We had found out that Hillside was a family living, and that there was

much activity there on the part of the father and son—rector and curate;

and that the other clerical folk, ladies especially, who called on us,

spoke of Mrs. F. C. Fordyce with a certain tone, as if they were afraid

of her, as Sir Horace Lester’s sister,—very superior, very active, very

strict in her notions,—as if these were so many defects. They were an

offshoot of the old Fordyces of Chantry House, but so far back that all

recollection of kindred or connection must have worn out. Their

property—all in beautiful order—marched with ours, and Chapman was very

particular about the boundaries. ‘Old master he wouldn’t have a bird

picked up if it fell over on they Fordys’ ground—not he! He couldn’t

abide passons, couldn’t the old Squire—not Miss Hannah More, and all they

Cheddar lot, and they Fordys least of all. My son’s wife, she was for

sending her little maid to Hillside to Madam Fordys’ school, but, bless

your heart, ’twould have been as much as my place was worth if master had

known it.’

The visit was not returned till after Clarence had gone back to his

London work. Sore as was the loss of him from my daily life, I could see

that the new world and fresh acquaintances were a trial to him, and

especially since the encounter with young Lester had driven him back into

his shell, so that he would be better where he was already known and had

nothing new to overcome. Emily, though not yet sixteen, was emancipated

from schoolroom habits, and the dear girl was my devoted slave to an

extent that perhaps I abused.

Not being ‘come out,’ she was left at home on the day when we set out on

a regular progress in the chariot with post-horses. The britshka and

pair, which were our ambition, were to wait till my father’s next rents

came in. Morning calls in the country were a solemn and imposing

ceremony, and the head of the family had to be taken on the first

circuit; nor was there much scruple as to making them in the forenoon, so

several were to be disposed of before fulfilling an engagement to

luncheon at the farthest point, where some old London friends had

borrowed a house for the summer, and had included me in their invitation.

Here alone did I leave the carriage, but I had Cooper’s _Spy_ and my

sketch-book as companions while waiting at doors where the inhabitants

were at home. The last visit was at Hillside Rectory, a house of

architecture somewhat similar to our own, but of the soft creamy stone

which so well set off the vine with purple clusters, the myrtles and

fuchsias, that covered it. I was wishing we had drawn up far enough off

for a sketch to be possible, when, from a window close above, I heard the

following words in a clear girlish voice—

‘No, indeed! I’m not going down. It is only those horrid Earlscombe

people. I can’t think how they have the face to come near us!’

There was a reply, perhaps that the parents had made the first visit, for

the rejoinder was—‘Yes; grandpapa said it was a Christian duty to make an

advance; but they need not have come so soon. Indeed, I wonder they show

themselves at all. I am sure I would not if I had such a dreadful son.’

Presently, ‘I hate to think of it. That I should have thanked him.

Depend upon it, he will never pay the doctor. A coward like that is

capable of anything.’

The proverb had been realised, but there could hardly have been a more

involuntary or helpless listener. Presently my parents came back,

escorted by both the gentlemen of the house, tall fine-looking men, the

elder with snowy hair, and the dignity of men of the old school; the

younger with a joyous, hearty, out-of-door countenance, more like a

squire than a clergyman.

The visit seemed to have been gratifying. Mrs. Fordyce was declared to

be of higher stamp than most of the neighbouring ladies; and my father

was much pleased with the two clergymen, while as we drove along he kept

on admiring the well-ordered fields and fences, and contrasting the

pretty cottages and trim gardens with the dreary appearance of our own

village. I asked why Amos Bell’s home had been neglected, and was

answered with some annoyance, as I pointed down the lane, that it was on

our land, though in Hillside parish. ‘I am glad to have such

neighbours!’ observed my mother, and I kept to myself the remarks I had

heard, though I was still tingling with the sting of them.

We heard no more of ‘they Fordys’ for some time. The married pair went

away to stay with friends, and we only once met the old gentleman, when I

was waiting in the street at Wattlesea in the donkey chair, while my

mother was trying to match netting silk in the odd little shop that

united fancy work, toys, and tracts with the post office. Old Mr.

Fordyce met us as we drew up, handed her out with a grand seigneur’s

courtesy, and stood talking to me so delightfully that I quite forgot it

was from Christian duty.

My father corresponded with the old Rector about the state of the parish,

and at last went over to Bath for a personal conference, but without much

satisfaction. The Earlscombe people were pronounced to be an ungrateful

good-for-nothing set, for whom it was of no use to do anything; and

indeed my mother made such discoveries in the cottages that she durst not

let Emily fulfil her cherished scheme of visiting them. The only

resemblance to the favourite heroines of religious tales that could be

permitted was assembling a tiny Sunday class in Chapman’s lodge; and it

must be confessed that her brothers thought she made as much fuss about

it as if there had been a hundred scholars.

However, between remonstrances and offers of undertaking a share of the

expense, my father managed to get Mr. Mears’ services dispensed with from

the ensuing Lady Day, and that a resident curate should be appointed, the

choice of whom was to rest with himself. It was then and there decided

that Martyn should be ‘brought up to the Church,’ as people then used to

term destination to Holy Orders. My father said he should feel justified

in building a good house when he could afford it, if it was to be a

provision for one of his sons, and he also felt that as he had the charge

of the parish as patron, it was right and fitting to train one of his

sons up to take care of it. Nor did Martyn show any distaste to the

idea, as indeed there was less in it then than at present to daunt the

imagination of an honest, lively boy, not as yet specially thoughtful or

devout, but obedient, truthful, and fairly reverent, and ready to grow as

he was trained.

CHAPTER XII.

MRS. SOPHIA’S FEUD.

‘O’er all there hung the shadow of a fear,

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,

And said as plain as whisper in the ear,

The place is haunted.’—HOOD.

WE had a houseful at Christmas. The Rev. Charles Henderson, a Fellow of

Trinity College, Oxford, lately ordained a deacon, had been recommended

to us by our London vicar, and was willing not only to take charge of the

parish, but to direct my studies, and to prepare Martyn for school. He

came to us for the Christmas vacation to reconnoitre and engage lodgings

at a farmhouse. We liked him very much—my mother being all the better

satisfied after he had shown her a miniature, and confided to her that

the original was waiting till a college living should come to him in the

distant future.

Admiral Griffith could not tear himself from his warm rooms and his club,

but our antiquarian friend, Mr. Stafford, came with his wife, and

revelled in the ceilings of the mullion room, where he would much have

liked to sleep, but that its accommodations were only fit for a bachelor.

Our other visitor was Miss Selby, or rather Mrs. Sophia Selby, as she

designated herself, according to the becoming fashion of elderly

spinsters, which to my mind might be gracefully resumed. It irked my

father to think of the good lady’s solitary Christmas at Bath, and he

asked her to come to us. She travelled half-way in a post-chaise, and

then was met by the carriage. A very nice old lady she was, with a meek,

delicate babyish face, which could not be spoilt by the cap of the

period, one of the most disfiguring articles of head gear ever devised,

though nobody thought so then. She was full of kindness; indeed, if she

had a fault it was the abundant pity she lavished on me, and her

determination to amuse me. The weather was of the kind that only the

healthy and hardy could encounter, and when every one else was gone out,

and I was just settling in with a new book, or an old crabbed Latin

document, that Mr. Stafford had entrusted to me to copy out fairly and

translate, she would glide in with her worsted work on a charitable

mission to enliven poor Mr. Edward.

However, this was the means of my obtaining some curious enlightenments.

A dinner-party was in contemplation, and she was dismayed at the choice

of the fashionable London hour of seven, and still more by finding that

the Fordyces were to be among the guests. She was too well-bred to

manifest her feelings to her hosts, but alone with me, she could not

refrain from expressing her astonishment to me, all the more when she

heard this was reciprocity for an invitation that it had not been

possible to accept. Her poor dear uncle would never hear of intercourse

with Hillside. On being asked why, she repeated what Chapman had said,

that he could not endure any one connected with Mrs. Hannah More and her

canting, humbugging set, as the ungodly old man had chosen to call them,

imbuing even this good woman with evil prejudices against their noble

work at Cheddar.

‘Besides this, Fordyces and Winslows could never be friends, since the

Fordyces had taken on themselves to dispute the will, and say it had been

improperly obtained.’

‘What will?’

‘Mrs. Winslow’s—Margaret Fordyce that was. She was the heiress, and had

every right to dispose of her property.’

‘But that was more than a hundred years ago!’

‘So it was, my dear; but though the law gave it to us—to my uncle’s

grandfather (or great-grandfather, was it?)—those Fordyces never could

rest content. Why, one of them—a clergyman’s son too—shot young Philip

Winslow dead in a duel. They have always grudged at us. Does your papa

know it, my dear Mr. Edward? He ought to be aware.’

‘I do not know,’ I said; ‘but he would hardly care about what happened in

the time of Queen Anne.’

It was curious to see how the gentle little lady espoused the family

quarrel, which, after all, was none of hers.

‘Well, you are London people, and the other branch, and may not feel as

we do down here; but I shall always say that Madam Winslow’s husband’s

son had every right to come before her cousin once removed.’

I asked if we were descended from her, for, having a turn for heraldry

and genealogy, I wanted to make out our family tree. Mrs. Sophia was

ready to hold up her hands at the ignorance of the ‘other branch.’ This

poor heiress had lost all her children in their infancy, and bequeathed

the estate to her stepson, the Fordyce male heir having been endowed by

her father with the advowson of Hillside and a handsome estate there,

which Mrs. Selby thought ought to have contented him, ‘but some people

never know when they have enough;’ and, on my observing that it might

have been a matter of justice, she waxed hotter, declaring that what the

Winslows felt so much was the accusation of violence against the poor

lady. She spoke as if it were a story of yesterday, and added, ‘Indeed,

they made the common people have all sorts of superstitious fancies about

the room where she died—that old part of the house.’ Then she added in a

low mysterious voice, ‘I hear that your brother Mr. Griffith Winslow

could not sleep there;’ and when the rats and the wind were

mentioned—‘Yes, that was what my poor dear uncle used to say. He always

called it nonsense; but we never had a servant who would sleep there.

You’ll not mention it, Mr. Edward, but I could not help asking that very

nice housemaid, Jane, whether the room was used, and she said how Mr.

Griffith had given it up, and none of the servants could spend a night

there when they are sleeping round. Of course I said all in my power to

dispel the idea, and told her that there was no accounting for all the

noises in old houses; but you never can reason with that class of

people.’

‘Did you ever hear the noises, Mrs. Selby?’

‘Oh, no; I wouldn’t sleep there for thousands! Not that I attach any

importance to such folly,—my poor dear uncle would never hear of such a

thing; but I am such a nervous creature, I should lie awake all night

expecting the rats to run over me. I never knew of any one sleeping

there, except in the gay times when I was a child, and the house used to

be as full as, or fuller than, it could hold, for the hunt breakfast or a

ball, and my poor aunt used to make up ever so many beds in the two

rooms, and then we never heard of any disturbance, except what they made

themselves.’

This chiefly concerned me, because home cosseting had made me old woman

enough to be uneasy about unaired beds; and I knew that my mother meant

to consign Clarence to the mullion chamber. So, without betraying Jane,

I spoke to her, and was answered, ‘Oh, sir, I’ll take care of that; I’ll

light a fire and air the mattresses well. I wish that was all, poor

young gentleman!’

To the reply that the rats were slaughtered and the wind stopped out,

Jane returned a look of compassion; but the subject was dropped, as it

was supposed to be the right thing to hush up, instead of fostering, any

popular superstition; but it surprised me that, as all our servants were

fresh importations, they should so soon have become imbued with these

undefined alarms.

My father was much amused at being successor to this family feud, and

said that when he had time he would look up the documents.

Mrs. Sophia was a sight when Mr. Fordyce and his son and daughter-in-law

were announced; she was so comically stiff between her deference to her

hosts and her allegiance to her poor dear uncle; but her coldness melted

before the charms of old Mr. Fordyce, who was one of the most delightful

people in the world. She even was his partner at whist, and won the

game, and that she _did_ like.

Parson Frank, as we naughty young ones called him, was all good-nature

and geniality—a thorough clergyman after the ideas of the time, and a

thorough farmer too; and in each capacity, as well as in politics, he

suited my father or Mr. Henderson. His lady, in a blonde cap, exactly

like the last equipment my mother had provided herself with in London,

and a black satin dress, had much more style than the more gaily-dressed

country dames, and far more conversation. Mr. Stafford, who had dreaded

the party, pronounced her a sensible, agreeable woman, and she was

particularly kind and pleasant to me, coming and talking over the botany

of the country, and then speaking of my brother’s kindness to poor Amos

Bell, who was nearly recovered, but was a weakly child, for whom she

dreaded the toil of a ploughboy in thick clay with heavy shoes.

I was sorry when, after Emily’s well-studied performance on the piano,

Mrs. Fordyce was summoned away from me to sing, but her music and her

voice were both of a very different order from ordinary drawing-room

music; and when our evening was over, we congratulated ourselves upon our

neighbours, and agreed that the Fordyces were the gems of the party.

Only Mrs. Sophia sighed at us as degenerate Winslows, and Emily reserved

to herself the right of believing that the daughter was ‘a horrid girl.’

CHAPTER XIII.

A SCRAPE.

‘Though bound with weakness’ heavy chain

We in the dust of earth remain;

Not all remorseful be our tears,

No agony of shame or fears,

Need pierce its passion’s bitter tide.’

_Verses and Sonnets_.

PERHAPS it was of set purpose that our dinner-party had been given before

Clarence’s return. Griffith had been expected in time for it, but he had

preferred going by way of London to attend a ball given by the daughter

of a barrister friend of my father’s. Selina Clarkson was a fine showy

girl, with the sort of beauty to inspire boyish admiration, and Griff’s

had been a standing family joke, even my father condescending to tease

him when the young lady married Sir Henry Peacock, a fat vulgar old man

who had made his fortune in the commissariat, and purchased a baronetcy.

He was allowing his young wife her full swing of fashion and enjoyment.

My mother did not think it a desirable acquaintance, and was restless

until both the brothers came home together, long after dark on Christmas

Eve, having been met by the gig at the corner where the coach stopped.

The dinner-hour had been put off till half-past six, and we had to wait

for them, the coach having been delayed by setting down Christmas guests

and Christmas fare. They were a contrast; Griffith looking very handsome

and manly, all in a ruddy glow from the frosty air, and Clarence, though

equally tall, well-made, and with more refined features, looked pale and

effaced, now that his sailor tan was worn off. The one talked as eagerly

as he ate, the other was shy, spiritless, and with little appetite; but

as he always shrank into himself among strangers, it was the less wonder

that he sat in his drooping way behind my sofa, while Griffith kept us

all merry with his account of the humours of the ‘Peacock at home;’ the

lumbering efforts of old Sir Henry to be as young and gay as his wife, in

spite of gout and portliness; and the extreme delight of his lady in her

new splendours—a gold spotted muslin and white plumes in a diamond

agraffe. He mimicked Sir Henry’s cockneyisms more than my father’s

chivalry approved towards his recent host, as he described the complaints

he had heard against ‘my Lady being refused the hentry at Halmack’s, but

treated like the wery canal;’ and how the devoted husband ‘wowed he would

get up a still more hexclusive circle, and shut hout these himpertinent

fashionables who regarded Halmack’s as the seventh ’eaven.’

My mother shook her head at his audacious fun about Paradise and the

Peri, but he was so brilliant and good-humoured that no one was ever long

displeased with him. At night he followed when Clarence helped me to my

room, and carefully shutting the door, Griff began. ‘Now, Teddy, you’re

always as rich as a Jew, and I told Bill you’d help him to set it

straight. I’d do it myself, but that I’m cleaned out. I’d give ten

times the cash rather than see him with that hang-dog look again for just

nothing at all, if he would only believe so and be rational.’

Clarence did look indescribably miserable while it was explained that he

had been commissioned to receive about £20 which was owing to my father,

and to discharge therewith some small debts to London tradesmen. All

except the last, for a little more than four pounds, had been paid, when

Clarence met in the street an old messmate, a good-natured rattle-pated

youth,—one of those who had thought him harshly treated. There was a

cordial greeting, and an invitation to dine at once at a hotel, where

they were joined by some other young men, and by and by betook themselves

to cards, when my poor brother’s besetting enemy prevented him from

withdrawing when he found the points were guineas. Thus he lost the

remaining amount in his charge, and so much of his own that barely enough

was left for his journey. His salary was not due till Lady Day; Mr.

Castleford was in the country, and no advances could be asked from Mr.

Frith. Thus Griff had found him in utter despair, and had ever since

been trying to cheer him and make light of his trouble. If I advanced

the amount, which was no serious matter to me, Clarence could easily get

Peter to pay the bill, and if my father should demand the receipt too

soon, it would be easy to put him off by saying there had been a delay in

getting the account sent in.

‘I couldn’t do that,’ said Clarence.

‘Well, I should not have thought you would have stuck at that,’ returned

Griff.

‘There must be no untruth,’ I broke in; ‘but if without _that_, he can

avoid getting into a scrape with papa—’

Clarence interrupted in the wavering voice we knew so well, but growing

clearer and stronger.

‘Thank you, Edward, but—but—no, I can’t. There’s the Sacrament

to-morrow.’

‘Oh—h!’ said Griff, in an indescribable tone. But he will never believe

you, nor let you go.’

‘Better so,’ said Clarence, half choked, ‘than go profanely—deceiving—or

not knowing whether I shall—’

Just then we heard our father wishing the other gentlemen good-night, and

to our surprise Clarence opened the door, though he was deadly white and

with dew starting on his forehead.

My father turned good-naturedly. ‘Boys, boys, you are glad to be

together, but mamma won’t have you talking here all night, keeping her

baby up.’

‘Sir,’ said Clarence, holding by the rail of the bed, ‘I was waiting for

you. I have something to tell you—’

The words that followed were incoherent and wrong end foremost; nor had

many, indeed, been uttered before my father cut them short with—

‘No false excuses, sir; I know you too well to listen. Go. I have

ceased to hope for anything better.’

Clarence went without a word, but Griff and I burst out with entreaties

to be listened to. Our father thought at first that ours were only the

pleadings of partiality, and endeavours to shield the brother we both so

heartily loved; but when he understood the circumstances, the real amount

of the transgression, and Clarence’s rejection of our united advice and

assistance to conceal it, he was greatly touched and softened. ‘Poor

lad! poor fellow!’ he muttered, ‘he is really doing his best. I need not

have cut him so short. I was afraid of more falsehoods if I let him open

his mouth. I’ll go and see.’

He went off, and we remained in suspense, Griff observing that he had

done his best, but poor Bill always would be a fool, and that no one who

had not always lived at home like me would have let out that we had been

for the suppression policy. As I was rather shocked, he went off to bed,

saying he should look in to see what remained of Clarence after the

pelting of the pitiless storm he was sure to bring on himself by his

ridiculous faltering instead of speaking out like a man.

I longed to have been able to do the same, but my father kindly came back

to relieve my mind by telling me that he was better satisfied about

Clarence than ever he had been before. When encouraged to speak out, the

narrative of the temptation had so entirely agreed with what we had said

as to show there had been no prevarication, and this had done more to

convince my father that he was on the right track than the having found

him on his knees. He had had a patient hearing, and thus was able to

command his nerves enough to explain himself, and it had ended in my

father giving entire forgiveness for what, as Griff truly said, would

have been a mere trifle but for the past. The voluntary confession had

much impressed my father, and he could not help adding a word of gentle

reproof to me for having joined in aiding him to withhold it, but he

accepted my explanation and went away, observing, ‘By the by, I don’t

wonder at what Griffith says of that room; I never heard such strange

effects of currents of air.’

Clarence was in my room before I was drest, full of our father’s

‘wonderful goodness’ to him. He had never experienced anything like it,

he said. ‘Why! he really seemed hopeful about me,’ were words uttered

with a gladness enough to go to one’s heart. ‘O Edward, I feel as if

there was some chance of “steadfastly purposing” this time.’

It was not the way of the family to say much of religious feeling, and

this was much for Clarence to utter. He looked white and tired, but

there was an air of rest and peace about him, above all when my mother

met him with a very real kiss. Moreover, Mr. Castleford had taken care

to brighten our Christmas with a letter expressive of great satisfaction

with Clarence for steadiness and intelligence. Even Mr. Frith allowed

that he was the most punctual of all those young dogs.

‘I do believe,’ said my father, ‘that his piety is doing him some good

after all.’

So our mutual wishes of a happy Christmas were verified, though not much

according to the notions of this half of the century. People made their

Christmas day either mere merriment, or something little different from

the grave Sunday of that date. And ours, except for the Admiral’s dining

with us, had always been of the latter description, all the more that

when celebrations of the Holy Communion were so rare they were treated

with an awe and reverence which frequency has perhaps diminished, and a

feeling (possibly Puritanical) prevailed which made it appear incongruous

to end with festivity a day so begun. That we had a Christmas Day

Communion at all at Earlscombe was an innovation only achieved by Mr.

Henderson going to assist the old Rector at Wattlesea; and there were no

communicants except from our house, besides Chapman, his daughter-in-law,

and five old creatures between whom the alms were immediately divided.

We afterwards learnt that our best farmer and his wife were much

disappointed at the change from Sunday interfering with the family

jollification; and Mrs. Sophia Selby was annoyed at the contradiction to

her habits under the rule of her poor dear uncle.

Of the irregularities, irreverences, and squalor of the whole I will not

speak. They were not then such stumbling-blocks as they would be now,

and many passed unperceived by us, buried as we were in our big pew, with

our eyes riveted on our books; yet even thus there was enough evident to

make my mother rejoice that Mr. Henderson would be with us before Easter.

Still this could not mar the thankful gladness that was with us all that

day, and which shone in Clarence’s eyes. His countenance always had a

remarkable expression in church, as if somehow his spirit went farther

than ours did, and things unseen were more real to him.

Hillside, as usual, had two services, and my father and his friend were

going to walk thither in the afternoon, but it was a raw cold day,

threatening snow, and Emily was caught by my mother in the hail and

ordered back, as well as Clarence, who had shown symptoms of having

caught cold on his dismal journey. Emily coaxed from her permission to

have a fire in the bookroom, and there we three had a memorably happy

time. We read our psalms and lessons, and our _Christian Year_, which

was more and more the lodestar of our feelings. We compared our

favourite passages, and discussed the obscurer ones, and Clarence was led

to talk out more of his heart than he had ever shown to us before.

Perhaps he had lost some of his reserve through his intercourse with our

good old governess, Miss Newton, who was still grinding away at her daily

mill, though with somewhat failing eyesight, so that she could do nothing

but knit in the long evenings, and was most grateful to her former pupil

for coming, as often as he could, to talk or read to her.

She was a most excellent and devout woman, and when Emily, who in

youthful _gaieté de cœur_ had got a little tired of her, exclaimed at his

taste, and asked if she made him read nothing but Pike’s Early _Piety_,

he replied gravely, ‘She showed me where to lay my burthen down,’ and

turned to the two last verses of the poem for ‘Good Friday’ in the

_Christian Year_, as well as to the one we had just read on the Holy

Communion.

My father’s kindness had seemed to him the pledge of the Heavenly

Father’s forgiveness; and he added, perhaps a little childishly, that it

had been his impulse to promise never to touch a card again, but that he

dreaded the only too familiar reply, ‘What availed his promises?’

‘Do promise, Clarry!’ cried Emily, ‘and then you won’t have to play with

that tiresome old Mrs. Sophia.’

‘That would rather deter me,’ said Clarence good-humouredly.

‘A card-playing old age is despicable,’ pronounced Miss Emily, much to

our amusement.

After that we got into a bewilderment. We knew nothing of the future

question of temperance _versus_ total abstinence; but after it had been

extracted that Miss Newton regarded cards as the devil’s books, the

inconsistent little sister changed sides, and declared it narrow and

evangelical to renounce what was innocent. Clarence argued that what

might be harmless for others might be dangerous for such as himself, and

that his real difficulty in making even a mental vow was that, if broken,

there was an additional sin.

‘It is not oneself that one trusts,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Clarence emphatically; ‘and setting up a vow seems as if it

might be sticking up the reed of one’s own word, and leaning on

_that_—when it breaks, at least mine does. If I could always get the

grasp of Him that I felt to-day, there would be no more bewildered heart

and failing spirit, which are worse than the actual falls they cause.’

And as Emily said she did not understand, he replied in words I wrote

down and thought over, ‘What we _are_ is the point, more than even what

we _do_. We _do_ as we _are_; and yet we form ourselves by what we

_do_.’

‘And,’ I put in, ‘I know somebody who won a victory last night over

himself and his two brothers. Surely _doing_ that is a sign that he _is_

more than he used to be.’

‘If he were, it would not have been an effort at all,’ said Clarence, but

with his rare sweet smile.

Just then Griff called him away, and Emily sat pondering and impressed.

‘It did seem so odd,’ she said, ‘that Clarry should be so much the best,

and yet so much the worst of us.’

I agreed. His insight into spiritual things, and his enjoyment of them,

always humiliated us both, yet he fell so much lower in practice,—‘But

then we had not his temptations.’

‘Yes,’ said Emily; ‘but look at Griff! He goes about like other young

men, and keeps all right, and yet he doesn’t care about religious things

a bit more than he can help.’

It was quite true. Religion was life to the one and an insurance to the

other, and this had been a mystery to us all our young lives, as far as

we had ever reflected on the contrast between the practical failure and

success of each. Our mother, on the other hand, viewed Clarence’s

tendencies as part of an unreal, self-deceptive nature, and regretted his

intimacy with Miss Newton, who, she said, had fostered ‘that kind of

thing’ in his childhood—made him fancy talk, feeling, and preaching were

more than truth and honour—and might lead him to run after Irving,

Rowland Hill, or Baptist Noel, about whose tenets she was rather

confused. It would be an additional misfortune if he became a fanatical

Evangelical light, and he was just the character to be worked upon.

My father held that she might be thankful for any good influence or safe

resort for a young man in lodgings in London, and he merely bade Clarence

never resort to any variety of dissenting preacher. We were of the

school called—a little later—high and dry, but were strictly orthodox

according to our lights, and held it a prime duty to attend our parish

church, whatever it might be; nor, indeed, had Clarence swerved from

these traditions.

Poor Mrs. Sophia was baulked of the game at whist, which she viewed as a

legitimate part of the Christmas pleasures; and after we had eaten our

turkey, we found the evening long, except that Martyn escaped to

snapdragon with the servants; and, by and by, Chapman, magnificent in

patronage, ushered in the church singers into the hall, and clarionet,

bassoon, and fiddle astonished our ears.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE MULLION CHAMBER.

‘A lady with a lamp I see,

Pass through the glimmering gloom,

And flit from room to room.’

LONGFELLOW.

FOR want of being able to take exercise, the first part of the night had

always been sleepless with me, though my dear mother thought it wrong to

recognise the habit or allow me a lamp. A fire, however, I had, and by

its light, on the second night after Christmas, I saw my door noiselessly

opened, and Clarence creeping in half-dressed and barefooted. To my

frightened interrogation the answer came, through chattering teeth, ‘It’s

I—only I—Ted—no—nothing’s the matter, only I can’t stand it any longer!’

His hands were cold as ice when he grasped mine, as if to get hold of

something substantial, and he trembled so as to shake the bed. ‘That

room,’ he faltered. ‘’Tis not only the moans! I’ve seen her!’

‘Whom?’

‘I don’t know. There she stands with her lamp, crying!’ I could

scarcely distinguish the words through the clashing of his teeth, and as

I threw my arms round him the shudder seemed to pass to me; but I did my

best to warm him by drawing the clothes over him, and he began to gather

himself together, and speak intelligibly. There had been sounds the

first night as of wailing, but he had been too much preoccupied to attend

to them till, soon after one o’clock, they ended in a heavy fall and long

shriek, after which all was still. Christmas night had been undisturbed,

but on this the voices had begun again at eleven, and had a strangely

human sound; but as it was windy, sleety weather, and he had learnt at

sea to disregard noises in the rigging, he drew the sheet over his head

and went to sleep. ‘I was dreaming that I was at sea,’ he said, ‘as I

always do on a noisy night, but this was not a dream. I was wakened by a

light in the room, and there stood a woman with a lamp, moaning and

sobbing. My first notion was that one of the maids had come to call me,

and I sat up; but I could not speak, and she gave another awful

suppressed cry, and moved towards that walled-up door. Then I saw it was

none of the servants, for it was an antique dress like an old picture.

So I knew what it must be, and an unbearable horror came over me, and I

rushed into the outer room, where there was a little fire left; but I

heard her going on still, and I could endure it no longer. I knew you

would be awake and would bear with me, so I came down to you.’

Then this was what Chapman and the maids had meant. This was Mrs. Sophia

Selby’s vulgar superstition! I found that Clarence had heard none of the

mysterious whispers afloat, and only knew that Griff had deserted the

room after his own return to London. I related what I had learnt from

the old lady, and in that midnight hour we agreed that it could be no

mere fancy or rumour, but that cruel wrong must have been done in that

chamber. Our feeling was that all ought to be made known, and in that

impression we fell asleep, Clarence first.

By and by I found him moving. He had heard the clock strike four, and

thought it wiser to repair to his own quarters, where he believed the

disturbance was over. Lucifer matches as yet were not, but he had always

been a noiseless being, with a sailor’s foot, so that, by the help of the

moonlight through the hall windows, he regained his room.

And when morning had come, the nocturnal visitation wore such a different

aspect to both our minds that we decided to say nothing to our parents,

who, said Clarence, would simply disbelieve him; and, indeed, I inclined

to suppose it had been an uncommonly vivid dream, produced in that

sensitive nature by the uncanny sounds of the wind in the chinks and

crannies of the ancient chamber. Had not Scott’s _Demonology and

Witchcraft_, which we studied hard on that day, proved all such phantoms

to be explicable? The only person we told was Griff, who was amused and

incredulous. He had heard the noises—oh yes! and objected to having his

sleep broken by them. It was too had to expose Clarence to them—poor

Bill—on whom they worked such fancies!

He interrogated Chapman, however, but probably in that bantering way

which is apt to produce reserve. Chapman never ‘gave heed to them

fictious tales,’ he said; but, when hard pressed, he allowed that he had

‘heerd that a lady do walk o’ winter nights,’ and that was why the garden

door of the old rooms was walled up. Griff asked if this was done for

fear she should catch cold, and this somewhat affronted him, so that he

averred that he knew nought about it, and gave no thought to such like.

Just then they arrived at the Winslow Arms, and took each a glass of ale,

when Griff, partly to tease Chapman, asked the landlady—an old Chantry

House servant—whether she had ever met the ghost. She turned rather

pale, which seemed to have impressed him, and demanded if he had seen it.

‘It always walked at Christmas time—between then and the New Year.’ She

had once seen a light in the garden by the ruin in winter-time, and once

last spring it came along the passage, but that was just before the old

Squire was took for death,—folks said that was always the way before any

of the family died—‘if you’ll excuse it, sir.’ Oh no, she thought

nothing of such things, but she had heard tell that the noises were such

at all times of the year that no one could sleep in the rooms, but the

light wasn’t to be seen except at Christmas.

Griff with the philosophy of a university man, was certain that all was

explained by Clarence having imbibed the impression of the place being

haunted; and going to sleep nervous at the noises, his brain had shaped a

phantom in accordance. Let Clarence declare as he might that the legends

were new to him, Griff only smiled to think how easily people forgot, and

he talked earnestly about catching ideas without conscious information.

However, he volunteered to sit up that night to ascertain the exact

causes of the strange noises and convince Clarence that they were nothing

but the effects of draughts. The fire in his gunroom was surreptitiously

kept up to serve for the vigil, which I ardently desired to share. It

was an enterprise; it would gratify my curiosity; and besides, though

Griffith was good-natured and forbearing in a general way towards

Clarence, I detected a spirit of mockery about him which might break out

unpleasantly when poor Clarry was convicted of one of his unreasonable

panics.

Both brothers were willing to gratify me, the only difficulty being that

the tap of my crutches would warn the entire household of the expedition.

However, they had—all unknown to my mother—several times carried me about

queen’s cushion fashion, as, being always much of a size, they could do

most handily; and as both were now fine, strong, well-made youths of

twenty and nineteen, they had no doubt of easily and silently conveying

me up the shallow-stepped staircase when all was quiet for the night.

Emily, with her sharp ears, guessed that something was in hand, but we

promised her that she should know all in time. I believe Griff, being a

little afraid of her quickness, led her to suppose he was going to hold

what he called a symposium in his rooms, and to think it a mystery of

college life not intended for young ladies.

He really had prepared a sort of supper for us when, after my father’s

resounding turn of the key of the drawing-room door, my brothers, in

their stocking soles, bore me upstairs, the fun of the achievement for

the moment overpowering all sense of eeriness. Griff said he could not

receive me in his apartment without doing honour to the occasion, and

that Dutch courage was requisite for us both; but I suspect it was more

in accordance with Oxford habits that he had provided a bottle of sherry

and another of ale, some brandy cherries, bread, cheese, and biscuits, by

what means I do not know, for my mother always locked up the wine. He

was disappointed that Clarence would touch nothing, and declared that

inanition was the preparation for ghost-seeing or imagining. I drank his

health in a glass of sherry as I looked round at the curious old room,

with its panelled roof, the heraldic devices and badges of the Power

family, and the trophy of swords, dirks, daggers, and pistols, chiefly

relics of our naval grandfather, but reinforced by the sword, helmet, and

spurs of the county Yeomanry which Griff had joined.

Griff proposed cards to drive away fancies, especially as the sounds were

beginning; but though we generally yielded to him we _could_ not give our

attention to anything but these. There was first a low moan. ‘No great

harm in that,’ said Griff; ‘it comes through that crack in the wainscot

where there is a sham window. Some putty will put a stop to that.’

Then came a more decided wail and sob much nearer to us. Griff hastily

swallowed the ale in his tumbler, and, striking a theatrical attitude,

exclaimed, ‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us!’

Clarence held up his hand in deprecation. The door into his bedroom was

open, and Griff, taking up one of the flat candlesticks, pursued his

researches, holding the flame to all chinks or cracks in the wainscotting

to detect draughts which might cause the dreary sounds, which were much

more like suppressed weeping than any senseless gust of wind. Of

draughts there were many, and he tried holding his hand against each

crevice to endeavour to silence the wails; but these became more human

and more distressful. Presently Clarence exclaimed, ‘There!’ and on his

face there was a whiteness and an expression which always recurs to me on

reading those words of Eliphaz the Temanite, ‘Then a spirit passed before

my face, and the hair of my flesh stood up.’ Even Griff was awestruck as

we cried, ‘Where? what?’

‘Don’t you see her? There! By the press—look!’

‘I see a patch of moonlight on the wall,’ said Griff.

‘Moonlight—her lamp. Edward, don’t you see her?’

I could see nothing but a spot of light on the wall. Griff (plainly

putting a force on himself) came back and gave him a good-natured shake.

‘Dreaming again, old Bill. Wake up and come to your senses.’

‘I am as much in my senses as you are,’ said Clarence. ‘I see her as

plainly as I see you.’

Nor could any one doubt either the reality of the awe in his voice and

countenance, nor of the light—a kind of hazy ball—nor of the choking

sobs.

‘What is she like?’ I asked, holding his hand, for, though infected by

his dread, my fears were chiefly for the effect on him; but he was much

calmer and less horror-struck than on the previous night, though still he

shuddered as he answered in a low voice, as if loth to describe a lady in

her presence, ‘A dark cloak with the hood fallen back, a kind of lace

headdress loosely fastened, brown hair, thin white face, eyes—oh, poor

thing!—staring with fright, dark—oh, how swollen the lids! all red below

with crying—black dress with white about it—a widow kind of look—a glove

on the arm with the lamp. Is she beckoning—looking at us? Oh, you poor

thing, if I could tell what you mean!’

I felt the motion of his muscles in act to rise, and grasped him. Griff

held him with a strong hand, hoarsely crying, ‘Don’t!—don’t—don’t follow

the thing, whatever you do!’

Clarence hid his face. It was very awful and strange. Once the thought

of conjuring her to speak by the Holy Name crossed me, but then I saw no

figure; and with incredulous Griffith standing by, it would have been

like playing, nor perhaps could I have spoken. How long this lasted

there is no knowing; but presently the light moved towards the walled-up

door and seemed to pass into it. Clarence raised his head and said she

was gone. We breathed freely.

‘The farce is over,’ said Griff. ‘Mr. Edward Winslow’s carriage stops

the way!’

I was hoisted up, candle in hand, between the two, and had nearly reached

the stairs when there came up on the garden side a sound as of tipsy

revellers in the garden. ‘The scoundrels! how can they have got in?’

cried Griff, looking towards the window; but all the windows on that side

had peculiarly heavy shutters and bars, with only a tiny heart-shaped

aperture very high up, so they somewhat hurried their steps downstairs,

intending to rush out on the intruders from the back door. But suddenly,

in the middle of the staircase, we heard a terrible heartrending woman’s

shriek, making us all start and have a general fall. My brothers managed

to seat me safely on a step without much damage to themselves, but the

candle fell and was extinguished, and we made too heavy a weight to fall

without real noise enough to bring the household together before we could

pick ourselves up in the dark.

We heard doors opening and hurried calls, and something about pistols,

impelling Griff to call out, ‘It’s nothing, papa; but there are some

drunken rascals in the garden.’

A light had come by this time, and we were detected. There was a general

sally upon the enemy in the garden before any one thought of me, except a

‘You here!’ when they nearly fell over me. And there I was left sitting

on the stair, helpless without my crutches, till in a few minutes all

returned declaring there was nothing—no signs of anything; and then as

Clarence ran up to me with my crutches my father demanded the meaning of

my being there at that time of night.

‘Well, sir,’ said Griff, ‘it is only that we have been sitting up to

investigate the ghost.’

‘Ghost! Arrant stuff and nonsense! What induced you to be dragging

Edward about in this dangerous way?’

‘I wished it,’ said I.

‘You are all mad together, I think. I won’t have the house disturbed for

this ridiculous folly. I shall look into it to-morrow!’

CHAPTER XV.

RATIONAL THEORIES.

‘These are the reasons, they are natural.’

_Julius Cæsar_.

IF anything could have made our adventure more unpleasant to Mr. and Mrs.

Winslow, it would have been the presence of guests. However, inquiry was

suppressed at breakfast, in deference to the signs my mother made to

enjoin silence before the children, all unaware that Emily was nearly

frantic with suppressed curiosity, and Martyn knew more about the popular

version of the legend than any of us.

Clarence looked wan and heavy-eyed. His head was aching from a bump

against the edge of a step, and his cold was much worse; no wonder, said

my mother; but she was always softened by any ailment, and feared that

the phantoms were the effect of coming illness. I have always thought

that if Clarence could have come home from his court-martial with a brain

fever he would have earned immediate forgiveness; but unluckily for him,

he was a very healthy person.

All three of us were summoned to the tribunal in the study, where my

father and my mother sat in judgment on what they termed ‘this

preposterous business.’ In our morning senses our impressions were much

more vague than at midnight, and we betrayed some confusion; but Griff

and I had a strong instinct of sheltering Clarence, and we stoutly

declared the noises to be beyond the capacities of wind, rats, or cats;

that the light was visible and inexplicable; and that though we had seen

nothing else, we could not doubt that Clarence did.

‘Thought he did,’ corrected my father.

‘Without discussing the word,’ said Griff, ‘I mean that the effect on his

senses was the same as the actual sight. You could not look at him

without being certain.’

‘Exactly so,’ returned my mother. ‘I wish Dr. Fellowes were near.’

Indeed nothing saved Clarence from being consigned to medical treatment

but the distance from Bath or Bristol, and the contradictory advice that

had been received from our county neighbours as to our family doctor.

However, she formed her theory that his nervous imaginings—whether

involuntary or acted, she hoped the former, and wished she could be

sure—had infected us; and, as she was really uneasy about him, she would

not let him sleep in the mullion room, but having nowhere else to bestow

him, she turned out the man-servant and put him into the little room

beyond mine, and she also forbade any mention of the subject to him that

day.

This was a sore prohibition to Emily, who had been discussing it with the

other ladies, and was in a mingled state of elation at the romance, and

terror at the supernatural, which found vent in excited giggle, and moved

Griff to cram her with raw-head and bloody-bone horrors, conventional

enough to be suspicious, and send her to me tearfully to entreat to know

the truth. If by day she exulted in a haunted chamber, in the evening

she paid for it by terrors at walking about the house alone, and, when

sent on an errand by my mother, looked piteous enough to be laughed at or

scolded on all sides.

The gentlemen had more serious colloquies, and the upshot was a

determination to sit up together and discover the origin of the

annoyance. Mr. Stafford’s antiquarian researches had made him familiar

with such mysteries, and enough of them had been explained by natural

causes to convince him that there was a key to all the rest. Owls,

coiners, and smugglers had all been convicted of simulating ghosts. In

one venerable mansion, behind the wainscot, there had been discovered

nine skeletons of cats in different stages of decay, having trapped

themselves at various intervals of time, and during the gradual

extinction of their eighty-one lives having emitted cries enough to

establish the ghastly reputation of the place. Perhaps Mr. Henderson was

inclined to believe there were more things in heaven and earth than were

dreamt of in even an antiquary’s philosophy. He owned himself perplexed,

but reserved his opinion.

At breakfast Clarence was quite well, except for the remains of his sore

throat, and the two seniors were gruff and brief as to their watch. They

had heard odd noises, and should discover the cause; the carpenter had

already been sent for, and they had seen a light which was certainly due

to reflection or refraction. Mr. Henderson committed himself to nothing

but that ‘it was very extraordinary;’ and there was a wicked look of

diversion on Griff’s face, and an exchange of glances. Afterwards, in

our own domain, we extracted a good deal more from them.

Griff told us how the two elders started on politics, and denounced

Brougham and O’Connell loud enough to terrify any save the most undaunted

ghost, till Henderson said ‘Hush!’ and they paused at the moan with which

the performance always commenced, making Mr. Stafford turn, as Griff

said, ‘white in the gills,’ though he talked of the wind on the stillest

of frosty nights. Then came the sobbing and wailing, which certainly

overawed them all; Henderson called them ‘agonising,’ but Griff was in a

manner inured to this, and felt as if master of the ceremonies. Let them

say what they would by daylight about owls, cats, and rats, they owned

the human element then, and were far from comfortable, though they would

not compromise their good sense by owning what both their younger

companions had perceived—their feeling of some undefinable presence.

Vain attempts had been made to account for the light or get rid of it by

changing the position of candles or bright objects in the outer room; and

Henderson had shut himself into the bedroom with it; but there he still

only saw the hazy light—though all was otherwise pitch dark, except the

keyhole and the small gray patch of sky at the top of the

window-shutters. ‘You saw nothing else?’ said Griff. ‘I thought I heard

you break out as Clarence did, just before my father opened the door.’

‘Perhaps I did so. I had the sense strongly on me of some being in

grievous distress very near me.’

‘And you should have power over it,’ suggested Emily.

‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘that more thorough conviction and comprehension

are needed before I could address the thing with authority. I should

like to have stayed longer and heard the conclusion.’

For Mr. Stafford had grown impatient and weary, and my father having

satisfied himself that there was something to be detected, would not

remain to the end, and not only carried his companions off, but locked

the doors, perhaps expecting to imprison some agent in a trick, and find

him in the morning.

Indeed Clarence had a dim remembrance of having been half wakened by some

one looking in on him in the night, when he was sleeping heavily after

his cold and the previous night’s disturbance, and we suspected, though

we would not say, that our father might have wished to ascertain that he

had no share in producing these appearances. He was, however, fully

acquitted of all wilful deception in the case, and he was not surprised,

though he was disappointed, that his vision of the lady was supposed to

be the consequence of excited imagination.

‘I can’t help it,’ he said to me in private. ‘I have always seen or

felt, or whatever you may call it, things that others do not. Don’t you

remember how nobody would believe that I saw Lucy Brooke?’

‘That was in the beginning of the measles.’

‘I know; and I will tell you something curious. When I was at Gibraltar

I met Mrs. Emmott—’

‘Mary Brooke?’

‘Yes; I spent a very happy Sunday with her. We talked over old times,

and she told me that Lucy had all through her illness been very uneasy

about having promised to bring me a macaw’s feather the next time we

played in the Square gardens. It could not be sent to me for fear of

carrying the infection, but the dear girl was too light-headed to

understand, and kept on fretting and wandering about breaking her word.

I have no doubt the wish carried her spirit to me the moment it was

free,’ he added, with tears springing to his eyes. He also said that

before the court-martial he had, night after night, dreams of sinking and

drowning in huge waves, and his friend Coles struggling to come to his

aid, but being forcibly withheld; and he had since learnt that Coles had

actually endeavoured to come from Plymouth to bear testimony to his

previous character, but had been refused leave, and told that he could do

no good.

There had been other instances of perception of a presence and of a

prescient foreboding. ‘It is like a sixth sense,’ he said, ‘and a very

uncomfortable one. I would give much to be rid of it, for it is

connected with all that is worst in my life. I had it before Navarino,

when no one expected an engagement. It made me believe I should be

killed, and drove me to what was much worse—or at least I used to think

so.’

‘Don’t you now?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Clarence. ‘It was a great mercy that I did not die then.

There’s something to conquer first. But you’ll never speak of this, Ted.

I have left off telling of such things—it only gives another reason for

disbelieving me.’

However, this time his veracity was not called in question,—but he was

supposed to be under a hallucination, the creation of the noises acting

on his imagination and memory of the persecuted widow, which must have

been somewhere dormant in his mind, though he averred that he had never

heard of it. It had now, however, made a strong impression on him; he

was convinced that some crime or injustice had been perpetrated, and

thought it ought to be investigated; but Griffith made us laugh at his

championship of this shadow of a shade, and even wrote some mock heroic

verses about it,—nor would it have been easy to stir my father to seek

for the motives of an apparition which no one in the family save Clarence

professed to have seen.

The noises were indisputable, but my mother began to suspect a cause for

them. To oblige a former cook we had brought down with us as stable-boy

her son, George Sims, an imp accustomed to be the pet and jester of a

mews. Martyn was only too fond of his company, and he made no secret of

his contempt for the insufferable dulness of the country, enlivening it

by various acts of monkey-mischief, in some of which Martyn had been

implicated. That very afternoon, as Mrs. Sophia Selby was walking home

in the twilight from Chapman’s lodge, in company with Mr. Henderson, an

eldritch yell proceeding from the vaults beneath the mullion chambers

nearly frightened her into fits. Henderson darted in and captured the

two boys in the fact. Martyn’s asseveration that he had taken the pair

for Griff and Emily would have pacified the good-natured clergyman, but

Mrs. Sophia was too much agitated, or too spiteful, as we declared, not

to make a scene.

Martyn spent the evening alone and in disgrace, and only his

unimpeachable character for truth caused the acceptance of his

affirmation that the yell was an impromptu fraternal compliment, and that

he had nothing to do with the noises in the mullion chamber. He had been

supposed to be perfectly unconscious of anything of the kind, and to have

never so much as heard of a phantom, so my mother was taken somewhat

aback when, in reply to her demand whether he had ever been so naughty as

to assist George in making a noise in Clarence’s room, he said, ‘Why,

that’s the ghost of the lady that was murdered atop of the steps, and

always walks every Christmas!’

‘Who told you such ridiculous nonsense?’

The answer ‘George’ was deemed conclusive that all had been got up by

that youth; and there was considerable evidence of his talent for

ventriloquism and taste for practical jokes. My mother was certain that,

having heard of the popular superstition, he had acted ghost. She

appealed to _Woodstock_ to prove the practicability of such feats; and

her absolute conviction persuaded the maids (who had given warning _en

masse_) that the enemy was exorcised when George Sims had been sent off

on the Royal Mail under Clarence’s guardianship.

None of the junior part of the family believed him guilty, but he had

hunted the cows round the paddock, mounted on my donkey, had nearly shot

the kitchen-maid with Griff’s gun, and, if not much maligned, knew the

way to the apple-chamber only too well,—so that he richly deserved his

doom, rejoiced in it himself, and was unregretted save by Martyn.

Clarence viewed him in the light of a victim, and tried to keep an eye on

him, but he developed his talent as a ventriloquist, made his fortune,

and retired on a public-house.

My mother would fain have had the vaults under the mullion rooms bricked

up, but Mr. Stafford cried out on the barbarism of such a proceeding.

The mystery was declared to be solved, and was added to Mr. Stafford’s

good stories of haunted houses.

And at home my father forbade any further mention of such rank folly and

deception. The inner mullion chamber was turned into a lumber-room, and

as weeks passed by without hearing or seeing any more of lady or of lamp,

we began to credit the wonderful freaks of the goblin page.

CHAPTER XVI.

CAT LANGUAGE.

Soon as she parted thence—the fearful twayne,

That blind old woman and her daughter deare,

Came forth, and finding Kirkrapine there slayne,

For anguish greate they gan to rend their heare

And beate their breasts, and naked flesh to teare;

And when they both had wept and wayled their fill,

Then forth they ran, like two amazèd deere,

Half mad through malice and revenging will,

To follow her that was the causer of their ill.’—SPENSER.

THE Christmas vacation was not without another breeze about Griffith’s

expenses at Oxford. He held his head high, and declared that people

expected something from the eldest son of a man of property, and my

father tried to convince him that a landed estate often left less cash

available than did the fixed salary of an office. Griff treated all in

his light, good-humoured way, promised to be careful, and came to me to

commiserate the poor old gentleman’s ignorance of the ways of the new

generation.

There ensued some trying weeks of dark days, raw frost, and black east

wind, when the home party cast longing, lingering recollections back to

the social intercourse, lamp-lit streets, and ready interchange of books

and other amenities we had left behind us. We were not accustomed to

have our nearest neighbours separated from us by two miles of dirty lane,

or road mended with excruciating stones, nor were they very congenial

when we did see them. The Fordyce family might be interesting, but we

younger ones could not forget the slight to Clarence, and, besides, the

girls seemed to be entirely in the schoolroom, Mrs. Fordyce was delicate

and was shut up all the winter, and the only intercourse that took place

was when my father met the elder Mr. Fordyce at the magistrates’ bench;

also there was a conference about Amos Bell, who was preferred to the

post left vacant by George Sims, in right of his being our tenant, but

more civilised than Earlscombers, a widow’s son, and not sufficiently

recovered from his accident to be exposed to the severe tasks of a

ploughboy in the winter.

Mrs. Fordyce was the manager of a book-club, which circulated volumes

covered in white cartridge paper, with a printed list of the subscribers’

names. Two volumes at a time might be kept for a month by each member in

rotation, novels were excluded, and the manager had a veto on all orders.

We found her more liberal than some of our other neighbours, who looked

on our wants and wishes with suspicion as savouring of London notions.

Happily we could read old books and standard books over again, and we

gloated over _Blackwood_ and the _Quarterly_, enjoying, too, every

out-of-door novelty of the coming spring, as each revealed itself. Emily

will never forget her first primroses, nor I the first thrush in early

morning.

Blankets, broth, and what were uncomfortably termed broken victuals had

been given away during the winter, and a bewildering amount of begging

women and children used to ask interviews with ‘the Lady Winslow,’ with

stories that crumbled on investigation so as to make us recollect the

Rector’s character of Earlscombe.

However, Mr. Henderson came in the second week of Lent, and what our

steps towards improvement introduced would have seemed almost as shocking

to you youngsters, as what they displaced. For instance, a plain crimson

cloth covered the altar, instead of the rags in the colours of the

Winslow livery, presented, according to the queer old register, by the

unfortunate Margaret. There was talk of velvet and the gold monogram,

surrounded by rays, alternately straight and wavy, as in our London

church, but this was voted ‘unfit for a plain village church.’ Still,

the new hangings of pulpit, desk, and altar were all good in quality and

colour, and huge square cushions were provided as essential to each.

Moreover, the altar vessels were made somewhat more respectable,—all this

being at my father’s expense.

He also carried in the Vestry, though not without strong opposition from

a dissenting farmer, that new linen and a fresh surplice should be

provided by the parish, which surplice would have made at least six of

such as are at present worn. The farmers were very jealous of the

interference of the Squire in the Vestry—‘what he had no call to,’ and of

church rates applied to any other object than the reward of birdslayers,

as thus, in the register—

Hairy Wills, 1 score sprows heds 2d.

Jems Brown, 1 poulcat 6d.

Jarge Bell, 2 howls 6d.

It was several years before this appropriation of the church rates could

be abolished. The year 1830, with a brand new squire and parson, was too

ticklish a time for many innovations.

Hillside Church was the only one in the neighbourhood where Holy Week or

Ascension Day had been observed in the memory of man. When we proposed

going to church on the latter day the gardener asked my mother ‘if it was

her will to keep Thursday holy,’ as if he expected its substitution for

Sunday. Monthly Communions and Baptisms after the Second Lesson were

viewed as ‘not fit for a country church,’ and every attempt at even more

secular improvements was treated with the most disappointing distrust and

aversion. When my father laid out the allotment grounds, the labourers

suspected some occult design for his own profit, and the farmers objected

that the gardens would be used as an excuse for neglecting their work and

stealing their potatoes. Coal-club and clothing-club were regarded in

like manner, and while a few took advantage of these offers in a grudging

manner, the others viewed everything except absolute gifts as ‘me-an’ on

our part, the principle of aid to self-help being an absolute novelty.

When I look back to the notes in our journals of that date I see how much

has been overcome.

Perhaps we listened more than was strictly wise to the revelations of

Amos Bell, when he attended Emily and me on our expeditions with the

donkey. Though living over the border of Hillside, he had a family of

relations at Earlscombe, and for a time lodged with his grandmother

there. When his shyness and lumpishness gave way, he proved so bright

that Emily undertook to carry on his education. He soon had a wonderful

eye for a wild flower, and would climb after it with the utmost agility;

and when once his tongue was loosed, he became almost too communicative,

and made us acquainted with the opinions of ‘they Earlscoom folk’ with a

freedom not to be found in an elder or a native.

Moreover, he was the brightest light of the Sunday school which Mr.

Henderson opened at once—for want of a more fitting place—in the disused

north transept of the church. It was an uncouth, ill-clad crew which

assembled on those dilapidated paving tiles. Their own grandchildren

look almost as far removed from them in dress and civilisation as did my

sister in her white worked cambric dress, silk scarf, huge Tuscan bonnet,

and the little curls beyond the lace quilling round her bright face, far

rosier than ever it had been in town. And what would the present

generation say to the odd little contrivances in the way of cotton

sun-bonnets, check pinafores, list tippets, and print capes, and other

wonderful manufactures from the rag-bag, which were then grand prizes and

stimulants?

Previous knowledge or intelligence scarcely existed, and then was not due

to Dame Dearlove’s tuition. Mr. Henderson pronounced an authorised

school a necessity. My father had scruples as to vested rights, for the

old woman was the last survivor of a family who had had recourse to

primer and hornbook after their ejection on ‘black Bartholomew’s Day;’

and when the meeting-house was built after the Revolution, had combined

preaching with teaching. Monopoly had promoted degeneracy, and this last

of the race was an unfavourable specimen in all save outward

picturesqueness. However, much against Henderson’s liking, an

accommodation was proposed, by which books were to be supplied to her,

and the Church Catechism be taught in her school, with the assistance of

the curate and Miss Winslow.

The terms were rejected with scorn. No School Board could be more

determined against the Catechism, nor against ‘passons meddling wi’ she;’

and as to assistance, ‘she had been a governess this thirty year, and

didn’t want no one trapesing in and out of her school.’

She was warned, but probably did not believe in the possibility of an

opposition school; and really there were children enough in the place to

overfill both her room and that which was fitted up after a very humble

fashion in one of our cottages. H.M. Inspector would hardly have thought

it even worth condemnation any more than the attainments of the mistress,

the young widow of a small Bristol skipper. Her qualifications consisted

in her piety and conscientiousness, good temper and excellent needlework,

together with her having been a scholar in one of Mrs. Hannah More’s

schools in the Cheddar district. She could read and teach reading well;

but as for the dangerous accomplishments of writing and arithmetic, such

as desired to pass beyond the rudiments of them must go to Wattlesea.

So nice did she look in her black that Earlscombe voted her a mere town

lady, and even at a penny a week hesitated to send its children to her.

Indeed it was currently reported that her school was part of a deep and

nefarious scheme of the gentlefolks for reducing the poor-rates by

enticing the children, and then shipping them off to foreign parts from

Bristol.

But the great crisis was one unlucky summer evening when Emily and I were

out with the donkey, and Griffith, just come home from Oxford, was airing

the new acquisition of a handsome black retriever.

Close by the old chapel, a black cat was leisurely crossing the road. At

her dashed Nero, stimulated perhaps by an almost involuntary

scss—scss—from his master, if not from Amos and me. The cat flew up a

low wall, and stood at bay on the top on tiptoe, with bristling tail,

arched back, and fiery eyes, while the dog danced round in agony on his

hind legs, barking furiously, and almost reaching her. Female sympathy

ever goes to the cat, and Emily screamed out in the fear that he would

seize her, or even that Griff might aid him. Perhaps Amos would have

done so, if left to himself; but Griff, who saw the cat was safe, could

not help egging on his dog’s impotent rage, when in the midst, out flew

pussy’s mistress, Dame Dearlove herself, broomstick in hand, using

language as vituperative as the cat’s, and more intelligible.

She was about to strike the dog—indeed I fancy she did, for there was a

howl, and Griff sprang to his defence with—‘Don’t hurt my dog, I say! He

hasn’t touched the brute! She can take care of herself. Here, there’s

half-a-crown for the fright,’ as the cat sprang down within the wall, and

Nero slunk behind him. But Dame Dearlove was not so easily appeased.

Her blood was up after our long series of offences, and she broke into a

regular tirade of abuse.

‘That’s the way with you fine folk, thinking you can tread down poor

people like the dirt under your feet, and insult ’em when you’ve taken

the bread out of the mouths of them that were here before you. Passons

and ladies a meddin’ where no one ever set a foot before! Ay, ay, but

ye’ll all be down before long.’

Griff signed to us to go on, and thundered out on her to take care what

she was about and not be abusive; but this brought a fresh volley on him,

heralded by a derisive laugh. ‘Ha! ha! fine talking for the likes of

you, Winslows that you are. But there’s a curse on you all! The poor

lady as was murdered won’t let you be! Why, there’s one of you, poor

humpy object—’

At this savage attack on me, Griff waxed furious, and shouted at her to

hold her confounded tongue, but this only diverted the attack on himself.

‘And as for you—fine chap as ye think yourself, swaggering and swearing

at poor folk, and setting your dog at them—your time’s coming. Look out

for yourself. It’s well known as how the curse is on the first-born.

The Lady Margaret don’t let none of ’em live to come after his father.’

Griff laughed and said, ‘There, we have had enough of this;’ and in fact

we had already moved on, so that he had to make some long steps to

overtake us, muttering, ‘So we’ve started a Meg Merrilies! My father

won’t keep such a foul-mouthed hag in the parish long!’

To which I had to respond that her cottage belonged to the trustees of

the chapel, whereat he whistled. I don’t think he knew that we had heard

her final denunciation, and we did not like to mention it to him,

scarcely to each other, though Emily looked very white and scared.

We talked it over afterwards in private, and with Henderson, who

confessed that he had heard of the old woman’s saying something of the

kind to other persons. We consulted the registers in hopes of confuting

it, but did not satisfy ourselves. The last Squire had lost his only son

at school. He himself had been originally second in the family, and in

the generation before him there had been some child-deaths, after which

we came back to a young man, apparently the eldest, who, according to

Miss Selby’s story, had been killed in a duel by one of the Fordyces. It

was not comfortable, till I remembered that our family Bible recorded the

birth, baptism, and death of a son who had preceded Griffith, and only

borne for a day the name afterwards bestowed on me.

And Henderson, who was so little our elder as to discuss things on fairly

equal grounds, had some very interesting talks with us two over ancestral

sin and its possible effects, dwelling on the 18th of Ezekiel as a

comment on the Second Commandment. Indeed, we agreed that the

uncomfortable state of disaffection which, in 1830, was becoming only too

manifest in the populace, was the result of neglect in former ages, and

that, even in our own parish, the bitterness, distrust, and ingratitude

were due to the careless, riotous, and oppressive family whom we

represented.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SIEGE OF HILLSIDE.

‘Ferments arise, imprisoned factions roar,

Represt ambition struggles round the shore;

Till, overwrought, the general system feels

Its motion stop, or frenzy fire the wheels.’

GOLDSMITH.

GRIFFITH had come straight home this year. There were no Peacock

gaieties to tempt him in London, for old Sir Henry had died suddenly soon

after the ball in December; nor was there much of a season that year,

owing to the illness and death of George IV.

A regiment containing two old schoolmates of his was at Bristol, and he

spent a good deal of time there, and also in Yeomanry drill. As autumn

came on we rejoiced in having so stalwart a protector, for the

agricultural riots had begun, and the forebodings of another French

Revolution seemed about to be realised. We stayed on at Chantry House.

My father thought his duty lay there as a magistrate, and my mother would

not leave him; nor indeed was any other place much safer, certainly not

London, whence Clarence wrote accounts of formidable mobs who were

expected to do more harm than they accomplished; though their hatred of

the hero of our country filled us with direful prognostications, and made

us think of the guillotine, which was linked with revolution in our

minds, before we had I beheld the numerous changes that followed upon the

thirty years of peace in which we grew up.

The ladies did not much like losing so stalwart a defender when Griff

returned to Oxford; and Jane the housemaid went to bed every night with

the pepper-pot and a poker, the first wherewith to blind the enemy, the

second to charge them with. From our height we could more than once see

blazing ricks, and were glad that the home farm was not in our own hands,

and that our only stack of hay was a good way from the house. When the

onset came at last, it was December, and the enemy only consisted of

about thirty dreary-looking men and boys in smock-frocks and chalked or

smutted faces, armed only with sticks and an old gun diverted from its

purpose of bird-scaring. They shouted for food, money, and arms; but my

father spoke to them from the hall steps, told them they had better go

home and learn that the public-house was a worse enemy to them than any

machine that had ever been invented, and assured them that they would get

no help from him in breaking the laws and getting themselves into

trouble. A stone or two was picked up, whereupon he went back and had

the hall door shut and barred, the heavy shutters of the windows having

all been closed already, so that we could have stood a much more severe

siege than from these poor fellows. One or two windows were broken, as

well as the glass of the conservatory, and the flower beds were trampled;

but finding our fortress impregnable they sneaked away before dark. We

fared better than our neighbours, some of whom were seriously frightened,

and suffered loss of property. Old Mr. Fordyce had for many years past

been an active magistrate—that a clergyman should be on the bench having

been quite correct according to the notions of his younger days; and in

spite of his beneficence he incurred a good deal of unpopularity for

withstanding the lax good-nature which made his brother magistrates give

orders for parish relief refused to able-bodied paupers by their own

Vestries. This was a mischievous abuse of the old poor-law times, which

made people dispose of every one’s money save their own. He had also

been a keen sportsman; and though his son had given up field sports in

deference to higher notions of clerical duty (his wife’s, as people

said), the old man’s feeling prompted him to severity on poachers. Frank

Fordyce, while by far the most earnest, hardworking clergyman in the

neighbourhood, worked off his superfluous energy on scientific farming,

making the glebe and the hereditary estate as much the model farm as

Hillside was the model parish. He had lately set up a threshing-machine

worked by horses, which was as much admired by the intelligent as it was

vituperated by the ignorant.

Neither paupers nor poachers abounded in Hillside; the natives were

chiefly tenants and employed on the property, and, between good

management and beneficence, there was little real want and much friendly

confidence and affection; and thus, in spite of surrounding riots,

Hillside seemed likely to be an exception, proving what could he done by

rightful care and attention. Nor indeed did the attack come from thence;

but the two parsons were bitterly hated by outsiders beyond the reach of

their personal influence and benevolence.

It was on a Saturday evening, the day after Griff had come back for the

Christmas vacation, that, as Emily was giving Amos his lesson, she saw

that the boy was crying, and after examination he let out that ‘folk

should say that the lads were agoing to break Parson Fordy’s machine and

fire his ricks that very night;’ but he would not give his authority, and

when he saw her about to give warning, entreated, ‘Now, dont’ze say

nothing, Miss Emily—’

‘What?’ she cried indignantly; ‘do you think I could hear of such a thing

without trying to stop it?’

‘Us says,’ he blurted out, ‘as how Winslows be always fain of ought as

happens to the Fordys—’

‘We are not such wicked Winslows as you have heard of,’ returned Emily

with dignity; and she rushed off in quest of papa and Griff, but when she

brought them to the bookroom, Amos had decamped, and was nowhere to be

found that night. We afterwards learnt that he lay hidden in the

hay-loft, not daring to return to his granny’s, lest he should be

suspected of being a traitor to his kind; for our lawless, untamed,

discontented parish furnished a large quota to the rioters, and he has

since told me that though all seemed to know what was about to be done,

he did not hear it from any one in particular.

It was no time to make light of a warning, but very difficult to know

what to do. Rural police were non-existent; there were no soldiers

nearer than Keynsham, and the Yeomanry were all in their own homesteads.

However, the captain of Griff’s troop, Sir George Eastwood, lived about

three miles beyond Wattlesea, and had a good many dependants in the

corps, so it was resolved to send him a note by the gardener, good James

Ellis, a steady, resolute man, on Emily’s fast-trotting pony, while my

father and Griff should hasten to Hillside to warn the Fordyces, who were

not unlikely to be able to muster trustworthy defenders among their own

people, and might send the ladies to take shelter at Chantry House.

My mother’s brave spirit disdained to detain an effective man for her own

protection, and the groom was to go to Hillside; he was in the Yeomanry,

and, like Griff, put on his uniform, while my father had the Riot Act in

his pocket. All the horses were thus absorbed, but Chapman and the

man-servant followed on foot.

Never did I feel my incapacity more than on that strange night, when

Emily was flying about with Martyn to all the doors and windows in a wild

state of excitement, humming to herself—

‘When the dawn on the mountain was misty and gray,

My true love has mounted his steed and away.’

My mother was equally restless, prolonging as much as possible the

preparation of rooms for possible guests; and when she did come and sit

down, she netted her purse with vehement jerks, and scolded Emily for

jumping up and leaving doors open.

At last, after an hour according to the clock, but far more by our

feelings, wheels were heard in the distance; Emily was off like a shot to

reconnoitre, and presently Martyn bounced in with the tidings that a pair

of carriage lamps were coming up the drive. My mother hurried out into

the hall; I made my best speed after her, and found her hastily undoing

the door-chain as she recognised the measured, courteous voice of old Mr.

Fordyce. In a moment more they were all in the house, the old gentleman

giving his arm to his daughter-in-law, who was quite overcome with

distress and alarm; then came his tall, slim granddaughter, carrying her

little sister with arms full of dolls, and sundry maid-servants completed

the party of fugitives.

‘We are taking advantage of Mr. Winslow’s goodness,’ said the old Rector.

‘He assured us that you would be kind enough to receive those who would

only be an encumbrance.’

‘Oh, but I must go back to Frank now that you and the children are safe,’

cried the poor lady. ‘Don’t send away the carriage; I must go back to

Frank.’

‘Nonsense, my dear,’ returned Mr. Fordyce, ‘Frank is in no danger. He

will get on much better for knowing you are safe. Mrs. Winslow will tell

you so.’

My mother was enforcing this assurance, when the little girl’s sobs burst

out in spite of her sister, who had been trying to console her. ‘It is

Celestina Mary,’ she cried, pointing to three dolls whom she had carried

in clasped to her breast. ‘Poor Celestina Mary! She is left behind, and

Ellen won’t let me go and see if she is in the carriage.’

‘My dear, if she is in the carriage, she will be quite safe in the

morning.’

‘Oh, but she will be so cold. She had nothing on but Rosella’s old

petticoat.’

The distress was so real that I had my hand on the bell to cause a search

to be instituted for the missing damsel, when Mrs. Fordyce begged me to

do no such thing, as it was only a doll. The child, while endeavouring

to shelter with a shawl the dolls, snatched in their night-gear from

their beds, wept so piteously at the rebuff that her grandfather had

nearly gone in quest of the lost one, but was stopped by a special

entreaty that he would not spoil the child. Martyn, however, who had

been standing in open-mouthed wonder at such feeling for a doll,

exclaimed, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry. I’ll go and get it for you;’ and

rushed off to the stable-yard.

This episode had restored Mrs. Fordyce, and while providing some of our

guests with wine, and others with tea, we heard the story, only

interrupted by Martyn’s return from a vain search, and Anne’s consequent

tears, which, however, were somehow hushed and smothered by fears of

being sent to bed, coupled with his promises to search every step of the

way to-morrow.

It appeared that while the Fordyce family were at dinner, shouts, howls

and yells had startled them. The rabble had surrounded the Rectory,

bawling out abuse of the parsons and their machines, and occasionally

throwing stones. There was no help to be expected; the only hope was in

the strength of the doors and windows, and the knowledge that personal

violence was very uncommon; but those were terrible moments, and poor

Mrs. Fordyce was nearly dead with suppressed terror when her husband

tried haranguing from an upper window, and was received with execrations

and a volley of stones, while the glass crashed round him.

At that instant the shouts turned to yells of dismay, ‘The so’diers! the

so’diers!’

Our party had found everything still and dark in the village, for in

truth the men had hidden themselves. They were being too much attached

to their masters to join in the attack, but were afraid of being

compelled to assist the rioters, and not resolute enough against their

own class either to inform against them or oppose them.

Through the midnight-like stillness of the street rose the tumult around

the Rectory; and by the light of a few lanterns, and from the upper

windows, they could see a mass of old hats, smock-frocked shoulders, and

the tops of bludgeons; while at soonest, Sir George Eastwood’s troop

could not be expected for an hour or more.

‘We must get to them somehow,’ said my father and Griff to one another;

and Griff added, ‘These rascals are arrant cowards, and they can’t see

the number of us.’

Then, before my father knew what he was about—certainly before he could

get hold of the Riot Act—he found the stable lantern made over to him,

and Griff’s sword flashing in light, as, making all possible clatter and

jingling with their accoutrements, the two yeomen dashed among the

throng, shouting with all their might, and striking with the flat of

their swords. The rioters, ill-fed, dull-hearted men for the most

part—many dragged out by compulsion, and already terrified—went tumbling

over one another and running off headlong, bearing off with them (as we

afterwards learnt) their leaders by their weight, taking the blows and

pushes they gave one another in their pell-mell rush for those of the

soldiery, and falling blindly against the low wall of the enclosure. The

only difficulty was in clearing them out at the two gates of the drive.

When Mr. Fordyce opened the door to hail his rescuers he was utterly

amazed to behold only three, and asked in a bewildered voice, ‘Where are

the others?’

There were two prisoners, Petty the ratcatcher, who had attempted some

resistance and had been knocked down by Griff’s horse, and a young lad in

a smock-frock who had fallen off the wall and hurt his knee, and who

blubbered piteously, declaring that them chaps had forced him to go with

them, or they would duck him in the horse-pond. They were supposed to be

given in charge to some one, but were lost sight of, and no wonder! For

just then it was discovered that the machine shed was on fire. The

rioters had apparently detached one of their number to kindle the flame

before assaulting the house. The matter was specially serious, because

the stackyard was on a line with the Rectory, at some distance indeed,

but on lower ground; and what with barns, hay and wheat ricks, sheds,

cowhouses and stables, all thatched, a big wood-pile, and a long

old-fashioned greenhouse, there was almost continuous communication.

Clouds of smoke and an ominous smell were already perceptible on the

wind, generated by the heat, and the loose straw in the centre of the

farmyard was beginning to be ignited by the flakes and sparks, carrying

the mischief everywhere, and rendering it exceedingly difficult to

release the animals and drive them to a place of safety. Water was

scarce. There were only two wells, besides the pump in the house, and a

shallow pond. The brook was a quarter of a mile off in the valley, and

the nearest engine, a poor feeble thing, at Wattlesea. Moreover, the

assailants might discover how small was the force of rescuers, and return

to the attack. Thus, while Griff, who had given amateur assistance at

all the fires he could reach in London; was striving to organise

resistance to this new enemy, my father induced the gentlemen to cause

the horses to be put to the various vehicles, and employ them in carrying

the women and children to Chantry House. The old Rector was persuaded to

go to take care of his daughter-in-law, and she only thought of putting

her girls in safety. She listened to reason, and indeed was too much

exhausted to move when once she was laid on the sofa. She would not hear

of going to bed, though her little daughter Anne was sent off with her

nurse, grandpapa persuading her that Rosella and the others were very

much tired. When she was gone, he declared his fears that he had sat

down on Celestina’s head, and showed so much compunction that we were

much amused at his relief when Martyn assured him of having searched the

carriage with a stable lantern, so that whatever had befallen the lady he

was not the guilty person. He really seemed more concerned about this

than at the loss of all his own barns and stores. And little Anne was

certainly as lovely and engaging a little creature as ever I saw; while,

as to her elder sister, in all the trouble and anxiety of the night, I

could not help enjoying the sight of her beautiful eager face and form.

She was tall and very slight, sylph-like, as it was the fashion to call

it, but every limb was instinct with grace and animation. Her face was,

perhaps, rather too thin for robust health, though this enhanced the idea

of her being all spirit, as also did the transparency of complexion,

tinted with an exquisite varying carnation. Her eyes were of a clear,

bright, rather light brown, and were sparkling with the lustre of

excitement, her delicate lips parted, showing the pretty pearly teeth, as

she was telling Emily, in a low voice of enthusiasm, scarcely designed

for my ears, how glorious a sight our brother had been, riding there in

his glancing silver, bearing down all before him with his good sword,

like the Captal de Buch dispersing the Jacquerie.

To which Emily responded, ‘Oh, don’t you love the Captal de Buch?’ And

their friendship was cemented.

Next I heard, ‘And that you should have been so good after all my

rudeness. But I thought you were like the old Winslows; and instead of

that you have come to the rescue of your enemies. Isn’t it beautiful?’

‘Oh no, not enemies,’ said Emily. ‘That was all over a hundred years

ago!’

‘So my papa and grandpapa say,’ returned Miss Fordyce; ‘but the last Mr.

Winslow was not a very nice man, and never would be civil to us.’

A report was brought that the glare of the fire could be seen over the

hill from the top of the house, and off went the two young ladies to the

leads, after satisfying themselves that Anne was asleep among her

homeless dolls.

Old Mr. Fordyce devoted himself to keeping up the spirits of his

daughter-in-law as the night advanced without any tidings, except that

the girls, from time to time, rushed down to tell us of fresh outbursts

of red flame reflected in the sky, then that the glow was diminishing; by

which time they were tired out, and, both sinking into a big armchair,

they went to sleep in each other’s arms. Indeed I believe we all dozed

more or less before any one returned from the scene of action—at about

three o’clock.

The struggle with the flames had been very unequal. The long tongues

soon reached the roof of the large barn, which was filled with straw, nor

could the flakes of burning thatch be kept from the stable, while the

water of the pond was soon reduced to mud. Helpers began to flock in,

but who could tell which were trustworthy? and all were uncomprehending.

There was so little hope of saving the house that the removal of

everything valuable was begun under my father’s superintendence. Frank

Fordyce was here, there, and everywhere; while Griffith, like a gallant

general, fought the foe with very helpless unmanageable forces.

Villagers, male and female, had emerged and stood gaping round; but, let

him rage and storm as he might, they would not go and collect pails and

buckets and form a line to the brook. Still less would they assist in

overthrowing and carrying away the faggots of a big wood-pile so as to

cut off the communication with the offices. Only Chapman and one other

man gave any help in this; and presently the stack caught, and Griff, on

the top, was in great peril of the faggots rolling down with him into the

middle, and imprisoning him in the blazing pile. ‘I never felt so like

Dido,’ said Griff.

That woodstack gave fearful aliment to the roaring flame, which came on

so fast that the destruction of the adjoining buildings quickly followed.

The Wattlesea engine had come, but the yard well was unattainable, and

all that could be done was to saturate the house with water from its own

well, and cover the side with wet blankets; but these reeked with steam,

and then shrivelled away in the intense glow of heat.

However, by this time the Eastwood Yeomanry, together with some

reasonable men, had arrived. A raid was made on the cottages for

buckets, a chain formed to the river, and at last the fire was got under,

having made a wreck of everything out-of-doors, and consumed one whole

wing of the house, though the older and more esteemed portion was saved.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PORTRAIT.

‘When day was gone and night was come,

And all men fast asleep,

There came the spirit of fair Marg’ret

And stood at William’s feet.’

_Scotch Ballad_.

WHEN I emerged from my room the next morning the phaeton was at the door

to take the two clergymen to reconnoitre their abode before going to

church. Miss Fordyce went with them, and my father was for once about to

leave his parish church to give them his sympathy, and join in their

thanksgiving that neither life nor limb had been injured. He afterwards

said that nothing could have been more touching than old Mr. Fordyce’s

manner of mentioning this special cause for gratitude before the General

Thanksgiving; and Frank Fordyce, having had all his sermons burnt, gave a

short address extempore (a very rare and almost shocking thing at that

date), reducing half the congregation to tears, for they really loved

‘the fam’ly,’ though they had not spirit enough to defend it; and their

passiveness always remained a subject of pride and pleasure to the

Fordyces. It was against the will of these good people that Petty, the

ratcatcher, was arrested, but he had been engaged in other outrages,

though this was the only one in which a dwelling-house had suffered. And

Chapman observed that ‘there was nothing to be done with such chaps but

to string ’em up out of the way.’

Griff had toiled that night till he was as stiff as a rheumatic old man

when he came down only just in time for luncheon. Mrs. Fordyce did not

appear at all. She was a fragile creature, and quite knocked up by the

agitations of the night. The gentlemen had visited the desolate rectory,

and found that though the fine ancient kitchen had escaped, the pleasant

living rooms had been injured by the water, and the place could hardly be

made habitable before the spring. They proposed to take a house in Bath,

whence Frank Fordyce could go and come for Sunday duty and general

superintendence, but my parents were urgent that they should not leave us

until after Christmas, and they consented. Their larger possessions were

to be stored in the outhouses, their lesser in our house, notably in the

inner mullion chamber, which would thus be so blocked that there would be

no question of sleeping in it.

Old Mr. Fordyce had ascertained that he might acquit himself of smashing

Celestina Mary, for no remains appeared in the carriage; but a miserable

trunk was discovered in the ruins, which he identified—though surely no

one else save the disconsolate parent could have done so. Poor little

Anne’s private possessions had suffered most severely of all, for her

whole nursery establishment had vanished. Her surviving dolls were left

homeless, and devoid of all save their night-clothing, which concerned

her much more than the loss of almost all her own garments. For what

dolls were to her could never have been guessed by us, who had forced

Emily to disdain them; whereas they were children to the maternal heart

of this lonely child.

She was quite a new revelation to us. All the Fordyces were handsome;

and her chestnut curls and splendid eyes, her pretty colour and

unconscious grace, were very charming. Emily was so near our own age

that we had never known the winsomeness of a little maid-child amongst

us, and she was a perpetual wonder and delight to us.

Indeed, from having always lived with her elders, she was an odd little

old-fashioned person, advanced in some ways, and comically simple in

others. Her doll-heart was kept in abeyance all Sunday, and it was only

on Monday that her anxiety for Celestina manifested itself with

considerable vehemence; but her grandfather gravely informed her that the

young lady was gone to an excellent doctor, who would soon effect a cure.

The which was quite true, for he had sent her to a toy-shop by one of the

maids who had gone to restore the ravage on the wardrobes, and who

brought her back with a new head and arms, her identity apparently not

being thus interfered with. The hoards of scraps were put under

requisition to re-clothe the survivors; and I won my first step in Miss

Anne’s good graces by undertaking a knitted suit for Rosella.

The good little girl had evidently been schooled to repress her dread and

repugnance at my unlucky appearance, and was painfully polite, only

shutting her eyes when she came to shake hands with me; but after Rosella

condescended to adopt me, we became excellent friends. Indeed the

following conversation was overheard by Emily, and set down:

‘Do you know, Martyn, there’s a fairies’ ring on Hillside Down?’

‘Mushrooms,’ quoth Martyn.

‘Yes, don’t you know? They are the fairies’ tables. They come out and

spread them with lily tablecloths at night, and have acorn cups for

dishes, with honey in them. And they dance and play there. Well,

couldn’t Mr. Edward go and sit under the beech-tree at the edge till they

come?’

‘I don’t think he would like it at all,’ said Martyn. ‘He never goes out

at odd times.’

‘Oh, but don’t you know? when they come they begin to sing—

‘“Sunday and Monday,

Monday and Tuesday.”

And if he was to sing nicely,

‘“Wednesday and Thursday,”

they would be so much pleased that they would make his back straight

again in a moment. At least, perhaps Wednesday and Thursday would not

do, because the little tailor taught them those; but Friday makes them

angry. But suppose he made some nice verse—

‘“Monday and Tuesday

The fairies are gay,

Tuesday and Wednesday

They dance away—”

I think that would do as well, perhaps. Do get him to do so, Martyn. It

would be so nice if he was tall and straight.’

Dear little thing! Martyn, who was as much her slave as was her

grandfather, absolutely made her shed tears over his history of our

accident, and then caressed them off; but I believe he persuaded her that

such a case might be beyond the fairies’ reach, and that I could hardly

get to the spot in secret, which, it seems, is an essential point. He

had imagination enough to be almost persuaded of fairyland by her

earnestness, and she certainly took him into doll-land. He had a turn

for carpentry and contrivance, and he undertook that the Ladies Rosella,

etc., should be better housed than ever. A great packing-case was routed

out, and much ingenuity was expended, much delight obtained, in the

process of converting it into a doll’s mansion, and replenishing it with

furniture. Some was bought, but Martyn aspired to make whatever he

could; I did a good deal, and I believe most of our achievements are

still extant. Whatever we could not manage, Clarence was to accomplish

when he should come home.

His arrival was, as usual, late in the evening; and, as before, he had

the little room within mine. In the morning, as we were crossing the

hall to the bright wood fire, around which the family were wont to

assemble before prayers, he came to a pause, asking under his breath,

‘What’s that? Who’s that?’

‘It is one of the Hillside pictures. You know we have a great many

things here from thence.’

‘It is _she_,’ he said, in a low, awe-stricken voice. No need to say who

_she_ meant.

I had not paid much attention to the picture. It had come with several

more, such as are rife in country houses, and was one of the worst of the

lot, a poor imitation of Lely’s style, with a certain air common to all

the family; but Clarence’s eyes were riveted on it. ‘She looks younger,’

he said; ‘but it is the same. I could swear to the lip and the whole

shape of the brow and chin. No—the dress is different.’

For in the portrait, there was nothing on the head, and one long lock of

hair fell on the shoulder of the low-cut white-satin dress, done in very

heavy gray shading. The three girls came down together, and I asked who

the lady was.

‘Don’t you know? You ought; for that is poor Margaret who married your

ancestor.’

No more was said then, for the rest of the world was collecting, and then

everybody went out their several ways. Some tin tacks were wanted for

the dolls’ house, and there were reports that Wattlesea possessed a

doll’s grate and fire-irons. The children were wild to go in quest of

them, but they were not allowed to go alone, and it was pronounced too

far and too damp for the elder sister, so that they would have been

disappointed, if Clarence—stimulated by Martyn’s kicks under the

table—had not offered to be their escort. When Mrs. Fordyce demurred, my

mother replied, ‘You may perfectly trust her with Clarence.’

‘Yes; I don’t know a safer squire,’ rejoined my father.

Commendation was so rare that Clarence quite blushed with pleasure; and

the pretty little thing was given into his charge, prancing and dancing

with pleasure, and expecting much more from sixpence and from Wattlesea

than was likely to be fulfilled.

[Picture: ‘That is poor Margaret who married your ancestor.’]

Griff went out shooting, and the two young ladies and I intended to spend

a very rational morning in the bookroom, reading aloud Mme. de La

Rochejaquelein’s _Memoirs_ by turns. Our occupations were, on Emily’s

part, completing a reticule, in a mosaic of shaded coloured beads no

bigger than pins’ heads, for a Christmas gift to mamma—a most wearisome

business, of which she had grown extremely tired. Miss Fordyce was

elaborately copying our Müller’s print of Raffaelle’s St. John in pencil

on cardboard, so as to be as near as possible a facsimile; and she had

trusted me to make a finished water-coloured drawing from a rough sketch

of hers of the Hillside barn and farm-buildings, now no more.

In a pause Ellen Fordyce suddenly asked, ‘What did you mean about that

picture?’

‘Only Clarence said it was like—’ and here Emily came to a dead stop.

‘Grandpapa says it is like me,’ said Miss Fordyce. ‘What, you don’t mean

_that_? Oh! oh! oh! is it true? Does she walk? Have you seen her?

Mamma calls it all nonsense, and would not have Anne hear of it for

anything; but old Aunt Peggy used to tell me, and I am sure grandpapa

believes it, just a little. Have you seen her?’

‘Only Clarence has, and he knew the picture directly.’

She was much impressed, and on slight persuasion related the story, which

she had heard from an elder sister of her grandfather’s, and which had

perhaps been the more impressed on her by her mother’s consternation at

‘such folly’ having been communicated to her. Aunt Peggy, who was much

older than her brother, had died only four years ago, at eighty-eight,

having kept her faculties to the last, and handed down many traditions to

her great-niece. The old lady’s father had been contemporary with the

Margaret of ghostly fame, so that the stages had been few through which

it had come down from 1708 to 1830.

I wrote it down at once, as it here stands.

Margaret was the only daughter of the elder branch of the Fordyces. Her

father had intended her to marry her cousin, the male heir on whom the

Hillside estates and the advowson of that living were entailed; but

before the contract had been formally made, the father was killed by

accident, and through some folly and ambition of her mother’s (such

seemed to be the Fordyce belief), the poor heiress was married to Sir

James Winslow, one of the successful intriguers of the days of the later

Stewarts, and with a family nearly as old, if not older, than herself.

Her own children died almost at their birth, and she was left a young

widow. Being meek and gentle, her step-sons and daughters still ruled

over Chantry House. They prevented her Hillside relations from having

access to her whilst in a languishing state of health, and when she died

unexpectedly, she was found to have bequeathed all her property to her

step-son, Philip Winslow, instead of to her blood relations, the

Fordyces.

This was certain, but the Fordyce tradition was that she had been kept

shut up in the mullion chambers, where she had often been heard weeping

bitterly. One night in the winter, when the gentlemen of the family had

gone out to a Christmas carousal, she had endeavoured to escape by the

steps leading to the garden from the door now bricked up, but had been

met by them and dragged back with violence, of which she died in the

course of a few days; and, what was very suspicious, she had been

entirely attended by her step-daughter and an old nurse, who never would

let her own woman come near her.

The Fordyces had thought of a prosecution, but the Winslows had powerful

interest at Court in those corrupt times, and contrived to hush up the

matter, as well as to win the suit in which the Fordyces attempted to

prove that there was no right to will the property away. Bitter enmity

remained between the families; they were always opposed in politics, and

their animosity was fed by the belief which arose that at the

anniversaries of her death the poor lady haunted the rooms, lamp in hand,

wailing and lamenting. A duel had been fought on the subject between the

heirs of the two families, resulting in the death of the young Winslow.

‘And now,’ cried Ellen Fordyce, ‘the feud is so beautifully ended; the

doom must be appeased, now that the head of one hostile line has come to

the rescue of the other, and saved all our lives.’

My suggestion that these would hardly have been destroyed, even without

our interposition, fell very flat, for romance must have its swing.

Ellen told us how, on the news of our kinsman’s death and our

inheritance, the ancestral story had been discussed, and her grandfather

had said he believed there were letters about it in the iron deed-box,

and how he hoped to be on better terms with the new heir.

The ghost story had always been hushed up in the family, especially since

the duel, and we all knew the resemblance of the picture would be scouted

by our elders; but perhaps this gave us the more pleasure in dwelling

upon it, while we agreed that poor Margaret ought to be appeased by

Griffith’s prowess on behalf of the Fordyces.

The two young ladies went off to inspect the mullion chamber, which they

found so crammed with Hillside furniture that they could scarcely enter,

and returned disappointed, except for having inspected and admired all

Griff’s weapons, especially what Miss Fordyce called the sword of her

rescue.

She had been learning German—rather an unusual study in those days, and

she narrated to us most effectively the story of _Die Weisse Frau_,

working herself up to such a pitch that she would have actually

volunteered to spend a night in the room, to see whether Margaret would

hold any communication with a descendant, after the example of the White

Woman and Lady Bertha, if there had been either fire or accommodation,

and if the only entrance had not been through Griff’s private

sitting-room.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE WHITE FEATHER.

‘The white doe’s milk is not out of his mouth.’

SCOTT.

CLARENCE had come home free from all blots. His summer holiday had been

prevented by the illness of one of the other clerks, whose place, Mr.

Castleford wrote, he had so well supplied that ere long he would be sure

to earn his promotion. That kind friend had several times taken him to

spend a Sunday in the country, and, as we afterwards had reason to think,

would have taken more notice of him but for the rooted belief of Mr.

Frith that it was a case of favouritism, and that piety and strictness

were assumed to throw dust in the eyes of his patron.

Such distrust had tended to render Clarence more reserved than ever, and

it was quite by the accident of finding him studying one of Mrs.

Trimmer’s Manuals that I discovered that, at the request of his good

Rector, he had become a Sunday-school teacher, and was as much interested

as the enthusiastic girls; but I was immediately forbidden to utter a

word on the subject, even to Emily, lest she should tell any one.

Such reserve was no doubt an outcome of his natural timidity. He had to

bear a certain amount of scorn and derision among some of his

fellow-clerks for the stricter habits and observances that could not be

concealed, and he dreaded any fresh revelation of them, partly because of

the cruel imputation of hypocrisy, partly because he feared the bringing

a scandal on religion by his weakness and failures.

Nor did our lady visitors’ ways reassure him, though they meant to be

kind. They could not help being formal and stiff, not as they were with

Griff and me. The two gentlemen were thoroughly friendly and hearty;

Parson Frank could hardly have helped being so towards any one in the

same house with himself; and as to little Anne, she found in the

new-comer a carpenter and upholsterer superior even to Martyn; but her

candour revealed a great deal which I overheard one afternoon, when the

two children were sitting together on the hearth-rug in the bookroom in

the twilight.

‘I want to see Mr. Clarence’s white feather,’ observed Anne.

‘Griff has a white plume in his Yeomanry helmet,’ replied Martyn;

‘Clarence hasn’t one.’

‘Oh, I saw Mr. Griffith’s!’ she answered; ‘but Cousin Horace said Mr.

Clarence showed the white feather.’

‘Cousin Horace is an ape!’ cried Martyn.

‘I don’t think he is so nice as an ape,’ said Anne. ‘He is more like a

monkey. He tries the dolls by court-martial, and he shot Arabella with a

pea-shooter, and broke her eye; only grandpapa made him have it put in

again with his own money, and then he said I was a little sneak, and if I

ever did it again he would shoot me.’

‘Mind you don’t tell Clarence what he said,’ said Martyn.

‘Oh, no! I think Mr. Clarence very nice indeed; but Horace did tease so

about that day when he carried poor Amos Bell home. He said Ellen had

gone and made friends with the worst of all the wicked Winslows, who had

shown the white feather and disgraced his flag. No; I know you are not

wicked. And Mr. Griff came all glittering, like Richard Cœur de Lion,

and saved us all that night. But Ellen cried to think what she had done,

and mamma said it showed what it was to speak to a strange young man; and

she has never let Ellen and me go out of the grounds by ourselves since

that day.’

‘It is a horrid shame,’ exclaimed Martyn, ‘that a fellow can’t get into a

scrape without its being for ever cast up to him.’

‘_I_ like him,’ said Anne. ‘He gave Mary Bell a nice pair of boots, and

he made a new pair of legs for poor old Arabella, and she can really sit

down! Oh, he is _very_ nice; but’—in an awful whisper—‘does he tell

stories? I mean fibs—falsehoods.’

‘Who told you that?’ exclaimed Martyn.

‘Mamma said it. Ellen was telling them something about the picture of

the white-satin lady, and mamma said, “Oh, if it is only that young man,

no doubt it is a mere mystification;” and papa said, “Poor young fellow,

he seems very amiable and well disposed;” and mamma said, “If he can

invent such a story it shows that Horace was right, and he is not to be

believed.” Then they stopped, but I asked Ellen who it was, and she said

it was Mr. Clarence, and it was a sad thing for Emily and all of you to

have such a brother.’

Martyn began to stammer with indignation, and I thought it time to

interfere; so I called the little maid, and gravely explained the facts,

adding that poor Clarence’s punishment had been terrible, but that he was

doing his best to make up for what was past; and that, as to anything he

might have told, though he might be mistaken, he never said anything

_now_ but what he believed to be true. She raised her brown eyes to mine

full of gravity, and said, ‘I _do_ like him.’ Moreover, I privately made

Martyn understand that if he told her what had been said about the

white-satin lady, he would never be forgiven; the others would be sure to

find it out, and it might shorten their stay.

That was a dreadful idea, for the presence of those two creatures, to say

nothing of their parents, was an unspeakable charm and novelty to us all.

We all worshipped the elder, and the little one was like a new discovery

and toy to us, who had never been used to such a presence. She was not a

commonplace child; but even if she had been, she would have been as

charming a study as a kitten; and she had all the four of us at her feet,

though her mother was constantly protesting against our spoiling her, and

really kept up so much wholesome discipline that the little maid never

exceeded the bounds of being charming to us. After that explanation

there was the same sweet wistful gentleness in her manner towards

Clarence as she showed to me; while he, who never dreamt of such a child

knowing his history was brighter and freer with her than with any one

else, played with her and Martyn, and could be heard laughing merrily

with them. Perhaps her mother and sister did not fully like this, but

they could not interfere before our faces. And Parson Frank was really

kind to him; took him out walking when going to Hillside, and talked to

him so as to draw him out; certifying, perhaps, that he would do no harm,

although, indeed, the family looked on dear good Frank as a sort of boy,

too kind-hearted and genial for his approval to be worth as much as that

of the more severe.

These were our only Christmas visitors, for the state of the country did

not invite Londoners; but we did not want them. The suppression of

Clarence was the only flaw in a singularly happy time; and, after all I

believe I felt the pity of it more than he did, who expected nothing, and

was accustomed to being in the background.

For instance, one afternoon in the course of one of the grave discussions

that used to grow up between Miss Fordyce, Emily, and me, over subjects

trite to the better-instructed younger generation, we got quite out of

our shallow depths. I think it was on the meaning of the ‘Communion of

Saints,’ for the two girls were both reading in preparation for a

Confirmation at Bristol, and Miss Fordyce knew more than we did on these

subjects. All the time Clarence had sat in the window, carving a bit of

doll’s furniture, and quite forgotten; but at night he showed me the

exposition copied from _Pearson on the Creed_, a bit of Hooker, and

extracts from one or two sermons. I found these were notes written out

in a blank book, which he had had in hand ever since his Confirmation—his

logbook as he called it; but he would not hear of their being mentioned

even to Emily, and only consented to hunt up the books on condition I

would not bring him forward as the finder. It was of no use to urge that

it was a deprivation to us all that he should not aid us with his more

thorough knowledge and deeper thought. ‘He could not do so,’ he said, in

a quiet decisive manner; ‘it was enough for him to watch and listen to

Miss Fordyce, when she could forget his presence.’

She often did forget it in her eagerness. She was by nature one of the

most ardent beings that I ever saw, yet with enthusiasm kept in check by

the self-control inculcated as a primary duty. It would kindle in those

wonderful light brown eyes, glow in the clear delicate cheek, quiver in

the voice even when the words were only half adequate to the feeling.

She was not what is now called gushing. Oh, no! not in the least! She

was too reticent and had too much dignity for anything of the kind.

Emily had always been reckoned as our romantic young lady, and teased

accordingly, but her enthusiasm beside Ellen’s was

‘As moonlight is to sunlight, as water is to wine,’—

a mere reflection of the tone of the period, compared with a real element

in the character. At least so my sister tells me, though at the time all

the difference I saw was that Miss Fordyce had the most originality, and

unconsciously became the leader. The bookroom was given up to us, and

there in the morning we drew, worked, read, copied and practised music,

wrote out extracts, and delivered our youthful minds to one another on

all imaginable topics from ‘slea silk to predestination.’