"How reverend is the face of this tall pile,
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads
To bear aloft its arch'd and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable--
Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe
And terror on my aching sight; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold.
And shoot a chiliness to my trembling heart."
"MOURNING BRIDE."--CONGREVE.
During the ensuing three or four months, nothing occurred in
the course of our daily life, in any way worth recording. I
had spoken to my aunt of Alice Tracy in such a way as strongly
to excite her interest and curiosity about her, and from this
reason, as well as from the wish to give me pleasure, which
was at all times an all-sufficient inducement to her, she
wrote to her grand-mother to request that if she herself did
not feel inclined to come to Elmsley, she would at least allow
Alice to come and spend a day with us.
Mrs. Tracy wrote a brief answer to the purport that Alice was
gone away on a visit to some relations of her father, and was
therefore out of reach of the honour intended her.
My uncle received now and then a letter from Edward Middleton,
but never communicated its contents beyond the mere facts that
he was well, and was staying in this or that town on the
Continent.
Henry still remained at Elmsley; and nothing was changed in
the state of things between us. The only new feature in our
domestic affairs, was the growing dislike which my uncle
seemed to feel towards him. He had never appeared much to like
him, but now he seemed hardly able to endure his protracted
residence at Elmsley, and often inquired of my aunt and
myself, if Henry did not mean soon to begin the study of the
law; which was the profession he was destined to pursue.
As to Henry himself, he never alluded to it, and seemed to
look upon Elmsley as a permanent home. My uncle was too much
attached to his wife, and by nature of too kind a disposition,
to mark more plainly, than by occasional hints, his
displeasure at this line of conduct; but he could hardly
conceal his satisfaction, when, at last, a letter from his
father obliged Henry to take the subject into consideration.
It became arranged that he should leave Elmsley in three
weeks; and I was surprised, and even mortified, at observing
how little he seemed grieved or annoyed at this rather abrupt
separation, and with what indifference of manner he took leave
of me on the day of his departure.
A few days afterwards, there arrived a letter from Mrs.
Brandon, a sister of my mother and of Mr. Middleton,
containing an urgent request that I might be allowed to spend
a few weeks with her in Dorsetshire.
I had only seen this aunt of mine once or twice during the
course of my childhood; and she had left no other impression
on my mind than that she was a short, pretty-looking woman,
with large dark eyes, and a peculiarly gentle voice.
I had dreaded so much the void which Henry's absence would
have made in my life, that I welcomed with pleasure the idea
of entering upon a new scene. I had also a vague indefinite
hope that far from Elmsley--away from the material objects
which recalled to me continually my fatal secret--I should,
perhaps, shake off, in some degree, the sense of oppression
that weighed upon me. I was only seventeen, and prematurely
miserable as I was become, still there remained something in
me of the spirit of youth, which pants after new scenes, new
companions, and new excitements. I therefore expressed a
strong wish to accept Mrs. Brandon's invitation, and this was,
as usual, enough to secure Mrs. Middleton's acquiescence, and
my uncle made no objection to the plan.
Accordingly, on one of the first days of the month of June, in
a small open carriage, accompanied by a lady who had once been
my governess, and who had undertaken to escort me to Brandon
Park, I left Elmsley, in tears indeed, for as my aunt pressed
me to her bosom, I returned her embrace with an intense
emotion, that seemed to resume in itself the history of my
past life; but still with the eager impatience of the bird who
wildly takes his flight from the perch to which he is still
confined, and hopes, by the keen impetuosity with which he
soars, to shake off the dead weight which chains him down to
earth. The day was beautiful: white fleecy clouds were
flitting rapidly across the sky; and the mild breeze that
fanned my cheek was scented with the perfume of the fields of
clover, through which our road chiefly lay during the first
stage of our journey. The sky, the air, the smells, the
sounds, the rapid motion of the carriage, were all sources of
the keenest enjoyment. Fortunately for me, Mrs. Hatton, my
travelling companion, possessed the qualification of finding
amusement in herself, and by herself, to an extraordinary
degree. I have never met with so thoroughly good-humoured a
person. She always liked best whatever was proposed to her to
do, and never liked at all anything that others were not
inclined to. Whatever happened to be ordered for dinner, was
invariably the thing she preferred; but if, by any mischance,
it did not appear, and something else appeared in its stead,
she as suddenly recollected that she liked the new dish a
great deal better than the one that had failed. Even the
weather received at her hands very different treatment from
that which it is accustomed to meet with. A black frost she
considered wholesome and bracing; a cutting east wind, she
described as a fresh breeze; snow, rain, and hail, had each
particular merits, in her eyes. When the sun shone, it was
fortunate; when it rained, it was a piece of luck, for she had
ever so many letters to write; and there was nothing like a
rainy day for getting through business. And if the weather was
without any other apology, "Still," as I heard her once say,
"it was better than no weather at all."
I never heard her admit that anything was a grievance; that
anybody was tiresome. Her friends' misfortunes, indeed, she
felt heartily sorry for; but, with respect to them, she found
consolation in the fact, that, in proportion to their extent,
she could bestow a fuller share of sympathy, a more ample
measure of kindness than ever, out of the ever-springing
sources of tenderness, with which her own heart overflowed.
Poor Mrs. Hatton! she was the best of women, but not the
wisest of governesses. During the years that she superintended
my education, she had never been able to disagree with me, as
to grammar and arithmetic being dull and perfectly useless
studies; or help agreeing with me that Sir Walter Scott's
novels improved the mind infinitely more than Goldsmith's
History of England; and so I read novels to her, and she
listened with delighted attention--I wrote poetry, which she
read aloud, and declared was the best that had ever been
written--I put aside all the books that bored me, all the
exercises that puzzled me, and she heartily concurred with me,
in pronouncing them all highly unprofitable and superfluous.
Dear Mrs. Hatton! she was not wise; but such guileless,
warm-hearted lack of wisdom as hers, often supplied the place
of those mental qualifications which are too seldom united to
a perfect singleness of heart and simplicity of character.
She was, indeed, a capital travelling companion; as we passed
the gates of Elmsley I said to her, "Do you know, dear Mrs.
Hatton, that I am apt to be very silent in a carriage; shall
you mind it?"
"It is the very thing I like best, dear, to drive along and
look about me, and not have the trouble of talking. The very
thing I like best; there is nothing so tiring as to talk in a
carriage." And settling herself in her corner, she gave
herself up to looking about her; and she was right; for what
in the world is so pleasant, as a living German authoress
says, as "on a fine summer morning through a lovely country
rapidly to fly, like the bird, that wants nothing of the world
but its surface to skim over. This is the really enjoyable
part of travelling. The inn life is wearisome; the passage
through towns is fatiguing. The admiration due to the
treasures of art, to the wonders of science, is a task from
which one would sometimes gladly buy one's self off, at the
price of a day of wood-cleaving or water-carrying. But to lean
back in perfect quiet in a carriage while it rolls lightly and
easily along a good road; to have a variety of pictures pass
before one's eyes as in a dream, each remaining long enough to
please, none long enough to tire; to allow the thoughts that
spring from the magical connection of ideas to flit across the
mind, in unison with the visible objects before us; to be tied
down by no earthly cares--sure to find a meal wherever one
stops; and should one happen not to find a bed, to have
nothing worse in store than to sleep _a la belle etoile_,
rocked by the carriage as in a cradle; ever to hear the
rolling of the wheels, which, like the murmur of a brook, the
clapping of a mill, or the splash of oars in the water, forms,
by its uniformity, a soothing accompaniment to the everlasting
fluctuation of thought in the mind. This is a bliss, which,
like that of love and lovers, genuine travellers alone believe
in; and, except genuine lovers, there is nothing more seldom
met with in the world than genuine travellers. For those who
travel from curiosity, from ennui, for health, or for fashion,
or in order to write books, belong not to them, and know
nothing of that intoxicating repose." * [* "Aus der
Gesellschaft," by the Countess Hahn-Hahn.]
Such was the enjoyment in which I hoped Mrs. Hatton found
ample compensation for my silence. She was no doubt a genuine
traveller; for she must have been genuine in every character
she assumed; though I fear that her notion of the happiness of
not talking, and of looking about her, would have fallen short
of the German countess's ideal of a traveller's bliss.
After a journey of about eighty miles, at five o'clock in the
evening we reached the town of Salisbury, where we were to
sleep that night. We ordered dinner at the inn, and I then
walked to the cathedral. I had never seen one before; and when
I came in sight of its tower, and then of the whole of its
beautiful structure, tears rushed into my eyes, and I stood
entranced in contemplation before it. My hands involuntarily
clasped themselves as in prayer, and I longed to fall on my
knees and adore there the God who had given to man's heart to
desire, to his mind to conceive, and to his hand the power of
raising, such shrines for His worship.
Salisbury Cathedral stands in the middle of a close, where
evergreens and shrubs of all kinds rise from the smooth green
grass that grows quite up to the foot of its walls. The door
was closed; but while I sent to procure the key from the
sexton, I walked slowly round the exterior of the cathedral,
and paused for some minutes in a spot where, in a recess
formed by the angles of the building, I stood with nothing
round me but the beautiful gothic walls--nothing above me but
the blue sky. It seemed a spot fitted for holy meditation, for
heavenly aspiration; it was a spot that might have been
selected when the Saviour's visible presence was withdrawn, by
that Mary who chose the good part which was never to be taken
from her. It might have been the resort of that Hannah who
departed not from the Temple but served the Lord with fastings
and with prayers day and night. It might have been the chosen
retreat of one who, amidst all the blessings of life, day by
day made preparation for the hour of death. The vision of such
a life, of a course of sacred duties, of holy affections, of
usefulness in life, of resignation in death, of humility in
time of weal, of peace in time of woe; such a vision passed
before my eyes even then, and my lips murmured: "Let me die
the death of the righteous, and let my latter end be like
his."
The sexton arrived with the key; and entering by the great
portal door, I wandered for nearly an hour through the aisles,
and lingered in the choir and in the chapel, though there was
scarcely light to do more than just to trace the outlines of
the masses of columns which rise in severe simplicity, and
arch above one's head at a height which, in the dimness of the
twilight, was scarcely discernible. After having visited the
cloisters, and been so beguiled by their beauty as to forget
that dinner was to be on the table at six o'clock, and that it
was now verging on the half-hour past, I hurried back to the
inn just as the first set of mutton-chops were coming up the
stairs, and had just time to close Mrs. Hatton's mouth with a
kiss as she was beginning to assure me, in answer to my
apologies, that there was nothing in the world she liked so
much as waiting for dinner.
The weather had grown close and warm; and we were glad,
immediately after we had finished eating, to have the table
cleared, and to draw our chairs to the open bow-window. It
commanded a view all down the street, which at that moment
bore the peculiarly dull and dusty appearance which streets in
provincial towns are apt to present on a summer's evening. Two
or three children were playing at marbles before one door, and
screaming at each other in that particular key which games of
this description call into exercise. Now and then a small cart
drove by, and a few people on foot occasionally walked past
the window. The clouds were gathering rapidly over the sky,
and the air was becoming every instant more sultry and
oppressive. Heavy drops of rain began to fall one by one in
large round spots on the dusty pavement. Red and darkgreen
umbrellas began to be unfolded; the carts to drive by more
briskly; the marble players to withdraw into the house after
sundry vociferations from some neighbouring window; and the
whole scene fairly assumed the hopeless character of a rainy
summer's evening. Meantime two men had stationed themselves
under the projecting roof of our inn at the outset of the
shower, and kept up between themselves a conversation, of
which a few words occasionally reached my ears. One of the
speakers was a man seemingly of fifty or thereabouts, of a
heavy, dull character of countenance; his dress that of a
tradesman, not of the better sort. The other was a young man
who would have been handsome had it not been for a scowl which
disfigured his otherwise well-shaped features. The oldest of
the two men said to the other, apparently in answer to some
inquiry, "Not till the old un dies, which he will soon."
"Is he as bad as that comes to?" returned the other. A cart
rambled by at that moment, and I heard nothing more, and would
have probably left the window had not the next words that were
spoken arrested my attention.
"So Alice is here?" observed the youngest of the two speakers.
"And are you still after that ere spec?" was the answer.
I immediately identified the Alice they were speaking of with
Alice Tracy, and I could not help listening on with the wish
to hear something that would corroborate or destroy this idea.
"She'll never have you, take my word for it," continued the
same man.
"May be not, while the gemman's a-courting her; but he's after
other game, I take it, now."
"I seed him here, with my own eyes, not four days ago," said
the first speaker.--"Old mother Tracy has him in her clutches,
I'll warrant you. She didn't come down with the shiners for
nothing."
"He's a limb of Satan; and if he were the devil himself, I'd
tear his eyes out first," retorted the younger man with a
fearful volley of oaths.
"And he'd snap his fingers at you, and give you into a
policeman's charge. That's no go, my hearty--"
"But if the old un is dying; as you say, and the lass comes in
for the cash, he'll not be such a d--d fool--"
"Ay, ay; but mother Tracy, with the bit of paper you know of,
would prove an awkward customer for that ere chap! But I'll
tell ye, my lad,--you 've but one chance--"
Here the speaker's voice sunk into a whisper, and I did not
catch another word. The two men soon took a reconnoitring
glance at the weather; and after looking up the street and
down the street, and up at the sky, where nothing was visible
but a thick mass of gray clouds, they seemed to awake to the
thorough hopelessness of the case, and walked off, muttering
imprecations on the weather.
I remained by the window absorbed in thought, till Mrs. Hatton
apprised me that tea was come. There was, indeed, matter for
thought in the few words these men had uttered; and the
thoughts they suggested were perplexing in the extreme. It was
of Alice Tracy they had spoken, for I had twice distinctly
heard her grandmother's name pronounced. She was in Salisbury
at this very moment, it appeared; these two rough and somewhat
discreditable men were acquainted with her. A gentleman (to
use their own expression) was after her; but the youngest man
of the two had expressed a hope that he was at present
devoting himself to some other person. Could this gentleman be
Henry Lovell? Had he been base, vile enough to attempt the
ruin of the lovely girl whose beauty and innocence had seemed
to me to belong to a higher sphere than that of this world of
ours? Was his devotion to me what was alluded to in the
conversation I had overheard? Who was the person whose death
they seemed to expect? I was lost in a maze of doubts and
conjectures; among which the most distressing was the one that
presented to my mind the idea of Alice becoming a victim to
the infamous pursuit of Henry Lovell. But again, what could
they mean by his (the gentleman, whoever he was,) being in
Mrs. Tracy's clutches? I vainly racked my brain to form some
conjecture which would account for the different parts of this
short conversation. Poor Mrs. Hatton must have thought me apt
to be silent, not only in a carriage, but out of one, too, if
she judged by my taciturnity on this occasion. When the waiter
came in to fetch the tea-things away, I asked him if he knew
of any person living in Salisbury, and bearing the name of
Tracy? He did not know of any such, he said, but would inquire
if I wished. As he was going out of the room, he turned back,
and holding the handle of the door with one hand, and passing
the other through a bushy head of hair, he added: "I suppose
it's quality you are asking for, Ma'am?"
"No; any persons of that name: do you know any?"
"There's an old Miss Tracy, Ma'am, lives in the next street
here; she was sister to the grocer that died two years ago."
"Do you happen to know if she has had any relations staying
with her lately?"
"I think she has. Ma'am; for she hired a bed, a chair, and a
table, some three months ago, of my brother, who lets out
furniture; and she'd not go to expense for nothing: her late
brother's money is safe enough in her keeping."
As I still looked interested in the subject of Miss Tracy's
expenses, the waiter, who was evidently of a communicative
turn of mind, closed the door and came back to the table to
wipe off some nearly imperceptible crumbs that were lying on
the smooth, bright mahogany.
"It was a curious thing enough, Ma'am," he resumed; "nobody in
the wide world knowing that the grocer in--street,--old Tracy,
as he was called,--had scraped together thirty thousand
pounds, and never had been the better for it while he lived."
"Nor when he died," I thought to myself; and inquired if the
whole of that sum had been left to the lady who certainly
would not go to expense for nothing?
"No, only half, Ma'am," was the answer; "fifteen thousand
pounds in hard cash her brother left her; but it is not many
folk in Salisbury that have seen the colour of her money.
She'll keep adding on to it as long as she lives."
"And where did the other fifteen thousand pounds go?" I asked.
"They was lodged in some Lunnon banker's hands, Ma'am, I
fancy. It's said he left that other half of his money to some
relations that lived thereabouts, but I can't tell for sure."
I longed to ask him, if he knew what kind of people had been
staying with Miss Tracy, and to find out, if possible, if it
was Alice, and whether she was still in Salisbury; but I felt
ashamed of questioning on, and, during the pause that ensued,
my informant gave one more general polishing to the table,
pushed one or two chairs out of their places, poked the fire,
which did not want poking, and with a side bow left the room.
My curiosity was so strongly excited, that I could not refrain
from asking Mrs. Hatton if she knew anything of the Mrs.
Tracy, who, in old times, had been my aunt's maid, but she had
never seen her, and could give me no information on the
subject. We were to start the next morning at nine o'clock,
and I resolved to make an effort to satisfy myself as to the
state of the case by calling at Miss Tracy's door before
setting off. At eight o'clock accordingly, having ascertained
from my friend, the waiter, the name of the street and the
number of the house, I set out, and as I approached it, my
heart beat with a strange mixture of shyness, anxiety, and
curiosity. I pulled the bell, and was almost tempted to run
away when I heard some one walking heavily to the door to open
it. It opened however before I had made up my mind to bolt,
and I asked the slip-shod, red-faced girl who appeared,
whether Miss Tracy lived there?
"Yes, she does (was the answer). What's your will, Miss?"
"Is Miss Alice Tracy staying with her?"
"Yes, she is."
"Is she at home?"
"No, she aint, she's in church, but her grandmother's at
home."
I did not feel courage enough to renew my acquaintance with
Mrs. Tracy, whose reception of me at Bridman Cottage I well
remembered, and whose forbidding countenance had remained
strongly impressed on my recollection. I therefore drew a bit
of paper from my pocket, and hastily writing my name upon it,
I was just handing it to the girl, when it struck me that it
was possible, that, after all, there might be two Alice Tracys
in the world, and that I had better not leave my name at a
venture. I therefore tore off the bit of writing, and on the
remaining slip of paper I drew a passion flower, and requested
the girl to give it to Miss Alice Tracy when she came home.
"But what's your name. Ma'am?" she inquired.
"Never mind it," I replied. "Miss Alice will know it
immediately, if she is my Miss Alice, and if she is not, it
does not signify," and I walked off, leaving the puzzled
portress with her mouth wide open, my sketch in her hand, and
her intellect evidently employed in balancing the
probabilities as to the sanity of mine.
The britschka was at the door when I got back to the inn, and
Mrs. Hatton with her veil down, and her boa round her neck,
was waiting for me in the little sitting-room. We hastened
into the carriage and rattled off through the streets of
Salisbury, and were soon after ascending at a slow pace the
hill that lies on the west side of the town. After a few hours
of uninteresting driving along the high road, we turned into a
lane which brought us at once into a new kind of scenery,
quite different from any that I had yet been acquainted with.
On either side of us rose, in gentle acclivities, a boundless
extent of down, diversified by large patches of gorse, tall
clumps of broom shining in all the gorgeous beauty of their
yellow flowers, and spreading beds of fern, that loveliest of
leaves, as beautiful in its form, and almost as architectural
in its natural symmetry, as the more classical acanthus.
As we advanced into the very heart of the country, the
character of the scenery changed, and became of a more
woodland description. Hedges on both sides of the road bounded
our view, but there was ample compensation for this in these
delicious hedges themselves, in which hawthorn stood out in
sturdy independence from among the intricacies of shrubs and
brambles, that imprisoned their stems, while they scattered
their snowy blossoms on the shining leaves and green patches
of grass beneath them; in which the frail but daring eglantine
twined its weak tendrils round the withered trunk of some
hollow, worn-out oak; in which the wild clematis and the
feathery traveller's-joy, as children love to call it, flung
their fairy flowers in reckless profusion over the tangled
mass from whence they sprung. There was enough in these hedges
to make up for the loss of views; but we had views too, when,
for a moment, a gate, a stile, a gap in the hedge itself,
opened to us glimpses of such woods and dells as we read of in
the Midsummer Night's Dream.
We reached Brandon at four o'clock. It stands in the midst of
what was formerly a chase of immense extent, and which now
forms a park of extraordinary size, and of singular beauty.
The hand of man seems to have done but little to improve that
beauty: the house stands as if by chance in the midst of a
wilderness of downy hills and grassy valleys, of hawthorn
groves, and wild commons, of remnants of forests, and miles of
underwood. I was so engrossed by the strange character of
this, to me, perfectly novel scenery, that I thought little of
anything else as we drove up to the house: and when on
reaching the entrance door, the servants rushed to let down
the step, and seize upon the luggage, I felt taken by
surprise; rousing myself, I took an affectionate leave of Mrs.
Hatton, who was proceeding to her own home in the town of--,
about ten miles beyond Brandon, and we did not part without my
promising her, that, if I could possible contrive it, I would
visit her there before I left Dorsetshire.