CHAPTER XIV.

Like many other things which have been declared to be impossible, this

report of Captain James being attentive to Miss Brooke turned out to be

very true.

The mere idea of her agent being on the slightest possible terms of

acquaintance with the Dissenter, the tradesman, the Birmingham democrat,

who had come to settle in our good, orthodox, aristocratic, and

agricultural Hanbury, made my lady very uneasy. Miss Galindo’s

misdemeanour in having taken Miss Bessy to live with her, faded into a

mistake, a mere error of judgment, in comparison with Captain James’s

intimacy at Yeast House, as the Brookes called their ugly square-built

farm. My lady talked herself quite into complacency with Miss Galindo,

and even Miss Bessy was named by her, the first time I had ever been

aware that my lady recognized her existence; but—I recollect it was a

long rainy afternoon, and I sat with her ladyship, and we had time and

opportunity for a long uninterrupted talk—whenever we had been silent

for a little while she began again, with something like a wonder how it

was that Captain James could ever have commenced an acquaintance with

“that man Brooke.” My lady recapitulated all the times she could

remember, that anything had occurred, or been said by Captain James which

she could now understand as throwing light upon the subject.

“He said once that he was anxious to bring in the Norfolk system of

cropping, and spoke a good deal about Mr. Coke of Holkham (who, by the

way, was no more a Coke than I am—collateral in the female line—which

counts for little or nothing among the great old commoners’ families of

pure blood), and his new ways of cultivation; of course new men bring in

new ways, but it does not follow that either are better than the old

ways. However, Captain James has been very anxious to try turnips and

bone manure, and he really is a man of such good sense and energy, and

was so sorry last year about the failure, that I consented; and now I

begin to see my error. I have always heard that town bakers adulterate

their flour with bone-dust; and, of course, Captain James would be aware

of this, and go to Brooke to inquire where the article was to be

purchased.”

My lady always ignored the fact which had sometimes, I suspect, been

brought under her very eyes during her drives, that Mr. Brooke’s few

fields were in a state of far higher cultivation than her own; so she

could not, of course, perceive that there was any wisdom to be gained

from asking the advice of the tradesman turned farmer.

But by-and-by this fact of her agent’s intimacy with the person whom

in the whole world she most disliked (with that sort of dislike in

which a large amount of uncomfortableness is combined—the dislike

which conscientious people sometimes feel to another without knowing

why, and yet which they cannot indulge in with comfort to themselves

without having a moral reason why), came before my lady in many shapes.

For, indeed I am sure that Captain James was not a man to conceal or

be ashamed of one of his actions. I cannot fancy his ever lowering his

strong loud clear voice, or having a confidental conversation with

any one. When his crops had failed, all the village had known it. He

complained, he regretted, he was angry, or owned himself a —— fool, all

down the village street; and the consequence was that, although he was

a far more passionate man than Mr. Horner, all the tenants liked him

far better. People, in general, take a kindlier interest in any one,

the workings of whose mind and heart they can watch and understand,

than in a man who only lets you know what he has been thinking about

and feeling, by what he does. But Harry Gregson was faithful to the

memory of Mr. Horner. Miss Galindo has told me that she used to

watch him hobble out of the way of Captain James, as if to accept

his notice, however good-naturedly given, would have been a kind of

treachery to his former benefactor. But Gregson (the father) and the

new agent rather took to each other; and one day, much to my surprise,

I heard that the “poaching, tinkering vagabond,” as the people used

to call Gregson when I first had come to live at Hanbury, had been

appointed gamekeeper; Mr. Gray standing godfather, as it were, to his

trustworthiness, if he were trusted with anything; which I thought at

the time was rather an experiment, only it answered, as many of Mr.

Gray’s deeds of daring did. It was curious how he was growing to be a

kind of autocrat in the village; and how unconscious he was of it. He

was as shy and awkward and nervous as ever in any affair that was not

of some moral consequence to him. But as soon as he was convinced that

a thing was right, he “shut his eyes and ran and butted at it like a

ram,” as Captain James once expressed it, in talking over something Mr.

Gray had done. People in the village said, “they never knew what the

parson would be at next;” or they might have said, “where his reverence

would next turn up.” For I have heard of his marching right into the

middle of a set of poachers, gathered together for some desperate

midnight enterprise, or walking into a public-house that lay just

beyond the bounds of my lady’s estate, and in that extra-parochial

piece of ground I named long ago, and which was considered the

rendezvous of all the ne’er-do-weel characters for miles round, and

where a parson and a constable were held in much the same kind of

esteem as unwelcome visitors. And yet Mr. Gray had his long fits of

depression, in which he felt as if he were doing nothing, making no

way in his work, useless and unprofitable, and better out of the world

than in it. In comparison with the work he had set himself to do, what

he did seemed to be nothing. I suppose it was constitutional, those

attacks of lowness of spirits which he had about this time; perhaps a

part of the nervousness which made him always so awkward when he came

to the Hall. Even Mrs. Medlicott, who almost worshipped the ground he

trod on, as the saying is, owned that Mr. Gray never entered one of my

lady’s rooms without knocking down something, and too often breaking

it. He would much sooner have faced a desperate poacher than a young

lady any day. At least so we thought.

I do not know how it was that it came to pass that my lady became

reconciled to Miss Galindo about this time. Whether it was that her

ladyship was weary of the unspoken coolness with her old friend; or that

the specimens of delicate sewing and fine spinning at the school had

mollified her towards Miss Bessy; but I was surprised to learn one day

that Miss Galindo and her young friend were coming that very evening to

tea at the Hall. This information was given me by Mrs. Medlicott, as a

message from my lady, who further went on to desire that certain little

preparations should be made in her own private sitting-room, in which the

greater part of my days were spent. From the nature of these

preparations, I became quite aware that my lady intended to do honour to

her expected visitors. Indeed, Lady Ludlow never forgave by halves, as I

have known some people do. Whoever was coming as a visitor to my lady,

peeress, or poor nameless girl, there was a certain amount of preparation

required in order to do them fitting honour. I do not mean to say that

the preparation was of the same degree of importance in each case. I

dare say, if a peeress had come to visit us at the Hall, the covers would

have been taken off the furniture in the white drawing-room (they never

were uncovered all the time I stayed at the Hall), because my lady would

wish to offer her the ornaments and luxuries which this grand visitor

(who never came—I wish she had! I did so want to see that furniture

uncovered!) was accustomed to at home, and to present them to her in the

best order in which my lady could. The same rule, mollified, held good

with Miss Galindo. Certain things, in which my lady knew she took an

interest, were laid out ready for her to examine on this very day; and,

what was more, great books of prints were laid out, such as I remembered

my lady had had brought forth to beguile my own early days of

illness,—Mr. Hogarth’s works, and the like,—which I was sure were put

out for Miss Bessy.

No one knows how curious I was to see this mysterious Miss Bessy—twenty

times more mysterious, of course, for want of her surname. And then

again (to try and account for my great curiosity, of which in

recollection I am more than half ashamed), I had been leading the quiet

monotonous life of a crippled invalid for many years,—shut up from any

sight of new faces; and this was to be the face of one whom I had thought

about so much and so long,—Oh! I think I might be excused.

Of course they drank tea in the great hall, with the four young

gentlewomen, who, with myself, formed the small bevy now under her

ladyship’s charge. Of those who were at Hanbury when first I came, none

remained; all were married, or gone once more to live at some home which

could be called their own, whether the ostensible head were father or

brother. I myself was not without some hopes of a similar kind. My

brother Harry was now a curate in Westmoreland, and wanted me to go and

live with him, as eventually I did for a time. But that is neither here

nor there at present. What I am talking about is Miss Bessy.

After a reasonable time had elapsed, occupied as I well knew by the meal

in the great hall,—the measured, yet agreeable conversation

afterwards,—and a certain promenade around the hall, and through the

drawing-rooms, with pauses before different pictures, the history or

subject of each of which was invariably told by my lady to every new

visitor,—a sort of giving them the freedom of the old family-seat, by

describing the kind and nature of the great progenitors who had lived

there before the narrator,—I heard the steps approaching my lady’s room,

where I lay. I think I was in such a state of nervous expectation, that

if I could have moved easily, I should have got up and run away. And yet

I need not have been, for Miss Galindo was not in the least altered (her

nose a little redder, to be sure, but then that might only have had a

temporary cause in the private crying I know she would have had before

coming to see her dear Lady Ludlow once again). But I could almost have

pushed Miss Galindo away, as she intercepted me in my view of the

mysterious Miss Bessy.

Miss Bessy was, as I knew, only about eighteen, but she looked older.

Dark hair, dark eyes, a tall, firm figure, a good, sensible face, with a

serene expression, not in the least disturbed by what I had been thinking

must be such awful circumstances as a first introduction to my lady, who

had so disapproved of her very existence: those are the clearest

impressions I remember of my first interview with Miss Bessy. She seemed

to observe us all, in her quiet manner, quite as much as I did her; but

she spoke very little; occupied herself, indeed, as my lady had planned,

with looking over the great books of engravings. I think I must have

(foolishly) intended to make her feel at her ease, by my patronage; but

she was seated far away from my sofa, in order to command the light, and

really seemed so unconcerned at her unwonted circumstances, that she did

not need my countenance or kindness. One thing I did like—her watchful

look at Miss Galindo from time to time: it showed that her thoughts and

sympathy were ever at Miss Galindo’s service, as indeed they well might

be. When Miss Bessy spoke, her voice was full and clear, and what she

said, to the purpose, though there was a slight provincial accent in her

way of speaking. After a while, my lady set us two to play at chess, a

game which I had lately learnt at Mr. Gray’s suggestion. Still we did

not talk much together, though we were becoming attracted towards each

other, I fancy.

“You will play well,” said she. “You have only learnt about six months,

have you? And yet you can nearly beat me, who have been at it as many

years.”

“I began to learn last November. I remember Mr. Gray’s bringing me

‘Philidor on Chess,’ one very foggy, dismal day.”

What made her look up so suddenly, with bright inquiry in her eyes? What

made her silent for a moment as if in thought, and then go on with

something, I know not what, in quite an altered tone?

My lady and Miss Galindo went on talking, while I sat thinking. I heard

Captain James’s name mentioned pretty frequently; and at last my lady put

down her work, and said, almost with tears in her eyes:

“I could not—I cannot believe it. He must be aware she is a schismatic;

a baker’s daughter; and he is a gentleman by virtue and feeling, as well

as by his profession, though his manners may be at times a little rough.

My dear Miss Galindo, what will this world come to?”

Miss Galindo might possibly be aware of her own share in bringing the

world to the pass which now dismayed my lady,—for of course, though all

was now over and forgiven, yet Miss, Bessy’s being received into a

respectable maiden lady’s house, was one of the portents as to the

world’s future which alarmed her ladyship; and Miss Galindo knew

this,—but, at any rate, she had too lately been forgiven herself not to

plead for mercy for the next offender against my lady’s delicate sense of

fitness and propriety,—so she replied:

“Indeed, my lady, I have long left off trying to conjecture what makes

Jack fancy Gill, or Gill Jack. It’s best to sit down quiet under the

belief that marriages are made for us, somewhere out of this world, and

out of the range of this world’s reason and laws. I’m not so sure that I

should settle it down that they were made in heaven; t’other place seems

to me as likely a workshop; but at any rate, I’ve given up troubling my

head as to why they take place. Captain James is a gentleman; I make no

doubt of that ever since I saw him stop to pick up old Goody Blake (when

she tumbled down on the slide last winter) and then swear at a little lad

who was laughing at her, and cuff him till he tumbled down crying; but we

must have bread somehow, and though I like it better baked at home in a

good sweet brick oven, yet, as some folks never can get it to rise, I

don’t see why a man may not be a baker. You see, my lady, I look upon

baking as a simple trade, and as such lawful. There is no machine comes

in to take away a man’s or woman’s power of earning their living, like

the spinning-jenny (the old busybody that she is), to knock up all our

good old women’s livelihood, and send them to their graves before their

time. There’s an invention of the enemy, if you will!”

“That’s very true!” said my lady, shaking her head.

“But baking bread is wholesome, straightforward elbow-work. They have

not got to inventing any contrivance for that yet, thank Heaven! It does

not seem to me natural, nor according to Scripture, that iron and steel

(whose brows can’t sweat) should be made to do man’s work. And so I say,

all those trades where iron and steel do the work ordained to man at the

Fall, are unlawful, and I never stand up for them. But say this baker

Brooke did knead his bread, and make it rise, and then that people, who

had, perhaps, no good ovens, came to him, and bought his good light

bread, and in this manner he turned an honest penny and got rich; why,

all I say, my lady, is this,—I dare say he would have been born a

Hanbury, or a lord if he could; and if he was not, it is no fault of his,

that I can see, that he made good bread (being a baker by trade), and got

money, and bought his land. It was his misfortune, not his fault, that

he was not a person of quality by birth.”

“That’s very true,” said my lady, after a moment’s pause for

consideration. “But, although he was a baker, he might have been a

Churchman. Even your eloquence, Miss Galindo, shan’t convince me that

that is not his own fault.”

“I don’t see even that, begging your pardon, my lady,” said Miss Galindo,

emboldened by the first success of her eloquence. “When a Baptist is a

baby, if I understand their creed aright, he is not baptized; and,

consequently, he can have no godfathers and godmothers to do anything for

him in his baptism; you agree to that, my lady?”

My lady would rather have known what her acquiescence would lead to,

before acknowledging that she could not dissent from this first

proposition; still she gave her tacit agreement by bowing her head.

“And, you know, our godfathers and godmothers are expected to promise and

vow three things in our name, when we are little babies, and can do

nothing but squall for ourselves. It is a great privilege, but don’t let

us be hard upon those who have not had the chance of godfathers and

godmothers. Some people, we know, are born with silver spoons,—that’s

to say, a godfather to give one things, and teach one’s catechism, and

see that we’re confirmed into good church-going Christians,—and others

with wooden ladles in their mouths. These poor last folks must just be

content to be godfatherless orphans, and Dissenters, all their lives; and

if they are tradespeople into the bargain, so much the worse for them;

but let us be humble Christians, my dear lady, and not hold our heads too

high because we were born orthodox quality.”

“You go on too fast, Miss Galindo! I can’t follow you. Besides, I do

believe dissent to be an invention of the Devil’s. Why can’t they

believe as we do? It’s very wrong. Besides, its schism and heresy, and,

you know, the Bible says that’s as bad as witchcraft.”

My lady was not convinced, as I could see. After Miss Galindo had gone,

she sent Mrs. Medlicott for certain books out of the great old library up

stairs, and had them made up into a parcel under her own eye.

“If Captain James comes to-morrow, I will speak to him about these

Brookes. I have not hitherto liked to speak to him, because I did not

wish to hurt him, by supposing there could be any truth in the reports

about his intimacy with them. But now I will try and do my duty by him

and them. Surely this great body of divinity will bring them back to the

true church.”

I could not tell, for though my lady read me over the titles, I was not

any the wiser as to their contents. Besides, I was much more anxious to

consult my lady as to my own change of place. I showed her the letter I

had that day received from Harry; and we once more talked over the

expediency of my going to live with him, and trying what entire change of

air would do to re-establish my failing health. I could say anything to

my lady, she was so sure to understand me rightly. For one thing, she

never thought of herself, so I had no fear of hurting her by stating the

truth. I told her how happy my years had been while passed under her

roof; but that now I had begun to wonder whether I had not duties

elsewhere, in making a home for Harry,—and whether the fulfilment of

these duties, quiet ones they must needs be in the case of such a cripple

as myself, would not prevent my sinking into the querulous habit of

thinking and talking, into which I found myself occasionally falling. Add

to which, there was the prospect of benefit from the more bracing air of

the north.

It was then settled that my departure from Hanbury, my happy home for so

long, was to take place before many weeks had passed. And as, when one

period of life is about to be shut up for ever, we are sure to look back

upon it with fond regret, so I, happy enough in my future prospects,

could not avoid recurring to all the days of my life in the Hall, from

the time when I came to it, a shy awkward girl, scarcely past childhood,

to now, when a grown woman,—past childhood—almost, from the very

character of my illness, past youth,—I was looking forward to leaving my

lady’s house (as a residence) for ever. As it has turned out, I never

saw either her or it again. Like a piece of sea-wreck, I have drifted

away from those days: quiet, happy, eventless days,—very happy to

remember!

I thought of good, jovial Mr. Mountford,—and his regrets that he might

not keep a pack, “a very small pack,” of harriers, and his merry ways,

and his love of good eating; of the first coming of Mr. Gray, and my

lady’s attempt to quench his sermons, when they tended to enforce any

duty connected with education. And now we had an absolute school-house

in the village; and since Miss Bessy’s drinking tea at the Hall, my lady

had been twice inside it, to give directions about some fine yarn she was

having spun for table-napery. And her ladyship had so outgrown her old

custom of dispensing with sermon or discourse, that even during the

temporary preaching of Mr. Crosse, she had never had recourse to it,

though I believe she would have had all the congregation on her side if

she had.

And Mr. Horner was dead, and Captain James reigned in his stead. Good,

steady, severe, silent Mr. Horner! with his clock-like regularity, and

his snuff-coloured clothes, and silver buckles! I have often wondered

which one misses most when they are dead and gone,—the bright creatures

full of life, who are hither and thither and everywhere, so that no one

can reckon upon their coming and going, with whom stillness and the long

quiet of the grave, seems utterly irreconcilable, so full are they of

vivid motion and passion,—or the slow, serious people, whose

movements—nay, whose very words, seem to go by clockwork; who never

appear much to affect the course of our life while they are with us, but

whose methodical ways show themselves, when they are gone, to have been

intertwined with our very roots of daily existence. I think I miss these

last the most, although I may have loved the former best. Captain James

never was to me what Mr. Horner was, though the latter had hardly changed

a dozen words with me at the day of his death. Then Miss Galindo! I

remembered the time as if it had been only yesterday, when she was but a

name—and a very odd one—to me; then she was a queer, abrupt,

disagreeable, busy old maid. Now I loved her dearly, and I found out

that I was almost jealous of Miss Bessy.

Mr. Gray I never thought of with love; the feeling was almost reverence

with which I looked upon him. I have not wished to speak much of myself,

or else I could have told you how much he had been to me during these

long, weary years of illness. But he was almost as much to every one,

rich and poor, from my lady down to Miss Galindo’s Sally.

The village, too, had a different look about it. I am sure I could not

tell you what caused the change; but there were no more lounging young

men to form a group at the cross-road, at a time of day when young men

ought to be at work. I don’t say this was all Mr. Gray’s doing, for

there really was so much to do in the fields that there was but little

time for lounging now-a-days. And the children were hushed up in school,

and better behaved out of it, too, than in the days when I used to be

able to go my lady’s errands in the village. I went so little about now,

that I am sure I can’t tell who Miss Galindo found to scold; and yet she

looked so well and so happy that I think she must have had her accustomed

portion of that wholesome exercise.

Before I left Hanbury, the rumour that Captain James was going to marry

Miss Brooke, Baker Brooke’s eldest daughter, who had only a sister to

share his property with her, was confirmed. He himself announced it to

my lady; nay, more, with a courage, gained, I suppose, in his former

profession, where, as I have heard, he had led his ship into many a post

of danger, he asked her ladyship, the Countess Ludlow, if he might bring

his bride elect, (the Baptist baker’s daughter!) and present her to my

lady!

I am glad I was not present when he made this request; I should have felt

so much ashamed for him, and I could not have helped being anxious till I

heard my lady’s answer, if I had been there. Of course she acceded; but

I can fancy the grave surprise of her look. I wonder if Captain James

noticed it.

I hardly dared ask my lady, after the interview had taken place, what she

thought of the bride elect; but I hinted my curiosity, and she told me,

that if the young person had applied to Mrs. Medlicott, for the situation

of cook, and Mrs. Medlicott had engaged her, she thought that it would

have been a very suitable arrangement. I understood from this how little

she thought a marriage with Captain James, R.N., suitable.

About a year after I left Hanbury, I received a letter from Miss Galindo;

I think I can find it.—Yes, this is it.

‘Hanbury, May 4, 1811.

DEAR MARGARET,

‘You ask for news of us all. Don’t you know there is no news in

Hanbury? Did you ever hear of an event here? Now, if you have

answered “Yes,” in your own mind to these questions, you have fallen

into my trap, and never were more mistaken in your life. Hanbury is

full of news; and we have more events on our hands than we know what

to do with. I will take them in the order of the newspapers—births,

deaths, and marriages. In the matter of births, Jenny Lucas has had

twins not a week ago. Sadly too much of a good thing, you’ll say.

Very true: but then they died; so their birth did not much signify. My

cat has kittened, too; she has had three kittens, which again you may

observe is too much of a good thing; and so it would be, if it were

not for the next item of intelligence I shall lay before you. Captain

and Mrs. James have taken the old house next Pearson’s; and the house

is overrun with mice, which is just as fortunate for me as the King of

Egypt’s rat-ridden kingdom was to Dick Whittington. For my cat’s

kittening decided me to go and call on the bride, in hopes she wanted

a cat; which she did like a sensible woman, as I do believe she is, in

spite of Baptism, Bakers, Bread, and Birmingham, and something worse

than all, which you shall hear about, if you’ll only be patient. As I

had got my best bonnet on, the one I bought when poor Lord Ludlow was

last at Hanbury in ’99—I thought it a great condescension in myself

(always remembering the date of the Galindo baronetcy) to go and call

on the bride; though I don’t think so much of myself in my every-day

clothes, as you know. But who should I find there but my Lady Ludlow!

She looks as frail and delicate as ever, but is, I think, in better

heart ever since that old city merchant of a Hanbury took it into his

head that he was a cadet of the Hanburys of Hanbury, and left her that

handsome legacy. I’ll warrant you that the mortgage was paid off

pretty fast; and Mr. Horner’s money—or my lady’s money, or Harry

Gregson’s money, call it which you will—is invested in his name, all

right and tight; and they do talk of his being captain of his school,

or Grecian, or something, and going to college, after all! Harry

Gregson the poacher’s son! Well! to be sure, we are living in strange

times!

‘But I have not done with the marriages yet. Captain James’s is all

very well, but no one cares for it now, we are so full of Mr. Gray’s.

Yes, indeed, Mr. Gray is going to be married, and to nobody else but

my little Bessy! I tell her she will have to nurse him half the days

of her life, he is such a frail little body. But she says she does

not care for that; so that his body holds his soul, it is enough for

her. She has a good spirit and a brave heart, has my Bessy! It is a

great advantage that she won’t have to mark her clothes over again:

for when she had knitted herself her last set of stockings, I told her

to put G for Galindo, if she did not choose to put it for Gibson, for

she should be my child if she was no one else’s. And now you see it

stands for Gray. So there are two marriages, and what more would you

have? And she promises to take another of my kittens.

‘Now, as to deaths, old Farmer Hale is dead—poor old man, I should

think his wife thought it a good riddance, for he beat her every day

that he was drunk, and he was never sober, in spite of Mr. Gray. I

don’t think (as I tell him) that Mr. Gray would ever have found

courage to speak to Bessy as long as Farmer Hale lived, he took the

old gentleman’s sins so much to heart, and seemed to think it was all

his fault for not being able to make a sinner into a saint. The

parish bull is dead too. I never was so glad in my life. But they

say we are to have a new one in his place. In the meantime I cross

the common in peace, which is very convenient just now, when I have so

often to go to Mr. Gray’s to see about furnishing.

‘Now you think I have told you all the Hanbury news, don’t you? Not

so. The very greatest thing of all is to come. I won’t tantalize

you, but just out with it, for you would never guess it. My Lady

Ludlow has given a party, just like any plebeian amongst us. We had

tea and toast in the blue drawing-room, old John Footman waiting with

Tom Diggles, the lad that used to frighten away crows in Farmer Hale’s

fields, following in my lady’s livery, hair powdered and everything.

Mrs. Medlicott made tea in my lady’s own room. My lady looked like a

splendid fairy queen of mature age, in black velvet, and the old lace,

which I have never seen her wear before since my lord’s death. But

the company? you’ll say. Why, we had the parson of Clover, and the

parson of Headleigh, and the parson of Merribank, and the three

parsonesses; and Farmer Donkin, and two Miss Donkins; and Mr. Gray (of

course), and myself and Bessy; and Captain and Mrs. James; yes, and

Mr. and Mrs. Brooke; think of that! I am not sure the parsons liked

it; but he was there. For he has been helping Captain James to get my

lady’s land into order; and then his daughter married the agent; and

Mr. Gray (who ought to know) says that, after all, Baptists are not

such bad people; and he was right against them at one time, as you may

remember. Mrs. Brooke is a rough diamond, to be sure. People have

said that of me, I know. But, being a Galindo, I learnt manners in my

youth and can take them up when I choose. But Mrs. Brooke never

learnt manners, I’ll be bound. When John Footman handed her the tray

with the tea-cups, she looked up at him as if she were sorely puzzled

by that way of going on. I was sitting next to her, so I pretended

not to see her perplexity, and put her cream and sugar in for her, and

was all ready to pop it into her hands,—when who should come up, but

that impudent lad Tom Diggles (I call him lad, for all his hair is

powdered, for you know that it is not natural gray hair), with his

tray full of cakes and what not, all as good as Mrs. Medlicott could

make them. By this time, I should tell you, all the parsonesses were

looking at Mrs. Brooke, for she had shown her want of breeding before;

and the parsonesses, who were just a step above her in manners, were

very much inclined to smile at her doings and sayings. Well! what

does she do, but pull out a clean Bandanna pocket-handkerchief all red

and yellow silk, spread it over her best silk gown; it was, like

enough, a new one, for I had it from Sally, who had it from her cousin

Molly, who is dairy-woman at the Brookes’, that the Brookes were

mighty set-up with an invitation to drink tea at the Hall. There we

were, Tom Diggles even on the grin (I wonder how long it is since he

was own brother to a scarecrow, only not so decently dressed) and Mrs.

Parsoness of Headleigh,—I forget her name, and it’s no matter, for

she’s an ill-bred creature, I hope Bessy will behave herself

better—was right-down bursting with laughter, and as near a hee-haw

as ever a donkey was, when what does my lady do? Ay! there’s my own

dear Lady Ludlow, God bless her! She takes out her own

pocket-handkerchief, all snowy cambric, and lays it softly down on her

velvet lap, for all the world as if she did it every day of her life,

just like Mrs. Brooke, the baker’s wife; and when the one got up to

shake the crumbs into the fire-place, the other did just the same. But

with such a grace! and such a look at us all! Tom Diggles went red

all over; and Mrs. Parsoness of Headleigh scarce spoke for the rest of

the evening; and the tears came into my old silly eyes; and Mr. Gray,

who was before silent and awkward in a way which I tell Bessy she must

cure him of, was made so happy by this pretty action of my lady’s,

that he talked away all the rest of the evening, and was the life of

the company.

‘Oh, Margaret Dawson! I sometimes wonder if you’re the better off for

leaving us. To be sure you’re with your brother, and blood is blood.

But when I look at my lady and Mr. Gray, for all they’re so different,

I would not change places with any in England.’

Alas! alas! I never saw my dear lady again. She died in eighteen

hundred and fourteen, and Mr. Gray did not long survive her. As I dare

say you know, the Reverend Henry Gregson is now vicar of Hanbury, and his

wife is the daughter of Mr. Gray and Miss Bessy.

* * * * *

As any one may guess, it had taken Mrs. Dawson several Monday evenings

to narrate all this history of the days of her youth. Miss Duncan

thought it would be a good exercise for me, both in memory and

composition, to write out on Tuesday mornings all that I had heard the

night before; and thus it came to pass that I have the manuscript of

“My Lady Ludlow” now lying by me.

* * * * *

Mr. Dawson had often come in and out of the room during the time that

his sister had been telling us about Lady Ludlow. He would stop, and

listen a little, and smile or sigh as the case might be. The Monday

after the dear old lady had wound up her tale (if tale it could be

called), we felt rather at a loss what to talk about, we had grown so

accustomed to listen to Mrs. Dawson. I remember I was saying, “Oh,

dear! I wish some one would tell us another story!” when her brother

said, as if in answer to my speech, that he had drawn up a paper all

ready for the Philosophical Society, and that perhaps we might care to

hear it before it was sent off: it was in a great measure compiled from

a French book, published by one of the Academies, and rather dry in

itself; but to which Mr. Dawson’s attention had been directed, after a

tour he had made in England during the past year, in which he had

noticed small walled-up doors in unusual parts of some old parish

churches, and had been told that they had formerly been appropriated to

the use of some half-heathen race, who, before the days of gipsies,

held the same outcast pariah position in most of the countries of

western Europe. Mr. Dawson had been recommended to the French book

which he named, as containing the fullest and most authentic account of

this mysterious race, the Cagots. I did not think I should like hearing

this paper as much as a story; but, of course, as he meant it kindly,

we were bound to submit, and I found it, on the whole, more interesting

than I anticipated.

AN ACCURSED RACE

We have our prejudices in England. Or, if that assertion offends any of

my readers, I will modify it: we have had our prejudices in England. We

have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics and Protestants, to say

nothing of a few witches and wizards. We have satirized Puritans, and we

have dressed-up Guys. But, after all, I do not think we have been so bad

as our Continental friends. To be sure, our insular position has kept us

free, to a certain degree, from the inroads of alien races; who, driven

from one land of refuge, steal into another equally unwilling to receive

them; and where, for long centuries, their presence is barely endured,

and no pains is taken to conceal the repugnance which the natives of

"pure blood" experience towards them.

There yet remains a remnant of the miserable people called Cagots in the

valleys of the Pyrenees; in the Landes near Bourdeaux; and, stretching up

on the west side of France, their numbers become larger in Lower

Brittany. Even now, the origin of these families is a word of shame to

them among their neighbours; although they are protected by the law,

which confirmed them in the equal rights of citizens about the end of the

last century. Before then they had lived, for hundreds of years,

isolated from all those who boasted of pure blood, and they had been, all

this time, oppressed by cruel local edicts. They were truly what they

were popularly called, The Accursed Race.

All distinct traces of their origin are lost. Even at the close of that

period which we call the Middle Ages, this was a problem which no one

could solve; and as the traces, which even then were faint and uncertain,

have vanished away one by one, it is a complete mystery at the present

day. Why they were accursed in the first instance, why isolated from

their kind, no one knows. From the earliest accounts of their state that

are yet remaining to us, it seems that the names which they gave each

other were ignored by the population they lived amongst, who spoke of

them as Crestiaa, or Cagots, just as we speak of animals by their generic

names. Their houses or huts were always placed at some distance out of

the villages of the country-folk, who unwillingly called in the services

of the Cagots as carpenters, or tilers, or slaters--trades which seemed

appropriated by this unfortunate race--who were forbidden to occupy land,

or to bear arms, the usual occupations of those times. They had some

small right of pasturage on the common lands, and in the forests: but the

number of their cattle and live-stock was strictly limited by the

earliest laws relating to the Cagots. They were forbidden by one act to

have more than twenty sheep, a pig, a ram, and six geese. The pig was to

be fattened and killed for winter food; the fleece of the sheep was to

clothe them; but if the said sheep had lambs, they were forbidden to eat

them. Their only privilege arising from this increase was, that they

might choose out the strongest and finest in preference to keeping the

old sheep. At Martinmas the authorities of the commune came round, and

counted over the stock of each Cagot. If he had more than his appointed

number, they were forfeited; half went to the commune, half to the

baillie, or chief magistrate of the commune. The poor beasts were

limited as to the amount of common which they might stray over in search

of grass. While the cattle of the inhabitants of the commune might

wander hither and thither in search of the sweetest herbage, the deepest

shade, or the coolest pool in which to stand on the hot days, and lazily

switch their dappled sides, the Cagot sheep and pig had to learn

imaginary bounds, beyond which if they strayed, any one might snap them

up, and kill them, reserving a part of the flesh for his own use, but

graciously restoring the inferior parts to their original owner. Any

damage done by the sheep was, however, fairly appraised, and the Cagot

paid no more for it than any other man would have done.

Did a Cagot leave his poor cabin, and venture into the towns, even to

render services required of him in the way of his trade, he was bidden, by all

the municipal laws, to stand by and remember his rude old state. In all

the towns and villages the large districts extending on both sides of the

Pyrenees--in all that part of Spain--they were forbidden to buy or sell

anything eatable, to walk in the middle (esteemed the better) part of the

streets, to come within the gates before sunrise, or to be found after

sunset within the walls of the town. But still, as the Cagots were good-

looking men, and (although they bore certain natural marks of their

caste, of which I shall speak by-and-by) were not easily distinguished by

casual passers-by from other men, they were compelled to wear some

distinctive peculiarity which should arrest the eye; and, in the greater

number of towns, it was decreed that the outward sign of a Cagot should

be a piece of red cloth sewed conspicuously on the front of his dress. In

other towns, the mark of Cagoterie was the foot of a duck or a goose hung

over their left shoulder, so as to be seen by any one meeting them. After

a time, the more convenient badge of a piece of yellow cloth cut out in

the shape of a duck's foot, was adopted. If any Cagot was found in any

town or village without his badge, he had to pay a fine of five sous, and

to lose his dress. He was expected to shrink away from any passer-by,

for fear that their clothes should touch each other; or else to stand

still in some corner or by-place. If the Cagots were thirsty during the

days which they passed in those towns where their presence was barely

suffered, they had no means of quenching their thirst, for they were

forbidden to enter into the little cabarets or taverns. Even the water

gushing out of the common fountain was prohibited to them. Far away, in

their own squalid village, there was the Cagot fountain, and they were

not allowed to drink of any other water. A Cagot woman having to make

purchases in the town, was liable to be flogged out of it if she went to

buy anything except on a Monday--a day on which all other people who

could, kept their houses for fear of coming in contact with the accursed

race.

In the Pays Basque, the prejudices--and for some time the laws--ran

stronger against them than any which I have hitherto mentioned. The

Basque Cagot was not allowed to possess sheep. He might keep a pig for

provision, but his pig had no right of pasturage. He might cut and carry

grass for the ass, which was the only other animal he was permitted to

own; and this ass was permitted, because its existence was rather an

advantage to the oppressor, who constantly availed himself of the Cagot's

mechanical skill, and was glad to have him and his tools easily conveyed

from one place to another.

The race was repulsed by the State. Under the small local governments

they could hold no post whatsoever. And they were barely tolerated by

the Church, although they were good Catholics, and zealous frequenters of

the mass. They might only enter the churches by a small door set apart

for them, through which no one of the pure race ever passed. This door

was low, so as to compel them to make an obeisance. It was occasionally

surrounded by sculpture, which invariably represented an oak-branch with

a dove above it. When they were once in, they might not go to the holy

water used by others. They had a benitier of their own; nor were they

allowed to share in the consecrated bread when that was handed round to

the believers of the pure race. The Cagots stood afar off, near the

door. There were certain boundaries--imaginary lines on the nave and in

the aisles which they might not pass. In one or two of the more tolerant

of the Pyrenean villages, the blessed bread was offered to the Cagots,

the priest standing on one side of the boundary, and giving the pieces of

bread on a long wooden fork to each person successively.

When the Cagot died, he was interred apart, in a plot burying-ground on

the north side of the cemetery. Under such laws and prescriptions as I

have described, it is no wonder that he was generally too poor to have

much property for his children to inherit; but certain descriptions of it

were forfeited to the commune. The only possession which all who were

not of his own race refused to touch, was his furniture. That was

tainted, infectious, unclean--fit for none but Cagots.

When such were, for at least three centuries, the prevalent usages and

opinions with regard to this oppressed race, it is not surprising that we

read of occasional outbursts of ferocious violence on their part. In the

Basses-Pyrenees, for instance it is only about a hundred years since,

that the Cagots of Rehouilhes rose up against the inhabitants of the

neighbouring town of Lourdes, and got the better of them, by their

magical powers as it is said. The people of Lourdes were conquered and

slain, and their ghastly, bloody heads served the triumphant Cagots for

balls to play at ninepins with! The local parliaments had begun, by this

time, to perceive how oppressive was the ban of public opinion under

which the Cagots lay, and were not inclined to enforce too severe a

punishment. Accordingly, the decree of the parliament of Toulouse

condemned only the leading Cagots concerned in this affray to be put to

death, and that henceforward and for ever no Cagot was to be permitted to

enter the town of Lourdes by any gate but that called Capdet-pourtet:

they were only to be allowed to walk under the rain-gutters, and neither

to sit, eat, nor drink in the town. If they failed in observing any of

these rules, the parliament decreed, in the spirit of Shylock, that the

disobedient Cagots should have two strips of flesh, weighing never more

than two ounces a-piece, cut out from each side of their spines.

In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries it was considered

no more a crime to kill a Cagot than to destroy obnoxious vermin. A

"nest of Cagots," as the old accounts phrase it, had assembled in a

deserted castle of Mauvezin, about the year sixteen hundred; and,

certainly, they made themselves not very agreeable neighbours, as they

seemed to enjoy their reputation of magicians; and, by some acoustic

secrets which were known to them, all sorts of moanings and groanings

were heard in the neighbouring forests, very much to the alarm of the

good people of the pure race; who could not cut off a withered branch for

firewood, but some unearthly sound seemed to fill the air, nor drink

water which was not poisoned, because the Cagots would persist in filling

their pitchers at the same running stream. Added to these grievances,

the various pilferings perpetually going on in the neighbourhood made the

inhabitants of the adjacent towns and hamlets believe that they had a

very sufficient cause for wishing to murder all the Cagots in the Chateau

de Mauvezin. But it was surrounded by a moat, and only accessible by a

drawbridge; besides which, the Cagots were fierce and vigilant. Some

one, however, proposed to get into their confidence; and for this purpose

he pretended to fall ill close to their path, so that on returning to

their stronghold they perceived him, and took him in, restored him to

health, and made a friend of him. One day, when they were all playing at

ninepins in the woods, their treacherous friend left the party on

pretence of being thirsty, and went back into the castle, drawing up the

bridge after he had passed over it, and so cutting off their means of

escape into safety. Them, going up to the highest part of the castle, he

blew a horn, and the pure race, who were lying in wait on the watch for

some such signal, fell upon the Cagots at their games, and slew them all.

For this murder I find no punishment decreed in the parliament of

Toulouse, or elsewhere.

As any intermarriage with the pure race was strictly forbidden, and as

there were books kept in every commune in which the names and habitations

of the reputed Cagots were written, these unfortunate people had no hope

of ever becoming blended with the rest of the population. Did a Cagot

marriage take place, the couple were serenaded with satirical songs. They

also had minstrels, and many of their romances are still current in

Brittany; but they did not attempt to make any reprisals of satire or

abuse. Their disposition was amiable, and their intelligence great.

Indeed, it required both these qualities, and their great love of

mechanical labour, to make their lives tolerable.

At last, they began to petition that they might receive some protection

from the laws; and, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the

judicial power took their side. But they gained little by this. Law

could not prevail against custom: and, in the ten or twenty years just

preceding the first French revolution, the prejudice in France against

the Cagots amounted to fierce and positive abhorrence.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Cagots of Navarre

complained to the Pope, that they were excluded from the fellowship of

men, and accursed by the Church, because their ancestors had given help

to a certain Count Raymond of Toulouse in his revolt against the Holy

See. They entreated his holiness not to visit upon them the sins of

their fathers. The Pope issued a bull on the thirteenth of May, fifteen

hundred and fifteen--ordering them to be well-treated and to be admitted

to the same privileges as other men. He charged Don Juan de Santa Maria

of Pampeluna to see to the execution of this bull. But Don Juan was slow

to help, and the poor Spanish Cagots grew impatient, and resolved to try

the secular power. They accordingly applied to the Cortes of Navarre,

and were opposed on a variety of grounds. First, it was stated that

their ancestors had had "nothing to do with Raymond Count of Toulouse, or

with any such knightly personage; that they were in fact descendants of

Gehazi, servant of Elisha (second book of Kings, fifth chapter, twenty-

seventh verse), who had been accursed by his master for his fraud upon

Naaman, and doomed, he and his descendants, to be lepers for evermore.

Name, Cagots or Gahets; Gahets, Gehazites. What can be more clear? And

if that is not enough, and you tell us that the Cagots are not lepers

now; we reply that there are two kinds of leprosy, one perceptible and

the other imperceptible, even to the person suffering from it. Besides,

it is the country talk, that where the Cagot treads, the grass withers,

proving the unnatural heat of his body. Many credible and trustworthy

witnesses will also tell you that, if a Cagot holds a freshly-gathered

apple in his hand, it will shrivel and wither up in an hour's time as

much as if it had been kept for a whole winter in a dry room. They are

born with tails; although the parents are cunning enough to pinch them

off immediately. Do you doubt this? If it is not true, why do the

children of the pure race delight in sewing on sheep's tails to the dress

of any Cagot who is so absorbed in his work as not to perceive them? And

their bodily smell is so horrible and detestable that it shows that they

must be heretics of some vile and pernicious description, for do we not

read of the incense of good workers, and the fragrance of holiness?"

Such were literally the arguments by which the Cagots were thrown back

into a worse position than ever, as far as regarded their rights as

citizens. The Pope insisted that they should receive all their

ecclesiastical privileges. The Spanish priests said nothing; but tacitly

refused to allow the Cagots to mingle with the rest of the faithful,

either dead or alive. The accursed race obtained laws in their favour

from the Emperor Charles the Fifth; which, however, there was no one to

carry into effect. As a sort of revenge for their want of submission,

and for their impertinence in daring to complain, their tools were all

taken away from them by the local authorities: an old man and all his

family died of starvation, being no longer allowed to fish.

They could not emigrate. Even to remove their poor mud habitations, from

one spot to another, excited anger and suspicion. To be sure, in sixteen

hundred and ninety-five, the Spanish government ordered the alcaldes to

search out all the Cagots, and to expel them before two months had

expired, under pain of having fifty ducats to pay for every Cagot

remaining in Spain at the expiration of that time. The inhabitants of

the villages rose up and flogged out any of the miserable race who might

be in their neighbourhood; but the French were on their guard against

this enforced irruption, and refused to permit them to enter France.

Numbers were hunted up into the inhospitable Pyrenees, and there died of

starvation, or became a prey to wild beasts. They were obliged to wear

both gloves and shoes when they were thus put to flight, otherwise the

stones and herbage they trod upon and the balustrades of the bridges that

they handled in crossing, would, according to popular belief, have become

poisonous.

And all this time, there was nothing remarkable or disgusting in the

outward appearance of this unfortunate people. There was nothing about

them to countenance the idea of their being lepers--the most natural mode

of accounting for the abhorrence in which they were held. They were

repeatedly examined by learned doctors, whose experiments, although

singular and rude, appear to have been made in a spirit of humanity. For

instance, the surgeons of the king of Navarre, in sixteen hundred, bled

twenty-two Cagots, in order to examine and analyze their blood. They

were young and healthy people of both sexes; and the doctors seem to have

expected that they should have been able to extract some new kind of salt

from their blood which might account for the wonderful heat of their

bodies. But their blood was just like that of other people. Some of

these medical men have left us a description of the general appearance of

this unfortunate race, at a time when they were more numerous and less

intermixed than they are now. The families existing in the south and

west of France, who are reputed to be of Cagot descent at this day, are,

like their ancestors, tall, largely made, and powerful in frame; fair and

ruddy in complexion, with gray-blue eyes, in which some observers see a

pensive heaviness of look. Their lips are thick, but well-formed. Some

of the reports name their sad expression of countenance with surprise and

suspicion--"They are not gay, like other folk." The wonder would be if

they were. Dr. Guyon, the medical man of the last century who has left

the clearest report on the health of the Cagots, speaks of the vigorous

old age they attain to. In one family alone, he found a man of seventy-

four years of age; a woman as old, gathering cherries; and another woman,

aged eighty-three, was lying on the grass, having her hair combed by her

great-grandchildren. Dr. Guyon and other surgeons examined into the

subject of the horribly infectious smell which the Cagots were said to

leave behind them, and upon everything they touched; but they could

perceive nothing unusual on this head. They also examined their ears,

which according to common belief (a belief existing to this day), were

differently shaped from those of other people; being round and gristly,

without the lobe of flesh into which the ear-ring is inserted. They

decided that most of the Cagots whom they examined had the ears of this

round shape; but they gravely added, that they saw no reason why this

should exclude them from the good-will of men, and from the power of

holding office in Church and State. They recorded the fact, that the

children of the towns ran baaing after any Cagot who had been compelled

to come into the streets to make purchases, in allusion to this

peculiarity of the shape of the ear, which bore some resemblance to the

ears of the sheep as they are cut by the shepherds in this district. Dr.

Guyon names the case of a beautiful Cagot girl, who sang most sweetly,

and prayed to be allowed to sing canticles in the organ-loft. The

organist, more musician than bigot, allowed her to come, but the

indignant congregation, finding out whence proceeded that clear, fresh

voice, rushed up to the organ-loft, and chased the girl out, bidding her

"remember her ears," and not commit the sacrilege of singing praises to

God along with the pure race.

But this medical report of Dr. Guyon's--bringing facts and arguments to

confirm his opinion, that there was no physical reason why the Cagots

should not be received on terms of social equality by the rest of the

world--did no more for his clients than the legal decrees promulgated two

centuries before had done. The French proved the truth of the saying in

Hudibras--

He that's convinced against his will

Is of the same opinion still.

And, indeed, the being convinced by Dr. Guyon that they ought to receive

Cagots as fellow-creatures, only made them more rabid in declaring that

they would not. One or two little occurrences which are recorded, show

that the bitterness of the repugnance to the Cagots was in full force at

the time just preceding the first French revolution. There was a M.

d'Abedos, the curate of Lourdes, and brother to the seigneur of the

neighbouring castle, who was living in seventeen hundred and eighty; he

was well-educated for the time, a travelled man, and sensible and

moderate in all respects but that of his abhorrence of the Cagots: he

would insult them from the very altar, calling out to them, as they stood

afar off, "Oh! ye Cagots, damned for evermore!" One day, a half-blind

Cagot stumbled and touched the censer borne before this Abbe de Lourdes.

He was immediately turned out of the church, and forbidden ever to re-

enter it. One does not know how to account for the fact, that the very

brother of this bigoted abbe, the seigneur of the village, went and

married a Cagot girl; but so it was, and the abbe brought a legal process

against him, and had his estates taken from him, solely on account of his

marriage, which reduced him to the condition of a Cagot, against whom the

old law was still in force. The descendants of this Seigneur de Lourdes

are simple peasants at this very day, working on the lands which belonged

to their grandfather.

This prejudice against mixed marriages remained prevalent until very

lately. The tradition of the Cagot descent lingered among the people,

long after the laws against the accursed race were abolished. A Breton

girl, within the last few years, having two lovers each of reputed Cagot

descent, employed a notary to examine their pedigrees, and see which of

the two had least Cagot in him; and to that one she gave her hand. In

Brittany the prejudice seems to have been more virulent than anywhere

else. M. Emile Souvestre records proofs of the hatred borne to them in

Brittany so recently as in eighteen hundred and thirty-five. Just lately

a baker at Hennebon, having married a girl of Cagot descent, lost all his

custom. The godfather and godmother of a Cagot child became Cagots

themselves by the Breton laws, unless, indeed, the poor little baby died

before attaining a certain number of days. They had to eat the butchers'

meat condemned as unhealthy; but, for some unknown reason, they were

considered to have a right to every cut loaf turned upside down, with its

cut side towards the door, and might enter any house in which they saw a

loaf in this position, and carry it away with them. About thirty years

ago, there was the skeleton of a hand hanging up as an offering in a

Breton church near Quimperle, and the tradition was, that it was the hand

of a rich Cagot who had dared to take holy water out of the usual

benitier, some time at the beginning of the reign of Louis the Sixteenth;

which an old soldier witnessing, he lay in wait, and the next time the

offender approached the benitier he cut off his hand, and hung it up,

dripping with blood, as an offering to the patron saint of the church.

The poor Cagots in Brittany petitioned against their opprobrious name,

and begged to be distinguished by the appelation of Malandrins. To

English ears one is much the same as the other, as neither conveys any

meaning; but, to this day, the descendants of the Cagots do not like to

have this name applied to them, preferring that of Malandrin.

The French Cagots tried to destroy all the records of their pariah

descent, in the commotions of seventeen hundred and eighty-nine; but if

writings have disappeared, the tradition yet remains, and points out such

and such a family as Cagot, or Malandrin, or Oiselier, according to the

old terms of abhorrence.

There are various ways in which learned men have attempted to account for

the universal repugnance in which this well-made, powerful race are held.

Some say that the antipathy to them took its rise in the days when

leprosy was a dreadfully prevalent disease; and that the Cagots are more

liable than any other men to a kind of skin disease, not precisely

leprosy, but resembling it in some of its symptoms; such as dead

whiteness of complexion, and swellings of the face and extremities. There

was also some resemblance to the ancient Jewish custom in respect to

lepers, in the habit of the people; who on meeting a Cagot called out,

"Cagote? Cagote?" to which they were bound to reply, "Perlute! perlute!"

Leprosy is not properly an infectious complaint, in spite of the horror

in which the Cagot furniture, and the cloth woven by them, are held in

some places; the disorder is hereditary, and hence (say this body of wise

men, who have troubled themselves to account for the origin of Cagoterie)

the reasonableness and the justice of preventing any mixed marriages, by

which this terrible tendency to leprous complaints might be spread far

and wide. Another authority says, that though the Cagots are

fine-looking men, hard-working, and good mechanics, yet they bear in

their faces, and show in their actions, reasons for the detestation in

which they are held: their glance, if you meet it, is the jettatura, or

evil-eye, and they are spiteful, and cruel, and deceitful above all other

men. All these qualities they derive from their ancestor Gehazi, the

servant of Elisha, together with their tendency to leprosy.

Again, it is said that they are descended from the Arian Goths who were

permitted to live in certain places in Guienne and Languedoc, after their

defeat by King Clovis, on condition that they abjured their heresy, and

kept themselves separate from all other men for ever. The principal

reason alleged in support of this supposition of their Gothic descent, is

the specious one of derivation,--Chiens Gots, Cans Gets, Cagots,

equivalent to Dogs of Goths.

Again, they were thought to be Saracens, coming from Syria. In

confirmation of this idea, was the belief that all Cagots were possessed

by a horrible smell. The Lombards, also, were an unfragrant race, or so

reputed among the Italians: witness Pope Stephen's letter to Charlemagne,

dissuading him from marrying Bertha, daughter of Didier, King of

Lombardy. The Lombards boasted of Eastern descent, and were noisome. The

Cagots were noisome, and therefore must be of Eastern descent. What

could be clearer? In addition, there was the proof to be derived from

the name Cagot, which those maintaining the opinion of their Saracen

descent held to be Chiens, or Chasseurs des Gots, because the Saracens

chased the Goths out of Spain. Moreover, the Saracens were originally

Mahometans, and as such obliged to bathe seven times a-day: whence the

badge of the duck's foot. A duck was a water-bird: Mahometans bathed in

the water. Proof upon proof!

In Brittany the common idea was, they were of Jewish descent. Their

unpleasant smell was again pressed into service. The Jews, it was well

known, had this physical infirmity, which might be cured either by

bathing in a certain fountain in Egypt--which was a long way from

Brittany--or by anointing themselves with the blood of a Christian child.

Blood gushed out of the body of every Cagot on Good Friday. No wonder,

if they were of Jewish descent. It was the only way of accounting for so

portentous a fact. Again; the Cagots were capital carpenters, which gave

the Bretons every reason to believe that their ancestors were the very

Jews who made the cross. When first the tide of emigration set from

Brittany to America, the oppressed Cagots crowded to the ports, seeking

to go to some new country, where their race might be unknown. Here was

another proof of their descent from Abraham and his nomadic people: and,

the forty years' wandering in the wilderness and the Wandering Jew

himself, were pressed into the service to prove that the Cagots derived

their restlessness and love of change from their ancestors, the Jews. The

Jews, also, practised arts-magic, and the Cagots sold bags of wind to the

Breton sailors, enchanted maidens to love them--maidens who never would

have cared for them, unless they had been previously enchanted--made

hollow rocks and trees give out strange and unearthly noises, and sold

the magical herb called _bon-succes_. It is true enough that, in all the

early acts of the fourteenth century, the same laws apply to Jews as to

Cagots, and the appellations seem used indiscriminately; but their fair

complexions, their remarkable devotion to all the ceremonies of the

Catholic Church, and many other circumstances, conspire to forbid our

believing them to be of Hebrew descent.

Another very plausible idea is, that they are the descendants of

unfortunate individuals afflicted with goitres, which is, even to this

day, not an uncommon disorder in the gorges and valleys of the Pyrenees.

Some have even derived the word goitre from Got, or Goth; but their name,

Crestia, is not unlike Cretin, and the same symptoms of idiotism were not

unusual among the Cagots; although sometimes, if old tradition is to be

credited, their malady of the brain took rather the form of violent

delirium, which attacked them at new and full moons. Then the workmen

laid down their tools, and rushed off from their labour to play mad

pranks up and down the country. Perpetual motion was required to

alleviate the agony of fury that seized upon the Cagots at such times. In

this desire for rapid movement, the attack resembled the Neapolitan

tarantella; while in the mad deeds they performed during such attacks,

they were not unlike the northern Berserker. In Bearn especially, those

suffering from this madness were dreaded by the pure race; the Bearnais,

going to cut their wooden clogs in the great forests that lay around the

base of the Pyrenees, feared above all things to go too near the periods

when the Cagoutelle seized on the oppressed and accursed people; from

whom it was then the oppressors' turn to fly. A man was living within

the memory of some, who married a Cagot wife; he used to beat her right

soundly when he saw the first symptoms of the Cagoutelle, and, having

reduced her to a wholesome state of exhaustion and insensibility, he

locked her up until the moon had altered her shape in the heavens. If he

had not taken such decided steps, say the oldest inhabitants, there is no

knowing what might have happened.

From the thirteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, there are facts

enough to prove the universal abhorrence in which this unfortunate race

was held; whether called Cagots, or Gahets in Pyrenean districts,

Caqueaux in Brittany, or Yaqueros Asturias. The great French revolution

brought some good out of its fermentation of the people: the more

intelligent among them tried to overcome the prejudice against the

Cagots.

In seventeen hundred and eighteen, there was a famous cause tried at

Biarritz relating to Cagot rights and privileges. There was a wealthy

miller, Etienne Arnauld by name, of the race of Gotz, Quagotz, Bisigotz,

Astragotz, or Gahetz, as his people are described in the legal document.

He married an heiress, a Gotte (or Cagot) of Biarritz; and the

newly-married well-to-do couple saw no reason why they should stand near

the door in the church, nor why he should not hold some civil office in

the commune, of which he was the principal inhabitant. Accordingly, he

petitioned the law that he and his wife might be allowed to sit in the

gallery of the church, and that he might be relieved from his civil

disabilities. This wealthy white miller, Etienne Arnauld, pursued his

rights with some vigour against the Baillie of Labourd, the dignitary of

the neighbourhood. Whereupon the inhabitants of Biarritz met in the open

air, on the eighth of May, to the number of one hundred and fifty;

approved of the conduct of the Baillie in rejecting Arnauld, made a

subscription, and gave all power to their lawyers to defend the cause of

the pure race against Etienne Arnauld--"that stranger," who, having

married a girl of Cagot blood, ought also to be expelled from the holy

places. This lawsuit was carried through all the local courts, and ended

by an appeal to the highest court in Paris; where a decision was given

against Basque superstitions; and Etienne Arnauld was thenceforward

entitled to enter the gallery of the church.

Of course, the inhabitants of Biarritz were all the more ferocious for

having been conquered; and, four years later, a carpenter, named Miguel

Legaret, suspected of Cagot descent, having placed himself in the church

among other people, was dragged out by the abbe and two of the jurets of

the parish. Legaret defended himself with a sharp knife at the time, and

went to law afterwards; the end of which was, that the abbe and his two

accomplices were condemned to a public confession of penitence, to be

uttered while on their knees at the church door, just after high-mass.

They appealed to the parliament of Bourdeaux against this decision, but

met with no better success than the opponents of the miller Arnauld.

Legaret was confirmed in his right of standing where he would in the

parish church. That a living Cagot had equal rights with other men in

the town of Biarritz seemed now ceded to them; but a dead Cagot was a

different thing. The inhabitants of pure blood struggled long and hard

to be interred apart from the abhorred race. The Cagots were equally

persistent in claiming to have a common burying-ground. Again the texts

of the Old Testament were referred to, and the pure blood quoted

triumphantly the precedent of Uzziah the leper (twenty-sixth chapter of

the second book of Chronicles), who was buried in the field of the

Sepulchres of the Kings, not in the sepulchres themselves. The Cagots

pleaded that they were healthy and able-bodied; with no taint of leprosy

near them. They were met by the strong argument so difficult to be

refuted, which I quoted before. Leprosy was of two kinds, perceptible

and imperceptible. If the Cagots were suffering from the latter kind,

who could tell whether they were free from it or not? That decision must

be left to the judgment of others.

One sturdy Cagot family alone, Belone by name, kept up a lawsuit,

claiming the privilege of common sepulture, for forty-two years; although

the cure of Biarritz had to pay one hundred livres for every Cagot not

interred in the right place. The inhabitants indemnified the curate for

all these fines.

M. de Romagne, Bishop of Tarbes, who died in seventeen hundred and sixty-

eight, was the first to allow a Cagot to fill any office in the Church.

To be sure, some were so spiritless as to reject office when it was

offered to them, because, by so claiming their equality, they had to pay

the same taxes as other men, instead of the Rancale or pole-tax levied on

the Cagots; the collector of which had also a right to claim a piece of

bread of a certain size for his dog at every Cagot dwelling.

Even in the present century, it has been necessary in some churches for

the archdeacon of the district, followed by all his clergy, to pass out

of the small door previously appropriated to the Cagots, in order to

mitigate the superstition which, even so lately, made the people refuse

to mingle with them in the house of God. A Cagot once played the

congregation at Larroque a trick suggested by what I have just named. He

slily locked the great parish-door of the church, while the greater part

of the inhabitants were assisting at mass inside; put gravel into the

lock itself, so as to prevent the use of any duplicate key,--and had the

pleasure of seeing the proud pure-blooded people file out with bended

head, through the small low door used by the abhorred Cagots.

We are naturally shocked at discovering, from facts such as these, the

causeless rancour with which innocent and industrious people were so

recently persecuted. The moral of the history of the accursed race may,

perhaps, be best conveyed in the words of an epitaph on Mrs. Mary Hand,

who lies buried in the churchyard of Stratford-on-Avon:--

What faults you saw in me,

Pray strive to shun;

And look at home; there's

Something to be done.

For some time past I had observed that Miss Duncan made a good deal of

occupation for herself in writing, but that she did not like me to

notice her employment. Of course this made me all the more curious; and

many were my silent conjectures—some of them so near the truth that I

was not much surprised when, after Mr. Dawson had finished reading his

Paper to us, she hesitated, coughed, and abruptly introduced a little

formal speech, to the effect that she had noted down an old Welsh story

the particulars of which had often been told her in her youth, as she

lived close to the place where the events occurred. Everybody pressed

her to read the manuscript, which she now produced from her reticule;

but, when on the point of beginning, her nervousness seemed to overcome

her, and she made so many apologies for its being the first and only

attempt she had ever made at that kind of composition, that I began to

wonder if we should ever arrive at the story at all. At length, in a

high-pitched, ill-assured voice, she read out the title:

“THE DOOM OF THE GRIFFITHS.”

THE DOOM OF THE GRIFFITHS

CHAPTER I.

I have always been much interested by the traditions which are scattered

up and down North Wales relating to Owen Glendower (Owain Glendwr is the

national spelling of the name), and I fully enter into the feeling which

makes the Welsh peasant still look upon him as the hero of his country.

There was great joy among many of the inhabitants of the principality,

when the subject of the Welsh prize poem at Oxford, some fifteen or

sixteen years ago, was announced to be “Owain Glendwr.” It was the most

proudly national subject that had been given for years.

Perhaps, some may not be aware that this redoubted chieftain is, even in

the present days of enlightenment, as famous among his illiterate

countrymen for his magical powers as for his patriotism. He says

himself—or Shakespeare says it for him, which is much the same thing—

‘At my nativity

The front of heaven was full of fiery shapes

Of burning cressets . . .

. . . I can call spirits from the vasty deep.’

And few among the lower orders in the principality would think of asking

Hotspur’s irreverent question in reply.

Among other traditions preserved relative to this part of the Welsh

hero’s character, is the old family prophecy which gives title to this

tale. When Sir David Gam, “as black a traitor as if he had been born in

Builth,” sought to murder Owen at Machynlleth, there was one with him

whose name Glendwr little dreamed of having associated with his enemies.

Rhys ap Gryfydd, his “old familiar friend,” his relation, his more than

brother, had consented unto his blood. Sir David Gam might be forgiven,

but one whom he had loved, and who had betrayed him, could never be

forgiven. Glendwr was too deeply read in the human heart to kill him.

No, he let him live on, the loathing and scorn of his compatriots, and

the victim of bitter remorse. The mark of Cain was upon him.

But before he went forth—while he yet stood a prisoner, cowering beneath

his conscience before Owain Glendwr—that chieftain passed a doom upon him

and his race:

“I doom thee to live, because I know thou wilt pray for death. Thou

shalt live on beyond the natural term of the life of man, the scorn of

all good men. The very children shall point to thee with hissing tongue,

and say, ‘There goes one who would have shed a brother’s blood!’ For I

loved thee more than a brother, oh Rhys ap Gryfydd! Thou shalt live on

to see all of thy house, except the weakling in arms, perish by the

sword. Thy race shall be accursed. Each generation shall see their

lands melt away like snow; yea their wealth shall vanish, though they may

labour night and day to heap up gold. And when nine generations have

passed from the face of the earth, thy blood shall no longer flow in the

veins of any human being. In those days the last male of thy race shall

avenge me. The son shall slay the father.”

Such was the traditionary account of Owain Glendwr’s speech to his

once-trusted friend. And it was declared that the doom had been

fulfilled in all things; that live in as miserly a manner as they would,

the Griffiths never were wealthy and prosperous—indeed that their worldly

stock diminished without any visible cause.

But the lapse of many years had almost deadened the wonder-inspiring

power of the whole curse. It was only brought forth from the hoards of

Memory when some untoward event happened to the Griffiths family; and in

the eighth generation the faith in the prophecy was nearly destroyed, by

the marriage of the Griffiths of that day, to a Miss Owen, who,

unexpectedly, by the death of a brother, became an heiress—to no

considerable amount, to be sure, but enough to make the prophecy appear

reversed. The heiress and her husband removed from his small patrimonial

estate in Merionethshire, to her heritage in Caernarvonshire, and for a

time the prophecy lay dormant.

If you go from Tremadoc to Criccaeth, you pass by the parochial church of

Ynysynhanarn, situated in a boggy valley running from the mountains,

which shoulder up to the Rivals, down to Cardigan Bay. This tract of

land has every appearance of having been redeemed at no distant period of

time from the sea, and has all the desolate rankness often attendant upon

such marshes. But the valley beyond, similar in character, had yet more

of gloom at the time of which I write. In the higher part there were

large plantations of firs, set too closely to attain any size, and

remaining stunted in height and scrubby in appearance. Indeed, many of

the smaller and more weakly had died, and the bark had fallen down on the

brown soil neglected and unnoticed. These trees had a ghastly

appearance, with their white trunks, seen by the dim light which

struggled through the thick boughs above. Nearer to the sea, the valley

assumed a more open, though hardly a more cheerful character; it looked

dark and overhung by sea-fog through the greater part of the year, and

even a farm-house, which usually imparts something of cheerfulness to a

landscape, failed to do so here. This valley formed the greater part of

the estate to which Owen Griffiths became entitled by right of his wife.

In the higher part of the valley was situated the family mansion, or

rather dwelling-house, for “mansion” is too grand a word to apply to the

clumsy, but substantially-built Bodowen. It was square and

heavy-looking, with just that much pretension to ornament necessary to

distinguish it from the mere farm-house.

In this dwelling Mrs. Owen Griffiths bore her husband two sons—Llewellyn,

the future Squire, and Robert, who was early destined for the Church.

The only difference in their situation, up to the time when Robert was

entered at Jesus College, was, that the elder was invariably indulged by

all around him, while Robert was thwarted and indulged by turns; that

Llewellyn never learned anything from the poor Welsh parson, who was

nominally his private tutor; while occasionally Squire Griffiths made a

great point of enforcing Robert’s diligence, telling him that, as he had

his bread to earn, he must pay attention to his learning. There is no

knowing how far the very irregular education he had received would have

carried Robert through his college examinations; but, luckily for him in

this respect, before such a trial of his learning came round, he heard of

the death of his elder brother, after a short illness, brought on by a

hard drinking-bout. Of course, Robert was summoned home, and it seemed

quite as much of course, now that there was no necessity for him to “earn

his bread by his learning,” that he should not return to Oxford. So the

half-educated, but not unintelligent, young man continued at home, during

the short remainder of his parent’s lifetime.

His was not an uncommon character. In general he was mild, indolent, and

easily managed; but once thoroughly roused, his passions were vehement

and fearful. He seemed, indeed, almost afraid of himself, and in common

hardly dared to give way to justifiable anger—so much did he dread losing

his self-control. Had he been judiciously educated, he would, probably,

have distinguished himself in those branches of literature which call for

taste and imagination, rather than any exertion of reflection or

judgment. As it was, his literary taste showed itself in making

collections of Cambrian antiquities of every description, till his stock

of Welsh MSS. would have excited the envy of Dr. Pugh himself, had he

been alive at the time of which I write.

There is one characteristic of Robert Griffiths which I have omitted to

note, and which was peculiar among his class. He was no hard drinker;

whether it was that his head was easily affected, or that his

partially-refined taste led him to dislike intoxication and its attendant

circumstances, I cannot say; but at five-and-twenty Robert Griffiths was

habitually sober—a thing so rare in Llyn, that he was almost shunned as a

churlish, unsociable being, and paused much of his time in solitude.

About this time, he had to appear in some case that was tried at the

Caernarvon assizes; and while there, was a guest at the house of his

agent, a shrewd, sensible Welsh attorney, with one daughter, who had

charms enough to captivate Robert Griffiths. Though he remained only a

few days at her father’s house, they were sufficient to decide his

affections, and short was the period allowed to elapse before he brought

home a mistress to Bodowen. The new Mrs. Griffiths was a gentle,

yielding person, full of love toward her husband, of whom, nevertheless,

she stood something in awe, partly arising from the difference in their

ages, partly from his devoting much time to studies of which she could

understand nothing.

She soon made him the father of a blooming little daughter, called

Augharad after her mother. Then there came several uneventful years in

the household of Bodowen; and when the old women had one and all declared

that the cradle would not rock again, Mrs. Griffiths bore the son and

heir. His birth was soon followed by his mother’s death: she had been

ailing and low-spirited during her pregnancy, and she seemed to lack the

buoyancy of body and mind requisite to bring her round after her time of

trial. Her husband, who loved her all the more from having few other

claims on his affections, was deeply grieved by her early death, and his

only comforter was the sweet little boy whom she had left behind. That

part of the squire’s character, which was so tender, and almost feminine,

seemed called forth by the helpless situation of the little infant, who

stretched out his arms to his father with the same earnest cooing that

happier children make use of to their mother alone. Augharad was almost

neglected, while the little Owen was king of the house; still next to his

father, none tended him so lovingly as his sister. She was so accustomed

to give way to him that it was no longer a hardship. By night and by day

Owen was the constant companion of his father, and increasing years

seemed only to confirm the custom. It was an unnatural life for the

child, seeing no bright little faces peering into his own (for Augharad

was, as I said before, five or six years older, and her face, poor

motherless girl! was often anything but bright), hearing no din of clear

ringing voices, but day after day sharing the otherwise solitary hours of

his father, whether in the dim room, surrounded by wizard-like

antiquities, or pattering his little feet to keep up with his “tada” in

his mountain rambles or shooting excursions. When the pair came to some

little foaming brook, where the stepping-stones were far and wide, the

father carried his little boy across with the tenderest care; when the

lad was weary, they rested, he cradled in his father’s arms, or the

Squire would lift him up and carry him to his home again. The boy was

indulged (for his father felt flattered by the desire) in his wish of

sharing his meals and keeping the same hours. All this indulgence did

not render Owen unamiable, but it made him wilful, and not a happy child.

He had a thoughtful look, not common to the face of a young boy. He knew

no games, no merry sports; his information was of an imaginative and

speculative character. His father delighted to interest him in his own

studies, without considering how far they were healthy for so young a

mind.

Of course Squire Griffiths was not unaware of the prophecy which was to

be fulfilled in his generation. He would occasionally refer to it when

among his friends, with sceptical levity; but in truth it lay nearer to

his heart than he chose to acknowledge. His strong imagination rendered

him peculiarly impressible on such subjects; while his judgment, seldom

exercised or fortified by severe thought, could not prevent his

continually recurring to it. He used to gaze on the half-sad countenance

of the child, who sat looking up into his face with his large dark eyes,

so fondly yet so inquiringly, till the old legend swelled around his

heart, and became too painful for him not to require sympathy. Besides,

the overpowering love he bore to the child seemed to demand fuller vent

than tender words; it made him like, yet dread, to upbraid its object for

the fearful contrast foretold. Still Squire Griffiths told the legend,

in a half-jesting manner, to his little son, when they were roaming over

the wild heaths in the autumn days, “the saddest of the year,” or while

they sat in the oak-wainscoted room, surrounded by mysterious relics that

gleamed strangely forth by the flickering fire-light. The legend was

wrought into the boy’s mind, and he would crave, yet tremble, to hear it

told over and over again, while the words were intermingled with caresses

and questions as to his love. Occasionally his loving words and actions

were cut short by his father’s light yet bitter speech—“Get thee away, my

lad; thou knowest not what is to come of all this love.”

When Augharad was seventeen, and Owen eleven or twelve, the rector of the

parish in which Bodowen was situated, endeavoured to prevail on Squire

Griffiths to send the boy to school. Now, this rector had many congenial

tastes with his parishioner, and was his only intimate; and, by repeated

arguments, he succeeded in convincing the Squire that the unnatural life

Owen was leading was in every way injurious. Unwillingly was the father

wrought to part from his son; but he did at length send him to the

Grammar School at Bangor, then under the management of an excellent

classic. Here Owen showed that he had more talents than the rector had

given him credit for, when he affirmed that the lad had been completely

stupefied by the life he led at Bodowen. He bade fair to do credit to

the school in the peculiar branch of learning for which it was famous.

But he was not popular among his schoolfellows. He was wayward, though,

to a certain degree, generous and unselfish; he was reserved but gentle,

except when the tremendous bursts of passion (similar in character to

those of his father) forced their way.

On his return from school one Christmas-time, when he had been a year or

so at Bangor, he was stunned by hearing that the undervalued Augharad was

about to be married to a gentleman of South Wales, residing near

Aberystwith. Boys seldom appreciate their sisters; but Owen thought of

the many slights with which he had requited the patient Augharad, and he

gave way to bitter regrets, which, with a selfish want of control over

his words, he kept expressing to his father, until the Squire was

thoroughly hurt and chagrined at the repeated exclamations of “What shall

we do when Augharad is gone?” “How dull we shall be when Augharad is

married!” Owen’s holidays were prolonged a few weeks, in order that he

might be present at the wedding; and when all the festivities were over,

and the bride and bridegroom had left Bodowen, the boy and his father

really felt how much they missed the quiet, loving Augharad. She had

performed so many thoughtful, noiseless little offices, on which their

daily comfort depended; and now she was gone, the household seemed to

miss the spirit that peacefully kept it in order; the servants roamed

about in search of commands and directions, the rooms had no longer the

unobtrusive ordering of taste to make them cheerful, the very fires

burned dim, and were always sinking down into dull heaps of gray ashes.

Altogether Owen did not regret his return to Bangor, and this also the

mortified parent perceived. Squire Griffiths was a selfish parent.

Letters in those days were a rare occurrence. Owen usually received one

during his half-yearly absences from home, and occasionally his father

paid him a visit. This half-year the boy had no visit, nor even a

letter, till very near the time of his leaving school, and then he was

astounded by the intelligence that his father was married again.

Then came one of his paroxysms of rage; the more disastrous in its

effects upon his character because it could find no vent in action.

Independently of slight to the memory of the first wife which children

are so apt to fancy such an action implies, Owen had hitherto considered

himself (and with justice) the first object of his father’s life. They

had been so much to each other; and now a shapeless, but too real

something had come between him and his father there for ever. He felt as

if his permission should have been asked, as if he should have been

consulted. Certainly he ought to have been told of the intended event.

So the Squire felt, and hence his constrained letter which had so much

increased the bitterness of Owen’s feelings.

With all this anger, when Owen saw his stepmother, he thought he had

never seen so beautiful a woman for her age; for she was no longer in the

bloom of youth, being a widow when his father married her. Her manners,

to the Welsh lad, who had seen little of female grace among the families

of the few antiquarians with whom his father visited, were so fascinating

that he watched her with a sort of breathless admiration. Her measured

grace, her faultless movements, her tones of voice, sweet, till the ear

was sated with their sweetness, made Owen less angry at his father’s

marriage. Yet he felt, more than ever, that the cloud was between him

and his father; that the hasty letter he had sent in answer to the

announcement of his wedding was not forgotten, although no allusion was

ever made to it. He was no longer his father’s confidant—hardly ever his

father’s companion, for the newly-married wife was all in all to the

Squire, and his son felt himself almost a cipher, where he had so long

been everything. The lady herself had ever the softest consideration for

her stepson; almost too obtrusive was the attention paid to his wishes,

but still he fancied that the heart had no part in the winning advances.

There was a watchful glance of the eye that Owen once or twice caught

when she had imagined herself unobserved, and many other nameless little

circumstances, that gave him a strong feeling of want of sincerity in his

stepmother. Mrs. Owen brought with her into the family her little child

by her first husband, a boy nearly three years old. He was one of those

elfish, observant, mocking children, over whose feelings you seem to have

no control: agile and mischievous, his little practical jokes, at first

performed in ignorance of the pain he gave, but afterward proceeding to a

malicious pleasure in suffering, really seemed to afford some ground to

the superstitious notion of some of the common people that he was a fairy

changeling.

Years passed on; and as Owen grew older he became more observant. He

saw, even in his occasional visits at home (for from school he had passed

on to college), that a great change had taken place in the outward

manifestations of his father’s character; and, by degrees, Owen traced

this change to the influence of his stepmother; so slight, so

imperceptible to the common observer, yet so resistless in its effects.

Squire Griffiths caught up his wife’s humbly advanced opinions, and,

unawares to himself, adopted them as his own, defying all argument and

opposition. It was the same with her wishes; they met their fulfilment,

from the extreme and delicate art with which she insinuated them into her

husband’s mind, as his own. She sacrificed the show of authority for the

power. At last, when Owen perceived some oppressive act in his father’s

conduct toward his dependants, or some unaccountable thwarting of his own

wishes, he fancied he saw his stepmother’s secret influence thus

displayed, however much she might regret the injustice of his father’s

actions in her conversations with him when they were alone. His father

was fast losing his temperate habits, and frequent intoxication soon took

its usual effect upon the temper. Yet even here was the spell of his

wife upon him. Before her he placed a restraint upon his passion, yet

she was perfectly aware of his irritable disposition, and directed it

hither and thither with the same apparent ignorance of the tendency of

her words.

Meanwhile Owen’s situation became peculiarly mortifying to a youth whose

early remembrances afforded such a contrast to his present state. As a

child, he had been elevated to the consequence of a man before his years

gave any mental check to the selfishness which such conduct was likely to

engender; he could remember when his will was law to the servants and

dependants, and his sympathy necessary to his father: now he was as a

cipher in his father’s house; and the Squire, estranged in the first

instance by a feeling of the injury he had done his son in not sooner

acquainting him with his purposed marriage, seemed rather to avoid than

to seek him as a companion, and too frequently showed the most utter

indifference to the feelings and wishes which a young man of a high and

independent spirit might be supposed to indulge.

Perhaps Owen was not fully aware of the force of all these circumstances;

for an actor in a family drama is seldom unimpassioned enough to be

perfectly observant. But he became moody and soured; brooding over his

unloved existence, and craving with a human heart after sympathy.

This feeling took more full possession of his mind when he had left

college, and returned home to lead an idle and purposeless life. As the

heir, there was no worldly necessity for exertion: his father was too

much of a Welsh squire to dream of the moral necessity, and he himself

had not sufficient strength of mind to decide at once upon abandoning a

place and mode of life which abounded in daily mortifications; yet to

this course his judgment was slowly tending, when some circumstances

occurred to detain him at Bodowen.

It was not to be expected that harmony would long be preserved, even in

appearance, between an unguarded and soured young man, such as Owen, and

his wary stepmother, when he had once left college, and come, not as a

visitor, but as the heir to his father’s house. Some cause of difference

occurred, where the woman subdued her hidden anger sufficiently to become

convinced that Owen was not entirely the dupe she had believed him to be.

Henceforward there was no peace between them. Not in vulgar altercations

did this show itself; but in moody reserve on Owen’s part, and in

undisguised and contemptuous pursuance of her own plans by his

stepmother. Bodowen was no longer a place where, if Owen was not loved

or attended to, he could at least find peace, and care for himself: he

was thwarted at every step, and in every wish, by his father’s desire,

apparently, while the wife sat by with a smile of triumph on her

beautiful lips.

So Owen went forth at the early day dawn, sometimes roaming about on the

shore or the upland, shooting or fishing, as the season might be, but

oftener “stretched in indolent repose” on the short, sweet grass,

indulging in gloomy and morbid reveries. He would fancy that this

mortified state of existence was a dream, a horrible dream, from which he

should awake and find himself again the sole object and darling of his

father. And then he would start up and strive to shake off the incubus.

There was the molten sunset of his childish memory; the gorgeous crimson

piles of glory in the west, fading away into the cold calm light of the

rising moon, while here and there a cloud floated across the western

heaven, like a seraph’s wing, in its flaming beauty; the earth was the

same as in his childhood’s days, full of gentle evening sounds, and the

harmonies of twilight—the breeze came sweeping low over the heather and

blue-bells by his side, and the turf was sending up its evening incense

of perfume. But life, and heart, and hope were changed for ever since

those bygone days!

Or he would seat himself in a favourite niche of the rocks on Moel Gêst,

hidden by a stunted growth of the whitty, or mountain-ash, from general

observation, with a rich-tinted cushion of stone-crop for his feet, and a

straight precipice of rock rising just above. Here would he sit for

hours, gazing idly at the bay below with its back-ground of purple hills,

and the little fishing-sail on its bosom, showing white in the sunbeam,

and gliding on in such harmony with the quiet beauty of the glassy sea;

or he would pull out an old school-volume, his companion for years, and

in morbid accordance with the dark legend that still lurked in the

recesses of his mind—a shape of gloom in those innermost haunts awaiting

its time to come forth in distinct outline—would he turn to the old Greek

dramas which treat of a family foredoomed by an avenging Fate. The worn

page opened of itself at the play of the Œdipus Tyrannus, and Owen dwelt

with the craving disease upon the prophecy so nearly resembling that

which concerned himself. With his consciousness of neglect, there was a

sort of self-flattery in the consequence which the legend gave him. He

almost wondered how they durst, with slights and insults, thus provoke

the Avenger.

The days drifted onward. Often he would vehemently pursue some sylvan

sport, till thought and feeling were lost in the violence of bodily

exertion. Occasionally his evenings were spent at a small public-house,

such as stood by the unfrequented wayside, where the welcome, hearty,

though bought, seemed so strongly to contrast with the gloomy negligence

of home—unsympathising home.

One evening (Owen might be four or five-and-twenty), wearied with a day’s

shooting on the Clenneny Moors, he passed by the open door of “The Goat”

at Penmorfa. The light and the cheeriness within tempted him, poor

self-exhausted man! as it has done many a one more wretched in worldly

circumstances, to step in, and take his evening meal where at least his

presence was of some consequence. It was a busy day in that little

hostel. A flock of sheep, amounting to some hundreds, had arrived at

Penmorfa, on their road to England, and thronged the space before the

house. Inside was the shrewd, kind-hearted hostess, bustling to and fro,

with merry greetings for every tired drover who was to pass the night in

her house, while the sheep were penned in a field close by. Ever and

anon, she kept attending to the second crowd of guests, who were

celebrating a rural wedding in her house. It was busy work to Martha

Thomas, yet her smile never flagged; and when Owen Griffiths had finished

his evening meal she was there, ready with a hope that it had done him

good, and was to his mind, and a word of intelligence that the

wedding-folk were about to dance in the kitchen, and the harper was the

famous Edward of Corwen.

Owen, partly from good-natured compliance with his hostess’s implied

wish, and partly from curiosity, lounged to the passage which led to the

kitchen—not the every-day, working, cooking kitchen, which was behind,

but a good-sized room, where the mistress sat, when her work was done,

and where the country people were commonly entertained at such

merry-makings as the present. The lintels of the door formed a frame for

the animated picture which Owen saw within, as he leaned against the wall

in the dark passage. The red light of the fire, with every now and then

a falling piece of turf sending forth a fresh blaze, shone full upon four

young men who were dancing a measure something like a Scotch reel,

keeping admirable time in their rapid movements to the capital tune the

harper was playing. They had their hats on when Owen first took his

stand, but as they grew more and more animated they flung them away, and

presently their shoes were kicked off with like disregard to the spot

where they might happen to alight. Shouts of applause followed any

remarkable exertion of agility, in which each seemed to try to excel his

companions. At length, wearied and exhausted, they sat down, and the

harper gradually changed to one of those wild, inspiring national airs

for which he was so famous. The thronged audience sat earnest and

breathless, and you might have heard a pin drop, except when some maiden

passed hurriedly, with flaring candle and busy look, through to the real

kitchen beyond. When he had finished his beautiful theme on “The March

of the men of Harlech,” he changed the measure again to “Tri chant o’

bunnan” (Three hundred pounds), and immediately a most unmusical-looking

man began chanting “Pennillion,” or a sort of recitative stanzas, which

were soon taken up by another, and this amusement lasted so long that

Owen grew weary, and was thinking of retreating from his post by the

door, when some little bustle was occasioned, on the opposite side of the

room, by the entrance of a middle-aged man, and a young girl, apparently

his daughter. The man advanced to the bench occupied by the seniors of

the party, who welcomed him with the usual pretty Welsh greeting, “Pa sut

mae dy galon?” (“How is thy heart?”) and drinking his health passed on to

him the cup of excellent _cwrw_. The girl, evidently a village belle,

was as warmly greeted by the young men, while the girls eyed her rather

askance with a half-jealous look, which Owen set down to the score of her

extreme prettiness. Like most Welsh women, she was of middle size as to

height, but beautifully made, with the most perfect yet delicate

roundness in every limb. Her little mob-cap was carefully adjusted to a

face which was excessively pretty, though it never could be called

handsome. It also was round, with the slightest tendency to the oval

shape, richly coloured, though somewhat olive in complexion, with dimples

in cheek and chin, and the most scarlet lips Owen had ever seen, that

were too short to meet over the small pearly teeth. The nose was the

most defective feature; but the eyes were splendid. They were so long,

so lustrous, yet at times so very soft under their thick fringe of

eyelash! The nut-brown hair was carefully braided beneath the border of

delicate lace: it was evident the little village beauty knew how to make

the most of all her attractions, for the gay colours which were displayed

in her neckerchief were in complete harmony with the complexion.

Owen was much attracted, while yet he was amused, by the evident coquetry

the girl displayed, collecting around her a whole bevy of young fellows,

for each of whom she seemed to have some gay speech, some attractive look

or action. In a few minutes young Griffiths of Bodowen was at her side,

brought thither by a variety of idle motives, and as her undivided

attention was given to the Welsh heir, her admirers, one by one, dropped

off, to seat themselves by some less fascinating but more attentive fair

one. The more Owen conversed with the girl, the more he was taken; she

had more wit and talent than he had fancied possible; a self-abandon and

thoughtfulness, to boot, that seemed full of charms; and then her voice

was so clear and sweet, and her actions so full of grace, that Owen was

fascinated before he was well aware, and kept looking into her bright,

blushing face, till her uplifted flashing eye fell beneath his earnest

gaze.

While it thus happened that they were silent—she from confusion at the

unexpected warmth of his admiration, he from an unconsciousness of

anything but the beautiful changes in her flexile countenance—the man

whom Owen took for her father came up and addressed some observation to

his daughter, from whence he glided into some commonplace though

respectful remark to Owen, and at length engaging him in some slight,

local conversation, he led the way to the account of a spot on the

peninsula of Penthryn, where teal abounded, and concluded with begging

Owen to allow him to show him the exact place, saying that whenever the

young Squire felt so inclined, if he would honour him by a call at his

house, he would take him across in his boat. While Owen listened, his

attention was not so much absorbed as to be unaware that the little

beauty at his side was refusing one or two who endeavoured to draw her

from her place by invitations to dance. Flattered by his own

construction of her refusals, he again directed all his attention to her,

till she was called away by her father, who was leaving the scene of

festivity. Before he left he reminded Owen of his promise, and added—

“Perhaps, sir, you do not know me. My name is Ellis Pritchard, and I

live at Ty Glas, on this side of Moel Gêst; anyone can point it out to

you.”

When the father and daughter had left, Owen slowly prepared for his ride

home; but encountering the hostess, he could not resist asking a few

questions relative to Ellis Pritchard and his pretty daughter. She

answered shortly but respectfully, and then said, rather hesitatingly—

“Master Griffiths, you know the triad, ‘Tri pheth tebyg y naill i’r

llall, ysgnbwr heb yd, mail deg heb ddiawd, a merch deg heb ei geirda’

(Three things are alike: a fine barn without corn, a fine cup without

drink, a fine woman without her reputation).” She hastily quitted him,

and Owen rode slowly to his unhappy home.

Ellis Pritchard, half farmer and half fisherman, was shrewd, and keen,

and worldly; yet he was good-natured, and sufficiently generous to have

become rather a popular man among his equals. He had been struck with

the young Squire’s attention to his pretty daughter, and was not

insensible to the advantages to be derived from it. Nest would not be

the first peasant girl, by any means, who had been transplanted to a

Welsh manor-house as its mistress; and, accordingly, her father had

shrewdly given the admiring young man some pretext for further

opportunities of seeing her.

As for Nest herself, she had somewhat of her father’s worldliness, and

was fully alive to the superior station of her new admirer, and quite

prepared to slight all her old sweethearts on his account. But then she

had something more of feeling in her reckoning; she had not been

insensible to the earnest yet comparatively refined homage which Owen

paid her; she had noticed his expressive and occasionally handsome

countenance with admiration, and was flattered by his so immediately

singling her out from her companions. As to the hint which Martha Thomas

had thrown out, it is enough to say that Nest was very giddy, and that

she was motherless. She had high spirits and a great love of admiration,

or, to use a softer term, she loved to please; men, women, and children,

all, she delighted to gladden with her smile and voice. She coquetted,

and flirted, and went to the extreme lengths of Welsh courtship, till the

seniors of the village shook their heads, and cautioned their daughters

against her acquaintance. If not absolutely guilty, she had too

frequently been on the verge of guilt.