikes and burdock leaves, more graceful
than the trim borders and zinc crosses which are pleasanter to the
mental eye.
The London church we had left would be a fearful shock to the
present generation, but we were accustomed to decency, order, and
reverence; and it was no wonder that my father was walking about the
churchyard, muttering that he never saw such a place, while my
brothers were full of amusement. Their spruce looks in their tall
hats, bright ties, dark coats, and white trowsers strapped tight
under their boots, looked incongruous with the rest of the
congregation, the most distinguished members of which were farmers
in drab coats with huge mother-of-pearl buttons, and long gaiters
buttoned up to their knees and strapped up to their gay waistcoats
over their white corduroys. Their wives and daughters were in
enormous bonnets, fluttering with ribbons; but then what my mother
and Emily wore were no trifles. The rest of the congregation were--
the male part of it--in white or gray smock-frocks, the elderly
women in black bonnets, the younger in straw; but we had not long to
make our observations, for Chapman took possession of us. He was
parish clerk, and was in great glory in his mourning coat and hat,
and his object was to marshal us all into our pew before he had to
attend upon the clergyman; and of course I was glad enough to get as
soon as possible out of sight of all the eyes not yet accustomed to
my figure.
And hidden enough I was when we had been introduced through the
little north chancel door into a black-curtained, black-cushioned,
black-lined pew, well carpeted, with a table in the midst, and a
stove, whose pipe made its exit through the floriated tracery of the
window overhead. The chancel arch was to the west of us, blocked up
by a wooden parcel-gilt erection, and to the east a decorated window
that would have been very handsome if two side-lights had not been
obscured by the two Tables of the Law, with the royal arms on the
top of the first table, and over the other our own, with the Fordyce
in a scutcheon of pretence; for, as an inscription recorded, they
had been erected by Margaret, daughter of Christopher Fordyce,
Esquire, of Chantry House, and relict of Sir James John Winslow,
Kt., sergeant-at-law, A.D. 1700--the last date, I verily believe, at
which anything had been done to the church. And on the wall,
stopping up the southern chancel window, was a huge marble slab,
supported by angels blowing trumpets, with a very long inscription
about the Fordyce family, ending with this same Margaret, who had
married the Winslow, lost two or three infants, and died on 1st
January 1708, three years later than her husband.
Thus far I could see; but Griff was standing lifting the curtain,
and showing by the working of his shoulders his amazement and
diversion, so that only the daggers in my mother's eyes kept Martyn
from springing up after him. What he beheld was an altar draped in
black like a coffin, and on the step up to the rail, boys and girls
eating apples and performing antics to beguile the waiting time,
while a row of white-smocked old men occupied the bench opposite to
our seat, conversing loud enough for us to hear them.
My father and Clarence came in; the bells stopped; there was a sound
of steps, and in the fabric in front of us there emerged a grizzled
head and the back of a very dirty surplice besprinkled with iron
moulds, while Chapman's back appeared above our curtain, his desk
(full of dilapidated prayer-books) being wedged in between us and
the reading-desk.
The duet that then took place between him and the curate must have
been heard to be credible, especially as, being so close behind the
old man, we could not fail to be aware of all the remarkable shots
at long words which he bawled out at the top of his voice, and I
refrain from recording, lest they should haunt others as they have
done by me all my life. Now and then Chapman caught up a long
switch and dashed out at some obstreperous child to give an audible
whack; and towards the close of the litany he stumped out--we heard
his tramp the whole length of the church, and by and by his voice
issued from an unknown height, proclaiming--'Let us sing to the
praise and glory in an anthem taken from the 42d chapter of
Genesis.'
There was an outburst of bassoon, clarionet, and fiddle, and the
performance that followed was the most marvellous we had ever heard,
especially when the big butcher--fiddling all the time--declared in
a mighty solo, 'I am Jo--Jo--Jo--Joseph!' and having reiterated this
information four or five times, inquired with equal pertinacity,
'Doth--doth my fa-a-u-ther yet live?' Poor Emily was fairly
'convulsed;' she stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, and grew
so crimson that my mother was quite frightened, and very near
putting her out at the little door of excommunication. To our last
hour we shall never forget the shock of that first anthem.
The Commandments were read from the desk, Chapman's solitary
response coming from the gallery; and while the second singing--four
verses from Tate and Brady--was going on, we beheld the surplice
stripped off,--like the slough of a May-fly, as Griff said,--when a
rusty black gown was revealed, in which the curate ascended the
pulpit and was lost to our view before the concluding verse of the
psalm, which we had reason to believe was selected in compliment to
us, as well as to Earlscombe, -
'My lot is fall'n in that blest land
Where God is truly know,
He fills my cup with liberal hand;
'Tis He--'tis He--'tis He--supports my throne.'
We had great reason to doubt how far the second line could justly be
applied to the parish! but there was no judging of the sermon, for
only detached sentences reached us in a sort of mumble. Griff
afterwards declared churchgoing to be as good as a comedy, and we
all had to learn to avoid meeting each other's eyes, whatever we
might hear. When the scuffle and tramp of the departing
congregation had ceased, we came forth from our sable box, and
beheld the remnants of a once handsome church, mauled in every
possible way, green stains on the walls, windows bricked up, and a
huge singing gallery. Good bits of carved stall work were nailed
anyhow into the pews; the floor was uneven; no font was visible;
there was a mouldy uncared-for look about everything. The curate in
riding-boots came out of the vestry,--a pale, weary-looking man,
painfully meek and civil, with gray hair sleeked round his face. He
'louted low,' and seemed hardly to venture on taking the hand my
father held out to him. There was some attempt to enter into
conversation with him, but he begged to be excused, for he had to
hurry back to Wattlesea to a funeral. Poor man! he was as great a
pluralist as his vicar, for he kept a boys' school, partially day,
partially boarding, and his eyes looked hungrily at Martyn.
If the 'sweet cottage bonnet' had been at church there would have
been little chance of discovering her, but we found that we were the
only 'quality,' as Chapman called it, or things might not have been
so bad. Old James Winslow had been a mere fox-hunting squire till
he became a valetudinarian; nor had he ever cared for the church or
for the poor, so that the village was in a frightful state of
neglect. There was a dissenting chapel, old enough to be overgrown
with ivy and not too hideous, erected by the Nonconformists in the
reign of the Great Deliverer, but this partook of the general
decadence of the parish, and, as we found, the chapel's principal
use was to serve as an excuse for not going to church.
My father always went to church twice, so he and Clarence walked to
Wattlesea, where appearances were more respectable; but they heard
the same sermon over again, and, as my father drily remarked, it was
not a composition that would bear repetition.
He was much distressed at the state of things, and intended to write
to the incumbent, though, as he said, whatever was done would end by
being at his own expense, and the move and other calls left him so
little in hand that he sighed over the difficulties, and declared
that he was better off in London, except for the honour of the
thing. Perhaps my mother was of the same opinion after a dreary
afternoon, when Griff and Martyn had been wandering about aimlessly,
and were at length betrayed by the barking of a little terrier,
purchased the day before from Tom Petty, besieging the stable cat,
who stood with swollen tail, glaring eyes, and thunderous growls, on
the top of the tallest pillar of the ruins. Emily nearly cried at
their cruelty. Martyn was called off by my mother, and set down,
half sulky, half ashamed, to Henry and his Bearer; and Griff, vowing
that he believed it was that brute who made the row at night, and
that she ought to be exterminated, strolled off to converse with
Chapman, who was a quaint compound of clerk and keeper--in the one
capacity upholding his late master, in the other bemoaning Mr.
Mears' unpunctualities, specially as regarded weddings and funerals;
one 'corp' having been kept waiting till a messenger had been sent
to Wattlesea, who finding both clergy out for the day, had had to go
to Hillside, 'where they was always ready, though the old Squire
would have been mad with him if he'd a-guessed one of they Fordys
had ever set foot in the parish.'
The only school in the place was close to the meeting-house, 'a very
dame's school indeed,' as Emily described it after a peep on Monday.
Dame Dearlove, the old woman who presided, was a picture of
Shenstone's schoolmistress,--black bonnet, horn spectacles, fearful
birch rod, three-cornered buff 'kerchief, checked apron and all, but
on meddling with her, she proved a very dragon, the antipodes of her
name. Tattered copies of the Universal Spelling-Book served her
aristocracy, ragged Testaments the general herd, whence all appeared
to be shouting aloud at once. She looked sour as verjuice when my
mother and Emily entered, and gave them to understand that 'she
wasn't used to no strangers in her school, and didn't want 'em.' We
found that in Chapman's opinion she 'didn't larn 'em nothing.' She
had succeeded her aunt, who had taught him to read 'right off,' but
'her baint to be compared with she.' And now the farmers' children,
and the little aristocracy, including his own grand-children,--all
indeed who, in his phrase, 'cared for eddication,'--went to
Wattlesea.
CHAPTER XI--'THEY FORDYS.'
'Of honourable reckoning are you both,
And pity 'tis, you lived at odds so long.'
SHAKESPEARE.
My father had a good deal of business in hand, and was glad of
Clarence's help in writing and accounts,--a great pleasure, though
it prevented his being Griff's companion in his exploring and essays
at shooting. He had time, however, to make an expedition with me in
the donkey chair to inquire after the herdboy, Amos Bell, and carry
him some kitchen physic. To our horror we found him quite alone in
the wretched cottage, while everybody was out harvesting; but he did
not seem to pity himself, or think it otherwise than quite natural,
as he lay on a little bed in the corner, disabled by what Clarence
thought a dislocation. Miss Ellen had brought him a pudding, and
little Miss Anne a picture-book.
He was not so dense and shy as the children of the hamlet near us,
and Emily extracted from him that Miss Ellen was 'Our passon's young
lady.'
'Mr. Mears'!' she exclaimed.
'No: ourn be Passon Fordy.'
It turned out that this place was not in Earlscombe at all, but in
Hillside, a different parish; and the boy, Amos, further
communicated that there was old Passon Fordy, and Passon Frank, and
Madam, what was Mr. Frank's lady. Yes, he could read, he could; he
went to Sunday School, and was in Miss Ellen's class; he had been to
school worky days, only father was dead, and Farmer Hartop gave him
a job.
It was plain that Hillside was under a very different rule from
Earlscombe; and Emily was delighted to have discovered that the
sweet cottage bonnet's owner was called Ellen, which just then was
the pet Christian name of romance, in honour of the Lady of the
Lake.
In the midst of her raptures, however, just as we were about to turn
in at our own gate into the wood, we heard horses' hoofs, and then
came, careering by on ponies, a very pretty girl and a youth of
about the same age. Clarence's hand rose to his hat, and he made
his eager bow; but the young lady did not vouchsafe the slightest
acknowledgment, turned her head away, and urged her pony to speed.
Emily broke out with an angry disappointed exclamation. Clarence's
face was scarlet, and he said low and hoarsely, 'That's Lester. He
was in the Argus at Portsmouth two years ago;'--and then, as our
little sister continued her indignant exclamations, he added, 'Hush!
Don't on any account say a word about it. I had better get back to
my work. I am only doing you harm by staying here.'
At which Emily shed tears, and together we persuaded him not to
curtail his holiday, which, indeed, he could not have done without
assigning the reason to the elders, and this was out of the
question. Nor did he venture to hang back when, as our service was
to be on Sunday afternoon, my father proposed to walk to Hillside
Church in the morning. They came back well pleased. There was care
and decency throughout. The psalms were sung to a 'grinder organ'--
which was an advanced state of things in those days--and very
nicely. Parson Frank read well and impressively, and the old
parson, a fine venerable man, had preached an excellent sermon--
really admirable, as my father repeated. Our party had been
scarcely in time, and had been disposed of in seats close to the
door, where Clarence was quite out of sight of the disdainful young
lady and her squire, of whom Emily begged to hear no more.
She looked askance at the cards left on the hall table the next day-
-'The Rev. Christopher Fordyce,' and 'The Rev. F. C. Fordyce,' also
'Mrs. F. C. Fordyce, Hillside Rectory.'
We had found out that Hillside was a family living, and that there
was much activity there on the part of the father and son--rector
and curate; and that the other clerical folk, ladies especially, who
called on us, spoke of Mrs. F. C. Fordyce with a certain tone, as if
they were afraid of her, as Sir Horace Lester's sister,--very
superior, very active, very strict in her notions,--as if these were
so many defects. They were an offshoot of the old Fordyces of
Chantry House, but so far back that all recollection of kindred or
connection must have worn out. Their property--all in beautiful
order--marched with ours, and Chapman was very particular about the
boundaries. 'Old master he wouldn't have a bird picked up if it
fell over on they Fordys' ground--not he! He couldn't abide
passons, couldn't the old Squire--not Miss Hannah More, and all they
Cheddar lot, and they Fordys least of all. My son's wife, she was
for sending her little maid to Hillside to Madam Fordys' school,
but, bless your heart, 'twould have been as much as my place was
worth if master had known it.'
The visit was not returned till after Clarence had gone back to his
London work. Sore as was the loss of him from my daily life, I
could see that the new world and fresh acquaintances were a trial to
him, and especially since the encounter with young Lester had driven
him back into his shell, so that he would be better where he was
already known and had nothing new to overcome. Emily, though not
yet sixteen, was emancipated from schoolroom habits, and the dear
girl was my devoted slave to an extent that perhaps I abused.
Not being 'come out,' she was left at home on the day when we set
out on a regular progress in the chariot with post-horses. The
britshka and pair, which were our ambition, were to wait till my
father's next rents came in. Morning calls in the country were a
solemn and imposing ceremony, and the head of the family had to be
taken on the first circuit; nor was there much scruple as to making
them in the forenoon, so several were to be disposed of before
fulfilling an engagement to luncheon at the farthest point, where
some old London friends had borrowed a house for the summer, and had
included me in their invitation.
Here alone did I leave the carriage, but I had Cooper's Spy and my
sketch-book as companions while waiting at doors where the
inhabitants were at home. The last visit was at Hillside Rectory, a
house of architecture somewhat similar to our own, but of the soft
creamy stone which so well set off the vine with purple clusters,
the myrtles and fuchsias, that covered it. I was wishing we had
drawn up far enough off for a sketch to be possible, when, from a
window close above, I heard the following words in a clear girlish
voice -
'No, indeed! I'm not going down. It is only those horrid
Earlscombe people. I can't think how they have the face to come
near us!'
There was a reply, perhaps that the parents had made the first
visit, for the rejoinder was--'Yes; grandpapa said it was a
Christian duty to make an advance; but they need not have come so
soon. Indeed, I wonder they show themselves at all. I am sure I
would not if I had such a dreadful son.' Presently, 'I hate to
think of it. That I should have thanked him. Depend upon it, he
will never pay the doctor. A coward like that is capable of
anything.'
The proverb had been realised, but there could hardly have been a
more involuntary or helpless listener. Presently my parents came
back, escorted by both the gentlemen of the house, tall fine-looking
men, the elder with snowy hair, and the dignity of men of the old
school; the younger with a joyous, hearty, out-of-door countenance,
more like a squire than a clergyman.
The visit seemed to have been gratifying. Mrs. Fordyce was declared
to be of higher stamp than most of the neighbouring ladies; and my
father was much pleased with the two clergymen, while as we drove
along he kept on admiring the well-ordered fields and fences, and
contrasting the pretty cottages and trim gardens with the dreary
appearance of our own village. I asked why Amos Bell's home had
been neglected, and was answered with some annoyance, as I pointed
down the lane, that it was on our land, though in Hillside parish.
'I am glad to have such neighbours!' observed my mother, and I kept
to myself the remarks I had heard, though I was still tingling with
the sting of them.
We heard no more of 'they Fordys' for some time. The married pair
went away to stay with friends, and we only once met the old
gentleman, when I was waiting in the street at Wattlesea in the
donkey chair, while my mother was trying to match netting silk in
the odd little shop that united fancy work, toys, and tracts with
the post office. Old Mr. Fordyce met us as we drew up, handed her
out with a grand seigneur's courtesy, and stood talking to me so
delightfully that I quite forgot it was from Christian duty.
My father corresponded with the old Rector about the state of the
parish, and at last went over to Bath for a personal conference, but
without much satisfaction. The Earlscombe people were pronounced to
be an ungrateful good-for-nothing set, for whom it was of no use to
do anything; and indeed my mother made such discoveries in the
cottages that she durst not let Emily fulfil her cherished scheme of
visiting them. The only resemblance to the favourite heroines of
religious tales that could be permitted was assembling a tiny Sunday
class in Chapman's lodge; and it must be confessed that her brothers
thought she made as much fuss about it as if there had been a
hundred scholars.
However, between remonstrances and offers of undertaking a share of
the expense, my father managed to get Mr. Mears' services dispensed
with from the ensuing Lady Day, and that a resident curate should be
appointed, the choice of whom was to rest with himself. It was then
and there decided that Martyn should be 'brought up to the Church,'
as people then used to term destination to Holy Orders. My father
said he should feel justified in building a good house when he could
afford it, if it was to be a provision for one of his sons, and he
also felt that as he had the charge of the parish as patron, it was
right and fitting to train one of his sons up to take care of it.
Nor did Martyn show any distaste to the idea, as indeed there was
less in it then than at present to daunt the imagination of an
honest, lively boy, not as yet specially thoughtful or devout, but
obedient, truthful, and fairly reverent, and ready to grow as he was
trained.
CHAPTER XII--MRS. SOPHIA'S FEUD
'O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.'
HOOD.
We had a houseful at Christmas. The Rev. Charles Henderson, a
Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, lately ordained a deacon, had
been recommended to us by our London vicar, and was willing not only
to take charge of the parish, but to direct my studies, and to
prepare Martyn for school. He came to us for the Christmas vacation
to reconnoitre and engage lodgings at a farmhouse. We liked him
very much--my mother being all the better satisfied after he had
shown her a miniature, and confided to her that the original was
waiting till a college living should come to him in the distant
future.
Admiral Griffith could not tear himself from his warm rooms and his
club, but our antiquarian friend, Mr. Stafford, came with his wife,
and revelled in the ceilings of the mullion room, where he would
much have liked to sleep, but that its accommodations were only fit
for a bachelor.
Our other visitor was Miss Selby, or rather Mrs. Sophia Selby, as
she designated herself, according to the becoming fashion of elderly
spinsters, which to my mind might be gracefully resumed. It irked
my father to think of the good lady's solitary Christmas at Bath,
and he asked her to come to us. She travelled half-way in a post-
chaise, and then was met by the carriage. A very nice old lady she
was, with a meek, delicate babyish face, which could not be spoilt
by the cap of the period, one of the most disfiguring articles of
head gear ever devised, though nobody thought so then. She was full
of kindness; indeed, if she had a fault it was the abundant pity she
lavished on me, and her determination to amuse me. The weather was
of the kind that only the healthy and hardy could encounter, and
when every one else was gone out, and I was just settling in with a
new book, or an old crabbed Latin document, that Mr. Stafford had
entrusted to me to copy out fairly and translate, she would glide in
with her worsted work on a charitable mission to enliven poor Mr.
Edward.
However, this was the means of my obtaining some curious
enlightenments. A dinner-party was in contemplation, and she was
dismayed at the choice of the fashionable London hour of seven, and
still more by finding that the Fordyces were to be among the guests.
She was too well-bred to manifest her feelings to her hosts, but
alone with me, she could not refrain from expressing her
astonishment to me, all the more when she heard this was reciprocity
for an invitation that it had not been possible to accept. Her poor
dear uncle would never hear of intercourse with Hillside. On being
asked why, she repeated what Chapman had said, that he could not
endure any one connected with Mrs. Hannah More and her canting,
humbugging set, as the ungodly old man had chosen to call them,
imbuing even this good woman with evil prejudices against their
noble work at Cheddar.
'Besides this, Fordyces and Winslows could never be friends, since
the Fordyces had taken on themselves to dispute the will, and say it
had been improperly obtained.'
'What will?'
'Mrs. Winslow's--Margaret Fordyce that was. She was the heiress,
and had every right to dispose of her property.'
'But that was more than a hundred years ago!'
'So it was, my dear; but though the law gave it to us--to my uncle's
grandfather (or great-grandfather, was it?)--those Fordyces never
could rest content. Why, one of them--a clergyman's son too--shot
young Philip Winslow dead in a duel. They have always grudged at
us. Does your papa know it, my dear Mr. Edward? He ought to be
aware.'
'I do not know,' I said; 'but he would hardly care about what
happened in the time of Queen Anne.'
It was curious to see how the gentle little lady espoused the family
quarrel, which, after all, was none of hers.
'Well, you are London people, and the other branch, and may not feel
as we do down here; but I shall always say that Madam Winslow's
husband's son had every right to come before her cousin once
removed.'
I asked if we were descended from her, for, having a turn for
heraldry and genealogy, I wanted to make out our family tree. Mrs.
Sophia was ready to hold up her hands at the ignorance of the 'other
branch.' This poor heiress had lost all her children in their
infancy, and bequeathed the estate to her stepson, the Fordyce male
heir having been endowed by her father with the advowson of Hillside
and a handsome estate there, which Mrs. Selby thought ought to have
contented him, 'but some people never know when they have enough;'
and, on my observing that it might have been a matter of justice,
she waxed hotter, declaring that what the Winslows felt so much was
the accusation of violence against the poor lady. She spoke as if
it were a story of yesterday, and added, 'Indeed, they made the
common people have all sorts of superstitious fancies about the room
where she died--that old part of the house.' Then she added in a
low mysterious voice, 'I hear that your brother Mr. Griffith Winslow
could not sleep there;' and when the rats and the wind were
mentioned--'Yes, that was what my poor dear uncle used to say. He
always called it nonsense; but we never had a servant who would
sleep there. You'll not mention it, Mr. Edward, but I could not
help asking that very nice housemaid, Jane, whether the room was
used, and she said how Mr. Griffith had given it up, and none of the
servants could spend a night there when they are sleeping round. Of
course I said all in my power to dispel the idea, and told her that
there was no accounting for all the noises in old houses; but you
never can reason with that class of people.'
'Did you ever hear the noises, Mrs. Selby?'
'Oh, no; I wouldn't sleep there for thousands! Not that I attach
any importance to such folly,--my poor dear uncle would never hear
of such a thing; but I am such a nervous creature, I should lie
awake all night expecting the rats to run over me. I never knew of
any one sleeping there, except in the gay times when I was a child,
and the house used to be as full as, or fuller than, it could hold,
for the hunt breakfast or a ball, and my poor aunt used to make up
ever so many beds in the two rooms, and then we never heard of any
disturbance, except what they made themselves.'
This chiefly concerned me, because home cosseting had made me old
woman enough to be uneasy about unaired beds; and I knew that my
mother meant to consign Clarence to the mullion chamber. So,
without betraying Jane, I spoke to her, and was answered, 'Oh, sir,
I'll take care of that; I'll light a fire and air the mattresses
well. I wish that was all, poor young gentleman!'
To the reply that the rats were slaughtered and the wind stopped
out, Jane returned a look of compassion; but the subject was
dropped, as it was supposed to be the right thing to hush up,
instead of fostering, any popular superstition; but it surprised me
that, as all our servants were fresh importations, they should so
soon have become imbued with these undefined alarms.
My father was much amused at being successor to this family feud,
and said that when he had time he would look up the documents.
Mrs. Sophia was a sight when Mr. Fordyce and his son and daughter-
in-law were announced; she was so comically stiff between her
deference to her hosts and her allegiance to her poor dear uncle;
but her coldness melted before the charms of old Mr. Fordyce, who
was one of the most delightful people in the world. She even was
his partner at whist, and won the game, and that she DID like.
Parson Frank, as we naughty young ones called him, was all good-
nature and geniality--a thorough clergyman after the ideas of the
time, and a thorough farmer too; and in each capacity, as well as in
politics, he suited my father or Mr. Henderson. His lady, in a
blonde cap, exactly like the last equipment my mother had provided
herself with in London, and a black satin dress, had much more style
than the more gaily-dressed country dames, and far more
conversation. Mr. Stafford, who had dreaded the party, pronounced
her a sensible, agreeable woman, and she was particularly kind and
pleasant to me, coming and talking over the botany of the country,
and then speaking of my brother's kindness to poor Amos Bell, who
was nearly recovered, but was a weakly child, for whom she dreaded
the toil of a ploughboy in thick clay with heavy shoes.
I was sorry when, after Emily's well-studied performance on the
piano, Mrs. Fordyce was summoned away from me to sing, but her music
and her voice were both of a very different order from ordinary
drawing-room music; and when our evening was over, we congratulated
ourselves upon our neighbours, and agreed that the Fordyces were the
gems of the party.
Only Mrs. Sophia sighed at us as degenerate Winslows, and Emily
reserved to herself the right of believing that the daughter was 'a
horrid girl.'
CHAPTER XIII--A SCRAPE
'Though bound with weakness' heavy chain
We in the dust of earth remain;
Not all remorseful be our tears,
No agony of shame or fears,
Need pierce its passion's bitter tide.'
Verses and Sonnets.
Perhaps it was of set purpose that our dinner. party had been given
before Clarence's return. Griffith had been expected in time for
it, but he had preferred going by way of London to attend a ball
given by the daughter of a barrister friend of my father's. Selina
Clarkson was a fine showy girl, with the sort of beauty to inspire
boyish admiration, and Griff's had been a standing family joke, even
my father condescending to tease him when the young lady married Sir
Henry Peacock, a fat vulgar old man who had made his fortune in the
commissariat, and purchased a baronetcy. He was allowing his young
wife her full swing of fashion and enjoyment. My mother did not
think it a desirable acquaintance, and was restless until both the
brothers came home together, long after dark on Christmas Eve,
having been met by the gig at the corner where the coach stopped.
The dinner-hour had been put off till half-past six, and we had to
wait for them, the coach having been delayed by setting down
Christmas guests and Christmas fare. They were a contrast; Griffith
looking very handsome and manly, all in a ruddy glow from the frosty
air, and Clarence, though equally tall, well-made, and with more
refined features, looked pale and effaced, now that his sailor tan
was worn off. The one talked as eagerly as he ate, the other was
shy, spiritless, and with little appetite; but as he always shrank
into himself among strangers, it was the less wonder that he sat in
his drooping way behind my sofa, while Griffith kept us all merry
with his account of the humours of the 'Peacock at home;' the
lumbering efforts of old Sir Henry to be as young and gay as his
wife, in spite of gout and portliness; and the extreme delight of
his lady in her new splendours--a gold spotted muslin and white
plumes in a diamond agraffe. He mimicked Sir Henry's cockneyisms
more than my father's chivalry approved towards his recent host, as
he described the complaints he had heard against 'my Lady being
refused the hentry at Halmack's, but treated like the wery canal;'
and how the devoted husband 'wowed he would get up a still more
hexclusive circle, and shut hout these himpertinent fashionables who
regarded Halmack's as the seventh 'eaven.'
My mother shook her head at his audacious fun about Paradise and the
Peri, but he was so brilliant and good-humoured that no one was ever
long displeased with him. At night he followed when Clarence helped
me to my room, and carefully shutting the door, Griff began. 'Now,
Teddy, you're always as rich as a Jew, and I told Bill you'd help
him to set it straight. I'd do it myself, but that I'm cleaned out.
I'd give ten times the cash rather than see him with that hang-dog
look again for just nothing at all, if he would only believe so and
be rational.'
Clarence did look indescribably miserable while it was explained
that he had been commissioned to receive about 20 pounds which was
owing to my father, and to discharge therewith some small debts to
London tradesmen. All except the last, for a little more than four
pounds, had been paid, when Clarence met in the street an old
messmate, a good-natured rattle-pated youth,--one of those who had
thought him harshly treated. There was a cordial greeting, and an
invitation to dine at once at a hotel, where they were joined by
some other young men, and by and by betook themselves to cards, when
my poor brother's besetting enemy prevented him from withdrawing
when he found the points were guineas. Thus he lost the remaining
amount in his charge, and so much of his own that barely enough was
left for his journey. His salary was not due till Lady Day; Mr.
Castleford was in the country, and no advances could be asked from
Mr. Frith. Thus Griff had found him in utter despair, and had ever
since been trying to cheer him and make light of his trouble. If I
advanced the amount, which was no serious matter to me, Clarence
could easily get Peter to pay the bill, and if my father should
demand the receipt too soon, it would be easy to put him off by
saying there had been a delay in getting the account sent in.
'I couldn't do that,' said Clarence.
'Well, I should not have thought you would have stuck at that,'
returned Griff.
'There must be no untruth,' I broke in; 'but if without THAT, he can
avoid getting into a scrape with papa--'
Clarence interrupted in the wavering voice we knew so well, but
growing clearer and stronger.
'Thank you, Edward, but--but--no, I can't. There's the Sacrament
to-morrow.'
'Oh--h!' said Griff, in an indescribable tone. But he will never
believe you, nor let you go.'
'Better so,' said Clarence, half choked, 'than go profanely--
deceiving--or not knowing whether I shall--'
Just then we heard our father wishing the other gentlemen good-
night, and to our surprise Clarence opened the door, though he was
deadly white and with dew starting on his forehead.
My father turned good-naturedly. 'Boys, boys, you are glad to be
together, but mamma won't have you talking here all night, keeping
her baby up.'
'Sir,' said Clarence, holding by the rail of the bed, 'I was waiting
for you. I have something to tell you--'
The words that followed were incoherent and wrong end foremost; nor
had many, indeed, been uttered before my father cut them short with
-
'No false excuses, sir; I know you too well to listen. Go. I have
ceased to hope for anything better.'
Clarence went without a word, but Griff and I burst out with
entreaties to be listened to. Our father thought at first that ours
were only the pleadings of partiality, and endeavours to shield the
brother we both so heartily loved; but when he understood the
circumstances, the real amount of the transgression, and Clarence's
rejection of our united advice and assistance to conceal it, he was
greatly touched and softened. 'Poor lad! poor fellow!' he muttered,
'he is really doing his best. I need not have cut him so short. I
was afraid of more falsehoods if I let him open his mouth. I'll go
and see.'
He went off, and we remained in suspense, Griff observing that he
had done his best, but poor Bill always would be a fool, and that no
one who had not always lived at home like me would have let out that
we had been for the suppression policy. As I was rather shocked, he
went off to bed, saying he should look in to see what remained of
Clarence after the pelting of the pitiless storm he was sure to
bring on himself by his ridiculous faltering instead of speaking out
like a man.
I longed to have been able to do the same, but my father kindly came
back to relieve my mind by telling me that he was better satisfied
about Clarence than ever he had been before. When encouraged to
speak out, the narrative of the temptation had so entirely agreed
with what we had said as to show there had been no prevarication,
and this had done more to convince my father that he was on the
right track than the having found him on his knees. He had had a
patient hearing, and thus was able to command his nerves enough to
explain himself, and it had ended in my father giving entire
forgiveness for what, as Griff truly said, would have been a mere
trifle but for the past. The voluntary confession had much
impressed my father, and he could not help adding a word of gentle
reproof to me for having joined in aiding him to withhold it, but he
accepted my explanation and went away, observing, 'By the by, I
don't wonder at what Griffith says of that room; I never heard such
strange effects of currents of air.'
Clarence was in my room before I was drest, full of our father's
'wonderful goodness' to him. He had never experienced anything like
it, he said. 'Why! he really seemed hopeful about me,' were words
uttered with a gladness enough to go to one's heart. 'O Edward, I
feel as if there was some chance of "steadfastly purposing" this
time.'
It was not the way of the family to say much of religious feeling,
and this was much for Clarence to utter. He looked white and tired,
but there was an air of rest and peace about him, above all when my
mother met him with a very real kiss. Moreover, Mr. Castleford had
taken care to brighten our Christmas with a letter expressive of
great satisfaction with Clarence for steadiness and intelligence.
Even Mr. Frith allowed that he was the most punctual of all those
young dogs.
'I do believe,' said my father, 'that his piety is doing him some
good after all.'
So our mutual wishes of a happy Christmas were verified, though not
much according to the notions of this half of the century. People
made their Christmas day either mere merriment, or something little
different from the grave Sunday of that date. And ours, except for
the Admiral's dining with us, had always been of the latter
description, all the more that when celebrations of the Holy
Communion were so rare they were treated with an awe and reverence
which frequency has perhaps diminished, and a feeling (possibly
Puritanical) prevailed which made it appear incongruous to end with
festivity a day so begun. That we had a Christmas Day Communion at
all at Earlscombe was an innovation only achieved by Mr. Henderson
going to assist the old Rector at Wattlesea; and there were no
communicants except from our house, besides Chapman, his daughter-
in-law, and five old creatures between whom the alms were
immediately divided. We afterwards learnt that our best farmer and
his wife were much disappointed at the change from Sunday
interfering with the family jollification; and Mrs. Sophia Selby was
annoyed at the contradiction to her habits under the rule of her
poor dear uncle.
Of the irregularities, irreverences, and squalor of the whole I will
not speak. They were not then such stumbling-blocks as they would
be now, and many passed unperceived by us, buried as we were in our
big pew, with our eyes riveted on our books; yet even thus there was
enough evident to make my mother rejoice that Mr. Henderson would be
with us before Easter. Still this could not mar the thankful
gladness that was with us all that day, and which shone in
Clarence's eyes. His countenance always had a remarkable expression
in church, as if somehow his spirit went farther than ours did, and
things unseen were more real to him.
Hillside, as usual, had two services, and my father and his friend
were going to walk thither in the afternoon, but it was a raw cold
day, threatening snow, and Emily was caught by my mother in the hail
and ordered back, as well as Clarence, who had shown symptoms of
having caught cold on his dismal journey. Emily coaxed from her
permission to have a fire in the bookroom, and there we three had a
memorably happy time. We read our psalms and lessons, and our
Christian Year, which was more and more the lodestar of our
feelings. We compared our favourite passages, and discussed the
obscurer ones, and Clarence was led to talk out more of his heart
than he had ever shown to us before. Perhaps he had lost some of
his reserve through his intercourse with our good old governess,
Miss Newton, who was still grinding away at her daily mill, though
with somewhat failing eyesight, so that she could do nothing but
knit in the long evenings, and was most grateful to her former pupil
for coming, as often as he could, to talk or read to her.
She was a most excellent and devout woman, and when Emily, who in
youthful gaiete de coeur had got a little tired of her, exclaimed at
his taste, and asked if she made him read nothing but Pike's Early
Piety, he replied gravely, 'She showed me where to lay my burthen
down,' and turned to the two last verses of the poem for 'Good
Friday' in the Christian Year, as well as to the one we had just
read on the Holy Communion.
My father's kindness had seemed to him the pledge of the Heavenly
Father's forgiveness; and he added, perhaps a little childishly,
that it had been his impulse to promise never to touch a card again,
but that he dreaded the only too familiar reply, 'What availed his
promises?'
'Do promise, Clarry!' cried Emily, 'and then you won't have to play
with that tiresome old Mrs. Sophia.'
'That would rather deter me,' said Clarence good-humouredly.
'A card-playing old age is despicable,' pronounced Miss Emily, much
to our amusement.
After that we got into a bewilderment. We knew nothing of the
future question of temperance versus total abstinence; but after it
had been extracted that Miss Newton regarded cards as the devil's
books, the inconsistent little sister changed sides, and declared it
narrow and evangelical to renounce what was innocent. Clarence
argued that what might be harmless for others might be dangerous for
such as himself, and that his real difficulty in making even a
mental vow was that, if broken, there was an additional sin.
'It is not oneself that one trusts,' I said.
'No,' said Clarence emphatically; 'and setting up a vow seems as if
it might be sticking up the reed of one's own word, and leaning on
THAT--when it breaks, at least mine does. If I could always get the
grasp of Him that I felt to-day, there would be no more bewildered
heart and failing spirit, which are worse than the actual falls they
cause.' And as Emily said she did not understand, he replied in
words I wrote down and thought over, 'What we ARE is the point, more
than even what we DO. We DO as we ARE; and yet we form ourselves by
what we DO.'
'And,' I put in, 'I know somebody who won a victory last night over
himself and his two brothers. Surely DOING that is a sign that he
IS more than he used to be.'
'If he were, it would not have been an effort at all,' said
Clarence, but with his rare sweet smile.
Just then Griff called him away, and Emily sat pondering and
impressed. 'It did seem so odd,' she said, 'that Clarry should be
so much the best, and yet so much the worst of us.'
I agreed. His insight into spiritual things, and his enjoyment of
them, always humiliated us both, yet he fell so much lower in
practice,--'But then we had not his temptations.'
'Yes,' said Emily; 'but look at Griff! He goes about like other
young men, and keeps all right, and yet he doesn't care about
religious things a bit more than he can help.'
It was quite true. Religion was life to the one and an insurance to
the other, and this had been a mystery to us all our young lives, as
far as we had ever reflected on the contrast between the practical
failure and success of each. Our mother, on the other hand, viewed
Clarence's tendencies as part of an unreal, self-deceptive nature,
and regretted his intimacy with Miss Newton, who, she said, had
fostered 'that kind of thing' in his childhood--made him fancy talk,
feeling, and preaching were more than truth and honour--and might
lead him to run after Irving, Rowland Hill, or Baptist Noel, about
whose tenets she was rather confused. It would be an additional
misfortune if he became a fanatical Evangelical light, and he was
just the character to be worked upon.
My father held that she might be thankful for any good influence or
safe resort for a young man in lodgings in London, and he merely
bade Clarence never resort to any variety of dissenting preacher.
We were of the school called--a little later--high and dry, but were
strictly orthodox according to our lights, and held it a prime duty
to attend our parish church, whatever it might be; nor, indeed, had
Clarence swerved from these traditions.
Poor Mrs. Sophia was baulked of the game at whist, which she viewed
as a legitimate part of the Christmas pleasures; and after we had
eaten our turkey, we found the evening long, except that Martyn
escaped to snapdragon with the servants; and, by and by, Chapman,
magnificent in patronage, ushered in the church singers into the
hall, and clarionet, bassoon, and fiddle astonished our ears.
CHAPTER XIV--THE MULLION CHAMBER
'A lady with a lamp I see,
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.'
LONGFELLOW.
For want of being able to take exercise, the first part of the night
had always been sleepless with me, though my dear mother thought it
wrong to recognise the habit or allow me a lamp. A fire, however, I
had, and by its light, on the second night after Christmas, I saw my
door noiselessly opened, and Clarence creeping in half-dressed and
barefooted. To my frightened interrogation the answer came, through
chattering teeth, 'It's I--only I--Ted--no--nothing's the matter,
only I can't stand it any longer!'
His hands were cold as ice when he grasped mine, as if to get hold
of something substantial, and he trembled so as to shake the bed.
'That room,' he faltered. ''Tis not only the moans! I've seen
her!'
'Whom?'
'I don't know. There she stands with her lamp, crying!' I could
scarcely distinguish the words through the clashing of his teeth,
and as I threw my arms round him the shudder seemed to pass to me;
but I did my best to warm him by drawing the clothes over him, and
he began to gather himself together, and speak intelligibly. There
had been sounds the first night as of wailing, but he had been too
much preoccupied to attend to them till, soon after one o'clock,
they ended in a heavy fall and long shriek, after which all was
still. Christmas night had been undisturbed, but on this the voices
had begun again at eleven, and had a strangely human sound; but as
it was windy, sleety weather, and he had learnt at sea to disregard
noises in the rigging, he drew the sheet over his head and went to
sleep. 'I was dreaming that I was at sea,' he said, 'as I always do
on a noisy night, but this was not a dream. I was wakened by a
light in the room, and there stood a woman with a lamp, moaning and
sobbing. My first notion was that one of the maids had come to call
me, and I sat up; but I could not speak, and she gave another awful
suppressed cry, and moved towards that walled-up door. Then I saw
it was none of the servants, for it was an antique dress like an old
picture. So I knew what it must be, and an unbearable horror came
over me, and I rushed into the outer room, where there was a little
fire left; but I heard her going on still, and I could endure it no
longer. I knew you would be awake and would bear with me, so I came
down to you.'
Then this was what Chapman and the maids had meant. This was Mrs.
Sophia Selby's vulgar superstition! I found that Clarence had heard
none of the mysterious whispers afloat, and only knew that Griff had
deserted the room after his own return to London. I related what I
had learnt from the old lady, and in that midnight hour we agreed
that it could be no mere fancy or rumour, but that cruel wrong must
have been done in that chamber. Our feeling was that all ought to
be made known, and in that impression we fell asleep, Clarence
first.
By and by I found him moving. He had heard the clock strike four,
and thought it wiser to repair to his own quarters, where he
believed the disturbance was over. Lucifer matches as yet were not,
but he had always been a noiseless being, with a sailor's foot, so
that, by the help of the moonlight through the hall windows, he
regained his room.
And when morning had come, the nocturnal visitation wore such a
different aspect to both our minds that we decided to say nothing to
our parents, who, said Clarence, would simply disbelieve him; and,
indeed, I inclined to suppose it had been an uncommonly vivid dream,
produced in that sensitive nature by the uncanny sounds of the wind
in the chinks and crannies of the ancient chamber. Had not Scott's
Demonology and Witchcraft, which we studied hard on that day, proved
all such phantoms to be explicable? The only person we told was
Griff, who was amused and incredulous. He had heard the noises--oh
yes! and objected to having his sleep broken by them. It was too
had to expose Clarence to them--poor Bill--on whom they worked such
fancies!
He interrogated Chapman, however, but probably in that bantering way
which is apt to produce reserve. Chapman never 'gave heed to them
fictious tales,' he said; but, when hard pressed, he allowed that he
had 'heerd that a lady do walk o' winter nights,' and that was why
the garden door of the old rooms was walled up. Griff asked if this
was done for fear she should catch cold, and this somewhat affronted
him, so that he averred that he knew nought about it, and gave no
thought to such like.
Just then they arrived at the Winslow Arms, and took each a glass of
ale, when Griff, partly to tease Chapman, asked the landlady--an old
Chantry House servant--whether she had ever met the ghost. She
turned rather pale, which seemed to have impressed him, and demanded
if he had seen it. 'It always walked at Christmas time--between
then and the New Year.' She had once seen a light in the garden by
the ruin in winter-time, and once last spring it came along the
passage, but that was just before the old Squire was took for
death,--folks said that was always the way before any of the family
died--'if you'll excuse it, sir.' Oh no, she thought nothing of
such things, but she had heard tell that the noises were such at all
times of the year that no one could sleep in the rooms, but the
light wasn't to be seen except at Christmas.
Griff with the philosophy of a university man, was certain that all
was explained by Clarence having imbibed the impression of the place
being haunted; and going to sleep nervous at the noises, his brain
had shaped a phantom in accordance. Let Clarence declare as he
might that the legends were new to him, Griff only smiled to think
how easily people forgot, and he talked earnestly about catching
ideas without conscious information.
However, he volunteered to sit up that night to ascertain the exact
causes of the strange noises and convince Clarence that they were
nothing but the effects of draughts. The fire in his gunroom was
surreptitiously kept up to serve for the vigil, which I ardently
desired to share. It was an enterprise; it would gratify my
curiosity; and besides, though Griffith was good-natured and
forbearing in a general way towards Clarence, I detected a spirit of
mockery about him which might break out unpleasantly when poor
Clarry was convicted of one of his unreasonable panics.
Both brothers were willing to gratify me, the only difficulty being
that the tap of my crutches would warn the entire household of the
expedition. However, they had--all unknown to my mother--several
times carried me about queen's cushion fashion, as, being always
much of a size, they could do most handily; and as both were now
fine, strong, well-made youths of twenty and nineteen, they had no
doubt of easily and silently conveying me up the shallow-stepped
staircase when all was quiet for the night.
Emily, with her sharp ears, guessed that something was in hand, but
we promised her that she should know all in time. I believe Griff,
being a little afraid of her quickness, led her to suppose he was
going to hold what he called a symposium in his rooms, and to think
it a mystery of college life not intended for young ladies.
He really had prepared a sort of supper for us when, after my
father's resounding turn of the key of the drawing-room door, my
brothers, in their stocking soles, bore me upstairs, the fun of the
achievement for the moment overpowering all sense of eeriness.
Griff said he could not receive me in his apartment without doing
honour to the occasion, and that Dutch courage was requisite for us
both; but I suspect it was more in accordance with Oxford habits
that he had provided a bottle of sherry and another of ale, some
brandy cherries, bread, cheese, and biscuits, by what means I do not
know, for my mother always locked up the wine. He was disappointed
that Clarence would touch nothing, and declared that inanition was
the preparation for ghost-seeing or imagining. I drank his health
in a glass of sherry as I looked round at the curious old room, with
its panelled roof, the heraldic devices and badges of the Power
family, and the trophy of swords, dirks, daggers, and pistols,
chiefly relics of our naval grandfather, but reinforced by the
sword, helmet, and spurs of the county Yeomanry which Griff had
joined.
Griff proposed cards to drive away fancies, especially as the sounds
were beginning; but though we generally yielded to him we COULD not
give our attention to anything but these. There was first a low
moan. 'No great harm in that,' said Griff; 'it comes through that
crack in the wainscot where there is a sham window. Some putty will
put a stop to that.'
Then came a more decided wail and sob much nearer to us. Griff
hastily swallowed the ale in his tumbler, and, striking a theatrical
attitude, exclaimed, 'Angels and ministers of grace defend us!'
Clarence held up his hand in deprecation. The door into his bedroom
was open, and Griff, taking up one of the flat candlesticks, pursued
his researches, holding the flame to all chinks or cracks in the
wainscotting to detect draughts which might cause the dreary sounds,
which were much more like suppressed weeping than any senseless gust
of wind. Of draughts there were many, and he tried holding his hand
against each crevice to endeavour to silence the wails; but these
became more human and more distressful. Presently Clarence
exclaimed, 'There!' and on his face there was a whiteness and an
expression which always recurs to me on reading those words of
Eliphaz the Temanite, 'Then a spirit passed before my face, and the
hair of my flesh stood up.' Even Griff was awestruck as we cried,
'Where? what?'
'Don't you see her? There! By the press--look!'
'I see a patch of moonlight on the wall,' said Griff.
'Moonlight--her lamp. Edward, don't you see her?'
I could see nothing but a spot of light on the wall. Griff (plainly
putting a force on himself) came back and gave him a good-natured
shake. 'Dreaming again, old Bill. Wake up and come to your
senses.'
'I am as much in my senses as you are,' said Clarence. 'I see her
as plainly as I see you.'
Nor could any one doubt either the reality of the awe in his voice
and countenance, nor of the light--a kind of hazy ball--nor of the
choking sobs.
'What is she like?' I asked, holding his hand, for, though infected
by his dread, my fears were chiefly for the effect on him; but he
was much calmer and less horror-struck than on the previous night,
though still he shuddered as he answered in a low voice, as if loth
to describe a lady in her presence, 'A dark cloak with the hood
fallen back, a kind of lace headdress loosely fastened, brown hair,
thin white face, eyes--oh, poor thing!--staring with fright, dark--
oh, how swollen the lids! all red below with crying--black dress
with white about it--a widow kind of look--a glove on the arm with
the lamp. Is she beckoning--looking at us? Oh, you poor thing, if
I could tell what you mean!'
I felt the motion of his muscles in act to rise, and grasped him.
Griff held him with a strong hand, hoarsely crying, 'Don't!--don't--
don't follow the thing, whatever you do!'
Clarence hid his face. It was very awful and strange. Once the
thought of conjuring her to speak by the Holy Name crossed me, but
then I saw no figure; and with incredulous Griffith standing by, it
would have been like playing, nor perhaps could I have spoken. How
long this lasted there is no knowing; but presently the light moved
towards the walled-up door and seemed to pass into it. Clarence
raised his head and said she was gone. We breathed freely.
'The farce is over,' said Griff. 'Mr. Edward Winslow's carriage
stops the way!'
I was hoisted up, candle in hand, between the two, and had nearly
reached the stairs when there came up on the garden side a sound as
of tipsy revellers in the garden. 'The scoundrels! how can they
have got in?' cried Griff, looking towards the window; but all the
windows on that side had peculiarly heavy shutters and bars, with
only a tiny heart-shaped aperture very high up, so they somewhat
hurried their steps downstairs, intending to rush out on the
intruders from the back door. But suddenly, in the middle of the
staircase, we heard a terrible heartrending woman's shriek, making
us all start and have a general fall. My brothers managed to seat
me safely on a step without much damage to themselves, but the
candle fell and was extinguished, and we made too heavy a weight to
fall without real noise enough to bring the household together
before we could pick ourselves up in the dark.
We heard doors opening and hurried calls, and something about
pistols, impelling Griff to call out, 'It's nothing, papa; but there
are some drunken rascals in the garden.'
A light had come by this time, and we were detected. There was a
general sally upon the enemy in the garden before any one thought of
me, except a 'You here!' when they nearly fell over me. And there I
was left sitting on the stair, helpless without my crutches, till in
a few minutes all returned declaring there was nothing--no signs of
anything; and then as Clarence ran up to me with my crutches my
father demanded the meaning of my being there at that time of night.
'Well, sir,' said Griff, 'it is only that we have been sitting up to
investigate the ghost.'
'Ghost! Arrant stuff and nonsense! What induced you to be dragging
Edward about in this dangerous way?'
'I wished it,' said I.
'You are all mad together, I think. I won't have the house
disturbed for this ridiculous folly. I shall look into it to-
morrow!'
CHAPTER XV--RATIONAL THEORIES
'These are the reasons, they are natural.'
Julius Caesar.
If anything could have made our adventure more unpleasant to Mr. and
Mrs. Winslow, it would have been the presence of guests. However,
inquiry was suppressed at breakfast, in deference to the signs my
mother made to enjoin silence before the children, all unaware that
Emily was nearly frantic with suppressed curiosity, and Martyn knew
more about the popular version of the legend than any of us.
Clarence looked wan and heavy-eyed. His head was aching from a bump
against the edge of a step, and his cold was much worse; no wonder,
said my mother; but she was always softened by any ailment, and
feared that the phantoms were the effect of coming illness. I have
always thought that if Clarence could have come home from his court-
martial with a brain fever he would have earned immediate
forgiveness; but unluckily for him, he was a very healthy person.
All three of us were summoned to the tribunal in the study, where my
father and my mother sat in judgment on what they termed 'this
preposterous business.' In our morning senses our impressions were
much more vague than at midnight, and we betrayed some confusion;
but Griff and I had a strong instinct of sheltering Clarence, and we
stoutly declared the noises to be beyond the capacities of wind,
rats, or cats; that the light was visible and inexplicable; and that
though we had seen nothing else, we could not doubt that Clarence
did.
'Thought he did,' corrected my father.
'Without discussing the word,' said Griff, 'I mean that the effect
on his senses was the same as the actual sight. You could not look
at him without being certain.'
'Exactly so,' returned my mother. 'I wish Dr. Fellowes were near.'
Indeed nothing saved Clarence from being consigned to medical
treatment but the distance from Bath or Bristol, and the
contradictory advice that had been received from our county
neighbours as to our family doctor. However, she formed her theory
that his nervous imaginings--whether involuntary or acted, she hoped
the former, and wished she could be sure--had infected us; and, as
she was really uneasy about him, she would not let him sleep in the
mullion room, but having nowhere else to bestow him, she turned out
the man-servant and put him into the little room beyond mine, and
she also forbade any mention of the subject to him that day.
This was a sore prohibition to Emily, who had been discussing it
with the other ladies, and was in a mingled state of elation at the
romance, and terror at the supernatural, which found vent in excited
giggle, and moved Griff to cram her with raw-head and bloody-bone
horrors, conventional enough to be suspicious, and send her to me
tearfully to entreat to know the truth. If by day she exulted in a
haunted chamber, in the evening she paid for it by terrors at
walking about the house alone, and, when sent on an errand by my
mother, looked piteous enough to be laughed at or scolded on all
sides.
The gentlemen had more serious colloquies, and the upshot was a
determination to sit up together and discover the origin of the
annoyance. Mr. Stafford's antiquarian researches had made him
familiar with such mysteries, and enough of them had been explained
by natural causes to convince him that there was a key to all the
rest. Owls, coiners, and smugglers had all been convicted of
simulating ghosts. In one venerable mansion, behind the wainscot,
there had been discovered nine skeletons of cats in different stages
of decay, having trapped themselves at various intervals of time,
and during the gradual extinction of their eighty-one lives having
emitted cries enough to establish the ghastly reputation of the
place. Perhaps Mr. Henderson was inclined to believe there were
more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in even an
antiquary's philosophy. He owned himself perplexed, but reserved
his opinion.
At breakfast Clarence was quite well, except for the remains of his
sore throat, and the two seniors were gruff and brief as to their
watch. They had heard odd noises, and should discover the cause;
the carpenter had already been sent for, and they had seen a light
which was certainly due to reflection or refraction. Mr. Henderson
committed himself to nothing but that 'it was very extraordinary;'
and there was a wicked look of diversion on Griff's face, and an
exchange of glances. Afterwards, in our own domain, we extracted a
good deal more from them.
Griff told us how the two elders started on politics, and denounced
Brougham and O'Connell loud enough to terrify any save the most
undaunted ghost, till Henderson said 'Hush!' and they paused at the
moan with which the performance always commenced, making Mr.
Stafford turn, as Griff said, 'white in the gills,' though he talked
of the wind on the stillest of frosty nights. Then came the sobbing
and wailing, which certainly overawed them all; Henderson called
them 'agonising,' but Griff was in a manner inured to this, and felt
as if master of the ceremonies. Let them say what they would by
daylight about owls, cats, and rats, they owned the human element
then, and were far from comfortable, though they would not
compromise their good sense by owning what both their younger
companions had perceived--their feeling of some undefinable
presence. Vain attempts had been made to account for the light or
get rid of it by changing the position of candles or bright objects
in the outer room; and Henderson had shut himself into the bedroom
with it; but there he still only saw the hazy light--though all was
otherwise pitch dark, except the keyhole and the small gray patch of
sky at the top of the window-shutters. 'You saw nothing else?' said
Griff. 'I thought I heard you break out as Clarence did, just
before my father opened the door.'
'Perhaps I did so. I had the sense strongly on me of some being in
grievous distress very near me.'
'And you should have power over it,' suggested Emily.
'I am afraid,' he said, 'that more thorough conviction and
comprehension are needed before I could address the thing with
authority. I should like to have stayed longer and heard the
conclusion.'
For Mr. Stafford had grown impatient and weary, and my father having
satisfied himself that there was something to be detected, would not
remain to the end, and not only carried his companions off, but
locked the doors, perhaps expecting to imprison some agent in a
trick, and find him in the morning.
Indeed Clarence had a dim remembrance of having been half wakened by
some one looking in on him in the night, when he was sleeping
heavily after his cold and the previous night's disturbance, and we
suspected, though we would not say, that our father might have
wished to ascertain that he had no share in producing these
appearances. He was, however, fully acquitted of all wilful
deception in the case, and he was not surprised, though he was
disappointed, that his vision of the lady was supposed to be the
consequence of excited imagination.
'I can't help it,' he said to me in private. 'I have always seen or
felt, or whatever you may call it, things that others do not. Don't
you remember how nobody would believe that I saw Lucy Brooke?'
'That was in the beginning of the measles.'
' I know; and I will tell you something curious. When I was at
Gibraltar I met Mrs. Emmott--'
'Mary Brooke?'
'Yes; I spent a very happy Sunday with her. We talked over old
times, and she told me that Lucy had all through her illness been
very uneasy about having promised to bring me a macaw's feather the
next time we played in the Square gardens. It could not be sent to
me for fear of carrying the infection, but the dear girl was too
light-headed to understand, and kept on fretting and wandering about
breaking her word. I have no doubt the wish carried her spirit to
me the moment it was free,' he added, with tears springing to his
eyes. He also said that before the court-martial he had, night
after night, dreams of sinking and drowning in huge waves, and his
friend Coles struggling to come to his aid, but being forcibly
withheld; and he had since learnt that Coles had actually
endeavoured to come from Plymouth to bear testimony to his previous
character, but had been refused leave, and told that he could do no
good.
There had been other instances of perception of a presence and of a
prescient foreboding. 'It is like a sixth sense,' he said, 'and a
very uncomfortable one. I would give much to be rid of it, for it
is connected with all that is worst in my life. I had it before
Navarino, when no one expected an engagement. It made me believe I
should be killed, and drove me to what was much worse--or at least I
used to think so.'
'Don't you now?' I asked.
'No,' said Clarence. 'It was a great mercy that I did not die then.
There's something to conquer first. But you'll never speak of this,
Ted. I have left off telling of such things--it only gives another
reason for disbelieving me.'
However, this time his veracity was not called in question,--but he
was supposed to be under a hallucination, the creation of the noises
acting on his imagination and memory of the persecuted widow, which
must have been somewhere dormant in his mind, though he averred that
he had never heard of it. It had now, however, made a strong
impression on him; he was convinced that some crime or injustice had
been perpetrated, and thought it ought to be investigated; but
Griffith made us laugh at his championship of this shadow of a
shade, and even wrote some mock heroic verses about it,--nor would
it have been easy to stir my father to seek for the motives of an
apparition which no one in the family save Clarence professed to
have seen.
The noises were indisputable, but my mother began to suspect a cause
for them. To oblige a former cook we had brought down with us as
stable-boy her son, George Sims, an imp accustomed to be the pet and
jester of a mews. Martyn was only too fond of his company, and he
made no secret of his contempt for the insufferable dulness of the
country, enlivening it by various acts of monkey-mischief, in some
of which Martyn had been implicated. That very afternoon, as Mrs.
Sophia Selby was walking home in the twilight from Chapman's lodge,
in company with Mr. Henderson, an eldritch yell proceeding from the
vaults beneath the mullion chambers nearly frightened her into fits.
Henderson darted in and captured the two boys in the fact. Martyn's
asseveration that he had taken the pair for Griff and Emily would
have pacified the good-natured clergyman, but Mrs. Sophia was too
much agitated, or too spiteful, as we declared, not to make a scene.
Martyn spent the evening alone and in disgrace, and only his
unimpeachable character for truth caused the acceptance of his
affirmation that the yell was an impromptu fraternal compliment, and
that he had nothing to do with the noises in the mullion chamber.
He had been supposed to be perfectly unconscious of anything of the
kind, and to have never so much as heard of a phantom, so my mother
was taken somewhat aback when, in reply to her demand whether he had
ever been so naughty as to assist George in making a noise in
Clarence's room, he said, 'Why, that's the ghost of the lady that
was murdered atop of the steps, and always walks every Christmas!'
'Who told you such ridiculous nonsense?'
The answer 'George' was deemed conclusive that all had been got up
by that youth; and there was considerable evidence of his talent for
ventriloquism and taste for practical jokes. My mother was certain
that, having heard of the popular superstition, he had acted ghost.
She appealed to Woodstock to prove the practicability of such feats;
and her absolute conviction persuaded the maids (who had given
warning en masse) that the enemy was exorcised when George Sims had
been sent off on the Royal Mail under Clarence's guardianship.
None of the junior part of the family believed him guilty, but he
had hunted the cows round the paddock, mounted on my donkey, had
nearly shot the kitchen-maid with Griff's gun, and, if not much
maligned, knew the way to the apple-chamber only too well,--so that
he richly deserved his doom, rejoiced in it himself, and was
unregretted save by Martyn. Clarence viewed him in the light of a
victim, and tried to keep an eye on him, but he developed his talent
as a ventriloquist, made his fortune, and retired on a public-house.
My mother would fain have had the vaults under the mullion rooms
bricked up, but Mr. Stafford cried out on the barbarism of such a
proceeding. The mystery was declared to be solved, and was added to
Mr. Stafford's good stories of haunted houses.
And at home my father forbade any further mention of such rank folly
and deception. The inner mullion chamber was turned into a lumber-
room, and as weeks passed by without hearing or seeing any more of
lady or of lamp, we began to credit the wonderful freaks of the
goblin page.
CHAPTER XVI--CAT LANGUAGE
Soon as she parted thence--the fearful twayne,
That blind old woman and her daughter deare,
Came forth, and finding Kirkrapine there slayne,
For anguish greate they gan to rend their heare
And beate their breasts, and naked flesh to teare;
And when they both had wept and wayled their fill,
Then forth they ran, like two amazed deere,
Half mad through malice and revenging will,
To follow her that was the causer of their ill.'
SPENSER.
The Christmas vacation was not without another breeze about
Griffith's expenses at Oxford. He held his head high, and declared
that people expected something from the eldest son of a man of
property, and my father tried to convince him that a landed estate
often left less cash available than did the fixed salary of an
office. Griff treated all in his light, good-humoured way, promised
to be careful, and came to me to commiserate the poor old
gentleman's ignorance of the ways of the new generation.
There ensued some trying weeks of dark days, raw frost, and black
east wind, when the home party cast longing, lingering recollections
back to the social intercourse, lamp-lit streets, and ready
interchange of books and other amenities we had left behind us. We
were not accustomed to have our nearest neighbours separated from us
by two miles of dirty lane, or road mended with excruciating stones,
nor were they very congenial when we did see them. The Fordyce
family might be interesting, but we younger ones could not forget
the slight to Clarence, and, besides, the girls seemed to be
entirely in the schoolroom, Mrs. Fordyce was delicate and was shut
up all the winter, and the only intercourse that took place was when
my father met the elder Mr. Fordyce at the magistrates' bench; also
there was a conference about Amos Bell, who was preferred to the
post left vacant by George Sims, in right of his being our tenant,
but more civilised than Earlscombers, a widow's son, and not
sufficiently recovered from his accident to be exposed to the severe
tasks of a ploughboy in the winter.
Mrs. Fordyce was the manager of a book-club, which circulated
volumes covered in white cartridge paper, with a printed list of the
subscribers' names. Two volumes at a time might be kept for a month
by each member in rotation, novels were excluded, and the manager
had a veto on all orders. We found her more liberal than some of
our other neighbours, who looked on our wants and wishes with
suspicion as savouring of London notions. Happily we could read old
books and standard books over again, and we gloated over Blackwood
and the Quarterly, enjoying, too, every out-of-door novelty of the
coming spring, as each revealed itself. Emily will never forget her
first primroses, nor I the first thrush in early morning.
Blankets, broth, and what were uncomfortably termed broken victuals
had been given away during the winter, and a bewildering amount of
begging women and children used to ask interviews with 'the Lady
Winslow,' with stories that crumbled on investigation so as to make
us recollect the Rector's character of Earlscombe.
However, Mr. Henderson came in the second week of Lent, and what our
steps towards improvement introduced would have seemed almost as
shocking to you youngsters, as what they displaced. For instance, a
plain crimson cloth covered the altar, instead of the rags in the
colours of the Winslow livery, presented, according to the queer old
register, by the unfortunate Margaret. There was talk of velvet and
the gold monogram, surrounded by rays, alternately straight and
wavy, as in our London church, but this was voted 'unfit for a plain
village church.' Still, the new hangings of pulpit, desk, and altar
were all good in quality and colour, and huge square cushions were
provided as essential to each. Moreover, the altar vessels were
made somewhat more respectable,--all this being at my father's
expense.
He also carried in the Vestry, though not without strong opposition
from a dissenting farmer, that new linen and a fresh surplice should
be provided by the parish, which surplice would have made at least
six of such as are at present worn. The farmers were very jealous
of the interference of the Squire in the Vestry--'what he had no
call to,' and of church rates applied to any other object than the
reward of birdslayers, as thus, in the register -
Hairy Wills, 1 score sprows heds 2d.
Jems Brown, 1 poulcat 6d.
Jarge Bell, 2 howls 6d.
It was several years before this appropriation of the church rates
could be abolished. The year 1830, with a brand new squire and
parson, was too ticklish a time for many innovations.
Hillside Church was the only one in the neighbourhood where Holy
Week or Ascension Day had been observed in the memory of man. When
we proposed going to church on the latter day the gardener asked my
mother 'if it was her will to keep Thursday holy,' as if he expected
its substitution for Sunday. Monthly Communions and Baptisms after
the Second Lesson were viewed as 'not fit for a country church,' and
every attempt at even more secular improvements was treated with the
most disappointing distrust and aversion. When my father laid out
the allotment grounds, the labourers suspected some occult design
for his own profit, and the farmers objected that the gardens would
be used as an excuse for neglecting their work and stealing their
potatoes. Coal-club and clothing-club were regarded in like manner,
and while a few took advantage of these offers in a grudging manner,
the others viewed everything except absolute gifts as 'me-an' on our
part, the principle of aid to self-help being an absolute novelty.
When I look back to the notes in our journals of that date I see how
much has been overcome.
Perhaps we listened more than was strictly wise to the revelations
of Amos Bell, when he attended Emily and me on our expeditions with
the donkey. Though living over the border of Hillside, he had a
family of relations at Earlscombe, and for a time lodged with his
grandmother there. When his shyness and lumpishness gave way, he
proved so bright that Emily undertook to carry on his education. He
soon had a wonderful eye for a wild flower, and would climb after it
with the utmost agility; and when once his tongue was loosed, he
became almost too communicative, and made us acquainted with the
opinions of 'they Earlscoom folk' with a freedom not to be found in
an elder or a native.
Moreover, he was the brightest light of the Sunday school which Mr.
Henderson opened at once--for want of a more fitting place--in the
disused north transept of the church. It was an uncouth, ill-clad
crew which assembled on those dilapidated paving tiles. Their own
grandchildren look almost as far removed from them in dress and
civilisation as did my sister in her white worked cambric dress,
silk scarf, huge Tuscan bonnet, and the little curls beyond the lace
quilling round her bright face, far rosier than ever it had been in
town. And what would the present generation say to the odd little
contrivances in the way of cotton sun-bonnets, check pinafores, list
tippets, and print capes, and other wonderful manufactures from the
rag-bag, which were then grand prizes and stimulants?
Previous knowledge or intelligence scarcely existed, and then was
not due to Dame Dearlove's tuition. Mr. Henderson pronounced an
authorised school a necessity. My father had scruples as to vested
rights, for the old woman was the last survivor of a family who had
had recourse to primer and hornbook after their ejection on 'black
Bartholomew's Day;' and when the meeting-house was built after the
Revolution, had combined preaching with teaching. Monopoly had
promoted degeneracy, and this last of the race was an unfavourable
specimen in all save outward picturesqueness. However, much against
Henderson's liking, an accommodation was proposed, by which books
were to be supplied to her, and the Church Catechism be taught in
her school, with the assistance of the curate and Miss Winslow.
The terms were rejected with scorn. No School Board could be more
determined against the Catechism, nor against 'passons meddling wi'
she;' and as to assistance, 'she had been a governess this thirty
year, and didn't want no one trapesing in and out of her school.'
She was warned, but probably did not believe in the possibility of
an opposition school; and really there were children enough in the
place to overfill both her room and that which was fitted up after a
very humble fashion in one of our cottages. H.M. Inspector would
hardly have thought it even worth condemnation any more than the
attainments of the mistress, the young widow of a small Bristol
skipper. Her qualifications consisted in her piety and
conscientiousness, good temper and excellent needlework, together
with her having been a scholar in one of Mrs. Hannah More's schools
in the Cheddar district. She could read and teach reading well; but
as for the dangerous accomplishments of writing and arithmetic, such
as desired to pass beyond the rudiments of them must go to
Wattlesea.
So nice did she look in her black that Earlscombe voted her a mere
town lady, and even at a penny a week hesitated to send its children
to her. Indeed it was currently reported that her school was part
of a deep and nefarious scheme of the gentlefolks for reducing the
poor-rates by enticing the children, and then shipping them off to
foreign parts from Bristol.
But the great crisis was one unlucky summer evening when Emily and I
were out with the donkey, and Griffith, just come home from Oxford,
was airing the new acquisition of a handsome black retriever.
Close by the old chapel, a black cat was leisurely crossing the
road. At her dashed Nero, stimulated perhaps by an almost
involuntary scss--scss--from his master, if not from Amos and me.
The cat flew up a low wall, and stood at bay on the top on tiptoe,
with bristling tail, arched back, and fiery eyes, while the dog
danced round in agony on his hind legs, barking furiously, and
almost reaching her. Female sympathy ever goes to the cat, and
Emily screamed out in the fear that he would seize her, or even that
Griff might aid him. Perhaps Amos would have done so, if left to
himself; but Griff, who saw the cat was safe, could not help egging
on his dog's impotent rage, when in the midst, out flew pussy's
mistress, Dame Dearlove herself, broomstick in hand, using language
as vituperative as the cat's, and more intelligible.
She was about to strike the dog--indeed I fancy she did, for there
was a howl, and Griff sprang to his defence with--'Don't hurt my
dog, I say! He hasn't touched the brute! She can take care of
herself. Here, there's half-a-crown for the fright,' as the cat
sprang down within the wall, and Nero slunk behind him. But Dame
Dearlove was not so easily appeased. Her blood was up after our
long series of offences, and she broke into a regular tirade of
abuse.
'That's the way with you fine folk, thinking you can tread down poor
people like the dirt under your feet, and insult 'em when you've
taken the bread out of the mouths of them that were here before you.
Passons and ladies a meddin' where no one ever set a foot before!
Ay, ay, but ye'll all be down before long.'
Griff signed to us to go on, and thundered out on her to take care
what she was about and not be abusive; but this brought a fresh
volley on him, heralded by a derisive laugh. 'Ha! ha! fine talking
for the likes of you, Winslows that you are. But there's a curse on
you all! The poor lady as was murdered won't let you be! Why,
there's one of you, poor humpy object--'
At this savage attack on me, Griff waxed furious, and shouted at her
to hold her confounded tongue, but this only diverted the attack on
himself. 'And as for you--fine chap as ye think yourself,
swaggering and swearing at poor folk, and setting your dog at them--
your time's coming. Look out for yourself. It's well known as how
the curse is on the first-born. The Lady Margaret don't let none of
'em live to come after his father.'
Griff laughed and said, 'There, we have had enough of this;' and in
fact we had already moved on, so that he had to make some long steps
to overtake us, muttering, 'So we've started a Meg Merrilies! My
father won't keep such a foul-mouthed hag in the parish long!'
To which I had to respond that her cottage belonged to the trustees
of the chapel, whereat he whistled. I don't think he knew that we
had heard her final denunciation, and we did not like to mention it
to him, scarcely to each other, though Emily looked very white and
scared.
We talked it over afterwards in private, and with Henderson, who
confessed that he had heard of the old woman's saying something of
the kind to other persons. We consulted the registers in hopes of
confuting it, but did not satisfy ourselves. The last Squire had
lost his only son at school. He himself had been originally second
in the family, and in the generation before him there had been some
child-deaths, after which we came back to a young man, apparently
the eldest, who, according to Miss Selby's story, had been killed in
a duel by one of the Fordyces. It was not comfortable, till I
remembered that our family Bible recorded the birth, baptism, and
death of a son who had preceded Griffith, and only borne for a day
the name afterwards bestowed on me.
And Henderson, who was so little our elder as to discuss things on
fairly equal grounds, had some very interesting talks with us two
over ancestral sin and its possible effects, dwelling on the 18th of
Ezekiel as a comment on the Second Commandment. Indeed, we agreed
that the uncomfortable state of disaffection which, in 1830, was
becoming only too manifest in the populace, was the result of
neglect in former ages, and that, even in our own parish, the
bitterness, distrust, and ingratitude were due to the careless,
riotous, and oppressive family whom we represented.
CHAPTER XVII--THE SIEGE OF HILLSIDE
'Ferments arise, imprisoned factions roar,
Represt ambition struggles round the shore;
Till, overwrought, the general system feels
Its motion stop, or frenzy fire the wheels.'
GOLDSMITH.
Griffith had come straight home this year. There were no Peacock
gaieties to tempt him in London, for old Sir Henry had died suddenly
soon after the ball in December; nor was there much of a season that
year, owing to the illness and death of George IV.
A regiment containing two old schoolmates of his was at Bristol, and
he spent a good deal of time there, and also in Yeomanry drill. As
autumn came on we rejoiced in having so stalwart a protector, for
the agricultural riots had begun, and the forebodings of another
French Revolution seemed about to be realised. We stayed on at
Chantry House. My father thought his duty lay there as a
magistrate, and my mother would not leave him; nor indeed was any
other place much safer, certainly not London, whence Clarence wrote
accounts of formidable mobs who were expected to do more harm than
they accomplished; though their hatred of the hero of our country
filled us with direful prognostications, and made us think of the
guillotine, which was linked with revolution in our minds, before we
had I beheld the numerous changes that followed upon the thirty
years of peace in which we grew up.
The ladies did not much like losing so stalwart a defender when
Griff returned to Oxford; and Jane the housemaid went to bed every
night with the pepper-pot and a poker, the first wherewith to blind
the enemy, the second to charge them with. From our height we could
more than once see blazing ricks, and were glad that the home farm
was not in our own hands, and that our only stack of hay was a good
way from the house. When the onset came at last, it was December,
and the enemy only consisted of about thirty dreary-looking men and
boys in smock-frocks and chalked or smutted faces, armed only with
sticks and an old gun diverted from its purpose of bird-scaring.
They shouted for food, money, and arms; but my father spoke to them
from the hall steps, told them they had better go home and learn
that the public-house was a worse enemy to them than any machine
that had ever been invented, and assured them that they would get no
help from him in breaking the laws and getting themselves into
trouble. A stone or two was picked up, whereupon he went back and
had the hall door shut and barred, the heavy shutters of the windows
having all been closed already, so that we could have stood a much
more severe siege than from these poor fellows. One or two windows
were broken, as well as the glass of the conservatory, and the
flower beds were trampled; but finding our fortress impregnable they
sneaked away before dark. We fared better than our neighbours, some
of whom were seriously frightened, and suffered loss of property.
Old Mr. Fordyce had for many years past been an active magistrate--
that a clergyman should be on the bench having been quite correct
according to the notions of his younger days; and in spite of his
beneficence he incurred a good deal of unpopularity for withstanding
the lax good-nature which made his brother magistrates give orders
for parish relief refused to able-bodied paupers by their own
Vestries. This was a mischievous abuse of the old poor-law times,
which made people dispose of every one's money save their own. He
had also been a keen sportsman; and though his son had given up
field sports in deference to higher notions of clerical duty (his
wife's, as people said), the old man's feeling prompted him to
severity on poachers. Frank Fordyce, while by far the most earnest,
hardworking clergyman in the neighbourhood, worked off his
superfluous energy on scientific farming, making the glebe and the
hereditary estate as much the model farm as Hillside was the model
parish. He had lately set up a threshing-machine worked by horses,
which was as much admired by the intelligent as it was vituperated
by the ignorant.
Neither paupers nor poachers abounded in Hillside; the natives were
chiefly tenants and employed on the property, and, between good
management and beneficence, there was little real want and much
friendly confidence and affection; and thus, in spite of surrounding
riots, Hillside seemed likely to be an exception, proving what could
he done by rightful care and attention. Nor indeed did the attack
come from thence; but the two parsons were bitterly hated by
outsiders beyond the reach of their personal influence and
benevolence.
It was on a Saturday evening, the day after Griff had come back for
the Christmas vacation, that, as Emily was giving Amos his lesson,
she saw that the boy was crying, and after examination he let out
that 'folk should say that the lads were agoing to break Parson
Fordy's machine and fire his ricks that very night;' but he would
not give his authority, and when he saw her about to give warning,
entreated, 'Now, dont'ze say nothing, Miss Emily--'
'What?' she cried indignantly; 'do you think I could hear of such a
thing without trying to stop it?'
'Us says,' he blurted out, 'as how Winslows be always fain of ought
as happens to the Fordys--'
'We are not such wicked Winslows as you have heard of,' returned
Emily with dignity; and she rushed off in quest of papa and Griff,
but when she brought them to the bookroom, Amos had decamped, and
was nowhere to be found that night. We afterwards learnt that he
lay hidden in the hay-loft, not daring to return to his granny's,
lest he should be suspected of being a traitor to his kind; for our
lawless, untamed, discontented parish furnished a large quota to the
rioters, and he has since told me that though all seemed to know
what was about to be done, he did not hear it from any one in
particular.
It was no time to make light of a warning, but very difficult to
know what to do. Rural police were non-existent; there were no
soldiers nearer than Keynsham, and the Yeomanry were all in their
own homesteads. However, the captain of Griff's troop, Sir George
Eastwood, lived about three miles beyond Wattlesea, and had a good
many dependants in the corps, so it was resolved to send him a note
by the gardener, good James Ellis, a steady, resolute man, on
Emily's fast-trotting pony, while my father and Griff should hasten
to Hillside to warn the Fordyces, who were not unlikely to be able
to muster trustworthy defenders among their own people, and might
send the ladies to take shelter at Chantry House.
My mother's brave spirit disdained to detain an effective man for
her own protection, and the groom was to go to Hillside; he was in
the Yeomanry, and, like Griff, put on his uniform, while my father
had the Riot Act in his pocket. All the horses were thus absorbed,
but Chapman and the man-servant followed on foot.
Never did I feel my incapacity more than on that strange night, when
Emily was flying about with Martyn to all the doors and windows in a
wild state of excitement, humming to herself -
'When the dawn on the mountain was misty and gray,
My true love has mounted his steed and away.'
My mother was equally restless, prolonging as much as possible the
preparation of rooms for possible guests; and when she did come and
sit down, she netted her purse with vehement jerks, and scolded
Emily for jumping up and leaving doors open.
At last, after an hour according to the clock, but far more by our
feelings, wheels were heard in the distance; Emily was off like a
shot to reconnoitre, and presently Martyn bounced in with the
tidings that a pair of carriage lamps were coming up the drive. My
mother hurried out into the hall; I made my best speed after her,
and found her hastily undoing the door-chain as she recognised the
measured, courteous voice of old Mr. Fordyce. In a moment more they
were all in the house, the old gentleman giving his arm to his
daughter-in-law, who was quite overcome with distress and alarm;
then came his tall, slim granddaughter, carrying her little sister
with arms full of dolls, and sundry maid-servants completed the
party of fugitives.
'We are taking advantage of Mr. Winslow's goodness,' said the old
Rector. 'He assured us that you would be kind enough to receive
those who would only be an encumbrance.'
'Oh, but I must go back to Frank now that you and the children are
safe,' cried the poor lady. 'Don't send away the carriage; I must
go back to Frank.'
'Nonsense, my dear,' returned Mr. Fordyce, 'Frank is in no danger.
He will get on much better for knowing you are safe. Mrs. Winslow
will tell you so.'
My mother was enforcing this assurance, when the little girl's sobs
burst out in spite of her sister, who had been trying to console
her. 'It is Celestina Mary,' she cried, pointing to three dolls
whom she had carried in clasped to her breast. 'Poor Celestina
Mary! She is left behind, and Ellen won't let me go and see if she
is in the carriage.'
'My dear, if she is in the carriage, she will be quite safe in the
morning.'
'Oh, but she will be so cold. She had nothing on but Rosella's old
petticoat.'
The distress was so real that I had my hand on the bell to cause a
search to be instituted for the missing damsel, when Mrs. Fordyce
begged me to do no such thing, as it was only a doll. The child,
while endeavouring to shelter with a shawl the dolls, snatched in
their night-gear from their beds, wept so piteously at the rebuff
that her grandfather had nearly gone in quest of the lost one, but
was stopped by a special entreaty that he would not spoil the child.
Martyn, however, who had been standing in open-mouthed wonder at
such feeling for a doll, exclaimed, 'Don't cry, don't cry. I'll go
and get it for you;' and rushed off to the stable-yard.
This episode had restored Mrs. Fordyce, and while providing some of
our guests with wine, and others with tea, we heard the story, only
interrupted by Martyn's return from a vain search, and Anne's
consequent tears, which, however, were somehow hushed and smothered
by fears of being sent to bed, coupled with his promises to search
every step of the way to-morrow.
It appeared that while the Fordyce family were at dinner, shouts,
howls and yells had startled them. The rabble had surrounded the
Rectory, bawling out abuse of the parsons and their machines, and
occasionally throwing stones. There was no help to be expected; the
only hope was in the strength of the doors and windows, and the
knowledge that personal violence was very uncommon; but those were
terrible moments, and poor Mrs. Fordyce was nearly dead with
suppressed terror when her husband tried haranguing from an upper
window, and was received with execrations and a volley of stones,
while the glass crashed round him.
At that instant the shouts turned to yells of dismay, 'The so'diers!
the so'diers!'
Our party had found everything still and dark in the village, for in
truth the men had hidden themselves. They were being too much
attached to their masters to join in the attack, but were afraid of
being compelled to assist the rioters, and not resolute enough
against their own class either to inform against them or oppose
them.
Through the midnight-like stillness of the street rose the tumult
around the Rectory; and by the light of a few lanterns, and from the
upper windows, they could see a mass of old hats, smock-frocked
shoulders, and the tops of bludgeons; while at soonest, Sir George
Eastwood's troop could not be expected for an hour or more.
'We must get to them somehow,' said my father and Griff to one
another; and Griff added, 'These rascals are arrant cowards, and
they can't see the number of us.'
Then, before my father knew what he was about--certainly before he
could get hold of the Riot Act--he found the stable lantern made
over to him, and Griff's sword flashing in light, as, making all
possible clatter and jingling with their accoutrements, the two
yeomen dashed among the throng, shouting with all their might, and
striking with the flat of their swords. The rioters, ill-fed, dull-
hearted men for the most part--many dragged out by compulsion, and
already terrified--went tumbling over one another and running off
headlong, bearing off with them (as we afterwards learnt) their
leaders by their weight, taking the blows and pushes they gave one
another in their pell-mell rush for those of the soldiery, and
falling blindly against the low wall of the enclosure. The only
difficulty was in clearing them out at the two gates of the drive.
When Mr. Fordyce opened the door to hail his rescuers he was utterly
amazed to behold only three, and asked in a bewildered voice, 'Where
are the others?'
There were two prisoners, Petty the ratcatcher, who had attempted
some resistance and had been knocked down by Griff's horse, and a
young lad in a smock-frock who had fallen off the wall and hurt his
knee, and who blubbered piteously, declaring that them chaps had
forced him to go with them, or they would duck him in the horse-
pond. They were supposed to be given in charge to some one, but
were lost sight of, and no wonder! For just then it was discovered
that the machine shed was on fire. The rioters had apparently
detached one of their number to kindle the flame before assaulting
the house. The matter was specially serious, because the stackyard
was on a line with the Rectory, at some distance indeed, but on
lower ground; and what with barns, hay and wheat ricks, sheds,
cowhouses and stables, all thatched, a big wood-pile, and a long
old-fashioned greenhouse, there was almost continuous communication.
Clouds of smoke and an ominous smell were already perceptible on the
wind, generated by the heat, and the loose straw in the centre of
the farmyard was beginning to be ignited by the flakes and sparks,
carrying the mischief everywhere, and rendering it exceedingly
difficult to release the animals and drive them to a place of
safety. Water was scarce. There were only two wells, besides the
pump in the house, and a shallow pond. The brook was a quarter of a
mile off in the valley, and the nearest engine, a poor feeble thing,
at Wattlesea. Moreover, the assailants might discover how small was
the force of rescuers, and return to the attack. Thus, while Griff,
who had given amateur assistance at all the fires he could reach in
London; was striving to organise resistance to this new enemy, my
father induced the gentlemen to cause the horses to be put to the
various vehicles, and employ them in carrying the women and children
to Chantry House. The old Rector was persuaded to go to take care
of his daughter-in-law, and she only thought of putting her girls in
safety. She listened to reason, and indeed was too much exhausted
to move when once she was laid on the sofa. She would not hear of
going to bed, though her little daughter Anne was sent off with her
nurse, grandpapa persuading her that Rosella and the others were
very much tired. When she was gone, he declared his fears that he
had sat down on Celestina's head, and showed so much compunction
that we were much amused at his relief when Martyn assured him of
having searched the carriage with a stable lantern, so that whatever
had befallen the lady he was not the guilty person. He really
seemed more concerned about this than at the loss of all his own
barns and stores. And little Anne was certainly as lovely and
engaging a little creature as ever I saw; while, as to her elder
sister, in all the trouble and anxiety of the night, I could not
help enjoying the sight of her beautiful eager face and form. She
was tall and very slight, sylph-like, as it was the fashion to call
it, but every limb was instinct with grace and animation. Her face
was, perhaps, rather too thin for robust health, though this
enhanced the idea of her being all spirit, as also did the
transparency of complexion, tinted with an exquisite varying
carnation. Her eyes were of a clear, bright, rather light brown,
and were sparkling with the lustre of excitement, her delicate lips
parted, showing the pretty pearly teeth, as she was telling Emily,
in a low voice of enthusiasm, scarcely designed for my ears, how
glorious a sight our brother had been, riding there in his glancing
silver, bearing down all before him with his good sword, like the
Captal de Buch dispersing the Jacquerie.
To which Emily responded, 'Oh, don't you love the Captal de Buch?'
And their friendship was cemented.
Next I heard, 'And that you should have been so good after all my
rudeness. But I thought you were like the old Winslows; and instead
of that you have come to the rescue of your enemies. Isn't it
beautiful?'
'Oh no, not enemies,' said Emily. 'That was all over a hundred
years ago!'
'So my papa and grandpapa say,' returned Miss Fordyce; 'but the last
Mr. Winslow was not a very nice man, and never would be civil to
us.'
A report was brought that the glare of the fire could be seen over
the hill from the top of the house, and off went the two young
ladies to the leads, after satisfying themselves that Anne was
asleep among her homeless dolls.
Old Mr. Fordyce devoted himself to keeping up the spirits of his
daughter-in-law as the night advanced without any tidings, except
that the girls, from time to time, rushed down to tell us of fresh
outbursts of red flame reflected in the sky, then that the glow was
diminishing; by which time they were tired out, and, both sinking
into a big armchair, they went to sleep in each other's arms.
Indeed I believe we all dozed more or less before any one returned
from the scene of action--at about three o'clock.
The struggle with the flames had been very unequal. The long
tongues soon reached the roof of the large barn, which was filled
with straw, nor could the flakes of burning thatch be kept from the
stable, while the water of the pond was soon reduced to mud.
Helpers began to flock in, but who could tell which were
trustworthy? and all were uncomprehending.
There was so little hope of saving the house that the removal of
everything valuable was begun under my father's superintendence.
Frank Fordyce was here, there, and everywhere; while Griffith, like
a gallant general, fought the foe with very helpless unmanageable
forces. Villagers, male and female, had emerged and stood gaping
round; but, let him rage and storm as he might, they would not go
and collect pails and buckets and form a line to the brook. Still
less would they assist in overthrowing and carrying away the faggots
of a big wood-pile so as to cut off the communication with the
offices. Only Chapman and one other man gave any help in this; and
presently the stack caught, and Griff, on the top, was in great
peril of the faggots rolling down with him into the middle, and
imprisoning him in the blazing pile. 'I never felt so like Dido,'
said Griff.
That woodstack gave fearful aliment to the roaring flame, which came
on so fast that the destruction of the adjoining buildings quickly
followed. The Wattlesea engine had come, but the yard well was
unattainable, and all that could be done was to saturate the house
with water from its own well, and cover the side with wet blankets;
but these reeked with steam, and then shrivelled away in the intense
glow of heat.
However, by this time the Eastwood Yeomanry, together with some
reasonable men, had arrived. A raid was made on the cottages for
buckets, a chain formed to the river, and at last the fire was got
under, having made a wreck of everything out-of-doors, and consumed
one whole wing of the house, though the older and more esteemed
portion was saved.
CHAPTER XVIII--THE PORTRAIT
'When day was gone and night was come,
And all men fast asleep,
There came the spirit of fair Marg'ret
And stood at William's feet.'
Scotch Ballad.
When I emerged from my room the next morning the phaeton was at the
door to take the two clergymen to reconnoitre their abode before
going to church. Miss Fordyce went with them, and my father was for
once about to leave his parish church to give them his sympathy, and
join in their thanksgiving that neither life nor limb had been
injured. He afterwards said that nothing could have been more
touching than old Mr. Fordyce's manner of mentioning this special
cause for gratitude before the General Thanksgiving; and Frank
Fordyce, having had all his sermons burnt, gave a short address
extempore (a very rare and almost shocking thing at that date),
reducing half the congregation to tears, for they really loved 'the
fam'ly,' though they had not spirit enough to defend it; and their
passiveness always remained a subject of pride and pleasure to the
Fordyces. It was against the will of these good people that Petty,
the ratcatcher, was arrested, but he had been engaged in other
outrages, though this was the only one in which a dwelling-house had
suffered. And Chapman observed that 'there was nothing to be done
with such chaps but to string 'em up out of the way.'
Griff had toiled that night till he was as stiff as a rheumatic old
man when he came down only just in time for luncheon. Mrs. Fordyce
did not appear at all. She was a fragile creature, and quite
knocked up by the agitations of the night. The gentlemen had
visited the desolate rectory, and found that though the fine ancient
kitchen had escaped, the pleasant living rooms had been injured by
the water, and the place could hardly be made habitable before the
spring. They proposed to take a house in Bath, whence Frank Fordyce
could go and come for Sunday duty and general superintendence, but
my parents were urgent that they should not leave us until after
Christmas, and they consented. Their larger possessions were to be
stored in the outhouses, their lesser in our house, notably in the
inner mullion chamber, which would thus be so blocked that there
would be no question of sleeping in it.
Old Mr. Fordyce had ascertained that he might acquit himself of
smashing Celestina Mary, for no remains appeared in the carriage;
but a miserable trunk was discovered in the ruins, which he
identified--though surely no one else save the disconsolate parent
could have done so. Poor little Anne's private possessions had
suffered most severely of all, for her whole nursery establishment
had vanished. Her surviving dolls were left homeless, and devoid of
all save their night-clothing, which concerned her much more than
the loss of almost all her own garments. For what dolls were to her
could never have been guessed by us, who had forced Emily to disdain
them; whereas they were children to the maternal heart of this
lonely child.
She was quite a new revelation to us. All the Fordyces were
handsome; and her chestnut curls and splendid eyes, her pretty
colour and unconscious grace, were very charming. Emily was so near
our own age that we had never known the winsomeness of a little
maid-child amongst us, and she was a perpetual wonder and delight to
us.
Indeed, from having always lived with her elders, she was an odd
little old-fashioned person, advanced in some ways, and comically
simple in others. Her doll-heart was kept in abeyance all Sunday,
and it was only on Monday that her anxiety for Celestina manifested
itself with considerable vehemence; but her grandfather gravely
informed her that the young lady was gone to an excellent doctor,
who would soon effect a cure. The which was quite true, for he had
sent her to a toy-shop by one of the maids who had gone to restore
the ravage on the wardrobes, and who brought her back with a new
head and arms, her identity apparently not being thus interfered
with. The hoards of scraps were put under requisition to re-clothe
the survivors; and I won my first step in Miss Anne's good graces by
undertaking a knitted suit for Rosella.
The good little girl had evidently been schooled to repress her
dread and repugnance at my unlucky appearance, and was painfully
polite, only shutting her eyes when she came to shake hands with me;
but after Rosella condescended to adopt me, we became excellent
friends. Indeed the following conversation was overheard by Emily,
and set down:
'Do you know, Martyn, there's a fairies' ring on Hillside Down?'
'Mushrooms,' quoth Martyn.
'Yes, don't you know? They are the fairies' tables. They come out
and spread them with lily tablecloths at night, and have acorn cups
for dishes, with honey in them. And they dance and play there.
Well, couldn't Mr. Edward go and sit under the beech-tree at the
edge till they come?'
'I don't think he would like it at all,' said Martyn. 'He never
goes out at odd times.'
'Oh, but don't you know? when they come they begin to sing -
'"Sunday and Monday,
Monday and Tuesday."
And if he was to sing nicely,
'"Wednesday and Thursday,"
they would be so much pleased that they would make his back straight
again in a moment. At least, perhaps Wednesday and Thursday would
not do, because the little tailor taught them those; but Friday
makes them angry. But suppose he made some nice verse -
'"Monday and Tuesday
The fairies are gay,
Tuesday and Wednesday
They dance away--"
I think that would do as well, perhaps. Do get him to do so,
Martyn. It would be so nice if he was tall and straight.'
Dear little thing! Martyn, who was as much her slave as was her
grandfather, absolutely made her shed tears over his history of our
accident, and then caressed them off; but I believe he persuaded her
that such a case might be beyond the fairies' reach, and that I
could hardly get to the spot in secret, which, it seems, is an
essential point. He had imagination enough to be almost persuaded
of fairyland by her earnestness, and she certainly took him into
doll-land. He had a turn for carpentry and contrivance, and he
undertook that the Ladies Rosella, etc., should be better housed
than ever. A great packing-case was routed out, and much ingenuity
was expended, much delight obtained, in the process of converting it
into a doll's mansion, and replenishing it with furniture. Some was
bought, but Martyn aspired to make whatever he could; I did a good
deal, and I believe most of our achievements are still extant.
Whatever we could not manage, Clarence was to accomplish when he
should come home.
His arrival was, as usual, late in the evening; and, as before, he
had the little room within mine. In the morning, as we were
crossing the hall to the bright wood fire, around which the family
were wont to assemble before prayers, he came to a pause, asking
under his breath, 'What's that? Who's that?'
'It is one of the Hillside pictures. You know we have a great many
things here from thence.'
'It is SHE,' he said, in a low, awe-stricken voice. No need to say
who SHE meant.
I had not paid much attention to the picture. It had come with
several more, such as are rife in country houses, and was one of the
worst of the lot, a poor imitation of Lely's style, with a certain
air common to all the family; but Clarence's eyes were riveted on
it. 'She looks younger,' he said; 'but it is the same. I could
swear to the lip and the whole shape of the brow and chin. No--the
dress is different.'
For in the portrait, there was nothing on the head, and one long
lock of hair fell on the shoulder of the low-cut white-satin dress,
done in very heavy gray shading. The three girls came down
together, and I asked who the lady was.
'Don't you know? You ought; for that is poor Margaret who married
your ancestor.'
No more was said then, for the rest of the world was collecting, and
then everybody went out their several ways. Some tin tacks were
wanted for the dolls' house, and there were reports that Wattlesea
possessed a doll's grate and fire-irons. The children were wild to
go in quest of them, but they were not allowed to go alone, and it
was pronounced too far and too damp for the elder sister, so that
they would have been disappointed, if Clarence--stimulated by
Martyn's kicks under the table--had not offered to be their escort.
When Mrs. Fordyce demurred, my mother replied, 'You may perfectly
trust her with Clarence.'
'Yes; I don't know a safer squire,' rejoined my father.
Commendation was so rare that Clarence quite blushed with pleasure;
and the pretty little thing was given into his charge, prancing and
dancing with pleasure, and expecting much more from sixpence and
from Wattlesea than was likely to be fulfilled.
Griff went out shooting, and the two young ladies and I intended to
spend a very rational morning in the bookroom, reading aloud Mme. de
La Rochejaquelein's Memoirs by turns. Our occupations were, on
Emily's part, completing a reticule, in a mosaic of shaded coloured
beads no bigger than pins' heads, for a Christmas gift to mamma--a
most wearisome business, of which she had grown extremely tired.
Miss Fordyce was elaborately copying our Muller's print of
Raffaelle's St. John in pencil on cardboard, so as to be as near as
possible a facsimile; and she had trusted me to make a finished
water-coloured drawing from a rough sketch of hers of the Hillside
barn and farm-buildings, now no more.
In a pause Ellen Fordyce suddenly asked, 'What did you mean about
that picture?'
'Only Clarence said it was like--' and here Emily came to a dead
stop.
'Grandpapa says it is like me,' said Miss Fordyce. 'What, you don't
mean THAT? Oh! oh! oh! is it true? Does she walk? Have you seen
her? Mamma calls it all nonsense, and would not have Anne hear of
it for anything; but old Aunt Peggy used to tell me, and I am sure
grandpapa believes it, just a little. Have you seen her?'
'Only Clarence has, and he knew the picture directly.'
She was much impressed, and on slight persuasion related the story,
which she had heard from an elder sister of her grandfather's, and
which had perhaps been the more impressed on her by her mother's
consternation at 'such folly' having been communicated to her. Aunt
Peggy, who was much older than her brother, had died only four years
ago, at eighty-eight, having kept her faculties to the last, and
handed down many traditions to her great-niece. The old lady's
father had been contemporary with the Margaret of ghostly fame, so
that the stages had been few through which it had come down from
1708 to 1830.
I wrote it down at once, as it here stands.
Margaret was the only daughter of the elder branch of the Fordyces.
Her father had intended her to marry her cousin, the male heir on
whom the Hillside estates and the advowson of that living were
entailed; but before the contract had been formally made, the father
was killed by accident, and through some folly and ambition of her
mother's (such seemed to be the Fordyce belief), the poor heiress
was married to Sir James Winslow, one of the successful intriguers
of the days of the later Stewarts, and with a family nearly as old,
if not older, than herself. Her own children died almost at their
birth, and she was left a young widow. Being meek and gentle, her
step-sons and daughters still ruled over Chantry House. They
prevented her Hillside relations from having access to her whilst in
a languishing state of health, and when she died unexpectedly, she
was found to have bequeathed all her property to her step-son,
Philip Winslow, instead of to her blood relations, the Fordyces.
This was certain, but the Fordyce tradition was that she had been
kept shut up in the mullion chambers, where she had often been heard
weeping bitterly. One night in the winter, when the gentlemen of
the family had gone out to a Christmas carousal, she had endeavoured
to escape by the steps leading to the garden from the door now
bricked up, but had been met by them and dragged back with violence,
of which she died in the course of a few days; and, what was very
suspicious, she had been entirely attended by her step-daughter and
an old nurse, who never would let her own woman come near her.
The Fordyces had thought of a prosecution, but the Winslows had
powerful interest at Court in those corrupt times, and contrived to
hush up the matter, as well as to win the suit in which the Fordyces
attempted to prove that there was no right to will the property
away. Bitter enmity remained between the families; they were always
opposed in politics, and their animosity was fed by the belief which
arose that at the anniversaries of her death the poor lady haunted
the rooms, lamp in hand, wailing and lamenting. A duel had been
fought on the subject between the heirs of the two families,
resulting in the death of the young Winslow.
'And now,' cried Ellen Fordyce, 'the feud is so beautifully ended;
the doom must be appeased, now that the head of one hostile line has
come to the rescue of the other, and saved all our lives.'
My suggestion that these would hardly have been destroyed, even
without our interposition, fell very flat, for romance must have its
swing. Ellen told us how, on the news of our kinsman's death and
our inheritance, the ancestral story had been discussed, and her
grandfather had said he believed there were letters about it in the
iron deed-box, and how he hoped to be on better terms with the new
heir.
The ghost story had always been hushed up in the family, especially
since the duel, and we all knew the resemblance of the picture would
be scouted by our elders; but perhaps this gave us the more pleasure
in dwelling upon it, while we agreed that poor Margaret ought to be
appeased by Griffith's prowess on behalf of the Fordyces.
The two young ladies went off to inspect the mullion chamber, which
they found so crammed with Hillside furniture that they could
scarcely enter, and returned disappointed, except for having
inspected and admired all Griff's weapons, especially what Miss
Fordyce called the sword of her rescue.
She had been learning German--rather an unusual study in those days,
and she narrated to us most effectively the story of Die Weisse
Frau, working herself up to such a pitch that she would have
actually volunteered to spend a night in the room, to see whether
Margaret would hold any communication with a descendant, after the
example of the White Woman and Lady Bertha, if there had been either
fire or accommodation, and if the only entrance had not been through
Griff's private sitting-room.
CHAPTER XIX--THE WHITE FEATHER
'The white doe's milk is not out of his mouth.'
SCOTT.
Clarence had come home free from all blots. His summer holiday had
been prevented by the illness of one of the other clerks, whose
place, Mr. Castleford wrote, he had so well supplied that ere long
he would be sure to earn his promotion. That kind friend had
several times taken him to spend a Sunday in the country, and, as we
afterwards had reason to think, would have taken more notice of him
but for the rooted belief of Mr. Frith that it was a case of
favouritism, and that piety and strictness were assumed to throw
dust in the eyes of his patron.
Such distrust had tended to render Clarence more reserved than ever,
and it was quite by the accident of finding him studying one of Mrs.
Trimmer's Manuals that I discovered that, at the request of his good
Rector, he had become a Sunday-school teacher, and was as much
interested as the enthusiastic girls; but I was immediately
forbidden to utter a word on the subject, even to Emily, lest she
should tell any one.
Such reserve was no doubt an outcome of his natural timidity. He
had to bear a certain amount of scorn and derision among some of his
fellow-clerks for the stricter habits and observances that could not
be concealed, and he dreaded any fresh revelation of them, partly
because of the cruel imputation of hypocrisy, partly because he
feared the bringing a scandal on religion by his weakness and
failures.
Nor did our lady visitors' ways reassure him, though they meant to
be kind. They could not help being formal and stiff, not as they
were with Griff and me. The two gentlemen were thoroughly friendly
and hearty; Parson Frank could hardly have helped being so towards
any one in the same house with himself; and as to little Anne, she
found in the new-comer a carpenter and upholsterer superior even to
Martyn; but her candour revealed a great deal which I overheard one
afternoon, when the two children were sitting together on the
hearth-rug in the bookroom in the twilight.
'I want to see Mr. Clarence's white feather,' observed Anne.
'Griff has a white plume in his Yeomanry helmet,' replied Martyn;
'Clarence hasn't one.'
'Oh, I saw Mr. Griffith's!' she answered; 'but Cousin Horace said
Mr. Clarence showed the white feather.'
'Cousin Horace is an ape!' cried Martyn.
'I don't think he is so nice as an ape,' said Anne. 'He is more
like a monkey. He tries the dolls by court-martial, and he shot
Arabella with a pea-shooter, and broke her eye; only grandpapa made
him have it put in again with his own money, and then he said I was
a little sneak, and if I ever did it again he would shoot me.'
'Mind you don't tell Clarence what he said,' said Martyn.
'Oh, no! I think Mr. Clarence very nice indeed; but Horace did
tease so about that day when he carried poor Amos Bell home. He
said Ellen had gone and made friends with the worst of all the
wicked Winslows, who had shown the white feather and disgraced his
flag. No; I know you are not wicked. And Mr. Griff came all
glittering, like Richard Coeur de Lion, and saved us all that night.
But Ellen cried to think what she had done, and mamma said it showed
what it was to speak to a strange young man; and she has never let
Ellen and me go out of the grounds by ourselves since that day.'
'It is a horrid shame,' exclaimed Martyn, 'that a fellow can't get
into a scrape without its being for ever cast up to him.'
'_I_ like him,' said Anne. 'He gave Mary Bell a nice pair of boots,
and he made a new pair of legs for poor old Arabella, and she can
really sit down! Oh, he is VERY nice; but'--in an awful whisper--
'does he tell stories? I mean fibs--falsehoods.'
'Who told you that?' exclaimed Martyn.
'Mamma said it. Ellen was telling them something about the picture
of the white-satin lady, and mamma said, "Oh, if it is only that
young man, no doubt it is a mere mystification;" and papa said,
"Poor young fellow, he seems very amiable and well disposed;" and
mamma said, "If he can invent such a story it shows that Horace was
right, and he is not to be believed." Then they stopped, but I
asked Ellen who it was, and she said it was Mr. Clarence, and it was
a sad thing for Emily and all of you to have such a brother.'
Martyn began to stammer with indignation, and I thought it time to
interfere; so I called the little maid, and gravely explained the
facts, adding that poor Clarence's punishment had been terrible, but
that he was doing his best to make up for what was past; and that,
as to anything he might have told, though he might be mistaken, he
never said anything NOW but what he believed to be true. She raised
her brown eyes to mine full of gravity, and said, 'I DO like him.'
Moreover, I privately made Martyn understand that if he told her
what had been said about the white-satin lady, he would never be
forgiven; the others would be sure to find it out, and it might
shorten their stay.
That was a dreadful idea, for the presence of those two creatures,
to say nothing of their parents, was an unspeakable charm and
novelty to us all. We all worshipped the elder, and the little one
was like a new discovery and toy to us, who had never been used to
such a presence. She was not a commonplace child; but even if she
had been, she would have been as charming a study as a kitten; and
she had all the four of us at her feet, though her mother was
constantly protesting against our spoiling her, and really kept up
so much wholesome discipline that the little maid never exceeded the
bounds of being charming to us. After that explanation there was
the same sweet wistful gentleness in her manner towards Clarence as
she showed to me; while he, who never dreamt of such a child knowing
his history was brighter and freer with her than with any one else,
played with her and Martyn, and could be heard laughing merrily with
them. Perhaps her mother and sister did not fully like this, but
they could not interfere before our faces. And Parson Frank was
really kind to him; took him out walking when going to Hillside, and
talked to him so as to draw him out; certifying, perhaps, that he
would do no harm, although, indeed, the family looked on dear good
Frank as a sort of boy, too kind-hearted and genial for his approval
to be worth as much as that of the more severe.
These were our only Christmas visitors, for the state of the country
did not invite Londoners; but we did not want them. The suppression
of Clarence was the only flaw in a singularly happy time; and, after
all I believe I felt the pity of it more than he did, who expected
nothing, and was accustomed to being in the background.
For instance, one afternoon in the course of one of the grave
discussions that used to grow up between Miss Fordyce, Emily, and
me, over subjects trite to the better-instructed younger generation,
we got quite out of our shallow depths. I think it was on the
meaning of the 'Communion of Saints,' for the two girls were both
reading in preparation for a Confirmation at Bristol, and Miss
Fordyce knew more than we did on these subjects. All the time
Clarence had sat in the window, carving a bit of doll's furniture,
and quite forgotten; but at night he showed me the exposition copied
from Pearson on the Creed, a bit of Hooker, and extracts from one or
two sermons. I found these were notes written out in a blank book,
which he had had in hand ever since his Confirmation--his logbook as
he called it; but he would not hear of their being mentioned even to
Emily, and only consented to hunt up the books on condition I would
not bring him forward as the finder. It was of no use to urge that
it was a deprivation to us all that he should not aid us with his
more thorough knowledge and deeper thought. 'He could not do so,'
he said, in a quiet decisive manner; 'it was enough for him to watch
and listen to Miss Fordyce, when she could forget his presence.'
She often did forget it in her eagerness. She was by nature one of
the most ardent beings that I ever saw, yet with enthusiasm kept in
check by the self-control inculcated as a primary duty. It would
kindle in those wonderful light brown eyes, glow in the clear
delicate cheek, quiver in the voice even when the words were only
half adequate to the feeling. She was not what is now called
gushing. Oh, no! not in the least! She was too reticent and had
too much dignity for anything of the kind. Emily had always been
reckoned as our romantic young lady, and teased accordingly, but her
enthusiasm beside Ellen's was
'As moonlight is to sunlight, as water is to wine,' -
a mere reflection of the tone of the period, compared with a real
element in the character. At least so my sister tells me, though at
the time all the difference I saw was that Miss Fordyce had the most
originality, and unconsciously became the leader. The bookroom was
given up to us, and there in the morning we drew, worked, read,
copied and practised music, wrote out extracts, and delivered our
youthful minds to one another on all imaginable topics from 'slea
silk to predestination.'
Religious subjects occupied us more than might have been held
likely. A spirit of reflection and revival was silently working in
many a heart. Evangelicalism had stirred old-fashioned orthodoxy,
and we felt its action. The Christian Year was Ellen's guiding
star--as it was ours, nay, doubly so in proportion to the ardour of
her nature. Certain poems are dearer and more eloquent to me still,
because the verses recall to me the thrill of her sweet tones as she
repeated them. We were all very ignorant alike of Church doctrine
and history, but talking out and comparing our discoveries and
impressions was as useful as it was pleasant to us.
What the Christian Year was in religion to us Scott was in history.
We read to verify or illustrate him, and we had little raving fits
over his characters, and jokes founded on them. Indeed, Ellen saw
life almost through that medium; and the siege of Hillside,
dispersed by the splendid prowess of Griffith, the champion with
silver helm and flashing sword, was precious to her as a renewal of
the days of Ivanhoe or Damian de Lacy.
As may be believed, these quiet mornings were those when that true
knight was employed in field sports or yeomanry duties, such as the
state of the country called for. When he was at home, all was fun
and merriment and noise--walks and rides on fine days, battledore
and shuttlecock on wet ones, music, singing, paper games, giggling
and making giggle, and sometimes dancing in the hall--Mr. Frank
Fordyce joining with all his heart and drollery in many of these,
like the boy he was.
I could play quadrilles and country dances, and now and then a reel-
-nobody thought of waltzes--and the three couples changed and
counterchanged partners. Clarence had the sailor's foot, and did
his part when needed; Emily generally fell to his share, and their
silence and gravity contrasted with the mirth of the other pairs.
He knew very well he was the pis aller of the party, and only danced
when Parson Frank was not dragged out, nothing loth, by his little
daughter. With Miss Fordyce, Clarence never had the chance of
dancing; she was always claimed by Griff, or pounced upon by Martyn.
Miss Fordyce she always was to us in those days, and those pretty
lips scrupulously 'Mistered' and 'Winslowed' us. I don't think she
would have been more to us, if we had called her Nell, and had been
Griff, Bill, and Ted to her, or if there had not been all the little
formalities of avoiding tete a tetes and the like. They were
essentials of propriety then--natural, and never viewed as prudish.
Nor did it detract from the sweet dignity of maidenhood that there
was none of the familiarity which breeds something one would rather
not mention in conjunction with a lady.
Altogether there was a sunshine around Miss Fordyce by which we all
seemed illuminated, even the least favoured and least demonstrative;
we were all her willing slaves, and thought her smile and thanks
full reward.
One day, when Griff and Martyn were assisting at the turn out of an
isolated barn at Hillside, where Frank Fordyce declared, all the
burnt-out rats and mice had taken refuge, the young ladies went out
to cater for house decorations for Christmas under Clarence's
escort. Nobody but the clerk ever thought of touching the church,
where there were holes in all the pews to receive the holly boughs.
The girls came back, telling in eager scared voices how, while
gathering butcher's broom in Farmer Hodges' home copse, a savage dog
had flown out at them, but had been kept at bay by Mr. Clarence
Winslow with an umbrella, while they escaped over the stile.
Clarence had not come into the drawing-room with them, and while my
mother, who had a great objection to people standing about in out-
door garments, sent them up to doff their bonnets and furs, I
repaired to our room, and was horrified to find him on my bed, white
and faint.
'Bitten?' I cried in dismay.
'Yes; but not much. Only I'm such a fool. I turned off when I
began taking off my boots. No, no--don't! Don't call any one. It
is nothing!'
He was springing up to stop me, but was forced to drop back, and I
made my way to the drawing-room, where my mother happened to be
alone. She was much alarmed, but a glass of wine restored Clarence;
and inspection showed that the thick trowser and winter stocking had
so protected him that little blood had been drawn, and there was
bruise rather than bite in the calf of the leg, where the brute had
caught him as he was getting over the stile as the rear-guard. It
was painful, though the faintness was chiefly from tension of nerve,
for he had kept behind all the way home, and no one had guessed at
the hurt. My mother doctored it tenderly, and he begged that
nothing should be said about it; he wanted no fuss about such a
trifle. My mother agreed, with the proud feeling of not enhancing
the obligations of the Fordyce family; but she absolutely kissed
Clarence's forehead as she bade him lie quiet till dinner-time.
We kept silence at table while the girls described the horrors of
the monster. 'A tawny creature, with a hideous black muzzle,' said
Emily. 'Like a bad dream,' said Miss Fordyce. The two fathers
expressed their intention of remonstrating with the farmer, and
Griff declared that it would be lucky if he did not shoot it. Miss
Fordyce generously took its part, saying the poor dog was doing its
duty, and Griff ejaculated, 'If I had been there!'
'It would not have dared to show its teeth, eh?' said my father,
when there was a good deal of banter.
My father, however, came at night with mamma to inspect the hurt and
ask details, and he ended with, 'Well done, Clarence, boy; I am
gratified to see you are acquiring presence of mind, and can act
like a man.'
Clarence smiled when they were gone, saying, 'That would have been
an insult to any one else.'
Emily perceived that he had not come off unscathed, and was much
aggrieved at being bound to silence. 'Well,' she broke out, 'if the
dog goes mad, and Clarence has the hydrophobia, I suppose I may
tell.'
'In that pleasing contingency,' said Clarence smiling. 'Don't you
see, Emily, it is the worst compliment you can pay me not to treat
this as a matter of course?' Still, he was the happier for not
having failed. Whatever strengthened his self-respect and gave him
trust in himself was a stepping-stone.
As to rivalry or competition with Griff, the idea seemingly never
crossed his mind, and envy or jealousy were equally aloof from it.
One subject of thankfulness runs through these recollections--
namely, that nothing broke the tie of strong affection between us
three brothers. Griffith might figure as the 'vary parfite knight,'
the St. George of the piece, glittering in the halo shed round him
by the bright eyes of the rescued damsel; while Clarence might drag
himself along as the poor recreant to be contemned and tolerated,
and he would accept the position meekly as only his desert, without
a thought of bitterness. Indeed, he himself seemed to have imbibed
Nurse Gooch's original opinion, that his genuine love for sacred
things was a sort of impertinence and pretension in such as he--a
kind of hypocrisy even when they were the realities and helps to
which he clung with all his heart. Still, this depression was only
shown by reserve, and troubled no one save myself, who knew him best
guessed what was lost by his silence, and burned in spirit at seeing
him merely endured as one unworthy.
In one of our varieties of Waverley discussions the crystal hardness
and inexperienced intolerance of youth made Miss Fordyce declare
that had she been Edith Plantagenet, she would never, never have
forgiven Sir Kenneth. 'How could she, when he had forsaken the
king's banner? Unpardonable!'
Then came a sudden, awful silence, as she recollected her audience,
and blushed crimson with the misery of perceiving where her random
shaft had struck, nor did either of us know what to say; but to our
surprise it was Clarence who first spoke to relieve the desperate
embarrassment. 'Is forgiven quite the right word, when the offence
was not personal? I know that such things can neither be repaired
nor overlooked, and I think that is what Miss Fordyce meant.'
'Oh, Mr. Winslow,' she exclaimed, 'I am very sorry--I don't think I
quite meant'--and then, as her eyes for one moment fell on his
subdued face, she added, 'No, I said what I ought not. If there is
sorrow'--her voice trembled--'and pardon above, no one below has any
right to say unpardonable.'
Clarence bowed his head, and his lips framed, but he did not utter,
'Thank you.' Emily nervously began reading aloud the page before
her, full of the jingling recurring rhymes about Sir Thomas of Kent;
but I saw Ellen surreptitiously wipe away a tear, and from that time
she was more kind and friendly with Clarence.
CHAPTER XX--VENI, VIDI, VICI
'None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserve the fair.'
Song.
Christmas trees were not yet heard of beyond the Fatherland, and
both the mothers held that Christmas parties were not good for
little children, since Mrs. Winslow's strong common sense had
arrived at the same conclusion as Mrs. Fordyce had derived from
Hannah More and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Besides, rick-burning and
mobs were far too recent for our neighbours to venture out at night.
But as we were all resolved that little Anne should have a memorable
Christmas at Chantry House, we begged an innocent, though iced cake,
from the cook, painted a set of characters ourselves, including all
the dolls, and bespoke the presence of Frank Fordyce at a feast in
the outer mullion room--Griff's apartment, of course. The locality
was chosen as allowing more opportunity for high jinks than the
bookroom, and also because the swords and pistols in trophy over the
mantelpiece had a great fascination for the two sisters, and to
'drink tea with Mr. Griffith' was always known to be a great
ambition of the little queen of the festival. As to the mullion
chamber legends, they had nearly gone out of our heads, though
Clarence did once observe, 'You remember, it will be the 26th of
December;' but we did not think this worthy of consideration,
especially as Anne's entertainment, at its latest, could not last
beyond nine o'clock; and the ghostly performances--now entirely laid
to the account of the departed stable-boy--never began before
eleven.
Nor did anything interfere with our merriment. The fun of fifty
years ago must be intrinsically exquisite to bear being handed down
to another generation, so I will attempt no repetition, though some
of those Twelfth Day characters still remain, pasted into my diary.
We anticipated Twelfth Day because our guests meant to go to visit
some other friends before the New Year, and we knew Anne would have
no chance there of fulfilling her great ambition of drawing for king
and queen. These home-made characters were really charming. Mrs.
Fordyce had done several of them, and she drew beautifully. A
little manipulation contrived that the exquisite Oberon and Titania
should fall to Martyn and Anne, for whom crowns and robes had been
prepared, worn by her majesty with complacent dignity, but barely
tolerated by him! The others took their chance. Parson Frank was
Tom Thumb, and convulsed us all the evening by acting as if no
bigger than that worthy, keeping us so merry that even Clarence
laughed as I had never seen him laugh before.
Cock Robin and Jenny Wren--the best drawn of all--fell to Griff and
Miss Fordyce. There was a suspicion of a tint of real carnation on
her cheek, as, on his low, highly-delighted bow, she held up her
impromptu fan of folded paper; and drollery about currant wine and
hopping upon twigs went on more or less all the time, while somehow
or other the beauteous glow on her cheeks went on deepening, so that
I never saw her look so pretty as when thus playing at Jenny Wren's
coyness, though neither she nor Griff had passed the bounds of her
gracious precise discretion.
The joyous evening ended at last. With the stroke of nine, Jenny
Wren bore away Queen Titania to put her to bed, for the servants
were having an entertainment of their own downstairs for all the
out-door retainers, etc. Oberon departed, after an interval
sufficient to prove his own dignity and advanced age. Emily went
down to report the success of the evening to the elders in the
drawing-room, but we lingered while Frank Fordyce was telling good
stories of Oxford life, and Griff capping them with more recent
ones.
We too broke up--I don't remember how; but Clarence was to help me
down the stairs, and Mr. Fordyce, frowning with anxiety at the
process, was offering assistance, while we had much rather he had
gone out of the way; when suddenly, in the gallery round the hall
giving access to the bedrooms, there dawned upon us the startled but
scarcely displeased figure of Jenny Wren in her white dress, not
turning aside that blushing face, while Cock Robin was clasping her
hand and pressing it to his lips. The tap of my crutches warned
them. She flew back within her door and shut it; Griff strode
rapidly on, caught hold of her father's hand, exclaiming, 'Sir, sir,
I must speak to you!' and dragged him back into the mullion room
leaving Clarence and me to convey ourselves downstairs as best we
might.
'Our sister, our sweet sister!'
We were immensely excited. All the three of us were so far in love
with Ellen Fordyce that her presence was an enchantment to us, and
at any rate none of us ever saw the woman we could compare to her;
and as we both felt ourselves disqualified in different ways from
any nearer approach, we were content to bask in the reflected rays
of our brother's happiness.
Not that he had gone that length as yet, as we knew before the night
was over, when he came down to us. Even with the dear maiden
herself, he had only made sure that she was not averse, and that
merely by her eyes and lips; and he had extracted nothing from her
father but that they were both very young, a great deal too young,
and had no business to think of such things yet. It must be talked
over, etc. etc.
But just then, Griff told us, Frank Fordyce jumped up and turned
round with the sudden exclamation, 'Ellen!' looking towards the door
behind him with blank astonishment, as he found it had neither been
opened nor shut. He thought his daughter had recollected something
left behind, and coming in search of it, had retreated
precipitately. He had seen her, he said, in the mirror opposite.
Griff told him there was no mirror, and had to carry a candle across
to convince him that he had only been looking at the door into the
inner room, which though of shining dark oak, could hardly have made
a reflection as vivid as he declared that his had been. Indeed, he
ascertained that Ellen had never left her own room at all. 'It must
have been thinking about the dear child,' he said. 'And after all,
it was not quite like her--somehow--she was paler, and had something
over her head.' We had no doubt who it was. Griff had not seen
her, but he was certain that there had been none of the moaning nor
crying, 'In fact, she has come to give her consent,' he said with
earnest in his mocking tone.
'Yes,' said Clarence gravely, and with glistening eyes. 'You are
happy Griff. It is given to you to right the wrong, and quiet that
poor spirit.'
'Happy! The happiest fellow in the world,' said Griff, 'even
without that latter clause--if only Madam and the old man will have
as much sense as she has!'
The next day was a thoroughly uncomfortable one. Griff was not half
so near his goal as he had hoped last night when with kindly Parson
Frank.
The commotion was as if a thunderbolt had descended among the
elders. What they had been thinking of, I cannot tell, not to have
perceived how matters were tending; but their minds were full of the
Reform Bill and the state of the country, and, besides, we were all
looked on still as mere children. Indeed, Griff was scarcely one-
and-twenty, and Ellen wanted a month of seventeen; and the crisis
had really been a sudden impulse, as he said, 'She looked so sweet
and lovely, he could not help it.'
The first effect was a serious lecture upon maidenliness and
propriety to poor Ellen from her mother, who was sure that she must
have transgressed the bounds of discretion, or such ill-bred
presumption would have been spared her, and bitterly regretted the
having trusted her to take care of herself. There were sufficient
grains of truth in this to make the poor girl cry herself out of all
condition for appearing at breakfast or luncheon, and Emily's report
of her despair made us much more angry with Mrs. Fordyce than was
perhaps quite due to that good lady.
My parents were at first inclined to take the same line, and be
vexed with Griff for an act of impertinence towards a guest. He had
a great deal of difficulty in inducing the elders to believe him in
earnest, or treat him as a man capable of knowing his own mind; and
even thus they felt as if his addresses to Miss Fordyce were, under
present circumstances, taking almost an unfair advantage of the
other family--at which our youthful spirits felt indignant.
Yet, after all, such a match was as obvious and suitable as if it
had been a family compact, and the only objection was the youth of
the parties. Mrs. Fordyce would fain have believed her daughter's
heart to be not yet awake, and was grieved to find childhood over,
and the hero of romance become the lover; and she was anxious that
full time should be given to perceive whether her daughter's
feelings were only the result of the dazzling aureole which
gratitude and excited fancy had cast around the fine, handsome,
winning youth. Her husband, however, who had himself married very
young, and was greatly taken with Griff, besides being always
tender-hearted, did not enter into her scruples; but, as we had
already found out, the grand-looking and clever man of thirty-eight
was, chiefly from his impulsiveness and good-nature, treated as the
boy of the family. His old father, too, was greatly pleased with
Griff's spirit, affection, and purpose, as well as with my father's
conduct in the matter; and so, after a succession of private
interviews, very tantalising to us poor outsiders, it was conceded
that though an engagement for the present was preposterous, it might
possibly be permitted when Ellen was eighteen if Griff had completed
his university life with full credit. He was fervently grateful to
have such an object set before him, and my father was warmly
thankful for the stimulus.
That last evening was very odd and constrained. We could not help
looking on the lovers as new specimens over which some strange
transformation had passed, though for the present it had stiffened
them in public into the strictest good behaviour. They would have
been awkward if it had been possible to either of them, and, save
for a certain look in their eyes, comported themselves as perfect
strangers.
The three elder gentlemen held discussions in the dining-room, but
we were not trusted in our playground adjoining. Mrs. Fordyce
nailed Griff down to an interminable game at chess, and my mother
kept the two girls playing duets, while Clarence turned over the
leaves; and I read over The Lady of the Lake, a study which I always
felt, and still feel, as an act of homage to Ellen Fordyce, though
there was not much in common between her and the maid of Douglas.
Indeed, it was a joke of her father's to tease her by criticising
the famous passage about the tears that old Douglas shed over his
duteous daughter's head--'What in the world should the man go
whining and crying for? He had much better have laughed with her.'
Little did the elders know what was going on in the next room, where
there was a grand courtship among the dolls; the hero being a small
jointed Dutch one in Swiss costume, about an eighth part of the size
of the resuscitated Celestina Mary, but the only available male
character in doll-land! Anne was supposed to be completely ignorant
of what passed above her head; and her mother would have been aghast
had she heard the remarkable discoveries and speculations that she
and Martyn communicated to one another.
CHAPTER XXI--THE OUTSIDE OF THE COURTSHIP
'Or framing, as a fair excuse,
The book, the pencil, or the muse;
Something to give, to sing, to say,
Some modern tale, some ancient lay.'
SCOTT.
It seems to me on looking back that I have hardly done justice to
Mrs. Fordyce, and certainly we--as Griffith's eager partisans--often
regarded her in the light of an enemy and opponent; but after this
lapse of time, I can see that she was no more than a prudent mother,
unwilling to see her fair young daughter suddenly launched into
womanhood, and involved in an attachment to a young and untried man.
The part of a drag is an invidious one; and this must have been her
part through most of her life. The Fordyces, father and son, were
of good family, gentlemen to their very backbones, and thoroughly
good, religious men; but she came of a more aristocratic strain, had
been in London society, and brought with her a high-bred air which,
implanted on the Fordyce good looks, made her daughter especially
fascinating. But that air did not recommend Mrs. Fordyce to all her
neighbours, any more than did those stronger, stricter, more
thorough-going notions of religious obligation which had led her
husband to make the very real and painful sacrifice of his sporting
tastes, and attend to the parish in a manner only too rare in those
days. She was a very well-informed and highly accomplished woman,
and had made her daughter the same, keeping her children up in a
somewhat exclusive style, away from all gossip or undesirable
intimacies, as recommended by Miss Edgeworth and other more
religious authorities, and which gave great offence in houses where
there were girls of the same age. No one, however, could look at
Ellen, and doubt of the success of the system, or of the young
girl's entire content and perfect affection for her mother, though
her father was her beloved playfellow--yet always with respect. She
never took liberties with him, nor called him Pap or any other
ridiculous name inconsistent with the fifth Commandment, though she
certainly was more entirely at ease with him than ever we had been
with our elderly father. When once Mrs. Fordyce found on what terms
we were to be, she accepted them frankly and fully. Already Emily
had been the first girl, not a relation, whose friendship she had
fostered with Ellen; and she had also become thoroughly affectionate
and at home with my mother, who suited her perfectly on the
conscientious, and likewise on the prudent and sensible, side of her
nature.
To me she was always kindness itself, so kind that I never felt, as
I did on so many occasions, that she was very pitiful and attentive
to the deformed youth; but that she really enjoyed my companionship,
and I could help her in her pursuits. I have a whole packet of
charming notes of hers about books, botany, drawings, little bits of
antiquarianism, written with an arch grace and finish of expression
peculiarly her own, and in a very pointed hand, yet too definite to
be illegible. I owe her more than I can say for the windows of
wholesome hope and ambition she opened to me, giving a fresh motive
and zest even to such a life as mine. I can hardly tell which was
the most delightful companion, she or her husband. In spite of ill
health, she knew every plant, and every bit of fair scenery in the
neighbourhood, and had fresh, amusing criticisms to utter on each
new book; while he, not neglecting the books, was equally well
acquainted with all beasts and birds, and shed his kindly light over
everything he approached. He was never melancholy about anything
but politics, and even there it was an immense consolation to him to
have the owner of Chantry House staunch on the same side, instead of
in chronic opposition.
The family party moved to a tall house at Bath, but there still was
close intercourse, for the younger clergyman rode over every week
for the Sunday duty, and almost always dined and slept at Chantry
House. He acted as bearer of long letters, which, in spite of a
reticulation of crossings, were too expensive by post for young
ladies' pocket-money, often exceeding the regular quarto sheet. It
was a favourite joke to ask Emily what Ellen reported about Bath
fashions, and to see her look of scorn. For they were a curious
mixture, those girlish letters, of village interests, discussion of
books, and thoughts beyond their age; Tommy Toogood and Prometheus;
or Du Guesclin in the closest juxtaposition with reports of progress
in Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers. It was the desire of
Ellen to prove herself not unsettled but improved by love, and to
become worthy of her ideal Griffith, never guessing that he would
have been equally content with her if she had been as frivolous as
the idlest girl who lingered amid the waning glories of Bath.
We all made them a visit there when Martyn was taken to a
preparatory school in the place. Mrs. Fordyce took me out for
drives on the beautiful hills; and Emily and I had a very delightful
time, undisturbed by the engrossing claims of love-making. Very
good, too, were our friends, after our departure, in letting Martyn
spend Sundays and holidays with them, play with Anne as before, say
his Catechism with her to Mrs. Fordyce, and share her little Sunday
lessons, which had, he has since told, a force and attractiveness he
had never known before, and really did much, young as he was, in
preparing the way towards the fulfilment of my father's design for
him.
When the Rectory was ready, and the family returned, it was high
summer, and there were constant meetings between the households. No
doubt there were the usual amount of trivial disappointments and
annoyances, but the whole season seems to me to have been bathed in
sunlight. The Reform Bill agitations and the London mobs of which
Clarence wrote to us were like waves surging beyond an isle of
peace. Clarence had some unpleasant walks from the office. Once or
twice the shutters had to be put up at Frith and Castleford's to
prevent the windows from being broken; and once Clarence actually
saw our nation's hero, 'the Duke,' riding quietly and slowly through
a yelling, furious mob, who seemed withheld from falling on him by
the perfect impassiveness of the eagle face and spare figure.
Moreover a pretty little boy, on his pony, suddenly pushed forward
and rode by the Duke's side, as if proud and resolute to share his
peril.
'If Griffith had been there!' said Ellen and Emily, though they did
not exactly know what they expected him to have done.
The chief storms that drifted across our sky were caused by Mrs.
Fordyce's resolution that Griffith should enjoy none of the
privileges of an accepted suitor before the engagement was an actual
fact. Ellen was obedient and conscientious; and would neither
transgress nor endure to have her mother railed at by Griff's hasty
tongue, and this affronted him, and led to little breezes.
When people overstay their usual time, tempers are apt to get rather
difficult. Griffith had kept all his terms at Oxford, and was not
to return thither after the long vacation, but was to read with a
tutor before taking his degree. Moreover bills began to come from
Oxford, not very serious, but vexing my father and raising
annoyances and frets, for Griff resented their being complained of,
and thought himself ill-used, going off to see his own friends
whenever he was put out.
One morning at breakfast, late in October, he announced that Lady
Peacock was in lodgings at Clifton, and asked my mother to call on
her. But mamma said it was too far for the horse--she visited no
one at that distance, and had never thought much of Selina Clarkson
before or after her marriage.
'But now that she is a widow, it would be such a kindness,' pleaded
Griff.
'Depend upon it, a gay young widow needs no kindness from me, and
had better not have it from you,' said my mother, getting up from
behind her urn and walking off, followed by my father.
Griff drummed on the table. 'I wonder what good ladies of a certain
age do with their charity,' he said.
And while we were still crying out at him, Ellen Fordyce and her
father appeared, like mirth bidding good-morrow, at the window. All
was well for the time, but Griff wanted Ellen to set out alone with
him, and take their leisurely way through the wood-path, and she
insisted on waiting for her father, who had got into an endless
discussion with mine on the Reform Bill, thrown out in the last
Session. Griff tried to wile her on with him, but, though she
consented to wander about the lawn before the windows with him, she
always resolutely turned at the great beech tree. Emily and I
watched them from the window, at first amused, then vexed, as we
could see, by his gestures, that he was getting out of temper, and
her straw bonnet drooped at one moment, and was raised the next in
eager remonstrance or defence. At last he flung angrily away from
her, and went off to the stables, leaving her leaning against the
gate in tears. Emily, in an access of indignant sympathy, rushed
out to her, and they vanished together into the summer-house, until
her father called her, and they went home together.
Emily told me that Ellen had struggled hard to keep herself from
crying enough to show traces of tears which her father could
observe, and that she had excused Griff with all her might on the
plea of her own 'tiresomeness.'
We were all the more angry with him for his selfishness and want of
consideration, for Ellen, in her torrent of grief, had even
disclosed that he had said she did not care for him--no one really
in love ever scrupled about a mother's nonsense, etc., etc.
We were resolved, like two sages, to give him a piece of our minds,
and convince him that such dutifulness was the pledge of future
happiness, and that it was absolute cruelty to the rare creature he
had won, to try to draw her in a direction contrary to her
conscience.
However, we saw him no more that day; and only learnt that he had
left a message at the stables that dinner was not to be kept waiting
for him. Such a message from Clarence would have caused a great
commotion; but it was quite natural and a matter of course from him
in the eyes of the elders, who knew nothing of his parting with
Ellen. However, there was annoyance enough, when bedtime came,
family prayers were over, and still there was no sign of him. My
father sat up till one o'clock, to let him in, then gave it up, and
I heard his step heavily mounting the stairs.
CHAPTER XXII--BRISTOL DIAMONDS
'Stafford. And you that are the King's friends, follow me.
Cade. And you that love the Commons, follow me;
We will not leave one lord, one gentleman,
Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon.'
Act I. Henry VI.
The next day was Sunday, and no Griff appeared in the morning.
Vexation, perhaps, prevented us from attending as much as we
otherwise might have done to Mr. Henderson when he told us that
there were rumours of a serious disturbance at Bristol; until Emily
recollected that Griff had been talking for some days past of riding
over to see his friend in the cavalry regiment there stationed, and
we all agreed that it was most likely that he was there; and our
wrath began to soften in the belief that he might have been detained
to give his aid in the cause of order, though his single arm could
not be expected to effect as much as at Hillside.
Long after dark we heard a horse's feet, and in another minute
Griff, singed, splashed, and battered, had hurried into the room--
'It has begun!' he said. 'The revolution! I have brought her--Lady
Peacock. She was at Clifton, dreadfully alarmed. She is almost at
the door now, in her carriage. I'll just take the pony, and ride
over to tell Eastwood in case he will call out the Yeomanry.'
The wheels were to be heard, and everybody hastened out to receive
Lady Peacock, who was there with her maid, full of gratitude. I
heard her broken sentences as she came across the hall, about
dreadful scenes--frightful mob--she knew not what would have become
of her but for Griffith--the place was in flames when they left it--
the military would not act--Griffith had assured her that Mr. and
Mrs. Winslow would be so kind--as long as any place was a refuge
We really did believe we were at the outbreak of a revolution or
civil war, and, all little frets forgotten, listened appalled to the
tidings; how the appearance of Sir Charles Wetherall, the Recorder
of Bristol, a strong opponent to the Reform Bill, seemed to have
inspired the mob with fury. Griff and his friend the dragoon, while
walking in Broad Street, were astonished by a violent rush of
riotous men and boys, hooting and throwing stones as the Recorder's
carriage tried to make its way to the Guildhall. In the midst a
piteous voice exclaimed -
'Oh, Griffith! Mr. Griffith Winslow! Is it you?' and Lady Peacock
was seen retreating upon the stone steps of a house either empty, or
where the inhabitants were too much alarmed to open the doors. She
was terribly frightened, and the two gentlemen stood in front of her
till the tumultuary procession had passed by. She was staying in
lodgings at Clifton, and had driven in to Bristol to shop, when she
thus found herself entangled in the mob. They then escorted her to
the place where she was to meet her carriage, and found it for her
with some difficulty. Then, while the officer returned to his
quarters, Griff accompanied her far enough on the way to Clifton to
see that everything was quiet before her, and then returned to seek
out his friend. The court at the Guildhall had had to be adjourned,
but the rioters were hunting Sir Charles to the Mansion-House.
Griff was met by one of the Town Council, a tradesman with whom we
dealt, who, having perhaps heard of his prowess at Hillside,
entreated him to remain, offering him a bed, and saying that all
friends of order were needed in such a crisis as this. Griff wrote
a note to let us know what had become of him, but everything was
disorganised, and we did not get it till two days afterwards.
In the evening the mob became more violent, and in the midst of
dinner a summons came for Griff's host to attend the Mayor in
endeavouring to disperse it. Getting into the Mansion-House by
private back ways, they were able to join the Mayor when he came
out, amid a shower of brickbats, sticks, and stones, and read the
Riot Act three times over, after warning them of the consequences of
persisting in their defiance.
'But they were far past caring for that,' said Griff. 'An iron rail
from the square was thrown in the midst of it, and if I had not
caught it there would have been an end of his Worship.'
The constables, with such help as Griff and a few others could give
them, defended the front of the Mansion-House, while the Recorder,
for whom they savagely roared, made his escape by the roof to
another house. A barricade was made with beds, tables, and chairs,
behind which the defenders sheltered themselves, while volleys of
stones smashed in the windows, and straw was thrown after them. But
at last the tramp of horses' feet was heard, and the Dragoons came
up.
'We thought all over then,' said Griff; 'but Colonel Brereton would
not have a blow struck, far less a shot fired! He would have it
that it was a good-humoured mob! I heard him! When one of his own
men was brought up badly hurt with a brickbat, I heard Ludlow, the
Town-Clerk, ask him what he thought of their good humour, and he had
nothing to say but that it was an accident! And the rogues knew it!
He took care they should; he walked about among them and shook hands
with them!'
Griff waited at the Mansion-House all night, and helped to board up
the smashed windows; but at daylight Colonel Brereton came and
insisted on withdrawing the piquet on guard--not, however, sending a
relief for them, on the plea that they only collected a crowd. The
instant they were withdrawn, down came the mob in fresh force, so
desperate that all the defences were torn down, and they swarmed in
so that there was nothing for it but to escape over the roofs.
Griffith was sent to rouse the inhabitants of College Green and St.
Augustine's Back to come in the King's name to assist the
Magistrates, and he had many good stories of the various responses
he met with. But the rioters, inflamed by the wine they had found
in sacking the Mansion-House, and encouraged by the passiveness of
the troops, had become entirely masters of the situation. And
Colonel Brereton seems to have imagined that the presence of the
soldiers acted as an irritation; for in this crisis he actually sent
them out of the city to Keynsham, then came and informed the mob,
who cheered him, as well they might.
In the night the Recorder had left the city, and notices were posted
to that effect; also that the Riot Act had been read, and any
further disturbance would be capital felony. This escape of their
victim only had the effect of directing the rage of the populace
against Bishop Grey, who had likewise opposed the Reform Bill.
Messages had been sent to advise the Bishop, who was to preach that
day at the Cathedral, to stay away and sanction the omission of the
service; but his answer to one of his clergy was--'These are times
in which it is necessary not to shrink from danger! Our duty is to
be at our post.' And he also said, 'Where can I die better than in
my own Cathedral?'
Since the bells were ringing, and it was understood that the Bishop
was actually going to dare the peril, Griff and others of the
defenders decided that it was better to attend the service and fill
up the nave so as to hinder outrage. He said it was a most strange
and wonderful service. Chants and Psalms and Lessons and prayers
going on their course as usual, but every now and then in the pauses
of the organ, a howl or yell of the voice of the multitude would
break on the ear through the thick walls. Griff listened and hoped
for a volley of musketry. He was not tender-hearted! But none
came, and by the time the service was over, the mob had been greatly
reinforced and had broken into the prisons, set them on fire, and
released the prisoners. They were mustering on College Green for an
attack on the palace. Griff aided in guarding the entrance to the
cloisters till the Bishop and his family had had time to drive away
to Almondsbury, four miles off, and then the rush became so strong
that they had to give way. There was another great struggle at the
door of the palace, but it was forced open with a crowbar, while
shouts rang out 'No King and no Bishops!' A fire was made in the
dining-room with chairs and tables, and live coals were put into the
beds, while the plunder went on.
Griff meantime had made his way to the party headed by the
magistrates, and accompanied by the dragoons, and the mob began to
flee; but Colonel Brereton had given strict orders that the soldiers
should not fire, and the plunderers rallied, made a fire in the
Chapter House, and burnt the whole of the library, shouting with the
maddest triumph.
They next attacked the Cathedral, intending to burn that likewise,
but two brave gentlemen, Mr. Ralph and Mr. Linne, succeeded in
saving this last outrage, at the head of the better affected.
Griff had fought hard. He was all over bruises which he really had
never felt at the time, scarcely even now, though one side of his
face was turning purple, and his clothes were singed. In a sort of
council held at the repulse of the attack on the Cathedral, it had
been decided that the best thing he could do would be to give notice
to Sir George Eastwood, in order that the Yeomanry might be called
out, since the troops were so strangely prevented from acting. As
he rode through Clifton, he had halted at Lady Peacock's, and found
her in extreme alarm. Indeed, no one could guess what the temper of
the mob might be the next day, or whether they might not fall upon
private houses. The Mansion-House, the prisons, the palace were all
burning and were an astounding sight, which terrified her
exceedingly, and she was sending out right and left to endeavour to
get horses to take her away. In common humanity, and for old
acquaintance sake, it was impossible not to help her, and Griff had
delayed, to offer any amount of reward in her name for posthorses,
which he had at last secured. Her own man-servant, whom she had
sent in quest of some, had never returned, and she had to set off
without him, Griff acting as outrider; but after the first there was
no more difficulty about horses, and she had been able to change
them at the next stage.
We all thought the days of civil war were really begun, as the heads
of this account were hastily gathered; but there was not much said,
only Mr. Frank Fordyce laid his hand on Griff's shoulder and said,
'Well done, my boy; but you have had enough for to-day. If you'll
lend me a horse, Winslow, I'll ride over to Eastwood. That's work
for the clergy in these times, eh? Griffith should rest. He may be
wanted to-morrow. Only is there any one to take a note home for me,
to say where I'm gone;' and then he added with that sweet smile of
his, 'Some one will be more the true knight than ever, eh, you
Griffith you--'
Griffith coloured a little, and Lady Peacock's eyes looked
interrogative. When the horse was announced, Griff followed Mr.
Fordyce into the hall, and came back announcing that, unless
summoned elsewhere, he should go to breakfast at Hillside, and so
hear what was decided on. He longed to be back at the scene of
action, but was so tired out that he could not dispense with another
night's rest; though he took all precautions for being called up, in
case of need.
However, nothing came, and he rode to the Rectory in Yeomanry
equipment. Nor could any one doubt that in the ecstasy of meeting
such a hero, all the little misunderstanding and grief of the night
before was forgotten? Ellen looked as if she trod on air, when she
came down with her father to report that Griffith had gone,
according to the orders sent, to join the rest of the Yeomanry, who
were to advance upon Bristol. They had seen, and tried to turn
back, some of the villagers who were starting with bludgeons to
share in the spoil, and who looked sullen, as if they were
determined not to miss their share.
I do not think we were very much alarmed for Griff's safety or for
our own, not even the ladies. My mother had the lion-heart of her
naval ancestors, and Ellen was in a state of exaltation. Would that
I could put her before other eyes, as she stood with hands clasped
and glowing cheek.
'Oh!--think!--think of having one among us who is as real and true
knight as ever watched his armour -
'"For king, for church, for lady fight!"
It has all come gloriously true!'
'Should not you like to bind on his spurs?' I asked somewhat
mischievously; but she was serious as she said, 'I am sure he has
won them.' All the rest of the Fordyces came down afterwards, too
anxious to stay at home. Our elders felt the matter more gravely,
thinking of what civil war might mean to us all, and what an awful
thing it was for Englishmen to be enrolled against each other.
Nottingham Castle had just been burnt, and things looked only too
like revolution, especially considering the inaction of the
dragoons. After Griff had left Bristol, there had been some
terrible scenes at the Custom House, where the ringleaders--unhappy
men!--were caught in a trap of their own and perished miserably.
However, by the morning, the order sent from Lord Hill, the arrival
of Major Beckwith from Gloucester, and the proceedings of the good-
humoured mob had put an end to poor Brereton's hesitations; a
determined front had been shown; the mob had been fairly broken up;
troops from all quarters poured into the city, and by dinner-time
Griff came back with the news that all was quiet and there was
nothing more to fear. Ellen and Emily both flew out to meet him at
the first sound of the horse's feet, and they all came into the
drawing-room together--each young lady having hold of one of his
hands--and Ellen's face in such a glow, that I rather suspect that
he had snatched a reward which certainly would not have been granted
save in such a moment of uplifted feeling, and when she was thankful
to her hero for forgetting how angry he had been with her two days
before.
Minor matters were forgotten in the details of his tidings, as he
stood before the fire, shining in his silver lace, and relating the
tragedy and the comedy of the scene.
It was curious, as the evening passed on, to see how Ellen and Lady
Peacock regarded each other, now that the tension of suspense was
over. To Ellen, the guest was primarily a distressed and widowed
dame, delivered by Griff, to whom she, as his lady love, was bound
to be gracious and kind; nor had they seen much of one another, the
elder ladies sitting in the drawing-room, and we in our own regions;
but we were all together at dinner and afterwards, and Lady Peacock,
who had been in a very limp, nervous, and terrified state all day,
began to be the Selina Clarkson we remembered, and 'more too.' She
was still in mourning, but she came down to dinner in gray satin
sheen, and with her hair in a most astonishing erection of bows and
bands, on the very crown of her head, raising her height at least
four inches. Emily assures me that it was the mode in use, and that
she and Ellen wore their hair in the same style, appealing to
portraits to prove it. I can only say that they never astonished my
weak mind in the like manner; and that their heads, however dressed,
only appeared to me a portion of the general woman, and part of the
universal fitness of things. Ellen was likewise amazed, most likely
not at the hair, but at the transformation of the disconsolate,
frightened widow, into the handsome, fashionable, stylish lady,
talking over London acquaintance and London news with my father and
Griff whenever they left the endless subject of the Bristol
adventures.
The widow had gained a good deal in beauty since her early girlhood,
having regular features, eyes of an uncommon deep blue, very black
brows, eye-lashes, and hair, and a form of the kind that is better
after early youth is over. 'A fine figure of a woman,' Parson Frank
pronounced her, and his wife, with the fine edge of her lips
replied, 'exactly what she is!'
She looked upon us younger ones as mere children still--indeed she
never looked at me at all if she could help it--but she mortally
offended Emily by penning her up in a corner, and asking if Griff
were engaged to that sentimental little girl.
Emily coloured like a turkey cock between wrath and embarrassment,
and hotly protested against the word sentimental.
'Ah yes, I see!' she said in a patronising tone, 'she is your bosom
friend, eh? That's the way those things always begin. You need not
answer: I see it all. And no doubt it is a capital thing for him;
properties joining and all. And she will get a little air and style
when he takes her to London.' It was a tremendous offence even to
hint that Ellen's style was capable of improvement; perhaps an
unprejudiced eye would have said that the difference was between
high-bred simplicity and the air of fashion and society.
In our eyes Lady Peacock was the companion of the elders, and as
such was appreciated by the gentlemen; but neither of the two
mothers was equally delighted with her, nor was mine at all sorry
when, on Tuesday, the boxes were packed, posthorses sent for, and my
Lady departed, with great expressions of thankfulness to us all.
'A tulip to a jessamine,' muttered Griff as she drove off, and he
looked up at his Ellen's sweet refined face.
The unfortunate Colonel Brereton put an end to himself when the
court-martial was half over. How Clarence was shocked and how
ardent was his pity! But Griffith received the thanks of the
Corporation of Bristol for his gallant conduct, when the special
assize was held in January. Mrs. Fordyce was almost as proud of him
as we were, and there was much less attempt at restraining the terms
on which he stood with Ellen--though still the formal engagement was
not permitted.
CHAPTER XXIII--QUICKSANDS
'Whither shall I go?
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes?'
TENNYSON.
It was in the May of the ensuing year, 1832, that Clarence was sent
down to Bristol for a few weeks to take the place of one of the
clerks in the office where the cargoes of the incoming vessels of
the firm were received and overhauled.
This was a good-natured arrangement of Mr. Castleford's in order to
give him change of work and a sight of home, where, by the help of
the coach, he could spend his Sundays. That first spring day on his
way down was a great delight and even surprise to him, who had never
seen our profusion of primroses, cowslips, and bluebells, nor our
splendid blossom of trees--apple, lilac, laburnum--all vieing in
beauty with one another. Emily conducted him about in great
delight, taking him over to Hillside to see Mrs. Fordyce's American
garden, blazing with azaleas, and glowing with rhododendrons. He
came back with a great bouquet given to him by Ellen, who had been
unusually friendly with him, and he was more animated and full of
life than for years before.
Next time he came he looked less happy. There was plenty of room in
our house, but he used, by preference, the little chamber within
mine, and there at night he asked me to lend him a few pounds, since
Griffith had written one of his off-hand letters asking him to
discharge a little bill or two at Bristol, giving the addresses, but
not sending the accounts. This was no wonder, since any enclosure
doubled the already heavy postage. One of these bills was for some
sporting equipments from the gunsmith's; another, much heavier, from
a tavern for breakfasts, or rather luncheons, to parties of
gentlemen, mostly bearing date in the summer and autumn of 1830,
before the friendship with the Fordyces had begun. On Clarence's
defraying the first and applying for the second, two more had come
in, one from a jeweller for a pair of drop-earrings, the other from
a nurseryman for a bouquet of exotics. Doubting of these two last,
Clarence had written to Griff, but had not yet received an answer.
The whole amount was so much beyond what he had been led to expect
that he had not brought enough money to meet it, and wanted an
advance from me, promising repayment, to which latter point I could
not assent, as both of us knew, but did not say, we should never see
the sum again, and to me it only meant stinting in new books and
curiosities. We were anxious to get the matter settled at once, as
Griffith spoke of being dunned; and it might be serious, if the
tradesmen applied to my father when he was still groaning over
revelations of college expenses.
On the ensuing Saturday, Clarence showed me Griff's answer--'I had
forgotten these items. The earrings were a wedding present to the
pretty little barmaid, who had been very civil. The bouquet was for
Lady Peacock; I felt bound to do something to atone for mamma's
severe virtue. It is all right, you best of brothers.'
It was consolatory that all the dates were prior to the Hillside
fire, except that of the bouquet. As to the earrings, we all knew
that Griff could not see a pretty girl without talking nonsense to
her. Anyway, if they were a wedding present, there was an end of
it; and we were only glad to prevent any hint of them from reaching
the ears of the authorities.
Clarence had another trouble to confide to me. He had strong reason
to believe that Tooke, the managing clerk at Bristol, was carrying
on a course of peculation, and feathering his nest at the expense of
the firm. What a grand discovery, thought I, for such a youth to
have made. The firm would be infinitely obliged to him, and his
fortune would be secured. He shook his head, and said that was all
my ignorance; the man, Tooke, was greatly trusted, especially by Mr.
Frith the senior partner, and was so clever and experienced that it
would be almost impossible to establish anything against him.
Indeed he had browbeaten Clarence, and convinced him at the moment
that his suspicions and perplexities were only due to the ignorance
of a foolish, scrupulous youth, who did not understand the customs
and perquisites of an agency. It was only when Clarence was alone,
and reflected on the matter by the light of experience gained on a
similar expedition to Liverpool, that he had perceived that Mr.
Tooke had been throwing dust in his eyes.
'I shall only get into a scrape myself,' said Clarence despondently.
'I have felt it coming ever since I have been at Bristol;' and he
pushed his hair back with a weary hopeless gesture.
'But you don't mean to let it alone?' I cried indignantly.
He hesitated in a manner that painfully recalled his failing, and
said at last, 'I don't know; I suppose I ought not.'
'Suppose?' I cried.
'It is not so easy as you think,' he answered, 'especially for one
who has forfeited the right to be believed. I must wait till I have
an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Castleford, and then I can hardly
do more than privately give him a hint to be watchful. You don't
know how things are in such houses as ours. One may only ruin
oneself without doing any good.'
'You cannot write to him?'
'Certainly not. He has taken his family to Mrs. Castleford's home
in the north of Ireland for a month or six weeks. I don't know the
address, and I cannot run the risk of the letter being opened at the
office.'
'Can't you speak to my father?'
'Impossible! it would be a betrayal. He would do things for which I
should never be forgiven. And, after all, remember, it is no
business of mine. I know of agents at the docks who do such things
as a matter of course. It is only that I happen to know that Harris
at Liverpool does not. Very possibly old Frith knows all about it.
I should only get scored down as a meddlesome prig, worse hypocrite
than they think me already.'
He said a good deal more to this effect, and I remember exclaiming,
'Oh, Clarence, the old story!' and then being frightened at the
whiteness that came over his face.
Little did I know the suffering to which those words of mine
condemned him. For not only had he to make up his mind to
resistance, which to his nature was infinitely worse than it was to
Griffith to face a raging mob, but he knew very well that it would
almost inevitably produce his own ruin, and renew the disgrace out
of which he was beginning to emerge. I did not--even while I prayed
that he might do the right--guess at his own agony of supplication,
carried on incessantly, day and night, sleeping and waking, that the
Holy Spirit of might should brace his will and govern his tongue,
and make him say the right thing at the right time, be the
consequences what they might. No one, not constituted as he was,
can guess at the anguish he endured. I knew no more. Clarence did
not come home the next Saturday, to my mother's great vexation; but
on Tuesday a small parcel was given to me, brought from our point of
contact with the Bristol coach. It contained some pencils I had
asked him to get, and a note marked PRIVATE. Here it is -
'DEAR EDWARD--I am summoned to town. Tooke has no doubt forestalled
me. We have had some curious interviews, in which he first, as I
told you, persuaded me out of my senses that it was all right, and
then, finding me still dissatisfied, tried in a delicate fashion to
apprise me that I had a claim to a share of the plunder. When I
refused to appropriate anything without sanction from headquarters,
he threatened me with the consequences of presumptuous interference.
It came to bullying at last. I hardly know what I answered, but I
don't think I gave in. Now, a sharp letter from old Frith recalls
me. Say nothing at home; and whatever you do, do not betray Griff.
He has more to lose than I. Help me in the true way, as you know
how.--Ever yours, W. C. W.
I need not dwell on the misery of those days. It was well that my
father had ruled that our letters should not be family property.
Here were all the others discussing a proposed tour in the north of
Devon, to be taken conjointly with the Fordyces, as soon as Griff
should come home. My mother said it would do me good; she saw I was
flagging, but she little guessed at the continual torment of
anxiety, and my wonder at the warning about Griff.
At the end of the week came another letter.
'You need not speak yet. Papa and mamma will know soon enough. I
brought down 150 pounds in specie, to be paid over to Tooke. He
avers that only 130 pounds was received. What is my word worth
against his? I am told that if I am not prosecuted it will only be
out of respect to my father. I am not dismissed yet, but shall get
notice as soon as letters come from Ireland. I have written, but it
is not in the nature of things that Mr. Castleford should not accept
such proofs as have been sent him. I have no hope, and shall be
glad when it is over. The part of black sheep is not a pleasant
one. Say not a word, and do not let my father come up. He could do
no good, and to see him believing it all would be the last drop in
the bucket.
N.B.--In this pass, nothing would be saved by bringing Griff into
it, so be silent on your life. Innocence does not seem to be much
comfort at present. Maybe it will come in time. I know you will
not drop me, dear Ted, wherever I may be.'
Need I tell the distress of those days of suspense and silence, when
my only solace was in being left alone, and in writing letters to
Clarence which were mostly torn up again.
My horror was lest he should be driven to go off to the sea, which
he loved so well, knowing, as nobody else did, the longing that
sometimes seized him for it, a hereditary craving that curiously
conflicted with the rest of his disposition; and, indeed, his lack
was more of moral than of physical courage. It haunted me
constantly that his entreaty that my father should not come to
London was a bad sign, and that he would never face such another
return home. And was I justified in keeping all this to myself,
when my father's presence might save him from the flight that would
indeed be the surrender of his character, and to the life of a
common sailor? Never have I known such leaden days as these, yet
the misery was not a tithe of what Clarence was undergoing.
I was right in my forebodings. Prosecution and a second return home
in shame and disgrace were alike hideous to Clarence, and the
present was almost equally terrible, for nobody at the office had
any doubt of his guilt, and the young men who had sneered at his
strictness and religious habits regarded him as an unmasked
hypocrite, only waiting on sufferance till his greatly deceived
patron should write to decide on the steps to be taken with him,
while he knew he was thought to be brazening it out in hopes of
again deceiving Mr. Castleford.
The sea began to exert its power over him, and he thought with
longing of its freedom, as if the sails of the vessels were the
wings of a dove to flee away and be at rest. He had no illusions as
to the roughness of the life and companionship; but in his present
mood, the frank rudeness and profanity of the sailors seemed
preferable to his cramped life, and the scowls of his fellows; and
he knew himself to have seamanship enough to rise quickly, even if
he could not secure a mate's berth at first.
Mr. Castleford could not be heard from till the end of the week.
Friday, Saturday came and not a word. That was the climax! When
the consignment of cash, hitherto carried by Clarence to the Bank of
England, was committed to another clerk, the very office boy
sniggered, and the manager demonstratively waited to see him depart.
Unable to bear it any longer, he walked towards Wapping, bought a
Southwester, examined the lists of shipping, and entered into
conversation with one or two sailors about the vessels making up
their crews; intending to go down after dark, to meet the skipper of
a craft bound for Lisbon, who, he heard, was so much in want of a
mate as perhaps to overlook the lack of testimonials, and at any
rate take him on board on Sunday.
Going home to pick up a few necessaries, a book lent to him by Miss
Newton came in his way, and he felt drawn to carry it home, and see
her face for the last time.
All unconscious of his trouble and of his intentions, the good lady
told him of her strong desire to hear a celebrated preacher at a
neighbouring church on the Sunday evening, but said that in her
partial blindness and weakness, she was afraid to venture, unless he
would have the extreme goodness, as she said, to take care of her.
He saw that she wished it so much that he had not the heart to
refuse, and he recollected likewise that very early on Monday
morning would answer his purpose equally well.
It was the 7th of June. The Psalm was the 37th--the supreme lesson
of patience. 'Hold thee still in the Lord; and abide patiently on
Him; and He shall bring it to pass. He shall make thy righteousness
as clear as the light, and thy just dealing as the noonday.'
The awful sense of desolation seemed to pass away under those words,
with that gentle woman beside him. And the sermon was on 'Oh tarry
thou the Lord's leisure; be strong, and He shall comfort thine
heart; and put thou thy trust in the Lord.'
Clarence remembered nothing but the text. But it was borne in upon
him that his purpose of flight was 'the old story,'--cowardice and
virtual distrust of the Lord, as well as absolute cruelty to us who
loved him.
When he had deposited Miss Newton at her own door, he whispered
thanks, and an entreaty for her prayers.
And then he went home, and fought the battle of his life, with his
own horrible dread of Mr. Castleford's disappointment; of possible
prosecution; of the shame at home; the misery of a life a second
time blighted. He fought it out on his knees, many a time
persuading himself that flight would not be a sin, then returning to
the sense that it was a temptation of his worse self to be overcome.
And by morning he knew that it would be a surrender of himself to
his lower nature, and the evil spirit behind it; while, by facing
the worst that could befall him, he would be falling into the hand
of the Lord.
CHAPTER XXIV--AFTER THE TEMPEST
'Nor deem the irrevocable past
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If rising on its wrecks at last
To something nobler we attain.'
LONGFELLOW.
All the rest of the family were out, and I was relieved by being
alone with my distress, not forced to hide it, when the door opened
and 'Mr. Castleford' was announced. After one moment's look at me,
one touch of my hand, he must have seen that I was faint with
anxiety, and said, 'It is all right, Edward; I see you know all. I
am come from Bristol to tell your father that he may be proud of his
son Clarence.'
I don't know what I did. Perhaps I sobbed and cried, but the first
words I could get out were, 'Does he know? Oh! it may be too late.
He may be gone off to sea!' I cried, breaking out with my chief
fear. Mr. Castleford looked astounded, then said, 'I trust not. I
sent off a special messenger last night, as soon as I saw my way--'
Then I breathed a little more freely, and could understand what he
was telling me, namely, that Tooke had accused Clarence of
abstracting 20 pounds from the sum in his charge. The fellow
accounted for it by explaining that young Winslow had been paying
extravagant bills at a tavern, where the barmaid showed his
presents, and boasted of her conquest. All this had been written to
Mr. Castleford by his partner, and he was told that it was out of
deference to himself that his protege was not in custody, nor had
received notice of dismissal; but, no doubt, he would give his
sanction to immediate measures, and communicate with the family.
The effect had been to make the good man hurry at once from the
Giant's Causeway to Bristol, where he had arrived on Sunday, to
investigate the books and examine the underlings. In the midst
Tooke attempted to abscond, but he was brought back as he was
embarking in an American vessel; and he then confessed the whole,--
how speculation had led to dishonesty, and following evil customs
not uncommon in other firms. Then, when the fugitive found that
young Winslow was too acute to be blinded, and that it had been a
still greater mistake to try to overcome his integrity, self-defence
required his ruin, or at any rate his expulsion, before he could
gain Mr. Castleford's ear.
Tooke really believed that the discreditable bills were the young
man's own, and proofs of concealed habits of dissipation; but this
excellent man had gone into the matter, repaired to the tradesfolk,
learnt the date, and whose the accounts really were, and had even
hunted up the barmaid, who was not married after all, and had no
hesitation in avowing that her beau had been the handsome young
Yeomanry lieutenant. Mr. Castleford had spent the greater part of
Monday in this painful task, but had not been clear enough till
quite late in the evening to despatch an express to his partner, and
to Clarence, whom he desired to meet him here.
'He has acted nobly,' said our kind friend. 'His only error seems
to have been in being too good a brother.'
This made me implore that nothing should be said about Griffith's
bills, showing those injunctions of Clarence's which had so puzzled
me, and explaining the circumstances.
Mr. Castleford hummed and hawed, and perhaps wished he had seen my
father before me; but I prevailed at last, and when the others came
in from their drive, there was nothing to alloy the intelligence
that Clarence had shown rare discernment, as well as great
uprightness, steadfastness, and moral courage.
My mother, when she had taken in the fact, actually shed tears of
joy. Emily stood by me, holding my hand. My father said, 'It is
all owing to you, Castleford, and the helping hand you gave the poor
boy.'
'Nay,' was the answer, 'it seems to me that it was owing to his
having the root of the matter in him to overcome his natural
failings.'
Still, in all the rejoicing, my heart failed me lest the express
should have come too late, and Clarence should be already on the
high seas, for there had been no letter from him on Sunday morning.
It was doubtful whether Mr. Castleford's messenger could reach
London in time for tidings to come down by the coach--far less did
we expect Clarence--and we had nearly finished the first course at
dinner, when we heard the front door open, and a voice speaking to
the butler. Emily screamed 'It's he! Oh mamma, may I?' and flew
out into the hall, dragging in a pale, worn and weary wight, all
dust and heat, having travelled down outside the coach on a broiling
day, and walked the rest of the way. He looked quite bewildered at
the rush at him; my father's 'Well done, Clarence,' and strong
clasp; and my mother's fervent kiss, and muttered something about
washing his hands.
Formal folks, such as we were, had to sit in our chairs; and when he
came back apologising for not dressing, as he had left his
portmanteau for the carrier, he looked so white and ill that we were
quite shocked, and began to realise what he had suffered. He could
not eat the food that was brought back for him, and allowed that his
head was aching dreadfully; but, after a glass of wine had been
administered, it was extracted that he had met Mr. Frith at the
office door, and been gruffly told that Mr. Castleford was
satisfied, and he might consider himself acquitted.
'And then I had your letter, sir, thank you,' said Clarence,
scarcely restraining his tears.
'The thanks are on our side, my dear boy,' said Mr. Castleford. 'I
must talk it over with you, but not till you have had a night's
rest. You look as if you had not known one for a good while.'
Clarence gave a sort of trembling smile, not trusting himself to
speak. Approbation at home was so new and strange to him that he
could scarcely bear it, worn out as he was by nearly a month of
doubt, distress, apprehension, and self-debate.
My mother went herself to hasten the preparation of his room, and
after she had sent him to bed went again to satisfy herself that he
was comfortable and not feverish. She came back wiping away a tear,
and saying he had looked up at her just as when she had the three of
us in our nursery cribs. In truth these two had seldom been so
happy together since those days, though the dear mother, while
thankful that he had not failed, was little aware of the conflict
his resolution had cost him, and the hot journey and long walk came
in for more blame for his exhaustion than they entirely deserved.
My father perhaps understood more of the trial; for when she came
back, declaring that all that was needed was sleep, and forbidding
me to go to my room before bedtime, he said he must bid the boy
good-night.
And he spoke as his reserve would have never let him speak at any
other time, telling Clarence how deeply thankful he felt for the
manifestation of such truthfulness and moral courage as he said
showed that the man had conquered the failings of the boy.
Nevertheless, when I retired for the night, it was to find Clarence
asleep indeed, but most uneasily, tossing, moaning, and muttering
broken sentences about 'disgracing his pennant,' 'never bearing to
see mamma's face'--and the like. I thought it a kindness to wake
him, and he started up. 'Ted, is it you? I thought I should never
hear your dear old crutch again! Is it really all right'--then,
sitting up and passing his hand over his face, 'I always mix it up
with the old affair, and think the court-martial is coming again.'
'There's all the difference now.'
'Thank God! yes--He has dragged me through! But it did not seem so
in one's sleep, nor waking neither--though sleep is worst, and
happily there was not much of that! Sit down, Ted; I want to look
at you. I can't believe it is not three weeks since I saw you
last.'
We talked it all out, and I came to some perception of the fearful
ordeal it had been--first, in the decision neither to shut his eyes,
nor to conceal that they were open; and then in the lack of presence
of mind and the sense of confusion that always beset him when
browbeaten and talked down, so that, in the critical contest with
Tooke, he felt as if his feet were slipping from under him, and what
had once been clear to him was becoming dim, so that he had only
been assured that he had held his ground by Tooke's redoubled
persuasions and increased anger. And for a clerk, whose years were
only twenty-one, to oppose a manager, who had been in the service
more than the whole of that space, was preposterous insolence, and
likely to result in the utter ruin of his own prospects, and the
character he had begun to retrieve. It was just after this, the
real crisis, that he had the only dream which had not been misery
and distress. In it she--she yonder--yes, the lady with the lamp,
came and stood by him, and said, 'Be steadfast.'
'It was a dream,' said Clarence. 'She was not as she is in the
mullion room, not crying, but with a sweet, sad look, almost like
Miss Fordyce--if Miss Fordyce ever looked sad. It was only a
dream.'
Yet it had so refreshed and comforted him that we have often since
discussed whether the spirit really visited him, or whether this was
the manner in which conscience and imagination acted on his brain.
Indeed, he always believed that the dream had been either heaven-
sent or heaven-permitted.
The die had been cast in that interview when he had let it be seen
that he was dangerous, and could not be bought over. The after
consequences had been the terrible distress and temptation I have
before described, only most inadequately. 'But that,' said
Clarence, half smiling, 'only came of my being such a wretched
creature as I am. There, dear old Miss Newton saved me--yes, she
did--most unconsciously, dear old soul. Don't you remember how
Griff used to say she maundered over the text. Well, she did it all
the way home in my ear, as she clung to my arm--"Be strong, and He
shall comfort thine heart." And then I knew my despair and
determination to leave it all behind were a temptation--"the old
story," as you told me, and I prayed God to help me, and just
managed to fight it out. Thank God for her!'
If it had not been for that good woman, he would have been out of
reach--already out in the river--before Mr. Castleford's messenger
had reached London! He might call himself a poor creature--and
certainly a man of harder, bolder stuff would not have fared so
badly in the strife; but it always seemed to me in after years that
much of what he called the poor creature--the old, nervous, timid,
diffident self--had been shaken off in that desperate struggle,
perhaps because it had really given him more self-reliance, and
certainly inspired others with confidence in him.
We talked late enough to have horrified my mother, but I did not
leave him till he was sleeping like a child, nor did he wake till I
was leaving the room at the sound of the bell. It was alleged that
it was the first time in his life that he had been late for prayers.
Mr. Castleford said he was very glad, and my mother, looking
severely at me, said she knew we had been talking all night, and
then went off to satisfy herself whether he ought to be getting up.
There was no doubt on that score, for he was quite himself again,
though he was, in looks and in weariness, just as if he had
recovered from a bad illness, or, as he put it himself, he felt as
tired and bruised as if he had been in a stiff gale. Mr. Castleford
was sorry to be obliged to ask him to go through the whole matter
with him in the study, and the result was that he was pronounced to
have an admirable head for business, as well as the higher qualities
that had been put to the test. After that his good friend insisted
that he should have a long and complete holiday, at first proposing
to take him to Ireland, but giving the notion up on hearing of our
projected excursion to the north of Devon. Pending this, Clarence
was, for nearly a week, fit for nothing but lying on the grass in
the shade, playing with the cats and dogs, or with little Anne,
looking over our drawings, listening to Wordsworth, our reigning
idol,--and enjoying, with almost touching gratitude, the first
approach to petting that had ever fallen to his share.
The only trouble on his mind was the Quarter-Session. Mr.
Castleford would hardly have prosecuted an old employe, but Mr.
Frith was furious, and resolved to make an example. Tooke had,
however, so carefully entrenched himself that nothing could be
actually made a subject of prosecution but the abstraction of the 20
pounds of which he had accused Clarence, who had to prove the having
received and delivered it.
It was a very painful affair, and Tooke was sentenced to seven
years' transportation. I believe he became a very rich and
prosperous man in New South Wales, and founded a family. My father
received warm compliments upon his sons, and Clarence had the new
sensation of being honourably coupled with Griffith, though he
laughed at the idea of mere honesty with fierce struggles being
placed beside heroism with no struggle at all.
CHAPTER XXV--HOLIDAY-MAKING
'The child upon the mountain side
Plays fearless and at ease,
While the hush of purple evening
Spreads over earth and seas.
The valley lies in shadow,
But the valley lies afar;
And the mountain is a slope of light
Upreaching to a star.'
MENELLA SMEDLEY.
How pleasant it was to hear Griffith's cheery voice, as he swung
himself down, out of a cloud of dust, from the top of the coach at
the wayside stage-house, whither Clarence and I had driven in the
new britshka to meet him. While the four fine coach-horses were led
off, and their successors harnessed in almost the twinkling of an
eye, Griff was with us; and we did nothing but laugh and poke fun at
each other all the way home, without a word of graver matters.
I was resolved, however, that Griff should know how terribly his
commission had added to Clarence's danger, and how carefully the
secret had been guarded; and the first time I could get him alone, I
told him the whole.
The effect was one of his most overwhelming fits of laughter. 'Poor
old Bill! To think of his being accused of gallanting about with
barmaids!' (an explosion at every pause) 'and revelling with
officers! Poor old Bill! it was as bad as Malvolio himself.'
When, indignant at the mirth excited by what had nearly cost us so
dear, I observed that these items had nearly turned the scale
against our brother, Griff demanded how we could have been such
idiots as not to have written to him; I might at least have had the
sense to do so. As to its doing him harm at Hillside, Parson Frank
was no fool, and knew what men were made of! Griff would have taken
the risk, come at once, and thrust the story down the fellow's
throat (as indeed he would have done). The idea of Betsy putting up
with a pious young man like Bill, whose only flame had ever been old
Miss Newton! And he roared again at the incongruous pair. 'Oh,
wasn't she married after all, the hussy? She always had a dozen
beaux, and professed to be on the point of putting up her banns; so
if the earrings were not a wedding present, they might have been,
ought to have been, and would be some time or other.'
Then he patted me, and declared there was no occasion for my
disgusted looks, for no one knew better than himself that he had the
best brace of brothers in existence, wanting in nothing but common
sense and knowledge of the world. As to Betsy--faugh! I need not
make myself uneasy about her; she knew what a civil word was worth
much better than I did.
He showed considerable affection for Clarence after a fashion of his
own, which we three perfectly understood, and preferred to anything
more conventional. Griff was always delightful, and he was
especially so on that vacation, when every one was in high spirits;
so that the journey is, as I look back on it, like a spot of
brilliant sunshine in the distant landscape.
Mrs. Fordyce kept house with her father-in-law, little Anne, and
Martyn, whose holidays began a week after we had started. The two
children were allowed to make a desert island and a robbers' cave in
the beech wood; and the adventures which their imaginations
underwent there completely threw ours into the shade.
The three ladies and I started in the big Hillside open carriage,
with my brothers on the box and the two fathers on horseback. Frank
Fordyce was a splendid rider, as indeed was the old rector, who had
followed the hounds, made a leap over a fearful chasm, still known
as the Parson's Stride, and had been an excellent shot. The
renunciation of field sports had been a severe sacrifice to Frank
Fordyce, and showed of what excellent stuff he was made. He used to
say that it was his own fault that he had to 
Chantry House / Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 1823-1901