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MARY LEE
* * * * * *
_NEW BORZOI NOVELS FALL, 1922_
THE QUEST
_Pio Baroja_
THE ROOM
_G. B. Stern_
ONE OF OURS
_Willa Cather_
A LOVELY DAY
_Henry Céard_
MARY LEE
_Geoffrey Dennis_
TUTORS' LANE
_Wilmarth Lewis_
THE PROMISED ISLE
_Laurids Bruun_
THE RETURN
_Walter de la Mare_
THE BRIGHT SHAWL
_Joseph Hergesheimer_
THE MOTH DECIDES
_Edward Alden Jewell_
INDIAN SUMMER
_Emily Grant Hutchings_
* * * * * *
MARY LEE
by
GEOFFREY DENNIS
[Illustration]
New York
Alfred A. Knopf
MCMXXII
Copyright, 1922, by
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Published, August, 1922
Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton,
N. Y.
Paper (Warren's) furnished by Henry Lindenmeyr & Sons, New York, N. Y.
Bound by the Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass.
Manufactured in the United States of America
CONTENTS
PART ONE
I I AM BORN 3
II BEAR LAWN 14
III CHILD OF PRIVILEGE 24
IV I GO TO MEETING 36
V I GO TO SCHOOL 55
VI CHEESE, LUMPS, CREWJOE, THE SCARLET WOMAN
AND THE GREAT GOD BENAMUCKEE 73
VII THE END OF THE WORLD 87
VIII SATAN COMES TO TAWBOROUGH 95
IX AND SO DOES UNCLE SIMEON 101
X OLD LETTERS 120
XI EXTRAORDINARY MEETING FOR PRAYER, PRAISE
AND PURGING 135
XII THE GREAT DISCLOSURE 144
XIII I GO TO TORRIBRIDGE 158
XIV I BECOME CURIOUS 172
XV WESTWARD HO! 179
XVI ROBBIE 192
XVII CHRISTMAS NIGHT 206
XVIII NEW YEAR'S NIGHT 223
XIX BEAR LAWN AGAIN 233
XX DIARY 243
XXI I AM BAPTIZED IN JORDAN 253
XXII THE RETURN OF THE STRANGER 265
XXIII WINE THAT MAKETH GLAD THE HEART OF
WOMAN 282
XXIV PROSPECTS 301
XXV I SAY GOOD-BYE 312
PART TWO
XXVI CHÂTEAU VILLEBECQ 319
XXVII MARY THE SECOND 327
XXVIII LAYING-ON OF HANDS 336
XXIX HAPPY FAMILY 340
XXX CARDBOARD 356
XXXI WAY OF AN EAGLE IN THE AIR 362
XXXII PAREE! 370
XXXIII I BECOME AN HEIRESS 377
XXXIV I BECOME A DAUGHTER 381
XXXV WAY OF A SERPENT UPON A ROCK 386
XXXVI THE STRANGER WITHIN THE GATES 389
XXXVII WAY OF A SHIP IN THE MIDST OF THE SEA 393
XXXVIII DEATHBED 408
XXXIX END OF THREE VISIONS: THE STRANGER'S 412
XL END OF THREE VISIONS: NAPOLEON'S 420
XLI END OF THREE VISIONS: MINE 424
XLII TWIN DEATHBEDS 427
XLIII ONE LONG PRERCESSION O' DEATHBEDS 431
XLIV CHRISTMAS NIGHT 434
XLV WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAID 439
PART ONE
CHAPTER I: I AM BORN
I was born at Tawborough on March the Second, 1848.
It seems to have been a great year in the history books. Fires of
revolution sweeping over Europe; half the capitals aflame. From Prague
to Palermo, from Paris to Pesth, the peoples rising against their
rulers. Wars and rumours of wars; civil strife everywhere. Radicals in
Prussia, revolutionaries in Italy, rebels in Austria, republicans in
France. Even in old England we had our chartists.
All such troubles failed to touch Tawborough. What did she know of it
all, or care if she knew? She was a good old peaceful English country
town, with her own day's work to do. The great world might go its way
for all she cared--a wild and noisy way it seemed. She would go hers.
Not that Tawborough had always been without a say in England's affairs.
She had indeed a long and honourable history. At the dawn of time there
was a settlement in the marshes where the little stream of Yeo empties
itself into the Taw: a primitive village of wattled huts, known to
the Britons as Artavia. The Phoenicians record the name for us, and
describe the place as a great mart for their commerce. Here the tin of
the western mines was bartered against the rich products of the East:
camphire and calamus, spikenard and saffron, fine linen and purple
silk. This was the origin of Tawborough market, which is the first in
Devonshire to this day. Artavia seems to have been an important seat
of the old British worship. The see of the Arch-Druid of the West was
near at hand in the Valley of the Rocks at Lynton; from the sacred
oak-groves above the Taw on a clear day the Druids could see the fires
of the great altar on the Promontory of Hercules--Hartland Point they
call it now.
Religion, indeed, in one way or another, seems to have coloured most of
the big events of the town's history. The next great fight was between
pagans and Christian men.
It was the foeman from the North, threatening the men of Wessex with
desolation. One day the terrified townsfolk heard clanging in their
ears the great ivory horns of the Northmen, and beheld the blood-red
banners sailing up the Taw. One of the standards had upon it a Raven.
Then the Englishmen knew their foe for the wild Hubba, King of the
Vikings; since the Raven floated always at his mast. The banner was of
crimson. It had been worked by the King's three sisters in a noontide
and blessed by a strange Icelandic wizard, who endowed the Raven sewn
upon it with this magical gift: that she clapped her wings to announce
success to the Viking arms, and drooped them to presage failure. Never
till this day had the black wings drooped; they drooped this winter's
morning. So the English took heart. Odin, Earl of Devon, sallied forth
from Kenwith Castle, defeated and slew King Hubba, and captured the
magic banner. Then came peace for a while. King Alfred, full of piety,
came to Tawborough and set up the great Mound by the Castle. King
Athelstan gave the town a charter, and housed himself in a magnificent
palace at Umberleigh hard by.
In the wake of the Normans came the religious orders. The Cluniacs
built a monastery in the town, the Benedictines another at Pilton just
outside. With the monks came light and learning, better lives and
milder ways. Tawborough became rich and prosperous. Her trade excelled
that of Bristol. Her fair and market were famous "tyme out of mynde."
For many years the Taw--that "greate, hugy, mighty, perylous and
dredful water"--became a highway for the ships of all nations.
When the New World was found, Englishmen sailed west for glory. Devon
led the way, Tawborough men among the foremost, and Tawborough ships
did valiant deeds against the Invincible Armada. Those were the
great days of England. The townsfolk were all for the new religion.
Spaniard and Papist were twin-children of the devil. A murrain on
both! They favoured the Puritan party in the civil wars, stood out
against the rest of the county, and shouted for the Parliament. Though
when the Royalists took the town and gay Prince Charles made it his
headquarters, the townspeople were charmed with His Merry Highness;
and he, as he told Lord Clarendon, with them. All the courtiers were
of the same mind. Lord Clarendon himself declared that Tawborough was
"a very fine sweet town as ever I saw," while Lady Fanshawe thought
that the cherry pies they made there "with their sort of cream" were
the best things that man, or woman, could eat. Gay John Gay, who wrote
the Beggar's Opera, showed to the world the fair and likeable character
of his native town, which at heart, however, was always of the godly
serious-minded quality, Puritan to the core. No town in England gave a
warmer welcome to the poor Huguenots, who were flying from King Lewis.
One Sunday morning as the townsfolk were coming forth from Church
they saw against the sky--not this time the scarlet banners of the
North--the brown sails of an old French schooner, bearing up the Taw a
band of exiled French Puritans, weary and wretched after their voyage.
Tawborough found every one of them a home. In return the grateful
Frenchmen taught the natives new ways of cloth-weaving, which sent the
fame of Tawborough Bays through all the land.
Later came a change, a new century, the reign of King Coal; and
Tawborough, like many another historic Western town, sank into
comparative decay. What did the new industrial cities know of such as
her, or care if they knew? For her part, she was indifferent to their
ignorance or their indifference alike. She was a good old English
country town with her own day's work to do. Troubles, invasions,
vicissitudes had assailed her before. New blood, Saxon, Danish, Norman,
Huguenot had coursed through her veins. Her dead had buried their
dead. The people pass, the place alone is abiding.... Abiding, yet not
eternal; for there comes the day when the old earth will fall into the
sun.... Meanwhile, Town Tawborough had her daily life to live, her
townsfolk had theirs.
Two of them, indeed, were living theirs with plenty of zest, somewhere
in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Jael and Hannah
Vickary were the daughters of an old sea-captain, Ebenezer Vickary of
Torribridge. He and his brother had three or four vessels of their own,
trading with the Indies in sugar and molasses, or with the Spanish
Main, as it then still was, in logwood and mahogany. The brother died
in Cuba of the yellow fever. Soon afterwards Ebenezer gave up the
sea, settled down in Tawborough, and died in his time. He left his
two daughters enough money to live upon in the quiet style of those
days, together with a big dwelling house by the old North Gate. Here
Jael and Hannah Vickary lived alone, with an old servant whose years
were unknown and unnumbered, and whose wages were six pounds a year.
They had a few friends and visitors, faithful women of the Parish
Church, chief among whom were the Other Six of "the Seven Old Maids of
Tawborough." By a strange coincidence seven female children had been
born in Tawborough on August the First 1785, all of whom had risen to
be devout handmaidens of the Lord in the work of the Parish Church,
shining lights around the central figure of the Vicar, and all of whom
had dwindled into a sure spinsterhood. "We are the wise virgins," said
Jael Vickary, their leader and spiritual chief, in whom the scorn of
all menfolk except the Vicar (who had a meek wife and twelve children)
amounted to a prophet's passion. This passion was shared in various
degrees by the Other Six, to wit: Miss Lucy Clarke, Miss Fanny Baker,
Miss Keturah Crabb, Miss Sarah Tombstone, and last but not least the
Heavenly Twins, the Misses Glory and Salvation Clinker. The Twins were
the only regular visitors at Northgate House. There were a few others,
no relatives among them. Jael and Hannah had indeed an elder brother,
John: Ebenezer's only son. He had gone to London as a boy, worked his
way up in a wholesale sugar house in the City, and become passing
rich. His sisters were kept aware of his existence only by receiving
occasional presents and more occasional letters. He never married.
Thus it was that his death, if nothing so crude as a self-acknowledged
source of financial hope to Miss Jael, would nevertheless have been
borne by her with true Christian fortitude.
If alike in a salt and shrewdness of personality unknown to our end
of the century, in most ways the two sisters differed as much as two
human beings can. Miss Jael was hard, Miss Hannah kindly; Miss Jael
stern, Miss Hannah gentle; Miss Jael was feared, Miss Hannah loved.
Though Hannah was less than eighteen months her sister's junior,
this unbridgeable gulf enabled Miss Jael throughout life to refer to
Miss Hannah as "a young woman," and to treat her accordingly. Then,
behold, in the year 1822, when both were nearer forty than thirty, the
Young Woman brazenly gave ear to the suit of one Edward Lee, an old
sea-captain, who had sailed under her father, and was twenty years her
senior. Jael mocked (Why did he choose her? asked her heart bitterly);
yet stayed on at Northgate House, when Captain Lee came to live there,
to bully and bludgeon the dear old man into his grave. This procedure
took but five years. The old man died, leaving to his widow two little
girls and a boy: Rachel, Martha and Christian.
In the godlier activities of Tawborough life Jael and her widowed
sister were leading lights, with the parish church as General
Headquarters of their operations. Miss Jael was the vicar's right-hand
_man_. She ran his poor club, his guild, his Dorcas-meeting, effacing
completely the meek many-childrened little lady of the Rectory. He
thought her a queen among women, a tower set upon a rock.
All this was in the twenties and thirties of the century, ere yet
the Church of England had taken her earliest step on the swift steep
path to Rome. The same wave of evangelical fervour that had swelled
Wesley's great following had strengthened also the Church from which
they broke away. This fervour, whether Methodist or Established, did
not however go nearly far enough for certain pious souls, especially
in the West country, who formed themselves into little bodies for the
Worship of God in the strictest and simplest Gospel fashion. "They
continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in
breaking of bread, and in prayer." They called themselves the Saints,
or more modestly the Brethren. Outsiders called them the Plymouth
Brethren--they flourished in the great seaport--or more profanely,
the Plymouth Rocks. They were drawn from all communions and no
communion, if principally from the Established Church; from all classes
and conditions, the humbler trades-folk perhaps predominating. In
Tawborough they were especially active. From the days of the primitive
Druids away through the long story of missionaries and monks, seafaring
Protestants and Huguenot exiles, here was a town that took her religion
neat. She preferred the good Calvin flavouring, and thus it was that
the Plymouth evangel sent up a savoury smell in her nostrils. There
were literally hundreds of converts. The Parish Church lost some of
its leading members. Arose the cry "The Church in danger!"; and of
all who responded, most valiant was the Vicar's right-hand man. She
stemmed the tide of deserters with loins girt for battle. Like St.
Paul, she breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the new
sect. She encouraged the faithful, visited the wavering, anathematized
deserters. To crown her efforts she counselled the vicar to summon
a great Church Defence Meeting in the Parish Room, to rally and
re-affirm the confidence of the faithful. The Vicar agreed. The hour
of commencement saw a right goodly and godly assembly foregathered
together. On the platform sat a Canon of Exeter, the old Marquess of
Exmoor, several county bigwigs, the Mayor and the Churchwardens. Seven
o'clock struck, the Vicar was about to open the proceedings, everything
was ready--except--except that two honoured places on the platform (in
those days a place on a platform was for a woman an honour indeed) were
not yet occupied. Miss Vickary and her sister were late. The Vicar
hesitated. There was a distinguished company, true: but start the
meeting without its guiding spirit--never! Give her five minutes....
Some one handed the Vicar an envelope. He opened it, read through the
contents, and fainted then and there.
How the reverend gentleman was brought round from his swoon by the
joint endeavours of the Canon, the Marquess, two Churchwardens, nine
ladies and a bottle of sal-volatile; how the great Church Defence
Meeting fizzled to an inglorious end; and how Jael Vickary and Hannah
Lee were baptized in the Taw in the presence of three thousand five
hundred spectators, there is no need to relate here. The facts were
well enough known to the older generation in the town. Some say
that the Vicar made a last despairing effort to retain his apostate
right-hand man; that, with tears in his eyes, he went down on his knees
before her. If so, as Hannah wickedly said, he was the only man who
ever did so, and in any case he achieved nothing. On the contrary The
Great Betrayal encouraged wholesale desertions. The Other Six deserted
_en masse_.
Henceforward Jael Vickary's life was occupied with two main things:
building up the new sect, and bringing up her sister's family. She
filled the vacant post of father with thoroughness and vigour. Her
method was the rod, or to be accurate the thorned stick, and a horrible
weapon it was. Hannah approved the method in moderation, though she
could never have applied it herself. Much of her life, indeed, was
spent in protecting her children from her sister. Rachel, the eldest,
was best beloved. She was a sweet, gentle child; bright, tender and
gay. Martha was quieter, even morose. Christian was a peevish child,
weak and ailing from birth. With no husband to help her, and her sister
on the scold from morn till night, Hannah Lee's life was not an easy
one. She gave her two daughters the best schooling in Devonshire, as
schooling for girls went in those days; so that when they grew up they
were able to take positions as governesses in the best families of the
county. Rachel went to Woolthy Hall to teach Guy, the Lord Tawborough's
five year old heir. Martha was employed by the Groves, of Grove House
near Exeter, to begin the education of their daughter. The two girls'
attainments and appearance explained their good fortune. Rachel in
particular was a refined and attractive young woman, with bright eyes,
a peerless skin, and a gentle winning expression. Dressed oftenest in a
dove-coloured cotton robe, she had a Quakerish charm, simple yet sure.
Hannah was left alone at Tawborough with Jael and young Christian.
As the years passed, life turned greyer. When the Devon and Three
Counties' Bank collapsed, nearly half the household income disappeared.
Jael's imperiousness grew with her years, while her temper soured.
Christian was in a decline, dying slowly before his mother's eyes. Then
came Martha's marriage. She had fallen in with one Simeon Greeber, a
retired chemist, who lived over at Torribridge--the Taw's twin-river's
port, and Tawborough's immemorial rival. This Greeber was the local
leader of the extreme wing of the Saints, the Close or Exclusive
Brethren; a man twice Martha Lee's age, and one who filled her aunt and
her mother with a special sense of dislike and mistrust. Against their
will she married him, gave up her excellent post with the Grove family,
and went to live at Torribridge.
Hannah's consolation was always Rachel, whom she loved most dearly.
Then, in its turn, came Rachel's marriage.
At Woolthy Hall the young governess had come into contact with Lord
Tawborough's cousin, Mr. Philip Traies, who was a frequent if not
welcome guest. He had served in the Navy, but had left the service
under doubtful circumstances. He had led a scandalous life and earned
a reputation to match it. A clear-cut handsome mouth set in a proud
aristocratic face, a fine bearing, a fine speech, and an honoured name,
deluded many and were his own undoing. In ill odour with his family
and his Maker, he decided to come to terms with the latter. At the age
of forty, he joined the Plymouth Brethren. When the Devil turns saint
he does a very sharp round-about, and no withered Anglo-Indian colonel
who communed with the Saints in his dotage to ensure himself as gay
a time in the next world as he had passed in this, ever excelled Mr.
Philip Traies in fervour and piety. He worshipped occasionally with
the Tawborough Saints, who were duly honoured. Sometimes here, and
sometimes at his cousin's, he met Rachel Lee, at this time a girl of
twenty-one. He bestowed upon her the favour of eager kindly patronage,
as such men will; though if she were beneath him in station, and his
equal in manners and good looks, she was far above him in everything
else: goodness and purity and wholeness of heart. Quite how it happened
nobody knew; but one day Rachel came home from Woolthy Hall, and said
to her mother, "I am going to marry Mr. Philip Traies."
Hannah entreated. A "good" match with a bad man had no attraction for
her. She pleaded with Rachel. Aunt Jael would not stoop to plead; she
gave her niece instead a plain outline of Mr. Philip Traies' past.
"I know," said the girl, and murmured something about "reforming" him.
Neither mother nor aunt achieved her surrender. Pleading and
plain-speaking did nothing, nor ever do. The wedding took place at
the registry office, as in those days the Brethren's Meeting Houses
were not licensed for solemnization of marriages, and neither bride
nor bridegroom would enter a church or chapel: temples of Antichrist.
Hannah sat through the ceremony with a queer sense of foreboding,
of sickness, and coming sorrow; an order of sentiment which, as a
sensible Devon woman with no tomfool tombstone fancies ever in her
head, in sixty years she had not known. Immediately after the ceremony,
at the registry office door, the bridegroom suddenly loosened himself
from the bride's arm, and walked sharply away without saying a word.
Nobody knew why. Everybody stared. The wedding breakfast at Northgate
House began without him. They waited; he did not come. After an hour
the tension became unbearable. The guests whispered in groups; Rachel
and her mother bore already on their brows the sorrow of the years
to come. Aunt Jael's face was a gloomy triumphant "I told you so."
Pastries were nibbled, wine was sipped; the joy-feast continued. After
nearly two hours a bell rang, and the bridegroom appeared.
"Your explanation?" asked Hannah. Rachel dared not look.
"Oh, I had another woman to see. A glass of sherry please. Besides, it
amused me."
He took her away to his house at Torquay. Their married life
was wretched from the start. Among many evil passions these two
predominated in Mr. Philip Traies: desire and cruelty. Here was a
lovely and gentle girl who would satisfy both. The first was soon
appeased (shattering love in her heart once and for all), the second
never. Cruelty is insatiable. With this man it was a devouring passion.
It is doubtful perhaps if he was sane. Taunts, foulness, sneers.... He
starved her sometimes, taunted her with her lowlier birth, engaged the
servants on the condition of ill-treating their mistress, dismissed
them if they wavered. All the time he talked religion. The knees
of his elegant trousers were threadbare with prayer. He could fit
a text to every taunt. Then a baby-boy came to cheer the sinking
heart. A few hours after the child was born, when the young mother
lay in the agony and weakness she alone can know, Mr. Philip Traies
entered the room--with a gentler word to-day surely?--no, with this:
"So this is how you keep your fine promises to make a good lady of
the house, a busy housewife and the rest of it"--he raised his voice
savagely--"idling in bed at four in the afternoon. _Get up, you idle
bitch!_" Leaning over the end-rail, he spat in her face.
The baby soon died. He taunted her with nursing it badly; and doubled
every cruelty he knew save blows.
"Strike me," she said once.
Her patience was a fool's, a saint's, a loving woman's; her goodness,
if not her spirits, unfailing. In writing home she made the best of
things. But her heart was broken, her spirit wasting away.
"Why did you marry me?" she asked.
"To break your spirit," was the amused reply.
"Then your marriage has fulfilled its purpose," she said wearily. "My
spirit is broken. Now I can go home."
That night she wrote to Hannah. The letter is faded, and stained with
three women's tears, wife's, mother's, daughter's. "Dearest Mother,"
she wrote, "I am ill and weary. Another little child is coming, but I
may not live for it to be born. I can leave him without failing in my
wife's duty now, for the end is very near. I am coming home to die.
Your loving broken-hearted Daughter."
Next day she packed for home.
"Deserting me, are you? Fine Jezebel ways! A good Christian wifely
thing to do, I'm sure. I thought we were proud of doing our duty."
His sneers did not move her now. She was going home to die.
Northgate House was a dismal place to return to. It was a wet cheerless
winter. Hannah was tired and heart-sore. Christian was dying. Jael
was evil-tempered, scolding harshly: her comfort to her mother and
daughter was still "I told you so." Rachel went straight to bed. In a
few days Christian died, a sickly pitiful boy of twenty. "It is the
Lord's will," said his mother. Hannah had everything to do, for Simeon
Greeber would not let Martha come over from Torribridge, and Jael took
to her bed with a convenient fit of the ague. Faith in the eternal
love of God was Hannah's only stay. Always, ever, "It was the Lord's
will." This sufficed her, though the times were bitter. The day after
Christian's funeral was wet and wintry: March the Second 1848. Rachel
was twenty-four. Three years ago she had been a happy healthy girl. Now
she was a dying broken woman. The morning of that day she gave birth to
a daughter. Then she was very weak. Her eyes closed, yet she seemed to
see something.
"What do you see, Rachel, my dear?" asked her mother.
The spirit was already half away, looking through the golden gates of
Heaven.
"There is a little angel born. I see her in God's cradle. _My_ little
angel, God's little angel. I shall be with her always--though far away.
I see ... the King in His beauty ... I behold the land ... that is very
far off."
Her face was radiant as a lover's, yet sad as Love is. Hannah could not
reply. The dying woman seemed to sleep. Her mother watched. An hour
passed. Rachel opened her eyes.
"Mother."
"Yes, my dear."
"Love my little baby for me; and--tell _him_--I forgive him." The eyes
closed, this time for ever.
My poor mother.