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-Project Gutenberg's Tales From the Telling-House, by R. D. Blackmore
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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/license
-
-
-Title: Tales From the Telling-House
-
-Author: R. D. Blackmore
-
-Release Date: March 19, 2016 [EBook #51497]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALES FROM THE TELLING-HOUSE ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Charlie Howard and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-  TALES FROM
-  THE TELLING-HOUSE
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration:
-
-  TALES FROM THE
-  TELLING-HOUSE
-
-
-  BY
-
-  R. D. BLACKMORE
-  AUTHOR OF “LORNA DOONE,” ETC.
-
-
-  1. SLAIN BY THE DOONES
-  2. FRIDA; OR, THE LOVER’S LEAP
-  3. GEORGE BOWRING
-  4. CROCKER’S HOLE
-
-
-  LONDON
-
-  SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY
-  LIMITED
-  St. Dunstan’s House
-  1896
-]
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE.
-
-
-Sometimes of a night, when the spirit of a dream flits away for a waltz
-with the shadow of a pen, over dreary moors and dark waters, I behold
-an old man, with a keen profile, under a parson’s shovel hat, riding
-a tall chestnut horse up the western slope of Exmoor, followed by his
-little grandson upon a shaggy and stuggy pony.
-
-In the hazy folds of lower hills, some four or five miles behind them,
-may be seen the ancient Parsonage, where the lawn is a russet sponge of
-moss, and a stream tinkles under the dining-room floor, and the pious
-rook, poised on the pulpit of his nest, reads a hoarse sermon to the
-chimney-pots below. There is the home not of rooks alone, and parson,
-and dogs that are scouring the moor; but also of the patches of hurry
-we can see, and the bevies of bleating haste, converging by force of
-men and dogs towards the final _rendezvous_, the autumnal muster of the
-clans of wool.
-
-For now the shrill piping of the northwest wind, and the browning
-of furze and heather, and a scollop of snow upon Oare-oak Hill,
-announce that the roving of soft green height, and the browsing of
-sunny hollow, must be changed for the durance of hurdled quads, and
-the monotonous munch of turnips. The joy of a scurry from the shadow
-of a cloud, the glory of a rally with a hundred heads in line, the
-pleasure of polishing a coign of rock, the bliss of beholding flat
-nose, brown eyes, and fringy forehead, approaching round a corner for
-a sheepish talk, these and every other jollity of freedom--what is
-now become of them? Gone! Like a midsummer dream, or the vision of a
-blue sky, pastured--to match the green hill--with white forms floating
-peacefully; a sky, where no dog can be, much less a man, only the
-fleeces of the gentle flock of heaven. Lackadaisy, and well-a-day! How
-many of you will be woolly ghosts like them, before you are two months
-older!
-
-My grandfather knows what fine mutton is, though his grandson indites
-of it by memory alone. “Ha, ha!” shouts the happier age, amid the
-bleating turmoil, the yelping of dogs, and the sprawling of shepherds;
-“John Fry, put your eye on that wether, the one with his J. B. upside
-down, we’ll have a cut out of him on Sunday week, please God. Why, you
-stupid fellow, you don’t even know a B yet! That is Farmer Passmore’s
-mark you have got hold of. Two stomachs to a B; will you never
-understand? Just look at what you’re doing! Here come James Bowden’s
-and he has got a lot of ours! _Shep_ is getting stupid, and deaf as a
-post. _Watch_ is worth ten of him. Good dog, good dog! You won’t let
-your master be cheated. How many of ours, John Fry? Quick now! You can
-tell, if you can’t read; and I can read quicker than I can tell.”
-
-“Dree score, and vower Maister; ‘cardin’ to my rackonin’. Dree score
-and zax it waz as us toorned out, zeventh of June, God knows it waz.
-Wan us killed, long of harvest-taime; and wan tummled into bog-hole,
-across yanner to Mole’s Chimmers.”
-
-“But,” says the little chap on the shaggy pony, “John Fry, where are
-the four that ought to have R. D. B. on them? You promised me, on the
-blade of your knife, before I went to school again, that my two lambs
-should have their children marked the same as they were.”
-
-John turns redder than his own sheep’s-redding. He knows that he has
-been caught out in a thumping lie, and although that happens to him
-almost every day, his conscience has a pure complexion still. “’Twaz
-along of the rains as wasshed ’un out.” In vain has he scratched his
-head for a finer lie.
-
-“Grandfather, you know that I had two lambs, and you let me put
-R. D. B. on them with both my hands, after the shearing-time last year,
-and I got six shillings for their wool the next time, and I gave it to
-a boy who thrashed a boy that bullied me. And Aunt Mary Anne wrote to
-tell me at school that my two lambs had increased two each, all of them
-sheep; and there was sure to be a lot of money soon for me. And so I
-went and promised it right and left, and how can I go back to school,
-and be called a liar? You call this the _Telling-house_, because
-people come here to tell their own sheep from their neighbours’, when
-they fetch them home again. But I should say it was because they tell
-such stories here. And if that is the reason, I know who can tell the
-biggest ones.”
-
-With the pride of a conscious author, he blushes, that rogue of a John
-Fry blushes, wherever he has shaved within the last three weeks of his
-false life.
-
-“Never mind, my boy; story-telling never answers in the end,” says my
-Grandfather--oh how could he thus foresee my fate? “Be sure you always
-speak the truth.”
-
-That advice have I followed always. And if I lost my four sheep then,
-through the plagiarism of that bad fellow, by hook or crook I have
-fetched four more out of the wilderness of the past; and I only wish
-they were better mutton, for the pleasure of old friends who like a
-simple English joint.
-
-            R.D.B.
-
-  _Old Christmas Day, 1896_
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS.
-
-
-                                   PAGE
-
-  SLAIN BY THE DOONES:
-
-        I. AFTER A STORMY LIFE,       1
-
-       II. BY A QUIET RIVER,         12
-
-      III. WISE COUNSEL,             22
-
-       IV. A COTTAGE HOSPITAL,       33
-
-        V. MISTAKEN AIMS,            43
-
-       VI. OVER THE BRIDGE,          55
-
-  FRIDA; OR, THE LOVER’S LEAP,       69
-
-  GEORGE BOWRING,                   135
-
-  CROCKER’S HOLE,                   203
-
-
-
-
-SLAIN BY THE DOONES.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-AFTER A STORMY LIFE.
-
-
-To hear people talking about North Devon, and the savage part called
-Exmoor, you might almost think that there never was any place in the
-world so beautiful, or any living men so wonderful. It is not my
-intention to make little of them, for they would be the last to permit
-it; neither do I feel ill will against them for the pangs they allowed
-me to suffer; for I dare say they could not help themselves, being
-so slow-blooded, and hard to stir even by their own egrimonies. But
-when I look back upon the things that happened, and were for a full
-generation of mankind accepted as the will of God, I say, that the
-people who endured them must have been born to be ruled by the devil.
-And in thinking thus I am not alone; for the very best judges of that
-day stopped short of that end of the world, because the law would not
-go any further. Nevertheless, every word is true of what I am going
-to tell, and the stoutest writer of history cannot make less of it by
-denial.
-
-My father was Sylvester Ford of Quantock, in the county of Somerset,
-a gentleman of large estate as well as ancient lineage. Also of high
-courage and resolution not to be beaten, as he proved in his many
-rides with Prince Rupert, and woe that I should say it! in his most
-sad death. To this he was not looking forward much, though turned of
-threescore years and five; and his only child and loving daughter,
-Sylvia, which is myself, had never dreamed of losing him. For he
-was exceeding fond of me, little as I deserved it, except by loving
-him with all my heart and thinking nobody like him. And he without
-anything to go upon, except that he was my father, held, as I have
-often heard, as good an opinion of me.
-
-Upon the triumph of that hard fanatic, the Brewer, who came to a
-timely end by the justice of high Heaven--my father, being disgusted
-with England as well as banished from her, and despoiled of all his
-property, took service on the Continent, and wandered there for many
-years, until the replacement of the throne. Thereupon he expected, as
-many others did, to get his estates restored to him, and perhaps to be
-held in high esteem at court, as he had a right to be. But this did
-not so come to pass. Excellent words were granted him, and promise of
-tenfold restitution; on the faith of which he returned to Paris, and
-married a young Italian lady of good birth and high qualities, but with
-nothing more to come to her. Then, to his great disappointment, he
-found himself left to live upon air--which, however distinguished, is
-not sufficient--and love, which, being fed so easily, expects all who
-lodge with it to live upon itself.
-
-My father was full of strong loyalty; and the king (in his value of
-that sentiment) showed faith that it would support him. His majesty
-took both my father’s hands, having learned that hearty style in
-France, and welcomed him with most gracious warmth, and promised him
-more than he could desire. But time went on, and the bright words
-faded, like a rose set bravely in a noble vase, without any nurture
-under it.
-
-Another man had been long established in our hereditaments by the
-Commonwealth; and he would not quit them of his own accord, having a
-sense of obligation to himself. Nevertheless, he went so far as to
-offer my father a share of the land, if some honest lawyers, whom he
-quoted, could find proper means for arranging it. But my father said:
-“If I cannot have my rights, I will have my wrongs. No mixture of the
-two for me.” And so, for the last few years of his life, being now
-very poor and a widower, he took refuge in an outlandish place, a house
-and small property in the heart of Exmoor, which had come to the Fords
-on the spindle side, and had been overlooked when their patrimony was
-confiscated by the Brewer. Of him I would speak with no contempt,
-because he was ever as good as his word.
-
-In the course of time, we had grown used to live according to our
-fortunes. And I verily believe that we were quite content, and
-repined but little at our lost importance. For my father was a very
-simple-minded man, who had seen so much of uproarious life, and the
-falsehood of friends, and small glitter of great folk, that he was glad
-to fall back upon his own good will. Moreover he had his books, and me;
-and as he always spoke out his thoughts, he seldom grudged to thank the
-Lord for having left both of these to him. I felt a little jealous of
-his books now and then, as a very poor scholar might be; but reason is
-the proper guide for women, and we are quick enough in discerning it,
-without having to borrow it from books.
-
-At any rate now we were living in a wood, and trees were the only
-creatures near us, to the best of our belief and wish. Few might say
-in what part of the wood we lived, unless they saw the smoke ascending
-from our single chimney; so thick were the trees, and the land they
-stood on so full of sudden rise and fall. But a little river called the
-Lynn makes a crooked border to it, and being for its size as noisy a
-water as any in the world perhaps, can be heard all through the trees
-and leaves to the very top of the Warren Wood. In the summer all this
-was sweet and pleasant; but lonely and dreary and shuddersome, when the
-twigs bore drops instead of leaves, and the ground would not stand to
-the foot, and the play of light and shadow fell, like the lopping of a
-tree, into one great lump.
-
-Now there was a young man about this time, and not so very distant from
-our place--as distances are counted there--who managed to make himself
-acquainted with us, although we lived so privately. To me it was a
-marvel, both why and how he did it; seeing what little we had to offer,
-and how much we desired to live alone. But Mrs. Pring told me to look
-in the glass, if I wanted to know the reason; and while I was blushing
-with anger at that, being only just turned eighteen years, and thinking
-of nobody but my father, she asked if I had never heard the famous
-rhymes made by the wise woman at Tarr-steps:
-
-    “Three fair maids live upon Exymoor,
-    The rocks, and the woods, and the dairy-door.
-    The son of a baron shall woo all three,
-    But barren of them all shall the young man be.”
-
-Of the countless things I could never understand, one of the very
-strangest was how Deborah Pring, our only domestic, living in the
-lonely depths of this great wood, and seeming to see nobody but
-ourselves, in spite of all that contrived to know as much of the doings
-of the neighbourhood as if she went to market twice a week. But my
-father cared little for any such stuff; coming from a better part of
-the world, and having been mixed with mighty issues and making of great
-kingdoms, he never said what he thought of these little combings of
-petty pie crust, because it was not worth his while. And yet he seemed
-to take a kindly liking to the young De Wichehalse; not as a youth
-of birth only, but as one driven astray perhaps by harsh and austere
-influence. For his father, the baron, was a godly man,--which is much
-to the credit of anyone, growing rarer and rarer, as it does,--and
-there should be no rasp against such men, if they would only bear in
-mind that in their time they had been young, and were not quite so
-perfect then. But lo! I am writing as if I knew a great deal more than
-I could know until the harrow passed over me.
-
-No one, however, need be surprised at the favour this young man
-obtained with all who came into his converse. Handsome, and beautiful
-as he was, so that bold maids longed to kiss him, it was the sadness
-in his eyes, and the gentle sense of doom therein, together with a
-laughing scorn of it, that made him come home to our nature, in a way
-that it feels but cannot talk of. And he seemed to be of the past
-somehow, although so young and bright and brave; of the time when
-greater things were done, and men would die for women. That he should
-woo three maids in vain, to me was a stupid old woman’s tale.
-
-“Sylvia,” my father said to me, when I was not even thinking of
-him, “no more converse must we hold with that son of the Baron de
-Wichehalse. I have ordered Pring to keep the door; and Mistress Pring,
-who hath the stronger tongue, to come up if he attempted to dispute;
-the while I go away to catch our supper.”
-
-He was bearing a fishing rod made by himself, and a basket strapped
-over his shoulders.
-
-“But why, father? Why should such a change be? How hath the young
-gentleman displeased thee?” I put my face into his beard as I spoke,
-that I might not appear too curious.
-
-“Is it so?” he answered, “then high time is it. No more shall he enter
-this”--_house_ he would have said, but being so truthful changed it
-into--“hut. I was pleased with the youth. He is gentle and kind; but
-weak--my dear child, remember that. Why are we in this hut, my dear?
-and thou, the heiress of the best land in the world, now picking up
-sticks in the wilderness? Because the man who should do us right is
-weak, and wavering, and careth but for pleasure. So is this young
-Marwood de Wichehalse. He rideth with the Doones. I knew it not, but
-now that I know, it is enough.”
-
-My father was of tall stature and fine presence, and his beard shone
-like a cascade of silver. It was not the manner of the young as yet
-to argue with their elders, and though I might have been a little
-fluttered by the comely gallant’s lofty talk and gaze of daring
-melancholy, I said good-bye to him in my heart, as I kissed my noble
-father. Shall I ever cease to thank the Lord that I proved myself a
-good daughter then?
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-BY A QUIET RIVER.
-
-
-Living as we did all by ourselves, and five or six miles away from
-the Robbers’ Valley, we had felt little fear of the Doones hitherto,
-because we had nothing for them to steal except a few books, the sight
-of which would only make them swear and ride away. But now that I
-was full-grown, and beginning to be accounted comely, my father was
-sometimes uneasy in his mind, as he told Deborah, and she told me; for
-the outlaws showed interest in such matters, even to the extent of
-carrying off young women who had won reputation thus. Therefore he left
-Thomas Pring at home, with the doors well-barred, and two duck guns
-loaded, and ordered me not to quit the house until he should return
-with a creel of trout for supper. Only our little boy Dick Hutchings
-was to go with him, to help when his fly caught in the bushes.
-
-My father set off in the highest spirits, as anglers always seem to
-do, to balance the state in which they shall return; and I knew not,
-neither did anyone else, what a bold stroke he was resolved upon. When
-it was too late, we found out that, hearing so much of that strange
-race, he desired to know more about them, scorning the idea that men
-of birth could ever behave like savages, and forgetting that they had
-received no chance of being tamed, as rough spirits are by the lessons
-of the battlefield. No gentleman would ever dream of attacking an
-unarmed man, he thought; least of all one whose hair was white. And so
-he resolved to fish the brook which ran away from their stronghold,
-believing that he might see some of them, and hoping for a peaceful
-interview.
-
-We waited and waited for his pleasant face, and long, deliberate step
-upon the steep, and cheerful shout for his Sylvia, to come and ease
-down his basket, and say--“Well done, father!” But the shadows of the
-trees grew darker, and the song of the gray-bird died out among them,
-and the silent wings of the owl swept by, and all the mysterious sounds
-of night in the depth of forest loneliness, and the glimmer of a star
-through the leaves here and there, to tell us that there still was
-light in heaven--but of an earthly father not a sign; only pain, and
-long sighs, and deep sinking of the heart.
-
-But why should I dwell upon this? All women, being of a gentle and
-loving kind,--unless they forego their nature,--know better than I at
-this first trial knew, the misery often sent to us. I could not believe
-it, and went about in a dreary haze of wonder, getting into dark
-places, when all was dark, and expecting to be called out again and
-asked what had made such a fool of me. And so the long night went at
-last, and no comfort came in the morning. But I heard a great crying,
-sometime the next day, and ran back from the wood to learn what it
-meant, for there I had been searching up and down, not knowing whither
-I went or why. And lo, it was little Dick Hutchings at our door, and
-Deborah Pring held him by the coat-flap, and was beating him with one
-of my father’s sticks.
-
-“I tell ’ee, they Doo-uns has done for ’un,” the boy was roaring
-betwixt his sobs; “dree on ’em, dree on ’em, and he’ve a killed one.
-The squire be layin’ as dead as a sto-un.”
-
-Mrs. Pring smacked him on the mouth, for she saw that I had heard it.
-What followed I know not, for down I fell, and the sense of life went
-from me.
-
-There was little chance of finding Thomas Pring, or any other man to
-help us, for neighbours were none, and Thomas was gone everywhere he
-could think of to look for them. Was I likely to wait for night again,
-and then talk for hours about it? I recovered my strength when the sun
-went low; and who was Deborah Pring, to stop me? She would have come,
-but I would not have it; and the strength of my grief took command of
-her.
-
-Little Dick Hutchings whistled now, I remember that he whistled, as he
-went through the wood in front of me. Who had given him the breeches on
-his legs and the hat upon his shallow pate? And the poor little coward
-had skiddered away, and slept in a furze rick, till famine drove him
-home. But now he was set up again by gorging for an hour, and chattered
-as if he had done a great thing.
-
-There must have been miles of rough walking through woods, and tangles,
-and craggy and black boggy hollows, until we arrived at a wide open
-space where two streams ran into one another.
-
-“Thic be Oare watter,” said the boy, “and t’other over yonner be
-Badgery. Squire be dead up there; plaise, Miss Sillie, ’ee can goo
-vorrard and vaind ’un.”
-
-He would go no further; but I crossed the brook, and followed the
-Badgery stream, without knowing, or caring to know, where I was. The
-banks, and the bushes, and the rushing water went by me until I came
-upon--but though the Lord hath made us to endure such things, he hath
-not compelled us to enlarge upon them.
-
-In the course of the night kind people came, under the guidance of
-Thomas Pring, and they made a pair of wattles such as farmers use for
-sheep, and carried home father and daughter, one sobbing and groaning
-with a broken heart, and the other that should never so much as sigh
-again. Troubles have fallen upon me since, as the will of the Lord is
-always; but none that I ever felt like that, and for months everything
-was the same to me.
-
-But inasmuch as it has been said by those who should know better,
-that my father in some way provoked his merciless end by those vile
-barbarians, I will put into plainest form, without any other change,
-except from outlandish words, the tale received from Dick Hutchings,
-the boy, who had seen and heard almost everything while crouching in
-the water and huddled up inside a bush.
-
-“Squire had catched a tidy few, and he seemed well pleased with
-himself, and then we came to a sort of a hollow place where one brook
-floweth into the other. Here he was a-casting of his fly, most careful,
-for if there was ever a trout on the feed, it was like to be a big one,
-and lucky for me I was keeping round the corner when a kingfisher bird
-flew along like a string-bolt, and there were three great men coming
-round a fuzz-bush, and looking at squire, and he back to them. Down
-goes I, you may say sure enough, with all of me in the water but my
-face, and that stuck into a wutts-clump, and my teeth making holes in
-my naked knees, because of the way they were shaking.
-
-“‘Ho, fellow!’ one of them called out to squire, as if he was no better
-than father is, ‘who give thee leave to fish in our river?’
-
-“‘Open moor,’ says squire, ‘and belongeth to the king, if it belongeth
-to anybody. Any of you gentlemen hold his majesty’s warrant to forbid
-an old officer of his?’
-
-“That seemed to put them in a dreadful rage, for to talk of a warrant
-was unpleasant to them.
-
-“‘Good fellow, thou mayest spin spider’s webs, or jib up and down like
-a gnat,’ said one, ‘but such tricks are not lawful upon land of ours.
-Therefore render up thy spoil.’
-
-“Squire walked up from the pebbles at that, and he stood before the
-three of them, as tall as any of them. And he said, ‘You be young men,
-but I am old. Nevertheless, I will not be robbed by three, or by thirty
-of you. If you be cowards enough, come on.’
-
-“Two of them held off, and I heard them say, ‘Let him alone, he is a
-brave old cock.’ For you never seed anyone look more braver, and his
-heart was up with righteousness. But the other, who seemed to be the
-oldest of the three, shouted out something, and put his leg across, and
-made at the squire with a long blue thing that shone in the sun, like
-a looking-glass. And the squire, instead of turning round to run away
-as he should have, led at him with the thick end of the fishing rod, to
-which he had bound an old knife of Mother Pring’s for to stick it in
-the grass, while he put his flies on. And I heard the old knife strike
-the man in his breast, and down he goes dead as a door-nail. And before
-I could look again almost, another man ran a long blade into squire,
-and there he was lying as straight as a lath, with the end of his white
-beard as red as a rose. At that I was so scared that I couldn’t look no
-more, and the water came bubbling into my mouth, and I thought I was at
-home along of mother.
-
-“By and by, I came back to myself with my face full of scratches in
-a bush, and the sun was going low, and the place all as quiet as
-Cheriton church. But the noise of the water told me where I was; and I
-got up, and ran for the life of me, till I came to the goyal. And then
-I got into a fuzz-rick, and slept all night, for I durstn’t go home to
-tell Mother Pring. But I just took a look before I began to run, and
-the Doone that was killed was gone away, but the squire lay along with
-his arms stretched out, as quiet as a sheep before they hang him up to
-drain.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-WISE COUNSEL.
-
-
-Some pious people seem not to care how many of their dearest hearts
-the Lord in heaven takes from them. How well I remember that in later
-life, I met a beautiful young widow, who had loved her husband with
-her one love, and was left with twin babies by him. I feared to speak,
-for I had known him well, and thought her the tenderest of the tender,
-and my eyes were full of tears for her. But she looked at me with some
-surprise, and said: “You loved my Bob, I know,” for he was a cousin of
-my own, and as good a man as ever lived, “but, Sylvia, you must not
-commit the sin of grieving for him.”
-
-It may be so, in a better world, if people are allowed to die there;
-but as long as we are here, how can we help being as the Lord has made
-us? The sin, as it seems to me, would be to feel or fancy ourselves
-case-hardened against the will of our Maker, which so often is--that
-we should grieve. Without a thought how that might be, I did the
-natural thing, and cried about the death of my dear father until I was
-like to follow him. But a strange thing happened in a month or so of
-time, which according to Deborah saved my life, by compelling other
-thoughts to come. My father had been buried in a small churchyard, with
-nobody living near it, and the church itself was falling down, through
-scarcity of money on the moor. The Warren, as our wood was called, lay
-somewhere in the parish of Brendon, a straggling country, with a little
-village somewhere, and a blacksmith’s shop and an ale house, but no
-church that anyone knew of, till you came to a place called Cheriton.
-And there was a little church all by itself, not easy to find, though
-it had four bells, which nobody dared to ring, for fear of his head
-and the burden above it. But a boy would go up the first Sunday of each
-month, and strike the liveliest of them with a poker from the smithy.
-And then a brave parson, who feared nothing but his duty, would make
-his way in, with a small flock at his heels, and read the Psalms of the
-day, and preach concerning the difficulty of doing better. And it was
-accounted to the credit of the Doones that they never came near him,
-for he had no money.
-
-The Fords had been excellent Catholics always; but Thomas and Deborah
-Pring, who managed everything while I was overcome, said that the
-church, being now so old, must have belonged to us, and therefor might
-be considered holy. The parson also said that it would do, for he was
-not a man of hot persuasions. And so my dear father lay there, without
-a stone, or a word to tell who he was, and the grass began to grow.
-
-Here I was sitting one afternoon in May, and the earth was beginning to
-look lively; when a shadow from the west fell over me, and a large,
-broad man stood behind it. If I had been at all like myself, a thing of
-that kind would have frightened me; but now the strings of my system
-seemed to have nothing like a jerk in them, for I cared not whither I
-went, nor how I looked, nor whether I went anywhere.
-
-“Child! poor child!” It was a deep, soft voice of distant yet large
-benevolence. “Almost a woman, and a comely one, for those who think of
-such matters. Such a child I might have owned, if Heaven had been kind
-to me.”
-
-Low as I was of heart and spirit, I could not help looking up at him;
-for Mother Pring’s voice, though her meaning was so good, sounded
-like a cackle in comparison to this. But when I looked up, such
-encouragement came from a great benign and steadfast gaze that I turned
-away my eyes, as I felt them overflow. But he said not a word, for his
-pity was too deep, and I thanked him in my heart for that.
-
-“Pardon me if I am wrong,” I said, with my eyes on the white flowers
-I had brought and arranged as my father would have liked them; “but
-perhaps you are the clergyman of this old church.” For I had lain
-senseless and moaning on the ground when my father was carried away to
-be buried.
-
-“How often am I taken for a clerk in holy orders! And in better times I
-might have been of that sacred vocation, though so unworthy. But I am a
-member of the older church, and to me all this is heresy.”
-
-There was nothing of bigotry in our race, and we knew that we must put
-up with all changes for the worst; yet it pleased me not a little that
-so good a man should be also a sound Catholic.
-
-“There are few of us left, and we are persecuted. Sad calumnies are
-spread about us,” this venerable man proceeded, while I gazed on the
-silver locks that fell upon his well-worn velvet coat. “But of such
-things we take small heed, while we know that the Lord is with us.
-Haply even you, young maiden, have listened to slander about us.”
-
-I told him with some concern, although not caring much for such things
-now, that I never had any chance of listening to tales about anybody,
-and was yet without the honour of even knowing who he was.
-
-“Few indeed care for that point now,” he answered, with a toss of his
-glistening curls, and a lift of his broad white eyebrows. “Though there
-has been a time when the noblest of this earth--but vanity, vanity, the
-wise man saith. Yet some good I do in my quiet little way. There is a
-peaceful company among these hills, respected by all who conceive them
-aright. My child, perhaps you have heard of them?”
-
-I replied sadly that I had not done so, but hoped that he would forgive
-me as one unacquainted with that neighbourhood. But I knew that there
-might be godly monks still in hiding, for the service of God in the
-wilderness.
-
-“So far as the name goes, we are not monastics,” he said, with a
-sparkle in his deep-set eyes; “we are but a family of ancient lineage,
-expelled from our home in these irreligious times. It is no longer
-in our power to do all the good we would, and therefore we are much
-undervalued. Perhaps you have heard of the Doones, my child?”
-
-To me it was a wonder that he spoke of them thus, for his look was of
-beautiful mildness, instead of any just condemnation. But his aspect
-was as if he came from heaven; and I thought that he had a hard job
-before him, if he were sent to conduct the Doones thither.
-
-“I am not severe; I think well of mankind,” he went on, as I looked at
-him meekly; “perhaps because I am one of them. You are very young, my
-dear, and unable to form much opinion as yet. But let it be your rule
-of life ever to keep an open mind.”
-
-This advice impressed me much, though I could not see clearly what it
-meant. But the sun was going beyond Exmoor now, and safe as I felt with
-so good an old man, a long, lonely walk was before me. So I took up my
-basket and rose to depart, saying, “Good-bye, sir; I am much in your
-debt for your excellent advice and kindness.”
-
-He looked at me most benevolently, and whatever may be said of him
-hereafter, I shall always believe that he was a good man, overcome
-perhaps by circumstances, yet trying to make the best of them. He
-has now become a by-word as a hypocrite and a merciless self-seeker.
-But many young people, who met him as I did, without possibility of
-prejudice, hold a larger opinion of him. And surely young eyes are the
-brightest.
-
-“I will protect thee, my dear,” he said, looking capable in his
-great width and wisdom of protecting all the host of heaven. “I have
-protected a maiden even more beautiful than thou art. But now she hath
-unwisely fled from us. Our young men are thoughtless, but they are not
-violent, at least until they are sadly provoked. Your father was a
-brave man, and much to be esteemed. My brother, the mildest man that
-ever lived, hath ridden down hundreds of Roundheads with him. Therefore
-thou shalt come to no harm. But he should not have fallen upon our
-young men as if they were rabble of the Commonwealth.”
-
-Upon these words I looked at him I know not how, so great was the
-variance betwixt my ears and eyes. Then I tried to say something, but
-nothing would come, so entire was my amazement.
-
-“Such are the things we have ever to contend with,” he continued,
-as if to himself, with a smile of compassion at my prejudice. “Nay,
-I am not angry; I have seen so much of this. Right and wrong stand
-fast, and cannot be changed by any facundity. But time is short, and
-will soon be stirring. Have a backway from thy bedroom, child. I am
-Councillor Doone; by birthright and in right of understanding, the
-captain of that pious family, since the return of the good Sir Ensor
-to the land where there are no lies. So long as we are not molested in
-our peaceful valley, my will is law; and I have ordered that none shall
-go near thee. But a mob of country louts are drilling in a farmyard
-up the moorlands, to plunder and destroy us, if they can. We shall
-make short work of them. But after that, our youths may be provoked
-beyond control, and sally forth to make reprisal. They have their eyes
-on thee, I know, and thy father hath assaulted us. An ornament to our
-valley thou wouldst be; but I would reproach myself if the daughter of
-my brother’s friend were discontented with our life. Therefore have
-I come to warn thee, for there are troublous times in front. Have a
-backway from thy bedroom, child, and slip out into the wood if a noise
-comes in the night.”
-
-Before I could thank him, he strode away, with a step of no small
-dignity, and as he raised his pointed hat, the western light showed
-nothing fairer or more venerable than the long wave of his silver
-locks.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-A COTTAGE HOSPITAL.
-
-
-Master Pring was not much of a man to talk. But for power of thought he
-was considered equal to any pair of other men, and superior of course
-to all womankind. Moreover, he had seen a good deal of fighting, not
-among outlaws, but fine soldiers well skilled in the proper style of
-it. So that it was impossible for him to think very highly of the
-Doones. Gentlemen they might be, he said, and therefore by nature well
-qualified to fight. But where could they have learned any discipline,
-any tactics, any knowledge of formation, or even any skill of sword or
-firearms? “Tush, there was his own son, Bob, now serving under Captain
-Purvis, as fine a young trooper as ever drew sword, and perhaps on his
-way at this very moment, under orders from the Lord Lieutenant, to rid
-the country of that pestilent race. Ah, ha! We soon shall see!”
-
-And in truth we did see him, even sooner than his own dear mother had
-expected, and long before his father wanted him, though he loved him so
-much in his absence. For I heard a deep voice in the kitchen one night
-(before I was prepared for such things, by making a backway out of my
-bedroom), and thinking it best to know the worst, went out to ask what
-was doing there.
-
-A young man was sitting upon the table, accounting too little of our
-house, yet showing no great readiness to boast, only to let us know
-who he was. He had a fine head of curly hair, and spoke with a firm
-conviction that there was much inside it. “Father, you have possessed
-small opportunity of seeing how we do things now. Mother is not to be
-blamed for thinking that we are in front of what used to be. What do
-we care how the country lies? We have heared all this stuff up at Oare.
-If there are bogs, we shall timber them. If there are rocks, we shall
-blow them up. If there are caves, we shall fire down them. The moment
-we get our guns into position----”
-
-“Hush, Bob, hush! Here is your master’s daughter. Not the interlopers
-you put up with; but your real master, on whose property you were born.
-Is that the position for your guns?”
-
-Being thus rebuked by his father, who was a very faithful-minded
-man, Robert Pring shuffled his long boots down, and made me a low
-salutation. But, having paid little attention to the things other
-people were full of, I left the young man to convince his parents, and
-he soon was successful with his mother.
-
-Two, or it may have been three days after this, a great noise arose in
-the morning. I was dusting my father’s books, which lay open just as
-he had left them. There was “Barker’s Delight” and “Isaac Walton,”
-and the “Secrets of Angling by J. D.” and some notes of his own about
-making of flies; also fish hooks made of Spanish steel, and long hairs
-pulled from the tail of a gray horse, with spindles and bits of quill
-for plaiting them. So proud and so pleased had he been with these
-trifles, after the clamour and clash of life, that tears came into my
-eyes once more, as I thought of his tranquil and amiable ways.
-
-“’Tis a wrong thing altogether to my mind,” cried Deborah Pring,
-running in to me. “They Doones was established afore we come, and why
-not let them bide upon their own land? They treated poor master amiss,
-beyond denial; and never will I forgive them for it. All the same, he
-was catching what belonged to them; meaning for the best no doubt,
-because he was so righteous. And having such courage he killed one,
-or perhaps two; though I never could have thought so much of that old
-knife. But ever since that, they have been good, Miss Sillie, never
-even coming anigh us; and I don’t believe half of the tales about them.”
-
-All this was new to me; for if anybody had cried shame and death upon
-that wicked horde, it was Deborah Pring, who was talking to me thus! I
-looked at her with wonder, suspecting for the moment that the venerable
-Councillor--who was clever enough to make a cow forget her calf--might
-have paid her a visit while I was away. But very soon the reason of the
-change appeared.
-
-“Who hath taken command of the attack?” she asked, as if no one would
-believe the answer; “not Captain Purvis, as ought to have been, nor
-even Captain Dallas of Devon, but Spy Stickles by royal warrant, the
-man that hath been up to Oare so long! And my son Robert, who hath come
-down to help to train them, and understandeth cannon guns----”
-
-“Captain Purvis? I seem to know that name very well. I have often heard
-it from my father. And your son under him! Why, Deborah, what are you
-hiding from me?”
-
-Now good Mrs. Pring was beginning to forget, or rather had never
-borne properly in mind, that I was the head of the household now, and
-entitled to know everything, and to be asked about it. But people who
-desire to have this done should insist upon it at the outset, which I
-had not been in proper state to do. So that she made quite a grievance
-of it, when I would not be treated as a helpless child. However, I soon
-put a stop to that, and discovered to my surprise much more than could
-be imagined.
-
-And before I could say even half of what I thought, a great noise
-arose in the hollow of the hills, and came along the valleys, like the
-blowing of a wind that had picked up the roaring of mankind upon its
-way. Perhaps greater noise had never arisen upon the moor; and the
-cattle, and the quiet sheep, and even the wild deer came bounding from
-unsheltered places into any offering of branches, or of other heling
-from the turbulence of men. And then a gray fog rolled down the valley,
-and Deborah said it was cannon-smoke, following the river course; but
-to me it seemed only the usual thickness of the air, when the clouds
-hang low. Thomas Pring was gone, as behooved an ancient warrior, to see
-how his successors did things, and the boy Dick Hutchings had begged
-leave to sit in a tree and watch the smoke. Deborah and I were left
-alone, and a long and anxious day we had.
-
-At last the wood-pigeons had stopped their cooing,--which they kept
-up for hours, when the weather matched the light,--and there was not
-a tree that could tell its own shadow, and we were contented with the
-gentle sounds that come through a forest when it falls asleep, and
-Deborah Pring, who had taken a motherly tendency toward me now, as if
-to make up for my father, was sitting in the porch with my hands in
-her lap, and telling me how to behave henceforth, as if the whole world
-depended upon that, when we heard a swishing sound, as of branches
-thrust aside, and then a low moan that went straight to my heart, as I
-thought of my father when he took the blow of death.
-
-“My son, my Bob, my eldest boy!” cried Mistress Pring, jumping up and
-falling into my arms, like a pillow full of wire, for she insisted upon
-her figure still. But before I could do anything to help her----
-
-“Hit her on the back, ma’am; hit her hard upon the back. That is what
-always brings mother round,” was shouted, as I might say, into my ear
-by the young man whom she was lamenting.
-
-“Shut thy trap, Braggadose. To whom art thou speaking? Pretty much thou
-hast learned of war to come and give lessons to thy father! Mistress
-Sylvia, it is for thee to speak. Nothing would satisfy this young
-springal but to bring his beaten captain here, for the sake of mother’s
-management. I told un that you would never take him in, for his father
-have taken in you pretty well! Captain Purvis of the Somerset I know
-not what--for the regiments now be all upside down. _Raggiments_ is the
-proper name for them. Very like he be dead by this time, and better die
-out of doors than in. Take un away, Bob. No hospital here!”
-
-“Thomas Pring, who are you,” I said, for the sound of another low groan
-came through me, “to give orders to your master’s daughter? If you
-bring not the poor wounded gentleman in, you shall never come through
-this door yourself.”
-
-“Ha, old hunks, I told thee so!”
-
-The young man who spoke raised his hat to me, and I saw that it had a
-scarlet plume, such as Marwood de Wichehalse gloried in. “In with thee,
-and stretch him that he may die straight. I am off to Southmolton for
-Cutcliffe Lane, who can make a furze-fagot bloom again. My filly can
-give a land-yard in a mile to Tom Faggus and his Winnie. But mind one
-thing, all of you; it was none of us that shot the captain, but his
-own good men. Farewell, Mistress Sylvia!” With these words he made me a
-very low bow, and set off for his horse at the corner of the wood--as
-reckless a gallant as ever broke hearts, and those of his own kin
-foremost; yet himself so kind and loving.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-MISTAKEN AIMS.
-
-
-Captain Purvis, now brought to the Warren in this very sad condition,
-had not been shot by his own men, as the dashing Marwood de Wichehalse
-said; neither was it quite true to say that he had been shot by anyone.
-What happened to him was simply this: While behaving with the utmost
-gallantry and encouraging the militia of Somerset, whose uniforms were
-faced with yellow, he received in his chest a terrific blow from the
-bottom of a bottle. This had been discharged from a culverin on the
-opposite side of the valley by the brave but impetuous sons of Devon,
-who wore the red facings, and had taken umbrage at a pure mistake on
-the part of their excellent friends and neighbours, the loyal band of
-Somerset. Either brigade had three culverins; and never having seen
-such things before, as was natural with good farmers’ sons, they felt
-it a compliment to themselves to be intrusted with such danger, and
-resolved to make the most of it. However, when they tried to make them
-go, with the help of a good many horses, upon places that had no roads
-for war, and even no sort of road at all, the difficulty was beyond
-them. But a very clever blacksmith near Malmesford, who had better,
-as it proved, have stuck to the plough, persuaded them that he knew
-all about it, and would bring their guns to bear, if they let him have
-his way. So they took the long tubes from their carriages, and lashed
-rollers of barked oak under them, and with very stout ropes, and great
-power of swearing, dragged them into the proper place to overwhelm the
-Doones.
-
-Here they mounted their guns upon cider barrels, with allowance of roll
-for recoil, and charged them to the very best of their knowledge,
-and pointed them as nearly as they could guess at the dwellings of
-the outlaws in the glen; three cannons on the north were of Somerset,
-and the three on the south were of Devonshire; but these latter had
-no balls of metal, only anything round they could pick up. Colonel
-Stickles was in command, by virtue of his royal warrant, and his
-plan was to make his chief assault in company with some chosen men,
-including his host, young farmer Ridd, at the head of the valley
-where the chief entrance was, while the trainbands pounded away on
-either side. And perhaps this would have succeeded well, except for a
-little mistake in firing, for which the enemy alone could be blamed
-with justice. For while Captain Purvis was behind the line rallying
-a few men who showed fear, and not expecting any combat yet, because
-Devonshire was not ready, an elderly gentleman of great authority
-appeared among the bombardiers. On his breast he wore a badge of
-office, and in his hat a noble plume of the sea eagle, and he handed
-his horse to a man in red clothes.
-
-“Just in time,” he shouted; “and the Lord be thanked for that! By order
-of His Majesty, I take supreme command. Ha, and high time, too, for it!
-You idiots, where are you pointing your guns? What allowance have you
-made for windage? Why, at that elevation, you’ll shoot yourselves. Up
-with your muzzles, you yellow jackanapes! Down on your bellies! Hand me
-the linstock! By the Lord, you don’t even know how to touch them off!”
-
-The soldiers were abashed at his rebukes, and glad to lie down on their
-breasts for fear of the powder on their yellow facings. And thus they
-were shaken by three great roars, and wrapped in a cloud of streaky
-smoke. When this had cleared off, and they stood up, lo! the houses of
-the Doones were the same as before, but a great shriek arose on the
-opposite bank, and two good horses lay on the ground; and the red men
-were stamping about, and some crossing their arms, and some running for
-their lives, and the bravest of them stooping over one another. Then as
-Captain Purvis rushed up in great wrath, shouting: “What the devil do
-you mean by this?” another great roar arose from across the valley, and
-he was lying flat, and two other fine fellows were rolling in a furze
-bush without knowledge of it. But of the general and his horse there
-was no longer any token.
-
-This was the matter that lay so heavily on the breast of Captain
-Purvis, sadly crushed as it was already by the spiteful stroke bitterly
-intended for him. His own men had meant no harm whatever, unless to the
-proper enemy; although they appear to have been deluded by a subtle
-device of the Councillor, for which on the other hand none may blame
-him. But those redfaced men, without any inquiry, turned the muzzles of
-their guns upon Somerset, and the injustice rankled for a generation
-between two equally honest counties. Happily they did not fight it out
-through scarcity of ammunition, as well as their mutual desire to go
-home and attend to their harvest business.
-
-But Anthony Purvis, now our guest and patient, became very difficult
-to manage; not only because of his three broken ribs, but the lowness
-of the heart inside them. Dr. Cutcliffe Lane, a most cheerful man
-from that cheerful town Southmolton, was able (with the help of
-Providence) to make the bones grow again without much anger into their
-own embraces. It is useless, however, for the body to pretend that it
-is doing wonders on its own account, and rejoicing and holiday making,
-when the thing that sits inside it and holds the whip, keeps down upon
-the slouch and is out of sorts. And truly this was the case just now
-with the soul of Captain Purvis. Deborah Pring did her very best, and
-was in and out of his room every minute, and very often seemed to me
-to run him down when he deserved it not; on purpose that I might be
-started to run him up. But nothing of that sort told at all according
-to her intention. I kept myself very much to myself; feeling that my
-nature was too kind, and asking at some little questions of behaviour,
-what sort of returns my dear father had obtained for supposing other
-people as good as himself.
-
-Moreover, it seemed an impossible thing that such a brave warrior, and
-a rich man too--for his father, Sir Geoffrey, was in full possession
-now of all the great property that belonged by right to us--that an
-officer who should have been in command of this fine expedition, if he
-had his dues, could be either the worse or the better of his wound,
-according to his glimpses of a simple maid like me. It was useless for
-Deborah Pring, or even Dr. Cutcliffe Lane himself, to go on as they
-did about love at first sight, and the rising of the heart when the
-ribs were broken, and a quantity of other stuff too foolish to repeat.
-“I am neither a plaster nor a poultice,” I replied to myself, for I
-would not be too cross to them--and beyond a little peep at him, every
-afternoon, I kept out of the sight of Captain Purvis.
-
-But these things made it very hard for me to be quite sure how to
-conduct myself, without father and mother to help me, and with Mistress
-Pring, who had always been such a landmark, becoming no more than a
-vane for the wind to blow upon as it listed; or, perhaps, as she listed
-to go with it. And remembering how she used to speak of the people who
-had ousted us, I told her that I could not make it out. Things were
-in this condition, and Captain Purvis, as it seemed to me, quite fit
-to go and make war again upon some of His Majesty’s subjects, when a
-thing, altogether out of reason, or even of civilisation, happened;
-and people who live in lawful parts will accuse me of caring too
-little for the truth. But even before that came about, something less
-unreasonable--but still unexpected--befell me. To wit, I received
-through Mistress Pring an offer of marriage, immediate and pressing,
-from Captain Anthony Purvis! He must have been sadly confused by that
-blow on his heart to think mine so tender, or that this was the way to
-deal with it, though later explanations proved that Deborah, if she
-had been just, would have taken the whole reproach upon herself. The
-captain could scarcely have seen me, I believe more than half a dozen
-times to speak of; and generally he had shut his eyes, gentle as they
-were and beautiful; not only to make me feel less afraid, but to fill
-me with pity for his weakness. Having no knowledge of mankind as yet,
-I was touched to the brink of tears at first; until when the tray came
-out of his room soon after one of these pitiful moments, it was plain
-to the youngest comprehension that the sick man had left very little
-upon a shoulder of Exmoor mutton, and nothing in a bowl of thick onion
-sauce.
-
-For that I would be the last to blame him, and being his hostess, I
-was glad to find it so. But Deborah played a most double-minded part;
-leading him to believe that now she was father and mother in one to me;
-while to me she went on, as if I was most headstrong, and certain to go
-against anything she said, though for her part she never said anything.
-Nevertheless he made a great mistake, as men always do, about our ways;
-and having some sense of what is right, I said, “Let me hear no more of
-Captain Purvis.”
-
-This forced him to leave us; which he might have done, for aught
-I could see to the contrary, a full week before he departed. He
-behaved very well when he said good-bye,--for I could not deny him
-that occasion,--and, perhaps, if he had not assured me so much of
-his everlasting gratitude, I should have felt surer of deserving it.
-Perhaps I was a little disappointed also, that he expressed no anxiety
-at leaving our cottage so much at the mercy of turbulent and triumphant
-outlaws. But it was not for me to speak of that; and when I knew the
-reason of his silence, it redounded tenfold to his credit. Nothing,
-however, vexed me so much as what Deborah Pring said afterward: that he
-could not help feeling in the sadness of his heart that I had behaved
-in that manner to him just because his father was in possession of
-our rightful home and property. I was not so small as that; and if he
-truly did suppose it, there must have been some fault on my part, for
-his nature was good to everybody, and perhaps all the better for not
-descending through too many high generations.
-
-There is nothing more strange than the way things work in the mind of a
-woman, when left alone, to doubt about her own behaviour. With men it
-can scarcely be so cruel; because they can always convince themselves
-that they did their best; and if it fail, they can throw the fault upon
-Providence, or bad luck, or something outside their own power. But we
-seem always to be denied this happy style of thinking, and cannot
-put aside what comes into our hearts more quickly, and has less stir
-of outward things, to lead it away and to brighten it. So that I fell
-into sad, low spirits; and the glory of the year began to wane, and the
-forest grew more and more lonesome.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-OVER THE BRIDGE.
-
-
-The sound of the woods was with me now, both night and day, to dwell
-upon. Exmoor in general is bare of trees, though it hath the name of
-forest; but in the shelter, where the wind flies over, are many thick
-places full of shade. For here the trees and bushes thrive, so copious
-with rich moisture that, from the hills on the opposite side, no eye
-may pick holes in the umbrage; neither may a foot that gets amid them
-be sure of getting out again. And now was the fullest and heaviest
-time, for the summer had been a wet one, after a winter that went
-to our bones; and the leaves were at their darkest tone without any
-sense of autumn. As one stood beneath and wondered at their countless
-multitude, a quick breathing passed among them, not enough to make them
-move, but seeming rather as if they wished, and yet were half ashamed
-to sigh. And this was very sad for one whose spring comes only once for
-all.
-
-One night toward the end of August I was lying awake thinking of the
-happier times, and wondering what the end would be--for now we had very
-little money left, and I would rather starve than die in debt--when I
-heard our cottage door smashed in and the sound of horrible voices. The
-roar of a gun rang up the stairs, and the crash of someone falling and
-the smoke came through my bedroom door, and then wailing mixed with
-curses. “Out of the way, old hag!” I heard, and then another shriek;
-and then I stood upon the stairs and looked down at them. The moon was
-shining through the shattered door, and the bodies and legs of men
-went to and fro, like branches in a tempest. Nobody seemed to notice
-me, although I had cast over my night-dress--having no more sense in
-the terror--a long silver coat of some animal shot by my father in his
-wanderings, and the light upon the stairs glistened round it. Having no
-time to think, I was turning to flee and jump out of my bedroom window,
-for which I had made some arrangements, according to the wisdom of
-the Councillor, when the flash of some light or the strain of my eyes
-showed me the body of Thomas Pring, our faithful old retainer, lying at
-the foot of the broken door, and beside it his good wife, creeping up
-to give him the last embrace of death. And lately she had been cross to
-him. At the sight of this my terror fled, and I cared not what became
-of me. Buckling the white skin round my waist, I went down the stairs
-as steadily as if it were breakfast time, and said:
-
-“Brutes, murderers, cowards! you have slain my father; now slay me!”
-
-Every one of those wicked men stood up and fixed his eyes on me; and
-if it had been a time to laugh, their amazement might have been
-laughed at. Some of them took me for a spirit--as I was told long
-afterward--and rightly enough their evil hearts were struck with dread
-of judgment. But even so, to scare them long in their contemptuous,
-godless vein was beyond the power of Heaven itself; and when one of my
-long tresses fell, to my great vexation, down my breast, a shocking
-sneer arose, and words unfit for a maiden’s ear ensued.
-
-“None of that! This is no farmhouse wench, but a lady of birth and
-breeding. She shall be our queen, instead of the one that hath been
-filched away. Sylvia, thou shalt come with me.”
-
-The man who spoke with this mighty voice was a terror to the others,
-for they fell away before him, and he was the biggest monster
-there--Carver Doone, whose name for many a generation shall be used
-to frighten unruly babes to bed. And now, as he strode up to me and
-bowed,--to show some breeding,--I doubt if the moon, in all her rounds
-of earth and sky and the realms below, fell ever upon another face so
-cold, repulsive, ruthless.
-
-To belong to him, to feel his lips, to touch him with anything but a
-dagger! Suddenly I saw my father’s sword hanging under a beam in the
-scabbard. With a quick spring I seized it, and, leaping up the stairs,
-had the long blade gleaming in the moonlight. The staircase would not
-hold two people abreast, and the stairs were as steep as narrow. I
-brought the point down it, with the hilt against my breast, and there
-was no room for another blade to swing and strike it up.
-
-“Let her alone!” said Carver Doone, with a smile upon his cold and
-corpselike face. “My sons, let the lady have her time. She is worthy to
-be the mother of many a fine Doone.”
-
-The young men began to lounge about in a manner most provoking, as if
-I had passed from their minds altogether; and some of them went to
-the kitchen for victuals, and grumbled at our fare by the light of a
-lantern which they had found upon a shelf. But I stood at my post, with
-my heart beating, so that the long sword quivered like a candle. Of my
-life they might rob me, but of my honour, never!
-
-“Beautiful maiden! Who hath ever seen the like? Why, even Lorna hath
-not such eyes.”
-
-Carver Doone came to the foot of the stairs and flashed the lantern
-at me, and, thinking that he meant to make a rush for it, I thrust my
-weapon forward; but at the same moment a great pair of arms was thrown
-around me from behind by some villain who must have scaled my chamber
-window, and backward I fell, with no sense or power left.
-
-When my scattered wits came back I felt that I was being shaken
-grievously, and the moon was dancing in my eyes through a mist of
-tears, half blinding them. I remember how hard I tried to get my
-fingers up to wipe my eyes, so as to obtain some knowledge; but jerk
-and bump and helpless wonder were all that I could get or take; for my
-hands were strapped, and my feet likewise, and I seemed like a wave
-going up and down, without any judgment, upon the open sea.
-
-But presently I smelled the wholesome smell which a horse of all
-animals alone possesses, though sometimes a cow is almost as good, and
-then I felt a mane coming into my hair, and then there was the sound
-of steady feet moving just under me, with rise and fall and swing
-alternate, and a sense of going forward. I was on the back of a great,
-strong horse, and he was obeying the commands of man. Gradually I began
-to think, and understood my awful plight. The Doones were taking me to
-Doone Glen to be some cut-throat’s light-of-love; perhaps to be passed
-from brute to brute--me, Sylvia Ford, my father’s darling, a proud and
-dainty and stately maiden, of as good birth as any in this English
-realm. My heart broke down as I thought of that, and all discretion
-vanished. Though my hands were tied my throat was free, and I sent
-forth such a scream of woe that the many-winding vale of Lynn, with all
-its wild waters could not drown, nor with all its dumb foliage smother
-it; and the long wail rang from crag to crag, as the wrongs of men echo
-unto the ears of God.
-
-“Valiant damsel, what a voice thou hast! Again, and again let it strike
-the skies. With them we are at peace, being persecuted here, according
-to the doom of all good men. And yet I am loth to have that fair throat
-strained.”
-
-It was Carver Doone who led my horse; and his horrible visage glared
-into my eyes through the strange, wan light that flows between the
-departure of the sinking moon and the flutter of the morning when it
-cannot see its way. I strove to look at him; but my scared eyes fell,
-and he bound his rank glove across my poor lips. “Let it be so,” I
-thought; “I can do no more.”
-
-Then, when my heart was quite gone in despair, and all trouble shrank
-into a trifle, I heard a loud shout, and the trample of feet, and the
-rattle of arms, and the clash of horses. Contriving to twist myself a
-little, I saw that the band of the Doones were mounting a saddle-backed
-bridge in a deep wooded glen, with a roaring water under them. On the
-crown of the bridge a vast man stood, such as I had never descried
-before, bearing no armour that I could see, but wearing a farmer’s hat,
-and raising a staff like the stem of a young oak tree. He was striking
-at no one, but playing with his staff, as if it were a willow in the
-morning breeze.
-
-“Down with him! Ride him down! Send a bullet through him!” several of
-the Doones called out, but no one showed any hurry to do it. It seemed
-as if they knew him, and feared his mighty strength, and their guns
-were now slung behind their backs on account of the roughness of the
-way.
-
-“Charlie, you are not afraid of him,” I heard that crafty Carver say
-to the tallest of his villains, and a very handsome young man he was;
-“if the girl were not on my horse, I would do it. Ride over him, and
-you shall have my prize, when I am tired of her.”
-
-I felt the fire come into my eyes, to be spoken of so by a brute;
-and then I saw Charlie Doone spur up the bridge, leaning forward and
-swinging a long blade round his head.
-
-“Down with thee, clod!” he shouted; and he showed such strength and
-fury that I scarce could look at the farmer, dreading to see his great
-head fly away. But just as the horse rushed at him, he leaped aside
-with most wonderful nimbleness, and the rider’s sword was dashed out of
-his grasp, and down he went, over the back of the saddle, and his long
-legs spun up in the air, as a juggler tosses a two-pronged fork.
-
-“Now for another!” the farmer cried, and his deep voice rang above the
-roar of Lynn; “or two at once, if it suits you better. I will teach
-you to carry off women, you dogs!”
-
-But the outlaws would not try another charge. On a word from their
-leader they all dismounted, and were bringing their long guns to bear,
-and I heard the clink of their flints as they fixed the trigger. Carver
-Doone, grinding his enormous teeth, stood at the head of my horse, who
-was lashing and plunging, so that I must have been flung if any of the
-straps had given way. In terror of the gun flash I shut my eyes, for if
-I had seen that brave man killed, it would have been the death of me as
-well. Then I felt my horse treading on something soft. Carver Doone was
-beneath his feet, and an awful curse came from the earth.
-
-“Have no fear!” said the sweetest voice that ever came into the ears
-of despair. “Sylvia, none can harm you now. Lie still, and let this
-protect your face.”
-
-“How can I help lying still?” I said, as a soft cloak was thrown over
-me, and in less than a moment my horse was rushing through branches
-and brushwood that swept his ears. At his side was another horse, and
-my bridle rein was held by a man who stooped over his neck in silence.
-Though his face was out of sight, I knew that Anthony Purvis was
-leading me.
-
-There was no possibility of speaking now, but after a tumult of speed
-we came to an open glade where the trees fell back, and a gentle brook
-was gurgling. Then Captain Purvis cut my bonds, and lifting me down
-very softly, set me upon a bank of moss, for my limbs would not support
-me; and I lay there unable to do anything but weep.
-
-When I returned to myself, the sun was just looking over a wooded
-cliff, and Anthony, holding a horn of water, and with water on his
-cheeks, was regarding me.
-
-“Did you leave that brave man to be shot?” I asked, as if that were all
-my gratitude.
-
-“I am not so bad as that,” he answered, without any anger, for he saw
-that I was not in reason yet. “At sight of my men, although we were but
-five in all, the robbers fled, thinking the regiment was there; but it
-is God’s truth that I thought little of anyone’s peril compared with
-thine. But there need be no fear for John Ridd; the Doones are mighty
-afraid of him since he cast their culverin through their door.”
-
-“Was that the John Ridd I have heard so much of? Surely I might have
-known it, but my wits were shaken out of me.”
-
-“Yes, that was the mighty man of Exmoor, to whom thou owest more than
-life.”
-
-In horror of what I had so narrowly escaped, I fell upon my knees and
-thanked the Lord, and then I went shyly to the captain’s side and said:
-“I am ashamed to look at thee. Without Anthony Purvis, where should I
-be? Speak of no John Ridd to me.”
-
-For this man whom I had cast forth, with coldness, as he must have
-thought--although I knew better, when he was gone--this man (my
-honoured husband now, who hath restored me to my father’s place, when
-kings had no gratitude or justice), Sir Anthony Purvis, as now he is,
-had dwelled in a hovel and lived on scraps, to guard the forsaken
-orphan, who had won, and shall ever retain, his love.
-
-
-
-
-FRIDA; OR, THE LOVER’S LEAP.
-
-A LEGEND OF THE WEST COUNTRY.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-
-On the very day when Charles I. was crowned with due
-rejoicings--Candlemas-day, in the year of our Lord 1626--a loyalty,
-quite as deep and perhaps even more lasting, was having its beer at Ley
-Manor in the north of Devon. A loyalty not to the king, for the old
-West-country folk knew little and cared less about the house that came
-over the Border; but to a lord who had won their hearts by dwelling
-among them, and dealing kindly, and paying his way every Saturday
-night. When this has been done for three generations general and genial
-respect may almost be relied upon. The present Baron de Wichehalse was
-fourth in descent from that Hugh de Wichehalse, the head of an old and
-wealthy race, who had sacrificed his comfort to his resolve to have a
-will of his own in matters of religion. That Hugh de Wichehalse, having
-an eye to this, as well as the other world, contrived to sell his large
-estates before they were confiscated, and to escape with all the money,
-from very sharp measures then enforced, by order of King Philip II.,
-in the unhappy Low Countries. Landing in England, with all his effects
-and a score of trusty followers, he bought a fine property, settled,
-and died, and left a good name behind him. And that good name had been
-well kept up, and the property had increased and thriven, so that the
-present lord was loved and admired by all the neighbourhood.
-
-In one thing, however, he had been unlucky, at least in his own
-opinion. Ten years of married life had not found issue in parental
-life. All his beautiful rocks and hills, lovely streams and glorious
-woods, green meadows and golden corn lands, must pass to his nephew
-and not to his child, because he had not gained one. Being a good man,
-he did his best to see this thing in its proper light. Children, after
-all, are a plague, a risk, and a deep anxiety. His nephew was a very
-worthy boy, and his rights should be respected. Nevertheless, the baron
-often longed to supersede them.
-
-Of this there was every prospect now. The lady of the house had
-intrusted her case to a highly celebrated simple-woman, who lived among
-rocks and scanty vegetation at Heddon’s Mouth, gathering wisdom from
-the earth and from the sea tranquillity. De Wichehalse was naturally
-vexed a little when all this accumulated wisdom culminated in nothing
-grander than a somewhat undersized, and unhappily female child--one,
-moreover, whose presence cost him that of his faithful and loving wife.
-So that the heiress of Ley Manor was greeted, after all, with a very
-brief and sorry welcome. “Jennyfried,” for so they named her, soon
-began to grow into a fair esteem and good liking. Her father, after
-a year or two, plucked up his courage and played with her; and the
-more he played the more pleased he was, both with her and his own kind
-self. Unhappily, there were at that time no shops in the neighbourhood;
-unhappily, now there are too many. Nevertheless, upon the whole, she
-had all the toys that were good for her; and her teeth had a fair
-chance of fitting themselves for life’s chief operation in the absence
-of sugared allurements.
-
-A brief and meagre account is this of the birth, and growth, and
-condition of a maiden whose beauty and goodness still linger in the
-winter tales of many a simple homestead. For, sharing her father’s
-genial nature, she went about among the people in her soft and playful
-way; knowing all their cares, and gifted with a kindly wonder at them,
-which is very soothing. All the simple folk expected condescension
-from her; and she would have let them have it, if she had possessed it.
-
-At last she was come to a time of life when maidens really must
-begin to consider their responsibilities--a time when it does matter
-how the dress sits and what it is made of, and whether the hair is
-well arranged for dancing in the sunshine and for fluttering in the
-moonlight; also that the eyes convey not from that roguish nook the
-heart any betrayal of “hide and seek”; neither must the risk of
-blushing tremble on perpetual brinks; neither must--but, in a word,
-’twas the seventeenth year of a maiden’s life.
-
-More and more such matters gained on her motherless necessity. Strictly
-anxious as she was to do the right thing always, she felt more and
-more upon every occasion (unless it was something particular) that her
-cousin need not so impress his cousinly salutation.
-
-Albert de Wichehalse (who received that name before it became so
-inevitable) was that same worthy boy grown up as to whom the baron
-had felt compunctions, highly honourable to either party, touching his
-defeasance; or rather, perhaps, as to interception of his presumptive
-heirship by the said Albert, or at least by his mother contemplated.
-And Albert’s father had entrusted him to his uncle’s special care and
-love, having comfortably made up his mind, before he left this evil
-world, that his son should have a good slice of it.
-
-Now, therefore, the baron’s chief desire was to heal all breaches and
-make things pleasant, and to keep all the family property snug by
-marrying his fair Jennyfried (or “Frida,” as she was called at home)
-to her cousin Albert, now a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty. De
-Wichehalse was strongly attached to his nephew, and failed to see any
-good reason why a certain large farm near Martinhoe, quite a huge
-cantle from the Ley estates, which by a prior devise must fall to
-Albert upon his own demise, should be allowed to depart in that way
-from his posthumous control.
-
-However, like most of our fallible race, he went the worst possible way
-to work in pursuit of his favourite purpose. He threw the young people
-together daily, and dinned into the ears of each perpetual praise of
-the other. This seemed to answer well enough in the case of the simple
-Albert. He could never have too much of his lively cousin’s company,
-neither could he weary of sounding her sweet excellence. But with
-the young maid it was not so. She liked the good Albert well enough,
-and never got out of his way at all. Moreover, sometimes his curly
-hair and bright moustache, when they came too near, would raise not a
-positive flutter, perhaps, but a sense of some fugitive movement in the
-unexplored distances of the heart. Still, this might go on for years,
-and nothing more to come of it. Frida loved her father best of all the
-world, at present.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-
-There happened to be at this time an old fogy--of course it is most
-distressing to speak of anyone disrespectfully; but when one thinks
-of the trouble he caused, and not only that, but he was an old fogy,
-essentially and pre-eminently--and his name was Sir Maunder Meddleby.
-This worthy baronet, one of the first of a newly invented order, came
-in his sled stuffed with goose-feathers (because he was too fat to
-ride, and no wheels were yet known on the hill tracks) to talk about
-some exchange of land with his old friend, our De Wichehalse. The baron
-and the baronet had been making a happy day of it. Each knew pretty
-well exactly what his neighbour’s little rashness might be hoped to
-lead to, and each in his mind was pretty sure of having the upper hand
-of it. Therefore both their hearts were open--business being now
-dismissed, and dinner over--to one another. They sat in a beautiful
-place, and drew refreshment of mind through their outward lips by means
-of long reeden tubes with bowls at their ends, and something burning.
-
-Clouds of delicate vapour wandered round and betwixt them and the sea;
-and each was well content to wonder whether the time need ever come
-when he must have to think again. Suddenly a light form flitted over
-the rocks, as the shadows flit; and though Frida ran away for fear of
-interrupting them, they knew who it was, and both, of course, began to
-think about her.
-
-The baron gave a puff of his pipe, and left the baronet to begin. In
-course of time Sir Maunder spoke, with all that breadth and beauty of
-the vowels and the other things which a Devonshire man commands, from
-the lord lieutenant downward.
-
-“If so be that ’ee gooth vor to ax me, ai can zay wan thing, and wan
-oney.”
-
-“What one thing is it, good neighbour? I am well content with her as
-she is.”
-
-“Laikely enough. And ’e wad be zo till ’e zeed a zummut fainer.”
-
-“I want to see nothing finer or better than what we have seen just now,
-sir.”
-
-“There, you be like all varthers, a’most! No zort o’ oose to advaise
-’un.”
-
-“Nay, nay! Far otherwise. I am not by any means of that nature. Sir
-Maunder Meddleby, I have the honour of craving your opinion.”
-
-Sir Maunder Meddleby thought for a while, or, at any rate, meant to
-be thinking, ere ever he dared to deliver himself of all his weighty
-judgment.
-
-“I’ve a-knowed she, my Lord Witcher, ever since her wore that haigh. A
-purty wanch, and a peart one. But her wanteth the vinish of the coort.
-Never do no good wi’out un, whan a coomth, as her must, to coorting.”
-
-This was the very thing De Wichehalse was afraid to hear of. He had
-lived so mild a life among the folk who loved him that any fear of
-worry in great places was too much for him. And yet sometimes he could
-not help a little prick of thought about his duty to his daughter.
-Hence it came that common sense was driven wild by conscience, as
-forever happens with the few who keep that gadfly. Six great horses,
-who knew no conscience but had more fleshly tormentors, were ordered
-out, and the journey began, and at last it ended.
-
-Everything in London now was going almost anyhow. Kind and worthy
-people scarcely knew the way to look at things. They desired to respect
-the king and all his privilege, and yet they found his mind so wayward
-that they had no hold of him.
-
-The court, however, was doing its best, from place to place in its
-wanderings, to despise the uproar and enjoy itself as it used to do.
-Bright and beautiful ladies gathered round the king, when the queen was
-gone, persuading him and one another that they must have their own way.
-
-Of the lords who helped these ladies to their strong opinions there
-was none in higher favour with the queen and the king himself than the
-young Lord Auberley. His dress was like a sweet enchantment, and his
-tongue was finer still, and his grace and beauty were as if no earth
-existed. Frida was a new thing to him, in her pure simplicity. He to
-her was such a marvel, such a mirror of the skies, as a maid can only
-dream of in the full moon of St. John.
-
-Little dainty glance, and flushing, and the fear to look too much, and
-the stealthy joy of feeling that there must be something meant, yet the
-terror of believing anything in earnest and the hope that, after all,
-there may be nought to come of it; and when this hope seems over true,
-the hollow of the heart behind it, and the longing to be at home with
-anyone to love oneself--time is wasted in recounting this that always
-must be.
-
-Enough that Frida loved this gallant from the depths of her pure heart,
-while he admired and loved her to the best of his ability.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-
-The worthy baron was not of a versatile complexion. When his mind was
-quite made up he carried out the whole of it. But he could not now
-make up his mind upon either of two questions. Of these questions one
-was this--should he fight for the king or against him, in the struggle
-now begun? By hereditary instincts he was stanch for liberty, for
-letting people have their own opinions who could pay for them. And
-about religious matters and the royal view of them, he fell under sore
-misgiving that his grandfather on high would have a bone to pick with
-him.
-
-His other difficulty was what to say, or what to think, about Lord
-Auberley. To his own plain way of judging, and that human instinct
-which, when highly cultivated, equals that of the weaker dogs, also to
-his recollection of what used to be expected in the time when he was
-young, Viscount Auberley did not give perfect satisfaction.
-
-Nevertheless, being governed as strong folk are by the gentle ones,
-the worthy baron winked at little things which did not please him, and
-went so far as to ask that noble spark to flash upon the natives of
-benighted Devon. Lord Auberley was glad enough to retire for a season,
-both for other reasons and because he saw that bitter fighting must
-be soon expected. Hence it happened that the six great Flemish horses
-were buckled to, early in September of the first year of the civil war,
-while the king was on his westward march collecting men and money. The
-queen was not expected back from the Continent for another month; there
-had scarcely been for all the summer even the semblance of a court
-fit to teach a maiden lofty carriage and cold dignity; so that Lord
-de Wichehalse thought Sir Maunder Meddleby an oaf for sending him to
-London.
-
-But there was someone who had tasted strong delight and shuddering
-fear, glowing hope and chill despair, triumph, shame, and all confusion
-of the heart and mind and will, such as simple maidens hug into their
-blushing chastity by the moonlight of first love. Frida de Wichehalse
-knew for certain, and forever felt it settled, that in all the world of
-worlds never had been any body, any mind, or even soul, fit to think of
-twice when once you had beheld Lord Auberley.
-
-His young lordship, on the whole, was much of the same opinion. Low
-fellows must not have the honour to discharge their guns at him. He
-liked the king, and really meant no harm whatever to his peace of mind
-concerning his Henrietta; and, if the worst came to the worst, everyone
-knew that out of France there was no swordsman fit to meet, even with
-a rapier, the foil of Aubyn Auberley. Neither was it any slur upon his
-loyalty or courage that he was now going westward from the world of
-camps and war. It was important to secure the wavering De Wichehalse,
-the leading man of all the coast, from Minehead down to Hartland; so
-that, with the full consent of all the king’s advisers, Lord Auberley
-left court and camp to press his own suit peacefully. What a difference
-he found it to be here in mid-September, far away from any knowledge
-of the world and every care; only to behold the manner of the trees
-disrobing, blushing with a trembling wonder at the freedom of the
-winds, or in the wealth of deep wood browning into rich defiance; only
-to observe the colour of the hills, and cliffs, and glens, and the
-glory of the sea underneath the peace of heaven, when the balanced sun
-was striking level light all over them! And if this were not enough to
-make a man contented with his littleness and largeness, then to see
-the freshened Pleiads, after their long dip of night, over the eastern
-waters twinkling, glad to see us all once more and sparkling to be
-counted.
-
-These things, and a thousand others, which (without a waft of knowledge
-or of thought on our part) enter into and become our sweetest
-recollections, for the gay young lord possessed no charm, nor even
-interest. “Dull, dull, how dull it is!” was all he thought when he
-thought at all; and he vexed his host by asking how he could live in
-such a hole as that. And he would have vexed his young love, too, if
-young love were not so large of heart, by asking what the foreign
-tongue was which “her people” tried to speak. “Their native tongue and
-mine, my lord!” cried Frida, with the sweetness of her smile less true
-than usual, because she loved her people and the air of her nativity.
-
-However, take it altogether, this was a golden time for her. Golden
-trust and reliance are the well-spring of our nature, and that man is
-the happiest who is cheated every day almost. The pleasure is tenfold
-as great in being cheated as to cheat. Therefore Frida was as happy as
-the day and night are long. Though the trees were striped with autumn,
-and the green of the fields was waning, and the puce of the heath was
-faded into dingy cinamon; though the tint of the rocks was darkened
-by the nightly rain and damp, and the clear brooks were beginning to
-be hoarse with shivering floods, and the only flowers left were but
-widows of the sun, yet she had the sovereign comfort and the cheer of
-trustful love. Lord Auberley, though he cared nought for the Valley
-of Rocks or Watersmeet, for beetling majesty of the cliffs or mantled
-curves of Woody Bay, and though he accounted the land a wilderness
-and the inhabitants savages, had taken a favourable view of the ample
-spread of the inland farms and the loyalty of the tenants, which
-naturally suggested the raising of the rental. Therefore he grew more
-attentive to young Mistress Frida; even sitting in shady places, which
-it made him damp to think of when he turned his eyes from her. Also
-he was moved a little by her growing beauty, for now the return to
-her native hills, the presence of her lover, and the home-made bread
-and forest mutton, combining with her dainty years, were making her
-look wonderful. If Aubyn Auberley had not been despoiled of all true
-manliness, by the petting and the forward wit of many a foreign lady,
-he might have won the pure salvation of an earnest love. But, when
-judged by that French standard which was now supreme at court, this
-poor Frida was a rustic, only fit to go to school.
-
-There was another fine young fellow who thought wholly otherwise. To
-him, in his simple power of judging for himself, and seldom budging
-from that judgment, there was no one fit to dream of in comparison with
-her. Often, in this state of mind, he longed to come forward and let
-them know what he thought concerning the whole of it. But Albert could
-not see his way toward doing any good with it, and being of a bashful
-mind, he kept his heart in order.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-
-The stir of the general rising of the kingdom against the king had not
-disturbed these places yet beyond what might be borne with. Everybody
-liked to talk, and everybody else was ready to put in a word or two;
-broken heads, however, were as yet the only issue. So that when there
-came great news of a real battle fought, and lost by Englishmen against
-Englishmen, the indignation of all the country ran against both parties.
-
-Baron de Wichehalse had been thinking, after his crop of hay was
-in,--for such a faithful hay they have that it will not go from root
-to rick by less than two months of worrying,--from time to time, and
-even in the middle of his haycocks, this good lord had not been able to
-perceive his proper course. Arguments there were that sounded quite as
-if a baby must be perfectly convinced by them; and then there would be
-quite a different line of reason taken by someone who knew all about
-it and despised the opposite. So that many of a less decided way of
-thinking every day embraced whatever had been last confuted.
-
-This most manly view of matters and desire to give fair play was
-scorned, of course, by the fairer (and unfairer) half of men. Frida
-counted all as traitors who opposed their liege the king.
-
-“Go forth, my lord; go forth and fight,” she cried to Viscount
-Auberley, when the doubtful combat of Edgehill was firing new
-pugnacity; “if I were a man, think you that I would let them do so?”
-
-“Alas, fair mistress! it will take a many men to help it. But since
-you bid me thus away--hi, Dixon! get my trunks packed!” And then, of
-course, her blushing roses faded to a lily white; and then, of course,
-it was his duty to support her slender form; neither were those dulcet
-murmurs absent which forever must be present when the female kind
-begin to have the best of it.
-
-So they went on once or twice, and would have gone on fifty times if
-fortune had allowed them thus to hang on one another. All the world was
-fair around them; and themselves, as fair as any, vouched the whole
-world to attest their everlasting constancy.
-
-But one soft November evening, when the trees were full of drops, and
-gentle mists were creeping up the channels of the moorlands, and snipes
-(come home from foreign parts) were cheeping at their borings, and
-every weary man was gladdened by the glance of a bright wood fire, and
-smell of what was over it, there happened to come, on a jaded horse, a
-man, all hat, and cape, and boots, and mud, and sweat, and grumbling.
-All the people saw at once that it was quite impossible to make at
-all too much of him, because he must be full of news, which (after
-victuals) is the greatest need of human nature. So he had his own way
-as to everything he ordered; and, having ridden into much experience of
-women, kept himself as warm as could be, without any jealousy.
-
-This stern man bore urgent order for the Viscount Auberley to join the
-king at once at Oxford, and bring with him all his gathering. Having
-gathered no men yet, but spent the time in plucking roses and the wild
-myrtles of Devonshire love, the young lord was for once a little taken
-aback at this order. Moreover, though he had been grumbling, half a
-dozen times a day--to make himself more precious--about the place, and
-the people, and the way they cooked his meals, he really meant it less
-and less as he came to know the neighbourhood. These are things which
-nobody can understand without seeing them.
-
-“I grieve, my lord,” said the worthy baron, “that you must leave us in
-this hot haste.” On the whole, however, this excellent man was partly
-glad to be quit of him.
-
-“And I am deeply indebted to your lordship for the grievance; but it
-must be so. _Que voulez-vous?_ You talk the French, _mon baron_?”
-
-“With a Frenchman, my lord; but not when I have the honour to speak
-with an Englishman.”
-
-“Ah, there! Foreign again! My lord, you will never speak English.”
-
-De Wichehalse could never be quite sure, though his race had been long
-in this country, whether he or they could speak born English as it
-ought to be.
-
-“Perhaps you will find,” he said at last, with grief as well as
-courtesy, “many who speak one language striving to silence one another.”
-
-“He fights best who fights the longest. You will come with us, my lord?”
-
-“Not a foot, not half an inch,” the baron answered sturdily. “I’ve
-a-laboured hard to zee my best, and ’a can’t zee head nor tail to it.”
-
-Thus he spoke in imitation of what his leading tenant said, smiling
-brightly at himself, but sadly at his subject.
-
-“Even so!” the young man answered; “I will forth and pay my duty. The
-rusty weathercock, my lord, is often too late for the oiling.”
-
-With this conceit he left De Wichehalse, and, while his grooms were
-making ready, sauntered down the zigzag path, which, through rocks
-and stubbed oaks, made toward the rugged headland known, far up and
-down the Channel, by the name of Duty Point. Near the end of this walk
-there lurked a soft and silent bower, made by Nature, and with all
-of Nature’s art secluded. The ledge that wound along the rock-front
-widened, and the rock fell back and left a little cove, retiring into
-moss and ferny shade. Here the maid was well accustomed every day to
-sit and think, gazing down at the calm, gray sea, and filled with rich
-content and deep capacity of dreaming.
-
-Here she was, at the present moment, resting in her pure love-dream,
-believing all the world as good, and true, and kind as her own young
-self. Round her all was calm and lovely; and the soft brown hand of
-autumn, with the sun’s approval, tempered every mellow mood of leaves.
-
-Aubyn Auberley was not of a sentimental cast of mind. He liked the
-poets of the day, whenever he deigned to read them; nor was he at
-all above accepting the dedication of a book. But it was not the
-fashion now--as had been in the noble time of Watson, Raleigh, and
-Shakspere--for men to look around and love the greater things they grow
-among.
-
-Frida was surprised to see her dainty lord so early. She came here in
-the morning always, when it did not rain too hard, to let her mind have
-pasture on the landscape of sweet memory. And even sweeter hope was
-always fluttering in the distance, on the sea, or clouds, or flitting
-vapour of the morning. Even so she now was looking at the mounting
-glory of the sun above the sea-clouds, the sun that lay along the
-land, and made the distance roll away.
-
-“Hard and bitter is my task,” the gallant lord began with her, “to say
-farewell to all I love. But so it ever must be.”
-
-Frida looked at his riding-dress, and cold fear seized her suddenly,
-and then warm hope that he might only be riding after the bustards.
-
-“My lord,” she said, “will you never grant me that one little prayer of
-mine--to spare poor birds, and make those cruel gaze-hounds run down
-one another?”
-
-“I shall never see the gaze-hounds more,” he answered petulantly; “my
-time for sport is over. I must set forth for the war to-day.”
-
-“To-day!” she cried; and then tried to say a little more for pride’s
-sake; “to go to the war to-day, my lord!”
-
-“Alas! it is too true. Either I must go, or be a traitor and a dastard.”
-
-Her soft blue eyes lay full on his, and tears that had not time to flow
-began to spread a hazy veil between her and the one she loved.
-
-He saw it, and he saw the rise and sinking of her wounded heart, and
-how the words she tried to utter fell away and died within her for the
-want of courage; and light and hard, and mainly selfish as his nature
-was, the strength, and depth, and truth of love came nigh to scare him
-for the moment even of his vanities.
-
-“Frida!” he said, with her hand in his, and bending one knee on the
-moss; “only tell me that I must stay; then stay I will; the rest of the
-world may scorn if you approve me.”
-
-This, of course, sounded very well and pleased her, as it was meant to
-do; still, it did not satisfy her--so exacting are young maidens, and
-so keen is the ear of love.
-
-“Aubyn, you are good and true. How very good and true you are! But even
-by your dear voice now I know what you are thinking.”
-
-Lord Auberley, by this time, was as well within himself again as he
-generally found himself; so that he began to balance chances very
-knowingly. If the king should win the warfare and be paramount again,
-this bright star of the court must rise to something infinitely higher
-than a Devonshire squire’s child. A fine young widow of a duke, of the
-royal blood of France itself, was not far from being quite determined
-to accept him, if she only could be certain how these things would
-end themselves. Many other ladies were determined quite as bravely to
-wait the course of events, and let him have them, if convenient. On
-the other hand, if the kingdom should succeed in keeping the king in
-order--which was the utmost then intended--Aubyn Auberley might be only
-too glad to fall back upon Frida.
-
-Thinking it wiser, upon the whole, to make sure of this little lamb,
-with nobler game in prospect, Lord Auberley heaved as deep a sigh as
-the size of his chest could compass. After which he spoke as follows,
-in a most delicious tone:
-
-“Sweetest, and my only hope, the one star of my wanderings; although
-you send me forth to battle, where my arm is needed, give me one dear
-pledge that ever you will live and die my own.”
-
-This was just what Frida wanted, having trust (as our free-traders, by
-vast amplitude of vision, have in reciprocity) that if a man gets the
-best of a woman he is sure to give it back. Therefore these two sealed
-and delivered certain treaties (all unwritten, but forever engraven
-upon the best and tenderest feelings of the lofty human nature) that
-nothing less than death, or even greater, should divide them.
-
-Is there one, among the many who survive such process, unable to
-imagine or remember how they parted? The fierce and even desperate
-anguish, nursed and made the most of; the pride and self-control that
-keep such things for comfort afterward; the falling of the heart that
-feels itself the true thing after all. Let it be so, since it must be;
-and no sympathy can heal it, since in every case it never, never, was
-so bad before!
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-
-Lovers come, and lovers go; ecstasies of joy and anguish have their
-proper intervals; and good young folk, who know no better, revel in
-high misery. But the sun ascends the heavens at the same hour of the
-day, by himself dictated; and if we see him not, it is our earth that
-spreads the curtain. Nevertheless, these lovers, being out of rule
-with everything, heap their own faults on his head, and want him to be
-setting always, that they may behold the moon.
-
-Therefore it was useless for the wisest man in the north of Devon, or
-even the wisest woman, to reason with young Frida now, or even to let
-her have the reason upon her side, and be sure of it. She, for her
-part, was astray from all the bounds of reason, soaring on the wings of
-faith, and hope, and high delusion. Though the winter-time was coming,
-and the wind was damp and raw, and the beauty of the valleys lay down
-to recover itself; yet with her the spring was breaking, and the world
-was lifting with the glory underneath it. Because it had been firmly
-pledged--and who could ever doubt it?--that the best and noblest lover
-in this world of noble love would come and grandly claim and win his
-bride on her next birthday.
-
-At Christmas she had further pledge of her noble lover’s constancy.
-In spite of difficulties, dangers, and the pressing need of men, he
-contrived to send her by some very valiant messengers (none of whom
-would ride alone) a beautiful portrait of himself, set round with
-sparkling diamonds; also a necklace of large pearls, as white and pure
-as the neck whose grace was to enhance their beauty.
-
-Hereupon such pride and pleasure mounted into her cheeks and eyes, and
-flushed her with young gaiety, that all who loved her, being grafted
-with good superstition, nearly spoiled their Christmas-time by serious
-sagacity. She, however, in the wealth of all she had to think of,
-heeded none who trod the line of prudence and cold certainty.
-
-“It is more than I can tell,” she used to say, most prettily, to
-anybody who made bold to ask her about anything; “all things go so in
-and out that I am sure of nothing else except that I am happy.”
-
-The baron now began to take a narrow, perhaps a natural, view of all
-the things around him. In all the world there was for him no sign or
-semblance of any being whose desires or strictest rights could be
-thought of more than once when set against his daughter’s. This, of
-course, was very bad for Frida’s own improvement. It could not make her
-selfish yet, but it really made her wayward. The very best girls ever
-seen are sure to have their failings; and Frida, though one of the very
-best, was not above all nature. People made too much of this, when she
-could no more defend herself.
-
-Whoever may have been to blame, one thing at least is certain--the
-father, though he could not follow all his child’s precipitance, yet
-was well contented now to stoop his gray head to bright lips, and do
-his best toward believing some of their soft eloquence. The child, on
-the other hand, was full of pride, and rose on tiptoe, lest anybody
-might suppose her still too young for anything. Thus between them they
-looked forward to a pleasant time to come, hoping for the best, and
-judging everyone with charity.
-
-The thing that vexed them most (for always there must, of course, be
-something) was the behaviour of Albert, nephew to the baron, and most
-loving cousin of Frida. Nothing they could do might bring him to spend
-his Christmas with them; and this would be the first time ever since
-his long-clothed babyhood that he had failed to be among them, and to
-lead or follow, just as might be required of him. Such a guest has
-no small value in a lonely neighbourhood, and years of usage mar the
-circle of the year without him.
-
-Christmas passed, and New Year’s Day, and so did many other days.
-The baron saw to his proper work, and took his turn of hunting, and
-entertained his neighbours, and pleased almost everybody. Much against
-his will, he had consented to the marriage of his daughter with Lord
-Auberley--to make the best of a bad job, as he told Sir Maunder
-Meddleby. Still, this kind and crafty father had his own ideas; for the
-moment he was swimming with the tide to please his daughter, even as
-for her dear sake he was ready to sink beneath it. Yet, these fathers
-have a right to form their own opinions; and for the most part they
-believe that they have more experience. Frida laughed at this, of
-course, and her father was glad to see her laugh. Nevertheless, he
-could not escape some respect for his own opinion, having so rarely
-found it wrong; and his own opinion was that something was very likely
-to happen.
-
-In this he proved to be quite right. For many things began to happen,
-some on the right and some on the left hand of the baron’s auguries.
-All of them, however, might be reconciled exactly with the very thing
-he had predicted. He noticed this, and it pleased him well, and
-inspired him so that he started anew for even truer prophecies. And
-everybody round the place was born so to respect him that, if he missed
-the mark a little, they could hit it for him.
-
-Things stood thus at the old Ley Manor--and folk were content to have
-them so, for fear of getting worse, perhaps--toward the end of January,
-A. D. 1643. De Wichehalse had vowed that his only child--although so
-clever for her age, and prompt of mind and body--should not enter
-into marriage until she was in her eighteenth year. Otherwise, it
-would, no doubt, have all been settled long ago; for Aubyn Auberley
-sometimes had been in the greatest hurry. However, hither he must come
-now, as everybody argued, even though the fate of England hung on his
-stirrup-leather. Because he had even sent again, with his very best
-intentions, fashionable things for Frida, and the hottest messages; so
-that, if they did not mean him to be quite beside himself, everything
-must be smoking for his wedding at the Candlemas.
-
-But when everything and even everybody else--save Albert and the
-baron, and a few other obstinate people--was and were quite ready
-and rejoicing for a grand affair, to be celebrated with well-springs
-of wine and delightfully cordial Watersmeet, rocks of beef hewn into
-valleys, and conglomerate cliffs of pudding; when ruddy dame and rosy
-damsel were absorbed in “what to wear,” and even steady farmers were in
-“practice for the back step”; in a word, when all the country was gone
-wild about Frida’s wedding--one night there happened to come a man.
-
-This man tied his horse to a gate and sneaked into the back yard,
-and listened in a quiet corner, knowing, as he did, the ins and
-outs and ways of the kitchen. Because he was that very same man who
-understood the women so, and made himself at home, by long experience,
-in new places. It had befallen this man, as it always befell any man
-of perception, to be smitten with the kindly loveliness of Frida.
-Therefore, now, although he was as hungry as ever he had been, his
-heart was such that he heard the sound of dishes, yet drew no nearer.
-Experience of human nature does not always spoil it.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-
-When the baron at last received the letter which this rider had been
-so abashed to deliver, slow but lasting wrath began to gather in his
-gray-lashed eyes. It was the inborn anger of an honest man at villany
-mixed with lofty scorn and traversed by a dear anxiety. Withal he found
-himself so helpless that he scarce knew what to do. He had been to
-Frida both a father and a mother, as she often used to tell him when
-she wanted something; but now he felt that no man could administer the
-velvet touches of the female sympathy.
-
-Moreover, although he was so kind, and had tried to think what his
-daughter thought, he found himself in a most ungenial mood for sweet
-condolement. Any but the best of fathers would have been delighted with
-the proof of all his prophecies and the riddance of a rogue. So that
-even he, though dwelling in his child’s heart as his own, read this
-letter (when the first emotions had exploded) with a real hope that
-things, in the long run, would come round again.
-
-    “To my most esteemed and honoured friend, the Lord de Wichehalse,
-    these from his most observant and most grateful Aubyn
-    Auberley,--Under command of his Majesty, our most Royal Lord and
-    King, I have this day been joined in bands of holy marriage with
-    her Highness, the Duchess of B----, in France. At one time I had
-    hope of favour with your good Lordship’s daughter, neither could
-    I have desired more complete promotion. But the service of the
-    kingdom and the doubt of my own desert have forced me, in these
-    troublous times, to forego mine own ambition. Our lord the King
-    enjoins you with his Royal commendation, to bring your forces
-    toward Bristowe by the day of St. Valentine. There shall I be
-    in hope to meet your Lordship, and again find pleasure in such
-    goodly company. Until then I am your Lordship’s poor and humble
-    servant,
-
-            “AUBYN AUBERLEY.”
-
-Lord de Wichehalse made his mind up not to let his daughter know
-until the following morning what a heavy blow had fallen on her faith
-and fealty. But, as evil chance would have it, the damsels of the
-house--and most of all the gentle cook-maid--could not but observe the
-rider’s state of mind toward them. He managed to eat his supper in a
-dark state of parenthesis; but after that they plied him with some
-sentimental mixtures, and, being only a man at best, although a very
-trusty one, he could not help the rise of manly wrath at every tumbler.
-So, in spite of dry experience and careworn discretion, at last he
-let the woman know the whole of what himself knew. Nine good females
-crowded round him, and, of course, in their kind bosoms every word of
-all his story germinated ninety-fold.
-
-Hence it came to pass that, after floods of tears in council and
-stronger language than had right to come from under aprons, Frida’s
-nurse (the old herb-woman, now called “Mother Eyebright”) was appointed
-to let her know that very night the whole of it. Because my lord might
-go on mooning for a month about it, betwixt his love of his daughter
-and his quiet way of taking things; and all that while the dresses
-might be cut, and trimmed, and fitted to a size and fashion all gone by
-before there came a wedding.
-
-Mother Eyebright so was called both from the brightness of her eyes and
-her faith in that little simple flower, the euphrasia. Though her own
-love-tide was over, and the romance of life had long relapsed into the
-old allegiance to the hour of dinner, yet her heart was not grown tough
-to the troubles of the young ones; therefore all that she could do was
-done, but it was little.
-
-Frida, being almost tired with the blissful cares of dress, happened
-to go up that evening earlier than her wont to bed. She sat by herself
-in the firelight, with many gorgeous things around her--wedding
-presents from great people, and (what touched her more) the humble
-offerings of her cottage friends. As she looked on these and thought
-of all the good will they expressed, and how a little kindness gathers
-such a heap of gratitude, glad tears shone in her bright eyes, and she
-only wished that all the world could be as blessed as she was.
-
-To her entered Mother Eyebright, now unworthy of her name; and sobbing,
-writhing, crushing anguish is a thing which even Frida, simple and
-open-hearted one, would rather keep to her own poor self.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-
-Upon the following day she was not half so wretched and lamentable as
-was expected of her. She even showed a brisk and pleasant air to the
-chief seamstress, and bade her keep some pretty things for the time of
-her own wedding. Even to her father she behaved as if there had been
-nothing more than happens every day. The worthy baron went to fold
-her in his arms, and let her cry there; but she only gave him a kiss,
-and asked the maid for some salt butter. Lord de Wichehalse, being
-disappointed of his outlet, thought (as all his life he had been forced
-to think continually) that any sort of woman, whether young or old, is
-wonderful. And so she carried on, and no one well could understand her.
-
-She, however, in her own heart, knew the ups and downs of it. She
-alone could feel the want of any faith remaining, the ache of ever
-stretching forth and laying hold on nothing. Her mind had never been
-encouraged--as with maidens nowadays--to magnify itself, and soar, and
-scorn the heart that victuals it. All the deeper was her trouble, being
-less to be explained.
-
-For a day or two the story is that she contrived to keep her distance,
-and her own opinion of what had been done to her. Child and almost baby
-as her father had considered her, even he was awed from asking what she
-meant to do about it. Something seemed to keep her back from speaking
-of her trouble, or bearing to have it spoken of. Only to her faithful
-hound, with whom she now began again to wander in the oak-wood, to him
-alone had she the comfort of declaring anything. This was a dog of fine
-old English breed and high connections, his great-grandmother having
-owned a kennel at Whitehall itself--a very large and well-conducted
-dog, and now an old one, going down into his grave without a stain
-upon him. Only he had shown such foul contempt of Aubyn Auberley,
-proceeding to extremes of ill-behaviour toward his raiment, that for
-months young Frida had been forced to keep him chained, and take her
-favourite walks without him.
-
-“Ah, Lear!” now she cried, with sense of long injustice toward him;
-“you were right, and I was wrong; at least--at least it seems so.”
-
-“Lear,” so called whether by some man who had heard of Shakspere, or
-(as seems more likely) from his peculiar way of contemplating the world
-at his own angle, shook his ears when thus addressed, and looked too
-wise for any dog to even sniff his wisdom.
-
-Frida now allowed this dog to lead the way, and she would follow,
-careless of whatever mischief might be in the road for them. So he
-led her, without care or even thought on her part, to a hut upon the
-beach of Woody Bay; where Albert had set up his staff, to think of
-her and watch her. This, her cousin and true lover, had been grieving
-for her sorrow to the utmost power of a man who wanted her himself. It
-may have been beyond his power to help saying to himself sometimes,
-“How this serves her right, for making such a laughing-stock of me!”
-Nevertheless, he did his utmost to be truly sorrowful.
-
-And now, as he came forth to meet her, in his fishing dress and boots
-(as different a figure as could be from Aubyn Auberley), memories of
-childish troubles and of strong protection thrilled her with a helpless
-hope of something to be done for her. So she looked at him, and let him
-see the state her eyes were in with constant crying, when there was
-not anyone to notice it. Also, she allowed him to be certain what her
-hands were like, and to be surprised how much she had fallen away in
-her figure. Neither was she quite as proud as might have been expected,
-to keep her voice from trembling or her plundered heart from sobbing.
-Only, let not anybody say a word to comfort her. Anything but that she
-now could bear, as she bore everything. It was, of course, the proper
-thing for everyone to scorn her. That, of course, she had fully earned,
-and met it, therefore, with disdain. Only, she could almost hate
-anybody who tried to comfort her.
-
-Albert de Wichehalse, with a sudden start of intuition, saw what her
-father had been unable to descry or even dream. The worthy baron’s time
-of life for fervid thoughts was over; for him despairing love was but
-a poet’s fiction, or a joke against a pale young lady. But Albert felt
-from his own case, from burning jealousy suppressed, and cold neglect
-put up with, and all the other many-pointed aches of vain devotion,
-how sad must be the state of things when plighted faith was shattered
-also, and great ridicule left behind, with only a young girl to face
-it, motherless, and having none to stroke dishevelled hair, and coax
-the troubles by the firelight. However, this good fellow did the
-utmost he could do for her. Love and pity led him into dainty loving
-kindness; and when he could not find his way to say the right thing,
-he did better--he left her to say it. And so well did he move her
-courage, in his old protective way, without a word that could offend
-her or depreciate her love, that she for the moment, like a woman,
-wondered at her own despair. Also, like a woman, glancing into this
-and that, instead of any steadfast gazing, she had wholesome change of
-view, winning sudden insight into Albert’s thoughts concerning her. Of
-course, she made up her mind at once, although her heart was aching so
-for want of any tenant, in a moment to extinguish any such presumption.
-Still, she would have liked to have it made a little clearer, if it
-were for nothing else than to be sure of something.
-
-Albert saw her safely climb the steep and shaly walk that led, among
-retentive oak trees, or around the naked gully, all the way from his
-lonely cottage to the light, and warmth, and comfort of the peopled
-Manor House. And within himself he thought, the more from contrast of
-his own cold comfort and untended state:
-
-“Ah! she will forget it soon; she is so young. She will soon get over
-that gay frippard’s fickleness. To-morrow I will start upon my little
-errand cheerfully. After that she will come round; they cannot feel as
-we do.”
-
-Full of these fond hopes, he started on the following morning with set
-purpose to compel the man whom he had once disliked, and now despised
-unspeakably, to render some account of despite done to such a family.
-For, after all, the dainty viscount was the grandson of a goldsmith,
-who by brokerage for the Crown had earned the balls of his coronet. In
-quest of this gay fellow went the stern and solid Albert, leaving not
-a word about his purpose there behind him, but allowing everybody to
-believe what all found out. All found out, as he expected, that he was
-gone to sell his hay, perhaps as far as Taunton; and all the parish,
-looking forward to great rise of forage, felt indignant that he had not
-doubled his price, and let them think.
-
-Alack-a-day and all the year round! that men perceive not how the women
-differ from them in the very source of thought. Albert never dreamed
-that his cousin, after doing so long without him, had now relapsed
-quite suddenly into her childish dependence upon him. And when she
-heard, on the following day, that he was gone for the lofty purpose of
-selling his seven ricks of hay, she said not a word, but only felt her
-cold heart so much colder.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-
-She had nothing now to do, and nobody to speak to; though her father
-did his utmost, in his kind and clumsy way, to draw his darling close
-to him. But she knew that all along he had disliked her idol, and she
-fancied, now and then, that this dislike had had something perhaps to
-do with what had befallen her. This, of course, was wrong on her part.
-But when youth and faith are wronged, the hurt is very apt to fly to
-all the tender places. Even the weather also seemed to have taken a
-turn against her. No wholesome frost set in to brace the slackened
-joints and make her walk until she began to tingle; neither was there
-any snow to spread a new cast on the rocks and gift the trees with
-airiness; nor even what mild winters, for the most part, bring in
-counterpoise--soft, obedient skies, and trembling pleasure of the air
-and earth. But--as over her own love--over all the country hung just
-enough of mist and chill to shut out cheerful prospect, and not enough
-to shut folk in to the hearth of their own comfort.
-
-In her dull, forlorn condition, Frida still, through force of habit or
-the love of solitude, made her daily round of wood and rock, seashore
-and moorland. Things seemed to come across her now, instead of her
-going to them, and her spirit failed at every rise of the hilly road
-against her. In that dreary way she lingered, hoping nothing, fearing
-nothing, showing neither sigh nor tear, only seeking to go somewhere
-and be lost from self and sorrow in the cloudy and dark day.
-
-Often thus the soft, low moaning of the sea encompassed her, where she
-stood, in forgotten beauty, careless of the wind and wave. The short,
-uneasy heave of waters in among the kelpy rocks, flowing from no swell
-or furrow on the misty glass of sea, but like a pulse of discontent,
-and longing to go further; after the turn, the little rattle of invaded
-pebbles, the lithe relapse and soft, shampooing lambency of oarweed,
-then the lavered boulders pouring gritty runnels back again, and every
-basined outlet wavering toward another inlet; these, and every phase
-of each innumerable to-and-fro, made or met their impress in her
-fluctuating misery.
-
-“It is the only rest,” she said; “the only chance of being quiet, after
-all that I have done, and all that people say of me.”
-
-None had been dastard enough to say a syllable against her; neither
-had she, in the warmest faith of love, forgotten truth; but her own
-dejection drove her, not to revile the world (as sour natures do
-consistently), but to shrink from sight, and fancy that the world was
-reviling her.
-
-While she fluttered thus and hovered over the cold verge of death,
-with her sore distempered spirit, scarcely sure of anything, tidings
-came of another trouble, and turned the scale against her. Albert de
-Wichehalse, her trusty cousin and true lover, had fallen in a duel with
-that recreant and miscreant Lord Auberley. The strictest orders were
-given that this should be kept for the present from Frida’s ears; but
-what is the use of the strictest orders when a widowed mother raves?
-Albert’s mother vowed that “the shameless jilt” should hear it out,
-and slipped her guards and waylaid Frida on the morn of Candlemas, and
-overbore her with such words as may be well imagined.
-
-“Auntie!” said the poor thing at last, shaking her beautiful curls,
-and laying one little hand to her empty heart, “don’t be cross with me
-to-day. I am going home to be married, auntie. It is the day my Aubyn
-always fixed, and he never fails me.”
-
-“Little fool!” her aunt exclaimed, as Frida kissed her hand and
-courtesied, and ran round the corner; “one comfort is to know that she
-is as mad as a mole, at any rate.”
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-
-Frida, knowing--perhaps more deeply than that violent woman
-thought--the mischief thus put into her, stole back to her bedroom,
-and, without a word to anyone, tired her hair in the Grecian snood
-which her lover used to admire so, and arrayed her soft and delicate
-form in all the bridal finery. Perhaps, that day, no bride in
-England--certainly none of her youth and beauty--treated her favourite
-looking-glass with such contempt and ingratitude. She did not care to
-examine herself, through some reluctant sense of havoc, and a bitter
-fear that someone might be disappointed in her. Then at the last, when
-all was ready, she snatched up her lover’s portrait (which for days had
-been cast aside and cold), and, laying it on her bosom, took a snatch
-of a glance at her lovely self.
-
-After some wonder she fetched a deep sigh--not from clearly thinking
-anything, but as an act of nature--and said, “Good-by!” forever, with
-a little smile of irony, to her looking-glass, and all the many pretty
-things that knew her.
-
-It was her bad luck, as some people thought thereafter--or her good
-luck, as herself beheld it--to get down the stairs and out of the house
-without anyone being the wiser. For the widow De Wichehalse, Albert’s
-mother, had not been content with sealing the doom of this poor maiden,
-but in that highly excited state, which was to be expected, hurried
-into the house, to beard the worthy baron in his den. There she found
-him; and, although he said and did all sympathy, the strain of parental
-feelings could not yield without “hysterics.”
-
-All the servants, and especially Mother Eyebright (whose chief duty
-now was to watch Frida), were called by the terrified baron, and with
-one unanimous rush replied; so that the daughter of the house left it
-without notice, and before any glances was out of sight, in the rough
-ground where the deer were feeding, and the umber oak-leaves hung.
-
-It was the dainty time when first the year begins to have a little hope
-of meaning kindly--when in the quiet places often, free from any haste
-of wind, or hindrances of pattering thaw, small and unimportant flowers
-have a little knack of dreaming that the world expects them. Therefore
-neither do they wait for leaves to introduce them, nor much weather to
-encourage, but in shelfy corners come, in a day, or in a night--no man
-knows quite which it is; and there they are, as if by magic, asking,
-“Am I welcome?” And if anybody sees them, he is sure to answer “Yes.”
-
-Frida, in the sheltered corners and the sunny nooks of rock, saw a
-few of these little things delicately trespassing upon the petulance
-of spring. Also, though her troubles wrapped her with an icy mantle,
-softer breath of Nature came, and sighed for her to listen to it, and
-to make the best of all that is not past the sighing. More than once
-she stopped to listen, in the hush of the timid south wind creeping
-through the dishevelled wood; and once, but only once, she was glad to
-see her first primrose and last, and stooped to pluck, but, on second
-thoughts, left it to outblossom her.
-
-So, past many a briered rock, and dingle buff with littered fern, green
-holly copse where lurked the woodcock, and arcades of zigzag oak, Frida
-kept her bridal robe from spot, or rent, or blemish. Passing all these
-little pleadings of the life she had always loved, at last she turned
-the craggy corner into the ledge of the windy cliff.
-
-Now below her there was nothing but repose from shallow thought; rest
-from all the little troubles she had made so much of; deep, eternal
-satisfaction in the arms of something vast. But all the same, she did
-not feel quite ready for the great jump yet.
-
-The tide was in, and she must wait at least until it began to turn,
-otherwise her white satin velvet would have all its pile set wrong, if
-ever anybody found her. There could be no worse luck than that for any
-bride on her wedding-day; therefore up the rock-walk Frida kept very
-close to the landward side.
-
-All this way she thought of pretty little things said to her in the
-early days of love. Many things that made her smile because they had
-gone so otherwise, and one or two that would have fetched her tears,
-if she had any. Filled with vain remembrance thus, and counting up
-the many presents sent to her for this occasion, but remaining safe
-at home, Frida came to the little coving bower just inside the Point,
-where she could go no further. Here she had received the pledges, and
-the plight, and honour; and here her light head led her on to look for
-something faithful.
-
-“When the tide turns I shall know it. If he does not come by that time,
-there will be no more to do. It will be too late for weddings, for the
-tide turns at twelve o’clock. How calm and peaceful is the sea! How
-happy are the sea gulls, and how true to one another!”
-
-She stood where, if she had cared for life, it would have been certain
-death to stand, so giddy was the height, and the rock beneath her feet
-so slippery. The craggy headland, Duty Point, well known to every
-navigator of that rock-bound coast, commands the Channel for many a
-league, facing eastward the Castle Rock and Countisbury Foreland, and
-westward Highveer Point, across the secluded cove of Leymouth. With
-one sheer fall of a hundred fathoms the stern cliff meets the baffled
-sea--or met it then, but now the level of the tide is lowering. Air
-and sea were still and quiet; the murmur of the multitudinous wavelets
-could not climb the cliff; but loops and curves of snowy braiding on
-the dark gray water showed the set of tide and shift of current in and
-out the buried rocks.
-
-Standing in the void of fear, and gazing into the deep of death, Frida
-loved the pair of sea gulls hovering halfway between her and the soft
-gray sea. These good birds had found a place well suited for their
-nesting, and sweetly screamed to one another that it was a contract.
-Frida watched how proud they were, and how they kept their strong wings
-sailing and their gray backs flat and quivering, while with buoyant
-bosom each made circles round the other.
-
-As she watched, she saw the turning of the tide below them. The
-streaky bends of curdled water, lately true as fairy-rings, stopped
-and wavered, and drew inward on their flowing curves, and outward on
-the side toward the ebb. Then the south wind brought the distant toll
-of her father’s turret-clock, striking noon with slow deliberation and
-dead certainty.
-
-Frida made one little turn toward her bower behind the cliff, where the
-many sweet words spoken drew her to this last of hope. All was silent.
-There was no one. Now was the time to go home at last.
-
-Suddenly she felt a heavy drag upon her velvet skirt. Ancient Lear
-had escaped from the chain she had put on him, and, more trusty than
-mankind, was come to keep his faith with her.
-
-“You fine old dog, it is too late! The clock has struck. The tide
-has turned. There is no one left to care for me; and I have ruined
-everyone. Good-by, you only true one!”
-
-Submissive as he always was, the ancient dog lay down when touched, and
-drew his grizzled eyelids meekly over his dim and sunken eyes. Before
-he lifted them again Frida was below the sea gulls, and beneath the
-waves they fished.
-
-Lear, with a puzzled sniff, arose and shook his head, and peered, with
-his old eyes full of wistful wonder, down the fearful precipice. Seeing
-something, he made his mind up, gave one long re-echoed howl, then
-tossed his mane, like a tawny wave, and followed down the death-leap.
-
-Neither body was ever found; and the whole of this might not have been
-known so clearly as it is known, unless it had happened that Mother
-Eyebright, growing uneasy, came round the corner just in time to be too
-late. She, like a sensible woman, never dreamed of jumping after them,
-but ran home so fast that she could not walk to church for three months
-afterward; and when her breath came back was enabled to tell tenfold of
-all she had seen.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-One of the strangest things in life is the way in which we mortals take
-the great and fatal blows of life.
-
-For instance, the baron was suddenly told, while waiting for Frida to
-sit beside him, at his one o’clock dinner:
-
-“Plaize, my lard, your lardship’s darter hath a been and jumped off
-Duty Point.”
-
-“What an undutiful thing to do!” was the first thing Lord de Wichehalse
-said; and those who knew no better thought that this was how he took it.
-
-Aubyn Auberley, however, took a different measure of a broken-hearted
-father’s strength. For the baron buckled on the armour of a century
-ago, which had served his grandsire through hard blows in foreign
-battles, and, with a few of his trusty servants, rode to join the
-Parliament. It happened so that he could not make redress of his ruined
-life until the middle of the summer. Then, at last, his chance came
-to him, and he did not waste it. Viscount Auberley, who had so often
-slipped away and laughed at him, was brought to bay beneath a tree in
-the famous fight of Lansdowne.
-
-The young man offered to hold parley, but the old man had no words. His
-snowy hair and rugged forehead, hard-set mouth and lifted arm, were
-enough to show his meaning. The gallant, being so skilled of fence,
-thought to play with this old man as he had with his daughter; but the
-Gueldres ax cleft his curly head, and split what little brain it takes
-to fool a trusting maiden.
-
-So, in early life, deceiver and deceived were quit of harm; and may ere
-now have both found out whether it is better to inflict the wrong or
-suffer it.
-
-
-
-
-GEORGE BOWRING.
-
-A TALE OF CADER IDRIS.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-
-When I was a young man, and full of spirits, some forty years ago or
-more, I lost my best and truest friend in a very sad and mysterious
-way. The greater part of my life has been darkened by this heavy blow
-and loss, and the blame which I poured upon myself for my own share in
-the matter.
-
-George Bowring had been seven years with me at the fine old school of
-Shrewsbury, and trod on my heels from form to form so closely that,
-when I became at last the captain of the school, he was second to
-me. I was his elder by half a year, and “sapped” very hard, while he
-laboured little; so that it will be plain at a glance, although he
-never acknowledged it, that he was the better endowed of the two with
-natural ability. At that time we of Salop always expected to carry
-everything, so far as pure scholarship was concerned, at both the
-universities. But nowadays I am grieved to see that schools of quite a
-different stamp (such as Rugby and Harrow, and even Marlborough, and
-worse of all peddling Manchester) have been running our boys hard,
-and sometimes almost beating them. And how have they done it? Why, by
-purchasing masters of our prime rank and special style.
-
-George and myself were at one time likely, and pretty well relied upon,
-to keep up the fame of Sabrina’s crown, and hold our own at Oxford. But
-suddenly it so fell out that both of us were cut short of classics, and
-flung into this unclassic world. In the course of our last half year at
-school and when we were both taking final polish to stand for Balliol
-scholarships, which we were almost sure to win, as all the examiners
-were Shrewsbury men,--not that they would be partial to us, but because
-we knew all their questions,--within a week, both George and I were
-forced to leave the dear old school, the grand old town, the lovely
-Severn, and everything but one another.
-
-He lost his father; I lost my uncle, a gentleman in Derbyshire, who had
-well provided my education; but, having a family of his own, could not
-be expected to leave me much. And he left me even less than could, from
-his own point of view, have been rational. It is true that he had seven
-children; but still a man of £15,000 a year might have done, without
-injustice--or, I might say, with better justice--something more than
-to leave his nephew a sum which, after much pushing about into divers
-insecurities, fetched £72 10s. per annum.
-
-Nevertheless, I am truly grateful; though, perhaps, at the time I had
-not that knowledge of the world which enlarges the grateful organs. It
-cannot matter what my feelings were, and I never was mercenary. All my
-sentiments at that period ran in Greek senarii; and perhaps it would
-show how good and lofty boys were in that ancient time, though now they
-are only rude Solecists, if I were to set these verses down--but, after
-much consideration, I find it wiser to keep them in.
-
-George Bowring’s father had some appointment well up in the Treasury.
-He seems to have been at some time knighted for finding a manuscript
-of great value that went in the end to the paper mills. How he did it,
-or what it was, or whether he ever did it at all, were questions for
-no one to meddle with. People in those days had larger minds than they
-ever seem to exhibit now. The king might tap a man, and say, “Rise, Sir
-Joseph,” and all the journals of the age, or, at least, the next day,
-would echo “Sir Joseph!” And really he was worthy of it. A knight he
-lived, and a knight he died; and his widow found it such a comfort!
-
-And now on his father’s sudden death, George Bowring was left not so
-very well off. Sir Joseph had lived, as a knight should do, in a
-free-handed, errant, and chivalrous style; and what he left behind
-him made it lucky that the title dropped. George, however, was better
-placed, as regards the world, than I was; but not so very much as to
-make a difference between us. Having always held together, and being
-started in life together, we resolved to face the world (as other
-people are always called) side by side, and with a friendship that
-should make us as good as one.
-
-This, however, did not come out exactly as it should have done. Many
-things arose between us--such as diverse occupation, different hours
-of work and food, and a little split in the taste of trowsers, which,
-of course, should not have been. He liked the selvage down his legs,
-while I thought it unartistic, and, going much into the graphic line, I
-pressed my objections strongly.
-
-But George, in the handsomest manner--as now, looking back on the case,
-I acknowledge--waived my objections, and insisted as little as he could
-upon his own. And again we became as tolerant as any two men, at all
-alike, can be of one another.
-
-He, by some postern of influence, got into some dry ditch of the
-Treasury, and there, as in an old castle-moat, began to be at home, and
-move, gently and after his seniors, as the young ducks follow the old
-ones. And at every waddle he got more money.
-
-My fortune, however, was not so nice. I had not Sir Joseph, of Treasury
-cellars, to light me with his name and memory into a snug cell of my
-own. I had nothing to look to but courage, and youth, and education,
-and three-quarters of a hundred pounds a year, with some little change
-to give out of it. Yet why should I have doubted? Now, I wonder at my
-own misgivings; yet all of them still return upon me, if I ever am
-persuaded just to try Welsh rabbit. Enough, that I got on at last, to
-such an extent that the man at the dairy offered me half a year’s milk
-for a sketch of a cow that had never belonged to him.
-
-George, meanwhile, having something better than a brush for a walking
-stick and an easel to sit down upon, had taken unto himself a wife--a
-lady as sweet and bright as could be--by name Emily Atkinson. In truth,
-she was such a charming person that I myself, in a quiet way, had taken
-a very great fancy to her before George Bowring saw her; but as soon
-as I found what a desperate state the heart of poor George was reduced
-to, and came to remember that he was fitted by money to marry, while I
-was not, it appeared to me my true duty toward the young lady and him,
-and even myself, to withdraw from the field, and have nothing to say if
-they set up their horses together.
-
-So George married Emily, and could not imagine why it was that I strove
-in vain to appear as his “best man,” at the rails where they do it.
-
-For though I had ordered a blue coat and buttons, and a cashmere
-waistcoat (amber-coloured, with a braid of peonies), yet at the last
-moment my courage failed me, and I was caught with a shivering in the
-knees, which the doctor said was ague. This and that shyness of dining
-at his house (which I thought it expedient to adopt during the years
-of his married life) created some little reserve between us, though
-hardly so bad as our first disagreement concerning the stripe down the
-pantaloons.
-
-However, before that dereliction I had made my friend a wedding
-present, as was right and proper--a present such as nothing less than a
-glorious windfall could have enabled me to buy. For while engaged, some
-three years back, upon a grand historical painting of “Cœur de Lion and
-Saladin,” now to be seen--but let that pass; posterity will always know
-where to find it--I was harassed in mind perpetually concerning the
-grain of the fur of a cat. To the dashing young artists of the present
-day this may seem a trifle; to them, no doubt, a cat is a cat--or
-would be, if they could make it one. Of course, there are cats enough
-in London, and sometimes even a few to spare; but I wanted a cat of
-peculiar order, and of a Saracenic cast. I walked miles and miles;
-till at last I found him residing in a very old-fashioned house in the
-Polygon, at Somers Town. Here was a genuine paradise of cats, carefully
-ministered to and guarded by a maiden lady of Portuguese birth and of
-advanced maturity. Each of these nine cats possessed his own stool--a
-mahogany stool, with a velvet cushion, and his name embroidered upon
-it in beautiful letters of gold. And every day they sat round the
-fire to digest their dinners, all nine of them, each on his proper
-stool, some purring, some washing their faces, and some blinking or
-nodding drowsily. But I need not have spoken of this, except that one
-of them was called “Saladin.” He was the very cat I wanted. I made his
-acquaintance in the area, and followed it up on the knife-boy’s board.
-And then I had the most happy privilege of saving him from a tail-pipe.
-Thus my entrance was secured into this feline Eden; and the lady was
-so well pleased that she gave me an order for nine full-length cat
-portraits, at the handsome price of ten guineas apiece. And not only
-this, but at her demise--which followed, alas! too speedily--she left
-me £150, as a proof of her esteem and affection.
-
-This sum I divided into three equal parts--fifty pounds for a present
-for George, another fifty for a duty to myself, and the residue to
-be put by for any future purposes. I knew that my friend had no gold
-watch; neither, of course, did I possess one. In those days a gold
-watch was thought a good deal of, and made an impression in society,
-as a three-hundred-guinea ring does now. Barwise was then considered
-the best watchmaker in London, and perhaps in the world. So I went to
-his shop, and chose two gold watches of good size and substance--none
-of your trumpery catchpenny things, the size of a gilt pill trodden
-upon--at the price of fifty guineas each. As I took the pair, the
-foreman let me have them for a hundred pounds, including also in that
-figure a handsome gold key for each, of exactly the same pattern, and a
-guard for the fob of watered black-silk ribbon.
-
-My reason for choosing these two watches, out of a trayful of similar
-quality, was perhaps a little whimsical--viz., that the numbers they
-bore happened to be sequents. Each had its number engraved on its white
-enamel dial, in small but very clear figures, placed a little above
-the central spindle; also upon the extreme verge, at the nadir below
-the seconds hand, the name of the maker, “Barwise, London.” They were
-not what are called “hunting watches,” but had strong and very clear
-lunette glasses fixed in rims of substantial gold. And their respective
-numbers were 7777 and 7778.
-
-Carrying these in wash-leather bags, I gave George Bowring his choice
-of the two; and he chose the one with four figures of seven, making
-some little joke about it, not good enough to repeat, nor even bad
-enough to laugh at.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-
-For six years after this all went smoothly with George Bowring and
-myself. We met almost daily, although we did not lodge together (as
-once we had done) nor spend the evening hours together, because, of
-course, he had now his home and family rising around him. By the summer
-of 1832 he had three children, and was expecting a fourth at no very
-distant time. His eldest son was named after me, “Robert Bistre,” for
-such is my name, which I have often thought of changing. Not that
-the name is at all a bad one, as among friends and relations, but
-that, when I am addressed by strangers, “Mr. Bistre” has a jingling
-sound, suggestive of childish levity. “Sir Robert Bistre,” however,
-would sound uncommonly well; and (as some people say) less eminent
-artists--but perhaps, after all, I am not so very old as to be in a
-hurry.
-
-In the summer of 1832--as elderly people will call to mind, and the
-younger sort will have heard or read--the cholera broke over London
-like a bursting meteor. Such panic had not been known, I believe, since
-the time of the plague, in the reign of Charles II., as painted (beyond
-any skill of the brush) by the simple and wonderful pen of Defoe.
-There had been in the interval many seasons--or at least I am informed
-so--of sickness more widely spread, and of death more frequent, if not
-so sudden. But now this new plague, attacking so harshly a man’s most
-perceptive and valued part, drove rich people out of London faster than
-horses (not being attacked) could fly. Well, used as I was to a good
-deal of poison in dealing with my colours, I felt no alarm on my own
-account, but was anxious about my landlady. This was an excellently
-honest woman of fifty-five summers at the utmost, but weakly
-confessing to as much as forty. She had made a point of insisting upon
-a brisket of beef and a flat-polled cabbage for dinner every Saturday;
-and the same, with a “cowcumber,” cold on Sunday; and for supper a
-soft-roed herring, ever since her widowhood.
-
-“Mrs. Whitehead,” said I--for that was her name, though she said she
-did not deserve it; and her hair confirmed her in that position by
-growing darker from year to year--“Madam, allow me to beg you to vary
-your diet a little at this sad time.”
-
-“I varies it every day, Mr. Bistre,” she answered somewhat snappishly.
-“The days of the week is not so many but what they all come round
-again.”
-
-For the moment I did not quite perceive the precision of her argument;
-but after her death I was able to do more justice to her intellect.
-And, unhappily, she was removed to a better world on the following
-Sunday.
-
-To a man in London of quiet habits and regular ways and periods there
-scarcely can be a more desperate blow than the loss of his landlady.
-It is not only that his conscience pricks him for all his narrow,
-plagiaristic, and even irrational suspicions about the low level of his
-tea caddy, or a neap tide in his brandy bottle, or any false evidence
-of the eyes (which ever go spying to lock up the heart), or the ears,
-which are also wicked organs--these memories truly are grievous to
-him, and make him yearn now to be robbed again; but what he feels most
-sadly is the desolation of having nobody who understands his locks.
-One of the best men I ever knew was so plagued with his sideboard
-every day for two years, after dinner, that he married a little new
-maid-of-all-work--because she was a blacksmith’s daughter.
-
-Nothing of that sort, however, occurred in my case, I am proud to say.
-But finding myself in a helpless state, without anyone to be afraid
-of, I had only two courses before me: either to go back to my former
-landlady (who was almost too much of a Tartar, perhaps), or else to
-run away from my rooms till Providence provided a new landlady.
-
-Now, in this dilemma I met George Bowring, who saw my distress, and
-most kindly pressed me to stay at his house till some female arose to
-manage my affairs for me. This, of course, I declined to do, especially
-under present circumstances; and, with mutual pity, we parted. But
-the very next day he sought me out, in a quiet nook where a few good
-artists were accustomed to meet and think; and there he told me that
-really now he saw his way to cut short my troubles as well as his own,
-and to earn a piece of enjoyment and profit for both of us. And I
-happen to remember his very words.
-
-“You are cramped in your hand, my dear fellow,” said he (for in those
-days youths did not call each other “old man”--with sad sense of their
-own decrepitude). “Bob, you are losing your freedom of touch. You must
-come out of these stony holes, and look at a rocky mountain.”
-
-My heart gave a jump at these words; and yet I had been too much laid
-flat by facts--“sat upon,” is the slang of these last twenty years, and
-in the present dearth of invention must serve, no doubt, for another
-twenty--I say that I had been used as a cushion by so many landladies
-and maids-of-all-work (who take not an hour to find out where they need
-do no work), that I could not fetch my breath to think of ever going up
-a mountain.
-
-“I will leave you to think of it, Bob,” said George, putting his hat on
-carefully; “I am bound for time, and you seem to be nervous. Consult
-your pillow, my dear fellow; and peep into your old stocking and see
-whether you can afford it.”
-
-That last hit settled me. People said, in spite of all my generous
-acts--and nobody knows, except myself, the frequency and the extent of
-these--without understanding the merits of the case--perfect (or rather
-imperfect) strangers said that I was stingy! To prove the contrary, I
-resolved to launch into great expenditure, and to pay coach fare all
-the way from London toward the nearest mountain.
-
-Half the inhabitants now were rushing helter-skelter out of London, and
-very often to seaside towns where the smell of fish destroyed them.
-And those who could not get away were shuddering at the blinds drawn
-down, and huddling away from the mutes at the doors, and turning pale
-at the funeral bells. And some, who had never thought twice before of
-their latter end, now began to dwell with so much unction upon it, that
-Providence graciously spared them the waste of perpetual preparation.
-
-Among the rest, George Bowring had been scared, far more than he liked
-to own, by the sudden death of his butcher, between half a dozen chops
-for cutlets and the trimming of a wing-bone. George’s own cook had gone
-down with the order, and meant to bring it all back herself, because
-she knew what butchers do when left to consider their subject. And Mrs.
-Tompkins was so alarmed that she gave only six hours’ notice to leave,
-though her husband was far on the salt-sea wave, according to her own
-account, and she had none to make her welcome except her father’s
-second wife. This broke up the household; and hence it was that George
-tempted me so with the mountains.
-
-For he took his wife and children to an old manor-house in Berkshire,
-belonging to two maiden aunts of the lady, who promised to see to all
-that might happen, but wanted no gentleman in the house at a period of
-such delicacy. George Bowring, therefore, agreed to meet me on the 12th
-day of September, at the inn in Reading--I forget its name--where the
-Regulator coach (belonging to the old company, and leaving White Horse
-Cellars at half-past nine in the morning) allowed an hour to dine, from
-one o’clock onward, as the roads might be. And here I found him, and
-we supped at Oxford, and did very well at the Mitre. On the following
-morning we took coach for Shrewsbury, as we had agreed, and, reaching
-the town before dark, put up at the Talbot Inn, and sauntered into the
-dear old school, to see what the lads had been at since our time; for
-their names and their exploits, at Oxford and Cambridge, are scored in
-large letters upon the panels, from the year 1806 and onward, so that
-soon there will be no place to register any more of them; and we found
-that though we ourselves had done nothing, many fine fellows had been
-instituted in letters of higher humanity, and were holding up the old
-standard, so that we longed to invite them to dinner. But discipline
-must be maintained; and that word means, more than anything else, the
-difference of men’s ages.
-
-Now, at Shrewsbury, we had resolved to cast off all further heed
-of coaches; and knowing the country pretty well, or recalling it
-from our childhood, to strike away on foot for some of the mountain
-wildernesses. Of these, in those days, nobody knew much more than
-that they were high and steep, and slippery and dangerous, and much to
-be shunned by all sensible people who liked a nice fire and the right
-side of the window. So that when we shouldered staves with knapsacks
-flapping heavily, all the wiser sort looked on us as marching off to
-Bedlam.
-
-In the morning, as we were starting, we set our watches by the old
-school dial, as I have cause to remember well. And we staked half a
-crown, in a sporting manner, each on his own watch to be the truer
-by sun upon our way back again. And thus we left those ancient walls
-and the glancing of the river, and stoutly took the Welshpool road,
-dreading nought except starvation.
-
-Although in those days I was not by any means a cripple, George was
-far stronger of arm and leg, having always been famous, though we made
-no fuss about such things then, for running and jumping, and lifting
-weights, and using the boxing-gloves and the foils. A fine, brave
-fellow as ever lived, with a short, straight nose and a resolute chin,
-he touched the measuring-bar quite fairly at seventy-four inches,
-and turned the scales at fourteen stone and a quarter. And so, as my
-chattels weighed more than his (by means of a rough old easel and
-material for rude sketches), he did me a good turn now and then by
-changing packs for a mile or two. And thus we came in four days’ march
-to Aber-Aydyr, a village lying under Cader Idris.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-
-If any place ever lay out of the world, and was proud of itself for
-doing so, this little village of Aber-Aydyr must have been very near
-it. The village was built, as the people expressed it, of thirty
-cottages, one public-house, one shop universal, and two chapels.
-The torrent of the Aydyr entered with a roar of rapids, and at the
-lower end departed in a thunder of cascades. The natives were all so
-accustomed to live in the thick of this watery uproar that, whenever
-they left their beloved village to see the inferior outer world,
-they found themselves as deaf as posts till they came to a weir or a
-waterfall. And they told us that in the scorching summer of the year
-1826 the river had failed them so that for nearly a month they could
-only discourse by signs; and they used to stand on the bridge and
-point at the shrunken rapids, and stop their ears to exclude that
-horrible emptiness. Till a violent thunderstorm broke up the drought,
-and the river came down roaring; and the next day all Aber-Aydyr was
-able to gossip again as usual.
-
-Finding these people, who lived altogether upon slate, of a quaint and
-original turn, George Bowring and I resolved to halt and rest the soles
-of our feet a little, and sketch and fish the neighbourhood. For George
-had brought his rod and tackle, and many a time had he wanted to stop
-and set up his rod and begin to cast; but I said that I would not be
-cheated so: he had promised me a mountain, and would he put me off with
-a river? Here, however, we had both delights; the river for him and
-the mountain for me. As for the fishing, all that he might have, and I
-would grudge him none of it, if he fairly divided whatever he caught.
-But he must not expect me to follow him always and watch all his dainty
-manœuvring; each was to carry and eat his own dinner, whenever we made
-a day of it, so that he might keep to his flies and his water, while I
-worked away with my brush at the mountains. And thus we spent a most
-pleasant week, though we knew very little of Welsh and the slaters
-spoke but little English. But--much as they are maligned because they
-will not have strangers to work with them--we found them a thoroughly
-civil, obliging, and rather intelligent set of men; most of them also
-of a respectable and religious turn of mind; and they scarcely ever
-poach, except on Saturdays and Mondays.
-
-On September 25, as we sat at breakfast in the little sanded parlour
-of the Cross-Pipes public house, our bedroom being overhead, my dear
-friend complained to me that he was tired of fishing so long up and
-down one valley, and asked me to come with him further up, into wilder
-and rockier districts, where the water ran deeper (as he had been
-told) and the trout were less worried by quarrymen, because it was
-such a savage place, deserted by all except evil spirits, that even
-the Aber-Aydyr slaters could not enjoy the fishing there. I promised
-him gladly to come, only keeping the old understanding between us,
-that each should attend to his own pursuits and his own opportunities
-mainly; so that George might stir most when the trout rose well, and
-I when the shadows fell properly. And thus we set forth about nine
-o’clock of a bright and cheerful morning, while the sun, like a courtly
-perruquier of the reign of George II., was lifting, and shifting, and
-setting in order the vapoury curls of the mountains.
-
-We trudged along thus at a merry swing, for the freshness of autumnal
-dew was sparkling in the valley, until we came to a rocky pass,
-where walking turned to clambering. After an hour of sharpish work
-among slaty shelves and threatening crags, we got into one of those
-troughlike hollows hung on each side with precipices, which look as if
-the earth had sunk for the sake of letting the water through. On our
-left hand, cliff towered over cliff to the grand height of Pen y Cader,
-the steepest and most formidable aspect of the mountain. Rock piled
-on rock, and shingle cast in naked waste disdainfully, and slippery
-channels scooped by torrents of tempestuous waters, forbade one to
-desire at all to have anything more to do with them--except, of course,
-to get them painted at a proper distance, so that they might hang at
-last in the dining rooms of London, to give people appetite with sense
-of hungry breezes, and to make them comfortable with the sight of
-danger.
-
-“This is very grand indeed,” said George, as he turned to watch me; for
-the worst part of our business is to have to give an opinion always
-upon points of scenery. But I am glad that I was not cross, or even
-crisp with him that day.
-
-“It is magnificent,” I answered; “and I see a piece of soft sward
-there, where you can set up your rod, old fellow, while I get my
-sticks in trim. Let us fill our pipes and watch the shadows; they do
-not fall quite to suit me yet.”
-
-“How these things make one think,” cried Bowring, as we sat on a stone
-and smoked, “of the miserable littleness of men like you and me, Bob!”
-
-“Speak for yourself, sir,” I said, laughing at his unaccustomed, but
-by no means novel, reflection. “I am quite contented with my size,
-although I am smaller than you, George. Dissatisfied mortal! Nature
-wants no increase of us, or she would have had it.”
-
-“In another world we shall be much larger,” he said, with his eyes on
-the tops of the hills. “Last night I dreamed that my wife and children
-were running to meet me in heaven, Bob.”
-
-“Tush! You go and catch fish,” I replied; for tears were in his large,
-soft eyes, and I hated the sentimental. “Would they ever let such a
-little Turk as Bob Bistre into heaven, do you think? My godson would
-shout all the angels deaf and outdrum all the cherubim.”
-
-“Poor little chap! He is very noisy; but he is not half a bad sort,”
-said George. “If he only comes like his godfather I shall wish no
-better luck for him.”
-
-These were kind words, and I shook his hand to let him know that I felt
-them; and then, as if he were ashamed of having talked rather weakly,
-he took with his strong legs a dangerous leap of some ten or twelve
-feet downward, and landed on a narrow ledge that overhung the river.
-Here he put his rod together, and I heard the click of reel as he drew
-the loop at the end of the line through the rings, and so on; and I
-heard him cry “Chut!” as he took his flies from his Scotch cap and
-found a tangle; and I saw the glistening of his rod, as the sunshine
-pierced the valley, and then his tall, straight figure pass the corner
-of a crag that stood as upright as a tombstone; and after that no more
-of any live and bright George Bowring.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-
-Swift is the flight of Time whenever a man would fain lay hold of him.
-All created beings, from Behemoth to a butterfly, dread and fly (as
-best they may) that universal butcher--man. And as nothing is more
-carefully killed by the upper sort of mankind than Time, how can he
-help making off for his life when anybody wants to catch him?
-
-Of course, I am not of that upper sort, and make no pretence to be so;
-but Time, perhaps, may be excused for thinking--having had such a very
-short turn at my clothes--that I belonged to the aristocracy. At any
-rate, while I drew, and rubbed, and dubbed, and made hieroglyphics,
-Time was uneasily shifting and shuffling the lines of the hills, as a
-fever patient jerks and works the bed-clothes. And, worse than that,
-he was scurrying westward (frightened, no doubt, by the equinox) at
-such a pace that I was scared by the huddling together of shadows.
-Awaking from a long, long dream--through which I had been working hard,
-and laying the foundations of a thousand pounds hereafter--I felt the
-invisible damp of evening settling in the valleys. The sun, from over
-the sea, had still his hand on Cader Idris; but every inferior head and
-height was gray in the sweep of his mantle.
-
-I threw my hair back--for an artist really should be picturesque; and,
-having no other beauty, must be firm to long hair, while it lasts--and
-then I shouted, “George!” until the strata of the mountain (which dip
-and jag, like veins of oak) began and sluggishly prolonged a slow
-zigzag of echoes. No counter-echo came to me; no ring of any sonorous
-voice made crag, and precipice, and mountain vocal with the sound of
-“Bob!”
-
-“He must have gone back. What a fool I must be never to remember
-seeing him! He saw that I was full of rubbish, and he would not disturb
-me. He is gone back to the Cross-Pipes, no doubt. And yet it does not
-seem like him.”
-
-“To look for a pin in a bundle of hay” would be a job of sense and
-wisdom rather than to seek a thing so very small as a very big man
-among the depth, and height, and breadth of river, shingle, stone, and
-rock, crag, precipice, and mountain. And so I doubled up my things,
-while the very noise they made in doubling flurried and alarmed me;
-and I thought it was not like George to leave me to find my way back
-all alone, among the deep bogs, and the whirlpools, and the trackless
-tracts of crag.
-
-When I had got my fardel ready, and was about to shoulder it, the
-sound of brisk, short steps, set sharply upon doubtful footing, struck
-my ear, through the roar of the banks and stones that shook with
-waterfall. And before I had time to ask, “Who goes there?”--as in this
-solitude one might do--a slight, short man, whom I knew by sight as
-a workman of Aber-Aydyr, named Evan Peters, was close to me, and was
-swinging a slate-hammer in one hand, and bore in the other a five-foot
-staff. He seemed to be amazed at sight of me, but touched his hat with
-his staff, and said: “Good-night, gentleman!” in Welsh; for the natives
-of this part are very polite. “Good-night, Evan!” I answered, in his
-own language, of which I had picked up a little; and he looked well
-pleased, and said in his English: “For why, sir, did you leave your
-things in that place there? A bad mans come and steal them, it is very
-likely.”
-
-Then he wished me “Good-night” again, and was gone--for he seemed to be
-in a dreadful hurry--before I had the sense to ask him what he meant
-about “my things.” But as his footfall died away a sudden fear came
-over me.
-
-“The things he meant must be George Bowring’s,” I said to myself; and I
-dropped my own, and set off, with my blood all tingling, for the place
-toward which he had jerked his staff. How long it took me to force my
-way among rugged rocks and stubs of oak I cannot tell, for every moment
-was an hour to me. But a streak of sunset glanced along the lonesome
-gorge, and cast my shadow further than my voice would go; and by it I
-saw something long and slender against a scar of rock, and standing far
-in front of me. Toward this I ran as fast as ever my trembling legs
-would carry me, for I knew too well that it must be the fishing-rod of
-George Bowring.
-
-It was stuck in the ground--not carelessly, nor even in any hurry; but
-as a sportsman makes all snug, when for a time he leaves off casting.
-For instance, the end fly was fixed in the lowest ring of the butt, and
-the slack of the line reeled up so that the collar lay close to the rod
-itself. Moreover, in such a rocky place, a bed to receive the spike
-could not have been found without some searching. For a moment I was
-reassured. Most likely George himself was near--perhaps in quest of
-blueberries (which abound at the foot of the shingles and are a very
-delicious fruit), or of some rare fern to send his wife, who was one
-of the first in England to take much notice of them. And it shows what
-confidence I had in my friend’s activity and strength, that I never
-feared the likely chance of his falling from some precipice.
-
-But just as I began, with some impatience--for we were to have dined
-at the Cross-Pipes about sundown, five good (or very bad) miles away,
-and a brace of ducks was the order--just as I began to shout, “George!
-Wherever have you got to?” leaping on a little rock, I saw a thing that
-stopped me. At the further side of this rock, and below my feet, was a
-fishing basket, and a half-pint mug nearly full of beer, and a crust
-of the brown, sweet bread of the hills, and a young white onion, half
-cut through, and a clasp-knife open, and a screw of salt, and a slice
-of the cheese, just dashed with goat’s milk, which George was so fond
-of, but I disliked; and there may have been a hard-boiled egg. At the
-sight of these things all my blood rushed to my head in such a manner
-that all my power to think was gone. I sat down on the rock where
-George must have sat while beginning his frugal luncheon, and I put
-my heels into the marks of his, and, without knowing why, I began to
-sob like a child who has lost his mother. What train of reasoning went
-through my brain--if any passed in the obscurity--let metaphysicians or
-psychologists, as they call themselves, pretend to know. I only know
-that I kept on whispering, “George is dead! Unless he had been killed,
-he never would have left his beer so!”
-
-I must have sat, making a fool of myself, a considerable time in this
-way, thinking of George’s poor wife and children, and wondering what
-would become of them, instead of setting to work at once to know what
-was become of him. I took up a piece of cheese-rind, showing a perfect
-impression of his fine front teeth, and I put it in my pocketbook, as
-the last thing he had touched. And then I examined the place all around
-and knelt to look for footmarks, though the light was sadly waning.
-
-For the moment I discovered nothing of footsteps or other traces to
-frighten or to comfort me. A little narrow channel (all of rock and
-stone and slaty stuff) sloped to the river’s brink, which was not more
-than five yards distant. In this channel I saw no mark except that some
-of the smaller stones appeared to have been turned over; and then I
-looked into the river itself, and saw a force of water sliding smoothly
-into a rocky pool.
-
-“If he had fallen in there,” I said, “he would have leaped out again
-in two seconds; or even if the force of the water had carried him down
-into that deep pool, he can swim like a duck--of course he can. What
-river could ever drown you, George?”
-
-And then I remembered how at Salop he used to swim the flooded Severn
-when most of us feared to approach the banks; and I knew that he could
-not be drowned, unless something first had stunned him. And after that
-I looked around, and my heart was full of terror.
-
-“It is a murder!” I cried aloud, though my voice among the rocks might
-well have brought like fate upon me. “As sure as I stand here, and God
-is looking down upon me, this is a black murder!”
-
-In what way I got back that night to Aber-Aydyr I know not. All I
-remember is that the people would not come out of their houses to me,
-according to some superstition, which was not explained till morning;
-and, being unable to go to bed, I took a blanket and lay down beneath a
-dry arch of the bridge, and the Aydyr, as swiftly as a spectre gliding,
-hushed me with a melancholy song.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-
-Now, as sure as ever I lay beneath the third arch of Aber-Aydyr Bridge,
-in a blanket of Welsh serge or flannel, with a double border, so surely
-did I see, and not dream, what I am going to tell you.
-
-The river ran from east to west; and the moon, being now the harvest
-moon, was not very high, but large and full, and just gliding over the
-crest of the hill that overhangs the quarry-pit; so that, if I can put
-it plainly, the moon was across the river from me, and striking the
-turbulent water athwart, so that her face, or a glimmer thereof, must
-have been lying upon the river if any smooth place had been left for
-it. But of this there was no chance, because the whole of the river was
-in a rush, according to its habit, and covered with bubbles, and froth,
-and furrows, even where it did not splash, and spout, and leap, as
-it loved to do. In the depth of the night, when even the roar of the
-water seemed drowsy and indolent, and the calm trees stooped with their
-heavy limbs overhanging the darkness languidly, and only a few rays of
-the moon, like the fluttering of a silver bird, moved in and out the
-mesh-work, I leaned upon my elbow, and I saw the dead George Bowring.
-
-He came from the pit of the river toward me, quietly and without stride
-or step, gliding over the water like a mist or the vapour of a calm
-white frost; and he stopped at the ripple where the shore began, and he
-looked at me very peacefully. And I felt neither fear nor doubt of him,
-any more than I do of this pen in my hand.
-
-“George,” I said, “I have been uneasy all the day about you and I
-cannot sleep, and I have had no comfort. What has made you treat me so?”
-
-He seemed to be anxious to explain, having always been so
-straightforward; but an unknown hand or the power of death held him,
-so that he could only smile. And then it appeared to me as if he
-pointed to the water first and then to the sky, with such an import
-that I understood (as plainly as if he had pronounced it) that his body
-lay under the one and his soul was soaring on high through the other;
-and, being forbidden to speak, he spread his hands, as if entrusting me
-with all that had belonged to him; and then he smiled once more, and
-faded into the whiteness of the froth and foam.
-
-And then I knew that I had been holding converse, face to face, with
-Death; and icy fear shook me, and I strove in vain to hide my eyes from
-everything. And when I awoke in the morning there was a gray trunk of
-an alder tree, just George Bowring’s height and size, on the other side
-of the water, so that I could have no doubt that himself had been there.
-
-After a search of about three hours we found the body of my dear
-friend in a deep black pool of the Aydyr--not the first hole below
-the place in which he sat down to his luncheon, but nearly a hundred
-yards farther down, where a bold cliff jutted out and bent the water
-scornfully. Our quarrymen would not search this pool until the sunlight
-fell on it, because it was a place of dread with a legend hovering over
-it. “The Giant’s Tombstone” was the name of the crag that overhung it;
-and the story was that the giant Idris, when he grew worn out with
-age, chose this rock out of many others near the top of the mountain,
-and laid it under his arm and came down here to drink of the Aydyr.
-He drank the Aydyr dry because he was feverish and flushed with age;
-and he set down the crag in a hole he had scooped with the palms of
-his hands for more water; and then he lay down on his back, and Death
-(who never could reach to his knee when he stood) took advantage of
-his posture to drive home the javelin. And thus he lay dead, with the
-crag for his headstone, and the weight of his corpse sank a grave for
-itself in the channel of the river, and the toes of his boots are still
-to be seen after less than a mile of the valley.
-
-Under this headstone of Idris lay the body of George Bowring, fair and
-comely, with the clothes all perfect, and even the light cap still on
-the head. And as we laid it upon the grass, reverently and carefully,
-the face, although it could smile no more, still appeared to wear a
-smile, as if the new world were its home, and death a mere trouble left
-far behind. Even the eyes were open, and their expression was not of
-fright or pain, but pleasant and bright, with a look of interest such
-as a man pays to his food.
-
-“Stand back, all of you!” I said sternly; “none shall examine him but
-myself. Now all of you note what I find here.”
-
-I searched all his pockets, one after another; and tears came to my
-eyes again as I counted not less than eleven of them, for I thought
-of the fuss we used to make with the Shrewsbury tailor about them.
-There was something in every pocket, but nothing of any importance at
-present, except his purse and a letter from his wife, for which he had
-walked to Dolgelly and back on the last entire day of his life.
-
-“It is a hopeless mystery!” I exclaimed aloud, as the Welshmen
-gazed with superstitious awe and doubt. “He is dead as if struck by
-lightning, but there was no storm in the valley!”
-
-“No, no, sure enough; no storm was there. But it is plain to see what
-has killed him!” This was Evan Peters, the quarryman, and I glanced at
-him very suspiciously. “Iss, sure, plain enough,” said another; and
-then they all broke into Welsh, with much gesticulation; and “e-ah,
-e-ah,” and “otty, otty,” and “hanool, hanool,” were the sounds they
-made--at least to an ignorant English ear.
-
-“What do you mean, you fools?” I asked, being vexed at their offhand
-way of settling things so far beyond them. “Can you pretend to say what
-it was?”
-
-“Indeed, then, and indeed, my gentleman, it is no use to talk no more.
-It was the Caroline Morgan.”
-
-“Which is the nearest house?” I asked, for I saw that some of them
-were already girding up their loins to fly, at the mere sound of that
-fearful name; for the cholera morbus had scared the whole country; and
-if one were to fly, all the rest would follow, as swiftly as mountain
-sheep go. “Be quick to the nearest house, my friends, and we will send
-for the doctor.”
-
-This was a lucky hit; for these Cambrians never believed in anyone’s
-death until he had “taken the doctor.” And so, with much courage and
-kindness, “to give the poor gentleman the last chance,” they made
-a rude litter, and, bearing the body upon sturdy shoulders, betook
-themselves to a track which I had overlooked entirely. Some people have
-all their wits about them as soon as they are called for, but with me
-it is mainly otherwise. And this I had shown in two things already; the
-first of which came to my mind the moment I pulled out my watch to see
-what the time was. “Good Heavens!” it struck me, “where is George’s
-watch? It was not in any of his pockets; and I did not feel it in his
-fob.”
-
-In an instant I made them set down the bier; and, much as it grieved
-me to do such a thing, I carefully sought for my dear friend’s watch.
-No watch, no seals, no ribbon, was there! “Go on,” I said; and I fell
-behind them, having much to think about. In this condition, I took
-little heed of the distance, or of the ground itself; being even
-astonished when, at last, we stopped; as if we were bound to go on
-forever.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-
-We had stopped at the gate of an old farmhouse, built with massive
-boulder stones, laid dry, and flushed in with mortar. As dreary a
-place as was ever seen; at the head of a narrow mountain-gorge, with
-mountains towering over it. There was no sign of life about it, except
-that a gaunt hog trotted forth, and grunted at us, and showed his
-tusks, and would perhaps have charged us, if we had not been so many.
-The house looked just like a low church-tower, and might have been
-taken for one at a distance if there had been any battlements. It
-seemed to be four or five hundred years old, and perhaps belonged to
-some petty chief in the days of Owen Glendower.
-
-“Knock again, Thomas Edwards. Stop, let me knock,” said one of our
-party impatiently. “There, waddow, waddow, waddow!”
-
-Suiting the action to the word, he thumped with a big stone heavily,
-till a middle-aged woman, with rough black hair, looked out of a
-window and screamed in Welsh to ask what this terrible noise was. To
-this they made answer in the same language, pointing to their sad
-burden, and asking permission to leave it for the doctor’s inspection
-and the inquest, if there was to be one. And I told them to add that
-I would pay well--anything, whatever she might like to ask. But she
-screamed out something that sounded like a curse, and closed the
-lattice violently. Knowing that many superstitions lingered in these
-mountains--as, indeed, they do elsewhere plentifully--I was not
-surprised at the woman’s stern refusal to admit us, especially at this
-time of pest; but I thought it strange that her fierce black eyes
-avoided both me and the poor rude litter on which the body of George
-lay, covered with some slate-workers’ aprons.
-
-“She is not the mistress!” cried Evan Peters, in great excitement, as I
-thought. “Ask where is Hopkin--Black Hopkin--where is he?”
-
-At this suggestion a general outcry arose in Welsh for “Black Hopkin”;
-an outcry so loud and prolonged that the woman opened the window again
-and screamed--as they told me afterward--“He is not at home, you noisy
-fools; he is gone to Machynlleth. Not long would you dare to make this
-noise if Hopkin ap Howel was at home.”
-
-But while she was speaking the wicket-door of the great arched gate was
-thrown open, and a gun about six feet long and of very large bore was
-presented at us. The quarrymen drew aside briskly, and I was about to
-move somewhat hastily, when the great, swarthy man who was holding the
-gun withdrew it, and lifted his hat to me, proudly and as an equal.
-
-“You cannot enter this house,” he said in very good English, and by no
-means rudely. “I am sorry for it, but it cannot be. My little daughter
-is very ill, the last of seven. You must go elsewhere.”
-
-With these words he bowed again to me, while his sad eyes seemed to
-pierce my soul; and then he quietly closed the wicket and fastened it
-with a heavy bolt, and I knew that we must indeed go further.
-
-This was no easy thing to do; for our useless walk to “Crug y Dlwlith”
-(the Dewless Hills), as this farm was called, had taken us further
-at every step from the place we must strive for after all--the good
-little Aber-Aydyr. The gallant quarrymen were now growing both weary
-and uneasy; and in justice to them I must say that no temptation of
-money, nor even any appeal to their sympathies, but only a challenge of
-their patriotism held them to the sad duties owing from the living to
-the dead. But knowing how proud all Welshmen are of the fame of their
-race and country, happily I exclaimed at last, when fear was getting
-the mastery, “What will be said of this in England, this low cowardice
-of the Cymro?” Upon that they looked at one another and did their best
-right gallantly.
-
-Now, I need not go into any further sad details of this most sad time,
-except to say that Dr. Jones, who came the next day from Dolgelly, made
-a brief examination by order of the coroner. Of course, he had too much
-sense to suppose that the case was one of cholera; but to my surprise
-he pronounced that death was the result of “asphyxia, caused by too
-long immersion in the water.” And knowing nothing of George Bowring’s
-activity, vigour, and cultivated power in the water, perhaps he was not
-to be blamed for dreaming that a little mountain stream could drown
-him. I, on the other hand, felt as sure that my dear friend was foully
-murdered as I did that I should meet him in heaven--if I lived well for
-the rest of my life, which I resolved at once to do--and there have
-the whole thing explained, and perhaps be permitted to glance at the
-man who did it, as Lazarus did at Dives.
-
-In spite of the doctor’s evidence and the coroner’s own persuasion, the
-jury found that “George Bowring died of the Caroline Morgan”--which
-the clerk corrected to cholera morbus--“brought on by wetting his feet
-and eating too many fish of his own catching.” And so you may see it
-entered now in the records of the court of the coroners of the king for
-Merioneth.
-
-And now I was occupied with a trouble, which, after all, was more
-urgent than the enquiry how it came to pass. When a man is dead, it
-must be taken as a done thing, not to be undone; and, happily, all
-near relatives are inclined to see it in that light. They are grieved,
-of course, and they put on hatbands and give no dinner parties; and
-they even think of their latter ends more than they might have desired
-to do. But after a little while all comes round. Such things must be
-happening always, and it seems so unchristian to repine; and if any
-money has been left them, truly they must attend to it. On the other
-hand, if there has been no money, they scarcely see why they should
-mourn for nothing; and, as a duty, they begin to allow themselves to be
-roused up.
-
-But when a wife becomes a widow, it is wholly different. No money
-can ever make up to her the utter loss of the love-time and the
-loneliness of the remaining years; the little turns, and thoughts, and
-touches--wherever she goes and whatever she does--which at every corner
-meet her with a deep, perpetual want. She tries to fetch her spirit up
-and to think of her duties to all around--to her children, or to the
-guests whom trouble forces upon her for business’ sake, or even the
-friends who call to comfort (though the call can fetch her none); but
-all the while how deeply aches her sense that all these duties are as
-different as a thing can be from her love-work to her husband!
-
-What could I do? I had heard from George, but could not for my life
-remember, the name of that old house in Berkshire where poor Mrs.
-Bowring was on a visit to two of her aunts, as I said before. I
-ventured to open her letter to her husband, found in his left-hand
-side breast-pocket, and, having dried it, endeavoured only to make out
-whence she wrote; but there was nothing. Ladies scarcely ever date a
-letter both with time and place, for they seem to think that everybody
-must know it, because they do. So the best I could do was to write
-to poor George’s house in London, and beg that the letter might be
-forwarded at once. It came, however, too late to hand. For, although
-the newspapers of that time were respectably slow and steady, compared
-with the rush they all make nowadays, they generally managed to outrun
-the post, especially in the nutting season. They told me at Dolgelly,
-and they confirmed it at Machynlleth, that nobody must desire to get
-his letters at any particular time, in the months of September and
-October, when the nuts were ripe. For the postmen never would come
-along until they had filled their bags with nuts, for the pleasure of
-their families. And I dare say they do the same thing now, but without
-being free to declare it so.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-
-The body of my dear friend was borne round the mountain slopes to
-Dolgelly and buried there, with no relative near, nor any mourner
-except myself; for his wife, or rather his widow, was taken with sudden
-illness (as might be expected), and for weeks it was doubtful whether
-she would stay behind to mourn for him. But youth and strength at last
-restored her to dreary duties and worldly troubles.
-
-Of the latter, a great part fell on me; and I did my best--though you
-might not think so, after the fuss I made of my own--to intercept all
-that I could, and quit myself manfully of the trust which George had
-returned from the dead to enjoin. And, what with one thing and another,
-and a sudden dearth of money which fell on me (when my cat-fund was all
-spent, and my gold watch gone up a gargoyle), I had such a job to feed
-the living that I never was able to follow up the dead.
-
-The magistrates held some enquiry, of course, and I had to give my
-evidence; but nothing came of it, except that the quarryman, Evan
-Peters, clearly proved his innocence. Being a very clever fellow, and
-dabbling a bit in geology, he had taken his hammer up the mountains, as
-his practice was when he could spare the time, to seek for new veins of
-slate, or lead, or even gold, which is said to be there. He was able
-to show that he had been at Tal y Llyn at the time of day when George
-would be having his luncheon; and the people who knew Evan Peters were
-much more inclined to suspect me than him. But why should they suspect
-anybody, when anyone but a fool could see “how plain it was of the
-cholera?”
-
-Twenty years slipped by (like a rope paid out on the seashore, “hand
-over hand,” chafing as it goes, but gone as soon as one looks after
-it), and my hair was gray, and my fame was growing (slowly, as it
-appeared to me, but as all my friends said “rapidly”; as if I could
-never have earned it!) when the mystery of George Bowring’s death was
-solved without an effort.
-
-I had been so taken up with the three dear children, and working for
-them as hard as if they were my own (for the treasury of our British
-empire was bankrupt to these little ones--“no provision had been made
-for such a case,” and so we had to make it)--I say that these children
-had grown to me and I to them in such degree that they all of them
-called me “Uncle!”
-
-This is the most endearing word that one human being can use to
-another. A fellow is certain to fight with his brothers and sisters,
-his father, and perhaps even his mother. Tenfold thus with his wife;
-but whoever did fight with his uncle? Of course I mean unless he was
-his heir. And the tenderness of this relation has not escaped _vox
-populi_, that keen discriminator. Who is the most reliable, cordial,
-indispensable of mankind--especially to artists--in every sense of the
-word the dearest? A pawnbroker; he is our uncle.
-
-Under my care, these three children grew to be splendid “members of
-society.” They used to come and kick over my easel with legs that were
-quite Titanic; and I could not scold them when I thought of George.
-Bob Bistre, the eldest, was my apprentice, and must become famous in
-consequence; and when he was twenty-five years old, and money became no
-object to me (through the purchase by a great art critic of the very
-worst picture I ever painted; half of it, in fact, was Bob’s!), I gave
-the boy choice of our autumn trip to California, or the antipodes.
-
-“I would rather go to North Wales, dear uncle,” he answered, and then
-dropped his eyes, as his father used when he had provoked me. That
-settled the matter. He must have his way; though as for myself, I must
-confess that I have begun, for a long time now, upon principle, to
-shun melancholy.
-
-The whole of the district is opened up so by those desperate railways
-that we positively dined at the Cross-Pipes Hotel the very day after
-we left Euston Square. Our landlady did not remember me, which was
-anything but flattering. But she jumped at Bob as if she would have
-kissed him; for he was the image of his father, whose handsome face had
-charmed her.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-
-The Aydyr was making as much noise as ever, for the summer had been a
-wet one; and of course all the people of Aber-Aydyr had their ears wide
-open. I showed Bob the bridge and the place of my vision, but did not
-explain its meaning, lest my love for him should seem fiduciary; and
-the next morning, at his most urgent request, we started afoot for that
-dark, sad valley. It was a long walk, and I did not find that twenty
-years had shortened it.
-
-“Here we are at last,” I said, “and the place looks the same as ever.
-There is the grand old Pen y Cader, with the white cloud rolling as
-usual; to the left and right are the two other summits, the arms of
-the chair of Idris; and over the shoulder of that crag you can catch a
-glassy light in the air--that is the reflection of Tal y Llyn.”
-
-“Yes, yes!” he answered impatiently. “I know all that from your
-picture, uncle. But show me the place where my father died.”
-
-“It lies immediately under our feet. You see that gray stone down in
-the hollow, a few yards from the river brink. There he sat, as I have
-often told you, twenty years ago this day. There he was taking his
-food, when someone----Well, well! God knows, but we never shall. My
-boy, I am stiff in the knees; go on.”
-
-He went on alone, as I wished him to do, with exactly his father’s
-step, and glance, figure, face, and stature. Even his dress was of the
-silver-gray which his father had been so fond of, and which the kind
-young fellow chose to please his widowed mother. I could almost believe
-(as a cloudy mantle stole in long folds over the highland, reproducing
-the lights, and shades, and gloom of that mysterious day) that the
-twenty years were all a dream, and that here was poor George Bowring
-going to his murder and his watery grave.
-
-My nerves are good and strong, I trow; and that much must have long
-been evident. But I did not know what young Bob’s might be, and
-therefore I left him to himself. No man should be watched as he stands
-at the grave of his wife or mother: neither should a young fellow who
-sits on the spot where his father was murdered. Therefore, as soon as
-our Bob had descended into the gray stone-pit, in which his dear father
-must have breathed his last, I took good care to be out of sight,
-after observing that he sat down exactly as his father must have sat,
-except that his attitude, of course, was sad, and his face pale and
-reproachful. Then, leaving the poor young fellow to his thoughts, I
-also sat down to collect myself.
-
-But before I had time to do more than wonder at the mysterious ways
-of the world, or of Providence in guiding it; at the manner in which
-great wrong lies hidden, and great woe falls unrecompensed; at the
-dark, uncertain laws which cover (like an indiscriminate mountain
-cloud) the good and the bad, the kind and the cruel, the murdered and
-the murderer--a loud shriek rang through the rocky ravine, and up the
-dark folds of the mountain.
-
-I started with terror, and rushed forward, and heard myself called, and
-saw young Bowring leap up, and stand erect and firm, although with a
-gesture of horror. At his feet lay the body of a man struck dead, flung
-on its back, with great hands spread on the eyes, and white hair over
-them.
-
-No need to ask what it meant. At last the justice of God was manifest.
-The murderer lay, a rigid corpse, before the son of the murdered.
-
-“Did you strike him?” I asked.
-
-“Is it likely,” said the youth, “that I would strike an aged man like
-that? I assure you I never had such a fright in my life. This poor old
-fellow came on me quite suddenly, from behind a rock, when all my mind
-was full of my father; and his eyes met mine, and down he fell, as if I
-had shot him through the heart!”
-
-“You have done no less,” I answered; and then I stooped over the corpse
-(as I had stooped over the corpse of its victim), and the whole of my
-strength was required to draw the great knotted hands from the eyes,
-upon which they were cramped with a spasm not yet relaxed.
-
-“It is Hopkin ap Howel!” I cried, as the great eyes, glaring with the
-horror of death, stood forth. “Black Hopkin once, white Hopkin now!
-Robert Bowring, you have slain the man who slew your father.”
-
-“You know that I never meant to do it,” said Bob. “Surely, uncle, it
-was his own fault!”
-
-“How did he come? I see no way. He was not here when I showed you the
-place, or else we must have seen him.”
-
-“He came round the corner of that rock, that stands in front of the
-furze-bush.”
-
-Now that we had the clue, a little examination showed the track. Behind
-the furze-bush, a natural tunnel of rock, not more than a few yards
-long, led into a narrow gorge covered with brushwood, and winding into
-the valley below the farmhouse of the Dewless Crags. Thither we hurried
-to obtain assistance, and there the whole mystery was explained.
-
-Black Hopkin (who stole behind George Bowring and stunned, or, perhaps,
-slew him with one vile blow) has this and this only to say at the
-Bar--that he did it through love of his daughter.
-
-Gwenthlian, the last of seven, lay dying on the day when my friend and
-myself came up the valley of the Aydyr. Her father, a man of enormous
-power of will and passion, as well as muscle, rushed forth of the house
-like a madman, when the doctor from Dolgelly told him that nothing more
-remained except to await the good time of heaven. It was the same
-deadly decline which had slain every one of his children at that same
-age, and now must extinguish a long descended and slowly impoverished
-family.
-
-“If I had but a gold watch I could save her!” he cried in his agony, as
-he left the house. “Ever since the old gold watch was sold, they have
-died--they have died! They are gone, one after one, the last of all my
-children!”
-
-In these lonely valleys lurks a strange old superstition that even
-Death must listen to the voice of Time in gold; that, when the scanty
-numbered moments of the sick are fleeting, a gold watch laid in the
-wasted palm, and pointing the earthly hours, compels the scythe of
-Death to pause, the timeless power to bow before the two great gods of
-the human race--time and gold.
-
-Poor George in the valley must have shown his watch. The despairing
-father must have been struck with crafty madness at the sight. The
-watch was placed in his daughter’s palm; but Death had no regard for
-it. Thenceforth Black Hopkin was a blasted man, racked with remorse and
-heart-disease, sometimes raving, always roving, but finding no place
-of repentance. And it must have been a happy stroke--if he had made
-his peace above, which none of us can deal with--when the throb of his
-long-worn heart stood still at the vision of his victim, and his soul
-took flight to realms that have no gold and no chronometer.
-
-
-
-
-CROCKER’S HOLE.
-
-
-
-
-PART I.
-
-
-The Culm, which rises in Somersetshire, and hastening into a fairer
-land (as the border waters wisely do) falls into the Exe near
-Killerton, formerly was a lovely trout stream, such as perverts the
-Devonshire angler from due respect toward Father Thames and the other
-canals round London. In the Devonshire valleys it is sweet to see how
-soon a spring becomes a rill, and a rill runs on into a rivulet, and a
-rivulet swells into a brook; and before one has time to say, “What are
-you at?”--before the first tree it ever spoke to is a dummy, or the
-first hill it ever ran down has turned blue, here we have all the airs
-and graces, demands and assertions of a full-grown river.
-
-But what is the test of a river? Who shall say? “The power to drown a
-man,” replies the river darkly. But rudeness is not argument. Rather
-shall we say that the power to work a good undershot wheel, without
-being dammed up all night in a pond, and leaving a tidy back-stream to
-spare at the bottom of the orchard, is a fair certificate of riverhood.
-If so, many Devonshire streams attain that rank within five miles of
-their spring; aye, and rapidly add to it. At every turn they gather
-aid, from ash-clad dingle and aldered meadow, mossy rock and ferny
-wall, hedge-trough roofed with bramble netting, where the baby water
-lurks, and lanes that coming down to ford bring suicidal tribute.
-Arrogant, all-engrossing river, now it has claimed a great valley of
-its own; and whatever falls within the hill scoop, sooner or later
-belongs to itself. Even the crystal “shutt” that crosses the farmyard
-by the woodrick, and glides down an aqueduct of last year’s bark for
-Mary to fill the kettle from; and even the tricklets that have no
-organs for telling or knowing their business, but only get into unwary
-oozings in and among the water-grass, and there make moss and forget
-themselves among it--one and all, they come to the same thing at last,
-and that is the river.
-
-The Culm used to be a good river at Culmstock, tormented already by
-a factory, but not strangled as yet by a railroad. How it is now the
-present writer does not know, and is afraid to ask, having heard of a
-vile “Culm Valley Line.” But Culmstock bridge was a very pretty place
-to stand and contemplate the ways of trout; which is easier work than
-to catch them. When I was just big enough to peep above the rim, or
-to lie upon it with one leg inside for fear of tumbling over, what a
-mighty river it used to seem, for it takes a treat there and spreads
-itself. Above the bridge the factory stream falls in again, having
-done its business, and washing its hands in the innocent half that has
-strayed down the meadows. Then under the arches they both rejoice and
-come to a slide of about two feet, and make a short, wide pool below,
-and indulge themselves in perhaps two islands, through which a little
-river always magnifies itself, and maintains a mysterious middle. But
-after that, all of it used to come together, and make off in one body
-for the meadows, intent upon nurturing trout with rapid stickles, and
-buttercuppy corners where fat flies may tumble in. And here you may
-find in the very first meadow, or at any rate you might have found,
-forty years ago, the celebrated “Crocker’s Hole.”
-
-The story of Crocker is unknown to me, and interesting as it doubtless
-was, I do not deal with him, but with his Hole. Tradition said that he
-was a baker’s boy who, during his basket-rounds, fell in love with a
-maiden who received the cottage-loaf, or perhaps good “Households,” for
-her master’s use. No doubt she was charming, as a girl should be, but
-whether she encouraged the youthful baker and then betrayed him with
-false _rôle_, or whether she “consisted” throughout,--as our cousins
-across the water express it,--is known to their _manes_ only. Enough
-that she would not have the floury lad; and that he, after giving in
-his books and money, sought an untimely grave among the trout. And
-this was the first pool below the bread-walk deep enough to drown a
-five-foot baker boy. Sad it was; but such things must be, and bread
-must still be delivered daily.
-
-A truce to such reflections,--as our foremost writers always say, when
-they do not see how to go on with them,--but it is a serious thing
-to know what Crocker’s Hole was like; because at a time when (if he
-had only persevered, and married the maid, and succeeded to the oven,
-and reared a large family of short-weight bakers) he might have been
-leaning on his crutch beside the pool, and teaching his grandson to
-swim by precept (that beautiful proxy for practice)--at such a time,
-I say, there lived a remarkably fine trout in that hole. Anglers are
-notoriously truthful, especially as to what they catch, or even more
-frequently have not caught. Though I may have written fiction, among
-many other sins,--as a nice old lady told me once,--now I have to deal
-with facts; and foul scorn would I count it ever to make believe that
-I caught that fish. My length at that time was not more than the butt
-of a four-jointed rod, and all I could catch was a minnow with a pin,
-which our cook Lydia would not cook, but used to say, “Oh, what a
-shame, Master Richard! they would have been trout in the summer, please
-God! if you would only a’ let ’em grow on.” She is living now, and will
-bear me out in this.
-
-But upon every great occasion there arises a great man; or to put it
-more accurately, in the present instance, a mighty and distinguished
-boy. My father, being the parson of the parish, and getting, need it
-be said, small pay, took sundry pupils, very pleasant fellows, about
-to adorn the universities. Among them was the original “Bude Light,”
-as he was satirically called at Cambridge, for he came from Bude,
-and there was no light in him. Among them also was John Pike, a born
-Zebedee, if ever there was one.
-
-John Pike was a thick-set younker, with a large and bushy head, keen
-blue eyes that could see through water, and the proper slouch of
-shoulder into which great anglers ripen; but greater still are born
-with it; and of these was Master John. It mattered little what the
-weather was, and scarcely more as to the time of year, John Pike must
-have his fishing every day, and on Sundays he read about it, and made
-flies. All the rest of the time he was thinking about it.
-
-My father was coaching him in the fourth book of the Æneid and all
-those wonderful speeches of Dido, where passion disdains construction;
-but the only line Pike cared for was of horsehair. “I fear, Mr. Pike,
-that you are not giving me your entire attention,” my father used to
-say in his mild dry way; and once when Pike was more than usually
-abroad, his tutor begged to share his meditations. “Well, sir,” said
-Pike, who was very truthful, “I can see a green drake by the strawberry
-tree, the first of the season, and your derivation of ‘barbarous’ put
-me in mind of my barberry dye.” In those days it was a very nice point
-to get the right tint for the mallard’s feather.
-
-No sooner was lesson done than Pike, whose rod was ready upon the lawn,
-dashed away always for the river, rushing headlong down the hill, and
-away to the left through a private yard, where “no thoroughfare” was
-put up, and a big dog stationed to enforce it. But Cerberus himself
-could not have stopped John Pike; his conscience backed him up in
-trespass the most sinful when his heart was inditing of a trout upon
-the rise.
-
-All this, however, is preliminary, as the boy said when he put his
-father’s coat upon his grandfather’s tenterhooks, with felonious intent
-upon his grandmother’s apples; the main point to be understood is this,
-that nothing--neither brazen tower, hundred-eyed Argus, nor Cretan
-Minotaur--could stop John Pike from getting at a good stickle. But,
-even as the world knows nothing of its greatest men, its greatest men
-know nothing of the world beneath their very nose, till fortune sneezes
-dexter. For two years John Pike must have been whipping the water as
-hard as Xerxes, without having ever once dreamed of the glorious trout
-that lived in Crocker’s Hole. But why, when he ought to have been at
-least on bowing terms with every fish as long as his middle finger, why
-had he failed to know this champion? The answer is simple--because of
-his short cuts. Flying as he did like an arrow from a bow, Pike used to
-hit his beloved river at an elbow, some furlong below Crocker’s Hole,
-where a sweet little stickle sailed away down stream, whereas for the
-length of a meadow upward the water lay smooth, clear, and shallow;
-therefore the youth, with so little time to spare, rushed into the
-downward joy.
-
-And here it may be noted that the leading maxim of the present period,
-that man can discharge his duty only by going counter to the stream,
-was scarcely mooted in those days. My grandfather (who was a wonderful
-man, if he was accustomed to fill a cart in two days of fly-fishing on
-the Barle) regularly fished down stream; and what more than a cartload
-need anyone put into his basket?
-
-And surely it is more genial and pleasant to behold our friend the
-river growing and thriving as we go on, strengthening its voice and
-enlargening its bosom, and sparkling through each successive meadow
-with richer plenitude of silver, than to trace it against its own grain
-and good-will toward weakness, and littleness, and immature conceptions.
-
-However, you will say that if John Pike had fished up stream, he would
-have found this trout much sooner. And that is true; but still, as it
-was, the trout had more time to grow into such a prize. And the way in
-which John found him out was this. For some days he had been tormented
-with a very painful tooth, which even poisoned all the joys of fishing.
-Therefore he resolved to have it out, and sturdily entered the shop of
-John Sweetland, the village blacksmith, and there paid his sixpence.
-Sweetland extracted the teeth of the village, whenever they required
-it, in the simplest and most effectual way. A piece of fine wire was
-fastened round the tooth, and the other end round the anvil’s nose,
-then the sturdy blacksmith shut the lower half of his shop door, which
-was about breast-high, with the patient outside and the anvil within; a
-strong push of the foot upset the anvil, and the tooth flew out like a
-well-thrown fly.
-
-When John Pike had suffered this very bravely, “Ah, Master Pike,” said
-the blacksmith, with a grin, “I reckon you won’t pull out thic there
-big vish,”--the smithy commanded a view of the river,--“clever as you
-be, quite so peart as thiccy.”
-
-“What big fish?” asked the boy, with deepest interest, though his mouth
-was bleeding fearfully.
-
-“Why that girt mortial of a vish as hath his hover in Crocker’s Hole.
-Zum on ’em saith as a’ must be a zammon.”
-
-Off went Pike with his handkerchief to his mouth, and after him ran
-Alec Bolt, one of his fellow-pupils, who had come to the shop to enjoy
-the extraction.
-
-“Oh, my!” was all that Pike could utter, when by craftily posting
-himself he had obtained a good view of this grand fish.
-
-“I’ll lay you a crown you don’t catch him!” cried Bolt, an impatient
-youth, who scorned angling.
-
-“How long will you give me?” asked the wary Pike, who never made rash
-wagers.
-
-“Oh! till the holidays if you like; or, if that won’t do, till
-Michaelmas.”
-
-Now the midsummer holidays were six weeks off--boys used not to talk of
-“vacations” then, still less of “recesses.”
-
-“I think I’ll bet you,” said Pike, in his slow way, bending forward
-carefully, with his keen eyes on this monster; “but it would not be
-fair to take till Michaelmas. I’ll bet you a crown that I catch him
-before the holidays--at least, unless some other fellow does.”
-
-
-
-
-PART II.
-
-
-The day of that most momentous interview must have been the 14th of
-May. Of the year I will not be so sure; for children take more note
-of days than of years, for which the latter have their full revenge
-thereafter. It must have been the 14th, because the morrow was our
-holiday, given upon the 15th of May, in honour of a birthday.
-
-Now, John Pike was beyond his years wary as well as enterprising,
-calm as well as ardent, quite as rich in patience as in promptitude
-and vigour. But Alec Bolt was a headlong youth, volatile, hot, and
-hasty, fit only to fish the Maëlstrom, or a torrent of new lava. And
-the moment he had laid that wager he expected his crown piece; though
-time, as the lawyers phrase it, was “expressly of the essence of the
-contract.” And now he demanded that Pike should spend the holiday in
-trying to catch that trout.
-
-“I shall not go near him,” that lad replied, “until I have got a new
-collar.” No piece of personal adornment was it, without which he
-would not act, but rather that which now is called the fly-cast, or
-the gut-cast, or the trace, or what it may be. “And another thing,”
-continued Pike; “the bet is off if you go near him, either now or at
-any other time, without asking my leave first, and then only going as I
-tell you.”
-
-“What do I want with the great slimy beggar?” the arrogant Bolt made
-answer. “A good rat is worth fifty of him. No fear of my going near
-him, Pike. You shan’t get out of it that way.”
-
-Pike showed his remarkable qualities that day, by fishing exactly as he
-would have fished without having heard of the great Crockerite. He was
-up and away upon the mill-stream before breakfast; and the forenoon he
-devoted to his favourite course--first down the Craddock stream, a very
-pretty confluent of the Culm, and from its junction, down the pleasant
-hams, where the river winds toward Uffculme. It was my privilege to
-accompany this hero, as his humble Sancho; while Bolt and the faster
-race went up the river ratting. We were back in time to have Pike’s
-trout (which ranged between two ounces and one-half pound) fried for
-the early dinner; and here it may be lawful to remark that the trout
-of the Culm are of the very purest excellence, by reason of the flinty
-bottom, at any rate in these the upper regions. For the valley is the
-western outlet of the Black-down range, with the Beacon hill upon the
-north, and Hackpen long ridge to the south; and beyond that again the
-Whetstone hill, upon whose western end dark port-holes scarped with
-white grit mark the pits. But flint is the staple of the broad Culm
-Valley, under good, well-pastured loam; and here are chalcedonies and
-agate stones.
-
-At dinner everybody had a brace of trout--large for the larger folk,
-little for the little ones, with coughing and some patting on the back
-for bones. What of equal purport could the fierce rat-hunter show? Pike
-explained many points in the history of each fish, seeming to know
-them none the worse, and love them all the better, for being fried. We
-banqueted, neither a whit did soul get stinted of banquet impartial.
-Then the wielder of the magic rod very modestly sought leave of absence
-at the tea time.
-
-“Fishing again, Mr. Pike, I suppose,” my father answered pleasantly; “I
-used to be fond of it at your age; but never so entirely wrapped up in
-it as you are.”
-
-“No, sir; I am not going fishing again. I want to walk to Wellington,
-to get some things at Cherry’s.”
-
-“Books, Mr. Pike? Ah! I am very glad of that. But I fear it can only be
-fly-books.”
-
-“I want a little Horace for eighteen-pence--the Cambridge one just
-published, to carry in my pocket--and a new hank of gut.”
-
-“Which of the two is more important? Put that into Latin, and answer
-it.”
-
-“Utrum pluris facio? Flaccum flocci. Viscera magni.” With this vast
-effort Pike turned as red as any trout spot.
-
-“After that who could refuse you?” said my father. “You always tell the
-truth, my boy, in Latin or in English.”
-
-Although it was a long walk, some fourteen miles to Wellington and
-back, I got permission to go with Pike; and as we crossed the bridge
-and saw the tree that overhung Crocker’s Hole, I begged him to show me
-that mighty fish.
-
-“Not a bit of it,” he replied. “It would bring the blackguards. If the
-blackguards once find him out, it is all over with him.”
-
-“The blackguards are all in factory now, and I am sure they cannot see
-us from the windows. They won’t be out till five o’clock.”
-
-With the true liberality of young England, which abides even now as
-large and glorious as ever, we always called the free and enlightened
-operatives of the period by the courteous name above set down, and it
-must be acknowledged that some of them deserved it, although perhaps
-they poached with less of science than their sons. But the cowardly
-murder of fish by liming the water was already prevalent.
-
-Yielding to my request and perhaps his own desire--manfully kept
-in check that morning--Pike very carefully approached that pool,
-commanding me to sit down while he reconnoitred from the meadow upon
-the right bank of the stream. And the place which had so sadly quenched
-the fire of the poor baker’s love filled my childish heart with dread
-and deep wonder at the cruelty of women. But as for John Pike, all he
-thought of was the fish and the best way to get at him.
-
-Very likely that hole is “holed out” now, as the Yankees well express
-it, or at any rate changed out of knowledge. Even in my time a very
-heavy flood entirely altered its character; but to the eager eye of
-Pike it seemed pretty much as follows, and possibly it may have come to
-such a form again:
-
-The river, after passing though a hurdle fence at the head of the
-meadow, takes a little turn or two of bright and shallow indifference,
-then gathers itself into a good strong slide, as if going down a slope
-instead of steps. The right bank is high and beetles over with yellow
-loam and grassy fringe; but the other side is of flinty shingle, low
-and bare and washed by floods. At the end of this rapid, the stream
-turns sharply under an ancient alder tree into a large, deep, calm
-repose, cool, unruffled, and sheltered from the sun by branch and
-leaf--and that is the hole of poor Crocker.
-
-At the head of the pool (where the hasty current rushes in so
-eagerly, with noisy excitement and much ado) the quieter waters from
-below, having rested and enlarged themselves, come lapping up round
-either curve, with some recollection of their past career, the hoary
-experience of foam. And sidling toward the new arrival of the impulsive
-column, where they meet it, things go on, which no man can describe
-without his mouth being full of water. A “V” is formed, a fancy letter
-V, beyond any designer’s tracery, and even beyond his imagination,
-a perpetually fluctuating limpid wedge, perpetually crenelled and
-rippled into by little ups and downs that try to make an impress, but
-can only glide away upon either side or sink in dimples under it. And
-here a gray bough of the ancient alder stretches across, like a thirsty
-giant’s arm, and makes it a very ticklish place to throw a fly. Yet
-this was the very spot our John Pike must put his fly into, or lose his
-crown.
-
-Because the great tenant of Crocker’s Hole, who allowed no other fish
-to wag a fin there, and from strict monopoly had grown so fat, kept
-his victualing yard--if so low an expression can be used concerning
-him--within about a square yard of this spot. He had a sweet hover,
-both for rest and recreation, under the bank, in a placid antre, where
-the water made no noise, but tickled his belly in digestive ease. The
-loftier the character is of any being, the slower and more dignified
-his movements are. No true psychologist could have believed--as
-Sweetland the blacksmith did, and Mr. Pook the tinman--that this trout
-could ever be the embodiment of Crocker. For this was the last trout in
-the universal world to drown himself for love; if truly any trout has
-done so.
-
-“You may come now, and try to look along my back,” John Pike, with
-a reverential whisper, said to me. “Now don’t be in a hurry, young
-stupid; kneel down. He is not to be disturbed at his dinner, mind. You
-keep behind me, and look along my back; I never clapped eyes on such a
-whopper.”
-
-I had to kneel down in a tender reminiscence of pasture land, and gaze
-carefully; and not having eyes like those of our Zebedee (who offered
-his spine for a camera, as he crawled on all fours in front of me), it
-took me a long time to descry an object most distinct to all who have
-that special gift of piercing with their eyes the water. See what is
-said upon this subject in that delicious book, “The Gamekeeper at Home.”
-
-“You are no better than a muff,” said Pike, and it was not in my power
-to deny it.
-
-“If the sun would only leave off,” I said. But the sun, who was having
-a very pleasant play with the sparkle of the water and the twinkle of
-the leaves, had no inclination to leave off yet, but kept the rippling
-crystal in a dance of flashing facets, and the quivering verdure in a
-steady flush of gold.
-
-But suddenly a May-fly, a luscious gray-drake, richer and more delicate
-than canvas-back or woodcock, with a dart and a leap and a merry
-zigzag, began to enjoy a little game above the stream. Rising and
-falling like a gnat, thrilling her gauzy wings, and arching her elegant
-pellucid frame, every now and then she almost dipped her three long
-tapering whisks into the dimples of the water.
-
-“He sees her! He’ll have her as sure as a gun!” cried Pike, with a
-gulp, as if he himself were “rising.” “Now, can you see him, stupid?”
-
-“Crikey, crokums!” I exclaimed, with classic elegance; “I have seen
-that long thing for five minutes; but I took it for a tree.”
-
-“You little”--animal quite early in the alphabet--“now don’t you stir a
-peg, or I’ll dig my elbow into you.”
-
-The great trout was stationary almost as a stone, in the middle of the
-“V” above described. He was gently fanning with his large clear fins,
-but holding his own against the current mainly by the wagging of his
-broad-fluked tail. As soon as my slow eyes had once defined him, he
-grew upon them mightily, moulding himself in the matrix of the water,
-as a thing put into jelly does. And I doubt whether even John Pike saw
-him more accurately than I did. His size was such, or seemed to be
-such, that I fear to say a word about it; not because language does not
-contain the word, but from dread of exaggeration. But his shape and
-colour may be reasonably told without wounding the feeling of an age
-whose incredulity springs from self-knowledge.
-
-His head was truly small, his shoulders vast; the spring of his back
-was like a rainbow when the sun is southing; the generous sweep of his
-deep elastic belly, nobly pulped out with rich nurture, showed what
-the power of his brain must be, and seemed to undulate, time for time,
-with the vibrant vigilance of his large wise eyes. His latter end was
-consistent also. An elegant taper run of counter, coming almost to a
-cylinder, as a mackered does, boldly developed with a hugeous spread to
-a glorious amplitude of swallow-tail. His colour was all that can well
-be desired, but ill-described by any poor word-palette. Enough that
-he seemed to tone away from olive and umber, with carmine stars, to
-glowing gold and soft pure silver, mantled with a subtle flush of rose
-and fawn and opal.
-
-Swoop came a swallow, as we gazed, and was gone with a flick, having
-missed the May-fly. But the wind of his passage, or the skir of wing,
-struck the merry dancer down, so that he fluttered for one instant on
-the wave, and that instant was enough. Swift as the swallow, and more
-true of aim, the great trout made one dart, and a sound, deeper than a
-tinkle, but as silvery as a bell, rang the poor ephemerid’s knell. The
-rapid water scarcely showed a break; but a bubble sailed down the pool,
-and the dark hollow echoed with the music of a rise.
-
-“He knows how to take a fly,” said Pike; “he has had too many to be
-tricked with mine. Have him I must; but how ever shall I do it?”
-
-All the way to Wellington he uttered not a word, but shambled along
-with a mind full of care. When I ventured to look up now and then,
-to surmise what was going on beneath his hat, deeply-set eyes and
-a wrinkled forehead, relieved at long intervals by a solid shake,
-proved that there are meditations deeper than those of philosopher or
-statesman.
-
-
-
-
-PART III.
-
-
-Surely no trout could have been misled by the artificial May-fly
-of that time, unless he were either a very young fish, quite new
-to entomology, or else one afflicted with a combination of myopy
-and bulimy. Even now there is room for plenty of improvement in our
-counterfeit presentment; but in those days the body was made with
-yellow mohair, ribbed with red silk and gold twist, and as thick as a
-fertile bumble-bee. John Pike perceived that to offer such a thing to
-Crocker’s trout would probably consign him--even if his great stamina
-should over-get the horror--to an uneatable death, through just and
-natural indignation. On the other hand, while the May-fly lasted, a
-trout so cultured, so highly refined, so full of light and sweetness,
-would never demean himself to low bait, or any coarse son of a maggot.
-
-Meanwhile Alec Bolt allowed poor Pike no peaceful thought, no calm
-absorption of high mind into the world of flies, no placid period of
-cobblers’ wax, floss-silk, turned hackles, and dubbing. For in making
-of flies John Pike had his special moments of inspiration, times of
-clearer insight into the everlasting verities, times of brighter
-conception and more subtle execution, tails of more elastic grace
-and heads of a neater and nattier expression. As a poet labours at
-one immortal line, compressing worlds of wisdom into the music of
-ten syllables, so toiled the patient Pike about the fabric of a fly
-comprising all the excellence that ever sprang from maggot. Yet Bolt
-rejoiced to jerk his elbow at the moment of sublimest art. And a swarm
-of flies was blighted thus.
-
-Peaceful, therefore, and long-suffering, and full of resignation as he
-was, John Pike came slowly to the sad perception that arts avail not
-without arms. The elbow, so often jerked, at last took a voluntary jerk
-from the shoulder and Alec Bolt lay prostrate, with his right eye full
-of cobbler’s wax. This put a desirable check upon his energies for a
-week or more, and by that time Pike had flown his fly.
-
-When the honeymoon of spring and summer (which they are now too
-fashionable to celebrate in this country), the hey-day of the whole
-year marked by the budding of the wild rose, the start of the wheatear
-from its sheath, the feathering of the lesser plantain, and flowering
-of the meadow-sweet, and, foremost for the angler’s joy, the caracole
-of May-flies--when these things are to be seen and felt (which has not
-happened at all this year), then rivers should be mild and bright,
-skies blue and white with fleecy cloud, the west wind blowing softly,
-and the trout in charming appetite.
-
-On such a day came Pike to the bank of Culm, with a loudly beating
-heart. A fly there is, not ignominious, or of cowdab origin, neither
-gross and heavy-bodied, from cradlehood of slimy stones, nor yet of
-menacing aspect and suggesting deeds of poison, but elegant, bland,
-and of sunny nature, and obviously good to eat. Him or her--why quest
-we which?--the shepherd of the dale, contemptuous of gender, except in
-his own species, has called, and as long as they two coexist will call,
-the “Yellow Sally.” A fly that does not waste the day in giddy dances
-and the fervid waltz, but undergoes family incidents with decorum and
-discretion. He or she, as the case may be,--for the natural history of
-the river bank is a book to come hereafter, and of fifty men who make
-flies not one knows the name of the fly he is making,--in the early
-morning of June, or else in the second quarter of the afternoon, this
-Yellow Sally fares abroad, with a nice well-ordered flutter.
-
-Despairing of the May-fly, as it still may be despaired of, Pike came
-down to the river with his master-piece of portraiture. The artificial
-Yellow Sally is generally always--as they say in Cheshire--a mile or
-more too yellow. On the other hand, the “Yellow Dun” conveys no idea
-of any Sally. But Pike had made a very decent Sally, not perfect (for
-he was young as well as wise), but far above any counterfeit to be had
-in fishing-tackle shops. How he made it, he told nobody. But if he
-lives now, as I hope he does, any of my readers may ask him through the
-G. P. O., and hope to get an answer.
-
-It fluttered beautifully on the breeze, and in such living form, that
-a brother or sister Sally came up to see it, and went away sadder and
-wiser. Then Pike said: “Get away, you young wretch,” to your humble
-servant who tells this tale; yet being better than his words, allowed
-that pious follower to lie down upon his digestive organs and with deep
-attention watch. There must have been great things to see, but to see
-them so was difficult. And if I huddle up what happened, excitement
-also shares the blame.
-
-Pike had fashioned well the time and manner of this overture. He knew
-that the giant Crockerite was satiate now with May-flies, or began to
-find their flavour failing, as happens to us with asparagus, marrow-fat
-peas, or strawberries, when we have had a month of them. And he thought
-that the first Yellow Sally of the season, inferior though it were,
-might have the special charm of novelty. With the skill of a Zulu,
-he stole up through the branches over the lower pool till he came to
-a spot where a yard-wide opening gave just space for spring of rod.
-Then he saw his desirable friend at dinner, wagging his tail, as a
-hungry gentleman dining with the Lord Mayor agitates his coat. With one
-dexterous whirl, untaught by any of the many books upon the subject,
-John Pike laid his Yellow Sally (for he cast with one fly only) as
-lightly as gossamer upon the rapid, about a yard in front of the big
-trout’s head. A moment’s pause, and then, too quick for words, was the
-things that happened.
-
-A heavy plunge was followed by a fearful rush. Forgetful of current the
-river was ridged, as if with a plough driven under it; the strong line,
-though given out as fast as might be, twanged like a harp-string as it
-cut the wave, and then Pike stood up, like a ship dismasted, with the
-butt of his rod snapped below the ferrule. He had one of those foolish
-things, just invented, a hollow butt of hickory; and the finial ring of
-his spare top looked out, to ask what had happened to the rest of it.
-“Bad luck!” cried the fisherman; “but never mind, I shall have him next
-time, to a certainty.”
-
-When this great issue came to be considered, the cause of it was sadly
-obvious. The fish, being hooked, had made off with the rush of a shark
-for the bottom of the pool. A thicket of saplings below the alder tree
-had stopped the judicious hooker from all possibility of following; and
-when he strove to turn him by elastic pliance, his rod broke at the
-breach of pliability. “I have learned a sad lesson,” said John Pike,
-looking sadly.
-
-How many fellows would have given up this matter, and glorified
-themselves for having hooked so grand a fish, while explaining that
-they must have caught him, if they could have done it! But Pike only
-told me not to say a word about it, and began to make ready for
-another tug of war. He made himself a splice-rod, short and handy, of
-well-seasoned ash, with a stout top of bamboo, tapered so discreetly,
-and so balanced in its spring, that verily it formed an arc, with any
-pressure on it, as perfect as a leafy poplar in a stormy summer. “Now
-break it if you can,” he said, “by any amount of rushes; I’ll hook you
-by your jacket collar; you cut away now, and I’ll land you.”
-
-This was highly skilful, and he did it many times; and whenever I was
-landed well, I got a lollypop, so that I was careful not to break his
-tackle. Moreover he made him a landing net, with a kidney-bean stick,
-a ring of wire, and his own best nightcap of strong cotton net. Then
-he got the farmer’s leave, and lopped obnoxious bushes; and now the
-chiefest question was: what bait, and when to offer it? In spite of
-his sad rebuff, the spirit of John Pike had been equable. The genuine
-angling mind is steadfast, large, and self-supported, and to the vapid,
-ignominious chaff, tossed by swine upon the idle wind, it pays as
-much heed as a big trout does to a dance of midges. People put their
-fingers to their noses and said: “Master Pike, have you caught him
-yet?” and Pike only answered: “Wait a bit.” If ever this fortitude and
-perseverance is to be recovered as the English Brand (the one thing
-that has made us what we are, and may yet redeem us from niddering
-shame), a degenerate age should encourage the habit of fishing and
-never despairing. And the brightest sign yet for our future is the
-increasing demand for hooks and gut.
-
-Pike fished in a manlier age, when nobody would dream of cowering from
-a savage because he was clever at skulking; and when, if a big fish
-broke the rod, a stronger rod was made for him, according to the usage
-of Great Britain. And though the young angler had been defeated, he did
-not sit down and have a good cry over it.
-
-About the second week in June, when the May-fly had danced its day,
-and died,--for the season was an early one,--and Crocker’s trout had
-recovered from the wound to his feelings and philanthropy, there came
-a night of gentle rain, of pleasant tinkling upon window ledges, and
-a soothing patter among young leaves, and the Culm was yellow in the
-morning. “I mean to do it this afternoon,” Pike whispered to me, as
-he came back panting. “When the water clears there will be a splendid
-time.”
-
-The lover of the rose knows well a gay voluptuous beetle, whose
-pleasure is to lie embedded in a fount of beauty. Deep among the
-incurving petals of the blushing fragrance, he loses himself in his
-joys sometimes, till a breezy waft reveals him. And when the sunlight
-breaks upon his luscious dissipation, few would have the heart to oust
-him, such a gem from such a setting. All his back is emerald sparkles;
-all his front red Indian gold, and here and there he grows white spots
-to save the eye from aching. Pike put his finger in and fetched him
-out, and offered him a little change of joys, by putting a Limerick
-hook through his thorax, and bringing it out between his elytra.
-_Cetonia aurata_ liked it not, but pawed the air very naturally, and
-fluttered with his wings attractively.
-
-“I meant to have tried with a fern-web”, said the angler; “until I
-saw one of these beggars this morning. If he works like that upon the
-water, he will do. It was hopeless to try artificials again. What a
-lovely colour the water is! Only three days now to the holidays. I have
-run it very close. You be ready, younker.”
-
-With these words he stepped upon a branch of the alder, for the tone of
-the waters allowed approach, being soft and sublustrous, without any
-mud. Also Master Pike’s own tone was such as becomes the fisherman,
-calm, deliberate, free from nerve, but full of eye and muscle. He
-stepped upon the alder bough to get as near as might be to the fish,
-for he could not cast this beetle like a fly; it must be dropped gently
-and allowed to play. “You may come and look,” he said to me; “when the
-water is so, they have no eyes in their tails.”
-
-The rose-beetle trod upon the water prettily, under a lively vibration,
-and he looked quite as happy, and considerably more active, than when
-he had been cradled in the anthers of the rose. To the eye of a fish he
-was a strong individual, fighting courageously with the current, but
-sure to be beaten through lack of fins; and mercy suggested, as well as
-appetite, that the proper solution was to gulp him.
-
-“Hooked him in the gullet. He can’t get off!” cried John Pike,
-labouring to keep his nerves under; “every inch of tackle is as strong
-as a bell-pull. Now, if I don’t land him, I will never fish again!”
-
-Providence, which had constructed Pike, foremost of all things, for
-lofty angling--disdainful of worm and even minnow--Providence, I say,
-at this adjuration, pronounced that Pike must catch that trout. Not
-many anglers are heaven-born; and for one to drop off the hook halfway
-through his teens would be infinitely worse than to slay the champion
-trout. Pike felt the force of this, and rushing through the rushes,
-shouted: “I am sure to have him, Dick! Be ready with my nightcap.”
-
-Rod in a bow, like a springle-riser; line on the hum, like the string
-of Paganini; winch on the gallop, like a harpoon wheel, Pike, the
-head-centre of everything, dashing through thick and thin, and once
-taken overhead--for he jumped into the hole, when he must have lost
-him else, but the fish too impetuously towed him out, and made off in
-passion for another pool, when, if he had only retired to his hover,
-the angler might have shared the baker’s fate--all these things (I
-tell you, for they all come up again, as if the day were yesterday) so
-scared me of my never very steadfast wits, that I could only holloa!
-But one thing I did, I kept the nightcap ready.
-
-“He is pretty nearly spent, I do believe,” said Pike; and his voice was
-like balm of Gilead, as we came to Farmer Anning’s meadow, a quarter of
-a mile below Crocker’s Hole. “Take it coolly, my dear boy, and we shall
-be safe to have him.”
-
-Never have I felt, through forty years, such tremendous responsibility.
-I had not the faintest notion how to use a landing net; but a mighty
-general directed me. “Don’t let him see it; don’t let him see it! Don’t
-clap it over him; go under him, you stupid! If he makes another rush,
-he will get off, after all. Bring it up his tail. Well done! You have
-him!”
-
-The mighty trout lay in the nightcap of Pike, which was half a fathom
-long, with a tassel at the end, for his mother had made it in the
-winter evenings. “Come and hold the rod, if you can’t lift him,” my
-master shouted, and so I did. Then, with both arms straining, and his
-mouth wide open, John Pike made a mighty sweep, and we both fell upon
-the grass and rolled, with the giant of the deep flapping heavily
-between us, and no power left to us, except to cry, “Hurrah!”
-
-
-THE END.
-
-
-  CHISWICK PRESS:--CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
-  TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes
-
-
-Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
-predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
-changed.
-
-Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
-quotation marks retained.
-
-Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
-
-Page 30: “facundity” was printed that way.
-
-Page 86: “cinamon” was printed that way.
-
-Page 125: “tired her hair in the Grecian snood” was printed that way.
-
-
-
-
-
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