at secresy, and she was still loudly inveighing against the grovelling
propensities of men. “That’s quite true, Mrs. Talboys,” said one of the
elder ladies; “but then women are not always so careful as they should
be. Of course I do not mean to say that there has been any fault on your
part.”
“Fault on my part! Of course there has been fault on my part. No one can
make any mistake without fault to some extent. I took him to be a man of
sense, and he is a fool. Go to Naples indeed!”
“Did he want you to go to Naples?” asked Mrs. Mackinnon.
“Yes; that was what he suggested. We were to leave by the train for
Civita Vecchia at six to-morrow morning, and catch the steamer which
leaves Leghorn to-night. Don’t tell me of wine. He was prepared for it!”
And she looked round about on us with an air of injured majesty in her
face which was almost insupportable.
“I wonder whether he took the tickets over-night,” said Mackinnon.
“Naples!” she said, as though now speaking exclusively to herself, “the
only ground in Italy which has as yet made no struggle on behalf of
freedom;--a fitting residence for such a dastard!”
“You would have found it very pleasant at this season,” said the
unmarried lady, who was three years her junior.
My wife had taken Ida out of the way when the first complaining note
from Mrs. Talboys had been heard ascending the hill. But now, when
matters began gradually to become quiescent, she brought her back,
suggesting, as she did so, that they might begin to think of returning.
“It is getting very cold, Ida, dear, is it not?” said she.
“But where is Mr. O’Brien?” said Ida.
“He has fled,--as poltroons always fly,” said Mrs. Talboys. I believe in
my heart that she would have been glad to have had him there in the
middle of the circle, and to have triumphed over him publicly among us
all. No feeling of shame would have kept her silent for a moment.
“Fled!” said Ida, looking up into her mother’s face.
“Yes, fled, my child.” And she seized her daughter in her arms, and
pressed her closely to her bosom. “Cowards always fly.”
“Is Mr. O’Brien a coward?” Ida asked.
“Yes, a coward, a very coward! And he has fled before the glance of an
honest woman’s eye. Come, Mrs. Mackinnon, shall we go back to the city?
I am sorry that the amusement of the day should have received this
check.” And she walked forward to the carriage and took her place in it
with an air that showed that she was proud of the way in which she had
conducted herself.
“She is a little conceited about it after all,” said that unmarried
lady. “If poor Mr. O’Brien had not shown so much premature anxiety with
reference to that little journey to Naples, things might have gone
quietly after all.”
But the unmarried lady was wrong in her judgment. Mrs. Talboys was proud
and conceited in the matter,--but not proud of having excited the
admiration of her Irish lover. She was proud of her own subsequent
conduct, and gave herself credit for coming out strongly as a
noble-minded matron. “I believe she thinks,” said Mrs. Mackinnon, “that
her virtue is quite Spartan and unique; and if she remains in Rome
she’ll boast of it through the whole winter.”
“If she does, she may be certain that O’Brien will do the same,” said
Mackinnon. “And in spite of his having fled from the field, it is upon
the cards that he may get the best of it. Mrs. Talboys is a very
excellent woman. She has proved her excellence beyond a doubt. But,
nevertheless, she is susceptible of ridicule.”
We all felt a little anxiety to hear O’Brien’s account of the matter,
and after having deposited the ladies at their homes, Mackinnon and I
went off to his lodgings. At first he was denied to us, but after awhile
we got his servant to acknowledge that he was at home, and then we made
our way up to his studio. We found him seated behind a half-formed
model, or rather a mere lump of clay punched into something resembling
the shape of a head, with a pipe in his mouth and a bit of stick in his
hand. He was pretending to work, though we both knew that it was out of
the question that he should do anything in his present frame of mind.
“I think I heard my servant tell you that I was not at home,” said he.
“Yes, he did,” said Mackinnon, “and would have sworn to it too if we
would have let him. Come, don’t pretend to be surly.”
“I am very busy, Mr. Mackinnon.”
“Completing your head of Mrs. Talboys, I suppose, before you start for
Naples.”
“You don’t mean to say that she has told you all about it,” and he
turned away from his work, and looked up into our faces with a comical
expression, half of fun and half of despair.
“Every word of it,” said I. “When you want a lady to travel with you,
never ask her to get up so early in winter.”
“But, O’Brien, how could you be such an ass?” said Mackinnon. “As it has
turned out, there is no very great harm done. You have insulted a
respectable middle-aged woman, the mother of a family, and the wife of a
general officer, and there is an end of it;--unless, indeed, the general
officer should come out from England to call you to account.”
“He is welcome,” said O’Brien, haughtily.
“No doubt, my dear fellow,” said Mackinnon; “that would be a dignified
and pleasant ending to the affair. But what I want to know is
this;--what would you have done if she had agreed to go?”
“He never calculated on the possibility of such a contingency,” said I.
“By heavens, then, I thought she would like it,” said he.
“And to oblige her you were content to sacrifice yourself,” said
Mackinnon.
“Well, that was just it. What the deuce is a fellow to do when a woman
goes on in that way. She told me down there, upon the old race course
you know, that matrimonial bonds were made for fools and slaves. What
was I to suppose that she meant by that? But to make all sure, I asked
her what sort of a fellow the General was. ‘Dear old man,’ she said,
clasping her hands together. ‘He might, you know, have been my father.’
‘I wish he were,’ said I, ‘because then you’d be free.’ ‘I am free,’
said she, stamping on the ground, and looking up at me as much as to say
that she cared for no one. ‘Then,’ said I, ‘accept all that is left of
the heart of Wenceslaus O’Brien,’ and I threw myself before her in her
path. ‘Hand,’ said I, ‘I have none to give, but the blood which runs red
through my veins is descended from a double line of kings.’ I said that
because she is always fond of riding a high horse. I had gotten close
under the wall, so that none of you should see me from the tower.”
“And what answer did she make?” said Mackinnon.
“Why she was pleased as Punch;--gave me both her hands, and declared
that we would be friends for ever. It is my belief, Mackinnon, that that
woman never heard anything of the kind before. The General, no doubt,
did it by letter.”
“And how was it that she changed her mind?”
“Why; I got up, put my arm round her waist, and told her that we would
be off to Naples. I’m blest if she didn’t give me a knock in the ribs
that nearly sent me backwards. She took my breath away, so that I
couldn’t speak to her.”
“And then----”
“Oh, there was nothing more. Of course I saw how it was. So she walked
off one way and I the other. On the whole I consider that I am well out
of it.”
“And so do I,” said Mackinnon, very gravely. “But if you will allow me
to give you my advice, I would suggest that it would be well to avoid
such mistakes in future.”
“Upon my word,” said O’Brien, excusing himself, “I don’t know what a man
is to do under such circumstances. I give you my honour that I did it
all to oblige her.”
We then decided that Mackinnon should convey to the injured lady the
humble apology of her late admirer. It was settled that no detailed
excuses should be made. It should be left to her to consider whether the
deed which had been done might have been occasioned by wine, or by the
folly of a moment,--or by her own indiscreet enthusiasm. No one but the
two were present when the message was given, and therefore we were
obliged to trust to Mackinnon’s accuracy for an account of it.
She stood on very high ground indeed, he said, at first refusing to hear
anything that he had to say on the matter. “The foolish young man,” she
declared, “was below her anger and below her contempt.”
“He is not the first Irishman that has been made indiscreet by beauty,”
said Mackinnon.
“A truce to that,” she replied, waving her hand with an air of assumed
majesty. “The incident, contemptible as it is, has been unpleasant to
me. It will necessitate my withdrawal from Rome.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Talboys; that will be making too much of him.”
“The greatest hero that lives,” she answered, “may have his house made
uninhabitable by a very small insect.” Mackinnon swore that those were
her own words. Consequently a sobriquet was attached to O’Brien of which
he by no means approved. And from that day we always called Mrs. Talboys
“the hero.”
Mackinnon prevailed at last with her, and she did not leave Rome. She
was even induced to send a message to O’Brien, conveying her
forgiveness. They shook hands together with great éclat in Mrs.
Mackinnon’s drawing-room; but I do not suppose that she ever again
offered to him sympathy on the score of his matrimonial troubles.
THE PARSON’S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE.
The prettiest scenery in all England--and if I am contradicted in that
assertion, I will say in all Europe--is in Devonshire, on the southern
and south-eastern skirts of Dartmoor, where the rivers Dart, and Avon,
and Teign form themselves, and where the broken moor is half cultivated,
and the wild-looking upland fields are half moor. In making this
assertion I am often met with much doubt, but it is by persons who do
not really know the locality. Men and women talk to me on the matter,
who have travelled down the line of railway from Exeter to Plymouth, who
have spent a fortnight at Torquay, and perhaps made an excursion from
Tavistock to the convict prison on Dartmoor. But who knows the glories
of Chagford? Who has walked through the parish of Manaton? Who is
conversant with Lustleigh Cleeves and Withycombe in the moor? Who has
explored Holne Chase? Gentle reader, believe me that you will be rash in
contradicting me, unless you have done these things.
There or thereabouts--I will not say by the waters of which little river
it is washed--is the parish of Oxney Colne. And for those who wish to
see all the beauties of this lovely country, a sojourn in Oxney Colne
would be most desirable, seeing that the sojourner would then be brought
nearer to all that he would wish to visit, than, at any other spot in
the country. But there is an objection to any such arrangement. There
are only two decent houses in the whole parish, and these are--or were
when I knew the locality--small and fully occupied by their possessors.
The larger and better is the parsonage, in which lived the parson and
his daughter; and the smaller is a freehold residence of a certain Miss
Le Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred acres, which was rented by one
Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed some thirty acres round her own
house, which she managed herself, regarding herself to be quite as
great in cream, as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether superior to him in the
article of cyder. “But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,” Farmer Cloysey
would say, when Miss Le Smyrger expressed this opinion of her art in a
manner too defiant. “Yeu pays no rent, or yeu couldn’t do it.” Miss Le
Smyrger was an old maid, with a pedigree and blood of her own, a hundred
and thirty acres of fee-simple land on the borders of Dartmoor, fifty
years of age, a constitution of iron, and an opinion of her own on every
subject under the sun.
And now for the parson and his daughter. The parson’s name was
Woolsworthy--or Woolathy, as it was pronounced by all those who lived
around him--the Rev. Saul Woolsworthy; and his daughter was Patience
Woolsworthy, or Miss Patty, as she was known to the Devonshire world of
those parts. That name of Patience had not been well chosen for her, for
she was a hot-tempered damsel, warm in her convictions, and inclined to
express them freely. She had but two closely intimate friends in the
world, and by both of them this freedom of expression had now been fully
permitted to her since she was a child. Miss Le Smyrger and her father
were well accustomed to her ways, and on the whole well satisfied with
them. The former was equally free and equally warm-tempered as herself,
and as Mr. Woolsworthy was allowed by his daughter to be quite paramount
on his own subject--for he had a subject--he did not object to his
daughter being paramount on all others. A pretty girl was Patience
Woolsworthy at the time of which I am writing, and one who possessed
much that was worthy of remark and admiration, had she lived where
beauty meets with admiration, or where force of character is remarked.
But at Oxney Colne, on the borders of Dartmoor, there were few to
appreciate her, and it seemed as though she herself had but little idea
of carrying her talent further afield, so that it might not remain for
ever wrapped in a blanket.
She was a pretty girl, tall and slender, with dark eyes and black hair.
Her eyes were perhaps too round for regular beauty, and her hair was
perhaps too crisp; her mouth was large and expressive; her nose was
finely formed, though a critic in female form might have declared it to
be somewhat broad. But her countenance altogether was wonderfully
attractive--if only it might be seen without that resolution for
dominion which occasionally marred it, though sometimes it even added to
her attractions.
It must be confessed on behalf of Patience Woolsworthy, that the
circumstances of her life had peremptorily called upon her to exercise
dominion. She had lost her mother when she was sixteen, and had had
neither brother nor sister. She had no neighbours near her fit either
from education or rank to interfere in the conduct of her life,
excepting always Miss Le Smyrger. Miss Le Smyrger would have done
anything for her, including the whole management of her morals and of
the parsonage household, had Patience been content with such an
arrangement. But much as Patience had ever loved Miss Le Smyrger, she
was not content with this, and therefore she had been called on to put
forth a strong hand of her own. She had put forth this strong hand
early, and hence had come the character which I am attempting to
describe. But I must say on behalf of this girl, that it was not only
over others that she thus exercised dominion. In acquiring that power
she had also acquired the much greater power of exercising rule over
herself.
But why should her father have been ignored in these family
arrangements? Perhaps it may almost suffice to say, that of all living
men her father was the man best conversant with the antiquities of the
county in which he lived. He was the Jonathan Oldbuck of Devonshire, and
especially of Dartmoor, without that decision of character which enabled
Oldbuck to keep his womenkind in some kind of subjection, and probably
enabled him also to see that his weekly bills did not pass their proper
limits. Our Mr. Oldbuck, of Oxney Colne, was sadly deficient in these. A
a parish pastor with but a small cure, he did his duty with sufficient
energy, to keep him, at any rate, from reproach. He was kind and
charitable to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing with the
farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and indifferent to
aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of him. I do not name
this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But all these points
were as nothing in the known character of Mr. Woolsworthy, of Oxney
Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That was his line of life. It
was in that capacity that he was known to the Devonshire world; it was
as such that he journeyed about with his humble carpet-bag, staying away
from his parsonage a night or two at a time; it was in that character
that he received now and again stray visitors in the single spare
bedroom--not friends asked to see him and his girl because of their
friendship--but men who knew something as to this buried stone, or that
old land-mark. In all these things his daughter let him have his own
way, assisting and encouraging him. That was his line of life, and
therefore she respected it. But in all other matters she chose to be
paramount at the parsonage.
Mr. Woolsworthy was a little man, who always wore, except on Sundays,
grey clothes--clothes of so light a grey that they would hardly have
been regarded as clerical in a district less remote. He had now reached
a goodly age, being full seventy years old; but still he was wiry and
active, and showed but few symptoms of decay. His head was bald, and the
few remaining locks that surrounded it were nearly white. But there was
a look of energy about his mouth, and a humour in his light grey eye,
which forbade those who knew him to regard him altogether as an old man.
As it was, he could walk from Oxney Colne to Priestown, fifteen long
Devonshire miles across the moor; and he who could do that could hardly
be regarded as too old for work.
But our present story will have more to do with his daughter than with
him. A pretty girl, I have said, was Patience Woolsworthy; and one, too,
in many ways remarkable. She had taken her outlook into life, weighing
the things which she had and those which she had not, in a manner very
unusual, and, as a rule, not always desirable for a young lady. The
things which she had not were very many. She had not society; she had
not a fortune; she had not any assurance of future means of livelihood;
she had not high hope of procuring for herself a position in life by
marriage; she had not that excitement and pleasure in life which she
read of in such books as found their way down to Oxney Colne Parsonage.
It would be easy to add to the list of the things which she had not; and
this list against herself she made out with the utmost vigour. The
things which she had, or those rather which she assured herself of
having, were much more easily counted. She had the birth and education
of a lady, the strength of a healthy woman, and a will of her own. Such
was the list as she made it out for herself, and I protest that I assert
no more than the truth in saying that she never added to it either
beauty, wit, or talent.
I began these descriptions by saying that Oxney Colne would, of all
places, be the best spot from which a tourist could visit those parts of
Devonshire, but for the fact that he could obtain there none of the
accommodation which tourists require. A brother antiquarian might,
perhaps, in those days have done so, seeing that there was, as I have
said, a spare bedroom at the parsonage. Any intimate friend of Miss Le
Smyrger’s might be as fortunate, for she was equally well provided at
Oxney Combe, by which name her house was known. But Miss Le Smyrger was
not given to extensive hospitality, and it was only to those who were
bound to her, either by ties of blood or of very old friendship, that
she delighted to open her doors. As her old friends were very few in
number, as those few lived at a distance, and as her nearest relations
were higher in the world than she was, and were said by herself to look
down upon her, the visits made to Oxney Combe were few and far between.
But now, at the period of which I am writing, such a visit was about to
be made. Miss Le Smyrger had a younger sister, who had inherited a
property in the parish of Oxney Colne equal to that of the lady who now
lived there; but this the younger sister had inherited beauty also, and
she therefore, in early life, had found sundry lovers, one of whom
became her husband. She had married a man even then well to do in the
world, but now rich and almost mighty; a Member of Parliament, a lord of
this and that board, a man who had a house in Eaton Square, and a park
in the north of England; and in this way her course of life had been
very much divided from that of our Miss Le Smyrger. But the Lord of the
Government Board had been blessed with various children; and perhaps it
was now thought expedient to look after Aunt Penelope’s Devonshire
acres. Aunt Penelope was empowered to leave them to whom she pleased;
and though it was thought in Eaton Square that she must, as a matter of
course, leave them to one of the family, nevertheless a little cousinly
intercourse might make the thing more certain. I will not say that this
was the sole cause of such a visit, but in these days a visit was to be
made by Captain Broughton to his aunt. Now Captain John Broughton was
the second son of Alfonso Broughton, of Clapham Park and Eaton Square,
Member of Parliament, and Lord of the aforesaid Government Board.
“And what do you mean to do with him?” Patience Woolsworthy asked of
Miss Le Smyrger when that lady walked over from the Combe to say that
her nephew John was to arrive on the following morning.
“Do with him? Why I shall bring him over here to talk to your father.”
“He’ll be too fashionable for that; and papa won’t trouble his head
about him if he finds that he doesn’t care for Dartmoor.”
“Then he may fall in love with you, my dear.”
“Well, yes; there’s that resource at any rate, and for your sake I dare
say I should be more civil to him than papa. But he’ll soon get tired
of making love, and what you’ll do then I cannot imagine.”
That Miss Woolsworthy felt no interest in the coming of the Captain I
will not pretend to say. The advent of any stranger with whom she would
be called on to associate must be matter of interest to her in that
secluded place; and she was not so absolutely unlike other young ladies
that the arrival of an unmarried young man would be the same to her as
the advent of some patriarchal paterfamilias. In taking that outlook
into life of which I have spoken, she had never said to herself that she
despised those things from which other girls received the excitement,
the joys, and the disappointment of their lives. She had simply given
herself to understand that very little of such things would come her
way, and that it behoved her to live--to live happily if such might be
possible--without experiencing the need of them. She had heard, when
there was no thought of any such visit to Oxney Colne, that John
Broughton was a handsome, clever man--one who thought much of himself,
and was thought much of by others--that there had been some talk of his
marrying a great heiress, which marriage, however, had not taken place
through unwillingness on his part, and that he was on the whole a man of
more mark in the world than the ordinary captain of ordinary regiments.
Captain Broughton came to Oxney Combe, stayed there a fortnight,--the
intended period for his projected visit having been fixed at three or
four days,--and then went his way. He went his way back to his London
haunts, the time of the year then being the close of the Easter
holidays; but as he did so he told his aunt that he should assuredly
return to her in the autumn.
“And assuredly I shall be happy to see you, John--if you come with a
certain purpose. If you have no such purpose, you had better remain
away.”
“I shall assuredly come,” the Captain had replied, and then he had gone
on his journey.
The summer passed rapidly by, and very little was said between Miss Le
Smyrger and Miss Woolsworthy about Captain Broughton. In many
respects--nay, I may say, as to all ordinary matters, no two women could
well be more intimate with each other than they were,--and more than
that, they had the courage each to talk to the other with absolute truth
as to things concerning themselves--a courage in which dear friends
often fail. But nevertheless, very little was said between them about
Captain John Broughton. All that was said may be here repeated.
“John says that he shall return here in August,” Miss Le Smyrger said,
as Patience was sitting with her in the parlour at Oxney Combe, on the
morning after that gentleman’s departure.
“He told me so himself,” said Patience; and as she spoke her round dark
eyes assumed a look of more than ordinary self-will. If Miss Le Smyrger
had intended to carry the conversation any further, she changed her mind
as she looked at her companion. Then, as I said, the summer ran by, and
towards the close of the warm days of July, Miss Le Smyrger, sitting in
the same chair in the same room, again took up the conversation.
“I got a letter from John this morning. He says that he shall be here on
the third.”
“Does he?”
“He is very punctual to the time he named.”
“Yes; I fancy that he is a punctual man,” said Patience.