Some of the miserable, and I might say strange, things which had befallen me from time to time unseasonably, now began to force their remembrance upon me. Such dark figures always seem to make the most of a nervous moment, when solid reason yields to fluttering fear and small misgivings. There any body seems to lie, as a stranded sailor lies, at the foot of perpendicular cliffs of most inhuman humanity, with all the world frowning down over the crest, and no one to throw a rope down. Often and often had I felt this want of any one to help me, but the only way out of it seemed to be to do my best to help myself.
Even, now I had little hope, having been so often dashed, and knowing that my father's cousin possessed no share of my father's strength. He might, at the utmost, give good advice, and help me with kind feeling; but if he wanted to do more, surely he might have tried ere now. But my thoughts about this were cut short by a message that he would be glad to see me, and I followed the servant to the library.
Here I found Lord Castlewood sitting in a high-backed chair, uncushioned and uncomfortable. When he saw me near him he got up and took my hand, and looked at me, and I was pleased to find his face well-meaning, brave, and generous. But even to rise from his chair was plainly no small effort to him, and he leaned upon a staff or crutch as he offered me a small white hand.
“Miss Castlewood,” he said, with a very weak yet clear and silvery voice, “for many years I have longed in vain and sought in vain to hear of you. I have not escaped all self-reproach through my sense of want of energy; yet, such as I am, I have done my best, or I do my best to think so.”
“I am sure you have,” I replied, without thinking, knowing his kindness to my father, and feeling the shame of my own hot words to Mr. Shovelin about him. “I owe you more gratitude than I can tell, for your goodness to my dear father. I am not come now to trouble you, but because it was my duty.”
While I was speaking he managed to lead me, feebly as himself could walk, to a deep chair for reading, or some such use, whereof I have had few chances. And in every step and word and gesture I recognized that foreign grace which true-born Britons are proud to despise on both sides of the Atlantic. And, being in the light, I watched him well, because I am not a foreigner.
In the clear summer light of the westering sun (which is better for accurate uses than the radiance of the morning) I saw a firm, calm face, which might in good health have been powerful—a face which might be called the moonlight image of my father's. I could not help turning away to cry, and suspicion fled forever.
“My dear young cousin,” he said, as soon as I was fit to speak to, “your father trusted me, and so must you. You may think that I have forgotten you, or done very little to find you out. It was no indifference, no forgetfulness: I have not been able to work myself, and I have had very deep trouble of my own.”
He leaned on his staff, and looked down at me, for I had sat down when thus overcome, and I knew that the forehead and eyes were those of a learned and intellectual man. How I knew this it is impossible to say, for I never had met with such a character as this, unless it were the Abbe of Flechon, when I was only fourteen years old, and valued his great skill in spinning a top tenfold more than all his deep learning. Lord Castlewood had long, silky hair, falling in curls of silver gray upon either side of his beautiful forehead, and the gaze of his soft dark eyes was sad, gentle, yet penetrating. Weak health and almost constant pain had chastened his delicate features to an expression almost feminine, though firm thin lips and rigid lines showed masculine will and fortitude. And when he spoke of his own trouble (which, perhaps, he would not have done except for consolation's sake), I knew that he meant something even more grievous than bodily anguish.
“It is hard,” he said, “that you, so young and healthy and full of high spirit as you are (unless your face belies you), should begin the best years of your life, as common opinion puts such things, in such a cloud of gloom and shame.”
“There is no shame at all,” I answered; “and if there is gloom, I am used to that; and so was my father for years and years. What is my trouble compared with his?”
“Your trouble is nothing when compared with his, so far as regards the mere weight of it; but he was a strong man to carry his load; you are a young and a sensitive woman. The burden may even be worse for you. Now tell me all about yourself, and what has brought you to me.”
His voice was so quiet and soothing that I seemed to rest beneath it. He had not spoken once of religion or the will of God, nor plied me at all with those pious allusions, which even to the reverent mind are like illusions when so urged. Lord Castlewood had too deep a sense of the will of God to know what it is; and he looked at me wistfully as at one who might have worse experience of it.
Falling happily under his influence, as his clear, kind eyes met mine, I told him every thing I could think of about my father and myself, and all I wanted to do next, and how my heart and soul were set upon getting to the bottom of every thing. And while I spoke with spirit, or softness, or, I fear, sometimes with hate, I could not help seeing that he was surprised, but not wholly displeased, with my energy. And then, when all was exhausted, came the old question I had heard so often, and found so hard to answer—
“And what do you propose to do next, Erema?”
“To go to the very place itself,” I said, speaking strongly under challenge, though quite unresolved about such a thing before; “to live in the house where my father lived, and my mother and all of the family died; and from day to day to search every corner and fish up every bit of evidence, until I get hold of the true man at last, of the villain who did it—who did it, and left my father and all the rest of us to be condemned and die for it.”
“Erema,” replied my cousin, as he had told me now to call him, “you are too impetuous for such work, and it is wholly unfit for you. For such a task, persons of trained sagacity and keen observation are needed. And after all these eighteen years, or nearly nineteen now it must be, there can not be any thing to discover there.”
“But if I like, may I go there, cousin, if only to satisfy my own mind? I am miserable now at Bruntsea, and Sir Montague Hockin wears me out.”
“Sir Montague Hockin!” Lord Castlewood exclaimed; “why, you did not tell me that he was there. Wherever he is, you should not be.”
“I forgot to speak of him. He does not live there, but is continually to and fro for bathing, or fishing, or rabbit-shooting, or any other pretext. And he makes the place very unpleasant to me, kind as the Major and Mrs. Hockin are, because I can never make him out at all.”
“Do not try to do so,” my cousin answered, looking at me earnestly; “be content to know nothing of him, my dear. If you can put up with a very dull house, and a host who is even duller, come here and live with me, as your father would have wished, and as I, your nearest relative, now ask and beg of you.”
This was wonderfully kind, and for a moment I felt tempted. Lord Castlewood being an elderly man, and, as the head of our family, my natural protector, there could be nothing wrong, and there might be much that was good, in such an easy arrangement. But, on the other hand, it seemed to me that after this my work would languish. Living in comfort and prosperity under the roof of my forefathers, beyond any doubt I should begin to fall into habits of luxury, to take to the love of literature, which I knew to be latent within me, to lose the clear, strong, practical sense of the duty for which I, the last of seven, was spared, and in some measure, perhaps, by wanderings and by hardships, fitted. And then I thought of my host's weak health, continual pain (the signs of which were hardly repressed even while he was speaking), and probably also his secluded life. Was it fair to force him, by virtue of his inborn kindness and courtesy, to come out of his privileges and deal with me, who could not altogether be in any place a mere nobody? And so I refused his offer.
“I am very much obliged to you indeed,” I said, “but I think you might be sorry for it. I will come and stop with you every now and then, when your health is better, and you ask me. But to live here altogether would not do; I should like it too well, and do nothing else.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he replied, with the air of one who cares little for any thing, which is to me the most melancholy thing, and worse than any distress almost; “you are very young, my dear, and years should be allowed to pass before you know what full-grown sorrow is. You have had enough, for your age, of it. You had better not live in this house; it is not a house for cheerfulness.”
“Then if I must neither live here nor at Bruntsea,” I asked, with sudden remonstrance, feeling as if every body desired to be quit of me or to worry me, “to what place in all the world am I to go, unless it is back to America? I will go at once to Shoxford, and take lodgings of my own.”
“Perhaps you had better wait a little while,” Lord Castlewood answered, gently, “although I would much rather have you at Shoxford than where you are at present. But please to remember, my good Erema, that you can not go to Shoxford all alone. I have a most faithful and trusty man—the one who opened the door to you. He has been here before his remembrance. He disdains me still as compared with your father. Will you have him to superintend you? I scarcely see how you can do any good, but if you do go, you must go openly, and as your father's daughter.”
“I have no intention whatever of going in any other way, Lord Castlewood; but perhaps,” I continued, “it would be as well to make as little stir as possible. Of an English village I know nothing but the little I have seen at Bruntsea, but there they make a very great fuss about any one who comes down with a man-servant.”
“To be sure,” replied my cousin, with a smile; “they would not be true Britons otherwise. Perhaps you would do better without Stixon; but of course you must not go alone. Could you by any means persuade your old nurse Betsy to go with you?”
“How good of you to think of it!—how wise you are!” I really could not help saying, as I gazed at his delicate and noble face. “I am sure that if Betsy can come, she will; though of course she must be compensated well for the waste all her lodgers will make of it. They are very wicked, and eat most dreadfully if she even takes one day's holiday. What do you think they even do? She has told me with tears in her eyes of it. They are all allowed a pat of butter, a penny roll, and two sardines for breakfast. No sooner do they know that her back is turned—”
“Erema!” cried my cousin, with some surprise; and being so recalled, I was ashamed. But I never could help taking interest in very little things indeed, until my own common-sense, or somebody else, came to tell me what a child I was. However, I do believe that Uncle Sam liked me all the better for this fault.
“My dear, I did not mean to blame you,” Lord Castlewood said, most kindly; “it must be a great relief for you to look on at other people. But tell me—or rather, since you have told me almost every thing you know—let me, if only in one way I can help you, help you at least in that way.”
Knowing that he must mean money, I declined, from no false pride, but a set resolve to work out my work, if possible, through my own resources. But I promised to apply to him at once if scarcity should again befall me, as had happened lately. And then I longed to ask him why he seemed to have so low an opinion of Sir Montague Hockin. That question, however, I feared to put, because it might not be a proper one, and also because my cousin had spoken in a very strange tone, as if of some private dislike or reserve on that subject. Moreover, it was too evident that I had tried his courtesy long enough. From time to time pale shades of bodily pain, and then hot flushes, had flitted across his face, like clouds on a windy summer evening. And more than once he had glanced at the time-piece, not to hurry me, but as if he dreaded its announcements. It was a beautiful clock, and struck with a silvery sound every quarter of an hour. And now, as I rose to say good-by, to catch my evening train, it struck a quarter to five, and my cousin stood up, with his weight upon his staff, and looked at me with an inexpressible depth of weary misery.
“I have only a few minutes left,” he said, “during which I can say any thing. My time is divided into two sad parts: the time when I am capable of very little, and the time when I am capable of nothing; and the latter part is twice the length of the other. For sixteen hours of every day, far better had I be dead than living, so far as our own little insolence may judge. But I speak of it only to excuse bad manners, and perhaps I show worse by doing so. I shall not be able to see you again until to-morrow morning. Do not go; they will arrange all that. Send a note to Major Hockin by Stixon's boy. Stixon and Mrs. Price will see to your comfort, if those who are free from pain require any other comfort. Forgive me; I did not mean to be rude. Sometimes I can not help giving way.”
Less enviable than the poorest slave, Lord Castlewood sank upon his hard stiff chair, and straightened his long narrow hands upon his knees, and set his thin lips in straight blue lines. Each hand was as rigid as the ivory handle of an umbrella or walking-stick, and his lips were like clamped wire. This was his regular way of preparing for the onset of the night, so that no grimace, no cry, no moan, or other token of fierce agony should be wrung from him.
“My lord will catch it stiff to-night,” said Mr. Stixon, who came as I rang, and then led me away to the drawing-room; “he always have it ten times worse after any talking or any thing to upset him like. And so, then, miss—excuse a humble servant—did I understand from him that you was the Captain's own daughter?”
“Yes; but surely your master wants you—he is in such dreadful pain. Do please to go to him, and do something.”
“There is nothing to be done, miss,” Stixon answered, with calm resignation; “he is bound to stay so for sixteen hours, and then he eases off again. But bless my heart, miss—excuse me in your presence—his lordship is thoroughly used to it. It is my certain knowledge that for seven years now he has never had seven minutes free from pain—seven minutes all of a heap, I mean. Some do say, miss, as the Lord doeth every thing according to His righteousness, that the reason is not very far to seek.”
I asked him what he meant, though I ought, perhaps, to have put a stop to his loquacity; and he pretended not to hear, which made me ask him all the more.
“A better man never lived than my lord,” he answered, with a little shock at my misprision; “but it has been said among censoorous persons that nobody ever had no luck as came in suddenly to a property and a high state of life on the top of the heads of a family of seven.”
“What a poor superstition!” I cried, though I was not quite sure of its being a wicked one. “But what is your master's malady, Stixon? Surely there might be something done to relieve his violent pain, even if there is no real cure for it?”
“No, miss, nothing can be done. The doctors have exorced themselves. They tried this, that, and the other, but nature only flew worse against them. 'Tis a thing as was never heard of till the Constitooshon was knocked on the head and to pieces by the Reform Bill. And though they couldn't cure it, they done what they could do, miss. They discovered a very good name for it—they christened it the 'New-rager!'”
In the morning, when I was called again to see my afflicted cousin—Stixon junior having gladly gone to explain things for me at Bruntsea—little as I knew of any bodily pain (except hunger, or thirst, or weariness, and once in my life a headache), I stood before Lord Castlewood with a deference and humility such as I had never felt before toward any human being. Not only because he bore perpetual pain in the two degrees of night and day—the day being dark and the night jet-black—without a murmur or an evil word; not only because through the whole of this he had kept his mind clear and his love of knowledge bright; not even because he had managed, like Job, to love God through the whole of it. All these were good reasons for very great and very high respect of any man; and when there was no claim whatever on his part to any such feeling, it needs must come. But when I learned another thing, high respect at once became what might be called deep reverence. And this came to pass in a simple and, as any one must confess, quite inevitable way.
It was not to be supposed that I could sit the whole of my first evening in that house without a soul to speak to. So far as my dignity and sense of right permitted, I wore out Mr. Stixon, so far as he would go, not asking him any thing that the very worst-minded person could call “inquisitive,” but allowing him to talk, as he seemed to like to do, while he waited upon me, and alternately lamented my hapless history and my hopeless want of taste.
“Ah, your father, the Captain, now, he would have knowed what this is! You've no right to his eyes, Miss Erma, without his tongue and palate. No more of this, miss! and done for you a-purpose! Well, cook will be put out, and no mistake! I better not let her see it go down, anyhow.” And the worthy man tearfully put some dainty by, perhaps without any view to his own supper.
“Lord Castlewood spoke to me about a Mrs. Price—the housekeeper, is she not?” I asked at last, being so accustomed to like what I could get, that the number of dishes wearied me.
“Oh yes, miss,” said Stixon, very shortly, as if that description exhausted Mrs. Price.
“If she is not too busy, I should like to see her as soon as these things are all taken away. I mean if she is not a stranger, and if she would like to see me.”
“No new-comers here,” Mr. Stixon replied; “we all works our way up regular, the same as my lad is beginning for to do. New-fangled ways is not accepted here. We puts the reforming spirits scrubbing of the steps till their knuckles is cracked and their knees like a bean. The old lord was the man for discipline—your grandfather, if you please, miss. He catched me when I were about that high—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Stixon; but would he have encouraged you to talk as you so very kindly talk to me, instead of answering a question?”
I thought that poor Stixon would have been upset by this, and was angry with myself for saying it; but instead of being hurt, he only smiled and touched his forehead.
“Well, now, you did remind me uncommon of him then, miss. I could have heard the old lord speak almost, though he were always harsh and distant. And as I was going for to say, he catched me fifty years agone next Lammas-tide; a pear-tree of an early sort it was; you may see the very tree if you please to stand here, miss, though the pears is quite altered now, and scarcely fit to eat. Well, I was running off with my cap chock-full, miss—”
“Please to keep that story for another time,” I said; “I shall be most happy to hear it then. But I have a particular wish, if you please, to see Mrs. Price before dark, unless there is any good reason why I should not.”
“Oh no, Miss Erma, no reason at all. Only please to bear in mind, miss, that she is a coorous woman. She is that jealous, and I might say forward—”
“Then she is capable of speaking for herself.”
“You are right, miss, there, and no mistake. She can speak for herself and for fifty others—words enough, I mean, for all of them. But I would not have her know for all the world that I said it.”
“Then if you do not send her to me at once, the first thing I shall do will be to tell her.”
“Oh no, miss, none of your family would do that; that never has been done anonymous.”
I assured him that my threat was not in earnest, but of pure impatience. And having no motive but downright jealousy for keeping Mrs. Price from me, he made up his mind at last to let her come. But he told me to be careful what I said; I must not expect it to be at all like talking to himself, for instance.
The housekeeper came up at last, by dint of my persistence, and she stopped in the doorway and made me a courtesy, which put me out of countenance, for nobody ever does that in America, and scarcely any one in England now, except in country-dancing. Instead of being as described by Stixon, Mrs. Price was of a very quiet, sensible, and respectful kind. She was rather short, but looked rather tall, from her even walk and way of carrying her head. Her figure was neat, and her face clear-spoken, with straight pretty eyebrows, and calm bright eyes. I felt that I could tell her almost any thing, and she would think before she talked of it. And in my strong want of some woman to advise with—Betsy Bowen being very good but very narrow, and Mrs. Hockin a mere echo of the Major until he contradicted her, and Suan Isco, with her fine, large views, five thousand miles out of sight just now—this was a state of things to enhance the value of any good countenance feminine.
At any rate, I was so glad to see her that, being still ungraduated in the steps of rank (though beginning to like a good footing there), I ran up and took her by both hands, and fetched her out of her grand courtesy and into a low chair. At this she was surprised, as one quick glance showed; and she thought me, perhaps, what is called in England “an impulsive creature.” This put me again upon my dignity, for I never have been in any way like that, and I clearly perceived that she ought to understand a little more distinctly my character.
It is easy to begin with this intention, but very hard indeed to keep it up when any body of nice ways and looks is sitting with a proper deferential power of listening, and liking one's young ideas, which multiply and magnify themselves at each demand. So after some general talk about the weather, the country, the house, and so on, we came to the people of the house, or at any rate the chief person. And I asked her a few quiet questions about Lord Castlewood's health and habits, and any thing else she might like to tell me. For many things had seemed to me a little strange and out of the usual course, and on that account worthy to be spoken of without common curiosity. Mrs. Price told me that there were many things generally divulged and credited, which therefore lay in her power to communicate without any derogation from her office. Being pleased with these larger words (which I always have trouble in pronouncing), I asked her whether there was any thing else. And she answered yes, but unhappily of a nature to which it was scarcely desirable to allude in my presence. I told her that this was not satisfactory, and I might say quite the opposite; that having “alluded” to whatever it might be, she was bound to tell me all about it. That I had lived in very many countries, in all of which wrong things continually went on, of which I continually heard just in that sort of way and no more. Enough to make one uncomfortable, but not enough to keep one instructed and vigilant as to things that ought to be avoided. Upon this she yielded either to my arguments or to her own dislike of unreasonable silence, and gave me the following account of the misfortunes of Lord Castlewood:
Herbert William Castlewood was the third son of Dean Castlewood, a younger brother of my grandfather, and was born in the year 1806. He was older, therefore, than my father, but still (even before my father's birth, which provided a direct heir) there were many lives betwixt him and the family estates. And his father, having as yet no promotion in the Church, found it hard to bring up his children. The eldest son got a commission in the army, and the second entered the navy, while Herbert was placed in a bank at Bristol—not at all the sort of life which he would have chosen. But being of a gentle, unselfish nature, as well as a weak constitution, he put up with his state in life, and did his best to give satisfaction.
This calm courage generally has its reward, and in the year 1842, not very long before the death of my grandfather at Shoxford, Mr. Herbert Castlewood, being well-connected, well-behaved, diligent, and pleasing, obtained a partnership in the firm, which was, perhaps, the foremost in the west of England. His two elder brothers happened then to be at home, Major and Commander Castlewood, each of whom had seen very hard service, and found it still harder slavery to make both ends meet, although bachelors. But, returning full of glory, they found one thing harder still, and that was to extract any cash from their father, the highly venerated Dean, who in that respect, if in no other, very closely resembled the head of the family. Therefore these brave men resolved to go and see their Bristol brother, to whom they were tenderly attached, and who now must have money enough and to spare. So they wrote to their brother to meet them on the platform, scarcely believing that they could be there in so short a time from London; for they never had travelled by rail before; and they set forth in wonderful spirits, and laughed at the strange, giddy rush of the travelling, and made bets with each other about punctual time (for trains kept much better time while new), and, as long as they could time it, they kept time to a second. But, sad to relate, they wanted no chronometers when they arrived at Bristol, both being killed at a blow, with their watches still going, and a smile on their faces. For the train had run into a wall of Bath stone, and several of the passengers were killed.
The sight of his two brothers carried out like this, after so many years of not seeing them, was too much for Mr. Herbert Castlewood's nerves, which always had been delicate. And he shivered all the more from reproach of conscience, having made up his mind not to lend them any money, as a practical banker was compelled to do. And from that very moment he began to feel great pain.
Mrs. Price assured me that the doctors all agreed that nothing but change of climate could restore Mr. Castlewood's tone and system, and being full of art (though so simple, as she said, which she could not entirely reconcile), he set off for Italy, and there he stopped, with the good leave of his partners, being now valued highly as heir to the Dean, who was known to have put a good trifle together. And in Italy my father must have found him, as related by Mr. Shovelin, and there received kindness and comfort in his trouble, if trouble so deep could be comforted.
Now I wondered and eagerly yearned to know whether my father, at such a time, and in such a state of loneliness, might not have been led to impart to his cousin and host and protector the dark mystery which lay at the bottom of his own conduct. Knowing how resolute and stern he was, and doubtless then imbittered by the wreck of love and life, I thought it more probable that he had kept silence even toward so near a relative, especially as he had seen very little of his cousin Herbert till he had found him thus. Moreover, my grandfather and the Dean had spent little brotherly love on each other, having had a life-long feud about a copy-hold furze brake of nearly three-quarters of an acre, as Betsy remembered to have heard her master say.
To go on, however, with what Mrs. Price was saying. She knew scarcely any thing about my father, because she was too young at that time to be called into the counsels of the servants' hall, for she scarcely was thirty-five yet, as she declared, and she certainly did not look forty. But all about the present Lord Castlewood she knew better than any body else, perhaps, because she had been in the service of his wife, and, indeed, her chief attendant. Then, having spoken of her master's wife, Mrs. Price caught herself up, and thenceforth called her only his “lady.”
Mr. Herbert Castlewood, who had minded his business for so many years, and kept himself aloof from ladies, spending all his leisure in good literature, at this time of life and in this state of health (for the shock he had received struck inward), fell into an accident tenfold worse—the fatal accident of love. And this malady raged the more powerfully with him on account of breaking out so late in life. In one of the picture-galleries at Florence, or some such place, Mrs. Price declared, he met with a lady who made all the pictures look cold and dull and dead to him. A lovely young creature she must have been (as even Mrs. Price, who detested her, acknowledged), and to the eyes of a learned but not keen man as good as lovely. My father was gone to look after me, and fetch me out of England, but even if he had been there, perhaps he scarcely could have stopped it; for this Mr. Castlewood, although so quiet, had the family fault of tenacity.
Mrs. Price, being a very steady person, with a limited income, and enough to do, was inclined to look down upon the state of mind in which Mr. Castlewood became involved. She was not there at the moment, of course, but suddenly sent for when all was settled; nevertheless, she found out afterward how it began from her master's man, through what he had for dinner. And in the kitchen-garden at Castlewood no rampion would she allow while she lived. I asked her whether she had no pity, no sympathy, no fine feeling, and how she could have become Mrs. Price if she never had known such sentiments. But she said that they only called her “Mistress” on account of her authority, and she never had been drawn to the opposite sex, though many times asked in marriage. And what she had seen of matrimony led her far away from it. I was sorry to hear her say this, and felt damped, till I thought that the world was not all alike.
Then she told me, just as if it were no more than a bargain for a pound of tallow candles, how Mr. Herbert Castlewood, patient and persistent, was kept off and on for at least two years by the mother of his sweet idol. How the old lady held a balance in her mind as to the likelihood of his succession, trying, through English friends, to find the value and the course of property. Of what nation she was, Mrs. Price could not say, and only knew that it must be a bad one. She called herself the Countess of Ixorism, as truly pronounced in English; and she really was of good family too, so far as any foreigner can be. And her daughter's name was Flittamore, not according to the right spelling, perhaps, but pronounced with the proper accent.
Flittamore herself did not seem to care, according to what Mrs. Price had been told, but left herself wholly in her mother's hands, being sure of her beauty still growing upon her, and desiring to have it admired and praised. And the number of foreigners she always had about her sometimes made her real lover nearly give her up. But, alas! he was not quite wise enough for this, with all that he had read and learned and seen. Therefore, when it was reported from Spain that my father had been killed by bandits—the truth being that he was then in Greece—the Countess at last consented to the marriage of her daughter with Herbert Castlewood, and even seemed to press it forward for some reasons of her own. And the happy couple set forth upon their travels, and Mrs. Price was sent abroad to wait upon the lady.
For a few months they seemed to get on very well, Flittamore showing much affection for her husband, whose age was a trifle more than her own doubled, while he was entirely wrapped up in her, and labored that the graces of her mind might be worthy to compare with those more visible. But her spiritual face and most sweet poetic eyes were vivid with bodily brilliance alone. She had neither mind enough to learn, nor heart enough to pretend to learn.
It is out of my power to describe such things, even if it were my duty to do so, which, happily, it has never been; moreover, Mrs. Price, in what she told me, exercised a just and strict reserve. Enough that Mr. Castlewood's wedded life was done with in six months and three days. Lady Castlewood, as she would be called, though my father still was living and his cousin disclaimed the title—away she ran from some dull German place, after a very stiff lesson in poetry, and with her ran off a young Englishman, the present Sir Montague Hockin. He was Mr. Hockin then, and had not a half-penny of his own; but Flittamore met that difficulty by robbing her husband to his last farthing.
This had happened about twelve years back, soon after I was placed at the school in Languedoc, to which I was taken so early in life that I almost forget all about it. But it might have been better for poor Flittamore if she had been brought up at a steady place like that, with sisters and ladies of retreat, to teach her the proper description of her duties to mankind. I seemed now in my own mind to condemn her quite enough, feeling how superior her husband must have been; but Mrs. Price went even further, and became quite indignant that any one should pity her.
“A hussy! a hussy! a poppet of a hussy!” she exclaimed, with greater power than her quiet face could indicate; “never would I look at her. Speak never so, Miss Castlewood. My lord is the very best of all men, and she has made him what he is. The pity she deserves is to be trodden under foot, as I saw them do in Naples.”
After all the passion I had seen among rough people, I scarcely could help trembling at the depth of wrath dissembled and firmly controlled in calm clear eyes under very steadfast eyebrows. It was plain that Lord Castlewood had, at any rate, the gift of being loved by his dependents.
“I hope that he took it aright!” I cried, catching some of her indignation; “I hope that he cast her to the winds, without even a sigh for such a cruel creature!”
“He was not strong enough,” she answered, sadly; “his bodily health was not equal to it. From childhood he had been partly crippled and spoiled in his nerves by an accident. And the shock of that sight at Bristol flew to his weakness, and was too much for him. And now this third and worst disaster, coming upon him where his best hope lay, and at such a time of life, took him altogether off his legs. And off his head too, I might almost say, miss; for, instead of blaming her, he put the fault entirely upon himself. At his time of life, and in such poor health, he should not have married a bright young girl: how could he ever hope to make her happy? That was how he looked at it, when he should have sent constables after her.”
“And what became of her—the mindless animal, to forsake so good and great a man! I do hope she was punished, and that vile man too.”
“She was, Miss Castlewood; but he was not; at least he has not received justice yet. But he will, he will, he will, miss. The treacherous thief! And my lord received him as a young fellow-countryman under a cloud, and lent him money, and saved him from starving; for he had broken with his father and was running from his creditors.”
“Tell me no more,” I said; “not another word. It is my fate to meet that—well, that gentleman—almost every day. And he, and he—oh, how thankful I am to have found out all this about him!”
The above will show why, when I met my father's cousin on the following morning—with his grand, calm face, as benevolent as if he had passed a night of luxurious rest instead of sleepless agony—I knew myself to be of a lower order in mind and soul and heart than his; a small, narrow, passionate girl, in the presence of a large, broad-sighted, and compassionate man.
I threw myself altogether on his will; for, when I trust, I trust wholly. And, under his advice, I did not return with any rash haste to Bruntsea, but wrote in discharge of all duty there; while Mrs. Price, a clear and steadfast woman, was sent to London to see Wilhelmina Strouss. These two must have had very great talks together, and, both being zealous and faithful, they came to many misunderstandings. However, on the whole, they became very honest friends, and sworn allies at last, discovering more, the more they talked, people against whom they felt a common and just enmity.
Are there people who have never, in the course of anxious life, felt desire to be away, to fly away, from every thing, however good and dear to them, and rest a little, and think new thought, or let new thought flow into them, from the gentle air of some new place, where nobody has heard of them—a place whose cares, being felt by proxy, almost seem romantic, and where the eyes spare brain and heart with a critic's self-complacence? If any such place yet remains, the happy soul may seek it in an inland English village.
A village where no billows are to stun or to confound it, no crag or precipice to trouble it with giddiness, and where no hurry of restless tide makes time, its own father, uneasy. But in the quiet, at the bottom of the valley, a beautiful rivulet, belonging to the place, hastens or lingers, according to its mood; hankering here and there, not to be away yet; and then, by the doing of its own work, led to a swift perplexity of ripples. Here along its side, and there softly leaning over it, fresh green meadows lie reposing in the settled meaning of the summer day. For this is a safer time of year than the flourish of the spring-tide, when the impulse of young warmth awaking was suddenly smitten by the bleak east wind, and cowslip and cuckoo-flower and speedwell got their bright lips browned with cold. Then, moreover, must the meads have felt the worry of scarcely knowing yet what would be demanded of them; whether to carry an exacting load of hay, or only to feed a few sauntering cows.
But now every trouble has been settled for the best; the long grass is mown, and the short grass browsed, and capers of the fairies and caprices of the cows have dappled worn texture with a deeper green. Therefore let eyes that are satisfied here—as any but a very bad eye must be, with so many changes of softness—follow the sweet lead of the valley; and there, in a bend of the gently brawling river, stands the never-brawling church.
A church less troubled with the gift of tongues is not to be found in England: a church of gray stone that crumbles just enough to entice frail mortal sympathy, and confesses to the storms it has undergone in a tone that conciliates the human sigh. The tower is large, and high enough to tell what the way of the wind is without any potato-bury on the top, and the simple roof is not cruciated with tiles of misguided fancy. But gray rest, and peace of ages, and content of lying calmly six feet deeper than the bustle of the quick; memory also, and oblivion, following each other slowly, like the shadows of the church-yard trees—for all of these no better place can be, nor softer comfort.
For the village of Shoxford runs up on the rise, and straggles away from its burial-place, as a child from his school goes mitching. There are some few little ups and downs in the manner of its building, as well as in other particulars about it; but still it keeps as parallel with the crooked river as the far more crooked ways of men permit. But the whole of the little road of houses runs down the valley from the church-yard gate; and above the church, looking up the pretty valley, stands nothing but the mill and the plank bridge below it; and a furlong above that again the stone bridge, where the main road crosses the stream, and is consoled by leading to a big house—the Moonstock Inn.
The house in which my father lived so long—or rather, I should say, my mother, while he was away with his regiment—and where we unfortunate seven saw the light, stands about half-way down the little village, being on the right-hand side of the road as you come down the valley from the Moonstock bridge. Therefore it is on the further and upper side of the street—if it can be called a street—from the valley and the river and the meads below the mill, inasmuch as every bit of Shoxford, and every particle of the parish also, has existence—of no mean sort, as compared with other parishes, in its own esteem—on the right side of the river Moon.
My father's house, in this good village, standing endwise to the street, was higher at one end than at the other. That is to say, the ground came sloping, or even falling, as fairly might be said, from one end to the other of it, so that it looked like a Noah's ark tilted by Behemoth under the stern-post. And a little lane, from a finely wooded hill, here fell steeply into the “High Street” (as the grocer and the butcher loved to call it), and made my father's house most distinct, by obeying a good deal of its outline, and discharging in heavy rain a free supply of water under the weather-board of our front-door. This front-door opened on the little steep triangle formed by the meeting of lane and road, while the back-door led into a long but narrow garden running along the road, but raised some feet above it; the bank was kept up by a rough stone wall crested with stuck-up snap-dragon and valerian, and faced with rosettes and disks and dills of houseleek, pennywort, and hart's-tongue.
Betsy and I were only just in time to see the old house as it used to be; for the owner had died about half a year ago, and his grandson, having proved his will, was resolved to make short work with it. The poor house was blamed for the sorrows it had sheltered, and had the repute of two spectres, as well as the pale shadow of misfortune. For my dear father was now believed by the superstitious villagers to haunt the old home of his happiness and love, and roam from room to room in search of his wife and all his children. But his phantom was most careful not to face that of his father, which stalked along haughtily, as behooved a lord, and pointed forever to a red wound in its breast. No wonder, therefore, that the house would never let; and it would have been pulled down long ago if the owner had not felt a liking for it, through memories tender and peculiar to himself. His grandson, having none of these to contend with, resolved to make a mere stable of it, and build a public-house at the bottom of the garden, and turn the space between them into skittle-ground, and so forth.
To me this seemed such a very low idea, and such a desecration of a sacred spot, that if I had owned any money to be sure of, I would have offered hundreds to prevent it. But I found myself now in a delicate state of mind concerning money, having little of my own, and doubting how much other people might intend for me. So that I durst not offer to buy land and a house without any means to pay.
And it was not for that reason only that Betsy and I kept ourselves quiet. We knew that any stir in this little place about us—such as my name might at once set going—would once for all destroy all hope of doing good by coming. Betsy knew more of such matters than I did, besides all her knowledge of the place itself, and her great superiority of age; therefore I left to her all little management, as was in every way fair and wise. For Mrs. Strouss had forsaken a large and good company of lodgers, with only Herr Strouss to look after them—and who was he among them? If she trod on one side of her foot, or felt a tingling in her hand, or a buzzing in her ear, she knew in a moment what it was—of pounds and pounds was she being cheated, a hundred miles off, by foreigners!
For this reason it had cost much persuasion and many appeals to her faithfulness, as well as considerable weekly payment, ere ever my good nurse could be brought away from London; and perhaps even so she never would have come if I had not written myself to Mrs. Price, then visiting Betsy in European Square, that if the landlady was too busy to be spared by her lodgers, I must try to get Lord Castlewood to spare me his housekeeper. Upon this Mrs. Strouss at once declared that Mrs. Price would ruin every thing; and rather than that—no matter what she lost—she herself would go with me. And so she did, and she managed very well, keeping my name out of sight (for, happen what might, I would have no false one); and she got quiet lodgings in her present name, which sounded nicely foreign; and the village being more agitated now about my father's material house, and the work they were promised in pulling it down, than about his shattered household, we had a very favorable time for coming in, and were pronounced to be foreigners who must not be allowed to run up bills.
This rustic conclusion suited us quite well, and we soon confirmed it unwittingly, Betsy offering a German thaler and I an American dollar at the shop of the village chandler and baker, so that we were looked upon with some pity, and yet a kind desire for our custom. Thus, without any attempt of ours at either delusion or mystery, Mrs. Strouss was hailed throughout the place as “Madam Straw,” while I, through the sagacity of a deeply read shoe-maker, obtained a foreign name, as will by-and-by appear.
We lodged at the post-office, not through any wisdom or even any thought on our part, but simply because we happened there to find the cleanest and prettiest rooms in the place. For the sun being now in the height of August, and having much harvest to ripen, at middle day came ramping down the little street of Shoxford like the chairman of the guild of bakers. Every house having lately brightened up its whitewash—which they always do there when the frosts are over, soon after the feast of St. Barnabas—and the weeds of the way having fared amiss in the absence of any water-cart, it was not in the strong, sharp character of the sun to miss such an opportunity. After the red Californian glare, I had no fear of any English sun; but Betsy was frightened, and both of us were glad to get into a little place sheltered by green blinds. This chanced to be the post-office, and there we found nice lodgings.
By an equal chance this proved to be the wisest thing we could possibly have done, if we had set about it carefully. For why, that nobody ever would impute any desire of secrecy to people who straightway unpacked their boxes at the very head-quarters of all the village news. And the mistress of the post was a sharp-tongued woman, pleased to speak freely of her neighbors' doings, and prompt with good advice that they should heed their own business, if any of them durst say a word about her own. She kept a tidy little shop, showing something of almost every thing; but we had a side door, quite of our own, where Betsy met the baker's wife and the veritable milkman; and neither of them knew her, which was just what she had hoped; and yet it made her speak amiss of them.
But if all things must be brought to the harsh test of dry reason, I myself might be hard pushed to say what good I hoped to do by coming thus to Shoxford. I knew of a great many things, for certain, that never had been thoroughly examined here; also I naturally wished to see, being a native, what the natives were; and, much more than that, it was always on my mind that here lay my mother and the other six of us.
Therefore it was an impatient thing for me to hear Betsy working out the afternoon with perpetual chatter and challenge of prices, combating now as a lodger all those points which as a landlady she never would allow even to be moot questions. If any applicant in European Square had dared so much as hint at any of all the requirements which she now expected gratis, she would simply have whisked her duster, and said that the lodgings for such people must be looked for down the alley. However, Mrs. Busk, our new landlady, although she had a temper of her own (as any one keeping a post-office must have) was forced by the rarity of lodgers here to yield many points, which Mrs. Strouss, on her own boards, would not even have allowed to be debated. All this was entirely against my wish; for when I have money, I spend it, finding really no other good in it; but Betsy told me that the purest principle of all was—not to be cheated.
So I left her to have these little matters out, and took that occasion for stealing away (as the hours grew on toward evening) to a place where I wished to be quite alone. And the shadow of the western hills shed peace upon the valley, when I crossed a little stile leading into Shoxford church-yard.
For a minute or two I was quite afraid, seeing nobody any where about, nor even hearing any sound in the distance to keep me company. For the church lay apart from the village, and was thickly planted out from it, the living folk being full of superstition, and deeply believing in the dead people's ghosts. And even if this were a wife to a husband, or even a husband reappearing to his wife, there was not a man or a woman in the village that would not run away from it.
This I did not know at present, not having been there long enough; neither had I any terror of that sort, not being quite such a coward, I should hope. But still, as the mantles of the cold trees darkened, and the stony remembrance of the dead grew pale, and of the living there was not even the whistle of a grave-digger—my heart got the better of my mind for a moment, and made me long to be across that stile again. Because (as I said to myself) if there had been a hill to go up, that would be so different and so easy; but going down into a place like this, whence the only escape must be by steps, and where any flight must be along channels that run in and out of graves and tombstones, I tried not to be afraid, yet could not altogether help it.
But lo! when I came to the north side of the tower, scarcely thinking what to look for, I found myself in the middle of a place which made me stop and wonder. Here were six little grassy tuffets, according to the length of children, all laid east and west, without any stint of room, harmoniously.
From the eldest to the youngest, one could almost tell the age at which their lowly stature stopped, and took its final measurement.
And in the middle was a larger grave, to comfort and encourage them, as a hen lies down among her chicks and waits for them to shelter. Without a name to any of them, all these seven graves lay together, as in a fairy ring of rest, and kind compassion had prevented any stranger from coming to be buried there.
I would not sit on my mother's grave for fear of crushing the pretty grass, which some one tended carefully; but I stood at its foot, and bent my head, and counted all the little ones. Then I thought of my father in the grove of peaches, more than six thousand miles away, on the banks of the soft Blue River. And a sense of desolate sorrow and of the blessing of death overwhelmed me.