[Illustration:
CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
Fifth Series
ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
NO. 48.—VOL. I. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1884. PRICE 1½_d._]
IN BROMPTON CEMETERY.
‘In Memory of THEODORE. Died November the 20th, 18—, aged three
years,’ I am not going to tell you about the tragedy this little life
represented, and how much suffering and how many tears lie buried with
my darling. I put all that away—all useless regrets, all vain repining,
when I laid him under two great pine-trees, looking straight to the
south, where the morning sun peeps earliest in faint yellow streaks,
and the broad arms of the firs are ever held lovingly over the little
head, and shelter away alike the drifting snow and summer heat—where
the thrushes and blackbirds sing their matins and vespers. They and
the pink chaffinches, and bold-eyed sparrows, come half-timidly,
half-hardily, with their little shy feet, close to mine, where I sit
alone by my lamb—Rachel weeping for her dead.
As time, God’s true physician, softened my grief, and yet drew me to
spend many hours where all was buried that could have pieced together
a broken life and broken heart, I became gradually interested in the
great company of the dead lying round, and anxious to learn some word
of the lives and histories, even of those whose birth and death-date
make up all the world shall ever write of them.
Right and left of my baby lie an old man and a young girl; he, a
wealthy, honoured merchant, who had lived ninety years of prosperous
and successful existence. His tomb is of gray marble; the letters
are cut well and deeply; all its cold grandeur is perfectly kept
up in unsurpassed cleanliness and order; but no one ever comes to
put a flower on his grave. The other grave, young Bessie’s, is also
neglected, though in a different way. The letters are fading fast
from the crooked headstone; and the ivy that has crept round it is
so tangled, that before long the little tomb will be quite covered.
Bessie was sixteen years old, and went to her rest in the glowing July
of 1851, when the fairy palace of Hyde Park, sparkling in its glory,
promised, but did not fulfil, the commencement of a long reign of
peace and good-will to all the nations of the earth. Where are now
those, I wonder, who left Bessie here!
Hard by lies many a different life from the maid’s and the merchant’s.
Brompton is essentially a military cemetery, where sleep the veterans
of the Peninsula, the Crimea, and India, and the Cape. Truly, when the
last réveille sounds, no more gallant hearts shall answer to the call
than our dead English soldiers.
Close to my baby are Sir John Garvock and Sir James Anderson, the last
under a pyramid of cannon-balls; and on this February day, warm and
breezy, with flying rain-clouds, driving off the fogs that for days
past have hovered like unclean birds over London, there comes a wail of
fifes and muffled drums. The trees are dripping with water, the grass
is sodden, but through its muddy surface, here and there, are peeping
green blades—fresh promises of spring. Shrill over the long damp
walks under the yews comes the _Adeste Fideles_. It is ‘a soldier’s
funeral,’ the gardener tells me—two Guardsmen from the Tower, who
were drowned last week, having fallen into the river in the fog. The
procession winds slowly into view—the muffled drums, the gay uniforms,
the coffins, each covered with a black and white pall, and heaped
with wreaths. On each coffin lie the dead man’s bayonet and shako.
The chaplain commits earth to earth; and the volleys flash over our
brothers departed, and with cheery strains the band is back again into
the world.
Next in number to the soldiers lie the actors, with whom Brompton has
ever been a favourite burying-ground. Here is one of the greatest
actresses of our day, Adelaide Neilson, whose ‘glorious eyes’
closed—for us—too soon; for her, just as a first gleam of happiness
and repose was dawning upon a stormy, clouded life. The ‘beautiful
gifted’ is ‘resting’ under a tall hewn cross of roughened marble. The
noble head of Mellon the composer, conspicuously placed, looks out
upon us from a grove where lie Nellie Moore, the ‘Lancashire lass;’
T. P. Cooke, the sailor-actor; Keeley, Leigh Murray, and Planché,
whose coffin may be seen through the iron gates of the catacombs.
Albert Smith is here too. Near Mellon rests a lady whose story and
recollections must have been interesting—one Sarah Agnes, who died in
1846, ‘widow of General Count Demetrius de Wints, elected Prince of
Montenegro on the 1st of August 1795.’ I know nothing of this page of
the history of Montenegro; but for Sarah Agnes, it was, as Bismarck
said of the election of young Battenberg, ‘something to be remembered.’
Sydney Lady Morgan is here too, and makes us think of the Wild Irish
Girl, with her harp and green fan and _mode_ cloak, her quarrels with
her publishers, and her endless vanities, from the concealment of her
age, to the blue satin gown which made her ‘the best dressed woman in
the room;’ her ceaseless tormentings of the staid sensible husband,
who won her so hardly and loved her so patiently. One wonders if that
unquiet spirit sleeps soundly, and why her novels—novels that brought
the Dublin actor’s daughter from obscurity to be a leader of the
fashion she loved so dearly—should now be hardly remembered even by the
fact, that one beguiled the last hours of Pitt.
Jackson the pugilist, whose tomb by Baily, with its couching lion, is
one of the most conspicuous objects here, represents a science that is
now moribund. Near him is the humble grave of one of the sextons of the
cemetery, who a year or two ago was crushed by the falling-in of the
warm yellow gravel of the grave he was digging.
* * * * *
The year has rolled away; it is Christmas eve; the snow is crisp and
sparkling in the low December sun, and groups are thronging in with
wreaths and crosses and bouquets, to tell their dear ones they are not
forgotten, and that to-morrow the vacant place by the fireside will be
haunted by
The touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.
Near the Brompton gate, where the porter, smiling, good-natured giant,
stands holding the gate open for loiterers like me—sleeps a dear old
friend, long passed away—an Indian doctor, the kindest heart for
young people, the most interested in their pleasures, I ever knew. A
Scotchman from Skye—even in his eightieth year with strength unfailed,
and the large limbs of the people of his race. ‘A strong lad, Samson;
sure he cam’ frae Skye,’ was the old woman’s commentary on the hero of
the Book of Judges. The merry days of girlhood on Richmond Hill and
Thames, clear Marlow water, childhood treats of strawberries at Kew,
rise up before misty eyes as I read your name, dear old William Bruce!
Many a happy Christmas eve have we spent at your kindly table, when
your dark beaming face and Scottish voice asked the ‘bit lassie,’ whose
tall toddy glass stood untasted at her side—‘Why, Miss Helena, Miss
Helena, are ye doing naught for the gude o’ the hoose?’ He used to say
the fifty years of perfect health he had spent in India were due to the
nightly toddy! I believe it was the kindly heart and cheerful mind.
Lie lightly, snow; shine red, ye holly-berries; and I pass out bidding
good-night to my baby, sleeping till his young eyes shall open, not on
the Christmas, but on the Resurrection morn. As I go, I see that even
the long-forgotten old merchant has at last been remembered, and on his
grave is a scroll of immortelles and berries inscribed, ‘Kind words and
deeds, they never die.’
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
CHAPTER LVIII.—CLEARING UP.
Philip with amazement not unmingled with displeasure recognised Mr
Beecham in the person who in this mysterious fashion intruded himself
on their privacy.
Madge was for a second startled by the sudden apparition; but that
feeling passed as the shadow of a swift-flying bird passes over the
breast of a clear pool, and her face became bright with hope. The
object which Philip had so longed for was accomplished—the distrust and
enmity of Austin Shield were extinguished. Remembering about the secret
recess of the Oak Parlour, and the legend of its having once served as
the hiding-place of a fugitive king, she did not pause to speculate how
it had been discovered, or how or why the man came to make use of it at
that moment, but waited eagerly for the upshot of this singular meeting.
The invalid, resting back on his cushions, stared at the intruder
with mingled emotions of astonishment, curiosity, and suspicion; then
he glanced inquiringly from Madge to Philip, seeking from them the
explanation at which the latter could no more guess than he.
The man himself advanced calmly.
‘I must ask you to pardon the odd way in which I present myself to you,
Mr Hadleigh,’ he said gravely, as he bowed with respect; ‘it is partly
due to accident, partly to design.’
‘I am your debtor, Mr Beecham,’ answered Philip coldly, ‘on my own
account and my uncle’s; but I am not conscious of anything you have
done which can justify you in playing the part of a’——
‘You would say the part of a spy and a hidden listener to what was not
intended for my ears,’ was the calm rejoinder, a smile of good-humoured
approval on the kindly face. ‘I have been both, but I shall not lose
all your respect when you understand the position. Be patient.—I was
waiting in the room until the girl who admitted me could find an
opportunity of telling Miss Heathcote that I wished to see her before
seeking an interview with your father. She returned immediately to say
that she had been unable to deliver my message, and that they were
bringing the sick gentleman in here. She left me hurriedly. I did not
wish to meet Mr Hadleigh until his leave had been asked, and I could
not go into the hall without meeting him.’
‘Why should you avoid him?’
‘There are circumstances which might have made an unexpected meeting
unpleasant. I am now aware that that was my mistake. At anyrate I
remembered the secret of this panel, which was explained to me years
ago by old Jerry Mogridge. He was then the only one who knew it. I
was aware of the misconceptions my conduct might give rise to, but
entered the place hoping to find the outlet to the garden. Some time
was occupied in searching for it without success. I would have endured
my ignominious imprisonment, however, had not Mr Hadleigh’s voice
confirmed Dr Joy’s assurance that I might speak to him freely.’
He paused, as if desirous of some sign from the invalid that he might
proceed. The latter assented with a slight movement of the head.
‘I do not regret my awkward position, Mr Hadleigh, since it has enabled
me to hear what you have said to these young people when you could have
no suspicion of my neighbourhood. Your treatment of them has done as
much as the proofs placed in my hands by Miss Heathcote to convince me
that, in the blind passion of youth and deceived by a scoundrel, I did
you gross injustice. You know me: is it too late to ask your pardon?’
There was silence. Philip, in much perplexity, was looking alternately
at the two men; Madge was watching with breathless interest, the dawn
of a joyful smile on her face. At length, Hadleigh:
‘I trust it is never too late to ask pardon—or to grant it. There is my
hand, Mr Shield.’
They clasped hands with the calmness of men who strike a mutually
advantageous bargain: there was no pretence of any other feeling in the
touch. But Madge placed her hands on theirs, and her face was radiant
with joy.
‘You are both my friends and Philip’s,’ she said; ‘he wanted you to
understand each other: he desired it and thought of it a great deal
more than of the fortune you tried to tempt him with, Mr Shield.’
‘I should like to understand this riddle,’ Philip broke in. ‘I have
known you as Beecham, and another as Austin Shield.’
Beecham drew from his pocket a pencil and note-book. He wrote: ‘I
am the Austin Shield you have known in correspondence—as this will
testify. The man you have met under my name is Jack Hartopp, who has
been my faithful ally and comrade for years past. For reasons—most
unhappy reasons, which shall be fully explained—I desired to test your
nature before you became the husband of Madge Heathcote.’
‘I recognise the writing,’ said Philip, ‘but am unable to comprehend
what authority you can pretend to have over Miss Heathcote.’
‘I will explain that,’ interrupted Madge; and she did so to his entire
satisfaction within a few hours.
Meanwhile, Philip was anything but satisfied. He was frowning as he put
the next question:
‘Then this report about the losses—the financial difficulties which
prevented Mr Shield from giving me the assistance I required?’
‘You have had the assistance you required; you have been rescued from
the clutches of a knave, who would have duped you out of everything;
you have had a lesson which will be worth thousands to you; and you
have still the opportunity of carrying out your plans to what I hope
will be a satisfactory issue.’ Shield said this in a tone of reproach;
but observing the changes on Philip’s face, he proceeded with his
usual kindliness of expression: ‘I could never have known what genuine
and generous stuff you were made of, Philip, unless I had seen you
in misfortune, and found that you are ready to give up everything to
support the man whose money you had lost.’
‘That was my duty.’
‘Yes, yes,’ was the smiling interruption; ‘but it was a duty from which
you might easily and without discredit have excused yourself. It was,
however, your brave acceptance of the duty which convinced me that she
would be safe in your keeping; and to secure her happiness as far as
it is in human power to do so, I was ready to sacrifice anything. I
am satisfied on that point, and you know that Miss Heathcote has been
satisfied for a long time.’
‘Then the story which this Hartopp told me about the losses—what of
that?’
‘You must not blame Jack Hartopp; he acted faithfully according to his
instructions; and it was only on account of his mania for drink that I
was obliged to keep him out of your way as much as possible. With that
pitiable drawback, he is as shrewd and brave as he is honest. To save
my life and property, he has stood up single-handed against a gang of
mutinous workmen on the diamond fields. He likes you, Philip, and you
will soon respect him as well as like him. As to our losses, they have
been heavy and sudden, owing to the failure of a gold-mining Company in
which I had invested and the fall in the price of Cape diamonds. But we
have still ample means to go on with comfortably.’
‘Is Mr Hartopp a son of our neighbours of the Chelmer Bridge farm?’
inquired Madge.
‘Yes; he was in California for a time, but hearing of the diamond
fields, thought he would try his luck in them. He was in a poor plight
when he reached my station; but he had a hearty welcome as soon as he
told where he came from.... And now, I should like to see Mrs Crawshay
and her husband. She would have recognised me at once, and that is why
I have kept out of her way.’
When, however, Madge brought him face to face with the dame, the latter
had to scrutinise his visage closely for several minutes before she
identified him.
‘Faces change with time,’ he said, as if excusing beforehand her
slowness of recognition.
‘And hearts too,’ she answered somewhat drily.
‘Not always,’ was his earnest comment; and the grasp of their hands,
the smile on their faces, proved that their hearts had not changed at
anyrate.
‘I am glad there is an end of this prank,’ she said by-and-by; ‘many a
weary thought it has cost me, for it is the only time I have ever held
anything back from Dick. But I knew thou wert meaning well, and it was
not in me to thwart thee in doing what seemed to thee right, for love
of Lucy. But it was a perilous adventure for all of us, and we have
reason to give thanks that it ends as we would have it.’
* * * * *
Dick Crawshay could not easily grasp all the details of the
explanations which were given him; but he quickly comprehended that
Madge had been doing her best to make others happy at the risk of her
conduct being much misconstrued. So he took her in his arms.
‘Buss me, lass, and forget that I was ever angered with you. But it
wasn’t easy to keep temper when all things about the place seemed to be
going contrary, and everybody was more dunderheaded than another—not to
mention my temper was always known to be of the gunpowder sort, so that
one spark was enough to blow up the whole place.’
‘But the explosion is never very destructive,’ she said with a smile
and a kiss.
‘Dunno how you take it, Madge, but it always leaves me somehow
uncomfortable. Hows’ever, let that be, and come and see to the entries
for the Smithfield Club. I’ll be main vexed if we don’t get a prize;
they have got a clean bill of health, and I’ll go bail there are no
cows or steers in the country to beat them.’
He took Austin Shield as much into his favour as he had done when that
person had presented himself under the name of Beecham, and consulted
him about the cattle as if he had been the most famous of ‘vets.’ To
Jack Hartopp he gave a cordial welcome, and, unwisely, opened a case
of hollands, which had come from Amsterdam by way of Harwich, for his
delectation.
‘Never you mind,’ he said in answer to the dame’s remonstrance; ‘there
is nothing too good for a man that has been as faithful to his mate
or master as Jack Hartopp has been to Shield. Clever rogues, both of
’em—and they say, and Philip says, I’m sure of a red rosette at the
Smithfield show.’
* * * * *
There was a great gathering at Willowmere this Christmas. The huge
barn was cleared for the occasion, and all the lads and lasses of the
village who had ever done a day’s work on the farm were invited. Gay
ribbons and happy faces, lamps and candles, made the place brilliant.
There was a huge bush of mistletoe and holly hanging from the centre of
the roof, and Uncle Dick led his dame forward and gave her a sounding
kiss under it, amidst the cheers and laughter of the lads, who whirled
their lasses along to follow this gallant example.
Then the fiddles struck up _Sir Roger de Coverley_, and yeoman Dick led
off the dance with his dame, both as young in heart as the youngest
present, and as joyful as if they had not those long reaches of the
past to look back upon. Madge and Philip followed, as if their young
lives were to fill the gap between youth and age.
All the guests agreed there had never been in their recollection such a
merry Christmas gathering in the county.