to stop him, and went on:--
'You have been foolishly generous, Mr. Herring. You have advanced sixty
pounds to my father, to stave off the ruin that is impending. It is of
no use. Do not venture to do this again. You ought not to have done it
even once. However, let me clear off the debt in part immediately. I
have butter money--not the entire sum, not even a half.'
'Dear Miss Battishill, I will not take it.'
'Let us understand each other,' she said; 'do not interrupt me. I have
had a little battle with myself upstairs before I could nerve myself to
meet you. I do not know why it is that gentlefolks shrink from speaking
of money matters one with another. Now I am wound up, and can go on
ticking, but if you say a word, it is like putting a feather among the
wheels, it arrests the movements, and the clock ceases. What I have to
say must be said. Mr. Herring, it will not do to lend us money, we are
hopelessly involved to the Trampleasures. Nothing that you can do will
save us, without involving you in our disasters. My dear father has
relied on the hereditary wisdom of the Battishills,' she looked up at
the stained glass in the window, and the pretty dimple came in her rosy
cheek. 'Those heraldic owls have done us harm. They have bred in our
hearts the belief that Wisdom went with the cognizances, and had set up
her temple at West Wyke. My dear father always supposed that he was
about to make his fortune by the application of the hereditary wisdom to
the development of the resources of the property, or else in
speculations in mines. Alas! an owl can see in the dark, but not even
one of our owls in the darkness that envelops Cornish mining. My father
was led on by Mr. Trampleasure, who flattered him by appealing to his
judgment in various matters, and now we are clipped past recovery. The
Tramplaras will take from us everything--the dear old house, our moors,
our little farms. I have foreseen this for some time, and I have known
that it is inevitable. Sooner or later the crash must come, and it is
better that it should come now, rather than later when my father will be
less able to bear it.'
Herring made another effort to interrupt.
'No,' she said again, with a faint smile, 'let me go on ticking. You
have advanced my father sixty pounds. Next Michaelmas he will have to
meet another demand for a larger amount. There are thousands of pounds
owing to Mr. Trampleasure, of which this is the interest. He may call
in that debt at any time, and then--how are we to meet it? All the money
my father borrowed is gone without having been of the smallest advantage
to us--gone in unfortunate ventures which have engulfed everything. The
dear old man would do the same thing to-morrow if he were able. He is
now full of the notion that he has discovered a silver lead mine at
Upaver, and he may try to persuade you to embark in it. Do not be
persuaded. Do not listen to him. Nothing that my father touches ever
succeeds. As long as I can remember he has been on the point of making
a fortune, but has invariably missed the point, and fallen after each
venture into deeper disaster.'
'I have been to Upaver. I walked there yesterday, and saw what had been
brought up. There is silver lead there, of that I am certain.'
'Have nothing to do with it,' said Cicely. 'Fortune's wheel has been on
the turn for the Battishills for some time, and always downwards.
Promise me to banish Upaver from your mind. Promise me not to put your
money into it.'
'I have no money to put in.'
'And never, never again lend my father money--or me, however earnestly I
may beg for it. It is of no good; we must go down, down, down. Most of
us small Devon gentry are like buoys moored to a sandbank. Every wave
goes over our heads, We are never wholly above water. After a while the
canker gets into our hearts; we break away from our sandbank, and drift
away--away into the vast unknown. We Battishills are about to drift;
decay has set in. Nothing but a miracle can save us, and the age of
miracles is over. There, take my butter-money, it consists of eighteen
pounds, no more; I shall, however, be able to pay you two pounds in a
fortnight, and you shall have the rest, if I can possibly manage it,
next year. I cannot promise an earlier payment. Take it.'
Herring drew back his hand.
'Take it,' said Cicely. 'It is stocking money. An old stocking is the
surest of banks; it never breaks.'
'No,' said Herring, 'you want the money. I am not a rich man, by any
means, but I am not so hard pinched that I cannot lend a trifle. You
will hurt me if you refuse the loan.'
'I said to myself when I came down that we should fight,' said Cicely;
'but I will not suffer you to conquer me. Do you not understand that I
have pride, and that it is the part of a gallant gentleman to humour
it?'
'Give me the money,' said Herring. 'One thing, however, I will not
promise. You asked me never to listen to you again if you begged a
loan. This money and more will always be at your service on an
emergency.'
'That is settled,' said Cicely with a sigh of relief.
'Now we come to a second matter; again I appeal to your good nature.
Look at this letter. My father has received it from Mr. Trampleasure,
requesting him immediately to bring his ward--Miss Strange as he calls
her--to Launceston, along with her boxes and her father's papers. The
will must be proved and an inventory of goods taken for probate. Mr.
Trampleasure does not offer to come for Mirelle himself, he expects my
father to conduct her to Launceston; he knows that the demands he makes
on my father must be complied with. Now it is out of the question that
the dear old man should take this journey in his present condition of
health, and I dare not leave him. There is no one we can trust except
yourself. It is true I might write and say that my father is ill and
unable to travel; then Mr. Trampleasure would be forced to come himself,
but I dread an interview between my father and the man who has ruined
him. In his present weak state and partial convalescence, it would not
be wise. The doctor says he must be kept from everything liable to
excite him. So I fall back on you. I told you that I knew you were
ready to do whatever is kind, and because I know this, I make no scruple
in using you. Was I not right?'
'I will do what you wish--gladly.'
'And,' said Cicely, hesitating and colouring, 'as you return on your way
to Exeter, you will call on us again? You cheer my father, who quite
counts on your visits, and, I am not ashamed to confess it, I want
advice. There is no one in this neighbourhood I can speak with on these
matters. Accident or Providence--I believe the latter--has brought you
here, and made you a welcome guest, and has constituted you almost the
confessor and adviser of the house.'
'I will certainly see you again.'
'By the time you return an answer will have arrived from Avranches, and
we shall then know whether Mirelle will have another protector, or must
be left to the uncontrolled disposal of the Tramplaras.'
'Yes,' said Herring impetuously, 'if only for that I must return. It is
too dreadful to think that she who has been accustomed to the purest and
most refined surroundings should be thrust into association with persons
like Mr. Tramplara and his son, and that her property should be
intrusted to a man who plays ducks and drakes with all the money that he
gets a chance of fingering.'
'I am glad you feel warmly in this matter,' said Cicely, laying a slight
touch of sarcasm on the words 'feel warmly.' 'Mirelle will apparently
need protector, confessor, and adviser as much as we, if not more so.'
'She is so helpless, so solitary,' explained Herring.
'By the way, chivalrous defender of unprotected maidens,' said Cicely,
brightening up, 'you come to us like the mysterious knight in a romance,
we know not whence, nor whither you go. It shows how utterly selfish we
have been, how centred in our own troubles, that no one has cared to
inquire whether you too have troubles, and whether you are alone in the
world.'
Herring smiled. 'There is no mystery about me; I am plain John Herring,
nothing more. I eat, I grow, I sleep, I talk. Troubles!--no, I have
none. Alone!--well, yes, that I am. You and the Countess I find acting
in tragedies, but my part hitherto has been in a farce?'
'And you so little regard your good luck that you offer it to the first
girl you meet.'
'What do you mean?'
'Only the sprig of white heath,' said Cicely, laughing.
Next day Mirelle left West Wyke in company with John Herring in an open
caleche. Cicely parted with her in a friendly manner, but without great
cordiality. The coldness and pride of Mirelle repelled her, and she did
not like her contemptuous treatment of Herring. Yet--strange mystery
that the female heart is--she would have liked it quite as little had
Mirelle gratefully accepted his services.
She resented also her want of tenderness towards her father. Cicely
could not understand it. But then she had been brought up with her
father, knew him, respected even his weaknesses, and loved his many
virtues. She was unable to understand that a like great love could not
grow out of the acquaintanceship of ten days, passed in coaches,
steam-packet, and hotels. She judged Mirelle more harshly than justly.
That is, she judged her as one woman judges another. As Mirelle was
driven away Cicely turned back towards the house, saying, 'She is an
icicle; she freezes my blood.'
Herring turned to Mirelle and said, 'How kind, and good, and simple Miss
Battishill is.'
'I have never before seen such red cheeks,' answered Mirelle. 'Do you
think she paints?'
*CHAPTER IX.*
*DOLBEARE.*
A bright day, with a few fleecy clouds drifting before a west wind. A
sky bright as that which overarches a young heart. The prospect as
smiling as that which opens before youth. Barriers bathed in sunlight
and indistinct in haze. Clouds without threat of rain casting
cobalt-blue shadows.
The wild range of Dartmoor rose into peaks, with gullies seaming their
sides, down which the Taw and the Ockments rushed foaming from their
cradles. A glorious scene inviting exploration, an enchanted land
calling the traveller to enter its seclusion and dispel its mysteries.
Bathed in sunlight, enveloped in that finest haze that pervades the air
on the brightest day in the West Country, who would suppose that all he
saw was barrenness and naked desolation?
'Do you see that castle rising out of the woods?' asked Herring,
pointing to some ruins of a keep on a hill to the left of the road,
after they had passed Okehampton. 'That castle belonged to the
Courtneys. There is a story of a certain Lady Howard who lived there in
the reign of James I.'
'I have not heard of him. Was he an English king?'
'He was king of England. He was the father of the ill-fated Charles I.'
'I have heard of him. He married a French princess, so he comes into
history.'
'Lady Howard was married four times; she had one daughter by her first
husband, whom she hated.'
'Perhaps she only despised him because he was not noble, and had taken
advantage of her poverty to marry her.'
'On the contrary, she was rich, an heiress, and her first husband was a
son of the Earl of Northumberland.'
'Then I understand nothing about it,' said Mirelle, leaning back in the
carriage as if the story had ceased to interest her.
'When she was married to her second husband she refused to see her
daughter. The poor girl came here to Okehampton; some relations sought
to effect a reconciliation. She was introduced to her mother under a
feigned name--here, in this castle, and Lady Howard did not know her.
But when the daughter fell on her knees to her mother and entreated
recognition, Lady Howard started to her feet with an exclamation of
aversion, and attempted to leave the room. The girl clung to her,
entreating her love, as the unnatural mother was escaping through the
door. But Lady Howard flung together the oak valves as she escaped, and
they caught the daughter's arm between them and broke it.'
'She was a bad woman; but she is expiating her crime in purgatory.'
'Her purgatory is a strange one,' said Herring. 'Every night she drives
along this road from Okehampton Castle to Launceston Castle in her great
coach drawn by four headless horses, with a skeleton driver on the box,
and her favourite bloodhound runs beside the coach. When they arrive at
Launceston the dog plucks a blade of grass from the mound on which the
keep stands, and then they return in the same way to Okehampton, which
they reach before break of day. And she is condemned to do this
nightly, till every blade of grass has been plucked off Launceston
Castle hill; and that will not be till the end of the world, for the
grass grows faster than the hound can pluck it.'
'Have you ever seen the carriage with the lady in it?'
'No. During the war French prisoners have been confined in the
dismantled castle, parts of which have been converted into prisons for
them, and several who have died in confinement are buried in Okehampton
churchyard.'
Mirelle shivered.
'I would not, I could not lie here. I should be wet under this dripping
sky. Poor men! Why did you not tell me this before, and I would have
visited their graves and prayed over them in their native tongue? It
contracts my heart to think of them, lying here, away from la belle
France, and the golden sun, and the vineyards, and the waving corn, and
the scent of incense, and the shadow of the cross.'
'The sun shines here. It is shining now.'
'_It_,' said Mirelle. 'You are right when you say _it_, not _he_. In
France he shines, he laughs, he illumines, he warms and even burns. He
is always in the sky. Here you have a phantasm of the sun, without
power and blaze and fire. I do not call that the sun; it is a
make-believe, a constitutional monarch allowed to peep out between the
clouds now and then, not reigning by right divine, dispelling the
clouds.'
Herring looked round at the girl in astonishment. She was echoing
sentiments she had heard in the convent and among her mother's
aristocratic acquaintance. 'And,' she went on, 'your church is the
same--a phantasm, a mock sun. When the servants of Saul came to seek
David, Michal, his wife, took a log of wood and put on it a bit of
goat's skin, and threw over it the bedclothes. Then the servants said,
It is David asleep. And that was what your Reformation consisted of.
You substituted a log for the living body. But why should I speak to you
of all this? You and I use the same names for expressing different
ideas. You have never eaten grapes off a vine, nor figs warm with the
kiss of the sun on their cheeks; and by grapes you mean raisins brown
and dried, and by figs withered fruit packed in wooden boxes. When I
speak of the sun, I mean something indescribably glorious; you, a round
tuft of cotton wool up in the clouds, that you can see sometimes when
supremely lucky. So in other things; what you mean by a king and a
church are altogether different; pale ghosts of what I mean by the same
words.'
Herring was amused, and not a little perplexed. She put him down with
an air of superiority, as a schoolmistress would put down a boy in her
class who had made a stupid blunder, which merited a whipping, but was
let off with degradation.
After some pause in the conversation he ventured to remark, 'You will
not deny that this scenery is lovely.'
'It is beautiful in feature, but wanting in colour. I could cry out for
my paint-box, and spill the colours over the scene to make it perfect.
My master taught me, when I learned to paint, that shadows were to be
made of carmine and ultramarine. There are no such colours here.
Shadows must be put in with Indian ink. I could copy all the tints with
a child's fifty-sous box of paints, warranted free from poisonous
matter, as also from all real colour. Besides,' she added, 'Venus when
she rose from the sea must have been intolerable till dried. Your land
is fair, but ever-lastingly dripping.'
She spoke without a smile. Herring turned his head aside to laugh.
So they went on; he telling her traditions to while away the journey,
she setting him down.
At length they arrived at Launceston.
The town is curious, perched on a height, rising precipitously out of
the valley of the Kensey, and culminating in a rock that has been shaped
by the hands of men, and crowned by a circular keep of concentric rings
of masonry.
The main street of Launceston is entered under an ancient gateway.
Scarcely another English town has such a picturesque and continental
appearance.
On the steep slope of the hill, clinging to its side, was the quaintest
conceivable house--a long narrow range of gables, roof and walls encased
in small slate-like mail armour. In front of the house is a narrow
terrace, with, at one end, a sort of summer-house, furnished with
fireplace and chimney. Below this terrace the rock falls abruptly to the
valley. The foundations of the houses in the street above are higher
than the tops of the chimneys of 'Dolbeare,' as this picturesque old
house was called.
In Dolbeare lived the Trampleasures, as they called themselves;
Tramplaras, as the world called them. Herring knew little of
Launceston, and he had some difficulty in finding the house.
The door opened to them, and they were introduced into a hall, with
stairs branching off on either side. Then a stout red-faced man, with
perfectly white hair, burst out of the adjoining room, with a noisy
shout of 'Oh, here you are at last! Come to my arms, Cousin Strange.'
Mirelle drew back before the coarse man.
'I say,' pursued he with effusion, 'what's your pet name, darling?
Let's be cosy and familiar at starting. What are you? Mirrie? Rellie?'
Mirelle turned to ice. 'You have mistaken the person,' she said. 'I am
no cousin. I have no other name than that of Countess Mirelle Garcia de
Cantalejo. I have come here till my affairs are settled, and then I
shall go elsewhere. I pray let this be understood from the outset. I
am not a Strange, and we are not relations.'
The old man stood open-eyed and open-mouthed without speaking, and then
burst into a roar of laughter, which made his face blaze a fierce red,
horrible against the snow of his hair and whiskers. His eyes were
black, with a cunning twinkle in them. His hands were large, the
fingers short and fat, the palms very wide. Altogether a repulsive old
man. to whom the hoar head was no crown of glory, but he a dishonour to
hoar hairs.
Mirelle contemplated him with undisguised aversion. Then she turned to
Herring and said, 'I cannot lodge with this person. Take me back to the
Battishills.'
Herring did not know what answer to make.
'Pray, who are you?' asked the old man. 'Brother or lover of the lady?
Perhaps a cousin whom she does condescend to recognise; a Parley-vous
Mossou, hey?'
'My name is Herring,' said the young man, gravely. 'Mr. Battishill is
ill, and Miss Battishill cannot leave her father. Consequently they
asked me to escort the Countess to Launceston.'
'The Countess!' exclaimed Mr. Tramplara. 'Oh, Ginger! a live Countess in
the house. Lord! the little rooms won't contain her. We must throw out
bow windows. Come here, Orange, come here, Polly, and see a live
Countess.'
As he called, a feeble old woman, in a big cap with lilac ribands and a
pink bow under her chin, appeared at a side door, and with her the
daughter whom he called Orange. The latter entered the hall.
'Father,' said Miss Orange Trampleasure, reproachfully, 'you are too
boisterous with the young lady. Do you not see? She is tired with her
journey, and your noise frightens her.'
'Frightens me!' repeated Mirelle, with perfect composure. 'Non, il ne
me fait paspeur--il me revolte.'
'Come with me, cousin,' said Orange. 'Let me take off your things, and
show you your room.'
Mirelle hesitated.
'My dear,' Orange went on, 'there is no help for it. Whether you like
it or not, here you must stay; you cannot go back to the Battishills.
It is unreasonable to expect them to take charge of you. Besides, your
father committed you to us.'
'My father has left a gentleman in France my guardian equally with this
person here.'
'Then you must stay with us till he has been communicated with,' said
Orange. 'Come with me.'
Mirelle allowed herself to be conducted upstairs.
Old Tramplara went into a muffled convulsion of laughter. He winked at
Herring and said, 'She's a queer piece of flesh, ain't she--full of
French hoity-toity? We must take all that out of her, and make good
English homespun take the place of mouslin-de-laine, parley-vous,
bong-soir, mossou!' Then the old man curtsied and grimaced, and went
into attitudes. 'So,' said he, 'you be the gent that has escorted my
Lady High and Mighty here! My son said something about you. You gave
him a rap over the knuckles, hey? Serve the beggar right. He had been
drinking, I'll swear. He said he had come across a temperance fellow
who had insulted him. And you also, I suppose, are the party that have
been paying sixty pounds for old Battishill; lending him the
money--making him a present of it, I should rather say--for he who lends
to him don't hear the chink of his coin again. I suppose you have
plenty of brass to throw away. Well, there be better investments than
West Wyke, I can tell'y. I wish I had been by to have tipped you a
hint. Herring is your name! I wonder whether you are any relation to
old Jago Herring, of Welltown?'
The young man did not enlighten him.
'Look here,' said Mr. Trampleasure. 'Stay and pick a bone of mutton
with us at supper. Don't be shy about meeting Sampson. He ain't here,
now at least--and what's more, he's not the fellow to bear malice. Lord
bless you! if he were a bit rampageous, it was because he had been
drinking; and as Moses who was the meekest of men said, when the liquor
is in the manners is out. But the contrary is also true--and I Sampson
Trampleasure say it--when the liquor is out the manners return. And,
though I ain't a Moses, and a prophet, and all that sort of thing, yet
I've a pretty shrewd head of my own, and what I say is worth attending
to. Come along, Herring, and have a bite with us all, and see the young
lady nestle into the bosom of the family. By Grogs! I've lost my
manners though. Here's Mrs. Trampleasure, and I've never introduced you
to her. Mr. Herring, Mrs. Tram, the flame of my youth, the solace of my
age--eh, old woman?'
'Have done wi' your funning, Tram,' said the old lady, giggling feebly.
'Will you step in, sir? It gets chilly of an evening, and a fire is
agreeable, sir, especially when one is troubled with a cold in the
head.'
'Look here, Herring,' said Trampleasure, familiarly. 'You are not
returning to West Wyke to-night. That is impossible. You are going to
sleep at the White Hart or the King's Arms, that is certain. Well, it
ain't always lively of an evening at an inn. You can plead no
engagement, and therefore I will take no excuse. You stay with us and
save your pocket the cost of supper. If you are fond of music, we'll
give you some. "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," you
remember the text--in Malachi I believe, and he was the last of the
prophets. If that was the last thing he ever said it was the truest.
Is her Serene Highness at all in the tum-tum way?'
'I really cannot say.'
'Because, if she is, she's where her talent will be drawn out. I play
the bass violin, Sampson is a Boanerges on the flute, and Orange can do
pretty well on the harpsichord. But there she comes herself, all along
of her Ladyship. Come in, Herring, this is Liberty Hall, with no more
forms and ceremonies in it than in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness.'
He drew the young man into the sitting-room. 'There's another musician
in the house,' he said, 'but of him, mum. He don't let himself be heard
often, thanks be.'
Herring reluctantly submitted. He was repelled by the old man, but he
was concerned for Mirelle. Could she endure this association? Was the
daughter, Orange, better than her father, or was she equally vulgar?
The mother was feeble and commonplace, not obtrusively offensive. He
would like to be satisfied that in Orange poor Mirelle would find a
refuge and a support against the coarse father and from the brutal son.
He could learn this only by staying, and he therefore accepted the
invitation, though not with the best grace.