"Her form was fresher than the morning rose
When the dew wets its leaves."--THOMSON.
Pullingham-on-the-Moors is a small, untidy, picturesque little
village, situated on the side of a hill. It boasts a railway-station,
a police-barrack, a solitary hotel, and two or three well-sized shops.
It is old-fashioned, stationary, and, as a rule, hopelessly harmless,
though now and then, dissensions, based principally on religious
grounds, will arise.
These can scarcely be avoided, as one-half of the parish trips lightly
after Mr. Redmond, the vicar (who has a subdued passion for wax
candles, and a craving for floral decorations), and looks with scorn
upon the other half, as, with solemn step and slow, it descends the
high hill that leads, each Sabbath, to the "Methody" Chapel beneath.
It never grows older, this village, and never younger; is seldom cast
down or elated, surprised or demonstrative, about anything. In a
quaint, sleepy fashion, it has its dissipations, and acknowledges its
festive seasons,--such as Christmas-tide when all the shops burst
into a general bloom of colored cards, and February, when valentines
adorn every pane. It has also its fair days, when fat cattle and lean
sugar-sticks seem to be everywhere.
A marriage is reckoned an event, and causes some gossip: a birth does
not,--possibly because of the fact that it is a weekly occurrence.
Indeed, the babies in Pullingham are a "joy forever." They have their
season all the year round, and never by any chance "go out;" though I
have heard people very foolishly liken them to flowers. They grow, and
thrive, and blossom all over the place, which no doubt is greatly to
the credit of the inhabitants. Occasionally, too, some one is good
enough to cause a little pleasurable excitement by dying, but very
seldom, as the place is fatally healthy, and people live here until
they become a social nuisance, and almost wish themselves dead. There
is, I believe, some legend belonging to the country, about an old
woman who had to be shot, so aggressively old did she become; but this
is obscure.
About two miles from the town, one comes to Sartoris, the residence of
Dorian Branscombe, which runs in a line with the lands of Scrope
Royal, the property of Sir James Scrope.
Sir James is a tall, rather old-young man of thirty-two with a calm,
expressive face, kindly eyes, and a somewhat lanky figure. He has a
heart of gold, a fine estate, and----a step-sister.
Miss Jemima Scrope is not as nice as she might be. She has a face as
hard as her manners, and, though considerably over forty, is neither
fat nor fair. She has a perfect talent for making herself obnoxious to
all unhappy enough to come within her reach, a temper like "Kate the
Curst," and a nose like the Duke of Wellington.
Somewhere to the left, on a hill as high and pompous as itself, stands
the castle, where three months out of the twelve the Duke and Duchess
of Spendleton, and some of their family, put in a dreary time. They
give two balls, one fancy bazaar, a private concert, and three
garden-parties--neither more nor less--every year. Nobody likes them
very much, because nobody knows them. Nobody dislikes them very much,
for just the same reason.
The castle is beautifully situated, and is correct in every detail.
There are Queen Anne rooms, and Gothic apartments, and Elizabethan
anterooms, and staircases of the most vague. There are secret
passages, and panels, and sliding doors, and trap-doors, and, in fact,
every sort of door you could mention, and all other abominations.
Artists revel in it, and grow frenzied with joy over its
impossibilities, and almost every year some room is painted from it
and sent to the Academy, But outside lies its chief beauty, for there
are the swelling woods, and the glimpse of the far-off ocean as it
gleams, now green, now steel-blue, beneath the rays of the setting
sun. And beyond it is Gowran, where Clarissa lives with her father,
George Peyton.
Clarissa is all that is charming. She is tall, slight, _svelte_:
indeed, earth has not anything to show more fair. She is tender, too,
and true, and very earnest,--perhaps a degree too earnest, too
intense, for every-day life. Her eyes, "twin stars of beauty," are
deep and gray; her hair is dark; her mouth, though somewhat large, is
perfect; and her smile is indescribable, so sweet it is, so soft and
lingering.
Her mother died when she was nine years old, and from that time until
she was twelve she spent most of her life with the Branscombe
boys,--riding, fishing, sometimes even shooting, with them. The effect
of such training began to make itself felt. She was fast degenerating
into a tomboy of the first water (indeed, one of the purest gems of
its kind), when James Scrope, who even then was a serious young man,
came to the rescue, and induced her father to send her from Gowran to
a school at Brussels.
"Virtue is its own reward," they tell us: let us hope Scrope felt
rewarded! Whether he did or not, I know he was considerably frightened
when Clarissa (having discovered who had been the instigator of this
"plot" to drive her from her beloved Gowran) came down to Scrope Hall,
and, dashing into his presence like a small whirlwind, abused him for
his well-meant interference in good round terms, and, having refused
even to say good-by to him, had slammed the door in his face, and,
starting from home next morning, had seen no more of him for six long
years.
At seventeen, her aunt, the Hon. Mrs. Greville, had brought her back
from Brussels to her own house in town, where she kept her for twelve
months, and where she once more renewed acquaintance with her old
friends, Dorian and Horace Branscombe. Mrs. Greville took her to all
the most desirable balls of her season, to concerts and "small and
earlies," to high-art entertainments of the most "too, too," and,
having given her free scope to break the hearts of half the men in
town, had sent her at last to her father, hopelessly in love with a
detrimental.
The detrimental was Horace Branscombe. Mrs. Greville was intensely
annoyed and disgusted. After all her care, all her trouble, to have
this happen! She had married her own girls with the greatest _eclat_,
had not made one false move with regard to any of them, and now to see
Clarissa (who, with her beauty and fortune, might have married any
one) throw herself away upon a penniless barrister seemed to her to
savor of positive crime.
Horace, certainly, so far, had not proposed in form, but Mrs. Greville
was not to be hoodwinked. He meant it. He was not always at her
niece's side for nothing; and, sooner or later, Clarissa, with all her
money, would go over to him. When she thought of this shocking waste
of money, she groaned aloud; and then she washed her hands of the
whole affair, and sent Clarissa back to Gowran, where her father
received her with open arms, and made much of her.