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LEVI COFFIN.
The Coffyns or Coffins are a Devonshire family, said to have been
founded by one of the followers of the Conqueror. In 1642 Tristram
Coffyn, a son of this old house, sailed from Plymouth for New England,
taking with him his wife and five children, his mother and two
sisters. He settled at Salisbury, in the colony of Massachusetts, and
his descendants are now to be found in many of the States. Several
of them have won themselves a name of note in the service of their
country; but none has a higher claim to the remembrance, not only of
their fellow-citizens but of all who honour worth wherever it is to be
found, than Levi Coffin, whose memoirs lie before us under the title of
_Reminiscences of Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground
Railroad, being a brief History of the Labours of a Lifetime on behalf
of the Slave_ (London: Sampson Low, 1876). His tale, told in plain
homely language, is a stirring one, and shews us a phase of American
life which is happily a thing of the past; for now that slavery is
abolished there is no longer any need for the devoted labours of the
true-hearted men who by means of the once famous ‘Underground Railroad’
helped the fugitive slave on his way to the land of freedom—over the
Canadian border and into British territory, where, and where only, he
was safe from kidnappers and hunters.
Levi Coffin was born in 1798. His father was a member of a colony of
the Society of Friends, settled at New Garden in North Carolina; and he
himself has always belonged to that religious profession. One day when
he was about seven years old he was standing beside his father, who was
chopping up some wood at a little distance from the house. Along the
road came a coffle or gang of slaves, chained in couples on each side
of a long chain which extended between them. At some distance behind
came the slave-dealer with a wagon-load of supplies. Levi’s father
spoke pleasantly to the slaves. ‘Well boys,’ he said, ‘why do they
chain you?’ One of them replied for the rest: ‘They have taken us away
from our wives and children, and they chain us lest we should make our
escape and go back to them.’ The gang tramped off along the dusty road;
and in answer to the child’s eager questions, his father told him what
slavery was; and little Levi endeavoured to realise the troubles of the
poor men he had just seen, by thinking—‘How terribly we should feel if
father were taken away from us!’
This was the first outbreak of a feeling which influenced his whole
life. He began his work early. At fifteen years of age he was the means
of enabling a slave—who had been kidnapped near Baltimore and brought
into North Carolina—to escape from the slave-dealer’s gang. He was also
often of service to runaway slaves, who used to conceal themselves in
the daytime in the woods and thickets near his father’s house at New
Garden, by going out to them with a small store of provisions, which he
distributed to those he found there.
In 1826 Levi Coffin removed to Newport, Indiana, where he took a shop
and began business. He was soon a prosperous man; and ten years after
he was able to set up a large oil-factory. His place in Newport soon
became one of the ‘stations’ of the Underground Railroad. This was a
secret organisation for facilitating the escape of slaves from the
Southern States to Canada. It was neither planned nor organised by
any one man; it had grown up gradually, to supply a want felt by the
Abolitionist party. A slave escaped from a plantation would without
it have no means of travelling rapidly, of obtaining relief, or of
finding friends to conceal him, and his hope of safety would depend
only upon a series of lucky chances and accidents. Gradually, however,
along the routes by which the slaves usually escaped certain houses
came to be known as those to which the fugitives could safely apply
for assistance. These routes were in the secret language of the U.
G. R. R. (Underground Railroad) known as lines, and the houses were
called ‘stations.’ In course of time the lines were so well organised
that in every town along the route there was a director who had at his
command a number of hiding-places for slaves, funds collected for
their relief, wagons for passing them on by night to the next station,
and means of acquiring information as to any pursuit that might be
attempted.
‘I kept,’ says Levi Coffin, ‘a team and wagon always at command, to
convey the fugitive slaves on their journey. These journeys had to be
made at night, often through deep and bad roads, and along by-ways
that were seldom travelled. Every precaution to evade pursuit had to
be used, as the hunters were often on the track, and sometimes ahead
of the slaves. We had different routes for sending the slaves to
depôts ten, fifteen, or twenty miles distant; and when we heard of
slave-hunters having passed on one road, we forwarded our passengers
by another. Sometimes we learned that the pursuers were ahead of them;
and we sent a messenger and had the fugitives brought back to my house,
to lie in concealment till they had lost the trail.... Three principal
lines from the south converged at my house—one from Cincinnati, one
from Madison, and one from Jeffersonville, Indiana. There was no lack
of passengers. Seldom a week passed without our receiving them. We
knew not what night or what hour of the night we would be roused from
slumber by a gentle rap at the door; that was the signal announcing the
arrival of a train of the U. G. R. R. I have often been awaked by this
signal, and sprung out of bed in the dark and opened the door. Outside
in the cold or rain there would be a two-horse wagon loaded with
fugitives, perhaps the greater part of them women and children. When
they were all safely inside and the door fastened, I would cover the
windows, strike a light, and build a good fire. By this time my wife
would be up and preparing victuals for them; and in a short time the
cold and hungry fugitives would be made comfortable. I would accompany
the conductor of the train’ [that is, the driver of the wagon; in
America the guard of a railway train is always called the conductor]
‘to the stable, and care for the horses, that had perhaps been driven
twenty-five or thirty miles that night through the cold and rain.
The fugitives would rest on pallets before the fire the rest of the
night. The companies varied in number from two or three to seventeen
fugitives.’
Such was the work which for twenty years this good man carried on
in Newport. He had often to set his wits hard at work to foil the
slave-hunters, and more than once ran serious personal risk. The whole
undertaking must have cost him a heavy expenditure of time, labour,
and money. But he was not content with this. He organised in Newport a
store where cotton goods were sold that had been manufactured entirely
by free labour; and for this purpose took a journey to the South to
establish relations with planters who employed only freemen. He and his
friends then formed a league, each member of which bound himself to
purchase no goods on the production of which slaves had been employed.
In 1847 he removed to Cincinnati, and took charge of one of the most
important points in the system of the U. G. R. R. Cincinnati is built
on the northern bank of the Ohio River, and thus stood on the very
frontier of the slave-land, the opposite shore belonging to the slave
state of Kentucky. Here his work went on for about fifteen years, till
the war put an end to slavery in the United States. He tells in his
_Reminiscences_ many a stirring story of the escape of fugitives that
he passed on to Canada. For these we must refer our readers to the book
itself. He was so active, enterprising, and successful that he received
the name of ‘President of the Underground Railroad.’ Everywhere he
had the fullest confidence reposed in him by the coloured people; and
often those who had escaped to Canada would send him their savings, to
be employed in buying their relatives and friends out of captivity in
the South by a fair bargain with the planters. It may be safely said
that his whole life was passed in the cause of promoting the freedom
of the slave; and he always found willing helpers and allies, mostly
men of his own religious persuasion. He always confined his operations
to concealing the slaves that came or were brought to him, and helping
them upon their way to Canada or to some free state. He would never
actually lure a slave from a plantation; and he condemned any active
or forcible resistance to the law, even when it was exercised upon the
side of slavery.
A man of quite a different stamp was John Fairfield, another agent of
the Underground Railroad, but whom Levi Coffin with his Quaker peace
principles could never forgive for making the revolver an auxiliary
in his work. ‘With all his faults,’ he says, ‘and misguided impulses
and wicked ways, Fairfield was a brave man; he never betrayed a trust
that was reposed in him, and he was a true friend to the oppressed and
suffering slave.’ Fairfield was a Virginian; and his earliest exploit
had been to run away to Canada from his uncle’s plantation taking
one of the slaves with him. From that time till he died he passed
an adventurous life, visiting once or twice in the year Virginia or
Kentucky, establishing relations with the slaves upon a plantation, and
then leading them to Canada. He was soon known to many of the refugees
settled there, and they would ask him to bring them their relatives
from the Southern plantations, sometimes offering him money they had
saved as payment for his exertions.
‘Fairfield,’ says Levi Coffin, ‘was a young man without family, and
was fond of adventure and excitement. He wanted employment, and
agreed to take the money offered by the fugitives and engage in the
undertaking. He obtained the names of masters and slaves, and an exact
knowledge of the different localities to be visited, then acted as his
shrewd judgment dictated under different circumstances. He would go
South, into the neighbourhood where the slaves were whom he intended
to conduct away, and under an assumed name and a false pretence of
business, would board perhaps at the house of the master whose stock of
valuable property he intended to decrease. He would proclaim himself
to be a Virginian, and profess to be strongly pro-slavery in his
sentiments, thus lulling the suspicions of the slaveholders, while
he established a secret understanding with the slaves, gaining their
confidence, and making arrangements for their escape. Then he would
suddenly disappear from the neighbourhood, and several slaves would be
missing at the same time. Fairfield was always ready to take money for
his services from the slaves if they had it to offer; but if they had
not he helped them all the same. He was equally ready to spend it in
the same cause, and if necessary would part with his last dollar to
effect his object.’
Often he would bring a negro or two with him, who would act as his
slaves, and whom he would pretend to treat very roughly. These would
act as his intermediaries with the men he hoped to rescue. On one
occasion he rescued a large number of men from the salt-works on the
Kanawha River in Virginia. He assumed the character of a salt-dealer,
and had two large boats built on the river for his business. When the
boats were finished, a crowd of negroes escaped in them down the river
towards the Ohio. As soon as the alarm was given, he pretended to be
very anxious to aid in recapturing his boats and the escaped slaves.
He rode off at the head of the pursuers, directed the chase, and when
they found the abandoned boats on the river-bank, he suggested that
they should scatter in various directions, and meet in a few hours to
report if they had got any traces of the fugitives. He never appeared
at the rendezvous; he had joined the slaves at a previously appointed
spot, and was conducting them to one of the stations on the Underground
Railroad _en route_ for Canada. He generally marched at night, and
rested in concealment in the daytime.
Often on these journeys he had to fight his way through patrols
of slave-hunters. One moonlight night he had a narrow escape. The
patrollers had found his track, and gathered a body of armed men,
and lay in ambush waiting for him at both ends of a bridge which his
party of fugitives had to cross. Fairfield always armed his men with
revolvers, and told them that he would shoot down any one who would
not fight for his freedom. On this occasion he was taken by surprise.
As the party gained the centre of the bridge they were fired upon from
both ends of it. ‘They thought, no doubt,’ said Fairfield, ‘that this
sudden attack would intimidate us, and that we would surrender; but in
this they were mistaken. I ordered my men to charge to the front, and
they did charge. We fired as we went, and the men in ambush scattered
and ran like scared sheep.’ Fairfield’s clothes were torn by balls, and
he and one of his party were slightly wounded. Levi reproved him for
trying to kill any one, and told him that we should love our enemies.
Fairfield’s reply was characteristic. ‘Love our enemies, indeed! I do
not intend to hurt people if they keep out of the way; but if they
step in between me and liberty they must take the consequences.’ Levi
naïvely adds: ‘I saw it was useless to preach peace principles to
Fairfield.’ Such a man could only have one end. There is reason to
believe that shortly before the outbreak of the war in 1861 he was
detected arming the negroes in Tennessee, and was lynched by a Southern
mob. He had been twelve years engaged in his daring work among the
plantations.
The abolition of slavery by the war did not put an end to Levi Coffin’s
labours for the negroes; it only gave them another form. It became
necessary to provide for the thousands to whom a sweeping measure of
emancipation had given their freedom and nothing more, in many cases
casting them adrift upon the world without any resource, for at the
end of the war trade was bad and employment scarce. Relief societies
for the freedmen were formed throughout the States. Levi Coffin took
a leading part in this work; and when it was decided to send a
delegate to ask for aid from England, he was chosen for this important
post. In the summer of 1864 he arrived in London with credentials
and introductions to various public men. At his first meeting held
in London for the freedmen he was supported by Messrs John Bright,
W. E. Forster, Samuel Gurney, and other members of parliament. A
second meeting followed at Mr Gurney’s house. Levi Coffin notes with
satisfaction that ‘it was quite aristocratic in character, being
largely composed of lords, dukes, bishops, and members of parliament.’
A London Freedmen’s Aid Society was organised with several prominent
men upon its committee. Branches were established and meetings held
throughout England and Ireland. Levi Coffin spoke at all these
meetings. Perhaps many of our readers will remember having heard him.
Having finished his work in England, he went over to France and
continued it there; and when, after having been more than twelve months
in Europe, he returned to Cincinnati in 1865, he had the satisfaction
of knowing that his journey had borne rich fruit for the freedmen. He
paid another visit to Europe in 1867 as a delegate to an Anti-slavery
Congress in Paris. With the account of this journey his book of
interesting _Reminiscences_ concludes. We heartily recommend it to
our readers. If nothing else, it shews how much one earnest man can
accomplish in a lifetime for a cause that he has thoroughly at heart.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XXIX.—FOUND.
By some seeming irony of Fate, it is when our fortunes have ebbed to
their lowest, and all seems cold, bleak, and dreary in the threatening
horizon before us, that light begins to break in upon the oppressive
darkness. That we are never so likely to fall as when we deem ourselves
to stand in boastful security, proud of our seeming strength, is a
truth which the historical student will not be slow to recognise. Down
comes the thunderbolt from a clear sky, toppling over to shameful
ruin the gilded image propped on feet of sorry clay. But there is a
substratum of fact whereon is reared the homely proverb which declares
that when things are at the worst they will mend.
For all that, we cannot wrap ourselves in a comfortable mantle of
indolent fatalism, assured that our shortcomings will be compensated
by some extraordinary turn of Fortune’s wheel. It so happens that we
are often too dull of vision to know the heavenly messenger when we
see him. Our deaf ears fail to catch the strain of hope. We miss the
tide that offered to bear our argosy to port. The grass grows, but the
steed, all unwitting of the green meadow hard by, starves within a
stone’s throw of plenty. Chatterton was not the only one who, goaded
by despair, has taken the leap in the dark at the very moment when
kind hands were held out to lead the truant into the goodly fellowship
of honest men. A great hush and stillness had fallen upon those who
were shut up in the Hunger Hole. There was that in the situation
which forbade useless words. It was getting late. There was every
probability of spending the night and the morrow in that dismal place.
That amount of imprisonment entailed cold and misery, perhaps an
attack of marsh-fever, since the air from Bitternley Swamp was likely
to be fraught with the seeds of ague. But twenty-four hours—thirty-six
hours—might not see the end of the captivity of Ethel and Lady Alice,
and in that case——
How strange that any one should run the risk of being starved to death,
in this blatant nineteenth century of ours, when road and rail, gas and
press, have opened up so many an old-world nook, and dragged so many an
abuse into the killing light of day. Yet Dartmoor remains Dartmoor, and
it is quite possible to be smothered in its snows, sunk in its swamps,
or to wander among its blinding mists until the deadly chill of fatigue
benumbs the wearied limbs, for there are wildernesses yet where Nature
is more than a match for man.
The fickle beauty of the day had not lasted. Clouds went driving by;
that much could be distinguished by gazing up through the narrow
space which weeds and leaves left free. And presently it began to
rain, and the moaning wind grew shrill, and rushed with strange and
mournful dissonance through the recesses of the cavern. ‘It is all my
fault—mine!’ sobbed Lady Alice, nestling at Ethel’s side. ‘I would not
say a word, before starting, about the Hunger Hole, for fear the elders
should object; and now I am caught in my own trap. It’s very hard on
you though, Miss Gray.’
Ethel bore up bravely, but she was far from feeling the calm that
she affected. Perhaps Lady Alice was too positive in her conviction
of the hopelessness of their condition; but if the attention of the
seekers was diverted into false channels, who could tell what might
result before a happy accident should bring aid? It was for her pupil
that she feared, not for herself. In the event of long detention in
that wretched place, a large-eyed, excitable slip of a girl, of high
spirit but delicate temperament, could scarcely be expected to endure
hardships which Ethel, in the bloom of perfect health, might be able to
support. It was growing late, and perceptibly colder. Night would be
upon them soon, and then——
And then the morrow would dawn laggingly, and hope would leap up a
little at the sight of welcome daylight, and flag and droop as the
hours went by and relief came not. That Lady Alice could live through
a second night in that chill atmosphere of the cave, and without
sustenance, Ethel did not believe.
‘How cold it strikes!’ said the young girl almost peevishly, as she
shivered and pressed closer to Ethel. ‘I am afraid though,’ she added,
more gently after a while, ‘that we shall be colder yet before the end
of this.’
As the moaning wind swept by, and the patter of the rain that lashed
the outer walls of the grotto grew louder, Ethel listened, with a
sense of hearing which her anxiety had sharpened, for any sound that
might indicate that help was near. But no! There was nothing to be
distinguished save the beating of the rain, the mournful cadence of the
wind, and the dull regular drip of the water that trickled from the
spring, and fell deep down, to the hidden waters at the bottom of the
abyss.
Was that the tread of a horse? Fancy plays strange tricks with those
who watch, but surely that sound resembled nothing so much as the quick
beat of hoofs upon grass or heather. Then the sound ceased, and a long
tantalising pause succeeded. Ethel began to imagine that her senses
must have played her false. No; for the rattling of loose stones,
disturbed by a human foot, at the outer portal of the Hunger Hole, came
at last to confirm the first impression that a horse’s tramp had really
sounded near, and then a man’s form darkened the doorway between the
two caves.
‘Alice, look up! We are found!’ cried Ethel, starting from the rocky
bench; and almost at the same instant a voice, the very sound of which
sent the blood madly coursing through her veins, exclaimed: ‘There
_is_ some one here then. Alice—Miss Gray, can it be you? Ah! I see how
it is,’ added the speaker, as his further progress was barred by the
gaping chasm, while his foot struck against a fragment of the broken
bridge, yet clinging to its rusted holdfast in the rock. The voice was
Lord Harrogate’s.
‘What good angel sent you to our help, brother?’ said young Lady
Alice, laughing and crying all at once, now that the tension of her
overstrained nerves had slackened.
‘She is a moorland angel, and here she is to answer for herself,’
returned the young man, as Betty Mudge, hot and panting, appeared
beside him in the entrance of the cavern. ‘This good girl must have
wings, I think, as well as a sharp pair of eyes. She almost kept
up with my horse as we crossed the moorland, avoiding Bitternley
Swamp, where _Bay Middleton_ could never have made his way over the
treacherous peat-hags. I can guess now how this awkward business
happened.’
‘But how to get at you, now I have found you!’ added Lord Harrogate in
some perplexity, after a pause. It was provoking, to be baffled by the
eleven feet of sheer black emptiness that lay between the wet outer
grotto and the dry inner compartment of the cave.
‘Some one will perhaps arrive before long. A plank put across the gap
would set us free,’ said Ethel, advancing to the edge of the chasm.
‘I wanted to jump it, but Miss Gray would not let me try,’ called out
Lady Alice.
‘And Miss Gray was quite right, Miss Madcap,’ answered her brother,
scanning the width of the abyss. ‘An uglier jump, or a less inviting, I
never saw—at all events for a young lady to venture on. The worst of it
is, that nobody excepting myself and this excellent Betty Mudge here,
is in the secret of the Hunger Hole; so nobody is coming with ropes
or planks or civilised contrivances of any sort. I have tied my horse
to a bush below, just by the dead alder-tree; but I can’t well make a
suspension-bridge out of reins and saddle-girths, after all.’
‘Please ye, my lord,’ put in Betty, who had by this time recovered her
breath—‘please ye, I might run across to Farmer Fletcher’s town, and
ask him to get chaise ready for the ladies, and send some of his men
with things ’cross Swamp.’
This was a very sensible proposition, for Mr Fletcher was the farmer
who dwelt on the ridge, and at whose ‘town’ or farm-house, clustered
round by cottages for the labourers who tilled the fields of that
little oasis in the desert, the pony and wagonette had been left. The
pony and wagonette had long since returned to High Tor in charge of the
lad in the Earl’s livery, who had sounded the first note of alarm as
to the probable fate of the missing ones; but the farmer possessed a
green chaise and a serviceable cob to draw it, and would of course send
over all that was needed.
‘Better ask him then, from me, to send his chaise to the Crossroads,
at the north end of the Heronmere. Bitternley Swamp will not be dry
walking after the rain,’ said Lord Harrogate.
Betty vanished on her errand like a fog-wreath at sunrise.
‘Now let me see what I can do single-handed towards the good work,’
said Lord Harrogate. ‘It strikes me that the withered tree I spoke of,
close to which my nag is tethered, might do good service now. There is
something ignominious in being balked by a ditch like that.’
He went, and shortly returned, dragging after him the torn-up trunk of
the alder of which he had spoken. Lady Alice clapped her hands. ‘I like
a man to be strong!’ she said applaudingly. Ethel said nothing, but her
colour heightened and her eyes grew bright. All women do admire the
manly virtues in a man, and strength, like courage and truth and wit,
takes rank among them.
The uprooted alder-tree bridged the chasm, with some two feet to spare
on each bank, and Lord Harrogate tested it with his foot, and assured
himself that it would bear a considerable weight. With his handkerchief
he tied one end of it tightly to the iron holdfast belonging to the
broken bridge, and crossing with a light and elastic step to the other
side, with no trifling difficulty persuaded the two girls to follow his
example.
‘I am afraid we were sad cowards,’ said Ethel, when at last the dreaded
passage had been effected, not very promptly or easily, for the narrow
tree afforded but a sorry and unsteady foothold, and there was that in
the recollection of the ghastly depth below, and the remembrance of the
narrowness and slippery roundness of the crackling tree-trunk beneath
the feet, that was not unlikely to affect feminine nerves. Yet, propped
by Lord Harrogate’s arm, and encouraged by Lord Harrogate’s voice, with
shut eyes and scarcely throbbing hearts, the two girls did manage to
get across.
Then came the hasty traversing of the damp outer cave, the emerging
into the fresh free air from what had seemed a grave closing its hungry
jaws upon the living, and then the long walk through the brooding
twilight to the north end of Heronmere, where, thanks to the trusty
Betty’s winged feet, Farmer Fletcher’s green chaise was in readiness
to receive the two half-fainting girls, and where at length Lord
Harrogate, who had hitherto led _Bay Middleton_ by the bridle, as he
walked beside the rescued prisoners of the Hunger Hole, was able to
spring again into the saddle.
To Betty Mudge, as Lord Harrogate laughingly declared when he had
escorted his sister and her governess safely back to High Tor, where
the warmest welcome awaited those for whom the neighbourhood was
already in full search, the whole credit of the rescue was due. Betty
it was who, mushroom-gathering on the moor, had espied the signal of
distress, Ethel’s handkerchief, fluttering from the slender top of the
hazel-tree that rose like a thin flagstaff above the rocks. Betty it
was who, divining mischief where duller eyes might have seen nothing
but a hazard or a frolicsome prank, had been making her way towards the
Hunger Hole, when she caught sight of Lord Harrogate spurring across
the moor in aimless quest of the missing ones. And if there could be
faith put in the word of as worthy an Earl and as estimable a Countess
as any in the peerage, the wind of adversity should never more be
suffered to blow too bitingly, for Betty’s sake, on any of the Mudge
family.
‘I shall ask Morford, as a particular favour, not to repair that
bridge,’ said Lord Harrogate jestingly. ‘No chance then that the Hunger
Hole should turn again into a trap for catching young ladies.’
CHAPTER XXX.—MAN PROPOSES.
‘Harrogate is going, you know, to leave us so very soon,’ Lady Maud
De Vere had said, in her kindly matter-of-fact way, in the course
of conversation with Ethel Gray; and Ethel had turned away her face
instinctively, lest the burning blush which rose there unbidden should
betray her secret to her pupil’s sister and her own friend. Poor Ethel
had communed with her heart in the still hours of more than one night
since the evening that had witnessed her release from the Hunger Hole,
and she could not but acknowledge to herself that she loved Lord
Harrogate.
It was not a welcome conviction that forced itself gradually upon
Ethel Gray. The attachment, hopeless as it perforce was, was a thing
to be deplored, a misfortune; not a source of joy. Lord Harrogate
could be nothing to her. He was almost as remote from her humble
sphere of life as a Prince of the blood-royal would have been. There
are girls who know, where their own personal vanity is at stake, no
distinction of ranks, and would set their caps without compunction at
an Emperor. Ethel was none of these. To fall in love, even with an
object as hopelessly out of reach as one of the fixed stars would be,
is a forlorn privilege which has been claimed in every age by very
humble persons of either sex. But to Ethel’s proud, maidenly heart
it was pain, not pleasure, to know that the future Earl, the future
master of High Tor, had grown to be dearer to her than was well for her
peace of mind. That she was in his eyes merely Miss Gray, his sister’s
governess, was to her thinking a certainty. And she did not even wish
that it were otherwise. Why should there be two persons unhappy, on
such a subject, instead of one? It was much better as it was. She had
begun to love him before, in that desolate cavern on the moor, he
had appeared as the harbinger of safety. But she had not admitted to
herself that this was so, until the whirl of strong feelings consequent
on the danger and the deliverance had taught her to read her own heart,
and to learn that his image was garnered in its innermost core. And
now he was going away, going very soon. Well, it was better so. A
young man such as he was could not always be expected to linger in a
country-house. He was going, and she should see him no more. Doubtless
it was for the best.
She was in the garden, and alone. A governess is seldom alone. But
lessons were over for the day; and Lady Alice her pupil was up-stairs
finishing a sketch, and Ethel had strayed out into what, from some
household tradition of a foreign florist who had been invoked, when
Anne was Queen, to shape and stock the flower-beds and to trim the
luxuriant holly-hedge into Netherlandish neatness, was called the
Dutch garden. A pleasant spot it was, with its wealth of fragrant
old-fashioned roses and gorgeous display of variegated tulips, screened
by the immemorial holly-hedge from the rude north-east wind.
Quite suddenly, as she reached the other end of the holly-hedge, Ethel
looked up at the rustle of the crisp green leaves, against which some
one or something had brushed in passing, and her eyes met those of Lord
Harrogate. The latter lifted his hat, but did not immediately speak,
while Ethel neither spoke nor stirred. When the thoughts have been busy
in conjuring up the image of a particular person, and the original of
the air-drawn portrait appears, a kind of dreamy appreciativeness,
which is of all sensations the most unlike to surprise, is apt to
result. It was so in this case; and for a few brief instants Ethel
looked at Lord Harrogate as she would have looked at his picture on the
wall.
‘I thought I might find you here,’ said Lord Harrogate, dissolving
the spell by the sound of his voice. ‘I hoped I should,’ he added, in
a lower and more meaning tone. Ethel murmured something, stooping as
she did so to lift the drooping tendril of a standard rose-tree beaten
down by the heavy rain of yesterday. ‘Can you guess at all, Miss Gray,’
continued the young man, with an evident effort to speak carelessly and
confidently, ‘why I wanted to find you here—and alone?’
It was not quite a fair question. Ethel, in her simple honesty, not
caring to enter on a course of that verbal fencing which comes so
naturally to a woman whose heart has not yet learned to speak, made no
reply. Her colour deepened, and she became very intent indeed upon the
bruised trail of the rose-tree.
‘I am going away, as you know, and that very soon. My plans for the
winter are quite undecided. I may not be back at High Tor for a good
while,’ said the heir to that mansion.
Now there were to be certain autumn manœuvres in the open country
near Aldershot Camp, in which that regiment of militia in which Lord
Harrogate was a captain, and towards the perfection of whose drill and
discipline he was thought to have contributed more than most militia
officers find it convenient to do, had been selected to figure among
the auxiliary forces on that occasion.
‘Some friends want me,’ explained Lord Harrogate, ‘when our amateur
soldiering is over, to go with them on a yacht-cruise in the
Mediterranean, and so on to Egypt, and perhaps farther. What I choose
will very much depend on you, Miss Gray.’
‘On me!’ She could not avoid answering this time, and her tone was one
of genuine surprise. ‘On me, Lord Harrogate!’
‘On you. I should like all my plans to have some reference to
you—Ethel!’ said the young man, trying to get a full view of the
beautiful blushing face that was half averted. ‘I say again, can you
guess why?’
‘Do not ask me to guess,’ returned Ethel, with a trembling lip. She was
very much frightened. She had not the least experience in that science
of flirtation in which the modern young lady graduates so early. But
she divined that words had been said which rendered it necessary
that other words should be spoken, and with what result! Could it
be that the end of the interview would be the dashing down of the
half-idolised image that her fancy had set up as the emblem of pure
chivalry?
‘Only because I love you—love you very dearly, Ethel!’ said the heir of
High Tor; and as he spoke he took her unresisting hand in his and drew
her towards him. For a moment Ethel was spellbound, her whole faculties
absorbed in the one fact that he had told her that he loved her. Come
what might, those words—those dear delicious words had sunk into her
ear, and the memory of them must remain to the end of what would very
likely be a lonely, loveless life; a treasure, her very own, of which
none could rob her! But in the next minute Ethel drew her hand away
from the hand that held it, and the crimson of indignant anger mounted
to her cheek.
‘My lord,’ she said, in a voice that all her wish to speak and act
calmly could not render quite steady, ‘you should not have done this. I
could not have believed it of you. It is not generous. It is not like
yourself.’
‘Why not?’ Lord Harrogate blundered out the words awkwardly enough; but
Ethel misunderstood him.
‘Because,’ she said firmly, ‘my position beneath your mother’s roof,
in its very lowliness, ought to have been my protection from insult,
which’——
‘Insult!’ flashed out Lord Harrogate, reddening too, and breaking
almost roughly in on the girl’s half-uttered speech. ‘Can you deem
that I mean to insult you when I tell you of my love—that I speak
insolently, Miss Gray, when I ask you to be my wife?’
Ethel quivered from head to foot as her half-incredulous ears drank in
the words. ‘You meant—that is’—— she faltered out feebly.
‘I meant this,’ said Lord Harrogate earnestly. ‘Miss Gray—Ethel,
darling, I have learned during the time that I have known you, to love
you with a true and honest love. I am a clumsy wooer, I daresay, but
surely you cannot have deemed that I had any other thought than that of
asking you, for weal and woe, to share my fortunes?’
He tried to take her hand; but she eluded his grasp, and covering her
face, sobbed aloud.
‘Come, Ethel, come, my love! Let it be mine to dry those tears!’ said
the young man, passing his arm round her waist; but gently and firmly
she released herself.
‘You have made me very happy and very miserable all at once, my lord,’
she said, turning round and facing him; ‘but believe me, there must
be no more of this. I thank you from my heart for the very great
compliment of your preference for a girl so humbly born, without
fortune or kindred. But I am your sister’s governess; and it shall
never be said that Ethel Gray brought disunion and sorrow upon the
noble family that had received her with so kindly a welcome. I have my
own ideas of right and wrong, Lord Harrogate, and I know that I should
be mean and base, even in my own eyes, were I to avail myself of—your
great goodness.’
He was taken by surprise. He had made up his mind, and reckoned the
difficulties of the step which he proposed to take. That he would meet
with some opposition on the part of his family, he was of course aware.
It might take much time and much persuasion to bring his parents, and
especially the Countess, to consent to a match so little calculated
to advance his worldly prospects. But he was no shallow boy to cry for
his toy, and then forget the bauble that had been withheld from him.
His offer of marriage would no doubt render Ethel’s position at High
Tor for a time untenable. He had thought the matter over. There were
relatives of the De Veres who, without being partisans of the match,
would willingly offer a temporary home to such a girl as Ethel Gray,
while his mother and Lady Gladys were in process of being converted to
see the matter as he saw it.
Ethel’s unlooked-for opposition disconcerted all these projects. She
was very grateful, gentle, and almost submissive in her bearing; but
she was as steadfast as adamant on the point that it behoved her to
return a respectful refusal to Lord Harrogate’s proposals.
‘Do not tempt me,’ she said more than once; ‘do not urge me to forfeit
my self-respect, or be false to those who have put trust in me. I am
no fit match for the future master of High Tor, the future Earl of
Wolverhampton. Would the kind Countess have received me here, would
Lady Maud have given me her friendship, had they dreamed of this?’
She was very firm. She let him infer, if he chose, that he was not
indifferent to her; but to none of his instances would she yield her
steady conviction that duty forbade her to say ‘Yes’ to his entreaties.
He became—small blame to him for being so—almost angry, and tried
if reproach would succeed where prayer and argument had failed. In
vain. His reproaches brought the tears to Ethel’s eyes, but she never
faltered in her resolve.
If he pressed her unduly on this point, she said simply that she must
go away. Let him forget her, or learn, as she hoped he would, to regard
her as a friend, and then she need not leave High Tor. And then——
And then Lady Alice, Ethel’s pupil, made her appearance, and there was
no more opportunity for private conversation; and two days later, Lord
Harrogate started for Aldershot.
(_To be continued._)
STRANGE SEA ANIMALS.
By the term sea-squirts, the naturalist denominates some of the most
remarkable animals which it is his province to study. In more polite
phraseology the sea-squirts are termed ‘Ascidians,’ this appellation
being derived from the Greek _askos_, meaning a wine-skin or Eastern
leather-bottle, to which, in outward shape and form the sea-squirts
bear a very close resemblance. And as a final designation, the animals
under discussion may be known as ‘Tunicates,’ since their bodies are
inclosed within a tough bag or ‘tunic,’ the chemical composition of
which forms, as we shall presently shew, one of the notable points of
their structure. The sea-squirts present themselves to the zoologist as
a group of beings exhibiting many exceptions to the ordinary rules of
animal organisation; and it may also be noted that they have attained
a degree of scientific fame almost exceeding that which their most
ardent admirers could have expected. The young sea-squirt has thus
been credited in certain scientific speculations with presenting the
naturalist and mankind at large with a _fac-simile_ of the early
progenitor and far-back ancestor of the whole vertebrate group of
animals, including man himself—in other words, it is maintained that
the young sea-squirt, through some peculiar process of modification
and elevation, has given origin to the highest group of living beings.
With the promise before us of obtaining information regarding a most
interesting group of animals, which are thus held by some _savants_ to
possess relations of no ordinary kind to man himself, the reader will
require little incentive to follow out the steps of a brief inquiry
into their life-history and relations.
The fame of the sea-squirts is by no means of modern date. Aristotle
gives us a succinct description of them in his _History of Animals_
under the designation ‘Tethea;’ and by the same name Pliny has made
the sea-squirts of classic reputation, since we learn from this latter
author that they were included as articles of importance in the
pharmacopœia of the Romans. In their commonest phases, the sea-squirts
appear as little leathery bags of clear aspect, through the somewhat
transparent wall of which the internal organs can be discerned. The
resemblance of the animals to the ancient wine-skin has already been
remarked. The wine-skin, as every one knows, was made of the stomach
of some animal, or of the skin so arranged as to present two orifices
or necks. Thus when we look at a common sea-squirt we see a veritable
little ‘leather-bottel,’ measuring from half an inch to an inch or
more in length, attached by one extremity to the rock at low-water
mark, or to the shell we have dredged, and bearing on its upper surface
two prominent openings, each supported on a short neck. The origin
of the common name of ‘sea-squirt’ is by no means hard to trace.
The incautious observer who picks up a sea-squirt which has through
unpropitious fate been cast up on the sea-beach after a storm, after a
short survey of the sac-like body, may possibly be tempted to squeeze
it as a preliminary to further investigation. On being thus irritated,
the animal will most likely retaliate by forcibly ejecting jets of
water from the two orifices of the ‘bottel;’ this procedure possibly
resulting in the relinquishment of the sea-squirt as altogether an
unlikely and unfavourable object for further study. But the observation
of this unpolite habit on the part of the animal, will be found to
assist our further comprehension of its physiology, and of the manner
in which the functions of its life are carried on.
A highly curious item of sea-squirt history is furnished at the outset
by the consideration of the rough bag or ‘test’ in which its organs are
inclosed. When the chemist analyses this part of the animal, he finds
it to be composed in greater part of a substance known as _cellulose_.
It so happens that cellulose is a most important constituent of plants,
being almost as common in vegetables as starch. Hence zoologists
accounted it a strange and unwonted proceeding on the part of an
animal, that it should manufacture in a seemingly natural manner a
substance proper and peculiar to the plant-world. The multiplication
of cases of like kind in animals has destroyed the novelty and unique
nature of the sea-squirt’s case; but none the less curious must the
fact be accounted, that the animal should mimic the plant in the mode
and results of its life. When the tough outer sac is cut open, we come
upon a much more delicate and softer structure, known as the _mantle_.
This latter forms an inner lining to the test, and is the structure
upon the presence of which the sea-squirt’s power of ejecting water
depends. The mantle is a highly muscular layer, and lies next the
organs and internal belongings of the animal.
The clearest mode of describing the structure of the sea-squirt is
that of beginning with that neck of the bottle-shaped body on which
the mouth opens. The mouth leads, curiously enough, not into a throat,
but into a large chamber, named the breathing-sac. The walls of this
chamber may be simply described as composed of a network of fine
blood-vessels; the meshes of this network being provided with those
delicate vibratile filaments, named cilia, the function of which is
to keep up, by their movements, a constant circulation of the water
admitted to the breathing-chamber. Just within the mouth-opening a few
small tentacles or feelers exist, these organs serving to guard the
entrance to the body. On the floor of the breathing-sac an opening
may be perceived; this aperture leading into the throat, and being,
therefore, by many naturalists termed the true mouth. And in the way
of digestive apparatus, we find the sea-squirt to possess a stomach,
intestine, and other organs.
It is highly interesting to note the manner in which the sea-squirt
obtains its food. The nutritive wherewithal consists of sedimentary
matters, such as minute animals and plants, these substances being
drawn into the breathing-sac along with the currents of water which
are continually being taken into the body. The nutritive sediment is
collected together by certain folds of the lining membrane of the
breathing-chamber, and is thus transferred to the mouth-opening below.
The breathing-chambers of the sea-squirts, it may be noted in passing,
frequently afford lodgment to tiny dwellers in the shape of little
pea-crabs. The writer has noticed these little lodgers to issue forth
at night from the mouth of the sea-squirts, when the latter have been
kept in an aquarium, in order to pick up particles of food on the floor
of their abode. The crabs retreated to their shelter on the slightest
alarm; and this case of companionship presents one of those curious
instances of animal association which at present we are wholly unable
to explain.
The food being converted into blood in the digestive system, we may
next inquire as to the means which the sea-squirt possesses for
circulating the blood through the body. In higher animals, the heart
and blood-vessels perform this important task; and in the sea-squirt we
find these structures to be represented; the sea-squirt’s heart indeed,
in respect of its peculiarity of action, being without a parallel in
the whole animal world. The heart consists of a simple tube, from
each end of which blood-vessels pass, some being distributed to the
breathing-chamber, and others to the body generally. In the highest
animals the heart has the double function of driving pure blood through
the body, and of circulating impure blood through the breathing organs
for purification. It is noteworthy to observe, that by a curious and,
as already remarked, altogether unparalleled contrivance, Nature
has succeeded in causing the simple tube-heart of the sea-squirt to
perform the work done by the complex organ of higher animals. When
we observe the movements of the sea-squirt’s heart, we may see it to
propel the blood by its pulsations at first to the breathing-chamber
for purification. Then a pause succeeds, and the heart is observed
to pulsate in the reverse direction, and to drive the blood from the
breathing-chamber through the body. Probably no better illustration of
the manner in which, by a modification of function, Nature compensates
for simplicity of structure, could be had, than that afforded by the
sea-squirt’s heart.