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FRANK F. LOVELL & COMPANY,
142 AND 144 WORTH STREET, NEW YORK.
ST. CUTHBERT’S TOWER
BY
FLORENCE WARDEN
AUTHOR OF “THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “SCHEHERAZADE,”
“A WITCH OF THE HILLS,” ETC., ETC.
NEW YORK
FRANK F. LOVELL & COMPANY
142 AND 144 WORTH STREET
COPYRIGHT, 1889,
BY
JOHN W. LOVELL.
CHAPTER I.
Rishton Hall Farm was let at last. Lord Stannington had had it on his
hands a long time, and had offered it at a lower and ever lower rent.
It was an open secret that John Oldshaw, who had a long lease of Lower
Rishton Farm at the other end of the village, had expected the Rishton
Hall lease to drop into his hands at last for a very trifling rent
indeed. He was a careful man; the property under his hands throve; and
he was fond of saying that his lordship would make a better bargain
by letting him have the land at £10 an acre than by letting another
man have it at £15. However, Lord Stannington had apparently thought
otherwise; at any rate, when a stranger appeared upon the scene and
offered him a fair rent for the land without any haggling, they came to
terms without delay, and John Oldshaw found that his hoped-for bargain
had escaped him.
This West Riding farmer was not a nice person to deal with when he was
disappointed. He drove over to Sheffield to the agent’s office, and
stamped into that gentleman’s presence, his square, heavy face purple
with ill-suppressed rage.
“Na then, Maister Garrett, be pleased to tell mah if yender’s true as
Ah hear, that Rishton Hall Farm’s let to a stranger?” he bellowed,
thumping the table with his broad fist, and glaring at the agent with
the unreasoning fierceness of an angry bull.
Mr. Garrett was a slight, fair man of uncertain age, whose light eyes
were accustomed, by long practice, to read men pretty accurately.
“Quite true, Mr. Oldshaw,” he answered, civilly, with imperturbable
coolness. “It was let a fortnight ago; and the new tenant comes in--let
me see--” referring to his papers--“on the 16th; this day week in fact.”
“And dost tha’ knaw, Maister Garrett, that Ah’re had ma mahnd set on
Rishton Hall Farm for this twelvemonth and mair?”
“How could we know it, Mr. Oldshaw, since the farm’s been in the market
more than twice that time, and we have never had any intimation from
you of a wish for it?”
“We Yarkshiremen doan’t do thing’s in a hurry. But every mon in t’
village knawed Ah’d set ma heeart on t’ farm, and noo Ah’m to be t’
laughin’-stock o’ a’ t’ feeals i’ t’ coontry, and Rishton Farm let ower
ma yead to a stranger as nawbody’s ever heeard on!”
And the farmer gave an apoplectic snort of malignant anger.
“Oh, but that is not the case, Mr. Oldshaw,” said the agent as quietly
as ever; “Mr. Denison, the gentleman who has taken the farm, is a
friend of friends of his lordship, and in every way a tenant of the
most desirable kind.”
John Oldshaw calmed down suddenly, and into his small, bloodshot blue
eyes there came a satisfied twinkle.
“A gentleman, ye say. A gentleman’s got the farm!” in a tone of the
deepest contempt. “Thank ye, Maister Garrett, Ah’m quite satisfied.
It’s not for me to grumble at his lordship, then. Ah can pity him. The’
never was t’ gentleman barn could do any good at farming, and if a
gentleman barn’s got Rishton Hall Farm, all t’ ill I wish his lordship
is--may t’ gentleman barn stick to’s bargain.”
And with these words, uttered in a tone of fierce triumph, the farmer,
who had not removed his hat on entering the office, turned and stalked
out with every appearance of enjoying, as he had intimated, a complete
revenge.
The village of Rishton boasted two inns, both of the most unpretending
kind. The larger and more important of these was the Chequers, a stone
building of the simplest kind of architecture, to which were attached
numerous small outbuildings, forming three sides of a quadrangle for
Mr. Tew’s gig and Mrs. Tew’s hens. The Chequers stood just outside the
gate of Rishton Hall Farm, and its windows commanded the approach from
Matherham, the nearest market town, which was three miles away. On the
16th of January, the day of the expected arrival of the new tenant of
Rishton Hall, John Oldshaw took up his stand at one of the inn windows,
watching with malevolent eyes for the approach of his rival. It was a
bitterly cold day, grey overhead and black under foot; and the frost,
which had held for three days, was growing harder as the afternoon wore
on. John Oldshaw, with a sense of keen disappointment, had at last to
acquiesce in the general belief that the new tenant would not come
to-day.
“If he’s coom as far as Matherham he’ll stop there t’ night, Maister
Oldshaw,” said Tew, the landlord, a small man, ruled by his wife. “T’
ground’s too slaippery for e’er a horse to stand on, lettin’ alone t’
road’s all hill and dale ’tween this and Matherham. Besides, t’ awd
house is as bare as a barn; he’d never coom till he’d sent some stuff
to put in it, and a coople o’ servants to set it to rights a bit.”
“Well, it ain’t ma way o’ doin’ things, to neame wan day for coomin’
and then to coom another,” said Oldshaw, contemptuously. “But, then,
Ah’m naw gentleman, and my lord Stannington ’ll mighty soon wish as he
could say same o’ t’ new tenant, Maister Tew.”
Mr. Tew could not afford to have an independent opinion in the
presence of the great man of the village, with that miserable Cock and
Bottle, not five hundred yards away, gaping for first place as the
hostelry of the _elite_.
“It’s ta mooch to expect to get another tenant like you, Maister
Oldshaw,” he said, discreetly.
It was by this time nearly four o’clock, and the grey day was already
beginning to darken towards a black evening when Mat Oldshaw, the
farmer’s oldest son, who had been sent by his father to the top of the
hill on the look-out, re-entered the inn at a pace somewhat faster than
his usual shambling gait. He was a tall, round-shouldered lad of about
twenty, with fair hair and a weather-tanned face, whose heavy dulness
was for the moment lightened by a passing gleam of great excitement.
“Weel, Mat, hast seean a ghoost?” asked his father.
“Naw, feyther; but there’s a cab coomin’ down t’ hill----”
“So Maister Gentleman’s coom, has he?” shouted the farmer,
triumphantly; and he had seized his stout ash stick, and was making
with ponderous strides for the door, as if with the intention of
inflicting bodily chastisement on the insolent new comer, when his son
interposed, blushing a deep brick-red to the roots of his hair.
“Eh, but feyther,” he stammered, turning the door handle uneasily, and
dividing his glances between the floor, the window, and his father’s
boorish face, “it’s na t’ gentleman; it’s nobbut twea lasses.”
After which admission, he fell to blushing more violently than before.
“Twea lasses?” echoed Oldshaw, incredulously.
“Hey, feyther. An’ wan o’ them’s got a feace lik’ a rose.”
“Feace lik’ a rose?” thundered the farmer. “Doan’t thee daze tha dull
wits lookin’ at wenches’ faces, for Ah tell tha Ah’ll have na son o’
mine hangin’ aboot t’ Hall noo.”
“She bain’t na lass for t’ likes o’ mea, feyther; yon lass is a leady,”
said the lad, simply.
If the stranger’s fair face had not, as his father suggested, dazed
his dull wits already, the young man would surely have had the tact
to restrain these rash words, which fanned the flame of his father’s
coarse malevolence.
“A leady! A foine leady! ta foine for any son o’ mine? Ah tell thee,
feeal, t’ day’ll coom when tha foine leady’ll wish she wur good enoo
for t’ loikes o’ thee; and good enoo she shall never be--tha heears?”
Though the young man’s head was bent in a listening attitude, and he
assented in the meekest of gruff voices, the father guessed that this
deep attention was not all for his discourse, when the sound of hoofs
and wheels on the hard ground outside attracted him to the outer door,
which he reached in time to see a luggage-laden cab slowly descend the
hill and pass the inn door, giving time for a look at the two young
faces inside. Mistress and maid evidently; both bright, eager, and
rather anxious. The former met full the surly stare of the farmer,
and she drew back her head as if a blast of chilling wind had met her
on her approach to her new home. The little maid, who had rosy cheeks
and what one may call retrousse features, was less sensitive, and she
looked out to resent this cold unwelcome with a contemptuous toss of
the head.
“They’re reg’lar savages in these parts, Miss Olivia,” she said, in a
slightly raised tone. “I only hope we may be uneaten by the time the
master comes!”
The cab had passed the front of the inn, and was rounding the sharp
turn which led up a slight ascent through the open farmyard gate, when
suddenly, without any warning except a few rough jolts over the uneven
ground, it turned over on its side, to the accompaniment of shrill
screams from one female throat, and a less loud but more plaintive
cry from the other. Mat Oldshaw, who was standing on the inn doorstep
behind his father, made a spring forward to help them. But the elder
man, with a movement quicker than one would have expected from his
clumsy form and ponderous gait, grasped his arm with a violence which
made the lad reel, and giving him a push back against the wall of the
house, said, in a low, thick voice--
“Doan’t thoo meddle with what darn’t concern thee. Wheer there’s so
mooch cry, there ain’t mooch hurt, tak’ ma word for’t.”
“Feyther!” said Mat, indignantly, entreatingly. Then he was dumb, for
even through his not over-bright brains came a suspicion that this
accident was perhaps not wholly unexpected by one of its witnesses.
As this brief scene passed between father and son, a man in a short
frieze coat, knickerbockers, gaiters, and deer-stalker cap, who had
quickened his pace down the hill into a run on seeing the accident,
looked full into the faces of both men with a keen, shrewd expression
as he dashed by.
“It’s parson Brander, o’ S’ Cuthbert’s, feyther. He heeard thee,” said
the young man in a husky, awed whisper.
“An’ wha not? Ah’d loike to see sik as him say a word to me!” said the
farmer, in a loud voice of boastful contempt.
And the attitudes respectively of father and son, the one of
contemptuous disgust, the other of awestruck respect, represented the
two views most commonly taken in the country-side of the Reverend
Vernon Brander, vicar of Saint Cuthbert’s.
Before the last disdainful word was out of John Oldshaw’s mouth, the
new comer had opened the cab door, and extricated the two girls from
their unpleasant position. The maid was uppermost, but she was a little
creature, and had probably inflicted far less inconvenience on her more
massively built mistress than that young lady would have inflicted on
her had their positions been reversed. Her rosy cheeks had lost their
color, and from her forehead, which had been cut by the broken glass of
the carriage window, blood was trickling down.
In answer to the gentleman’s inquiries as to whether she was hurt, she
said in a trembling voice that she didn’t know yet, and begged him to
get her mistress out. This he at once proceeded to do, and was rewarded
by the thanks of a young lady whom he at once decided to be one of the
handsomest girls that this or any other country ever produced.
Olivia Denison was indeed an unchallenged beauty, and had occupied
that proud position almost ever since, twenty years ago, she had been
pronounced to be “a lovely baby.” She was tall--of that cruel height
which forces short admirers, on pain of looking ridiculous, to keep
their distance; of figure rather massive than slender, with a fair
skin, a fresh color, dark hair, blue eyes, and a winning expression of
energy and honesty which gave to the whole face its greatest charm. For
the moment, however, the rose color had left her cheeks, too, and her
lips were drawn tightly together.
“You are hurt, I am afraid,” said the stranger, with concern.
“I’ve only--pinched--my finger,” she answered, trying to laugh.
But the effort of speaking brought the tears to her eyes, much to her
indignation. For she was brave, and she liked to have the credit of it.
“Let me see,” said he, with kindly authority.
She presented her right hand, from which he drew the glove very gently,
disclosing bruised and slightly discolored finger tips.
“They do hurt a little, but it’s nothing very dreadful. I don’t know
how I did it,” she said.
“Lucky it’s no worse,” said the stranger, kindly. “Now for the lad.”
The young driver was looking ruefully at the overturned vehicle. He
proved to have escaped with no worse damage than a battered hat.
Lucy, the maid, who had ascertained that her head was still on her
shoulders, had bound up her cut forehead with her handkerchief, and
was scolding the driver for his carelessness as she pointed to the
scattered luggage. The traces having broken as the cab fell, the horse
had sustained very little hurt, so that, on the whole, the accident had
been without tragic consequences. The rescuer took hold of the girl,
and shook her by the arm.
“Now, don’t you think, considering all things, you might find some
better use for your tongue than scolding. You might have been upset a
mile away on the road, instead of which you are turned out comfortably
at your own door. For, I suppose, you are coming to the Hall?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Lucy, abashed, but still rather mutinous, not
having the least idea that she was speaking to a clergyman.
“So that the real sufferer by this spill is neither you nor your
mistress, but the poor lad who has driven you safely more than three
miles over a very dangerously slippery road, and who will perhaps get
discharged by his master for having injured the cab. Your mistress does
not scold you for half an hour if you break a plate.”
“Yes she does, sir,” fired up Lucy, so unexpectedly that Mr. Brander
involuntarily glanced with surprise at the young lady. “Oh, not Miss
Olivia,” added the little maid almost indignantly; “it’s Mrs. Denison I
mean.”
“Well, then, if you find the habit so unamiable in Mrs. Denison, as
I see you do, you should take the greatest care not to fall into it
yourself,” said the vicar, suppressing a smile.
Then he turned again to the lady.
“Is everything ready for your coming?” he asked, doubtfully.
For he had passed the house that morning, and found it deserted,
mildewed, and shuttered-up as usual.
“No, nothing,” said the girl. “We’ve come on in advance to prepare
things for papa and mamma and the rest,” she added rather tremulously.
The frightful immensity of the undertaking perhaps struck her now for
the first time, as she stood, still shaking from the shock of the
accident, staring at the smokeless chimneys and shuttered windows of
the new home. Mr. Brander looked from one girl to the other, very sorry
for both, wondering what kind of idiots the parents could be to send
two inexperienced young lasses to grapple with all the difficulties of
installation.
“And the furniture? I suppose that has come?” he suggested, dubiously.
“Oh, I hope so,” said the girl, anxiously.
“I’ll ask at the inn here. If it has come they will have seen it pass.
And Mrs. Tew will give you both a cup of tea. You don’t mind going into
an inn, do you? It’s a very respectable place.”
“Oh, no; of course we don’t,” said Miss Denison. “Indeed, it is very,
very kind of you to take so much trouble for us.”
“Trouble! Nonsense. It’s a splendid excitement. As far as I am
concerned, I should like a pair of travellers overturned here once a
week.”
He beckoned to Lucy, and led them the few steps back to the inn door.
John Oldshaw was still standing in a defiant attitude on the doorstep,
whence he had watched the proceedings with malicious interest. His son
was still peeping out, sheepish and ashamed, from behind him.
“Here, Mat, will you run round to Mrs. Wall’s--tell her that Miss
Denison has come, and ask for the key of the Hall?” said he. “And then
you might lend me a hand to take some of the lady’s trunks into the
house.”
Mat’s face brightened and flushed.
“All right, sir,” he said, and tried to push past his father.
But the elder man blocked the doorway with his arms, and stood like a
rock.
“Nay,” he said, obstinately; “Mat doesna’ stir at tha’ bidding. Help
the wenches thasel’; thoo’s used to ’t.”
Olivia drew back; she was shocked, frightened, by the dogged ferocity
of the farmer’s face and by the sudden expression of some strong
feelings--whether anger or anguish she could not quite tell--which
for a moment convulsed the features of her unknown companion. As
for Oldshaw’s coarse words, the strong Yorkshire dialect rendered
them unintelligible to her. They, however, roused the spirit of the
phlegmatic Mat.
“For shame, feyther!” cried he, in a voice which was a new terror for
the young lady whose champion he thus declared himself to be. “Maister
Brander, Ah’ll go loike a reace horse.”
And ducking his long body under his father’s left arm with an
unceremonious roughness which shook that mighty man from his dignity,
he touched his cap to Olivia with oafish respect, and ran off down the
lane past the Hall barns with the best speed of his long legs.
“We won’t go in there, thank you very much,” said Olivia, when Mr.
Brander had come back to the spot to which she had retreated. “I could
not pass that man; I would rather not go near him.”
“Will you wait here while I find out about the furniture, then?”
“Please promise not to quarrel with that horrid man about his rudeness
to us. I can see he is one of those people who can’t help being rude
and horrid, just as some other people can’t help being unselfish and
kind,” said the girl, shyly, but with much warmth. “Will you please
promise?”
“Yes,” said he, simply, looking into her face with a grave,
straightforward expression of interest and, as it seemed to her, of
gratitude which surprised and touched her.
Then he turned without another word, almost as if afraid to say another
word, and going back rapidly to the inn, passed the farmer, who
sullenly made way for him, and disappeared into the house. When he came
back, his face was full of deep concern of a different kind.
“I bring bad news,” he said to the girls, who, mistress and maid, were
shrinking together in their desolation. “I am afraid your furniture has
not come, and--they say they haven’t a room to spare in the inn for
to-night. But if Mrs. Tew could see you and speak to you herself----”
“I wouldn’t stay in the house,” burst out Olivia, indignantly. “If we
can only get into the Hall, Lucy and I can manage very well indeed.”
“But the place is sure to be hideously damp, and there are no carpets;
in fact, there’s nothing,” said Mr. Brander, in dismay.
“The resources of the feminine mind are infinite,” said Olivia, who was
again blinking behind her veil. “Here comes the old woman who has the
keys, I suppose. I shall get her to take us in for a little while--at
least, she’ll have a cottage and a fire somewhere or other. And perhaps
while we are waiting there the furniture will come.”
Mr. Brander looked at her with renewed compassion. He thought this last
a forlorn hope.
“Don’t be disappointed if it doesn’t come yet,” he said, encouragingly.
“Old Sarah Wall will do her best for you, I’m sure, and all the better
if she doesn’t see me talking to you. For you won’t hear any good of me
from her.”
And before Olivia could detain him to pour out again the thanks for
his kindness with which her heart was overflowing, he had raised his
hat with a sudden cold withdrawal into himself, and turning with the
rapidity of the most accomplished athlete, disappeared along the
road which led through Lower Rishton, leaving her overwhelmed with
surprise at the abrupt change in his manner and with desolation at this
unexpectedly sudden loss of their only friend.