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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Round the Sofa, by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Round the Sofa
+
+Author: Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+Release Date: April 4, 2000 [eBook #2533]
+[Most recently updated: December 22, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price, Vanessa Mosher, Jennifer Lee, Alev Akman, Andy Wallace, Audrey Emmitt and Eugenia Corbo
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUND THE SOFA ***
+
+
+
+
+               ROUND THE SOFA.
+
+             by Elizabeth Gaskell
+
+
+
+
+Long ago I was placed by my parents under the medical treatment of a
+certain Mr. Dawson, a surgeon in Edinburgh, who had obtained a
+reputation for the cure of a particular class of diseases. I was sent
+with my governess into lodgings near his house, in the Old Town. I was
+to combine lessons from the excellent Edinburgh masters, with the
+medicines and exercises needed for my indisposition. It was at first
+rather dreary to leave my brothers and sisters, and to give up our
+merry out-of-doors life with our country home, for dull lodgings, with
+only poor grave Miss Duncan for a companion; and to exchange our romps
+in the garden and rambles through the fields for stiff walks in the
+streets, the decorum of which obliged me to tie my bonnet-strings
+neatly, and put on my shawl with some regard to straightness.
+
+The evenings were the worst. It was autumn, and of course they daily
+grew longer: they were long enough, I am sure, when we first settled
+down in those gray and drab lodgings. For, you must know, my father and
+mother were not rich, and there were a great many of us, and the
+medical expenses to be incurred by my being placed under Mr. Dawson’s
+care were expected to be considerable; therefore, one great point in
+our search after lodgings was economy. My father, who was too true a
+gentleman to feel false shame, had named this necessity for cheapness
+to Mr. Dawson; and in return, Mr. Dawson had told him of those at No. 6
+Cromer Street, in which we were finally settled. The house belonged to
+an old man, at one time a tutor to young men preparing for the
+University, in which capacity he had become known to Mr. Dawson. But
+his pupils had dropped off; and when we went to lodge with him, I
+imagine that his principal support was derived from a few occasional
+lessons which he gave, and from letting the rooms that we took, a
+drawing-room opening into a bed-room, out of which a smaller chamber
+led. His daughter was his housekeeper: a son, whom we never saw,
+supposed to be leading the same life that his father had done before
+him, only we never saw or heard of any pupils; and there was one
+hard-working, honest little Scottish maiden, square, stumpy, neat, and
+plain, who might have been any age from eighteen to forty.
+
+Looking back on the household now, there was perhaps much to admire in
+their quiet endurance of decent poverty; but at this time, their
+poverty grated against many of my tastes, for I could not recognize the
+fact, that in a town the simple graces of fresh flowers, clean white
+muslin curtains, pretty bright chintzes, all cost money, which is saved
+by the adoption of dust-coloured moreen, and mud-coloured carpets.
+There was not a penny spent on mere elegance in that room; yet there
+was everything considered necessary to comfort: but after all, such
+mere pretences of comfort! a hard, slippery, black horse-hair sofa,
+which was no place of rest; an old piano, serving as a sideboard; a
+grate, narrowed by an inner supplement, till it hardly held a handful
+of the small coal which could scarcely ever be stirred up into a genial
+blaze. But there were two evils worse than even this coldness and
+bareness of the rooms: one was that we were provided with a latch-key,
+which allowed us to open the front door whenever we came home from a
+walk, and go upstairs without meeting any face of welcome, or hearing
+the sound of a human voice in the apparently deserted house—Mr.
+Mackenzie piqued himself on the noiselessness of his establishment; and
+the other, which might almost seem to neutralize the first, was the
+danger we were always exposed to on going out, of the old man—sly,
+miserly, and intelligent—popping out upon us from his room, close to
+the left hand of the door, with some civility which we learned to
+distrust as a mere pretext for extorting more money, yet which it was
+difficult to refuse: such as the offer of any books out of his library,
+a great temptation, for we could see into the shelf-lined room; but
+just as we were on the point of yielding, there was a hint of the
+“consideration” to be expected for the loan of books of so much higher
+a class than any to be obtained at the circulating library, which made
+us suddenly draw back. Another time he came out of his den to offer us
+written cards, to distribute among our acquaintance, on which he
+undertook to teach the very things I was to learn; but I would rather
+have been the most ignorant woman that ever lived than tried to learn
+anything from that old fox in breeches. When we had declined all his
+proposals, he went apparently into dudgeon. Once when we had forgotten
+our latch-key we rang in vain for many times at the door, seeing our
+landlord standing all the time at the window to the right, looking out
+of it in an absent and philosophical state of mind, from which no signs
+and gestures of ours could arouse him.
+
+The women of the household were far better, and more really
+respectable, though even on them poverty had laid her heavy left hand,
+instead of her blessing right. Miss Mackenzie kept us as short in our
+food as she decently could—we paid so much a week for our board, be it
+observed; and if one day we had less appetite than another our meals
+were docked to the smaller standard, until Miss Duncan ventured to
+remonstrate. The sturdy maid-of-all-work was scrupulously honest, but
+looked discontented, and scarcely vouchsafed us thanks, when on leaving
+we gave her what Mrs. Dawson had told us would be considered handsome
+in most lodgings. I do not believe Phenice ever received wages from the
+Mackenzies.
+
+But that dear Mrs. Dawson! The mention of her comes into my mind like
+the bright sunshine into our dingy little drawing room came on those
+days;—as a sweet scent of violets greets the sorrowful passer among the
+woodlands.
+
+Mrs. Dawson was not Mr. Dawson’s wife, for he was a bachelor. She was
+his crippled sister, an old maid, who had, what she called, taken her
+brevet rank.
+
+After we had been about a fortnight in Edinburgh, Mr. Dawson said, in a
+sort of half doubtful manner to Miss Duncan—
+
+“My sister bids me say, that every Monday evening a few friends come in
+to sit round her sofa for an hour or so,—some before going to gayer
+parties—and that if you and Miss Greatorex would like a little change,
+she would only be too glad to see you. Any time from seven to eight
+to-night; and I must add my injunctions, both for her sake, and for
+that of my little patient’s, here, that you leave at nine o’clock.
+After all, I do not know if you will care to come; but Margaret bade me
+ask you;” and he glanced up suspiciously and sharply at us. If either
+of us had felt the slightest reluctance, however well disguised by
+manner, to accept this invitation, I am sure he would have at once
+detected our feelings, and withdrawn it; so jealous and chary was he of
+anything pertaining to the appreciation of this beloved sister.
+
+But if it had been to spend an evening at the dentist’s, I believe I
+should have welcomed the invitation, so weary was I of the monotony of
+the nights in our lodgings; and as for Miss Duncan, an invitation to
+tea was of itself a pure and unmixed honour, and one to be accepted
+with all becoming form and gratitude: so Mr. Dawson’s sharp glances
+over his spectacles failed to detect anything but the truest pleasure,
+and he went on.
+
+“You’ll find it very dull, I dare say. Only a few old fogies like
+myself, and one or two good sweet young women: I never know who’ll
+come. Margaret is obliged to lie in a darkened room—only half-lighted I
+mean,—because her eyes are weak,—oh, it will be very stupid, I dare
+say: don’t thank me till you’ve been once and tried it, and then if you
+like it, your best thanks will be to come again every Monday, from
+half-past seven to nine, you know. Good-bye, good-bye.”
+
+Hitherto I had never been out to a party of grown-up people; and no
+court ball to a London young lady could seem more redolent of honour
+and pleasure than this Monday evening to me.
+
+Dressed out in new stiff book-muslin, made up to my throat,—a frock
+which had seemed to me and my sisters the height of earthly grandeur
+and finery—Alice, our old nurse, had been making it at home, in
+contemplation of the possibility of such an event during my stay in
+Edinburgh, but which had then appeared to me a robe too lovely and
+angelic to be ever worn short of heaven—I went with Miss Duncan to Mr.
+Dawson’s at the appointed time. We entered through one small lofty
+room, perhaps I ought to call it an antechamber, for the house was
+old-fashioned, and stately and grand, the large square drawing-room,
+into the centre of which Mrs. Dawson’s sofa was drawn. Behind her a
+little was placed a table with a great cluster candlestick upon it,
+bearing seven or eight wax-lights; and that was all the light in the
+room, which looked to me very vast and indistinct after our pinched-up
+apartment at the Mackenzie’s. Mrs. Dawson must have been sixty; and yet
+her face looked very soft and smooth and child-like. Her hair was quite
+gray: it would have looked white but for the snowiness of her cap, and
+satin ribbon. She was wrapped in a kind of dressing-gown of French grey
+merino: the furniture of the room was deep rose-colour, and white and
+gold,—the paper which covered the walls was Indian, beginning low down
+with a profusion of tropical leaves and birds and insects, and
+gradually diminishing in richness of detail till at the top it ended in
+the most delicate tendrils and most filmy insects.
+
+Mr. Dawson had acquired much riches in his profession, and his house
+gave one this impression. In the corners of the rooms were great jars
+of Eastern china, filled with flower-leaves and spices; and in the
+middle of all this was placed the sofa, which poor Margaret Dawson
+passed whole days, and months, and years, without the power of moving
+by herself. By-and-by Mrs. Dawson’s maid brought in tea and macaroons
+for us, and a little cup of milk and water and a biscuit for her. Then
+the door opened. We had come very early, and in came Edinburgh
+professors, Edinburgh beauties, and celebrities, all on their way to
+some other gayer and later party, but coming first to see Mrs. Dawson,
+and tell her their _bon-mots_, or their interests, or their plans. By
+each learned man, by each lovely girl, she was treated as a dear
+friend, who knew something more about their own individual selves,
+independent of their reputation and general society-character, than any
+one else.
+
+It was very brilliant and very dazzling, and gave enough to think about
+and wonder about for many days.
+
+Monday after Monday we went, stationary, silent; what could we find to
+say to any one but Mrs. Margaret herself? Winter passed, summer was
+coming, still I was ailing, and weary of my life; but still Mr. Dawson
+gave hopes of my ultimate recovery. My father and mother came and went;
+but they could not stay long, they had so many claims upon them. Mrs.
+Margaret Dawson had become my dear friend, although, perhaps, I had
+never exchanged as many words with her as I had with Miss Mackenzie,
+but then with Mrs. Dawson every word was a pearl or a diamond.
+
+People began to drop off from Edinburgh, only a few were left, and I am
+not sure if our Monday evenings were not all the pleasanter.
+
+There was Mr. Sperano, the Italian exile, banished even from France,
+where he had long resided, and now teaching Italian with meek diligence
+in the northern city; there was Mr. Preston, the Westmoreland squire,
+or, as he preferred to be called, statesman, whose wife had come to
+Edinburgh for the education of their numerous family, and who, whenever
+her husband had come over on one of his occasional visits, was only too
+glad to accompany him to Mrs. Dawson’s Monday evenings, he and the
+invalid lady having been friends from long ago. These and ourselves
+kept steady visitors, and enjoyed ourselves all the more from having
+the more of Mrs. Dawson’s society.
+
+One evening I had brought the little stool close to her sofa, and was
+caressing her thin white hand, when the thought came into my head and
+out I spoke it.
+
+“Tell me, dear Mrs. Dawson,” said I, “how long you have been in
+Edinburgh; you do not speak Scotch, and Mr. Dawson says he is not
+Scotch.”
+
+“No, I am Lancashire—Liverpool-born,” said she, smiling. “Don’t you
+hear it in my broad tongue?”
+
+“I hear something different to other people, but I like it because it
+is just you; is that Lancashire?”
+
+“I dare say it is; for, though I am sure Lady Ludlow took pains enough
+to correct me in my younger days, I never could get rightly over the
+accent.”
+
+“Lady Ludlow,” said I, “what had she to do with you? I heard you
+talking about her to Lady Madeline Stuart the first evening I ever came
+here; you and she seemed so fond of Lady Ludlow; who is she?”
+
+“She is dead, my child; dead long ago.”
+
+I felt sorry I had spoken about her, Mrs. Dawson looked so grave and
+sad. I suppose she perceived my sorrow, for she went on and said—“My
+dear, I like to talk and to think of Lady Ludlow: she was my true, kind
+friend and benefactress for many years; ask me what you like about her,
+and do not think you give me pain.”
+
+I grew bold at this.
+
+“Will you tell me all about her, then, please, Mrs. Dawson?”
+
+“Nay,” said she, smiling, “that would be too long a story. Here are
+Signor Sperano, and Miss Duncan, and Mr. and Mrs. Preston are coming
+to-night, Mr. Preston told me; how would they like to hear an old-world
+story which, after all, would be no story at all, neither beginning,
+nor middle, nor end, only a bundle of recollections?”
+
+“If you speak of me, madame,” said Signor Sperano, “I can only say you
+do me one great honour by recounting in my presence anything about any
+person that has ever interested you.”
+
+Miss Duncan tried to say something of the same kind. In the middle of
+her confused speech, Mr. and Mrs. Preston came in. I sprang up; I went
+to meet them.
+
+“Oh,” said I, “Mrs. Dawson is just going to tell us all about Lady
+Ludlow, and a great deal more, only she is afraid it won’t interest
+anybody: do say you would like to hear it!”
+
+Mrs. Dawson smiled at me, and in reply to their urgency she promised to
+tell us all about Lady Ludlow, on condition that each one of us should,
+after she had ended, narrate something interesting, which we had either
+heard, or which had fallen within our own experience. We all promised
+willingly, and then gathered round her sofa to hear what she could tell
+us about my Lady Ludlow.
+
+
+
+
+MY LADY LUDLOW
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I am an old woman now, and things are very different to what they were
+in my youth. Then we, who travelled, travelled in coaches, carrying six
+inside, and making a two days’ journey out of what people now go over
+in a couple of hours with a whizz and a flash, and a screaming whistle,
+enough to deafen one. Then letters came in but three times a week:
+indeed, in some places in Scotland where I have stayed when I was a
+girl, the post came in but once a month;—but letters were letters then;
+and we made great prizes of them, and read them and studied them like
+books. Now the post comes rattling in twice a day, bringing short jerky
+notes, some without beginning or end, but just a little sharp sentence,
+which well-bred folks would think too abrupt to be spoken. Well, well!
+they may all be improvements,—I dare say they are; but you will never
+meet with a Lady Ludlow in these days.
+
+I will try and tell you about her. It is no story: it has, as I said,
+neither beginning, middle, nor end.
+
+My father was a poor clergyman with a large family. My mother was always
+said to have good blood in her veins; and when she wanted to maintain her
+position with the people she was thrown among,—principally rich
+democratic manufacturers, all for liberty and the French Revolution,—she
+would put on a pair of ruffles, trimmed with real old English point, very
+much darned to be sure,—but which could not be bought new for love or
+money, as the art of making it was lost years before. These ruffles
+showed, as she said, that her ancestors had been Somebodies, when the
+grandfathers of the rich folk, who now looked down upon her, had been
+Nobodies,—if, indeed, they had any grandfathers at all. I don’t know
+whether any one out of our own family ever noticed these ruffles,—but we
+were all taught as children to feel rather proud when my mother put them
+on, and to hold up our heads as became the descendants of the lady who
+had first possessed the lace. Not but what my dear father often told us
+that pride was a great sin; we were never allowed to be proud of anything
+but my mother’s ruffles: and she was so innocently happy when she put
+them on,—often, poor dear creature, to a very worn and threadbare
+gown,—that I still think, even after all my experience of life, they
+were a blessing to the family. You will think that I am wandering away
+from my Lady Ludlow. Not at all. The Lady who had owned the lace,
+Ursula Hanbury, was a common ancestress of both my mother and my Lady
+Ludlow. And so it fell out, that when my poor father died, and my mother
+was sorely pressed to know what to do with her nine children, and looked
+far and wide for signs of willingness to help, Lady Ludlow sent her a
+letter, proffering aid and assistance. I see that letter now: a large
+sheet of thick yellow paper, with a straight broad margin left on the
+left-hand side of the delicate Italian writing,—writing which contained
+far more in the same space of paper than all the sloping, or masculine
+hand-writings of the present day. It was sealed with a coat-of-arms,—a
+lozenge,—for Lady Ludlow was a widow. My mother made us notice the
+motto, “Foy et Loy,” and told us where to look for the quarterings of the
+Hanbury arms before she opened the letter. Indeed, I think she was
+rather afraid of what the contents might be; for, as I have said, in her
+anxious love for her fatherless children, she had written to many people
+upon whom, to tell truly, she had but little claim; and their cold, hard
+answers had many a time made her cry, when she thought none of us were
+looking. I do not even know if she had ever seen Lady Ludlow: all I knew
+of her was that she was a very grand lady, whose grandmother had been
+half-sister to my mother’s great-grandmother; but of her character and
+circumstances I had heard nothing, and I doubt if my mother was
+acquainted with them.
+
+I looked over my mother’s shoulder to read the letter; it began, “Dear
+Cousin Margaret Dawson,” and I think I felt hopeful from the moment I saw
+those words. She went on to say,—stay, I think I can remember the very
+words:
+
+‘DEAR COUSIN MARGARET DAWSON,—I have been much grieved to hear of the
+loss you have sustained in the death of so good a husband, and so
+excellent a clergyman as I have always heard that my late cousin Richard
+was esteemed to be.’
+
+“There!” said my mother, laying her finger on the passage, “read that
+aloud to the little ones. Let them hear how their father’s good report
+travelled far and wide, and how well he is spoken of by one whom he never
+saw. COUSIN Richard, how prettily her ladyship writes! Go on,
+Margaret!” She wiped her eyes as she spoke: and laid her fingers on her
+lips, to still my little sister, Cecily, who, not understanding anything
+about the important letter, was beginning to talk and make a noise.
+
+‘You say you are left with nine children. I too should have had nine, if
+mine had all lived. I have none left but Rudolph, the present Lord
+Ludlow. He is married, and lives, for the most part, in London. But I
+entertain six young gentlewomen at my house at Connington, who are to me
+as daughters—save that, perhaps, I restrict them in certain indulgences
+in dress and diet that might be befitting in young ladies of a higher
+rank, and of more probable wealth. These young persons—all of
+condition, though out of means—are my constant companions, and I strive
+to do my duty as a Christian lady towards them. One of these young
+gentlewomen died (at her own home, whither she had gone upon a visit)
+last May. Will you do me the favour to allow your eldest daughter to
+supply her place in my household? She is, as I make out, about sixteen
+years of age. She will find companions here who are but a little older
+than herself. I dress my young friends myself, and make each of them a
+small allowance for pocket-money. They have but few opportunities for
+matrimony, as Connington is far removed from any town. The clergyman is
+a deaf old widower; my agent is married; and as for the neighbouring
+farmers, they are, of course, below the notice of the young gentlewomen
+under my protection. Still, if any young woman wishes to marry, and has
+conducted herself to my satisfaction, I give her a wedding dinner, her
+clothes, and her house-linen. And such as remain with me to my death,
+will find a small competency provided for them in my will. I reserve to
+myself the option of paying their travelling expenses,—disliking gadding
+women, on the one hand; on the other, not wishing by too long absence
+from the family home to weaken natural ties.
+
+‘If my proposal pleases you and your daughter—or rather, if it pleases
+you, for I trust your daughter has been too well brought up to have a
+will in opposition to yours—let me know, dear cousin Margaret Dawson,
+and I will make arrangements for meeting the young gentlewoman at
+Cavistock, which is the nearest point to which the coach will bring her.’
+
+My mother dropped the letter, and sat silent.
+
+“I shall not know what to do without you, Margaret.”
+
+A moment before, like a young untried girl as I was, I had been pleased
+at the notion of seeing a new place, and leading a new life. But now,—my
+mother’s look of sorrow, and the children’s cry of remonstrance: “Mother;
+I won’t go,” I said.
+
+“Nay! but you had better,” replied she, shaking her head. “Lady Ludlow
+has much power. She can help your brothers. It will not do to slight
+her offer.”
+
+So we accepted it, after much consultation. We were rewarded,—or so we
+thought,—for, afterwards, when I came to know Lady Ludlow, I saw that
+she would have done her duty by us, as helpless relations, however we
+might have rejected her kindness,—by a presentation to Christ’s Hospital
+for one of my brothers.
+
+And this was how I came to know my Lady Ludlow.
+
+I remember well the afternoon of my arrival at Hanbury Court. Her
+ladyship had sent to meet me at the nearest post-town at which the
+mail-coach stopped. There was an old groom inquiring for me, the ostler
+said, if my name was Dawson—from Hanbury Court, he believed. I felt
+it rather formidable; and first began to understand what was meant by
+going among strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to whom my mother
+had intrusted me. I was perched up in a high gig with a hood to it,
+such as in those days was called a chair, and my companion was driving
+deliberately through the most pastoral country I had ever yet seen.
+By-and-by we ascended a long hill, and the man got out and walked at
+the horse’s head. I should have liked to walk, too, very much indeed;
+but I did not know how far I might do it; and, in fact, I dared not
+speak to ask to be helped down the deep steps of the gig. We were at
+last at the top,—on a long, breezy, sweeping, unenclosed piece of
+ground, called, as I afterwards learnt, a Chase. The groom stopped,
+breathed, patted his horse, and then mounted again to my side.
+
+“Are we near Hanbury Court?” I asked.
+
+“Near! Why, Miss! we’ve a matter of ten mile yet to go.”
+
+Once launched into conversation, we went on pretty glibly. I fancy he
+had been afraid of beginning to speak to me, just as I was to him; but he
+got over his shyness with me sooner than I did mine with him. I let him
+choose the subjects of conversation, although very often I could not
+understand the points of interest in them: for instance, he talked for
+more than a quarter of an hour of a famous race which a certain dog-fox
+had given him, above thirty years before; and spoke of all the covers and
+turns just as if I knew them as well as he did; and all the time I was
+wondering what kind of an animal a dog-fox might be.
+
+After we left the Chase, the road grew worse. No one in these days,
+who has not seen the byroads of fifty years ago, can imagine what they
+were. We had to quarter, as Randal called it, nearly all the way along
+the deep-rutted, miry lanes; and the tremendous jolts I occasionally
+met with made my seat in the gig so unsteady that I could not look
+about me at all, I was so much occupied in holding on. The road was
+too muddy for me to walk without dirtying myself more than I liked to
+do, just before my first sight of my Lady Ludlow. But by-and-by, when
+we came to the fields in which the lane ended, I begged Randal to help
+me down, as I saw that I could pick my steps among the pasture grass
+without making myself unfit to be seen; and Randal, out of pity for his
+steaming horse, wearied with the hard struggle through the mud, thanked
+me kindly, and helped me down with a springing jump.
+
+The pastures fell gradually down to the lower land, shut in on either
+side by rows of high elms, as if there had been a wide grand avenue here
+in former times. Down the grassy gorge we went, seeing the sunset sky at
+the end of the shadowed descent. Suddenly we came to a long flight of
+steps.
+
+“If you’ll run down there, Miss, I’ll go round and meet you, and then
+you’d better mount again, for my lady will like to see you drive up to
+the house.”
+
+“Are we near the house?” said I, suddenly checked by the idea.
+
+“Down there, Miss,” replied he, pointing with his whip to certain stacks
+of twisted chimneys rising out of a group of trees, in deep shadow
+against the crimson light, and which lay just beyond a great square lawn
+at the base of the steep slope of a hundred yards, on the edge of which
+we stood.
+
+I went down the steps quietly enough. I met Randal and the gig at the
+bottom; and, falling into a side road to the left, we drove sedately
+round, through the gateway, and into the great court in front of the
+house.
+
+The road by which we had come lay right at the back.
+
+Hanbury Court is a vast red-brick house—at least, it is cased in part
+with red bricks; and the gate-house and walls about the place are of
+brick,—with stone facings at every corner, and door, and window, such as
+you see at Hampton Court. At the back are the gables, and arched
+doorways, and stone mullions, which show (so Lady Ludlow used to tell us)
+that it was once a priory. There was a prior’s parlour, I know—only we
+called it Mrs. Medlicott’s room; and there was a tithe-barn as big as a
+church, and rows of fish-ponds, all got ready for the monks’ fasting-days
+in old time. But all this I did not see till afterwards. I hardly
+noticed, this first night, the great Virginian Creeper (said to have been
+the first planted in England by one of my lady’s ancestors) that half
+covered the front of the house. As I had been unwilling to leave the
+guard of the coach, so did I now feel unwilling to leave Randal, a known
+friend of three hours. But there was no help for it; in I must go; past
+the grand-looking old gentleman holding the door open for me, on into the
+great hall on the right hand, into which the sun’s last rays were sending
+in glorious red light,—the gentleman was now walking before me,—up a
+step on to the dais, as I afterwards learned that it was called,—then
+again to the left, through a series of sitting-rooms, opening one out of
+another, and all of them looking into a stately garden, glowing, even in
+the twilight, with the bloom of flowers. We went up four steps out of
+the last of these rooms, and then my guide lifted up a heavy silk curtain
+and I was in the presence of my Lady Ludlow.
+
+She was very small of stature, and very upright. She wore a great lace
+cap, nearly half her own height, I should think, that went round her
+head (caps which tied under the chin, and which we called “mobs,” came
+in later, and my lady held them in great contempt, saying people might
+as well come down in their nightcaps). In front of my lady’s cap was a
+great bow of white satin ribbon; and a broad band of the same ribbon
+was tied tight round her head, and served to keep the cap straight. She
+had a fine Indian muslin shawl folded over her shoulders and across
+her chest, and an apron of the same; a black silk mode gown, made with
+short sleeves and ruffles, and with the tail thereof pulled through
+the pocket-hole, so as to shorten it to a useful length: beneath it
+she wore, as I could plainly see, a quilted lavender satin petticoat.
+Her hair was snowy white, but I hardly saw it, it was so covered with
+her cap: her skin, even at her age, was waxen in texture and tint; her
+eyes were large and dark blue, and must have been her great beauty
+when she was young, for there was nothing particular, as far as I can
+remember, either in mouth or nose. She had a great gold-headed stick by
+her chair; but I think it was more as a mark of state and dignity than
+for use; for she had as light and brisk a step when she chose as any
+girl of fifteen, and, in her private early walk of meditation in the
+mornings, would go as swiftly from garden alley to garden alley as any
+one of us.
+
+She was standing up when I went in. I dropped my curtsey at the door,
+which my mother had always taught me as a part of good manners, and went
+up instinctively to my lady. She did not put out her hand, but raised
+herself a little on tiptoe, and kissed me on both cheeks.
+
+“You are cold, my child. You shall have a dish of tea with me.” She
+rang a little hand-bell on the table by her, and her waiting-maid came in
+from a small anteroom; and, as if all had been prepared, and was awaiting
+my arrival, brought with her a small china service with tea ready made,
+and a plate of delicately-cut bread and butter, every morsel of which I
+could have eaten, and been none the better for it, so hungry was I after
+my long ride. The waiting-maid took off my cloak, and I sat down, sorely
+alarmed at the silence, the hushed foot-falls of the subdued maiden over
+the thick carpet, and the soft voice and clear pronunciation of my Lady
+Ludlow. My teaspoon fell against my cup with a sharp noise, that seemed
+so out of place and season that I blushed deeply. My lady caught my eye
+with hers,—both keen and sweet were those dark-blue eyes of her
+ladyship’s:—
+
+“Your hands are very cold, my dear; take off those gloves” (I wore thick
+serviceable doeskin, and had been too shy to take them off unbidden),
+“and let me try and warm them—the evenings are very chilly.” And she
+held my great red hands in hers,—soft, warm, white, ring-laden. Looking
+at last a little wistfully into my face, she said—“Poor child! And
+you’re the eldest of nine! I had a daughter who would have been just
+your age; but I cannot fancy her the eldest of nine.” Then came a pause
+of silence; and then she rang her bell, and desired her waiting-maid,
+Adams, to show me to my room.
+
+It was so small that I think it must have been a cell. The walls were
+whitewashed stone; the bed was of white dimity. There was a small piece
+of red staircarpet on each side of the bed, and two chairs. In a closet
+adjoining were my washstand and toilet-table. There was a text of
+Scripture painted on the wall right opposite to my bed; and below hung a
+print, common enough in those days, of King George and Queen Charlotte,
+with all their numerous children, down to the little Princess Amelia in a
+go-cart. On each side hung a small portrait, also engraved: on the left,
+it was Louis the Sixteenth; on the other, Marie-Antoinette. On the
+chimney-piece there was a tinder-box and a Prayer-book. I do not
+remember anything else in the room. Indeed, in those days people did not
+dream of writing-tables, and inkstands, and portfolios, and easy chairs,
+and what not. We were taught to go into our bed-rooms for the purposes of
+dressing, and sleeping, and praying.
+
+Presently I was summoned to supper. I followed the young lady who had
+been sent to call me, down the wide shallow stairs, into the great hall,
+through which I had first passed on my way to my Lady Ludlow’s room.
+There were four other young gentlewomen, all standing, and all silent,
+who curtsied to me when I first came in. They were dressed in a kind of
+uniform: muslin caps bound round their heads with blue ribbons, plain
+muslin handkerchiefs, lawn aprons, and drab-coloured stuff gowns. They
+were all gathered together at a little distance from the table, on which
+were placed a couple of cold chickens, a salad, and a fruit tart. On the
+dais there was a smaller round table, on which stood a silver jug filled
+with milk, and a small roll. Near that was set a carved chair, with a
+countess’s coronet surmounting the back of it. I thought that some one
+might have spoken to me; but they were shy, and I was shy; or else there
+was some other reason; but, indeed, almost the minute after I had come
+into the hall by the door at the lower hand, her ladyship entered by the
+door opening upon the dais; whereupon we all curtsied very low; I because
+I saw the others do it. She stood, and looked at us for a moment.
+
+“Young gentlewomen,” said she, “make Margaret Dawson welcome among you;”
+and they treated me with the kind politeness due to a stranger, but still
+without any talking beyond what was required for the purposes of the
+meal. After it was over, and grace was said by one of our party, my lady
+rang her hand-bell, and the servants came in and cleared away the supper
+things: then they brought in a portable reading-desk, which was placed on
+the dais, and, the whole household trooping in, my lady called to one of
+my companions to come up and read the Psalms and Lessons for the day. I
+remember thinking how afraid I should have been had I been in her place.
+There were no prayers. My lady thought it schismatic to have any prayers
+excepting those in the Prayer-book; and would as soon have preached a
+sermon herself in the parish church, as have allowed any one not a deacon
+at the least to read prayers in a private dwelling-house. I am not sure
+that even then she would have approved of his reading them in an
+unconsecrated place.
+
+She had been maid-of-honour to Queen Charlotte: a Hanbury of that old
+stock that flourished in the days of the Plantagenets, and heiress of all
+the land that remained to the family, of the great estates which had once
+stretched into four separate counties. Hanbury Court was hers by right.
+She had married Lord Ludlow, and had lived for many years at his various
+seats, and away from her ancestral home. She had lost all her children
+but one, and most of them had died at these houses of Lord Ludlow’s; and,
+I dare say, that gave my lady a distaste to the places, and a longing to
+come back to Hanbury Court, where she had been so happy as a girl. I
+imagine her girlhood had been the happiest time of her life; for, now I
+think of it, most of her opinions, when I knew her in later life, were
+singular enough then, but had been universally prevalent fifty years
+before. For instance, while I lived at Hanbury Court, the cry for
+education was beginning to come up: Mr. Raikes had set up his Sunday
+Schools; and some clergymen were all for teaching writing and arithmetic,
+as well as reading. My lady would have none of this; it was levelling
+and revolutionary, she said. When a young woman came to be hired, my
+lady would have her in, and see if she liked her looks and her dress, and
+question her about her family. Her ladyship laid great stress upon this
+latter point, saying that a girl who did not warm up when any interest or
+curiosity was expressed about her mother, or the “baby” (if there was
+one), was not likely to make a good servant. Then she would make her put
+out her feet, to see if they were well and neatly shod. Then she would
+bid her say the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. Then she inquired if she
+could write. If she could, and she had liked all that had gone before,
+her face sank—it was a great disappointment, for it was an all but
+inviolable rule with her never to engage a servant who could write. But
+I have known her ladyship break through it, although in both cases in
+which she did so she put the girl’s principles to a further and unusual
+test in asking her to repeat the Ten Commandments. One pert young
+woman—and yet I was sorry for her too, only she afterwards married a
+rich draper in Shrewsbury—who had got through her trials pretty
+tolerably, considering she could write, spoilt all, by saying glibly, at
+the end of the last Commandment, “An’t please your ladyship, I can cast
+accounts.”
+
+“Go away, wench,” said my lady in a hurry, “you’re only fit for trade;
+you will not suit me for a servant.” The girl went away crestfallen: in
+a minute, however, my lady sent me after her to see that she had
+something to eat before leaving the house; and, indeed, she sent for her
+once again, but it was only to give her a Bible, and to bid her beware of
+French principles, which had led the French to cut off their king’s and
+queen’s heads.
+
+The poor, blubbering girl said, “Indeed, my lady, I wouldn’t hurt a fly,
+much less a king, and I cannot abide the French, nor frogs neither, for
+that matter.”
+
+But my lady was inexorable, and took a girl who could neither read nor
+write, to make up for her alarm about the progress of education towards
+addition and subtraction; and afterwards, when the clergyman who was at
+Hanbury parish when I came there, had died, and the bishop had appointed
+another, and a younger man, in his stead, this was one of the points on
+which he and my lady did not agree. While good old deaf Mr. Mountford
+lived, it was my lady’s custom, when indisposed for a sermon, to stand up
+at the door of her large square pew,—just opposite to the
+reading-desk,—and to say (at that part of the morning service where it
+is decreed that, in quires and places where they sing, here followeth the
+anthem): “Mr. Mountford, I will not trouble you for a discourse this
+morning.” And we all knelt down to the Litany with great satisfaction;
+for Mr. Mountford, though he could not hear, had always his eyes open
+about this part of the service, for any of my lady’s movements. But the
+new clergyman, Mr. Gray, was of a different stamp. He was very zealous
+in all his parish work; and my lady, who was just as good as she could be
+to the poor, was often crying him up as a godsend to the parish, and he
+never could send amiss to the Court when he wanted broth, or wine, or
+jelly, or sago for a sick person. But he needs must take up the new
+hobby of education; and I could see that this put my lady sadly about one
+Sunday, when she suspected, I know not how, that there was something to
+be said in his sermon about a Sunday-school which he was planning. She
+stood up, as she had not done since Mr. Mountford’s death, two years and
+better before this time, and said—
+
+“Mr. Gray, I will not trouble you for a discourse this morning.”
+
+But her voice was not well-assured and steady; and we knelt down with
+more of curiosity than satisfaction in our minds. Mr. Gray preached a
+very rousing sermon, on the necessity of establishing a Sabbath-school in
+the village. My lady shut her eyes, and seemed to go to sleep; but I
+don’t believe she lost a word of it, though she said nothing about it
+that I heard until the next Saturday, when two of us, as was the custom,
+were riding out with her in her carriage, and we went to see a poor
+bedridden woman, who lived some miles away at the other end of the estate
+and of the parish: and as we came out of the cottage we met Mr. Gray
+walking up to it, in a great heat, and looking very tired. My lady
+beckoned him to her, and told him she should wait and take him home with
+her, adding that she wondered to see him there, so far from his home, for
+that it was beyond a Sabbath-day’s journey, and, from what she had
+gathered from his sermon the last Sunday, he was all for Judaism against
+Christianity. He looked as if he did not understand what she meant; but
+the truth was that, besides the way in which he had spoken up for schools
+and schooling, he had kept calling Sunday the Sabbath: and, as her
+ladyship said, “The Sabbath is the Sabbath, and that’s one thing—it is
+Saturday; and if I keep it, I’m a Jew, which I’m not. And Sunday is
+Sunday; and that’s another thing; and if I keep it, I’m a Christian,
+which I humbly trust I am.”
+
+But when Mr. Gray got an inkling of her meaning in talking about a
+Sabbath-day’s journey, he only took notice of a part of it: he smiled and
+bowed, and said no one knew better than her ladyship what were the duties
+that abrogated all inferior laws regarding the Sabbath; and that he must
+go in and read to old Betty Brown, so that he would not detain her
+ladyship.
+
+“But I shall wait for you, Mr. Gray,” said she. “Or I will take a drive
+round by Oakfield, and be back in an hour’s time.” For, you see, she
+would not have him feel hurried or troubled with a thought that he was
+keeping her waiting, while he ought to be comforting and praying with old
+Betty.
+
+“A very pretty young man, my dears,” said she, as we drove away. “But I
+shall have my pew glazed all the same.”
+
+We did not know what she meant at the time; but the next Sunday but one
+we did. She had the curtains all round the grand old Hanbury family seat
+taken down, and, instead of them, there was glass up to the height of six
+or seven feet. We entered by a door, with a window in it that drew up or
+down just like what you see in carriages. This window was generally
+down, and then we could hear perfectly; but if Mr. Gray used the word
+“Sabbath,” or spoke in favour of schooling and education, my lady stepped
+out of her corner, and drew up the window with a decided clang and clash.
+
+I must tell you something more about Mr. Gray. The presentation to the
+living of Hanbury was vested in two trustees, of whom Lady Ludlow was
+one: Lord Ludlow had exercised this right in the appointment of Mr.
+Mountford, who had won his lordship’s favour by his excellent
+horsemanship. Nor was Mr. Mountford a bad clergyman, as clergymen went
+in those days. He did not drink, though he liked good eating as much as
+any one. And if any poor person was ill, and he heard of it, he would
+send them plates from his own dinner of what he himself liked best;
+sometimes of dishes which were almost as bad as poison to sick people. He
+meant kindly to everybody except dissenters, whom Lady Ludlow and he
+united in trying to drive out of the parish; and among dissenters he
+particularly abhorred Methodists—some one said, because John Wesley had
+objected to his hunting. But that must have been long ago for when I
+knew him he was far too stout and too heavy to hunt; besides, the bishop
+of the diocese disapproved of hunting, and had intimated his
+disapprobation to the clergy. For my own part, I think a good run would
+not have come amiss, even in a moral point of view, to Mr. Mountford. He
+ate so much, and took so little exercise, that we young women often heard
+of his being in terrible passions with his servants, and the sexton and
+clerk. But they none of them minded him much, for he soon came to
+himself, and was sure to make them some present or other—some said in
+proportion to his anger; so that the sexton, who was a bit of a wag (as
+all sextons are, I think), said that the vicar’s saying, “The Devil take
+you,” was worth a shilling any day, whereas “The Deuce” was a shabby
+sixpenny speech, only fit for a curate.
+
+There was a great deal of good in Mr. Mountford, too. He could not bear
+to see pain, or sorrow, or misery of any kind; and, if it came under his
+notice, he was never easy till he had relieved it, for the time, at any
+rate. But he was afraid of being made uncomfortable; so, if he possibly
+could, he would avoid seeing any one who was ill or unhappy; and he did
+not thank any one for telling him about them.
+
+“What would your ladyship have me to do?” he once said to my Lady Ludlow,
+when she wished him to go and see a poor man who had broken his leg. “I
+cannot piece the leg as the doctor can; I cannot nurse him as well as his
+wife does; I may talk to him, but he no more understands me than I do the
+language of the alchemists. My coming puts him out; he stiffens himself
+into an uncomfortable posture, out of respect to the cloth, and dare not
+take the comfort of kicking, and swearing, and scolding his wife, while I
+am there. I hear him, with my figurative ears, my lady, heave a sigh of
+relief when my back is turned, and the sermon that he thinks I ought to
+have kept for the pulpit, and have delivered to his neighbours (whose
+case, as he fancies, it would just have fitted, as it seemed to him to be
+addressed to the sinful), is all ended, and done, for the day. I judge
+others as myself; I do to them as I would be done to. That’s
+Christianity, at any rate. I should hate—saving your ladyship’s
+presence—to have my Lord Ludlow coming and seeing me, if I were ill.
+’Twould be a great honour, no doubt; but I should have to put on a clean
+nightcap for the occasion; and sham patience, in order to be polite, and
+not weary his lordship with my complaints. I should be twice as thankful
+to him if he would send me game, or a good fat haunch, to bring me up to
+that pitch of health and strength one ought to be in, to appreciate the
+honour of a visit from a nobleman. So I shall send Jerry Butler a good
+dinner every day till he is strong again; and spare the poor old fellow
+my presence and advice.”
+
+My lady would be puzzled by this, and by many other of Mr. Mountford’s
+speeches. But he had been appointed by my lord, and she could not
+question her dead husband’s wisdom; and she knew that the dinners were
+always sent, and often a guinea or two to help to pay the doctor’s bills;
+and Mr. Mountford was true blue, as we call it, to the back-bone; hated
+the dissenters and the French; and could hardly drink a dish of tea
+without giving out the toast of “Church and King, and down with the
+Rump.” Moreover, he had once had the honour of preaching before the King
+and Queen, and two of the Princesses, at Weymouth; and the King had
+applauded his sermon audibly with,—“Very good; very good;” and that was
+a seal put upon his merit in my lady’s eyes.
+
+Besides, in the long winter Sunday evenings, he would come up to the
+Court, and read a sermon to us girls, and play a game of picquet with my
+lady afterwards; which served to shorten the tedium of the time. My lady
+would, on those occasions, invite him to sup with her on the dais; but as
+her meal was invariably bread and milk only, Mr. Mountford preferred
+sitting down amongst us, and made a joke about its being wicked and
+heterodox to eat meagre on Sunday, a festival of the Church. We smiled
+at this joke just as much the twentieth time we heard it as we did at the
+first; for we knew it was coming, because he always coughed a little
+nervously before he made a joke, for fear my lady should not approve: and
+neither she nor he seemed to remember that he had ever hit upon the idea
+before.
+
+Mr. Mountford died quite suddenly at last. We were all very sorry to
+lose him. He left some of his property (for he had a private estate) to
+the poor of the parish, to furnish them with an annual Christmas dinner
+of roast beef and plum pudding, for which he wrote out a very good
+receipt in the codicil to his will.
+
+Moreover, he desired his executors to see that the vault, in which the
+vicars of Hanbury were interred, was well aired, before his coffin was
+taken in; for, all his life long, he had had a dread of damp, and
+latterly he kept his rooms to such a pitch of warmth that some thought it
+hastened his end.
+
+Then the other trustee, as I have said, presented the living to Mr. Gray,
+Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. It was quite natural for us all, as
+belonging in some sort to the Hanbury family, to disapprove of the other
+trustee’s choice. But when some ill-natured person circulated the report
+that Mr. Gray was a Moravian Methodist, I remember my lady said, “She
+could not believe anything so bad, without a great deal of evidence.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Before I tell you about Mr. Gray, I think I ought to make you understand
+something more of what we did all day long at Hanbury Court. There were
+five of us at the time of which I am speaking, all young women of good
+descent, and allied (however distantly) to people of rank. When we were
+not with my lady, Mrs. Medlicott looked after us; a gentle little woman,
+who had been companion to my lady for many years, and was indeed, I have
+been told, some kind of relation to her. Mrs. Medlicott’s parents had
+lived in Germany, and the consequence was, she spoke English with a very
+foreign accent. Another consequence was, that she excelled in all manner
+of needlework, such as is not known even by name in these days. She
+could darn either lace, table-linen, India muslin, or stockings, so that
+no one could tell where the hole or rent had been. Though a good
+Protestant, and never missing Guy Faux day at church, she was as skilful
+at fine work as any nun in a Papist convent. She would take a piece of
+French cambric, and by drawing out some threads, and working in others,
+it became delicate lace in a very few hours. She did the same by
+Hollands cloth, and made coarse strong lace, with which all my lady’s
+napkins and table-linen were trimmed. We worked under her during a great
+part of the day, either in the still-room, or at our sewing in a chamber
+that opened out of the great hall. My lady despised every kind of work
+that would now be called Fancy-work. She considered that the use of
+coloured threads or worsted was only fit to amuse children; but that
+grown women ought not to be taken with mere blues and reds, but to
+restrict their pleasure in sewing to making small and delicate stitches.
+She would speak of the old tapestry in the hall as the work of her
+ancestresses, who lived before the Reformation, and were consequently
+unacquainted with pure and simple tastes in work, as well as in religion.
+Nor would my lady sanction the fashion of the day, which, at the
+beginning of this century, made all the fine ladies take to making shoes.
+She said that such work was a consequence of the French Revolution, which
+had done much to annihilate all distinctions of rank and class, and hence
+it was, that she saw young ladies of birth and breeding handling lasts,
+and awls, and dirty cobblers’-wax, like shoe-makers’ daughters.
+
+Very frequently one of us would be summoned to my lady to read aloud to
+her, as she sat in her small withdrawing-room, some improving book. It
+was generally Mr. Addison’s “Spectator;” but one year, I remember, we had
+to read “Sturm’s Reflections” translated from a German book Mrs.
+Medlicott recommended. Mr. Sturm told us what to think about for every
+day in the year; and very dull it was; but I believe Queen Charlotte had
+liked the book very much, and the thought of her royal approbation kept
+my lady awake during the reading. “Mrs. Chapone’s Letters” and “Dr.
+Gregory’s Advice to Young Ladies” composed the rest of our library for
+week-day reading. I, for one, was glad to leave my fine sewing, and even
+my reading aloud (though this last did keep me with my dear lady) to go
+to the still-room and potter about among the preserves and the medicated
+waters. There was no doctor for many miles round, and with Mrs.
+Medlicott to direct us, and Dr. Buchan to go by for recipes, we sent out
+many a bottle of physic, which, I dare say, was as good as what comes out
+of the druggist’s shop. At any rate, I do not think we did much harm;
+for if any of our physics tasted stronger than usual, Mrs. Medlicott
+would bid us let it down with cochineal and water, to make all safe, as
+she said. So our bottles of medicine had very little real physic in them
+at last; but we were careful in putting labels on them, which looked very
+mysterious to those who could not read, and helped the medicine to do its
+work. I have sent off many a bottle of salt and water coloured red; and
+whenever we had nothing else to do in the still-room, Mrs. Medlicott
+would set us to making bread-pills, by way of practice; and, as far as I
+can say, they were very efficacious, as before we gave out a box Mrs.
+Medlicott always told the patient what symptoms to expect; and I hardly
+ever inquired without hearing that they had produced their effect. There
+was one old man, who took six pills a-night, of any kind we liked to give
+him, to make him sleep; and if, by any chance, his daughter had forgotten
+to let us know that he was out of his medicine, he was so restless and
+miserable that, as he said, he thought he was like to die. I think ours
+was what would be called homoeopathic practice now-a-days. Then we
+learnt to make all the cakes and dishes of the season in the still-room.
+We had plum-porridge and mince-pies at Christmas, fritters and pancakes
+on Shrove Tuesday, furmenty on Mothering Sunday, violet-cakes in Passion
+Week, tansy-pudding on Easter Sunday, three-cornered cakes on Trinity
+Sunday, and so on through the year: all made from good old Church
+receipts, handed down from one of my lady’s earliest Protestant
+ancestresses. Every one of us passed a portion of the day with Lady
+Ludlow; and now and then we rode out with her in her coach and four. She
+did not like to go out with a pair of horses, considering this rather
+beneath her rank; and, indeed, four horses were very often needed to pull
+her heavy coach through the stiff mud. But it was rather a cumbersome
+equipage through the narrow Warwickshire lanes; and I used often to think
+it was well that countesses were not plentiful, or else we might have met
+another lady of quality in another coach and four, where there would have
+been no possibility of turning, or passing each other, and very little
+chance of backing. Once when the idea of this danger of meeting another
+countess in a narrow, deep-rutted lane was very prominent in my mind I
+ventured to ask Mrs. Medlicott what would have to be done on such an
+occasion; and she told me that “de latest creation must back, for sure,”
+which puzzled me a good deal at the time, although I understand it now. I
+began to find out the use of the “Peerage,” a book which had seemed to me
+rather dull before; but, as I was always a coward in a coach, I made
+myself well acquainted with the dates of creation of our three
+Warwickshire earls, and was happy to find that Earl Ludlow ranked second,
+the oldest earl being a hunting widower, and not likely to drive out in a
+carriage.
+
+All this time I have wandered from Mr. Gray. Of course, we first saw
+him in church when he read himself in. He was very red-faced, the kind
+of redness which goes with light hair and a blushing complexion; he
+looked slight and short, and his bright light frizzy hair had hardly a
+dash of powder in it. I remember my lady making this observation, and
+sighing over it; for, though since the famine in seventeen hundred and
+ninety-nine and eighteen hundred there had been a tax on hair-powder,
+yet it was reckoned very revolutionary and Jacobin not to wear a good
+deal of it. My lady hardly liked the opinions of any man who wore his
+own hair; but this she would say was rather a prejudice: only in her
+youth none but the mob had gone wigless, and she could not get over
+the association of wigs with birth and breeding; a man’s own hair with
+that class of people who had formed the rioters in seventeen hundred
+and eighty, when Lord George Gordon had been one of the bugbears of my
+lady’s life. Her husband and his brothers, she told us, had been put
+into breeches, and had their heads shaved on their seventh birthday,
+each of them; a handsome little wig of the newest fashion forming the
+old Lady Ludlow’s invariable birthday present to her sons as they each
+arrived at that age; and afterwards, to the day of their death, they
+never saw their own hair. To be without powder, as some underbred
+people were talking of being now, was in fact to insult the proprieties
+of life, by being undressed. It was English sans-culottism. But Mr.
+Gray did wear a little powder, enough to save him in my lady’s good
+opinion; but not enough to make her approve of him decidedly.
+
+The next time I saw him was in the great hall. Mary Mason and I were
+going to drive out with my lady in her coach, and when we went down
+stairs with our best hats and cloaks on, we found Mr. Gray awaiting my
+lady’s coming. I believe he had paid his respects to her before, but we
+had never seen him; and he had declined her invitation to spend Sunday
+evening at the Court (as Mr. Mountford used to do pretty regularly—and
+play a game at picquet too—), which, Mrs. Medlicott told us, had caused
+my lady to be not over well pleased with him.
+
+He blushed redder than ever at the sight of us, as we entered the hall
+and dropped him our curtsies. He coughed two or three times, as if he
+would have liked to speak to us, if he could but have found something to
+say; and every time he coughed he became hotter-looking than ever. I am
+ashamed to say, we were nearly laughing at him; half because we, too,
+were so shy that we understood what his awkwardness meant.
+
+My lady came in, with her quick active step—she always walked quickly
+when she did not bethink herself of her cane—as if she was sorry to have
+us kept waiting—and, as she entered, she gave us all round one of those
+graceful sweeping curtsies, of which I think the art must have died out
+with her,—it implied so much courtesy;—this time it said, as well as
+words could do, “I am sorry to have kept you all waiting,—forgive me.”
+
+She went up to the mantelpiece, near which Mr. Gray had been standing
+until her entrance, and curtseying afresh to him, and pretty deeply this
+time, because of his cloth, and her being hostess, and he, a new guest.
+She asked him if he would not prefer speaking to her in her own private
+parlour, and looked as though she would have conducted him there. But he
+burst out with his errand, of which he was full even to choking, and
+which sent the glistening tears into his large blue eyes, which stood
+farther and farther out with his excitement.
+
+“My lady, I want to speak to you, and to persuade you to exert your kind
+interest with Mr. Lathom—Justice Lathom, of Hathaway Manor—”
+
+“Harry Lathom?” inquired my lady,—as Mr. Gray stopped to take the breath
+he had lost in his hurry,—“I did not know he was in the commission.”
+
+“He is only just appointed; he took the oaths not a month ago,—more’s
+the pity!”
+
+“I do not understand why you should regret it. The Lathoms have held
+Hathaway since Edward the First, and Mr. Lathom bears a good character,
+although his temper is hasty—”
+
+“My lady! he has committed Job Gregson for stealing—a fault of which he
+is as innocent as I—and all the evidence goes to prove it, now that the
+case is brought before the Bench; only the Squires hang so together that
+they can’t be brought to see justice, and are all for sending Job to
+gaol, out of compliment to Mr. Lathom, saying it his first committal, and
+it won’t be civil to tell him there is no evidence against his man. For
+God’s sake, my lady, speak to the gentlemen; they will attend to you,
+while they only tell me to mind my own business.”
+
+Now my lady was always inclined to stand by her order, and the Lathoms of
+Hathaway Court were cousins to the Hanbury’s. Besides, it was rather a
+point of honour in those days to encourage a young magistrate, by passing
+a pretty sharp sentence on his first committals; and Job Gregson was the
+father of a girl who had been lately turned away from her place as
+scullery-maid for sauciness to Mrs. Adams, her ladyship’s own maid; and
+Mr. Gray had not said a word of the reasons why he believed the man
+innocent,—for he was in such a hurry, I believe he would have had my
+lady drive off to the Henley Court-house then and there;—so there seemed
+a good deal against the man, and nothing but Mr. Gray’s bare word for
+him; and my lady drew herself a little up, and said—
+
+“Mr. Gray! I do not see what reason either you or I have to interfere.
+Mr. Harry Lathom is a sensible kind of young man, well capable of
+ascertaining the truth without our help—”
+
+“But more evidence has come out since,” broke in Mr. Gray. My lady went
+a little stiffer, and spoke a little more coldly:—
+
+“I suppose this additional evidence is before the justices: men of good
+family, and of honour and credit, well known in the county. They
+naturally feel that the opinion of one of themselves must have more
+weight than the words of a man like Job Gregson, who bears a very
+indifferent character,—has been strongly suspected of poaching, coming
+from no one knows where, squatting on Hareman’s Common—which, by the
+way, is extra-parochial, I believe; consequently you, as a clergyman, are
+not responsible for what goes on there; and, although impolitic, there
+might be some truth in what the magistrates said, in advising you to mind
+your own business,”—said her ladyship, smiling,—“and they might be
+tempted to bid me mind mine, if I interfered, Mr. Gray: might they not?”
+
+He looked extremely uncomfortable; half angry. Once or twice he began to
+speak, but checked himself, as if his words would not have been wise or
+prudent. At last he said—“It may seem presumptuous in me,—a stranger
+of only a few weeks’ standing—to set up my judgment as to men’s
+character against that of residents—” Lady Ludlow gave a little bow of
+acquiescence, which was, I think, involuntary on her part, and which I
+don’t think he perceived,—“but I am convinced that the man is innocent
+of this offence,—and besides, the justices themselves allege this
+ridiculous custom of paying a compliment to a newly-appointed magistrate
+as their only reason.”
+
+That unlucky word “ridiculous!” It undid all the good his modest
+beginning had done him with my lady. I knew as well as words could have
+told me, that she was affronted at the expression being used by a man
+inferior in rank to those whose actions he applied it to,—and truly, it
+was a great want of tact, considering to whom he was speaking.
+
+Lady Ludlow spoke very gently and slowly; she always did so when she was
+annoyed; it was a certain sign, the meaning of which we had all learnt.
+
+“I think, Mr. Gray, we will drop the subject. It is one on which we are
+not likely to agree.”
+
+Mr. Gray’s ruddy colour grew purple and then faded away, and his face
+became pale. I think both my lady and he had forgotten our presence; and
+we were beginning to feel too awkward to wish to remind them of it. And
+yet we could not help watching and listening with the greatest interest.
+
+Mr. Gray drew himself up to his full height, with an unconscious feeling
+of dignity. Little as was his stature, and awkward and embarrassed as he
+had been only a few minutes before, I remember thinking he looked almost
+as grand as my lady when he spoke.
+
+“Your ladyship must remember that it may be my duty to speak to my
+parishioners on many subjects on which they do not agree with me. I am
+not at liberty to be silent, because they differ in opinion from me.”
+
+Lady Ludlow’s great blue eyes dilated with surprise, and—I do
+think—anger, at being thus spoken to. I am not sure whether it was very
+wise in Mr. Gray. He himself looked afraid of the consequences but as if
+he was determined to bear them without flinching. For a minute there was
+silence. Then my lady replied—“Mr. Gray, I respect your plain-speaking,
+although I may wonder whether a young man of your age and position has
+any right to assume that he is a better judge than one with the
+experience which I have naturally gained at my time of life, and in the
+station I hold.”
+
+“If I, madam, as the clergyman of this parish, am not to shrink from
+telling what I believe to be the truth to the poor and lowly, no more am
+I to hold my peace in the presence of the rich and titled.” Mr. Gray’s
+face showed that he was in that state of excitement which in a child
+would have ended in a good fit of crying. He looked as if he had nerved
+himself up to doing and saying things, which he disliked above
+everything, and which nothing short of serious duty could have compelled
+him to do and say. And at such times every minute circumstance which
+could add to pain comes vividly before one. I saw that he became aware
+of our presence, and that it added to his discomfiture.
+
+My lady flushed up. “Are you aware, sir,” asked she, “that you have gone
+far astray from the original subject of conversation? But as you talk of
+your parish, allow me to remind you that Hareman’s Common is beyond the
+bounds, and that you are really not responsible for the characters and
+lives of the squatters on that unlucky piece of ground.”
+
+“Madam, I see I have only done harm in speaking to you about the affair
+at all. I beg your pardon and take my leave.”
+
+He bowed, and looked very sad. Lady Ludlow caught the expression of his
+face.
+
+“Good morning!” she cried, in rather a louder and quicker way than that
+in which she had been speaking. “Remember, Job Gregson is a notorious
+poacher and evildoer, and you really are not responsible for what goes on
+at Hareman’s Common.”
+
+He was near the hall door, and said something—half to himself, which we
+heard (being nearer to him), but my lady did not; although she saw that
+he spoke. “What did he say?” she asked in a somewhat hurried manner, as
+soon as the door was closed—“I did not hear.” We looked at each other,
+and then I spoke:
+
+“He said, my lady, that ‘God help him! he was responsible for all the
+evil he did not strive to overcome.’”
+
+My lady turned sharp round away from us, and Mary Mason said afterwards
+she thought her ladyship was much vexed with both of us, for having been
+present, and with me for having repeated what Mr. Gray had said. But it
+was not our fault that we were in the hall, and when my lady asked what
+Mr. Gray had said, I thought it right to tell her.
+
+In a few minutes she bade us accompany her in her ride in the coach.
+
+Lady Ludlow always sat forwards by herself, and we girls backwards.
+Somehow this was a rule, which we never thought of questioning. It was
+true that riding backwards made some of us feel very uncomfortable and
+faint; and to remedy this my lady always drove with both windows open,
+which occasionally gave her the rheumatism; but we always went on in the
+old way. This day she did not pay any great attention to the road by
+which we were going, and Coachman took his own way. We were very silent,
+as my lady did not speak, and looked very serious. Or else, in general,
+she made these rides very pleasant (to those who were not qualmish with
+riding backwards), by talking to us in a very agreeable manner, and
+telling us of the different things which had happened to her at various
+places,—at Paris and Versailles, where she had been in her youth,—at
+Windsor and Kew and Weymouth, where she had been with the Queen, when
+maid-of-honour—and so on. But this day she did not talk at all. All at
+once she put her head out of the window.
+
+“John Footman,” said she, “where are we? Surely this is Hareman’s
+Common.”
+
+“Yes, an’t please my lady,” said John Footman, and waited for further
+speech or orders. My lady thought a while, and then said she would have
+the steps put down and get out.
+
+As soon as she was gone, we looked at each other, and then without a word
+began to gaze after her. We saw her pick her dainty way in the little
+high-heeled shoes she always wore (because they had been in fashion in
+her youth), among the yellow pools of stagnant water that had gathered in
+the clayey soil. John Footman followed, stately, after; afraid too, for
+all his stateliness, of splashing his pure white stockings. Suddenly my
+lady turned round and said something to him, and he returned to the
+carriage with a half-pleased, half-puzzled air.
+
+My lady went on to a cluster of rude mud houses at the higher end of the
+Common; cottages built, as they were occasionally at that day, of wattles
+and clay, and thatched with sods. As far as we could make out from dumb
+show, Lady Ludlow saw enough of the interiors of these places to make her
+hesitate before entering, or even speaking to any of the children who
+were playing about in the puddles. After a pause, she disappeared into
+one of the cottages. It seemed to us a long time before she came out;
+but I dare say it was not more than eight or ten minutes. She came back
+with her head hanging down, as if to choose her way,—but we saw it was
+more in thought and bewilderment than for any such purpose.
+
+She had not made up her mind where we should drive to when she got into
+the carriage again. John Footman stood, bare-headed, waiting for orders.
+
+“To Hathaway. My dears, if you are tired, or if you have anything to do
+for Mrs. Medlicott, I can drop you at Barford Corner, and it is but a
+quarter of an hour’s brisk walk home.”
+
+But luckily we could safely say that Mrs. Medlicott did not want us;
+and as we had whispered to each other, as we sat alone in the coach,
+that surely my lady must have gone to Job Gregson’s, we were far too
+anxious to know the end of it all to say that we were tired. So we all
+set off to Hathaway. Mr. Harry Lathom was a bachelor squire, thirty
+or thirty-five years of age, more at home in the field than in the
+drawing-room, and with sporting men than with ladies.
+
+My lady did not alight, of course; it was Mr. Lathom’s place to wait upon
+her, and she bade the butler,—who had a smack of the gamekeeper in him,
+very unlike our own powdered venerable fine gentleman at Hanbury,—tell
+his master, with her compliments, that she wished to speak to him. You
+may think how pleased we were to find that we should hear all that was
+said; though, I think, afterwards we were half sorry when we saw how our
+presence confused the squire, who would have found it bad enough to
+answer my lady’s questions, even without two eager girls for audience.
+
+“Pray, Mr. Lathom,” began my lady, something abruptly for her,—but she
+was very full of her subject,—“what is this I hear about Job Gregson?”
+
+Mr. Lathom looked annoyed and vexed, but dared not show it in his words.
+
+“I gave out a warrant against him, my lady, for theft,—that is all. You
+are doubtless aware of his character; a man who sets nets and springes in
+long cover, and fishes wherever he takes a fancy. It is but a short step
+from poaching to thieving.”
+
+“That is quite true,” replied Lady Ludlow (who had a horror of poaching
+for this very reason): “but I imagine you do not send a man to gaol on
+account of his bad character.”
+
+“Rogues and vagabonds,” said Mr. Lathom. “A man may be sent to prison
+for being a vagabond; for no specific act, but for his general mode of
+life.”
+
+He had the better of her ladyship for one moment; but then she answered—
+
+“But in this case, the charge on which you committed him is for theft;
+now his wife tells me he can prove he was some miles distant from
+Holmwood, where the robbery took place, all that afternoon; she says you
+had the evidence before you.”
+
+Mr. Lathom here interrupted my lady, by saying, in a somewhat sulky
+manner—“No such evidence was brought before me when I gave the warrant.
+I am not answerable for the other magistrates’ decision, when they had
+more evidence before them. It was they who committed him to gaol. I am
+not responsible for that.”
+
+My lady did not often show signs of impatience; but we knew she was
+feeling irritated, by the little perpetual tapping of her high-heeled
+shoe against the bottom of the carriage. About the same time we, sitting
+backwards, caught a glimpse of Mr. Gray through the open door, standing
+in the shadow of the hall. Doubtless Lady Ludlow’s arrival had
+interrupted a conversation between Mr. Lathom and Mr. Gray. The latter
+must have heard every word of what she was saying; but of this she was
+not aware, and caught at Mr. Lathom’s disclaimer of responsibility with
+pretty much the same argument which she had heard (through our
+repetition) that Mr. Gray had used not two hours before.
+
+“And do you mean to say, Mr. Lathom, that you don’t consider yourself
+responsible for all injustice or wrong-doing that you might have
+prevented, and have not? Nay, in this case the first germ of injustice
+was your own mistake. I wish you had been with me a little while ago,
+and seen the misery in that poor fellow’s cottage.” She spoke lower, and
+Mr. Gray drew near, in a sort of involuntary manner; as if to hear all
+she was saying. We saw him, and doubtless Mr. Lathom heard his footstep,
+and knew who it was that was listening behind him, and approving of every
+word that was said. He grew yet more sullen in manner; but still my lady
+was my lady, and he dared not speak out before her, as he would have done
+to Mr. Gray. Lady Ludlow, however, caught the look of stubborness in his
+face, and it roused her as I had never seen her roused.
+
+“I am sure you will not refuse, sir, to accept my bail. I offer to bail
+the fellow out, and to be responsible for his appearance at the sessions.
+What say you to that, Mr. Lathom?”
+
+“The offence of theft is not bailable, my lady.”
+
+“Not in ordinary cases, I dare say. But I imagine this is an
+extraordinary case. The man is sent to prison out of compliment to you,
+and against all evidence, as far as I can learn. He will have to rot in
+gaol for two months, and his wife and children to starve. I, Lady
+Ludlow, offer to bail him out, and pledge myself for his appearance at
+next quarter-sessions.”
+
+“It is against the law, my lady.”
+
+“Bah! Bah! Bah! Who makes laws? Such as I, in the House of Lords—such
+as you, in the House of Commons. We, who make the laws in St. Stephen’s,
+may break the mere forms of them, when we have right on our sides, on our
+own land, and amongst our own people.”
+
+“The lord-lieutenant may take away my commission, if he heard of it.”
+
+“And a very good thing for the county, Harry Lathom; and for you too, if
+he did,—if you don’t go on more wisely than you have begun. A pretty
+set you and your brother magistrates are to administer justice through
+the land! I always said a good despotism was the best form of
+government; and I am twice as much in favour of it now I see what a
+quorum is! My dears!” suddenly turning round to us, “if it would not
+tire you to walk home, I would beg Mr. Lathom to take a seat in my coach,
+and we would drive to Henley Gaol, and have the poor man out at once.”
+
+“A walk over the fields at this time of day is hardly fitting for young
+ladies to take alone,” said Mr. Lathom, anxious no doubt to escape from
+his tete-a-tete drive with my lady, and possibly not quite prepared to go
+to the illegal length of prompt measures, which she had in contemplation.
+
+But Mr. Gray now stepped forward, too anxious for the release of the
+prisoner to allow any obstacle to intervene which he could do away with.
+To see Lady Ludlow’s face when she first perceived whom she had had for
+auditor and spectator of her interview with Mr. Lathom, was as good as a
+play. She had been doing and saying the very things she had been so much
+annoyed at Mr. Gray’s saying and proposing only an hour or two ago. She
+had been setting down Mr. Lathom pretty smartly, in the presence of the
+very man to whom she had spoken of that gentleman as so sensible, and of
+such a standing in the county, that it was presumption to question his
+doings. But before Mr. Gray had finished his offer of escorting us back
+to Hanbury Court, my lady had recovered herself. There was neither
+surprise nor displeasure in her manner, as she answered—“I thank you,
+Mr. Gray. I was not aware that you were here, but I think I can
+understand on what errand you came. And seeing you here, recalls me to a
+duty I owe Mr. Lathom. Mr. Lathom, I have spoken to you pretty
+plainly,—forgetting, until I saw Mr. Gray, that only this very afternoon
+I differed from him on this very question; taking completely, at that
+time, the same view of the whole subject which you have done; thinking
+that the county would be well rid of such a man as Job Gregson, whether
+he had committed this theft or not. Mr. Gray and I did not part quite
+friends,” she continued, bowing towards him; “but it so happened that I
+saw Job Gregson’s wife and home,—I felt that Mr. Gray had been right and
+I had been wrong, so, with the famous inconsistency of my sex, I came
+hither to scold you,” smiling towards Mr. Lathom, who looked half-sulky
+yet, and did not relax a bit of his gravity at her smile, “for holding
+the same opinions that I had done an hour before. Mr. Gray,” (again
+bowing towards him) “these young ladies will be very much obliged to you
+for your escort, and so shall I. Mr. Lathom, may I beg of you to
+accompany me to Henley?”
+
+Mr. Gray bowed very low, and went very red; Mr. Lathom said something
+which we none of us heard, but which was, I think, some remonstrance
+against the course he was, as it were, compelled to take. Lady Ludlow,
+however, took no notice of his murmur, but sat in an attitude of polite
+expectancy; and as we turned off on our walk, I saw Mr. Lathom getting
+into the coach with the air of a whipped hound. I must say, considering
+my lady’s feeling, I did not envy him his ride—though, I believe, he was
+quite in the right as to the object of the ride being illegal.
+
+Our walk home was very dull. We had no fears; and would far rather have
+been without the awkward, blushing young man, into which Mr. Gray had
+sunk. At every stile he hesitated,—sometimes he half got over it,
+thinking that he could assist us better in that way; then he would turn
+back unwilling to go before ladies. He had no ease of manner, as my lady
+once said of him, though on any occasion of duty, he had an immense deal
+of dignity.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+As far as I can remember, it was very soon after this that I first began
+to have the pain in my hip, which has ended in making me a cripple for
+life. I hardly recollect more than one walk after our return under Mr.
+Gray’s escort from Mr. Lathom’s. Indeed, at the time, I was not without
+suspicions (which I never named) that the beginning of all the mischief
+was a great jump I had taken from the top of one of the stiles on that
+very occasion.
+
+Well, it is a long while ago, and God disposes of us all, and I am not
+going to tire you out with telling you how I thought and felt, and how,
+when I saw what my life was to be, I could hardly bring myself to be
+patient, but rather wished to die at once. You can every one of you
+think for yourselves what becoming all at once useless and unable to
+move, and by-and-by growing hopeless of cure, and feeling that one must
+be a burden to some one all one’s life long, would be to an active,
+wilful, strong girl of seventeen, anxious to get on in the world, so as,
+if possible, to help her brothers and sisters. So I shall only say, that
+one among the blessings which arose out of what seemed at the time a
+great, black sorrow was, that Lady Ludlow for many years took me, as it
+were, into her own especial charge; and now, as I lie still and alone in
+my old age, it is such a pleasure to think of her!
+
+Mrs. Medlicott was great as a nurse, and I am sure I can never be
+grateful enough to her memory for all her kindness. But she was puzzled
+to know how to manage me in other ways. I used to have long, hard fits
+of crying; and, thinking that I ought to go home—and yet what could they
+do with me there?—and a hundred and fifty other anxious thoughts, some
+of which I could tell to Mrs. Medlicott, and others I could not. Her way
+of comforting me was hurrying away for some kind of tempting or
+strengthening food—a basin of melted calves-foot jelly was, I am sure
+she thought, a cure for every woe.
+
+“There take it, dear, take it!” she would say; “and don’t go on fretting
+for what can’t be helped.”
+
+But, I think, she got puzzled at length at the non-efficacy of good
+things to eat; and one day, after I had limped down to see the doctor, in
+Mrs. Medlicott’s sitting-room—a room lined with cupboards, containing
+preserves and dainties of all kinds, which she perpetually made, and
+never touched herself—when I was returning to my bed-room to cry away
+the afternoon, under pretence of arranging my clothes, John Footman
+brought me a message from my lady (with whom the doctor had been having a
+conversation) to bid me go to her in that private sitting-room at the end
+of the suite of apartments, about which I spoke in describing the day of
+my first arrival at Hanbury. I had hardly been in it since; as, when we
+read to my lady, she generally sat in the small withdrawing-room out of
+which this private room of hers opened. I suppose great people do not
+require what we smaller people value so much,—I mean privacy. I do not
+think that there was a room which my lady occupied that had not two
+doors, and some of them had three or four. Then my lady had always Adams
+waiting upon her in her bed-chamber; and it was Mrs. Medlicott’s duty to
+sit within call, as it were, in a sort of anteroom that led out of my
+lady’s own sitting-room, on the opposite side to the drawing-room door.
+To fancy the house, you must take a great square and halve it by a line:
+at one end of this line was the hall door, or public entrance; at the
+opposite the private entrance from a terrace, which was terminated at one
+end by a sort of postern door in an old gray stone wall, beyond which lay
+the farm buildings and offices; so that people could come in this way to
+my lady on business, while, if she were going into the garden from her
+own room, she had nothing to do but to pass through Mrs. Medlicott’s
+apartment, out into the lesser hall, and then turning to the right as she
+passed on to the terrace, she could go down the flight of broad, shallow
+steps at the corner of the house into the lovely garden, with stretching,
+sweeping lawns, and gay flower-beds, and beautiful, bossy laurels, and
+other blooming or massy shrubs, with full-grown beeches, or larches
+feathering down to the ground a little farther off. The whole was set in
+a frame, as it were, by the more distant woodlands. The house had been
+modernized in the days of Queen Anne, I think; but the money had fallen
+short that was requisite to carry out all the improvements, so it was
+only the suite of withdrawing-rooms and the terrace-rooms, as far as the
+private entrance, that had the new, long, high windows put in, and these
+were old enough by this time to be draped with roses, and honeysuckles,
+and pyracanthus, winter and summer long.
+
+Well, to go back to that day when I limped into my lady’s sitting-room,
+trying hard to look as if I had not been crying, and not to walk as if I
+was in much pain. I do not know whether my lady saw how near my tears
+were to my eyes, but she told me she had sent for me, because she wanted
+some help in arranging the drawers of her bureau, and asked me—just as
+if it was a favour I was to do her—if I could sit down in the easy-chair
+near the window—(all quietly arranged before I came in, with a
+footstool, and a table quite near)—and assist her. You will wonder,
+perhaps, why I was not bidden to sit or lie on the sofa; but (although I
+found one there a morning or two afterwards, when I came down) the fact
+was, that there was none in the room at this time. I have even fancied
+that the easy-chair was brought in on purpose for me; for it was not the
+chair in which I remembered my lady sitting the first time I saw her.
+That chair was very much carved and gilded, with a countess’ coronet at
+the top. I tried it one day, some time afterwards, when my lady was out
+of the room, and I had a fancy for seeing how I could move about, and
+very uncomfortable it was. Now my chair (as I learnt to call it, and to
+think it) was soft and luxurious, and seemed somehow to give one’s body
+rest just in that part where one most needed it.
+
+I was not at my ease that first day, nor indeed for many days afterwards,
+notwithstanding my chair was so comfortable. Yet I forgot my sad pain in
+silently wondering over the meaning of many of the things we turned out
+of those curious old drawers. I was puzzled to know why some were kept
+at all; a scrap of writing maybe, with only half a dozen common-place
+words written on it, or a bit of broken riding-whip, and here and there a
+stone, of which I thought I could have picked up twenty just as good in
+the first walk I took. But it seems that was just my ignorance; for my
+lady told me they were pieces of valuable marble, used to make the floors
+of the great Roman emperors palaces long ago; and that when she had been
+a girl, and made the grand tour long ago, her cousin Sir Horace Mann, the
+Ambassador or Envoy at Florence, had told her to be sure to go into the
+fields inside the walls of ancient Rome, when the farmers were preparing
+the ground for the onion-sowing, and had to make the soil fine, and pick
+up what bits of marble she could find. She had done so, and meant to
+have had them made into a table; but somehow that plan fell through, and
+there they were with all the dirt out of the onion-field upon them; but
+once when I thought of cleaning them with soap and water, at any rate,
+she bade me not to do so, for it was Roman dirt—earth, I think, she
+called it—but it was dirt all the same.
+
+Then, in this bureau, were many other things, the value of which I could
+understand—locks of hair carefully ticketed, which my lady looked at
+very sadly; and lockets and bracelets with miniatures in them,—very
+small pictures to what they make now-a-days, and called miniatures: some
+of them had even to be looked at through a microscope before you could
+see the individual expression of the faces, or how beautifully they were
+painted. I don’t think that looking at these made may lady seem so
+melancholy, as the seeing and touching of the hair did. But, to be sure,
+the hair was, as it were, a part of some beloved body which she might
+never touch and caress again, but which lay beneath the turf, all faded
+and disfigured, except perhaps the very hair, from which the lock she
+held had been dissevered; whereas the pictures were but pictures after
+all—likenesses, but not the very things themselves. This is only my own
+conjecture, mind. My lady rarely spoke out her feelings. For, to begin
+with, she was of rank: and I have heard her say that people of rank do
+not talk about their feelings except to their equals, and even to them
+they conceal them, except upon rare occasions. Secondly,—and this is my
+own reflection,—she was an only child and an heiress; and as such was
+more apt to think than to talk, as all well-brought-up heiresses must be.
+I think. Thirdly, she had long been a widow, without any companion of
+her own age with whom it would have been natural for her to refer to old
+associations, past pleasures, or mutual sorrows. Mrs. Medlicott came
+nearest to her as a companion of this sort; and her ladyship talked more
+to Mrs. Medlicott, in a kind of familiar way, than she did to all the
+rest of the household put together. But Mrs. Medlicott was silent by
+nature, and did not reply at any great length. Adams, indeed, was the
+only one who spoke much to Lady Ludlow.
+
+After we had worked away about an hour at the bureau, her ladyship
+said we had done enough for one day; and as the time was come for her
+afternoon ride, she left me, with a volume of engravings from Mr.
+Hogarth’s pictures on one side of me (I don’t like to write down the
+names of them, though my lady thought nothing of it, I am sure), and
+upon a stand her great prayer-book open at the evening psalms for the
+day, on the other. But as soon as she was gone, I troubled myself
+little with either, but amused myself with looking round the room at my
+leisure. The side on which the fire-place stood was all panelled,—part
+of the old ornaments of the house, for there was an Indian paper with
+birds and beasts and insects on it, on all the other sides. There
+were coats of arms, of the various families with whom the Hanburys
+had intermarried, all over these panels, and up and down the ceiling
+as well. There was very little looking-glass in the room, though one
+of the great drawing-rooms was called the “Mirror Room,” because it
+was lined with glass, which my lady’s great-grandfather had brought
+from Venice when he was ambassador there. There were china jars of all
+shapes and sizes round and about the room, and some china monsters, or
+idols, of which I could never bear the sight, they were so ugly, though
+I think my lady valued them more than all. There was a thick carpet on
+the middle of the floor, which was made of small pieces of rare wood
+fitted into a pattern; the doors were opposite to each other, and were
+composed of two heavy tall wings, and opened in the middle, moving on
+brass grooves inserted into the floor—they would not have opened over
+a carpet. There were two windows reaching up nearly to the ceiling,
+but very narrow and with deep window-seats in the thickness of the
+wall. The room was full of scent, partly from the flowers outside, and
+partly from the great jars of pot-pourri inside. The choice of odours
+was what my lady piqued herself upon, saying nothing showed birth like
+a keen susceptibility of smell. We never named musk in her presence,
+her antipathy to it was so well understood through the household:
+her opinion on the subject was believed to be, that no scent derived
+from an animal could ever be of a sufficiently pure nature to give
+pleasure to any person of good family, where, of course, the delicate
+perception of the senses had been cultivated for generations. She would
+instance the way in which sportsmen preserve the breed of dogs who have
+shown keen scent; and how such gifts descend for generations amongst
+animals, who cannot be supposed to have anything of ancestral pride,
+or hereditary fancies about them. Musk, then, was never mentioned
+at Hanbury Court. No more were bergamot or southern-wood, although
+vegetable in their nature. She considered these two latter as betraying
+a vulgar taste in the person who chose to gather or wear them. She was
+sorry to notice sprigs of them in the button-hole of any young man in
+whom she took an interest, either because he was engaged to a servant
+of hers or otherwise, as he came out of church on a Sunday afternoon.
+She was afraid that he liked coarse pleasures; and I am not sure if
+she did not think that his preference for these coarse sweetnesses
+did not imply a probability that he would take to drinking. But she
+distinguished between vulgar and common. Violets, pinks, and sweetbriar
+were common enough; roses and mignionette, for those who had gardens,
+honeysuckle for those who walked along the bowery lanes; but wearing
+them betrayed no vulgarity of taste: the queen upon her throne might be
+glad to smell at a nosegay of the flowers. A beau-pot (as we called
+it) of pinks and roses freshly gathered was placed every morning that
+they were in bloom on my lady’s own particular table. For lasting
+vegetable odours she preferred lavender and sweet woodroof to any
+extract whatever. Lavender reminded her of old customs, she said, and
+of homely cottage-gardens, and many a cottager made his offering to her
+of a bundle of lavender. Sweet woodroof, again, grew in wild, woodland
+places where the soil was fine and the air delicate: the poor children
+used to go and gather it for her up in the woods on the higher lands;
+and for this service she always rewarded them with bright new pennies,
+of which my lord, her son, used to send her down a bagful fresh from
+the Mint in London every February.
+
+Attar of roses, again, she disliked. She said it reminded her of the
+city and of merchants’ wives, over-rich, over-heavy in its perfume. And
+lilies-of-the-valley somehow fell under the same condemnation. They were
+most graceful and elegant to look at (my lady was quite candid about
+this), flower, leaf, colour—everything was refined about them but the
+smell. That was too strong. But the great hereditary faculty on which
+my lady piqued herself, and with reason, for I never met with any person
+who possessed it, was the power she had of perceiving the delicious odour
+arising from a bed of strawberries in the late autumn, when the leaves
+were all fading and dying. “Bacon’s Essays” was one of the few books
+that lay about in my lady’s room; and if you took it up and opened it
+carelessly, it was sure to fall apart at his “Essay on Gardens.”
+“Listen,” her ladyship would say, “to what that great philosopher and
+statesman says. ‘Next to that,’—he is speaking of violets, my dear,—‘is
+the musk-rose,’—of which you remember the great bush, at the corner of
+the south wall just by the Blue Drawing-room windows; that is the old
+musk-rose, Shakespeare’s musk-rose, which is dying out through the
+kingdom now. But to return to my Lord Bacon: ‘Then the strawberry
+leaves, dying with a most excellent cordial smell.’ Now the Hanburys can
+always smell this excellent cordial odour, and very delicious and
+refreshing it is. You see, in Lord Bacon’s time, there had not been so
+many intermarriages between the court and the city as there have been
+since the needy days of his Majesty Charles the Second; and altogether in
+the time of Queen Elizabeth, the great, old families of England were a
+distinct race, just as a cart-horse is one creature, and very useful in
+its place, and Childers or Eclipse is another creature, though both are
+of the same species. So the old families have gifts and powers of a
+different and higher class to what the other orders have. My dear,
+remember that you try if you can smell the scent of dying
+strawberry-leaves in this next autumn. You have some of Ursula Hanbury’s
+blood in you, and that gives you a chance.”
+
+But when October came, I sniffed and sniffed, and all to no purpose; and
+my lady—who had watched the little experiment rather anxiously—had to
+give me up as a hybrid. I was mortified, I confess, and thought that it
+was in some ostentation of her own powers that she ordered the gardener
+to plant a border of strawberries on that side of the terrace that lay
+under her windows.
+
+I have wandered away from time and place. I tell you all the
+remembrances I have of those years just as they come up, and I hope that,
+in my old age, I am not getting too like a certain Mrs. Nickleby, whose
+speeches were once read out aloud to me.
+
+I came by degrees to be all day long in this room which I have been
+describing; sometimes sitting in the easy-chair, doing some little piece
+of dainty work for my lady, or sometimes arranging flowers, or sorting
+letters according to their handwriting, so that she could arrange them
+afterwards, and destroy or keep, as she planned, looking ever onward to
+her death. Then, after the sofa was brought in, she would watch my face,
+and if she saw my colour change, she would bid me lie down and rest. And
+I used to try to walk upon the terrace every day for a short time: it
+hurt me very much, it is true, but the doctor had ordered it, and I knew
+her ladyship wished me to obey.
+
+Before I had seen the background of a great lady’s life, I had thought it
+all play and fine doings. But whatever other grand people are, my lady
+was never idle. For one thing, she had to superintend the agent for the
+large Hanbury estate. I believe it was mortgaged for a sum of money
+which had gone to improve the late lord’s Scotch lands; but she was
+anxious to pay off this before her death, and so to leave her own
+inheritance free of incumbrance to her son, the present Earl; whom, I
+secretly think, she considered a greater person, as being the heir of the
+Hanburys (though through a female line), than as being my Lord Ludlow
+with half a dozen other minor titles.
+
+With this wish of releasing her property from the mortgage, skilful
+care was much needed in the management of it; and as far as my lady
+could go, she took every pains. She had a great book, in which every
+page was ruled into three divisions; on the first column was written
+the date and the name of the tenant who addressed any letter on
+business to her; on the second was briefly stated the subject of the
+letter, which generally contained a request of some kind. This request
+would be surrounded and enveloped in so many words, and often inserted
+amidst so many odd reasons and excuses, that Mr. Horner (the steward)
+would sometimes say it was like hunting through a bushel of chaff
+to find a grain of wheat. Now, in the second column of this book,
+the grain of meaning was placed, clean and dry, before her ladyship
+every morning. She sometimes would ask to see the original letter;
+sometimes she simply answered the request by a “Yes,” or a “No;” and
+often she would send for lenses and papers, and examine them well, with
+Mr. Horner at her elbow, to see if such petitions, as to be allowed
+to plough up pasture fields, were provided for in the terms of the
+original agreement. On every Thursday she made herself at liberty to
+see her tenants, from four to six in the afternoon. Mornings would have
+suited my lady better, as far as convenience went, and I believe the
+old custom had been to have these levees (as her ladyship used to call
+them) held before twelve. But, as she said to Mr. Horner, when he urged
+returning to the former hours, it spoilt a whole day for a farmer, if
+he had to dress himself in his best and leave his work in the forenoon
+(and my lady liked to see her tenants come in their Sunday clothes;
+she would not say a word, maybe, but she would take her spectacles
+slowly out, and put them on with silent gravity, and look at a dirty or
+raggedly-dressed man so solemnly and earnestly, that his nerves must
+have been pretty strong if he did not wince, and resolve that, however
+poor he might be, soap and water, and needle and thread, should be used
+before he again appeared in her ladyship’s anteroom). The outlying
+tenants had always a supper provided for them in the servants’-hall on
+Thursdays, to which, indeed all comers were welcome to sit down. For
+my lady said, though there were not many hours left of a working man’s
+day when their business with her was ended, yet that they needed food
+and rest, and that she should be ashamed if they sought either at the
+Fighting Lion (called at this day the Hanbury Arms). They had as much
+beer as they could drink while they were eating; and when the food was
+cleared away, they had a cup a piece of good ale, in which the oldest
+tenant present, standing up, gave Madam’s health; and after that was
+drunk, they were expected to set off homewards; at any rate, no more
+liquor was given them. The tenants one and all called her “Madam;”
+for they recognized in her the married heiress of the Hanburys, not
+the widow of a Lord Ludlow, of whom they and their forefathers knew
+nothing; and against whose memory, indeed, there rankled a dim unspoken
+grudge, the cause of which was accurately known to the very few who
+understood the nature of a mortgage, and were therefore aware that
+Madam’s money had been taken to enrich my lord’s poor land in Scotland.
+I am sure—for you can understand I was behind the scenes, as it were,
+and had many an opportunity of seeing and hearing, as I lay or sat
+motionless in my lady’s room with the double doors open between it
+and the anteroom beyond, where Lady Ludlow saw her steward, and gave
+audience to her tenants,—I am certain, I say, that Mr. Horner was
+silently as much annoyed at the money that was swallowed up by this
+mortgage as any one; and, some time or other, he had probably spoken
+his mind out to my lady; for there was a sort of offended reference
+on her part, and respectful submission to blame on his, while every
+now and then there was an implied protest—whenever the payments of
+the interest became due, or whenever my lady stinted herself of any
+personal expense, such as Mr. Horner thought was only decorous and
+becoming in the heiress of the Hanburys. Her carriages were old and
+cumbrous, wanting all the improvements which had been adopted by those
+of her rank throughout the county. Mr. Horner would fain have had the
+ordering of a new coach. The carriage-horses, too, were getting past
+their work; yet all the promising colts bred on the estate were sold
+for ready money; and so on. My lord, her son, was ambassador at some
+foreign place; and very proud we all were of his glory and dignity;
+but I fancy it cost money, and my lady would have lived on bread and
+water sooner than have called upon him to help her in paying off the
+mortgage, although he was the one who was to benefit by it in the end.
+
+Mr. Horner was a very faithful steward, and very respectful to my lady;
+although sometimes, I thought she was sharper to him than to any one
+else; perhaps because she knew that, although he never said anything, he
+disapproved of the Hanburys being made to pay for the Earl Ludlow’s
+estates and state.
+
+The late lord had been a sailor, and had been as extravagant in his
+habits as most sailors are, I am told,—for I never saw the sea; and yet
+he had a long sight to his own interests; but whatever he was, my lady
+loved him and his memory, with about as fond and proud a love as ever
+wife gave husband, I should think.
+
+For a part of his life Mr. Horner, who was born on the Hanbury property,
+had been a clerk to an attorney in Birmingham; and these few years had
+given him a kind of worldly wisdom, which, though always exerted for her
+benefit, was antipathetic to her ladyship, who thought that some of her
+steward’s maxims savoured of trade and commerce. I fancy that if it had
+been possible, she would have preferred a return to the primitive system,
+of living on the produce of the land, and exchanging the surplus for such
+articles as were needed, without the intervention of money.
+
+But Mr. Horner was bitten with new-fangled notions, as she would say,
+though his new-fangled notions were what folk at the present day would
+think sadly behindhand; and some of Mr. Gray’s ideas fell on Mr. Horner’s
+mind like sparks on tow, though they started from two different points.
+Mr. Horner wanted to make every man useful and active in this world, and
+to direct as much activity and usefulness as possible to the improvement
+of the Hanbury estates, and the aggrandisement of the Hanbury family, and
+therefore he fell into the new cry for education.
+
+Mr. Gray did not care much,—Mr. Horner thought not enough,—for this
+world, and where any man or family stood in their earthly position; but
+he would have every one prepared for the world to come, and capable of
+understanding and receiving certain doctrines, for which latter purpose,
+it stands to reason, he must have heard of these doctrines; and therefore
+Mr. Gray wanted education. The answer in the Catechism that Mr. Horner
+was most fond of calling upon a child to repeat, was that to, “What is
+thy duty towards thy neighbour?” The answer Mr. Gray liked best to hear
+repeated with unction, was that to the question, “What is the inward and
+spiritual grace?” The reply to which Lady Ludlow bent her head the
+lowest, as we said our Catechism to her on Sundays, was to, “What is thy
+duty towards God?” But neither Mr. Horner nor Mr. Gray had heard many
+answers to the Catechism as yet.
+
+Up to this time there was no Sunday-school in Hanbury. Mr. Gray’s
+desires were bounded by that object. Mr. Horner looked farther on: he
+hoped for a day-school at some future time, to train up intelligent
+labourers for working on the estate. My lady would hear of neither one
+nor the other: indeed, not the boldest man whom she ever saw would have
+dared to name the project of a day-school within her hearing.
+
+So Mr. Horner contented himself with quietly teaching a sharp, clever lad
+to read and write, with a view to making use of him as a kind of foreman
+in process of time. He had his pick of the farm-lads for this purpose;
+and, as the brightest and sharpest, although by far the raggedest and
+dirtiest, singled out Job Gregson’s son. But all this—as my lady never
+listened to gossip, or indeed, was spoken to unless she spoke first—was
+quite unknown to her, until the unlucky incident took place which I am
+going to relate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+I think my lady was not aware of Mr. Horner’s views on education (as
+making men into more useful members of society), or the practice to which
+he was putting his precepts in taking Harry Gregson as pupil and protege;
+if, indeed, she were aware of Harry’s distinct existence at all, until
+the following unfortunate occasion. The anteroom, which was a kind of
+business-place for my lady to receive her steward and tenants in, was
+surrounded by shelves. I cannot call them book-shelves, though there
+were many books on them; but the contents of the volumes were principally
+manuscript, and relating to details connected with the Hanbury property.
+There were also one or two dictionaries, gazetteers, works of reference
+on the management of property; all of a very old date (the dictionary was
+Bailey’s, I remember; we had a great Johnson in my lady’s room, but where
+lexicographers differed, she generally preferred Bailey).
+
+In this antechamber a footman generally sat, awaiting orders from my
+lady; for she clung to the grand old customs, and despised any bells,
+except her own little hand-bell, as modern inventions; she would have her
+people always within summons of this silvery bell, or her scarce less
+silvery voice. This man had not the sinecure you might imagine. He had
+to reply to the private entrance; what we should call the back door in a
+smaller house. As none came to the front door but my lady, and those of
+the county whom she honoured by visiting, and her nearest acquaintance of
+this kind lived eight miles (of bad road) off, the majority of comers
+knocked at the nail-studded terrace-door; not to have it opened (for open
+it stood, by my lady’s orders, winter and summer, so that the snow often
+drifted into the back hall, and lay there in heaps when the weather was
+severe), but to summon some one to receive their message, or carry their
+request to be allowed to speak to my lady. I remember it was long before
+Mr. Gray could be made to understand that the great door was only open on
+state occasions, and even to the last he would as soon come in by that as
+the terrace entrance. I had been received there on my first setting foot
+over my lady’s threshold; every stranger was led in by that way the first
+time they came; but after that (with the exceptions I have named) they
+went round by the terrace, as it were by instinct. It was an assistance
+to this instinct to be aware that from time immemorial, the magnificent
+and fierce Hanbury wolf-hounds, which were extinct in every other part of
+the island, had been and still were kept chained in the front quadrangle,
+where they bayed through a great part of the day and night and were
+always ready with their deep, savage growl at the sight of every person
+and thing, excepting the man who fed them, my lady’s carriage and four,
+and my lady herself. It was pretty to see her small figure go up to the
+great, crouching brutes thumping the flags with their heavy, wagging
+tails, and slobbering in an ecstacy of delight, at her light approach and
+soft caress. She had no fear of them; but she was a Hanbury born, and
+the tale went, that they and their kind knew all Hanburys instantly, and
+acknowledged their supremacy, ever since the ancestors of the breed had
+been brought from the East by the great Sir Urian Hanbury, who lay with
+his legs crossed on the altar-tomb in the church. Moreover, it was
+reported that, not fifty years before, one of these dogs had eaten up a
+child, which had inadvertently strayed within reach of its chain. So you
+may imagine how most people preferred the terrace-door. Mr. Gray did not
+seem to care for the dogs. It might be absence of mind, for I have heard
+of his starting away from their sudden spring when he had unwittingly
+walked within reach of their chains: but it could hardly have been
+absence of mind, when one day he went right up to one of them, and patted
+him in the most friendly manner, the dog meanwhile looking pleased, and
+affably wagging his tail, just as if Mr. Gray had been a Hanbury. We
+were all very much puzzled by this, and to this day I have not been able
+to account for it.
+
+But now let us go back to the terrace-door, and the footman sitting in
+the antechamber.
+
+One morning we heard a parleying, which rose to such a vehemence, and
+lasted for so long, that my lady had to ring her hand-bell twice before
+the footman heard it.
+
+“What is the matter, John?” asked she, when he entered,
+
+“A little boy, my lady, who says he comes from Mr. Horner, and must see
+your ladyship. Impudent little lad!” (This last to himself.)
+
+“What does he want?”
+
+“That’s just what I have asked him, my lady, but he won’t tell me, please
+your ladyship.”
+
+“It is, probably, some message from Mr. Horner,” said Lady Ludlow, with
+just a shade of annoyance in her manner; for it was against all etiquette
+to send a message to her, and by such a messenger too!
+
+“No! please your ladyship, I asked him if he had any message, and he said
+no, he had none; but he must see your ladyship for all that.”
+
+“You had better show him in then, without more words,” said her ladyship,
+quietly, but still, as I have said, rather annoyed.
+
+As if in mockery of the humble visitor, the footman threw open both
+battants of the door, and in the opening there stood a lithe, wiry lad,
+with a thick head of hair, standing out in every direction, as if stirred
+by some electrical current, a short, brown face, red now from affright
+and excitement, wide, resolute mouth, and bright, deep-set eyes, which
+glanced keenly and rapidly round the room, as if taking in everything
+(and all was new and strange), to be thought and puzzled over at some
+future time. He knew enough of manners not to speak first to one above
+him in rank, or else he was afraid.
+
+“What do you want with me?” asked my lady; in so gentle a tone that it
+seemed to surprise and stun him.
+
+“An’t please your ladyship?” said he, as if he had been deaf.
+
+“You come from Mr. Horner’s: why do you want to see me?” again asked she,
+a little more loudly.
+
+“An’t please your ladyship, Mr. Horner was sent for all on a sudden to
+Warwick this morning.”
+
+His face began to work; but he felt it, and closed his lips into a
+resolute form.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“And he went off all on a sudden like.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“And he left a note for your ladyship with me, your ladyship.”
+
+“Is that all? You might have given it to the footman.”
+
+“Please your ladyship, I’ve clean gone and lost it.”
+
+He never took his eyes off her face. If he had not kept his look fixed,
+he would have burst out crying.
+
+“That was very careless,” said my lady gently. “But I am sure you are
+very sorry for it. You had better try and find it; it may have been of
+consequence.
+
+“Please, mum—please your ladyship—I can say it off by heart.”
+
+“You! What do you mean?” I was really afraid now. My lady’s blue eyes
+absolutely gave out light, she was so much displeased, and, moreover,
+perplexed. The more reason he had for affright, the more his courage
+rose. He must have seen,—so sharp a lad must have perceived her
+displeasure; but he went on quickly and steadily.
+
+“Mr. Horner, my lady, has taught me to read, write, and cast accounts, my
+lady. And he was in a hurry, and he folded his paper up, but he did not
+seal it; and I read it, my lady; and now, my lady, it seems like as if I
+had got it off by heart;” and he went on with a high pitched voice,
+saying out very loud what, I have no doubt, were the identical words of
+the letter, date, signature and all: it was merely something about a
+deed, which required my lady’s signature.
+
+When he had done, he stood almost as if he expected commendation for his
+accurate memory.
+
+My lady’s eyes contracted till the pupils were as needle-points; it was a
+way she had when much disturbed. She looked at me and said—
+
+“Margaret Dawson, what will this world come to?” And then she was
+silent.
+
+The lad, beginning to perceive he had given deep offence, stood stock
+still—as if his brave will had brought him into this presence, and
+impelled him to confession, and the best amends he could make, but had
+now deserted him, or was extinct, and left his body motionless, until
+some one else with word or deed made him quit the room. My lady looked
+again at him, and saw the frowning, dumb-foundering terror at his
+misdeed, and the manner in which his confession had been received.
+
+“My poor lad!” said she, the angry look leaving her face, “into whose
+hands have you fallen?”
+
+The boy’s lips began to quiver.
+
+“Don’t you know what tree we read of in Genesis?—No! I hope you have
+not got to read so easily as that.” A pause. “Who has taught you to
+read and write?”
+
+“Please, my lady, I meant no harm, my lady.” He was fairly blubbering,
+overcome by her evident feeling of dismay and regret, the soft repression
+of which was more frightening to him than any strong or violent words
+would have been.
+
+“Who taught you, I ask?”
+
+“It were Mr. Horner’s clerk who learned me, my lady.”
+
+“And did Mr. Horner know of it?”
+
+“Yes, my lady. And I am sure I thought for to please him.”
+
+“Well! perhaps you were not to blame for that. But I wonder at Mr.
+Horner. However, my boy, as you have got possession of edge-tools, you
+must have some rules how to use them. Did you never hear that you were
+not to open letters?”
+
+“Please, my lady, it were open. Mr. Horner forgot for to seal it, in his
+hurry to be off.”
+
+“But you must not read letters that are not intended for you. You must
+never try to read any letters that are not directed to you, even if they
+be open before you.”
+
+“Please, may lady, I thought it were good for practice, all as one as a
+book.”
+
+My lady looked bewildered as to what way she could farther explain to him
+the laws of honour as regarded letters.
+
+“You would not listen, I am sure,” said she, “to anything you were not
+intended to hear?”
+
+He hesitated for a moment, partly because he did not fully comprehend the
+question. My lady repeated it. The light of intelligence came into his
+eager eyes, and I could see that he was not certain if he could tell the
+truth.
+
+“Please, my lady, I always hearken when I hear folk talking secrets; but
+I mean no harm.”
+
+My poor lady sighed: she was not prepared to begin a long way off in
+morals. Honour was, to her, second nature, and she had never tried to
+find out on what principle its laws were based. So, telling the lad that
+she wished to see Mr. Horner when he returned from Warwick, she dismissed
+him with a despondent look; he, meanwhile, right glad to be out of the
+awful gentleness of her presence.
+
+“What is to be done?” said she, half to herself and half to me. I could
+not answer, for I was puzzled myself.
+
+“It was a right word,” she continued, “that I used, when I called reading
+and writing ‘edge-tools.’ If our lower orders have these edge-tools
+given to them, we shall have the terrible scenes of the French Revolution
+acted over again in England. When I was a girl, one never heard of the
+rights of men, one only heard of the duties. Now, here was Mr. Gray,
+only last night, talking of the right every child had to instruction. I
+could hardly keep my patience with him, and at length we fairly came to
+words; and I told him I would have no such thing as a Sunday-school (or a
+Sabbath-school, as he calls it, just like a Jew) in my village.”
+
+“And what did he say, my lady?” I asked; for the struggle that seemed now
+to have come to a crisis, had been going on for some time in a quiet way.
+
+“Why, he gave way to temper, and said he was bound to remember, he was
+under the bishop’s authority, not under mine; and implied that he should
+persevere in his designs, notwithstanding my expressed opinion.”
+
+“And your ladyship—” I half inquired.
+
+“I could only rise and curtsey, and civilly dismiss him. When two
+persons have arrived at a certain point of expression on a subject, about
+which they differ as materially as I do from Mr. Gray, the wisest course,
+if they wish to remain friends, is to drop the conversation entirely and
+suddenly. It is one of the few cases where abruptness is desirable.”
+
+I was sorry for Mr. Gray. He had been to see me several times, and had
+helped me to bear my illness in a better spirit than I should have done
+without his good advice and prayers. And I had gathered from little
+things he said, how much his heart was set upon this new scheme. I liked
+him so much, and I loved and respected my lady so well, that I could not
+bear them to be on the cool terms to which they were constantly getting.
+Yet I could do nothing but keep silence.
+
+I suppose my lady understood something of what was passing in my mind;
+for, after a minute or two, she went on:—
+
+“If Mr. Gray knew all I know,—if he had my experience, he would not be
+so ready to speak of setting up his new plans in opposition to my
+judgment. Indeed,” she continued, lashing herself up with her own
+recollections, “times are changed when the parson of a village comes to
+beard the liege lady in her own house. Why, in my grandfather’s days,
+the parson was family chaplain too, and dined at the Hall every Sunday.
+He was helped last, and expected to have done first. I remember seeing
+him take up his plate and knife and fork, and say with his mouth full all
+the time he was speaking: ‘If you please, Sir Urian, and my lady, I’ll
+follow the beef into the housekeeper’s room;’ for you see, unless he did
+so, he stood no chance of a second helping. A greedy man, that parson
+was, to be sure! I recollect his once eating up the whole of some little
+bird at dinner, and by way of diverting attention from his greediness, he
+told how he had heard that a rook soaked in vinegar and then dressed in a
+particular way, could not be distinguished from the bird he was then
+eating. I saw by the grim look of my grandfather’s face that the
+parson’s doing and saying displeased him; and, child as I was, I had some
+notion of what was coming, when, as I was riding out on my little, white
+pony, by my grandfather’s side, the next Friday, he stopped one of the
+gamekeepers, and bade him shoot one of the oldest rooks he could find. I
+knew no more about it till Sunday, when a dish was set right before the
+parson, and Sir Urian said: ‘Now, Parson Hemming, I have had a rook shot,
+and soaked in vinegar, and dressed as you described last Sunday. Fall
+to, man, and eat it with as good an appetite as you had last Sunday. Pick
+the bones clean, or by—, no more Sunday dinners shall you eat at my
+table!’ I gave one look at poor Mr. Hemming’s face, as he tried to
+swallow the first morsel, and make believe as though he thought it very
+good; but I could not look again, for shame, although my grandfather
+laughed, and kept asking us all round if we knew what could have become
+of the parson’s appetite.”
+
+“And did he finish it?” I asked.
+
+“O yes, my dear. What my grandfather said was to be done, was done
+always. He was a terrible man in his anger! But to think of the
+difference between Parson Hemming and Mr. Gray! or even of poor dear Mr.
+Mountford and Mr. Gray. Mr. Mountford would never have withstood me as
+Mr. Gray did!”
+
+“And your ladyship really thinks that it would not be right to have a
+Sunday-school?” I asked, feeling very timid as I put time question.
+
+“Certainly not. As I told Mr. Gray. I consider a knowledge of the
+Creed, and of the Lord’s Prayer, as essential to salvation; and that
+any child may have, whose parents bring it regularly to church. Then
+there are the Ten Commandments, which teach simple duties in the
+plainest language. Of course, if a lad is taught to read and write (as
+that unfortunate boy has been who was here this morning) his duties
+become complicated, and his temptations much greater, while, at the
+same time, he has no hereditary principles and honourable training to
+serve as safeguards. I might take up my old simile of the race-horse
+and cart-horse. I am distressed,” continued she, with a break in her
+ideas, “about that boy. The whole thing reminds me so much of a story
+of what happened to a friend of mine—Clement de Crequy. Did I ever tell
+you about him?”
+
+“No, your ladyship,” I replied.
+
+“Poor Clement! More than twenty years ago, Lord Ludlow and I spent a
+winter in Paris. He had many friends there; perhaps not very good or
+very wise men, but he was so kind that he liked every one, and every
+one liked him. We had an apartment, as they call it there, in the Rue
+de Lille; we had the first-floor of a grand hotel, with the basement
+for our servants. On the floor above us the owner of the house lived, a
+Marquise de Crequy, a widow. They tell me that the Crequy coat-of-arms
+is still emblazoned, after all these terrible years, on a shield above
+the arched porte-cochere, just as it was then, though the family is
+quite extinct. Madame de Crequy had only one son, Clement, who was
+just the same age as my Urian—you may see his portrait in the great
+hall—Urian’s, I mean.” I knew that Master Urian had been drowned at
+sea; and often had I looked at the presentment of his bonny hopeful
+face, in his sailor’s dress, with right hand outstretched to a ship
+on the sea in the distance, as if he had just said, “Look at her! all
+her sails are set, and I’m just off.” Poor Master Urian! he went down
+in this very ship not a year after the picture was taken! But now I
+will go back to my lady’s story. “I can see those two boys playing
+now,” continued she, softly, shutting her eyes, as if the better
+to call up the vision, “as they used to do five-and-twenty years
+ago in those old-fashioned French gardens behind our hotel. Many a
+time have I watched them from my windows. It was, perhaps, a better
+play-place than an English garden would have been, for there were but
+few flower-beds, and no lawn at all to speak about; but, instead,
+terraces and balustrades and vases and flights of stone steps more in
+the Italian style; and there were jets-d’eau, and little fountains that
+could be set playing by turning water-cocks that were hidden here and
+there. How Clement delighted in turning the water on to surprise Urian,
+and how gracefully he did the honours, as it were, to my dear, rough,
+sailor lad! Urian was as dark as a gipsy boy, and cared little for his
+appearance, and resisted all my efforts at setting off his black eyes
+and tangled curls; but Clement, without ever showing that he thought
+about himself and his dress, was always dainty and elegant, even though
+his clothes were sometimes but threadbare. He used to be dressed in a
+kind of hunter’s green suit, open at the neck and half-way down the
+chest to beautiful old lace frills; his long golden curls fell behind
+just like a girl’s, and his hair in front was cut over his straight
+dark eyebrows in a line almost as straight. Urian learnt more of a
+gentleman’s carefulness and propriety of appearance from that lad in
+two months than he had done in years from all my lectures. I recollect
+one day, when the two boys were in full romp—and, my window being
+open, I could hear them perfectly—and Urian was daring Clement to some
+scrambling or climbing, which Clement refused to undertake, but in a
+hesitating way, as though he longed to do it if some reason had not
+stood in the way; and at times, Urian, who was hasty and thoughtless,
+poor fellow, told Clement that he was afraid. ‘Fear!’ said the French
+boy, drawing himself up; ‘you do not know what you say. If you will
+be here at six to-morrow morning, when it is only just light, I will
+take that starling’s nest on the top of yonder chimney.’ ‘But why not
+now, Clement?’ said Urian, putting his arm round Clement’s neck. ‘Why
+then, and not now, just when we are in the humour for it?’ ‘Because we
+De Crequys are poor, and my mother cannot afford me another suit of
+clothes this year, and yonder stone carving is all jagged, and would
+tear my coat and breeches. Now, to-morrow morning I could go up with
+nothing on but an old shirt.’
+
+“‘But you would tear your legs.’
+
+“‘My race do not care for pain,’ said the boy, drawing himself from
+Urian’s arm, and walking a few steps away, with a becoming pride and
+reserve; for he was hurt at being spoken to as if he were afraid, and
+annoyed at having to confess the true reason for declining the feat. But
+Urian was not to be thus baffled. He went up to Clement, and put his arm
+once more about his neck, and I could see the two lads as they walked
+down the terrace away from the hotel windows: first Urian spoke eagerly,
+looking with imploring fondness into Clement’s face, which sought the
+ground, till at last the French boy spoke, and by-and-by his arm was
+round Urian too, and they paced backwards and forwards in deep talk, but
+gravely, as became men, rather than boys.
+
+“All at once, from the little chapel at the corner of the large garden
+belonging to the Missions Etrangeres, I heard the tinkle of the little
+bell, announcing the elevation of the host. Down on his knees went
+Clement, hands crossed, eyes bent down: while Urian stood looking on in
+respectful thought.
+
+“What a friendship that might have been! I never dream of Urian without
+seeing Clement too—Urian speaks to me, or does something,—but Clement
+only flits round Urian, and never seems to see any one else!”
+
+“But I must not forget to tell you, that the next morning, before he was
+out of his room, a footman of Madame de Crequy’s brought Urian the
+starling’s nest.”
+
+“Well! we came back to England, and the boys were to correspond; and
+Madame de Crequy and I exchanged civilities; and Urian went to sea.”
+
+“After that, all seemed to drop away. I cannot tell you all. However,
+to confine myself to the De Crequys. I had a letter from Clement; I knew
+he felt his friend’s death deeply; but I should never have learnt it from
+the letter he sent. It was formal, and seemed like chaff to my hungering
+heart. Poor fellow! I dare say he had found it hard to write. What
+could he—or any one—say to a mother who has lost her child? The world
+does not think so, and, in general, one must conform to the customs of
+the world; but, judging from my own experience, I should say that
+reverent silence at such times is the tenderest balm. Madame de Crequy
+wrote too. But I knew she could not feel my loss so much as Clement, and
+therefore her letter was not such a disappointment. She and I went on
+being civil and polite in the way of commissions, and occasionally
+introducing friends to each other, for a year or two, and then we ceased
+to have any intercourse. Then the terrible Revolution came. No one who
+did not live at those times can imagine the daily expectation of news—the
+hourly terror of rumours affecting the fortunes and lives of those whom
+most of us had known as pleasant hosts, receiving us with peaceful
+welcome in their magnificent houses. Of course, there was sin enough and
+suffering enough behind the scenes; but we English visitors to Paris had
+seen little or nothing of that,—and I had sometimes thought, indeed, how
+even death seemed loth to choose his victims out of that brilliant throng
+whom I had known. Madame de Crequy’s one boy lived; while three out of
+my six were gone since we had met! I do not think all lots are equal,
+even now that I know the end of her hopes; but I do say that whatever our
+individual lot is, it is our duty to accept it, without comparing it with
+that of others.
+
+“The times were thick with gloom and terror. ‘What next?’ was the
+question we asked of every one who brought us news from Paris. Where
+were these demons hidden when, so few years ago, we danced and feasted,
+and enjoyed the brilliant salons and the charming friendships of Paris?
+
+“One evening, I was sitting alone in Saint James’s Square; my lord off at
+the club with Mr. Fox and others: he had left me, thinking that I should
+go to one of the many places to which I had been invited for that
+evening; but I had no heart to go anywhere, for it was poor Urian’s
+birthday, and I had not even rung for lights, though the day was fast
+closing in, but was thinking over all his pretty ways, and on his warm
+affectionate nature, and how often I had been too hasty in speaking to
+him, for all I loved him so dearly; and how I seemed to have neglected
+and dropped his dear friend Clement, who might even now be in need of
+help in that cruel, bloody Paris. I say I was thinking reproachfully of
+all this, and particularly of Clement de Crequy in connection with Urian,
+when Fenwick brought me a note, sealed with a coat-of-arms I knew well,
+though I could not remember at the moment where I had seen it. I puzzled
+over it, as one does sometimes, for a minute or more, before I opened the
+letter. In a moment I saw it was from Clement de Crequy. ‘My mother is
+here,’ he said: ‘she is very ill, and I am bewildered in this strange
+country. May I entreat you to receive me for a few minutes?’ The bearer
+of the note was the woman of the house where they lodged. I had her
+brought up into the anteroom, and questioned her myself, while my
+carriage was being brought round. They had arrived in London a fortnight
+or so before: she had not known their quality, judging them (according to
+her kind) by their dress and their luggage; poor enough, no doubt. The
+lady had never left her bed-room since her arrival; the young man waited
+upon her, did everything for her, never left her, in fact; only she (the
+messenger) had promised to stay within call, as soon as she returned,
+while he went out somewhere. She could hardly understand him, he spoke
+English so badly. He had never spoken it, I dare say, since he had
+talked to my Urian.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+“In the hurry of the moment I scarce knew what I did. I bade the
+housekeeper put up every delicacy she had, in order to tempt the invalid,
+whom yet I hoped to bring back with me to our house. When the carriage
+was ready I took the good woman with me to show us the exact way, which
+my coachman professed not to know; for, indeed, they were staying at but
+a poor kind of place at the back of Leicester Square, of which they had
+heard, as Clement told me afterwards, from one of the fishermen who had
+carried them across from the Dutch coast in their disguises as a
+Friesland peasant and his mother. They had some jewels of value
+concealed round their persons; but their ready money was all spent before
+I saw them, and Clement had been unwilling to leave his mother, even for
+the time necessary to ascertain the best mode of disposing of the
+diamonds. For, overcome with distress of mind and bodily fatigue, she
+had reached London only to take to her bed in a sort of low, nervous
+fever, in which her chief and only idea seemed to be that Clement was
+about to be taken from her to some prison or other; and if he were out of
+her sight, though but for a minute, she cried like a child, and could not
+be pacified or comforted. The landlady was a kind, good woman, and
+though she but half understood the case, she was truly sorry for them, as
+foreigners, and the mother sick in a strange land.
+
+“I sent her forwards to request permission for my entrance. In a moment
+I saw Clement—a tall, elegant young man, in a curious dress of coarse
+cloth, standing at the open door of a room, and evidently—even before he
+accosted me—striving to soothe the terrors of his mother inside. I went
+towards him, and would have taken his hand, but he bent down and kissed
+mine.
+
+“‘May I come in, madame?’ I asked, looking at the poor sick lady, lying
+in the dark, dingy bed, her head propped up on coarse and dirty pillows,
+and gazing with affrighted eyes at all that was going on.
+
+“‘Clement! Clement! come to me!’ she cried; and when he went to the
+bedside she turned on one side, and took his hand in both of hers, and
+began stroking it, and looking up in his face. I could scarce keep back
+my tears.
+
+“He stood there quite still, except that from time to time he spoke to
+her in a low tone. At last I advanced into the room, so that I could
+talk to him, without renewing her alarm. I asked for the doctor’s
+address; for I had heard that they had called in some one, at their
+landlady’s recommendation: but I could hardly understand Clement’s broken
+English, and mispronunciation of our proper names, and was obliged to
+apply to the woman herself. I could not say much to Clement, for his
+attention was perpetually needed by his mother, who never seemed to
+perceive that I was there. But I told him not to fear, however long I
+might be away, for that I would return before night; and, bidding the
+woman take charge of all the heterogeneous things the housekeeper had put
+up, and leaving one of my men in the house, who could understand a few
+words of French, with directions that he was to hold himself at Madame de
+Crequy’s orders until I sent or gave him fresh commands, I drove off to
+the doctor’s. What I wanted was his permission to remove Madame de
+Crequy to my own house, and to learn how it best could be done; for I saw
+that every movement in the room, every sound except Clement’s voice,
+brought on a fresh access of trembling and nervous agitation.
+
+“The doctor was, I should think, a clever man; but he had that kind of
+abrupt manner which people get who have much to do with the lower orders.
+
+“I told him the story of his patient, the interest I had in her, and the
+wish I entertained of removing her to my own house.
+
+“‘It can’t be done,’ said he. ‘Any change will kill her.’
+
+“‘But it must be done,’ I replied. ‘And it shall not kill her.’
+
+“‘Then I have nothing more to say,’ said he, turning away from the
+carriage door, and making as though he would go back into the house.
+
+“‘Stop a moment. You must help me; and, if you do, you shall have reason
+to be glad, for I will give you fifty pounds down with pleasure. If you
+won’t do it, another shall.’
+
+“He looked at me, then (furtively) at the carriage, hesitated, and then
+said: ‘You do not mind expense, apparently. I suppose you are a rich
+lady of quality. Such folks will not stick at such trifles as the life
+or death of a sick woman to get their own way. I suppose I must e’en
+help you, for if I don’t, another will.’
+
+“I did not mind what he said, so that he would assist me. I was pretty
+sure that she was in a state to require opiates; and I had not forgotten
+Christopher Sly, you may be sure, so I told him what I had in my head.
+That in the dead of night—the quiet time in the streets,—she should be
+carried in a hospital litter, softly and warmly covered over, from the
+Leicester Square lodging-house to rooms that I would have in perfect
+readiness for her. As I planned, so it was done. I let Clement know, by
+a note, of my design. I had all prepared at home, and we walked about my
+house as though shod with velvet, while the porter watched at the open
+door. At last, through the darkness, I saw the lanterns carried by my
+men, who were leading the little procession. The litter looked like a
+hearse; on one side walked the doctor, on the other Clement; they came
+softly and swiftly along. I could not try any farther experiment; we
+dared not change her clothes; she was laid in the bed in the landlady’s
+coarse night-gear, and covered over warmly, and left in the shaded,
+scented room, with a nurse and the doctor watching by her, while I led
+Clement to the dressing-room adjoining, in which I had had a bed placed
+for him. Farther than that he would not go; and there I had refreshments
+brought. Meanwhile, he had shown his gratitude by every possible action
+(for we none of us dared to speak): he had kneeled at my feet, and kissed
+my hand, and left it wet with his tears. He had thrown up his arms to
+Heaven, and prayed earnestly, as I could see by the movement of his lips.
+I allowed him to relieve himself by these dumb expressions, if I may so
+call them,—and then I left him, and went to my own rooms to sit up for
+my lord, and tell him what I had done.
+
+“Of course, it was all right; and neither my lord nor I could sleep for
+wondering how Madame de Crequy would bear her awakening. I had engaged
+the doctor, to whose face and voice she was accustomed, to remain with
+her all night: the nurse was experienced, and Clement was within call.
+But it was with the greatest relief that I heard from my own woman, when
+she brought me my chocolate, that Madame de Crequy (Monsieur had said)
+had awakened more tranquil than she had been for many days. To be sure,
+the whole aspect of the bed-chamber must have been more familiar to her
+than the miserable place where I had found her, and she must have
+intuitively felt herself among friends.
+
+“My lord was scandalized at Clement’s dress, which, after the first
+moment of seeing him I had forgotten, in thinking of other things, and
+for which I had not prepared Lord Ludlow. He sent for his own tailor,
+and bade him bring patterns of stuffs, and engage his men to work night
+and day till Clement could appear as became his rank. In short, in a few
+days so much of the traces of their flight were removed, that we had
+almost forgotten the terrible causes of it, and rather felt as if they
+had come on a visit to us than that they had been compelled to fly their
+country. Their diamonds, too, were sold well by my lord’s agents, though
+the London shops were stocked with jewellery, and such portable
+valuables, some of rare and curious fashion, which were sold for half
+their real value by emigrants who could not afford to wait. Madame de
+Crequy was recovering her health, although her strength was sadly gone,
+and she would never be equal to such another flight, as the perilous one
+which she had gone through, and to which she could not bear the slightest
+reference. For some time things continued in this state—the De Crequys
+still our honoured visitors,—many houses besides our own, even among our
+own friends, open to receive the poor flying nobility of France, driven
+from their country by the brutal republicans, and every freshly-arrived
+emigrant bringing new tales of horror, as if these revolutionists were
+drunk with blood, and mad to devise new atrocities. One day Clement—I
+should tell you he had been presented to our good King George and the
+sweet Queen, and they had accosted him most graciously, and his beauty
+and elegance, and some of the circumstances attendant on his flight, made
+him be received in the world quite like a hero of romance; he might have
+been on intimate terms in many a distinguished house, had he cared to
+visit much; but he accompanied my lord and me with an air of indifference
+and languor, which I sometimes fancied made him be all the more sought
+after: Monkshaven (that was the title my eldest son bore) tried in vain
+to interest him in all young men’s sports. But no! it was the same
+through all. His mother took far more interest in the on-dits of the
+London world, into which she was far too great an invalid to venture,
+than he did in the absolute events themselves, in which he might have
+been an actor. One day, as I was saying, an old Frenchman of a humble
+class presented himself to our servants, several of them, understood
+French; and through Medlicott, I learnt that he was in some way connected
+with the De Crequys; not with their Paris-life; but I fancy he had been
+intendant of their estates in the country; estates which were more useful
+as hunting-grounds than as adding to their income. However, there was
+the old man and with him, wrapped round his person, he had brought the
+long parchment rolls, and deeds relating to their property. These he
+would deliver up to none but Monsieur de Crequy, the rightful owner; and
+Clement was out with Monkshaven, so the old man waited; and when Clement
+came in, I told him of the steward’s arrival, and how he had been cared
+for by my people. Clement went directly to see him. He was a long time
+away, and I was waiting for him to drive out with me, for some purpose or
+another, I scarce know what, but I remember I was tired of waiting, and
+was just in the act of ringing the bell to desire that he might be
+reminded of his engagement with me, when he came in, his face as white as
+the powder in his hair, his beautiful eyes dilated with horror. I saw
+that he had heard something that touched him even more closely than the
+usual tales which every fresh emigrant brought.
+
+“‘What is it, Clement?’ I asked.
+
+“He clasped his hands, and looked as though he tried to speak, but could
+not bring out the words.
+
+“‘They have guillotined my uncle!’ said he at last. Now, I knew that
+there was a Count de Crequy; but I had always understood that the elder
+branch held very little communication with him; in fact, that he was a
+vaurien of some kind, and rather a disgrace than otherwise to the family.
+So, perhaps, I was hard-hearted but I was a little surprised at this
+excess of emotion, till I saw that peculiar look in his eyes that many
+people have when there is more terror in their hearts than they dare put
+into words. He wanted me to understand something without his saying it;
+but how could I? I had never heard of a Mademoiselle de Crequy.
+
+“‘Virginie!’ at last he uttered. In an instant I understood it all, and
+remembered that, if Urian had lived, he too might have been in love.
+
+“‘Your uncle’s daughter?’ I inquired.
+
+“‘My cousin,’ he replied.
+
+“I did not say, ‘your betrothed,’ but I had no doubt of it. I was
+mistaken, however.
+
+“‘O madame!’ he continued, ‘her mother died long ago—her father now—and
+she is in daily fear,—alone, deserted—’
+
+“‘Is she in the Abbaye?’ asked I.
+
+“‘No! she is in hiding with the widow of her father’s old concierge. Any
+day they may search the house for aristocrats. They are seeking them
+everywhere. Then, not her life alone, but that of the old woman, her
+hostess, is sacrificed. The old woman knows this, and trembles with
+fear. Even if she is brave enough to be faithful, her fears would betray
+her, should the house be searched. Yet, there is no one to help Virginie
+to escape. She is alone in Paris.’
+
+“I saw what was in his mind. He was fretting and chafing to go to his
+cousin’s assistance; but the thought of his mother restrained him. I
+would not have kept back Urian from such on errand at such a time. How
+should I restrain him? And yet, perhaps, I did wrong in not urging the
+chances of danger more. Still, if it was danger to him, was it not the
+same or even greater danger to her?—for the French spared neither age
+nor sex in those wicked days of terror. So I rather fell in with his
+wish, and encouraged him to think how best and most prudently it might be
+fulfilled; never doubting, as I have said, that he and his cousin were
+troth-plighted.
+
+“But when I went to Madame de Crequy—after he had imparted his, or
+rather our plan to her—I found out my mistake. She, who was in general
+too feeble to walk across the room save slowly, and with a stick, was
+going from end to end with quick, tottering steps; and, if now and then
+she sank upon a chair, it seemed as if she could not rest, for she was up
+again in a moment, pacing along, wringing her hands, and speaking rapidly
+to herself. When she saw me, she stopped: ‘Madame,’ she said, ‘you have
+lost your own boy. You might have left me mine.’
+
+“I was so astonished—I hardly knew what to say. I had spoken to Clement
+as if his mother’s consent were secure (as I had felt my own would have
+been if Urian had been alive to ask it). Of coarse, both he and I knew
+that his mother’s consent must be asked and obtained, before he could
+leave her to go on such an undertaking; but, somehow, my blood always
+rose at the sight or sound of danger; perhaps, because my life had been
+so peaceful. Poor Madame de Crequy! it was otherwise with her; she
+despaired while I hoped, and Clement trusted.
+
+“‘Dear Madame de Crequy,’ said I, ‘he will return safely to us; every
+precaution shall be taken, that either he or you, or my lord, or
+Monkshaven can think of; but he cannot leave a girl—his nearest relation
+save you—his betrothed, is she not?’
+
+“‘His betrothed!’ cried she, now at the utmost pitch of her excitement.
+‘Virginie betrothed to Clement?—no! thank heaven, not so bad as that!
+Yet it might have been. But mademoiselle scorned my son! She would have
+nothing to do with him. Now is the time for him to have nothing to do
+with her!’
+
+“Clement had entered at the door behind his mother as she thus spoke. His
+face was set and pale, till it looked as gray and immovable as if it had
+been carved in stone. He came forward and stood before his mother. She
+stopped her walk, threw back her haughty head, and the two looked each
+other steadily in the face. After a minute or two in this attitude, her
+proud and resolute gaze never flinching or wavering, he went down upon
+one knee, and, taking her hand—her hard, stony hand, which never closed
+on his, but remained straight and stiff:
+
+“‘Mother,’ he pleaded, ‘withdraw your prohibition. Let me go!’
+
+“‘What were her words?’ Madame de Crequy replied, slowly, as if forcing
+her memory to the extreme of accuracy. ‘My cousin,’ she said, ‘when I
+marry, I marry a man, not a petit-maitre. I marry a man who, whatever
+his rank may be will add dignity to the human race by his virtues, and
+not be content to live in an effeminate court on the traditions of past
+grandeur.’ She borrowed her words from the infamous Jean-Jacques
+Rousseau, the friend of her scarce less infamous father—nay! I will say
+it,—if not her words, she borrowed her principles. And my son to
+request her to marry him!
+
+“‘It was my father’s written wish,’ said Clement.
+
+“‘But did you not love her? You plead your father’s words,—words
+written twelve years before,—and as if that were your reason for being
+indifferent to my dislike to the alliance. But you requested her to
+marry you,—and she refused you with insolent contempt; and now you are
+ready to leave me,—leave me desolate in a foreign land—’
+
+“‘Desolate! my mother! and the Countess Ludlow stands there!’
+
+“‘Pardon, madame! But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts,
+is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is
+absent. And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,—this
+degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes!
+She is only reaping some of the fruit of the harvest whereof her friends
+have sown the seed. Let her alone! Doubtless she has friends—it may be
+lovers—among these demons, who, under the cry of liberty, commit every
+licence. Let her alone, Clement! She refused you with scorn: be too
+proud to notice her now.’
+
+“‘Mother, I cannot think of myself; only of her.’
+
+“‘Think of me, then! I, your mother, forbid you to go.’
+
+“Clement bowed low, and went out of the room instantly, as one blinded.
+She saw his groping movement, and, for an instant, I think her heart
+was touched. But she turned to me, and tried to exculpate her past
+violence by dilating upon her wrongs, and they certainly were many.
+The Count, her husband’s younger brother, had invariably tried to make
+mischief between husband and wife. He had been the cleverer man of
+the two, and had possessed extraordinary influence over her husband.
+She suspected him of having instigated that clause in her husband’s
+will, by which the Marquis expressed his wish for the marriage of the
+cousins. The Count had had some interest in the management of the De
+Crequy property during her son’s minority. Indeed, I remembered then,
+that it was through Count de Crequy that Lord Ludlow had first heard
+of the apartment which we afterwards took in the Hotel de Crequy; and
+then the recollection of a past feeling came distinctly out of the
+mist, as it were; and I called to mind how, when we first took up our
+abode in the Hotel de Crequy, both Lord Ludlow and I imagined that
+the arrangement was displeasing to our hostess; and how it had taken
+us a considerable time before we had been able to establish relations
+of friendship with her. Years after our visit, she began to suspect
+that Clement (whom she could not forbid to visit at his uncle’s house,
+considering the terms on which his father had been with his brother;
+though she herself never set foot over the Count de Crequy’s threshold)
+was attaching himself to mademoiselle, his cousin; and she made
+cautious inquiries as to the appearance, character, and disposition
+of the young lady. Mademoiselle was not handsome, they said; but of
+a fine figure, and generally considered as having a very noble and
+attractive presence. In character she was daring and wilful (said one
+set); original and independent (said another). She was much indulged
+by her father, who had given her something of a man’s education, and
+selected for her intimate friend a young lady below her in rank, one
+of the Bureaucracie, a Mademoiselle Necker, daughter of the Minister
+of Finance. Mademoiselle de Crequy was thus introduced into all the
+free-thinking salons of Paris; among people who were always full of
+plans for subverting society. ‘And did Clement affect such people?’
+Madame de Crequy had asked with some anxiety. No! Monsieur de Crequy
+had neither eyes nor ears, nor thought for anything but his cousin,
+while she was by. And she? She hardly took notice of his devotion, so
+evident to every one else. The proud creature! But perhaps that was
+her haughty way of concealing what she felt. And so Madame de Crequy
+listened, and questioned, and learnt nothing decided, until one day she
+surprised Clement with the note in his hand, of which she remembered
+the stinging words so well, in which Virginie had said, in reply to
+a proposal Clement had sent her through her father, that ‘When she
+married she married a man, not a petit-maitre.’
+
+“Clement was justly indignant at the insulting nature of the answer
+Virginie had sent to a proposal, respectful in its tone, and which was,
+after all, but the cool, hardened lava over a burning heart. He
+acquiesced in his mother’s desire, that he should not again present
+himself in his uncle’s salons; but he did not forget Virginie, though he
+never mentioned her name.
+
+“Madame de Crequy and her son were among the earliest proscrits, as they
+were of the strongest possible royalists, and aristocrats, as it was the
+custom of the horrid Sansculottes to term those who adhered to the habits
+of expression and action in which it was their pride to have been
+educated. They had left Paris some weeks before they had arrived in
+England, and Clement’s belief at the time of quitting the Hotel de Crequy
+had certainly been, that his uncle was not merely safe, but rather a
+popular man with the party in power. And, as all communication having
+relation to private individuals of a reliable kind was intercepted,
+Monsieur de Crequy had felt but little anxiety for his uncle and cousin,
+in comparison with what he did for many other friends of very different
+opinions in politics, until the day when he was stunned by the fatal
+information that even his progressive uncle was guillotined, and learnt
+that his cousin was imprisoned by the licence of the mob, whose rights
+(as she called them) she was always advocating.
+
+“When I had heard all this story, I confess I lost in sympathy for
+Clement what I gained for his mother. Virginie’s life did not seem to me
+worth the risk that Clement’s would run. But when I saw him—sad,
+depressed, nay, hopeless—going about like one oppressed by a heavy dream
+which he cannot shake off; caring neither to eat, drink, nor sleep, yet
+bearing all with silent dignity, and even trying to force a poor, faint
+smile when he caught my anxious eyes; I turned round again, and wondered
+how Madame de Crequy could resist this mute pleading of her son’s altered
+appearance. As for my Lord Ludlow and Monkshaven, as soon as they
+understood the case, they were indignant that any mother should attempt
+to keep a son out of honourable danger; and it was honourable, and a
+clear duty (according to them) to try to save the life of a helpless
+orphan girl, his next of kin. None but a Frenchman, said my lord, would
+hold himself bound by an old woman’s whimsies and fears, even though she
+were his mother. As it was, he was chafing himself to death under the
+restraint. If he went, to be sure, the wretches might make an end of
+him, as they had done of many a fine fellow: but my lord would take heavy
+odds, that, instead of being guillotined, he would save the girl, and
+bring her safe to England, just desperately in love with her preserver,
+and then we would have a jolly wedding down at Monkshaven. My lord
+repeated his opinion so often that it became a certain prophecy in his
+mind of what was to take place; and, one day seeing Clement look even
+paler and thinner than he had ever done before, he sent a message to
+Madame de Crequy, requesting permission to speak to her in private.
+
+“‘For, by George!’ said he, ‘she shall hear my opinion, and not let that
+lad of hers kill himself by fretting. He’s too good for that, if he had
+been an English lad, he would have been off to his sweetheart long before
+this, without saying with your leave or by your leave; but being a
+Frenchman, he is all for AEneas and filial piety,—filial fiddle-sticks!’
+(My lord had run away to sea, when a boy, against his father’s consent, I
+am sorry to say; and, as all had ended well, and he had come back to find
+both his parents alive, I do not think he was ever as much aware of his
+fault as he might have been under other circumstances.) ‘No, my lady,’
+he went on, ‘don’t come with me. A woman can manage a man best when he
+has a fit of obstinacy, and a man can persuade a woman out of her
+tantrums, when all her own sex, the whole army of them, would fail. Allow
+me to go alone to my tete-a-tete with madame.’
+
+“What he said, what passed, he never could repeat; but he came back
+graver than he went. However, the point was gained; Madame de Crequy
+withdrew her prohibition, and had given him leave to tell Clement as
+much.
+
+“‘But she is an old Cassandra,’ said he. ‘Don’t let the lad be much with
+her; her talk would destroy the courage of the bravest man; she is so
+given over to superstition.’ Something that she had said had touched a
+chord in my lord’s nature which he inherited from his Scotch ancestors.
+Long afterwards, I heard what this was. Medlicott told me.
+
+“However, my lord shook off all fancies that told against the fulfilment
+of Clement’s wishes. All that afternoon we three sat together, planning;
+and Monkshaven passed in and out, executing our commissions, and
+preparing everything. Towards nightfall all was ready for Clement’s
+start on his journey towards the coast.
+
+“Madame had declined seeing any of us since my lord’s stormy interview
+with her. She sent word that she was fatigued, and desired repose. But,
+of course, before Clement set off, he was bound to wish her farewell, and
+to ask for her blessing. In order to avoid an agitating conversation
+between mother and son, my lord and I resolved to be present at the
+interview. Clement was already in his travelling-dress, that of a Norman
+fisherman, which Monkshaven had, with infinite trouble, discovered in the
+possession of one of the emigres who thronged London, and who had made
+his escape from the shores of France in this disguise. Clement’s plan
+was, to go down to the coast of Sussex, and get some of the fishing or
+smuggling boats to take him across to the French coast near Dieppe. There
+again he would have to change his dress. Oh, it was so well planned! His
+mother was startled by his disguise (of which we had not thought to
+forewarn her) as he entered her apartment. And either that, or the being
+suddenly roused from the heavy slumber into which she was apt to fall
+when she was left alone, gave her manner an air of wildness that was
+almost like insanity.
+
+“‘Go, go!’ she said to him, almost pushing him away as he knelt to kiss
+her hand. ‘Virginie is beckoning to you, but you don’t see what kind of
+a bed it is—’
+
+“‘Clement, make haste!’ said my lord, in a hurried manner, as if to
+interrupt madame. ‘The time is later than I thought, and you must not
+miss the morning’s tide. Bid your mother good-bye at once, and let us be
+off.’ For my lord and Monkshaven were to ride with him to an inn near
+the shore, from whence he was to walk to his destination. My lord almost
+took him by the arm to pull him away; and they were gone, and I was left
+alone with Madame de Crequy. When she heard the horses’ feet, she seemed
+to find out the truth, as if for the first time. She set her teeth
+together. ‘He has left me for her!’ she almost screamed. ‘Left me for
+her!’ she kept muttering; and then, as the wild look came back into her
+eyes, she said, almost with exultation, ‘But I did not give him my
+blessing!’”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+“All night Madame de Crequy raved in delirium. If I could I would have
+sent for Clement back again. I did send off one man, but I suppose my
+directions were confused, or they were wrong, for he came back after my
+lord’s return, on the following afternoon. By this time Madame de Crequy
+was quieter: she was, indeed, asleep from exhaustion when Lord Ludlow and
+Monkshaven came in. They were in high spirits, and their hopefulness
+brought me round to a less dispirited state. All had gone well: they had
+accompanied Clement on foot along the shore, until they had met with a
+lugger, which my lord had hailed in good nautical language. The captain
+had responded to these freemason terms by sending a boat to pick up his
+passenger, and by an invitation to breakfast sent through a
+speaking-trumpet. Monkshaven did not approve of either the meal or the
+company, and had returned to the inn, but my lord had gone with Clement
+and breakfasted on board, upon grog, biscuit, fresh-caught fish—‘the
+best breakfast he ever ate,’ he said, but that was probably owing to the
+appetite his night’s ride had given him. However, his good fellowship
+had evidently won the captain’s heart, and Clement had set sail under the
+best auspices. It was agreed that I should tell all this to Madame de
+Crequy, if she inquired; otherwise, it would be wiser not to renew her
+agitation by alluding to her son’s journey.
+
+“I sat with her constantly for many days; but she never spoke of Clement.
+She forced herself to talk of the little occurrences of Parisian society
+in former days: she tried to be conversational and agreeable, and to
+betray no anxiety or even interest in the object of Clement’s journey;
+and, as far as unremitting efforts could go, she succeeded. But the
+tones of her voice were sharp and yet piteous, as if she were in constant
+pain; and the glance of her eye hurried and fearful, as if she dared not
+let it rest on any object.
+
+“In a week we heard of Clement’s safe arrival on the French coast. He
+sent a letter to this effect by the captain of the smuggler, when the
+latter returned. We hoped to hear again; but week after week elapsed,
+and there was no news of Clement. I had told Lord Ludlow, in Madame de
+Crequy’s presence, as he and I had arranged, of the note I had received
+from her son, informing us of his landing in France. She heard, but she
+took no notice, and evidently began to wonder that we did not mention any
+further intelligence of him in the same manner before her; and daily I
+began to fear that her pride would give way, and that she would
+supplicate for news before I had any to give her.
+
+“One morning, on my awakening, my maid told me that Madame de Crequy had
+passed a wretched night, and had bidden Medlicott (whom, as understanding
+French, and speaking it pretty well, though with that horrid German
+accent, I had put about her) request that I would go to madame’s room as
+soon as I was dressed.
+
+“I knew what was coming, and I trembled all the time they were doing my
+hair, and otherwise arranging me. I was not encouraged by my lord’s
+speeches. He had heard the message, and kept declaring that he would
+rather be shot than have to tell her that there was no news of her son;
+and yet he said, every now and then, when I was at the lowest pitch of
+uneasiness, that he never expected to hear again: that some day soon we
+should see him walking in and introducing Mademoiselle de Crequy to us.
+
+“However at last I was ready, and go I must.
+
+“Her eyes were fixed on the door by which I entered. I went up to the
+bedside. She was not rouged,—she had left it off now for several
+days,—she no longer attempted to keep up the vain show of not feeling,
+and loving, and fearing.
+
+“For a moment or two she did not speak, and I was glad of the respite.
+
+“‘Clement?’ she said at length, covering her mouth with a handkerchief
+the minute she had spoken, that I might not see it quiver.
+
+“‘There has been no news since the first letter, saying how well the
+voyage was performed, and how safely he had landed—near Dieppe, you
+know,’ I replied as cheerfully as possible. ‘My lord does not expect
+that we shall have another letter; he thinks that we shall see him soon.’
+
+“There was no answer. As I looked, uncertain whether to do or say more,
+she slowly turned herself in bed, and lay with her face to the wall; and,
+as if that did not shut out the light of day and the busy, happy world
+enough, she put out her trembling hands, and covered her face with her
+handkerchief. There was no violence: hardly any sound.
+
+“I told her what my lord had said about Clement’s coming in some day, and
+taking us all by surprise. I did not believe it myself, but it was just
+possible,—and I had nothing else to say. Pity, to one who was striving
+so hard to conceal her feelings, would have been impertinent. She let me
+talk; but she did not reply. She knew that my words were vain and idle,
+and had no root in my belief; as well as I did myself.
+
+“I was very thankful when Medlicott came in with Madame’s breakfast, and
+gave me an excuse for leaving.
+
+“But I think that conversation made me feel more anxious and impatient
+than ever. I felt almost pledged to Madame de Crequy for the fulfilment
+of the vision I had held out. She had taken entirely to her bed by this
+time: not from illness, but because she had no hope within her to stir
+her up to the effort of dressing. In the same way she hardly cared for
+food. She had no appetite,—why eat to prolong a life of despair? But
+she let Medlicott feed her, sooner than take the trouble of resisting.
+
+“And so it went on,—for weeks, months—I could hardly count the time, it
+seemed so long. Medlicott told me she noticed a preternatural
+sensitiveness of ear in Madame de Crequy, induced by the habit of
+listening silently for the slightest unusual sound in the house.
+Medlicott was always a minute watcher of any one whom she cared about;
+and, one day, she made me notice by a sign madame’s acuteness of hearing,
+although the quick expectation was but evinced for a moment in the turn
+of the eye, the hushed breath—and then, when the unusual footstep turned
+into my lord’s apartments, the soft quivering sigh, and the closed
+eyelids.
+
+“At length the intendant of the De Crequy estates—the old man, you will
+remember, whose information respecting Virginie de Crequy first gave
+Clement the desire to return to Paris,—came to St. James’s Square, and
+begged to speak to me. I made haste to go down to him in the
+housekeeper’s room, sooner than that he should be ushered into mine, for
+fear of madame hearing any sound.
+
+“The old man stood—I see him now—with his hat held before him in both
+his hands; he slowly bowed till his face touched it when I came in. Such
+long excess of courtesy augured ill. He waited for me to speak.
+
+“‘Have you any intelligence?’ I inquired. He had been often to the house
+before, to ask if we had received any news; and once or twice I had seen
+him, but this was the first time he had begged to see me.
+
+“‘Yes, madame,’ he replied, still standing with his head bent down, like
+a child in disgrace.
+
+“‘And it is bad!’ I exclaimed.
+
+“‘It is bad.’ For a moment I was angry at the cold tone in which my
+words were echoed; but directly afterwards I saw the large, slow, heavy
+tears of age falling down the old man’s cheeks, and on to the sleeves of
+his poor, threadbare coat.
+
+“I asked him how he had heard it: it seemed as though I could not all at
+once bear to hear what it was. He told me that the night before, in
+crossing Long Acre, he had stumbled upon an old acquaintance of his; one
+who, like himself had been a dependent upon the De Crequy family, but had
+managed their Paris affairs, while Flechier had taken charge of their
+estates in the country. Both were now emigrants, and living on the
+proceeds of such small available talents as they possessed. Flechier, as
+I knew, earned a very fair livelihood by going about to dress salads for
+dinner parties. His compatriot, Le Febvre, had begun to give a few
+lessons as a dancing-master. One of them took the other home to his
+lodgings; and there, when their most immediate personal adventures had
+been hastily talked over, came the inquiry from Flechier as to Monsieur
+de Crequy
+
+“‘Clement was dead—guillotined. Virginie was dead—guillotined.’
+
+“When Flechier had told me thus much, he could not speak for sobbing; and
+I, myself, could hardly tell how to restrain my tears sufficiently, until
+I could go to my own room and be at liberty to give way. He asked my
+leave to bring in his friend Le Febvre, who was walking in the square,
+awaiting a possible summons to tell his story. I heard afterwards a good
+many details, which filled up the account, and made me feel—which brings
+me back to the point I started from—how unfit the lower orders are for
+being trusted indiscriminately with the dangerous powers of education. I
+have made a long preamble, but now I am coming to the moral of my story.”
+
+My lady was trying to shake off the emotion which she evidently felt in
+recurring to this sad history of Monsieur de Crequy’s death. She came
+behind me, and arranged my pillows, and then, seeing I had been
+crying—for, indeed, I was weak-spirited at the time, and a little served
+to unloose my tears—she stooped down, and kissed my forehead, and said
+“Poor child!” almost as if she thanked me for feeling that old grief of
+hers.
+
+“Being once in France, it was no difficult thing for Clement to get into
+Paris. The difficulty in those days was to leave, not to enter. He came
+in dressed as a Norman peasant, in charge of a load of fruit and
+vegetables, with which one of the Seine barges was freighted. He worked
+hard with his companions in landing and arranging their produce on the
+quays; and then, when they dispersed to get their breakfasts at some of
+the estaminets near the old Marche aux Fleurs, he sauntered up a street
+which conducted him, by many an odd turn, through the Quartier Latin to a
+horrid back alley, leading out of the Rue l’Ecole de Medecine; some
+atrocious place, as I have heard, not far from the shadow of that
+terrible Abbaye, where so many of the best blood of France awaited their
+deaths. But here some old man lived, on whose fidelity Clement thought
+that he might rely. I am not sure if he had not been gardener in those
+very gardens behind the Hotel Crequy where Clement and Urian used to play
+together years before. But whatever the old man’s dwelling might be,
+Clement was only too glad to reach it, you may be sure, he had been kept
+in Normandy, in all sorts of disguises, for many days after landing in
+Dieppe, through the difficulty of entering Paris unsuspected by the many
+ruffians who were always on the look-out for aristocrats.
+
+“The old gardener was, I believe, both faithful and tried, and sheltered
+Clement in his garret as well as might be. Before he could stir out, it
+was necessary to procure a fresh disguise, and one more in character with
+an inhabitant of Paris than that of a Norman carter was procured; and
+after waiting indoors for one or two days, to see if any suspicion was
+excited, Clement set off to discover Virginie.
+
+“He found her at the old concierge’s dwelling. Madame Babette was the
+name of this woman, who must have been a less faithful—or rather,
+perhaps, I should say, a more interested—friend to her guest than the
+old gardener Jaques was to Clement.
+
+“I have seen a miniature of Virginie, which a French lady of quality
+happened to have in her possession at the time of her flight from
+Paris, and which she brought with her to England unwittingly; for it
+belonged to the Count de Crequy, with whom she was slightly acquainted.
+I should fancy from it, that Virginie was taller and of a more
+powerful figure for a woman than her cousin Clement was for a man. Her
+dark-brown hair was arranged in short curls—the way of dressing the
+hair announced the politics of the individual, in those days, just as
+patches did in my grandmother’s time; and Virginie’s hair was not to my
+taste, or according to my principles: it was too classical. Her large,
+black eyes looked out at you steadily. One cannot judge of the shape of
+a nose from a full-face miniature, but the nostrils were clearly cut
+and largely opened. I do not fancy her nose could have been pretty; but
+her mouth had a character all its own, and which would, I think, have
+redeemed a plainer face. It was wide, and deep set into the cheeks at
+the corners; the upper lip was very much arched, and hardly closed over
+the teeth; so that the whole face looked (from the serious, intent look
+in the eyes, and the sweet intelligence of the mouth) as if she were
+listening eagerly to something to which her answer was quite ready, and
+would come out of those red, opening lips as soon as ever you had done
+speaking, and you longed to know what she would say.
+
+“Well: this Virginie de Crequy was living with Madame Babette in the
+conciergerie of an old French inn, somewhere to the north of Paris,
+so, far enough from Clement’s refuge. The inn had been frequented by
+farmers from Brittany and such kind of people, in the days when that
+sort of intercourse went on between Paris and the provinces which had
+nearly stopped now. Few Bretons came near it now, and the inn had
+fallen into the hands of Madame Babette’s brother, as payment for a bad
+wine debt of the last proprietor. He put his sister and her child in,
+to keep it open, as it were, and sent all the people he could to occupy
+the half-furnished rooms of the house. They paid Babette for their
+lodging every morning as they went out to breakfast, and returned or
+not as they chose, at night. Every three days, the wine merchant or his
+son came to Madame Babette, and she accounted to them for the money she
+had received. She and her child occupied the porter’s office (in which
+the lad slept at nights) and a little miserable bed-room which opened
+out of it, and received all the light and air that was admitted through
+the door of communication, which was half glass. Madame Babette must
+have had a kind of attachment for the De Crequys—her De Crequys, you
+understand—Virginie’s father, the Count; for, at some risk to herself,
+she had warned both him and his daughter of the danger impending over
+them. But he, infatuated, would not believe that his dear Human Race
+could ever do him harm; and, as long as he did not fear, Virginie was
+not afraid. It was by some ruse, the nature of which I never heard,
+that Madame Babette induced Virginie to come to her abode at the very
+hour in which the Count had been recognized in the streets, and hurried
+off to the Lanterne. It was after Babette had got her there, safe shut
+up in the little back den, that she told her what had befallen her
+father. From that day, Virginie had never stirred out of the gates,
+or crossed the threshold of the porter’s lodge. I do not say that
+Madame Babette was tired of her continual presence, or regretted the
+impulse which made her rush to the De Crequy’s well-known house—after
+being compelled to form one of the mad crowds that saw the Count de
+Crequy seized and hung—and hurry his daughter out, through alleys and
+backways, until at length she had the orphan safe in her own dark
+sleeping-room, and could tell her tale of horror: but Madame Babette
+was poorly paid for her porter’s work by her avaricious brother; and
+it was hard enough to find food for herself and her growing boy; and,
+though the poor girl ate little enough, I dare say, yet there seemed
+no end to the burthen that Madame Babette had imposed upon herself:
+the De Crequys were plundered, ruined, had become an extinct race,
+all but a lonely friendless girl, in broken health and spirits; and,
+though she lent no positive encouragement to his suit, yet, at the
+time, when Clement reappeared in Paris, Madame Babette was beginning
+to think that Virginie might do worse than encourage the attentions
+of Monsieur Morin Fils, her nephew, and the wine merchant’s son. Of
+course, he and his father had the entree into the conciergerie of the
+hotel that belonged to them, in right of being both proprietors and
+relations. The son, Morin, had seen Virginie in this manner. He was
+fully aware that she was far above him in rank, and guessed from her
+whole aspect that she had lost her natural protectors by the terrible
+guillotine; but he did not know her exact name or station, nor could he
+persuade his aunt to tell him. However, he fell head over ears in love
+with her, whether she were princess or peasant; and though at first
+there was something about her which made his passionate love conceal
+itself with shy, awkward reserve, and then made it only appear in the
+guise of deep, respectful devotion; yet, by-and-by,—by the same process
+of reasoning, I suppose, that his aunt had gone through even before
+him—Jean Morin began to let Hope oust Despair from his heart. Sometimes
+he thought—perhaps years hence—that solitary, friendless lady, pent up
+in squalor, might turn to him as to a friend and comforter—and then—and
+then—. Meanwhile Jean Morin was most attentive to his aunt, whom he
+had rather slighted before. He would linger over the accounts; would
+bring her little presents; and, above all, he made a pet and favourite
+of Pierre, the little cousin, who could tell him about all the ways
+of going on of Mam’selle Cannes, as Virginie was called. Pierre was
+thoroughly aware of the drift and cause of his cousin’s inquiries; and
+was his ardent partisan, as I have heard, even before Jean Morin had
+exactly acknowledged his wishes to himself.
+
+“It must have required some patience and much diplomacy, before Clement
+de Crequy found out the exact place where his cousin was hidden. The old
+gardener took the cause very much to heart; as, judging from my
+recollections, I imagine he would have forwarded any fancy, however wild,
+of Monsieur Clement’s. (I will tell you afterwards how I came to know
+all these particulars so well.)
+
+“After Clement’s return, on two succeeding days, from his dangerous
+search, without meeting with any good result, Jacques entreated Monsieur
+de Crequy to let him take it in hand. He represented that he, as
+gardener for the space of twenty years and more at the Hotel de Crequy,
+had a right to be acquainted with all the successive concierges at the
+Count’s house; that he should not go among them as a stranger, but as an
+old friend, anxious to renew pleasant intercourse; and that if the
+Intendant’s story, which he had told Monsieur de Crequy in England, was
+true, that mademoiselle was in hiding at the house of a former concierge,
+why, something relating to her would surely drop out in the course of
+conversation. So he persuaded Clement to remain indoors, while he set
+off on his round, with no apparent object but to gossip.
+
+“At night he came home,—having seen mademoiselle. He told Clement much
+of the story relating to Madame Babette that I have told to you. Of
+course, he had heard nothing of the ambitious hopes of Morin Fils,—hardly
+of his existence, I should think. Madame Babette had received him
+kindly; although, for some time, she had kept him standing in the
+carriage gateway outside her door. But, on his complaining of the
+draught and his rheumatism, she had asked him in: first looking round
+with some anxiety, to see who was in the room behind her. No one was
+there when he entered and sat down. But, in a minute or two, a tall,
+thin young lady, with great, sad eyes, and pale cheeks, came from the
+inner room, and, seeing him, retired. ‘It is Mademoiselle Cannes,’ said
+Madame Babette, rather unnecessarily; for, if he had not been on the
+watch for some sign of Mademoiselle de Crequy, he would hardly have
+noticed the entrance and withdrawal.
+
+“Clement and the good old gardener were always rather perplexed by Madame
+Babette’s evident avoidance of all mention of the De Crequy family. If
+she were so much interested in one member as to be willing to undergo the
+pains and penalties of a domiciliary visit, it was strange that she never
+inquired after the existence of her charge’s friends and relations from
+one who might very probably have heard something of them. They settled
+that Madame Babette must believe that the Marquise and Clement were dead;
+and admired her for her reticence in never speaking of Virginie. The
+truth was, I suspect, that she was so desirous of her nephews success by
+this time, that she did not like letting any one into the secret of
+Virginie’s whereabouts who might interfere with their plan. However, it
+was arranged between Clement and his humble friend, that the former,
+dressed in the peasant’s clothes in which he had entered Paris, but
+smartened up in one or two particulars, as if, although a countryman, he
+had money to spare, should go and engage a sleeping-room in the old
+Breton Inn; where, as I told you, accommodation for the night was to be
+had. This was accordingly done, without exciting Madame Babette’s
+suspicions, for she was unacquainted with the Normandy accent, and
+consequently did not perceive the exaggeration of it which Monsieur de
+Crequy adopted in order to disguise his pure Parisian. But after he had
+for two nights slept in a queer dark closet, at the end of one of the
+numerous short galleries in the Hotel Duguesclin, and paid his money for
+such accommodation each morning at the little bureau under the window of
+the conciergerie, he found himself no nearer to his object. He stood
+outside in the gateway: Madame Babette opened a pane in her window,
+counted out the change, gave polite thanks, and shut to the pane with a
+clack, before he could ever find out what to say that might be the means
+of opening a conversation. Once in the streets, he was in danger from
+the bloodthirsty mob, who were ready in those days to hunt to death every
+one who looked like a gentleman, as an aristocrat: and Clement, depend
+upon it, looked a gentleman, whatever dress he wore. Yet it was unwise
+to traverse Paris to his old friend the gardener’s grenier, so he had to
+loiter about, where I hardly know. Only he did leave the Hotel
+Duguesclin, and he did not go to old Jacques, and there was not another
+house in Paris open to him. At the end of two days, he had made out
+Pierre’s existence; and he began to try to make friends with the lad.
+Pierre was too sharp and shrewd not to suspect something from the
+confused attempts at friendliness. It was not for nothing that the
+Norman farmer lounged in the court and doorway, and brought home presents
+of galette. Pierre accepted the galette, reciprocated the civil
+speeches, but kept his eyes open. Once, returning home pretty late at
+night, he surprised the Norman studying the shadows on the blind, which
+was drawn down when Madame Babette’s lamp was lighted. On going in, he
+found Mademoiselle Cannes with his mother, sitting by the table, and
+helping in the family mending.
+
+“Pierre was afraid that the Norman had some view upon the money which
+his mother, as concierge, collected for her brother. But the money
+was all safe next evening, when his cousin, Monsieur Morin Fils,
+came to collect it. Madame Babette asked her nephew to sit down, and
+skilfully barred the passage to the inner door, so that Virginie, had
+she been ever so much disposed, could not have retreated. She sat
+silently sewing. All at once the little party were startled by a very
+sweet tenor voice, just close to the street window, singing one of the
+airs out of Beaumarchais’ operas, which, a few years before, had been
+popular all over Paris. But after a few moments of silence, and one or
+two remarks, the talking went on again. Pierre, however, noticed an
+increased air of abstraction in Virginie, who, I suppose, was recurring
+to the last time that she had heard the song, and did not consider, as
+her cousin had hoped she would have done, what were the words set to
+the air, which he imagined she would remember, and which would have
+told her so much. For, only a few years before, Adam’s opera of Richard
+le Roi had made the story of the minstrel Blondel and our English Coeur
+de Lion familiar to all the opera-going part of the Parisian public,
+and Clement had bethought him of establishing a communication with
+Virginie by some such means.
+
+“The next night, about the same hour, the same voice was singing outside
+the window again. Pierre, who had been irritated by the proceeding the
+evening before, as it had diverted Virginie’s attention from his cousin,
+who had been doing his utmost to make himself agreeable, rushed out to
+the door, just as the Norman was ringing the bell to be admitted for the
+night. Pierre looked up and down the street; no one else was to be seen.
+The next day, the Norman mollified him somewhat by knocking at the door
+of the conciergerie, and begging Monsieur Pierre’s acceptance of some
+knee-buckles, which had taken the country farmer’s fancy the day before,
+as he had been gazing into the shops, but which, being too small for his
+purpose, he took the liberty of offering to Monsieur Pierre. Pierre, a
+French boy, inclined to foppery, was charmed, ravished by the beauty of
+the present and with monsieur’s goodness, and he began to adjust them to
+his breeches immediately, as well as he could, at least, in his mother’s
+absence. The Norman, whom Pierre kept carefully on the outside of the
+threshold, stood by, as if amused at the boy’s eagerness.
+
+“‘Take care,’ said he, clearly and distinctly; ‘take care, my little
+friend, lest you become a fop; and, in that case, some day, years hence,
+when your heart is devoted to some young lady, she may be inclined to say
+to you’—here he raised his voice—‘No, thank you; when I marry, I marry
+a man, not a petit-maitre; I marry a man, who, whatever his position may
+be, will add dignity to the human race by his virtues.’ Farther than
+that in his quotation Clement dared not go. His sentiments (so much
+above the apparent occasion) met with applause from Pierre, who liked to
+contemplate himself in the light of a lover, even though it should be a
+rejected one, and who hailed the mention of the words ‘virtues’ and
+‘dignity of the human race’ as belonging to the cant of a good citizen.
+
+“But Clement was more anxious to know how the invisible Lady took his
+speech. There was no sign at the time. But when he returned at night,
+he heard a voice, low singing, behind Madame Babette, as she handed him
+his candle, the very air he had sung without effect for two nights past.
+As if he had caught it up from her murmuring voice, he sang it loudly and
+clearly as he crossed the court.
+
+“‘Here is our opera-singer!’ exclaimed Madame Babette. ‘Why, the Norman
+grazier sings like Boupre,’ naming a favourite singer at the neighbouring
+theatre.
+
+“Pierre was struck by the remark, and quietly resolved to look after the
+Norman; but again, I believe, it was more because of his mother’s deposit
+of money than with any thought of Virginie.
+
+“However, the next morning, to the wonder of both mother and son,
+Mademoiselle Cannes proposed, with much hesitation, to go out and make
+some little purchase for herself. A month or two ago, this was what
+Madame Babette had been never weary of urging. But now she was as much
+surprised as if she had expected Virginie to remain a prisoner in her
+rooms all the rest of her life. I suppose she had hoped that her first
+time of quitting it would be when she left it for Monsieur Morin’s house
+as his wife.
+
+“A quick look from Madame Babette towards Pierre was all that was needed
+to encourage the boy to follow her. He went out cautiously. She was at
+the end of the street. She looked up and down, as if waiting for some
+one. No one was there. Back she came, so swiftly that she nearly caught
+Pierre before he could retreat through the porte-cochere. There he
+looked out again. The neighbourhood was low and wild, and strange; and
+some one spoke to Virginie,—nay, laid his hand upon her arm,—whose
+dress and aspect (he had emerged out of a side-street) Pierre did not
+know; but, after a start, and (Pierre could fancy) a little scream,
+Virginie recognised the stranger, and the two turned up the side street
+whence the man had come. Pierre stole swiftly to the corner of this
+street; no one was there: they had disappeared up some of the alleys.
+Pierre returned home to excite his mother’s infinite surprise. But they
+had hardly done talking, when Virginie returned, with a colour and a
+radiance in her face, which they had never seen there since her father’s
+death.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+“I have told you that I heard much of this story from a friend of the
+Intendant of the De Crequys, whom he met with in London. Some years
+afterwards—the summer before my lord’s death—I was travelling with him
+in Devonshire, and we went to see the French prisoners of war on
+Dartmoor. We fell into conversation with one of them, whom I found out
+to be the very Pierre of whom I had heard before, as having been involved
+in the fatal story of Clement and Virginie, and by him I was told much of
+their last days, and thus I learnt how to have some sympathy with all
+those who were concerned in those terrible events; yes, even with the
+younger Morin himself, on whose behalf Pierre spoke warmly, even after so
+long a time had elapsed.
+
+“For when the younger Morin called at the porter’s lodge, on the evening
+of the day when Virginie had gone out for the first time after so many
+months’ confinement to the conciergerie, he was struck with the
+improvement in her appearance. It seems to have hardly been that he
+thought her beauty greater: for, in addition to the fact that she was not
+beautiful, Morin had arrived at that point of being enamoured when it
+does not signify whether the beloved one is plain or handsome—she has
+enchanted one pair of eyes, which henceforward see her through their own
+medium. But Morin noticed the faint increase of colour and light in her
+countenance. It was as though she had broken through her thick cloud of
+hopeless sorrow, and was dawning forth into a happier life. And so,
+whereas during her grief, he had revered and respected it even to a point
+of silent sympathy, now that she was gladdened, his heart rose on the
+wings of strengthened hopes. Even in the dreary monotony of this
+existence in his Aunt Babette’s conciergerie, Time had not failed in his
+work, and now, perhaps, soon he might humbly strive to help Time. The
+very next day he returned—on some pretence of business—to the Hotel
+Duguesclin, and made his aunt’s room, rather than his aunt herself, a
+present of roses and geraniums tied up in a bouquet with a tricolor
+ribbon. Virginie was in the room, sitting at the coarse sewing she liked
+to do for Madame Babette. He saw her eyes brighten at the sight of the
+flowers: she asked his aunt to let her arrange them; he saw her untie the
+ribbon, and with a gesture of dislike, throw it on the ground, and give
+it a kick with her little foot, and even in this girlish manner of
+insulting his dearest prejudices, he found something to admire.
+
+“As he was coming out, Pierre stopped him. The lad had been trying to
+arrest his cousin’s attention by futile grimaces and signs played off
+behind Virginie’s back: but Monsieur Morin saw nothing but Mademoiselle
+Cannes. However, Pierre was not to be baffled, and Monsieur Morin found
+him in waiting just outside the threshold. With his finger on his lips,
+Pierre walked on tiptoe by his companion’s side till they would have been
+long past sight or hearing of the conciergerie, even had the inhabitants
+devoted themselves to the purposes of spying or listening.
+
+“‘Chut!’ said Pierre, at last. ‘She goes out walking.’
+
+“‘Well?’ said Monsieur Morin, half curious, half annoyed at being
+disturbed in the delicious reverie of the future into which he longed to
+fall.
+
+“‘Well! It is not well. It is bad.’
+
+“‘Why? I do not ask who she is, but I have my ideas. She is an
+aristocrat. Do the people about here begin to suspect her?’
+
+“‘No, no!’ said Pierre. ‘But she goes out walking. She has gone these
+two mornings. I have watched her. She meets a man—she is friends with
+him, for she talks to him as eagerly as he does to her—mamma cannot tell
+who he is.’
+
+“‘Has my aunt seen him?’
+
+“‘No, not so much as a fly’s wing of him. I myself have only seen his
+back. It strikes me like a familiar back, and yet I cannot think who it
+is. But they separate with sudden darts, like two birds who have been
+together to feed their young ones. One moment they are in close talk,
+their heads together chuchotting; the next he has turned up some
+bye-street, and Mademoiselle Cannes is close upon me—has almost caught
+me.’
+
+“‘But she did not see you?’ inquired Monsieur Morin, in so altered a
+voice that Pierre gave him one of his quick penetrating looks. He was
+struck by the way in which his cousin’s features—always coarse and
+common-place—had become contracted and pinched; struck, too, by the
+livid look on his sallow complexion. But as if Morin was conscious of
+the manner in which his face belied his feelings, he made an effort, and
+smiled, and patted Pierre’s head, and thanked him for his intelligence,
+and gave him a five-franc piece, and bade him go on with his observations
+of Mademoiselle Cannes’ movements, and report all to him.
+
+“Pierre returned home with a light heart, tossing up his five-franc piece
+as he ran. Just as he was at the conciergerie door, a great tall man
+bustled past him, and snatched his money away from him, looking back with
+a laugh, which added insult to injury. Pierre had no redress; no one had
+witnessed the impudent theft, and if they had, no one to be seen in the
+street was strong enough to give him redress. Besides, Pierre had seen
+enough of the state of the streets of Paris at that time to know that
+friends, not enemies, were required, and the man had a bad air about him.
+But all these considerations did not keep Pierre from bursting out into a
+fit of crying when he was once more under his mother’s roof; and
+Virginie, who was alone there (Madame Babette having gone out to make her
+daily purchases), might have imagined him pommeled to death by the
+loudness of his sobs.
+
+“‘What is the matter?’ asked she. ‘Speak, my child. What hast thou
+done?’
+
+“‘He has robbed me! he has robbed me!’ was all Pierre could gulp out.
+
+“‘Robbed thee! and of what, my poor boy?’ said Virginie, stroking his
+hair gently.
+
+“‘Of my five-franc piece—of a five-franc piece,’ said Pierre, correcting
+himself, and leaving out the word my, half fearful lest Virginie should
+inquire how he became possessed of such a sum, and for what services it
+had been given him. But, of course, no such idea came into her head, for
+it would have been impertinent, and she was gentle-born.
+
+“‘Wait a moment, my lad,’ and going to the one small drawer in the inner
+apartment, which held all her few possessions, she brought back a little
+ring—a ring just with one ruby in it—which she had worn in the days
+when she cared to wear jewels. ‘Take this,’ said she, ‘and run with it
+to a jeweller’s. It is but a poor, valueless thing, but it will bring
+you in your five francs, at any rate. Go! I desire you.’
+
+“‘But I cannot,’ said the boy, hesitating; some dim sense of honour
+flitting through his misty morals.
+
+“‘Yes, you must!’ she continued, urging him with her hand to the door.
+‘Run! if it brings in more than five francs, you shall return the surplus
+to me.’
+
+“Thus tempted by her urgency, and, I suppose, reasoning with himself to
+the effect that he might as well have the money, and then see whether he
+thought it right to act as a spy upon her or not—the one action did not
+pledge him to the other, nor yet did she make any conditions with her
+gift—Pierre went off with her ring; and, after repaying himself his five
+francs, he was enabled to bring Virginie back two more, so well had he
+managed his affairs. But, although the whole transaction did not leave
+him bound, in any way, to discover or forward Virginie’s wishes, it did
+leave him pledged, according to his code, to act according to her
+advantage, and he considered himself the judge of the best course to be
+pursued to this end. And, moreover, this little kindness attached him to
+her personally. He began to think how pleasant it would be to have so
+kind and generous a person for a relation; how easily his troubles might
+be borne if he had always such a ready helper at hand; how much he should
+like to make her like him, and come to him for the protection of his
+masculine power! First of all his duties, as her self-appointed squire,
+came the necessity of finding out who her strange new acquaintance was.
+Thus, you see, he arrived at the same end, via supposed duty, that he was
+previously pledged to via interest. I fancy a good number of us, when
+any line of action will promote our own interest, can make ourselves
+believe that reasons exist which compel us to it as a duty.
+
+“In the course of a very few days, Pierre had so circumvented Virginie as
+to have discovered that her new friend was no other than the Norman
+farmer in a different dress. This was a great piece of knowledge to
+impart to Morin. But Pierre was not prepared for the immediate physical
+effect it had on his cousin. Morin sat suddenly down on one of the seats
+in the Boulevards—it was there Pierre had met with him accidentally—when
+he heard who it was that Virginie met. I do not suppose the man had the
+faintest idea of any relationship or even previous acquaintanceship
+between Clement and Virginie. If he thought of anything beyond the mere
+fact presented to him, that his idol was in communication with another,
+younger, handsomer man than himself, it must have been that the Norman
+farmer had seen her at the conciergerie, and had been attracted by her,
+and, as was but natural, had tried to make her acquaintance, and had
+succeeded. But, from what Pierre told me, I should not think that even
+this much thought passed through Morin’s mind. He seems to have been a
+man of rare and concentrated attachments; violent, though restrained and
+undemonstrative passions; and, above all, a capability of jealousy, of
+which his dark oriental complexion must have been a type. I could fancy
+that if he had married Virginie, he would have coined his life-blood for
+luxuries to make her happy; would have watched over and petted her, at
+every sacrifice to himself, as long as she would have been content to
+live with him alone. But, as Pierre expressed it to me: ‘When I saw what
+my cousin was, when I learned his nature too late, I perceived that he
+would have strangled a bird if she whom he loved was attracted by it from
+him.’
+
+“When Pierre had told Morin of his discovery, Morin sat down, as I said,
+quite suddenly, as if he had been shot. He found out that the first
+meeting between the Norman and Virginie was no accidental, isolated
+circumstance. Pierre was torturing him with his accounts of daily
+rendezvous: if but for a moment, they were seeing each other every day,
+sometimes twice a day. And Virginie could speak to this man, though to
+himself she was coy and reserved as hardly to utter a sentence. Pierre
+caught these broken words while his cousin’s complexion grew more and
+more livid, and then purple, as if some great effect were produced on his
+circulation by the news he had just heard. Pierre was so startled by his
+cousin’s wandering, senseless eyes, and otherwise disordered looks, that
+he rushed into a neighbouring cabaret for a glass of absinthe, which he
+paid for, as he recollected afterwards, with a portion of Virginie’s five
+francs. By-and-by Morin recovered his natural appearance; but he was
+gloomy and silent; and all that Pierre could get out of him was, that the
+Norman farmer should not sleep another night at the Hotel Duguesclin,
+giving him such opportunities of passing and repassing by the
+conciergerie door. He was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to repay
+Pierre the half franc he had spent on the absinthe, which Pierre
+perceived, and seems to have noted down in the ledger of his mind as on
+Virginie’s balance of favour.
+
+“Altogether, he was much disappointed at his cousin’s mode of receiving
+intelligence, which the lad thought worth another five-franc piece at
+least; or, if not paid for in money, to be paid for in open-mouthed
+confidence and expression of feeling, that he was, for a time, so far a
+partisan of Virginie’s—unconscious Virginie—against his cousin, as to
+feel regret when the Norman returned no more to his night’s lodging, and
+when Virginie’s eager watch at the crevice of the closely-drawn blind
+ended only with a sigh of disappointment. If it had not been for his
+mother’s presence at the time, Pierre thought he should have told her
+all. But how far was his mother in his cousin’s confidence as regarded
+the dismissal of the Norman?
+
+“In a few days, however, Pierre felt almost sure that they had
+established some new means of communication. Virginie went out for a
+short time every day; but though Pierre followed her as closely as he
+could without exciting her observation, he was unable to discover what
+kind of intercourse she held with the Norman. She went, in general, the
+same short round among the little shops in the neighbourhood; not
+entering any, but stopping at two or three. Pierre afterwards remembered
+that she had invariably paused at the nosegays displayed in a certain
+window, and studied them long: but, then, she stopped and looked at caps,
+hats, fashions, confectionery (all of the humble kind common in that
+quarter), so how should he have known that any particular attraction
+existed among the flowers? Morin came more regularly than ever to his
+aunt’s; but Virginie was apparently unconscious that she was the
+attraction. She looked healthier and more hopeful than she had done for
+months, and her manners to all were gentler and not so reserved. Almost
+as if she wished to manifest her gratitude to Madame Babette for her long
+continuance of kindness, the necessity for which was nearly ended,
+Virginie showed an unusual alacrity in rendering the old woman any little
+service in her power, and evidently tried to respond to Monsieur Morin’s
+civilities, he being Madame Babette’s nephew, with a soft graciousness
+which must have made one of her principal charms; for all who knew her
+speak of the fascination of her manners, so winning and attentive to
+others, while yet her opinions, and often her actions, were of so decided
+a character. For, as I have said, her beauty was by no means great; yet
+every man who came near her seems to have fallen into the sphere of her
+influence. Monsieur Morin was deeper than ever in love with her during
+these last few days: he was worked up into a state capable of any
+sacrifice, either of himself or others, so that he might obtain her at
+last. He sat ‘devouring her with his eyes’ (to use Pierre’s expression)
+whenever she could not see him; but, if she looked towards him, he looked
+to the ground—anywhere—away from her and almost stammered in his
+replies if she addressed any question to him.
+
+“He had been, I should think, ashamed of his extreme agitation on the
+Boulevards, for Pierre thought that he absolutely shunned him for these
+few succeeding days. He must have believed that he had driven the Norman
+(my poor Clement!) off the field, by banishing him from his inn; and
+thought that the intercourse between him and Virginie, which he had thus
+interrupted, was of so slight and transient a character as to be quenched
+by a little difficulty.
+
+“But he appears to have felt that he had made but little way, and he
+awkwardly turned to Pierre for help—not yet confessing his love, though;
+he only tried to make friends again with the lad after their silent
+estrangement. And Pierre for some time did not choose to perceive his
+cousin’s advances. He would reply to all the roundabout questions Morin
+put to him respecting household conversations when he was not present, or
+household occupations and tone of thought, without mentioning Virginie’s
+name any more than his questioner did. The lad would seem to suppose,
+that his cousin’s strong interest in their domestic ways of going on was
+all on account of Madame Babette. At last he worked his cousin up to the
+point of making him a confidant: and then the boy was half frightened at
+the torrent of vehement words he had unloosed. The lava came down with a
+greater rush for having been pent up so long. Morin cried out his words
+in a hoarse, passionate voice, clenched his teeth, his fingers, and
+seemed almost convulsed, as he spoke out his terrible love for Virginie,
+which would lead him to kill her sooner than see her another’s; and if
+another stepped in between him and her!—and then he smiled a fierce,
+triumphant smile, but did not say any more.
+
+“Pierre was, as I said, half frightened; but also half-admiring. This
+was really love—a ‘grande passion,’—a really fine dramatic thing,—like
+the plays they acted at the little theatre yonder. He had a dozen times
+the sympathy with his cousin now that he had had before, and readily
+swore by the infernal gods, for they were far too enlightened to believe
+in one God, or Christianity, or anything of the kind,—that he would
+devote himself, body and soul, to forwarding his cousin’s views. Then
+his cousin took him to a shop, and bought him a smart second-hand watch,
+on which they scratched the word Fidelite, and thus was the compact
+sealed. Pierre settled in his own mind, that if he were a woman, he
+should like to be beloved as Virginie was, by his cousin, and that it
+would be an extremely good thing for her to be the wife of so rich a
+citizen as Morin Fils,—and for Pierre himself, too, for doubtless their
+gratitude would lead them to give him rings and watches ad infinitum.
+
+“A day or two afterwards, Virginie was taken ill. Madame Babette said
+it was because she had persevered in going out in all weathers, after
+confining herself to two warm rooms for so long; and very probably this
+was really the cause, for, from Pierre’s account, she must have been
+suffering from a feverish cold, aggravated, no doubt, by her impatience
+at Madame Babette’s familiar prohibitions of any more walks until she
+was better. Every day, in spite of her trembling, aching limbs, she
+would fain have arranged her dress for her walk at the usual time; but
+Madame Babette was fully prepared to put physical obstacles in her
+way, if she was not obedient in remaining tranquil on the little sofa
+by the side of the fire. The third day, she called Pierre to her, when
+his mother was not attending (having, in fact, locked up Mademoiselle
+Cannes’ out-of-door things).
+
+“‘See, my child,’ said Virginie. ‘Thou must do me a great favour. Go to
+the gardener’s shop in the Rue des Bons-Enfans, and look at the nosegays
+in the window. I long for pinks; they are my favourite flower. Here are
+two francs. If thou seest a nosegay of pinks displayed in the window, if
+it be ever so faded—nay, if thou seest two or three nosegays of pinks,
+remember, buy them all, and bring them to me, I have so great a desire
+for the smell.’ She fell back weak and exhausted. Pierre hurried out.
+Now was the time; here was the clue to the long inspection of the nosegay
+in this very shop.
+
+“Sure enough, there was a drooping nosegay of pinks in the window. Pierre
+went in, and, with all his impatience, he made as good a bargain as he
+could, urging that the flowers were faded, and good for nothing. At last
+he purchased them at a very moderate price. And now you will learn the
+bad consequences of teaching the lower orders anything beyond what is
+immediately necessary to enable them to earn their daily bread! The
+silly Count de Crequy,—he who had been sent to his bloody rest, by the
+very canaille of whom he thought so much,—he who had made Virginie
+(indirectly, it is true) reject such a man as her cousin Clement, by
+inflating her mind with his bubbles of theories,—this Count de Crequy
+had long ago taken a fancy to Pierre, as he saw the bright sharp child
+playing about his court—Monsieur de Crequy had even begun to educate the
+boy himself to try work out certain opinions of his into practice,—but
+the drudgery of the affair wearied him, and, beside, Babette had left his
+employment. Still the Count took a kind of interest in his former pupil;
+and made some sort of arrangement by which Pierre was to be taught
+reading and writing, and accounts, and Heaven knows what besides,—Latin,
+I dare say. So Pierre, instead of being an innocent messenger, as he
+ought to have been—(as Mr. Horner’s little lad Gregson ought to have
+been this morning)—could read writing as well as either you or I. So
+what does he do, on obtaining the nosegay, but examine it well. The
+stalks of the flowers were tied up with slips of matting in wet moss.
+Pierre undid the strings, unwrapped the moss, and out fell a piece of wet
+paper, with the writing all blurred with moisture. It was but a torn
+piece of writing-paper, apparently, but Pierre’s wicked mischievous eyes
+read what was written on it,—written so as to look like a
+fragment,—‘Ready, every and any night at nine. All is prepared. Have
+no fright. Trust one who, whatever hopes he might once have had, is
+content now to serve you as a faithful cousin;’ and a place was named,
+which I forget, but which Pierre did not, as it was evidently the
+rendezvous. After the lad had studied every word, till he could say it
+off by heart, he placed the paper where he had found it, enveloped it in
+moss, and tied the whole up again carefully. Virginie’s face coloured
+scarlet as she received it. She kept smelling at it, and trembling: but
+she did not untie it, although Pierre suggested how much fresher it would
+be if the stalks were immediately put into water. But once, after his
+back had been turned for a minute, he saw it untied when he looked round
+again, and Virginie was blushing, and hiding something in her bosom.
+
+“Pierre was now all impatience to set off and find his cousin, But his
+mother seemed to want him for small domestic purposes even more than
+usual; and he had chafed over a multitude of errands connected with the
+Hotel before he could set off and search for his cousin at his usual
+haunts. At last the two met and Pierre related all the events of the
+morning to Morin. He said the note off word by word. (That lad this
+morning had something of the magpie look of Pierre—it made me shudder to
+see him, and hear him repeat the note by heart.) Then Morin asked him to
+tell him all over again. Pierre was struck by Morin’s heavy sighs as he
+repeated the story. When he came the second time to the note, Morin
+tried to write the words down; but either he was not a good, ready
+scholar, or his fingers trembled too much. Pierre hardly remembered,
+but, at any rate, the lad had to do it, with his wicked reading and
+writing. When this was done, Morin sat heavily silent. Pierre would
+have preferred the expected outburst, for this impenetrable gloom
+perplexed and baffled him. He had even to speak to his cousin to rouse
+him; and when he replied, what he said had so little apparent connection
+with the subject which Pierre had expected to find uppermost in his mind,
+that he was half afraid that his cousin had lost his wits.
+
+“‘My Aunt Babette is out of coffee.’
+
+“‘I am sure I do not know,’ said Pierre.
+
+“‘Yes, she is. I heard her say so. Tell her that a friend of mine has
+just opened a shop in the Rue Saint Antoine, and that if she will join me
+there in an hour, I will supply her with a good stock of coffee, just to
+give my friend encouragement. His name is Antoine Meyer, Number One
+hundred and Fifty at the sign of the Cap of Liberty.’
+
+“‘I could go with you now. I can carry a few pounds of coffee better
+than my mother,’ said Pierre, all in good faith. He told me he should
+never forget the look on his cousin’s face, as he turned round, and bade
+him begone, and give his mother the message without another word. It had
+evidently sent him home promptly to obey his cousins command. Morin’s
+message perplexed Madame Babette.
+
+“‘How could he know I was out of coffee?’ said she. ‘I am; but I only
+used the last up this morning. How could Victor know about it?’
+
+“‘I am sure I can’t tell,’ said Pierre, who by this time had recovered
+his usual self-possession. ‘All I know is, that monsieur is in a pretty
+temper, and that if you are not sharp to your time at this Antoine
+Meyer’s you are likely to come in for some of his black looks.’
+
+“‘Well, it is very kind of him to offer to give me some coffee, to be
+sure! But how could he know I was out?’
+
+“Pierre hurried his mother off impatiently, for he was certain that
+the offer of the coffee was only a blind to some hidden purpose on
+his cousin’s part; and he made no doubt that when his mother had been
+informed of what his cousin’s real intention was, he, Pierre, could
+extract it from her by coaxing or bullying. But he was mistaken.
+Madame Babette returned home, grave, depressed, silent, and loaded
+with the best coffee. Some time afterwards he learnt why his cousin
+had sought for this interview. It was to extract from her, by promises
+and threats, the real name of Mam’selle Cannes, which would give him
+a clue to the true appellation of The Faithful Cousin. He concealed
+the second purpose from his aunt, who had been quite unaware of his
+jealousy of the Norman farmer, or of his identification of him with
+any relation of Virginie’s. But Madame Babette instinctively shrank
+from giving him any information: she must have felt that, in the
+lowering mood in which she found him, his desire for greater knowledge
+of Virginie’s antecedents boded her no good. And yet he made his aunt
+his confidante—told her what she had only suspected before—that he
+was deeply enamoured of Mam’selle Cannes, and would gladly marry her.
+He spoke to Madame Babette of his father’s hoarded riches; and of the
+share which he, as partner, had in them at the present time; and of
+the prospect of the succession to the whole, which he had, as only
+child. He told his aunt of the provision for her (Madame Babette’s)
+life, which he would make on the day when he married Mam’selle Cannes.
+And yet—and yet—Babette saw that in his eye and look which made her
+more and more reluctant to confide in him. By-and-by he tried threats.
+She should leave the conciergerie, and find employment where she
+liked. Still silence. Then he grew angry, and swore that he would
+inform against her at the bureau of the Directory, for harbouring an
+aristocrat; an aristocrat he knew Mademoiselle was, whatever her real
+name might be. His aunt should have a domiciliary visit, and see how
+she liked that. The officers of the Government were the people for
+finding out secrets. In vain she reminded him that, by so doing, he
+would expose to imminent danger the lady whom he had professed to love.
+He told her, with a sullen relapse into silence after his vehement
+outpouring of passion, never to trouble herself about that. At last
+he wearied out the old woman, and, frightened alike of herself and of
+him, she told him all,—that Mam’selle Cannes was Mademoiselle Virginie
+de Crequy, daughter of the Count of that name. Who was the Count?
+Younger brother of the Marquis. Where was the Marquis? Dead long ago,
+leaving a widow and child. A son? (eagerly). Yes, a son. Where was he?
+Parbleu! how should she know?—for her courage returned a little as
+the talk went away from the only person of the De Crequy family that
+she cared about. But, by dint of some small glasses out of a bottle
+of Antoine Meyer’s, she told him more about the De Crequys than she
+liked afterwards to remember. For the exhilaration of the brandy lasted
+but a very short time, and she came home, as I have said, depressed,
+with a presentiment of coming evil. She would not answer Pierre,
+but cuffed him about in a manner to which the spoilt boy was quite
+unaccustomed. His cousin’s short, angry words, and sudden withdrawal
+of confidence,—his mother’s unwonted crossness and fault-finding, all
+made Virginie’s kind, gentle treatment, more than ever charming to the
+lad. He half resolved to tell her how he had been acting as a spy upon
+her actions, and at whose desire he had done it. But he was afraid of
+Morin, and of the vengeance which he was sure would fall upon him for
+any breach of confidence. Towards half-past eight that evening—Pierre,
+watching, saw Virginie arrange several little things—she was in the
+inner room, but he sat where he could see her through the glazed
+partition. His mother sat—apparently sleeping—in the great easy-chair;
+Virginie moved about softly, for fear of disturbing her. She made up
+one or two little parcels of the few things she could call her own:
+one packet she concealed about herself—the others she directed, and
+left on the shelf. ‘She is going,’ thought Pierre, and (as he said
+in giving me the account) his heart gave a spring, to think that he
+should never see her again. If either his mother or his cousin had
+been more kind to him, he might have endeavoured to intercept her; but
+as it was, he held his breath, and when she came out he pretended to
+read, scarcely knowing whether he wished her to succeed in the purpose
+which he was almost sure she entertained, or not. She stopped by him,
+and passed her hand over his hair. He told me that his eyes filled
+with tears at this caress. Then she stood for a moment looking at the
+sleeping Madame Babette, and stooped down and softly kissed her on the
+forehead. Pierre dreaded lest his mother should awake (for by this time
+the wayward, vacillating boy must have been quite on Virginie’s side),
+but the brandy she had drunk made her slumber heavily. Virginie went.
+Pierre’s heart beat fast. He was sure his cousin would try to intercept
+her; but how, he could not imagine. He longed to run out and see the
+catastrophe,—but he had let the moment slip; he was also afraid of
+reawakening his mother to her unusual state of anger and violence.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+“Pierre went on pretending to read, but in reality listening with acute
+tension of ear to every little sound. His perceptions became so
+sensitive in this respect that he was incapable of measuring time, every
+moment had seemed so full of noises, from the beating of his heart up to
+the roll of the heavy carts in the distance. He wondered whether
+Virginie would have reached the place of rendezvous, and yet he was
+unable to compute the passage of minutes. His mother slept soundly: that
+was well. By this time Virginie must have met the ‘faithful cousin:’ if,
+indeed, Morin had not made his appearance.
+
+“At length, he felt as if he could no longer sit still, awaiting the
+issue, but must run out and see what course events had taken. In vain
+his mother, half-rousing herself, called after him to ask whither he was
+going: he was already out of hearing before she had ended her sentence,
+and he ran on until, stopped by the sight of Mademoiselle Cannes walking
+along at so swift a pace that it was almost a run; while at her side,
+resolutely keeping by her, Morin was striding abreast. Pierre had just
+turned the corner of the street, when he came upon them. Virginie would
+have passed him without recognizing him, she was in such passionate
+agitation, but for Morin’s gesture, by which he would fain have kept
+Pierre from interrupting them. Then, when Virginie saw the lad, she
+caught at his arm, and thanked God, as if in that boy of twelve or
+fourteen she held a protector. Pierre felt her tremble from head to
+foot, and was afraid lest she would fall, there where she stood, in the
+hard rough street.
+
+“‘Begone, Pierre!’ said Morin.
+
+“‘I cannot,’ replied Pierre, who indeed was held firmly by Virginie.
+‘Besides, I won’t,’ he added. ‘Who has been frightening mademoiselle in
+this way?’ asked he, very much inclined to brave his cousin at all
+hazards.
+
+“‘Mademoiselle is not accustomed to walk in the streets alone,’ said
+Morin, sulkily. ‘She came upon a crowd attracted by the arrest of an
+aristocrat, and their cries alarmed her. I offered to take charge of her
+home. Mademoiselle should not walk in these streets alone. We are not
+like the cold-blooded people of the Faubourg Saint Germain.’
+
+“Virginie did not speak. Pierre doubted if she heard a word of what they
+were saying. She leant upon him more and more heavily.
+
+“‘Will mademoiselle condescend to take my arm?’ said Morin, with sulky,
+and yet humble, uncouthness. I dare say he would have given worlds if he
+might have had that little hand within his arm; but, though she still
+kept silence, she shuddered up away from him, as you shrink from touching
+a toad. He had said something to her during that walk, you may be sure,
+which had made her loathe him. He marked and understood the gesture. He
+held himself aloof while Pierre gave her all the assistance he could in
+their slow progress homewards. But Morin accompanied her all the same.
+He had played too desperate a game to be baulked now. He had given
+information against the ci-devant Marquis de Crequy, as a returned
+emigre, to be met with at such a time, in such a place. Morin had hoped
+that all sign of the arrest would have been cleared away before Virginie
+reached the spot—so swiftly were terrible deeds done in those days. But
+Clement defended himself desperately: Virginie was punctual to a second;
+and, though the wounded man was borne off to the Abbaye, amid a crowd of
+the unsympathising jeerers who mingled with the armed officials of the
+Directory, Morin feared lest Virginie had recognized him; and he would
+have preferred that she should have thought that the ‘faithful cousin’
+was faithless, than that she should have seen him in bloody danger on her
+account. I suppose he fancied that, if Virginie never saw or heard more
+of him, her imagination would not dwell on his simple disappearance, as
+it would do if she knew what he was suffering for her sake.
+
+“At any rate, Pierre saw that his cousin was deeply mortified by the
+whole tenor of his behaviour during their walk home. When they arrived
+at Madame Babette’s, Virginie fell fainting on the floor; her strength
+had but just sufficed for this exertion of reaching the shelter of the
+house. Her first sign of restoring consciousness consisted in avoidance
+of Morin. He had been most assiduous in his efforts to bring her round;
+quite tender in his way, Pierre said; and this marked, instinctive
+repugnance to him evidently gave him extreme pain. I suppose Frenchmen
+are more demonstrative than we are; for Pierre declared that he saw his
+cousin’s eyes fill with tears, as she shrank away from his touch, if he
+tried to arrange the shawl they had laid under her head like a pillow, or
+as she shut her eyes when he passed before her. Madame Babette was
+urgent with her to go and lie down on the bed in the inner room; but it
+was some time before she was strong enough to rise and do this.
+
+“When Madame Babette returned from arranging the girl comfortably, the
+three relations sat down in silence; a silence which Pierre thought would
+never be broken. He wanted his mother to ask his cousin what had
+happened. But Madame Babette was afraid of her nephew, and thought it
+more discreet to wait for such crumbs of intelligence as he might think
+fit to throw to her. But, after she had twice reported Virginie to be
+asleep, without a word being uttered in reply to her whispers by either
+of her companions, Morin’s powers of self-containment gave way.
+
+“‘It is hard!’ he said.
+
+“‘What is hard?’ asked Madame Babette, after she had paused for a time,
+to enable him to add to, or to finish, his sentence, if he pleased.
+
+“‘It is hard for a man to love a woman as I do,’ he went on—‘I did not
+seek to love her, it came upon me before I was aware—before I had ever
+thought about it at all, I loved her better than all the world beside.
+All my life, before I knew her, seems a dull blank. I neither know nor
+care for what I did before then. And now there are just two lives before
+me. Either I have her, or I have not. That is all: but that is
+everything. And what can I do to make her have me? Tell me, aunt,’ and
+he caught at Madame Babette’s arm, and gave it so sharp a shake, that she
+half screamed out, Pierre said, and evidently grew alarmed at her
+nephew’s excitement.
+
+“‘Hush, Victor!’ said she. ‘There are other women in the world, if this
+one will not have you.’
+
+“‘None other for me,’ he said, sinking back as if hopeless. ‘I am plain
+and coarse, not one of the scented darlings of the aristocrats. Say that
+I am ugly, brutish; I did not make myself so, any more than I made myself
+love her. It is my fate. But am I to submit to the consequences of my
+fate without a struggle? Not I. As strong as my love is, so strong is
+my will. It can be no stronger,’ continued he, gloomily. ‘Aunt Babette,
+you must help me—you must make her love me.’ He was so fierce here,
+that Pierre said he did not wonder that his mother was frightened.
+
+“‘I, Victor!’ she exclaimed. ‘I make her love you? How can I? Ask me
+to speak for you to Mademoiselle Didot, or to Mademoiselle Cauchois even,
+or to such as they, and I’ll do it, and welcome. But to Mademoiselle de
+Crequy, why you don’t know the difference! Those people—the old
+nobility I mean—why they don’t know a man from a dog, out of their own
+rank! And no wonder, for the young gentlemen of quality are treated
+differently to us from their very birth. If she had you to-morrow, you
+would be miserable. Let me alone for knowing the aristocracy. I have
+not been a concierge to a duke and three counts for nothing. I tell you,
+all your ways are different to her ways.’
+
+“‘I would change my “ways,” as you call them.’
+
+“‘Be reasonable, Victor.’
+
+“‘No, I will not be reasonable, if by that you mean giving her up. I
+tell you two lives are before me; one with her, one without her. But the
+latter will be but a short career for both of us. You said, aunt, that
+the talk went in the conciergerie of her father’s hotel, that she would
+have nothing to do with this cousin whom I put out of the way to-day?’
+
+“‘So the servants said. How could I know? All I know is, that he left
+off coming to our hotel, and that at one time before then he had never
+been two days absent.’
+
+“‘So much the better for him. He suffers now for having come between me
+and my object—in trying to snatch her away out of my sight. Take you
+warning, Pierre! I did not like your meddling to-night.’ And so he went
+off, leaving Madam Babette rocking herself backwards and forwards, in all
+the depression of spirits consequent upon the reaction after the brandy,
+and upon her knowledge of her nephew’s threatened purpose combined.
+
+“In telling you most of this, I have simply repeated Pierre’s account,
+which I wrote down at the time. But here what he had to say came to a
+sudden break; for, the next morning, when Madame Babette rose, Virginie
+was missing, and it was some time before either she, or Pierre, or Morin,
+could get the slightest clue to the missing girl.
+
+“And now I must take up the story as it was told to the Intendant
+Flechier by the old gardener Jacques, with whom Clement had been
+lodging on his first arrival in Paris. The old man could not, I dare
+say, remember half as much of what had happened as Pierre did; the
+former had the dulled memory of age, while Pierre had evidently thought
+over the whole series of events as a story—as a play, if one may call
+it so—during the solitary hours in his after-life, wherever they were
+passed, whether in lonely camp watches, or in the foreign prison,
+where he had to drag out many years. Clement had, as I said, returned
+to the gardener’s garret after he had been dismissed from the Hotel
+Duguesclin. There were several reasons for his thus doubling back. One
+was, that he put nearly the whole breadth of Paris between him and an
+enemy; though why Morin was an enemy, and to what extent he carried
+his dislike or hatred, Clement could not tell, of course. The next
+reason for returning to Jacques was, no doubt, the conviction that,
+in multiplying his residences, he multiplied the chances against his
+being suspected and recognized. And then, again, the old man was in his
+secret, and his ally, although perhaps but a feeble kind of one. It was
+through Jacques that the plan of communication, by means of a nosegay
+of pinks, had been devised; and it was Jacques who procured him the
+last disguise that Clement was to use in Paris—as he hoped and trusted.
+It was that of a respectable shopkeeper of no particular class; a dress
+that would have seemed perfectly suitable to the young man who would
+naturally have worn it; and yet, as Clement put it on, and adjusted
+it—giving it a sort of finish and elegance which I always noticed about
+his appearance and which I believed was innate in the wearer—I have no
+doubt it seemed like the usual apparel of a gentleman. No coarseness
+of texture, nor clumsiness of cut could disguise the nobleman of
+thirty descents, it appeared; for immediately on arriving at the place
+of rendezvous, he was recognized by the men placed there on Morin’s
+information to seize him. Jacques, following at a little distance,
+with a bundle under his arm containing articles of feminine disguise
+for Virginie, saw four men attempt Clement’s arrest—saw him, quick as
+lightning, draw a sword hitherto concealed in a clumsy stick—saw his
+agile figure spring to his guard,—and saw him defend himself with the
+rapidity and art of a man skilled in arms. But what good did it do?
+as Jacques piteously used to ask, Monsieur Flechier told me. A great
+blow from a heavy club on the sword-arm of Monsieur de Crequy laid it
+helpless and immovable by his side. Jacques always thought that that
+blow came from one of the spectators, who by this time had collected
+round the scene of the affray. The next instant, his master—his little
+marquis—was down among the feet of the crowd, and though he was up
+again before he had received much damage—so active and light was my
+poor Clement—it was not before the old gardener had hobbled forwards,
+and, with many an old-fashioned oath and curse, proclaimed himself a
+partisan of the losing side—a follower of a ci-devant aristocrat. It
+was quite enough. He received one or two good blows, which were, in
+fact, aimed at his master; and then, almost before he was aware, he
+found his arms pinioned behind him with a woman’s garter, which one of
+the viragos in the crowd had made no scruple of pulling off in public,
+as soon as she heard for what purpose it was wanted. Poor Jacques was
+stunned and unhappy,—his master was out of sight, on before; and the
+old gardener scarce knew whither they were taking him. His head ached
+from the blows which had fallen upon it; it was growing dark—June day
+though it was,—and when first he seems to have become exactly aware of
+what had happened to him, it was when he was turned into one of the
+larger rooms of the Abbaye, in which all were put who had no other
+allotted place wherein to sleep. One or two iron lamps hung from the
+ceiling by chains, giving a dim light for a little circle. Jacques
+stumbled forwards over a sleeping body lying on the ground. The sleeper
+wakened up enough to complain; and the apology of the old man in reply
+caught the ear of his master, who, until this time, could hardly have
+been aware of the straits and difficulties of his faithful Jacques.
+And there they sat,—against a pillar, the live-long night, holding one
+another’s hands, and each restraining expressions of pain, for fear of
+adding to the other’s distress. That night made them intimate friends,
+in spite of the difference of age and rank. The disappointed hopes, the
+acute suffering of the present, the apprehensions of the future, made
+them seek solace in talking of the past. Monsieur de Crequy and the
+gardener found themselves disputing with interest in which chimney of
+the stack the starling used to build,—the starling whose nest Clement
+sent to Urian, you remember, and discussing the merits of different
+espalier-pears which grew, and may grow still, in the old garden of
+the Hotel de Crequy. Towards morning both fell asleep. The old man
+wakened first. His frame was deadened to suffering, I suppose, for he
+felt relieved of his pain; but Clement moaned and cried in feverish
+slumber. His broken arm was beginning to inflame his blood. He was,
+besides, much injured by some kicks from the crowd as he fell. As the
+old man looked sadly on the white, baked lips, and the flushed cheeks,
+contorted with suffering even in his sleep, Clement gave a sharp cry
+which disturbed his miserable neighbours, all slumbering around in
+uneasy attitudes. They bade him with curses be silent; and then turning
+round, tried again to forget their own misery in sleep. For you see,
+the bloodthirsty canaille had not been sated with guillotining and
+hanging all the nobility they could find, but were now informing,
+right and left, even against each other; and when Clement and Jacques
+were in the prison, there were few of gentle blood in the place,
+and fewer still of gentle manners. At the sound of the angry words
+and threats, Jacques thought it best to awaken his master from his
+feverish uncomfortable sleep, lest he should provoke more enmity; and,
+tenderly lifting him up, he tried to adjust his own body, so that it
+should serve as a rest and a pillow for the younger man. The motion
+aroused Clement, and he began to talk in a strange, feverish way, of
+Virginie, too,—whose name he would not have breathed in such a place
+had he been quite himself. But Jacques had as much delicacy of feeling
+as any lady in the land, although, mind you, he knew neither how to
+read nor write,—and bent his head low down, so that his master might
+tell him in a whisper what messages he was to take to Mademoiselle de
+Crequy, in case—Poor Clement, he knew it must come to that! No escape
+for him now, in Norman disguise or otherwise! Either by gathering fever
+or guillotine, death was sure of his prey. Well! when that happened,
+Jacques was to go and find Mademoiselle de Crequy, and tell her that
+her cousin loved her at the last as he had loved her at the first;
+but that she should never have heard another word of his attachment
+from his living lips; that he knew he was not good enough for her, his
+queen; and that no thought of earning her love by his devotion had
+prompted his return to France, only that, if possible, he might have
+the great privilege of serving her whom he loved. And then he went off
+into rambling talk about petit-maitres, and such kind of expressions,
+said Jacques to Flechier, the intendant, little knowing what a clue
+that one word gave to much of the poor lad’s suffering.
+
+“The summer morning came slowly on in that dark prison, and when Jacques
+could look round—his master was now sleeping on his shoulder, still the
+uneasy, starting sleep of fever—he saw that there were many women among
+the prisoners. (I have heard some of those who have escaped from the
+prisons say, that the look of despair and agony that came into the faces
+of the prisoners on first wakening, as the sense of their situation grew
+upon them, was what lasted the longest in the memory of the survivors.
+This look, they said, passed away from the women’s faces sooner than it
+did from those of the men.)
+
+“Poor old Jacques kept falling asleep, and plucking himself up again for
+fear lest, if he did not attend to his master, some harm might come to
+the swollen, helpless arm. Yet his weariness grew upon him in spite of
+all his efforts, and at last he felt as if he must give way to the
+irresistible desire, if only for five minutes. But just then there was a
+bustle at the door. Jacques opened his eyes wide to look.
+
+“‘The gaoler is early with breakfast,’ said some one, lazily.
+
+“‘It is the darkness of this accursed place that makes us think it
+early,’ said another.
+
+“All this time a parley was going on at the door. Some one came in; not
+the gaoler—a woman. The door was shut to and locked behind her. She
+only advanced a step or two, for it was too sudden a change, out of the
+light into that dark shadow, for any one to see clearly for the first few
+minutes. Jacques had his eyes fairly open now, and was wide awake. It
+was Mademoiselle de Crequy, looking bright, clear, and resolute. The
+faithful heart of the old man read that look like an open page. Her
+cousin should not die there on her behalf, without at least the comfort
+of her sweet presence.
+
+“‘Here he is,’ he whispered as her gown would have touched him in
+passing, without her perceiving him, in the heavy obscurity of the place.
+
+“‘The good God bless you, my friend!’ she murmured, as she saw the
+attitude of the old man, propped against a pillar, and holding Clement in
+his arms, as if the young man had been a helpless baby, while one of the
+poor gardener’s hands supported the broken limb in the easiest position.
+Virginie sat down by the old man, and held out her arms. Softly she
+moved Clement’s head to her own shoulder; softly she transferred the task
+of holding the arm to herself. Clement lay on the floor, but she
+supported him, and Jacques was at liberty to arise and stretch and shake
+his stiff, weary old body. He then sat down at a little distance, and
+watched the pair until he fell asleep. Clement had muttered ‘Virginie,’
+as they half-roused him by their movements out of his stupor; but Jacques
+thought he was only dreaming; nor did he seem fully awake when once his
+eyes opened, and he looked full at Virginie’s face bending over him, and
+growing crimson under his gaze, though she never stirred, for fear of
+hurting him if she moved. Clement looked in silence, until his heavy
+eyelids came slowly down, and he fell into his oppressive slumber again.
+Either he did not recognize her, or she came in too completely as a part
+of his sleeping visions for him to be disturbed by her appearance there.
+
+“When Jacques awoke it was full daylight—at least as full as it would
+ever be in that place. His breakfast—the gaol-allowance of bread and
+vin ordinaire—was by his side. He must have slept soundly. He looked
+for his master. He and Virginie had recognized each other now,—hearts,
+as well as appearance. They were smiling into each other’s faces, as if
+that dull, vaulted room in the grim Abbaye were the sunny gardens of
+Versailles, with music and festivity all abroad. Apparently they had
+much to say to each other; for whispered questions and answers never
+ceased.
+
+“Virginie had made a sling for the poor broken arm; nay, she had obtained
+two splinters of wood in some way, and one of their fellow-prisoners—having,
+it appeared, some knowledge of surgery—had set it. Jacques felt more
+desponding by far than they did, for he was suffering from the night he had
+passed, which told upon his aged frame; while they must have heard some
+good news, as it seemed to him, so bright and happy did they look. Yet
+Clement was still in bodily pain and suffering, and Virginie, by her own
+act and deed, was a prisoner in that dreadful Abbaye, whence the only
+issue was the guillotine. But they were together: they loved: they
+understood each other at length.
+
+“When Virginie saw that Jacques was awake, and languidly munching his
+breakfast, she rose from the wooden stool on which she was sitting, and
+went to him, holding out both hands, and refusing to allow him to rise,
+while she thanked him with pretty eagerness for all his kindness to
+Monsieur. Monsieur himself came towards him, following Virginie, but
+with tottering steps, as if his head was weak and dizzy, to thank the
+poor old man, who now on his feet, stood between them, ready to cry while
+they gave him credit for faithful actions which he felt to have been
+almost involuntary on his part,—for loyalty was like an instinct in the
+good old days, before your educational cant had come up. And so two days
+went on. The only event was the morning call for the victims, a certain
+number of whom were summoned to trial every day. And to be tried was to
+be condemned. Every one of the prisoners became grave, as the hour for
+their summons approached. Most of the victims went to their doom with
+uncomplaining resignation, and for a while after their departure there
+was comparative silence in the prison. But, by-and-by—so said
+Jacques—the conversation or amusements began again. Human nature cannot
+stand the perpetual pressure of such keen anxiety, without an effort to
+relieve itself by thinking of something else. Jacques said that Monsieur
+and Mademoiselle were for ever talking together of the past days,—it was
+‘Do you remember this?’ or, ‘Do you remember that?’ perpetually. He
+sometimes thought they forgot where they were, and what was before them.
+But Jacques did not, and every day he trembled more and more as the list
+was called over.
+
+“The third morning of their incarceration, the gaoler brought in a man
+whom Jacques did not recognize, and therefore did not at once observe;
+for he was waiting, as in duty bound, upon his master and his sweet young
+lady (as he always called her in repeating the story). He thought that
+the new introduction was some friend of the gaoler, as the two seemed
+well acquainted, and the latter stayed a few minutes talking with his
+visitor before leaving him in prison. So Jacques was surprised when,
+after a short time had elapsed, he looked round, and saw the fierce stare
+with which the stranger was regarding Monsieur and Mademoiselle de
+Crequy, as the pair sat at breakfast,—the said breakfast being laid as
+well as Jacques knew how, on a bench fastened into the prison
+wall,—Virginie sitting on her low stool, and Clement half lying on the
+ground by her side, and submitting gladly to be fed by her pretty white
+fingers; for it was one of her fancies, Jacques said, to do all she could
+for him, in consideration of his broken arm. And, indeed, Clement was
+wasting away daily; for he had received other injuries, internal and more
+serious than that to his arm, during the melee which had ended in his
+capture. The stranger made Jacques conscious of his presence by a sigh,
+which was almost a groan. All three prisoners looked round at the sound.
+Clement’s face expressed little but scornful indifference; but Virginie’s
+face froze into stony hate. Jacques said he never saw such a look, and
+hoped that he never should again. Yet after that first revelation of
+feeling, her look was steady and fixed in another direction to that in
+which the stranger stood,—still motionless—still watching. He came a
+step nearer at last.
+
+“‘Mademoiselle,’ he said. Not the quivering of an eyelash showed that
+she heard him. ‘Mademoiselle!’ he said again, with an intensity of
+beseeching that made Jacques—not knowing who he was—almost pity him,
+when he saw his young lady’s obdurate face.
+
+“There was perfect silence for a space of time which Jacques could not
+measure. Then again the voice, hesitatingly, saying, ‘Monsieur!’ Clement
+could not hold the same icy countenance as Virginie; he turned his head
+with an impatient gesture of disgust; but even that emboldened the man.
+
+“‘Monsieur, do ask mademoiselle to listen to me,—just two words.’
+
+“‘Mademoiselle de Crequy only listens to whom she chooses.’ Very
+haughtily my Clement would say that, I am sure.
+
+“‘But, mademoiselle,’—lowering his voice, and coming a step or two
+nearer. Virginie must have felt his approach, though she did not see it;
+for she drew herself a little on one side, so as to put as much space as
+possible between him and her.—‘Mademoiselle, it is not too late. I can
+save you: but to-morrow your name is down on the list. I can save you,
+if you will listen.’
+
+“Still no word or sign. Jacques did not understand the affair. Why was
+she so obdurate to one who might be ready to include Clement in the
+proposal, as far as Jacques knew?
+
+“The man withdrew a little, but did not offer to leave the prison. He
+never took his eyes off Virginie; he seemed to be suffering from some
+acute and terrible pain as he watched her.
+
+“Jacques cleared away the breakfast-things as well as he could.
+Purposely, as I suspect, he passed near the man.
+
+“‘Hist!’ said the stranger. ‘You are Jacques, the gardener, arrested for
+assisting an aristocrat. I know the gaoler. You shall escape, if you
+will. Only take this message from me to mademoiselle. You heard. She
+will not listen to me: I did not want her to come here. I never knew she
+was here, and she will die to-morrow. They will put her beautiful round
+throat under the guillotine. Tell her, good old man, tell her how sweet
+life is; and how I can save her; and how I will not ask for more than
+just to see her from time to time. She is so young; and death is
+annihilation, you know. Why does she hate me so? I want to save her; I
+have done her no harm. Good old man, tell her how terrible death is; and
+that she will die to-morrow, unless she listens to me.’
+
+“Jacques saw no harm in repeating this message. Clement listened in
+silence, watching Virginie with an air of infinite tenderness.
+
+“‘Will you not try him, my cherished one?’ he said. ‘Towards you he may
+mean well’ (which makes me think that Virginie had never repeated to
+Clement the conversation which she had overheard that last night at
+Madame Babette’s); ‘you would be in no worse a situation than you were
+before!’
+
+“‘No worse, Clement! and I should have known what you were, and have lost
+you. My Clement!’ said she, reproachfully.
+
+“‘Ask him,’ said she, turning to Jacques, suddenly, ‘if he can save
+Monsieur de Crequy as well,—if he can?—O Clement, we might escape to
+England; we are but young.’ And she hid her face on his shoulder.
+
+“Jacques returned to the stranger, and asked him Virginie’s question. His
+eyes were fixed on the cousins; he was very pale, and the twitchings or
+contortions, which must have been involuntary whenever he was agitated,
+convulsed his whole body.
+
+“He made a long pause. ‘I will save mademoiselle and monsieur, if she
+will go straight from prison to the mairie, and be my wife.’
+
+“‘Your wife!’ Jacques could not help exclaiming, ‘That she will never
+be—never!’
+
+“‘Ask her!’ said Morin, hoarsely.
+
+“But almost before Jacques thought he could have fairly uttered the
+words, Clement caught their meaning.
+
+“‘Begone!’ said he; ‘not one word more.’ Virginie touched the old man as
+he was moving away. ‘Tell him he does not know how he makes me welcome
+death.’ And smiling, as if triumphant, she turned again to Clement.
+
+“The stranger did not speak as Jacques gave him the meaning, not the
+words, of their replies. He was going away, but stopped. A minute or
+two afterwards, he beckoned to Jacques. The old gardener seems to have
+thought it undesirable to throw away even the chance of assistance from
+such a man as this, for he went forward to speak to him.
+
+“‘Listen! I have influence with the gaoler. He shall let thee pass out
+with the victims to-morrow. No one will notice it, or miss thee—. They
+will be led to trial,—even at the last moment, I will save her, if she
+sends me word she relents. Speak to her, as the time draws on. Life is
+very sweet,—tell her how sweet. Speak to him; he will do more with her
+than thou canst. Let him urge her to live. Even at the last, I will be
+at the Palais de Justice,—at the Greve. I have followers,—I have
+interest. Come among the crowd that follow the victims,—I shall see
+thee. It will be no worse for him, if she escapes’—
+
+“‘Save my master, and I will do all,’ said Jacques.
+
+“‘Only on my one condition,’ said Morin, doggedly; and Jacques was
+hopeless of that condition ever being fulfilled. But he did not see why
+his own life might not be saved. By remaining in prison until the next
+day, he should have rendered every service in his power to his master and
+the young lady. He, poor fellow, shrank from death; and he agreed with
+Morin to escape, if he could, by the means Morin had suggested, and to
+bring him word if Mademoiselle de Crequy relented. (Jacques had no
+expectation that she would; but I fancy he did not think it necessary to
+tell Morin of this conviction of his.) This bargaining with so base a man
+for so slight a thing as life, was the only flaw that I heard of in the
+old gardener’s behaviour. Of course, the mere reopening of the subject
+was enough to stir Virginie to displeasure. Clement urged her, it is
+true; but the light he had gained upon Morin’s motions, made him rather
+try to set the case before her in as fair a manner as possible than use
+any persuasive arguments. And, even as it was, what he said on the
+subject made Virginie shed tears—the first that had fallen from her
+since she entered the prison. So, they were summoned and went together,
+at the fatal call of the muster-roll of victims the next morning. He,
+feeble from his wounds and his injured health; she, calm and serene, only
+petitioning to be allowed to walk next to him, in order that she might
+hold him up when he turned faint and giddy from his extreme suffering.
+
+“Together they stood at the bar; together they were condemned. As the
+words of judgment were pronounced, Virginie tuned to Clement, and
+embraced him with passionate fondness. Then, making him lean on her,
+they marched out towards the Place de la Greve.
+
+“Jacques was free now. He had told Morin how fruitless his efforts at
+persuasion had been; and scarcely caring to note the effect of his
+information upon the man, he had devoted himself to watching Monsieur and
+Mademoiselle de Crequy. And now he followed them to the Place de la
+Greve. He saw them mount the platform; saw them kneel down together till
+plucked up by the impatient officials; could see that she was urging some
+request to the executioner; the end of which seemed to be, that Clement
+advanced first to the guillotine, was executed (and just at this moment
+there was a stir among the crowd, as of a man pressing forward towards
+the scaffold). Then she, standing with her face to the guillotine,
+slowly made the sign of the cross, and knelt down.
+
+“Jacques covered his eyes, blinded with tears. The report of a pistol
+made him look up. She was gone—another victim in her place—and where
+there had been a little stir in the crowd not five minutes before, some
+men were carrying off a dead body. A man had shot himself, they said.
+Pierre told me who that man was.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+After a pause, I ventured to ask what became of Madame de Crequy,
+Clement’s mother.
+
+“She never made any inquiry about him,” said my lady. “She must have
+known that he was dead; though how, we never could tell. Medlicott
+remembered afterwards that it was about, if not on—Medlicott to this day
+declares that it was on the very Monday, June the nineteenth, when her
+son was executed, that Madame de Crequy left off her rouge and took to
+her bed, as one bereaved and hopeless. It certainly was about that time;
+and Medlicott—who was deeply impressed by that dream of Madame de
+Crequy’s (the relation of which I told you had had such an effect on my
+lord), in which she had seen the figure of Virginie—as the only light
+object amid much surrounding darkness as of night, smiling and beckoning
+Clement on—on—till at length the bright phantom stopped, motionless,
+and Madame de Crequy’s eyes began to penetrate the murky darkness, and to
+see closing around her the gloomy dripping walls which she had once seen
+and never forgotten—the walls of the vault of the chapel of the De
+Crequys in Saint Germain l’Auxerrois; and there the two last of the
+Crequys laid them down among their forefathers, and Madame de Crequy had
+wakened to the sound of the great door, which led to the open air, being
+locked upon her—I say Medlicott, who was predisposed by this dream to
+look out for the supernatural, always declared that Madame de Crequy was
+made conscious in some mysterious way, of her son’s death, on the very
+day and hour when it occurred, and that after that she had no more
+anxiety, but was only conscious of a kind of stupefying despair.”
+
+“And what became of her, my lady?” I again asked.
+
+“What could become of her?” replied Lady Ludlow. “She never could be
+induced to rise again, though she lived more than a year after her son’s
+departure. She kept her bed; her room darkened, her face turned towards
+the wall, whenever any one besides Medlicott was in the room. She hardly
+ever spoke, and would have died of starvation but for Medlicott’s tender
+care, in putting a morsel to her lips every now and then, feeding her, in
+fact, just as an old bird feeds her young ones. In the height of summer
+my lord and I left London. We would fain have taken her with us into
+Scotland, but the doctor (we had the old doctor from Leicester Square)
+forbade her removal; and this time he gave such good reasons against it
+that I acquiesced. Medlicott and a maid were left with her. Every care
+was taken of her. She survived till our return. Indeed, I thought she
+was in much the same state as I had left her in, when I came back to
+London. But Medlicott spoke of her as much weaker; and one morning on
+awakening, they told me she was dead. I sent for Medlicott, who was in
+sad distress, she had become so fond of her charge. She said that, about
+two o’clock, she had been awakened by unusual restlessness on Madame de
+Crequy’s part; that she had gone to her bedside, and found the poor lady
+feebly but perpetually moving her wasted arm up and down—and saying to
+herself in a wailing voice: ‘I did not bless him when he left me—I did
+not bless him when he left me!’ Medlicott gave her a spoonful or two of
+jelly, and sat by her, stroking her hand, and soothing her till she
+seemed to fall asleep. But in the morning she was dead.”
+
+“It is a sad story, your ladyship,” said I, after a while.
+
+“Yes it is. People seldom arrive at my age without having watched the
+beginning, middle, and end of many lives and many fortunes. We do not
+talk about them, perhaps; for they are often so sacred to us, from having
+touched into the very quick of our own hearts, as it were, or into those
+of others who are dead and gone, and veiled over from human sight, that
+we cannot tell the tale as if it was a mere story. But young people
+should remember that we have had this solemn experience of life, on which
+to base our opinions and form our judgments, so that they are not mere
+untried theories. I am not alluding to Mr. Horner just now, for he is
+nearly as old as I am—within ten years, I dare say—but I am thinking of
+Mr. Gray, with his endless plans for some new thing—schools, education,
+Sabbaths, and what not. Now he has not seen what all this leads to.”
+
+“It is a pity he has not heard your ladyship tell the story of poor
+Monsieur de Crequy.”
+
+“Not at all a pity, my dear. A young man like him, who, both by position
+and age, must have had his experience confined to a very narrow circle,
+ought not to set up his opinion against mine; he ought not to require
+reasons from me, nor to need such explanation of my arguments (if I
+condescend to argue), as going into relation of the circumstances on
+which my arguments are based in my own mind, would be.”
+
+“But, my lady, it might convince him,” I said, with perhaps injudicious
+perseverance.
+
+“And why should he be convinced?” she asked, with gentle inquiry in her
+tone. “He has only to acquiesce. Though he is appointed by Mr. Croxton,
+I am the lady of the manor, as he must know. But it is with Mr. Horner
+that I must have to do about this unfortunate lad Gregson. I am afraid
+there will be no method of making him forget his unlucky knowledge. His
+poor brains will be intoxicated with the sense of his powers, without any
+counterbalancing principles to guide him. Poor fellow! I am quite
+afraid it will end in his being hanged!”
+
+The next day Mr. Horner came to apologize and explain. He was
+evidently—as I could tell from his voice, as he spoke to my lady in the
+next room—extremely annoyed at her ladyship’s discovery of the education
+he had been giving to this boy. My lady spoke with great authority, and
+with reasonable grounds of complaint. Mr. Horner was well acquainted
+with her thoughts on the subject, and had acted in defiance of her
+wishes. He acknowledged as much, and should on no account have done it,
+in any other instance, without her leave.
+
+“Which I could never have granted you,” said my lady.
+
+But this boy had extraordinary capabilities; would, in fact, have taught
+himself much that was bad, if he had not been rescued, and another
+direction given to his powers. And in all Mr. Horner had done, he had
+had her ladyship’s service in view. The business was getting almost
+beyond his power, so many letters and so much account-keeping was
+required by the complicated state in which things were.
+
+Lady Ludlow felt what was coming—a reference to the mortgage for the
+benefit of my lord’s Scottish estates, which, she was perfectly aware,
+Mr. Horner considered as having been a most unwise proceeding—and she
+hastened to observe—“All this may be very true, Mr. Horner, and I am
+sure I should be the last person to wish you to overwork or distress
+yourself; but of that we will talk another time. What I am now anxious
+to remedy is, if possible, the state of this poor little Gregson’s mind.
+Would not hard work in the fields be a wholesome and excellent way of
+enabling him to forget?”
+
+“I was in hopes, my lady, that you would have permitted me to bring him
+up to act as a kind of clerk,” said Mr. Horner, jerking out his project
+abruptly.
+
+“A what?” asked my lady, in infinite surprise.
+
+“A kind of—of assistant, in the way of copying letters and doing up
+accounts. He is already an excellent penman and very quick at figures.”
+
+“Mr. Horner,” said my lady, with dignity, “the son of a poacher and
+vagabond ought never to have been able to copy letters relating to the
+Hanbury estates; and, at any rate, he shall not. I wonder how it is
+that, knowing the use he has made of his power of reading a letter, you
+should venture to propose such an employment for him as would require his
+being in your confidence, and you the trusted agent of this family. Why,
+every secret (and every ancient and honourable family has its secrets, as
+you know, Mr. Horner) would be learnt off by heart, and repeated to the
+first comer!”
+
+“I should have hoped to have trained him, my lady, to understand the
+rules of discretion.”
+
+“Trained! Train a barn-door fowl to be a pheasant, Mr. Horner! That
+would be the easier task. But you did right to speak of discretion
+rather than honour. Discretion looks to the consequences of
+actions—honour looks to the action itself, and is an instinct rather
+than a virtue. After all, it is possible you might have trained him to
+be discreet.”
+
+Mr. Horner was silent. My lady was softened by his not replying, and
+began as she always did in such cases, to fear lest she had been too
+harsh. I could tell that by her voice and by her next speech, as well as
+if I had seen her face.
+
+“But I am sorry you are feeling the pressure of the affairs: I am quite
+aware that I have entailed much additional trouble upon you by some of my
+measures: I must try and provide you with some suitable assistance.
+Copying letters and doing up accounts, I think you said?”
+
+Mr. Horner had certainly had a distant idea of turning the little boy, in
+process of time, into a clerk; but he had rather urged this possibility
+of future usefulness beyond what he had at first intended, in speaking of
+it to my lady as a palliation of his offence, and he certainly was very
+much inclined to retract his statement that the letter-writing, or any
+other business, had increased, or that he was in the slightest want of
+help of any kind, when my lady after a pause of consideration, suddenly
+said—
+
+“I have it. Miss Galindo will, I am sure, be glad to assist you. I will
+speak to her myself. The payment we should make to a clerk would be of
+real service to her!”
+
+I could hardly help echoing Mr. Horner’s tone of surprise as he said—
+
+“Miss Galindo!”
+
+For, you must be told who Miss Galindo was; at least, told as much as I
+know. Miss Galindo had lived in the village for many years, keeping
+house on the smallest possible means, yet always managing to maintain a
+servant. And this servant was invariably chosen because she had some
+infirmity that made her undesirable to every one else. I believe Miss
+Galindo had had lame and blind and hump-backed maids. She had even at
+one time taken in a girl hopelessly gone in consumption, because if not
+she would have had to go to the workhouse, and not have had enough to
+eat. Of course the poor creature could not perform a single duty usually
+required of a servant, and Miss Galindo herself was both servant and
+nurse.
+
+Her present maid was scarcely four feet high, and bore a terrible
+character for ill-temper. Nobody but Miss Galindo would have kept her;
+but, as it was, mistress and servant squabbled perpetually, and were, at
+heart, the best of friends. For it was one of Miss Galindo’s
+peculiarities to do all manner of kind and self-denying actions, and to
+say all manner of provoking things. Lame, blind, deformed, and dwarf,
+all came in for scoldings without number: it was only the consumptive
+girl that never had heard a sharp word. I don’t think any of her
+servants liked her the worse for her peppery temper, and passionate odd
+ways, for they knew her real and beautiful kindness of heart: and,
+besides, she had so great a turn for humour that very often her speeches
+amused as much or more than they irritated; and on the other side, a
+piece of witty impudence from her servant would occasionally tickle her
+so much and so suddenly, that she would burst out laughing in the middle
+of her passion.
+
+But the talk about Miss Galindo’s choice and management of her servants
+was confined to village gossip, and had never reached my Lady Ludlow’s
+ears, though doubtless Mr. Horner was well acquainted with it. What my
+lady knew of her amounted to this. It was the custom in those days for
+the wealthy ladies of the county to set on foot a repository, as it was
+called, in the assize-town. The ostensible manager of this repository
+was generally a decayed gentlewoman, a clergyman’s widow, or so forth.
+She was, however, controlled by a committee of ladies; and paid by them
+in proportion to the amount of goods she sold; and these goods were the
+small manufactures of ladies of little or no fortune, whose names, if
+they chose it, were only signified by initials.
+
+Poor water-colour drawings, indigo and Indian ink; screens, ornamented
+with moss and dried leaves; paintings on velvet, and such faintly
+ornamental works were displayed on one side of the shop. It was always
+reckoned a mark of characteristic gentility in the repository, to have
+only common heavy-framed sash-windows, which admitted very little light,
+so I never was quite certain of the merit of these Works of Art as they
+were entitled. But, on the other side, where the Useful Work placard was
+put up, there was a great variety of articles, of whose unusual
+excellence every one might judge. Such fine sewing, and stitching, and
+button-holing! Such bundles of soft delicate knitted stockings and
+socks; and, above all, in Lady Ludlow’s eyes, such hanks of the finest
+spun flaxen thread!
+
+And the most delicate dainty work of all was done by Miss Galindo, as
+Lady Ludlow very well knew. Yet, for all their fine sewing, it sometimes
+happened that Miss Galindo’s patterns were of an old-fashioned kind; and
+the dozen nightcaps, maybe, on the materials for which she had expended
+bona-fide money, and on the making-up, no little time and eyesight,
+would lie for months in a yellow neglected heap; and at such times, it
+was said, Miss Galindo was more amusing than usual, more full of dry
+drollery and humour; just as at the times when an order came in to X.
+(the initial she had chosen) for a stock of well-paying things, she sat
+and stormed at her servant as she stitched away. She herself explained
+her practice in this way:—
+
+“When everything goes wrong, one would give up breathing if one could not
+lighten ones heart by a joke. But when I’ve to sit still from morning
+till night, I must have something to stir my blood, or I should go off
+into an apoplexy; so I set to, and quarrel with Sally.”
+
+Such were Miss Galindo’s means and manner of living in her own house. Out
+of doors, and in the village, she was not popular, although she would
+have been sorely missed had she left the place. But she asked too many
+home questions (not to say impertinent) respecting the domestic economies
+(for even the very poor liked to spend their bit of money their own way),
+and would open cupboards to find out hidden extravagances, and question
+closely respecting the weekly amount of butter, till one day she met with
+what would have been a rebuff to any other person, but which she rather
+enjoyed than otherwise.
+
+She was going into a cottage, and in the doorway met the good woman
+chasing out a duck, and apparently unconscious of her visitor.
+
+“Get out, Miss Galindo!” she cried, addressing the duck. “Get out! O, I
+ask your pardon,” she continued, as if seeing the lady for the first
+time. “It’s only that weary duck will come in. Get out Miss Gal——” (to
+the duck).
+
+“And so you call it after me, do you?” inquired her visitor.
+
+“O, yes, ma’am; my master would have it so, for he said, sure enough the
+unlucky bird was always poking herself where she was not wanted.”
+
+“Ha, ha! very good! And so your master is a wit, is he? Well! tell him
+to come up and speak to me to-night about my parlour chimney, for there
+is no one like him for chimney doctoring.”
+
+And the master went up, and was so won over by Miss Galindo’s merry ways,
+and sharp insight into the mysteries of his various kinds of business (he
+was a mason, chimney-sweeper, and ratcatcher), that he came home and
+abused his wife the next time she called the duck the name by which he
+himself had christened her.
+
+But odd as Miss Galindo was in general, she could be as well-bred a lady
+as any one when she chose. And choose she always did when my Lady Ludlow
+was by. Indeed, I don’t know the man, woman, or child, that did not
+instinctively turn out its best side to her ladyship. So she had no
+notion of the qualities which, I am sure, made Mr. Horner think that Miss
+Galindo would be most unmanageable as a clerk, and heartily wish that the
+idea had never come into my lady’s head. But there it was; and he had
+annoyed her ladyship already more than he liked to-day, so he could not
+directly contradict her, but only urge difficulties which he hoped might
+prove insuperable. But every one of them Lady Ludlow knocked down.
+Letters to copy? Doubtless. Miss Galindo could come up to the Hall; she
+should have a room to herself; she wrote a beautiful hand; and writing
+would save her eyesight. “Capability with regard to accounts?” My lady
+would answer for that too; and for more than Mr. Horner seemed to think
+it necessary to inquire about. Miss Galindo was by birth and breeding a
+lady of the strictest honour, and would, if possible, forget the
+substance of any letters that passed through her hands; at any rate, no
+one would ever hear of them again from her. “Remuneration?” Oh! as for
+that, Lady Ludlow would herself take care that it was managed in the most
+delicate manner possible. She would send to invite Miss Galindo to tea
+at the Hall that very afternoon, if Mr. Horner would only give her
+ladyship the slightest idea of the average length of time that my lady
+was to request Miss Galindo to sacrifice to her daily. “Three hours!
+Very well.” Mr. Horner looked very grave as he passed the windows of the
+room where I lay. I don’t think he liked the idea of Miss Galindo as a
+clerk.
+
+Lady Ludlow’s invitations were like royal commands. Indeed, the village
+was too quiet to allow the inhabitants to have many evening engagements
+of any kind. Now and then, Mr. and Mrs. Horner gave a tea and supper to
+the principal tenants and their wives, to which the clergyman was
+invited, and Miss Galindo, Mrs. Medlicott, and one or two other spinsters
+and widows. The glory of the supper-table on these occasions was
+invariably furnished by her ladyship: it was a cold roasted peacock, with
+his tail stuck out as if in life. Mrs. Medlicott would take up the whole
+morning arranging the feathers in the proper semicircle, and was always
+pleased with the wonder and admiration it excited. It was considered a
+due reward and fitting compliment to her exertions that Mr. Horner always
+took her in to supper, and placed her opposite to the magnificent dish,
+at which she sweetly smiled all the time they were at table. But since
+Mrs. Horner had had the paralytic stroke these parties had been given up;
+and Miss Galindo wrote a note to Lady Ludlow in reply to her invitation,
+saying that she was entirely disengaged, and would have great pleasure in
+doing herself the honour of waiting upon her ladyship.
+
+Whoever visited my lady took their meals with her, sitting on the dais,
+in the presence of all my former companions. So I did not see Miss
+Galindo until some time after tea; as the young gentlewomen had had to
+bring her their sewing and spinning, to hear the remarks of so competent
+a judge. At length her ladyship brought her visitor into the room where
+I lay,—it was one of my bad days, I remember,—in order to have her
+little bit of private conversation. Miss Galindo was dressed in her best
+gown, I am sure, but I had never seen anything like it except in a
+picture, it was so old-fashioned. She wore a white muslin apron,
+delicately embroidered, and put on a little crookedly, in order, as she
+told us, even Lady Ludlow, before the evening was over, to conceal a spot
+whence the colour had been discharged by a lemon-stain. This crookedness
+had an odd effect, especially when I saw that it was intentional; indeed,
+she was so anxious about her apron’s right adjustment in the wrong place,
+that she told us straight out why she wore it so, and asked her ladyship
+if the spot was properly hidden, at the same time lifting up her apron
+and showing her how large it was.
+
+“When my father was alive, I always took his right arm, so, and used to
+remove any spotted or discoloured breadths to the left side, if it was a
+walking-dress. That’s the convenience of a gentleman. But widows and
+spinsters must do what they can. Ah, my dear (to me)! when you are
+reckoning up the blessings in your lot,—though you may think it a hard
+one in some respects,—don’t forget how little your stockings want
+darning, as you are obliged to lie down so much! I would rather knit two
+pairs of stockings than darn one, any day.”
+
+“Have you been doing any of your beautiful knitting lately?” asked my
+lady, who had now arranged Miss Galindo in the pleasantest chair, and
+taken her own little wicker-work one, and, having her work in her hands,
+was ready to try and open the subject.
+
+“No, and alas! your ladyship. It is partly the hot weather’s fault, for
+people seem to forget that winter must come; and partly, I suppose, that
+every one is stocked who has the money to pay four-and-sixpence a pair
+for stockings.”
+
+“Then may I ask if you have any time in your active days at liberty?”
+said my lady, drawing a little nearer to her proposal, which I fancy she
+found it a little awkward to make.
+
+“Why, the village keeps me busy, your ladyship, when I have neither
+knitting or sewing to do. You know I took X. for my letter at the
+repository, because it stands for Xantippe, who was a great scold in old
+times, as I have learnt. But I’m sure I don’t know how the world would
+get on without scolding, your ladyship. It would go to sleep, and the
+sun would stand still.”
+
+“I don’t think I could bear to scold, Miss Galindo,” said her ladyship,
+smiling.
+
+“No! because your ladyship has people to do it for you. Begging your
+pardon, my lady, it seems to me the generality of people may be divided
+into saints, scolds, and sinners. Now, your ladyship is a saint, because
+you have a sweet and holy nature, in the first place; and have people to
+do your anger and vexation for you, in the second place. And Jonathan
+Walker is a sinner, because he is sent to prison. But here am I, half
+way, having but a poor kind of disposition at best, and yet hating sin,
+and all that leads to it, such as wasting, and extravagance, and
+gossiping,—and yet all this lies right under my nose in the village, and
+I am not saint enough to be vexed at it; and so I scold. And though I
+had rather be a saint, yet I think I do good in my way.”
+
+“No doubt you do, dear Miss Galindo,” said Lady Ludlow. “But I am sorry
+to hear that there is so much that is bad going on in the village,—very
+sorry.”
+
+“O, your ladyship! then I am sorry I brought it out. It was only by way
+of saying, that when I have no particular work to do at home, I take a
+turn abroad, and set my neighbours to rights, just by way of steering
+clear of Satan.
+
+   For Satan finds some mischief still
+   For idle hands to do,
+
+you know, my lady.”
+
+There was no leading into the subject by delicate degrees, for Miss
+Galindo was evidently so fond of talking, that, if asked a question, she
+made her answer so long, that before she came to an end of it, she had
+wandered far away from the original starting point. So Lady Ludlow
+plunged at once into what she had to say.
+
+“Miss Galindo, I have a great favour to ask of you.”
+
+“My lady, I wish I could tell you what a pleasure it is to hear you say
+so,” replied Miss Galindo, almost with tears in her eyes; so glad were we
+all to do anything for her ladyship, which could be called a free service
+and not merely a duty.
+
+“It is this. Mr. Horner tells me that the business-letters, relating to
+the estate, are multiplying so much that he finds it impossible to copy
+them all himself, and I therefore require the services of some
+confidential and discreet person to copy these letters, and occasionally
+to go through certain accounts. Now, there is a very pleasant little
+sitting-room very near to Mr. Horner’s office (you know Mr. Horner’s
+office—on the other side of the stone hall?), and if I could prevail
+upon you to come here to breakfast and afterwards sit there for three
+hours every morning, Mr. Horner should bring or send you the papers—”
+
+Lady Ludlow stopped. Miss Galindo’s countenance had fallen. There was
+some great obstacle in her mind to her wish for obliging Lady Ludlow.
+
+“What would Sally do?” she asked at length. Lady Ludlow had not a notion
+who Sally was. Nor if she had had a notion, would she have had a
+conception of the perplexities that poured into Miss Galindo’s mind, at
+the idea of leaving her rough forgetful dwarf without the perpetual
+monitorship of her mistress. Lady Ludlow, accustomed to a household
+where everything went on noiselessly, perfectly, and by clockwork,
+conducted by a number of highly-paid, well-chosen, and accomplished
+servants, had not a conception of the nature of the rough material from
+which her servants came. Besides, in her establishment, so that the
+result was good, no one inquired if the small economies had been observed
+in the production. Whereas every penny—every halfpenny, was of
+consequence to Miss Galindo; and visions of squandered drops of milk and
+wasted crusts of bread filled her mind with dismay. But she swallowed
+all her apprehensions down, out of her regard for Lady Ludlow, and desire
+to be of service to her. No one knows how great a trial it was to her
+when she thought of Sally, unchecked and unscolded for three hours every
+morning. But all she said was—
+
+“‘Sally, go to the Deuce.’ I beg your pardon, my lady, if I was talking
+to myself; it’s a habit I have got into of keeping my tongue in practice,
+and I am not quite aware when I do it. Three hours every morning! I
+shall be only too proud to do what I can for your ladyship; and I hope
+Mr. Horner will not be too impatient with me at first. You know,
+perhaps, that I was nearly being an authoress once, and that seems as if
+I was destined to ‘employ my time in writing.’”
+
+“No, indeed; we must return to the subject of the clerkship afterwards,
+if you please. An authoress, Miss Galindo! You surprise me!”
+
+“But, indeed, I was. All was quite ready. Doctor Burney used to teach
+me music: not that I ever could learn, but it was a fancy of my poor
+father’s. And his daughter wrote a book, and they said she was but a
+very young lady, and nothing but a music-master’s daughter; so why should
+not I try?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well! I got paper and half-a-hundred good pens, a bottle of ink, all
+ready—”
+
+“And then—”
+
+“O, it ended in my having nothing to say, when I sat down to write. But
+sometimes, when I get hold of a book, I wonder why I let such a poor
+reason stop me. It does not others.”
+
+“But I think it was very well it did, Miss Galindo,” said her ladyship.
+“I am extremely against women usurping men’s employments, as they are
+very apt to do. But perhaps, after all, the notion of writing a book
+improved your hand. It is one of the most legible I ever saw.”
+
+“I despise z’s without tails,” said Miss Galindo, with a good deal of
+gratified pride at my lady’s praise. Presently, my lady took her to look
+at a curious old cabinet, which Lord Ludlow had picked up at the Hague;
+and while they were out of the room on this errand, I suppose the
+question of remuneration was settled, for I heard no more of it.
+
+When they came back, they were talking of Mr. Gray. Miss Galindo was
+unsparing in her expressions of opinion about him: going much farther
+than my lady—in her language, at least.
+
+“A little blushing man like him, who can’t say bo to a goose without
+hesitating and colouring, to come to this village—which is as good a
+village as ever lived—and cry us down for a set of sinners, as if we had
+all committed murder and that other thing!—I have no patience with him,
+my lady. And then, how is he to help us to heaven, by teaching us our, a
+b, ab—b a, ba? And yet, by all accounts, that’s to save poor children’s
+souls. O, I knew your ladyship would agree with me. I am sure my mother
+was as good a creature as ever breathed the blessed air; and if she’s not
+gone to heaven I don’t want to go there; and she could not spell a letter
+decently. And does Mr. Gray think God took note of that?”
+
+“I was sure you would agree with me, Miss Galindo,” said my lady. “You
+and I can remember how this talk about education—Rousseau, and his
+writings—stirred up the French people to their Reign of Terror, and all
+those bloody scenes.”
+
+“I’m afraid that Rousseau and Mr. Gray are birds of a feather,” replied
+Miss Galindo, shaking her head. “And yet there is some good in the young
+man too. He sat up all night with Billy Davis, when his wife was fairly
+worn out with nursing him.”
+
+“Did he, indeed!” said my lady, her face lighting up, as it always did
+when she heard of any kind or generous action, no matter who performed
+it. “What a pity he is bitten with these new revolutionary ideas, and is
+so much for disturbing the established order of society!”
+
+When Miss Galindo went, she left so favourable an impression of her visit
+on my lady, that she said to me with a pleased smile—
+
+“I think I have provided Mr. Horner with a far better clerk than he would
+have made of that lad Gregson in twenty years. And I will send the lad
+to my lord’s grieve, in Scotland, that he may be kept out of harm’s way.”
+
+But something happened to the lad before this purpose could be
+accomplished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The next morning, Miss Galindo made her appearance, and, by some mistake,
+unusual to my lady’s well-trained servants, was shown into the room where
+I was trying to walk; for a certain amount of exercise was prescribed for
+me, painful although the exertion had become.
+
+She brought a little basket along with her and while the footman was gone
+to inquire my lady’s wishes (for I don’t think that Lady Ludlow expected
+Miss Galindo so soon to assume her clerkship; nor, indeed, had Mr. Horner
+any work of any kind ready for his new assistant to do), she launched out
+into conversation with me.
+
+“It was a sudden summons, my dear! However, as I have often said to
+myself, ever since an occasion long ago, if Lady Ludlow ever honours me
+by asking for my right hand, I’ll cut it off, and wrap the stump up so
+tidily she shall never find out it bleeds. But, if I had had a little
+more time, I could have mended my pens better. You see, I have had to
+sit up pretty late to get these sleeves made”—and she took out of her
+basket a pail of brown-holland over-sleeves, very much such as a grocer’s
+apprentice wears—“and I had only time to make seven or eight pens, out
+of some quills Farmer Thomson gave me last autumn. As for ink, I’m
+thankful to say, that’s always ready; an ounce of steel filings, an ounce
+of nut-gall, and a pint of water (tea, if you’re extravagant, which,
+thank Heaven! I’m not), put all in a bottle, and hang it up behind the
+house door, so that the whole gets a good shaking every time you slam it
+to—and even if you are in a passion and bang it, as Sally and I often
+do, it is all the better for it—and there’s my ink ready for use; ready
+to write my lady’s will with, if need be.”
+
+“O, Miss Galindo!” said I, “don’t talk so my lady’s will! and she not
+dead yet.”
+
+“And if she were, what would be the use of talking of making her will?
+Now, if you were Sally, I should say, ‘Answer me that, you goose!’ But,
+as you’re a relation of my lady’s, I must be civil, and only say, ‘I
+can’t think how you can talk so like a fool!’ To be sure, poor thing,
+you’re lame!”
+
+I do not know how long she would have gone on; but my lady came in, and
+I, released from my duty of entertaining Miss Galindo, made my limping
+way into the next room. To tell the truth, I was rather afraid of Miss
+Galindo’s tongue, for I never knew what she would say next.
+
+After a while my lady came, and began to look in the bureau for
+something: and as she looked she said—“I think Mr. Horner must have made
+some mistake, when he said he had so much work that he almost required a
+clerk, for this morning he cannot find anything for Miss Galindo to do;
+and there she is, sitting with her pen behind her ear, waiting for
+something to write. I am come to find her my mother’s letters, for I
+should like to have a fair copy made of them. O, here they are: don’t
+trouble yourself, my dear child.”
+
+When my lady returned again, she sat down and began to talk of Mr. Gray.
+
+“Miss Galindo says she saw him going to hold a prayer-meeting in a
+cottage. Now that really makes me unhappy, it is so like what Mr. Wesley
+used to do in my younger days; and since then we have had rebellion in
+the American colonies and the French Revolution. You may depend upon it,
+my dear, making religion and education common—vulgarising them, as it
+were—is a bad thing for a nation. A man who hears prayers read in the
+cottage where he has just supped on bread and bacon, forgets the respect
+due to a church: he begins to think that one place is as good as another,
+and, by-and-by, that one person is as good as another; and after that, I
+always find that people begin to talk of their rights, instead of
+thinking of their duties. I wish Mr. Gray had been more tractable, and
+had left well alone. What do you think I heard this morning? Why that
+the Home Hill estate, which niches into the Hanbury property, was bought
+by a Baptist baker from Birmingham!”
+
+“A Baptist baker!” I exclaimed. I had never seen a Dissenter, to my
+knowledge; but, having always heard them spoken of with horror, I looked
+upon them almost as if they were rhinoceroses. I wanted to see a live
+Dissenter, I believe, and yet I wished it were over. I was almost
+surprised when I heard that any of them were engaged in such peaceful
+occupations as baking.
+
+“Yes! so Mr. Horner tells me. A Mr. Lambe, I believe. But, at any rate,
+he is a Baptist, and has been in trade. What with his schismatism and
+Mr. Gray’s methodism, I am afraid all the primitive character of this
+place will vanish.”
+
+From what I could hear, Mr. Gray seemed to be taking his own way; at
+any rate, more than he had done when he first came to the village,
+when his natural timidity had made him defer to my lady, and seek her
+consent and sanction before embarking in any new plan. But newness
+was a quality Lady Ludlow especially disliked. Even in the fashions
+of dress and furniture, she clung to the old, to the modes which had
+prevailed when she was young; and though she had a deep personal regard
+for Queen Charlotte (to whom, as I have already said, she had been
+maid-of-honour), yet there was a tinge of Jacobitism about her, such
+as made her extremely dislike to hear Prince Charles Edward called the
+young Pretender, as many loyal people did in those days, and made her
+fond of telling of the thorn-tree in my lord’s park in Scotland, which
+had been planted by bonny Queen Mary herself, and before which every
+guest in the Castle of Monkshaven was expected to stand bare-headed,
+out of respect to the memory and misfortunes of the royal planter.
+
+We might play at cards, if we so chose, on a Sunday; at least, I suppose
+we might, for my lady and Mr. Mountford used to do so often when I first
+went. But we must neither play cards, nor read, nor sew on the fifth of
+November and on the thirtieth of January, but must go to church, and
+meditate all the rest of the day—and very hard work meditating was. I
+would far rather have scoured a room. That was the reason, I suppose,
+why a passive life was seen to be better discipline for me than an active
+one.
+
+But I am wandering away from my lady, and her dislike to all innovation.
+Now, it seemed to me, as far as I heard, that Mr. Gray was full of
+nothing but new things, and that what he first did was to attack all our
+established institutions, both in the village and the parish, and also in
+the nation. To be sure, I heard of his ways of going on principally from
+Miss Galindo, who was apt to speak more strongly than accurately.
+
+“There he goes,” she said, “clucking up the children just like an old
+hen, and trying to teach them about their salvation and their souls, and
+I don’t know what—things that it is just blasphemy to speak about out of
+church. And he potters old people about reading their Bibles. I am sure
+I don’t want to speak disrespectfully about the Holy Scriptures, but I
+found old Job Horton busy reading his Bible yesterday. Says I, ‘What are
+you reading, and where did you get it, and who gave it you?’ So he made
+answer, ‘That he was reading Susannah and the Elders, for that he had
+read Bel and the Dragon till he could pretty near say it off by heart,
+and they were two as pretty stories as ever he had read, and that it was
+a caution to him what bad old chaps there were in the world.’ Now, as
+Job is bedridden, I don’t think he is likely to meet with the Elders,
+and I say that I think repeating his Creed, the Commandments, and the
+Lord’s Prayer, and, maybe, throwing in a verse of the Psalms, if he
+wanted a bit of a change, would have done him far more good than his
+pretty stories, as he called them. And what’s the next thing our young
+parson does? Why he tries to make us all feel pitiful for the black
+slaves, and leaves little pictures of negroes about, with the question
+printed below, ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’ just as if I was to be
+hail-fellow-well-met with every negro footman. They do say he takes no
+sugar in his tea, because he thinks he sees spots of blood in it. Now I
+call that superstition.”
+
+The next day it was a still worse story.
+
+“Well, my dear! and how are you? My lady sent me in to sit a bit with
+you, while Mr. Horner looks out some papers for me to copy. Between
+ourselves, Mr. Steward Horner does not like having me for a clerk. It is
+all very well he does not; for, if he were decently civil to me, I might
+want a chaperone, you know, now poor Mrs. Horner is dead.” This was one
+of Miss Galindo’s grim jokes. “As it is, I try to make him forget I’m a
+woman, I do everything as ship-shape as a masculine man-clerk. I see he
+can’t find a fault—writing good, spelling correct, sums all right. And
+then he squints up at me with the tail of his eye, and looks glummer than
+ever, just because I’m a woman—as if I could help that. I have gone
+good lengths to set his mind at ease. I have stuck my pen behind my ear,
+I have made him a bow instead of a curtsey, I have whistled—not a tune I
+can’t pipe up that—nay, if you won’t tell my lady, I don’t mind telling
+you that I have said ‘Confound it!’ and ‘Zounds!’ I can’t get any
+farther. For all that, Mr. Horner won’t forget I am a lady, and so I am
+not half the use I might be, and if it were not to please my Lady Ludlow,
+Mr. Horner and his books might go hang (see how natural that came out!).
+And there is an order for a dozen nightcaps for a bride, and I am so
+afraid I shan’t have time to do them. Worst of all, there’s Mr. Gray
+taking advantage of my absence to seduce Sally!”
+
+“To seduce Sally! Mr. Gray!”
+
+“Pooh, pooh, child! There’s many a kind of seduction. Mr. Gray is
+seducing Sally to want to go to church. There has he been twice at my
+house, while I have been away in the mornings, talking to Sally about the
+state of her soul and that sort of thing. But when I found the meat all
+roasted to a cinder, I said, ‘Come, Sally, let’s have no more praying
+when beef is down at the fire. Pray at six o’clock in the morning and
+nine at night, and I won’t hinder you.’ So she sauced me, and said
+something about Martha and Mary, implying that, because she had let the
+beef get so overdone that I declare I could hardly find a bit for Nancy
+Pole’s sick grandchild, she had chosen the better part. I was very much
+put about, I own, and perhaps you’ll be shocked at what I said—indeed, I
+don’t know if it was right myself—but I told her I had a soul as well as
+she, and if it was to be saved by my sitting still and thinking about
+salvation and never doing my duty, I thought I had as good a right as she
+had to be Mary, and save my soul. So, that afternoon I sat quite still,
+and it was really a comfort, for I am often too busy, I know, to pray as
+I ought. There is first one person wanting me, and then another, and the
+house and the food and the neighbours to see after. So, when tea-time
+comes, there enters my maid with her hump on her back, and her soul to be
+saved. ‘Please, ma’am, did you order the pound of butter?’—‘No, Sally,’
+I said, shaking my head, ‘this morning I did not go round by Hale’s farm,
+and this afternoon I have been employed in spiritual things.’
+
+“Now, our Sally likes tea and bread and butter above everything, and dry
+bread was not to her taste.
+
+“‘I’m thankful,’ said the impudent hussy, ‘that you have taken a turn
+towards godliness. It will be my prayers, I trust, that’s given it you.’
+
+“I was determined not to give her an opening towards the carnal subject
+of butter, so she lingered still, longing to ask leave to run for it. But
+I gave her none, and munched my dry bread myself, thinking what a famous
+cake I could make for little Ben Pole with the bit of butter we were
+saving; and when Sally had had her butterless tea, and was in none of the
+best of tempers because Martha had not bethought herself of the butter, I
+just quietly said—
+
+“‘Now, Sally, to-morrow we’ll try to hash that beef well, and to remember
+the butter, and to work out our salvation all at the same time, for I
+don’t see why it can’t all be done, as God has set us to do it all.’ But
+I heard her at it again about Mary and Martha, and I have no doubt that
+Mr. Gray will teach her to consider me a lost sheep.”
+
+I had heard so many little speeches about Mr. Gray from one person or
+another, all speaking against him, as a mischief-maker, a setter-up of
+new doctrines, and of a fanciful standard of life (and you may be sure
+that, where Lady Ludlow led, Mrs. Medlicott and Adams were certain to
+follow, each in their different ways showing the influence my lady had
+over them), that I believe I had grown to consider him as a very
+instrument of evil, and to expect to perceive in his face marks of his
+presumption, and arrogance, and impertinent interference. It was now
+many weeks since I had seen him, and when he was one morning shown into
+the blue drawing-room (into which I had been removed for a change), I was
+quite surprised to see how innocent and awkward a young man he appeared,
+confused even more than I was at our unexpected tete-a-tete. He looked
+thinner, his eyes more eager, his expression more anxious, and his colour
+came and went more than it had done when I had seen him last. I tried to
+make a little conversation, as I was, to my own surprise, more at my ease
+than he was; but his thoughts were evidently too much preoccupied for him
+to do more than answer me with monosyllables.
+
+Presently my lady came in. Mr. Gray twitched and coloured more than
+ever; but plunged into the middle of his subject at once.
+
+“My lady, I cannot answer it to my conscience, if I allow the children of
+this village to go on any longer the little heathens that they are. I
+must do something to alter their condition. I am quite aware that your
+ladyship disapproves of many of the plans which have suggested themselves
+to me; but nevertheless I must do something, and I am come now to your
+ladyship to ask respectfully, but firmly, what you would advise me to
+do.”
+
+His eyes were dilated, and I could almost have said they were full of
+tears with his eagerness. But I am sure it is a bad plan to remind
+people of decided opinions which they have once expressed, if you wish
+them to modify those opinions. Now, Mr. Gray had done this with my lady;
+and though I do not mean to say she was obstinate, yet she was not one to
+retract.
+
+She was silent for a moment or two before she replied.
+
+“You ask me to suggest a remedy for an evil of the existence of which I
+am not conscious,” was her answer—very coldly, very gently given. “In
+Mr. Mountford’s time I heard no such complaints: whenever I see the
+village children (and they are not unfrequent visitors at this house, on
+one pretext or another), they are well and decently behaved.”
+
+“Oh, madam, you cannot judge,” he broke in. “They are trained to respect
+you in word and deed; you are the highest they ever look up to; they have
+no notion of a higher.”
+
+“Nay, Mr. Gray,” said my lady, smiling, “they are as loyally disposed as
+any children can be. They come up here every fourth of June, and drink
+his Majesty’s health, and have buns, and (as Margaret Dawson can testify)
+they take a great and respectful interest in all the pictures I can show
+them of the royal family.”
+
+“But, madam, I think of something higher than any earthly dignities.”
+
+My lady coloured at the mistake she had made; for she herself was truly
+pious. Yet when she resumed the subject, it seemed to me as if her tone
+was a little sharper than before.
+
+“Such want of reverence is, I should say, the clergyman’s fault. You
+must excuse me, Mr. Gray, if I speak plainly.”
+
+“My Lady, I want plain-speaking. I myself am not accustomed to those
+ceremonies and forms which are, I suppose, the etiquette in your
+ladyship’s rank of life, and which seem to hedge you in from any power of
+mine to touch you. Among those with whom I have passed my life hitherto,
+it has been the custom to speak plainly out what we have felt earnestly.
+So, instead of needing any apology from your ladyship for straightforward
+speaking, I will meet what you say at once, and admit that it is the
+clergyman’s fault, in a great measure, when the children of his parish
+swear, and curse, and are brutal, and ignorant of all saving grace; nay,
+some of them of the very name of God. And because this guilt of mine, as
+the clergyman of this parish, lies heavy on my soul, and every day leads
+but from bad to worse, till I am utterly bewildered how to do good to
+children who escape from me as if I were a monster, and who are growing
+up to be men fit for and capable of any crime, but those requiring wit or
+sense, I come to you, who seem to me all-powerful, as far as material
+power goes—for your ladyship only knows the surface of things, and
+barely that, that pass in your village—to help me with advice, and such
+outward help as you can give.”
+
+Mr. Gray had stood up and sat down once or twice while he had been
+speaking, in an agitated, nervous kind of way, and now he was interrupted
+by a violent fit of coughing, after which he trembled all over.
+
+My lady rang for a glass of water, and looked much distressed.
+
+“Mr. Gray,” said she, “I am sure you are not well; and that makes you
+exaggerate childish faults into positive evils. It is always the case
+with us when we are not strong in health. I hear of your exerting
+yourself in every direction: you overwork yourself, and the consequence
+is, that you imagine us all worse people than we are.”
+
+And my lady smiled very kindly and pleasantly at him, as he sat, a little
+panting, a little flushed, trying to recover his breath. I am sure that
+now they were brought face to face, she had quite forgotten all the
+offence she had taken at his doings when she heard of them from others;
+and, indeed, it was enough to soften any one’s heart to see that young,
+almost boyish face, looking in such anxiety and distress.
+
+“Oh, my lady, what shall I do?” he asked, as soon as he could recover
+breath, and with such an air of humility, that I am sure no one who had
+seen it could have ever thought him conceited again. “The evil of this
+world is too strong for me. I can do so little. It is all in vain. It
+was only to-day—” and again the cough and agitation returned.
+
+“My dear Mr. Gray,” said my lady (the day before I could never have
+believed she could have called him My dear), “you must take the advice of
+an old woman about yourself. You are not fit to do anything just now but
+attend to your own health: rest, and see a doctor (but, indeed, I will
+take care of that), and when you are pretty strong again, you will find
+that you have been magnifying evils to yourself.”
+
+“But, my lady, I cannot rest. The evils do exist, and the burden of
+their continuance lies on my shoulders. I have no place to gather the
+children together in, that I may teach them the things necessary to
+salvation. The rooms in my own house are too small; but I have tried
+them. I have money of my own; and, as your ladyship knows, I tried to
+get a piece of leasehold property, on which to build a school-house at my
+own expense. Your ladyship’s lawyer comes forward, at your instructions,
+to enforce some old feudal right, by which no building is allowed on
+leasehold property without the sanction of the lady of the manor. It may
+be all very true; but it was a cruel thing to do,—that is, if your
+ladyship had known (which I am sure you do not) the real moral and
+spiritual state of my poor parishioners. And now I come to you to know
+what I am to do. Rest! I cannot rest, while children whom I could
+possibly save are being left in their ignorance, their blasphemy, their
+uncleanness, their cruelty. It is known through the village that your
+ladyship disapproves of my efforts, and opposes all my plans. If you
+think them wrong, foolish, ill-digested (I have been a student, living in
+a college, and eschewing all society but that of pious men, until now: I
+may not judge for the best, in my ignorance of this sinful human nature),
+tell me of better plans and wiser projects for accomplishing my end; but
+do not bid me rest, with Satan compassing me round, and stealing souls
+away.”
+
+“Mr. Gray,” said my lady, “there may be some truth in what you have said.
+I do not deny it, though I think, in your present state of indisposition
+and excitement, you exaggerate it much. I believe—nay, the experience
+of a pretty long life has convinced me—that education is a bad thing, if
+given indiscriminately. It unfits the lower orders for their duties, the
+duties to which they are called by God; of submission to those placed in
+authority over them; of contentment with that state of life to which it
+has pleased God to call them, and of ordering themselves lowly and
+reverently to all their betters. I have made this conviction of mine
+tolerably evident to you; and I have expressed distinctly my
+disapprobation of some of your ideas. You may imagine, then, that I was
+not well pleased when I found that you had taken a rood or more of Farmer
+Hale’s land, and were laying the foundations of a school-house. You had
+done this without asking for my permission, which, as Farmer Hale’s liege
+lady, ought to have been obtained legally, as well as asked for out of
+courtesy. I put a stop to what I believed to be calculated to do harm to
+a village, to a population in which, to say the least of it, I may be
+disposed to take as much interest as you can do. How can reading, and
+writing, and the multiplication-table (if you choose to go so far)
+prevent blasphemy, and uncleanness, and cruelty? Really, Mr. Gray, I
+hardly like to express myself so strongly on the subject in your present
+state of health, as I should do at any other time. It seems to me that
+books do little; character much; and character is not formed from books.”
+
+“I do not think of character: I think of souls. I must get some hold
+upon these children, or what will become of them in the next world? I
+must be found to have some power beyond what they have, and which they
+are rendered capable of appreciating, before they will listen to me. At
+present physical force is all they look up to; and I have none.”
+
+“Nay, Mr. Gray, by your own admission, they look up to me.”
+
+“They would not do anything your ladyship disliked if it was likely to
+come to your knowledge; but if they could conceal it from you, the
+knowledge of your dislike to a particular line of conduct would never
+make them cease from pursuing it.”
+
+“Mr. Gray”—surprise in her air, and some little indignation—“they and
+their fathers have lived on the Hanbury lands for generations!”
+
+“I cannot help it, madam. I am telling you the truth, whether you
+believe me or not.” There was a pause; my lady looked perplexed, and
+somewhat ruffled; Mr. Gray as though hopeless and wearied out. “Then, my
+lady,” said he, at last, rising as he spoke, “you can suggest nothing to
+ameliorate the state of things which, I do assure you, does exist on your
+lands, and among your tenants. Surely, you will not object to my using
+Farmer Hale’s great barn every Sabbath? He will allow me the use of it,
+if your ladyship will grant your permission.”
+
+“You are not fit for any extra work at present,” (and indeed he had been
+coughing very much all through the conversation). “Give me time to
+consider of it. Tell me what you wish to teach. You will be able to
+take care of your health, and grow stronger while I consider. It shall
+not be the worse for you, if you leave it in my hands for a time.”
+
+My lady spoke very kindly; but he was in too excited a state to recognize
+the kindness, while the idea of delay was evidently a sore irritation. I
+heard him say: “And I have so little time in which to do my work. Lord!
+lay not this sin to my charge.”
+
+But my lady was speaking to the old butler, for whom, at her sign, I had
+rung the bell some little time before. Now she turned round.
+
+“Mr. Gray, I find I have some bottles of Malmsey, of the vintage of
+seventeen hundred and seventy-eight, yet left. Malmsey, as perhaps you
+know, used to be considered a specific for coughs arising from weakness.
+You must permit me to send you half a dozen bottles, and, depend upon it,
+you will take a more cheerful view of life and its duties before you have
+finished them, especially if you will be so kind as to see Dr. Trevor,
+who is coming to see me in the course of the week. By the time you are
+strong enough to work, I will try and find some means of preventing the
+children from using such bad language, and otherwise annoying you.”
+
+“My lady, it is the sin, and not the annoyance. I wish I could make you
+understand.” He spoke with some impatience; Poor fellow! he was too
+weak, exhausted, and nervous. “I am perfectly well; I can set to work
+to-morrow; I will do anything not to be oppressed with the thought of
+how little I am doing. I do not want your wine. Liberty to act in the
+manner I think right, will do me far more good. But it is of no use. It
+is preordained that I am to be nothing but a cumberer of the ground. I
+beg your ladyship’s pardon for this call.”
+
+He stood up, and then turned dizzy. My lady looked on, deeply hurt, and
+not a little offended, he held out his hand to her, and I could see that
+she had a little hesitation before she took it. He then saw me, I almost
+think, for the first time; and put out his hand once more, drew it back,
+as if undecided, put it out again, and finally took hold of mine for an
+instant in his damp, listless hand, and was gone.
+
+Lady Ludlow was dissatisfied with both him and herself, I was sure.
+Indeed, I was dissatisfied with the result of the interview myself. But
+my lady was not one to speak out her feelings on the subject; nor was I
+one to forget myself, and begin on a topic which she did not begin. She
+came to me, and was very tender with me; so tender, that that, and the
+thoughts of Mr. Gray’s sick, hopeless, disappointed look, nearly made me
+cry.
+
+“You are tired, little one,” said my lady. “Go and lie down in my
+room, and hear what Medlicott and I can decide upon in the way of
+strengthening dainties for that poor young man, who is killing himself
+with his over-sensitive conscientiousness.”
+
+“Oh, my lady!” said I, and then I stopped.
+
+“Well. What?” asked she.
+
+“If you would but let him have Farmer Hale’s barn at once, it would do
+him more good than all.”
+
+“Pooh, pooh, child!” though I don’t think she was displeased, “he is not
+fit for more work just now. I shall go and write for Dr. Trevor.”
+
+And for the next half-hour, we did nothing but arrange physical comforts
+and cures for poor Mr. Gray. At the end of the time, Mrs. Medlicott
+said—
+
+“Has your ladyship heard that Harry Gregson has fallen from a tree, and
+broken his thigh-bone, and is like to be a cripple for life?”
+
+“Harry Gregson! That black-eyed lad who read my letter? It all comes
+from over-education!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+But I don’t see how my lady could think it was over-education that made
+Harry Gregson break his thigh, for the manner in which he met with the
+accident was this:—
+
+Mr. Horner, who had fallen sadly out of health since his wife’s death,
+had attached himself greatly to Harry Gregson. Now, Mr. Horner had a
+cold manner to every one, and never spoke more than was necessary, at the
+best of times. And, latterly, it had not been the best of times with
+him. I dare say, he had had some causes for anxiety (of which I knew
+nothing) about my lady’s affairs; and he was evidently annoyed by my
+lady’s whim (as he once inadvertently called it) of placing Miss Galindo
+under him in the position of a clerk. Yet he had always been friends, in
+his quiet way, with Miss Galindo, and she devoted herself to her new
+occupation with diligence and punctuality, although more than once she
+had moaned to me over the orders for needlework which had been sent to
+her, and which, owing to her occupation in the service of Lady Ludlow,
+she had been unable to fulfil.
+
+The only living creature to whom the staid Mr. Horner could be said to be
+attached, was Harry Gregson. To my lady he was a faithful and devoted
+servant, looking keenly after her interests, and anxious to forward them
+at any cost of trouble to himself. But the more shrewd Mr. Horner was,
+the more probability was there of his being annoyed at certain
+peculiarities of opinion which my lady held with a quiet, gentle
+pertinacity; against which no arguments, based on mere worldly and
+business calculations, made any way. This frequent opposition to views
+which Mr. Horner entertained, although it did not interfere with the
+sincere respect which the lady and the steward felt for each other, yet
+prevented any warmer feeling of affection from coming in. It seems
+strange to say it, but I must repeat it—the only person for whom, since
+his wife’s death, Mr. Horner seemed to feel any love, was the little imp
+Harry Gregson, with his bright, watchful eyes, his tangled hair hanging
+right down to his eyebrows, for all the world like a Skye terrier. This
+lad, half gipsy and whole poacher, as many people esteemed him, hung
+about the silent, respectable, staid Mr. Horner, and followed his steps
+with something of the affectionate fidelity of the dog which he
+resembled. I suspect, this demonstration of attachment to his person on
+Harry Gregson’s part was what won Mr. Horner’s regard. In the first
+instance, the steward had only chosen the lad out as the cleverest
+instrument he could find for his purpose; and I don’t mean to say that,
+if Harry had not been almost as shrewd as Mr. Horner himself was, both by
+original disposition and subsequent experience, the steward would have
+taken to him as he did, let the lad have shown ever so much affection for
+him.
+
+But even to Harry Mr. Horner was silent. Still, it was pleasant to find
+himself in many ways so readily understood; to perceive that the crumbs
+of knowledge he let fall were picked up by his little follower, and
+hoarded like gold that here was one to hate the persons and things whom
+Mr. Horner coldly disliked, and to reverence and admire all those for
+whom he had any regard. Mr. Horner had never had a child, and
+unconsciously, I suppose, something of the paternal feeling had begun to
+develop itself in him towards Harry Gregson. I heard one or two things
+from different people, which have always made me fancy that Mr. Horner
+secretly and almost unconsciously hoped that Harry Gregson might be
+trained so as to be first his clerk, and next his assistant, and finally
+his successor in his stewardship to the Hanbury estates.
+
+Harry’s disgrace with my lady, in consequence of his reading the letter,
+was a deeper blow to Mr. Horner than his quiet manner would ever have led
+any one to suppose, or than Lady Ludlow ever dreamed of inflicting, I am
+sure.
+
+Probably Harry had a short, stern rebuke from Mr. Horner at the time, for
+his manner was always hard even to those he cared for the most. But
+Harry’s love was not to be daunted or quelled by a few sharp words. I
+dare say, from what I heard of them afterwards, that Harry accompanied
+Mr. Horner in his walk over the farm the very day of the rebuke; his
+presence apparently unnoticed by the agent, by whom his absence would
+have been painfully felt nevertheless. That was the way of it, as I have
+been told. Mr. Horner never bade Harry go with him; never thanked him
+for going, or being at his heels ready to run on any errands, straight as
+the crow flies to his point, and back to heel in as short a time as
+possible. Yet, if Harry were away, Mr. Horner never inquired the reason
+from any of the men who might be supposed to know whether he was detained
+by his father, or otherwise engaged; he never asked Harry himself where
+he had been. But Miss Galindo said that those labourers who knew Mr.
+Horner well, told her that he was always more quick-eyed to shortcomings,
+more savage-like in fault-finding, on those days when the lad was absent.
+
+Miss Galindo, indeed, was my great authority for most of the village news
+which I heard. She it was who gave me the particulars of poor Harry’s
+accident.
+
+“You see, my dear,” she said, “the little poacher has taken some
+unaccountable fancy to my master.” (This was the name by which Miss
+Galindo always spoke of Mr. Horner to me, ever since she had been, as she
+called it, appointed his clerk.)
+
+“Now if I had twenty hearts to lose, I never could spare a bit of one of
+them for that good, gray, square, severe man. But different people have
+different tastes, and here is that little imp of a gipsy-tinker ready to
+turn slave for my master; and, odd enough, my master,—who, I should have
+said beforehand, would have made short work of imp, and imp’s family, and
+have sent Hall, the Bang-beggar, after them in no time—my master, as
+they tell me, is in his way quite fond of the lad, and if he could,
+without vexing my lady too much, he would have made him what the folks
+here call a Latiner. However, last night, it seems that there was a
+letter of some importance forgotten (I can’t tell you what it was about,
+my dear, though I know perfectly well, but ‘_service oblige_,’ as well as
+‘noblesse,’ and you must take my word for it that it was important, and
+one that I am surprised my master could forget), till too late for the
+post. (The poor, good, orderly man is not what he was before his wife’s
+death.) Well, it seems that he was sore annoyed by his forgetfulness,
+and well he might be. And it was all the more vexatious, as he had no
+one to blame but himself. As for that matter, I always scold somebody
+else when I’m in fault; but I suppose my master would never think of
+doing that, else it’s a mighty relief. However, he could eat no tea, and
+was altogether put out and gloomy. And the little faithful imp-lad,
+perceiving all this, I suppose, got up like a page in an old ballad, and
+said he would run for his life across country to Comberford, and see if
+he could not get there before the bags were made up. So my master gave
+him the letter, and nothing more was heard of the poor fellow till this
+morning, for the father thought his son was sleeping in Mr. Horner’s
+barn, as he does occasionally, it seems, and my master, as was very
+natural, that he had gone to his father’s.”
+
+“And he had fallen down the old stone quarry, had he not?”
+
+“Yes, sure enough. Mr. Gray had been up here fretting my lady with some
+of his new-fangled schemes, and because the young man could not have it
+all his own way, from what I understand, he was put out, and thought he
+would go home by the back lane, instead of through the village, where the
+folks would notice if the parson looked glum. But, however, it was a
+mercy, and I don’t mind saying so, ay, and meaning it too, though it may
+be like methodism; for, as Mr. Gray walked by the quarry, he heard a
+groan, and at first he thought it was a lamb fallen down; and he stood
+still, and then he heard it again; and then I suppose, he looked down and
+saw Harry. So he let himself down by the boughs of the trees to the
+ledge where Harry lay half-dead, and with his poor thigh broken. There
+he had lain ever since the night before: he had been returning to tell
+the master that he had safely posted the letter, and the first words he
+said, when they recovered him from the exhausted state he was in, were”
+(Miss Galindo tried hard not to whimper, as she said it), “‘It was in
+time, sir. I see’d it put in the bag with my own eyes.’”
+
+“But where is he?” asked I. “How did Mr. Gray get him out?”
+
+“Ay! there it is, you see. Why the old gentleman (I daren’t say Devil
+in Lady Ludlow’s house) is not so black as he is painted; and Mr. Gray
+must have a deal of good in him, as I say at times; and then at others,
+when he has gone against me, I can’t bear him, and think hanging too
+good for him. But he lifted the poor lad, as if he had been a baby,
+I suppose, and carried him up the great ledges that were formerly
+used for steps; and laid him soft and easy on the wayside grass, and
+ran home and got help and a door, and had him carried to his house,
+and laid on his bed; and then somehow, for the first time either he
+or any one else perceived it, he himself was all over blood—his own
+blood—he had broken a blood-vessel; and there he lies in the little
+dressing-room, as white and as still as if he were dead; and the little
+imp in Mr. Gray’s own bed, sound asleep, now his leg is set, just as if
+linen sheets and a feather bed were his native element, as one may say.
+Really, now he is doing so well, I’ve no patience with him, lying there
+where Mr. Gray ought to be. It is just what my lady always prophesied
+would come to pass, if there was any confusion of ranks.”
+
+“Poor Mr. Gray!” said I, thinking of his flushed face, and his feverish,
+restless ways, when he had been calling on my lady not an hour before his
+exertions on Harry’s behalf. And I told Miss Galindo how ill I had
+thought him.
+
+“Yes,” said she. “And that was the reason my lady had sent for Doctor
+Trevor. Well, it has fallen out admirably, for he looked well after that
+old donkey of a Prince, and saw that he made no blunders.”
+
+Now “that old donkey of a Prince” meant the village surgeon, Mr. Prince,
+between whom and Miss Galindo there was war to the knife, as they often
+met in the cottages, when there was illness, and she had her queer, odd
+recipes, which he, with his grand pharmacopoeia, held in infinite
+contempt, and the consequence of their squabbling had been, not long
+before this very time, that he had established a kind of rule, that into
+whatever sick-room Miss Galindo was admitted, there he refused to visit.
+But Miss Galindo’s prescriptions and visits cost nothing and were often
+backed by kitchen-physic; so, though it was true that she never came but
+she scolded about something or other, she was generally preferred as
+medical attendant to Mr. Prince.
+
+“Yes, the old donkey is obliged to tolerate me, and be civil to me;
+for, you see, I got there first, and had possession, as it were, and
+yet my lord the donkey likes the credit of attending the parson, and
+being in consultation with so grand a county-town doctor as Doctor
+Trevor. And Doctor Trevor is an old friend of mine” (she sighed a
+little, some time I may tell you why), “and treats me with infinite
+bowing and respect; so the donkey, not to be out of medical fashion,
+bows too, though it is sadly against the grain; and he pulled a face as
+if he had heard a slate-pencil gritting against a slate, when I told
+Doctor Trevor I meant to sit up with the two lads, for I call Mr. Gray
+little more than a lad, and a pretty conceited one, too, at times.”
+
+“But why should you sit up, Miss Galindo? It will tire you sadly.”
+
+“Not it. You see, there is Gregson’s mother to keep quiet for she sits
+by her lad, fretting and sobbing, so that I’m afraid of her disturbing
+Mr. Gray; and there’s Mr. Gray to keep quiet, for Doctor Trevor says his
+life depends on it; and there is medicine to be given to the one, and
+bandages to be attended to for the other; and the wild horde of gipsy
+brothers and sisters to be turned out, and the father to be held in from
+showing too much gratitude to Mr. Gray, who can’t hear it,—and who is to
+do it all but me? The only servant is old lame Betty, who once lived
+with me, and _would_ leave me because she said I was always
+bothering—(there was a good deal of truth in what she said, I grant, but
+she need not have said it; a good deal of truth is best let alone at the
+bottom of the well), and what can she do,—deaf as ever she can be, too?”
+
+So Miss Galindo went her ways; but not the less was she at her post in
+the morning; a little crosser and more silent than usual; but the first
+was not to be wondered at, and the last was rather a blessing.
+
+Lady Ludlow had been extremely anxious both about Mr. Gray and Harry
+Gregson. Kind and thoughtful in any case of illness and accident,
+she always was; but somehow, in this, the feeling that she was not
+quite—what shall I call it?—“friends” seems hardly the right word to
+use, as to the possible feeling between the Countess Ludlow and the
+little vagabond messenger, who had only once been in her presence,—that
+she had hardly parted from either as she could have wished to do, had
+death been near, made her more than usually anxious. Doctor Trevor was
+not to spare obtaining the best medical advice the county could afford:
+whatever he ordered in the way of diet, was to be prepared under Mrs.
+Medlicott’s own eye, and sent down from the Hall to the Parsonage. As
+Mr. Horner had given somewhat similar directions, in the case of Harry
+Gregson at least, there was rather a multiplicity of counsellors and
+dainties, than any lack of them. And, the second night, Mr. Horner
+insisted on taking the superintendence of the nursing himself, and sat
+and snored by Harry’s bedside, while the poor, exhausted mother lay by
+her child,—thinking that she watched him, but in reality fast asleep,
+as Miss Galindo told us; for, distrusting any one’s powers of watching
+and nursing but her own, she had stolen across the quiet village street
+in cloak and dressing-gown, and found Mr. Gray in vain trying to reach
+the cup of barley-water which Mr. Horner had placed just beyond his
+reach.
+
+In consequence of Mr. Gray’s illness, we had to have a strange curate to
+do duty; a man who dropped his h’s, and hurried through the service, and
+yet had time enough to stand in my Lady’s way, bowing to her as she came
+out of church, and so subservient in manner, that I believe that sooner
+than remain unnoticed by a countess, he would have preferred being
+scolded, or even cuffed. Now I found out, that great as was my lady’s
+liking and approval of respect, nay, even reverence, being paid to her as
+a person of quality,—a sort of tribute to her Order, which she had no
+individual right to remit, or, indeed, not to exact,—yet she, being
+personally simple, sincere, and holding herself in low esteem, could not
+endure anything like the servility of Mr. Crosse, the temporary curate.
+She grew absolutely to loathe his perpetual smiling and bowing; his
+instant agreement with the slightest opinion she uttered; his veering
+round as she blew the wind. I have often said that my lady did not talk
+much, as she might have done had she lived among her equals. But we all
+loved her so much, that we had learnt to interpret all her little ways
+pretty truly; and I knew what particular turns of her head, and
+contractions of her delicate fingers meant, as well as if she had
+expressed herself in words. I began to suspect that my lady would be
+very thankful to have Mr. Gray about again, and doing his duty even with
+a conscientiousness that might amount to worrying himself, and fidgeting
+others; and although Mr. Gray might hold her opinions in as little esteem
+as those of any simple gentlewoman, she was too sensible not to feel how
+much flavour there was in his conversation, compared to that of Mr.
+Crosse, who was only her tasteless echo.
+
+As for Miss Galindo, she was utterly and entirely a partisan of Mr.
+Gray’s, almost ever since she had begun to nurse him during his illness.
+
+“You know, I never set up for reasonableness, my lady. So I don’t
+pretend to say, as I might do if I were a sensible woman and all
+that,—that I am convinced by Mr. Gray’s arguments of this thing or
+t’other. For one thing, you see, poor fellow! he has never been able to
+argue, or hardly indeed to speak, for Doctor Trevor has been very
+peremptory. So there’s been no scope for arguing! But what I mean is
+this:—When I see a sick man thinking always of others, and never of
+himself; patient, humble—a trifle too much at times, for I’ve caught him
+praying to be forgiven for having neglected his work as a parish priest,”
+(Miss Galindo was making horrible faces, to keep back tears, squeezing up
+her eyes in a way which would have amused me at any other time, but when
+she was speaking of Mr. Gray); “when I see a downright good, religious
+man, I’m apt to think he’s got hold of the right clue, and that I can do
+no better than hold on by the tails of his coat and shut my eyes, if
+we’ve got to go over doubtful places on our road to Heaven. So, my lady,
+you must excuse me if, when he gets about again, he is all agog about a
+Sunday-school, for if he is, I shall be agog too, and perhaps twice as
+bad as him, for, you see, I’ve a strong constitution compared to his, and
+strong ways of speaking and acting. And I tell your ladyship this now,
+because I think from your rank—and still more, if I may say so, for all
+your kindness to me long ago, down to this very day—you’ve a right to be
+first told of anything about me. Change of opinion I can’t exactly call
+it, for I don’t see the good of schools and teaching A B C, any more than
+I did before, only Mr. Gray does, so I’m to shut my eyes, and leap over
+the ditch to the side of education. I’ve told Sally already, that if she
+does not mind her work, but stands gossiping with Nelly Mather, I’ll
+teach her her lessons; and I’ve never caught her with old Nelly since.”
+
+I think Miss Galindo’s desertion to Mr. Gray’s opinions in this matter
+hurt my lady just a little bit; but she only said—
+
+“Of course, if the parishoners wish for it, Mr. Gray must have his
+Sunday-school. I shall, in that case, withdraw my opposition. I am
+sorry I cannot alter my opinions as easily as you.”
+
+My lady made herself smile as she said this. Miss Galindo saw it was an
+effort to do so. She thought a minute before she spoke again.
+
+“Your ladyship has not seen Mr. Gray as intimately as I have done. That’s
+one thing. But, as for the parishioners, they will follow your
+ladyship’s lead in everything; so there is no chance of their wishing for
+a Sunday-school.”
+
+“I have never done anything to make them follow my lead, as you call it,
+Miss Galindo,” said my lady, gravely.
+
+“Yes, you have,” replied Miss Galindo, bluntly. And then, correcting
+herself, she said, “Begging your ladyship’s pardon, you have. Your
+ancestors have lived here time out of mind, and have owned the land on
+which their forefathers have lived ever since there were forefathers. You
+yourself were born amongst them, and have been like a little queen to
+them ever since, I might say, and they’ve never known your ladyship do
+anything but what was kind and gentle; but I’ll leave fine speeches about
+your ladyship to Mr. Crosse. Only you, my lady, lead the thoughts of the
+parish; and save some of them a world of trouble, for they could never
+tell what was right if they had to think for themselves. It’s all quite
+right that they should be guided by you, my lady,—if only you would
+agree with Mr. Gray.”
+
+“Well,” said my lady, “I told him only the last day that he was here,
+that I would think about it. I do believe I could make up my mind on
+certain subjects better if I were left alone, than while being constantly
+talked to about them.”
+
+My lady said this in her usual soft tones; but the words had a tinge of
+impatience about them; indeed, she was more ruffled than I had often seen
+her; but, checking herself in an instant she said—
+
+“You don’t know how Mr. Horner drags in this subject of education apropos
+of everything. Not that he says much about it at any time: it is not his
+way. But he cannot let the thing alone.”
+
+“I know why, my lady,” said Miss Galindo. “That poor lad, Harry Gregson,
+will never be able to earn his livelihood in any active way, but will be
+lame for life. Now, Mr. Horner thinks more of Harry than of any one else
+in the world,—except, perhaps, your ladyship.” Was it not a pretty
+companionship for my lady? “And he has schemes of his own for teaching
+Harry; and if Mr. Gray could but have his school, Mr. Horner and he think
+Harry might be schoolmaster, as your ladyship would not like to have him
+coming to you as steward’s clerk. I wish your ladyship would fall into
+this plan; Mr. Gray has it so at heart.”
+
+Miss Galindo looked wistfully at my lady, as she said this. But my lady
+only said, drily, and rising at the same time, as if to end the
+conversation—
+
+“So Mr. Horner and Mr. Gray seem to have gone a long way in advance of my
+consent to their plans.”
+
+“There!” exclaimed Miss Galindo, as my lady left the room, with an
+apology for going away; “I have gone and done mischief with my long,
+stupid tongue. To be sure, people plan a long way ahead of to-day; more
+especially when one is a sick man, lying all through the weary day on a
+sofa.”
+
+“My lady will soon get over her annoyance,” said I, as it were
+apologetically. I only stopped Miss Galindo’s self-reproaches to draw
+down her wrath upon myself.
+
+“And has not she a right to be annoyed with me, if she likes, and to keep
+annoyed as long as she likes? Am I complaining of her, that you need
+tell me that? Let me tell you, I have known my lady these thirty years;
+and if she were to take me by the shoulders, and turn me out of the
+house, I should only love her the more. So don’t you think to come
+between us with any little mincing, peace-making speeches. I have been a
+mischief-making parrot, and I like her the better for being vexed with
+me. So good-bye to you, Miss; and wait till you know Lady Ludlow as well
+as I do, before you next think of telling me she will soon get over her
+annoyance!” And off Miss Galindo went.
+
+I could not exactly tell what I had done wrong; but I took care never
+again to come in between my lady and her by any remark about the one to
+the other; for I saw that some most powerful bond of grateful affection
+made Miss Galindo almost worship my lady.
+
+Meanwhile, Harry Gregson was limping a little about in the village, still
+finding his home in Mr. Gray’s house; for there he could most
+conveniently be kept under the doctor’s eye, and receive the requisite
+care, and enjoy the requisite nourishment. As soon as he was a little
+better, he was to go to Mr. Horner’s house; but, as the steward lived
+some distance out of the way, and was much from home, he had agreed to
+leave Harry at the house; to which he had first been taken, until he was
+quite strong again; and the more willingly, I suspect, from what I heard
+afterwards, because Mr. Gray gave up all the little strength of speaking
+which he had, to teaching Harry in the very manner which Mr. Horner most
+desired.
+
+As for Gregson the father—he—wild man of the woods, poacher, tinker,
+jack-of-all trades—was getting tamed by this kindness to his child.
+Hitherto his hand had been against every man, as every man’s had been
+against him. That affair before the justice, which I told you about,
+when Mr. Gray and even my lady had interested themselves to get him
+released from unjust imprisonment, was the first bit of justice he
+had ever met with; it attracted him to the people, and attached him
+to the spot on which he had but squatted for a time. I am not sure
+if any of the villagers were grateful to him for remaining in their
+neighbourhood, instead of decamping as he had often done before, for
+good reasons, doubtless, of personal safety. Harry was only one out
+of a brood of ten or twelve children, some of whom had earned for
+themselves no good character in service: one, indeed, had been actually
+transported, for a robbery committed in a distant part of the county;
+and the tale was yet told in the village of how Gregson the father
+came back from the trial in a state of wild rage, striding through the
+place, and uttering oaths of vengeance to himself, his great black
+eyes gleaming out of his matted hair, and his arms working by his
+side, and now and then tossed up in his impotent despair. As I heard
+the account, his wife followed him, child-laden and weeping. After
+this, they had vanished from the country for a time, leaving their
+mud hovel locked up, and the door-key, as the neighbours said, buried
+in a hedge bank. The Gregsons had reappeared much about the same time
+that Mr. Gray came to Hanbury. He had either never heard of their evil
+character, or considered that it gave them all the more claims upon
+his Christian care; and the end of it was, that this rough, untamed,
+strong giant of a heathen was loyal slave to the weak, hectic, nervous,
+self-distrustful parson. Gregson had also a kind of grumbling respect
+for Mr. Horner: he did not quite like the steward’s monopoly of his
+Harry: the mother submitted to that with a better grace, swallowing
+down her maternal jealousy in the prospect of her child’s advancement
+to a better and more respectable position than that in which his
+parents had struggled through life. But Mr. Horner, the steward, and
+Gregson, the poacher and squatter, had come into disagreeable contact
+too often in former days for them to be perfectly cordial at any
+future time. Even now, when there was no immediate cause for anything
+but gratitude for his child’s sake on Gregson’s part, he would skulk
+out of Mr. Horner’s way, if he saw him coming; and it took all Mr.
+Horner’s natural reserve and acquired self-restraint to keep him from
+occasionally holding up his father’s life as a warning to Harry. Now
+Gregson had nothing of this desire for avoidance with regard to Mr.
+Gray. The poacher had a feeling of physical protection towards the
+parson; while the latter had shown the moral courage, without which
+Gregson would never have respected him, in coming right down upon him
+more than once in the exercise of unlawful pursuits, and simply and
+boldly telling him he was doing wrong, with such a quiet reliance upon
+Gregson’s better feeling, at the same time, that the strong poacher
+could not have lifted a finger against Mr. Gray, though it had been
+to save himself from being apprehended and taken to the lock-ups the
+very next hour. He had rather listened to the parson’s bold words
+with an approving smile, much as Mr. Gulliver might have hearkened to
+a lecture from a Lilliputian. But when brave words passed into kind
+deeds, Gregson’s heart mutely acknowledged its master and keeper. And
+the beauty of it all was, that Mr. Gray knew nothing of the good work
+he had done, or recognized himself as the instrument which God had
+employed. He thanked God, it is true, fervently and often, that the
+work was done; and loved the wild man for his rough gratitude; but it
+never occurred to the poor young clergyman, lying on his sick-bed, and
+praying, as Miss Galindo had told us he did, to be forgiven for his
+unprofitable life, to think of Gregson’s reclaimed soul as anything
+with which he had had to do. It was now more than three months since
+Mr. Gray had been at Hanbury Court. During all that time he had been
+confined to his house, if not to his sick-bed, and he and my lady had
+never met since their last discussion and difference about Farmer
+Hale’s barn.
+
+This was not my dear lady’s fault; no one could have been more attentive
+in every way to the slightest possible want of either of the invalids,
+especially of Mr. Gray. And she would have gone to see him at his own
+house, as she sent him word, but that her foot had slipped upon the
+polished oak staircase, and her ankle had been sprained.
+
+So we had never seen Mr. Gray since his illness, when one November day he
+was announced as wishing to speak to my lady. She was sitting in her
+room—the room in which I lay now pretty constantly—and I remember she
+looked startled, when word was brought to her of Mr. Gray’s being at the
+Hall.
+
+She could not go to him, she was too lame for that, so she bade him be
+shown into where she sat.
+
+“Such a day for him to go out!” she exclaimed, looking at the fog which
+had crept up to the windows, and was sapping the little remaining life in
+the brilliant Virginian creeper leaves that draperied the house on the
+terrace side.
+
+He came in white, trembling, his large eyes wild and dilated. He
+hastened up to Lady Ludlow’s chair, and, to my surprise, took one of her
+hands and kissed it, without speaking, yet shaking all over.
+
+“Mr. Gray!” said she, quickly, with sharp, tremulous apprehension of some
+unknown evil. “What is it? There is something unusual about you.”
+
+“Something unusual has occurred,” replied he, forcing his words to be
+calm, as with a great effort. “A gentleman came to my house, not half an
+hour ago—a Mr. Howard. He came straight from Vienna.”
+
+“My son!” said my dear lady, stretching out her arms in dumb questioning
+attitude.
+
+“The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the
+Lord.”
+
+But my poor lady could not echo the words. He was the last remaining
+child. And once she had been the joyful mother of nine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+I am ashamed to say what feeling became strongest in my mind about this
+time; next to the sympathy we all of us felt for my dear lady in her deep
+sorrow, I mean; for that was greater and stronger than anything else,
+however contradictory you may think it, when you hear all.
+
+It might arise from my being so far from well at the time, which produced
+a diseased mind in a diseased body; but I was absolutely jealous for my
+father’s memory, when I saw how many signs of grief there were for my
+lord’s death, he having done next to nothing for the village and parish,
+which now changed, as it were, its daily course of life, because his
+lordship died in a far-off city. My father had spent the best years of
+his manhood in labouring hard, body and soul, for the people amongst whom
+he lived. His family, of course, claimed the first place in his heart;
+he would have been good for little, even in the way of benevolence, if
+they had not. But close after them he cared for his parishioners, and
+neighbours. And yet, when he died, though the church bells tolled, and
+smote upon our hearts with hard, fresh pain at every beat, the sounds of
+every-day life still went on, close pressing around us,—carts and
+carriages, street-cries, distant barrel-organs (the kindly neighbours
+kept them out of our street): life, active, noisy life, pressed on our
+acute consciousness of Death, and jarred upon it as on a quick nerve.
+
+And when we went to church,—my father’s own church,—though the pulpit
+cushions were black, and many of the congregation had put on some humble
+sign of mourning, yet it did not alter the whole material aspect of the
+place. And yet what was Lord Ludlow’s relation to Hanbury, compared to
+my father’s work and place in—?
+
+O! it was very wicked in me! I think if I had seen my lady,—if I had
+dared to ask to go to her, I should not have felt so miserable, so
+discontented. But she sat in her own room, hung with black, all, even
+over the shutters. She saw no light but that which was
+artificial—candles, lamps, and the like—for more than a month. Only
+Adams went near her. Mr. Gray was not admitted, though he called daily.
+Even Mrs. Medlicott did not see her for near a fortnight. The sight of
+my lady’s griefs, or rather the recollection of it, made Mrs. Medlicott
+talk far more than was her wont. She told us, with many tears, and much
+gesticulation, even speaking German at times, when her English would not
+flow, that my lady sat there, a white figure in the middle of the
+darkened room; a shaded lamp near her, the light of which fell on an open
+Bible,—the great family Bible. It was not open at any chapter or
+consoling verse; but at the page whereon were registered the births of
+her nine children. Five had died in infancy,—sacrificed to the cruel
+system which forbade the mother to suckle her babies. Four had lived
+longer; Urian had been the first to die, Ughtred-Mortimar, Earl Ludlow,
+the last.
+
+My lady did not cry, Mrs. Medlicott said. She was quite composed; very
+still, very silent. She put aside everything that savoured of mere
+business: sent people to Mr. Horner for that. But she was proudly alive
+to every possible form which might do honour to the last of her race.
+
+In those days, expresses were slow things, and forms still slower. Before
+my lady’s directions could reach Vienna, my lord was buried. There was
+some talk (so Mrs. Medlicott said) about taking the body up, and bringing
+him to Hanbury. But his executors,—connections on the Ludlow
+side,—demurred to this. If he were removed to England, he must be
+carried on to Scotland, and interred with his Monkshaven forefathers. My
+lady, deeply hurt, withdrew from the discussion, before it degenerated to
+an unseemly contest. But all the more, for this understood mortification
+of my lady’s, did the whole village and estate of Hanbury assume every
+outward sign of mourning. The church bells tolled morning and evening.
+The church itself was draped in black inside. Hatchments were placed
+everywhere, where hatchments could be put. All the tenantry spoke in
+hushed voices for more than a week, scarcely daring to observe that all
+flesh, even that of an Earl Ludlow, and the last of the Hanburys, was but
+grass after all. The very Fighting Lion closed its front door, front
+shutters it had none, and those who needed drink stole in at the back,
+and were silent and maudlin over their cups, instead of riotous and
+noisy. Miss Galindo’s eyes were swollen up with crying, and she told me,
+with a fresh burst of tears, that even hump-backed Sally had been found
+sobbing over her Bible, and using a pocket-handkerchief for the first
+time in her life; her aprons having hitherto stood her in the necessary
+stead, but not being sufficiently in accordance with etiquette to be used
+when mourning over an earl’s premature decease.
+
+If it was this way out of the Hall, “you might work it by the rule of
+three,” as Miss Galindo used to say, and judge what it was in the Hall.
+We none of us spoke but in a whisper: we tried not to eat; and indeed the
+shock had been so really great, and we did really care so much for my
+lady, that for some days we had but little appetite. But after that, I
+fear our sympathy grew weaker, while our flesh grew stronger. But we
+still spoke low, and our hearts ached whenever we thought of my lady
+sitting there alone in the darkened room, with the light ever falling on
+that one solemn page.
+
+We wished, O how I wished that she would see Mr. Gray! But Adams said,
+she thought my lady ought to have a bishop come to see her. Still no one
+had authority enough to send for one.
+
+Mr. Horner all this time was suffering as much as any one. He was too
+faithful a servant of the great Hanbury family, though now the family had
+dwindled down to a fragile old lady, not to mourn acutely over its
+probable extinction. He had, besides, a deeper sympathy and reverence
+with, and for, my lady, in all things, than probably he ever cared to
+show, for his manners were always measured and cold. He suffered from
+sorrow. He also suffered from wrong. My lord’s executors kept writing
+to him continually. My lady refused to listen to mere business, saying
+she intrusted all to him. But the “all” was more complicated than I ever
+thoroughly understood. As far as I comprehended the case, it was
+something of this kind:—There had been a mortgage raised on my lady’s
+property of Hanbury, to enable my lord, her husband, to spend money in
+cultivating his Scotch estates, after some new fashion that required
+capital. As long as my lord, her son, lived, who was to succeed to both
+the estates after her death, this did not signify; so she had said and
+felt; and she had refused to take any steps to secure the repayment of
+capital, or even the payment of the interest of the mortgage from the
+possible representatives and possessors of the Scotch estates, to the
+possible owner of the Hanbury property; saying it ill became her to
+calculate on the contingency of her son’s death.
+
+But he had died childless, unmarried. The heir of the Monkshaven
+property was an Edinburgh advocate, a far-away kinsman of my lord’s: the
+Hanbury property, at my lady’s death, would go to the descendants of a
+third son of the Squire Hanbury in the days of Queen Anne.
+
+This complication of affairs was most grievous to Mr. Horner. He had
+always been opposed to the mortgage; had hated the payment of the
+interest, as obliging my lady to practise certain economies which, though
+she took care to make them as personal as possible, he disliked as
+derogatory to the family. Poor Mr. Horner! He was so cold and hard in
+his manner, so curt and decisive in his speech, that I don’t think we any
+of us did him justice. Miss Galindo was almost the first, at this time,
+to speak a kind word of him, or to take thought of him at all, any
+farther than to get out of his way when we saw him approaching.
+
+“I don’t think Mr. Horner is well,” she said one day; about three weeks
+after we had heard of my lord’s death. “He sits resting his head on his
+hand, and hardly hears me when I speak to him.”
+
+But I thought no more of it, as Miss Galindo did not name it again. My
+lady came amongst us once more. From elderly she had become old; a
+little, frail, old lady, in heavy black drapery, never speaking about nor
+alluding to her great sorrow; quieter, gentler, paler than ever before;
+and her eyes dim with much weeping, never witnessed by mortal.
+
+She had seen Mr. Gray at the expiration of the month of deep retirement.
+But I do not think that even to him she had said one word of her own
+particular individual sorrow. All mention of it seemed buried deep for
+evermore. One day, Mr. Horner sent word that he was too much indisposed
+to attend to his usual business at the Hall; but he wrote down some
+directions and requests to Miss Galindo, saying that he would be at his
+office early the next morning. The next morning he was dead.
+
+Miss Galindo told my lady. Miss Galindo herself cried plentifully, but
+my lady, although very much distressed, could not cry. It seemed a
+physical impossibility, as if she had shed all the tears in her power.
+Moreover, I almost think her wonder was far greater that she herself
+lived than that Mr. Horner died. It was almost natural that so faithful
+a servant should break his heart, when the family he belonged to lost
+their stay, their heir, and their last hope.
+
+Yes! Mr. Horner was a faithful servant. I do not think there are many
+so faithful now; but perhaps that is an old woman’s fancy of mine. When
+his will came to be examined, it was discovered that, soon after Harry
+Gregson’s accident, Mr. Horner had left the few thousands (three, I
+think,) of which he was possessed, in trust for Harry’s benefit, desiring
+his executors to see that the lad was well educated in certain things,
+for which Mr. Horner had thought that he had shown especial aptitude; and
+there was a kind of implied apology to my lady in one sentence where he
+stated that Harry’s lameness would prevent his being ever able to gain
+his living by the exercise of any mere bodily faculties, “as had been
+wished by a lady whose wishes” he, the testator, “was bound to regard.”
+
+But there was a codicil in the will, dated since Lord Ludlow’s
+death—feebly written by Mr. Horner himself, as if in preparation only
+for some more formal manner of bequest: or, perhaps, only as a mere
+temporary arrangement till he could see a lawyer, and have a fresh will
+made. In this he revoked his previous bequest to Harry Gregson. He only
+left two hundred pounds to Mr. Gray to be used, as that gentleman thought
+best, for Henry Gregson’s benefit. With this one exception, he
+bequeathed all the rest of his savings to my lady, with a hope that they
+might form a nest-egg, as it were, towards the paying off of the mortgage
+which had been such a grief to him during his life. I may not repeat all
+this in lawyer’s phrase; I heard it through Miss Galindo, and she might
+make mistakes. Though, indeed, she was very clear-headed, and soon
+earned the respect of Mr. Smithson, my lady’s lawyer from Warwick. Mr.
+Smithson knew Miss Galindo a little before, both personally and by
+reputation; but I don’t think he was prepared to find her installed as
+steward’s clerk, and, at first, he was inclined to treat her, in this
+capacity, with polite contempt. But Miss Galindo was both a lady and a
+spirited, sensible woman, and she could put aside her self-indulgence in
+eccentricity of speech and manner whenever she chose. Nay more; she was
+usually so talkative, that if she had not been amusing and warm-hearted,
+one might have thought her wearisome occasionally. But to meet Mr.
+Smithson she came out daily in her Sunday gown; she said no more than was
+required in answer to his questions; her books and papers were in
+thorough order, and methodically kept; her statements of matters-of-fact
+accurate, and to be relied on. She was amusingly conscious of her
+victory over his contempt of a woman-clerk and his preconceived opinion
+of her unpractical eccentricity.
+
+“Let me alone,” said she, one day when she came in to sit awhile with me.
+“That man is a good man—a sensible man—and I have no doubt he is a good
+lawyer; but he can’t fathom women yet. I make no doubt he’ll go back to
+Warwick, and never give credit again to those people who made him think
+me half-cracked to begin with. O, my dear, he did! He showed it twenty
+times worse than my poor dear master ever did. It was a form to be gone
+through to please my lady, and, for her sake, he would hear my statements
+and see my books. It was keeping a woman out of harm’s way, at any rate,
+to let her fancy herself useful. I read the man. And, I am thankful to
+say, he cannot read me. At least, only one side of me. When I see an
+end to be gained, I can behave myself accordingly. Here was a man who
+thought that a woman in a black silk gown was a respectable, orderly kind
+of person; and I was a woman in a black silk gown. He believed that a
+woman could not write straight lines, and required a man to tell her that
+two and two made four. I was not above ruling my books, and had Cocker a
+little more at my fingers’ ends than he had. But my greatest triumph has
+been holding my tongue. He would have thought nothing of my books, or my
+sums, or my black silk gown, if I had spoken unasked. So I have buried
+more sense in my bosom these ten days than ever I have uttered in the
+whole course of my life before. I have been so curt, so abrupt, so
+abominably dull, that I’ll answer for it he thinks me worthy to be a man.
+But I must go back to him, my dear, so good-bye to conversation and you.”
+
+But though Mr. Smithson might be satisfied with Miss Galindo, I am afraid
+she was the only part of the affair with which he was content. Everything
+else went wrong. I could not say who told me so—but the conviction of
+this seemed to pervade the house. I never knew how much we had all
+looked up to the silent, gruff Mr. Horner for decisions, until he was
+gone. My lady herself was a pretty good woman of business, as women of
+business go. Her father, seeing that she would be the heiress of the
+Hanbury property, had given her a training which was thought unusual in
+those days, and she liked to feel herself queen regnant, and to have to
+decide in all cases between herself and her tenantry. But, perhaps, Mr.
+Horner would have done it more wisely; not but what she always attended
+to him at last. She would begin by saying, pretty clearly and promptly,
+what she would have done, and what she would not have done. If Mr.
+Horner approved of it, he bowed, and set about obeying her directly; if
+he disapproved of it, he bowed, and lingered so long before he obeyed
+her, that she forced his opinion out of him with her “Well, Mr. Horner!
+and what have you to say against it?” For she always understood his
+silence as well as if he had spoken. But the estate was pressed for
+ready money, and Mr. Horner had grown gloomy and languid since the death
+of his wife, and even his own personal affairs were not in the order in
+which they had been a year or two before, for his old clerk had gradually
+become superannuated, or, at any rate, unable by the superfluity of his
+own energy and wit to supply the spirit that was wanting in Mr. Horner.
+
+Day after day Mr. Smithson seemed to grow more fidgety, more annoyed at
+the state of affairs. Like every one else employed by Lady Ludlow, as
+far as I could learn, he had an hereditary tie to the Hanbury family. As
+long as the Smithsons had been lawyers, they had been lawyers to the
+Hanburys; always coming in on all great family occasions, and better able
+to understand the characters, and connect the links of what had once been
+a large and scattered family, than any individual thereof had ever been.
+
+As long as a man was at the head of the Hanburys, the lawyers had simply
+acted as servants, and had only given their advice when it was required.
+But they had assumed a different position on the memorable occasion of
+the mortgage: they had remonstrated against it. My lady had resented
+this remonstrance, and a slight, unspoken coolness had existed between
+her and the father of this Mr. Smithson ever since.
+
+I was very sorry for my lady. Mr. Smithson was inclined to blame Mr.
+Horner for the disorderly state in which he found some of the outlying
+farms, and for the deficiencies in the annual payment of rents. Mr.
+Smithson had too much good feeling to put this blame into words; but my
+lady’s quick instinct led her to reply to a thought, the existence of
+which she perceived; and she quietly told the truth, and explained how
+she had interfered repeatedly to prevent Mr. Horner from taking certain
+desirable steps, which were discordant to her hereditary sense of right
+and wrong between landlord and tenant. She also spoke of the want of
+ready money as a misfortune that could be remedied, by more economical
+personal expenditure on her own part; by which individual saving, it was
+possible that a reduction of fifty pounds a year might have been
+accomplished. But as soon as Mr. Smithson touched on larger economies,
+such as either affected the welfare of others, or the honour and standing
+of the great House of Hanbury, she was inflexible. Her establishment
+consisted of somewhere about forty servants, of whom nearly as many as
+twenty were unable to perform their work properly, and yet would have
+been hurt if they had been dismissed; so they had the credit of
+fulfilling duties, while my lady paid and kept their substitutes. Mr.
+Smithson made a calculation, and would have saved some hundreds a year by
+pensioning off these old servants. But my lady would not hear of it.
+Then, again, I know privately that he urged her to allow some of us to
+return to our homes. Bitterly we should have regretted the separation
+from Lady Ludlow; but we would have gone back gladly, had we known at the
+time that her circumstances required it: but she would not listen to the
+proposal for a moment.
+
+“If I cannot act justly towards every one, I will give up a plan which
+has been a source of much satisfaction; at least, I will not carry it out
+to such an extent in future. But to these young ladies, who do me the
+favour to live with me at present, I stand pledged. I cannot go back
+from my word, Mr. Smithson. We had better talk no more of this.”
+
+As she spoke, she entered the room where I lay. She and Mr. Smithson
+were coming for some papers contained in the bureau. They did not know I
+was there, and Mr. Smithson started a little when he saw me, as he must
+have been aware that I had overheard something. But my lady did not
+change a muscle of her face. All the world might overhear her kind,
+just, pure sayings, and she had no fear of their misconstruction. She
+came up to me, and kissed me on the forehead, and then went to search for
+the required papers.
+
+“I rode over the Connington farms yesterday, my lady. I must say I was
+quite grieved to see the condition they are in; all the land that is not
+waste is utterly exhausted with working successive white crops. Not a
+pinch of manure laid on the ground for years. I must say that a greater
+contrast could never have been presented than that between Harding’s farm
+and the next fields—fences in perfect order, rotation crops, sheep
+eating down the turnips on the waste lands—everything that could be
+desired.”
+
+“Whose farm is that?” asked my lady.
+
+“Why, I am sorry to say, it was on none of your ladyship’s that I saw
+such good methods adopted. I hoped it was, I stopped my horse to
+inquire. A queer-looking man, sitting on his horse like a tailor,
+watching his men with a couple of the sharpest eyes I ever saw, and
+dropping his h’s at every word, answered my question, and told me it was
+his. I could not go on asking him who he was; but I fell into
+conversation with him, and I gathered that he had earned some money in
+trade in Birmingham, and had bought the estate (five hundred acres, I
+think he said,) on which he was born, and now was setting himself to
+cultivate it in downright earnest, going to Holkham and Woburn, and half
+the country over, to get himself up on the subject.”
+
+“It would be Brooke, that dissenting baker from Birmingham,” said my lady
+in her most icy tone. “Mr. Smithson, I am sorry I have been detaining
+you so long, but I think these are the letters you wished to see.”
+
+If her ladyship thought by this speech to quench Mr. Smithson she was
+mistaken. Mr. Smithson just looked at the letters, and went on with the
+old subject.
+
+“Now, my lady, it struck me that if you had such a man to take poor
+Horner’s place, he would work the rents and the land round most
+satisfactorily. I should not despair of inducing this very man to
+undertake the work. I should not mind speaking to him myself on the
+subject, for we got capital friends over a snack of luncheon that he
+asked me to share with him.”
+
+Lady Ludlow fixed her eyes on Mr. Smithson as he spoke, and never took
+them off his face until he had ended. She was silent a minute before she
+answered.
+
+“You are very good, Mr. Smithson, but I need not trouble you with any
+such arrangements. I am going to write this afternoon to Captain James,
+a friend of one of my sons, who has, I hear, been severely wounded at
+Trafalgar, to request him to honour me by accepting Mr. Horner’s
+situation.”
+
+“A Captain James! A captain in the navy! going to manage your ladyship’s
+estate!”
+
+“If he will be so kind. I shall esteem it a condescension on his part;
+but I hear that he will have to resign his profession, his state of
+health is so bad, and a country life is especially prescribed for him. I
+am in some hopes of tempting him here, as I learn he has but little to
+depend on if he gives up his profession.”
+
+“A Captain James! an invalid captain!”
+
+“You think I am asking too great a favour,” continued my lady. (I never
+could tell how far it was simplicity, or how far a kind of innocent
+malice, that made her misinterpret Mr. Smithson’s words and looks as she
+did.) “But he is not a post-captain, only a commander, and his pension
+will be but small. I may be able, by offering him country air and a
+healthy occupation, to restore him to health.”
+
+“Occupation! My lady, may I ask how a sailor is to manage land? Why,
+your tenants will laugh him to scorn.”
+
+“My tenants, I trust, will not behave so ill as to laugh at any one I
+choose to set over them. Captain James has had experience in managing
+men. He has remarkable practical talents, and great common-sense, as I
+hear from every one. But, whatever he may be, the affair rests between
+him and myself. I can only say I shall esteem myself fortunate if he
+comes.”
+
+There was no more to be said, after my lady spoke in this manner. I had
+heard her mention Captain James before, as a middy who had been very kind
+to her son Urian. I thought I remembered then, that she had mentioned
+that his family circumstances were not very prosperous. But, I confess,
+that little as I knew of the management of land, I quite sided with Mr.
+Smithson. He, silently prohibited from again speaking to my lady on the
+subject, opened his mind to Miss Galindo, from whom I was pretty sure to
+hear all the opinions and news of the household and village. She had
+taken a great fancy to me, because she said I talked so agreeably. I
+believe it was because I listened so well.
+
+“Well, have you heard the news,” she began, “about this Captain James? A
+sailor,—with a wooden leg, I have no doubt. What would the poor, dear,
+deceased master have said to it, if he had known who was to be his
+successor! My dear, I have often thought of the postman’s bringing me a
+letter as one of the pleasures I shall miss in heaven. But, really, I
+think Mr. Horner may be thankful he has got out of the reach of news; or
+else he would hear of Mr. Smithson’s having made up to the Birmingham
+baker, and of his one-legged captain, coming to dot-and-go-one over the
+estate. I suppose he will look after the labourers through a spy-glass.
+I only hope he won’t stick in the mud with his wooden leg; for I, for
+one, won’t help him out. Yes, I would,” said she, correcting herself; “I
+would, for my lady’s sake.”
+
+“But are you sure he has a wooden leg?” asked I. “I heard Lady Ludlow
+tell Mr. Smithson about him, and she only spoke of him as wounded.”
+
+“Well, sailors are almost always wounded in the leg. Look at Greenwich
+Hospital! I should say there were twenty one-legged pensioners to one
+without an arm there. But say he has got half a dozen legs: what has he
+to do with managing land? I shall think him very impudent if he comes,
+taking advantage of my lady’s kind heart.”
+
+However, come he did. In a month from that time, the carriage was sent
+to meet Captain James; just as three years before it had been sent to
+meet me. His coming had been so much talked about that we were all as
+curious as possible to see him, and to know how so unusual an experiment,
+as it seemed to us, would answer. But, before I tell you anything about
+our new agent, I must speak of something quite as interesting, and I
+really think quite as important. And this was my lady’s making friends
+with Harry Gregson. I do believe she did it for Mr. Horner’s sake; but,
+of course, I can only conjecture why my lady did anything. But I heard
+one day, from Mary Legard, that my lady had sent for Harry to come and
+see her, if he was well enough to walk so far; and the next day he was
+shown into the room he had been in once before under such unlucky
+circumstances.
+
+The lad looked pale enough, as he stood propping himself up on his
+crutch, and the instant my lady saw him, she bade John Footman place a
+stool for him to sit down upon while she spoke to him. It might be his
+paleness that gave his whole face a more refined and gentle look; but I
+suspect it was that the boy was apt to take impressions, and that Mr.
+Horner’s grave, dignified ways, and Mr. Gray’s tender and quiet manners,
+had altered him; and then the thoughts of illness and death seem to turn
+many of us into gentlemen, and gentlewomen, as long as such thoughts are
+in our minds. We cannot speak loudly or angrily at such times; we are
+not apt to be eager about mere worldly things, for our very awe at our
+quickened sense of the nearness of the invisible world, makes us calm and
+serene about the petty trifles of to-day. At least, I know that was the
+explanation Mr. Gray once gave me of what we all thought the great
+improvement in Harry Gregson’s way of behaving.
+
+My lady hesitated so long about what she had best say, that Harry grew a
+little frightened at her silence. A few months ago it would have
+surprised me more than it did now; but since my lord her son’s death, she
+had seemed altered in many ways,—more uncertain and distrustful of
+herself, as it were.
+
+At last she said, and I think the tears were in her eyes: “My poor little
+fellow, you have had a narrow escape with your life since I saw you
+last.”
+
+To this there was nothing to be said but “Yes;” and again there was
+silence.
+
+“And you have lost a good, kind friend, in Mr. Horner.”
+
+The boy’s lips worked, and I think he said, “Please, don’t.” But I can’t
+be sure; at any rate, my lady went on:
+
+“And so have I,—a good, kind friend, he was to both of us; and to you he
+wished to show his kindness in even a more generous way than he has done.
+Mr. Gray has told you about his legacy to you, has he not?”
+
+There was no sign of eager joy on the lad’s face, as if he realised the
+power and pleasure of having what to him must have seemed like a fortune.
+
+“Mr. Gray said as how he had left me a matter of money.”
+
+“Yes, he has left you two hundred pounds.”
+
+“But I would rather have had him alive, my lady,” he burst out, sobbing
+as if his heart would break.
+
+“My lad, I believe you. We would rather have had our dead alive, would
+we not? and there is nothing in money that can comfort us for their loss.
+But you know—Mr. Gray has told you—who has appointed all our times to
+die. Mr. Horner was a good, just man; and has done well and kindly, both
+by me and you. You perhaps do not know” (and now I understood what my
+lady had been making up her mind to say to Harry, all the time she was
+hesitating how to begin) “that Mr. Horner, at one time, meant to leave
+you a great deal more; probably all he had, with the exception of a
+legacy to his old clerk, Morrison. But he knew that this estate—on
+which my forefathers had lived for six hundred years—was in debt, and
+that I had no immediate chance of paying off this debt; and yet he felt
+that it was a very sad thing for an old property like this to belong in
+part to those other men, who had lent the money. You understand me, I
+think, my little man?” said she, questioning Harry’s face.
+
+He had left off crying, and was trying to understand, with all his might
+and main; and I think he had got a pretty good general idea of the state
+of affairs; though probably he was puzzled by the term “the estate being
+in debt.” But he was sufficiently interested to want my lady to go on;
+and he nodded his head at her, to signify this to her.
+
+“So Mr. Horner took the money which he once meant to be yours, and has
+left the greater part of it to me, with the intention of helping me to
+pay off this debt I have told you about. It will go a long way, and I
+shall try hard to save the rest, and then I shall die happy in leaving
+the land free from debt.” She paused. “But I shall not die happy in
+thinking of you. I do not know if having money, or even having a great
+estate and much honour, is a good thing for any of us. But God sees fit
+that some of us should be called to this condition, and it is our duty
+then to stand by our posts, like brave soldiers. Now, Mr. Horner
+intended you to have this money first. I shall only call it borrowing
+from you, Harry Gregson, if I take it and use it to pay off the debt. I
+shall pay Mr. Gray interest on this money, because he is to stand as your
+guardian, as it were, till you come of age; and he must fix what ought to
+be done with it, so as to fit you for spending the principal rightly when
+the estate can repay it you. I suppose, now, it will be right for you to
+be educated. That will be another snare that will come with your money.
+But have courage, Harry. Both education and money may be used rightly,
+if we only pray against the temptations they bring with them.”
+
+Harry could make no answer, though I am sure he understood it all. My
+lady wanted to get him to talk to her a little, by way of becoming
+acquainted with what was passing in his mind; and she asked him what he
+would like to have done with his money, if he could have part of it now?
+To such a simple question, involving no talk about feelings, his answer
+came readily enough.
+
+“Build a cottage for father, with stairs in it, and give Mr. Gray a
+school-house. O, father does so want Mr. Gray for to have his wish!
+Father saw all the stones lying quarried and hewn on Farmer Hale’s land;
+Mr. Gray had paid for them all himself. And father said he would work
+night and day, and little Tommy should carry mortar, if the parson would
+let him, sooner than that he should be fretted and frabbed as he was,
+with no one giving him a helping hand or a kind word.”
+
+Harry knew nothing of my lady’s part in the affair; that was very clear.
+My lady kept silence.
+
+“If I might have a piece of my money, I would buy land from Mr. Brooks;
+he has got a bit to sell just at the corner of Hendon Lane, and I would
+give it to Mr. Gray; and, perhaps, if your ladyship thinks I may be
+learned again, I might grow up into the schoolmaster.”
+
+“You are a good boy,” said my lady. “But there are more things to be
+thought of, in carrying out such a plan, than you are aware of. However,
+it shall be tried.”
+
+“The school, my lady?” I exclaimed, almost thinking she did not know what
+she was saying.
+
+“Yes, the school. For Mr. Horner’s sake, for Mr. Gray’s sake, and last,
+not least, for this lad’s sake, I will give the new plan a trial. Ask
+Mr. Gray to come up to me this afternoon about the land he wants. He
+need not go to a Dissenter for it. And tell your father he shall have a
+good share in the building of it, and Tommy shall carry the mortar.”
+
+“And I may be schoolmaster?” asked Harry, eagerly.
+
+“We’ll see about that,” said my lady, amused. “It will be some time
+before that plan comes to pass, my little fellow.”
+
+And now to return to Captain James. My first account of him was from
+Miss Galindo.
+
+“He’s not above thirty; and I must just pack up my pens and my paper, and
+be off; for it would be the height of impropriety for me to be staying
+here as his clerk. It was all very well in the old master’s days. But
+here am I, not fifty till next May, and this young, unmarried man, who is
+not even a widower! O, there would be no end of gossip. Besides he
+looks as askance at me as I do at him. My black silk gown had no effect.
+He’s afraid I shall marry him. But I won’t; he may feel himself quite
+safe from that. And Mr. Smithson has been recommending a clerk to my
+lady. She would far rather keep me on; but I can’t stop. I really could
+not think it proper.”
+
+“What sort of a looking man is he?”
+
+“O, nothing particular. Short, and brown, and sunburnt. I did not think
+it became me to look at him. Well, now for the nightcaps. I should have
+grudged any one else doing them, for I have got such a pretty pattern!”
+
+But when it came to Miss Galindo’s leaving, there was a great
+misunderstanding between her and my lady. Miss Galindo had imagined that
+my lady had asked her as a favour to copy the letters, and enter the
+accounts, and had agreed to do the work without the notion of being paid
+for so doing. She had, now and then, grieved over a very profitable
+order for needlework passing out of her hands on account of her not
+having time to do it, because of her occupation at the Hall; but she had
+never hinted this to my lady, but gone on cheerfully at her writing as
+long as her clerkship was required. My lady was annoyed that she had not
+made her intention of paying Miss Galindo more clear, in the first
+conversation she had had with her; but I suppose that she had been too
+delicate to be very explicit with regard to money matters; and now Miss
+Galindo was quite hurt at my lady’s wanting to pay her for what she had
+done in such right-down good-will.
+
+“No,” Miss Galindo said; “my own dear lady, you may be as angry with me
+as you like, but don’t offer me money. Think of six-and-twenty years
+ago, and poor Arthur, and as you were to me then! Besides, I wanted
+money—I don’t disguise it—for a particular purpose; and when I found
+that (God bless you for asking me!) I could do you a service, I turned it
+over in my mind, and I gave up one plan and took up another, and it’s all
+settled now. Bessy is to leave school and come and live with me. Don’t,
+please, offer me money again. You don’t know how glad I have been to do
+anything for you. Have not I, Margaret Dawson? Did you not hear me say,
+one day, I would cut off my hand for my lady; for am I a stick or a
+stone, that I should forget kindness? O, I have been so glad to work for
+you. And now Bessy is coming here; and no one knows anything about
+her—as if she had done anything wrong, poor child!”
+
+“Dear Miss Galindo,” replied my lady, “I will never ask you to take money
+again. Only I thought it was quite understood between us. And you know
+you have taken money for a set of morning wrappers, before now.”
+
+“Yes, my lady; but that was not confidential. Now I was so proud to have
+something to do for you confidentially.”
+
+“But who is Bessy?” asked my lady. “I do not understand who she is, or
+why she is to come and live with you. Dear Miss Galindo, you must honour
+me by being confidential with me in your turn!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+I had always understood that Miss Galindo had once been in much better
+circumstances, but I had never liked to ask any questions respecting her.
+But about this time many things came out respecting her former life,
+which I will try and arrange: not however, in the order in which I heard
+them, but rather as they occurred.
+
+Miss Galindo was the daughter of a clergyman in Westmoreland. Her father
+was the younger brother of a baronet, his ancestor having been one of
+those of James the First’s creation. This baronet-uncle of Miss Galindo
+was one of the queer, out-of-the-way people who were bred at that time,
+and in that northern district of England. I never heard much of him from
+any one, besides this one great fact: that he had early disappeared from
+his family, which indeed only consisted of a brother and sister who died
+unmarried, and lived no one knew where,—somewhere on the Continent, it
+was supposed, for he had never returned from the grand tour which he had
+been sent to make, according to the general fashion of the day, as soon
+as he had left Oxford. He corresponded occasionally with his brother the
+clergyman; but the letters passed through a banker’s hands; the banker
+being pledged to secrecy, and, as he told Mr. Galindo, having the
+penalty, if he broke his pledge, of losing the whole profitable business,
+and of having the management of the baronet’s affairs taken out of his
+hands, without any advantage accruing to the inquirer, for Sir Lawrence
+had told Messrs. Graham that, in case his place of residence was revealed
+by them, not only would he cease to bank with them, but instantly take
+measures to baffle any future inquiries as to his whereabouts, by
+removing to some distant country.
+
+Sir Lawrence paid a certain sum of money to his brother’s account every
+year; but the time of this payment varied, and it was sometimes eighteen
+or nineteen months between the deposits; then, again, it would not be
+above a quarter of the time, showing that he intended it to be annual,
+but, as this intention was never expressed in words, it was impossible to
+rely upon it, and a great deal of this money was swallowed up by the
+necessity Mr. Galindo felt himself under of living in the large, old,
+rambling family mansion, which had been one of Sir Lawrence’s rarely
+expressed desires. Mr. and Mrs. Galindo often planned to live upon their
+own small fortune and the income derived from the living (a vicarage, of
+which the great tithes went to Sir Lawrence as lay impropriator), so as
+to put-by the payments made by the baronet, for the benefit of
+Laurentia—our Miss Galindo. But I suppose they found it difficult to
+live economically in a large house, even though they had it rent free.
+They had to keep up with hereditary neighbours and friends, and could
+hardly help doing it in the hereditary manner.
+
+One of these neighbours, a Mr. Gibson, had a son a few years older than
+Laurentia. The families were sufficiently intimate for the young people
+to see a good deal of each other: and I was told that this young Mr. Mark
+Gibson was an unusually prepossessing man (he seemed to have impressed
+every one who spoke of him to me as being a handsome, manly, kind-hearted
+fellow), just what a girl would be sure to find most agreeable. The
+parents either forgot that their children were growing up to man’s and
+woman’s estate, or thought that the intimacy and probable attachment
+would be no bad thing, even if it did lead to a marriage. Still, nothing
+was ever said by young Gibson till later on, when it was too late, as it
+turned out. He went to and from Oxford; he shot and fished with Mr.
+Galindo, or came to the Mere to skate in winter-time; was asked to
+accompany Mr. Galindo to the Hall, as the latter returned to the quiet
+dinner with his wife and daughter; and so, and so, it went on, nobody
+much knew how, until one day, when Mr. Galindo received a formal letter
+from his brother’s bankers, announcing Sir Lawrence’s death, of malaria
+fever, at Albano, and congratulating Sir Hubert on his accession to the
+estates and the baronetcy. The king is dead—“Long live the king!” as I
+have since heard that the French express it.
+
+Sir Hubert and his wife were greatly surprised. Sir Lawrence was but
+two years older than his brother; and they had never heard of any
+illness till they heard of his death. They were sorry; very much
+shocked; but still a little elated at the succession to the baronetcy
+and estates. The London bankers had managed everything well. There was
+a large sum of ready money in their hands, at Sir Hubert’s service,
+until he should touch his rents, the rent-roll being eight thousand
+a-year. And only Laurentia to inherit it all! Her mother, a poor
+clergyman’s daughter, began to plan all sorts of fine marriages for
+her; nor was her father much behind his wife in his ambition. They took
+her up to London, when they went to buy new carriages, and dresses, and
+furniture. And it was then and there she made my lady’s acquaintance.
+How it was that they came to take a fancy to each other, I cannot say.
+My lady was of the old nobility,—grand, compose, gentle, and stately in
+her ways. Miss Galindo must always have been hurried in her manner, and
+her energy must have shown itself in inquisitiveness and oddness even
+in her youth. But I don’t pretend to account for things: I only narrate
+them. And the fact was this:—that the elegant, fastidious countess
+was attracted to the country girl, who on her part almost worshipped
+my lady. My lady’s notice of their daughter made her parents think,
+I suppose, that there was no match that she might not command; she,
+the heiress of eight thousand a-year, and visiting about among earls
+and dukes. So when they came back to their old Westmoreland Hall, and
+Mark Gibson rode over to offer his hand and his heart, and prospective
+estate of nine hundred a-year, to his old companion and playfellow,
+Laurentia, Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo made very short work of it.
+They refused him plumply themselves; and when he begged to be allowed
+to speak to Laurentia, they found some excuse for refusing him the
+opportunity of so doing, until they had talked to her themselves, and
+brought up every argument and fact in their power to convince her—a
+plain girl, and conscious of her plainness—that Mr. Mark Gibson had
+never thought of her in the way of marriage till after her father’s
+accession to his fortune; and that it was the estate—not the young
+lady—that he was in love with. I suppose it will never be known in
+this world how far this supposition of theirs was true. My Lady Ludlow
+had always spoken as if it was; but perhaps events, which came to her
+knowledge about this time, altered her opinion. At any rate, the end
+of it was, Laurentia refused Mark, and almost broke her heart in doing
+so. He discovered the suspicions of Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo, and
+that they had persuaded their daughter to share in them. So he flung
+off with high words, saying that they did not know a true heart when
+they met with one; and that although he had never offered till after
+Sir Lawrence’s death, yet that his father knew all along that he had
+been attached to Laurentia, only that he, being the eldest of five
+children, and having as yet no profession, had had to conceal, rather
+than to express, an attachment, which, in those days, he had believed
+was reciprocated. He had always meant to study for the bar, and the
+end of all he had hoped for had been to earn a moderate income, which
+he might ask Laurentia to share. This, or something like it, was what
+he said. But his reference to his father cut two ways. Old Mr. Gibson
+was known to be very keen about money. It was just as likely that he
+would urge Mark to make love to the heiress, now she was an heiress, as
+that he would have restrained him previously, as Mark said he had done.
+When this was repeated to Mark, he became proudly reserved, or sullen,
+and said that Laurentia, at any rate, might have known him better. He
+left the country, and went up to London to study law soon afterwards;
+and Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo thought they were well rid of him. But
+Laurentia never ceased reproaching herself, and never did to her dying
+day, as I believe. The words, “She might have known me better,” told
+to her by some kind friend or other, rankled in her mind, and were
+never forgotten. Her father and mother took her up to London the next
+year; but she did not care to visit—dreaded going out even for a drive,
+lest she should see Mark Gibson’s reproachful eyes—pined and lost her
+health. Lady Ludlow saw this change with regret, and was told the cause
+by Lady Galindo, who of course, gave her own version of Mark’s conduct
+and motives. My lady never spoke to Miss Galindo about it, but tried
+constantly to interest and please her. It was at this time that my lady
+told Miss Galindo so much about her own early life, and about Hanbury,
+that Miss Galindo resolved, if ever she could, she would go and see the
+old place which her friend loved so well. The end of it all was, that
+she came to live there, as we know.
+
+But a great change was to come first. Before Sir Hubert and Lady Galindo
+had left London on this, their second visit, they had a letter from the
+lawyer, whom they employed, saying that Sir Lawrence had left an heir,
+his legitimate child by an Italian woman of low rank; at least, legal
+claims to the title and property had been sent into him on the boy’s
+behalf. Sir Lawrence had always been a man of adventurous and artistic,
+rather than of luxurious tastes; and it was supposed, when all came to be
+proved at the trial, that he was captivated by the free, beautiful life
+they lead in Italy, and had married this Neapolitan fisherman’s daughter,
+who had people about her shrewd enough to see that the ceremony was
+legally performed. She and her husband had wandered about the shores of
+the Mediterranean for years, leading a happy, careless, irresponsible
+life, unencumbered by any duties except those connected with a rather
+numerous family. It was enough for her that they never wanted money, and
+that her husband’s love was always continued to her. She hated the name
+of England—wicked, cold, heretic England—and avoided the mention of any
+subjects connected with her husband’s early life. So that, when he died
+at Albano, she was almost roused out of her vehement grief to anger with
+the Italian doctor, who declared that he must write to a certain address
+to announce the death of Lawrence Galindo. For some time, she feared
+lest English barbarians might come down upon her, making a claim to the
+children. She hid herself and them in the Abruzzi, living upon the sale
+of what furniture and jewels Sir Lawrence had died possessed of. When
+these failed, she returned to Naples, which she had not visited since her
+marriage. Her father was dead; but her brother inherited some of his
+keenness. He interested the priests, who made inquiries and found that
+the Galindo succession was worth securing to an heir of the true faith.
+They stirred about it, obtained advice at the English Embassy; and hence
+that letter to the lawyers, calling upon Sir Hubert to relinquish title
+and property, and to refund what money he had expended. He was vehement
+in his opposition to this claim. He could not bear to think of his
+brother having married a foreigner—a papist, a fisherman’s daughter;
+nay, of his having become a papist himself. He was in despair at the
+thought of his ancestral property going to the issue of such a marriage.
+He fought tooth and nail, making enemies of his relations, and losing
+almost all his own private property; for he would go on against the
+lawyer’s advice, long after every one was convinced except himself and
+his wife. At last he was conquered. He gave up his living in gloomy
+despair. He would have changed his name if he could, so desirous was he
+to obliterate all tie between himself and the mongrel papist baronet and
+his Italian mother, and all the succession of children and nurses who
+came to take possession of the Hall soon after Mr. Hubert Galindo’s
+departure, stayed there one winter, and then flitted back to Naples with
+gladness and delight. Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Galindo lived in London. He
+had obtained a curacy somewhere in the city. They would have been
+thankful now if Mr. Mark Gibson had renewed his offer. No one could
+accuse him of mercenary motives if he had done so. Because he did not
+come forward, as they wished, they brought his silence up as a
+justification of what they had previously attributed to him. I don’t
+know what Miss Galindo thought herself; but Lady Ludlow has told me how
+she shrank from hearing her parents abuse him. Lady Ludlow supposed that
+he was aware that they were living in London. His father must have known
+the fact, and it was curious if he had never named it to his son.
+Besides, the name was very uncommon; and it was unlikely that it should
+never come across him, in the advertisements of charity sermons which the
+new and rather eloquent curate of Saint Mark’s East was asked to preach.
+All this time Lady Ludlow never lost sight of them, for Miss Galindo’s
+sake. And when the father and mother died, it was my lady who upheld
+Miss Galindo in her determination not to apply for any provision to her
+cousin, the Italian baronet, but rather to live upon the hundred a-year
+which had been settled on her mother and the children of his son Hubert’s
+marriage by the old grandfather, Sir Lawrence.
+
+Mr. Mark Gibson had risen to some eminence as a barrister on the Northern
+Circuit, but had died unmarried in the lifetime of his father, a victim
+(so people said) to intemperance. Doctor Trevor, the physician who had
+been called in to Mr. Gray and Harry Gregson, had married a sister of
+his. And that was all my lady knew about the Gibson family. But who was
+Bessy?
+
+That mystery and secret came out, too, in process of time. Miss Galindo
+had been to Warwick, some years before I arrived at Hanbury, on some kind
+of business or shopping, which can only be transacted in a county town.
+There was an old Westmoreland connection between her and Mrs. Trevor,
+though I believe the latter was too young to have been made aware of her
+brother’s offer to Miss Galindo at the time when it took place; and such
+affairs, if they are unsuccessful, are seldom spoken about in the
+gentleman’s family afterwards. But the Gibsons and Galindos had been
+county neighbours too long for the connection not to be kept up between
+two members settled far away from their early homes. Miss Galindo always
+desired her parcels to be sent to Dr. Trevor’s, when she went to Warwick
+for shopping purchases. If she were going any journey, and the coach did
+not come through Warwick as soon as she arrived (in my lady’s coach or
+otherwise) from Hanbury, she went to Doctor Trevor’s to wait. She was as
+much expected to sit down to the household meals as if she had been one
+of the family: and in after-years it was Mrs. Trevor who managed her
+repository business for her.
+
+So, on the day I spoke of, she had gone to Doctor Trevor’s to rest, and
+possibly to dine. The post in those times, came in at all hours of the
+morning: and Doctor Trevor’s letters had not arrived until after his
+departure on his morning round. Miss Galindo was sitting down to dinner
+with Mrs. Trevor and her seven children, when the Doctor came in. He was
+flurried and uncomfortable, and hurried the children away as soon as he
+decently could. Then (rather feeling Miss Galindo’s presence an
+advantage, both as a present restraint on the violence of his wife’s
+grief, and as a consoler when he was absent on his afternoon round), he
+told Mrs. Trevor of her brother’s death. He had been taken ill on
+circuit, and had hurried back to his chambers in London only to die. She
+cried terribly; but Doctor Trevor said afterwards, he never noticed that
+Miss Galindo cared much about it one way or another. She helped him to
+soothe his wife, promised to stay with her all the afternoon instead of
+returning to Hanbury, and afterwards offered to remain with her while the
+Doctor went to attend the funeral. When they heard of the old love-story
+between the dead man and Miss Galindo,—brought up by mutual friends in
+Westmoreland, in the review which we are all inclined to take of the
+events of a man’s life when he comes to die,—they tried to remember Miss
+Galindo’s speeches and ways of going on during this visit. She was a
+little pale, a little silent; her eyes were sometimes swollen, and her
+nose red; but she was at an age when such appearances are generally
+attributed to a bad cold in the head, rather than to any more sentimental
+reason. They felt towards her as towards an old friend, a kindly,
+useful, eccentric old maid. She did not expect more, or wish them to
+remember that she might once have had other hopes, and more youthful
+feelings. Doctor Trevor thanked her very warmly for staying with his
+wife, when he returned home from London (where the funeral had taken
+place). He begged Miss Galindo to stay with them, when the children were
+gone to bed, and she was preparing to leave the husband and wife by
+themselves. He told her and his wife many particulars—then paused—then
+went on—“And Mark has left a child—a little girl—
+
+“But he never was married!” exclaimed Mrs. Trevor.
+
+“A little girl,” continued her husband, “whose mother, I conclude, is
+dead. At any rate, the child was in possession of his chambers; she and
+an old nurse, who seemed to have the charge of everything, and has
+cheated poor Mark, I should fancy, not a little.”
+
+“But the child!” asked Mrs. Trevor, still almost breathless with
+astonishment. “How do you know it is his?”
+
+“The nurse told me it was, with great appearance of indignation at my
+doubting it. I asked the little thing her name, and all I could get was
+‘Bessy!’ and a cry of ‘Me wants papa!’ The nurse said the mother was
+dead, and she knew no more about it than that Mr. Gibson had engaged her
+to take care of the little girl, calling it his child. One or two of his
+lawyer friends, whom I met with at the funeral, told me they were aware
+of the existence of the child.”
+
+“What is to be done with her?” asked Mrs. Gibson.
+
+“Nay, I don’t know,” replied he. “Mark has hardly left assets enough to
+pay his debts, and your father is not inclined to come forward.”
+
+That night, as Doctor Trevor sat in his study, after his wife had gone to
+bed, Miss Galindo knocked at his door. She and he had a long
+conversation. The result was that he accompanied Miss Galindo up to town
+the next day; that they took possession of the little Bessy, and she was
+brought down, and placed at nurse at a farm in the country near Warwick,
+Miss Galindo undertaking to pay one-half of the expense, and to furnish
+her with clothes, and Dr. Trevor undertaking that the remaining half
+should be furnished by the Gibson family, or by himself in their default.
+
+Miss Galindo was not fond of children; and I dare say she dreaded taking
+this child to live with her for more reasons than one. My Lady Ludlow
+could not endure any mention of illegitimate children. It was a
+principle of hers that society ought to ignore them. And I believe Miss
+Galindo had always agreed with her until now, when the thing came home to
+her womanly heart. Still she shrank from having this child of some
+strange woman under her roof. She went over to see it from time to time;
+she worked at its clothes long after every one thought she was in bed;
+and, when the time came for Bessy to be sent to school, Miss Galindo
+laboured away more diligently than ever, in order to pay the increased
+expense. For the Gibson family had, at first, paid their part of the
+compact, but with unwillingness and grudging hearts; then they had left
+it off altogether, and it fell hard on Dr. Trevor with his twelve
+children; and, latterly, Miss Galindo had taken upon herself almost all
+the burden. One can hardly live and labour, and plan and make
+sacrifices, for any human creature, without learning to love it. And
+Bessy loved Miss Galindo, too, for all the poor girl’s scanty pleasures
+came from her, and Miss Galindo had always a kind word, and, latterly,
+many a kind caress, for Mark Gibson’s child; whereas, if she went to Dr.
+Trevor’s for her holiday, she was overlooked and neglected in that
+bustling family, who seemed to think that if she had comfortable board
+and lodging under their roof, it was enough.
+
+I am sure, now, that Miss Galindo had often longed to have Bessy to live
+with her; but, as long as she could pay for her being at school, she did
+not like to take so bold a step as bringing her home, knowing what the
+effect of the consequent explanation would be on my lady. And as the
+girl was now more than seventeen, and past the age when young ladies are
+usually kept at school, and as there was no great demand for governesses
+in those days, and as Bessy had never been taught any trade by which to
+earn her own living, why I don’t exactly see what could have been done
+but for Miss Galindo to bring her to her own home in Hanbury. For,
+although the child had grown up lately, in a kind of unexpected manner,
+into a young woman, Miss Galindo might have kept her at school for a year
+longer, if she could have afforded it; but this was impossible when she
+became Mr. Horner’s clerk, and relinquished all the payment of her
+repository work; and perhaps, after all, she was not sorry to be
+compelled to take the step she was longing for. At any rate, Bessy came
+to live with Miss Galindo, in a very few weeks from the time when Captain
+James set Miss Galindo free to superintend her own domestic economy
+again.
+
+For a long time, I knew nothing about this new inhabitant of Hanbury. My
+lady never mentioned her in any way. This was in accordance with Lady
+Ludlow’s well-known principles. She neither saw nor heard, nor was in
+any way cognisant of the existence of those who had no legal right to
+exist at all. If Miss Galindo had hoped to have an exception made in
+Bessy’s favour, she was mistaken. My lady sent a note inviting Miss
+Galindo herself to tea one evening, about a month after Bessy came; but
+Miss Galindo “had a cold and could not come.” The next time she was
+invited, she “had an engagement at home”—a step nearer to the absolute
+truth. And the third time, she “had a young friend staying with her whom
+she was unable to leave.” My lady accepted every excuse as bona fide,
+and took no further notice. I missed Miss Galindo very much; we all did;
+for, in the days when she was clerk, she was sure to come in and find the
+opportunity of saying something amusing to some of us before she went
+away. And I, as an invalid, or perhaps from natural tendency, was
+particularly fond of little bits of village gossip. There was no Mr.
+Horner—he even had come in, now and then, with formal, stately pieces of
+intelligence—and there was no Miss Galindo in these days. I missed her
+much. And so did my lady, I am sure. Behind all her quiet, sedate
+manner, I am certain her heart ached sometimes for a few words from Miss
+Galindo, who seemed to have absented herself altogether from the Hall now
+Bessy was come.
+
+Captain James might be very sensible, and all that; but not even my lady
+could call him a substitute for the old familiar friends. He was a
+thorough sailor, as sailors were in those days—swore a good deal, drank
+a good deal (without its ever affecting him in the least), and was very
+prompt and kind-hearted in all his actions; but he was not accustomed to
+women, as my lady once said, and would judge in all things for himself.
+My lady had expected, I think, to find some one who would take his
+notions on the management of her estate from her ladyship’s own self; but
+he spoke as if he were responsible for the good management of the whole,
+and must, consequently, be allowed full liberty of action. He had been
+too long in command over men at sea to like to be directed by a woman in
+anything he undertook, even though that woman was my lady. I suppose
+this was the common-sense my lady spoke of; but when common-sense goes
+against us, I don’t think we value it quite so much as we ought to do.
+
+Lady Ludlow was proud of her personal superintendence of her own
+estate. She liked to tell us how her father used to take her with him
+in his rides, and bid her observe this and that, and on no account
+to allow such and such things to be done. But I have heard that the
+first time she told all this to Captain James, he told her point-blank
+that he had heard from Mr. Smithson that the farms were much neglected
+and the rents sadly behindhand, and that he meant to set to in good
+earnest and study agriculture, and see how he could remedy the state
+of things. My lady would, I am sure, be greatly surprised, but what
+could she do? Here was the very man she had chosen herself, setting to
+with all his energy to conquer the defect of ignorance, which was all
+that those who had presumed to offer her ladyship advice had ever had
+to say against him. Captain James read Arthur Young’s “Tours” in all
+his spare time, as long as he was an invalid; and shook his head at my
+lady’s accounts as to how the land had been cropped or left fallow from
+time immemorial. Then he set to, and tried too many new experiments at
+once. My lady looked on in dignified silence; but all the farmers and
+tenants were in an uproar, and prophesied a hundred failures. Perhaps
+fifty did occur; they were only half as many as Lady Ludlow had feared;
+but they were twice as many, four, eight times as many as the captain
+had anticipated. His openly-expressed disappointment made him popular
+again. The rough country people could not have understood silent and
+dignified regret at the failure of his plans, but they sympathized
+with a man who swore at his ill success—sympathized, even while they
+chuckled over his discomfiture. Mr. Brooke, the retired tradesman, did
+not cease blaming him for not succeeding, and for swearing. “But what
+could you expect from a sailor?” Mr. Brooke asked, even in my lady’s
+hearing; though he might have known Captain James was my lady’s own
+personal choice, from the old friendship Mr. Urian had always shown for
+him. I think it was this speech of the Birmingham baker’s that made
+my lady determine to stand by Captain James, and encourage him to try
+again. For she would not allow that her choice had been an unwise one,
+at the bidding (as it were) of a dissenting tradesman; the only person
+in the neighbourhood, too, who had flaunted about in coloured clothes,
+when all the world was in mourning for my lady’s only son.
+
+Captain James would have thrown the agency up at once, if my lady had not
+felt herself bound to justify the wisdom of her choice, by urging him to
+stay. He was much touched by her confidence in him, and swore a great
+oath, that the next year he would make the land such as it had never been
+before for produce. It was not my lady’s way to repeat anything she had
+heard, especially to another person’s disadvantage. So I don’t think she
+ever told Captain James of Mr. Brooke’s speech about a sailor’s being
+likely to mismanage the property; and the captain was too anxious to
+succeed in this, the second year of his trial, to be above going to the
+flourishing, shrewd Mr. Brooke, and asking for his advice as to the best
+method of working the estate. I dare say, if Miss Galindo had been as
+intimate as formerly at the Hall, we should all of us have heard of this
+new acquaintance of the agent’s long before we did. As it was, I am sure
+my lady never dreamed that the captain, who held opinions that were even
+more Church and King than her own, could ever have made friends with a
+Baptist baker from Birmingham, even to serve her ladyship’s own interests
+in the most loyal manner.
+
+We heard of it first from Mr. Gray, who came now often to see my lady,
+for neither he nor she could forget the solemn tie which the fact of
+his being the person to acquaint her with my lord’s death had created
+between them. For true and holy words spoken at that time, though
+having no reference to aught below the solemn subjects of life and
+death, had made her withdraw her opposition to Mr. Gray’s wish about
+establishing a village school. She had sighed a little, it is true,
+and was even yet more apprehensive than hopeful as to the result; but
+almost as if as a memorial to my lord, she had allowed a kind of rough
+school-house to be built on the green, just by the church; and had
+gently used the power she undoubtedly had, in expressing her strong
+wish that the boys might only be taught to read and write, and the
+first four rules of arithmetic; while the girls were only to learn to
+read, and to add up in their heads, and the rest of the time to work
+at mending their own clothes, knitting stockings and spinning. My lady
+presented the school with more spinning-wheels than there were girls,
+and requested that there might be a rule that they should have spun so
+many hanks of flax, and knitted so many pairs of stockings, before they
+ever were taught to read at all. After all, it was but making the best
+of a bad job with my poor lady—but life was not what it had been to
+her. I remember well the day that Mr. Gray pulled some delicately fine
+yarn (and I was a good judge of those things) out of his pocket, and
+laid it and a capital pair of knitted stockings before my lady, as the
+first-fruits, so to say, of his school. I recollect seeing her put on
+her spectacles, and carefully examine both productions. Then she passed
+them to me.
+
+“This is well, Mr. Gray. I am much pleased. You are fortunate in your
+schoolmistress. She has had both proper knowledge of womanly things and
+much patience. Who is she? One out of our village?”
+
+“My lady,” said Mr. Gray, stammering and colouring in his old fashion,
+“Miss Bessy is so very kind as to teach all those sorts of things—Miss
+Bessy, and Miss Galindo, sometimes.”
+
+My lady looked at him over her spectacles: but she only repeated the
+words “Miss Bessy,” and paused, as if trying to remember who such a
+person could be; and he, if he had then intended to say more, was quelled
+by her manner, and dropped the subject. He went on to say, that he had
+thought it his duty to decline the subscription to his school offered by
+Mr. Brooke, because he was a Dissenter; that he (Mr. Gray) feared that
+Captain James, through whom Mr. Brooke’s offer of money had been made,
+was offended at his refusing to accept it from a man who held heterodox
+opinions; nay, whom Mr. Gray suspected of being infected by Dodwell’s
+heresy.
+
+“I think there must be some mistake,” said my lady, “or I have
+misunderstood you. Captain James would never be sufficiently with a
+schismatic to be employed by that man Brooke in distributing his
+charities. I should have doubted, until now, if Captain James knew him.”
+
+“Indeed, my lady, he not only knows him, but is intimate with him, I
+regret to say. I have repeatedly seen the captain and Mr. Brooke walking
+together; going through the fields together; and people do say—”
+
+My lady looked up in interrogation at Mr. Gray’s pause.
+
+“I disapprove of gossip, and it may be untrue; but people do say that
+Captain James is very attentive to Miss Brooke.”
+
+“Impossible!” said my lady, indignantly. “Captain James is a loyal and
+religious man. I beg your pardon Mr. Gray, but it is impossible.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Like many other things which have been declared to be impossible, this
+report of Captain James being attentive to Miss Brooke turned out to be
+very true.
+
+The mere idea of her agent being on the slightest possible terms of
+acquaintance with the Dissenter, the tradesman, the Birmingham democrat,
+who had come to settle in our good, orthodox, aristocratic, and
+agricultural Hanbury, made my lady very uneasy. Miss Galindo’s
+misdemeanour in having taken Miss Bessy to live with her, faded into a
+mistake, a mere error of judgment, in comparison with Captain James’s
+intimacy at Yeast House, as the Brookes called their ugly square-built
+farm. My lady talked herself quite into complacency with Miss Galindo,
+and even Miss Bessy was named by her, the first time I had ever been
+aware that my lady recognized her existence; but—I recollect it was a
+long rainy afternoon, and I sat with her ladyship, and we had time and
+opportunity for a long uninterrupted talk—whenever we had been silent
+for a little while she began again, with something like a wonder how it
+was that Captain James could ever have commenced an acquaintance with
+“that man Brooke.” My lady recapitulated all the times she could
+remember, that anything had occurred, or been said by Captain James which
+she could now understand as throwing light upon the subject.
+
+“He said once that he was anxious to bring in the Norfolk system of
+cropping, and spoke a good deal about Mr. Coke of Holkham (who, by the
+way, was no more a Coke than I am—collateral in the female line—which
+counts for little or nothing among the great old commoners’ families of
+pure blood), and his new ways of cultivation; of course new men bring in
+new ways, but it does not follow that either are better than the old
+ways. However, Captain James has been very anxious to try turnips and
+bone manure, and he really is a man of such good sense and energy, and
+was so sorry last year about the failure, that I consented; and now I
+begin to see my error. I have always heard that town bakers adulterate
+their flour with bone-dust; and, of course, Captain James would be aware
+of this, and go to Brooke to inquire where the article was to be
+purchased.”
+
+My lady always ignored the fact which had sometimes, I suspect, been
+brought under her very eyes during her drives, that Mr. Brooke’s few
+fields were in a state of far higher cultivation than her own; so she
+could not, of course, perceive that there was any wisdom to be gained
+from asking the advice of the tradesman turned farmer.
+
+But by-and-by this fact of her agent’s intimacy with the person whom
+in the whole world she most disliked (with that sort of dislike in
+which a large amount of uncomfortableness is combined—the dislike
+which conscientious people sometimes feel to another without knowing
+why, and yet which they cannot indulge in with comfort to themselves
+without having a moral reason why), came before my lady in many shapes.
+For, indeed I am sure that Captain James was not a man to conceal or
+be ashamed of one of his actions. I cannot fancy his ever lowering his
+strong loud clear voice, or having a confidental conversation with
+any one. When his crops had failed, all the village had known it. He
+complained, he regretted, he was angry, or owned himself a —— fool, all
+down the village street; and the consequence was that, although he was
+a far more passionate man than Mr. Horner, all the tenants liked him
+far better. People, in general, take a kindlier interest in any one,
+the workings of whose mind and heart they can watch and understand,
+than in a man who only lets you know what he has been thinking about
+and feeling, by what he does. But Harry Gregson was faithful to the
+memory of Mr. Horner. Miss Galindo has told me that she used to
+watch him hobble out of the way of Captain James, as if to accept
+his notice, however good-naturedly given, would have been a kind of
+treachery to his former benefactor. But Gregson (the father) and the
+new agent rather took to each other; and one day, much to my surprise,
+I heard that the “poaching, tinkering vagabond,” as the people used
+to call Gregson when I first had come to live at Hanbury, had been
+appointed gamekeeper; Mr. Gray standing godfather, as it were, to his
+trustworthiness, if he were trusted with anything; which I thought at
+the time was rather an experiment, only it answered, as many of Mr.
+Gray’s deeds of daring did. It was curious how he was growing to be a
+kind of autocrat in the village; and how unconscious he was of it. He
+was as shy and awkward and nervous as ever in any affair that was not
+of some moral consequence to him. But as soon as he was convinced that
+a thing was right, he “shut his eyes and ran and butted at it like a
+ram,” as Captain James once expressed it, in talking over something Mr.
+Gray had done. People in the village said, “they never knew what the
+parson would be at next;” or they might have said, “where his reverence
+would next turn up.” For I have heard of his marching right into the
+middle of a set of poachers, gathered together for some desperate
+midnight enterprise, or walking into a public-house that lay just
+beyond the bounds of my lady’s estate, and in that extra-parochial
+piece of ground I named long ago, and which was considered the
+rendezvous of all the ne’er-do-weel characters for miles round, and
+where a parson and a constable were held in much the same kind of
+esteem as unwelcome visitors. And yet Mr. Gray had his long fits of
+depression, in which he felt as if he were doing nothing, making no
+way in his work, useless and unprofitable, and better out of the world
+than in it. In comparison with the work he had set himself to do, what
+he did seemed to be nothing. I suppose it was constitutional, those
+attacks of lowness of spirits which he had about this time; perhaps a
+part of the nervousness which made him always so awkward when he came
+to the Hall. Even Mrs. Medlicott, who almost worshipped the ground he
+trod on, as the saying is, owned that Mr. Gray never entered one of my
+lady’s rooms without knocking down something, and too often breaking
+it. He would much sooner have faced a desperate poacher than a young
+lady any day. At least so we thought.
+
+I do not know how it was that it came to pass that my lady became
+reconciled to Miss Galindo about this time. Whether it was that her
+ladyship was weary of the unspoken coolness with her old friend; or that
+the specimens of delicate sewing and fine spinning at the school had
+mollified her towards Miss Bessy; but I was surprised to learn one day
+that Miss Galindo and her young friend were coming that very evening to
+tea at the Hall. This information was given me by Mrs. Medlicott, as a
+message from my lady, who further went on to desire that certain little
+preparations should be made in her own private sitting-room, in which the
+greater part of my days were spent. From the nature of these
+preparations, I became quite aware that my lady intended to do honour to
+her expected visitors. Indeed, Lady Ludlow never forgave by halves, as I
+have known some people do. Whoever was coming as a visitor to my lady,
+peeress, or poor nameless girl, there was a certain amount of preparation
+required in order to do them fitting honour. I do not mean to say that
+the preparation was of the same degree of importance in each case. I
+dare say, if a peeress had come to visit us at the Hall, the covers would
+have been taken off the furniture in the white drawing-room (they never
+were uncovered all the time I stayed at the Hall), because my lady would
+wish to offer her the ornaments and luxuries which this grand visitor
+(who never came—I wish she had! I did so want to see that furniture
+uncovered!) was accustomed to at home, and to present them to her in the
+best order in which my lady could. The same rule, mollified, held good
+with Miss Galindo. Certain things, in which my lady knew she took an
+interest, were laid out ready for her to examine on this very day; and,
+what was more, great books of prints were laid out, such as I remembered
+my lady had had brought forth to beguile my own early days of
+illness,—Mr. Hogarth’s works, and the like,—which I was sure were put
+out for Miss Bessy.
+
+No one knows how curious I was to see this mysterious Miss Bessy—twenty
+times more mysterious, of course, for want of her surname. And then
+again (to try and account for my great curiosity, of which in
+recollection I am more than half ashamed), I had been leading the quiet
+monotonous life of a crippled invalid for many years,—shut up from any
+sight of new faces; and this was to be the face of one whom I had thought
+about so much and so long,—Oh! I think I might be excused.
+
+Of course they drank tea in the great hall, with the four young
+gentlewomen, who, with myself, formed the small bevy now under her
+ladyship’s charge. Of those who were at Hanbury when first I came, none
+remained; all were married, or gone once more to live at some home which
+could be called their own, whether the ostensible head were father or
+brother. I myself was not without some hopes of a similar kind. My
+brother Harry was now a curate in Westmoreland, and wanted me to go and
+live with him, as eventually I did for a time. But that is neither here
+nor there at present. What I am talking about is Miss Bessy.
+
+After a reasonable time had elapsed, occupied as I well knew by the meal
+in the great hall,—the measured, yet agreeable conversation
+afterwards,—and a certain promenade around the hall, and through the
+drawing-rooms, with pauses before different pictures, the history or
+subject of each of which was invariably told by my lady to every new
+visitor,—a sort of giving them the freedom of the old family-seat, by
+describing the kind and nature of the great progenitors who had lived
+there before the narrator,—I heard the steps approaching my lady’s room,
+where I lay. I think I was in such a state of nervous expectation, that
+if I could have moved easily, I should have got up and run away. And yet
+I need not have been, for Miss Galindo was not in the least altered (her
+nose a little redder, to be sure, but then that might only have had a
+temporary cause in the private crying I know she would have had before
+coming to see her dear Lady Ludlow once again). But I could almost have
+pushed Miss Galindo away, as she intercepted me in my view of the
+mysterious Miss Bessy.
+
+Miss Bessy was, as I knew, only about eighteen, but she looked older.
+Dark hair, dark eyes, a tall, firm figure, a good, sensible face, with a
+serene expression, not in the least disturbed by what I had been thinking
+must be such awful circumstances as a first introduction to my lady, who
+had so disapproved of her very existence: those are the clearest
+impressions I remember of my first interview with Miss Bessy. She seemed
+to observe us all, in her quiet manner, quite as much as I did her; but
+she spoke very little; occupied herself, indeed, as my lady had planned,
+with looking over the great books of engravings. I think I must have
+(foolishly) intended to make her feel at her ease, by my patronage; but
+she was seated far away from my sofa, in order to command the light, and
+really seemed so unconcerned at her unwonted circumstances, that she did
+not need my countenance or kindness. One thing I did like—her watchful
+look at Miss Galindo from time to time: it showed that her thoughts and
+sympathy were ever at Miss Galindo’s service, as indeed they well might
+be. When Miss Bessy spoke, her voice was full and clear, and what she
+said, to the purpose, though there was a slight provincial accent in her
+way of speaking. After a while, my lady set us two to play at chess, a
+game which I had lately learnt at Mr. Gray’s suggestion. Still we did
+not talk much together, though we were becoming attracted towards each
+other, I fancy.
+
+“You will play well,” said she. “You have only learnt about six months,
+have you? And yet you can nearly beat me, who have been at it as many
+years.”
+
+“I began to learn last November. I remember Mr. Gray’s bringing me
+‘Philidor on Chess,’ one very foggy, dismal day.”
+
+What made her look up so suddenly, with bright inquiry in her eyes? What
+made her silent for a moment as if in thought, and then go on with
+something, I know not what, in quite an altered tone?
+
+My lady and Miss Galindo went on talking, while I sat thinking. I heard
+Captain James’s name mentioned pretty frequently; and at last my lady put
+down her work, and said, almost with tears in her eyes:
+
+“I could not—I cannot believe it. He must be aware she is a schismatic;
+a baker’s daughter; and he is a gentleman by virtue and feeling, as well
+as by his profession, though his manners may be at times a little rough.
+My dear Miss Galindo, what will this world come to?”
+
+Miss Galindo might possibly be aware of her own share in bringing the
+world to the pass which now dismayed my lady,—for of course, though all
+was now over and forgiven, yet Miss, Bessy’s being received into a
+respectable maiden lady’s house, was one of the portents as to the
+world’s future which alarmed her ladyship; and Miss Galindo knew
+this,—but, at any rate, she had too lately been forgiven herself not to
+plead for mercy for the next offender against my lady’s delicate sense of
+fitness and propriety,—so she replied:
+
+“Indeed, my lady, I have long left off trying to conjecture what makes
+Jack fancy Gill, or Gill Jack. It’s best to sit down quiet under the
+belief that marriages are made for us, somewhere out of this world, and
+out of the range of this world’s reason and laws. I’m not so sure that I
+should settle it down that they were made in heaven; t’other place seems
+to me as likely a workshop; but at any rate, I’ve given up troubling my
+head as to why they take place. Captain James is a gentleman; I make no
+doubt of that ever since I saw him stop to pick up old Goody Blake (when
+she tumbled down on the slide last winter) and then swear at a little lad
+who was laughing at her, and cuff him till he tumbled down crying; but we
+must have bread somehow, and though I like it better baked at home in a
+good sweet brick oven, yet, as some folks never can get it to rise, I
+don’t see why a man may not be a baker. You see, my lady, I look upon
+baking as a simple trade, and as such lawful. There is no machine comes
+in to take away a man’s or woman’s power of earning their living, like
+the spinning-jenny (the old busybody that she is), to knock up all our
+good old women’s livelihood, and send them to their graves before their
+time. There’s an invention of the enemy, if you will!”
+
+“That’s very true!” said my lady, shaking her head.
+
+“But baking bread is wholesome, straightforward elbow-work. They have
+not got to inventing any contrivance for that yet, thank Heaven! It does
+not seem to me natural, nor according to Scripture, that iron and steel
+(whose brows can’t sweat) should be made to do man’s work. And so I say,
+all those trades where iron and steel do the work ordained to man at the
+Fall, are unlawful, and I never stand up for them. But say this baker
+Brooke did knead his bread, and make it rise, and then that people, who
+had, perhaps, no good ovens, came to him, and bought his good light
+bread, and in this manner he turned an honest penny and got rich; why,
+all I say, my lady, is this,—I dare say he would have been born a
+Hanbury, or a lord if he could; and if he was not, it is no fault of his,
+that I can see, that he made good bread (being a baker by trade), and got
+money, and bought his land. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that
+he was not a person of quality by birth.”
+
+“That’s very true,” said my lady, after a moment’s pause for
+consideration. “But, although he was a baker, he might have been a
+Churchman. Even your eloquence, Miss Galindo, shan’t convince me that
+that is not his own fault.”
+
+“I don’t see even that, begging your pardon, my lady,” said Miss Galindo,
+emboldened by the first success of her eloquence. “When a Baptist is a
+baby, if I understand their creed aright, he is not baptized; and,
+consequently, he can have no godfathers and godmothers to do anything for
+him in his baptism; you agree to that, my lady?”
+
+My lady would rather have known what her acquiescence would lead to,
+before acknowledging that she could not dissent from this first
+proposition; still she gave her tacit agreement by bowing her head.
+
+“And, you know, our godfathers and godmothers are expected to promise and
+vow three things in our name, when we are little babies, and can do
+nothing but squall for ourselves. It is a great privilege, but don’t let
+us be hard upon those who have not had the chance of godfathers and
+godmothers. Some people, we know, are born with silver spoons,—that’s
+to say, a godfather to give one things, and teach one’s catechism, and
+see that we’re confirmed into good church-going Christians,—and others
+with wooden ladles in their mouths. These poor last folks must just be
+content to be godfatherless orphans, and Dissenters, all their lives; and
+if they are tradespeople into the bargain, so much the worse for them;
+but let us be humble Christians, my dear lady, and not hold our heads too
+high because we were born orthodox quality.”
+
+“You go on too fast, Miss Galindo! I can’t follow you. Besides, I do
+believe dissent to be an invention of the Devil’s. Why can’t they
+believe as we do? It’s very wrong. Besides, its schism and heresy, and,
+you know, the Bible says that’s as bad as witchcraft.”
+
+My lady was not convinced, as I could see. After Miss Galindo had gone,
+she sent Mrs. Medlicott for certain books out of the great old library up
+stairs, and had them made up into a parcel under her own eye.
+
+“If Captain James comes to-morrow, I will speak to him about these
+Brookes. I have not hitherto liked to speak to him, because I did not
+wish to hurt him, by supposing there could be any truth in the reports
+about his intimacy with them. But now I will try and do my duty by him
+and them. Surely this great body of divinity will bring them back to the
+true church.”
+
+I could not tell, for though my lady read me over the titles, I was not
+any the wiser as to their contents. Besides, I was much more anxious to
+consult my lady as to my own change of place. I showed her the letter I
+had that day received from Harry; and we once more talked over the
+expediency of my going to live with him, and trying what entire change of
+air would do to re-establish my failing health. I could say anything to
+my lady, she was so sure to understand me rightly. For one thing, she
+never thought of herself, so I had no fear of hurting her by stating the
+truth. I told her how happy my years had been while passed under her
+roof; but that now I had begun to wonder whether I had not duties
+elsewhere, in making a home for Harry,—and whether the fulfilment of
+these duties, quiet ones they must needs be in the case of such a cripple
+as myself, would not prevent my sinking into the querulous habit of
+thinking and talking, into which I found myself occasionally falling. Add
+to which, there was the prospect of benefit from the more bracing air of
+the north.
+
+It was then settled that my departure from Hanbury, my happy home for so
+long, was to take place before many weeks had passed. And as, when one
+period of life is about to be shut up for ever, we are sure to look back
+upon it with fond regret, so I, happy enough in my future prospects,
+could not avoid recurring to all the days of my life in the Hall, from
+the time when I came to it, a shy awkward girl, scarcely past childhood,
+to now, when a grown woman,—past childhood—almost, from the very
+character of my illness, past youth,—I was looking forward to leaving my
+lady’s house (as a residence) for ever. As it has turned out, I never
+saw either her or it again. Like a piece of sea-wreck, I have drifted
+away from those days: quiet, happy, eventless days,—very happy to
+remember!
+
+I thought of good, jovial Mr. Mountford,—and his regrets that he might
+not keep a pack, “a very small pack,” of harriers, and his merry ways,
+and his love of good eating; of the first coming of Mr. Gray, and my
+lady’s attempt to quench his sermons, when they tended to enforce any
+duty connected with education. And now we had an absolute school-house
+in the village; and since Miss Bessy’s drinking tea at the Hall, my lady
+had been twice inside it, to give directions about some fine yarn she was
+having spun for table-napery. And her ladyship had so outgrown her old
+custom of dispensing with sermon or discourse, that even during the
+temporary preaching of Mr. Crosse, she had never had recourse to it,
+though I believe she would have had all the congregation on her side if
+she had.
+
+And Mr. Horner was dead, and Captain James reigned in his stead. Good,
+steady, severe, silent Mr. Horner! with his clock-like regularity, and
+his snuff-coloured clothes, and silver buckles! I have often wondered
+which one misses most when they are dead and gone,—the bright creatures
+full of life, who are hither and thither and everywhere, so that no one
+can reckon upon their coming and going, with whom stillness and the long
+quiet of the grave, seems utterly irreconcilable, so full are they of
+vivid motion and passion,—or the slow, serious people, whose
+movements—nay, whose very words, seem to go by clockwork; who never
+appear much to affect the course of our life while they are with us, but
+whose methodical ways show themselves, when they are gone, to have been
+intertwined with our very roots of daily existence. I think I miss these
+last the most, although I may have loved the former best. Captain James
+never was to me what Mr. Horner was, though the latter had hardly changed
+a dozen words with me at the day of his death. Then Miss Galindo! I
+remembered the time as if it had been only yesterday, when she was but a
+name—and a very odd one—to me; then she was a queer, abrupt,
+disagreeable, busy old maid. Now I loved her dearly, and I found out
+that I was almost jealous of Miss Bessy.
+
+Mr. Gray I never thought of with love; the feeling was almost reverence
+with which I looked upon him. I have not wished to speak much of myself,
+or else I could have told you how much he had been to me during these
+long, weary years of illness. But he was almost as much to every one,
+rich and poor, from my lady down to Miss Galindo’s Sally.
+
+The village, too, had a different look about it. I am sure I could not
+tell you what caused the change; but there were no more lounging young
+men to form a group at the cross-road, at a time of day when young men
+ought to be at work. I don’t say this was all Mr. Gray’s doing, for
+there really was so much to do in the fields that there was but little
+time for lounging now-a-days. And the children were hushed up in school,
+and better behaved out of it, too, than in the days when I used to be
+able to go my lady’s errands in the village. I went so little about now,
+that I am sure I can’t tell who Miss Galindo found to scold; and yet she
+looked so well and so happy that I think she must have had her accustomed
+portion of that wholesome exercise.
+
+Before I left Hanbury, the rumour that Captain James was going to marry
+Miss Brooke, Baker Brooke’s eldest daughter, who had only a sister to
+share his property with her, was confirmed. He himself announced it to
+my lady; nay, more, with a courage, gained, I suppose, in his former
+profession, where, as I have heard, he had led his ship into many a post
+of danger, he asked her ladyship, the Countess Ludlow, if he might bring
+his bride elect, (the Baptist baker’s daughter!) and present her to my
+lady!
+
+I am glad I was not present when he made this request; I should have felt
+so much ashamed for him, and I could not have helped being anxious till I
+heard my lady’s answer, if I had been there. Of course she acceded; but
+I can fancy the grave surprise of her look. I wonder if Captain James
+noticed it.
+
+I hardly dared ask my lady, after the interview had taken place, what she
+thought of the bride elect; but I hinted my curiosity, and she told me,
+that if the young person had applied to Mrs. Medlicott, for the situation
+of cook, and Mrs. Medlicott had engaged her, she thought that it would
+have been a very suitable arrangement. I understood from this how little
+she thought a marriage with Captain James, R.N., suitable.
+
+About a year after I left Hanbury, I received a letter from Miss Galindo;
+I think I can find it.—Yes, this is it.
+
+   ‘Hanbury, May 4, 1811.
+
+   DEAR MARGARET,
+
+   ‘You ask for news of us all. Don’t you know there is no news in
+   Hanbury? Did you ever hear of an event here? Now, if you have
+   answered “Yes,” in your own mind to these questions, you have fallen
+   into my trap, and never were more mistaken in your life. Hanbury is
+   full of news; and we have more events on our hands than we know what
+   to do with. I will take them in the order of the newspapers—births,
+   deaths, and marriages. In the matter of births, Jenny Lucas has had
+   twins not a week ago. Sadly too much of a good thing, you’ll say.
+   Very true: but then they died; so their birth did not much signify. My
+   cat has kittened, too; she has had three kittens, which again you may
+   observe is too much of a good thing; and so it would be, if it were
+   not for the next item of intelligence I shall lay before you. Captain
+   and Mrs. James have taken the old house next Pearson’s; and the house
+   is overrun with mice, which is just as fortunate for me as the King of
+   Egypt’s rat-ridden kingdom was to Dick Whittington. For my cat’s
+   kittening decided me to go and call on the bride, in hopes she wanted
+   a cat; which she did like a sensible woman, as I do believe she is, in
+   spite of Baptism, Bakers, Bread, and Birmingham, and something worse
+   than all, which you shall hear about, if you’ll only be patient. As I
+   had got my best bonnet on, the one I bought when poor Lord Ludlow was
+   last at Hanbury in ’99—I thought it a great condescension in myself
+   (always remembering the date of the Galindo baronetcy) to go and call
+   on the bride; though I don’t think so much of myself in my every-day
+   clothes, as you know. But who should I find there but my Lady Ludlow!
+   She looks as frail and delicate as ever, but is, I think, in better
+   heart ever since that old city merchant of a Hanbury took it into his
+   head that he was a cadet of the Hanburys of Hanbury, and left her that
+   handsome legacy. I’ll warrant you that the mortgage was paid off
+   pretty fast; and Mr. Horner’s money—or my lady’s money, or Harry
+   Gregson’s money, call it which you will—is invested in his name, all
+   right and tight; and they do talk of his being captain of his school,
+   or Grecian, or something, and going to college, after all! Harry
+   Gregson the poacher’s son! Well! to be sure, we are living in strange
+   times!
+
+   ‘But I have not done with the marriages yet. Captain James’s is all
+   very well, but no one cares for it now, we are so full of Mr. Gray’s.
+   Yes, indeed, Mr. Gray is going to be married, and to nobody else but
+   my little Bessy! I tell her she will have to nurse him half the days
+   of her life, he is such a frail little body. But she says she does
+   not care for that; so that his body holds his soul, it is enough for
+   her. She has a good spirit and a brave heart, has my Bessy! It is a
+   great advantage that she won’t have to mark her clothes over again:
+   for when she had knitted herself her last set of stockings, I told her
+   to put G for Galindo, if she did not choose to put it for Gibson, for
+   she should be my child if she was no one else’s. And now you see it
+   stands for Gray. So there are two marriages, and what more would you
+   have? And she promises to take another of my kittens.
+
+   ‘Now, as to deaths, old Farmer Hale is dead—poor old man, I should
+   think his wife thought it a good riddance, for he beat her every day
+   that he was drunk, and he was never sober, in spite of Mr. Gray. I
+   don’t think (as I tell him) that Mr. Gray would ever have found
+   courage to speak to Bessy as long as Farmer Hale lived, he took the
+   old gentleman’s sins so much to heart, and seemed to think it was all
+   his fault for not being able to make a sinner into a saint. The
+   parish bull is dead too. I never was so glad in my life. But they
+   say we are to have a new one in his place. In the meantime I cross
+   the common in peace, which is very convenient just now, when I have so
+   often to go to Mr. Gray’s to see about furnishing.
+
+   ‘Now you think I have told you all the Hanbury news, don’t you? Not
+   so. The very greatest thing of all is to come. I won’t tantalize
+   you, but just out with it, for you would never guess it. My Lady
+   Ludlow has given a party, just like any plebeian amongst us. We had
+   tea and toast in the blue drawing-room, old John Footman waiting with
+   Tom Diggles, the lad that used to frighten away crows in Farmer Hale’s
+   fields, following in my lady’s livery, hair powdered and everything.
+   Mrs. Medlicott made tea in my lady’s own room. My lady looked like a
+   splendid fairy queen of mature age, in black velvet, and the old lace,
+   which I have never seen her wear before since my lord’s death. But
+   the company? you’ll say. Why, we had the parson of Clover, and the
+   parson of Headleigh, and the parson of Merribank, and the three
+   parsonesses; and Farmer Donkin, and two Miss Donkins; and Mr. Gray (of
+   course), and myself and Bessy; and Captain and Mrs. James; yes, and
+   Mr. and Mrs. Brooke; think of that! I am not sure the parsons liked
+   it; but he was there. For he has been helping Captain James to get my
+   lady’s land into order; and then his daughter married the agent; and
+   Mr. Gray (who ought to know) says that, after all, Baptists are not
+   such bad people; and he was right against them at one time, as you may
+   remember. Mrs. Brooke is a rough diamond, to be sure. People have
+   said that of me, I know. But, being a Galindo, I learnt manners in my
+   youth and can take them up when I choose. But Mrs. Brooke never
+   learnt manners, I’ll be bound. When John Footman handed her the tray
+   with the tea-cups, she looked up at him as if she were sorely puzzled
+   by that way of going on. I was sitting next to her, so I pretended
+   not to see her perplexity, and put her cream and sugar in for her, and
+   was all ready to pop it into her hands,—when who should come up, but
+   that impudent lad Tom Diggles (I call him lad, for all his hair is
+   powdered, for you know that it is not natural gray hair), with his
+   tray full of cakes and what not, all as good as Mrs. Medlicott could
+   make them. By this time, I should tell you, all the parsonesses were
+   looking at Mrs. Brooke, for she had shown her want of breeding before;
+   and the parsonesses, who were just a step above her in manners, were
+   very much inclined to smile at her doings and sayings. Well! what
+   does she do, but pull out a clean Bandanna pocket-handkerchief all red
+   and yellow silk, spread it over her best silk gown; it was, like
+   enough, a new one, for I had it from Sally, who had it from her cousin
+   Molly, who is dairy-woman at the Brookes’, that the Brookes were
+   mighty set-up with an invitation to drink tea at the Hall. There we
+   were, Tom Diggles even on the grin (I wonder how long it is since he
+   was own brother to a scarecrow, only not so decently dressed) and Mrs.
+   Parsoness of Headleigh,—I forget her name, and it’s no matter, for
+   she’s an ill-bred creature, I hope Bessy will behave herself
+   better—was right-down bursting with laughter, and as near a hee-haw
+   as ever a donkey was, when what does my lady do? Ay! there’s my own
+   dear Lady Ludlow, God bless her! She takes out her own
+   pocket-handkerchief, all snowy cambric, and lays it softly down on her
+   velvet lap, for all the world as if she did it every day of her life,
+   just like Mrs. Brooke, the baker’s wife; and when the one got up to
+   shake the crumbs into the fire-place, the other did just the same. But
+   with such a grace! and such a look at us all! Tom Diggles went red
+   all over; and Mrs. Parsoness of Headleigh scarce spoke for the rest of
+   the evening; and the tears came into my old silly eyes; and Mr. Gray,
+   who was before silent and awkward in a way which I tell Bessy she must
+   cure him of, was made so happy by this pretty action of my lady’s,
+   that he talked away all the rest of the evening, and was the life of
+   the company.
+
+   ‘Oh, Margaret Dawson! I sometimes wonder if you’re the better off for
+   leaving us. To be sure you’re with your brother, and blood is blood.
+   But when I look at my lady and Mr. Gray, for all they’re so different,
+   I would not change places with any in England.’
+
+Alas! alas! I never saw my dear lady again. She died in eighteen
+hundred and fourteen, and Mr. Gray did not long survive her. As I dare
+say you know, the Reverend Henry Gregson is now vicar of Hanbury, and his
+wife is the daughter of Mr. Gray and Miss Bessy.
+
+               * * * * *
+
+As any one may guess, it had taken Mrs. Dawson several Monday evenings
+to narrate all this history of the days of her youth. Miss Duncan
+thought it would be a good exercise for me, both in memory and
+composition, to write out on Tuesday mornings all that I had heard the
+night before; and thus it came to pass that I have the manuscript of
+“My Lady Ludlow” now lying by me.
+
+               * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Dawson had often come in and out of the room during the time that
+his sister had been telling us about Lady Ludlow. He would stop, and
+listen a little, and smile or sigh as the case might be. The Monday
+after the dear old lady had wound up her tale (if tale it could be
+called), we felt rather at a loss what to talk about, we had grown so
+accustomed to listen to Mrs. Dawson. I remember I was saying, “Oh,
+dear! I wish some one would tell us another story!” when her brother
+said, as if in answer to my speech, that he had drawn up a paper all
+ready for the Philosophical Society, and that perhaps we might care to
+hear it before it was sent off: it was in a great measure compiled from
+a French book, published by one of the Academies, and rather dry in
+itself; but to which Mr. Dawson’s attention had been directed, after a
+tour he had made in England during the past year, in which he had
+noticed small walled-up doors in unusual parts of some old parish
+churches, and had been told that they had formerly been appropriated to
+the use of some half-heathen race, who, before the days of gipsies,
+held the same outcast pariah position in most of the countries of
+western Europe. Mr. Dawson had been recommended to the French book
+which he named, as containing the fullest and most authentic account of
+this mysterious race, the Cagots. I did not think I should like hearing
+this paper as much as a story; but, of course, as he meant it kindly,
+we were bound to submit, and I found it, on the whole, more interesting
+than I anticipated.
+
+
+
+
+AN ACCURSED RACE
+
+
+We have our prejudices in England. Or, if that assertion offends any of
+my readers, I will modify it: we have had our prejudices in England. We
+have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics and Protestants, to say
+nothing of a few witches and wizards. We have satirized Puritans, and we
+have dressed-up Guys. But, after all, I do not think we have been so bad
+as our Continental friends. To be sure, our insular position has kept us
+free, to a certain degree, from the inroads of alien races; who, driven
+from one land of refuge, steal into another equally unwilling to receive
+them; and where, for long centuries, their presence is barely endured,
+and no pains is taken to conceal the repugnance which the natives of
+"pure blood" experience towards them.
+
+There yet remains a remnant of the miserable people called Cagots in the
+valleys of the Pyrenees; in the Landes near Bourdeaux; and, stretching up
+on the west side of France, their numbers become larger in Lower
+Brittany. Even now, the origin of these families is a word of shame to
+them among their neighbours; although they are protected by the law,
+which confirmed them in the equal rights of citizens about the end of the
+last century. Before then they had lived, for hundreds of years,
+isolated from all those who boasted of pure blood, and they had been, all
+this time, oppressed by cruel local edicts. They were truly what they
+were popularly called, The Accursed Race.
+
+All distinct traces of their origin are lost. Even at the close of that
+period which we call the Middle Ages, this was a problem which no one
+could solve; and as the traces, which even then were faint and uncertain,
+have vanished away one by one, it is a complete mystery at the present
+day. Why they were accursed in the first instance, why isolated from
+their kind, no one knows. From the earliest accounts of their state that
+are yet remaining to us, it seems that the names which they gave each
+other were ignored by the population they lived amongst, who spoke of
+them as Crestiaa, or Cagots, just as we speak of animals by their generic
+names. Their houses or huts were always placed at some distance out of
+the villages of the country-folk, who unwillingly called in the services
+of the Cagots as carpenters, or tilers, or slaters--trades which seemed
+appropriated by this unfortunate race--who were forbidden to occupy land,
+or to bear arms, the usual occupations of those times. They had some
+small right of pasturage on the common lands, and in the forests: but the
+number of their cattle and live-stock was strictly limited by the
+earliest laws relating to the Cagots. They were forbidden by one act to
+have more than twenty sheep, a pig, a ram, and six geese. The pig was to
+be fattened and killed for winter food; the fleece of the sheep was to
+clothe them; but if the said sheep had lambs, they were forbidden to eat
+them. Their only privilege arising from this increase was, that they
+might choose out the strongest and finest in preference to keeping the
+old sheep. At Martinmas the authorities of the commune came round, and
+counted over the stock of each Cagot. If he had more than his appointed
+number, they were forfeited; half went to the commune, half to the
+baillie, or chief magistrate of the commune. The poor beasts were
+limited as to the amount of common which they might stray over in search
+of grass. While the cattle of the inhabitants of the commune might
+wander hither and thither in search of the sweetest herbage, the deepest
+shade, or the coolest pool in which to stand on the hot days, and lazily
+switch their dappled sides, the Cagot sheep and pig had to learn
+imaginary bounds, beyond which if they strayed, any one might snap them
+up, and kill them, reserving a part of the flesh for his own use, but
+graciously restoring the inferior parts to their original owner. Any
+damage done by the sheep was, however, fairly appraised, and the Cagot
+paid no more for it than any other man would have done.
+
+Did a Cagot leave his poor cabin, and venture into the towns, even to
+render services required of him in the way of his trade, he was bidden, by all
+the municipal laws, to stand by and remember his rude old state. In all
+the towns and villages the large districts extending on both sides of the
+Pyrenees--in all that part of Spain--they were forbidden to buy or sell
+anything eatable, to walk in the middle (esteemed the better) part of the
+streets, to come within the gates before sunrise, or to be found after
+sunset within the walls of the town. But still, as the Cagots were good-
+looking men, and (although they bore certain natural marks of their
+caste, of which I shall speak by-and-by) were not easily distinguished by
+casual passers-by from other men, they were compelled to wear some
+distinctive peculiarity which should arrest the eye; and, in the greater
+number of towns, it was decreed that the outward sign of a Cagot should
+be a piece of red cloth sewed conspicuously on the front of his dress. In
+other towns, the mark of Cagoterie was the foot of a duck or a goose hung
+over their left shoulder, so as to be seen by any one meeting them. After
+a time, the more convenient badge of a piece of yellow cloth cut out in
+the shape of a duck's foot, was adopted. If any Cagot was found in any
+town or village without his badge, he had to pay a fine of five sous, and
+to lose his dress. He was expected to shrink away from any passer-by,
+for fear that their clothes should touch each other; or else to stand
+still in some corner or by-place. If the Cagots were thirsty during the
+days which they passed in those towns where their presence was barely
+suffered, they had no means of quenching their thirst, for they were
+forbidden to enter into the little cabarets or taverns. Even the water
+gushing out of the common fountain was prohibited to them. Far away, in
+their own squalid village, there was the Cagot fountain, and they were
+not allowed to drink of any other water. A Cagot woman having to make
+purchases in the town, was liable to be flogged out of it if she went to
+buy anything except on a Monday--a day on which all other people who
+could, kept their houses for fear of coming in contact with the accursed
+race.
+
+In the Pays Basque, the prejudices--and for some time the laws--ran
+stronger against them than any which I have hitherto mentioned. The
+Basque Cagot was not allowed to possess sheep. He might keep a pig for
+provision, but his pig had no right of pasturage. He might cut and carry
+grass for the ass, which was the only other animal he was permitted to
+own; and this ass was permitted, because its existence was rather an
+advantage to the oppressor, who constantly availed himself of the Cagot's
+mechanical skill, and was glad to have him and his tools easily conveyed
+from one place to another.
+
+The race was repulsed by the State. Under the small local governments
+they could hold no post whatsoever. And they were barely tolerated by
+the Church, although they were good Catholics, and zealous frequenters of
+the mass. They might only enter the churches by a small door set apart
+for them, through which no one of the pure race ever passed. This door
+was low, so as to compel them to make an obeisance. It was occasionally
+surrounded by sculpture, which invariably represented an oak-branch with
+a dove above it. When they were once in, they might not go to the holy
+water used by others. They had a benitier of their own; nor were they
+allowed to share in the consecrated bread when that was handed round to
+the believers of the pure race. The Cagots stood afar off, near the
+door. There were certain boundaries--imaginary lines on the nave and in
+the aisles which they might not pass. In one or two of the more tolerant
+of the Pyrenean villages, the blessed bread was offered to the Cagots,
+the priest standing on one side of the boundary, and giving the pieces of
+bread on a long wooden fork to each person successively.
+
+When the Cagot died, he was interred apart, in a plot burying-ground on
+the north side of the cemetery. Under such laws and prescriptions as I
+have described, it is no wonder that he was generally too poor to have
+much property for his children to inherit; but certain descriptions of it
+were forfeited to the commune. The only possession which all who were
+not of his own race refused to touch, was his furniture. That was
+tainted, infectious, unclean--fit for none but Cagots.
+
+When such were, for at least three centuries, the prevalent usages and
+opinions with regard to this oppressed race, it is not surprising that we
+read of occasional outbursts of ferocious violence on their part. In the
+Basses-Pyrenees, for instance it is only about a hundred years since,
+that the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against the inhabitants of the
+neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the better of them, by their
+magical powers as it is said. The people of Lourdes were conquered and
+slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads served the triumphant Cagots for
+balls to play at ninepins with! The local parliaments had begun, by this
+time, to perceive how oppressive was the ban of public opinion under
+which the Cagots lay, and were not inclined to enforce too severe a
+punishment. Accordingly, the decree of the parliament of Toulouse
+condemned only the leading Cagots concerned in this affray to be put to
+death, and that henceforward and for ever no Cagot was to be permitted to
+enter the town of Lourdes by any gate but that called Capdet-pourtet:
+they were only to be allowed to walk under the rain-gutters, and neither
+to sit, eat, nor drink in the town. If they failed in observing any of
+these rules, the parliament decreed, in the spirit of Shylock, that the
+disobedient Cagots should have two strips of flesh, weighing never more
+than two ounces a-piece, cut out from each side of their spines.
+
+In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries it was considered
+no more a crime to kill a Cagot than to destroy obnoxious vermin. A
+"nest of Cagots," as the old accounts phrase it, had assembled in a
+deserted castle of Mauvezin, about the year sixteen hundred; and,
+certainly, they made themselves not very agreeable neighbours, as they
+seemed to enjoy their reputation of magicians; and, by some acoustic
+secrets which were known to them, all sorts of moanings and groanings
+were heard in the neighbouring forests, very much to the alarm of the
+good people of the pure race; who could not cut off a withered branch for
+firewood, but some unearthly sound seemed to fill the air, nor drink
+water which was not poisoned, because the Cagots would persist in filling
+their pitchers at the same running stream. Added to these grievances,
+the various pilferings perpetually going on in the neighbourhood made the
+inhabitants of the adjacent towns and hamlets believe that they had a
+very sufficient cause for wishing to murder all the Cagots in the Chateau
+de Mauvezin. But it was surrounded by a moat, and only accessible by a
+drawbridge; besides which, the Cagots were fierce and vigilant. Some
+one, however, proposed to get into their confidence; and for this purpose
+he pretended to fall ill close to their path, so that on returning to
+their stronghold they perceived him, and took him in, restored him to
+health, and made a friend of him. One day, when they were all playing at
+ninepins in the woods, their treacherous friend left the party on
+pretence of being thirsty, and went back into the castle, drawing up the
+bridge after he had passed over it, and so cutting off their means of
+escape into safety. Them, going up to the highest part of the castle, he
+blew a horn, and the pure race, who were lying in wait on the watch for
+some such signal, fell upon the Cagots at their games, and slew them all.
+For this murder I find no punishment decreed in the parliament of
+Toulouse, or elsewhere.
+
+As any intermarriage with the pure race was strictly forbidden, and as
+there were books kept in every commune in which the names and habitations
+of the reputed Cagots were written, these unfortunate people had no hope
+of ever becoming blended with the rest of the population. Did a Cagot
+marriage take place, the couple were serenaded with satirical songs. They
+also had minstrels, and many of their romances are still current in
+Brittany; but they did not attempt to make any reprisals of satire or
+abuse. Their disposition was amiable, and their intelligence great.
+Indeed, it required both these qualities, and their great love of
+mechanical labour, to make their lives tolerable.
+
+At last, they began to petition that they might receive some protection
+from the laws; and, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the
+judicial power took their side. But they gained little by this. Law
+could not prevail against custom: and, in the ten or twenty years just
+preceding the first French revolution, the prejudice in France against
+the Cagots amounted to fierce and positive abhorrence.
+
+At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Cagots of Navarre
+complained to the Pope, that they were excluded from the fellowship of
+men, and accursed by the Church, because their ancestors had given help
+to a certain Count Raymond of Toulouse in his revolt against the Holy
+See. They entreated his holiness not to visit upon them the sins of
+their fathers. The Pope issued a bull on the thirteenth of May, fifteen
+hundred and fifteen--ordering them to be well-treated and to be admitted
+to the same privileges as other men. He charged Don Juan de Santa Maria
+of Pampeluna to see to the execution of this bull. But Don Juan was slow
+to help, and the poor Spanish Cagots grew impatient, and resolved to try
+the secular power. They accordingly applied to the Cortes of Navarre,
+and were opposed on a variety of grounds. First, it was stated that
+their ancestors had had "nothing to do with Raymond Count of Toulouse, or
+with any such knightly personage; that they were in fact descendants of
+Gehazi, servant of Elisha (second book of Kings, fifth chapter, twenty-
+seventh verse), who had been accursed by his master for his fraud upon
+Naaman, and doomed, he and his descendants, to be lepers for evermore.
+Name, Cagots or Gahets; Gahets, Gehazites. What can be more clear? And
+if that is not enough, and you tell us that the Cagots are not lepers
+now; we reply that there are two kinds of leprosy, one perceptible and
+the other imperceptible, even to the person suffering from it. Besides,
+it is the country talk, that where the Cagot treads, the grass withers,
+proving the unnatural heat of his body. Many credible and trustworthy
+witnesses will also tell you that, if a Cagot holds a freshly-gathered
+apple in his hand, it will shrivel and wither up in an hour's time as
+much as if it had been kept for a whole winter in a dry room. They are
+born with tails; although the parents are cunning enough to pinch them
+off immediately. Do you doubt this? If it is not true, why do the
+children of the pure race delight in sewing on sheep's tails to the dress
+of any Cagot who is so absorbed in his work as not to perceive them? And
+their bodily smell is so horrible and detestable that it shows that they
+must be heretics of some vile and pernicious description, for do we not
+read of the incense of good workers, and the fragrance of holiness?"
+
+Such were literally the arguments by which the Cagots were thrown back
+into a worse position than ever, as far as regarded their rights as
+citizens. The Pope insisted that they should receive all their
+ecclesiastical privileges. The Spanish priests said nothing; but tacitly
+refused to allow the Cagots to mingle with the rest of the faithful,
+either dead or alive. The accursed race obtained laws in their favour
+from the Emperor Charles the Fifth; which, however, there was no one to
+carry into effect. As a sort of revenge for their want of submission,
+and for their impertinence in daring to complain, their tools were all
+taken away from them by the local authorities: an old man and all his
+family died of starvation, being no longer allowed to fish.
+
+They could not emigrate. Even to remove their poor mud habitations, from
+one spot to another, excited anger and suspicion. To be sure, in sixteen
+hundred and ninety-five, the Spanish government ordered the alcaldes to
+search out all the Cagots, and to expel them before two months had
+expired, under pain of having fifty ducats to pay for every Cagot
+remaining in Spain at the expiration of that time. The inhabitants of
+the villages rose up and flogged out any of the miserable race who might
+be in their neighbourhood; but the French were on their guard against
+this enforced irruption, and refused to permit them to enter France.
+Numbers were hunted up into the inhospitable Pyrenees, and there died of
+starvation, or became a prey to wild beasts. They were obliged to wear
+both gloves and shoes when they were thus put to flight, otherwise the
+stones and herbage they trod upon and the balustrades of the bridges that
+they handled in crossing, would, according to popular belief, have become
+poisonous.
+
+And all this time, there was nothing remarkable or disgusting in the
+outward appearance of this unfortunate people. There was nothing about
+them to countenance the idea of their being lepers--the most natural mode
+of accounting for the abhorrence in which they were held. They were
+repeatedly examined by learned doctors, whose experiments, although
+singular and rude, appear to have been made in a spirit of humanity. For
+instance, the surgeons of the king of Navarre, in sixteen hundred, bled
+twenty-two Cagots, in order to examine and analyze their blood. They
+were young and healthy people of both sexes; and the doctors seem to have
+expected that they should have been able to extract some new kind of salt
+from their blood which might account for the wonderful heat of their
+bodies. But their blood was just like that of other people. Some of
+these medical men have left us a description of the general appearance of
+this unfortunate race, at a time when they were more numerous and less
+intermixed than they are now. The families existing in the south and
+west of France, who are reputed to be of Cagot descent at this day, are,
+like their ancestors, tall, largely made, and powerful in frame; fair and
+ruddy in complexion, with gray-blue eyes, in which some observers see a
+pensive heaviness of look. Their lips are thick, but well-formed. Some
+of the reports name their sad expression of countenance with surprise and
+suspicion--"They are not gay, like other folk." The wonder would be if
+they were. Dr. Guyon, the medical man of the last century who has left
+the clearest report on the health of the Cagots, speaks of the vigorous
+old age they attain to. In one family alone, he found a man of seventy-
+four years of age; a woman as old, gathering cherries; and another woman,
+aged eighty-three, was lying on the grass, having her hair combed by her
+great-grandchildren. Dr. Guyon and other surgeons examined into the
+subject of the horribly infectious smell which the Cagots were said to
+leave behind them, and upon everything they touched; but they could
+perceive nothing unusual on this head. They also examined their ears,
+which according to common belief (a belief existing to this day), were
+differently shaped from those of other people; being round and gristly,
+without the lobe of flesh into which the ear-ring is inserted. They
+decided that most of the Cagots whom they examined had the ears of this
+round shape; but they gravely added, that they saw no reason why this
+should exclude them from the good-will of men, and from the power of
+holding office in Church and State. They recorded the fact, that the
+children of the towns ran baaing after any Cagot who had been compelled
+to come into the streets to make purchases, in allusion to this
+peculiarity of the shape of the ear, which bore some resemblance to the
+ears of the sheep as they are cut by the shepherds in this district. Dr.
+Guyon names the case of a beautiful Cagot girl, who sang most sweetly,
+and prayed to be allowed to sing canticles in the organ-loft. The
+organist, more musician than bigot, allowed her to come, but the
+indignant congregation, finding out whence proceeded that clear, fresh
+voice, rushed up to the organ-loft, and chased the girl out, bidding her
+"remember her ears," and not commit the sacrilege of singing praises to
+God along with the pure race.
+
+But this medical report of Dr. Guyon's--bringing facts and arguments to
+confirm his opinion, that there was no physical reason why the Cagots
+should not be received on terms of social equality by the rest of the
+world--did no more for his clients than the legal decrees promulgated two
+centuries before had done. The French proved the truth of the saying in
+Hudibras--
+
+    He that's convinced against his will
+    Is of the same opinion still.
+
+And, indeed, the being convinced by Dr. Guyon that they ought to receive
+Cagots as fellow-creatures, only made them more rabid in declaring that
+they would not. One or two little occurrences which are recorded, show
+that the bitterness of the repugnance to the Cagots was in full force at
+the time just preceding the first French revolution. There was a M.
+d'Abedos, the curate of Lourdes, and brother to the seigneur of the
+neighbouring castle, who was living in seventeen hundred and eighty; he
+was well-educated for the time, a travelled man, and sensible and
+moderate in all respects but that of his abhorrence of the Cagots: he
+would insult them from the very altar, calling out to them, as they stood
+afar off, "Oh! ye Cagots, damned for evermore!" One day, a half-blind
+Cagot stumbled and touched the censer borne before this Abbe de Lourdes.
+He was immediately turned out of the church, and forbidden ever to re-
+enter it. One does not know how to account for the fact, that the very
+brother of this bigoted abbe, the seigneur of the village, went and
+married a Cagot girl; but so it was, and the abbe brought a legal process
+against him, and had his estates taken from him, solely on account of his
+marriage, which reduced him to the condition of a Cagot, against whom the
+old law was still in force. The descendants of this Seigneur de Lourdes
+are simple peasants at this very day, working on the lands which belonged
+to their grandfather.
+
+This prejudice against mixed marriages remained prevalent until very
+lately. The tradition of the Cagot descent lingered among the people,
+long after the laws against the accursed race were abolished. A Breton
+girl, within the last few years, having two lovers each of reputed Cagot
+descent, employed a notary to examine their pedigrees, and see which of
+the two had least Cagot in him; and to that one she gave her hand. In
+Brittany the prejudice seems to have been more virulent than anywhere
+else. M. Emile Souvestre records proofs of the hatred borne to them in
+Brittany so recently as in eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Just lately
+a baker at Hennebon, having married a girl of Cagot descent, lost all his
+custom. The godfather and godmother of a Cagot child became Cagots
+themselves by the Breton laws, unless, indeed, the poor little baby died
+before attaining a certain number of days. They had to eat the butchers'
+meat condemned as unhealthy; but, for some unknown reason, they were
+considered to have a right to every cut loaf turned upside down, with its
+cut side towards the door, and might enter any house in which they saw a
+loaf in this position, and carry it away with them. About thirty years
+ago, there was the skeleton of a hand hanging up as an offering in a
+Breton church near Quimperle, and the tradition was, that it was the hand
+of a rich Cagot who had dared to take holy water out of the usual
+benitier, some time at the beginning of the reign of Louis the Sixteenth;
+which an old soldier witnessing, he lay in wait, and the next time the
+offender approached the benitier he cut off his hand, and hung it up,
+dripping with blood, as an offering to the patron saint of the church.
+The poor Cagots in Brittany petitioned against their opprobrious name,
+and begged to be distinguished by the appelation of Malandrins. To
+English ears one is much the same as the other, as neither conveys any
+meaning; but, to this day, the descendants of the Cagots do not like to
+have this name applied to them, preferring that of Malandrin.
+
+The French Cagots tried to destroy all the records of their pariah
+descent, in the commotions of seventeen hundred and eighty-nine; but if
+writings have disappeared, the tradition yet remains, and points out such
+and such a family as Cagot, or Malandrin, or Oiselier, according to the
+old terms of abhorrence.
+
+There are various ways in which learned men have attempted to account for
+the universal repugnance in which this well-made, powerful race are held.
+Some say that the antipathy to them took its rise in the days when
+leprosy was a dreadfully prevalent disease; and that the Cagots are more
+liable than any other men to a kind of skin disease, not precisely
+leprosy, but resembling it in some of its symptoms; such as dead
+whiteness of complexion, and swellings of the face and extremities. There
+was also some resemblance to the ancient Jewish custom in respect to
+lepers, in the habit of the people; who on meeting a Cagot called out,
+"Cagote? Cagote?" to which they were bound to reply, "Perlute! perlute!"
+Leprosy is not properly an infectious complaint, in spite of the horror
+in which the Cagot furniture, and the cloth woven by them, are held in
+some places; the disorder is hereditary, and hence (say this body of wise
+men, who have troubled themselves to account for the origin of Cagoterie)
+the reasonableness and the justice of preventing any mixed marriages, by
+which this terrible tendency to leprous complaints might be spread far
+and wide. Another authority says, that though the Cagots are
+fine-looking men, hard-working, and good mechanics, yet they bear in
+their faces, and show in their actions, reasons for the detestation in
+which they are held: their glance, if you meet it, is the jettatura, or
+evil-eye, and they are spiteful, and cruel, and deceitful above all other
+men. All these qualities they derive from their ancestor Gehazi, the
+servant of Elisha, together with their tendency to leprosy.
+
+Again, it is said that they are descended from the Arian Goths who were
+permitted to live in certain places in Guienne and Languedoc, after their
+defeat by King Clovis, on condition that they abjured their heresy, and
+kept themselves separate from all other men for ever. The principal
+reason alleged in support of this supposition of their Gothic descent, is
+the specious one of derivation,--Chiens Gots, Cans Gets, Cagots,
+equivalent to Dogs of Goths.
+
+Again, they were thought to be Saracens, coming from Syria. In
+confirmation of this idea, was the belief that all Cagots were possessed
+by a horrible smell. The Lombards, also, were an unfragrant race, or so
+reputed among the Italians: witness Pope Stephen's letter to Charlemagne,
+dissuading him from marrying Bertha, daughter of Didier, King of
+Lombardy. The Lombards boasted of Eastern descent, and were noisome. The
+Cagots were noisome, and therefore must be of Eastern descent. What
+could be clearer? In addition, there was the proof to be derived from
+the name Cagot, which those maintaining the opinion of their Saracen
+descent held to be Chiens, or Chasseurs des Gots, because the Saracens
+chased the Goths out of Spain. Moreover, the Saracens were originally
+Mahometans, and as such obliged to bathe seven times a-day: whence the
+badge of the duck's foot. A duck was a water-bird: Mahometans bathed in
+the water. Proof upon proof!
+
+In Brittany the common idea was, they were of Jewish descent. Their
+unpleasant smell was again pressed into service. The Jews, it was well
+known, had this physical infirmity, which might be cured either by
+bathing in a certain fountain in Egypt--which was a long way from
+Brittany--or by anointing themselves with the blood of a Christian child.
+Blood gushed out of the body of every Cagot on Good Friday. No wonder,
+if they were of Jewish descent. It was the only way of accounting for so
+portentous a fact. Again; the Cagots were capital carpenters, which gave
+the Bretons every reason to believe that their ancestors were the very
+Jews who made the cross. When first the tide of emigration set from
+Brittany to America, the oppressed Cagots crowded to the ports, seeking
+to go to some new country, where their race might be unknown. Here was
+another proof of their descent from Abraham and his nomadic people: and,
+the forty years' wandering in the wilderness and the Wandering Jew
+himself, were pressed into the service to prove that the Cagots derived
+their restlessness and love of change from their ancestors, the Jews. The
+Jews, also, practised arts-magic, and the Cagots sold bags of wind to the
+Breton sailors, enchanted maidens to love them--maidens who never would
+have cared for them, unless they had been previously enchanted--made
+hollow rocks and trees give out strange and unearthly noises, and sold
+the magical herb called _bon-succes_. It is true enough that, in all the
+early acts of the fourteenth century, the same laws apply to Jews as to
+Cagots, and the appellations seem used indiscriminately; but their fair
+complexions, their remarkable devotion to all the ceremonies of the
+Catholic Church, and many other circumstances, conspire to forbid our
+believing them to be of Hebrew descent.
+
+Another very plausible idea is, that they are the descendants of
+unfortunate individuals afflicted with goitres, which is, even to this
+day, not an uncommon disorder in the gorges and valleys of the Pyrenees.
+Some have even derived the word goitre from Got, or Goth; but their name,
+Crestia, is not unlike Cretin, and the same symptoms of idiotism were not
+unusual among the Cagots; although sometimes, if old tradition is to be
+credited, their malady of the brain took rather the form of violent
+delirium, which attacked them at new and full moons. Then the workmen
+laid down their tools, and rushed off from their labour to play mad
+pranks up and down the country. Perpetual motion was required to
+alleviate the agony of fury that seized upon the Cagots at such times. In
+this desire for rapid movement, the attack resembled the Neapolitan
+tarantella; while in the mad deeds they performed during such attacks,
+they were not unlike the northern Berserker. In Bearn especially, those
+suffering from this madness were dreaded by the pure race; the Bearnais,
+going to cut their wooden clogs in the great forests that lay around the
+base of the Pyrenees, feared above all things to go too near the periods
+when the Cagoutelle seized on the oppressed and accursed people; from
+whom it was then the oppressors' turn to fly. A man was living within
+the memory of some, who married a Cagot wife; he used to beat her right
+soundly when he saw the first symptoms of the Cagoutelle, and, having
+reduced her to a wholesome state of exhaustion and insensibility, he
+locked her up until the moon had altered her shape in the heavens. If he
+had not taken such decided steps, say the oldest inhabitants, there is no
+knowing what might have happened.
+
+From the thirteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, there are facts
+enough to prove the universal abhorrence in which this unfortunate race
+was held; whether called Cagots, or Gahets in Pyrenean districts,
+Caqueaux in Brittany, or Yaqueros Asturias. The great French revolution
+brought some good out of its fermentation of the people: the more
+intelligent among them tried to overcome the prejudice against the
+Cagots.
+
+In seventeen hundred and eighteen, there was a famous cause tried at
+Biarritz relating to Cagot rights and privileges. There was a wealthy
+miller, Etienne Arnauld by name, of the race of Gotz, Quagotz, Bisigotz,
+Astragotz, or Gahetz, as his people are described in the legal document.
+He married an heiress, a Gotte (or Cagot) of Biarritz; and the
+newly-married well-to-do couple saw no reason why they should stand near
+the door in the church, nor why he should not hold some civil office in
+the commune, of which he was the principal inhabitant. Accordingly, he
+petitioned the law that he and his wife might be allowed to sit in the
+gallery of the church, and that he might be relieved from his civil
+disabilities. This wealthy white miller, Etienne Arnauld, pursued his
+rights with some vigour against the Baillie of Labourd, the dignitary of
+the neighbourhood. Whereupon the inhabitants of Biarritz met in the open
+air, on the eighth of May, to the number of one hundred and fifty;
+approved of the conduct of the Baillie in rejecting Arnauld, made a
+subscription, and gave all power to their lawyers to defend the cause of
+the pure race against Etienne Arnauld--"that stranger," who, having
+married a girl of Cagot blood, ought also to be expelled from the holy
+places. This lawsuit was carried through all the local courts, and ended
+by an appeal to the highest court in Paris; where a decision was given
+against Basque superstitions; and Etienne Arnauld was thenceforward
+entitled to enter the gallery of the church.
+
+Of course, the inhabitants of Biarritz were all the more ferocious for
+having been conquered; and, four years later, a carpenter, named Miguel
+Legaret, suspected of Cagot descent, having placed himself in the church
+among other people, was dragged out by the abbe and two of the jurets of
+the parish. Legaret defended himself with a sharp knife at the time, and
+went to law afterwards; the end of which was, that the abbe and his two
+accomplices were condemned to a public confession of penitence, to be
+uttered while on their knees at the church door, just after high-mass.
+They appealed to the parliament of Bourdeaux against this decision, but
+met with no better success than the opponents of the miller Arnauld.
+Legaret was confirmed in his right of standing where he would in the
+parish church. That a living Cagot had equal rights with other men in
+the town of Biarritz seemed now ceded to them; but a dead Cagot was a
+different thing. The inhabitants of pure blood struggled long and hard
+to be interred apart from the abhorred race. The Cagots were equally
+persistent in claiming to have a common burying-ground. Again the texts
+of the Old Testament were referred to, and the pure blood quoted
+triumphantly the precedent of Uzziah the leper (twenty-sixth chapter of
+the second book of Chronicles), who was buried in the field of the
+Sepulchres of the Kings, not in the sepulchres themselves. The Cagots
+pleaded that they were healthy and able-bodied; with no taint of leprosy
+near them. They were met by the strong argument so difficult to be
+refuted, which I quoted before. Leprosy was of two kinds, perceptible
+and imperceptible. If the Cagots were suffering from the latter kind,
+who could tell whether they were free from it or not? That decision must
+be left to the judgment of others.
+
+One sturdy Cagot family alone, Belone by name, kept up a lawsuit,
+claiming the privilege of common sepulture, for forty-two years; although
+the cure of Biarritz had to pay one hundred livres for every Cagot not
+interred in the right place. The inhabitants indemnified the curate for
+all these fines.
+
+M. de Romagne, Bishop of Tarbes, who died in seventeen hundred and sixty-
+eight, was the first to allow a Cagot to fill any office in the Church.
+To be sure, some were so spiritless as to reject office when it was
+offered to them, because, by so claiming their equality, they had to pay
+the same taxes as other men, instead of the Rancale or pole-tax levied on
+the Cagots; the collector of which had also a right to claim a piece of
+bread of a certain size for his dog at every Cagot dwelling.
+
+Even in the present century, it has been necessary in some churches for
+the archdeacon of the district, followed by all his clergy, to pass out
+of the small door previously appropriated to the Cagots, in order to
+mitigate the superstition which, even so lately, made the people refuse
+to mingle with them in the house of God. A Cagot once played the
+congregation at Larroque a trick suggested by what I have just named. He
+slily locked the great parish-door of the church, while the greater part
+of the inhabitants were assisting at mass inside; put gravel into the
+lock itself, so as to prevent the use of any duplicate key,--and had the
+pleasure of seeing the proud pure-blooded people file out with bended
+head, through the small low door used by the abhorred Cagots.
+
+We are naturally shocked at discovering, from facts such as these, the
+causeless rancour with which innocent and industrious people were so
+recently persecuted. The moral of the history of the accursed race may,
+perhaps, be best conveyed in the words of an epitaph on Mrs. Mary Hand,
+who lies buried in the churchyard of Stratford-on-Avon:--
+
+    What faults you saw in me,
+      Pray strive to shun;
+    And look at home; there's
+      Something to be done.
+
+
+
+
+For some time past I had observed that Miss Duncan made a good deal of
+occupation for herself in writing, but that she did not like me to
+notice her employment. Of course this made me all the more curious; and
+many were my silent conjectures—some of them so near the truth that I
+was not much surprised when, after Mr. Dawson had finished reading his
+Paper to us, she hesitated, coughed, and abruptly introduced a little
+formal speech, to the effect that she had noted down an old Welsh story
+the particulars of which had often been told her in her youth, as she
+lived close to the place where the events occurred. Everybody pressed
+her to read the manuscript, which she now produced from her reticule;
+but, when on the point of beginning, her nervousness seemed to overcome
+her, and she made so many apologies for its being the first and only
+attempt she had ever made at that kind of composition, that I began to
+wonder if we should ever arrive at the story at all. At length, in a
+high-pitched, ill-assured voice, she read out the title:
+
+               “THE DOOM OF THE GRIFFITHS.”
+
+
+
+
+                        THE DOOM OF THE GRIFFITHS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+I have always been much interested by the traditions which are scattered
+up and down North Wales relating to Owen Glendower (Owain Glendwr is the
+national spelling of the name), and I fully enter into the feeling which
+makes the Welsh peasant still look upon him as the hero of his country.
+There was great joy among many of the inhabitants of the principality,
+when the subject of the Welsh prize poem at Oxford, some fifteen or
+sixteen years ago, was announced to be “Owain Glendwr.” It was the most
+proudly national subject that had been given for years.
+
+Perhaps, some may not be aware that this redoubted chieftain is, even in
+the present days of enlightenment, as famous among his illiterate
+countrymen for his magical powers as for his patriotism. He says
+himself—or Shakespeare says it for him, which is much the same thing—
+
+                ‘At my nativity
+    The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes
+    Of burning cressets . . .
+    . . . I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’
+
+And few among the lower orders in the principality would think of asking
+Hotspur’s irreverent question in reply.
+
+Among other traditions preserved relative to this part of the Welsh
+hero’s character, is the old family prophecy which gives title to this
+tale. When Sir David Gam, “as black a traitor as if he had been born in
+Builth,” sought to murder Owen at Machynlleth, there was one with him
+whose name Glendwr little dreamed of having associated with his enemies.
+Rhys ap Gryfydd, his “old familiar friend,” his relation, his more than
+brother, had consented unto his blood. Sir David Gam might be forgiven,
+but one whom he had loved, and who had betrayed him, could never be
+forgiven. Glendwr was too deeply read in the human heart to kill him.
+No, he let him live on, the loathing and scorn of his compatriots, and
+the victim of bitter remorse. The mark of Cain was upon him.
+
+But before he went forth—while he yet stood a prisoner, cowering beneath
+his conscience before Owain Glendwr—that chieftain passed a doom upon him
+and his race:
+
+“I doom thee to live, because I know thou wilt pray for death. Thou
+shalt live on beyond the natural term of the life of man, the scorn of
+all good men. The very children shall point to thee with hissing tongue,
+and say, ‘There goes one who would have shed a brother’s blood!’ For I
+loved thee more than a brother, oh Rhys ap Gryfydd! Thou shalt live on
+to see all of thy house, except the weakling in arms, perish by the
+sword. Thy race shall be accursed. Each generation shall see their
+lands melt away like snow; yea their wealth shall vanish, though they may
+labour night and day to heap up gold. And when nine generations have
+passed from the face of the earth, thy blood shall no longer flow in the
+veins of any human being. In those days the last male of thy race shall
+avenge me. The son shall slay the father.”
+
+Such was the traditionary account of Owain Glendwr’s speech to his
+once-trusted friend. And it was declared that the doom had been
+fulfilled in all things; that live in as miserly a manner as they would,
+the Griffiths never were wealthy and prosperous—indeed that their worldly
+stock diminished without any visible cause.
+
+But the lapse of many years had almost deadened the wonder-inspiring
+power of the whole curse. It was only brought forth from the hoards of
+Memory when some untoward event happened to the Griffiths family; and in
+the eighth generation the faith in the prophecy was nearly destroyed, by
+the marriage of the Griffiths of that day, to a Miss Owen, who,
+unexpectedly, by the death of a brother, became an heiress—to no
+considerable amount, to be sure, but enough to make the prophecy appear
+reversed. The heiress and her husband removed from his small patrimonial
+estate in Merionethshire, to her heritage in Caernarvonshire, and for a
+time the prophecy lay dormant.
+
+If you go from Tremadoc to Criccaeth, you pass by the parochial church of
+Ynysynhanarn, situated in a boggy valley running from the mountains,
+which shoulder up to the Rivals, down to Cardigan Bay. This tract of
+land has every appearance of having been redeemed at no distant period of
+time from the sea, and has all the desolate rankness often attendant upon
+such marshes. But the valley beyond, similar in character, had yet more
+of gloom at the time of which I write. In the higher part there were
+large plantations of firs, set too closely to attain any size, and
+remaining stunted in height and scrubby in appearance. Indeed, many of
+the smaller and more weakly had died, and the bark had fallen down on the
+brown soil neglected and unnoticed. These trees had a ghastly
+appearance, with their white trunks, seen by the dim light which
+struggled through the thick boughs above. Nearer to the sea, the valley
+assumed a more open, though hardly a more cheerful character; it looked
+dark and overhung by sea-fog through the greater part of the year, and
+even a farm-house, which usually imparts something of cheerfulness to a
+landscape, failed to do so here. This valley formed the greater part of
+the estate to which Owen Griffiths became entitled by right of his wife.
+In the higher part of the valley was situated the family mansion, or
+rather dwelling-house, for “mansion” is too grand a word to apply to the
+clumsy, but substantially-built Bodowen. It was square and
+heavy-looking, with just that much pretension to ornament necessary to
+distinguish it from the mere farm-house.
+
+In this dwelling Mrs. Owen Griffiths bore her husband two sons—Llewellyn,
+the future Squire, and Robert, who was early destined for the Church.
+The only difference in their situation, up to the time when Robert was
+entered at Jesus College, was, that the elder was invariably indulged by
+all around him, while Robert was thwarted and indulged by turns; that
+Llewellyn never learned anything from the poor Welsh parson, who was
+nominally his private tutor; while occasionally Squire Griffiths made a
+great point of enforcing Robert’s diligence, telling him that, as he had
+his bread to earn, he must pay attention to his learning. There is no
+knowing how far the very irregular education he had received would have
+carried Robert through his college examinations; but, luckily for him in
+this respect, before such a trial of his learning came round, he heard of
+the death of his elder brother, after a short illness, brought on by a
+hard drinking-bout. Of course, Robert was summoned home, and it seemed
+quite as much of course, now that there was no necessity for him to “earn
+his bread by his learning,” that he should not return to Oxford. So the
+half-educated, but not unintelligent, young man continued at home, during
+the short remainder of his parent’s lifetime.
+
+His was not an uncommon character. In general he was mild, indolent, and
+easily managed; but once thoroughly roused, his passions were vehement
+and fearful. He seemed, indeed, almost afraid of himself, and in common
+hardly dared to give way to justifiable anger—so much did he dread losing
+his self-control. Had he been judiciously educated, he would, probably,
+have distinguished himself in those branches of literature which call for
+taste and imagination, rather than any exertion of reflection or
+judgment. As it was, his literary taste showed itself in making
+collections of Cambrian antiquities of every description, till his stock
+of Welsh MSS. would have excited the envy of Dr. Pugh himself, had he
+been alive at the time of which I write.
+
+There is one characteristic of Robert Griffiths which I have omitted to
+note, and which was peculiar among his class. He was no hard drinker;
+whether it was that his head was easily affected, or that his
+partially-refined taste led him to dislike intoxication and its attendant
+circumstances, I cannot say; but at five-and-twenty Robert Griffiths was
+habitually sober—a thing so rare in Llyn, that he was almost shunned as a
+churlish, unsociable being, and paused much of his time in solitude.
+
+About this time, he had to appear in some case that was tried at the
+Caernarvon assizes; and while there, was a guest at the house of his
+agent, a shrewd, sensible Welsh attorney, with one daughter, who had
+charms enough to captivate Robert Griffiths. Though he remained only a
+few days at her father’s house, they were sufficient to decide his
+affections, and short was the period allowed to elapse before he brought
+home a mistress to Bodowen. The new Mrs. Griffiths was a gentle,
+yielding person, full of love toward her husband, of whom, nevertheless,
+she stood something in awe, partly arising from the difference in their
+ages, partly from his devoting much time to studies of which she could
+understand nothing.
+
+She soon made him the father of a blooming little daughter, called
+Augharad after her mother. Then there came several uneventful years in
+the household of Bodowen; and when the old women had one and all declared
+that the cradle would not rock again, Mrs. Griffiths bore the son and
+heir. His birth was soon followed by his mother’s death: she had been
+ailing and low-spirited during her pregnancy, and she seemed to lack the
+buoyancy of body and mind requisite to bring her round after her time of
+trial. Her husband, who loved her all the more from having few other
+claims on his affections, was deeply grieved by her early death, and his
+only comforter was the sweet little boy whom she had left behind. That
+part of the squire’s character, which was so tender, and almost feminine,
+seemed called forth by the helpless situation of the little infant, who
+stretched out his arms to his father with the same earnest cooing that
+happier children make use of to their mother alone. Augharad was almost
+neglected, while the little Owen was king of the house; still next to his
+father, none tended him so lovingly as his sister. She was so accustomed
+to give way to him that it was no longer a hardship. By night and by day
+Owen was the constant companion of his father, and increasing years
+seemed only to confirm the custom. It was an unnatural life for the
+child, seeing no bright little faces peering into his own (for Augharad
+was, as I said before, five or six years older, and her face, poor
+motherless girl! was often anything but bright), hearing no din of clear
+ringing voices, but day after day sharing the otherwise solitary hours of
+his father, whether in the dim room, surrounded by wizard-like
+antiquities, or pattering his little feet to keep up with his “tada” in
+his mountain rambles or shooting excursions. When the pair came to some
+little foaming brook, where the stepping-stones were far and wide, the
+father carried his little boy across with the tenderest care; when the
+lad was weary, they rested, he cradled in his father’s arms, or the
+Squire would lift him up and carry him to his home again. The boy was
+indulged (for his father felt flattered by the desire) in his wish of
+sharing his meals and keeping the same hours. All this indulgence did
+not render Owen unamiable, but it made him wilful, and not a happy child.
+He had a thoughtful look, not common to the face of a young boy. He knew
+no games, no merry sports; his information was of an imaginative and
+speculative character. His father delighted to interest him in his own
+studies, without considering how far they were healthy for so young a
+mind.
+
+Of course Squire Griffiths was not unaware of the prophecy which was to
+be fulfilled in his generation. He would occasionally refer to it when
+among his friends, with sceptical levity; but in truth it lay nearer to
+his heart than he chose to acknowledge. His strong imagination rendered
+him peculiarly impressible on such subjects; while his judgment, seldom
+exercised or fortified by severe thought, could not prevent his
+continually recurring to it. He used to gaze on the half-sad countenance
+of the child, who sat looking up into his face with his large dark eyes,
+so fondly yet so inquiringly, till the old legend swelled around his
+heart, and became too painful for him not to require sympathy. Besides,
+the overpowering love he bore to the child seemed to demand fuller vent
+than tender words; it made him like, yet dread, to upbraid its object for
+the fearful contrast foretold. Still Squire Griffiths told the legend,
+in a half-jesting manner, to his little son, when they were roaming over
+the wild heaths in the autumn days, “the saddest of the year,” or while
+they sat in the oak-wainscoted room, surrounded by mysterious relics that
+gleamed strangely forth by the flickering fire-light. The legend was
+wrought into the boy’s mind, and he would crave, yet tremble, to hear it
+told over and over again, while the words were intermingled with caresses
+and questions as to his love. Occasionally his loving words and actions
+were cut short by his father’s light yet bitter speech—“Get thee away, my
+lad; thou knowest not what is to come of all this love.”
+
+When Augharad was seventeen, and Owen eleven or twelve, the rector of the
+parish in which Bodowen was situated, endeavoured to prevail on Squire
+Griffiths to send the boy to school. Now, this rector had many congenial
+tastes with his parishioner, and was his only intimate; and, by repeated
+arguments, he succeeded in convincing the Squire that the unnatural life
+Owen was leading was in every way injurious. Unwillingly was the father
+wrought to part from his son; but he did at length send him to the
+Grammar School at Bangor, then under the management of an excellent
+classic. Here Owen showed that he had more talents than the rector had
+given him credit for, when he affirmed that the lad had been completely
+stupefied by the life he led at Bodowen. He bade fair to do credit to
+the school in the peculiar branch of learning for which it was famous.
+But he was not popular among his schoolfellows. He was wayward, though,
+to a certain degree, generous and unselfish; he was reserved but gentle,
+except when the tremendous bursts of passion (similar in character to
+those of his father) forced their way.
+
+On his return from school one Christmas-time, when he had been a year or
+so at Bangor, he was stunned by hearing that the undervalued Augharad was
+about to be married to a gentleman of South Wales, residing near
+Aberystwith. Boys seldom appreciate their sisters; but Owen thought of
+the many slights with which he had requited the patient Augharad, and he
+gave way to bitter regrets, which, with a selfish want of control over
+his words, he kept expressing to his father, until the Squire was
+thoroughly hurt and chagrined at the repeated exclamations of “What shall
+we do when Augharad is gone?” “How dull we shall be when Augharad is
+married!” Owen’s holidays were prolonged a few weeks, in order that he
+might be present at the wedding; and when all the festivities were over,
+and the bride and bridegroom had left Bodowen, the boy and his father
+really felt how much they missed the quiet, loving Augharad. She had
+performed so many thoughtful, noiseless little offices, on which their
+daily comfort depended; and now she was gone, the household seemed to
+miss the spirit that peacefully kept it in order; the servants roamed
+about in search of commands and directions, the rooms had no longer the
+unobtrusive ordering of taste to make them cheerful, the very fires
+burned dim, and were always sinking down into dull heaps of gray ashes.
+Altogether Owen did not regret his return to Bangor, and this also the
+mortified parent perceived. Squire Griffiths was a selfish parent.
+
+Letters in those days were a rare occurrence. Owen usually received one
+during his half-yearly absences from home, and occasionally his father
+paid him a visit. This half-year the boy had no visit, nor even a
+letter, till very near the time of his leaving school, and then he was
+astounded by the intelligence that his father was married again.
+
+Then came one of his paroxysms of rage; the more disastrous in its
+effects upon his character because it could find no vent in action.
+Independently of slight to the memory of the first wife which children
+are so apt to fancy such an action implies, Owen had hitherto considered
+himself (and with justice) the first object of his father’s life. They
+had been so much to each other; and now a shapeless, but too real
+something had come between him and his father there for ever. He felt as
+if his permission should have been asked, as if he should have been
+consulted. Certainly he ought to have been told of the intended event.
+So the Squire felt, and hence his constrained letter which had so much
+increased the bitterness of Owen’s feelings.
+
+With all this anger, when Owen saw his stepmother, he thought he had
+never seen so beautiful a woman for her age; for she was no longer in the
+bloom of youth, being a widow when his father married her. Her manners,
+to the Welsh lad, who had seen little of female grace among the families
+of the few antiquarians with whom his father visited, were so fascinating
+that he watched her with a sort of breathless admiration. Her measured
+grace, her faultless movements, her tones of voice, sweet, till the ear
+was sated with their sweetness, made Owen less angry at his father’s
+marriage. Yet he felt, more than ever, that the cloud was between him
+and his father; that the hasty letter he had sent in answer to the
+announcement of his wedding was not forgotten, although no allusion was
+ever made to it. He was no longer his father’s confidant—hardly ever his
+father’s companion, for the newly-married wife was all in all to the
+Squire, and his son felt himself almost a cipher, where he had so long
+been everything. The lady herself had ever the softest consideration for
+her stepson; almost too obtrusive was the attention paid to his wishes,
+but still he fancied that the heart had no part in the winning advances.
+There was a watchful glance of the eye that Owen once or twice caught
+when she had imagined herself unobserved, and many other nameless little
+circumstances, that gave him a strong feeling of want of sincerity in his
+stepmother. Mrs. Owen brought with her into the family her little child
+by her first husband, a boy nearly three years old. He was one of those
+elfish, observant, mocking children, over whose feelings you seem to have
+no control: agile and mischievous, his little practical jokes, at first
+performed in ignorance of the pain he gave, but afterward proceeding to a
+malicious pleasure in suffering, really seemed to afford some ground to
+the superstitious notion of some of the common people that he was a fairy
+changeling.
+
+Years passed on; and as Owen grew older he became more observant. He
+saw, even in his occasional visits at home (for from school he had passed
+on to college), that a great change had taken place in the outward
+manifestations of his father’s character; and, by degrees, Owen traced
+this change to the influence of his stepmother; so slight, so
+imperceptible to the common observer, yet so resistless in its effects.
+Squire Griffiths caught up his wife’s humbly advanced opinions, and,
+unawares to himself, adopted them as his own, defying all argument and
+opposition. It was the same with her wishes; they met their fulfilment,
+from the extreme and delicate art with which she insinuated them into her
+husband’s mind, as his own. She sacrificed the show of authority for the
+power. At last, when Owen perceived some oppressive act in his father’s
+conduct toward his dependants, or some unaccountable thwarting of his own
+wishes, he fancied he saw his stepmother’s secret influence thus
+displayed, however much she might regret the injustice of his father’s
+actions in her conversations with him when they were alone. His father
+was fast losing his temperate habits, and frequent intoxication soon took
+its usual effect upon the temper. Yet even here was the spell of his
+wife upon him. Before her he placed a restraint upon his passion, yet
+she was perfectly aware of his irritable disposition, and directed it
+hither and thither with the same apparent ignorance of the tendency of
+her words.
+
+Meanwhile Owen’s situation became peculiarly mortifying to a youth whose
+early remembrances afforded such a contrast to his present state. As a
+child, he had been elevated to the consequence of a man before his years
+gave any mental check to the selfishness which such conduct was likely to
+engender; he could remember when his will was law to the servants and
+dependants, and his sympathy necessary to his father: now he was as a
+cipher in his father’s house; and the Squire, estranged in the first
+instance by a feeling of the injury he had done his son in not sooner
+acquainting him with his purposed marriage, seemed rather to avoid than
+to seek him as a companion, and too frequently showed the most utter
+indifference to the feelings and wishes which a young man of a high and
+independent spirit might be supposed to indulge.
+
+Perhaps Owen was not fully aware of the force of all these circumstances;
+for an actor in a family drama is seldom unimpassioned enough to be
+perfectly observant. But he became moody and soured; brooding over his
+unloved existence, and craving with a human heart after sympathy.
+
+This feeling took more full possession of his mind when he had left
+college, and returned home to lead an idle and purposeless life. As the
+heir, there was no worldly necessity for exertion: his father was too
+much of a Welsh squire to dream of the moral necessity, and he himself
+had not sufficient strength of mind to decide at once upon abandoning a
+place and mode of life which abounded in daily mortifications; yet to
+this course his judgment was slowly tending, when some circumstances
+occurred to detain him at Bodowen.
+
+It was not to be expected that harmony would long be preserved, even in
+appearance, between an unguarded and soured young man, such as Owen, and
+his wary stepmother, when he had once left college, and come, not as a
+visitor, but as the heir to his father’s house. Some cause of difference
+occurred, where the woman subdued her hidden anger sufficiently to become
+convinced that Owen was not entirely the dupe she had believed him to be.
+Henceforward there was no peace between them. Not in vulgar altercations
+did this show itself; but in moody reserve on Owen’s part, and in
+undisguised and contemptuous pursuance of her own plans by his
+stepmother. Bodowen was no longer a place where, if Owen was not loved
+or attended to, he could at least find peace, and care for himself: he
+was thwarted at every step, and in every wish, by his father’s desire,
+apparently, while the wife sat by with a smile of triumph on her
+beautiful lips.
+
+So Owen went forth at the early day dawn, sometimes roaming about on the
+shore or the upland, shooting or fishing, as the season might be, but
+oftener “stretched in indolent repose” on the short, sweet grass,
+indulging in gloomy and morbid reveries. He would fancy that this
+mortified state of existence was a dream, a horrible dream, from which he
+should awake and find himself again the sole object and darling of his
+father. And then he would start up and strive to shake off the incubus.
+There was the molten sunset of his childish memory; the gorgeous crimson
+piles of glory in the west, fading away into the cold calm light of the
+rising moon, while here and there a cloud floated across the western
+heaven, like a seraph’s wing, in its flaming beauty; the earth was the
+same as in his childhood’s days, full of gentle evening sounds, and the
+harmonies of twilight—the breeze came sweeping low over the heather and
+blue-bells by his side, and the turf was sending up its evening incense
+of perfume. But life, and heart, and hope were changed for ever since
+those bygone days!
+
+Or he would seat himself in a favourite niche of the rocks on Moel Gêst,
+hidden by a stunted growth of the whitty, or mountain-ash, from general
+observation, with a rich-tinted cushion of stone-crop for his feet, and a
+straight precipice of rock rising just above. Here would he sit for
+hours, gazing idly at the bay below with its back-ground of purple hills,
+and the little fishing-sail on its bosom, showing white in the sunbeam,
+and gliding on in such harmony with the quiet beauty of the glassy sea;
+or he would pull out an old school-volume, his companion for years, and
+in morbid accordance with the dark legend that still lurked in the
+recesses of his mind—a shape of gloom in those innermost haunts awaiting
+its time to come forth in distinct outline—would he turn to the old Greek
+dramas which treat of a family foredoomed by an avenging Fate. The worn
+page opened of itself at the play of the Œdipus Tyrannus, and Owen dwelt
+with the craving disease upon the prophecy so nearly resembling that
+which concerned himself. With his consciousness of neglect, there was a
+sort of self-flattery in the consequence which the legend gave him. He
+almost wondered how they durst, with slights and insults, thus provoke
+the Avenger.
+
+The days drifted onward. Often he would vehemently pursue some sylvan
+sport, till thought and feeling were lost in the violence of bodily
+exertion. Occasionally his evenings were spent at a small public-house,
+such as stood by the unfrequented wayside, where the welcome, hearty,
+though bought, seemed so strongly to contrast with the gloomy negligence
+of home—unsympathising home.
+
+One evening (Owen might be four or five-and-twenty), wearied with a day’s
+shooting on the Clenneny Moors, he passed by the open door of “The Goat”
+at Penmorfa. The light and the cheeriness within tempted him, poor
+self-exhausted man! as it has done many a one more wretched in worldly
+circumstances, to step in, and take his evening meal where at least his
+presence was of some consequence. It was a busy day in that little
+hostel. A flock of sheep, amounting to some hundreds, had arrived at
+Penmorfa, on their road to England, and thronged the space before the
+house. Inside was the shrewd, kind-hearted hostess, bustling to and fro,
+with merry greetings for every tired drover who was to pass the night in
+her house, while the sheep were penned in a field close by. Ever and
+anon, she kept attending to the second crowd of guests, who were
+celebrating a rural wedding in her house. It was busy work to Martha
+Thomas, yet her smile never flagged; and when Owen Griffiths had finished
+his evening meal she was there, ready with a hope that it had done him
+good, and was to his mind, and a word of intelligence that the
+wedding-folk were about to dance in the kitchen, and the harper was the
+famous Edward of Corwen.
+
+Owen, partly from good-natured compliance with his hostess’s implied
+wish, and partly from curiosity, lounged to the passage which led to the
+kitchen—not the every-day, working, cooking kitchen, which was behind,
+but a good-sized room, where the mistress sat, when her work was done,
+and where the country people were commonly entertained at such
+merry-makings as the present. The lintels of the door formed a frame for
+the animated picture which Owen saw within, as he leaned against the wall
+in the dark passage. The red light of the fire, with every now and then
+a falling piece of turf sending forth a fresh blaze, shone full upon four
+young men who were dancing a measure something like a Scotch reel,
+keeping admirable time in their rapid movements to the capital tune the
+harper was playing. They had their hats on when Owen first took his
+stand, but as they grew more and more animated they flung them away, and
+presently their shoes were kicked off with like disregard to the spot
+where they might happen to alight. Shouts of applause followed any
+remarkable exertion of agility, in which each seemed to try to excel his
+companions. At length, wearied and exhausted, they sat down, and the
+harper gradually changed to one of those wild, inspiring national airs
+for which he was so famous. The thronged audience sat earnest and
+breathless, and you might have heard a pin drop, except when some maiden
+passed hurriedly, with flaring candle and busy look, through to the real
+kitchen beyond. When he had finished his beautiful theme on “The March
+of the men of Harlech,” he changed the measure again to “Tri chant o’
+bunnan” (Three hundred pounds), and immediately a most unmusical-looking
+man began chanting “Pennillion,” or a sort of recitative stanzas, which
+were soon taken up by another, and this amusement lasted so long that
+Owen grew weary, and was thinking of retreating from his post by the
+door, when some little bustle was occasioned, on the opposite side of the
+room, by the entrance of a middle-aged man, and a young girl, apparently
+his daughter. The man advanced to the bench occupied by the seniors of
+the party, who welcomed him with the usual pretty Welsh greeting, “Pa sut
+mae dy galon?” (“How is thy heart?”) and drinking his health passed on to
+him the cup of excellent _cwrw_. The girl, evidently a village belle,
+was as warmly greeted by the young men, while the girls eyed her rather
+askance with a half-jealous look, which Owen set down to the score of her
+extreme prettiness. Like most Welsh women, she was of middle size as to
+height, but beautifully made, with the most perfect yet delicate
+roundness in every limb. Her little mob-cap was carefully adjusted to a
+face which was excessively pretty, though it never could be called
+handsome. It also was round, with the slightest tendency to the oval
+shape, richly coloured, though somewhat olive in complexion, with dimples
+in cheek and chin, and the most scarlet lips Owen had ever seen, that
+were too short to meet over the small pearly teeth. The nose was the
+most defective feature; but the eyes were splendid. They were so long,
+so lustrous, yet at times so very soft under their thick fringe of
+eyelash! The nut-brown hair was carefully braided beneath the border of
+delicate lace: it was evident the little village beauty knew how to make
+the most of all her attractions, for the gay colours which were displayed
+in her neckerchief were in complete harmony with the complexion.
+
+Owen was much attracted, while yet he was amused, by the evident coquetry
+the girl displayed, collecting around her a whole bevy of young fellows,
+for each of whom she seemed to have some gay speech, some attractive look
+or action. In a few minutes young Griffiths of Bodowen was at her side,
+brought thither by a variety of idle motives, and as her undivided
+attention was given to the Welsh heir, her admirers, one by one, dropped
+off, to seat themselves by some less fascinating but more attentive fair
+one. The more Owen conversed with the girl, the more he was taken; she
+had more wit and talent than he had fancied possible; a self-abandon and
+thoughtfulness, to boot, that seemed full of charms; and then her voice
+was so clear and sweet, and her actions so full of grace, that Owen was
+fascinated before he was well aware, and kept looking into her bright,
+blushing face, till her uplifted flashing eye fell beneath his earnest
+gaze.
+
+While it thus happened that they were silent—she from confusion at the
+unexpected warmth of his admiration, he from an unconsciousness of
+anything but the beautiful changes in her flexile countenance—the man
+whom Owen took for her father came up and addressed some observation to
+his daughter, from whence he glided into some commonplace though
+respectful remark to Owen, and at length engaging him in some slight,
+local conversation, he led the way to the account of a spot on the
+peninsula of Penthryn, where teal abounded, and concluded with begging
+Owen to allow him to show him the exact place, saying that whenever the
+young Squire felt so inclined, if he would honour him by a call at his
+house, he would take him across in his boat. While Owen listened, his
+attention was not so much absorbed as to be unaware that the little
+beauty at his side was refusing one or two who endeavoured to draw her
+from her place by invitations to dance. Flattered by his own
+construction of her refusals, he again directed all his attention to her,
+till she was called away by her father, who was leaving the scene of
+festivity. Before he left he reminded Owen of his promise, and added—
+
+“Perhaps, sir, you do not know me. My name is Ellis Pritchard, and I
+live at Ty Glas, on this side of Moel Gêst; anyone can point it out to
+you.”
+
+When the father and daughter had left, Owen slowly prepared for his ride
+home; but encountering the hostess, he could not resist asking a few
+questions relative to Ellis Pritchard and his pretty daughter. She
+answered shortly but respectfully, and then said, rather hesitatingly—
+
+“Master Griffiths, you know the triad, ‘Tri pheth tebyg y naill i’r
+llall, ysgnbwr heb yd, mail deg heb ddiawd, a merch deg heb ei geirda’
+(Three things are alike: a fine barn without corn, a fine cup without
+drink, a fine woman without her reputation).” She hastily quitted him,
+and Owen rode slowly to his unhappy home.
+
+Ellis Pritchard, half farmer and half fisherman, was shrewd, and keen,
+and worldly; yet he was good-natured, and sufficiently generous to have
+become rather a popular man among his equals. He had been struck with
+the young Squire’s attention to his pretty daughter, and was not
+insensible to the advantages to be derived from it. Nest would not be
+the first peasant girl, by any means, who had been transplanted to a
+Welsh manor-house as its mistress; and, accordingly, her father had
+shrewdly given the admiring young man some pretext for further
+opportunities of seeing her.
+
+As for Nest herself, she had somewhat of her father’s worldliness, and
+was fully alive to the superior station of her new admirer, and quite
+prepared to slight all her old sweethearts on his account. But then she
+had something more of feeling in her reckoning; she had not been
+insensible to the earnest yet comparatively refined homage which Owen
+paid her; she had noticed his expressive and occasionally handsome
+countenance with admiration, and was flattered by his so immediately
+singling her out from her companions. As to the hint which Martha Thomas
+had thrown out, it is enough to say that Nest was very giddy, and that
+she was motherless. She had high spirits and a great love of admiration,
+or, to use a softer term, she loved to please; men, women, and children,
+all, she delighted to gladden with her smile and voice. She coquetted,
+and flirted, and went to the extreme lengths of Welsh courtship, till the
+seniors of the village shook their heads, and cautioned their daughters
+against her acquaintance. If not absolutely guilty, she had too
+frequently been on the verge of guilt.
+
+Even at the time, Martha Thomas’s hint made but little impression on
+Owen, for his senses were otherwise occupied; but in a few days the
+recollection thereof had wholly died away, and one warm glorious summer’s
+day, he bent his steps toward Ellis Pritchard’s with a beating heart;
+for, except some very slight flirtations at Oxford, Owen had never been
+touched; his thoughts, his fancy, had been otherwise engaged.
+
+Ty Glas was built against one of the lower rocks of Moel Gêst, which,
+indeed, formed a side to the low, lengthy house. The materials of the
+cottage were the shingly stones which had fallen from above, plastered
+rudely together, with deep recesses for the small oblong windows.
+Altogether, the exterior was much ruder than Owen had expected; but
+inside there seemed no lack of comforts. The house was divided into two
+apartments, one large, roomy, and dark, into which Owen entered
+immediately; and before the blushing Nest came from the inner chamber
+(for she had seen the young Squire coming, and hastily gone to make some
+alteration in her dress), he had had time to look around him, and note
+the various little particulars of the room. Beneath the window (which
+commanded a magnificent view) was an oaken dresser, replete with drawers
+and cupboards, and brightly polished to a rich dark colour. In the
+farther part of the room Owen could at first distinguish little, entering
+as he did from the glaring sunlight, but he soon saw that there were two
+oaken beds, closed up after the manner of the Welsh: in fact, the
+domitories of Ellis Pritchard and the man who served under him, both on
+sea and on land. There was the large wheel used for spinning wool, left
+standing on the middle of the floor, as if in use only a few minutes
+before; and around the ample chimney hung flitches of bacon, dried
+kids’-flesh, and fish, that was in process of smoking for winter’s store.
+
+Before Nest had shyly dared to enter, her father, who had been mending
+his nets down below, and seen Owen winding up to the house, came in and
+gave him a hearty yet respectful welcome; and then Nest, downcast and
+blushing, full of the consciousness which her father’s advice and
+conversation had not failed to inspire, ventured to join them. To Owen’s
+mind this reserve and shyness gave her new charms.
+
+It was too bright, too hot, too anything to think of going to shoot teal
+till later in the day, and Owen was delighted to accept a hesitating
+invitation to share the noonday meal. Some ewe-milk cheese, very hard
+and dry, oat-cake, slips of the dried kids’-flesh broiled, after having
+been previously soaked in water for a few minutes, delicious butter and
+fresh butter-milk, with a liquor called “diod griafol” (made from the
+berries of the _Sorbus aucuparia_, infused in water and then fermented),
+composed the frugal repast; but there was something so clean and neat,
+and withal such a true welcome, that Owen had seldom enjoyed a meal so
+much. Indeed, at that time of day the Welsh squires differed from the
+farmers more in the plenty and rough abundance of their manner of living
+than in the refinement of style of their table.
+
+At the present day, down in Llyn, the Welsh gentry are not a wit behind
+their Saxon equals in the expensive elegances of life; but then (when
+there was but one pewter-service in all Northumberland) there was nothing
+in Ellis Pritchard’s mode of living that grated on the young Squire’s
+sense of refinement.
+
+Little was said by that young pair of wooers during the meal; the father
+had all the conversation to himself, apparently heedless of the ardent
+looks and inattentive mien of his guest. As Owen became more serious in
+his feelings, he grew more timid in their expression, and at night, when
+they returned from their shooting-excursion, the caress he gave Nest was
+almost as bashfully offered as received.
+
+This was but the first of a series of days devoted to Nest in reality,
+though at first he thought some little disguise of his object was
+necessary. The past, the future, was all forgotten in those happy days
+of love.
+
+And every worldly plan, every womanly wile was put in practice by Ellis
+Pritchard and his daughter, to render his visits agreeable and alluring.
+Indeed, the very circumstance of his being welcome was enough to attract
+the poor young man, to whom the feeling so produced was new and full of
+charms. He left a home where the certainty of being thwarted made him
+chary in expressing his wishes; where no tones of love ever fell on his
+ear, save those addressed to others; where his presence or absence was a
+matter of utter indifference; and when he entered Ty Glas, all, down to
+the little cur which, with clamorous barkings, claimed a part of his
+attention, seemed to rejoice. His account of his day’s employment found
+a willing listener in Ellis; and when he passed on to Nest, busy at her
+wheel or at her churn, the deepened colour, the conscious eye, and the
+gradual yielding of herself up to his lover-like caress, had worlds of
+charms. Ellis Pritchard was a tenant on the Bodowen estate, and
+therefore had reasons in plenty for wishing to keep the young Squire’s
+visits secret; and Owen, unwilling to disturb the sunny calm of these
+halcyon days by any storm at home, was ready to use all the artifice
+which Ellis suggested as to the mode of his calls at Ty Glas. Nor was he
+unaware of the probable, nay, the hoped-for termination of these repeated
+days of happiness. He was quite conscious that the father wished for
+nothing better than the marriage of his daughter to the heir of Bodowen;
+and when Nest had hidden her face in his neck, which was encircled by her
+clasping arms, and murmured into his ear her acknowledgment of love, he
+felt only too desirous of finding some one to love him for ever. Though
+not highly principled, he would not have tried to obtain Nest on other
+terms save those of marriage: he did so pine after enduring love, and
+fancied he should have bound her heart for evermore to his, when they had
+taken the solemn oaths of matrimony.
+
+There was no great difficulty attending a secret marriage at such a place
+and at such a time. One gusty autumn day, Ellis ferried them round
+Penthryn to Llandutrwyn, and there saw his little Nest become future Lady
+of Bodowen.
+
+How often do we see giddy, coquetting, restless girls become sobered by
+marriage? A great object in life is decided; one on which their thoughts
+have been running in all their vagaries, and they seem to verify the
+beautiful fable of Undine. A new soul beams out in the gentleness and
+repose of their future lives. An indescribable softness and tenderness
+takes place of the wearying vanity of their former endeavours to attract
+admiration. Something of this sort took place in Nest Pritchard. If at
+first she had been anxious to attract the young Squire of Bodowen, long
+before her marriage this feeling had merged into a truer love than she
+had ever felt before; and now that he was her own, her husband, her whole
+soul was bent toward making him amends, as far as in her lay, for the
+misery which, with a woman’s tact, she saw that he had to endure at his
+home. Her greetings were abounding in delicately-expressed love; her
+study of his tastes unwearying, in the arrangement of her dress, her
+time, her very thoughts.
+
+No wonder that he looked back on his wedding-day with a thankfulness
+which is seldom the result of unequal marriages. No wonder that his
+heart beat aloud as formerly when he wound up the little path to Ty Glas,
+and saw—keen though the winter’s wind might be—that Nest was standing out
+at the door to watch for his dimly-seen approach, while the candle flared
+in the little window as a beacon to guide him aright.
+
+The angry words and unkind actions of home fell deadened on his heart; he
+thought of the love that was surely his, and of the new promise of love
+that a short time would bring forth, and he could almost have smiled at
+the impotent efforts to disturb his peace.
+
+A few more months, and the young father was greeted by a feeble little
+cry, when he hastily entered Ty Glas, one morning early, in consequence
+of a summons conveyed mysteriously to Bodowen; and the pale mother,
+smiling, and feebly holding up her babe to its father’s kiss, seemed to
+him even more lovely than the bright gay Nest who had won his heart at
+the little inn of Penmorfa.
+
+But the curse was at work! The fulfilment of the prophecy was nigh at
+hand!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It was the autumn after the birth of their boy; it had been a glorious
+summer, with bright, hot, sunny weather; and now the year was fading away
+as seasonably into mellow days, with mornings of silver mists and clear
+frosty nights. The blooming look of the time of flowers, was past and
+gone; but instead there were even richer tints abroad in the sun-coloured
+leaves, the lichens, the golden blossomed furze; if it was the time of
+fading, there was a glory in the decay.
+
+Nest, in her loving anxiety to surround her dwelling with every charm for
+her husband’s sake, had turned gardener, and the little corners of the
+rude court before the house were filled with many a delicate
+mountain-flower, transplanted more for its beauty than its rarity. The
+sweetbrier bush may even yet be seen, old and gray, which she and Owen
+planted a green slipling beneath the window of her little chamber. In
+those moments Owen forgot all besides the present; all the cares and
+griefs he had known in the past, and all that might await him of woe and
+death in the future. The boy, too, was as lovely a child as the fondest
+parent was ever blessed with; and crowed with delight, and clapped his
+little hands, as his mother held him in her arms at the cottage-door to
+watch his father’s ascent up the rough path that led to Ty Glas, one
+bright autumnal morning; and when the three entered the house together,
+it was difficult to say which was the happiest. Owen carried his boy,
+and tossed and played with him, while Nest sought out some little article
+of work, and seated herself on the dresser beneath the window, where now
+busily plying the needle, and then again looking at her husband, she
+eagerly told him the little pieces of domestic intelligence, the winning
+ways of the child, the result of yesterday’s fishing, and such of the
+gossip of Penmorfa as came to the ears of the now retired Nest. She
+noticed that, when she mentioned any little circumstance which bore the
+slightest reference to Bodowen, her husband appeared chafed and uneasy,
+and at last avoided anything that might in the least remind him of home.
+In truth, he had been suffering much of late from the irritability of his
+father, shown in trifles to be sure, but not the less galling on that
+account.
+
+While they were thus talking, and caressing each other and the child, a
+shadow darkened the room, and before they could catch a glimpse of the
+object that had occasioned it, it vanished, and Squire Griffiths lifted
+the door-latch and stood before them. He stood and looked—first on his
+son, so different, in his buoyant expression of content and enjoyment,
+with his noble child in his arms, like a proud and happy father, as he
+was, from the depressed, moody young man he too often appeared at
+Bodowen; then on Nest—poor, trembling, sickened Nest!—who dropped her
+work, but yet durst not stir from her seat, on the dresser, while she
+looked to her husband as if for protection from his father.
+
+The Squire was silent, as he glared from one to the other, his features
+white with restrained passion. When he spoke, his words came most
+distinct in their forced composure. It was to his son he addressed
+himself:
+
+“That woman! who is she?”
+
+Owen hesitated one moment, and then replied, in a steady, yet quiet
+voice:
+
+“Father, that woman is my wife.”
+
+He would have added some apology for the long concealment of his
+marriage; have appealed to his father’s forgiveness; but the foam flew
+from Squire Owen’s lips as he burst forth with invective against Nest:—
+
+“You have married her! It is as they told me! Married Nest Pritchard yr
+buten! And you stand there as if you had not disgraced yourself for ever
+and ever with your accursed wiving! And the fair harlot sits there, in
+her mocking modesty, practising the mimming airs that will become her
+state as future Lady of Bodowen. But I will move heaven and earth before
+that false woman darken the doors of my father’s house as mistress!”
+
+All this was said with such rapidity that Owen had no time for the words
+that thronged to his lips. “Father!” (he burst forth at length) “Father,
+whosoever told you that Nest Pritchard was a harlot told you a lie as
+false as hell! Ay! a lie as false as hell!” he added, in a voice of
+thunder, while he advanced a step or two nearer to the Squire. And then,
+in a lower tone, he said—
+
+“She is as pure as your own wife; nay, God help me! as the dear, precious
+mother who brought me forth, and then left me—with no refuge in a
+mother’s heart—to struggle on through life alone. I tell you Nest is as
+pure as that dear, dead mother!”
+
+“Fool—poor fool!”
+
+At this moment the child—the little Owen—who had kept gazing from one
+angry countenance to the other, and with earnest look, trying to
+understand what had brought the fierce glare into the face where till now
+he had read nothing but love, in some way attracted the Squire’s
+attention, and increased his wrath.
+
+“Yes,” he continued, “poor, weak fool that you are, hugging the child of
+another as if it were your own offspring!” Owen involuntarily caressed
+the affrighted child, and half smiled at the implication of his father’s
+words. This the Squire perceived, and raising his voice to a scream of
+rage, he went on:
+
+“I bid you, if you call yourself my son, to cast away that miserable,
+shameless woman’s offspring; cast it away this instant—this instant!”
+
+In this ungovernable rage, seeing that Owen was far from complying with
+his command, he snatched the poor infant from the loving arms that held
+it, and throwing it to his mother, left the house inarticulate with fury.
+
+Nest—who had been pale and still as marble during this terrible dialogue,
+looking on and listening as if fascinated by the words that smote her
+heart—opened her arms to receive and cherish her precious babe; but the
+boy was not destined to reach the white refuge of her breast. The
+furious action of the Squire had been almost without aim, and the infant
+fell against the sharp edge of the dresser down on to the stone floor.
+
+Owen sprang up to take the child, but he lay so still, so motionless,
+that the awe of death came over the father, and he stooped down to gaze
+more closely. At that moment, the upturned, filmy eyes rolled
+convulsively—a spasm passed along the body—and the lips, yet warm with
+kissing, quivered into everlasting rest.
+
+A word from her husband told Nest all. She slid down from her seat, and
+lay by her little son as corpse-like as he, unheeding all the agonizing
+endearments and passionate adjurations of her husband. And that poor,
+desolate husband and father! Scarce one little quarter of an hour, and
+he had been so blessed in his consciousness of love! the bright promise
+of many years on his infant’s face, and the new, fresh soul beaming forth
+in its awakened intelligence. And there it was; the little clay image,
+that would never more gladden up at the sight of him, nor stretch forth
+to meet his embrace; whose inarticulate, yet most eloquent cooings might
+haunt him in his dreams, but would never more be heard in waking life
+again! And by the dead babe, almost as utterly insensate, the poor
+mother had fallen in a merciful faint—the slandered, heart-pierced Nest!
+Owen struggled against the sickness that came over him, and busied
+himself in vain attempts at her restoration.
+
+It was now near noon-day, and Ellis Pritchard came home, little dreaming
+of the sight that awaited him; but though stunned, he was able to take
+more effectual measures for his poor daughter’s recovery than Owen had
+done.
+
+By-and-by she showed symptoms of returning sense, and was placed in her
+own little bed in a darkened room, where, without ever waking to complete
+consciousness, she fell asleep. Then it was that her husband, suffocated
+by pressure of miserable thought, gently drew his hand from her tightened
+clasp, and printing one long soft kiss on her white waxen forehead,
+hastily stole out of the room, and out of the house.
+
+Near the base of Moel Gêst—it might be a quarter of a mile from Ty
+Glas—was a little neglected solitary copse, wild and tangled with the
+trailing branches of the dog-rose and the tendrils of the white bryony.
+Toward the middle of this thicket a deep crystal pool—a clear mirror for
+the blue heavens above—and round the margin floated the broad green
+leaves of the water-lily, and when the regal sun shone down in his
+noonday glory the flowers arose from their cool depths to welcome and
+greet him. The copse was musical with many sounds; the warbling of birds
+rejoicing in its shades, the ceaseless hum of the insects that hovered
+over the pool, the chime of the distant waterfall, the occasional
+bleating of the sheep from the mountaintop, were all blended into the
+delicious harmony of nature.
+
+It had been one of Owen’s favourite resorts when he had been a lonely
+wanderer—a pilgrim in search of love in the years gone by. And thither
+he went, as if by instinct, when he left Ty Glas; quelling the uprising
+agony till he should reach that little solitary spot.
+
+It was the time of day when a change in the aspect of the weather so
+frequently takes place; and the little pool was no longer the reflection
+of a blue and sunny sky: it sent back the dark and slaty clouds above,
+and, every now and then, a rough gust shook the painted autumn leaves
+from their branches, and all other music was lost in the sound of the
+wild winds piping down from the moorlands, which lay up and beyond the
+clefts in the mountain-side. Presently the rain came on and beat down in
+torrents.
+
+But Owen heeded it not. He sat on the dank ground, his face buried in
+his hands, and his whole strength, physical and mental, employed in
+quelling the rush of blood, which rose and boiled and gurgled in his
+brain as if it would madden him.
+
+The phantom of his dead child rose ever before him, and seemed to cry
+aloud for vengeance. And when the poor young man thought upon the victim
+whom he required in his wild longing for revenge, he shuddered, for it
+was his father!
+
+Again and again he tried not to think; but still the circle of thought
+came round, eddying through his brain. At length he mastered his
+passions, and they were calm; then he forced himself to arrange some plan
+for the future.
+
+He had not, in the passionate hurry of the moment, seen that his father
+had left the cottage before he was aware of the fatal accident that
+befell the child. Owen thought he had seen all; and once he planned to
+go to the Squire and tell him of the anguish of heart he had wrought, and
+awe him, as it were, by the dignity of grief. But then again he durst
+not—he distrusted his self-control—the old prophecy rose up in its
+horror—he dreaded his doom.
+
+At last he determined to leave his father for ever; to take Nest to some
+distant country where she might forget her firstborn, and where he
+himself might gain a livelihood by his own exertions.
+
+But when he tried to descend to the various little arrangements which
+were involved in the execution of this plan, he remembered that all his
+money (and in this respect Squire Griffiths was no niggard) was locked up
+in his escritoire at Bodowen. In vain he tried to do away with this
+matter-of-fact difficulty; go to Bodowen he must: and his only hope—nay
+his determination—was to avoid his father.
+
+He rose and took a by-path to Bodowen. The house looked even more gloomy
+and desolate than usual in the heavy down-pouring rain, yet Owen gazed on
+it with something of regret—for sorrowful as his days in it had been, he
+was about to leave it for many many years, if not for ever. He entered
+by a side door opening into a passage that led to his own room, where he
+kept his books, his guns, his fishing-tackle, his writing materials, et
+cetera.
+
+Here he hurriedly began to select the few articles he intended to take;
+for, besides the dread of interruption, he was feverishly anxious to
+travel far that very night, if only Nest was capable of performing the
+journey. As he was thus employed, he tried to conjecture what his
+father’s feelings would be on finding that his once-loved son was gone
+away for ever. Would he then awaken to regret for the conduct which had
+driven him from home, and bitterly think on the loving and caressing boy
+who haunted his footsteps in former days? Or, alas! would he only feel
+that an obstacle to his daily happiness—to his contentment with his wife,
+and his strange, doting affection for the child—was taken away? Would
+they make merry over the heir’s departure? Then he thought of Nest—the
+young childless mother, whose heart had not yet realized her fulness of
+desolation. Poor Nest! so loving as she was, so devoted to her child—how
+should he console her? He pictured her away in a strange land, pining
+for her native mountains, and refusing to be comforted because her child
+was not.
+
+Even this thought of the home-sickness that might possibly beset Nest
+hardly made him hesitate in his determination; so strongly had the idea
+taken possession of him that only by putting miles and leagues between
+him and his father could he avert the doom which seemed blending itself
+with the very purposes of his life as long as he stayed in proximity with
+the slayer of his child.
+
+He had now nearly completed his hasty work of preparation, and was full
+of tender thoughts of his wife, when the door opened, and the elfish
+Robert peered in, in search of some of his brother’s possessions. On
+seeing Owen he hesitated, but then came boldly forward, and laid his hand
+on Owen’s arm, saying,
+
+“Nesta yr buten! How is Nest yr buten?”
+
+He looked maliciously into Owen’s face to mark the effect of his words,
+but was terrified at the expression he read there. He started off and
+ran to the door, while Owen tried to check himself, saying continually,
+“He is but a child. He does not understand the meaning of what he says.
+He is but a child!” Still Robert, now in fancied security, kept calling
+out his insulting words, and Owen’s hand was on his gun, grasping it as
+if to restrain his rising fury.
+
+But when Robert passed on daringly to mocking words relating to the poor
+dead child, Owen could bear it no longer; and before the boy was well
+aware, Owen was fiercely holding him in an iron clasp with one hand,
+while he struck him hard with the other.
+
+In a minute he checked himself. He paused, relaxed his grasp, and, to
+his horror, he saw Robert sink to the ground; in fact, the lad was
+half-stunned, half-frightened, and thought it best to assume
+insensibility.
+
+Owen—miserable Owen—seeing him lie there prostrate, was bitterly
+repentant, and would have dragged him to the carved settle, and done all
+he could to restore him to his senses, but at this instant the Squire
+came in.
+
+Probably, when the household at Bodowen rose that morning, there was but
+one among them ignorant of the heir’s relation to Nest Pritchard and her
+child; for secret as he tried to make his visits to Ty Glas, they had
+been too frequent not to be noticed, and Nest’s altered conduct—no longer
+frequenting dances and merry-makings—was a strongly corroborative
+circumstance. But Mrs. Griffiths’ influence reigned paramount, if
+unacknowledged, at Bodowen, and till she sanctioned the disclosure, none
+would dare to tell the Squire.
+
+Now, however, the time drew near when it suited her to make her husband
+aware of the connection his son had formed; so, with many tears, and much
+seeming reluctance, she broke the intelligence to him—taking good care,
+at the same time, to inform him of the light character Nest had borne.
+Nor did she confine this evil reputation to her conduct before her
+marriage, but insinuated that even to this day she was a “woman of the
+grove and brake”—for centuries the Welsh term of opprobrium for the
+loosest female characters.
+
+Squire Griffiths easily tracked Owen to Ty Glas; and without any aim but
+the gratification of his furious anger, followed him to upbraid as we
+have seen. But he left the cottage even more enraged against his son
+than he had entered it, and returned home to hear the evil suggestions of
+the stepmother. He had heard a slight scuffle in which he caught the
+tones of Robert’s voice, as he passed along the hall, and an instant
+afterwards he saw the apparently lifeless body of his little favourite
+dragged along by the culprit Owen—the marks of strong passion yet visible
+on his face. Not loud, but bitter and deep were the evil words which the
+father bestowed on the son; and as Owen stood proudly and sullenly
+silent, disdaining all exculpation of himself in the presence of one who
+had wrought him so much graver—so fatal an injury—Robert’s mother entered
+the room. At sight of her natural emotion the wrath of the Squire was
+redoubled, and his wild suspicions that this violence of Owen’s to Robert
+was a premeditated act appeared like the proven truth through the mists
+of rage. He summoned domestics as if to guard his own and his wife’s
+life from the attempts of his son; and the servants stood wondering
+around—now gazing at Mrs. Griffiths, alternately scolding and sobbing,
+while she tried to restore the lad from his really bruised and
+half-unconscious state; now at the fierce and angry Squire; and now at
+the sad and silent Owen. And he—he was hardly aware of their looks of
+wonder and terror; his father’s words fell on a deadened ear; for before
+his eyes there rose a pale dead babe, and in that lady’s violent sounds
+of grief he heard the wailing of a more sad, more hopeless mother. For
+by this time the lad Robert had opened his eyes, and though evidently
+suffering a good deal from the effects of Owen’s blows, was fully
+conscious of all that was passing around him.
+
+Had Owen been left to his own nature, his heart would have worked itself
+to doubly love the boy whom he had injured; but he was stubborn from
+injustice, and hardened by suffering. He refused to vindicate himself;
+he made no effort to resist the imprisonment the Squire had decreed,
+until a surgeon’s opinion of the real extent of Robert’s injuries was
+made known. It was not until the door was locked and barred, as if upon
+some wild and furious beast, that the recollection of poor Nest, without
+his comforting presence, came into his mind. Oh! thought he, how she
+would be wearying, pining for his tender sympathy; if, indeed, she had
+recovered the shock of mind sufficiently to be sensible of consolation!
+What would she think of his absence? Could she imagine he believed his
+father’s words, and had left her, in this her sore trouble and
+bereavement? The thought madened him, and he looked around for some mode
+of escape.
+
+He had been confined in a small unfurnished room on the first floor,
+wainscoted, and carved all round, with a massy door, calculated to resist
+the attempts of a dozen strong men, even had he afterward been able to
+escape from the house unseen, unheard. The window was placed (as is
+common in old Welsh houses) over the fire-place; with branching chimneys
+on either hand, forming a sort of projection on the outside. By this
+outlet his escape was easy, even had he been less determined and
+desperate than he was. And when he had descended, with a little care, a
+little winding, he might elude all observation and pursue his original
+intention of going to Ty Glas.
+
+The storm had abated, and watery sunbeams were gilding the bay, as Owen
+descended from the window, and, stealing along in the broad afternoon
+shadows, made his way to the little plateau of green turf in the garden
+at the top of a steep precipitous rock, down the abrupt face of which he
+had often dropped, by means of a well-secured rope, into the small
+sailing-boat (his father’s present, alas! in days gone by) which lay
+moored in the deep sea-water below. He had always kept his boat there,
+because it was the nearest available spot to the house; but before he
+could reach the place—unless, indeed, he crossed a broad sun-lighted
+piece of ground in full view of the windows on that side of the house,
+and without the shadow of a single sheltering tree or shrub—he had to
+skirt round a rude semicircle of underwood, which would have been
+considered as a shrubbery had any one taken pains with it. Step by step
+he stealthily moved along—hearing voices now, again seeing his father and
+stepmother in no distant walk, the Squire evidently caressing and
+consoling his wife, who seemed to be urging some point with great
+vehemence, again forced to crouch down to avoid being seen by the cook,
+returning from the rude kitchen-garden with a handful of herbs. This was
+the way the doomed heir of Bodowen left his ancestral house for ever, and
+hoped to leave behind him his doom. At length he reached the plateau—he
+breathed more freely. He stooped to discover the hidden coil of rope,
+kept safe and dry in a hole under a great round flat piece of rock: his
+head was bent down; he did not see his father approach, nor did he hear
+his footstep for the rush of blood to his head in the stooping effort of
+lifting the stone; the Squire had grappled with him before he rose up
+again, before he fully knew whose hands detained him, now, when his
+liberty of person and action seemed secure. He made a vigorous struggle
+to free himself; he wrestled with his father for a moment—he pushed him
+hard, and drove him on to the great displaced stone, all unsteady in its
+balance.
+
+Down went the Squire, down into the deep waters below—down after him went
+Owen, half consciously, half unconsciously, partly compelled by the
+sudden cessation of any opposing body, partly from a vehement
+irrepressible impulse to rescue his father. But he had instinctively
+chosen a safer place in the deep seawater pool than that into which his
+push had sent his father. The Squire had hit his head with much violence
+against the side of the boat, in his fall; it is, indeed, doubtful
+whether he was not killed before ever he sank into the sea. But Owen
+knew nothing save that the awful doom seemed even now present. He
+plunged down, he dived below the water in search of the body which had
+none of the elasticity of life to buoy it up; he saw his father in those
+depths, he clutched at him, he brought him up and cast him, a dead
+weight, into the boat, and exhausted by the effort, he had begun himself
+to sink again before he instinctively strove to rise and climb into the
+rocking boat. There lay his father, with a deep dent in the side of his
+head where the skull had been fractured by his fall; his face blackened
+by the arrested course of the blood. Owen felt his pulse, his heart—all
+was still. He called him by his name.
+
+“Father, father!” he cried, “come back! come back! You never knew how I
+loved you! how I could love you still—if—Oh God!”
+
+And the thought of his little child rose before him. “Yes, father,” he
+cried afresh, “you never knew how he fell—how he died! Oh, if I had but
+had patience to tell you! If you would but have borne with me and
+listened! And now it is over! Oh father! father!”
+
+Whether she had heard this wild wailing voice, or whether it was only
+that she missed her husband and wanted him for some little every-day
+question, or, as was perhaps more likely, she had discovered Owen’s
+escape, and come to inform her husband of it, I do not know, but on the
+rock, right above his head, as it seemed, Owen heard his stepmother
+calling her husband.
+
+He was silent, and softly pushed the boat right under the rock till the
+sides grated against the stones, and the overhanging branches concealed
+him and it from all not on a level with the water. Wet as he was, he lay
+down by his dead father the better to conceal himself; and, somehow, the
+action recalled those early days of childhood—the first in the Squire’s
+widowhood—when Owen had shared his father’s bed, and used to waken him in
+the morning to hear one of the old Welsh legends. How long he lay
+thus—body chilled, and brain hard-working through the heavy pressure of a
+reality as terrible as a nightmare—he never knew; but at length he roused
+himself up to think of Nest.
+
+Drawing out a great sail, he covered up the body of his father with it
+where he lay in the bottom of the boat. Then with his numbed hands he
+took the oars, and pulled out into the more open sea toward Criccaeth.
+He skirted along the coast till he found a shadowed cleft in the dark
+rocks; to that point he rowed, and anchored his boat close in land. Then
+he mounted, staggering, half longing to fall into the dark waters and be
+at rest—half instinctively finding out the surest foot-rests on that
+precipitous face of rock, till he was high up, safe landed on the turfy
+summit. He ran off, as if pursued, toward Penmorfa; he ran with maddened
+energy. Suddenly he paused, turned, ran again with the same speed, and
+threw himself prone on the summit, looking down into his boat with
+straining eyes to see if there had been any movement of life—any
+displacement of a fold of sail-cloth. It was all quiet deep down below,
+but as he gazed the shifting light gave the appearance of a slight
+movement. Owen ran to a lower part of the rock, stripped, plunged into
+the water, and swam to the boat. When there, all was still—awfully
+still! For a minute or two, he dared not lift up the cloth. Then
+reflecting that the same terror might beset him again—of leaving his
+father unaided while yet a spark of life lingered—he removed the
+shrouding cover. The eyes looked into his with a dead stare! He closed
+the lids and bound up the jaw. Again he looked. This time he raised
+himself out of the water and kissed the brow.
+
+“It was my doom, father! It would have been better if I had died at my
+birth!”
+
+Daylight was fading away. Precious daylight! He swam back, dressed, and
+set off afresh for Penmorfa. When he opened the door of Ty Glas, Ellis
+Pritchard looked at him reproachfully, from his seat in the
+darkly-shadowed chimney-corner.
+
+“You’re come at last,” said he. “One of our kind (_i.e._, station) would
+not have left his wife to mourn by herself over her dead child; nor would
+one of our kind have let his father kill his own true son. I’ve a good
+mind to take her from you for ever.”
+
+“I did not tell him,” cried Nest, looking piteously at her husband; “he
+made me tell him part, and guessed the rest.”
+
+She was nursing her babe on her knee as if it was alive. Owen stood
+before Ellis Pritchard.
+
+“Be silent,” said he, quietly. “Neither words nor deeds but what are
+decreed can come to pass. I was set to do my work, this hundred years
+and more. The time waited for me, and the man waited for me. I have
+done what was foretold of me for generations!”
+
+Ellis Pritchard knew the old tale of the prophecy, and believed in it in
+a dull, dead kind of way, but somehow never thought it would come to pass
+in his time. Now, however, he understood it all in a moment, though he
+mistook Owen’s nature so much as to believe that the deed was
+intentionally done, out of revenge for the death of his boy; and viewing
+it in this light, Ellis thought it little more than a just punishment for
+the cause of all the wild despairing sorrow he had seen his only child
+suffer during the hours of this long afternoon. But he knew the law
+would not so regard it. Even the lax Welsh law of those days could not
+fail to examine into the death of a man of Squire Griffith’s standing.
+So the acute Ellis thought how he could conceal the culprit for a time.
+
+“Come,” said he; “don’t look so scared! It was your doom, not your
+fault;” and he laid a hand on Owen’s shoulder.
+
+“You’re wet,” said he, suddenly. “Where have you been? Nest, your
+husband is dripping, drookit wet. That’s what makes him look so blue and
+wan.”
+
+Nest softly laid her baby in its cradle; she was half stupefied with
+crying, and had not understood to what Owen alluded, when he spoke of his
+doom being fulfilled, if indeed she had heard the words.
+
+Her touch thawed Owen’s miserable heart.
+
+“Oh, Nest!” said he, clasping her in his arms; “do you love me still—can
+you love me, my own darling?”
+
+“Why not?” asked she, her eyes filling with tears. “I only love you more
+than ever, for you were my poor baby’s father!”
+
+“But, Nest—Oh, tell her, Ellis! _you_ know.”
+
+“No need, no need!” said Ellis. “She’s had enough to think on. Bustle,
+my girl, and get out my Sunday clothes.”
+
+“I don’t understand,” said Nest, putting her hand up to her head. “What
+is to tell? and why are you so wet? God help me for a poor crazed thing,
+for I cannot guess at the meaning of your words and your strange looks!
+I only know my baby is dead!” and she burst into tears.
+
+“Come, Nest! go and fetch him a change, quick!” and as she meekly obeyed,
+too languid to strive further to understand, Ellis said rapidly to Owen,
+in a low, hurried voice—
+
+“Are you meaning that the Squire is dead? Speak low, lest she hear.
+Well, well, no need to talk about how he died. It was sudden, I see; and
+we must all of us die; and he’ll have to be buried. It’s well the night
+is near. And I should not wonder now if you’d like to travel for a bit;
+it would do Nest a power of good; and then—there’s many a one goes out of
+his own house and never comes back again; and—I trust he’s not lying in
+his own house—and there’s a stir for a bit, and a search, and a
+wonder—and, by-and-by, the heir just steps in, as quiet as can be. And
+that’s what you’ll do, and bring Nest to Bodowen after all. Nay, child,
+better stockings nor those; find the blue woollens I bought at Llanrwst
+fair. Only don’t lose heart. It’s done now and can’t be helped. It was
+the piece of work set you to do from the days of the Tudors, they say.
+And he deserved it. Look in yon cradle. So tell us where he is, and
+I’ll take heart of grace and see what can be done for him.”
+
+But Owen sat wet and haggard, looking into the peat fire as if for
+visions of the past, and never heeding a word Ellis said. Nor did he
+move when Nest brought the armful of dry clothes.
+
+“Come, rouse up, man!” said Ellis, growing impatient. But he neither
+spoke nor moved.
+
+“What is the matter, father?” asked Nest, bewildered.
+
+Ellis kept on watching Owen for a minute or two, till on his daughter’s
+repetition of the question, he said—
+
+“Ask him yourself, Nest.”
+
+“Oh, husband, what is it?” said she, kneeling down and bringing her face
+to a level with his.
+
+“Don’t you know?” said he, heavily. “You won’t love me when you do know.
+And yet it was not my doing: it was my doom.”
+
+“What does he mean, father?” asked Nest, looking up; but she caught a
+gesture from Ellis urging her to go on questioning her husband.
+
+“I will love you, husband, whatever has happened. Only let me know the
+worst.”
+
+A pause, during which Nest and Ellis hung breathless.
+
+“My father is dead, Nest.”
+
+Nest caught her breath with a sharp gasp.
+
+“God forgive him!” said she, thinking on her babe.
+
+“God forgive _me_!” said Owen.
+
+“You did not—” Nest stopped.
+
+“Yes, I did. Now you know it. It was my doom. How could I help it?
+The devil helped me—he placed the stone so that my father fell. I jumped
+into the water to save him. I did, indeed, Nest. I was nearly drowned
+myself. But he was dead—dead—killed by the fall!”
+
+“Then he is safe at the bottom of the sea?” said Ellis, with hungry
+eagerness.
+
+“No, he is not; he lies in my boat,” said Owen, shivering a little, more
+at the thought of his last glimpse at his father’s face than from cold.
+
+“Oh, husband, change your wet clothes!” pleaded Nest, to whom the death
+of the old man was simply a horror with which she had nothing to do,
+while her husband’s discomfort was a present trouble.
+
+While she helped him to take off the wet garments which he would never
+have had energy enough to remove of himself, Ellis was busy preparing
+food, and mixing a great tumbler of spirits and hot water. He stood over
+the unfortunate young man and compelled him to eat and drink, and made
+Nest, too, taste some mouthfuls—all the while planning in his own mind
+how best to conceal what had been done, and who had done it; not
+altogether without a certain feeling of vulgar triumph in the reflection
+that Nest, as she stood there, carelessly dressed, dishevelled in her
+grief, was in reality the mistress of Bodowen, than which Ellis Pritchard
+had never seen a grander house, though he believed such might exist.
+
+By dint of a few dexterous questions he found out all he wanted to know
+from Owen, as he ate and drank. In fact, it was almost a relief to Owen
+to dilute the horror by talking about it. Before the meal was done, if
+meal it could be called, Ellis knew all he cared to know.
+
+“Now, Nest, on with your cloak and haps. Pack up what needs to go with
+you, for both you and your husband must be half way to Liverpool by
+to-morrow’s morn. I’ll take you past Rhyl Sands in my fishing-boat, with
+yours in tow; and, once over the dangerous part, I’ll return with my
+cargo of fish, and learn how much stir there is at Bodowen. Once safe
+hidden in Liverpool, no one will know where you are, and you may stay
+quiet till your time comes for returning.”
+
+“I will never come home again,” said Owen, doggedly. “The place is
+accursed!”
+
+“Hoot! be guided by me, man. Why, it was but an accident, after all!
+And we’ll land at the Holy Island, at the Point of Llyn; there is an old
+cousin of mine, the parson, there—for the Pritchards have known better
+days, Squire—and we’ll bury him there. It was but an accident, man.
+Hold up your head! You and Nest will come home yet and fill Bodowen with
+children, and I’ll live to see it.”
+
+“Never!” said Owen. “I am the last male of my race, and the son has
+murdered his father!”
+
+Nest came in laden and cloaked. Ellis was for hurrying them off. The
+fire was extinguished, the door was locked.
+
+“Here, Nest, my darling, let me take your bundle while I guide you down
+the steps.” But her husband bent his head, and spoke never a word. Nest
+gave her father the bundle (already loaded with such things as he himself
+had seen fit to take), but clasped another softly and tightly.
+
+“No one shall help me with this,” said she, in a low voice.
+
+Her father did not understand her; her husband did, and placed his strong
+helping arm round her waist, and blessed her.
+
+“We will all go together, Nest,” said he. “But where?” and he looked up
+at the storm-tossed clouds coming up from windward.
+
+“It is a dirty night,” said Ellis, turning his head round to speak to his
+companions at last. “But never fear, we’ll weather it?” And he made for
+the place where his vessel was moored. Then he stopped and thought a
+moment.
+
+“Stay here!” said he, addressing his companions. “I may meet folk, and I
+shall, maybe, have to hear and to speak. You wait here till I come back
+for you.” So they sat down close together in a corner of the path.
+
+“Let me look at him, Nest!” said Owen.
+
+She took her little dead son out from under her shawl; they looked at his
+waxen face long and tenderly; kissed it, and covered it up reverently and
+softly.
+
+“Nest,” said Owen, at last, “I feel as though my father’s spirit had been
+near us, and as if it had bent over our poor little one. A strange
+chilly air met me as I stooped over him. I could fancy the spirit of our
+pure, blameless child guiding my father’s safe over the paths of the sky
+to the gates of heaven, and escaping those accursed dogs of hell that
+were darting up from the north in pursuit of souls not five minutes
+since.
+
+“Don’t talk so, Owen,” said Nest, curling up to him in the darkness of
+the copse. “Who knows what may be listening?”
+
+The pair were silent, in a kind of nameless terror, till they heard Ellis
+Pritchard’s loud whisper. “Where are ye? Come along, soft and steady.
+There were folk about even now, and the Squire is missed, and madam in a
+fright.”
+
+They went swiftly down to the little harbour, and embarked on board
+Ellis’s boat. The sea heaved and rocked even there; the torn clouds went
+hurrying overhead in a wild tumultuous manner.
+
+They put out into the bay; still in silence, except when some word of
+command was spoken by Ellis, who took the management of the vessel. They
+made for the rocky shore, where Owen’s boat had been moored. It was not
+there. It had broken loose and disappeared.
+
+Owen sat down and covered his face. This last event, so simple and
+natural in itself, struck on his excited and superstitious mind in an
+extraordinary manner. He had hoped for a certain reconciliation, so to
+say, by laying his father and his child both in one grave. But now it
+appeared to him as if there was to be no forgiveness; as if his father
+revolted even in death against any such peaceful union. Ellis took a
+practical view of the case. If the Squire’s body was found drifting
+about in a boat known to belong to his son, it would create terrible
+suspicion as to the manner of his death. At one time in the evening,
+Ellis had thought of persuading Owen to let him bury the Squire in a
+sailor’s grave; or, in other words, to sew him up in a spare sail, and
+weighting it well, sink it for ever. He had not broached the subject,
+from a certain fear of Owen’s passionate repugnance to the plan;
+otherwise, if he had consented, they might have returned to Penmorfa, and
+passively awaited the course of events, secure of Owen’s succession to
+Bodowen, sooner or later; or if Owen was too much overwhelmed by what had
+happened, Ellis would have advised him to go away for a short time, and
+return when the buzz and the talk was over.
+
+Now it was different. It was absolutely necessary that they should leave
+the country for a time. Through those stormy waters they must plough
+their way that very night. Ellis had no fear—would have had no fear, at
+any rate, with Owen as he had been a week, a day ago; but with Owen wild,
+despairing, helpless, fate-pursued, what could he do?
+
+They sailed into the tossing darkness, and were never more seen of men.
+
+The house of Bodowen has sunk into damp, dark ruins; and a Saxon stranger
+holds the lands of the Griffiths.
+
+
+
+
+You cannot think how kindly Mrs. Dawson thanked Miss Duncan for writing
+and reading this story. She shook my poor, pale governess so tenderly
+by the hand that the tears came into her eyes, and the colour to her
+checks.
+
+“I though you had been so kind; I liked hearing about Lady Ludlow; I
+fancied, perhaps, I could do something to give a little pleasure,” were
+the half-finished sentences Miss Duncan stammered out. I am sure it was
+the wish to earn similar kind words from Mrs. Dawson, that made Mrs.
+Preston try and rummage through her memory to see if she could not
+recollect some fact, or event, or history, which might interested Mrs.
+Dawson and the little party that gathered round her sofa. Mrs. Preston
+it was who told us the following tale:
+
+               “HALF A LIFE-TIME AGO.”
+
+
+
+
+HALF A LIFE-TIME AGO
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+Half a life-time ago, there lived in one of the Westmoreland dales a
+single woman, of the name of Susan Dixon. She was owner of the small
+farm-house where she resided, and of some thirty or forty acres of land
+by which it was surrounded. She had also an hereditary right to a
+sheep-walk, extending to the wild fells that overhang Blea Tarn. In the
+language of the country she was a Stateswoman. Her house is yet to be
+seen on the Oxenfell road, between Skelwith and Coniston. You go along
+a moorland track, made by the carts that occasionally came for turf
+from the Oxenfell. A brook babbles and brattles by the wayside, giving
+you a sense of companionship, which relieves the deep solitude in which
+this way is usually traversed. Some miles on this side of Coniston
+there is a farmstead—a gray stone house, and a square of farm-buildings
+surrounding a green space of rough turf, in the midst of which stands a
+mighty, funereal umbrageous yew, making a solemn shadow, as of death,
+in the very heart and centre of the light and heat of the brightest
+summer day. On the side away from the house, this yard slopes down to a
+dark-brown pool, which is supplied with fresh water from the
+overflowings of a stone cistern, into which some rivulet of the brook
+before-mentioned continually and melodiously falls bubbling. The cattle
+drink out of this cistern. The household bring their pitchers and fill
+them with drinking-water by a dilatory, yet pretty, process. The
+water-carrier brings with her a leaf of the hound’s-tongue fern, and,
+inserting it in the crevice of the gray rock, makes a cool, green spout
+for the sparkling stream.
+
+The house is no specimen, at the present day, of what it was in the
+lifetime of Susan Dixon. Then, every small diamond pane in the windows
+glittered with cleanliness. You might have eaten off the floor; you
+could see yourself in the pewter plates and the polished oaken awmry,
+or dresser, of the state kitchen into which you entered. Few strangers
+penetrated further than this room. Once or twice, wandering tourists,
+attracted by the lonely picturesqueness of the situation, and the
+exquisite cleanliness of the house itself, made their way into this
+house-place, and offered money enough (as they thought) to tempt the
+hostess to receive them as lodgers. They would give no trouble, they
+said; they would be out rambling or sketching all day long; would be
+perfectly content with a share of the food which she provided for
+herself; or would procure what they required from the Waterhead Inn at
+Coniston. But no liberal sum—no fair words—moved her from her stony
+manner, or her monotonous tone of indifferent refusal. No persuasion
+could induce her to show any more of the house than that first room; no
+appearance of fatigue procured for the weary an invitation to sit down
+and rest; and if one more bold and less delicate did so without being
+asked, Susan stood by, cold and apparently deaf, or only replying by
+the briefest monosyllables, till the unwelcome visitor had departed.
+Yet those with whom she had dealings, in the way of selling her cattle
+or her farm produce, spoke of her as keen after a bargain—a hard one to
+have to do with; and she never spared herself exertion or fatigue, at
+market or in the field, to make the most of her produce. She led the
+hay-makers with her swift, steady rake, and her noiseless evenness of
+motion. She was about among the earliest in the market, examining
+samples of oats, pricing them, and then turning with grim satisfaction
+to her own cleaner corn.
+
+She was served faithfully and long by those who were rather her
+fellow-labourers than her servants. She was even and just in her
+dealings with them. If she was peculiar and silent, they knew her, and
+knew that she might be relied on. Some of them had known her from her
+childhood; and deep in their hearts was an unspoken—almost
+unconscious—pity for her, for they knew her story, though they never
+spoke of it.
+
+Yes; the time had been when that tall, gaunt, hard-featured, angular
+woman—who never smiled, and hardly ever spoke an unnecessary word—had
+been a fine-looking girl, bright-spirited and rosy; and when the hearth
+at the Yew Nook had been as bright as she, with family love and
+youthful hope and mirth. Fifty or fifty-one years ago, William Dixon
+and his wife Margaret were alive; and Susan, their daughter, was about
+eighteen years old—ten years older than the only other child, a boy
+named after his father. William and Margaret Dixon were rather superior
+people, of a character belonging—as far as I have seen—exclusively to
+the class of Westmoreland and Cumberland statesmen—just, independent,
+upright; not given to much speaking; kind-hearted, but not
+demonstrative; disliking change, and new ways, and new people; sensible
+and shrewd; each household self-contained, and its members having
+little curiosity as to their neighbours, with whom they rarely met for
+any social intercourse, save at the stated times of sheep-shearing and
+Christmas; having a certain kind of sober pleasure in amassing money,
+which occasionally made them miserable (as they call miserly people up
+in the north) in their old age; reading no light or ephemeral
+literature, but the grave, solid books brought round by the pedlars
+(such as the “Paradise Lost” and “Regained,’” “The Death of Abel,” “The
+Spiritual Quixote,” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress”), were to be found in
+nearly every house: the men occasionally going off laking, _i.e._
+playing, _i.e._ drinking for days together, and having to be hunted up
+by anxious wives, who dared not leave their husbands to the chances of
+the wild precipitous roads, but walked miles and miles, lantern in
+hand, in the dead of night, to discover and guide the solemnly-drunken
+husband home; who had a dreadful headache the next day, and the day
+after that came forth as grave, and sober, and virtuous looking as if
+there were no such thing as malt and spirituous liquors in the world;
+and who were seldom reminded of their misdoings by their wives, to whom
+such occasional outbreaks were as things of course, when once the
+immediate anxiety produced by them was over. Such were—such are—the
+characteristics of a class now passing away from the face of the land,
+as their compeers, the yeomen, have done before them. Of such was
+William Dixon. He was a shrewd clever farmer, in his day and
+generation, when shrewdness was rather shown in the breeding and
+rearing of sheep and cattle than in the cultivation of land. Owing to
+this character of his, statesmen from a distance from beyond Kendal, or
+from Borrowdale, of greater wealth than he, would send their sons to be
+farm-servants for a year or two with him, in order to learn some of his
+methods before setting up on land of their own. When Susan, his
+daughter, was about seventeen, one Michael Hurst was farm-servant at
+Yew Nook. He worked with the master, and lived with the family, and was
+in all respects treated as an equal, except in the field. His father
+was a wealthy statesman at Wythburne, up beyond Grasmere; and through
+Michael’s servitude the families had become acquainted, and the Dixons
+went over to the High Beck sheep-shearing, and the Hursts came down by
+Red Bank and Loughrig Tarn and across the Oxenfell when there was the
+Christmas-tide feasting at Yew Nook. The fathers strolled round the
+fields together, examined cattle and sheep, and looked knowing over
+each other’s horses. The mothers inspected the dairies and household
+arrangements, each openly admiring the plans of the other, but secretly
+preferring their own. Both fathers and mothers cast a glance from time
+to time at Michael and Susan, who were thinking of nothing less than
+farm or dairy, but whose unspoken attachment was, in all ways, so
+suitable and natural a thing that each parent rejoiced over it,
+although with characteristic reserve it was never spoken about—not even
+between husband and wife.
+
+Susan had been a strong, independent, healthy girl; a clever help to
+her mother, and a spirited companion to her father; more of a man in
+her (as he often said) than her delicate little brother ever would
+have. He was his mother’s darling, although she loved Susan well. There
+was no positive engagement between Michael and Susan—I doubt whether
+even plain words of love had been spoken; when one winter-time Margaret
+Dixon was seized with inflammation consequent upon a neglected cold.
+She had always been strong and notable, and had been too busy to attend
+to the early symptoms of illness. It would go off, she said to the
+woman who helped in the kitchen; or if she did not feel better when
+they had got the hams and bacon out of hand, she would take some
+herb-tea and nurse up a bit. But Death could not wait till the hams and
+bacon were cured: he came on with rapid strides, and shooting arrows of
+portentous agony. Susan had never seen illness—never knew how much she
+loved her mother till now, when she felt a dreadful, instinctive
+certainty that she was losing her. Her mind was thronged with
+recollections of the many times she had slighted her mother’s wishes;
+her heart was full of the echoes of careless and angry replies that she
+had spoken. What would she not now give to have opportunities of
+service and obedience, and trials of her patience and love, for that
+dear mother who lay gasping in torture! And yet Susan had been a good
+girl and an affectionate daughter.
+
+The sharp pain went off, and delicious ease came on; yet still her
+mother sunk. In the midst of this languid peace she was dying. She
+motioned Susan to her bedside, for she could only whisper; and then,
+while the father was out of the room, she spoke as much to the eager,
+hungering eyes of her daughter by the motion of her lips, as by the
+slow, feeble sounds of her voice.
+
+“Susan, lass, thou must not fret. It is God’s will, and thou wilt have
+a deal to do. Keep father straight if thou canst; and if he goes out
+Ulverstone ways, see that thou meet him before he gets to the Old
+Quarry. It’s a dree bit for a man who has had a drop. As for lile
+Will”—Here the poor woman’s face began to work and her fingers to move
+nervously as they lay on the bed-quilt—“lile Will will miss me most of
+all. Father’s often vexed with him because he’s not a quick strong lad;
+he is not, my poor lile chap. And father thinks he’s saucy, because he
+cannot always stomach oat-cake and porridge. There’s better than three
+pound in th’ old black tea-pot on the top shelf of the cupboard. Just
+keep a piece of loaf-bread by you, Susan dear, for Will to come to when
+he’s not taken his breakfast. I have, may be, spoilt him; but there’ll
+be no one to spoil him now.”
+
+She began to cry a low, feeble cry, and covered up her face that Susan
+might not see her. That dear face! those precious moments while yet the
+eyes could look out with love and intelligence. Susan laid her head
+down close by her mother’s ear.
+
+“Mother I’ll take tent of Will. Mother, do you hear? He shall not want
+ought I can give or get for him, least of all the kind words which you
+had ever ready for us both. Bless you! bless you! my own mother.”
+
+“Thou’lt promise me that, Susan, wilt thou? I can die easy if thou’lt
+take charge of him. But he’s hardly like other folk; he tries father at
+times, though I think father’ll be tender of him when I’m gone, for my
+sake. And, Susan, there’s one thing more. I never spoke on it for fear
+of the bairn being called a tell-tale, but I just comforted him up. He
+vexes Michael at times, and Michael has struck him before now. I did
+not want to make a stir; but he’s not strong, and a word from thee,
+Susan, will go a long way with Michael.”
+
+Susan was as red now as she had been pale before; it was the first time
+that her influence over Michael had been openly acknowledged by a third
+person, and a flash of joy came athwart the solemn sadness of the
+moment. Her mother had spoken too much, and now came on the miserable
+faintness. She never spoke again coherently; but when her children and
+her husband stood by her bedside, she took lile Will’s hand and put it
+into Susan’s, and looked at her with imploring eyes. Susan clasped her
+arms round Will, and leaned her head upon his little curly one, and
+vowed within herself to be as a mother to him.
+
+Henceforward she was all in all to her brother. She was a more spirited
+and amusing companion to him than his mother had been, from her greater
+activity, and perhaps, also, from her originality of character, which
+often prompted her to perform her habitual actions in some new and racy
+manner. She was tender to lile Will when she was prompt and sharp with
+everybody else—with Michael most of all; for somehow the girl felt
+that, unprotected by her mother, she must keep up her own dignity, and
+not allow her lover to see how strong a hold he had upon her heart. He
+called her hard and cruel, and left her so; and she smiled softly to
+herself, when his back was turned, to think how little he guessed how
+deeply he was loved. For Susan was merely comely and fine looking;
+Michael was strikingly handsome, admired by all the girls for miles
+round, and quite enough of a country coxcomb to know it and plume
+himself accordingly. He was the second son of his father; the eldest
+would have High Beck farm, of course, but there was a good penny in the
+Kendal bank in store for Michael. When harvest was over, he went to
+Chapel Langdale to learn to dance; and at night, in his merry moods, he
+would do his steps on the flag floor of the Yew Nook kitchen, to the
+secret admiration of Susan, who had never learned dancing, but who
+flouted him perpetually, even while she admired, in accordance with the
+rule she seemed to have made for herself about keeping him at a
+distance so long as he lived under the same roof with her. One evening
+he sulked at some saucy remark of hers; he sitting in the chimney
+corner with his arms on his knees, and his head bent forwards, lazily
+gazing into the wood-fire on the hearth, and luxuriating in rest after
+a hard day’s labour; she sitting among the geraniums on the long, low
+window-seat, trying to catch the last slanting rays of the autumnal
+light to enable her to finish stitching a shirt-collar for Will, who
+lounged full length on the flags at the other side of the hearth to
+Michael, poking the burning wood from time to time with a long
+hazel-stick to bring out the leap of glittering sparks.
+
+“And if you can dance a threesome reel, what good does it do ye?” asked
+Susan, looking askance at Michael, who had just been vaunting his
+proficiency. “Does it help you plough, reap, or even climb the rocks to
+take a raven’s nest? If I were a man, I’d be ashamed to give in to such
+softness.”
+
+“If you were a man, you’d be glad to do anything which made the pretty
+girls stand round and admire.”
+
+“As they do to you, eh! Ho, Michael, that would not be my way o’ being
+a man!”
+
+“What would then?” asked he, after a pause, during which he had
+expected in vain that she would go on with her sentence. No answer.
+
+“I should not like you as a man, Susy; you’d be too hard and
+headstrong.”
+
+“Am I hard and headstrong?” asked she, with as indifferent a tone as
+she could assume, but which yet had a touch of pique in it. His quick
+ear detected the inflexion.
+
+“No, Susy! You’re wilful at times, and that’s right enough. I don’t
+like a girl without spirit. There’s a mighty pretty girl comes to the
+dancing class; but she is all milk and water. Her eyes never flash like
+yours when you’re put out; why, I can see them flame across the kitchen
+like a cat’s in the dark. Now, if you were a man, I should feel queer
+before those looks of yours; as it is, I rather like them, because—”
+
+“Because what?” asked she, looking up and perceiving that he had stolen
+close up to her.
+
+“Because I can make all right in this way,” said he, kissing her
+suddenly.
+
+“Can you?” said she, wrenching herself out of his grasp and panting,
+half with rage. “Take that, by way of proof that making right is none
+so easy.” And she boxed his ears pretty sharply. He went back to his
+seat discomfited and out of temper. She could no longer see to look,
+even if her face had not burnt and her eyes dazzled, but she did not
+choose to move her seat, so she still preserved her stooping attitude
+and pretended to go on sewing.
+
+“Eleanor Hebthwaite may be milk-and-water,” muttered he, “but—Confound
+thee, lad! what art thou doing?” exclaimed Michael, as a great piece of
+burning wood was cast into his face by an unlucky poke of Will’s. “Thou
+great lounging, clumsy chap, I’ll teach thee better!” and with one or
+two good round kicks he sent the lad whimpering away into the
+back-kitchen. When he had a little recovered himself from his passion,
+he saw Susan standing before him, her face looking strange and almost
+ghastly by the reversed position of the shadows, arising from the
+firelight shining upwards right under it.
+
+“I tell thee what, Michael,” said she, “that lad’s motherless, but not
+friendless.”
+
+“His own father leathers him, and why should not I, when he’s given me
+such a burn on my face?” said Michael, putting up his hand to his cheek
+as if in pain.
+
+“His father’s his father, and there is nought more to be said. But if
+he did burn thee, it was by accident, and not o’ purpose; as thou
+kicked him, it’s a mercy if his ribs are not broken.”
+
+“He howls loud enough, I’m sure. I might ha’ kicked many a lad twice as
+hard, and they’d ne’er ha’ said ought but ‘damn ye;’ but yon lad must
+needs cry out like a stuck pig if one touches him;” replied Michael,
+sullenly.
+
+Susan went back to the window-seat, and looked absently out of the
+window at the drifting clouds for a minute or two, while her eyes
+filled with tears. Then she got up and made for the outer door which
+led into the back-kitchen. Before she reached it, however, she heard a
+low voice, whose music made her thrill, say—
+
+“Susan, Susan!”
+
+Her heart melted within her, but it seemed like treachery to her poor
+boy, like faithlessness to her dead mother, to turn to her lover while
+the tears which he had caused to flow were yet unwiped on Will’s
+cheeks. So she seemed to take no heed, but passed into the darkness,
+and, guided by the sobs, she found her way to where Willie sat crouched
+among the disused tubs and churns.
+
+“Come out wi’ me, lad;” and they went out into the orchard, where the
+fruit-trees were bare of leaves, but ghastly in their tattered covering
+of gray moss: and the soughing November wind came with long sweeps over
+the fells till it rattled among the crackling boughs, underneath which
+the brother and sister sat in the dark; he in her lap, and she hushing
+his head against her shoulder.
+
+“Thou should’st na’ play wi’ fire. It’s a naughty trick. Thoul’t suffer
+for it in worse ways nor this before thou’st done, I’m afeared. I
+should ha’ hit thee twice as lungeous kicks as Mike, if I’d been in his
+place. He did na’ hurt thee, I am sure,” she assumed, half as a
+question.
+
+“Yes but he did. He turned me quite sick.” And he let his head fall
+languidly down on his sister’s breast.
+
+“Come, lad! come, lad!” said she anxiously. “Be a man. It was not much
+that I saw. Why, when first the red cow came she kicked me far harder
+for offering to milk her before her legs were tied. See thee! here’s a
+peppermint-drop, and I’ll make thee a pasty to-night; only don’t give
+way so, for it hurts me sore to think that Michael has done thee any
+harm, my pretty.”
+
+Willie roused himself up, and put back the wet and ruffled hair from
+his heated face; and he and Susan rose up, and hand-in-hand went
+towards the house, walking slowly and quietly except for a kind of sob
+which Willie could not repress. Susan took him to the pump and washed
+his tear-stained face, till she thought she had obliterated all traces
+of the recent disturbance, arranging his curls for him, and then she
+kissed him tenderly, and led him in, hoping to find Michael in the
+kitchen, and make all straight between them. But the blaze had dropped
+down into darkness; the wood was a heap of gray ashes in which the
+sparks ran hither and thither; but even in the groping darkness Susan
+knew by the sinking at her heart that Michael was not there. She threw
+another brand on the hearth and lighted the candle, and sat down to her
+work in silence. Willie cowered on his stool by the side of the fire,
+eyeing his sister from time to time, and sorry and oppressed, he knew
+not why, by the sight of her grave, almost stern face. No one came.
+They two were in the house alone. The old woman who helped Susan with
+the household work had gone out for the night to some friend’s
+dwelling. William Dixon, the father, was up on the fells seeing after
+his sheep. Susan had no heart to prepare the evening meal.
+
+“Susy, darling, are you angry with me?” said Willie, in his little
+piping, gentle voice. He had stolen up to his sister’s side. “I won’t
+never play with the fire again; and I’ll not cry if Michael does kick
+me. Only don’t look so like dead mother—don’t—don’t—please don’t!” he
+exclaimed, hiding his face on her shoulder.
+
+“I’m not angry, Willie,” said she. “Don’t be feared on me. You want
+your supper, and you shall have it; and don’t you be feared on Michael.
+He shall give reason for every hair of your head that he touches—he
+shall.”
+
+When William Dixon came home he found Susan and Willie sitting
+together, hand-in-hand, and apparently pretty cheerful. He bade them go
+to bed, for that he would sit up for Michael; and the next morning,
+when Susan came down, she found that Michael had started an hour before
+with the cart for lime. It was a long day’s work; Susan knew it would
+be late, perhaps later than on the preceding night, before he
+returned—at any rate, past her usual bed-time; and on no account would
+she stop up a minute beyond that hour in the kitchen, whatever she
+might do in her bed-room. Here she sat and watched till past midnight;
+and when she saw him coming up the brow with the carts, she knew full
+well, even in that faint moonlight, that his gait was the gait of a man
+in liquor. But though she was annoyed and mortified to find in what way
+he had chosen to forget her, the fact did not disgust or shock her as
+it would have done many a girl, even at that day, who had not been
+brought up as Susan had, among a class who considered it no crime, but
+rather a mark of spirit, in a man to get drunk occasionally.
+Nevertheless, she chose to hold herself very high all the next day when
+Michael was, perforce, obliged to give up any attempt to do heavy work,
+and hung about the out-buildings and farm in a very disconsolate and
+sickly state. Willie had far more pity on him than Susan. Before
+evening, Willie and he were fast, and, on his side, ostentatious
+friends. Willie rode the horses down to water; Willie helped him to
+chop wood. Susan sat gloomily at her work, hearing an indistinct but
+cheerful conversation going on in the shippon, while the cows were
+being milked. She almost felt irritated with her little brother, as if
+he were a traitor, and had gone over to the enemy in the very battle
+that she was fighting in his cause. She was alone with no one to speak
+to, while they prattled on regardless if she were glad or sorry.
+
+Soon Willie burst in. “Susan! Susan! come with me; I’ve something so
+pretty to show you. Round the corner of the barn—run! run!” (He was
+dragging her along, half reluctant, half desirous of some change in
+that weary day.) Round the corner of the barn; and caught hold of by
+Michael, who stood there awaiting her.
+
+“O Willie!” cried she “you naughty boy. There is nothing pretty—what
+have you brought me here for? Let me go; I won’t be held.”
+
+“Only one word. Nay, if you wish it so much, you may go,” said Michael,
+suddenly loosing his hold as she struggled. But now she was free, she
+only drew off a step or two, murmuring something about Willie.
+
+“You are going, then?” said Michael, with seeming sadness. “You won’t
+hear me say a word of what is in my heart.”
+
+“How can I tell whether it is what I should like to hear?” replied she,
+still drawing back.
+
+“That is just what I want you to tell me; I want you to hear it and
+then to tell me whether you like it or not.”
+
+“Well, you may speak,” replied she, turning her back, and beginning to
+plait the hem of her apron.
+
+He came close to her ear.
+
+“I’m sorry I hurt Willie the other night. He has forgiven me. Can you?”
+
+“You hurt him very badly,” she replied. “But you are right to be sorry.
+I forgive you.”
+
+“Stop, stop!” said he, laying his hand upon her arm. “There is
+something more I’ve got to say. I want you to be my—what is it they
+call it, Susan?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said she, half-laughing, but trying to get away with
+all her might now; and she was a strong girl, but she could not manage
+it.
+
+“You do. My—what is it I want you to be?”
+
+“I tell you I don’t know, and you had best be quiet, and just let me go
+in, or I shall think you’re as bad now as you were last night.”
+
+“And how did you know what I was last night? It was past twelve when I
+came home. Were you watching? Ah, Susan! be my wife, and you shall
+never have to watch for a drunken husband. If I were your husband, I
+would come straight home, and count every minute an hour till I saw
+your bonny face. Now you know what I want you to be. I ask you to be my
+wife. Will you, my own dear Susan?”
+
+She did not speak for some time. Then she only said “Ask father.” And
+now she was really off like a lapwing round the corner of the barn, and
+up in her own little room, crying with all her might, before the
+triumphant smile had left Michael’s face where he stood.
+
+The “Ask father” was a mere form to be gone though. Old Daniel Hurst
+and William Dixon had talked over what they could respectively give
+their children before this; and that was the parental way of arranging
+such matters. When the probable amount of worldly gear that he could
+give his child had been named by each father, the young folk, as they
+said, might take their own time in coming to the point which the old
+men, with the prescience of experience, saw they were drifting to; no
+need to hurry them, for they were both young, and Michael, though
+active enough, was too thoughtless, old Daniel said, to be trusted with
+the entire management of a farm. Meanwhile, his father would look about
+him, and see after all the farms that were to be let.
+
+Michael had a shrewd notion of this preliminary understanding between
+the fathers, and so felt less daunted than he might otherwise have done
+at making the application for Susan’s hand. It was all right, there was
+not an obstacle; only a deal of good advice, which the lover thought
+might have as well been spared, and which it must be confessed he did
+not much attend to, although he assented to every part of it. Then
+Susan was called down stairs, and slowly came dropping into view down
+the steps which led from the two family apartments into the
+house-place. She tried to look composed and quiet, but it could not be
+done. She stood side by side with her lover, with her head drooping,
+her cheeks burning, not daring to look up or move, while her father
+made the newly-betrothed a somewhat formal address in which he gave his
+consent, and many a piece of worldly wisdom beside. Susan listened as
+well as she could for the beating of her heart; but when her father
+solemnly and sadly referred to his own lost wife, she could keep from
+sobbing no longer; but throwing her apron over her face, she sat down
+on the bench by the dresser, and fairly gave way to pent-up tears. Oh,
+how strangely sweet to be comforted as she was comforted, by tender
+caress, and many a low-whispered promise of love! Her father sat by the
+fire, thinking of the days that were gone; Willie was still out of
+doors; but Susan and Michael felt no one’s presence or absence—they
+only knew they were together as betrothed husband and wife.
+
+In a week, or two, they were formally told of the arrangements to be
+made in their favour. A small farm in the neighbourhood happened to
+fall vacant; and Michael’s father offered to take it for him, and be
+responsible for the rent for the first year, while William Dixon was to
+contribute a certain amount of stock, and both fathers were to help
+towards the furnishing of the house. Susan received all this
+information in a quiet, indifferent way; she did not care much for any
+of these preparations, which were to hurry her through the happy hours;
+she cared least of all for the money amount of dowry and of substance.
+It jarred on her to be made the confidante of occasional slight
+repinings of Michael’s, as one by one his future father-in-law set
+aside a beast or a pig for Susan’s portion, which were not always the
+best animals of their kind upon the farm. But he also complained of his
+own father’s stinginess, which somewhat, though not much, alleviated
+Susan’s dislike to being awakened out of her pure dream of love to the
+consideration of worldly wealth.
+
+But in the midst of all this bustle, Willie moped and pined. He had the
+same chord of delicacy running through his mind that made his body
+feeble and weak. He kept out of the way, and was apparently occupied in
+whittling and carving uncouth heads on hazel-sticks in an out-house.
+But he positively avoided Michael, and shrunk away even from Susan. She
+was too much occupied to notice this at first. Michael pointed it out
+to her, saying, with a laugh,—
+
+“Look at Willie! he might be a cast-off lover and jealous of me, he
+looks so dark and downcast at me.” Michael spoke this jest out loud,
+and Willie burst into tears, and ran out of the house.
+
+“Let me go. Let me go!” said Susan (for her lover’s arm was round her
+waist). “I must go to him if he’s fretting. I promised mother I would!”
+She pulled herself away, and went in search of the boy. She sought in
+byre and barn, through the orchard, where indeed in this leafless
+winter-time there was no great concealment; up into the room where the
+wool was usually stored in the later summer, and at last she found him,
+sitting at bay, like some hunted creature, up behind the wood-stack.
+
+“What are ye gone for, lad, and me seeking you everywhere?” asked she,
+breathless.
+
+“I did not know you would seek me. I’ve been away many a time, and no
+one has cared to seek me,” said he, crying afresh.
+
+“Nonsense,” replied Susan, “don’t be so foolish, ye little
+good-for-nought.” But she crept up to him in the hole he had made
+underneath the great, brown sheafs of wood, and squeezed herself down
+by him. “What for should folk seek after you, when you get away from
+them whenever you can?” asked she.
+
+“They don’t want me to stay. Nobody wants me. If I go with father, he
+says I hinder more than I help. You used to like to have me with you.
+But now, you’ve taken up with Michael, and you’d rather I was away; and
+I can just bide away; but I cannot stand Michael jeering at me. He’s
+got you to love him and that might serve him.”
+
+“But I love you, too, dearly, lad!” said she, putting her arm round his
+neck.
+
+“Which one of us do you like best?” said he, wistfully, after a little
+pause, putting her arm away, so that he might look in her face, and see
+if she spoke truth.
+
+She went very red.
+
+“You should not ask such questions. They are not fit for you to ask,
+nor for me to answer.”
+
+“But mother bade you love me!” said he, plaintively.
+
+“And so I do. And so I ever will do. Lover nor husband shall come
+betwixt thee and me, lad—ne’er a one of them. That I promise thee (as I
+promised mother before), in the sight of God and with her hearkening
+now, if ever she can hearken to earthly word again. Only I cannot abide
+to have thee fretting, just because my heart is large enough for two.”
+
+“And thou’lt love me always?”
+
+“Always, and ever. And the more—the more thou’lt love Michael,” said
+she, dropping her voice.
+
+“I’ll try,” said the boy, sighing, for he remembered many a harsh word
+and blow of which his sister knew nothing. She would have risen up to
+go away, but he held her tight, for here and now she was all his own,
+and he did not know when such a time might come again. So the two sat
+crouched up and silent, till they heard the horn blowing at the
+field-gate, which was the summons home to any wanderers belonging to
+the farm, and at this hour of the evening, signified that supper was
+ready. Then the two went in.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Susan and Michael were to be married in April. He had already gone to
+take possession of his new farm, three or four miles away from Yew
+Nook—but that is neighbouring, according to the acceptation of the word
+in that thinly-populated district,—when William Dixon fell ill. He came
+home one evening, complaining of head-ache and pains in his limbs, but
+seemed to loathe the posset which Susan prepared for him; the
+treacle-posset which was the homely country remedy against an incipient
+cold. He took to his bed with a sensation of exceeding weariness, and
+an odd, unusual looking-back to the days of his youth, when he was a
+lad living with his parents, in this very house.
+
+The next morning he had forgotten all his life since then, and did not
+know his own children; crying, like a newly-weaned baby, for his mother
+to come and soothe away his terrible pain. The doctor from Coniston
+said it was the typhus-fever, and warned Susan of its infectious
+character, and shook his head over his patient. There were no near
+friends to come and share her anxiety; only good, kind old Peggy, who
+was faithfulness itself, and one or two labourers’ wives, who would
+fain have helped her, had not their hands been tied by their
+responsibility to their own families. But, somehow, Susan neither
+feared nor flagged. As for fear, indeed, she had no time to give way to
+it, for every energy of both body and mind was required. Besides, the
+young have had too little experience of the danger of infection to
+dread it much. She did indeed wish, from time to time, that Michael had
+been at home to have taken Willie over to his father’s at High Beck;
+but then, again, the lad was docile and useful to her, and his
+fecklessness in many things might make him harshly treated by
+strangers; so, perhaps, it was as well that Michael was away at Appleby
+fair, or even beyond that—gone into Yorkshire after horses.
+
+Her father grew worse; and the doctor insisted on sending over a nurse
+from Coniston. Not a professed nurse—Coniston could not have supported
+such a one; but a widow who was ready to go where the doctor sent her
+for the sake of the payment. When she came, Susan suddenly gave way;
+she was felled by the fever herself, and lay unconscious for long
+weeks. Her consciousness returned to her one spring afternoon; early
+spring: April,—her wedding-month. There was a little fire burning in
+the small corner-grate, and the flickering of the blaze was enough for
+her to notice in her weak state. She felt that there was some one
+sitting on the window-side of her bed, behind the curtain, but she did
+not care to know who it was; it was even too great a trouble for her
+languid mind to consider who it was likely to be. She would rather shut
+her eyes, and melt off again into the gentle luxury of sleep. The next
+time she wakened, the Coniston nurse perceived her movement, and made
+her a cup of tea, which she drank with eager relish; but still they did
+not speak, and once more Susan lay motionless—not asleep, but
+strangely, pleasantly conscious of all the small chamber and household
+sounds; the fall of a cinder on the hearth, the fitful singing of the
+half-empty kettle, the cattle tramping out to field again after they
+had been milked, the aged step on the creaking stair—old Peggy’s, as
+she knew. It came to her door; it stopped; the person outside listened
+for a moment, and then lifted the wooden latch, and looked in. The
+watcher by the bedside arose, and went to her. Susan would have been
+glad to see Peggy’s face once more, but was far too weak to turn, so
+she lay and listened.
+
+“How is she?” whispered one trembling, aged voice.
+
+“Better,” replied the other. “She’s been awake, and had a cup of tea.
+She’ll do now.”
+
+“Has she asked after him?”
+
+“Hush! No; she has not spoken a word.”
+
+“Poor lass! poor lass!”
+
+The door was shut. A weak feeling of sorrow and self-pity came over
+Susan. What was wrong? Whom had she loved? And dawning, dawning, slowly
+rose the sun of her former life, and all particulars were made distinct
+to her. She felt that some sorrow was coming to her, and cried over it
+before she knew what it was, or had strength enough to ask. In the dead
+of night,—and she had never slept again,—she softly called to the
+watcher, and asked—
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Who what?” replied the woman, with a conscious affright, ill-veiled by
+a poor assumption of ease. “Lie still, there’s a darling, and go to
+sleep. Sleep’s better for you than all the doctor’s stuff.”
+
+“Who?” repeated Susan. “Something is wrong. Who?”
+
+“Oh, dear!” said the woman. “There’s nothing wrong. Willie has taken
+the turn, and is doing nicely.”
+
+“Father?”
+
+“Well! he’s all right now,” she answered, looking another way, as if
+seeking for something.
+
+“Then it’s Michael! Oh, me! oh, me!” She set up a succession of weak,
+plaintive, hysterical cries before the nurse could pacify her, by
+declaring that Michael had been at the house not three hours before to
+ask after her, and looked as well and as hearty as ever man did.
+
+“And you heard of no harm to him since?” inquired Susan.
+
+“Bless the lass, no, for sure! I’ve ne’er heard his name named since I
+saw him go out of the yard as stout a man as ever trod shoe-leather.”
+
+It was well, as the nurse said afterwards to Peggy, that Susan had been
+so easily pacified by the equivocating answer in respect to her father.
+If she had pressed the questions home in his case as she did in
+Michael’s, she would have learnt that he was dead and buried more than
+a month before. It was well, too, that in her weak state of
+convalescence (which lasted long after this first day of consciousness)
+her perceptions were not sharp enough to observe the sad change that
+had taken place in Willie. His bodily strength returned, his appetite
+was something enormous, but his eyes wandered continually; his regard
+could not be arrested; his speech became slow, impeded, and incoherent.
+People began to say that the fever had taken away the little wit Willie
+Dixon had ever possessed and that they feared that he would end in
+being a “natural,” as they call an idiot in the Dales.
+
+The habitual affection and obedience to Susan lasted longer than any
+other feeling that the boy had had previous to his illness; and,
+perhaps, this made her be the last to perceive what every one else had
+long anticipated. She felt the awakening rude when it did come. It was
+in this wise:—
+
+One June evening, she sat out of doors under the yew-tree, knitting.
+She was pale still from her recent illness; and her languor, joined to
+the fact of her black dress, made her look more than usually
+interesting. She was no longer the buoyant self-sufficient Susan, equal
+to every occasion. The men were bringing in the cows to be milked, and
+Michael was about in the yard giving orders and directions with
+somewhat the air of a master, for the farm belonged of right to Willie,
+and Susan had succeeded to the guardianship of her brother. Michael and
+she were to be married as soon as she was strong enough—so, perhaps,
+his authoritative manner was justified; but the labourers did not like
+it, although they said little. They remembered a stripling on the farm,
+knowing far less than they did, and often glad to shelter his ignorance
+of all agricultural matters behind their superior knowledge. They would
+have taken orders from Susan with far more willingness; nay, Willie
+himself might have commanded them; and from the old hereditary feeling
+toward the owners of land, they would have obeyed him with far greater
+cordiality than they now showed to Michael. But Susan was tired with
+even three rounds of knitting, and seemed not to notice, or to care,
+how things went on around her; and Willie—poor Willie!—there he stood
+lounging against the door-sill, enormously grown and developed, to be
+sure, but with restless eyes and ever-open mouth, and every now and
+then setting up a strange kind of howling cry, and then smiling
+vacantly to himself at the sound he had made. As the two old labourers
+passed him, they looked at each other ominously, and shook their heads.
+
+“Willie, darling,” said Susan, “don’t make that noise—it makes my head
+ache.”
+
+She spoke feebly, and Willie did not seem to hear; at any rate, he
+continued his howl from time to time.
+
+“Hold thy noise, wilt’a?” said Michael, roughly, as he passed near him,
+and threatening him with his fist. Susan’s back was turned to the pair.
+The expression of Willie’s face changed from vacancy to fear, and he
+came shambling up to Susan, who put her arm round him, and, as if
+protected by that shelter, he began making faces at Michael. Susan saw
+what was going on, and, as if now first struck by the strangeness of
+her brother’s manner, she looked anxiously at Michael for an
+explanation. Michael was irritated at Willie’s defiance of him, and did
+not mince the matter.
+
+“It’s just that the fever has left him silly—he never was as wise as
+other folk, and now I doubt if he will ever get right.”
+
+Susan did not speak, but she went very pale, and her lip quivered. She
+looked long and wistfully at Willie’s face, as he watched the motion of
+the ducks in the great stable-pool. He laughed softly to himself every
+now and then.
+
+“Willie likes to see the ducks go overhead,” said Susan, instinctively
+adopting the form of speech she would have used to a young child.
+
+“Willie, boo! Willie, boo!” he replied, clapping his hands, and
+avoiding her eye.
+
+“Speak properly, Willie,” said Susan, making a strong effort at
+self-control, and trying to arrest his attention.
+
+“You know who I am—tell me my name!” She grasped his arm almost
+painfully tight to make him attend. Now he looked at her, and, for an
+instant, a gleam of recognition quivered over his face; but the
+exertion was evidently painful, and he began to cry at the vainness of
+the effort to recall her name. He hid his face upon her shoulder with
+the old affectionate trick of manner. She put him gently away, and went
+into the house into her own little bedroom. She locked the door, and
+did not reply at all to Michael’s calls for her, hardly spoke to old
+Peggy, who tried to tempt her out to receive some homely sympathy, and
+through the open easement there still came the idiotic sound of
+“Willie, boo! Willie, boo!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+After the stun of the blow came the realization of the consequences.
+Susan would sit for hours trying patiently to recall and piece together
+fragments of recollection and consciousness in her brother’s mind. She
+would let him go and pursue some senseless bit of play, and wait until
+she could catch his eye or his attention again, when she would resume
+her self-imposed task. Michael complained that she never had a word for
+him, or a minute of time to spend with him now; but she only said she
+must try, while there was yet a chance, to bring back her brother’s
+lost wits. As for marriage in this state of uncertainty, she had no
+heart to think of it. Then Michael stormed, and absented himself for
+two or three days; but it was of no use. When he came back, he saw that
+she had been crying till her eyes were all swollen up, and he gathered
+from Peggy’s scoldings (which she did not spare him) that Susan had
+eaten nothing since he went away. But she was as inflexible as ever.
+
+“Not just yet. Only not just yet. And don’t say again that I do not
+love you,” said she, suddenly hiding herself in his arms.
+
+And so matters went on through August. The crop of oats was gathered
+in; the wheat-field was not ready as yet, when one fine day Michael
+drove up in a borrowed shandry, and offered to take Willie a ride. His
+manner, when Susan asked him where he was going to, was rather
+confused; but the answer was straight and clear enough.
+
+He had business in Ambleside. He would never lose sight of the lad, and
+have him back safe and sound before dark. So Susan let him go.
+
+Before night they were at home again: Willie in high delight at a
+little rattling paper windmill that Michael had bought for him in the
+street, and striving to imitate this new sound with perpetual buzzings.
+Michael, too, looked pleased. Susan knew the look, although afterwards
+she remembered that he had tried to veil it from her, and had assumed a
+grave appearance of sorrow whenever he caught her eye. He put up his
+horse; for, although he had three miles further to go, the moon was
+up—the bonny harvest-moon—and he did not care how late he had to drive
+on such a road by such a light. After the supper which Susan had
+prepared for the travellers was over, Peggy went up-stairs to see
+Willie safe in bed; for he had to have the same care taken of him that
+a little child of four years old requires.
+
+Michael drew near to Susan.
+
+“Susan,” said he, “I took Will to see Dr. Preston, at Kendal. He’s the
+first doctor in the county. I thought it were better for us—for you—to
+know at once what chance there were for him.”
+
+“Well!” said Susan, looking eagerly up. She saw the same strange glance
+of satisfaction, the same instant change to apparent regret and pain.
+“What did he say?” said she. “Speak! can’t you?”
+
+“He said he would never get better of his weakness.”
+
+“Never!”
+
+“No; never. It’s a long word, and hard to bear. And there’s worse to
+come, dearest. The doctor thinks he will get badder from year to year.
+And he said, if he was us—you—he would send him off in time to
+Lancaster Asylum. They’ve ways there both of keeping such people in
+order and making them happy. I only tell you what he said,” continued
+he, seeing the gathering storm in her face.
+
+“There was no harm in his saying it,” she replied, with great
+self-constraint, forcing herself to speak coldly instead of angrily.
+“Folk is welcome to their opinions.”
+
+They sat silent for a minute or two, her breast heaving with suppressed
+feeling.
+
+“He’s counted a very clever man,” said Michael at length.
+
+“He may be. He’s none of my clever men, nor am I going to be guided by
+him, whatever he may think. And I don’t thank them that went and took
+my poor lad to have such harsh notions formed about him. If I’d been
+there, I could have called out the sense that is in him.”
+
+“Well! I’ll not say more to-night, Susan. You’re not taking it rightly,
+and I’d best be gone, and leave you to think it over. I’ll not deny
+they are hard words to hear, but there’s sense in them, as I take it;
+and I reckon you’ll have to come to ’em. Anyhow, it’s a bad way of
+thanking me for my pains, and I don’t take it well in you, Susan,” said
+he, getting up, as if offended.
+
+“Michael, I’m beside myself with sorrow. Don’t blame me if I speak
+sharp. He and me is the only ones, you see. And mother did so charge me
+to have a care of him! And this is what he’s come to, poor lile chap!”
+She began to cry, and Michael to comfort her with caresses.
+
+“Don’t,” said she. “It’s no use trying to make me forget poor Willie is
+a natural. I could hate myself for being happy with you, even for just
+a little minute. Go away, and leave me to face it out.”
+
+“And you’ll think it over, Susan, and remember what the doctor says?”
+
+“I can’t forget,” said she. She meant she could not forget what the
+doctor had said about the hopelessness of her brother’s case; Michael
+had referred to the plan of sending Willie to an asylum, or madhouse,
+as they were called in that day and place. The idea had been gathering
+force in Michael’s mind for some time; he had talked it over with his
+father, and secretly rejoiced over the possession of the farm and land
+which would then be his in fact, if not in law, by right of his wife.
+He had always considered the good penny her father could give her in
+his catalogue of Susan’s charms and attractions. But of late he had
+grown to esteem her as the heiress of Yew Nook. He, too, should have
+land like his brother—land to possess, to cultivate, to make profit
+from, to bequeath. For some time he had wondered that Susan had been so
+much absorbed in Willie’s present, that she had never seemed to look
+forward to his future, state. Michael had long felt the boy to be a
+trouble; but of late he had absolutely loathed him. His gibbering, his
+uncouth gestures, his loose, shambling gait, all irritated Michael
+inexpressibly. He did not come near the Yew Nook for a couple of days.
+He thought that he would leave her time to become anxious to see him
+and reconciled to his plan. They were strange lonely days to Susan.
+They were the first she had spent face to face with the sorrows that
+had turned her from a girl into a woman; for hitherto Michael had never
+let twenty-four hours pass by without coming to see her since she had
+had the fever. Now that he was absent, it seemed as though some cause
+of irritation was removed from Will, who was much more gentle and
+tractable than he had been for many weeks. Susan thought that she
+observed him making efforts at her bidding, and there was something
+piteous in the way in which he crept up to her, and looked wistfully in
+her face, as if asking her to restore him the faculties that he felt to
+be wanting.
+
+“I never will let thee go, lad. Never! There’s no knowing where they
+would take thee to, or what they would do with thee. As it says in the
+Bible, ‘Nought but death shall part thee and me!’”
+
+The country-side was full, in those days, of stories of the brutal
+treatment offered to the insane; stories that were, in fact, but too
+well founded, and the truth of one of which only would have been a
+sufficient reason for the strong prejudice existing against all such
+places. Each succeeding hour that Susan passed, alone, or with the poor
+affectionate lad for her sole companion, served to deepen her solemn
+resolution never to part with him. So, when Michael came, he was
+annoyed and surprised by the calm way in which she spoke, as if
+following Dr. Preston’s advice was utterly and entirely out of the
+question. He had expected nothing less than a consent, reluctant it
+might be, but still a consent; and he was extremely irritated. He could
+have repressed his anger, but he chose rather to give way to it;
+thinking that he could thus best work upon Susan’s affection, so as to
+gain his point. But, somehow, he over-reached himself; and now he was
+astonished in his turn at the passion of indignation that she burst
+into.
+
+“Thou wilt not bide in the same house with him, say’st thou? There’s no
+need for thy biding, as far as I can tell. There’s solemn reason why I
+should bide with my own flesh and blood and keep to the word I pledged
+my mother on her death-bed; but, as for thee, there’s no tie that I
+know on to keep thee fro’ going to America or Botany Bay this very
+night, if that were thy inclination. I will have no more of your
+threats to make me send my bairn away. If thou marry me, thou’lt help
+me to take charge of Willie. If thou doesn’t choose to marry me on
+those terms—why, I can snap my fingers at thee, never fear. I’m not so
+far gone in love as that. But I will not have thee, if thou say’st in
+such a hectoring way that Willie must go out of the house—and the house
+his own too—before thoul’t set foot in it. Willie bides here, and I
+bide with him.”
+
+“Thou hast may-be spoken a word too much,” said Michael, pale with
+rage. “If I am free, as thou say’st, to go to Canada, or Botany Bay, I
+reckon I’m free to live where I like, and that will not be with a
+natural who may turn into a madman some day, for aught I know. Choose
+between him and me, Susy, for I swear to thee, thou shan’t have both.”
+
+“I have chosen,” said Susan, now perfectly composed and still.
+“Whatever comes of it, I bide with Willie.”
+
+“Very well,” replied Michael, trying to assume an equal composure of
+manner. “Then I’ll wish you a very good night.” He went out of the
+house door, half-expecting to be called back again; but, instead, he
+heard a hasty step inside, and a bolt drawn.
+
+“Whew!” said he to himself, “I think I must leave my lady alone for a
+week or two, and give her time to come to her senses. She’ll not find
+it so easy as she thinks to let me go.”
+
+So he went past the kitchen-window in nonchalant style, and was not
+seen again at Yew Nook for some weeks. How did he pass the time? For
+the first day or two, he was unusually cross with all things and people
+that came athwart him. Then wheat-harvest began, and he was busy, and
+exultant about his heavy crop. Then a man came from a distance to bid
+for the lease of his farm, which, by his father’s advice, had been
+offered for sale, as he himself was so soon likely to remove to the Yew
+Nook. He had so little idea that Susan really would remain firm to her
+determination, that he at once began to haggle with the man who came
+after his farm, showed him the crop just got in, and managed skilfully
+enough to make a good bargain for himself. Of course, the bargain had
+to be sealed at the public-house; and the companions he met with there
+soon became friends enough to tempt him into Langdale, where again he
+met with Eleanor Hebthwaite.
+
+How did Susan pass the time? For the first day or so, she was too angry
+and offended to cry. She went about her household duties in a quick,
+sharp, jerking, yet absent way; shrinking one moment from Will,
+overwhelming him with remorseful caresses the next. The third day of
+Michael’s absence, she had the relief of a good fit of crying; and
+after that, she grew softer and more tender; she felt how harshly she
+had spoken to him, and remembered how angry she had been. She made
+excuses for him. “It was no wonder,” she said to herself, “that he had
+been vexed with her; and no wonder he would not give in, when she had
+never tried to speak gently or to reason with him. She was to blame,
+and she would tell him so, and tell him once again all that her mother
+had bade her to be to Willie, and all the horrible stories she had
+heard about madhouses, and he would be on her side at once.”
+
+And so she watched for his coming, intending to apologise as soon as
+ever she saw him. She hurried over her household work, in order to sit
+quietly at her sewing, and hear the first distant sound of his
+well-known step or whistle. But even the sound of her flying needle
+seemed too loud—perhaps she was losing an exquisite instant of
+anticipation; so she stopped sewing, and looked longingly out through
+the geranium leaves, in order that her eye might catch the first stir
+of the branches in the wood-path by which he generally came. Now and
+then a bird might spring out of the covert; otherwise the leaves were
+heavily still in the sultry weather of early autumn. Then she would
+take up her sewing, and, with a spasm of resolution, she would
+determine that a certain task should be fulfilled before she would
+again allow herself the poignant luxury of expectation. Sick at heart
+was she when the evening closed in, and the chances of that day
+diminished. Yet she stayed up longer than usual, thinking that if he
+were coming—if he were only passing along the distant road—the sight of
+a light in the window might encourage him to make his appearance even
+at that late hour, while seeing the house all darkened and shut up
+might quench any such intention.
+
+Very sick and weary at heart, she went to bed; too desolate and
+despairing to cry, or make any moan. But in the morning hope came
+afresh. Another day—another chance! And so it went on for weeks. Peggy
+understood her young mistress’s sorrow full well, and respected it by
+her silence on the subject. Willie seemed happier now that the
+irritation of Michael’s presence was removed; for the poor idiot had a
+sort of antipathy to Michael, which was a kind of heart’s echo to the
+repugnance in which the latter held him. Altogether, just at this time,
+Willie was the happiest of the three.
+
+As Susan went into Coniston, to sell her butter, one Saturday, some
+inconsiderate person told her that she had seen Michael Hurst the night
+before. I said inconsiderate, but I might rather have said unobservant;
+for any one who had spent half-an-hour in Susan Dixon’s company might
+have seen that she disliked having any reference made to the subjects
+nearest her heart, were they joyous or grievous. Now she went a little
+paler than usual (and she had never recovered her colour since she had
+had the fever), and tried to keep silence. But an irrepressible pang
+forced out the question—
+
+“Where?”
+
+“At Thomas Applethwaite’s, in Langdale. They had a kind of
+harvest-home, and he were there among the young folk, and very thick
+wi’ Nelly Hebthwaite, old Thomas’s niece. Thou’lt have to look after
+him a bit, Susan!”
+
+She neither smiled nor sighed. The neighbour who had been speaking to
+her was struck with the gray stillness of her face. Susan herself felt
+how well her self-command was obeyed by every little muscle, and said
+to herself in her Spartan manner, “I can bear it without either wincing
+or blenching.” She went home early, at a tearing, passionate pace,
+trampling and breaking through all obstacles of briar or bush. Willie
+was moping in her absence—hanging listlessly on the farm-yard gate to
+watch for her. When he saw her, he set up one of his strange,
+inarticulate cries, of which she was now learning the meaning, and came
+towards her with his loose, galloping run, head and limbs all shaking
+and wagging with pleasant excitement. Suddenly she turned from him, and
+burst into tears. She sat down on a stone by the wayside, not a hundred
+yards from home, and buried her face in her hands, and gave way to a
+passion of pent-up sorrow; so terrible and full of agony were her low
+cries, that the idiot stood by her, aghast and silent. All his joy gone
+for the time, but not, like her joy, turned into ashes. Some thought
+struck him. Yes! the sight of her woe made him think, great as the
+exertion was. He ran, and stumbled, and shambled home, buzzing with his
+lips all the time. She never missed him. He came back in a trice,
+bringing with him his cherished paper windmill, bought on that fatal
+day when Michael had taken him into Kendal to have his doom of
+perpetual idiocy pronounced. He thrust it into Susan’s face, her hands,
+her lap, regardless of the injury his frail plaything thereby received.
+He leapt before her to think how he had cured all heart-sorrow, buzzing
+louder than ever. Susan looked up at him, and that glance of her sad
+eyes sobered him. He began to whimper, he knew not why: and she now,
+comforter in her turn, tried to soothe him by twirling his windmill.
+But it was broken; it made no noise; it would not go round. This seemed
+to afflict Susan more than him. She tried to make it right, although
+she saw the task was hopeless; and while she did so, the tears rained
+down unheeded from her bent head on the paper toy.
+
+“It won’t do,” said she, at last. “It will never do again.” And,
+somehow, she took the accident and her words as omens of the love that
+was broken, and that she feared could never be pieced together more.
+She rose up and took Willie’s hand, and the two went slowly into the
+house.
+
+To her surprise, Michael Hurst sat in the house-place. House-place is a
+sort of better kitchen, where no cookery is done, but which is reserved
+for state occasions. Michael had gone in there because he was
+accompanied by his only sister, a woman older than himself, who was
+well married beyond Keswick, and who now came for the first time to
+make acquaintance with Susan. Michael had primed his sister with his
+wishes regarding Will, and the position in which he stood with Susan;
+and arriving at Yew Nook in the absence of the latter, he had not
+scrupled to conduct his sister into the guest-room, as he held Mrs.
+Gale’s worldly position in respect and admiration, and therefore wished
+her to be favourably impressed with all the signs of property which he
+was beginning to consider as Susan’s greatest charms. He had secretly
+said to himself, that if Eleanor Hebthwaite and Susan Dixon were equal
+in point of riches, he would sooner have Eleanor by far. He had begun
+to consider Susan as a termagant; and when he thought of his
+intercourse with her, recollections of her somewhat warm and hasty
+temper came far more readily to his mind than any remembrance of her
+generous, loving nature.
+
+And now she stood face to face with him; her eyes tear-swollen, her
+garments dusty, and here and there torn in consequence of her rapid
+progress through the bushy by-paths. She did not make a favourable
+impression on the well-clad Mrs. Gale, dressed in her best silk gown,
+and therefore unusually susceptible to the appearance of another. Nor
+were Susan’s manners gracious or cordial. How could they be, when she
+remembered what had passed between Michael and herself the last time
+they met? For her penitence had faded away under the daily
+disappointment of these last weary weeks.
+
+But she was hospitable in substance. She bade Peggy hurry on the
+kettle, and busied herself among the tea-cups, thankful that the
+presence of Mrs. Gale, as a stranger, would prevent the immediate
+recurrence to the one subject which she felt must be present in
+Michael’s mind as well as in her own. But Mrs. Gale was withheld by no
+such feelings of delicacy. She had come ready-primed with the case, and
+had undertaken to bring the girl to reason. There was no time to be
+lost. It had been prearranged between the brother and sister that he
+was to stroll out into the farm-yard before his sister introduced the
+subject; but she was so confident in the success of her arguments, that
+she must needs have the triumph of a victory as soon as possible; and,
+accordingly, she brought a hail-storm of good reasons to bear upon
+Susan. Susan did not reply for a long time; she was so indignant at
+this intermeddling of a stranger in the deep family sorrow and shame.
+Mrs. Gale thought she was gaining the day, and urged her arguments more
+pitilessly. Even Michael winced for Susan, and wondered at her silence.
+He shrank out of sight, and into the shadow, hoping that his sister
+might prevail, but annoyed at the hard way in which she kept putting
+the case.
+
+Suddenly Susan turned round from the occupation she had pretended to be
+engaged in, and said to him in a low voice, which yet not only vibrated
+itself, but made its hearers thrill through all their obtuseness:
+
+“Michael Hurst! does your sister speak truth, think you?”
+
+Both women looked at him for his answer; Mrs. Gale without anxiety, for
+had she not said the very words they had spoken together before? had
+she not used the very arguments that he himself had suggested? Susan,
+on the contrary, looked to his answer as settling her doom for life;
+and in the gloom of her eyes you might have read more despair than
+hope.
+
+He shuffled his position. He shuffled in his words.
+
+“What is it you ask? My sister has said many things.”
+
+“I ask you,” said Susan, trying to give a crystal clearness both to her
+expressions and her pronunciation, “if, knowing as you do how Will is
+afflicted, you will help me to take that charge of him which I promised
+my mother on her death-bed that I would do; and which means, that I
+shall keep him always with me, and do all in my power to make his life
+happy. If you will do this, I will be your wife; if not, I remain
+unwed.”
+
+“But he may get dangerous; he can be but a trouble; his being here is a
+pain to you, Susan, not a pleasure.”
+
+“I ask you for either yes or no,” said she, a little contempt at his
+evading her question mingling with her tone. He perceived it, and it
+nettled him.
+
+“And I have told you. I answered your question the last time I was
+here. I said I would ne’er keep house with an idiot; no more I will. So
+now you’ve gotten your answer.”
+
+“I have,” said Susan. And she sighed deeply.
+
+“Come, now,” said Mrs. Gale, encouraged by the sigh; “one would think
+you don’t love Michael, Susan, to be so stubborn in yielding to what
+I’m sure would be best for the lad.”
+
+“Oh! she does not care for me,” said Michael. “I don’t believe she ever
+did.”
+
+“Don’t I? Haven’t I?” asked Susan, her eyes blazing out fire. She left
+the room directly, and sent Peggy in to make the tea; and catching at
+Will, who was lounging about in the kitchen, she went up-stairs with
+him and bolted herself in, straining the boy to her heart, and keeping
+almost breathless, lest any noise she made might cause him to break out
+into the howls and sounds which she could not bear that those below
+should hear.
+
+A knock at the door. It was Peggy.
+
+“He wants for to see you, to wish you good-bye.”
+
+“I cannot come. Oh, Peggy, send them away.”
+
+It was her only cry for sympathy; and the old servant understood it.
+She sent them away, somehow; not politely, as I have been given to
+understand.
+
+“Good go with them,” said Peggy, as she grimly watched their retreating
+figures. “We’re rid of bad rubbish, anyhow.” And she turned into the
+house, with the intention of making ready some refreshment for Susan,
+after her hard day at the market, and her harder evening. But in the
+kitchen, to which she passed through the empty house-place, making a
+face of contemptuous dislike at the used tea-cups and fragments of a
+meal yet standing there, she found Susan, with her sleeves tucked up
+and her working apron on, busied in preparing to make clap-bread, one
+of the hardest and hottest domestic tasks of a Daleswoman. She looked
+up, and first met, and then avoided Peggy’s eye; it was too full of
+sympathy. Her own cheeks were flushed, and her own eyes were dry and
+burning.
+
+“Where’s the board, Peggy? We need clap-bread; and, I reckon, I’ve time
+to get through with it to-night.” Her voice had a sharp, dry tone in
+it, and her motions a jerking angularity about them.
+
+Peggy said nothing, but fetched her all that she needed. Susan beat her
+cakes thin with vehement force. As she stooped over them, regardless
+even of the task in which she seemed so much occupied, she was
+surprised by a touch on her mouth of something—what she did not see at
+first. It was a cup of tea, delicately sweetened and cooled, and held
+to her lips, when exactly ready, by the faithful old woman. Susan held
+it off a hand’s breath, and looked into Peggy’s eyes, while her own
+filled with the strange relief of tears.
+
+“Lass!” said Peggy, solemnly, “thou hast done well. It is not long to
+bide, and then the end will come.”
+
+“But you are very old, Peggy,” said Susan, quivering.
+
+“It is but a day sin’ I were young,” replied Peggy; but she stopped the
+conversation by again pushing the cup with gentle force to Susan’s dry
+and thirsty lips. When she had drunken she fell again to her labour,
+Peggy heating the hearth, and doing all that she knew would be
+required, but never speaking another word. Willie basked close to the
+fire, enjoying the animal luxury of warmth, for the autumn evenings
+were beginning to be chilly. It was one o’clock before they thought of
+going to bed on that memorable night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+The vehemence with which Susan Dixon threw herself into occupation
+could not last for ever. Times of languor and remembrance would
+come—times when she recurred with a passionate yearning to bygone days,
+the recollection of which was so vivid and delicious, that it seemed as
+though it were the reality, and the present bleak bareness the dream.
+She smiled anew at the magical sweetness of some touch or tone which in
+memory she felt and heard, and drank the delicious cup of poison,
+although at the very time she knew what the consequences of racking
+pain would be.
+
+“This time, last year,” thought she, “we went nutting together—this
+very day last year; just such a day as to-day. Purple and gold were the
+lights on the hills; the leaves were just turning brown; here and there
+on the sunny slopes the stubble-fields looked tawny; down in a cleft of
+yon purple slate-rock the beck fell like a silver glancing thread; all
+just as it is to-day. And he climbed the slender, swaying nut-trees,
+and bent the branches for me to gather; or made a passage through the
+hazel copses, from time to time claiming a toll. Who could have thought
+he loved me so little?—who?—who?”
+
+Or, as the evening closed in, she would allow herself to imagine that
+she heard his coming step, just that she might recall time feeling of
+exquisite delight which had passed by without the due and passionate
+relish at the time. Then she would wonder how she could have had
+strength, the cruel, self-piercing strength, to say what she had done;
+to stab himself with that stern resolution, of which the sear would
+remain till her dying day. It might have been right; but, as she
+sickened, she wished she had not instinctively chosen the right. How
+luxurious a life haunted by no stern sense of duty must be! And many
+led this kind of life; why could not she? O, for one hour again of his
+sweet company! If he came now, she would agree to whatever he proposed.
+
+It was a fever of the mind. She passed through it, and came out
+healthy, if weak. She was capable once more of taking pleasure in
+following an unseen guide through briar and brake. She returned with
+tenfold affection to her protecting care of Willie. She acknowledged to
+herself that he was to be her all-in-all in life. She made him her
+constant companion. For his sake, as the real owner of Yew Nook, and
+she as his steward and guardian, she began that course of careful
+saving, and that love of acquisition, which afterwards gained for her
+the reputation of being miserly. She still thought that he might regain
+a scanty portion of sense—enough to require some simple pleasures and
+excitement, which would cost money. And money should not be wanting.
+Peggy rather assisted her in the formation of her parsimonious habits
+than otherwise; economy was the order of the district, and a certain
+degree of respectable avarice the characteristic of her age. Only
+Willie was never stinted nor hindered of anything that the two women
+thought could give him pleasure, for want of money.
+
+There was one gratification which Susan felt was needed for the
+restoration of her mind to its more healthy state, after she had passed
+through the whirling fever, when duty was as nothing, and anarchy
+reigned; a gratification that, somehow, was to be her last burst of
+unreasonableness; of which she knew and recognised pain as the sure
+consequence. She must see him once more,—herself unseen.
+
+The week before the Christmas of this memorable year, she went out in
+the dusk of the early winter evening, wrapped close in shawl and cloak.
+She wore her dark shawl under her cloak, putting it over her head in
+lieu of a bonnet; for she knew that she might have to wait long in
+concealment. Then she tramped over the wet fell-path, shut in by misty
+rain for miles and miles, till she came to the place where he was
+lodging; a farm-house in Langdale, with a steep, stony lane leading up
+to it: this lane was entered by a gate out of the main road, and by the
+gate were a few bushes—thorns; but of them the leaves had fallen, and
+they offered no concealment: an old wreck of a yew-tree grew among
+them, however, and underneath that Susan cowered down, shrouding her
+face, of which the colour might betray her, with a corner of her shawl.
+Long did she wait; cold and cramped she became, too damp and stiff to
+change her posture readily. And after all, he might never come! But,
+she would wait till daylight, if need were; and she pulled out a crust,
+with which she had providently supplied herself. The rain had ceased,—a
+dull, still, brooding weather had succeeded; it was a night to hear
+distant sounds. She heard horses’ hoofs striking and splashing in the
+stones, and in the pools of the road at her back. Two horses; not
+well-ridden, or evenly guided, as she could tell.
+
+Michael Hurst and a companion drew near: not tipsy, but not sober. They
+stopped at the gate to bid each other a maudlin farewell. Michael
+stooped forward to catch the latch with the hook of the stick which he
+carried; he dropped the stick, and it fell with one end close to
+Susan,—indeed, with the slightest change of posture she could have
+opened the gate for him. He swore a great oath, and struck his horse
+with his closed fist, as if that animal had been to blame; then he
+dismounted, opened the gate, and fumbled about for his stick. When he
+had found it (Susan had touched the other end) his first use of it was
+to flog his horse well, and she had much ado to avoid its kicks and
+plunges. Then, still swearing, he staggered up the lane, for it was
+evident he was not sober enough to remount.
+
+By daylight Susan was back and at her daily labours at Yew Nook. When
+the spring came, Michael Hurst was married to Eleanor Hebthwaite.
+Others, too, were married, and christenings made their firesides merry
+and glad; or they travelled, and came back after long years with many
+wondrous tales. More rarely, perhaps, a Dalesman changed his dwelling.
+But to all households more change came than to Yew Nook. There the
+seasons came round with monotonous sameness; or, if they brought
+mutation, it was of a slow, and decaying, and depressing kind. Old
+Peggy died. Her silent sympathy, concealed under much roughness, was a
+loss to Susan Dixon. Susan was not yet thirty when this happened, but
+she looked a middle-aged, not to say an elderly woman. People affirmed
+that she had never recovered her complexion since that fever, a dozen
+years ago, which killed her father, and left Will Dixon an idiot. But
+besides her gray sallowness, the lines in her face were strong, and
+deep, and hard. The movements of her eyeballs were slow and heavy; the
+wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes were planted firm and
+sure; not an ounce of unnecessary flesh was there on her bones—every
+muscle started strong and ready for use. She needed all this bodily
+strength, to a degree that no human creature, now Peggy was dead, knew
+of: for Willie had grown up large and strong in body, and, in general,
+docile enough in mind; but, every now and then, he became first moody,
+and then violent. These paroxysms lasted but a day or two; and it was
+Susan’s anxious care to keep their very existence hidden and unknown.
+It is true, that occasional passers-by on that lonely road heard sounds
+at night of knocking about of furniture, blows, and cries, as of some
+tearing demon within the solitary farm-house; but these fits of
+violence usually occurred in the night; and whatever had been their
+consequence, Susan had tidied and redded up all signs of aught unusual
+before the morning. For, above all, she dreaded lest some one might
+find out in what danger and peril she occasionally was, and might
+assume a right to take away her brother from her care. The one idea of
+taking charge of him had deepened and deepened with years. It was
+graven into her mind as the object for which she lived. The sacrifice
+she had made for this object only made it more precious to her.
+Besides, she separated the idea of the docile, affectionate, loutish,
+indolent Will, and kept it distinct from the terror which the demon
+that occasionally possessed him inspired her with. The one was her
+flesh and her blood—the child of her dead mother; the other was some
+fiend who came to torture and convulse the creature she so loved. She
+believed that she fought her brother’s battle in holding down those
+tearing hands, in binding whenever she could those uplifted restless
+arms prompt and prone to do mischief. All the time she subdued him with
+her cunning or her strength, she spoke to him in pitying murmurs, or
+abused the third person, the fiendish enemy, in no unmeasured tones.
+Towards morning the paroxysm was exhausted, and he would fall asleep,
+perhaps only to waken with evil and renewed vigour. But when he was
+laid down, she would sally out to taste the fresh air, and to work off
+her wild sorrow in cries and mutterings to herself. The early labourers
+saw her gestures at a distance, and thought her as crazed as the
+idiot-brother who made the neighbourhood a haunted place. But did any
+chance person call at Yew Nook later on in the day, he would find Susan
+Dixon cold, calm, collected; her manner curt, her wits keen.
+
+Once this fit of violence lasted longer than usual. Susan’s strength
+both of mind and body was nearly worn out; she wrestled in prayer that
+somehow it might end before she, too, was driven mad; or, worse, might
+be obliged to give up life’s aim, and consign Willie to a madhouse.
+From that moment of prayer (as she afterwards superstitiously thought)
+Willie calmed—and then he drooped—and then he sank—and, last of all, he
+died in reality from physical exhaustion.
+
+But he was so gentle and tender as he lay on his dying bed; such
+strange, child-like gleams of returning intelligence came over his
+face, long after the power to make his dull, inarticulate sounds had
+departed, that Susan was attracted to him by a stronger tie than she
+had ever felt before. It was something to have even an idiot loving her
+with dumb, wistful, animal affection; something to have any creature
+looking at her with such beseeching eyes, imploring protection from the
+insidious enemy stealing on. And yet she knew that to him death was no
+enemy, but a true friend, restoring light and health to his poor
+clouded mind. It was to her that death was an enemy; to her, the
+survivor, when Willie died; there was no one to love her.
+
+Worse doom still, there was no one left on earth for her to love.
+
+You now know why no wandering tourist could persuade her to receive him
+as a lodger; why no tired traveller could melt her heart to afford him
+rest and refreshment; why long habits of seclusion had given her a
+moroseness of manner, and how care for the interests of another had
+rendered her keen and miserly.
+
+But there was a third act in the drama of her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+In spite of Peggy’s prophecy that Susan’s life should not seem long, it
+did seem wearisome and endless, as the years slowly uncoiled their
+monotonous circles. To be sure, she might have made change for herself,
+but she did not care to do it. It was, indeed, more than “not caring,”
+which merely implies a certain degree of _vis inertiæ_ to be subdued
+before an object can be attained, and that the object itself does not
+seem to be of sufficient importance to call out the requisite energy.
+On the contrary, Susan exerted herself to avoid change and variety. She
+had a morbid dread of new faces, which originated in her desire to keep
+poor dead Willie’s state a profound secret. She had a contempt for new
+customs; and, indeed, her old ways prospered so well under her active
+hand and vigilant eye, that it was difficult to know how they could be
+improved upon. She was regularly present in Coniston market with the
+best butter and the earliest chickens of the season. Those were the
+common farm produce that every farmer’s wife about had to sell; but
+Susan, after she had disposed of the more feminine articles, turned to
+on the man’s side. A better judge of a horse or cow there was not in
+all the country round. Yorkshire itself might have attempted to jockey
+her, and would have failed. Her corn was sound and clean; her potatoes
+well preserved to the latest spring. People began to talk of the hoards
+of money Susan Dixon must have laid up somewhere; and one young
+ne’er-do-weel of a farmer’s son undertook to make love to the woman of
+forty, who looked fifty-five, if a day. He made up to her by opening a
+gate on the road-path home, as she was riding on a bare-backed horse,
+her purchase not an hour ago. She was off before him, refusing his
+civility; but the remounting was not so easy, and rather than fail she
+did not choose to attempt it. She walked, and he walked alongside,
+improving his opportunity, which, as he vainly thought, had been
+consciously granted to him. As they drew near Yew Nook, he ventured on
+some expression of a wish to keep company with her. His words were
+vague and clumsily arranged. Susan turned round and coolly asked him to
+explain himself, he took courage, as he thought of her reputed wealth,
+and expressed his wishes this second time pretty plainly. To his
+surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart strokes across
+his shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple
+hazel-switch.
+
+“Take that!” said she, almost breathless, “to teach thee how thou
+darest make a fool of an honest woman old enough to be thy mother. If
+thou com’st a step nearer the house, there’s a good horse-pool, and
+there’s two stout fellows who’ll like no better fun than ducking thee.
+Be off wi’ thee!”
+
+And she strode into her own premises, never looking round to see
+whether he obeyed her injunction or not.
+
+Sometimes three or four years would pass over without her hearing
+Michael Hurst’s name mentioned. She used to wonder at such times
+whether he were dead or alive. She would sit for hours by the dying
+embers of her fire on a winter’s evening, trying to recall the scenes
+of her youth; trying to bring up living pictures of the faces she had
+then known—Michael’s most especially. She thought it was possible, so
+long had been the lapse of years, that she might now pass by him in the
+street unknowing and unknown. His outward form she might not recognize,
+but himself she should feel in the thrill of her whole being. He could
+not pass her unawares.
+
+What little she did hear about him, all testified a downward tendency.
+He drank—not at stated times when there was no other work to be done,
+but continually, whether it was seed-time or harvest. His children were
+all ill at the same time; then one died, while the others recovered,
+but were poor sickly things. No one dared to give Susan any direct
+intelligence of her former lover; many avoided all mention of his name
+in her presence; but a few spoke out either in indifference to, or
+ignorance of, those bygone days. Susan heard every word, every whisper,
+every sound that related to him. But her eye never changed, nor did a
+muscle of her face move.
+
+Late one November night she sat over her fire; not a human being
+besides herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since
+Willie’s death. The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone
+home hours before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm
+hearth-stones; there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan
+had known from her childhood, and which then and ever since she had
+oddly associated within the idea of a mother and child talking
+together, one loud tick, and quick—a feeble, sharp one following.
+
+The day had been keen, and piercingly cold. The whole lift of heaven
+seemed a dome of iron. Black and frost-bound was the earth under the
+cruel east wind. Now the wind had dropped, and as the darkness had
+gathered in, the weather-wise old labourers prophesied snow. The sounds
+in the air arose again, as Susan sat still and silent. They were of a
+different character to what they had been during the prevalence of the
+east wind. Then they had been shrill and piping; now they were like low
+distant growling; not unmusical, but strangely threatening. Susan went
+to the window, and drew aside the little curtain. The whole world was
+white—the air was blinded with the swift and heavy fall of snow. At
+present it came down straight, but Susan knew those distant sounds in
+the hollows and gulleys of the hills portended a driving wind and a
+more cruel storm. She thought of her sheep; were they all folded? the
+new-born calf, was it bedded well? Before the drifts were formed too
+deep for her to pass in and out—and by the morning she judged that they
+would be six or seven feet deep—she would go out and see after the
+comfort of her beasts. She took a lantern, and tied a shawl over her
+head, and went out into the open air. She had tenderly provided for all
+her animals, and was returning, when, borne on the blast as if some
+spirit-cry—for it seemed to come rather down from the skies than from
+any creature standing on earth’s level—she heard a voice of agony; she
+could not distinguish words; it seemed rather as if some bird of prey
+was being caught in the whirl of the icy wind, and torn and tortured by
+its violence. Again up high above! Susan put down her lantern, and
+shouted loud in return; it was an instinct, for if the creature were
+not human, which she had doubted but a moment before, what good could
+her responding cry do? And her cry was seized on by the tyrannous wind,
+and borne farther away in the opposite direction to that from which the
+call of agony had proceeded. Again she listened; no sound: then again
+it rang through space; and this time she was sure it was human. She
+turned into the house, and heaped turf and wood on the fire, which,
+careless of her own sensations, she had allowed to fade and almost die
+out. She put a new candle in her lantern; she changed her shawl for a
+maud, and leaving the door on latch, she sallied out. Just at the
+moment when her ear first encountered the weird noises of the storm, on
+issuing forth into the open air, she thought she heard the words, “O
+God! O help!” They were a guide to her, if words they were, for they
+came straight from a rock not a quarter of a mile from Yew Nook, but
+only to be reached, on account of its precipitous character, by a
+round-about path. Thither she steered, defying wind and snow; guided by
+here a thorn-tree, there an old, doddered oak, which had not quite lest
+their identity under the whelming mask of snow. Now and then she
+stopped to listen; but never a word or sound heard she, till right from
+where the copse-wood grew thick and tangled at the base of the rock,
+round which she was winding, she heard a moan. Into the brake—all snow
+in appearance—almost a plain of snow looked on from the little eminence
+where she stood—she plunged, breaking down the bush, stumbling,
+bruising herself, fighting her way; her lantern held between her teeth,
+and she herself using head as well as hands to butt away a passage, at
+whatever cost of bodily injury. As she climbed or staggered, owing to
+the unevenness of the snow-covered ground, where the briars and weeds
+of years were tangled and matted together, her foot felt something
+strangely soft and yielding. She lowered her lantern; there lay a man,
+prone on his face, nearly covered by the fast-falling flakes; he must
+have fallen from the rock above, as, not knowing of the circuitous
+path, he had tried to descend its steep, slippery face. Who could tell?
+it was no time for thinking. Susan lifted him up with her wiry
+strength; he gave no help—no sign of life; but for all that he might be
+alive: he was still warm; she tied her maud round him; she fastened the
+lantern to her apron-string; she held him tight: half-carrying,
+half-dragging—what did a few bruises signify to him, compared to dear
+life, to precious life! She got him through the brake, and down the
+path. There, for an instant, she stopped to take breath; but, as if
+stung by the Furies, she pushed on again with almost superhuman
+strength. Clasping him round the waist, and leaning his dead weight
+against the lintel of the door, she tried to undo the latch; but now,
+just at this moment, a trembling faintness came over her, and a fearful
+dread took possession of her—that here, on the very threshold of her
+home, she might be found dead, and buried under the snow, when the
+farm-servants came in the morning. This terror stirred her up to one
+more effort. Then she and her companion were in the warmth of the quiet
+haven of that kitchen; she laid him on the settle, and sank on the
+floor by his side. How long she remained in this swoon she could not
+tell; not very long she judged by the fire, which was still red and
+sullenly glowing when she came to herself. She lighted the candle, and
+bent over her late burden to ascertain if indeed he were dead. She
+stood long gazing. The man lay dead. There could be no doubt about it.
+His filmy eyes glared at her, unshut. But Susan was not one to be
+affrighted by the stony aspect of death. It was not that; it was the
+bitter, woeful recognition of Michael Hurst!
+
+She was convinced he was dead; but after a while she refused to believe
+in her conviction. She stripped off his wet outer-garments with
+trembling, hurried hands. She brought a blanket down from her own bed;
+she made up the fire. She swathed him in fresh, warm wrappings, and
+laid him on the flags before the fire, sitting herself at his head, and
+holding it in her lap, while she tenderly wiped his loose, wet hair,
+curly still, although its colour had changed from nut-brown to
+iron-gray since she had seen it last. From time to time she bent over
+the face afresh, sick, and fain to believe that the flicker of the
+fire-light was some slight convulsive motion. But the dim, staring eyes
+struck chill to her heart. At last she ceased her delicate, busy cares:
+but she still held the head softly, as if caressing it. She thought
+over all the possibilities and chances in the mingled yarn of their
+lives that might, by so slight a turn, have ended far otherwise. If her
+mother’s cold had been early tended, so that the responsibility as to
+her brother’s weal or woe had not fallen upon her; if the fever had not
+taken such rough, cruel hold on Will; nay, if Mrs. Gale, that hard,
+worldly sister, had not accompanied him on his last visit to Yew
+Nook—his very last before this fatal, stormy might; if she had heard
+his cry,—cry uttered by these pale, dead lips with such wild,
+despairing agony, not yet three hours ago!—O! if she had but heard it
+sooner, he might have been saved before that blind, false step had
+precipitated him down the rock! In going over this weary chain of
+unrealized possibilities, Susan learnt the force of Peggy’s words. Life
+was short, looking back upon it. It seemed but yesterday since all the
+love of her being had been poured out, and run to waste. The
+intervening years—the long monotonous years that had turned her into an
+old woman before her time—were but a dream.
+
+The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter’s day were surprised to
+see the fire-light through the low kitchen-window. They knocked, and
+hearing a moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something had
+befallen their mistress. For all explanation they got these words
+
+“It is Michael Hurst. He was belated, and fell down the Raven’s Crag.
+Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?”
+
+How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew. They
+thought he had dragged himself there, with some sore internal bruise
+sapping away his minuted life. They could not have believed the
+superhuman exertion which had first sought him out, and then dragged
+him hither. Only Susan knew of that.
+
+She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and saddled
+her horse. Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side, and the
+road was clear and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the soft,
+deceitful heaps were massed up, she dismounted and led her steed,
+plunging in deep, with fierce energy, the pain at her heart urging her
+onwards with a sharp, digging spur.
+
+The gray, solemn, winter’s noon was more night-like than the depth of
+summer’s night; dim-purple brooded the low skies over the white earth,
+as Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst’s abode while living.
+It was a small farm-house carelessly kept outside, slatternly tended
+within. The pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty still; her delicate face
+had never suffered from any long-enduring feeling. If anything, its
+expression was that of plaintive sorrow; but the soft, light hair had
+scarcely a tinge of gray; the wood-rose tint of complexion yet
+remained, if not so brilliant as in youth; the straight nose, the small
+mouth were untouched by time. Susan felt the contrast even at that
+moment. She knew that her own skin was weather-beaten, furrowed,
+brown,—that her teeth were gone, and her hair gray and ragged. And yet
+she was not two years older than Nelly,—she had not been, in youth,
+when she took account of these things. Nelly stood wondering at the
+strange-enough horse-woman, who stopped and panted at the door, holding
+her horse’s bridle, and refusing to enter.
+
+“Where is Michael Hurst?” asked Susan, at last.
+
+“Well, I can’t rightly say. He should have been at home last night, but
+he was off, seeing after a public-house to be let at Ulverstone, for
+our farm does not answer, and we were thinking—”
+
+“He did not come home last night?” said Susan, cutting short the story,
+and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a ray of the
+awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming wrath.
+
+“No! he’ll be stopping somewhere out Ulverstone ways. I’m sure we’ve
+need of him at home, for I’ve no one but lile Tommy to help me tend the
+beasts. Things have not gone well with us, and we don’t keep a servant
+now. But you’re trembling all over, ma’am. You’d better come in, and
+take something warm, while your horse rests. That’s the stable-door, to
+your left.”
+
+Susan took her horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down
+with a wisp of straw. Then she hooked about her for hay; but the place
+was bare of feed, and smelt damp and unused. She went to the house,
+thankful for the respite, and got some clap-bread, which she mashed up
+in a pailful of lukewarm water. Every moment was a respite, and yet
+every moment made her dread the more the task that lay before her. It
+would be longer than she thought at first. She took the saddle off, and
+hung about her horse, which seemed, somehow, more like a friend than
+anything else in the world. She laid her cheek against its neck, and
+rested there, before returning to the house for the last time.
+
+Eleanor had brought down one of her own gowns, which hung on a chair
+against the fire, and had made her unknown visitor a cup of hot tea.
+Susan could hardly bear all these little attentions: they choked her,
+and yet she was so wet, so weak with fatigue and excitement, that she
+could neither resist by voice or by action. Two children stood
+awkwardly about, puzzled at the scene, and even Eleanor began to wish
+for some explanation of who her strange visitor was.
+
+“You’ve, maybe, heard him speaking of me? I’m called Susan Dixon.”
+
+Nelly coloured, and avoided meeting Susan’s eye.
+
+“I’ve heard other folk speak of you. He never named your name.”
+
+This respect of silence came like balm to Susan: balm not felt or
+heeded at the time it was applied, but very grateful in its effects for
+all that.
+
+“He is at my house,” continued Susan, determined not to stop or quaver
+in the operation—the pain which must be inflicted.
+
+“At your house? Yew Nook?” questioned Eleanor, surprised. “How came he
+there?”—half jealously. “Did he take shelter from the coming storm?
+Tell me,—there is something—tell me, woman!”
+
+“He took no shelter. Would to God he had!”
+
+“O! would to God! would to God!” shrieked out Eleanor, learning all
+from the woful import of those dreary eyes. Her cries thrilled through
+the house; the children’s piping wailings and passionate cries on
+“Daddy! Daddy!” pierced into Susan’s very marrow. But she remained as
+still and tearless as the great round face upon the clock.
+
+At last, in a lull of crying, she said,—not exactly questioning, but as
+if partly to herself—
+
+“You loved him, then?”
+
+“Loved him! he was my husband! He was the father of three bonny bairns
+that lie dead in Grasmere churchyard. I wish you’d go, Susan Dixon, and
+let me weep without your watching me! I wish you’d never come near the
+place.”
+
+“Alas! alas! it would not have brought him to life. I would have laid
+down my own to save his. My life has been so very sad! No one would
+have cared if I had died. Alas! alas!”
+
+The tone in which she said this was so utterly mournful and despairing
+that it awed Nelly into quiet for a time. But by-and-by she said, “I
+would not turn a dog out to do it harm; but the night is clear, and
+Tommy shall guide you to the Red Cow. But, oh, I want to be alone! If
+you’ll come back to-morrow, I’ll be better, and I’ll hear all, and
+thank you for every kindness you have shown him,—and I do believe
+you’ve showed him kindness,—though I don’t know why.”
+
+Susan moved heavily and strangely.
+
+She said something—her words came thick and unintelligible. She had had
+a paralytic stroke since she had last spoken. She could not go, even if
+she would. Nor did Eleanor, when she became aware of the state of the
+case, wish her to leave. She had her laid on her own bed, and weeping
+silently all the while for her last husband, she nursed Susan like a
+sister. She did not know what her guest’s worldly position might be;
+and she might never be repaid. But she sold many a little trifle to
+purchase such small comforts as Susan needed. Susan, lying still and
+motionless, learnt much. It was not a severe stroke; it might be the
+forerunner of others yet to come, but at some distance of time. But for
+the present she recovered, and regained much of her former health. On
+her sick-bed she matured her plans. When she returned to Yew Nook, she
+took Michael Hurst’s widow and children with her to live there, and
+fill up the haunted hearth with living forms that should banish the
+ghosts.
+
+And so it fell out that the latter days of Susan Dixon’s life were
+better than the former.
+
+
+
+
+When this narrative was finished, Mrs. Dawson called on our two
+gentlemen, Signor Sperano and Mr. Preston, and told them that they had
+hitherto been amused or interested, but that it was now their turn to
+amuse or interest. They looked at each other as if this application of
+hers took them by surprise, and seemed altogether as much abashed as
+well-grown men can ever be. Signor Sperano was the first to recover
+himself: after thinking a little, he said—
+
+“Your will, dear lady, is law. Next Monday evening, I will bring you an
+old, old story, which I found among the papers of the good old priest
+who first welcomed me to England. It was but a poor return for his
+generous kindness; but I had the opportunity of nursing him through the
+cholera, of which he died. He left me all that he had—no money—but his
+scanty furniture, his book of prayers, his crucifix and rosary, and his
+papers. How some of those papers came into his hands I know not. They
+had evidently been written many years before the venerable man was
+born; and I doubt whether he had ever examined the bundles, which had
+come down to him from some old ancestor, or in some strange bequest.
+His life was too busy to leave any time for the gratification of mere
+curiosity; I, alas! have only had too much leisure.”
+
+Next Monday, Signor Sperano read to us the story which I will call
+
+               “THE POOR CLARE.”
+
+
+
+
+                              THE POOR CLARE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+December 12th, 1747.—My life has been strangely bound up with
+extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
+connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I even
+knew of their existence.  I suppose, most old men are, like me, more
+given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest
+and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events—though these
+may have far more interest for the multitude—immediately passing before
+their eyes.  If this should be the case with the generality of old
+people, how much more so with me! . . . If I am to enter upon that
+strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back.  I
+myself only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her;
+but, to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the
+order in which they occurred—not that in which I became acquainted with
+them.
+
+There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part they
+called the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named Craven.
+Starkey Manor-house is rather like a number of rooms clustered round a
+gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall.  Indeed, I suppose
+that the house only consisted of a great tower in the centre, in the days
+when the Scots made their raids terrible as far south as this; and that
+after the Stuarts came in, and there was a little more security of
+property in those parts, the Starkeys of that time added the lower
+building, which runs, two stories high, all round the base of the keep.
+There has been a grand garden laid out in my days, on the southern slope
+near the house; but when I first knew the place, the kitchen-garden at
+the farm was the only piece of cultivated ground belonging to it.  The
+deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and might
+have browsed quite close up to the house if they had not been too wild
+and shy.  Starkey Manor-house itself stood on a projection or peninsula
+of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills that form the sides of
+the Trough of Bolland.  These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards
+their summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled copsewood and
+green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of an ancient forest-tree
+would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly white branches, as if
+in imprecation, to the sky.  These trees, they told me, were the remnants
+of that forest which existed in the days of the Heptarchy, and were even
+then noted as landmarks.  No wonder that their upper and more exposed
+branches were leafless, and that the dead bark had peeled away, from
+sapless old age.
+
+Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently, of the same
+date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the family, who
+sought shelter—they and their families and their small flocks and
+herds—at the hands of their feudal lord.  Some of them had pretty much
+fallen to decay.  They were built in a strange fashion.  Strong beams had
+been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other
+ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape of
+one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger.
+The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish,
+mortar—anything to keep out the weather.  The fires were made in the
+centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only
+chimney.  No Highland hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher
+construction.
+
+The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century, was
+a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey.  His family had kept to the old faith, and
+were stanch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to marry any one of
+Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to embrace
+the Romish religion.  Mr. Patrick Starkey’s father had been a follower of
+James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign of that
+monarch he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as
+zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself.  He had returned
+to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her, bearing her back
+to the court at St. Germains.  But some licence on the part of the
+disorderly gentlemen who surrounded King James in his exile, had insulted
+his beautiful wife, and disgusted him; so he removed from St. Germains to
+Antwerp, whence, in a few years’ time, he quietly returned to Starkey
+Manor-house—some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent their good
+offices to reconcile him to the powers that were.  He was as firm a
+Catholic as ever, and as stanch an advocate for the Stuarts and the
+divine rights of kings; but his religion almost amounted to asceticism,
+and the conduct of these with whom he had been brought in such close
+contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection of a stern
+moralist.  So he gave his allegiance where he could not give his esteem,
+and learned to respect sincerely the upright and moral character of one
+whom he yet regarded as an usurper.  King William’s government had little
+need to fear such a one.  So he returned, as I have said, with a sobered
+heart and impoverished fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had fallen
+sadly to ruin while the owner had been a courtier, a soldier, and an
+exile.  The roads into the Trough of Bolland were little more than
+cart-ruts; indeed, the way up to the house lay along a ploughed field
+before you came to the deer-park.  Madam, as the country-folk used to
+call Mrs. Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her husband, holding on to
+him with a light hand by his leather riding-belt.  Little master (he that
+was afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his pony by a
+serving-man.  A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong
+step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and high up on the mails
+and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on the topmost
+trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart rocked and
+shook in the heavy roads of late autumn.  The girl wore the Antwerp
+faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and altogether her
+appearance was such that the old cottager, who described the possession
+to me many years after, said that all the country-folk took her for a
+foreigner.  Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the
+company.  They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at
+the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to
+the real Squire, “come back at last,” and gazed after the little
+procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign
+language in which the few necessary words that passed among them were
+spoken.  One lad, called from his staring by the Squire to come and help
+about the cart, accompanied them to the Manor-house.  He said that when
+the lady had descended from her pillion, the middle-aged woman whom I
+have described as walking while the others rode, stepped quickly forward,
+and taking Madam Starkey (who was of a slight and delicate figure) in her
+arms, she lifted her over the threshold, and set her down in her
+husband’s house, at the same time uttering a passionate and outlandish
+blessing.  The Squire stood by, smiling gravely at first; but when the
+words of blessing were pronounced, he took off his fine feathered hat,
+and bent his head.  The girl with the black mantle stepped onward into
+the shadow of the dark hall, and kissed the lady’s hand; and that was all
+the lad could tell to the group that gathered round him on his return,
+eager to hear everything, and to know how much the Squire had given him
+for his services.
+
+From all I could gather, the Manor-house, at the time of the Squire’s
+return, was in the most dilapidated state.  The stout gray walls remained
+firm and entire; but the inner chambers had been used for all kinds of
+purposes.  The great withdrawing-room had been a barn; the state
+tapestry-chamber had held wool, and so on.  But, by-and-by, they were
+cleared out; and if the Squire had no money to spend on new furniture, he
+and his wife had the knack of making the best of the old.  He was no
+despicable joiner; she had a kind of grace in whatever she did, and
+imparted an air of elegant picturesqueness to whatever she touched.
+Besides, they had brought many rare things from the Continent; perhaps I
+should rather say, things that were rare in that part of
+England—carvings, and crosses, and beautiful pictures.  And then, again,
+wood was plentiful in the Trough of Bolland, and great log-fires danced
+and glittered in all the dark, old rooms, and gave a look of home and
+comfort to everything.
+
+Why do I tell you all this?  I have little to do with the Squire and
+Madame Starkey; and yet I dwell upon them, as if I were unwilling to come
+to the real people with whom my life was so strangely mixed up.  Madam
+had been nursed in Ireland by the very woman who lifted her in her arms,
+and welcomed her to her husband’s home in Lancashire.  Excepting for the
+short period of her own married life, Bridget Fitzgerald had never left
+her nursling.  Her marriage—to one above her in rank—had been unhappy.
+Her husband had died, and left her in even greater poverty than that in
+which she was when he had first met with her.  She had one child, the
+beautiful daughter who came riding on the waggon-load of furniture that
+was brought to the Manor-house.  Madame Starkey had taken her again into
+her service when she became a widow.  She and her daughter had followed
+“the mistress” in all her fortunes; they had lived at St. Germains and at
+Antwerp, and were now come to her home in Lancashire.  As soon as Bridget
+had arrived there, the Squire gave her a cottage of her own, and took
+more pains in furnishing it for her than he did in anything else out of
+his own house.  It was only nominally her residence.  She was constantly
+up at the great house; indeed, it was but a short cut across the woods
+from her own home to the home of her nursling.  Her daughter Mary, in
+like manner, moved from one house to the other at her own will.  Madam
+loved both mother and child dearly.  They had great influence over her,
+and, through her, over her husband.  Whatever Bridget or Mary willed was
+sure to come to pass.  They were not disliked; for, though wild and
+passionate, they were also generous by nature.  But the other servants
+were afraid of them, as being in secret the ruling spirits of the
+household.  The Squire had lost his interest in all secular things; Madam
+was gentle, affectionate, and yielding.  Both husband and wife were
+tenderly attached to each other and to their boy; but they grew more and
+more to shun the trouble of decision on any point; and hence it was that
+Bridget could exert such despotic power.  But if everyone else yielded to
+her “magic of a superior mind,” her daughter not unfrequently rebelled.
+She and her mother were too much alike to agree.  There were wild
+quarrels between them, and wilder reconciliations.  There were times
+when, in the heat of passion, they could have stabbed each other.  At all
+other times they both—Bridget especially—would have willingly laid down
+their lives for one another.  Bridget’s love for her child lay very
+deep—deeper than that daughter ever knew; or I should think she would
+never have wearied of home as she did, and prayed her mistress to obtain
+for her some situation—as waiting maid—beyond the seas, in that more
+cheerful continental life, among the scenes of which so many of her
+happiest years had been spent.  She thought, as youth thinks, that life
+would last for ever, and that two or three years were but a small portion
+of it to pass away from her mother, whose only child she was.  Bridget
+thought differently, but was too proud ever to show what she felt.  If
+her child wished to leave her, why—she should go.  But people said
+Bridget became ten years older in the course of two months at this time.
+She took it that Mary wanted to leave her.  The truth was, that Mary
+wanted for a time to leave the place, and to seek some change, and would
+thankfully have taken her mother with her.  Indeed when Madam Starkey had
+gotten her a situation with some grand lady abroad, and the time drew
+near for her to go, it was Mary who clung to her mother with passionate
+embrace, and, with floods of tears, declared that she would never leave
+her; and it was Bridget, who at last loosened her arms, and, grave and
+tearless herself, bade her keep her word, and go forth into the wide
+world.  Sobbing aloud, and looking back continually, Mary went away.
+Bridget was still as death, scarcely drawing her breath, or closing her
+stony eyes; till at last she turned back into her cottage, and heaved a
+ponderous old settle against the door.  There she sat, motionless, over
+the gray ashes of her extinguished fire, deaf to Madam’s sweet voice, as
+she begged leave to enter and comfort her nurse.  Deaf, stony, and
+motionless, she sat for more than twenty hours; till, for the third time,
+Madam came across the snowy path from the great house, carrying with her
+a young spaniel, which had been Mary’s pet up at the hall; and which had
+not ceased all night long to seek for its absent mistress, and to whine
+and moan after her.  With tears Madam told this story, through the closed
+door—tears excited by the terrible look of anguish, so steady, so
+immovable—so the same to-day as it was yesterday—on her nurse’s face.
+The little creature in her arms began to utter its piteous cry, as it
+shivered with the cold.  Bridget stirred; she moved—she listened.  Again
+that long whine; she thought it was for her daughter; and what she had
+denied to her nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature that
+Mary had cherished.  She opened the door, and took the dog from Madam’s
+arms.  Then Madam came in, and kissed and comforted the old woman, who
+took but little notice of her or anything.  And sending up Master Patrick
+to the hall for fire and food, the sweet young lady never left her nurse
+all that night.  Next day, the Squire himself came down, carrying a
+beautiful foreign picture—Our Lady of the Holy Heart, the Papists call
+it.  It is a picture of the Virgin, her heart pierced with arrows, each
+arrow representing one of her great woes.  That picture hung in Bridget’s
+cottage when I first saw her; I have that picture now.
+
+Years went on.  Mary was still abroad.  Bridget was still and stern,
+instead of active and passionate.  The little dog, Mignon, was indeed her
+darling.  I have heard that she talked to it continually; although, to
+most people, she was so silent.  The Squire and Madam treated her with
+the greatest consideration, and well they might; for to them she was as
+devoted and faithful as ever.  Mary wrote pretty often, and seemed
+satisfied with her life.  But at length the letters ceased—I hardly know
+whether before or after a great and terrible sorrow came upon the house
+of the Starkeys.  The Squire sickened of a putrid fever; and Madam caught
+it in nursing him, and died.  You may be sure, Bridget let no other woman
+tend her but herself; and in the very arms that had received her at her
+birth, that sweet young woman laid her head down, and gave up her breath.
+The Squire recovered, in a fashion.  He was never strong—he had never the
+heart to smile again.  He fasted and prayed more than ever; and people
+did say that he tried to cut off the entail, and leave all the property
+away to found a monastery abroad, of which he prayed that some day little
+Squire Patrick might be the reverend father.  But he could not do this,
+for the strictness of the entail and the laws against the Papists.  So he
+could only appoint gentlemen of his own faith as guardians to his son,
+with many charges about the lad’s soul, and a few about the land, and the
+way it was to be held while he was a minor.  Of course, Bridget was not
+forgotten.  He sent for her as he lay on his death-bed, and asked her if
+she would rather have a sum down, or have a small annuity settled upon
+her.  She said at once she would have a sum down; for she thought of her
+daughter, and how she could bequeath the money to her, whereas an annuity
+would have died with her.  So the Squire left her her cottage for life,
+and a fair sum of money.  And then he died, with as ready and willing a
+heart as, I suppose, ever any gentleman took out of this world with him.
+The young Squire was carried off by his guardians, and Bridget was left
+alone.
+
+I have said that she had not heard from Mary for some time.  In her last
+letter, she had told of travelling about with her mistress, who was the
+English wife of some great foreign officer, and had spoken of her chances
+of making a good marriage, without naming the gentleman’s name, keeping
+it rather back as a pleasant surprise to her mother; his station and
+fortune being, as I had afterwards reason to know, far superior to
+anything she had a right to expect.  Then came a long silence; and Madam
+was dead, and the Squire was dead; and Bridget’s heart was gnawed by
+anxiety, and she knew not whom to ask for news of her child.  She could
+not write, and the Squire had managed her communication with her
+daughter.  She walked off to Hurst; and got a good priest there—one whom
+she had known at Antwerp—to write for her.  But no answer came.  It was
+like crying into the’ awful stillness of night.
+
+One day, Bridget was missed by those neighbours who had been accustomed
+to mark her goings-out and comings-in.  She had never been sociable with
+any of them; but the sight of her had become a part of their daily lives,
+and slow wonder arose in their minds, as morning after morning came, and
+her house-door remained closed, her window dead from any glitter, or
+light of fire within.  At length, some one tried the door; it was locked.
+Two or three laid their heads together, before daring to look in through
+the blank unshuttered window.  But, at last, they summoned up courage;
+and then saw that Bridget’s absence from their little world was not the
+result of accident or death, but of premeditation.  Such small articles
+of furniture as could be secured from the effects of time and damp by
+being packed up, were stowed away in boxes.  The picture of the Madonna
+was taken down, and gone.  In a word, Bridget had stolen away from her
+home, and left no trace whither she was departed.  I knew afterwards,
+that she and her little dog had wandered off on the long search for her
+lost daughter.  She was too illiterate to have faith in letters, even had
+she had the means of writing and sending many.  But she had faith in her
+own strong love, and believed that her passionate instinct would guide
+her to her child.  Besides, foreign travel was no new thing to her, and
+she could speak enough of French to explain the object of her journey,
+and had, moreover, the advantage of being, from her faith, a welcome
+object of charitable hospitality at many a distant convent.  But the
+country people round Starkey Manor-house knew nothing of all this.  They
+wondered what had become of her, in a torpid, lazy fashion, and then left
+off thinking of her altogether.  Several years passed.  Both Manor-house
+and cottage were deserted.  The young Squire lived far away under the
+direction of his guardians.  There were inroads of wool and corn into the
+sitting-rooms of the Hall; and there was some low talk, from time to
+time, among the hinds and country people whether it would not be as well
+to break into old Bridget’s cottage, and save such of her goods as were
+left from the moth and rust which must be making sad havoc.  But this
+idea was always quenched by the recollection of her strong character and
+passionate anger; and tales of her masterful spirit, and vehement force
+of will, were whispered about, till the very thought of offending her, by
+touching any article of hers, became invested with a kind of horror: it
+was believed that, dead or alive, she would not fail to avenge it.
+
+Suddenly she came home; with as little noise or note of preparation as
+she had departed.  One day some one noticed a thin, blue curl of smoke
+ascending from her chimney.  Her door stood open to the noonday sun; and,
+ere many hours had elapsed, some one had seen an old
+travel-and-sorrow-stained woman dipping her pitcher in the well; and
+said, that the dark, solemn eyes that looked up at him were more like
+Bridget Fitzgerald’s than any one else’s in this world; and yet, if it
+were she, she looked as if she had been scorched in the flames of hell,
+so brown, and scared, and fierce a creature did she seem.  By-and-by many
+saw her; and those who met her eye once cared not to be caught looking at
+her again.  She had got into the habit of perpetually talking to herself;
+nay, more, answering herself, and varying her tones according to the side
+she took at the moment.  It was no wonder that those who dared to listen
+outside her door at night believed that she held converse with some
+spirit; in short, she was unconsciously earning for herself the dreadful
+reputation of a witch.
+
+Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her, was
+her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days.  Once he was
+ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
+management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had then
+been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals.  Whatever this man
+did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks, intermingled with
+blessings (that were rather promises of good fortune than prayers),
+looked grave at his good luck when, next year, his ewes twinned, and his
+meadow-grass was heavy and thick.
+
+Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven, one
+of the guardians of the young squire, a certain Sir Philip Tempest,
+bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his ward’s property;
+and in consequence he brought down four or five gentlemen, of his
+friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall.  From all accounts, they
+roystered and spent pretty freely.  I never heard any of their names but
+one, and that was Squire Gisborne’s.  He was hardly a middle-aged man
+then; he had been much abroad, and there, I believe, he had known Sir
+Philip Tempest, and done him some service.  He was a daring and dissolute
+fellow in those days: careless and fearless, and one who would rather be
+in a quarrel than out of it.  He had his fits of ill-temper besides, when
+he would spare neither man nor beast.  Otherwise, those who knew him
+well, used to say he had a good heart, when he was neither drunk, nor
+angry, nor in any way vexed.  He had altered much when I came to know
+him.
+
+One day, the gentlemen had all been out shooting, and with but little
+success, I believe; anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had none, and was in a black
+humour accordingly.  He was coming home, having his gun loaded,
+sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he turned
+out of the wood by Bridget’s cottage.  Partly for wantonness, partly to
+vent his spleen upon some living creature.  Mr. Gisborne took his gun,
+and fired—he had better have never fired gun again, than aimed that
+unlucky shot, he hit Mignon, and at the creature’s sudden cry, Bridget
+came out, and saw at a glance what had been done.  She took Mignon up in
+her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with
+his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all
+covered with blood.  Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of sullen penitence:
+
+“You should have kept the dog out of my way—a little poaching varmint.”
+
+At this very moment, Mignon stretched out his legs, and stiffened in her
+arms—her lost Mary’s dog, who had wandered and sorrowed with her for
+years.  She walked right into Mr. Gisborne’s path, and fixed his
+unwilling, sullen look, with her dark and terrible eye.
+
+“Those never throve that did me harm,” said she.  “I’m alone in the
+world, and helpless; the more do the saints in heaven hear my prayers.
+Hear me, ye blessed ones! hear me while I ask for sorrow on this bad,
+cruel man.  He has killed the only creature that loved me—the dumb beast
+that I loved.  Bring down heavy sorrow on his head for it, O ye saints!
+He thought that I was helpless, because he saw me lonely and poor; but
+are not the armies of heaven for the like of me?”
+
+“Come, come,” said he, half remorseful, but not one whit afraid.  “Here’s
+a crown to buy thee another dog.  Take it, and leave off cursing!  I care
+none for thy threats.”
+
+“Don’t you?” said she, coming a step closer, and changing her imprecatory
+cry for a whisper which made the gamekeeper’s lad, following Mr.
+Gisborne, creep all over.  “You shall live to see the creature you love
+best, and who alone loves you—ay, a human creature, but as innocent and
+fond as my poor, dead darling—you shall see this creature, for whom death
+would be too happy, become a terror and a loathing to all, for this
+blood’s sake.  Hear me, O holy saints, who never fail them that have no
+other help!”
+
+She threw up her right hand, filled with poor Mignon’s life-drops; they
+spirted, one or two of them, on his shooting-dress,—an ominous sight to
+the follower.  But the master only laughed a little, forced, scornful
+laugh, and went on to the Hall.  Before he got there, however, he took
+out a gold piece, and bade the boy carry it to the old woman on his
+return to the village.  The lad was “afeared,” as he told me in after
+years; he came to the cottage, and hovered about, not daring to enter.
+He peeped through the window at last; and by the flickering wood-flame,
+he saw Bridget kneeling before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart,
+with dead Mignon lying between her and the Madonna.  She was praying
+wildly, as her outstretched arms betokened.  The lad shrunk away in
+redoubled terror; and contented himself with slipping the gold piece
+under the ill-fitting door.  The next day it was thrown out upon the
+midden; and there it lay, no one daring to touch it.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Gisborne, half curious, half uneasy, thought to lessen his
+uncomfortable feelings by asking Sir Philip who Bridget was?  He could
+only describe her—he did not know her name.  Sir Philip was equally at a
+loss.  But an old servant of the Starkeys, who had resumed his livery at
+the Hall on this occasion—a scoundrel whom Bridget had saved from
+dismissal more than once during her palmy days—said:—
+
+“It will be the old witch, that his worship means.  She needs a ducking,
+if ever a woman did, does that Bridget Fitzgerald.”
+
+“Fitzgerald!” said both the gentlemen at once.  But Sir Philip was the
+first to continue:—
+
+“I must have no talk of ducking her, Dickon.  Why, she must be the very
+woman poor Starkey bade me have a care of; but when I came here last she
+was gone, no one knew where.  I’ll go and see her to-morrow.  But mind
+you, sirrah, if any harm comes to her, or any more talk of her being a
+witch—I’ve a pack of hounds at home, who can follow the scent of a lying
+knave as well as ever they followed a dog-fox; so take care how you talk
+about ducking a faithful old servant of your dead master’s.”
+
+“Had she ever a daughter?” asked Mr. Gisborne, after a while.
+
+“I don’t know—yes!  I’ve a notion she had; a kind of waiting woman to
+Madam Starkey.”
+
+“Please your worship,” said humbled Dickon, “Mistress Bridget had a
+daughter—one Mistress Mary—who went abroad, and has never been heard on
+since; and folk do say that has crazed her mother.”
+
+Mr. Gisborne shaded his eyes with his hand.
+
+“I could wish she had not cursed me,” he muttered.  “She may have
+power—no one else could.”  After a while, he said aloud, no one
+understanding rightly what he meant, “Tush! it is impossible!”—and called
+for claret; and he and the other gentlemen set-to to a drinking-bout.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+I now come to the time in which I myself was mixed up with the people
+that I have been writing about.  And to make you understand how I became
+connected with them, I must give you some little account of myself.  My
+father was the younger son of a Devonshire gentleman of moderate
+property; my eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his forefathers, my
+second became an eminent attorney in London, and my father took orders.
+Like most poor clergymen, he had a large family; and I have no doubt was
+glad enough when my London uncle, who was a bachelor, offered to take
+charge of me, and bring me up to be his successor in business.
+
+In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle’s house, not far from
+Gray’s Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour with
+him in his office.  I was very fond of the old gentleman.  He was the
+confidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to his
+present position as much by knowledge of human nature as by knowledge of
+law; though he was learned enough in the latter.  He used to say his
+business was law, his pleasure heraldry.  From his intimate acquaintance
+with family history, and all the tragic courses of life therein involved,
+to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of arms that came
+across his path was as good as a play or a romance.  Many cases of
+disputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy, were brought to him,
+as to a great authority on such points.  If the lawyer who came to
+consult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him a long lecture
+on the importance of attending to heraldry; if the lawyer was of mature
+age and good standing, he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse him to
+me afterwards as negligent of one great branch of the profession.  His
+house was in a stately new street called Ormond Street, and in it he had
+a handsome library; but all the books treated of things that were past;
+none of them planned or looked forward into the future.  I worked
+away—partly for the sake of my family at home, partly because my uncle
+had really taught me to enjoy the kind of practice in which he himself
+took such delight.  I suspect I worked too hard; at any rate, in
+seventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from well, and my good uncle was
+disturbed by my ill looks.
+
+One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk’s room at the dingy office
+in Grey’s Inn Lane.  It was the summons for me, and I went into his
+private room just as a gentleman—whom I knew well enough by sight as an
+Irish lawyer of more reputation than he deserved—was leaving.
+
+My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands together and considering.  I was
+there two or three minutes before he spoke.  Then he told me that I must
+pack up my portmanteau that very afternoon, and start that night by
+post-horse for West Chester.  I should get there, if all went well, at
+the end of five days’ time, and must then wait for a packet to cross over
+to Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a certain town named Kildoon,
+and in that neighbourhood I was to remain, making certain inquiries as to
+the existence of any descendants of the younger branch of a family to
+whom some valuable estates had descended in the female line.  The Irish
+lawyer whom I had seen was weary of the case, and would willingly have
+given up the property, without further ado, to a man who appeared to
+claim them; but on laying his tables and trees before my uncle, the
+latter had foreseen so many possible prior claimants, that the lawyer had
+begged him to undertake the management of the whole business.  In his
+youth, my uncle would have liked nothing better than going over to
+Ireland himself, and ferreting out every scrap of paper or parchment, and
+every word of tradition respecting the family.  As it was, old and gouty,
+he deputed me.
+
+Accordingly, I went to Kildoon.  I suspect I had something of my uncle’s
+delight in following up a genealogical scent, for I very soon found out,
+when on the spot, that Mr. Rooney, the Irish lawyer, would have got both
+himself and the first claimant into a terrible scrape, if he had
+pronounced his opinion that the estates ought to be given up to him.
+There were three poor Irish fellows, each nearer of kin to the last
+possessor; but, a generation before, there was a still nearer relation,
+who had never been accounted for, nor his existence ever discovered by
+the lawyers, I venture to think, till I routed him out from the memory of
+some of the old dependants of the family.  What had become of him?  I
+travelled backwards and forwards; I crossed over to France, and came back
+again with a slight clue, which ended in my discovering that, wild and
+dissipated himself, he had left one child, a son, of yet worse character
+than his father; that this same Hugh Fitzgerald had married a very
+beautiful serving-woman of the Byrnes—a person below him in hereditary
+rank, but above him in character; that he had died soon after his
+marriage, leaving one child, whether a boy or a girl I could not learn,
+and that the mother had returned to live in the family of the Byrnes.
+Now, the chief of this latter family was serving in the Duke of Berwick’s
+regiment, and it was long before I could hear from him; it was more than
+a year before I got a short, haughty letter—I fancy he had a soldier’s
+contempt for a civilian, an Irishman’s hatred for an Englishman, an
+exiled Jacobite’s jealousy of one who prospered and lived tranquilly
+under the government he looked upon as an usurpation.  “Bridget
+Fitzgerald,” he said, “had been faithful to the fortunes of his
+sister—had followed her abroad, and to England when Mrs. Starkey had
+thought fit to return.  Both his sister and her husband were dead, he
+knew nothing of Bridget Fitzgerald at the present time: probably Sir
+Philip Tempest, his nephew’s guardian, might be able to give me some
+information.”  I have not given the little contemptuous terms; the way in
+which faithful service was meant to imply more than it said—all that has
+nothing to do with my story.  Sir Philip, when applied to, told me that
+he paid an annuity regularly to an old woman named Fitzgerald, living at
+Coldholme (the village near Starkey Manor-house).  Whether she had any
+descendants he could not say.
+
+One bleak March evening, I came in sight of the places described at the
+beginning of my story.  I could hardly understand the rude dialect in
+which the direction to old Bridget’s house was given.
+
+“Yo’ see yon furleets,” all run together, gave me no idea that I was to
+guide myself by the distant lights that shone in the windows of the Hall,
+occupied for the time by a farmer who held the post of steward, while the
+Squire, now four or five and twenty, was making the grand tour.  However,
+at last, I reached Bridget’s cottage—a low, moss-grown place: the palings
+that had once surrounded it were broken and gone; and the underwood of
+the forest came up to the walls, and must have darkened the windows.  It
+was about seven o’clock—not late to my London notions—but, after knocking
+for some time at the door and receiving no reply, I was driven to
+conjecture that the occupant of the house was gone to bed.  So I betook
+myself to the nearest church I had seen, three miles back on the road I
+had come, sure that close to that I should find an inn of some kind; and
+early the next morning I set off back to Coldholme, by a field-path which
+my host assured me I should find a shorter cut than the road I had taken
+the night before.  It was a cold, sharp morning; my feet left prints in
+the sprinkling of hoar-frost that covered the ground; nevertheless, I saw
+an old woman, whom I instinctively suspected to be the object of my
+search, in a sheltered covert on one side of my path.  I lingered and
+watched her.  She must have been considerably above the middle size in
+her prime, for when she raised herself from the stooping position in
+which I first saw her, there was something fine and commanding in the
+erectness of her figure.  She drooped again in a minute or two, and
+seemed looking for something on the ground, as, with bent head, she
+turned off from the spot where I gazed upon her, and was lost to my
+sight.  I fancy I missed my way, and made a round in spite of the
+landlord’s directions; for by the time I had reached Bridget’s cottage
+she was there, with no semblance of hurried walk or discomposure of any
+kind.  The door was slightly ajar.  I knocked, and the majestic figure
+stood before me, silently awaiting the explanation of my errand.  Her
+teeth were all gone, so the nose and chin were brought near together; the
+gray eyebrows were straight, and almost hung over her deep, cavernous
+eyes, and the thick white hair lay in silvery masses over the low, wide,
+wrinkled forehead.  For a moment, I stood uncertain how to shape my
+answer to the solemn questioning of her silence.
+
+“Your name is Bridget Fitzgerald, I believe?”
+
+She bowed her head in assent.
+
+“I have something to say to you.  May I come in?  I am unwilling to keep
+you standing.”
+
+“You cannot tire me,” she said, and at first she seemed inclined to deny
+me the shelter of her roof.  But the next moment—she had searched the
+very soul in me with her eyes during that instant—she led me in, and
+dropped the shadowing hood of her gray, draping cloak, which had
+previously hid part of the character of her countenance.  The cottage was
+rude and bare enough.  But before the picture of the Virgin, of which I
+have made mention, there stood a little cup filled with fresh primroses.
+While she paid her reverence to the Madonna, I understood why she had
+been out seeking through the clumps of green in the sheltered copse.
+Then she turned round, and bade me be seated.  The expression of her
+face, which all this time I was studying, was not bad, as the stories of
+my last night’s landlord had led me to expect; it was a wild, stern,
+fierce, indomitable countenance, seamed and scarred by agonies of
+solitary weeping; but it was neither cunning nor malignant.
+
+“My name is Bridget Fitzgerald,” said she, by way of opening our
+conversation.
+
+“And your husband was Hugh Fitzgerald, of Knock Mahon, near Kildoon, in
+Ireland?”
+
+A faint light came into the dark gloom of her eyes.
+
+“He was.”
+
+“May I ask if you had any children by him?”
+
+The light in her eyes grew quick and red.  She tried to speak, I could
+see; but something rose in her throat, and choked her, and until she
+could speak calmly, she would fain not speak at all before a stranger.
+In a minute or so she said—“I had a daughter—one Mary Fitzgerald,”—then
+her strong nature mastered her strong will, and she cried out, with a
+trembling wailing cry: “Oh, man! what of her?—what of her?”
+
+She rose from her seat, and came and clutched at my arm, and looked in my
+eyes.  There she read, as I suppose, my utter ignorance of what had
+become of her child; for she went blindly back to her chair, and sat
+rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not daring
+to speak to the lone and awful woman.  After a little pause, she knelt
+down before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart, and spoke to her
+by all the fanciful and poetic names of the Litany.
+
+“O Rose of Sharon!  O Tower of David!  O Star of the Sea! have ye no
+comfort for my sore heart?  Am I for ever to hope?  Grant me at least
+despair!”—and so on she went, heedless of my presence.  Her prayers grew
+wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of
+madness and blasphemy.  Almost involuntarily, I spoke as if to stop her.
+
+“Have you any reason to think that your daughter is dead?”
+
+She rose from her knees, and came and stood before me.
+
+“Mary Fitzgerald is dead,” said she.  “I shall never see her again in the
+flesh.  No tongue ever told me; but I know she is dead.  I have yearned
+so to see her, and my heart’s will is fearful and strong: it would have
+drawn her to me before now, if she had been a wanderer on the other side
+of the world.  I wonder often it has not drawn her out of the grave to
+come and stand before me, and hear me tell her how I loved her.  For,
+sir, we parted unfriends.”
+
+I knew nothing but the dry particulars needed for my lawyer’s quest, but
+I could not help feeling for the desolate woman; and she must have read
+the unusual sympathy with her wistful eyes.
+
+“Yes, sir, we did.  She never knew how I loved her; and we parted
+unfriends; and I fear me that I wished her voyage might not turn out
+well, only meaning,—O, blessed Virgin! you know I only meant that she
+should come home to her mother’s arms as to the happiest place on earth;
+but my wishes are terrible—their power goes beyond my thought—and there
+is no hope for me, if my words brought Mary harm.”
+
+“But,” I said, “you do not know that she is dead.  Even now, you hoped
+she might be alive.  Listen to me,” and I told her the tale I have
+already told you, giving it all in the driest manner, for I wanted to
+recall the clear sense that I felt almost sure she had possessed in her
+younger days, and by keeping up her attention to details, restrain the
+vague wildness of her grief.
+
+She listened with deep attention, putting from time to time such
+questions as convinced me I had to do with no common intelligence,
+however dimmed and shorn by solitude and mysterious sorrow.  Then she
+took up her tale; and in few brief words, told me of her wanderings
+abroad in vain search after her daughter; sometimes in the wake of
+armies, sometimes in camp, sometimes in city.  The lady, whose
+waiting-woman Mary had gone to be, had died soon after the date of her
+last letter home; her husband, the foreign officer, had been serving in
+Hungary, whither Bridget had followed him, but too late to find him.
+Vague rumours reached her that Mary had made a great marriage: and this
+sting of doubt was added,—whether the mother might not be close to her
+child under her new name, and even hearing of her every day; and yet
+never recognizing the lost one under the appellation she then bore.  At
+length the thought took possession of her, that it was possible that all
+this time Mary might be at home at Coldholme, in the Trough of Bolland,
+in Lancashire, in England; and home came Bridget, in that vain hope, to
+her desolate hearth, and empty cottage.  Here she had thought it safest
+to remain; if Mary was in life, it was here she would seek for her
+mother.
+
+I noted down one or two particulars out of Bridget’s narrative that I
+thought might be of use to me: for I was stimulated to further search in
+a strange and extraordinary manner.  It seemed as if it were impressed
+upon me, that I must take up the quest where Bridget had laid it down;
+and this for no reason that had previously influenced me (such as my
+uncle’s anxiety on the subject, my own reputation as a lawyer, and so
+on), but from some strange power which had taken possession of my will
+only that very morning, and which forced it in the direction it chose.
+
+“I will go,” said I.  “I will spare nothing in the search.  Trust to me.
+I will learn all that can be learnt.  You shall know all that money, or
+pains, or wit can discover.  It is true she may be long dead: but she may
+have left a child.”
+
+“A child!” she cried, as if for the first time this idea had struck her
+mind.  “Hear him, Blessed Virgin! he says she may have left a child.  And
+you have never told me, though I have prayed so for a sign, waking or
+sleeping!”
+
+“Nay,” said I, “I know nothing but what you tell me.  You say you heard
+of her marriage.”
+
+But she caught nothing of what I said.  She was praying to the Virgin in
+a kind of ecstasy, which seemed to render her unconscious of my very
+presence.
+
+From Coldholme I went to Sir Philip Tempest’s.  The wife of the foreign
+officer had been a cousin of his father’s, and from him I thought I might
+gain some particulars as to the existence of the Count de la Tour
+d’Auvergne, and where I could find him; for I knew questions _de vive
+voix_ aid the flagging recollection, and I was determined to lose no
+chance for want of trouble.  But Sir Philip had gone abroad, and it would
+be some time before I could receive an answer.  So I followed my uncle’s
+advice, to whom I had mentioned how wearied I felt, both in body and
+mind, by my will-o’-the-wisp search.  He immediately told me to go to
+Harrogate, there to await Sir Philip’s reply.  I should be near to one of
+the places connected with my search, Coldholme; not far from Sir Philip
+Tempest, in case he returned, and I wished to ask him any further
+questions; and, in conclusion, my uncle bade me try to forget all about
+my business for a time.
+
+This was far easier said than done.  I have seen a child on a common
+blown along by a high wind, without power of standing still and resisting
+the tempestuous force.  I was somewhat in the same predicament as
+regarded my mental state.  Something resistless seemed to urge my
+thoughts on, through every possible course by which there was a chance of
+attaining to my object.  I did not see the sweeping moors when I walked
+out: when I held a book in my hand, and read the words, their sense did
+not penetrate to my brain.  If I slept, I went on with the same ideas,
+always flowing in the same direction.  This could not last long without
+having a bad effect on the body.  I had an illness, which, although I was
+racked with pain, was a positive relief to me, as it compelled me to live
+in the present suffering, and not in the visionary researches I had been
+continually making before.  My kind uncle came to nurse me; and after the
+immediate danger was over, my life seemed to slip away in delicious
+languor for two or three months.  I did not ask—so much did I dread
+falling into the old channel of thought—whether any reply had been
+received to my letter to Sir Philip.  I turned my whole imagination right
+away from all that subject.  My uncle remained with me until nigh
+midsummer, and then returned to his business in London; leaving me
+perfectly well, although not completely strong.  I was to follow him in a
+fortnight; when, as he said, “we would look over letters, and talk about
+several things.”  I knew what this little speech alluded to, and shrank
+from the train of thought it suggested, which was so intimately connected
+with my first feelings of illness.  However, I had a fortnight more to
+roam on those invigorating Yorkshire moors.
+
+In those days, there was one large, rambling inn, at Harrogate, close to
+the Medicinal Spring; but it was already becoming too small for the
+accommodation of the influx of visitors, and many lodged round about, in
+the farm-houses of the district.  It was so early in the season, that I
+had the inn pretty much to myself; and, indeed, felt rather like a
+visitor in a private house, so intimate had the landlord and landlady
+become with me during my long illness.  She would chide me for being out
+so late on the moors, or for having been too long without food, quite in
+a motherly way; while he consulted me about vintages and wines, and
+taught me many a Yorkshire wrinkle about horses.  In my walks I met other
+strangers from time to time.  Even before my uncle had left me, I had
+noticed, with half-torpid curiosity, a young lady of very striking
+appearance, who went about always accompanied by an elderly
+companion,—hardly a gentlewoman, but with something in her look that
+prepossessed me in her favour.  The younger lady always put her veil down
+when any one approached; so it had been only once or twice, when I had
+come upon her at a sudden turn in the path, that I had even had a glimpse
+at her face.  I am not sure if it was beautiful, though in after-life I
+grew to think it so.  But it was at this time overshadowed by a sadness
+that never varied: a pale, quiet, resigned look of intense suffering,
+that irresistibly attracted me,—not with love, but with a sense of
+infinite compassion for one so young yet so hopelessly unhappy.  The
+companion wore something of the same look: quiet melancholy, hopeless,
+yet resigned.  I asked my landlord who they were.  He said they were
+called Clarke, and wished to be considered as mother and daughter; but
+that, for his part, he did not believe that to be their right name, or
+that there was any such relationship between them.  They had been in the
+neighbourhood of Harrogate for some time, lodging in a remote farm-house.
+The people there would tell nothing about them; saying that they paid
+handsomely, and never did any harm; so why should they be speaking of any
+strange things that might happen?  That, as the landlord shrewdly
+observed, showed there was something out of the common way he had heard
+that the elderly woman was a cousin of the farmer’s where they lodged,
+and so the regard existing between relations might help to keep them
+quiet.
+
+“What did he think, then, was the reason for their extreme seclusion?”
+asked I.
+
+“Nay, he could not tell,—not he.  He had heard that the young lady, for
+all as quiet as she seemed, played strange pranks at times.”  He shook
+his head when I asked him for more particulars, and refused to give them,
+which made me doubt if he knew any, for he was in general a talkative and
+communicative man.  In default of other interests, after my uncle left, I
+set myself to watch these two people.  I hovered about their walks drawn
+towards them with a strange fascination, which was not diminished by
+their evident annoyance at so frequently meeting me.  One day, I had the
+sudden good fortune to be at hand when they were alarmed by the attack of
+a bull, which, in those unenclosed grazing districts, was a particularly
+dangerous occurrence.  I have other and more important things to relate,
+than to tell of the accident which gave me an opportunity of rescuing
+them, it is enough to say, that this event was the beginning of an
+acquaintance, reluctantly acquiesced in by them, but eagerly prosecuted
+by me.  I can hardly tell when intense curiosity became merged in love,
+but in less than ten days after my uncle’s departure I was passionately
+enamoured of Mistress Lucy, as her attendant called her; carefully—for
+this I noted well—avoiding any address which appeared as if there was an
+equality of station between them.  I noticed also that Mrs. Clarke, the
+elderly woman, after her first reluctance to allow me to pay them any
+attentions had been overcome, was cheered by my evident attachment to the
+young girl; it seemed to lighten her heavy burden of care, and she
+evidently favoured my visits to the farmhouse where they lodged.  It was
+not so with Lucy.  A more attractive person I never saw, in spite of her
+depression of manner, and shrinking avoidance of me.  I felt sure at
+once, that whatever was the source of her grief, it rose from no fault of
+her own.  It was difficult to draw her into conversation; but when at
+times, for a moment or two, I beguiled her into talk, I could see a rare
+intelligence in her face, and a grave, trusting look in the soft, gray
+eyes that were raised for a minute to mine.  I made every excuse I
+possibly could for going there.  I sought wild flowers for Lucy’s sake; I
+planned walks for Lucy’s sake; I watched the heavens by night, in hopes
+that some unusual beauty of sky would justify me in tempting Mrs. Clarke
+and Lucy forth upon the moors, to gaze at the great purple dome above.
+
+It seemed to me that Lucy was aware of my love; but that, for some motive
+which I could not guess, she would fain have repelled me; but then again
+I saw, or fancied I saw, that her heart spoke in my favour, and that
+there was a struggle going on in her mind, which at times (I loved so
+dearly) I could have begged her to spare herself, even though the
+happiness of my whole life should have been the sacrifice; for her
+complexion grew paler, her aspect of sorrow more hopeless, her delicate
+frame yet slighter.  During this period I had written, I should say, to
+my uncle, to beg to be allowed to prolong my stay at Harrogate, not
+giving any reason; but such was his tenderness towards me, that in a few
+days I heard from him, giving me a willing permission, and only charging
+me to take care of myself, and not use too much exertion during the hot
+weather.
+
+One sultry evening I drew near the farm.  The windows of their parlour
+were open, and I heard voices when I turned the corner of the house, as I
+passed the first window (there were two windows in their little
+ground-floor room).  I saw Lucy distinctly; but when I had knocked at
+their door—the house-door stood always ajar—she was gone, and I saw only
+Mrs. Clarke, turning over the work-things lying on the table, in a
+nervous and purposeless manner.  I felt by instinct that a conversation
+of some importance was coming on, in which I should be expected to say
+what was my object in paying these frequent visits.  I was glad of the
+opportunity.  My uncle had several times alluded to the pleasant
+possibility of my bringing home a young wife, to cheer and adorn the old
+house in Ormond Street.  He was rich, and I was to succeed him, and had,
+as I knew, a fair reputation for so young a lawyer.  So on my side I saw
+no obstacle.  It was true that Lucy was shrouded in mystery; her name (I
+was convinced it was not Clarke), birth, parentage, and previous life
+were unknown to me.  But I was sure of her goodness and sweet innocence,
+and although I knew that there must be something painful to be told, to
+account for her mournful sadness, yet I was willing to bear my share in
+her grief, whatever it might be.
+
+Mrs. Clarke began, as if it was a relief to her to plunge into the
+subject.
+
+“We have thought, sir—at least I have thought—that you knew very little
+of us, nor we of you, indeed; not enough to warrant the intimate
+acquaintance we have fallen into.  I beg your pardon, sir,” she went on,
+nervously; “I am but a plain kind of woman, and I mean to use no
+rudeness; but I must say straight out that I—we—think it would be better
+for you not to come so often to see us.  She is very unprotected, and—”
+
+“Why should I not come to see you, dear madam?” asked I, eagerly, glad of
+the opportunity of explaining myself.  “I come, I own, because I have
+learnt to love Mistress Lucy, and wish to teach her to love me.”
+
+Mistress Clarke shook her head, and sighed.
+
+“Don’t, sir—neither love her, nor, for the sake of all you hold sacred,
+teach her to love you!  If I am too late, and you love her already,
+forget her,—forget these last few weeks.  O!  I should never have allowed
+you to come!” she went on passionately; “but what am I to do?  We are
+forsaken by all, except the great God, and even He permits a strange and
+evil power to afflict us—what am I to do!  Where is it to end?” She wrung
+her hands in her distress; then she turned to me: “Go away, sir! go away,
+before you learn to care any more for her.  I ask it for your own sake—I
+implore!  You have been good and kind to us, and we shall always
+recollect you with gratitude; but go away now, and never come back to
+cross our fatal path!”
+
+“Indeed, madam,” said I, “I shall do no such thing.  You urge it for my
+own sake.  I have no fear, so urged—nor wish, except to hear more—all.  I
+cannot have seen Mistress Lucy in all the intimacy of this last
+fortnight, without acknowledging her goodness and innocence; and without
+seeing—pardon me, madam—that for some reason you are two very lonely
+women, in some mysterious sorrow and distress.  Now, though I am not
+powerful myself, yet I have friends who are so wise and kind that they
+may be said to possess power.  Tell me some particulars.  Why are you in
+grief—what is your secret—why are you here?  I declare solemnly that
+nothing you have said has daunted me in my wish to become Lucy’s husband;
+nor will I shrink from any difficulty that, as such an aspirant, I may
+have to encounter.  You say you are friendless—why cast away an honest
+friend?  I will tell you of people to whom you may write, and who will
+answer any questions as to my character and prospects.  I do not shun
+inquiry.”
+
+She shook her head again.  “You had better go away, sir.  You know
+nothing about us.”
+
+“I know your names,” said I, “and I have heard you allude to the part of
+the country from which you came, which I happen to know as a wild and
+lonely place.  There are so few people living in it that, if I chose to
+go there, I could easily ascertain all about you; but I would rather hear
+it from yourself.”  You see I wanted to pique her into telling me
+something definite.
+
+“You do not know our true names, sir,” said she, hastily.
+
+“Well, I may have conjectured as much.  But tell me, then, I conjure you.
+Give me your reasons for distrusting my willingness to stand by what I
+have said with regard to Mistress Lucy.”
+
+“Oh, what can I do?” exclaimed she.  “If I am turning away a true friend,
+as he says?—Stay!” coming to a sudden decision—“I will tell you
+something—I cannot tell you all—you would not believe it.  But, perhaps,
+I can tell you enough to prevent your going on in your hopeless
+attachment.  I am not Lucy’s mother.”
+
+“So I conjectured,” I said.  “Go on.”
+
+“I do not even know whether she is the legitimate or illegitimate child
+of her father.  But he is cruelly turned against her; and her mother is
+long dead; and for a terrible reason, she has no other creature to keep
+constant to her but me.  She—only two years ago—such a darling and such a
+pride in her father’s house!  Why, sir, there is a mystery that might
+happen in connection with her any moment; and then you would go away like
+all the rest; and, when you next heard her name, you would loathe her.
+Others, who have loved her longer, have done so before now.  My poor
+child! whom neither God nor man has mercy upon—or, surely, she would
+die!”
+
+The good woman was stopped by her crying.  I confess, I was a little
+stunned by her last words; but only for a moment.  At any rate, till I
+knew definitely what was this mysterious stain upon one so simple and
+pure, as Lucy seemed, I would not desert her, and so I said; and she made
+me answer:—
+
+“If you are daring in your heart to think harm of my child, sir, after
+knowing her as you have done, you are no good man yourself; but I am so
+foolish and helpless in my great sorrow, that I would fain hope to find a
+friend in you.  I cannot help trusting that, although you may no longer
+feel toward her as a lover, you will have pity upon us; and perhaps, by
+your learning you can tell us where to go for aid.”
+
+“I implore you to tell me what this mystery is,” I cried, almost maddened
+by this suspense.
+
+“I cannot,” said she, solemnly.  “I am under a deep vow of secrecy.  If
+you are to be told, it must be by her.”  She left the room, and I
+remained to ponder over this strange interview.  I mechanically turned
+over the few books, and with eyes that saw nothing at the time, examined
+the tokens of Lucy’s frequent presence in that room.
+
+When I got home at night, I remembered how all these trifles spoke of a
+pure and tender heart and innocent life.  Mistress Clarke returned; she
+had been crying sadly.
+
+“Yes,” said she, “it is as I feared: she loves you so much that she is
+willing to run the fearful risk of telling you all herself—she
+acknowledges it is but a poor chance; but your sympathy will be a balm,
+if you give it.  To-morrow, come here at ten in the morning; and, as you
+hope for pity in your hour of agony, repress all show of fear or
+repugnance you may feel towards one so grievously afflicted.”
+
+I half smiled.  “Have no fear,” I said.  It seemed too absurd to imagine
+my feeling dislike to Lucy.
+
+“Her father loved her well,” said she, gravely, “yet he drove her out
+like some monstrous thing.”
+
+Just at this moment came a peal of ringing laughter from the garden.  It
+was Lucy’s voice; it sounded as if she were standing just on one side of
+the open casement—and as though she were suddenly stirred to
+merriment—merriment verging on boisterousness, by the doings or sayings
+of some other person.  I can scarcely say why, but the sound jarred on me
+inexpressibly.  She knew the subject of our conversation, and must have
+been at least aware of the state of agitation her friend was in; she
+herself usually so gentle and quiet.  I half rose to go to the window,
+and satisfy my instinctive curiosity as to what had provoked this burst
+of, ill-timed laughter; but Mrs. Clarke threw her whole weight and power
+upon the hand with which she pressed and kept me down.
+
+“For God’s sake!” she said, white and trembling all over, “sit still; be
+quiet.  Oh! be patient.  To-morrow you will know all.  Leave us, for we
+are all sorely afflicted.  Do not seek to know more about us.”
+
+Again that laugh—so musical in sound, yet so discordant to my heart.  She
+held me tight—tighter; without positive violence I could not have risen.
+I was sitting with my back to the window, but I felt a shadow pass
+between the sun’s warmth and me, and a strange shudder ran through my
+frame.  In a minute or two she released me.
+
+“Go,” repeated she.  “Be warned, I ask you once more.  I do not think you
+can stand this knowledge that you seek.  If I had had my own way, Lucy
+should never have yielded, and promised to tell you all.  Who knows what
+may come of it?”
+
+“I am firm in my wish to know all.  I return at ten to-morrow morning,
+and then expect to see Mistress Lucy herself.”
+
+I turned away; having my own suspicions, I confess, as to Mistress
+Clarke’s sanity.
+
+Conjectures as to the meaning of her hints, and uncomfortable thoughts
+connected with that strange laughter, filled my mind.  I could hardly
+sleep.  I rose early; and long before the hour I had appointed, I was on
+the path over the common that led to the old farm-house where they
+lodged.  I suppose that Lucy had passed no better a night than I; for
+there she was also, slowly pacing with her even step, her eyes bent down,
+her whole look most saintly and pure.  She started when I came close to
+her, and grew paler as I reminded her of my appointment, and spoke with
+something of the impatience of obstacles that, seeing her once more, had
+called up afresh in my mind.  All strange and terrible hints, and giddy
+merriment were forgotten.  My heart gave forth words of fire, and my
+tongue uttered them.  Her colour went and came, as she listened; but,
+when I had ended my passionate speeches, she lifted her soft eyes to me,
+and said—
+
+“But you know that you have something to learn about me yet.  I only want
+to say this: I shall not think less of you—less well of you, I mean—if
+you, too, fall away from me when you know all.  Stop!” said she, as if
+fearing another burst of mad words.  “Listen to me.  My father is a man
+of great wealth.  I never knew my mother; she must have died when I was
+very young.  When first I remember anything, I was living in a great,
+lonely house, with my dear and faithful Mistress Clarke.  My father,
+even, was not there; he was—he is—a soldier, and his duties lie aboard.
+But he came from time to time, and every time I think he loved me more
+and more.  He brought me rarities from foreign lands, which prove to me
+now how much he must have thought of me during his absences.  I can sit
+down and measure the depth of his lost love now, by such standards as
+these.  I never thought whether he loved me or not, then; it was so
+natural, that it was like the air I breathed.  Yet he was an angry man at
+times, even then; but never with me.  He was very reckless, too; and,
+once or twice, I heard a whisper among the servants that a doom was over
+him, and that he knew it, and tried to drown his knowledge in wild
+activity, and even sometimes, sir, in wine.  So I grew up in this grand
+mansion, in that lonely place.  Everything around me seemed at my
+disposal, and I think every one loved me; I am sure I loved them.  Till
+about two years ago—I remember it well—my father had come to England, to
+us; and he seemed so proud and so pleased with me and all I had done.
+And one day his tongue seemed loosened with wine, and he told me much
+that I had not known till then,—how dearly he had loved my mother, yet
+how his wilful usage had caused her death; and then he went on to say how
+he loved me better than any creature on earth, and how, some day, he
+hoped to take me to foreign places, for that he could hardly bear these
+long absences from his only child.  Then he seemed to change suddenly,
+and said, in a strange, wild way, that I was not to believe what he said;
+that there was many a thing he loved better—his horse—his dog—I know not
+what.
+
+“And ’twas only the next morning that, when I came into his room to ask
+his blessing as was my wont, he received me with fierce and angry words.
+‘Why had I,’ so he asked, ‘been delighting myself in such wanton
+mischief—dancing over the tender plants in the flower-beds, all set with
+the famous Dutch bulbs he had brought from Holland?’ I had never been out
+of doors that morning, sir, and I could not conceive what he meant, and
+so I said; and then he swore at me for a liar, and said I was of no true
+blood, for he had seen me doing all that mischief himself—with his own
+eyes.  What could I say?  He would not listen to me, and even my tears
+seemed only to irritate him.  That day was the beginning of my great
+sorrows.  Not long after, he reproached me for my undue familiarity—all
+unbecoming a gentlewoman—with his grooms.  I had been in the stable-yard,
+laughing and talking, he said.  Now, sir, I am something of a coward by
+nature, and I had always dreaded horses; be-sides that, my father’s
+servants—those whom he brought with him from foreign parts—were wild
+fellows, whom I had always avoided, and to whom I had never spoken,
+except as a lady must needs from time to time speak to her father’s
+people.  Yet my father called me by names of which I hardly know the
+meaning, but my heart told me they were such as shame any modest woman;
+and from that day he turned quite against me;—nay, sir, not many weeks
+after that, he came in with a riding-whip in his hand; and, accusing me
+harshly of evil doings, of which I knew no more than you, sir, he was
+about to strike me, and I, all in bewildering tears, was ready to take
+his stripes as great kindness compared to his harder words, when suddenly
+he stopped his arm mid-way, gasped and staggered, crying out, ‘The
+curse—the curse!’  I looked up in terror.  In the great mirror opposite I
+saw myself, and right behind, another wicked, fearful self, so like me
+that my soul seemed to quiver within me, as though not knowing to which
+similitude of body it belonged.  My father saw my double at the same
+moment, either in its dreadful reality, whatever that might be, or in the
+scarcely less terrible reflection in the mirror; but what came of it at
+that moment I cannot say, for I suddenly swooned away; and when I came to
+myself I was lying in my bed, and my faithful Clarke sitting by me.  I
+was in my bed for days; and even while I lay there my double was seen by
+all, flitting about the house and gardens, always about some mischievous
+or detestable work.  What wonder that every one shrank from me in
+dread—that my father drove me forth at length, when the disgrace of which
+I was the cause was past his patience to bear.  Mistress Clarke came with
+me; and here we try to live such a life of piety and prayer as may in
+time set me free from the curse.”
+
+All the time she had been speaking, I had been weighing her story in my
+mind.  I had hitherto put cases of witchcraft on one side, as mere
+superstitions; and my uncle and I had had many an argument, he supporting
+himself by the opinion of his good friend Sir Matthew Hale.  Yet this
+sounded like the tale of one bewitched; or was it merely the effect of a
+life of extreme seclusion telling on the nerves of a sensitive girl?  My
+scepticism inclined me to the latter belief, and when she paused I said:
+
+“I fancy that some physician could have disabused your father of his
+belief in visions—”
+
+Just at that instant, standing as I was opposite to her in the full and
+perfect morning light, I saw behind her another figure—a ghastly
+resemblance, complete in likeness, so far as form and feature and
+minutest touch of dress could go, but with a loathsome demon soul looking
+out of the gray eyes, that were in turns mocking and voluptuous.  My
+heart stood still within me; every hair rose up erect; my flesh crept
+with horror.  I could not see the grave and tender Lucy—my eyes were
+fascinated by the creature beyond.  I know not why, but I put out my hand
+to clutch it; I grasped nothing but empty air, and my whole blood curdled
+to ice.  For a moment I could not see; then my sight came back, and I saw
+Lucy standing before me, alone, deathly pale, and, I could have fancied,
+almost, shrunk in size.
+
+“IT has been near me?” she said, as if asking a question.
+
+The sound seemed taken out of her voice; it was husky as the notes on an
+old harpsichord when the strings have ceased to vibrate.  She read her
+answer in my face, I suppose, for I could not speak.  Her look was one of
+intense fear, but that died away into an aspect of most humble patience.
+At length she seemed to force herself to face behind and around her: she
+saw the purple moors, the blue distant hills, quivering in the sunlight,
+but nothing else.
+
+“Will you take me home?” she said, meekly.
+
+I took her by the hand, and led her silently through the budding
+heather—we dared not speak; for we could not tell but that the dread
+creature was listening, although unseen,—but that IT might appear and
+push us asunder.  I never loved her more fondly than now when—and that
+was the unspeakable misery—the idea of her was becoming so inextricably
+blended with the shuddering thought of IT.  She seemed to understand what
+I must be feeling.  She let go my hand, which she had kept clasped until
+then, when we reached the garden gate, and went forwards to meet her
+anxious friend, who was standing by the window looking for her.  I could
+not enter the house: I needed silence, society, leisure, change—I knew
+not what—to shake off the sensation of that creature’s presence.  Yet I
+lingered about the garden—I hardly know why; I partly suppose, because I
+feared to encounter the resemblance again on the solitary common, where
+it had vanished, and partly from a feeling of inexpressible compassion
+for Lucy.  In a few minutes Mistress Clarke came forth and joined me.  We
+walked some paces in silence.
+
+“You know all now,” said she, solemnly.
+
+“I saw IT,” said I, below my breath.
+
+“And you shrink from us, now,” she said, with a hopelessness which
+stirred up all that was brave or good in me.
+
+“Not a whit,” said I.  “Human flesh shrinks from encounter with the
+powers of darkness: and, for some reason unknown to me, the pure and holy
+Lucy is their victim.”
+
+“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,” she said.
+
+“Who is her father?” asked I.  “Knowing as much as I do, I may surely
+know more—know all.  Tell me, I entreat you, madam, all that you can
+conjecture respecting this demoniac persecution of one so good.”
+
+“I will; but not now.  I must go to Lucy now.  Come this afternoon, I
+will see you alone; and oh, sir!  I will trust that you may yet find some
+way to help us in our sore trouble!”
+
+I was miserably exhausted by the swooning affright which had taken
+possession of me.  When I reached the inn, I staggered in like one
+overcome by wine.  I went to my own private room.  It was some time
+before I saw that the weekly post had come in, and brought me my letters.
+There was one from my uncle, one from my home in Devonshire, and one,
+re-directed over the first address, sealed with a great coat of arms, It
+was from Sir Philip Tempest: my letter of inquiry respecting Mary
+Fitzgerald had reached him at Liége, where it so happened that the Count
+de la Tour d’Auvergne was quartered at the very time.  He remembered his
+wife’s beautiful attendant; she had had high words with the deceased
+countess, respecting her intercourse with an English gentleman of good
+standing, who was also in the foreign service.  The countess augured evil
+of his intentions; while Mary, proud and vehement, asserted that he would
+soon marry her, and resented her mistress’s warnings as an insult.  The
+consequence was, that she had left Madame de la Tour d’Auvergne’s
+service, and, as the Count believed, had gone to live with the
+Englishman; whether he had married her, or not, he could not say.  “But,”
+added Sir Philip Tempest, “you may easily hear what particulars you wish
+to know respecting Mary Fitzgerald from the Englishman himself, if, as I
+suspect, he is no other than my neighbour and former acquaintance, Mr.
+Gisborne, of Skipford Hall, in the West Riding.  I am led to the belief
+that he is no other, by several small particulars, none of which are in
+themselves conclusive, but which, taken together, furnish a mass of
+presumptive evidence.  As far as I could make out from the Count’s
+foreign pronunciation, Gisborne was the name of the Englishman: I know
+that Gisborne of Skipford was abroad and in the foreign service at that
+time—he was a likely fellow enough for such an exploit, and, above all,
+certain expressions recur to my mind which he used in reference to old
+Bridget Fitzgerald, of Coldholme, whom he once encountered while staying
+with me at Starkey Manor-house.  I remember that the meeting seemed to
+have produced some extraordinary effect upon his mind, as though he had
+suddenly discovered some connection which she might have had with his
+previous life.  I beg you to let me know if I can be of any further
+service to you.  Your uncle once rendered me a good turn, and I will
+gladly repay it, so far as in me lies, to his nephew.”
+
+I was now apparently close on the discovery which I had striven so many
+months to attain.  But success had lost its zest.  I put my letters down,
+and seemed to forget them all in thinking of the morning I had passed
+that very day.  Nothing was real but the unreal presence, which had come
+like an evil blast across my bodily eyes, and burnt itself down upon my
+brain.  Dinner came, and went away untouched.  Early in the afternoon I
+walked to the farm-house.  I found Mistress Clarke alone, and I was glad
+and relieved.  She was evidently prepared to tell me all I might wish to
+hear.
+
+“You asked me for Mistress Lucy’s true name; it is Gisborne,” she began.
+
+“Not Gisborne of Skipford?” I exclaimed, breathless with anticipation.
+
+“The same,” said she, quietly, not regarding my manner.  “Her father is a
+man of note; although, being a Roman Catholic, he cannot take that rank
+in this country to which his station entitles him.  The consequence is
+that he lives much abroad—has been a soldier, I am told.”
+
+“And Lucy’s mother?” I asked.
+
+She shook her head.  “I never knew her,” said she.  “Lucy was about three
+years old when I was engaged to take charge of her.  Her mother was
+dead.”
+
+“But you know her name?—you can tell if it was Mary Fitzgerald?”
+
+She looked astonished.  “That was her name.  But, sir, how came you to be
+so well acquainted with it?  It was a mystery to the whole household at
+Skipford Court.  She was some beautiful young woman whom he lured away
+from her protectors while he was abroad.  I have heard said he practised
+some terrible deceit upon her, and when she came to know it, she was
+neither to have nor to hold, but rushed off from his very arms, and threw
+herself into a rapid stream and was drowned.  It stung him deep with
+remorse, but I used to think the remembrance of the mother’s cruel death
+made him love the child yet dearer.”
+
+I told her, as briefly as might be, of my researches after the descendant
+and heir of the Fitzgeralds of Kildoon, and added—something of my old
+lawyer spirit returning into me for the moment—that I had no doubt but
+that we should prove Lucy to be by right possessed of large estates in
+Ireland.
+
+No flush came over her gray face; no light into her eyes.  “And what is
+all the wealth in the whole world to that poor girl?” she said.  “It will
+not free her from the ghastly bewitchment which persecutes her.  As for
+money, what a pitiful thing it is! it cannot touch her.”
+
+“No more can the Evil Creature harm her,” I said.  “Her holy nature
+dwells apart, and cannot be defiled or stained by all the devilish arts
+in the whole world.”
+
+“True! but it is a cruel fate to know that all shrink from her, sooner or
+later, as from one possessed—accursed.”
+
+“How came it to pass?” I asked.
+
+“Nay, I know not.  Old rumours there are, that were bruited through the
+household at Skipford.”
+
+“Tell me,” I demanded.
+
+“They came from servants, who would fain account for every thing.  They
+say that, many years ago, Mr. Gisborne killed a dog belonging to an old
+witch at Coldholme; that she cursed, with a dreadful and mysterious
+curse, the creature, whatever it might be, that he should love best; and
+that it struck so deeply into his heart that for years he kept himself
+aloof from any temptation to love aught.  But who could help loving
+Lucy?”
+
+“You never heard the witch’s name?” I gasped.
+
+“Yes—they called her Bridget: they said he would never go near the spot
+again for terror of her.  Yet he was a brave man!”
+
+“Listen,” said I, taking hold of her arm, the better to arrest her full
+attention: “if what I suspect holds true, that man stole Bridget’s only
+child—the very Mary Fitzgerald who was Lucy’s mother; if so, Bridget
+cursed him in ignorance of the deeper wrong he had done her.  To this
+hour she yearns after her lost child, and questions the saints whether
+she be living or not.  The roots of that curse lie deeper than she knows:
+she unwittingly banned him for a deeper guilt than that of killing a dumb
+beast.  The sins of the fathers are indeed visited upon the children.”
+
+“But,” said Mistress Clarke, eagerly, “she would never let evil rest on
+her own grandchild?  Surely, sir, if what you say be true, there are
+hopes for Lucy.  Let us go—go at once, and tell this fearful woman all
+that you suspect, and beseech her to take off the spell she has put upon
+her innocent grandchild.”
+
+It seemed to me, indeed, that something like this was the best course we
+could pursue.  But first it was necessary to ascertain more than what
+mere rumour or careless hearsay could tell.  My thoughts turned to my
+uncle—he could advise me wisely—he ought to know all.  I resolved to go
+to him without delay; but I did not choose to tell Mistress Clarke of all
+the visionary plans that flitted through my mind.  I simply declared my
+intention of proceeding straight to London on Lucy’s affairs.  I bade her
+believe that my interest on the young lady’s behalf was greater than
+ever, and that my whole time should be given up to her cause.  I saw that
+Mistress Clarke distrusted me, because my mind was too full of thoughts
+for my words to flow freely.  She sighed and shook her head, and said,
+“Well, it is all right!” in such a tone that it was an implied reproach.
+But I was firm and constant in my heart, and I took confidence from that.
+
+I rode to London.  I rode long days drawn out into the lovely summer
+nights: I could not rest.  I reached London.  I told my uncle all, though
+in the stir of the great city the horror had faded away, and I could
+hardly imagine that he would believe the account I gave him of the
+fearful double of Lucy which I had seen on the lonely moor-side.  But my
+uncle had lived many years, and learnt many things; and, in the deep
+secrets of family history that had been confided to him, he had heard of
+cases of innocent people bewitched and taken possession of by evil
+spirits yet more fearful than Lucy’s.  For, as he said, to judge from all
+I told him, that resemblance had no power over her—she was too pure and
+good to be tainted by its evil, haunting presence.  It had, in all
+probability, so my uncle conceived, tried to suggest wicked thoughts and
+to tempt to wicked actions but she, in her saintly maidenhood, had passed
+on undefiled by evil thought or deed.  It could not touch her soul: but
+true, it set her apart from all sweet love or common human intercourse.
+My uncle threw himself with an energy more like six-and-twenty than sixty
+into the consideration of the whole case.  He undertook the proving
+Lucy’s descent, and volunteered to go and find out Mr. Gisborne, and
+obtain, firstly, the legal proofs of her descent from the Fitzgeralds of
+Kildoon, and, secondly, to try and hear all that he could respecting the
+working of the curse, and whether any and what means had been taken to
+exorcise that terrible appearance.  For he told me of instances where, by
+prayers and long fasting, the evil possessor had been driven forth with
+howling and many cries from the body which it had come to inhabit; he
+spoke of those strange New England cases which had happened not so long
+before; of Mr. Defoe, who had written a book, wherein he had named many
+modes of subduing apparitions, and sending them back whence they came;
+and, lastly, he spoke low of dreadful ways of compelling witches to undo
+their witchcraft.  But I could not endure to hear of those tortures and
+burnings.  I said that Bridget was rather a wild and savage woman than a
+malignant witch; and, above all, that Lucy was of her kith and kin; and
+that, in putting her to the trial, by water or by fire, we should be
+torturing—it might be to the death—the ancestress of her we sought to
+redeem.
+
+My uncle thought awhile, and then said, that in this last matter I was
+right—at any rate, it should not be tried, with his consent, till all
+other modes of remedy had failed; and he assented to my proposal that I
+should go myself and see Bridget, and tell her all.
+
+In accordance with this, I went down once more to the wayside inn near
+Coldholme.  It was late at night when I arrived there; and, while I
+supped, I inquired of the landlord more particulars as to Bridget’s ways.
+Solitary and savage had been her life for many years.  Wild and despotic
+were her words and manner to those few people who came across her path.
+The country-folk did her imperious bidding, because they feared to
+disobey.  If they pleased her, they prospered; if, on the contrary, they
+neglected or traversed her behests, misfortune, small or great, fell on
+them and theirs.  It was not detestation so much as an indefinable terror
+that she excited.
+
+In the morning I went to see her.  She was standing on the green outside
+her cottage, and received me with the sullen grandeur of a throneless
+queen.  I read in her face that she recognized me, and that I was not
+unwelcome; but she stood silent till I had opened my errand.
+
+“I have news of your daughter,” said I, resolved to speak straight to all
+that I knew she felt of love, and not to spare her.  “She is dead!”
+
+The stern figure scarcely trembled, but her hand sought the support of
+the door-post.
+
+“I knew that she was dead,” said she, deep and low, and then was silent
+for an instant.  “My tears that should have flowed for her were burnt up
+long years ago.  Young man, tell me about her.”
+
+“Not yet,” said I, having a strange power given me of confronting one,
+whom, nevertheless, in my secret soul I dreaded.
+
+“You had once a little dog,” I continued.  The words called out in her
+more show of emotion than the intelligence of her daughter’s death.  She
+broke in upon my speech:—
+
+“I had!  It was hers—the last thing I had of hers—and it was shot for
+wantonness!  It died in my arms.  The man who killed that dog rues it to
+this day.  For that dumb beast’s blood, his best-beloved stands
+accursed.”
+
+Her eyes distended, as if she were in a trance and saw the working of her
+curse.  Again I spoke:—
+
+“O, woman!” I said, “that best-beloved, standing accursed before men, is
+your dead daughter’s child.”
+
+The life, the energy, the passion, came back to the eyes with which she
+pierced through me, to see if I spoke truth; then, without another
+question or word, she threw herself on the ground with fearful vehemence,
+and clutched at the innocent daisies with convulsed hands.
+
+“Bone of my bone! flesh of my flesh! have I cursed thee—and art thou
+accursed?”
+
+So she moaned, as she lay prostrate in her great agony.  I stood aghast
+at my own work.  She did not hear my broken sentences; she asked no more,
+but the dumb confirmation which my sad looks had given that one fact,
+that her curse rested on her own daughter’s child.  The fear grew on me
+lest she should die in her strife of body and soul; and then might not
+Lucy remain under the spell as long as she lived?
+
+Even at this moment, I saw Lucy coming through the woodland path that led
+to Bridget’s cottage; Mistress Clarke was with her: I felt at my heart
+that it was she, by the balmy peace which the look of her sent over me,
+as she slowly advanced, a glad surprise shining out of her soft quiet
+eyes.  That was as her gaze met mine.  As her looks fell on the woman
+lying stiff, convulsed on the earth, they became full of tender pity; and
+she came forward to try and lift her up.  Seating herself on the turf,
+she took Bridget’s head into her lap; and, with gentle touches, she
+arranged the dishevelled gray hair streaming thick and wild from beneath
+her mutch.
+
+“God help her!” murmured Lucy.  “How she suffers!”
+
+At her desire we sought for water; but when we returned, Bridget had
+recovered her wandering senses, and was kneeling with clasped hands
+before Lucy, gazing at that sweet sad face as though her troubled nature
+drank in health and peace from every moment’s contemplation.  A faint
+tinge on Lucy’s pale cheeks showed me that she was aware of our return;
+otherwise it appeared as if she was conscious of her influence for good
+over the passionate and troubled woman kneeling before her, and would not
+willingly avert her grave and loving eyes from that wrinkled and careworn
+countenance.
+
+Suddenly—in the twinkling of an eye—the creature appeared, there, behind
+Lucy; fearfully the same as to outward semblance, but kneeling exactly as
+Bridget knelt, and clasping her hands in jesting mimicry as Bridget
+clasped hers in her ecstasy that was deepening into a prayer.  Mistress
+Clarke cried out—Bridget arose slowly, her gaze fixed on the creature
+beyond: drawing her breath with a hissing sound, never moving her
+terrible eyes, that were steady as stone, she made a dart at the phantom,
+and caught, as I had done, a mere handful of empty air.  We saw no more
+of the creature—it vanished as suddenly as it came, but Bridget looked
+slowly on, as if watching some receding form.  Lucy sat still, white,
+trembling, drooping—I think she would have swooned if I had not been
+there to uphold her.  While I was attending to her, Bridget passed us,
+without a word to any one, and, entering her cottage, she barred herself
+in, and left us without.
+
+All our endeavours were now directed to get Lucy back to the house where
+she had tarried the night before.  Mistress Clarke told me that, not
+hearing from me (some letter must have miscarried), she had grown
+impatient and despairing, and had urged Lucy to the enterprise of coming
+to seek her grandmother; not telling her, indeed, of the dread reputation
+she possessed, or how we suspected her of having so fearfully blighted
+that innocent girl; but, at the same time, hoping much from the
+mysterious stirring of blood, which Mistress Clarke trusted in for the
+removal of the curse.  They had come, by a different route from that
+which I had taken, to a village inn not far from Coldholme, only the
+night before.  This was the first interview between ancestress and
+descendant.
+
+All through the sultry noon I wandered along the tangled brush-wood of
+the old neglected forest, thinking where to turn for remedy in a matter
+so complicated and mysterious.  Meeting a countryman, I asked my way to
+the nearest clergyman, and went, hoping to obtain some counsel from him.
+But he proved to be a coarse and common-minded man, giving no time or
+attention to the intricacies of a case, but dashing out a strong opinion
+involving immediate action.  For instance, as soon as I named Bridget
+Fitzgerald, he exclaimed:—
+
+“The Coldholme witch! the Irish papist!  I’d have had her ducked long
+since but for that other papist, Sir Philip Tempest.  He has had to
+threaten honest folk about here over and over again, or they’d have had
+her up before the justices for her black doings.  And it’s the law of the
+land that witches should be burnt!  Ay, and of Scripture, too, sir!  Yet
+you see a papist, if he’s a rich squire, can overrule both law and
+Scripture.  I’d carry a faggot myself to rid the country of her!”
+
+Such a one could give me no help.  I rather drew back what I had already
+said; and tried to make the parson forget it, by treating him to several
+pots of beer, in the village inn, to which we had adjourned for our
+conference at his suggestion.  I left him as soon as I could, and
+returned to Coldholme, shaping my way past deserted Starkey Manor-house,
+and coming upon it by the back.  At that side were the oblong remains of
+the old moat, the waters of which lay placid and motionless under the
+crimson rays of the setting sun; with the forest-trees lying straight
+along each side, and their deep-green foliage mirrored to blackness in
+the burnished surface of the moat below—and the broken sun-dial at the
+end nearest the hall—and the heron, standing on one leg at the water’s
+edge, lazily looking down for fish—the lonely and desolate house scarce
+needed the broken windows, the weeds on the door-sill, the broken shutter
+softly flapping to and fro in the twilight breeze, to fill up the picture
+of desertion and decay.  I lingered about the place until the growing
+darkness warned me on.  And then I passed along the path, cut by the
+orders of the last lady of Starkey Manor-House, that led me to Bridget’s
+cottage.  I resolved at once to see her; and, in spite of closed doors—it
+might be of resolved will—she should see me.  So I knocked at her door,
+gently, loudly, fiercely.  I shook it so vehemently that a length the old
+hinges gave way, and with a crash it fell inwards, leaving me suddenly
+face to face with Bridget—I, red, heated, agitated with my so long
+baffled efforts—she, stiff as any stone, standing right facing me, her
+eyes dilated with terror, her ashen lips trembling, but her body
+motionless.  In her hands she held her crucifix, as if by that holy
+symbol she sought to oppose my entrance.  At sight of me, her whole frame
+relaxed, and she sank back upon a chair.  Some mighty tension had given
+way.  Still her eyes looked fearfully into the gloom of the outer air,
+made more opaque by the glimmer of the lamp inside, which she had placed
+before the picture of the Virgin.
+
+“Is she there?” asked Bridget, hoarsely.
+
+“No!  Who?  I am alone.  You remember me.”
+
+“Yes,” replied she, still terror stricken.  “But she—that creature—has
+been looking in upon me through that window all day long.  I closed it up
+with my shawl; and then I saw her feet below the door, as long as it was
+light, and I knew she heard my very breathing—nay, worse, my very
+prayers; and I could not pray, for her listening choked the words ere
+they rose to my lips.  Tell me, who is she?—what means that double girl I
+saw this morning?  One had a look of my dead Mary; but the other curdled
+my blood, and yet it was the same!”
+
+She had taken hold of my arm, as if to secure herself some human
+companionship.  She shook all over with the slight, never-ceasing tremor
+of intense terror.  I told her my tale as I have told it you, sparing
+none of the details.
+
+How Mistress Clarke had informed me that the resemblance had driven Lucy
+forth from her father’s house—how I had disbelieved, until, with mine own
+eyes, I had seen another Lucy standing behind my Lucy, the same in form
+and feature, but with the demon-soul looking out of the eyes.  I told her
+all, I say, believing that she—whose curse was working so upon the life
+of her innocent grandchild—was the only person who could find the remedy
+and the redemption.  When I had done, she sat silent for many minutes.
+
+“You love Mary’s child?” she asked.
+
+“I do, in spite of the fearful working of the curse—I love her.  Yet I
+shrink from her ever since that day on the moor-side.  And men must
+shrink from one so accompanied; friends and lovers must stand afar off.
+Oh, Bridget Fitzgerald! loosen the curse!  Set her free!”
+
+“Where is she?”
+
+I eagerly caught at the idea that her presence was needed, in order that,
+by some strange prayer or exorcism, the spell might be reversed.
+
+“I will go and bring her to you,” I exclaimed.  Bridget tightened her
+hold upon my arm.
+
+“Not so,” said she, in a low, hoarse voice.  “It would kill me to see her
+again as I saw her this morning.  And I must live till I have worked my
+work.  Leave me!” said she, suddenly, and again taking up the cross.  “I
+defy the demon I have called up.  Leave me to wrestle with it!”
+
+She stood up, as if in an ecstasy of inspiration, from which all fear was
+banished.  I lingered—why I can hardly tell—until once more she bade me
+begone.  As I went along the forest way, I looked back, and saw her
+planting the cross in the empty threshold, where the door had been.
+
+The next morning Lucy and I went to seek her, to bid her join her prayers
+with ours.  The cottage stood open and wide to our gaze.  No human being
+was there: the cross remained on the threshold, but Bridget was gone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+What was to be done next? was the question that I asked myself.  As for
+Lucy, she would fain have submitted to the doom that lay upon her.  Her
+gentleness and piety, under the pressure of so horrible a life, seemed
+over-passive to me.  She never complained.  Mrs. Clarke complained more
+than ever.  As for me, I was more in love with the real Lucy than ever;
+but I shrunk from the false similitude with an intensity proportioned to
+my love.  I found out by instinct that Mrs. Clarke had occasional
+temptations to leave Lucy.  The good lady’s nerves were shaken, and, from
+what she said, I could almost have concluded that the object of the
+Double was to drive away from Lucy this last, and almost earliest friend.
+At times, I could scarcely bear to own it, but I myself felt inclined to
+turn recreant; and I would accuse Lucy of being too patient—too resigned.
+One after another, she won the little children of Coldholme.  (Mrs.
+Clarke and she had resolved to stay there, for was it not as good a place
+as any other, to such as they? and did not all our faint hopes rest on
+Bridget—never seen or heard of now, but still we trusted to come back, or
+give some token?)  So, as I say, one after another, the little children
+came about my Lucy, won by her soft tones, and her gentle smiles, and
+kind actions.  Alas! one after another they fell away, and shrunk from
+her path with blanching terror; and we too surely guessed the reason why.
+It was the last drop.  I could bear it no longer.  I resolved no more to
+linger around the spot, but to go back to my uncle, and among the learned
+divines of the city of London, seek for some power whereby to annul the
+curse.
+
+My uncle, meanwhile, had obtained all the requisite testimonials relating
+to Lucy’s descent and birth, from the Irish lawyers, and from Mr.
+Gisborne.  The latter gentleman had written from abroad (he was again
+serving in the Austrian army), a letter alternately passionately
+self-reproachful and stoically repellant.  It was evident that when he
+thought of Mary—her short life—how he had wronged her, and of her violent
+death, he could hardly find words severe enough for his own conduct; and
+from this point of view, the curse that Bridget had laid upon him and
+his, was regarded by him as a prophetic doom, to the utterance of which
+she was moved by a Higher Power, working for the fulfilment of a deeper
+vengeance than for the death of the poor dog.  But then, again, when he
+came to speak of his daughter, the repugnance which the conduct of the
+demoniac creature had produced in his mind, was but ill-disguised under a
+show of profound indifference as to Lucy’s fate.  One almost felt as if
+he would have been as content to put her out of existence, as he would
+have been to destroy some disgusting reptile that had invaded his chamber
+or his couch.
+
+The great Fitzgerald property was Lucy’s; and that was all—was nothing.
+
+My uncle and I sat in the gloom of a London November evening, in our
+house in Ormond Street.  I was out of health, and felt as if I were in an
+inextricable coil of misery.  Lucy and I wrote to each other, but that
+was little; and we dared not see each other for dread of the fearful
+Third, who had more than once taken her place at our meetings.  My uncle
+had, on the day I speak of, bidden prayers to be put up on the ensuing
+Sabbath in many a church and meeting-house in London, for one grievously
+tormented by an evil spirit.  He had faith in prayers—I had none; I was
+fast losing faith in all things.  So we sat, he trying to interest me in
+the old talk of other days, I oppressed by one thought—when our old
+servant, Anthony, opened the door, and, without speaking, showed in a
+very gentlemanly and prepossessing man, who had something remarkable
+about his dress, betraying his profession to be that of the Roman
+Catholic priesthood.  He glanced at my uncle first, then at me.  It was
+to me he bowed.
+
+“I did not give my name,” said he, “because you would hardly have
+recognised it; unless, sir, when, in the north, you heard of Father
+Bernard, the chaplain at Stoney Hurst?”
+
+I remembered afterwards that I had heard of him, but at the time I had
+utterly forgotten it; so I professed myself a complete stranger to him;
+while my ever-hospitable uncle, although hating a papist as much as it
+was in his nature to hate anything, placed a chair for the visitor, and
+bade Anthony bring glasses, and a fresh jug of claret.
+
+Father Bernard received this courtesy with the graceful ease and pleasant
+acknowledgement which belongs to a man of the world.  Then he turned to
+scan me with his keen glance.  After some alight conversation, entered
+into on his part, I am certain, with an intention of discovering on what
+terms of confidence I stood with my uncle, he paused, and said gravely—
+
+“I am sent here with a message to you, sir, from a woman to whom you have
+shown kindness, and who is one of my penitents, in Antwerp—one Bridget
+Fitzgerald.”
+
+“Bridget Fitzgerald!” exclaimed I.  “In Antwerp?  Tell me, sir, all that
+you can about her.”
+
+“There is much to be said,” he replied.  “But may I inquire if this
+gentleman—if your uncle is acquainted with the particulars of which you
+and I stand informed?”
+
+“All that I know, he knows,” said I, eagerly laying my hand on my uncle’s
+arm, as he made a motion as if to quit the room.
+
+“Then I have to speak before two gentlemen who, however they may differ
+from me in faith, are yet fully impressed with the fact that there are
+evil powers going about continually to take cognizance of our evil
+thoughts: and, if their Master gives them power, to bring them into overt
+action.  Such is my theory of the nature of that sin, which I dare not
+disbelieve—as some sceptics would have us do—the sin of witchcraft.  Of
+this deadly sin, you and I are aware, Bridget Fitzgerald has been guilty.
+Since you saw her last, many prayers have been offered in our churches,
+many masses sung, many penances undergone, in order that, if God and the
+holy saints so willed it, her sin might be blotted out.  But it has not
+been so willed.”
+
+“Explain to me,” said I, “who you are, and how you come connected with
+Bridget.  Why is she at Antwerp?  I pray you, sir, tell me more.  If I am
+impatient, excuse me; I am ill and feverish, and in consequence
+bewildered.”
+
+There was something to me inexpressibly soothing in the tone of voice
+with which he began to narrate, as it were from the beginning, his
+acquaintance with Bridget.
+
+“I had known Mr. and Mrs. Starkey during their residence abroad, and so
+it fell out naturally that, when I came as chaplain to the Sherburnes at
+Stoney Hurst, our acquaintance was renewed; and thus I became the
+confessor of the whole family, isolated as they were from the offices of
+the Church, Sherburne being their nearest neighbour who professed the
+true faith.  Of course, you are aware that facts revealed in confession
+are sealed as in the grave; but I learnt enough of Bridget’s character to
+be convinced that I had to do with no common woman; one powerful for good
+as for evil.  I believe that I was able to give her spiritual assistance
+from time to time, and that she looked upon me as a servant of that Holy
+Church, which has such wonderful power of moving men’s hearts, and
+relieving them of the burden of their sins.  I have known her cross the
+moors on the wildest nights of storm, to confess and be absolved; and
+then she would return, calmed and subdued, to her daily work about her
+mistress, no one witting where she had been during the hours that most
+passed in sleep upon their beds.  After her daughter’s departure—after
+Mary’s mysterious disappearance—I had to impose many a long penance, in
+order to wash away the sin of impatient repining that was fast leading
+her into the deeper guilt of blasphemy.  She set out on that long journey
+of which you have possibly heard—that fruitless journey in search of
+Mary—and during her absence, my superiors ordered my return to my former
+duties at Antwerp, and for many years I heard no more of Bridget.
+
+“Not many months ago, as I was passing homewards in the evening, along
+one of the streets near St. Jacques, leading into the Meer Straet, I saw
+a woman sitting crouched up under the shrine of the Holy Mother of
+Sorrows.  Her hood was drawn over her head, so that the shadow caused by
+the light of the lamp above fell deep over her face; her hands were
+clasped round her knees.  It was evident that she was some one in
+hopeless trouble, and as such it was my duty to stop and speak.  I
+naturally addressed her first in Flemish, believing her to be one of the
+lower class of inhabitants.  She shook her head, but did not look up.
+Then I tried French, and she replied in that language, but speaking it so
+indifferently, that I was sure she was either English or Irish, and
+consequently spoke to her in my own native tongue.  She recognized my
+voice; and, starting up, caught at my robes, dragging me before the
+blessed shrine, and throwing herself down, and forcing me, as much by her
+evident desire as by her action, to kneel beside her, she exclaimed:
+
+“‘O Holy Virgin! you will never hearken to me again, but hear him; for
+you know him of old, that he does your bidding, and strives to heal
+broken hearts.  Hear him!’
+
+“She turned to me.
+
+“‘She will hear you, if you will only pray.  She never hears _me_: she
+and all the saints in heaven cannot hear my prayers, for the Evil One
+carries them off, as he carried that first away.  O, Father Bernard, pray
+for me!’
+
+“I prayed for one in sore distress, of what nature I could not say; but
+the Holy Virgin would know.  Bridget held me fast, gasping with eagerness
+at the sound of my words.  When I had ended, I rose, and, making the sign
+of the Cross over her, I was going to bless her in the name of the Holy
+Church, when she shrank away like some terrified creature, and said—
+
+“‘I am guilty of deadly sin, and am not shriven.’
+
+“‘Arise, my daughter,’ said I, ‘and come with me.’  And I led the way
+into one of the confessionals of St. Jaques.
+
+“She knelt; I listened.  No words came.  The evil powers had stricken her
+dumb, as I heard afterwards they had many a time before, when she
+approached confession.
+
+“She was too poor to pay for the necessary forms of exorcism; and
+hitherto those priests to whom she had addressed herself were either so
+ignorant of the meaning of her broken French, or her Irish-English, or
+else esteemed her to be one crazed—as, indeed, her wild and excited
+manner might easily have led any one to think—that they had neglected the
+sole means of loosening her tongue, so that she might confess her deadly
+sin, and, after due penance, obtain absolution.  But I knew Bridget of
+old, and felt that she was a penitent sent to me.  I went through those
+holy offices appointed by our Church for the relief of such a case.  I
+was the more bound to do this, as I found that she had come to Antwerp
+for the sole purpose of discovering me, and making confession to me.  Of
+the nature of that fearful confession I am forbidden to speak.  Much of
+it you know; possibly all.
+
+“It now remains for her to free herself from mortal guilt, and to set
+others free from the consequences thereof.  No prayers, no masses, will
+ever do it, although they may strengthen her with that strength by which
+alone acts of deepest love and purest self-devotion may be performed.
+Her words of passion, and cries for revenge—her unholy prayers could
+never reach the ears of the holy saints!  Other powers intercepted them,
+and wrought so that the curses thrown up to heaven have fallen on her own
+flesh and blood; and so, through her very strength of love, have brused
+and crushed her heart.  Henceforward her former self must be buried,—yea,
+buried quick, if need be,—but never more to make sign, or utter cry on
+earth!  She has become a Poor Clare, in order that, by perpetual penance
+and constant service of others, she may at length so act as to obtain
+final absolution and rest for her soul.  Until then, the innocent must
+suffer.  It is to plead for the innocent that I come to you; not in the
+name of the witch, Bridget Fitzgerald, but of the penitent and servant of
+all men, the Poor Clare, Sister Magdalen.”
+
+“Sir,” said I, “I listen to your request with respect; only I may tell
+you it is not needed to urge me to do all that I can on behalf of one,
+love for whom is part of my very life.  If for a time I have absented
+myself from her, it is to think and work for her redemption.  I, a member
+of the English Church—my uncle, a Puritan—pray morning and night for her
+by name: the congregations of London, on the next Sabbath, will pray for
+one unknown, that she may be set free from the Powers of Darkness.
+Moreover, I must tell you, sir, that those evil ones touch not the great
+calm of her soul.  She lives her own pure and loving life, unharmed and
+untainted, though all men fall off from her.  I would I could have her
+faith!”
+
+My uncle now spoke.
+
+“Nephew,” said he, “it seems to me that this gentleman, although
+professing what I consider an erroneous creed, has touched upon the right
+point in exhorting Bridget to acts of love and mercy, whereby to wipe out
+her sin of hate and vengeance.  Let us strive after our fashion, by
+almsgiving and visiting of the needy and fatherless, to make our prayers
+acceptable.  Meanwhile, I myself will go down into the north, and take
+charge of the maiden.  I am too old to be daunted by man or demon.  I
+will bring her to this house as to a home; and let the Double come if it
+will!  A company of godly divines shall give it the meeting, and we will
+try issue.”
+
+The kindly, brave old man!  But Father Bernard sat on musing.
+
+“All hate,” said he, “cannot be quenched in her heart; all Christian
+forgiveness cannot have entered into her soul, or the demon would have
+lost its power.  You said, I think, that her grandchild was still
+tormented?”
+
+“Still tormented!”  I replied, sadly, thinking of Mistress Clarke’s last
+letter—He rose to go.  We afterwards heard that the occasion of his
+coming to London was a secret political mission on behalf of the
+Jacobites.  Nevertheless, he was a good and a wise man.
+
+Months and months passed away without any change.  Lucy entreated my
+uncle to leave her where she was,—dreading, as I learnt, lest if she
+came, with her fearful companion, to dwell in the same house with me,
+that my love could not stand the repeated shocks to which I should be
+doomed.  And this she thought from no distrust of the strength of my
+affection, but from a kind of pitying sympathy for the terror to the
+nerves which she clearly observed that the demoniac visitation caused in
+all.
+
+I was restless and miserable.  I devoted myself to good works; but I
+performed them from no spirit of love, but solely from the hope of reward
+and payment, and so the reward was never granted.  At length, I asked my
+uncle’s leave to travel; and I went forth, a wanderer, with no distincter
+end than that of many another wanderer—to get away from myself.  A
+strange impulse led me to Antwerp, in spite of the wars and commotions
+then raging in the Low Countries—or rather, perhaps, the very craving to
+become interested in something external, led me into the thick of the
+struggle then going on with the Austrians.  The cities of Flanders were
+all full at that time of civil disturbances and rebellions, only kept
+down by force, and the presence of an Austrian garrison in every place.
+
+I arrived in Antwerp, and made inquiry for Father Bernard.  He was away
+in the country for a day or two.  Then I asked my way to the Convent of
+Poor Clares; but, being healthy and prosperous, I could only see the dim,
+pent-up, gray walls, shut closely in by narrow streets, in the lowest
+part of the town.  My landlord told me, that had I been stricken by some
+loathsome disease, or in desperate case of any kind, the Poor Clares
+would have taken me, and tended me.  He spoke of them as an order of
+mercy of the strictest kind, dressing scantily in the coarsest materials,
+going barefoot, living on what the inhabitants of Antwerp chose to
+bestow, and sharing even those fragments and crumbs with the poor and
+helpless that swarmed all around; receiving no letters or communication
+with the outer world; utterly dead to everything but the alleviation of
+suffering.  He smiled at my inquiring whether I could get speech of one
+of them; and told me that they were even forbidden to speak for the
+purposes of begging their daily food; while yet they lived, and fed
+others upon what was given in charity.
+
+“But,” exclaimed I, “supposing all men forgot them!  Would they quietly
+lie down and die, without making sign of their extremity?”
+
+“If such were the rule the Poor Clares would willingly do it; but their
+founder appointed a remedy for such extreme cases as you suggest.  They
+have a bell—’tis but a small one, as I have heard, and has yet never been
+rung in the memory man: when the Poor Clares have been without food for
+twenty-four hours, they may ring this bell, and then trust to our good
+people of Antwerp for rushing to the rescue of the Poor Clares, who have
+taken such blessed care of us in all our straits.”
+
+It seemed to me that such rescue would be late in the day; but I did not
+say what I thought.  I rather turned the conversation, by asking my
+landlord if he knew, or had ever heard, anything of a certain Sister
+Magdalen.
+
+“Yes,” said he, rather under his breath, “news will creep out, even from
+a convent of Poor Clares.  Sister Magdalen is either a great sinner or a
+great saint.  She does more, as I have heard, than all the other nuns put
+together; yet, when last month they would fain have made her
+mother-superior, she begged rather that they would place her below all
+the rest, and make her the meanest servant of all.”
+
+“You never saw her?” asked I.
+
+“Never,” he replied.
+
+I was weary of waiting for Father Bernard, and yet I lingered in Antwerp.
+The political state of things became worse than ever, increased to its
+height by the scarcity of food consequent on many deficient harvests.  I
+saw groups of fierce, squalid men, at every corner of the street, glaring
+out with wolfish eyes at my sleek skin and handsome clothes.
+
+At last Father Bernard returned.  We had a long conversation, in which he
+told me that, curiously enough, Mr. Gisborne, Lucy’s father, was serving
+in one of the Austrian regiments, then in garrison at Antwerp.  I asked
+Father Bernard if he would make us acquainted; which he consented to do.
+But, a day or two afterwards, he told me that, on hearing my name, Mr.
+Gisborne had declined responding to any advances on my part, saying he
+had adjured his country, and hated his countrymen.
+
+Probably he recollected my name in connection with that of his daughter
+Lucy.  Anyhow, it was clear enough that I had no chance of making his
+acquaintance.  Father Bernard confirmed me in my suspicions of the hidden
+fermentation, for some coming evil, working among the “blouses” of
+Antwerp, and he would fain have had me depart from out the city; but I
+rather craved the excitement of danger, and stubbornly refused to leave.
+
+One day, when I was walking with him in the Place Verte, he bowed to an
+Austrian officer, who was crossing towards the cathedral.
+
+“That is Mr. Gisborne,” said he, as soon as the gentleman was past.
+
+I turned to look at the tall, slight figure of the officer.  He carried
+himself in a stately manner, although he was past middle age, and from
+his years might have had some excuse for a slight stoop.  As I looked at
+the man, he turned round, his eyes met mine, and I saw his face.  Deeply
+lined, sallow, and scathed was that countenance; scarred by passion as
+well as by the fortunes of war.  ’Twas but a moment our eyes met.  We
+each turned round, and went on our separate way.
+
+But his whole appearance was not one to be easily forgotten; the thorough
+appointment of the dress, and evident thought bestowed on it, made but an
+incongruous whole with the dark, gloomy expression of his countenance.
+Because he was Lucy’s father, I sought instinctively to meet him
+everywhere.  At last he must have become aware of my pertinacity, for he
+gave me a haughty scowl whenever I passed him.  In one of these
+encounters, however, I chanced to be of some service to him.  He was
+turning the corner of a street, and came suddenly on one of the groups of
+discontented Flemings of whom I have spoken.  Some words were exchanged,
+when my gentleman out with his sword, and with a slight but skilful cut
+drew blood from one of those who had insulted him, as he fancied, though
+I was too far off to hear the words.  They would all have fallen upon him
+had I not rushed forwards and raised the cry, then well known in Antwerp,
+of rally, to the Austrian soldiers who were perpetually patrolling the
+streets, and who came in numbers to the rescue.  I think that neither Mr.
+Gisborne nor the mutinous group of plebeians owed me much gratitude for
+my interference.  He had planted himself against a wall, in a skilful
+attitude of fence, ready with his bright glancing rapier to do battle
+with all the heavy, fierce, unarmed men, some six or seven in number.
+But when his own soldiers came up, he sheathed his sword; and, giving
+some careless word of command, sent them away again, and continued his
+saunter all alone down the street, the workmen snarling in his rear, and
+more than half-inclined to fall on me for my cry for rescue.  I cared not
+if they did, my life seemed so dreary a burden just then; and, perhaps,
+it was this daring loitering among them that prevented their attacking
+me.  Instead, they suffered me to fall into conversation with them; and I
+heard some of their grievances.  Sore and heavy to be borne were they,
+and no wonder the sufferers were savage and desperate.
+
+The man whom Gisborne had wounded across his face would fain have got out
+of me the name of his aggressor, but I refused to tell it.  Another of
+the group heard his inquiry, and made answer—“I know the man.  He is one
+Gisborne, aide-de-camp to the General-Commandant.  I know him well.”
+
+He began to tell some story in connection with Gisborne in a low and
+muttering voice; and while he was relating a tale, which I saw excited
+their evil blood, and which they evidently wished me not to hear, I
+sauntered away and back to my lodgings.
+
+That night Antwerp was in open revolt.  The inhabitants rose in rebellion
+against their Austrian masters.  The Austrians, holding the gates of the
+city, remained at first pretty quiet in the citadel; only, from time to
+time, the boom of the great cannon swept sullenly over the town.  But if
+they expected the disturbance to die away, and spend itself in a few
+hours’ fury, they were mistaken.  In a day or two, the rioters held
+possession of the principal municipal buildings.  Then the Austrians
+poured forth in bright flaming array, calm and smiling, as they marched
+to the posts assigned, as if the fierce mob were no more to them then the
+swarms of buzzing summer flies.  Their practised manœuvres, their
+well-aimed shot, told with terrible effect; but in the place of one slain
+rioter, three sprang up of his blood to avenge his loss.  But a deadly
+foe, a ghastly ally of the Austrians, was at work.  Food, scarce and dear
+for months, was now hardly to be obtained at any price.  Desperate
+efforts were being made to bring provisions into the city, for the
+rioters had friends without.  Close to the city port, nearest to the
+Scheldt, a great struggle took place.  I was there, helping the rioters,
+whose cause I had adopted.  We had a savage encounter with the Austrians.
+Numbers fell on both sides: I saw them lie bleeding for a moment: then a
+volley of smoke obscured them; and when it cleared away, they were
+dead—trampled upon or smothered, pressed down and hidden by the
+freshly-wounded whom those last guns had brought low.  And then a
+gray-robed and grey-veiled figure came right across the flashing guns and
+stooped over some one, whose life-blood was ebbing away; sometimes it was
+to give him drink from cans which they carried slung at their sides;
+sometimes I saw the cross held above a dying man, and rapid prayers were
+being uttered, unheard by men in that hellish din and clangour, but
+listened to by One above.  I saw all this as in a dream: the reality of
+that stern time was battle and carnage.  But I knew that these gray
+figures, their bare feet all wet with blood, and their faces hidden by
+their veils, were the Poor Clares—sent forth now because dire agony was
+abroad and imminent danger at hand.  Therefore, they left their
+cloistered shelter, and came into that thick and evil mêlée.
+
+Close to me—driven past me by the struggle of many fighters—came the
+Antwerp burgess with the scarce-healed scar upon his face; and in an
+instant more, he was thrown by the press upon the Austrian officer
+Gisborne, and ere either had recovered the shock, the burgess had
+recognized his opponent.
+
+“Ha! the Englishman Gisborne!” he cried, and threw himself upon him with
+redoubled fury.  He had struck him hard—the Englishman was down; when out
+of the smoke came a dark-gray figure, and threw herself right under the
+uplifted flashing sword.  The burgess’s arm stood arrested.  Neither
+Austrians nor Anversois willingly harmed the Poor Clares.
+
+“Leave him to me!” said a low stern voice.  “He is mine enemy—mine for
+many years.”
+
+Those words were the last I heard.  I myself was struck down by a bullet.
+I remember nothing more for days.  When I came to myself, I was at the
+extremity of weakness, and was craving for food to recruit my strength.
+My landlord sat watching me.  He, too, looked pinched and shrunken; he
+had heard of my wounded state, and sought me out.  Yes! the struggle
+still continued, but the famine was sore: and some, he had heard, had
+died for lack of food.  The tears stood in his eyes as he spoke.  But
+soon he shook off his weakness, and his natural cheerfulness returned.
+Father Bernard had been to see me—no one else.  (Who should, indeed?)
+Father Bernard would come back that afternoon—he had promised.  But
+Father Bernard never came, although I was up and dressed, and looking
+eagerly for him.
+
+My landlord brought me a meal which he had cooked himself: of what it was
+composed he would not say, but it was most excellent, and with every
+mouthful I seemed to gain strength.  The good man sat looking at my
+evident enjoyment with a happy smile of sympathy; but, as my appetite
+became satisfied, I began to detect a certain wistfulness in his eyes, as
+if craving for the food I had so nearly devoured—for, indeed, at that
+time I was hardly aware of the extent of the famine.  Suddenly, there was
+a sound of many rushing feet past our window.  My landlord opened one of
+the sides of it, the better to learn what was going on.  Then we heard a
+faint, cracked, tinkling bell, coming shrill upon the air, clear and
+distinct from all other sounds.  “Holy Mother!” exclaimed my landlord,
+“the Poor Clares!”
+
+He snatched up the fragments of my meal, and crammed them into my hands,
+bidding me follow.  Down stairs he ran, clutching at more food, as the
+women of his house eagerly held it out to him; and in a moment we were in
+the street, moving along with the great current, all tending towards the
+Convent of the Poor Clares.  And still, as if piercing our ears with its
+inarticulate cry, came the shrill tinkle of the bell.  In that strange
+crowd were old men trembling and sobbing, as they carried their little
+pittance of food; women with tears running down their cheeks, who had
+snatched up what provisions they had in the vessels in which they stood,
+so that the burden of these was in many cases much greater than that
+which they contained; children, with flushed faces, grasping tight the
+morsel of bitten cake or bread, in their eagerness to carry it safe to
+the help of the Poor Clares; strong men—yea, both Anversois and
+Austrians—pressing onward with set teeth, and no word spoken; and over
+all, and through all, came that sharp tinkle—that cry for help in
+extremity.
+
+We met the first torrent of people returning with blanched and piteous
+faces: they were issuing out of the convent to make way for the offerings
+of others.  “Haste, haste!” said they.  “A Poor Clare is dying!  A Poor
+Clare is dead for hunger!  God forgive us and our city!”
+
+We pressed on.  The stream bore us along where it would.  We were carried
+through refectories, bare and crumbless; into cells over whose doors the
+conventual name of the occupant was written.  Thus it was that I, with
+others, was forced into Sister Magdalen’s cell.  On her couch lay
+Gisborne, pale unto death, but not dead.  By his side was a cup of water,
+and a small morsel of mouldy bread, which he had pushed out of his reach,
+and could not move to obtain.  Over against his bed were these words,
+copied in the English version “Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed
+him; if he thirst, give him drink.”
+
+Some of us gave him of our food, and left him eating greedily, like some
+famished wild animal.  For now it was no longer the sharp tinkle, but
+that one solemn toll, which in all Christian countries tells of the
+passing of the spirit out of earthly life into eternity; and again a
+murmur gathered and grew, as of many people speaking with awed breath, “A
+Poor Clare is dying! a Poor Clare is dead!”
+
+Borne along once more by the motion of the crowd, we were carried into
+the chapel belonging to the Poor Clares.  On a bier before the high
+altar, lay a woman—lay Sister Magdalen—lay Bridget Fitzgerald.  By her
+side stood Father Bernard, in his robes of office, and holding the
+crucifix on high while he pronounced the solemn absolution of the Church,
+as to one who had newly confessed herself of deadly sin.  I pushed on
+with passionate force, till I stood close to the dying woman, as she
+received extreme unction amid the breathless and awed hush of the
+multitude around.  Her eyes were glazing, her limbs were stiffening; but
+when the rite was over and finished, she raised her gaunt figure slowly
+up, and her eyes brightened to a strange intensity of joy, as, with the
+gesture of her finger and the trance-like gleam of her eye, she seemed
+like one who watched the disappearance of some loathed and fearful
+creature.
+
+“She is freed from the curse!” said she, as she fell back dead.
+
+
+
+
+Now, of all our party who had first listened to my Lady Ludlow, Mr.
+Preston was the only one who had not told us something, either of
+information, tradition, history, or legend. We naturally turned to him;
+but we did not like asking him directly for his contribution, for he
+was a grave, reserved, and silent man.
+
+He understood us, however, and, rousing himself as it were, he said—
+
+“I know you wish me to tell you, in my turn, of something which I have
+learnt during my life. I could tell you something of my own life, and
+of a life dearer still to my memory; but I have shunk from narrating
+anything so purely personal. Yet, shrink as I will, no other but those
+sad recollections will present themselves to my mind. I call them sad
+when I think of the end of it all. However, I am not going to moralize.
+If my dear brother’s life and death does not speak for itself, no words
+of mine will teach you what may be learnt from it.”
+
+
+
+
+THE HALF-BROTHERS
+
+
+My mother was twice married. She never spoke of her first husband, and
+it is only from other people that I have learnt what little I know
+about him. I believe she was scarcely seventeen when she was married to
+him: and he was barely one-and-twenty. He rented a small farm up in
+Cumberland, somewhere towards the sea-coast; but he was perhaps too
+young and inexperienced to have the charge of land and cattle: anyhow,
+his affairs did not prosper, and he fell into ill health, and died of
+consumption before they had been three years man and wife, leaving my
+mother a young widow of twenty, with a little child only just able to
+walk, and the farm on her hands for four years more by the lease, with
+half the stock on it dead, or sold off one by one to pay the more
+pressing debts, and with no money to purchase more, or even to buy the
+provisions needed for the small consumption of every day. There was
+another child coming, too; and sad and sorry, I believe, she was to
+think of it. A dreary winter she must have had in her lonesome
+dwelling, with never another near it for miles around; her sister came
+to bear her company, and they two planned and plotted how to make every
+penny they could raise go as far as possible. I can’t tell you how it
+happened that my little sister, whom I never saw, came to sicken and
+die; but, as if my poor mother’s cup was not full enough, only a
+fortnight before Gregory was born the little girl took ill of scarlet
+fever, and in a week she lay dead. My mother was, I believe, just
+stunned with this last blow. My aunt has told me that she did not cry;
+aunt Fanny would have been thankful if she had; but she sat holding the
+poor wee lassie’s hand and looking in her pretty, pale, dead face,
+without so much as shedding a tear. And it was all the same, when they
+had to take her away to be buried. She just kissed the child, and sat
+her down in the window-seat to watch the little black train of people
+(neighbours—my aunt, and one far-off cousin, who were all the friends
+they could muster) go winding away amongst the snow, which had fallen
+thinly over the country the night before. When my aunt came back from
+the funeral, she found my mother in the same place, and as dry-eyed as
+ever. So she continued until after Gregory was born; and, somehow, his
+coming seemed to loosen the tears, and she cried day and night, till my
+aunt and the other watcher looked at each other in dismay, and would
+fain have stopped her if they had but known how. But she bade them let
+her alone, and not be over-anxious, for every drop she shed eased her
+brain, which had been in a terrible state before for want of the power
+to cry. She seemed after that to think of nothing but her new little
+baby; she had hardly appeared to remember either her husband or her
+little daughter that lay dead in Brigham churchyard—at least so aunt
+Fanny said, but she was a great talker, and my mother was very silent
+by nature, and I think aunt Fanny may have been mistaken in believing
+that my mother never thought of her husband and child just because she
+never spoke about them. Aunt Fanny was older than my mother, and had a
+way of treating her like a child; but, for all that, she was a kind,
+warm-hearted creature, who thought more of her sister’s welfare than
+she did of her own and it was on her bit of money that they principally
+lived, and on what the two could earn by working for the great Glasgow
+sewing-merchants. But by-and-by my mother’s eye-sight began to fail. It
+was not that she was exactly blind, for she could see well enough to
+guide herself about the house, and to do a good deal of domestic work;
+but she could no longer do fine sewing and earn money. It must have
+been with the heavy crying she had had in her day, for she was but a
+young creature at this time, and as pretty a young woman, I have heard
+people say, as any on the country side. She took it sadly to heart that
+she could no longer gain anything towards the keep of herself and her
+child. My aunt Fanny would fain have persuaded her that she had enough
+to do in managing their cottage and minding Gregory; but my mother knew
+that they were pinched, and that aunt Fanny herself had not as much to
+eat, even of the commonest kind of food, as she could have done with;
+and as for Gregory, he was not a strong lad, and needed, not more
+food—for he always had enough, whoever went short—but better
+nourishment, and more flesh-meat. One day—it was aunt Fanny who told me
+all this about my poor mother, long after her death—as the sisters were
+sitting together, aunt Fanny working, and my mother hushing Gregory to
+sleep, William Preston, who was afterwards my father, came in. He was
+reckoned an old bachelor; I suppose he was long past forty, and he was
+one of the wealthiest farmers thereabouts, and had known my grandfather
+well, and my mother and my aunt in their more prosperous days. He sat
+down, and began to twirl his hat by way of being agreeable; my aunt
+Fanny talked, and he listened and looked at my mother. But he said very
+little, either on that visit, or on many another that he paid before he
+spoke out what had been the real purpose of his calling so often all
+along, and from the very first time he came to their house. One Sunday,
+however, my aunt Fanny stayed away from church, and took care of the
+child, and my mother went alone. When she came back, she ran straight
+upstairs, without going into the kitchen to look at Gregory or speak
+any word to her sister, and aunt Fanny heard her cry as if her heart
+was breaking; so she went up and scolded her right well through the
+bolted door, till at last she got her to open it. And then she threw
+herself on my aunt’s neck, and told her that William Preston had asked
+her to marry him, and had promised to take good charge of her boy, and
+to let him want for nothing, neither in the way of keep nor of
+education, and that she had consented. Aunt Fanny was a good deal
+shocked at this; for, as I have said, she had often thought that my
+mother had forgotten her first husband very quickly, and now here was
+proof positive of it, if she could so soon think of marrying again.
+Besides as aunt Fanny used to say, she herself would have been a far
+more suitable match for a man of William Preston’s age than Helen, who,
+though she was a widow, had not seen her four-and-twentieth summer.
+However, as aunt Fanny said, they had not asked her advice; and there
+was much to be said on the other side of the question. Helen’s eyesight
+would never be good for much again, and as William Preston’s wife she
+would never need to do anything, if she chose to sit with her hands
+before her; and a boy was a great charge to a widowed mother; and now
+there would be a decent steady man to see after him. So, by-and-by,
+aunt Fanny seemed to take a brighter view of the marriage than did my
+mother herself, who hardly ever looked up, and never smiled after the
+day when she promised William Preston to be his wife. But much as she
+had loved Gregory before, she seemed to love him more now. She was
+continually talking to him when they were alone, though he was far too
+young to understand her moaning words, or give her any comfort, except
+by his caresses.
+
+At last William Preston and she were wed; and she went to be mistress
+of a well-stocked house, not above half-an-hour’s walk from where aunt
+Fanny lived. I believe she did all that she could to please my father;
+and a more dutiful wife, I have heard him himself say, could never have
+been. But she did not love him, and he soon found it out. She loved
+Gregory, and she did not love him. Perhaps, love would have come in
+time, if he had been patient enough to wait; but it just turned him
+sour to see how her eye brightened and her colour came at the sight of
+that little child, while for him who had given her so much, she had
+only gentle words as cold as ice. He got to taunt her with the
+difference in her manner, as if that would bring love: and he took a
+positive dislike to Gregory,—he was so jealous of the ready love that
+always gushed out like a spring of fresh water when he came near. He
+wanted her to love him more, and perhaps that was all well and good;
+but he wanted her to love her child less, and that was an evil wish.
+One day, he gave way to his temper, and cursed and swore at Gregory,
+who had got into some mischief, as children will; my mother made some
+excuse for him; my father said it was hard enough to have to keep
+another man’s child, without having it perpetually held up in its
+naughtiness by his wife, who ought to be always in the same mind that
+he was; and so from little they got to more; and the end of it was,
+that my mother took to her bed before her time, and I was born that
+very day. My father was glad, and proud, and sorry, all in a breath;
+glad and proud that a son was born to him; and sorry for his poor
+wife’s state, and to think how his angry words had brought it on. But
+he was a man who liked better to be angry than sorry, so he soon found
+out that it was all Gregory’s fault, and owed him an additional grudge
+for having hastened my birth. He had another grudge against him before
+long. My mother began to sink the day after I was born. My father sent
+to Carlisle for doctors, and would have coined his heart’s blood into
+gold to save her, if that could have been; but it could not. My aunt
+Fanny used to say sometimes, that she thought that Helen did not wish
+to live, and so just let herself die away without trying to take hold
+on life; but when I questioned her, she owned that my mother did all
+the doctors bade her do, with the same sort of uncomplaining patience
+with which she had acted through life. One of her last requests was to
+have Gregory laid in her bed by my side, and then she made him take
+hold of my little hand. Her husband came in while she was looking at us
+so, and when he bent tenderly over her to ask her how she felt now, and
+seemed to gaze on us two little half-brothers, with a grave sort of
+kindness, she looked up in his face and smiled, almost her first smile
+at him; and such a sweet smile! as more besides aunt Fanny have said.
+In an hour she was dead. Aunt Fanny came to live with us. It was the
+best thing that could be done. My father would have been glad to return
+to his old mode of bachelor life, but what could he do with two little
+children? He needed a woman to take care of him, and who so fitting as
+his wife’s elder sister? So she had the charge of me from my birth; and
+for a time I was weakly, as was but natural, and she was always beside
+me, night and day watching over me, and my father nearly as anxious as
+she. For his land had come down from father to son for more than three
+hundred years, and he would have cared for me merely as his flesh and
+blood that was to inherit the land after him. But he needed something
+to love, for all that, to most people, he was a stern, hard man, and he
+took to me as, I fancy, he had taken to no human being before—as he
+might have taken to my mother, if she had had no former life for him to
+be jealous of. I loved him back again right heartily. I loved all
+around me, I believe, for everybody was kind to me. After a time, I
+overcame my original weakness of constitution, and was just a bonny,
+strong-looking lad whom every passer-by noticed, when my father took me
+with him to the nearest town.
+
+At home I was the darling of my aunt, the tenderly-beloved of my
+father, the pet and plaything of the old domestics, the “young master”
+of the farm-labourers, before whom I played many a lordly antic,
+assuming a sort of authority which sat oddly enough, I doubt not, on
+such a baby as I was.
+
+Gregory was three years older than I. Aunt Fanny was always kind to him
+in deed and in action, but she did not often think about him, she had
+fallen so completely into the habit of being engrossed by me, from the
+fact of my having come into her charge as a delicate baby. My father
+never got over his grudging dislike to his stepson, who had so
+innocently wrestled with him for the possession of my mother’s heart. I
+mistrust me, too, that my father always considered him as the cause of
+my mother’s death and my early delicacy; and utterly unreasonable as
+this may seem, I believe my father rather cherished his feeling of
+alienation to my brother as a duty, than strove to repress it. Yet not
+for the world would my father have grudged him anything that money
+could purchase. That was, as it were, in the bond when he had wedded my
+mother. Gregory was lumpish and loutish, awkward and ungainly, marring
+whatever he meddled in, and many a hard word and sharp scolding did he
+get from the people about the farm, who hardly waited till my father’s
+back was turned before they rated the stepson. I am ashamed—my heart is
+sore to think how I fell into the fashion of the family, and slighted
+my poor orphan step-brother. I don’t think I ever scouted him, or was
+wilfully ill-natured to him; but the habit of being considered in all
+things, and being treated as something uncommon and superior, made me
+insolent in my prosperity, and I exacted more than Gregory was always
+willing to grant, and then, irritated, I sometimes repeated the
+disparaging words I had heard others use with regard to him, without
+fully understanding their meaning. Whether he did or not I cannot tell.
+I am afraid he did. He used to turn silent and quiet—sullen and sulky,
+my father thought it: stupid, aunt Fanny used to call it. But every one
+said he was stupid and dull, and this stupidity and dullness grew upon
+him. He would sit without speaking a word, sometimes, for hours; then
+my father would bid him rise and do some piece of work, maybe, about
+the farm. And he would take three or four tellings before he would go.
+When we were sent to school, it was all the same. He could never be
+made to remember his lessons; the school-master grew weary of scolding
+and flogging, and at last advised my father just to take him away, and
+set him to some farm-work that might not be above his comprehension. I
+think he was more gloomy and stupid than ever after this, yet he was
+not a cross lad; he was patient and good-natured, and would try to do a
+kind turn for any one, even if they had been scolding or cuffing him
+not a minute before. But very often his attempts at kindness ended in
+some mischief to the very people he was trying to serve, owing to his
+awkward, ungainly ways. I suppose I was a clever lad; at any rate, I
+always got plenty of praise; and was, as we called it, the cock of the
+school. The schoolmaster said I could learn anything I chose, but my
+father, who had no great learning himself, saw little use in much for
+me, and took me away betimes, and kept me with him about the farm.
+Gregory was made into a kind of shepherd, receiving his training under
+old Adam, who was nearly past his work. I think old Adam was almost the
+first person who had a good opinion of Gregory. He stood to it that my
+brother had good parts, though he did not rightly know how to bring
+them out; and, for knowing the bearings of the Fells, he said he had
+never seen a lad like him. My father would try to bring Adam round to
+speak of Gregory’s faults and shortcomings; but, instead of that, he
+would praise him twice as much, as soon as he found out what was my
+father’s object.
+
+One winter-time, when I was about sixteen, and Gregory nineteen, I was
+sent by my father on an errand to a place about seven miles distant by
+the road, but only about four by the Fells. He bade me return by the
+road, whichever way I took in going, for the evenings closed in early,
+and were often thick and misty; besides which, old Adam, now paralytic
+and bedridden, foretold a downfall of snow before long. I soon got to
+my journey’s end, and soon had done my business; earlier by an hour, I
+thought, than my father had expected, so I took the decision of the way
+by which I would return into my own hands, and set off back again over
+the Fells, just as the first shades of evening began to fall. It looked
+dark and gloomy enough; but everything was so still that I thought I
+should have plenty of time to get home before the snow came down. Off I
+set at a pretty quick pace. But night came on quicker. The right path
+was clear enough in the day-time, although at several points two or
+three exactly similar diverged from the same place; but when there was
+a good light, the traveller was guided by the sight of distant
+objects,—a piece of rock,—a fall in the ground—which were quite
+invisible to me now. I plucked up a brave heart, however, and took what
+seemed to me the right road. It was wrong, nevertheless, and led me
+whither I knew not, but to some wild boggy moor where the solitude
+seemed painful, intense, as if never footfall of man had come thither
+to break the silence. I tried to shout—with the dimmest possible hope
+of being heard—rather to reassure myself by the sound of my own voice;
+but my voice came husky and short, and yet it dismayed me; it seemed so
+weird and strange, in that noiseless expanse of black darkness.
+Suddenly the air was filled thick with dusky flakes, my face and hands
+were wet with snow. It cut me off from the slightest knowledge of where
+I was, for I lost every idea of the direction from which I had come, so
+that I could not even retrace my steps; it hemmed me in, thicker,
+thicker, with a darkness that might be felt. The boggy soil on which I
+stood quaked under me if I remained long in one place, and yet I dared
+not move far. All my youthful hardiness seemed to leave me at once. I
+was on the point of crying, and only very shame seemed to keep it down.
+To save myself from shedding tears, I shouted—terrible, wild shouts for
+bare life they were. I turned sick as I paused to listen; no answering
+sound came but the unfeeling echoes. Only the noiseless, pitiless snow
+kept falling thicker, thicker—faster, faster! I was growing numb and
+sleepy. I tried to move about, but I dared not go far, for fear of the
+precipices which, I knew, abounded in certain places on the Fells. Now
+and then, I stood still and shouted again; but my voice was getting
+choked with tears, as I thought of the desolate helpless death I was to
+die, and how little they at home, sitting round the warm, red, bright
+fire, wotted what was become of me,—and how my poor father would grieve
+for me—it would surely kill him—it would break his heart, poor old man!
+Aunt Fanny too—was this to be the end of all her cares for me? I began
+to review my life in a strange kind of vivid dream, in which the
+various scenes of my few boyish years passed before me like visions. In
+a pang of agony, caused by such remembrance of my short life, I
+gathered up my strength and called out once more, a long, despairing,
+wailing cry, to which I had no hope of obtaining any answer, save from
+the echoes around, dulled as the sound might be by the thickened air.
+To my surprise I heard a cry—almost as long, as wild as mine—so wild
+that it seemed unearthly, and I almost thought it must be the voice of
+some of the mocking spirits of the Fells, about whom I had heard so
+many tales. My heart suddenly began to beat fast and loud. I could not
+reply for a minute or two. I nearly fancied I had lost the power of
+utterance. Just at this moment a dog barked. Was it Lassie’s bark—my
+brother’s collie?—an ugly enough brute, with a white, ill-looking face,
+that my father always kicked whenever he saw it, partly for its own
+demerits, partly because it belonged to my brother. On such occasions,
+Gregory would whistle Lassie away, and go off and sit with her in some
+outhouse. My father had once or twice been ashamed of himself, when the
+poor collie had yowled out with the suddenness of the pain, and had
+relieved himself of his self-reproach by blaming my brother, who, he
+said, had no notion of training a dog, and was enough to ruin any
+collie in Christendom with his stupid way of allowing them to lie by
+the kitchen fire. To all which Gregory would answer nothing, nor even
+seem to hear, but go on looking absent and moody.
+
+Yes! there again! It was Lassie’s bark! Now or never! I lifted up my
+voice and shouted “Lassie! Lassie! for God’s sake, Lassie!” Another
+moment, and the great white-faced Lassie was curving and gambolling
+with delight round my feet and legs, looking, however, up in my face
+with her intelligent, apprehensive eyes, as if fearing lest I might
+greet her with a blow, as I had done oftentimes before. But I cried
+with gladness, as I stooped down and patted her. My mind was sharing in
+my body’s weakness, and I could not reason, but I knew that help was at
+hand. A gray figure came more and more distinctly out of the thick,
+close-pressing darkness. It was Gregory wrapped in his maud.
+
+“Oh, Gregory!” said I, and I fell upon his neck, unable to speak
+another word. He never spoke much, and made me no answer for some
+little time. Then he told me we must move, we must walk for the dear
+life—we must find our road home, if possible; but we must move, or we
+should be frozen to death.
+
+“Don’t you know the way home?” asked I.
+
+“I thought I did when I set out, but I am doubtful now. The snow blinds
+me, and I am feared that in moving about just now, I have lost the
+right gait homewards.”
+
+He had his shepherd’s staff with him, and by dint of plunging it before
+us at every step we took—clinging close to each other, we went on
+safely enough, as far as not falling down any of the steep rocks, but
+it was slow, dreary work. My brother, I saw, was more guided by Lassie
+and the way she took than anything else, trusting to her instinct. It
+was too dark to see far before us; but he called her back continually,
+and noted from what quarter she returned, and shaped our slow steps
+accordingly. But the tedious motion scarcely kept my very blood from
+freezing. Every bone, every fibre in my body seemed first to ache, and
+then to swell, and then to turn numb with the intense cold. My brother
+bore it better than I, from having been more out upon the hills. He did
+not speak, except to call Lassie. I strove to be brave, and not
+complain; but now I felt the deadly fatal sleep stealing over me.
+
+“I can go no farther,” I said, in a drowsy tone. I remember I suddenly
+became dogged and resolved. Sleep I would, were it only for five
+minutes. If death were to be the consequence, sleep I would. Gregory
+stood still. I suppose, he recognized the peculiar phase of suffering
+to which I had been brought by the cold.
+
+“It is of no use,” said he, as if to himself. “We are no nearer home
+than we were when we started, as far as I can tell. Our only chance is
+in Lassie. Here! roll thee in my maud, lad, and lay thee down on this
+sheltered side of this bit of rock. Creep close under it, lad, and I’ll
+lie by thee, and strive to keep the warmth in us. Stay! hast gotten
+aught about thee they’ll know at home?”
+
+I felt him unkind thus to keep me from slumber, but on his repeating
+the question, I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief, of some showy
+pattern, which Aunt Fanny had hemmed for me—Gregory took it, and tied
+it round Lassie’s neck.
+
+“Hie thee, Lassie, hie thee home!” And the white-faced ill-favoured
+brute was off like a shot in the darkness. Now I might lie down—now I
+might sleep. In my drowsy stupor I felt that I was being tenderly
+covered up by my brother; but what with I neither knew nor cared—I was
+too dull, too selfish, too numb to think and reason, or I might have
+known that in that bleak bare place there was nought to wrap me in,
+save what was taken off another. I was glad enough when he ceased his
+cares and lay down by me. I took his hand.
+
+“Thou canst not remember, lad, how we lay together thus by our dying
+mother. She put thy small, wee hand in mine—I reckon she sees us now;
+and belike we shall soon be with her. Anyhow, God’s will be done.”
+
+“Dear Gregory,” I muttered, and crept nearer to him for warmth. He was
+talking still, and again about our mother, when I fell asleep. In an
+instant—or so it seemed—there were many voices about me—many faces
+hovering round me—the sweet luxury of warmth was stealing into every
+part of me. I was in my own little bed at home. I am thankful to say,
+my first word was “Gregory?”
+
+A look passed from one to another—my father’s stern old face strove in
+vain to keep its sternness; his mouth quivered, his eyes filled slowly
+with unwonted tears.
+
+“I would have given him half my land—I would have blessed him as my
+son,—oh God! I would have knelt at his feet, and asked him to forgive
+my hardness of heart.”
+
+I heard no more. A whirl came through my brain, catching me back to
+death.
+
+I came slowly to my consciousness, weeks afterwards. My father’s hair
+was white when I recovered, and his hands shook as he looked into my
+face.
+
+We spoke no more of Gregory. We could not speak of him; but he was
+strangely in our thoughts. Lassie came and went with never a word of
+blame; nay, my father would try to stroke her, but she shrank away; and
+he, as if reproved by the poor dumb beast, would sigh, and be silent
+and abstracted for a time.
+
+Aunt Fanny—always a talker—told me all. How, on that fatal night, my
+father,—irritated by my prolonged absence, and probably more anxious
+than he cared to show, had been fierce and imperious, even beyond his
+wont, to Gregory; had upbraided him with his father’s poverty, his own
+stupidity which made his services good for nothing—for so, in spite of
+the old shepherd, my father always chose to consider them. At last,
+Gregory had risen up, and whistled Lassie out with him—poor Lassie,
+crouching underneath his chair for fear of a kick or a blow. Some time
+before, there had been some talk between my father and my aunt
+respecting my return; and when aunt Fanny told me all this, she said
+she fancied that Gregory might have noticed the coming storm, and gone
+out silently to meet me. Three hours afterwards, when all were running
+about in wild alarm, not knowing whither to go in search of me—not even
+missing Gregory, or heeding his absence, poor fellow—poor, poor
+fellow!—Lassie came home, with my handkerchief tied round her neck.
+They knew and understood, and the whole strength of the farm was turned
+out to follow her, with wraps, and blankets, and brandy, and every
+thing that could be thought of. I lay in chilly sleep, but still alive,
+beneath the rock that Lassie guided them to. I was covered over with my
+brother’s plaid, and his thick shepherd’s coat was carefully wrapped
+round my feet. He was in his shirt-sleeves—his arm thrown over me—a
+quiet smile (he had hardly ever smiled in life) upon his still, cold
+face.
+
+My father’s last words were, “God forgive me my hardness of heart
+towards the fatherless child!”
+
+And what marked the depth of his feeling of repentance, perhaps more
+than all, considering the passionate love he bore my mother, was this:
+we found a paper of directions after his death, in which he desired
+that he might lie at the foot of the grave, in which, by his desire,
+poor Gregory had been laid with OUR MOTHER.
+
+
+
+
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