In spite of Peggy’s prophecy that Susan’s life should not seem long, it
did seem wearisome and endless, as the years slowly uncoiled their
monotonous circles. To be sure, she might have made change for herself,
but she did not care to do it. It was, indeed, more than “not caring,”
which merely implies a certain degree of _vis inertiæ_ to be subdued
before an object can be attained, and that the object itself does not
seem to be of sufficient importance to call out the requisite energy. On
the contrary, Susan exerted herself to avoid change and variety. She had
a morbid dread of new faces, which originated in her desire to keep poor
dead Willie’s state a profound secret. She had a contempt for new
customs; and, indeed, her old ways prospered so well under her active
hand and vigilant eye, that it was difficult to know how they could be
improved upon. She was regularly present in Coniston market with the
best butter and the earliest chickens of the season. Those were the
common farm produce that every farmer’s wife about had to sell; but
Susan, after she had disposed of the more feminine articles, turned to
on the man’s side. A better judge of a horse or cow there was not in all
the country round. Yorkshire itself might have attempted to jockey her,
and would have failed. Her corn was sound and clean; her potatoes well
preserved to the latest spring. People began to talk of the hoards of
money Susan Dixon must have laid up somewhere; and one young
ne’er-do-weel of a farmer’s son undertook to make love to the woman of
forty, who looked fifty-five, if a day. He made up to her by opening a
gate on the road-path home, as she was riding on a bare-backed horse,
her purchase not an hour ago. She was off before him, refusing his
civility; but the remounting was not so easy, and rather than fail she
did not choose to attempt it. She walked, and he walked alongside,
improving his opportunity, which, as he vainly thought, had been
consciously granted to him. As they drew near Yew Nook, he ventured on
some expression of a wish to keep company with her. His words were vague
and clumsily arranged. Susan turned round and coolly asked him to
explain himself. He took courage, as he thought of her reputed wealth,
and expressed his wishes this second time pretty plainly. To his
surprise, the reply she made was in a series of smart strokes across his
shoulders, administered through the medium of a supple hazel-switch.
“Take that!” said she, almost breathless, “to teach thee how thou darest
make a fool of an honest woman old enough to be thy mother. If thou
com’st a step nearer the house, there’s a good horse-pool, and there’s
two stout fellows who’ll like no better fun than ducking thee. Be off
wi’ thee.”
And she strode into her own premises, never looking round to see whether
he obeyed her injunction or not.
Sometimes three or four years would pass over without her hearing
Michael Hurst’s name mentioned. She used to wonder at such times whether
he were dead or alive. She would sit for hours by the dying embers of
her fire on a winter’s evening, trying to recall the scenes of her
youth; trying to bring up living pictures of the faces she had then
known--Michael’s most especially. She thought it was possible, so long
had been the lapse of years, that she might now pass by him in the
street unknowing and unknown. His outward form she might not recognise,
but himself she should feel in the thrill of her whole being. He could
not pass her unawares.
What little she did hear about him, all testified a downward tendency.
He drank--not at stated times when there was no other work to be done,
but continually, whether it was seed-time or harvest. His children were
all ill at the same time; then one died, while the others recovered, but
were poor sickly things. No one dared to give Susan any direct
intelligence of her former lover; many avoided all mention of his name
in her presence; but a few spoke out either in indifference to, or
ignorance of, those bygone days. Susan heard every word, every whisper,
every sound that related to him. But her eye never changed, nor did a
muscle of her face move.
Late one November night she sat over her fire; not a human being besides
herself in the house; none but she had ever slept there since Willie’s
death. The farm-labourers had foddered the cattle and gone home hours
before. There were crickets chirping all round the warm hearth-stones;
there was the clock ticking with the peculiar beat Susan had known from
her childhood, and which then and ever since she had oddly associated
with the idea of a mother and child talking together, one loud tick, and
quick--a feeble, sharp one following.
The day had been keen, and piercingly cold. The whole lift of heaven
seemed a dome of iron. Black and frost-bound was the earth under the
cruel east wind. Now the wind had dropped, and as the darkness had
gathered in, the weather-wise old labourers prophesied snow. The sounds
in the air arose again, as Susan sat still and silent. They were of a
different character to what they had been during the prevalence of the
east wind. Then they had been shrill and piping; now they were like low
distant growling; not unmusical, but strangely threatening. Susan went
to the window, and drew aside the little curtain. The whole world was
white--the air was blinded with the swift and heavy fall of snow. At
present it came down straight, but Susan knew those distant sounds in
the hollows and gulleys of the hills portended a driving wind and a more
cruel storm. She thought of her sheep; were they all folded? the
new-born calf, was it bedded well? Before the drifts were formed too
deep for her to pass in and out--and by the morning she judged that they
would be six or seven feet deep--she would go out and see after the
comfort of her beasts. She took a lantern, and tied a shawl over her
head, and went out into the open air. She had tenderly provided for all
her animals, and was returning, when, borne on the blast as if some
spirit-cry--for it seemed to come rather down from the skies than from
any creature standing on earth’s level--she heard a voice of agony; she
could not distinguish words; it seemed rather as if some bird of prey
was being caught in the whirl of the icy wind, and torn and tortured by
its violence. Again! up high above! Susan put down her lantern, and
shouted loud in return; it was an instinct, for if the creature were not
human, which she had doubted but a moment before, what good could her
responding cry do? And her cry was seized on by the tyrannous wind, and
borne farther away in the opposite direction to that from which the call
of agony had proceeded. Again she listened; no sound: then again it rang
through space; and this time she was sure it was human. She turned into
the house, and heaped turf and wood on the fire, which, careless of her
own sensations, she had allowed to fade and almost die out. She put a
new candle in her lantern; she changed her shawl for a maud, and
leaving the door on latch, she sallied out. Just at the moment when her
ear first encountered the weird noises of the storm, on issuing forth
into the open air, she thought she heard the words, “O God! O help!”
They were a guide to her, if words they were, for they came straight
from a rock not a quarter of a mile from Yew Nook, but only to be
reached, on account of its precipitous character, by a round-about path.
Thither she steered, defying wind and snow; guided by here a thorn-tree,
there an old, doddered oak, which had not quite lost their identity
under the whelming mask of snow. Now and then she stopped to listen; but
never a word or sound heard she, till right from where the copse-wood
grew thick and tangled at the base of the rock, round which
she was winding, she heard a moan. Into the brake--all snow in
appearance--almost a plain of snow looked on from the little eminence
where she stood--she plunged, breaking down the bush, stumbling,
bruising herself, fighting her way; her lantern held between her teeth,
and she herself using head as well as hands to butt away a passage, at
whatever cost of bodily injury. As she climbed or staggered, owing to
the unevenness of the snow-covered ground, where the briars and weeds of
years were tangled and matted together, her foot felt something
strangely soft and yielding. She lowered her lantern; there lay a man,
prone on his face, nearly covered by the fast-falling flakes; he must
have fallen from the rock above, as, not knowing of the circuitous path,
he had tried to descend its steep, slippery face. Who could tell? it was
no time for thinking. Susan lifted him up with her wiry strength; he
gave no help--no sign of life; but for all that he might be alive: he
was still warm; she tied her maud round him; she fastened the lantern to
her apron-string; she held him tight: half-carrying, half-dragging--what
did a few bruises signify to him, compared to dear life, to precious
life! She got him through the brake, and down the path. There, for an
instant, she stopped to take breath; but, as if stung by the Furies, she
pushed on again with almost superhuman strength. Clasping him round the
waist, and leaning his dead weight against the lintel of the door, she
tried to undo the latch; but now, just at this moment, a trembling
faintness came over her, and a fearful dread took possession of
her--that here, on the very threshold of her home, she might be found
dead, and buried under the snow, when the farm-servants came in the
morning. This terror stirred her up to one more effort. Then she and her
companion were in the warmth of the quiet haven of that kitchen; she
laid him on the settle, and sank on the floor by his side. How long she
remained in this swoon she could not tell; not very long she judged by
the fire, which was still red and sullenly glowing when she came to
herself. She lighted the candle, and bent over her late burden to
ascertain if indeed he were dead. She stood long gazing. The man lay
dead. There could be no doubt about it. His filmy eyes glared at her,
unshut. But Susan was not one to be affrighted by the stony aspect of
death. It was not that; it was the bitter, woeful recognition of Michael
Hurst!
She was convinced he was dead; but after a while she refused to believe
in her conviction. She stripped off his wet outer-garments with
trembling, hurried hands. She brought a blanket down from her own bed;
she made up the fire. She swathed him in fresh, warm wrappings, and laid
him on the flags before the fire, sitting herself at his head, and
holding it in her lap, while she tenderly wiped his loose, wet hair,
curly still, although its colour had changed from nut-brown to iron-gray
since she had seen it last. From time to time she bent over the face
afresh, sick, and fain to believe that the flicker of the fire-light was
some slight convulsive motion. But the dim, staring eyes struck chill to
her heart. At last she ceased her delicate, busy cares; but she still
held the head softly, as if caressing it. She thought over all the
possibilities and chances in the mingled yarn of their lives that might,
by so slight a turn, have ended far otherwise. If her mother’s cold had
been early tended, so that the responsibility as to her brother’s weal
or woe had not fallen upon her; if the fever had not taken such rough,
cruel hold on Will; nay, if Mrs. Gale, that hard, worldly sister, had
not accompanied him on his last visit to Yew Nook--his very last before
this fatal, stormy night; if she had heard his cry,--cry uttered by
those pale, dead lips with such wild, despairing agony, not yet three
hours ago!--O! if she had but heard it sooner, he might have been saved
before that blind, false step had precipitated him down the rock! In
going over this weary chain of unrealised possibilities, Susan learnt
the force of Peggy’s words. Life was short, looking back upon it. It
seemed but yesterday since all the love of her being had been poured
out, and run to waste. The intervening years--the long monotonous years
that had turned her into an old woman before her time--were but a dream.
The labourers coming in the dawn of the winter’s day were surprised to
see the fire-light through the low kitchen-window. They knocked, and
hearing a moaning answer, they entered, fearing that something had
befallen their mistress. For all explanation they got these words:
“It is Michael Hurst. He was belated, and fell down the Raven’s Crag.
Where does Eleanor, his wife, live?”
How Michael Hurst got to Yew Nook no one but Susan ever knew. They
thought he had dragged himself there, with some sore, internal bruise
sapping away his minuted life. They could not have believed the
superhuman exertion which had first sought him out, and then dragged
him hither. Only Susan knew of that.
She gave him into the charge of her servants, and went out and saddled
her horse. Where the wind had drifted the snow on one side, and the road
was clear and bare, she rode, and rode fast; where the soft, deceitful
heaps were massed up, she dismounted and led her steed, plunging in
deep, with fierce energy, the pain at her heart urging her onwards with
a sharp, digging spur.
The gray, solemn, winter’s noon was more night-like than the depth of
summer’s night; dim-purple brooded the low skies over the white earth,
as Susan rode up to what had been Michael Hurst’s abode while living. It
was a small farm-house, carelessly kept outside, slatternly tended
within. The pretty Nelly Hebthwaite was pretty still; her delicate face
had never suffered from any long-enduring feeling. If anything, its
expression was that of plaintive sorrow; but the soft, light hair had
scarcely a tinge of gray; the wood-rose tint of complexion yet remained,
if not so brilliant as in youth; the straight nose, the small mouth
were untouched by time. Susan felt the contrast even at that moment.
She knew that her own skin was weather-beaten, furrowed, brown,--that
her teeth were gone, and her hair gray and ragged. And yet she was not
two years older than Nelly,--she had not been, in youth, when she took
account of these things. Nelly stood wondering at the strange-enough
horsewoman, who stopped and panted at the door, holding her horse’s
bridle, and refusing to enter.
“Where is Michael Hurst?” asked Susan, at last.
“Well, I can’t rightly say. He should have been at home last night, but
he was off, seeing after a public-house to be let at Ulverstone, for our
farm does not answer, and we were thinking----”
“He did not come home last night?” said Susan, cutting short the story,
and half-affirming, half-questioning, by way of letting in a ray of the
awful light before she let it full in, in its consuming wrath.
“No! he’ll be stopping somewhere out Ulverstone ways. I’m sure we’ve
need of him at home, for I’ve no one but lile Tommy to help me tend the
beasts. Things have not gone well with us, and we don’t keep a servant
now. But you’re trembling all over, ma’am. You’d better come in, and
take something warm, while your horse rests. That’s the stable-door, to
your left.”
Susan took her horse there; loosened his girths, and rubbed him down
with a wisp of straw. Then she looked about her for hay; but the place
was bare of food, and smelt damp and unused. She went to the house,
thankful for the respite, and got some clap-bread, which she mashed up
in a pailful of luke-warm water. Every moment was a respite, and yet
every moment made her dread the more the task that lay before her. It
would be longer than she thought at first. She took the saddle off, and
hung about her horse, which seemed, somehow, more like a friend than
anything else in the world. She laid her cheek against its neck, and
rested there, before returning to the house for the last time.
Eleanor had brought down one of her own gowns, which hung on a chair
against the fire, and had made her unknown visitor a cup of hot tea.
Susan could hardly bear all these little attentions: they choked her,
and yet she was so wet, so weak with fatigue and excitement, that she
could neither resist by voice or by action. Two children stood awkwardly
about, puzzled at the scene, and even Eleanor began to wish for some
explanation of who her strange visitor was.
“You’ve, may-be, heard him speaking of me? I’m called Susan Dixon.”
Nelly coloured, and avoided meeting Susan’s eye.
“I’ve heard other folk speak of you. He never named your name.”
This respect of silence came like balm to Susan: balm not felt or heeded
at the time it was applied, but very grateful in its effects for all
that.
“He is at my house,” continued Susan, determined not to stop or quaver
in the operation--the pain which must be inflicted.
“At your house? Yew Nook?” questioned Eleanor, surprised. “How came he
there?”--half jealously. “Did he take shelter from the coming storm?
Tell me,--there is something--tell me, woman!”
“He took no shelter. Would to God he had!”
“O! would to God! would to God!” shrieked out Eleanor, learning all from
the woful import of those dreary eyes. Her cries thrilled through the
house; the children’s piping wailings and passionate cries on “Daddy!
Daddy!” pierced into Susan’s very marrow. But she remained as still and
tearless as the great round face upon the clock.
At last, in a lull of crying, she said,--not exactly questioning--but as
if partly to herself--
“You loved him, then?”
“Loved him! he was my husband! He was the father of three bonny bairns
that lie dead in Grasmere Churchyard. I wish you’d go, Susan Dixon, and
let me weep without your watching me! I wish you’d never come near the
place.”
“Alas! alas! it would not have brought him to life. I would have laid
down my own to save his. My life has been so very sad! No one would have
cared if I had died. Alas! alas!”
The tone in which she said this was so utterly mournful and despairing
that it awed Nelly into quiet for a time. But by-and-by she said, “I
would not turn a dog out to do it harm; but the night is clear, and
Tommy shall guide you to the Red Cow. But, O! I want to be alone. If
you’ll come back to-morrow, I’ll be better, and I’ll hear all, and thank
you for every kindness you have shown him,--and I do believe you’ve
showed him kindness,--though I don’t know why.”
Susan moved heavily and strangely.
She said something--her words came thick and unintelligible. She had had
a paralytic stroke since she had last spoken. She could not go, even if
she would. Nor did Eleanor, when she became aware of the state of the
case, wish her to leave. She had her laid on her own bed, and weeping
silently all the while for her lost husband, she nursed Susan like a
sister. She did not know what her guest’s worldly position might be; and
she might never be repaid. But she sold many a little trifle to purchase
such small comforts as Susan needed. Susan, lying still and motionless,
learnt much. It was not a severe stroke; it might be the forerunner of
others yet to come, but at some distance of time. But for the present
she recovered, and regained much of her former health. On her sick-bed
she matured her plans. When she returned to Yew Nook, she took Michael
Hurst’s widow and children with her to live there, and fill up the
haunted hearth with living forms that should banish the ghosts.
And so it fell out that the latter days of Susan Dixon’s life were
better than the former.
* * * * *
When this narrative was finished, Mrs. Dawson called on our two
gentlemen, Signor Sperano and Mr. Preston, and told them that they had
hitherto been amused or interested, but that it was now their turn to
amuse or interest. They looked at each other as if this application of
hers took them by surprise, and seemed altogether as much abashed as
well-grown men can ever be. Signor Sperano was the first to recover
himself: after thinking a little, he said:--
“Your will, dear Lady, is law. Next Monday evening, I will bring you an
old, old story, which I found among the papers of the good old Priest
who first welcomed me to England. It was but a poor return for his
generous kindness; but I had the opportunity of nursing him through the
cholera, of which he died. He left me all that he had--no money--but his
scanty furniture, his book of prayers, his crucifix and rosary, and his
papers. How some of those papers came into his hands I know not. They
had evidently been written many years before the venerable man was born;
and I doubt whether he had ever examined the bundles, which had come
down to him from some old ancestor, or in some strange bequest. His life
was too busy to leave any time for the gratification of mere curiosity;
I, alas! have only had too much leisure.”
Next Monday, Signor Sperano read to us the story which I will call
“THE POOR CLARE.”
THE POOR CLARE.
CHAPTER I.
December 12th, 1747.--My life has been strangely bound up with
extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
connection with the principal actors in them, or, indeed, before I even
knew of their existence. I suppose, most old men are, like me, more
given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest
and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events--though these
may have far more interest for the multitude--immediately passing before
their eyes. If this should be the case with the generality of old
people, how much more so with me!... If I am to enter upon that strange
story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back. I myself
only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her; but,
to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the
order in which they occurred--not that in which I became acquainted with
them.
There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part
they call the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named
Craven. Starkey Manor-House is rather like a number of rooms clustered
round a gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall. Indeed, I
suppose that the house only consisted of the great tower in the centre,
in the days when the Scots made their raids terrible as far south as
this; and that after the Stuarts came in, and there was a little more
security of property in those parts, the Starkeys of that time added the
lower building, which runs, two stories high, all round the base of the
keep. There has been a grand garden laid out in my days, on the southern
slope near the house; but when I first knew the place, the
kitchen-garden at the farm was the only piece of cultivated ground
belonging to it. The deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room
windows, and might have browsed quite close up to the house if they had
not been too wild and shy. Starkey Manor-House itself stood on a
projection or peninsula of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills
that form the sides of the Trough of Bolland. These hills were rocky and
bleak enough towards their summit; lower down they were clothed with
tangled copsewood and green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of
an ancient forest-tree would tower here and there, throwing up its
ghastly white branches, as if in imprecation, to the sky. These trees,
they told me, were the remnants of that forest which existed in the days
of the Heptarchy, and were even then noted as landmarks. No wonder that
their upper and more exposed branches were leafless, and that the dead
bark had peeled away, from sapless old age.
Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently of the same
date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the family, who
sought shelter--they and their families and their small flocks and
herds--at the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them had pretty much
fallen to decay. They were built in a strange fashion. Strong beams had
been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other
ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape
of one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much
larger. The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers,
rubbish, mortar--anything to keep out the weather. The fires were made
in the centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the
only chimney. No Highland hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher
construction.
The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century, was
a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey. His family had kept to the old faith, and
were staunch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to marry any one
of Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to
embrace the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick Starkey’s father had been a
follower of James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign
of that monarch, he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss
Byrne, as zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself. He
had returned to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her,
bearing her back to the court at St. Germains. But some licence on the
part of the disorderly gentlemen who surrounded King James in his
exile, had insulted his beautiful wife, and disgusted him; so he removed
from St. Germains to Antwerp, whence, in a few years’ time, he quietly
returned to Starkey Manor-House--some of his Lancashire neighbours
having lent their good offices to reconcile him to the powers that were.
He was as firm a Roman Catholic as ever, and as staunch an advocate for
the Stuarts and the divine right of kings; but his religion almost
amounted to asceticism, and the conduct of those with whom he had been
brought in such close contact at St. Germains would little bear the
inspection of a stern moralist. So he gave his allegiance where he could
not give his esteem, and learned to respect sincerely the upright and
moral character of one whom he yet regarded as an usurper. King
William’s government had little need to fear such a one. So he returned,
as I have said, with a sobered heart and impoverished fortunes, to his
ancestral house, which had fallen sadly to ruin while the owner had been
a courtier, a soldier, and an exile. The roads into the Trough of
Bolland were little more than cart-ruts; indeed, the way up to the house
lay along a ploughed field before you came to the deer-park. Madam, as
the country-folk used to call Mrs. Starkey, rode on a pillion behind
her husband, holding on to him with a light hand by his leather
riding-belt. Little master (he that was afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne
Starkey) was held on to his pony by a serving-man. A woman past middle
age walked, with a firm and strong step, by the cart that held much of
the baggage; and, high up on the mails and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling
beauty, perched lightly on the topmost trunk, and swaying herself
fearlessly to and fro, as the cart rocked and shook in the heavy roads
of late autumn. The girl wore the Antwerp faille, or black Spanish
mantle over her head, and altogether her appearance was such that the
old cottager, who described the procession to me many years after, said
that all the country-folk took her for a foreigner. Some dogs, and the
boy who held them in charge, made up the company. They rode silently
along, looking with grave, serious eyes at the people, who came out of
the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to the real Squire, “come back
at last,” and gazed after the little procession with gaping wonder, not
deadened by the sound of the foreign language in which the few necessary
words that passed among them were spoken. One lad, called from his
staring by the Squire to come and help about the cart, accompanied them
to the Manor-House. He said that when the lady had descended from her
pillion, the middle-aged woman whom I have described as walking while
the others rode, stepped quickly forward, and taking Madam Starkey (who
was of a slight and delicate figure) in her arms, she lifted her over
the threshold, and set her down in her husband’s house, at the same time
uttering a passionate and outlandish blessing. The Squire stood by,
smiling gravely at first; but when the words of blessing were
pronounced, he took off his fine feathered hat, and bent his head. The
girl with the black mantle stepped onward into the shadow of the dark
hall, and kissed the lady’s hand; and that was all the lad could tell to
the group that gathered round him on his return, eager to hear
everything, and to know how much the Squire had given him for his
services.
From all I could gather, the Manor-House, at the time of the Squire’s
return, was in the most dilapidated state. The stout gray walls remained
firm and entire; but the inner chambers had been used for all kinds of
purposes. The great withdrawing-room had been a barn; the state
tapestry-chamber had held wool, and so on. But, by-and-by, they were
cleared out; and if the Squire had no money to spend on new furniture,
he and his wife had the knack of making the best of the old. He was no
despicable joiner; she had a kind of grace in whatever she did, and
imparted an air of elegant picturesqueness to whatever she touched.
Besides, they had brought many rare things from the Continent; perhaps I
should rather say, things that were rare in that part of
England--carvings, and crosses, and beautiful pictures. And then, again,
wood was plentiful in the Trough of Bolland, and great log-fires danced
and glittered in all the dark, old rooms, and gave a look of home and
comfort to everything.
Why do I tell you all this? I have little to do with the Squire and
Madam Starkey; and yet I dwell upon them, as if I were unwilling to come
to the real people with whom my life was so strangely mixed up. Madam
had been nursed in Ireland by the very woman who lifted her in her arms,
and welcomed her to her husband’s home in Lancashire. Excepting for the
short period of her own married life, Bridget Fitzgerald had never left
her nursling. Her marriage--to one above her in rank--had been unhappy.
Her husband had died, and left her in even greater poverty than that in
which she was when he had first met with her. She had one child, the
beautiful daughter who came riding on the waggon-load of furniture that
was brought to the Manor-House. Madam Starkey had taken her again into
her service when she became a widow. She and her daughter had followed
“the mistress” in all her fortunes; they had lived at St. Germains and
at Antwerp, and were now come to her home in Lancashire. As soon as
Bridget had arrived there, the Squire gave her a cottage of her own, and
took more pains in furnishing it for her than he did in anything else
out of his own house. It was only nominally her residence. She was
constantly up at the great house; indeed, it was but a short cut across
the woods from her own home to the home of her nursling. Her daughter
Mary, in like manner, moved from one house to the other at her own will.
Madam loved both mother and child dearly. They had great influence over
her, and, through her, over her husband. Whatever Bridget or Mary willed
was sure to come to pass. They were not disliked; for, though wild and
passionate, they were also generous by nature. But the other servants
were afraid of them, as being in secret the ruling spirits of the
household. The Squire had lost his interest in all secular things; Madam
was gentle, affectionate, and yielding. Both husband and wife were
tenderly attached to each other and to their boy; but they grew more
and more to shun the trouble of decision on any point; and hence it was
that Bridget could exert such despotic power. But if every one else
yielded to her “magic of a superior mind,” her daughter not unfrequently
rebelled. She and her mother were too much alike to agree. There were
wild quarrels between them, and wilder reconciliations. There were times
when, in the heat of passion, they could have stabbed each other. At all
other times they both--Bridget especially--would have willingly laid
down their lives for one another. Bridget’s love for her child lay very
deep--deeper than that daughter ever knew; or I should think she would
never have wearied of home as she did, and prayed her mistress to obtain
for her some situation--as waiting-maid--beyond the seas, in that more
cheerful continental life, among the scenes of which so many of her
happiest years had been spent. She thought, as youth thinks, that life
would last for ever, and that two or three years were but a small
portion of it to pass away from her mother, whose only child she was.
Bridget thought differently, but was too proud ever to show what she
felt. If her child wished to leave her, why--she should go. But people
said Bridget became ten years older in the course of two months at this
time. She took it that Mary wanted to leave her. The truth was, that
Mary wanted for a time to leave the place, and to seek some change, and
would thankfully have taken her mother with her. Indeed, when Madam
Starkey had gotten her a situation with some grand lady abroad, and the
time drew near for her to go, it was Mary who clung to her mother with
passionate embrace, and, with floods of tears, declared that she would
never leave her; and it was Bridget, who at last loosened her arms, and,
grave and tearless herself, bade her keep her word, and go forth into
the wide world. Sobbing aloud, and looking back continually, Mary went
away. Bridget was still as death, scarcely drawing her breath, or
closing her stony eyes; till at last she turned back into her cottage,
and heaved a ponderous old settle against the door. There she sat,
motionless, over the gray ashes of her extinguished fire, deaf to
Madam’s sweet voice, as she begged leave to enter and comfort her nurse.
Deaf, stony, and motionless, she sat for more than twenty hours; till,
for the third time, Madam came across the snowy path from the great
house, carrying with her a young spaniel, which had been Mary’s pet up
at the hall, and which had not ceased all night long to seek for its
absent mistress, and to whine and moan after her. With tears Madam told
this story, through the closed door--tears excited by the terrible look
of anguish, so steady, so immovable--so the same to-day as it was
yesterday--on her nurse’s face. The little creature in her arms began to
utter its piteous cry, as it shivered with the cold. Bridget stirred;
she moved--she listened. Again that long whine; she thought it was for
her daughter; and what she had denied to her nursling and mistress she
granted to the dumb creature that Mary had cherished. She opened the
door, and took the dog from Madam’s arms. Then Madam came in, and
kissed and comforted the old woman, who took but little notice of her or
anything. And sending up Master Patrick to the hall for fire and food,
the sweet young lady never left her nurse all that night. Next day, the
Squire himself came down, carrying a beautiful foreign picture: Our Lady
of the Holy Heart, the Papists call it. It is a picture of the Virgin,
her heart pierced with arrows, each arrow representing one of her great
woes. That picture hung in Bridget’s cottage when I first saw her; I
have that picture now.
Years went on. Mary was still abroad. Bridget was still and stern,
instead of active and passionate. The little dog, Mignon, was indeed her
darling. I have heard that she talked to it continually; although, to
most people, she was so silent. The Squire and Madam treated her with
the greatest consideration, and well they might; for to them she was as
devoted and faithful as ever. Mary wrote pretty often, and seemed
satisfied with her life. But at length the letters ceased--I hardly know
whether before or after a great and terrible sorrow came upon the house
of the Starkeys. The Squire sickened of a putrid fever; and Madam
caught it in nursing him, and died. You may be sure, Bridget let no
other woman tend her but herself; and in the very arms that had received
her at her birth, that sweet young woman laid her head down, and gave up
her breath. The Squire recovered, in a fashion. He was never strong--he
had never the heart to smile again. He fasted and prayed more than ever;
and people did say that he tried to cut off the entail, and leave all
the property away to found a monastery abroad, of which he prayed that
some day little Squire Patrick might be the reverend father. But he
could not do this, for the strictness of the entail and the laws against
the Papists. So he could only appoint gentlemen of his own faith as
guardians to his son, with many charges about the lad’s soul, and a few
about the land, and the way it was to be held while he was a minor. Of
course, Bridget was not forgotten. He sent for her as he lay on his
death-bed, and asked her if she would rather have a sum down, or have a
small annuity settled upon her. She said at once she would have a sum
down; for she thought of her daughter, and how she could bequeath the
money to her, whereas an annuity would have died with her. So the Squire
left her her cottage for life, and a fair sum of money. And then he
died, with as ready and willing a heart as, I suppose, ever any
gentleman took out of this world with him. The young Squire was carried
off by his guardians, and Bridget was left alone.
I have said that she had not heard from Mary for some time. In her last
letter, she had told of travelling about with her mistress, who was the
English wife of some great foreign officer, and had spoken of her
chances of making a good marriage, without naming the gentleman’s name,
keeping it rather back as a pleasant surprise to her mother; his station
and fortune being, as I had afterwards reason to know, far superior to
anything she had a right to expect. Then came a long silence; and Madam
was dead, and the Squire was dead; and Bridget’s heart was gnawed by
anxiety, and she knew not whom to ask for news of her child. She could
not write, and the Squire had managed her communication with her
daughter. She walked off to Hurst; and got a good priest there--one whom
she had known at Antwerp--to write for her. But no answer came. It was
like crying into the awful stillness of night.
One day, Bridget was missed by those neighbours who had been accustomed
to mark her goings-out and comings-in. She had never been sociable with
any of them; but the sight of her had become a part of their daily
lives, and slow wonder arose in their minds, as morning after morning
came, and her house-door remained closed, her window dead from any
glitter, or light of fire within. At length, some one tried the door; it
was locked. Two or three laid their heads together, before daring to
look in through the blank, unshuttered window. But, at last, they
summoned up courage; and then saw that Bridget’s absence from their
little world was not the result of accident or death, but of
premeditation. Such small articles of furniture as could be secured from
the effects of time and damp by being packed up, were stowed away in
boxes. The picture of the Madonna was taken down, and gone. In a word,
Bridget had stolen away from her home, and left no trace whither she was
departed. I knew afterwards, that she and her little dog had wandered
off on the long search for her lost daughter. She was too illiterate to
have faith in letters, even had she had the means of writing and sending
many. But she had faith in her own strong love, and believed that her
passionate instinct would guide her to her child. Besides, foreign
travel was no new thing to her, and she could speak enough of French to
explain the object of her journey, and had, moreover, the advantage of
being, from her faith, a welcome object of charitable hospitality at
many a distant convent. But the country people round Starkey Manor-House
knew nothing of all this. They wondered what had become of her, in a
torpid, lazy fashion, and then left off thinking of her altogether.
Several years passed. Both Manor-House and cottage were deserted. The
young Squire lived far away under the direction of his guardians. There
were inroads of wool and corn into the sitting-rooms of the Hall; and
there was some low talk, from time to time, among the hinds and country
people, whether it would not be as well to break into old Bridget’s
cottage, and save such of her goods as were left from the moth and rust
which must be making sad havoc. But this idea was always quenched by the
recollection of her strong character and passionate anger; and tales of
her masterful spirit, and vehement force of will, were whispered about,
till the very thought of offending her, by touching any article of hers,
became invested with a kind of horror: it was believed that, dead or
alive, she would not fail to avenge it.
Suddenly she came home; with as little noise or note of preparation as
she had departed. One day, some one noticed a thin, blue curl of smoke,
ascending from her chimney. Her door stood open to the noon-day sun;
and, ere many hours had elapsed, some one had seen an old
travel-and-sorrow-stained woman dipping her pitcher in the well; and
said, that the dark, solemn eyes that looked up at him were more like
Bridget Fitzgerald’s than any one else’s in this world; and yet, if it
were she, she looked as if she had been scorched in the flames of hell,
so brown, and scared, and fierce a creature did she seem. By-and-by many
saw her; and those who met her eye once cared not to be caught looking
at her again. She had got into the habit of perpetually talking to
herself; nay, more, answering herself, and varying her tones according
to the side she took at the moment. It was no wonder that those who
dared to listen outside her door at night, believed that she held
converse with some spirit; in short, she was unconsciously earning for
herself the dreadful reputation of a witch.
Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her, was
her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days. Once he was
ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had then
been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals. Whatever this man
did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks, intermingled with
blessings (that were rather promises of good fortune than prayers),
looked grave at his good luck when, next year, his ewes twinned, and his
meadow-grass was heavy and thick.
Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven,
one of the guardians of the young Squire, a certain Sir Philip Tempest,
bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his ward’s property;
and, in consequence, he brought down four or five gentlemen, of his
friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall. From all accounts, they
roystered and spent pretty freely. I never heard any of their names but
one, and that was Squire Gisborne’s. He was hardly a middle-aged man
then; he had been much abroad, and there, I believe, he had known Sir
Philip Tempest, and done him some service. He was a daring and dissolute
fellow in those days: careless and fearless, and one who would rather be
in a quarrel than out of it. He had his fits of ill-temper beside, when
he would spare neither man nor beast. Otherwise, those who knew him
well, used to say he had a good heart, when he was neither drunk, nor
angry, nor in any way vexed. He had altered much when I came to know
him.
One day, the gentlemen had all been out shooting, and with but little
success, I believe; anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had had none, and was in a
black humour accordingly. He was coming home, having his gun loaded,
sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he turned
out of the wood by Bridget’s cottage. Partly for wantonness, partly to
vent his spleen upon some living creature, Mr. Gisborne took his gun,
and fired--he had better have never fired gun again, than aimed that
unlucky shot. He hit Mignon; and at the creature’s sudden cry, Bridget
came out, and saw at a glance what had been done. She took Mignon up in
her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with
his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all
covered with blood. Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of sullen penitence:
“You should have kept the dog out of my way--a little poaching varmint.”
At this very moment, Mignon stretched out his legs, and stiffened in her
arms--her lost Mary’s dog, who had wandered and sorrowed with her for
years. She walked right into Mr. Gisborne’s path, and fixed his
unwilling, sullen look with her dark and terrible eye.
“Those never throve that did me harm,” said she. “I’m alone in the
world, and helpless; the more do the Saints in Heaven hear my prayers.
Hear me, ye blessed ones! hear me while I ask for sorrow on this bad,
cruel man. He has killed the only creature that loved me--the dumb beast
that I loved. Bring down heavy sorrow on his head for it, O ye Saints!
He thought that I was helpless, because he saw me lonely and poor; but
are not the armies of Heaven for the like of me?”
“Come, come,” said he, half-remorseful, but not one whit afraid. “Here’s
a crown to buy thee another dog. Take it, and leave off cursing! I care
none for thy threats.”
“Don’t you?” said she, coming a step closer, and changing her
imprecatory cry for a whisper which made the gamekeeper’s lad, following
Mr. Gisborne, creep all over. “You shall live to see the creature you
love best, and who alone loves you--ay, a human creature, but as
innocent and fond as my poor, dead darling--you shall see this creature,
for whom death would be too happy, become a terror and a loathing to
all, for this blood’s sake. Hear me, O holy Saints, who never fail them
that have no other help!”
She threw up her right hand, filled with poor Mignon’s life-drops; they
spirted, one or two of them, on his shooting-dress,--an ominous sight to
the follower. But the master only laughed a little, forced, scornful
laugh, and went on to the Hall. Before he got there, however, he took
out a gold piece, and bade the boy carry it to the old woman on his
return to the village. The lad was “afeared,” as he told me in after
years; he came to the cottage, and hovered about, not daring to enter.
He peeped through the window at last; and by the flickering wood-flame,
he saw Bridget kneeling before the picture of our Lady of the Holy
Heart, with dead Mignon lying between her and the Madonna. She was
praying wildly, as her outstretched arms betokened. The lad shrank away
in redoubled terror; and contented himself with slipping the gold-piece
under the ill-fitting door. The next day it was thrown out upon the
midden; and there it lay, no one daring to touch it.
Meanwhile Mr. Gisborne, half curious, half uneasy, thought to lessen his
uncomfortable feelings by asking Sir Philip who Bridget was? He could
only describe her--he did not know her name. Sir Philip was equally at a
loss. But an old servant of the Starkeys, who had resumed his livery at
the Hall on this occasion--a scoundrel whom Bridget had saved from
dismissal more than once during her palmy days--said:--
“It will be the old witch, that his worship means. She needs a ducking,
if ever woman did, does that Bridget Fitzgerald.”
“Fitzgerald!” said both the gentlemen at once. But Sir Philip was the
first to continue:--
“I must have no talk of ducking her, Dickon. Why, she must be the very
woman poor Starkey bade me have a care of; but when I came here last she
was gone, no one knew where. I’ll go and see her to-morrow. But mind
you, sirrah, if any harm comes to her, or any more talk of her being a
witch--I’ve a pack of hounds at home, who can follow the scent of a
lying knave as well as ever they followed a dog-fox; so take care how
you talk about ducking a faithful old servant of your dead master’s.”
“Had she ever a daughter?” asked Mr. Gisborne, after a while.
“I don’t know--yes! I’ve a notion she had; a kind of waiting-woman to
Madam Starkey.”
“Please your worship,” said humbled Dickon, “Mistress Bridget had a
daughter--one Mistress Mary--who went abroad, and has never been heard
on since; and folk do say that has crazed her mother.”
Mr. Gisborne shaded his eyes with his hand.
“I could wish she had not cursed me,” he muttered. “She may have
power--no one else could.” After a while, he said aloud, no one
understanding rightly what he meant, “Tush! it’s impossible!”--and
called for claret; and he and the other gentlemen set-to to a
drinking-bout.
CHAPTER II.
I now come to the time in which I myself was mixed up with the people
that I have been writing about. And to make you understand how I became
connected with them, I must give you some little account of myself. My
father was the younger son of a Devonshire gentleman of moderate
property; my eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his forefathers, my
second became an eminent attorney in London, and my father took orders.
Like most poor clergymen, he had a large family; and I have no doubt was
glad enough when my London uncle, who was a bachelor, offered to take
charge of me, and bring me up to be his successor in business.
In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle’s house, not far from
Gray’s Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour
with him in his office. I was very fond of the old gentleman. He was the
confidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to his
present position as much by knowledge of human nature as by knowledge of
law; though he was learned enough in the latter. He used to say his
business was law, his pleasure heraldry. From his intimate acquaintance
with family history, and all the tragic courses of life therein
involved, to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of arms
that came across his path was as good as a play or a romance. Many cases
of disputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy, were brought to
him, as to a great authority on such points. If the lawyer who came to
consult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him a long
lecture on the importance of attending to heraldry; if the lawyer was of
mature age and good standing, he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse
him to me afterwards as negligent of one great branch of the profession.
His house was in a stately new street called Ormond Street, and in it he
had a handsome library; but all the books treated of things that were
past; none of them planned or looked forward into the future. I worked
away--partly for the sake of my family at home, partly because my uncle
had really taught me to enjoy the kind of practice in which he himself
took such delight. I suspect I worked too hard; at any rate, in
seventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from well, and my good uncle
was disturbed by my ill looks.
One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk’s room at the dingy
office in Gray’s Inn Lane. It was the summons for me, and I went into
his private room just as a gentleman--whom I knew well enough by sight
as an Irish lawyer of more reputation than he deserved--was leaving.
My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands together and considering. I was
there two or three minutes before he spoke. Then he told me that I must
pack up my portmanteau that very afternoon, and start that night by
post-horse for West Chester. I should get there, if all went well, at
the end of five days’ time, and must then wait for a packet to cross
over to Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a certain town named
Kildoon, and in that neighbourhood I was to remain, making certain
inquiries as to the existence of any descendants of the younger branch
of a family to whom some valuable estates had descended in the female
line. The Irish lawyer whom I had seen was weary of the case, and would
willingly have given up the property, without further ado, to a man who
appeared to claim them; but on laying his tables and trees before my
uncle, the latter had foreseen so many possible prior claimants, that
the lawyer had begged him to undertake the management of the whole
business. In his youth, my uncle would have liked nothing better than
going over to Ireland himself, and ferreting out every scrap of paper or
parchment, and every word of tradition respecting the family. As it was,
old and gouty, he deputed me.
Accordingly, I went to Kildoon. I suspect I had something of my uncle’s
delight in following up a genealogical scent, for I very soon found
out, when on the spot, that Mr. Rooney, the Irish lawyer, would have got
both himself and the first claimant into a terrible scrape, if he had
pronounced his opinion that the estates ought to be given up to him.
There were three poor Irish fellows, each nearer of kin to the last
possessor; but, a generation before, there was a still nearer relation,
who had never been accounted for, nor his existence ever discovered by
the lawyers, I venture to think, till I routed him out from the memory
of some of the old dependants of the family. What had become of him? I
travelled backwards and forwards; I crossed over to France, and came
back again with a slight clue, which ended in my discovering that, wild
and dissipated himself, he had left one child, a son, of yet worse
character than his father; that this same Hugh Fitzgerald had married a
very beautiful serving-woman of the Byrnes--a person below him in
hereditary rank, but above him in character; that he had died soon after
his marriage, leaving one child, whether a boy or a girl I could not
learn, and that the mother had returned to live in the family of the
Byrnes. Now, the chief of this latter family was serving in the Duke of
Berwick’s regiment, and it was long before I could hear from him; it was
more than a year before I got a short, haughty letter--I fancy he had a
soldier’s contempt for a civilian, an Irishman’s hatred for an
Englishman, an exiled Jacobite’s jealousy of one who prospered and lived
tranquilly under the government he looked upon as an usurpation.
“Bridget Fitzgerald,” he said, “had been faithful to the fortunes of his
sister--had followed her abroad, and to England when Mrs. Starkey had
thought fit to return. Both her sister and her husband were dead; he
knew nothing of Bridget Fitzgerald at the present time: probably Sir
Philip Tempest, his nephew’s guardian, might be able to give me some
information.” I have not given the little contemptuous terms; the way in
which faithful service was meant to imply more than it said--all that
has nothing to do with my story. Sir Philip, when applied to, told me
that he paid an annuity regularly to an old woman named Fitzgerald,
living at Coldholme (the village near Starkey Manor-House). Whether she
had any descendants he could not say.
One bleak March evening, I came in sight of the places described at the
beginning of my story. I could hardly understand the rude dialect in
which the direction to old Bridget’s house was given.
“Yo’ see yon furleets,” all run together, gave me no idea that I was to
guide myself by the distant lights that shone in the windows of the
Hall, occupied for the time by a farmer who held the post of steward,
while the Squire, now four or five and twenty, was making the grand
tour. However, at last, I reached Bridget’s cottage--a low, moss-grown
place; the palings that had once surrounded it were broken and gone; and
the underwood of the forest came up to the walls, and must have darkened
the windows. It was about seven o’clock--not late to my London
notions--but, after knocking for some time at the door and receiving no
reply, I was driven to conjecture that the occupant of the house was
gone to bed. So I betook myself to the nearest church I had seen, three
miles back on the road I had come, sure that close to that I should find
an inn of some kind; and early the next morning I set off back to
Coldholme, by a field-path which my host assured me I should find a
shorter cut than the road I had taken the night before. It was a cold,
sharp morning; my feet left prints in the sprinkling of hoar-frost that
covered the ground; nevertheless, I saw an old woman, whom I
instinctively suspected to be the object of my search, in a sheltered
covert on one side of my path. I lingered and watched her. She must have
been considerably above the middle size in her prime, for when she
raised herself from the stooping position in which I first saw her,
there was something fine and commanding in the erectness of her figure.
She drooped again in a minute or two, and seemed looking for something
on the ground, as, with bent head, she turned off from the spot where I
gazed upon her, and was lost to my sight. I fancy I missed my way, and
made a round in spite of the landlord’s directions; for by the time I
had reached Bridget’s cottage she was there, with no semblance of
hurried walk or discomposure of any kind. The door was slightly ajar. I
knocked, and the majestic figure stood before me, silently awaiting the
explanation of my errand. Her teeth were all gone, so the nose and chin
were brought near together; the gray eyebrows were straight, and almost
hung over her deep, cavernous eyes, and the thick white hair lay in
silvery masses over the low, wide, wrinkled forehead. For a moment, I
stood uncertain how to shape my answer to the solemn questioning of her
silence.
“Your name is Bridget Fitzgerald, I believe?”
She bowed her head in assent.
“I have something to say to you. May I come in? I am unwilling to keep
you standing.”
“You cannot tire me,” she said, and at first she seemed inclined to deny
me the shelter of her roof. But the next moment--she had searched the
very soul in me with her eyes during that instant--she led me in, and
dropped the shadowing hood of her gray, draping cloak, which had
previously hid part of the character of her countenance. The cottage was
rude and bare enough. But before that picture of the Virgin, of which I
have made mention, there stood a little cup filled with fresh primroses.
While she paid her reverence to the Madonna, I understood why she had
been out seeking through the clumps of green in the sheltered copse.
Then she turned round, and bade me be seated. The expression of her
face, which all this time I was studying, was not bad, as the stories of
my last night’s landlord had led me to expect; it was a wild, stern,
fierce, indomitable countenance, seamed and scarred by agonies of
solitary weeping; but it was neither cunning nor malignant.
“My name is Bridget Fitzgerald,” said she, by way of opening our
conversation.
“And your husband was Hugh Fitzgerald, of Knock-Mahon, near Kildoon, in
Ireland?”
A faint light came into the dark gloom of her eyes.
“He was.”
“May I ask if you had any children by him?”
The light in her eyes grew quick and red. She tried to speak, I could
see; but something rose in her throat, and choked her, and until she
could speak calmly, she would fain not speak at all before a stranger.
In a minute or so she said:
“I had a daughter--one Mary Fitzgerald,”--then her strong nature
mastered her strong will, and she cried out, with a trembling, wailing
cry: “Oh, man! what of her?--what of her?”
She rose from her seat, and came and clutched at my arm, and looked in
my eyes. There she read, as I suppose, my utter ignorance of what had
become of her child; for she went blindly back to her chair, and sat
rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not daring
to speak to the lone and awful woman. After a little pause, she knelt
down before the picture of our Lady of the Holy Heart, and spoke to her
by all the fanciful and poetic names of the Litany.
“O Rose of Sharon! O Tower of David! O Star of the Sea! have you no
comfort for my sore heart? Am I for ever to hope? Grant me at least
despair!”--and so on she went, heedless of my presence. Her prayers grew
wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of
madness and blasphemy. Almost involuntarily, I spoke as if to stop her.
“Have you any reason to think that your daughter is dead?”
She rose from her knees, and came and stood before me.
“Mary Fitzgerald is dead,” said she. “I shall never see her again in the
flesh. No tongue ever told me. But I know she is dead. I have yearned so
to see her, and my heart’s will is fearful and strong: it would have
drawn her to me before now, if she had been a wanderer on the other side
of the world. I wonder often it has not drawn her out of the grave to
come and stand before me, and hear me tell her how I loved her. For,
sir, we parted unfriends.”
I knew nothing but the dry particulars needed for my lawyer’s quest, but
I could not help feeling for the desolate woman; and she must have read
the unusual sympathy with her wistful eyes.
“Yes, sir, we did. She never knew how I loved her; and we parted
unfriends; and I fear me that I wished her voyage might not turn out
well, only meaning,--O, blessed Virgin! you know I only meant that she
should come home to her mother’s arms as to the happiest place on earth;
but my wishes are terrible--their power goes beyond my thought--and
there is no hope for me, if my words brought Mary harm.”
“But,” I said, “you do not know that she is dead. Even now, you hoped
she might be alive. Listen to me,” and I told her the tale I have
already told you, giving it all in the driest manner, for I wanted to
recall the clear sense that I felt almost sure she had possessed in her
younger days, and by keeping up her attention to details, restrain the
vague wildness of her grief.
She listened with deep attention, putting from time to time such
questions as convinced me I had to do with no common intelligence,
however dimmed and shorn by solitude and mysterious sorrow. Then she
took up her tale; and in few brief words, told me of her wanderings
abroad in vain search after her daughter; sometimes in the wake of
armies, sometimes in camp, sometimes in city. The lady, whose
waiting-woman Mary had gone to be, had died soon after the date of her
last letter home; her husband, the foreign officer, had been serving in
Hungary, whither Bridget had followed him, but too late to find him.
Vague rumours reached her that Mary had made a great marriage; and this
sting of doubt was added,--whether the mother might not be close to her
child under her new name, and even hearing of her every day, and yet
never recognising the lost one under the appellation she then bore. At
length the thought took possession of her, that it was possible that all
this time Mary might be at home at Coldholme, in the Trough of Bolland,
in Lancashire, in England; and home came Bridget, in that vain hope, to
her desolate hearth, and empty cottage. Here she had thought it safest
to remain; if Mary was in life, it was here she would seek for her
mother.
I noted down one or two particulars out of Bridget’s narrative that I
thought might be of use to me; for I was stimulated to further search in
a strange and extraordinary manner. It seemed as if it were impressed
upon me, that I must take up the quest where Bridget had laid it down;
and this for no reason that had previously influenced me (such as my
uncle’s anxiety on the subject, my own reputation as a lawyer, and so
on), but from some strange power which had taken possession of my will
only that very morning, and which forced it in the direction it chose.
“I will go,” said I. “I will spare nothing in the search. Trust to me. I
will learn all that can be learnt. You shall know all that money, or
pains, or wit can discover. It is true she may be long dead: but she may
have left a child.”
“A child!” she cried, as if for the first time this idea had struck her
mind. “Hear him, Blessed Virgin! he says she may have left a child. And
you have never told me, though I have prayed so for a sign, waking or
sleeping!”
“Nay,” said I, “I know nothing but what you tell me. You say you heard
of her marriage.”
But she caught nothing of what I said. She was praying to the Virgin in
a kind of ecstacy, which seemed to render her unconscious of my very
presence.
From Coldholme I went to Sir Philip Tempest’s. The wife of the foreign
officer had been a cousin of his father’s, and from him I thought I
might gain some particulars as to the existence of the Count de la Tour
d’Auvergne, and where I could find him; for I knew questions _de vive
voix_ aid the flagging recollection, and I was determined to lose no
chance for want of trouble. But Sir Philip had gone abroad, and it would
be some time before I could receive an answer. So I followed my uncle’s
advice, to whom I had mentioned how wearied I felt, both in body and
mind, by my will-o’-the-wisp search. He immediately told me to go to
Harrogate, there to await Sir Philip’s reply. I should be near to one of
the places connected with my search, Coldholme; not far from Sir Philip
Tempest, in case he returned, and I wished to ask him any further
questions; and, in conclusion, my uncle bade me try to forget all about
my business for a time.
This was far easier said than done. I have seen a child on a common
blown along by a high wind, without power of standing still and
resisting the tempestuous force. I was somewhat in the same predicament
as regarded my mental state. Something resistless seemed to urge my
thoughts on, through every possible course by which there was a chance
of attaining to my object. I did not see the sweeping moors when I
walked out: when I held a book in my hand, and read the words, their
sense did not penetrate to my brain. If I slept, I went on with the same
ideas, always flowing in the same direction. This could not last long
without having a bad effect on the body. I had an illness, which,
although I was racked with pain, was a positive relief to me, as it
compelled me to live in the present suffering, and not in the visionary
researches I had been continually making before. My kind uncle came to
nurse me; and after the immediate danger was over, my life seemed to
slip away in delicious languor for two or three months. I did not
ask--so much did I dread falling into the old channel of
thought--whether any reply had been received to my letter to Sir Philip.
I turned my whole imagination right away from all that subject. My uncle
remained with me until nigh summer, and then returned to his business in
London; leaving me perfectly well, although not completely strong. I was
to follow him in a fortnight; when, as he said, “we would look over
letters, and talk about several things.” I knew what this little speech
alluded to, and shrank from the train of thought it suggested, which was
so intimately connected with my first feelings of illness. However, I
had a fortnight more to roam on those invigorating Yorkshire moors.
In those days, there was one large, rambling inn at Harrogate, close to
the Medicinal Spring; but it was already becoming too small for the
accommodation of the influx of visitors, and many lodged round about, in
the farm-houses of the district. It was so early in the season, that I
had the inn pretty much to myself; and, indeed, felt rather like a
visitor in a private house, so intimate had the landlord and landlady
become with me during my long illness. She would chide me for being out
so late on the moors, or for having been too long without food, quite in
a motherly way; while he consulted me about vintages and wines, and
taught me many a Yorkshire wrinkle about horses. In my walks I met other
strangers from time to time. Even before my uncle had left me, I had
noticed, with half-torpid curiosity, a young lady of very striking
appearance, who went about always accompanied by an elderly
companion,--hardly a gentlewoman, but with something in her look that
prepossessed me in her favour. The younger lady always put her veil down
when any one approached; so it had been only once or twice, when I had
come upon her at a sudden turn in the path, that I had even had a
glimpse of her face. I am not sure if it was beautiful, though in
after-life I grew to think it so. But it was at this time over-shadowed
by a sadness that never varied: a pale, quiet, resigned look of intense
suffering, that irresistibly attracted me,--not with love, but with a
sense of infinite compassion for one so young yet so hopelessly
unhappy. The companion wore something of the same look: quiet,
melancholy, hopeless, yet resigned. I asked my landlord who they were.
He said they were called Clarke, and wished to be considered as mother
and daughter; but that, for his part, he did not believe that to be
their right name, or that there was any such relationship between them.
They had been in the neighbourhood of Harrogate for some time, lodging
in a remote farm-house. The people there would tell nothing about them;
saying that they paid handsomely, and never did any harm; so why should
they be speaking of any strange things that might happen? That, as the
landlord shrewdly observed, showed there was something out of the common
way: he had heard that the elderly woman was a cousin of the farmer’s
where they lodged, and so the regard existing between relations might
help to keep them quiet.
“What did he think, then, was the reason for their extreme seclusion?”
asked I.
“Nay, he could not tell, not he. He had heard that the young lady, for
all as quiet as she seemed, played strange pranks at times.” He shook
his head when I asked him for more particulars, and refused to give
them, which made me doubt if he knew any, for he was in general a
talkative and communicative man. In default of other interests, after my
uncle left, I set myself to watch these two people. I hovered about
their walks, drawn towards them with a strange fascination, which was
not diminished by their evident annoyance at so frequently meeting me.
One day, I had the sudden good fortune to be at hand when they were
alarmed by the attack of a bull, which, in those unenclosed grazing
districts, was a particularly dangerous occurrence. I have other and
more important things to relate, than to tell of the accident which gave
me an opportunity of rescuing them; it is enough to say, that this event
was the beginning of an acquaintance, reluctantly acquiesced in by them,
but eagerly prosecuted by me. I can hardly tell when intense curiosity
became merged in love, but in less than ten days after my uncle’s
departure I was passionately enamoured of Mrs. Lucy, as her attendant
called her; carefully--for this I noted well--avoiding any address which
appeared as if there was an equality of station between them. I noticed
also that Mrs. Clarke, the elderly woman, after her first reluctance to
allow me to pay them any attentions had been overcome, was cheered by my
evident attachment to the young girl; it seemed to lighten her heavy
burden of care, and she evidently favoured my visits to the farm-house
where they lodged. It was not so with Lucy. A more attractive person I
never saw, in spite of her depression of manner, and shrinking avoidance
of me. I felt sure at once, that whatever was the source of her grief,
it rose from no fault of her own. It was difficult to draw her into
conversation; but when at times, for a moment or two, I beguiled her
into talk, I could see a rare intelligence in her face, and a grave,
trusting look in the soft, gray eyes that were raised for a minute to
mine. I made every excuse I possibly could for going there. I sought
wild flowers for Lucy’s sake; I planned walks for Lucy’s sake; I watched
the heavens by night, in hopes that some unusual beauty of sky would
justify me in tempting Mrs. Clarke and Lucy forth upon the moors, to
gaze at the great purple dome above.
It seemed to me that Lucy was aware of my love; but that, for some
motive which I could not guess, she would fain have repelled me; but
then again I saw, or fancied I saw, that her heart spoke in my favour,
and that there was a struggle going on in her mind, which at times (I
loved so dearly) I could have begged her to spare herself, even though
the happiness of my whole life should have been the sacrifice; for her
complexion grew paler, her aspect of sorrow more hopeless, her delicate
frame yet slighter. During this period I had written, I should say, to
my uncle, to beg to be allowed to prolong my stay at Harrogate, not
giving any reason; but such was his tenderness towards me, that in a few
days I heard from him, giving me a willing permission, and only charging
me to take care of myself, and not use too much exertion during the hot
weather.
One sultry evening I drew near the farm. The windows of their parlour
were open, and I heard voices when I turned the corner of the house, as
I passed the first window (there were two windows in their little
ground-floor room). I saw Lucy distinctly; but when I had knocked at
their door--the house-door stood always ajar--she was gone, and I saw
only Mrs. Clarke, turning over the work-things lying on the table, in a
nervous and purposeless manner. I felt by instinct that a conversation
of some importance was coming on, in which I should be expected to say
what was my object in paying these frequent visits. I was glad of the
opportunity. My uncle had several times alluded to the pleasant
possibility of my bringing home a young wife, to cheer and adorn the old
house in Ormond Street. He was rich, and I was to succeed him, and had,
as I knew, a fair reputation for so young a lawyer. So on my side I saw
no obstacle. It was true that Lucy was shrouded in mystery; her name (I
was convinced it was not Clarke), birth, parentage, and previous life
were unknown to me. But I was sure of her goodness and sweet innocence,
and although I knew that there must be something painful to be told, to
account for her mournful sadness, yet I was willing to bear my share in
her grief, whatever it might be.
Mrs. Clarke began, as if it was a relief to her to plunge into the
subject.
“We have thought, sir--at least I have thought--that you know very
little of us, nor we of you, indeed; not enough to warrant the intimate
acquaintance we have fallen into. I beg your pardon, sir,” she went on,
nervously; “I am but a plain kind of woman, and I mean to use no
rudeness; but I must say straight out that I--we--think it would be
better for you not to come so often to see us. She is very unprotected,
and----”
“Why should I not come to see you, dear madam?” asked I, eagerly, glad
of the opportunity of explaining myself. “I come, I own, because I have
learnt to love Mistress Lucy, and wish to teach her to love me.”
Mistress Clarke shook her head, and sighed.
“Don’t, sir--neither love her, nor, for the sake of all you hold sacred,
teach her to love you! If I am too late, and you love her already,
forget her,--forget these last few weeks. O! I should never have allowed
you to come!” she went on, passionately; “but what am I to do? We are
forsaken by all, except the great God, and even He permits a strange and
evil power to afflict us--what am I to do? Where is it to end?” She
wrung her hands in her distress; then she turned to me: “Go away, sir;
go away, before you learn to care any more for her. I ask it for your
own sake--I implore. You have been good and kind to us, and we shall
always recollect you with gratitude; but go away now, and never come
back to cross our fatal path!”
“Indeed, madam,” said I, “I shall do no such thing. You urge it for my
own sake. I have no fear, so urged--nor wish, except to hear more--all.
I cannot have seen Mistress Lucy in all the intimacy of this last
fortnight, without acknowledging her goodness and innocence; and without
seeing--pardon me, madam--that for some reason you are two very lonely
women, in some mysterious sorrow and distress. Now, though I am not
powerful myself, yet I have friends who are so wise and kind, that they
may be said to possess power. Tell me some particulars. Why are you in
grief--what is your secret--why are you here? I declare solemnly that
nothing you have said has daunted me in my wish to become Lucy’s
husband; nor will I shrink from any difficulty that, as such an
aspirant, I may have to encounter. You say you are friendless--why cast
away an honest friend? I will tell you of people to whom you may write,
and who will answer any questions as to my character and prospects. I do
not shun inquiry.”
She shook her head again. “You had better go away, sir. You know nothing
about us.”
“I know your names,” said I, “and I have heard you allude to the part of
the country from which you came, which I happen to know as a wild and
lonely place. There are so few people living in it that, if I chose to
go there, I could easily ascertain all about you; but I would rather
hear it from yourself.” You see I wanted to pique her into telling me
something definite.
“You do not know our true names, sir,” said she, hastily.
“Well, I may have conjectured as much. But tell me, then, I conjure you.
Give me your reasons for distrusting my willingness to stand by what I
have said with regard to Mistress Lucy.”
“Oh, what can I do?” exclaimed she. “If I am turning away a true friend
as he says?--Stay!” coming to a sudden decision--“I will tell you
something--I cannot tell you all--you would not believe it. But,
perhaps, I can tell you enough to prevent your going on in your hopeless
attachment. I am not Lucy’s mother.”
“So I conjectured,” I said. “Go on.”
“I do not even know whether she is the legitimate or illegitimate child
of her father. But he is cruelly turned against her; and her mother is
long dead; and, for a terrible reason, she has no other creature to keep
constant to her but me. She--only two years ago--such a darling and such
a pride in her father’s house! Why, sir, there is a mystery that might
happen in connection with her any moment; and then you would go away
like all the rest; and, when you next heard her name, you would loathe
her. Others, who have loved her longer, have done so before now. My
poor child, whom neither God nor man has mercy upon--or, surely, she
would die!”
The good woman was stopped by her crying. I confess, I was a little
stunned by her last words; but only for a moment. At any rate, till I
knew definitely what was this mysterious stain upon one so simple and
pure, as Lucy seemed, I would not desert her, and so I said; and she
made answer:--
“If you are daring in your heart to think harm of my child, sir, after
knowing her as you have done, you are no good man yourself; but I am so
foolish and helpless in my great sorrow, that I would fain hope to find
a friend in you. I cannot help trusting that, although you may no longer
feel towards her as a lover, you will have pity upon us; and perhaps, by
your learning, you can tell us where to go for aid.”
“I implore you to tell me what this mystery is,” I cried, almost
maddened by this suspense.
“I cannot,” said she, solemnly. “I am under a deep vow of secrecy. If
you are to be told, it must be by her.” She left the room, and I
remained to ponder over this strange interview. I mechanically turned
over the few books, and with eyes that saw nothing at the time, examined
the tokens of Lucy’s frequent presence in that room.
When I got home at night, I remembered how all these trifles spoke of a
pure and tender heart and innocent life. Mistress Clarke returned; she
had been crying sadly.
“Yes,” said she, “it is as I feared: she loves you so much that she is
willing to run the fearful risk of telling you all herself--she
acknowledges it is but a poor chance; but your sympathy will be a balm,
if you give it. To-morrow, come here at ten in the morning; and, as you
hope for pity in your hour of agony, repress all show of fear or
repugnance you may feel towards one so grievously afflicted.”
I half smiled. “Have no fear,” I said. It seemed too absurd to imagine
my feeling dislike to Lucy.
“Her father loved her well,” said she, gravely, “yet he drove her out
like some monstrous thing.”
Just at this moment came a peal of ringing laughter from the garden. It
was Lucy’s voice; it sounded as if she were standing just on one side of
the open casement--and as though she were suddenly stirred to
merriment--merriment verging on boisterousness, by the doings or sayings
of some other person. I can scarcely say why, but the sound jarred on me
inexpressibly. She knew the subject of our conversation, and must have
been at least aware of the state of agitation her friend was in: she
herself usually so gentle and quiet. I half rose to go to the window,
and satisfy my instinctive curiosity as to what had provoked this burst
of ill-timed laughter; but Mrs. Clarke threw her whole weight and power
upon the hand with which she pressed and kept me down.
“For God’s sake!” she said, white and trembling all over, “sit still; be
quiet. Oh! be patient. To-morrow you will know all. Leave us, for we are
all sorely afflicted. Do not seek to know more about us.”
Again that laugh--so musical in sound, yet so discordant to my heart.
She held me tight--tighter; without positive violence I could not have
risen. I was sitting with my back to the window, but I felt a shadow
pass between the sun’s warmth and me, and a strange shudder ran through
my frame. In a minute or two she released me.
“Go,” repeated she. “Be warned, I ask you once more. I do not think you
can stand this knowledge that you seek. If I had had my own way, Lucy
should never have yielded, and promised to tell you all. Who knows what
may come of it?”
“I am firm in my wish to know all. I return at ten to-morrow morning,
and then expect to see Mistress Lucy herself.”
I turned away; having my own suspicions, I confess, as to Mistress
Clarke’s sanity.
Conjectures as to the meaning of her hints, and uncomfortable thoughts
connected with that strange laughter, filled my mind. I could hardly
sleep. I rose early; and long before the hour I had appointed, I was on
the path over the common that led to the old farm-house where they
lodged. I suppose that Lucy had passed no better a night than I; for
there she was also, slowly pacing with her even step, her eyes bent
down, her whole look most saintly and pure. She started when I came
close to her, and grew paler as I reminded her of my appointment, and
spoke with something of the impatience of obstacles that, seeing her
once more, had called up afresh in my mind. All strange and terrible
hints, and giddy merriment were forgotten. My heart gave forth words of
fire, and my tongue uttered them. Her colour went and came, as she
listened; but, when I had ended my passionate speeches, she lifted her
soft eyes to me, and said--
“But you know that you have something to learn about me yet. I only want
to say this: I shall not think less of you--less well of you, I mean--if
you, too, fall away from me when you know all. Stop!” said she, as if
fearing another burst of mad words. “Listen to me. My father is a man of
great wealth. I never knew my mother; she must have died when I was very
young. When first I remember anything, I was living in a great, lonely
house, with my dear and faithful Mistress Clarke. My father, even, was
not there; he was--he is--a soldier, and his duties lie abroad. But he
came, from time to time, and every time I think he loved me more and
more. He brought me rarities from foreign lands, which prove to me now
how much he must have thought of me during his absences. I can sit down
and measure the depth of his lost love now, by such standards as these.
I never thought whether he loved me or not, then; it was so natural,
that it was like the air I breathed. Yet he was an angry man at times,
even then; but never with me. He was very reckless, too; and, once or
twice, I heard a whisper among the servants that a doom was over him,
and that he knew it, and tried to drown his knowledge in wild activity,
and even sometimes, sir, in wine. So I grew up in this grand mansion, in
that lonely place. Everything around me seemed at my disposal, and I
think every one loved me; I am sure I loved them. Till about two years
ago--I remember it well--my father had come to England, to us; and he
seemed so proud and so pleased with me and all I had done. And one day
his tongue seemed loosened with wine, and he told me much that I had not
known till then,--how dearly he had loved my mother, yet how his wilful
usage had caused her death; and then he went on to say how he loved me
better than any creature on earth, and how, some day, he hoped to take
me to foreign places, for that he could hardly bear these long
abscences from his only child. Then he seemed to change suddenly, and
said, in a strange, wild way, that I was not to believe what he said;
that there was many a thing he loved better--his horse--his dog--I know
not what.
“And ’twas only the next morning that, when I came into his room to ask
his blessing as was my wont, he received me with fierce and angry words.
‘Why had I,’ so he asked, ‘been delighting myself in such wanton
mischief--dancing over the tender plants in the flower-beds, all set
with the famous Dutch bulbs he had brought from Holland?’ I had never
been out of doors that morning, sir, and I could not conceive what he
meant, and so I said; and then he swore at me for a liar, and said I was
of no true blood, for he had seen me doing all that mischief
himself--with his own eyes. What could I say? He would not listen to me,
and even my tears seemed only to irritate him. That day was the
beginning of my great sorrows. Not long after, he reproached me for my
undue familiarity--all unbecoming a gentlewoman--with his grooms. I had
been in the stable-yard, laughing and talking, he said. Now, sir, I am
something of a coward by nature, and I had always dreaded horses;
besides that, my father’s servants--those whom he brought with him from
foreign parts--were wild fellows, whom I had always avoided, and to whom
I had never spoken, except as a lady must needs from time to time speak
to her father’s people. Yet my father called me by names of which I
hardly know the meaning, but my heart told me they were such as shame
any modest woman; and from that day he turned quite against me;--nay,
sir, not many weeks after that, he came in with a riding-whip in his
hand; and, accusing me harshly of evil doings, of which I knew no more
than you, sir, he was about to strike me, and I, all in bewildering
tears, was ready to take his stripes as great kindness compared to his
harder words, when suddenly he stopped his arm mid-way, gasped and
staggered, crying out, ‘The curse--the curse!’ I looked up in terror. In
the great mirror opposite I saw myself, and, right behind, another
wicked, fearful self, so like me that my soul seemed to quiver within
me, as though not knowing to which similitude of body it belonged. My
father saw my double at the same moment, either in its dreadful reality,
whatever that might be, or in the scarcely less terrible reflection in
the mirror; but what came of it at that moment I cannot say, for I
suddenly swooned away; and when I came to myself I was lying in my bed,
and my faithful Clarke sitting by me. I was in my bed for days; and even
while I lay there my double was seen by all, flitting about the house
and gardens, always about some mischievous or detestable work. What
wonder that every one shrank from me in dread--that my father drove me
forth at length, when the disgrace of which I was the cause was past his
patience to bear. Mistress Clarke came with me; and here we try to live
such a life of piety and prayer as may in time set me free from the
curse.”
All the time she had been speaking, I had been weighing her story in my
mind. I had hitherto put cases of witchcraft on one side, as mere
superstitions; and my uncle and I had had many an argument, he
supporting himself by the opinion of his good friend Sir Matthew Hale.
Yet this sounded like the tale of one bewitched; or was it merely the
effect of a life of extreme seclusion telling on the nerves of a
sensitive girl? My scepticism inclined me to the latter belief, and when
she paused I said:
“I fancy that some physician could have disabused your father of his
belief in visions----”
Just at that instant, standing as I was opposite to her in the full and
perfect morning light, I saw behind her another figure--a ghastly
resemblance, complete in likeness, so far as form and feature and
minutest touch of dress could go, but with a loathsome demon soul
looking out of the gray eyes, that were in turns mocking and voluptuous.
My heart stood still within me; every hair rose up erect; my flesh crept
with horror. I could not see the grave and tender Lucy--my eyes were
fascinated by the creature beyond. I know not why, but I put out my hand
to clutch it; I grasped nothing but empty air, and my whole blood
curdled to ice. For a moment I could not see; then my sight came back,
and I saw Lucy standing before me, alone, deathly pale, and, I could
have fancied, almost, shrunk in size.
“It has been near me?” she said, as if asking a question.
The sound seemed taken out of her voice; it was husky as the notes on an
old harpsichord when the strings have ceased to vibrate. She read her
answer in my face, I suppose, for I could not speak. Her look was one of
intense fear, but that died away into an aspect of most humble patience.
At length she seemed to force herself to face behind and around her:
she saw the purple moors, the blue distant hills, quivering in the
sunlight, but nothing else.
“Will you take me home?” she said, meekly.
I took her by the hand, and led her silently through the budding
heather--we dared not speak; for we could not tell but that the dread
creature was listening, although unseen,--but that IT might appear and
push us asunder. I never loved her more fondly than now when--and that
was the unspeakable misery--the idea of her was becoming so inextricably
blended with the shuddering thought of IT. She seemed to understand what
I must be feeling. She let go my hand, which she had kept clasped until
then, when we reached the garden gate, and went forwards to meet her
anxious friend, who was standing by the window looking for her. I could
not enter the house: I needed silence, society, leisure, change--I knew
not what--to shake off the sensation of that creature’s presence. Yet I
lingered about the garden--I hardly know why; I partly suppose, because
I feared to encounter the resemblance again on the solitary common,
where it had vanished, and partly from a feeling of inexpressible
compassion for Lucy. In a few minutes Mistress Clarke came forth and
joined me. We walked some paces in silence.
“You know all now,” said she, solemnly.
“I saw IT,” said I, below my breath.
“And you shrink from us, now,” she said, with a hopelessness which
stirred up all that was brave or good in me.
“Not a whit,” said I. “Human flesh shrinks from encounter with the
powers of darkness: and, for some reason unknown to me, the pure and
holy Lucy is their victim.”
“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,” she said.
“Who is her father?” asked I. “Knowing as much as I do, I may surely
know more--know all. Tell me, I entreat you, madam, all that you can
conjecture respecting this demoniac persecution of one so good.”
“I will; but not now. I must go to Lucy now. Come this afternoon, I will
see you alone; and oh, sir! I will trust that you may yet find some way
to help us in our sore trouble!”
I was miserably exhausted by the swooning affright which had taken
possession of me. When I reached the inn, I staggered in like one
overcome by wine. I went to my own private room. It was some time before
I saw that the weekly post had come in, and brought me my letters. There
was one from my uncle, one from my home in Devonshire, and one,
re-directed over the first address, sealed with a great coat of arms. It
was from Sir Philip Tempest: my letter of inquiry respecting Mary
Fitzgerald had reached him at Liège, where it so happened that the Count
de la Tour d’Auvergne was quartered at the very time. He remembered his
wife’s beautiful attendant; she had had high words with the deceased
countess, respecting her intercourse with an English gentleman of good
standing, who was also in the foreign service. The countess augured evil
of his intentions; while Mary, proud and vehement, asserted that he
would soon marry her, and resented her mistress’s warnings as an insult.
The consequence was, that she had left Madame de la Tour d’Auvergne’s
service, and, as the Count believed, had gone to live with the
Englishman; whether he had married her, or not, he could not say. “But,”
added Sir Philip Tempest, “you may easily hear what particulars you wish
to know respecting Mary Fitzgerald from the Englishman himself, if, as I
suspect, he is no other than my neighbour and former acquaintance, Mr.
Gisborne, of Skipford Hall, in the West Riding. I am led to the belief
that he is no other by several small particulars, none of which are in
themselves conclusive, but which, taken together, make a mass of
presumptive evidence. As far as I could make out from the Count’s
foreign pronunciation, Gisborne was the name of the Englishman: I know
that Gisborne of Skipford was abroad and in the foreign service at that
time--he was a likely fellow enough for such an exploit, and, above all,
certain expressions recur to my mind which he used in reference to old
Bridget Fitzgerald, of Coldholme, whom he once encountered while staying
with me at Starkey Manor-House. I remember that the meeting seemed to
have produced some extraordinary effect upon his mind, as though he had
suddenly discovered some connection which she might have had with his
previous life. I beg you to let me know if I can be of any further
service to you. Your uncle once rendered me a good turn, and I will
gladly repay it, so far as in me lies, to his nephew.”
I was now apparently close on the discovery which I had striven so many
months to attain. But success had lost its zest. I put my letters down,
and seemed to forget them all in thinking of the morning I had passed
that very day. Nothing was real but the unreal presence, which had come
like an evil blast across my bodily eyes, and burnt itself down upon my
brain. Dinner came, and went away untouched. Early in the afternoon I
walked to the farm-house. I found Mistress Clarke alone, and I was glad
and relieved. She was evidently prepared to tell me all I might wish to
hear.
“You asked me for Mistress Lucy’s true name; it is Gisborne,” she began.
“Not Gisborne of Skipford?” I exclaimed, breathless with anticipation.
“The same,” said she, quietly, not regarding my manner. “Her father is
a man of note; although, being a Roman Catholic, he cannot take that
rank in this country to which his station entitles him. The consequence
is that he lives much abroad--has been a soldier, I am told.”
“And Lucy’s mother?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I never knew her,” said she. “Lucy was about three
years old when I was engaged to take charge of her. Her mother was
dead.”
“But you know her name?--you can tell if it was Mary Fitzgerald?”
She looked astonished. “That was her name. But, sir, how came you to be
so well acquainted with it? It was a mystery to the whole household at
Skipford Court. She was some beautiful young woman whom he lured away
from her protectors while he was abroad. I have heard said he practised
some terrible deceit upon her, and when she came to know it, she was
neither to have nor to hold, but rushed off from his very arms, and
threw herself into a rapid stream and was drowned. It stung him deep
with remorse, but I used to think the remembrance of the mother’s cruel
death made him love the child yet dearer.”
I told her, as briefly as might be, of my researches after the
descendant and heir of the Fitzgeralds of Kildoon, and added--something
of my old lawyer spirit returning into me for the moment--that I had no
doubt but that we should prove Lucy to be by right possessed of large
estates in Ireland.
No flush came over her gray face; no light into her eyes. “And what is
all the wealth in the whole world to that poor girl?” she said. “It will
not free her from the ghastly bewitchment which persecutes her. As for
money, what a pitiful thing it is; it cannot touch her.”
“No more can the Evil Creature harm her,” I said. “Her holy nature
dwells apart, and cannot be defiled or stained by all the devilish arts
in the whole world.”
“True! but it is a cruel fate to know that all shrink from her, sooner
or later, as from one possessed--accursed.”
“How came it to pass?” I asked.
“Nay, I know not. Old rumours there are, that were bruited through the
household at Skipford.”
“Tell me,” I demanded.
“They came from servants, who would fain account for everything. They
say that, many years ago, Mr. Gisborne killed a dog belonging to an old
witch at Coldholme; that she cursed, with a dreadful and mysterious
curse, the creature, whatever it might be, that he should love best; and
that it struck so deeply into his heart that for years he kept himself
aloof from any temptation to love aught. But who could help loving
Lucy?”
“You never heard the witch’s name?” I gasped.
“Yes--they called her Bridget; they said he would never go near the spot
again for terror of her. Yet he was a brave man!”
“Listen,” said I, taking hold of her arm, the better to arrest her full
attention; “if what I suspect holds true, that man stole Bridget’s only
child--the very Mary Fitzgerald who was Lucy’s mother; if so, Bridget
cursed him in ignorance of the deeper wrong he had done her. To this
hour she yearns after her lost child, and questions the saints whether
she be living or not. The roots of that curse lie deeper than she knows:
she unwittingly banned him for a deeper guilt than that of killing a
dumb beast. The sins of the fathers are indeed visited upon the
children.”
“But,” said Mistress Clarke, eagerly, “she would never let evil rest on
her own grandchild? Surely, sir, if what you say be true, there are
hopes for Lucy. Let us go--go at once, and tell this fearful woman all
that you suspect, and beseech her to take off the spell she has put upon
her innocent grandchild.”
It seemed to me, indeed, that something like this was the best course we
could pursue. But first it was necessary to ascertain more than what
mere rumour or careless hearsay could tell. My thoughts turned to my
uncle--he could advise me wisely--he ought to know all. I resolved to go
to him without delay; but I did not choose to tell Mistress Clarke of
all the visionary plans that flitted through my mind. I simply declared
my intention of proceeding straight to London on Lucy’s affairs. I bade
her believe that my interest on the young lady’s behalf was greater than
ever, and that my whole time should be given up to her cause. I saw that
Mistress Clarke distrusted me, because my mind was too full of thoughts
for my words to flow freely. She sighed and shook her head, and said,
“Well, it is all right!” in such a tone that it was an implied reproach.
But I was firm and constant in my heart, and I took confidence from
that.
I rode to London. I rode long days drawn out into the lovely summer
nights: I could not rest. I reached London. I told my uncle all, though
in the stir of the great city the horror had faded away, and I could
hardly imagine that he would believe the account I gave him of the
fearful double of Lucy which I had seen on the lonely moor-side. But my
uncle had lived many years, and learnt many things; and, in the deep
secrets of family history that had been confided to him, he had heard of
cases of innocent people bewitched and taken possession of by evil
spirits yet more fearful than Lucy’s. For, as he said, to judge from all
I told him, that resemblance had no power over her--she was too pure and
good to be tainted by its evil, haunting presence. It had, in all
probability, so my uncle conceived, tried to suggest wicked thoughts and
to tempt to wicked actions; but she, in her saintly maidenhood, had
passed on undefiled by evil thought or deed. It could not touch her
soul: but true, it set her apart from all sweet love or common human
intercourse. My uncle threw himself with an energy more like
six-and-twenty than sixty into the consideration of the whole case. He
undertook the proving Lucy’s descent, and volunteered to go and find out
Mr. Gisborne, and obtain, firstly, the legal proofs of her descent from
the Fitzgeralds of Kildoon, and, secondly, to try and hear all that he
could respecting the working of the curse, and whether any and what
means had been taken to exorcise that terrible appearance. For he told
me of instances where, by prayers and long fasting, the evil possessor
had been driven forth with howling and many cries from the body which it
had come to inhabit; he spoke of those strange New England cases which
had happened not so long before; of Mr. Defoe, who had written a book,
wherein he had named many modes of subduing apparitions, and sending
them back whence they came; and, lastly, he spoke low of dreadful ways
of compelling witches to undo their witchcraft. But I could not endure
to hear of those tortures and burnings. I said that Bridget was rather a
wild and savage woman than a malignant witch; and, above all, that Lucy
was of her kith and kin; and that, in putting her to the trial, by water
or by fire, we should be torturing--it might be to the death--the
ancestress of her we sought to redeem.
My uncle thought awhile, and then said, that in this last matter I was
right--at any rate, it should not be tried, with his consent, till all
other modes of remedy had failed; and he assented to my proposal that I
should go myself and see Bridget, and tell her all.
In accordance with this, I went down once more to the wayside inn near
Coldholme. It was late at night when I arrived there; and, while I
supped, I inquired of the landlord more particulars as to Bridget’s
ways. Solitary and savage had been her life for many years. Wild and
despotic were her words and manner to those few people who came across
her path. The country-folk did her imperious bidding, because they
feared to disobey. If they pleased her, they prospered; if, on the
contrary, they neglected or traversed her behests, misfortune, small or
great, fell on them and theirs. It was not detestation so much as an
indefinable terror that she excited.
In the morning I went to see her. She was standing on the green outside
her cottage, and received me with the sullen grandeur of a throneless
queen. I read in her face that she recognised me, and that I was not
unwelcome; but she stood silent till I had opened my errand.
“I have news of your daughter,” said I, resolved to speak straight to
all that I knew she felt of love, and not to spare her. “She is dead!”
The stern figure scarcely trembled, but her hand sought the support of
the door-post.
“I knew that she was dead,” said she, deep and low, and then was silent
for an instant. “My tears that should have flowed for her were burnt up
long years ago. Young man, tell me about her.”
“Not yet,” said I, having a strange power given me of confronting one,
whom, nevertheless, in my secret soul I dreaded.
“You had once a little dog,” I continued. The words called out in her
more show of emotion than the intelligence of her daughter’s death. She
broke in upon my speech:--
“I had! It was hers--the last thing I had of hers--and it was shot for
wantonness! It died in my arms. The man who killed that dog rues it to
this day. For that dumb beast’s blood, his best-beloved stands
accursed.”
Her eyes distended, as if she were in a trance and saw the working of
her curse. Again I spoke:
“O, woman!” I said, “that best-beloved, standing accursed before men, is
your dead daughter’s child.”
The life, the energy, the passion came back to the eyes with which she
pierced through me, to see if I spoke truth; then, without another
question or word, she threw herself on the ground with fearful
vehemence, and clutched at the innocent daisies with convulsed hands.
“Bone of my bone! flesh of my flesh! have I cursed thee--and art thou
accursed?”
So she moaned, as she lay prostrate in her great agony. I stood aghast
at my own work. She did not hear my broken sentences; she asked no more,
but the dumb confirmation which my sad looks had given that one fact,
that her curse rested on her own daughter’s child. The fear grew on me
lest she should die in her strife of body and soul; and then might not
Lucy remain under the spell as long as she lived?
Even at this moment, I saw Lucy coming through the woodland path that
led to Bridget’s cottage; Mistress Clarke was with her: I felt at my
heart that it was she, by the balmy peace which the look of her sent
over me, as she slowly advanced, a glad surprise shining out of her soft
quiet eyes. That was as her gaze met mine. As her looks fell on the
woman lying stiff, convulsed on the earth, they became full of tender
pity; and she came forward to try and lift her up. Seating herself on
the turf, she took Bridget’s head into her lap; and, with gentle
touches, she arranged the dishevelled gray hair streaming thick and wild
from beneath her mutch.
“God help her!” murmured Lucy. “How she suffers!”
At her desire we sought for water; but when we returned, Bridget had
recovered her wandering senses, and was kneeling with clasped hands
before Lucy, gazing at that sweet sad face as though her troubled nature
drank in health and peace from every moment’s contemplation. A faint
tinge on Lucy’s pale cheeks showed me that she was aware of our return;
otherwise it appeared as if she was conscious of her influence for good
over the passionate and troubled woman kneeling before her, and would
not willingly avert her grave and loving eyes from that wrinkled and
careworn countenance.
Suddenly--in the twinkling of an eye--the creature appeared, there,
behind Lucy; fearfully the same as to outward semblance, but kneeling
exactly as Bridget knelt, and clasping her hands in jesting mimicry as
Bridget clasped hers in her ecstasy that was deepening into a prayer.
Mistress Clarke cried out--Bridget arose slowly, her gaze fixed on the
creature beyond: drawing her breath with a hissing sound, never moving
her terrible eyes, that were steady as stone, she made a dart at the
phantom, and caught, as I had done, a mere handful of empty air. We saw
no more of the creature--it vanished as suddenly as it came, but Bridget
looked slowly on, as if watching some receding form. Lucy sat still,
white, trembling, drooping--I think she would have swooned if I had not
been there to uphold her. While I was attending to her, Bridget passed
us, without a word to any one, and, entering her cottage, she barred
herself in, and left us without.
All our endeavours were now directed to get Lucy back to the house where
she had tarried the night before. Mistress Clarke told me that, not
hearing from me (some letter must have miscarried), she had grown
impatient and despairing, and had urged Lucy to the enterprise of coming
to seek her grandmother; not telling her, indeed, of the dread
reputation she possessed, or how we suspected her of having so fearfully
blighted that innocent girl; but, at the same time, hoping much from the
mysterious stirring of blood, which Mistress Clarke trusted in for the
removal of the curse. They had come, by a different route from that
which I had taken, to a village inn not far from Coldholme, only the
night before. This was the first interview between ancestress and
descendant.
All through the sultry noon I wandered along the tangled wood-paths of
the old neglected forest, thinking where to turn for remedy in a matter
so complicated and mysterious. Meeting a countryman, I asked my way to
the nearest clergyman, and went, hoping to obtain some counsel from him.
But he proved to be a coarse and common-minded man, giving no time or
attention to the intricacies of a case, but dashing out a strong opinion
involving immediate action. For instance, as soon as I named Bridget
Fitzgerald, he exclaimed:--
“The Coldholme witch! the Irish papist! I’d have had her ducked long
since but for that other papist, Sir Philip Tempest. He has had to
threaten honest folk about here over and over again, or they’d have had
her up before the justices for her black doings. And it’s the law of the
land that witches should be burnt! Ay, and of Scripture, too, sir! Yet
you see a papist, if he’s a rich squire, can overrule both law and
Scripture. I’d carry a faggot myself to rid the country of her!”