COLD WELCOME
Seek not for others to love you,
But seek yourself to love them best,
And you shall find the secret true,
Of love and joy and rest.
I. WILLIAMS.
TO lack beauty was a much more serious misfortune in the Middle Ages than
at present. Of course it was probable that there might be a contract of
marriage made entirely irrespective of attractiveness, long before the
development of either of the principal parties concerned; but even then
the rude, open-spoken husband would consider himself absolved from any
attention to an ill-favoured wife, and the free tongues of her
surroundings would not be slack to make her aware of her defects. The
cloister was the refuge of the unmarried woman, if of gentle birth as a
nun, if of a lower grade as a lay-sister; but the fifteenth century was
an age neither of religion nor of chivalry. Dowers were more thought of
than devotion in convents as elsewhere. Whitby being one of the oldest
and grandest foundations was sure to be inaccessible to a high-born but
unportioned girl, and Grisell in her sense of loneliness saw nothing
before her but to become an anchoress, that is to say, a female hermit,
such as generally lived in strict seclusion under shelter of the Church.
“There at least,” thought poor Grisell, “there would be none to sting me
to the heart with those jeering eyes of theirs. And I might feel in time
that God and His Saints loved me, and not long for my father and mother,
and oh! my poor little brother—yes, and Leonard Copeland, and Sister
Avice, and the rest. But would Sister Avice call this devotion? Nay,
would she not say that these cruel eyes and words are a cross upon me,
and I must bear them and love in spite—at least till I be old enough to
choose for myself?”
She was summoned to supper, and this increased the sense of dreariness,
for Bernard screamed that the grisly one should not come near him, or he
would not eat, and she had to take her meal of dried fish and barley
bread in the wide chimney corner, where there always was a fire at every
season of the year.
Her chamber, which Cuthbert Ridley’s exertions had compelled the women to
prepare for her, was—as seen in the light of the long evening—a desolate
place, within a turret, opening from the solar, or chamber of her parents
and Bernard, the loophole window devoid of glass, though a shutter could
be closed in bad weather, the walls circular and of rough, untouched,
unconcealed stone, a pallet bed—the only attempt at furniture, except one
chest—and Grisell’s own mails tumbled down anyhow, and all pervaded by an
ancient and fishy smell. She felt too downhearted even to creep out and
ask for a pitcher of water. She took a long look over the gray, heaving
sea, and tired as she was, it was long before she could pray and cry
herself to sleep, and accustomed as she was to convent beds, this one
appeared to be stuffed with raw apples, and she awoke with aching bones.
Her request for a pitcher or pail of water was treated as southland
finery, for those who washed at all used the horse trough, but
fortunately for her Cuthbert Ridley heard the request. He had been
enough in the south in attendance on his master to know how young damsels
lived, and what treatment they met with, and he was soon rating the women
in no measured terms for the disrespect they had presumed to show to the
Lady Grisell, encouraged by the neglect of her parents
The Lord of Whitburn, appearing on the scene at the moment, backed up his
retainer, and made it plain that he intended his daughter to be respected
and obeyed, and the grumbling women had to submit. Nor did he refuse to
acknowledge, on Ridley’s representation, that Grisell ought to have an
attendant of her own, and the lady of the castle, coming down with
Bernard clinging to her skirt with one hand, and leaning on his crutch,
consented. “If the maid was to be here, she must be treated fitly, and
Bell and Madge had enough to do without convent-bred fancies.”
So Cuthbert descended the steep path to the ravine where dwelt the fisher
folk, and came back with a girl barefooted, bareheaded, with long,
streaming, lint-white locks, and the scantiest of garments, crying
bitterly with fright, and almost struggling to go back. She was the
orphan remnant of a family drowned in the bay, and was a burthen on her
fisher kindred, who were rejoiced thus to dispose of her.
She sobbed the more at sight of the grisly lady, and almost screamed when
Grisell smiled and tried to take her by the hand. Ridley fairly drove
her upstairs, step by step, and then shut her in with his young lady,
when she sank on the floor and hid her face under all her bleached hair.
“Poor little thing,” thought Grisell; “it is like having a fresh-caught
sea-gull. She is as forlorn as I am, and more afraid!”
So she began to speak gently and coaxingly, begging the girl to look up,
and assuring her that she would not be hurt. Grisell had a very soft and
persuasive voice. Her chief misfortune as regarded her appearance was
that the muscles of one cheek had been so drawn that though she smiled
sweetly with one side of her face, the other was contracted and went
awry, so that when the kind tones had made the girl look up for a moment,
the next she cried, “O don’t—don’t! Holy Mary, forbid the spell!”
“I have no spells, my poor maid; indeed I am only a poor girl, a stranger
here in my own home. Come, and do not fear me.”
“Madge said you had witches’ marks on your face,” sobbed the child.
“Only the marks of gunpowder,” said Grisell. “Listen, I will tell thee
what befell me.”
Gunpowder seemed to be quite beyond all experience of Whitburn nature,
but the history of the catastrophe gained attention, and the girl’s
terror abated, so that Grisell could ask her name, which was Thora, and
learning, too, that she had led a hard life since her granny died, and
her uncle’s wife beat her, and made her carry heavy loads of seaweed when
it froze her hands, besides a hundred other troubles. As to knowing any
kind of feminine art, she was as ignorant as if the rough and extremely
dirty woollen garment she wore, belted round with a strip of leather, had
grown upon her, and though Grisell’s own stock of garments was not
extensive, she was obliged, for very shame, to dress this strange
attendant in what she could best spare, as well as, in spite of sobs and
screams, to wash her face, hands, and feet, and it was wonderful how
great a difference this made in the wild creature by the time the clang
of the castle bell summoned all to the midday meal, when as before,
Bernard professed not to be able to look at his sister, but when she had
retreated he was seen spying at her through his fingers, with great
curiosity.
Afterwards she went up to her mother to beg for a few necessaries for
herself and for her maid, and to offer to do some spinning. She was not
very graciously answered; but she was allowed an old frayed horse-cloth
on which Thora might sleep, and for the rest she might see what she could
find under the stairs in the turret, or in the chest in the hall window.
The broken, dilapidated fragments which seemed to Grisell mere rubbish
were treasures and wonders to Thora, and out of them she picked enough to
render her dreary chamber a very few degrees more habitable. Thora would
sleep there, and certainly their relations were reversed, for carrying
water was almost the only office she performed at first, since Grisell
had to dress her, and teach her to keep herself in a tolerable state of
neatness, and likewise how to spin, luring her with the hope of spinning
yarn for a new dress for herself. As to prayers, her mind was a mere
blank, though she said something that sounded like a spell except that it
began with “Pater.” She did not know who made her, and entirely believed
in Niord and Rana, the storm-gods of Norseland. Yet she had always been
to mass every Sunday morning. So went all the family at the castle as a
matter of course, but except when the sacring-bell hushed them, the Baron
freely discussed crops or fish with the tenants, and the lady wrangled
about dues of lambs, eggs, and fish. Grisell’s attention was a new
thing, and the priest’s pronunciation was so defective to her ear that
she could hardly follow.
That first week Grisell had plenty of occupation in settling her room and
training her uncouth maid, who proved a much more apt scholar than she
had expected, and became devoted to her like a little faithful dog.
No one else took much notice of either, except that at times Cuthbert
Ridley showed himself to be willing to stand up for her. Her father was
out a great deal, hunting or hawking or holding consultations with
neighbouring knights or the men of Sunderland. Her mother, with the
loudest and most peremptory of voices, ruled over the castle, ordered the
men on their guards and at the stables, and the cook, scullions, and
other servants, but without much good effect as household affairs were
concerned, for the meals were as far removed from the delicate, dainty
serving of the simplest fast-day meal at Wilton as from the sumptuous
plenty and variety of Warwick house, and Bernard often cried and could
not eat. She longed to make up for him one of the many appetising
possets well known at Wilton, but her mother and Ralf the cook both
scouted her first proposal. They wanted no south-bred meddlers over
their fire.
However, one evening when Bernard had been fretful and in pain, the Baron
had growled out that the child was cockered beyond all bearing, and the
mother had flown out at the unnatural father, and on his half laughing at
her doting ways, had actually rushed across with clenched fist to box his
ears; he had muttered that the pining brat and shrewish dame made the
house no place for him, and wandered out to the society of his horses.
Lady Whitburn, after exhaling her wrath in abuse of him and all around,
carried the child up to his bed. There he was moaning, and she trying to
soothe him, when, darkness having put a stop to Grisell’s spinning, she
went to her chamber with Thora. In passing, the moaning was still heard,
and she even thought her mother was crying. She ventured to approach and
ask, “Fares he no better? If I might rub that poor leg.”
But Bernard peevishly hid his face and whined, “Go away, Grisly,” and her
mother exclaimed, “Away with you, I have enough to vex me here without
you.”
She could only retire as fast as possible, and her tears ran down her
face as in the long summer twilight she recited the evening offices, the
same in which Sister Avice was joining in Wilton chapel. Before they
were over she heard her father come up to bed, and in a harsh and angered
voice bid Bernard to be still. There was stillness for some little time,
but by and by the moaning and sobbing began again, and there was a
jangling between the gruff voice and the shrill one, now thinner and
weaker. Grisell felt that she must try again, and crept out. “If I
might rub him a little while, and you rest, Lady Mother. He cannot see
me now.”
She prevailed, or rather the poor mother’s utter weariness and dejection
did, together with the father’s growl, “Let her bring us peace if she
can.”
Lady Whitburn let her kneel down by the bed, and guided her hand to the
aching thigh.
“Soft! Soft! Good! Good!” muttered Bernard presently. “Go on!”
Grisell had acquired something of that strange almost magical touch of
Sister Avice, and Bernard lay still under her hand. Her mother, who was
quite worn out, moved to her own bed, and fell asleep, while the snores
of the Baron proclaimed him to have been long appeased. The boy, too,
presently was breathing softly, and Grisell’s attitude relaxed, as her
prayers and her dreams mingled together, and by and by, what she thought
was the organ in Wilton chapel, and the light of St. Edith’s taper,
proved to be the musical rush of the incoming tide, and the golden
sunrise over the sea, while all lay sound asleep around her, and she
ventured gently to withdraw into her own room.
That night was Grisell’s victory, though Bernard still held aloof from
her all the ensuing day, when he was really the better and fresher for
his long sleep, but at bed-time, when as usual the pain came on, he
wailed for her to rub him, and as it was still daylight, and her father
had gone out in one of the boats to fish, she ventured on singing to him,
as she rubbed, to his great delight and still greater boon to her
yearning heart. Even by day, as she sat at work, the little fellow
limped up to her, and said, “Grisly, sing that again,” staring hard in
her face as she did so.