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[Illustration: CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
Fourth Series
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.
NO. 735. SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1878. PRICE 1½_d._]
QUEEN’S MESSENGERS.
Somewhat more than forty years ago, Mr Baillie Fraser published a
lively and instructive volume under the title _A Winter’s Journey
(Tatâr) from Constantinople to Teheran_. Political complications
had arisen between Russia and Turkey‒an old story, of which we are
witnessing a new version at the present time. The English government
deemed it urgently necessary to send out instructions to our
representatives at Constantinople and Teheran; and this could only be
done in those days by means of Messengers bold and hardy enough to bear
a great amount of fatigue in the saddle. Mr Fraser, intrusted with this
duty, told the tale of his hard work. The word _Tatâr_, in Turkey, is
applied to a native courier, guide, and companion, a hardy horseman who
fulfils all these functions, speaking two or more languages, and ready
to do the best that can be done to overcome the multiplied tribulations
of regions almost roadless and innless. When travelling Tatâr, these
men have been known to make truly wonderful journeys on horseback. One
of special character was made in 1815, when the British government
wished to convey to Persia the stirring news of the escape of Napoleon
from Elba. The British Embassy at Constantinople sent a Messenger from
thence to Demavend, a Persian city nearly two thousand miles distant,
across a dangerously rugged country; this amazing horse-ride was
accomplished in seventeen days; averaging nearly a hundred and twenty
miles a day.
Mr Baillie Fraser gives a vivid description of his own experience
in this kind of life, riding day and night, and stopping only when
the absolute need of a few hours’ rest drove him into a wretched
post-house or a mere hovel. It was ‘a Tatâr journey of two thousand
six hundred miles, which for fatigue and anxiety, and suffering from
cold and exposure, I will venture to match against anything of the
sort that ever was done.’ First came seven hundred and fifty miles
across European Turkey, from Belgrade to Constantinople; and then
seven hundred along the whole extent of Asia Minor to Amasia; but
during the remaining seven weeks of the journey, he says: ‘We have been
wading night and day through interminable wastes of deep snow, exposed
to all the violence of storms, drift, and wind, with the thermometer
frequently from fifteen to twenty degrees below zero. Our clothes and
faces and beards were clotted into stiff masses of ice; our boots, hard
as iron, frozen to the stirrup; and our limbs tortured with pain, or
chilled into insensibility by intense cold.’
Another famous journey across European Turkey, in 1849, has been
described by Major Byng Hall, whose volume we shall presently advert
to. A Messenger was directed to haste as fast as horse-flesh could
carry him from Belgrade to the Morava, then on through Alexinitz and
Nissa, across the Balkans, and so on through Sofia to Constantinople‒in
great part the very route which Russian and Turkish troops have been
devastating. When he crossed the Balkans at one of the passes or
ravines, he had been riding continually night and day, and reeled
backward and forward in his saddle; and more than once he nearly fell
to the ground through exhaustion and want of sleep, at places where
precipices were perilously near. He reached Constantinople in five days
eleven hours from Belgrade, contending the whole time on horseback
against wind, mud, and rain. Sir Stratford Canning (now Lord Stratford
de Redcliffe), British ambassador at Constantinople, complimented him
by saying that it was ‘the quickest winter journey ever known.’ Lord
Palmerston adverted in the House of Commons to this journey, on an
occasion when some members were animadverting on the great cost of the
diplomatic service: ‘As a proof of the zeal with which these royal
Messengers render their services to the government of this country,
I will mention an instance in which one of these gentlemen performed
his duty on an occasion when it was required that he should make an
extraordinary effort in order to carry a despatch of very considerable
importance from the Foreign Office to Constantinople, at a time when a
question was pending between Russia and Turkey. He was days and nights
in the saddle without quitting it, and performed the journey in the
worst weather and under the greatest possible difficulties.’
Major Byng Hall, just named, has published a pleasant work under the
title of the _Queen’s Messenger_, recounting some of his own journeys
and those of his colleagues. Amongst others was a sledge-journey to
St Petersburg in midwinter; when his driver got intoxicated, drove
into some sledges coming in the opposite direction, and nearly brought
about a perilous scene of scuffle and bloodshed‒all in a dark night
amid enormous accumulations of snow. He draws attention to the varied
qualifications necessary to any one who fills this office: ‘No man,
be he who he may, who holds the post of one of Her Majesty’s foreign
Messengers, and who must, for the due performance of the constant and
arduous duties intrusted to him, be acquainted with foreign languages,
but must obtain much knowledge by the wayside, impracticable if not
impossible to the holiday traveller’‒which all becomes essentially
serviceable to him in subsequent journeys. A writer in _Blackwood_
pleasantly spoke a few years ago of these ‘foreign Mercuries, who
travel throughout Europe at a pace only short of the telegraph. They
are wonderful fellows, and must be very variously endowed. What capital
sleepers, and yet so easily awakened! What a deal of bumping must their
heads be equal to! What an indifference must they be endowed with to
bad dinners, bad roads, bad servants, and bad smells! How patient must
they be here, how peremptory there! How they must train their stomachs
to long fastings, and their skin to little soap!’
And now for a brief account of the organisation of this small but
remarkable body of men.
The Queen’s Messengers of the present day are virtually _employés_ of
the Foreign Office; seeing that the conveyance of despatches to and
from British ambassadors and representatives at foreign courts is the
chief duty intrusted to them. Many a declaration of war has been thus
conveyed.
About thirty years ago the House of Commons requested and obtained from
the Foreign Office an account of the expense connected with the system
of Queen’s Messengers. The payments to these gentlemen were found to
be made up in an odd way, such as no commercial firm would dream of
adopting. There was a small annual salary, whether the Messenger were
travelling or not. There were board wages, so much per day when in
actual service. There was an allowance for his trouble, anxiety, and
fatigue in riding and driving along‒so much a mile if on horseback, so
much in a vehicle, so much in a steam-boat. There was a reimbursement
for actual outlay for railways, vehicles, horses, postillions,
hostlers, road and bridge tolls, passports, loss on exchange of moneys,
&c. This reimbursement was in nearly all cases more than he actually
paid, owing to the liberal scale on which it was calculated.
Every Messenger, it was found, received about four hundred a year
for himself, and six hundred for travel-outlay. Some of the journeys,
we learn from the parliamentary paper, were enormously expensive;
railways on the continent were at that time comparatively few, and the
old system of posting and horse-riding had still to be kept up over
very long distances. One single journey from London to Frankfurt was
set down at L.46; to Berlin, L.70; to Turin, L.83; to Vienna, L.86; to
Madrid, L.123; to Rome, L.143; to Naples, L.162. The giant items were:
London to St Petersburg _viâ_ Berlin (1964 miles), L.166; and London to
Constantinople _viâ_ Vienna (2192 miles), L.269. It is probable that at
that time there was scarcely any rail beyond Vienna, whatever may have
been the case on this side; and that the Messenger to Constantinople
had to travel by relays of horses or of post vehicles more than eleven
hundred miles of his journey. The outward journey alone is mentioned in
each instance; the homeward was probably about equal to it in cost. One
Messenger, Mr Crotch, went from Calais to Paris (carrying despatches
which had come from London _viâ_ Dover) sixteen times in the year,
and sixteen times in the reverse direction; receiving about L.25 per
journey for expenses and emoluments.
In 1868 the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs resolved that the
time had come for remodelling the system. In a circular addressed to
all British representatives abroad, he pointed out numerous ways in
which the number of despatches sent might be reduced, and the expense
lessened still more considerably. The post and the electric telegraph
might safely be intrusted, under the improved modern arrangements, with
many of the questions, answers, and instructions hitherto conveyed by
Queen’s Messengers. It was also pointed out that, when telegrams were
sent, an unnecessary verbiage was indulged in, tending to increase
the cost without in any way conducing to the intelligibility of the
message. The employment of cipher-writing[A] would be available by post
and by telegraph as well as by Messenger, so long as the key to the
cipher is known only to the Foreign Office.
Irrespective of the quantity of circumlocution involved in the
matter, there is the question of emolument to the Messengers
employed. The Foreign Secretary found, on close examination, that
these gentlemen were in the receipt of eight hundred a year each on
an average. The amount had doubled itself in the course of twenty
years, chiefly by means of the profit derived from the allowance for
travelling‒economical railway and steam-boat fares being charged to
the government as if they were the expensive old-fashioned fares. Thus
the mileage _profit_ increased as the mileage _expenditure_ decreased.
All these lumbering arrangements were swept away, and a fixed salary
decided on, just as for government clerks, &c. Five hundred a year was
the amount decided on, to be paid whether the Messenger were employed
or unemployed, whether at home or abroad.
It need hardly be said that by the introduction of railways the duties
of these Messengers have been immensely simplified. ‘For many years
they have scarcely if ever been called upon to travel on horseback; the
communication with Constantinople, which was formerly carried on partly
by that means, having for some time past been wholly kept up by railway
and steam-vessel. In consequence of the accelerated rate of travelling
by railway, they are rarely kept out of bed as formerly, for six,
eight, ten, or even more nights; and even when they are travelling at
night, they are almost always able to enjoy uninterrupted rest, instead
of being obliged, as formerly, to be constantly on the alert, in order
to stimulate the exertions of postillions and owner.’
The salary was subsequently settled by making the amount five hundred
guineas instead of pounds.
Important personages in their way are these foreign Messengers,
sufficiently high in social position to comprise among their number (at
the present time) an ‘honourable,’ a major, and six captains. Evidently
the post is eagerly sought for when a vacancy occurs. One of those at
present in the service has been a Messenger during the long period of
thirty-five years: what a prodigious amount of travel he must have
gone through! Good salaries are not the only attractions; several past
Messengers have retired on pensions, pretty well wearied of knocking
about Europe; while widows of Messengers receive allowances under
exceptional circumstances.
Smart-looking personages are these messengers, as attired to
distinguish them from ordinary civilians. The official regulations on
this subject tell us that ‘the Messengers must be furnished with a
uniform‒consisting of a dark-blue cloth double-breasted frock coat with
turn-down collar; blue single-breasted waistcoat, buttoned up to the
throat, with edging of gold-lace; trousers of Oxford mixture, with a
scarlet cord down the side seams; gilt buttons embossed with the royal
arms encircled by the crown and garter, and having a greyhound pendent;
blue cloth cap with leather peak, band of black braid, and the royal
cipher and crown gilt in front; a badge of the regulation size, with
the royal crown and silver greyhound pendent, suspended from the neck
by a dark-blue ribbon. This uniform, and more especially the badge,
must be always worn by Messengers when travelling; but the badge must
not be worn at any other time.’
We have said nothing of home Messengers, those who carry despatches
to and fro within the limits of the British Islands. Nor indeed is
there much to say concerning them. They are fewer in number, and less
handsomely paid than those employed abroad. Under the system which
prevailed before the reforms effected eight or nine years ago, each
home Messenger had quite a medley of emoluments‒so much fixed salary,
so much board wages, so much excess or surplus above actual travelling
expenses of all kinds. This is now altered; each Messenger receives a
definite annual remuneration for his services‒less than formerly, but
quite sufficient for the kind of work done. In fact postal facilities
and the electric telegraph are gradually lessening the necessity for
the adoption of the Messenger system. Nevertheless there are times when
a home Messenger is thrown upon his own resources. When the Queen is at
Balmoral, and floods and snow-storms block the railways and render the
roads impassable, the Messenger must perforce get on somehow or other
with his despatch bag, at any cost of money, toil, and anxiety; and he
_does_ get on, although the newspapers are not told much about it.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The readers of _Chambers’s Journal_ are not without the means of
knowing something of cipher-writing. Vol. XX. (1853), page 161, and
Vol. IV. (1855), page 134, contain much curious information on the
subject, applicable equally to the present time.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE
CHAPTER V.‒IN THE WASTE.
It was Wednesday, a half-holiday at the village school of High Tor, and
the work of learning and the yet harder toil of teaching were for that
day over. Ethel Gray had seen the last of her released pupils scamper
joyously off homewards, and was busied in putting away books and maps,
when the clatter of heavy shoes caused her to turn her eyes towards
the doorway, wherein stood a tall slip of a girl, looking absurdly
big and bony for the clothes which she had outgrown. Ethel knew the
freckled face, and smiled pleasantly in answer to its owner’s grin of
recognition.
‘If you please, miss,’ said the new-comer, sidling towards the
school-mistress‒‘if you please, mother sent I down from the moor to
say how ’twas my little brother didn’t ’tend here nouther Monday, nor
yetterer Tuesday, nor now. Little Lenny be down in the fever; that’s
why he ben’t here, please.’
‘What fever?’ asked Ethel. She had not been long enough at High Tor to
become thoroughly familiar with the diction of the country folks.
‘_The_ fever, to be sure!’ reiterated the tall girl, who might have
been some fourteen years of age, amazed that so learned a personage as
she took Miss Gray to be should boggle over so patent a physiological
fact. ‘It do be going about most at fall-time; but Lenny’s only a wishy
one, ye know, so he’s took with the shiver fits in June, getting wet at
the hayfield; and so, mother bein’ main fond o’ he, as we ’m all, when
he begs her to “let Miss Gray, to school, know ’twarn’t his fault,”
why mother says: “Betty, get thee down to village and do the child’s
arrand.” That be all.’
The quick tears rose glistening to Ethel’s eyes. There was something
pathetic in the idea of this tiny sufferer tossing on his bed of pain
beneath the rotting thatch of the cottage among the moorlands, and
anxious to excuse his involuntary default to the kind teacher whom
he had already learned to love. He was a pet pupil of Ethel’s, this
wee boy Lenny, or Leonard Mudge by name, as being one of those rare
learners who seem to thirst after the fountains of knowledge towards
which others have to be cajoled or driven. Day after day had the new
school-mistress seen Lenny in class, the readiest to come, the least
eager to leave, his bright large eyes intent upon the face of his
instructress.
The parents had been proud of the little fellow’s cleverness, and with
an unselfishness not universal in the poor and struggling class to
which they belonged, had contrived not merely to save the school-pence
that supplemented the government grant, but to send the boy down under
such escort as could be found for him, day after day. Now it was a
carter, who would perch Lenny on the shaft of his rough chariot; now
a stalwart lass, bent on earning her ninepence for a day’s hard work
at the washing-tub, and who allowed the little scholar to trot by her
side; sometimes a mushroom-gatherer or gleaner of whortleberries
from the waste, and who was not unwilling to take temporary charge of
Lenny. Sometimes, as a great concession, Sister Betty would be spared
from weeding or cow-tending, to convoy Leonard, too young to go alone,
to High Tor. As for Betty herself, she had been relegated, long ago
in the bygone days of her own short schooling, into the category of
unteachables. She was a good girl; but two successive mistresses had
given her up as a hopeless dunce, long before Betty began to earn
two-thirds of her own living, and Ethel Gray to be mistress of High Tor
school.
‘I’ll go and see Lenny. It is a half-holiday for me, you know, as well
as for the children. How far is it, Betty? But I’m sure it is not too
far, for I am a tolerable walker, if you will shew me the way,’ said
Ethel impulsively. Now this, as Betty knew, was the very consummation
which her mother, whose perceptions had been for the time sharpened by
the stimulus of maternal love, desired to bring about. The moorland
lass was not much of a diplomatist, but she was quite well aware that
to exaggerate the difficulties of an enterprise is often to damp the
spirits of those who undertake it.
‘It’s not fur,’ said Betty argumentatively; ‘that’s to say,’ she added,
as her conscience smote her, ‘not to call fur, but a goodish walk. But
’tis mortal fine to-day. And Lenny he’d be so glad!’
Ethel hesitated no longer, but merely mentioning her errand to the
decent old village dame who was her housekeeper and factotum, threw her
rain-cloak over her arm‒no bad precaution in that moist climate‒and
under Betty’s guidance set forth. As to the beauty of the day, Betty
was speaking within bounds when she described it as ‘mortal fine.’ The
sparkling sky was as blue as a sapphire, and the breeze balmy enough to
have blown over the orange groves and geranium hedges of Bermuda. It
was, in short, one of those so-called ‘gaudy’ mornings which rarely,
in the uncertain climate of our latitudes, finish as they have begun;
least of all among the wilds of savage Dartmoor, the very cradle and
nesting-place of bad weather.
A long walk it was, over rough and smooth, over wet and dry, by road
and track of very various quality, to the cluster of moorland cottages,
far off in an upland valley, where dwelt the Mudge family. Betty knew
the mileage pretty well, but she kept the information to herself,
lest, as she said in her own heart, ‘school-mistress’ should be
‘scared.’ She had a very poor opinion personally of the physical powers
of book-learned fellow-creatures; but when she found how well her
companion kept pace with her on the steep hill-side, she paused once to
say, with shy approval: ‘’Tis yarely well ye walk, miss. We’ll be there
before long.’
A curiously contrasted pair would these two have appeared, had any
competent observer been there to note the difference between them,
as they scaled the edges of the lofty table-land, gashed by ravines
and dotted by crags, which constitutes Dartmoor. Betty’s personal
appearance has been mentioned. To say that a young female looks lanky
and gawky, may, however frequently such adjectives are upon feminine
lips, be thought to imply some irreverence towards the sex. But it
would be impossible to conceive an accurate idea of Betty Mudge without
constructing an ideal portrait of her that should depict her as gawky
and lanky, a large-boned, freckled, well-meaning young creature,
willingly accepting the responsibilities of a life of hard work and
contented ignorance.
Ethel Gray, on the other hand, was a very beautiful girl. Beauty, as we
know, is independent of its surroundings, and there is no reason why
a village schoolmistress should not possess that dangerous gift. Her
plain dress, her plain little hat, could not hide the fact that her
figure was faultless, and that she possessed a lovely face and hair
that in its dark luxuriance deserved to be called magnificent. What
was more remarkable was the sweet dignity of her manner, frank and
unpretending as it was. No one could be gentler than Ethel. Children
were at home with her at once. But she seemed to be one of those who
are born to be respected, without advancing any especial claim to
consideration.
Lenny Mudge’s sister ought to have known better than to have entered,
with the rash confidence of youth, on what was really five miles of
rough walking, on that most treacherous of days, locally denominated
as ‘spoiled,’ when a sunny morning is succeeded by the oncoming of a
mist as dense as if it had boiled up from the sullen shores of Cocytus
or Acheron. The fog fell, as Dartmoor fogs did fall before Britain
saw the Roman eagles, with the rapidity of a theatrical drop-scene
cutting off the mimic presentment from the clapping hands and levelled
opera-glasses of the spectators. Only in this case it was stern reality.
‘Doan’t you be afeard, miss,’ said Betty sturdily; ‘I be moorland born
and bred, and I’ll hammer it out somehow.’
But this boast was more easy to make than to fulfil, for everywhere
hung, poised in air, something like a silvery veil, shutting out
from sight all familiar landmarks, and rendering it impossible to
distinguish any object two paces distant. The mist had fallen so
abruptly from the huge Tors, as it seemed, that rose here and there
like watch-towers of the waste, that a fanciful imagination might have
conceived the seething vapour to represent a semi-transparent drapery,
suddenly cast from a giant hand over land and sea.
But a minute or two before, Ethel had allowed her eyes to rest
admiringly on the many-coloured surface of the vast moor, here robed
in purple of imperial splendour, there of tenderest green, and anon
brown or crimson or bluish gray, as shrub and berry and weed and
wild-flower dappled the rolling ocean of heather. Then below was the
cultured plain, furrowed by thickly wooded clefts, through which the
Dartmoor streams ran brawling to the sea, that lay calm and blue and
flecked with white sails, so plainly within the range of vision. And
now all was changed, and it was fog, fog, and fog only, girdling in the
wayfarers on every hand, and there was no knowing whither to turn.
Betty Mudge did her best; but her zeal outran her discretion; and
indeed the task of pilot in that rolling mist was no easy one. Had
there but been a hard road, though never so narrow, beneath her feet,
the girl would have gone on cheerfully enough. But there was no real
road for about half the distance between High Tor and Shaws, as that
solitary spot where stood the abode of the Mudges was called, merely
a congeries of winding cart-ruts, among which, in moderately clear
weather, it was facile for one who knew the country to make short-cuts
at pleasure.
‘If we were to go back?’ suggested Ethel, after a while; but Betty
Mudge by no means accepted the proposition.
‘It be just as easy, miss, to go forrard as to go backarder,’ returned
Lenny’s sister doggedly; ‘but what’s main hard in the thick is to know
which is which.’
They went on for some time without speaking.
‘I was listening,’ at last said the young guide abruptly, ‘for a
sheep-bell. If I could but hear that, shepherd would put us right.’
But though Ethel hearkened also, in hopes of catching the far-off
tinkle of a bell from some folded flock, the silence remained as
unbroken as though man, with all his works and ways, had been banished
from the island. Nothing but blinding mist to greet the eye, nothing
but heather and peat and stones beneath the feet, as the two stumbled
and groped forward, going deeper and deeper, for aught they knew, into
the heart of the wilderness. The misty vapour heaved and rolled like
a billowy sea, taking fantastic shapes, here of a threatening giant,
there of a winding-sheet spread by no mortal hand, there again of a
battlemented castle rearing its towers aloft.
There are landscape painters‒even aspiring young Associates, newly
elected, of the Royal Academy‒whom it would have greatly gratified to
have been on the moor that day, and to have seen the fluctuating hues
of the mist, here fleecy snow, there translucent silver, elsewhere such
pearly grays as the colour-box fails to render, while sunwards a faint
pale shimmering streak of tender opal stretched, like Jacob’s ladder,
almost from heaven to earth. It was a study worthy of an artist’s
heed too, the manner in which the bare bleak Tors, red, brown, gray,
according to the nature of the stone, cropped up from the moor, each
crag rising out of the peaty soil like the bones of a buried Titan.
But poor Ethel became very tired as she wandered on under the aimless
guidance of Betty Mudge, who was herself tired, and who could but
guess, and that wildly, in which direction home might lie.
‘Ware!’ she cried, as Ethel was about to plant her foot unsuspectingly
on an inviting patch of emerald turf. ‘Yon’s bog, yon is, deep enow
to suck down a horse to the saddle-laps. Never trust the green, and
the greener the softer, miss. Send, we moun’t a strayed to Heronsmere
or the Blackpool, for there be swamps there would swallow bigger nor
we. Gran’father, they tell, smouthered in Blackpool, but ’twere in
winter-time.’
Then there came creeping like insidious enemies into Ethel’s mind
all the weird legends which since her stay at High Tor she had heard
regarding the waste. There were tales of belated horsemen and lonely
foot-travellers overwhelmed by snow-storms in winter, and lying dead
among the drifts, the prey of the hill-fox and the carrion crow. There
were tales too of those who had been lost in the blinding mist, and had
either perished in some quagmire, or died miserably of hardship and
exhaustion, after many hours of walking on the moor.
‘It ben’t of no manner o’ good!’ said Betty, after another long spell
of silence. ‘We may walk till we drop. I’m main tired myself. And
what’s the use? For oughter we know, we may be going round and round.’
Ethel too was weary, so weary that it was with difficulty she could
raise her voice to urge on her now desponding companion the expediency
of a renewed effort. ‘Surely, surely,’ she said, ‘we shall, if we
persevere, come upon some road or see the lights‒for it must be getting
late‒in some farm or cottage.’
‘One Tor be terrible like another,’ returned Betty with a sob. ‘I got
no more notion whirrabouts we be, nor if I were fresh dropped out of
the moon. I’m no use here, and can hardly drag. And what’ll mother say!’
And the girl sat down on a fragment of rock which jutted from a bluff
stony Tor rising overhead, and began to weep. And then there forced
itself on Ethel’s mind the dreadful thought that they had perhaps
really been walking in a circle until their forces were spent, and
might die of fatigue, cold, and even hunger before they should be
discovered. Who could tell when the fog would disperse! The mist might
overhang the lofty table-land of the moor for whole days, possibly for
weeks, cutting the lost ones as completely off from succour as some
shipwrecked mariner on his desolate isle. No sound floated to Ethel’s
ears as she listened long and eagerly.
‘Don’t cry, Betty; don’t cry. Something‒I know not what‒tells me that
we shall get through this safely yet,’ said Ethel, as she too took
her seat upon the rock, and laid her hand kindly on that of her young
companion. But Betty only blubbered the more furiously.
‘’Tain’t so much for me, miss!’ she said. ‘It be my fault, every bit
on’t. I brought you here. And Lenny‒and mother’‒‒ The train of ideas
thus conjured up acted so strongly on the untutored imagination of
Betty Mudge, that she wept so loudly and dolefully that her wails
re-echoed through the solitary waste.
What was that? Surely a human voice calling aloud at some distance
through the fog, as if in answer to Betty’s inarticulate plaint. Yes,
there was no mistake this time. It was the hearty halloo of a deep
voice, and the words were: ‘Ho! I say, there! What ails you? Anything
wrong?’
‘We be lost in fog!’ called out the girl by way of answer.
‘It’s a woman or a child,’ exclaimed another voice from the mist.
‘Push on, Bates! The cry came from this direction to the left.’ And
presently, bursting through the floating wreaths of vapour, appeared
the figures of two men, the shorter and sturdier of whom, a gamekeeper
by his velveteen coat and leathern gaiters, and the metal dog-whistle
at his button-hole, led a pony with a creel strapped to the saddle-bow.
‘Here they are, my Lord!’ ejaculated this functionary, as he caught
sight of the forlorn two upon the rock. The gentleman to whom he spoke
came hurrying up across the stony ground, a fishing-rod in his hand.
‘Don’t be frightened, my little maid,’ he called out cheerily to Betty,
who wept more unrestrainedly than ever, now that help was near; and
then, catching a glimpse of Ethel’s pale beautiful face as she looked
up, he exclaimed: ‘Why, this is a lady‒here!’ and instinctively he
raised his hat. ‘Stop! It is Miss Gray from the village, if I am not
mistaken.‒You must let me see you safely off the moor. I live near, at
High Tor; though I daresay you do not know me, Miss Gray. I have seen
you at church.’
‘Yes, I know you, Lord Harrogate,’ returned Ethel, trying to rise,
but sinking back fainting and giddy on her rocky seat. ‘I am sorry to
give you trouble, but’‒‒ Her voice failed her, and her eyes seemed to
be darkened. The quick revulsion of feeling, from what was all but
sheer despair to the consciousness of being saved, had intensified the
effects of great physical fatigue. She heard the young man’s voice
addressing herself, but could not distinguish the words because of the
low droning sound that filled her ears as she sat passive on the rock.
Who he was she quite well knew. It was not possible for the member of
a small congregation such as that in High Tor church to be ignorant of
the features of so notable an occupant of Lord Wolverhampton’s pew as
the Earl’s son and heir. Tall, handsome, and manly, Lord Harrogate was
worth looking at for his own sake; but Ethel had never thus looked upon
him until she found herself thus confronted with him in the mist, as
her rescuer from certain suffering, perhaps from death.
‘If you are able to walk, Miss Gray,’ said Lord Harrogate earnestly,
‘will you take my arm and lean on me? My servant will charge himself
with the child here; indeed I do not think he can do better than to
set her on the pony, as she seems so tired. We must all of us rely on
Bates’s guidance to get clear of the waste. Happily, he is a thorough
moorman, and can pick his way where I should be at fault.’
‘Ay, ay, my Lord,’ returned Bates, flattered by the compliment, but
honestly unwilling to be pranked in borrowed plumage. ‘But if we were
t’ other side o’ Pinkney Ridge or Cranmere way, I’d not be so gey ready
to take the lead in a fog like this one. I’ve heard of moormen straying
round and round, and lying down to die in a drift within gunshot o’
their own house-door. But we were on the hard path just now, so if we
can but strike it again, we’re safe.’
They started, Betty Mudge perched sideways on the pony, which the
keeper led; while Ethel, in spite of her protestation that she could
walk unaided, was glad to avail herself of the support of Lord
Harrogate’s arm. It was not all plain sailing, for so dense was the
fog that even the experienced keeper was puzzled for a time, until his
sharp ear caught the well-known babble of a brook.
‘’Tis running water!’ cried Bates in triumph. ‘Safest plan on the moor
is to follow running water, for that won’t deceive. We’ll win through
it.’
And indeed a short half-hour brought the party to the firm high-road,
with the gates of High Tor Park, topped by their stone wyverns, within
sight. Betty Mudge, who announced herself as having an aunt in the
village at whose cottage she could pass the night, was despatched
under convoy to that relative’s abode. But Ethel Grey looked so worn
and ill, that Lord Harrogate insisted on her retaining his arm up
the carriage-drive leading to the house, where she could receive the
attention her state required.
‘My mother and sisters will take care of you, I know,’ he said, as
he supported her slow steps through the park, where the fog, so
dense upon the frowning hills above, only floated in fitful wreaths.
The house was reached, and great was the surprise of those within
when Lord Harrogate appeared with Ethel, pale, patient, exhausted,
but beautiful still, her dark hair and her dress dripping with wet,
leaning on his strong arm. The Countess was kind; and her daughters,
beautiful golden-haired Lady Gladys, honest-eyed earnest Lady Maud,
even Lady Alice, a clever child of twelve, were still more kind. A
bright wood-fire was soon blazing in what was called the Yellow Room;
and Ethel, seated as near to the crackling logs as her chair could be
placed, and propped up with cushions, was able to dry her wet tresses
and drenched garments; while Lord Harrogate’s sisters, and Lady Maud
in especial, pressed her to partake of tea and other refreshments, and
spoke soothingly to her, and were very full of tender womanly sympathy.
Lady Maud, the Earl’s second daughter, knew the new school-mistress
better than did the others, and liked her. She was herself a constant
visitor at the school-house, and had heard many and many an urchin
stammer through his or her lessons there, and could therefore the
better appreciate the motive which had led Ethel into her late danger,
through a natural wish to comfort little Lenny on his bed of fever.
Warmth, and that kindliness of manner which women shew more than we
do, did much towards bringing Ethel back from that death-in-life which
excessive fatigue and chill tend to produce; and when the carriage
was, in spite of her remonstrance, ‘ordered round,’ to convey her home
to the school, she had strength enough to walk unaided to the door.
Lord Harrogate had disappeared. The Earl had not as yet returned from
some meeting of magistrates. ‘I will come down to see you, Miss Gray,
to-morrow, if I can,’ said Lady Maud, as the carriage drove off.
CHAPTER VI.‒SIR SYKES MAKES AN ANNOUNCEMENT.
‘Lucy, my dear, and Blanche too, I want to know how you would like
to receive here, at Carbery, a young lady who is a total stranger
to all of us; but who, if she comes at all, comes with a distinct
understanding that this house, until she marries, is her home. I ask
you this, my dears, because I have received a letter’‒and the baronet
pointed to a black-bordered envelope that lay, with others, beside his
plate‒‘inclosing one penned, long ago, by a hand which can write no
more. George Willis‒Major, when he died, in the Indian army‒was one
of my earliest and truest friends. He is dead now. He left behind him
this one girl, his only and motherless child, and‒and he begs me, in a
letter, indorsed “After my death to be forwarded to Sir Sykes Denzil,”
to become the guardian of this‒this poor orphaned thing. How do you
say, my girls? Shall we have her here at Carbery, or not?’
It was very neatly and prettily put on the part of Sir Sykes, and
the appeal was all the more effective because of the quietude and
cool indifference of the baronet’s ordinary manner. He was a cold,
unemotional person, in the everyday routine of life; and hence the
quivering of his lips, the faltering of his voice, added much of
pathos to what might otherwise have seemed commonplace.
As for the answer to the question asked, could there be a doubt of it!
It is to the credit of a woman’s heart that it always, when a plea is
well urged, responds to the Open Sesamé of compassion. They may not,
as men do, seek out hidden wrongs to be righted and unseen pangs to
be assuaged. But the distress that lies at their door they seek to
comfort; and had the young ladies of Carbery been very much poorer than
they were, their reply to their father’s question would have been as
generously outspoken.
‘By all means, yes, papa, let us have the poor girl here‒this
Miss‒Willis I think is her name; and we will try to make her happy.
How sad!’ And Blanche and Lucy were all but in tears over the woes of
this Anglo-Indian orphan; while Jasper, hiding his face behind his
coffee-cup, reflected that ‘the governor’ was a cool hand, and did his
little bit of acting in a manner worthy of Barnum himself.
In most houses of sufficient dignity to own a special letter-bag,
the temporary office of post-master is publicly discharged. The old
Earl of Wolverhampton, for instance, found it pleasant to sort and
classify the motley mass of correspondence which came daily to High
Tor; but he would almost as soon have opened a servant’s letter as have
opened the bag otherwise than in the presence of guests and kindred.
Carbery Chase, however, was not High Tor, and Sir Sykes Denzil was a
very different family chief from his noble neighbour. The baronet was
an early riser, as are many men who have spent much of their lives
in India; and he chose that the post-bag should be brought to him in
the library an hour or so before the usual assembling for breakfast.
Jasper, who was of a suspicious temper, resented this exercise of
parental authority; but he was wrong. There may have been passages
in Sir Sykes’s life which would not, if published, have redounded to
his credit, but tampering with letters was not congenial to him. He
never gave a second glance to any envelope addressed to Captain Denzil
or the captain’s sisters, and was as loyal a custodian of the family
correspondence as any gentleman in the whole county of Devon. There
was this advantage in the baronet’s habit as regarded the post-bag,
that nobody could tell what letters Sir Sykes received or when he did
receive them. There are many of us, and those not the least loved
or esteemed, whose letters are as it were public property, and with
whom reticence on the subject of a missive newly received by the
post would diffuse disquiet and perhaps dismay through the domestic
circle. Sir Sykes had never been one of those who wear their hearts,
metaphorically, on their sleeves; he told those around him as much as
he wished them to know, and no more.
There was quite a flutter of pleasurable excitement among the Denzil
girls at the prospect of a new member of the household, a new face at
Carbery. They were sorry for this poor Miss Willis, sorrier for her by
far than for the many orphans whose bereavement is notified to us every
day by a grim list of deaths dryly chronicled in the newspaper. And
they felt doubly disposed to welcome her and be good to her in that she
was lonely and sad, and that her presence would introduce a new element
into Carbery. They made no sacrifice in giving a cheerful acquiescence
to their father’s suggestion that his ward should be received beneath
his roof. In such a house the maintenance of an extra inmate was of no
moment at all. But had Sir Sykes been living in furnished lodgings, and
forced to look twice at half-a-crown, those honest girls would still
not have grudged a share of their hashed mutton and scanty house-room
to the daughter of an old friend of their father’s.
‘I don’t think, sir, that I remember to have heard you mention the
Major’s name,’ said Jasper, stolidly buttering his toast, but furtively
eyeing his father from beneath his pale eyelashes.
‘I think you have heard it,’ answered Sir Sykes, with a self-possession
that all but staggered Jasper’s unbelief. ‘We were quartered together
for years at Allahabad, Cawnpore, and Lahore. There were Reynolds and
L’Estrange, and Moreton who is living yet, and this poor fellow Willis;
the old set, with whom I was intimate. I don’t often bore listeners who
have never been in India, with the details of my eastern experiences,
else I think that the name of Major‒or Captain‒George Willis would be
tolerably familiar here.’
That the girls, in their newly awakened interest, should ask questions
was but natural. But their father had not very much beyond the
substance of his original announcement to communicate. He had, he said,
but a vague recollection of Mrs Willis, his friend’s wife, a bride when
Sir Sykes returned to Europe, and who had now been dead for some years.
She was a quiet domestic little person, from Wales or Ireland, the
baronet did not know which; and she had some pittance of annual income,
which would no doubt go to her child at the husband’s decease. Major
Willis had no private means, at least so Sir Sykes thought. There was
a London lawyer, however, who knew all about the financial affairs of
the orphan, and who would of course render a proper statement to the
baronet’s solicitors. Miss Willis would be entitled, as the child of
an Indian officer, to no pension, being, as Sir Sykes understood, over
the age of twenty-one; but of that again he was not sure, not being
certain of the exact age of his friend’s daughter. She had no very near
relatives, and had never, to Sir Sykes’s knowledge, been in England
before.
‘It was the chaplain of the military station who wrote,’ continued Sir
Sykes, ‘inclosing in his letter that which poor Willis had left for
myself; and unless I telegraph to veto the arrangement, you are likely
to see Miss Ruth‒did I say that her name was Ruth‒very soon, since she
is to start by the next mail from Bombay.’
‘Well,’ muttered Jasper to himself, as some time later in the morning
he sauntered through the plantations, the path across which made a
short cut from Carbery Chase to Lord Wolverhampton’s park at High Tor,
‘I have seen some cool hands; but‒‒ Well, well! It was neatly done,
very neatly. If the governor had not had the rare luck to come into a
fortune, he would have been as fit to make one as any man I ever came
across.’
The young man, whose preference for crooked ways was congenital, and
who knew of no road to Fortune’s temple save miry and devious ones,
began really to feel an admiration for his father’s abilities, since
he had discovered to what profound depths of dissimulation the baronet
could descend. His own craft had enabled him to lift a corner of the
fair seeming mask which Sir Sykes wore before the world, but as yet his
knowledge was too imperfect to enable its possessor to make capital of
the secret. Could he once‒‒
‘Why, Captain Denzil!’ exclaimed a ringing girlish voice, ‘I could
almost give you credit for poetic reveries, so complete is your
unconsciousness of the mere commonplace world around you. You had all
but passed us without a word or a bow.’
Jasper could not repress a slight start, as he found himself in
presence of the three Ladies De Vere and of their brother Lord
Harrogate, in the main avenue of the park. The young man’s moody
countenance brightened at once.
‘I am not, as a rule, greatly given to dreaming in broad daylight, Lady
Gladys,’ he said good-humouredly; ‘and as for the poetry, I’ll promise
to dedicate my first volume of sonnets, or whatever they call them, to
yourself. I am afraid, though, you will have to wait a little before I
take a plunge into literature.’
‘Of books‒of a sort, you have been rather a diligent compiler,’ said
Lord Harrogate, smiling.
Jasper bit his lip; but it was in a careless tone that he rejoined:
‘That’s only too true; but let me tell you, Harrogate, there goes more
of hard thinking to the composition of a betting-book than people
usually suppose.‒I was on my way to the house, meaning to inflict a
little of my dullness on you, Lady Maud, but you are early abroad.’
‘Yes; and you may as well walk down with us,’ said Lady Maud. ‘We
are going to the school, to see how my friend, Miss Gray, the
school-mistress, fares after her moorland adventure of Saturday. You
heard of it, Captain Denzil?’
No; Jasper had not heard of it. And on receiving an account of it from
Lady Maud’s lips, the captain said, with never so little of a sneer,
that the episode was ‘quite romantic.’
‘Come and see the heroine of it,’ said bright-eyed Lady Gladys; ‘and
you who affect to admire nothing, will be compelled to admit that you
have seen a face such as we very seldom behold except in a picture.’
The party walked on together thus chatting until they reached the
village. The young people of the two great houses, High Tor and Carbery
Chase, had naturally been well acquainted with one another from an
early period; and the two elder of the De Vere girls were disposed to
pity Jasper rather than to blame him for the recklessness that had
brought about his exile from the haunts of fashion. But the captain
knew that Lord Harrogate and he were uncongenial spirits. He did not
like Harrogate, and he had a shrewd idea that Harrogate despised him.
We cannot, however, be very eclectic in the depths of the country as
regards those with whom we associate, and hence these two young men,
of natures so dissimilar, tolerated one another because of the ancient
friendship existing between their families.
The school was reached, and Ethel its mistress, still pale, but lovely
as one of the white roses in her tiny garden, came forward to receive
her distinguished visitors, and paid her tribute of thanks to Lord
Harrogate for the service he had rendered her, with a modest grace
which was all the more charming from its extreme simplicity of words
and manner.
‘I was too weak and faint the other evening, my Lord, to say what I
felt as to your‒your great kindness.’
And a princess could not have spoken better. It was Lord Harrogate
who seemed embarrassed, as your honest Briton, gentle or simple, is
embarrassed by being thanked. And then, while Lady Maud eagerly told
how jelly and hothouse fruit and port wine had been despatched from
High Tor to the moorland cottage for the benefit of little Lenny Mudge,
and how the parish doctor spoke hopefully of his small patient, Jasper
looked at Ethel Gray with a sort of wonder, as at the most beautiful
woman that he had ever seen, and the most thoroughly a lady, not
even excepting Lady Gladys De Vere. But he said nothing, and lounged
carelessly off with the party when adieus had been exchanged with Miss
Gray.
STORY OF CAPTAIN GLASS.
About the time of the accession of George III. to the throne, few
domestic events made a greater sensation in the papers and periodicals
of the day than the adventures and fate of a sea-captain named George
Glass, especially in connection with a mutiny on board the brig _Earl
of Sandwich_. This remarkable man, who was one of fifteen children of
John Glass, noted as the originator of the Scottish sect known as the
Glassites, was born at Dundee in 1725. After graduating in the medical
profession, he made several voyages, as surgeon of a merchant-ship
(belonging to London), to the Brazils and the coast of Guinea; and
in 1764, he published, by Dodsley, an interesting work in one volume
quarto, entitled _The History of the Discovery and Conquest of the
Canary Islands, translated from a Spanish manuscript_.