Chantry House / Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 1823-1901

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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

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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 fr