We went home, leaving all that was mortal of our darling sleeping at
Enderley, underneath the snows.
For twelve years after then, we lived at Longfield; in such unbroken,
uneventful peace, that looking back seems like looking back over a
level sea, whose leagues of tiny ripples make one smooth glassy plain.
Let me recall--as the first wave that rose, ominous of change--a
certain spring evening, when Mrs. Halifax and I were sitting, as was
our wont, under the walnut-tree. The same old walnut-tree, hardly a
bough altered, though many of its neighbours and kindred had grown from
saplings into trees--even as some of us had grown from children almost
into young men.
"Edwin is late home from Norton Bury," said Ursula.
"So is his father."
"No--this is just John's time. Hark! there are the carriage-wheels!"
For Mr. Halifax, a prosperous man now, drove daily to and from his
mills, in as tasteful an equipage as any of the country gentry between
here and Enderley.
His wife went down to the stream to meet him, as usual, and they came
up the field-path together.
Both were changed from the John and Ursula of whom I last wrote. She,
active and fresh-looking still, but settling into that fair largeness
which is not unbecoming a lady of middle-age, he, inclined to a slight
stoop, with the lines of his face more sharply defined, and the hair
wearing away off his forehead up to the crown. Though still not a grey
thread was discernible in the crisp locks at the back, which
successively five little ones had pulled, and played with, and nestled
in; not a sign of age, as yet, in "father's curls."
As soon as he had spoken to me, he looked round as usual for his
children, and asked if the boys and Maud would be home to tea?
"I think Guy and Walter never do come home in time when they go over to
the manor-house."
"They're young--let them enjoy themselves," said the father, smiling.
"And you know, love, of all our 'fine' friends, there are none you so
heartily approve of as the Oldtowers."
These were not of the former race. Good old Sir Ralph had gone to his
rest, and Sir Herbert reigned in his stead; Sir Herbert, who in his
dignified gratitude never forgot a certain election day, when he first
made the personal acquaintance of Mr. Halifax. The manor-house family
brought several other "county families" to our notice, or us to theirs.
These, when John's fortunes grew rapidly--as many another fortune grew,
in the beginning of the thirty years' peace, when unknown, petty
manufacturers first rose into merchant princes and cotton lords--these
gentry made a perceptible distinction, often amusing enough to us,
between John Halifax, the tanner of Norton Bury, and Mr. Halifax, the
prosperous owner of Enderley Mills. Some of them, too, were clever
enough to discover, what a pleasant and altogether "visitable" lady was
Mrs. Halifax, daughter of the late Mr. March, a governor in the West
Indies, and cousin of Mr. Brithwood of the Mythe. But Mrs. Halifax,
with quiet tenacity, altogether declined being visited as anything but
Mrs. Halifax, wife of John Halifax, tanner, or mill-owner, or whatever
he might be. All honours and all civilities that did not come through
him, and with him, were utterly valueless to her.
To this her peculiarity was added another of John's own, namely, that
all his life he had been averse to what is called "society;" had
eschewed "acquaintances,"--and--but most men might easily count upon
their fingers the number of those who, during a life-time, are found
worthy of the sacred name of "friend." Consequently, our circle of
associations was far more limited than that of many families holding an
equal position with us--on which circumstance our neighbours commented
a good deal. But little we cared; no more than we had cared for the
chit-chat of Norton Bury. Our whole hearts were bound up within our
own home--our happy Longfield.
"I do think this place is growing prettier than ever," said John, when,
tea being over--a rather quiet meal, without a single child--we elders
went out again to the walnut-tree bench. "Certainly, prettier than
ever;" and his eye wandered over the quaint, low house, all odds and
ends--for nearly every year something had been built, or something
pulled down; then crossing the smooth bit of lawn, Jem Watkins's
special pride, it rested on the sloping field, yellow with tall
buttercups, wavy with growing grass. "Let me see--how long have we
lived here? Phineas, you are the one for remembering dates. What year
was it we came to Longfield?"
"Eighteen hundred and twelve. Thirteen years ago."
"Ah, so long!"
"Not too long," said Mrs. Halifax, earnestly. "I hope we may end our
days here. Do not you, John?"
He paused a little before answering. "Yes, I wish it; but I am not
sure how far it would be right to do it."
"We will not open that subject again," said the mother, uneasily. "I
thought we had all made up our minds that little Longfield was a
thousand times pleasanter than Beechwood, grand as it is. But John
thinks he never can do enough for his people at Enderley."
"Not that alone, love. Other reasons combined. Do you know, Phineas,"
he continued, musingly, as he watched the sun set over Leckington
Hill--"sometimes I fancy my life is too easy--that I am not a wise
steward of the riches that have multiplied so fast. By fifty, a man so
blest as I have been, ought to have done really something of use in the
world--and I am forty-five. Once, I hoped to have done wonderful
things ere I was forty-five. But somehow the desire faded."
His wife and I were silent. We both knew the truth; that calm as had
flowed his outer existence, in which was omitted not one actual duty,
still, for these twelve years, all the high aims which make the glory
and charm of life as duties make its strength, all the active energies
and noble ambitions which especially belong to the prime of manhood, in
him had been, not dead perhaps, but sleeping. Sleeping, beyond the
power of any human voice to waken them, under the daisies of a child's
grave at Enderley.
I know not if this was right--but it was scarcely unnatural. In that
heart, which loved as few men love, and remembered as few men remember,
so deep a wound could never be thoroughly healed. A certain something
in him seemed different ever after, as if a portion of the father's own
life had been taken away with Muriel, and lay buried in the little dead
bosom of his first-born, his dearest child.
"You forget," said Mrs. Halifax, tenderly--"you forget, John, how much
you have been doing, and intend to do. What with your improvements at
Enderley, and your Catholic Emancipation--your Abolition of Slavery and
your Parliamentary Reform--why, there is hardly any scheme for good,
public or private, to which you do not lend a helping hand."
"A helping purse, perhaps, which is an easier thing, much."
"I will not have you blaming yourself. Ask Phineas, there--our
household Solomon."
"Thank you, Ursula," said I, submitting to the not rare fortune of
being loved and laughed at.
"Uncle Phineas, what better could John have done in all these years,
than look after his mills and educate his three sons?"
"Have them educated, rather," corrected he, sensitive over his own
painfully-gained and limited acquirements. Yet this feeling had made
him doubly careful to give his boys every possible advantage of study,
short of sending them from home, to which he had an invincible
objection. And three finer lads, or better educated, there could not
be found in the whole country.
"I think, John, Guy has quite got over his fancy of going to Cambridge
with Ralph Oldtower."
"Yes; college life would not have done for Guy," said the father
thoughtfully.
"Hush! we must not talk about them, for here come the children."
It was now a mere figure of speech to call them so, though in their
home-taught, loving simplicity, they would neither have been ashamed
nor annoyed at the epithet--these two tall lads, who in the dusk looked
as man-like as their father.
"Where is your sister, boys?"
"Maud stopped at the stream with Edwin," answered Guy, rather
carelessly. His heart had kept its childish faith; the youngest, pet
as she was, was never anything to him but "little Maud." One--whom the
boys still talked of, softly and tenderly, in fireside evening talks,
when the winter winds came and the snow was falling--one only was ever
spoken of by Guy as "sister."
Maud, or Miss Halifax, as from the first she was naturally called--as
naturally as our lost darling was never called anything else than
Muriel--came up, hanging on Edwin's arm, which she was fond of doing,
both because it happened to be the only arm low enough to suit her
childish stature, and because she was more especially "Edwin's girl,"
and had been so always. She had grown out of the likeness that we
longed for in her cradle days, or else we had grown out of the
perception of it; for though the external resemblance in hair and
complexion still remained, nothing could be more unlike in spirit than
this sprightly elf, at once the plague and pet of the family--to our
Muriel.
"Edwin's girl" stole away with him, merrily chattering. Guy sat down
beside his mother, and slipped his arm round her waist. They still
fondled her with a child-like simplicity--these her almost grown-up
sons; who had never been sent to school for a day, and had never
learned from other sons of far different mothers, that a young man's
chief manliness ought to consist in despising the tender charities of
home.
"Guy, you foolish boy!" as she took his cap off and pushed back his
hair, trying not to look proud of his handsome face, "what have you
been doing all day?"
"Making myself agreeable, of course, mother."
"That he has," corroborated Walter, whose great object of hero-worship
was his eldest brother. "He talked with Lady Oldtower, and he sang
with Miss Oldtower and Miss Grace. Never was there such a fellow as
our Guy."
"Nonsense!" said his mother, while Guy only laughed, too accustomed to
this family admiration to be much disconcerted or harmed thereby.
"When does Ralph return to Cambridge?"
"Not at all. He is going to leave college, and be off to help the
Greeks. Father, do you know everybody is joining the Greeks? Even
Lord Byron is off with the rest. I only wish I were."
"Heaven forbid!" muttered the mother.
"Why not? I should have made a capital soldier, and liked it too,
better than anything."
"Better than being my right hand at the mills, and your mother's at
home?--Better than growing up to be our eldest son, our comfort and our
hope?--I think not, Guy."
"You are right, father," was the answer, with an uneasy look. For this
description seemed less what Guy was than what we desired him to be.
With his easy, happy temper, generous but uncertain, and his showy,
brilliant parts, he was not nearly so much to be depended on as the
grave Edwin, who was already a thorough man of business, and plodded
between Enderley mills and a smaller one which had taken the place of
the flour mill at Norton Bury, with indomitable perseverance.
Guy fell into a brown study, not unnoticed by those anxious eyes, which
lingered oftener upon his face than on that of any of her sons. Mrs.
Halifax said, in her quick, decisive way, that it was "time to go in."
So the sunset picture outside changed to the home-group within; the
mother sitting at her little table, where the tall silver candlestick
shed a subdued light on her work-basket, that never was empty, and her
busy fingers, that never were still. The father sat beside her; he
kept his old habit of liking to have her close to him; ay, even though
he was falling into the middle-aged comforts of an arm-chair and
newspaper. There he sat, sometimes reading aloud, or talking;
sometimes lazily watching her, with silent, loving eyes, that saw
beauty in his old wife still.
The young folk scattered themselves about the room. Guy and Walter at
the unshuttered window--we had a habit of never hiding our
home-light--were looking at the moon, and laying bets, sotto voce, upon
how many minutes she would be in climbing over the oak on the top of
One-tree Hill. Edwin sat, reading hard--his shoulders up to his ears,
and his fingers stuck through his hair, developing the whole of his
broad, knobbed, knotted forehead, where, Maud declared, the wrinkles
had already begun to show. For Mistress Maud herself, she flitted
about in all directions, interrupting everything, and doing nothing.
"Maud," said her father, at last, "I am afraid you give a great deal of
trouble to Uncle Phineas."
Uncle Phineas tried to soften the fact, but the little lady was
certainly the most trying of his pupils. Her mother she had long
escaped from, for the advantage of both. For, to tell the truth, while
in the invisible atmosphere of moral training the mother's influence
was invaluable, in the minor branch of lesson-learning there might have
been found many a better teacher than Ursula Halifax. So the
children's education was chiefly left to me; other tutors succeeding as
was necessary; and it had just begun to be considered whether a lady
governess ought not to "finish" the education of Miss Halifax. But
always at home. Not for all the knowledge and all the accomplishments
in the world would these parents have suffered either son or
daughter--living souls intrusted them by the Divine Father--to be
brought up anywhere out of their own sight, out of the shelter and
safeguard of their own natural home.
"Love, when I was waiting to-day in Jessop's bank--"
(Ah! that was another change, to which we were even yet not familiar,
the passing away of our good doctor and his wife, and his brother and
heir turning the old dining-room into a "County Bank--open from ten
till four.")
"While waiting there I heard of a lady who struck me as likely to be an
excellent governess for Maud."
"Indeed!" said Mrs. Halifax, not over-enthusiastically. Maud became
eager to know "what the lady was like?" I at the same time inquiring
"who she was?"
"Who? I really did not ask," John answered, smiling. "But of what she
is, Jessop gave me first-rate evidence--a good daughter, who teaches in
Norton Bury anybody's children for any sort of pay, in order to
maintain an ailing mother. Ursula, you would let her teach our Maud, I
know?"
"Is she an Englishwoman?"--For Mrs. Halifax, prejudiced by a certain
French lady who had for a few months completely upset the peace of the
manor-house, and even slightly tainted her own favourite, pretty Grace
Oldtower, had received coldly this governess plan from the beginning.
"Would she have to live with us?"
"I think so, decidedly."
"Then it can't be. The house will not accommodate her. It will hardly
hold even ourselves. No, we cannot take in anybody else at Longfield."
"But--we may have to leave Longfield."
The boys here turned to listen; for this question had already been
mooted, as all family questions were. In our house we had no secrets:
the young folk, being trusted, were ever trustworthy; and the parents,
clean-handed and pure-hearted, had nothing that they were afraid to
tell their children.
"Leave Longfield!" repeated Mrs. Halifax; "surely--surely--" But
glancing at her husband, her tone of impatience ceased.
He sat gazing into the fire with an anxious air.
"Don't let us discuss that question--at least, not to-night. It
troubles you, John. Put it off till to-morrow."
No, that was never his habit. He was one of the very few who, a thing
being to be done, will not trust it to uncertain "to-morrows." His wife
saw that he wanted to talk to her, and listened.
"Yes, the question does trouble me a good deal. Whether, now that our
children are growing up, and our income is doubling and trebling year
by year, we ought to widen our circle of usefulness, or close it up
permanently within the quiet bound of little Longfield. Love, which
say you?"
"The latter, the latter--because it is far the happiest."
"I am afraid, NOT the latter, because it IS the happiest."
He spoke gently, laying his hand on his wife's shoulder, and looking
down on her with that peculiar look which he always had when telling
her things that he knew were sore to hear. I never saw that look on
any living face save John's; but I have seen it once in a picture--of
two Huguenot lovers. The woman is trying to fasten round the man's
neck the white badge that will save him from the massacre (of St.
Bartholomew)--he, clasping her the while, gently puts it aside--not
stern, but smiling. That quiet, tender smile, firmer than any frown,
will, you feel sure, soon control the woman's anguish, so that she will
sob out--any faithful woman would--"Go, die! Dearer to me than even
thyself are thy honour and thy duty!"
When I saw this noble picture, it touched to the core this old heart of
mine--for the painter, in that rare expression, might have caught
John's. Just as in a few crises of his life I have seen it, and
especially in this one, when he first told to his wife that
determination which he had slowly come to--that it was both right and
expedient for us to quit Longfield, our happy home for so many years,
of which the mother loved every flower in the garden, every nook and
stone in the walls.
"Leave Longfield!" she repeated again, with a bitter sigh.
"Leave Longfield!" echoed the children, first the youngest, then the
eldest, but rather in curiosity than regret. Edwin's keen, bright eyes
were just lifted from his book, and fell again; he was not a lad of
much speech, or much demonstration of any kind.
"Boys, come and let us talk over the matter."
They came at once and joined in the circle; respectfully, yet with
entire freedom, they looked towards their father--these, the sons of
his youth, to whom he had been from their birth, not only parent and
head, but companion, guide, and familiar friend. They honoured him,
they trusted him, they loved him; not, perhaps, in the exact way that
they loved their mother; for it often seems Nature's own ordinance,
that a mother's influence should be strongest over her sons, while the
father's is greatest over his daughters. But even a stranger could not
glance from each to each of those attentive faces, so different, yet
with a curious "family look" running through them all, without seeing
in what deep, reverent affection, such as naturally takes the place of
childish fondness, these youths held their father.
"Yes, I am afraid, after much serious thought on the matter, and much
consultation with your mother here,--that we ought to leave Longfield."
"So I think," said Mistress Maud, from her footstool; which putting
forward of her important opinion shook us all from gravity to
merriment, that compelled even Mrs. Halifax to join. Then, laying
aside her work, and with it the saddened air with which she had bent
over it, she drew her chair closer to her husband, slipping her hand in
his, and leaning against his shoulder. Upon which Guy, who had at
first watched his mother anxiously, doubtful whether or no his father's
plan had her approval, and therefore ought to be assented to,--relapsed
into satisfied, undivided attention.
"I have again been over Beechwood Hall. You all remember Beechwood?"
Yes. It was the "great house" at Enderley, just on the slope of the
hill, below Rose Cottage. The beech-wood itself was part of its
pleasure ground, and from its gardens honest James Tod, who had them in
keeping, had brought many a pocketful of pears for the boys, many a
sweet-scented nosegay for Muriel.
"Beechwood has been empty a great many years, father? Would it be a
safe investment to buy it?"
"I think so, Edwin, my practical lad," answered the father, smiling.
"What say you, children? Would you like living there?"
Each one made his or her comment. Guy's countenance brightened at the
notion of "lots of shooting and fishing" about Enderley, especially at
Luxmore; and Maud counted on the numerous visitors that would come to
John Halifax, Esquire, of Beechwood Hall.
"Neither of which excellent reasons happen to be your father's," said
Mrs. Halifax, shortly. But John, often tenderer over youthful
frivolities than she, answered:
"I will tell you, boys, what are my reasons. When I was a young man,
before your mother and I were married, indeed before I had ever seen
her, I had strongly impressed on my mind the wish to gain influence in
the world--riches if I could--but at all events, influence. I thought
I could use it well, better than most men; those can best help the poor
who understand the poor. And I can; since, you know, when Uncle
Phineas found me, I was--"
"Father," said Guy, flushing scarlet, "we may as well pass over that
fact. We are gentlefolks now."
"We always were, my son."
The rebuke, out of its very mildness, cut the youth to the heart. He
dropped his eyes, colouring now with a different and a holier shame.
"I know that. Please will you go on, father."
"And now," the father continued, speaking as much out of his own
thoughts as aloud to his children--"now, twenty-five years of labour
have won for me the position I desired. That is, I might have it for
the claiming. I might take my place among the men who have lately
risen from the people, to guide and help the people--the Cannings,
Huskissons, Peels."
"Would you enter parliament? Sir Herbert asked me to-day if you ever
intended it. He said there was nothing you might not attain to if you
would give yourself up entirely to politics."
"No, Guy, no. Wisdom, like charity, begins at home. Let me learn to
rule in my own valley, among my own people, before I attempt to guide
the state. And that brings me back again to the pros and cons about
Beechwood Hall."
"Tell them, John; tell all out plainly to the children."
The reasons were--first, the advantage of the boys themselves; for John
Halifax was not one of those philanthropists who would benefit all the
world except their own household and their own kin. He wished--since
the higher a man rises, the wider and nobler grows his sphere of
usefulness--not only to lift himself, but his sons after him; lift them
high enough to help on the ever-advancing tide of human improvement,
among their own people first, and thence extending outward in the world
whithersoever their talents or circumstances might call them.
"I understand," cried the eldest son, his eyes sparkling; "you want to
found a family. And so it shall be--we will settle at Beechwood Hall;
all coming generations shall live to the honour and glory of your
name--our name--"
"My boy, there is only one Name to whose honour we should all live. One
Name 'in whom all the generations of the earth are blessed.' In thus
far only do I wish to 'found a family,' as you call it, that our light
may shine before men--that we may be a city set on a hill--that we may
say plainly unto all that ask us, 'For me and my house, we will serve
the Lord.'"
It was not often that John Halifax spoke thus; adopting solemnly the
literal language of the Book--his and our life's guide, no word of
which was ever used lightly in our family. We all listened, as in his
earnestness he rose, and, standing upright in the firelight, spoke on.
"I believe, with His blessing, that one may 'serve the Lord' as well in
wealth as in poverty, in a great house as in a cottage like this. I am
not doubtful, even though my possessions are increased. I am not
afraid of being a rich man. Nor a great man neither, if I were called
to such a destiny."
"It may be--who knows?" said Ursula, softly.
John caught his wife's eyes, and smiled.
"Love, you were a true prophet once, with a certain 'Yes, you will,'
but now--Children, you know when I married your mother I had nothing,
and she gave up everything for me. I said I would yet make her as high
as any lady in the land,--in fortune I then meant, thinking it would
make her happier; but she and I are wiser now. We know that we never
can be happier than we were in the old house at Norton Bury, or in this
little Longfield. By making her lady of Beechwood I should double her
responsibilities and treble her cares; give her an infinitude of new
duties, and no pleasures half so sweet as those we leave behind.
Still, of herself and for herself, my wife shall decide."
Ursula looked up at him; tears stood in her eyes, though through them
shone all the steadfastness of faithful love. "Thank you, John. I
have decided. If you wish it, if you think it right, we will leave
Longfield and go to Beechwood."
He stooped and kissed her forehead, saying only: "We will go."
Guy looked up, half-reproachfully, as if the father were exacting a
sacrifice; but I question whether the greater sacrifice were not his
who took rather than hers who gave.
So all was settled--we were to leave beloved Longfield. It was to be
let, not sold; let to a person we knew, who would take jealous care of
all that was ours, and we might come back and see it continually; but
it would be ours--our own home--no more.
Very sad--sadder even than I had thought--was the leaving all the
familiar things; the orchard and the flower-garden, the meadow and the
stream, the woody hills beyond, every line and wave of which was
pleasant and dear almost as our children's faces. Ay, almost as that
face which for a year--one little year, had lived in sight of, but
never beheld, their beauty; the child who one spring day had gone away
merrily out of the white gate with her three brothers, and never came
back to Longfield any more.
Perhaps this circumstance, that her fading away and her departure
happened away from home, was the cause why her memory--the memory of
our living Muriel, in her human childhood--afterwards clung more
especially about the house at Longfield. The other children altered,
imperceptibly, yet so swiftly, that from year to year we half forgot
their old likenesses. But Muriel's never changed. Her image, only a
shade, yet often more real than any of these living children, seemed
perpetually among us. It crept through the house at dusk; in winter
fire-light it sat smiling in dim corners; in spring mornings it moved
about the garden borders, with tiny soft footsteps neither seen nor
heard. The others grew up--would be men and women shortly--but the one
child that "was not," remained to us always a child.
I thought, even the last evening--the very last evening that John
returned from Enderley, and his wife went down to the stream to meet
him, and they came up the field together, as they had done so for many,
many years;--ay, even then I thought I saw his eyes turn to the spot
where a little pale figure used to sit on the door-sill, listening and
waiting for him, with her dove in her bosom. We never kept doves now.
And the same night, when all the household was in bed--even the mother,
who had gone about with a restless activity, trying to persuade herself
that there would be at least no possibility of accomplishing the
flitting to-morrow--the last night, when John went as usual to fasten
the house-door, he stood a long time outside, looking down the valley.
"How quiet everything is. You can almost hear the tinkle of the
stream. Poor old Longfield!" And I sighed, thinking we should never
again have such another home.
John did not answer. He had been mechanically bending aside and
training into its place a long shoot of wild clematis--virgin's bower,
which Guy and Muriel had brought in from the fields and planted, a tiny
root; it covered the whole front of the house now. Then he came and
leaned beside me over the wicket-gate, looking fixedly up into the
moon-light blue.
"I wonder if she knows we are leaving Longfield?"
"Who?" said I; for a moment forgetting.
"The child."