CASTLE PERILOUS.
In one corner of the property of Hugh John's father stood an ancient
castle--somewhat doubtfully of it, however, for it was claimed as
public property by the adjoining abbey town, now much decayed and
fallen from its high estate, but desirous of a new lease of life as a
tourist and manufacturing centre. The castle and the abbey had for
centuries been jealous neighbours, treacherous friends, embattled
enemies according to the fluctuating power of those who possessed
them. The lord of the castle harried the abbot and his brethren. The
abbot promptly retaliated by launching, in the name of the Church, the
dread ban of excommunication against the freebooter. The castle
represented feudal rights, the abbey popular and ecclesiastical
authority.
And so it was still. Mr. Picton Smith had, indeed, only bought the
property a few years before the birth of our hero; but, among other
encumbrances, he had taken over a lawsuit with the town concerning the
castle, which for years had been dragging its slow length along. Edam
Abbey was a show-place of world-wide repute, and the shillings of the
tourist constituted a very important item in the finances of the
overburdened municipality. If the Council and magistrates of the good
town of Edam could add the Castle of Windy Standard to their
attractions, the resultant additional sixpence a head would go far
towards making up the ancient rental of the town parks, which now let
for exactly half of their former value.
But Mr. Picton Smith was not minded thus tamely to hand over an
ancient fortress, secured to him by deed and charter. He declared at
once that he would resist the claims of the town by every means in his
power. He would, however, refuse right-of-way to no respectable
sightseer. The painter, all unchallenged, might set up his easel
there, the poet meditate, even the casual wanderer in search of the
picturesque and romantic, have free access to these gloomy and
desolate halls. The townspeople would be at liberty to conduct their
friends and visitors thither. But Mr. Smith was resolved that the
ancient fortalice of the Windy Standard should not be made a vulgar
show. Sandwich papers and ginger-beer bottles would not be permitted
to profane the green sward of the courtyard, across which had so
often ridden all the chivalry of the dead Lorraines.
"Those who want sixpenny shows will find plenty at Edam Fair," was Mr.
Picton Smith's ultimatum. And when he had once committed himself, like
most of his stalwart name, Mr. Smith had the reputation of being very
set in his mind.
But in spite of this the town asserted its right-of-way through the
courtyard. A footpath was said to have passed that way by which
persons might go to and fro to kirk and market.
"I have no doubt a footpath passed through my dining-room a few
centuries ago," said Mr. Smith, "but that does not compel me to keep
my front and back doors open for all the rabble of Edam to come and go
at their pleasure."
And forthwith he locked his lodge gates and bought the largest mastiff
he could obtain. The castle stood on an island rather more than a mile
long, a little below the mansion house. A wooden bridge led over the
deeper, narrower, and more rapid branch of the Edam River from the
direction of the abbey and town. Across the broader and shallower
branch there could be traced, from the house of Windy Standard, the
remains of an ancient causeway. This, in the place where the stream
was to be crossed, had become a series of stepping-stones over which
Hugh John and Priscilla could go at a run (without falling in and
wetting themselves more than once in three or four times), but which
still constituted an impregnable barrier to the short fat legs of
Toady Lion--who usually stood on the shore and proclaimed his woes to
the world at large till somebody carried him over and deposited him on
the castle island.
Affairs were in this unsettled condition when, at twelve years of age,
Hugh John ceased to be Hugh John, and became, without, however, losing
his usual surname of Smith, one of the august and imperial race of the
Buonapartes.
It was a clear June evening, the kind of night when the whole
landscape seems to have been newly swept, washed down, and generally
spring-cleaned. All nature spoke peace to Janet Sheepshanks,
housekeeper, nurse, and general responsible female head of the house
of Windy Standard, when a procession came towards her across the
stepping-stones over the broad Edam water from the direction of the
castle island. Never had such a disreputable sight presented itself to
the eyes of Janet Sheepshanks. At once douce and severe, sharp-tongued
and covertly affectionate, she represented the authority of a father
who was frequently absent from them, and the memory of a dead mother
which remained to the three children in widely different degrees. To
Priscilla her mother was a loving being, gracious alike by the tender
sympathy of her voice and by the magic of a touch which healed all
childish troubles with the kiss of peace upon the place "to make it
well." To Hugh John she had been a confidant to whom he could rush,
eager and dishevelled, with the tale of the glorious defeat of some
tin enemy (for even in those prehistoric days Hugh John had been a
soldier), and who, smoothing back his ruffled hair, was prepared to
join as eagerly as himself in all his tiny triumphs. But to Toady
Lion, though he hushed the shrill persistence of his treble to a
reverent murmur when he talked of "muvver," she was only an
imagination, fostered mostly by Priscilla--his notion of motherhood
being taken from his rough-handed loving Janet Sheepshanks; while the
tomb in the village churchyard was a place to which he had no desire
to accompany his mother, and from whose gloomy precincts he sought to
escape as soon as possible.