December 12th, 1747.—My life has been strangely bound up with
extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I even
knew of their existence. I suppose, most old men are, like me, more
given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest
and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events—though these
may have far more interest for the multitude—immediately passing before
their eyes. If this should be the case with the generality of old
people, how much more so with me! . . . If I am to enter upon that
strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back. I
myself only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her;
but, to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the
order in which they occurred—not that in which I became acquainted with
them.
There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part they
called the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named Craven.
Starkey Manor-house is rather like a number of rooms clustered round a
gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall. Indeed, I suppose
that the house only consisted of a great tower in the centre, in the days
when the Scots made their raids terrible as far south as this; and that
after the Stuarts came in, and there was a little more security of
property in those parts, the Starkeys of that time added the lower
building, which runs, two stories high, all round the base of the keep.
There has been a grand garden laid out in my days, on the southern slope
near the house; but when I first knew the place, the kitchen-garden at
the farm was the only piece of cultivated ground belonging to it. The
deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and might
have browsed quite close up to the house if they had not been too wild
and shy. Starkey Manor-house itself stood on a projection or peninsula
of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills that form the sides of
the Trough of Bolland. These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards
their summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled copsewood and
green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of an ancient forest-tree
would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly white branches, as if
in imprecation, to the sky. These trees, they told me, were the remnants
of that forest which existed in the days of the Heptarchy, and were even
then noted as landmarks. No wonder that their upper and more exposed
branches were leafless, and that the dead bark had peeled away, from
sapless old age.
Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently, of the same
date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the family, who
sought shelter—they and their families and their small flocks and
herds—at the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them had pretty much
fallen to decay. They were built in a strange fashion. Strong beams had
been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other
ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape of
one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger.
The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish,
mortar—anything to keep out the weather. The fires were made in the
centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only
chimney. No Highland hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher
construction.
The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century, was
a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey. His family had kept to the old faith, and
were stanch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to marry any one of
Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to embrace
the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick Starkey’s father had been a follower of
James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign of that
monarch he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as
zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself. He had returned
to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her, bearing her back
to the court at St. Germains. But some licence on the part of the
disorderly gentlemen who surrounded King James in his exile, had insulted
his beautiful wife, and disgusted him; so he removed from St. Germains to
Antwerp, whence, in a few years’ time, he quietly returned to Starkey
Manor-house—some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent their good
offices to reconcile him to the powers that were. He was as firm a
Catholic as ever, and as stanch an advocate for the Stuarts and the
divine rights of kings; but his religion almost amounted to asceticism,
and the conduct of these with whom he had been brought in such close
contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection of a stern
moralist. So he gave his allegiance where he could not give his esteem,
and learned to respect sincerely the upright and moral character of one
whom he yet regarded as an usurper. King William’s government had little
need to fear such a one. So he returned, as I have said, with a sobered
heart and impoverished fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had fallen
sadly to ruin while the owner had been a courtier, a soldier, and an
exile. The roads into the Trough of Bolland were little more than
cart-ruts; indeed, the way up to the house lay along a ploughed field
before you came to the deer-park. Madam, as the country-folk used to
call Mrs. Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her husband, holding on to
him with a light hand by his leather riding-belt. Little master (he that
was afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his pony by a
serving-man. A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong
step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and high up on the mails
and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on the topmost
trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart rocked and
shook in the heavy roads of late autumn. The girl wore the Antwerp
faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and altogether her
appearance was such that the old cottager, who described the possession
to me many years after, said that all the country-folk took her for a
foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the
company. They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at
the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to
the real Squire, “come back at last,” and gazed after the little
procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign
language in which the few necessary words that passed among them were
spoken. One lad, called from his staring by the Squire to come and help
about the cart, accompanied them to the Manor-house. He said that when
the lady had descended from her pillion, the middle-aged woman whom I
have described as walking while the others rode, stepped quickly forward,
and taking Madam Starkey (who was of a slight and delicate figure) in her
arms, she lifted her over the threshold, and set her down in her
husband’s house, at the same time uttering a passionate and outlandish
blessing. The Squire stood by, smiling gravely at first; but when the
words of blessing were pronounced, he took off his fine feathered hat,
and bent his head. The girl with the black mantle stepped onward into
the shadow of the dark hall, and kissed the lady’s hand; and that was all
the lad could tell to the group that gathered round him on his return,
eager to hear everything, and to know how much the Squire had given him
for his services.
From all I could gather, the Manor-house, at the time of the Squire’s
return, was in the most dilapidated state. The stout gray walls remained
firm and entire; but the inner chambers had been used for all kinds of
purposes. The great withdrawing-room had been a barn; the state
tapestry-chamber had held wool, and so on. But, by-and-by, they were
cleared out; and if the Squire had no money to spend on new furniture, he
and his wife had the knack of making the best of the old. He was no
despicable joiner; she had a kind of grace in whatever she did, and
imparted an air of elegant picturesqueness to whatever she touched.
Besides, they had brought many rare things from the Continent; perhaps I
should rather say, things that were rare in that part of
England—carvings, and crosses, and beautiful pictures. And then, again,
wood was plentiful in the Trough of Bolland, and great log-fires danced
and glittered in all the dark, old rooms, and gave a look of home and
comfort to everything.
Why do I tell you all this? I have little to do with the Squire and
Madame Starkey; and yet I dwell upon them, as if I were unwilling to come
to the real people with whom my life was so strangely mixed up. Madam
had been nursed in Ireland by the very woman who lifted her in her arms,
and welcomed her to her husband’s home in Lancashire. Excepting for the
short period of her own married life, Bridget Fitzgerald had never left
her nursling. Her marriage—to one above her in rank—had been unhappy.
Her husband had died, and left her in even greater poverty than that in
which she was when he had first met with her. She had one child, the
beautiful daughter who came riding on the waggon-load of furniture that
was brought to the Manor-house. Madame Starkey had taken her again into
her service when she became a widow. She and her daughter had followed
“the mistress” in all her fortunes; they had lived at St. Germains and at
Antwerp, and were now come to her home in Lancashire. As soon as Bridget
had arrived there, the Squire gave her a cottage of her own, and took
more pains in furnishing it for her than he did in anything else out of
his own house. It was only nominally her residence. She was constantly
up at the great house; indeed, it was but a short cut across the woods
from her own home to the home of her nursling. Her daughter Mary, in
like manner, moved from one house to the other at her own will. Madam
loved both mother and child dearly. They had great influence over her,
and, through her, over her husband. Whatever Bridget or Mary willed was
sure to come to pass. They were not disliked; for, though wild and
passionate, they were also generous by nature. But the other servants
were afraid of them, as being in secret the ruling spirits of the
household. The Squire had lost his interest in all secular things; Madam
was gentle, affectionate, and yielding. Both husband and wife were
tenderly attached to each other and to their boy; but they grew more and
more to shun the trouble of decision on any point; and hence it was that
Bridget could exert such despotic power. But if everyone else yielded to
her “magic of a superior mind,” her daughter not unfrequently rebelled.
She and her mother were too much alike to agree. There were wild
quarrels between them, and wilder reconciliations. There were times
when, in the heat of passion, they could have stabbed each other. At all
other times they both—Bridget especially—would have willingly laid down
their lives for one another. Bridget’s love for her child lay very
deep—deeper than that daughter ever knew; or I should think she would
never have wearied of home as she did, and prayed her mistress to obtain
for her some situation—as waiting maid—beyond the seas, in that more
cheerful continental life, among the scenes of which so many of her
happiest years had been spent. She thought, as youth thinks, that life
would last for ever, and that two or three years were but a small portion
of it to pass away from her mother, whose only child she was. Bridget
thought differently, but was too proud ever to show what she felt. If
her child wished to leave her, why—she should go. But people said
Bridget became ten years older in the course of two months at this time.
She took it that Mary wanted to leave her. The truth was, that Mary
wanted for a time to leave the place, and to seek some change, and would
thankfully have taken her mother with her. Indeed when Madam Starkey had
gotten her a situation with some grand lady abroad, and the time drew
near for her to go, it was Mary who clung to her mother with passionate
embrace, and, with floods of tears, declared that she would never leave
her; and it was Bridget, who at last loosened her arms, and, grave and
tearless herself, bade her keep her word, and go forth into the wide
world. Sobbing aloud, and looking back continually, Mary went away.
Bridget was still as death, scarcely drawing her breath, or closing her
stony eyes; till at last she turned back into her cottage, and heaved a
ponderous old settle against the door. There she sat, motionless, over
the gray ashes of her extinguished fire, deaf to Madam’s sweet voice, as
she begged leave to enter and comfort her nurse. Deaf, stony, and
motionless, she sat for more than twenty hours; till, for the third time,
Madam came across the snowy path from the great house, carrying with her
a young spaniel, which had been Mary’s pet up at the hall; and which had
not ceased all night long to seek for its absent mistress, and to whine
and moan after her. With tears Madam told this story, through the closed
door—tears excited by the terrible look of anguish, so steady, so
immovable—so the same to-day as it was yesterday—on her nurse’s face.
The little creature in her arms began to utter its piteous cry, as it
shivered with the cold. Bridget stirred; she moved—she listened. Again
that long whine; she thought it was for her daughter; and what she had
denied to her nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature that
Mary had cherished. She opened the door, and took the dog from Madam’s
arms. Then Madam came in, and kissed and comforted the old woman, who
took but little notice of her or anything. And sending up Master Patrick
to the hall for fire and food, the sweet young lady never left her nurse
all that night. Next day, the Squire himself came down, carrying a
beautiful foreign picture—Our Lady of the Holy Heart, the Papists call
it. It is a picture of the Virgin, her heart pierced with arrows, each
arrow representing one of her great woes. That picture hung in Bridget’s
cottage when I first saw her; I have that picture now.
Years went on. Mary was still abroad. Bridget was still and stern,
instead of active and passionate. The little dog, Mignon, was indeed her
darling. I have heard that she talked to it continually; although, to
most people, she was so silent. The Squire and Madam treated her with
the greatest consideration, and well they might; for to them she was as
devoted and faithful as ever. Mary wrote pretty often, and seemed
satisfied with her life. But at length the letters ceased—I hardly know
whether before or after a great and terrible sorrow came upon the house
of the Starkeys. The Squire sickened of a putrid fever; and Madam caught
it in nursing him, and died. You may be sure, Bridget let no other woman
tend her but herself; and in the very arms that had received her at her
birth, that sweet young woman laid her head down, and gave up her breath.
The Squire recovered, in a fashion. He was never strong—he had never the
heart to smile again. He fasted and prayed more than ever; and people
did say that he tried to cut off the entail, and leave all the property
away to found a monastery abroad, of which he prayed that some day little
Squire Patrick might be the reverend father. But he could not do this,
for the strictness of the entail and the laws against the Papists. So he
could only appoint gentlemen of his own faith as guardians to his son,
with many charges about the lad’s soul, and a few about the land, and the
way it was to be held while he was a minor. Of course, Bridget was not
forgotten. He sent for her as he lay on his death-bed, and asked her if
she would rather have a sum down, or have a small annuity settled upon
her. She said at once she would have a sum down; for she thought of her
daughter, and how she could bequeath the money to her, whereas an annuity
would have died with her. So the Squire left her her cottage for life,
and a fair sum of money. And then he died, with as ready and willing a
heart as, I suppose, ever any gentleman took out of this world with him.
The young Squire was carried off by his guardians, and Bridget was left
alone.
I have said that she had not heard from Mary for some time. In her last
letter, she had told of travelling about with her mistress, who was the
English wife of some great foreign officer, and had spoken of her chances
of making a good marriage, without naming the gentleman’s name, keeping
it rather back as a pleasant surprise to her mother; his station and
fortune being, as I had afterwards reason to know, far superior to
anything she had a right to expect. Then came a long silence; and Madam
was dead, and the Squire was dead; and Bridget’s heart was gnawed by
anxiety, and she knew not whom to ask for news of her child. She could
not write, and the Squire had managed her communication with her
daughter. She walked off to Hurst; and got a good priest there—one whom
she had known at Antwerp—to write for her. But no answer came. It was
like crying into the awful stillness of night.
One day, Bridget was missed by those neighbours who had been accustomed
to mark her goings-out and comings-in. She had never been sociable with
any of them; but the sight of her had become a part of their daily lives,
and slow wonder arose in their minds, as morning after morning came, and
her house-door remained closed, her window dead from any glitter, or
light of fire within. At length, some one tried the door; it was locked.
Two or three laid their heads together, before daring to look in through
the blank unshuttered window. But, at last, they summoned up courage;
and then saw that Bridget’s absence from their little world was not the
result of accident or death, but of premeditation. Such small articles
of furniture as could be secured from the effects of time and damp by
being packed up, were stowed away in boxes. The picture of the Madonna
was taken down, and gone. In a word, Bridget had stolen away from her
home, and left no trace whither she was departed. I knew afterwards,
that she and her little dog had wandered off on the long search for her
lost daughter. She was too illiterate to have faith in letters, even had
she had the means of writing and sending many. But she had faith in her
own strong love, and believed that her passionate instinct would guide
her to her child. Besides, foreign travel was no new thing to her, and
she could speak enough of French to explain the object of her journey,
and had, moreover, the advantage of being, from her faith, a welcome
object of charitable hospitality at many a distant convent. But the
country people round Starkey Manor-house knew nothing of all this. They
wondered what had become of her, in a torpid, lazy fashion, and then left
off thinking of her altogether. Several years passed. Both Manor-house
and cottage were deserted. The young Squire lived far away under the
direction of his guardians. There were inroads of wool and corn into the
sitting-rooms of the Hall; and there was some low talk, from time to
time, among the hinds and country people whether it would not be as well
to break into old Bridget’s cottage, and save such of her goods as were
left from the moth and rust which must be making sad havoc. But this
idea was always quenched by the recollection of her strong character and
passionate anger; and tales of her masterful spirit, and vehement force
of will, were whispered about, till the very thought of offending her, by
touching any article of hers, became invested with a kind of horror: it
was believed that, dead or alive, she would not fail to avenge it.
Suddenly she came home; with as little noise or note of preparation as
she had departed. One day some one noticed a thin, blue curl of smoke
ascending from her chimney. Her door stood open to the noonday sun; and,
ere many hours had elapsed, some one had seen an old
travel-and-sorrow-stained woman dipping her pitcher in the well; and
said, that the dark, solemn eyes that looked up at him were more like
Bridget Fitzgerald’s than any one else’s in this world; and yet, if it
were she, she looked as if she had been scorched in the flames of hell,
so brown, and scared, and fierce a creature did she seem. By-and-by many
saw her; and those who met her eye once cared not to be caught looking at
her again. She had got into the habit of perpetually talking to herself;
nay, more, answering herself, and varying her tones according to the side
she took at the moment. It was no wonder that those who dared to listen
outside her door at night believed that she held converse with some
spirit; in short, she was unconsciously earning for herself the dreadful
reputation of a witch.
Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her, was
her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days. Once he was
ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had then
been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals. Whatever this man
did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks, intermingled with
blessings (that were rather promises of good fortune than prayers),
looked grave at his good luck when, next year, his ewes twinned, and his
meadow-grass was heavy and thick.
Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven, one
of the guardians of the young squire, a certain Sir Philip Tempest,
bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his ward’s property;
and in consequence he brought down four or five gentlemen, of his
friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall. From all accounts, they
roystered and spent pretty freely. I never heard any of their names but
one, and that was Squire Gisborne’s. He was hardly a middle-aged man
then; he had been much abroad, and there, I believe, he had known Sir
Philip Tempest, and done him some service. He was a daring and dissolute
fellow in those days: careless and fearless, and one who would rather be
in a quarrel than out of it. He had his fits of ill-temper besides, when
he would spare neither man nor beast. Otherwise, those who knew him
well, used to say he had a good heart, when he was neither drunk, nor
angry, nor in any way vexed. He had altered much when I came to know
him.
One day, the gentlemen had all been out shooting, and with but little
success, I believe; anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had none, and was in a black
humour accordingly. He was coming home, having his gun loaded,
sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he turned
out of the wood by Bridget’s cottage. Partly for wantonness, partly to
vent his spleen upon some living creature. Mr. Gisborne took his gun,
and fired—he had better have never fired gun again, than aimed that
unlucky shot, he hit Mignon, and at the creature’s sudden cry, Bridget
came out, and saw at a glance what had been done. She took Mignon up in
her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with
his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all
covered with blood. Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of sullen penitence:
“You should have kept the dog out of my way—a little poaching varmint.”
At this very moment, Mignon stretched out his legs, and stiffened in her
arms—her lost Mary’s dog, who had wandered and sorrowed with her for
years. She walked right into Mr. Gisborne’s path, and fixed his
unwilling, sullen look, with her dark and terrible eye.
“Those never throve that did me harm,” said she. “I’m alone in the
world, and helpless; the more do the saints in heaven hear my prayers.
Hear me, ye blessed ones! hear me while I ask for sorrow on this bad,
cruel man. He has killed the only creature that loved me—the dumb beast
that I loved. Bring down heavy sorrow on his head for it, O ye saints!
He thought that I was helpless, because he saw me lonely and poor; but
are not the armies of heaven for the like of me?”
“Come, come,” said he, half remorseful, but not one whit afraid. “Here’s
a crown to buy thee another dog. Take it, and leave off cursing! I care
none for thy threats.”
“Don’t you?” said she, coming a step closer, and changing her imprecatory
cry for a whisper which made the gamekeeper’s lad, following Mr.
Gisborne, creep all over. “You shall live to see the creature you love
best, and who alone loves you—ay, a human creature, but as innocent and
fond as my poor, dead darling—you shall see this creature, for whom death
would be too happy, become a terror and a loathing to all, for this
blood’s sake. Hear me, O holy saints, who never fail them that have no
other help!”
She threw up her right hand, filled with poor Mignon’s life-drops; they
spirted, one or two of them, on his shooting-dress,—an ominous sight to
the follower. But the master only laughed a little, forced, scornful
laugh, and went on to the Hall. Before he got there, however, he took
out a gold piece, and bade the boy carry it to the old woman on his
return to the village. The lad was “afeared,” as he told me in after
years; he came to the cottage, and hovered about, not daring to enter.
He peeped through the window at last; and by the flickering wood-flame,
he saw Bridget kneeling before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart,
with dead Mignon lying between her and the Madonna. She was praying
wildly, as her outstretched arms betokened. The lad shrunk away in
redoubled terror; and contented himself with slipping the gold piece
under the ill-fitting door. The next day it was thrown out upon the
midden; and there it lay, no one daring to touch it.
Meanwhile Mr. Gisborne, half curious, half uneasy, thought to lessen his
uncomfortable feelings by asking Sir Philip who Bridget was? He could
only describe her—he did not know her name. Sir Philip was equally at a
loss. But an old servant of the Starkeys, who had resumed his livery at
the Hall on this occasion—a scoundrel whom Bridget had saved from
dismissal more than once during her palmy days—said:—
“It will be the old witch, that his worship means. She needs a ducking,
if ever a woman did, does that Bridget Fitzgerald.”
“Fitzgerald!” said both the gentlemen at once. But Sir Philip was the
first to continue:—
“I must have no talk of ducking her, Dickon. Why, she must be the very
woman poor Starkey bade me have a care of; but when I came here last she
was gone, no one knew where. I’ll go and see her to-morrow. But mind
you, sirrah, if any harm comes to her, or any more talk of her being a
witch—I’ve a pack of hounds at home, who can follow the scent of a lying
knave as well as ever they followed a dog-fox; so take care how you talk
about ducking a faithful old servant of your dead master’s.”
“Had she ever a daughter?” asked Mr. Gisborne, after a while.
“I don’t know—yes! I’ve a notion she had; a kind of waiting woman to
Madam Starkey.”
“Please your worship,” said humbled Dickon, “Mistress Bridget had a
daughter—one Mistress Mary—who went abroad, and has never been heard on
since; and folk do say that has crazed her mother.”
Mr. Gisborne shaded his eyes with his hand.
“I could wish she had not cursed me,” he muttered. “She may have
power—no one else could.” After a while, he said aloud, no one
understanding rightly what he meant, “Tush! it is impossible!”—and called
for claret; and he and the other gentlemen set-to to a drinking-bout.