Edward's Escape
ASHCLIFFE HALL
A TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY.
BY
EMILY SARAH HOLT
"No joy is true, save that which hath no end;
No life is true save that which liveth ever;
No health is sound, save that which God doth send;
No love is real, save that which fadeth never."
—REV. HORATIUS BOMAR, D.D.
SAINT PAUL
D. D. MERRILL COMPANY
CONTENTS.
CHAP.
I. [Old Cicely has her Thoughts]
II. [A Rat behind the Wainscot]
III. [Alone in the World]
IV. [My Lady Ingram]
VI. [The Troubles of Greatness]
VIII. [Wanted, Diogenes' Lantern]
XII. [Traitors—Human and Canine]
XIII. [Lady Griselda's Ruby Ring]
ASHCLIFFE HALL.
I.
OLD CICELY HAS HER THOUGHTS.
"I ask Thee for the daily strength
To none that ask denied,
A mind to blend with outward things
While keeping at Thy side;
Content to fill a little space
So Thou be glorified."
Miss Waring.
In a large bedroom, on an autumn afternoon, two girls were divesting themselves of their out-door attire after a walk. They were dressed alike, though their ages were eleven and nineteen. Their costume consisted of brown stuff petticoats, over which they wore cashmere gowns of a white ground, covered with brown-stemmed red flowers, and edged with quillings of green ribbon. These dresses were high in the back and on the shoulders, but were cut down square in the front. The sleeves reached to the elbows, and were there finished by white muslin frills. The girls wore high-heeled shoes, the heels being red, and brown worsted stockings, which the petticoat was short enough to show plainly. On the dressing-table before them lay two tall white muslin caps, called cornettes, abundant in frills and lace, but having no strings. The hair of both girls was dressed high over a frame, standing up some three inches above their heads; and when the elder put on her cap, it increased her apparent height by at least three inches more.
The chamber in which they were dressing was long and low, two large beams being visible in the ceiling; and the casement, not two feet in height, ran nearly across the width of the room. There was a faint, delicate scent of lavender. The furniture comprised a large four-post bedstead, an unwieldy wardrobe, a washstand, a dressing-table, and two chairs. The carpet was only round the bed and washstand, the rest of the floor being left uncovered, and shining with age and use. The walls were wainscoted about half-way to the ceiling, the higher portion being painted a dull light-green. The girls turned to leave the room.
"O Lucy! your cornette!"
Lucy—aged eleven—made a dash at the dressing-table, and seizing her cap by its frills, to the severe detriment of the lace, stuck it on her head in the first way that occurred to her, and was about to rush down-stairs without further ceremony.
"That will not do, Lucy," said the elder girl. "You know what Henrietta will say. Go to the mirror and put your cornette on properly."
Muttering something which sounded like a statement that she did not care what Henrietta said, Lucy retraced her steps to the glass, pulled off the cornette, and stuck it on again, in a style very little better than before. This done, she joined her sister, who was half-way down the stairs. It was a fine old wooden staircase which the girls descended, "worn by the feet that now were silent,"[[1]] and at its base a long, narrow passage stretched right and left. Our young friends turned to the right, and after passing on for a few feet, entered a door on the left hand, which led to the family parlor. This room had already three occupants, two young ladies and a boy of fourteen. The two former were dressed like Lucy and her sister, except that the younger of them, who sat at a tapestry-frame in the corner of the room, wore broad pieces of brown velvet round her neck and wrists. The boy, who was equipped in out-door costume, part of which consisted of a pair of thick and pre-eminently splashed boots, sat on a low chair, staring into the fire, whistling, and playing with a riding-whip.
"Lucy! your hair!" was the shocked exclamation with which the new-comers were received.
"Oh, my hair is all right! I brushed it—this morning," said Lucy, the last words in a much lower tone than the rest; and then she asked of her whistling brother, "Have you heard anything, Charley?"
Charley shook his head without ceasing to whistle.
"Harry is not come yet?"
"No," said Charley, in a very discontented tone; "and he has taken Bay Fairy, and I can't go out. 'Tis enough to provoke a saint."
"That ben't you, Master Charley!" said a new and cheery voice, as an elderly woman appeared, carrying a little tea-tray, from behind the heavy, japanned screen which stood near the door. She was dressed in a black woollen gown, low in the neck, with a white muslin kerchief above, and a cap of more modest pretensions than those of the young ladies.
"What does the impertinent old woman mean by calling me a sinner?" inquired Charley, addressing himself to his boots.
"You ben't?" said old Cicely, setting down the tea-tray. "Well! stand up and let us look at you, do! You are the first ever I see that wasn't no sinner!"
To which cutting observation Charley replied only by banging the door between himself and the unwelcome querist.
"Ay, it ben't for none of us to set ourselves up i' thatn's!" meditatively remarked old Cicely, in her turn to the teapot. "Mrs. Henrietta, there's a poor old man at the yard-door, my dear, and I can't tell where to look for Madam; maybe you'd see to him, poor soul?"
Henrietta, the eldest sister, answered by quitting the room. Cicely arranged the tea-cups—large shallow cups of delicate china—on a small round table in the window.
"The tea is ready, Mrs. Bell," she said; "will you please to pour it?"
The decorated young lady who sat at the tapestry-frame rose languidly, and began to pour out the tea, while Cicely set four chairs round the little table; having done which, the latter calmly took one of them herself, and producing a large colored handkerchief from her pocket, carefully spread it over her black woollen dress.
"Well, truly," said she, for she was in a talkative mood this evening, "there is no end to the good in a dish of tea. I am sorry I ever said what I have done against it, my dears, and I wish Madam would drink it. 'Tis so heartening like! It is a new-fangled sort of drink, there's no denying; but surely, I wonder how we ever got on without it!"
"Cicely," said Henrietta, coming in, "I have told Dolly to give the poor man some meat and dry straw in the shed for to-night."
"Very good, Mrs. Henrietta," answered Cicely; "I'll see as he gets it. Mrs. Bell, I'll be obliged to you of another dish of tea."
There were only four tea-drinkers in this family, and, until a few months previous, there had been only three. The gentlemen despised what they considered a washy and exclusively feminine beverage, and the mistress of the house could by no means be induced to taste it. It was a new-fangled drink, she said, and new-fangled things, of whatever description, she abhorred. People never drank tea when she was a child, and why should they want it now? This was Madam Passmore's logic, and under its influence she drank no tea. Still she did not forbid her daughters' indulging in it. Young people, she allowed, were given to new-fangled things; and could be expected to be wiser only as they grew older. She was a little annoyed when the logic of the young people, adverse to her own, made a tea-convert of Cicely Aggett, who was about twenty-five years her senior; but Madam Passmore was a quiet, passive sort of woman, who never kept anger long, and was in her heart a fatalist. "What must be must be," she used to say; and many a time had she consoled herself with this comforting adage under troubles of various kinds. She said so when her son Harry went into the army; she said so when her husband broke his leg in fox-hunting; and she said so, but with tears, when her little daughter Margaret died. She had no political opinions but those of her husband, who was a fervent Whig; but deep down in her heart she was a profound Tory in all domestic matters, for she disliked change and novelty beyond everything. She never put down a new carpet until the old carpet was quite beyond endurance; not from any parsimonious motive, but simply because she liked best those things to which she was most accustomed. She never would have slept with comfort if her bed had been turned with its side to the wall instead of its back; nor would she ever have conceded that a new lamp burnt half so brightly as the old one. Her surviving family consisted of two sons and four daughters, who were remarkably alike in person—all but one. The neighbors who were sufficiently high in position to visit with Squire Passmore of Ashcliffe, often wondered how it was that Celia Passmore was so unlike every other member of the family. They were tall and stately in figure, she was small and slight; they had abundant light hair, hers was thin and dark; their eyes were blue or gray, hers brown. Most of all was she unlike her twin-sister, Isabella, who was considered the beauty of the family, and was very well aware of it. There was nothing remarkable about any of the others; but Celia, some said, was sadly plain, poor girl! and it must be a great mortification to Madam Passmore, who had been a country belle in her young days.
Cicely Aggett, whom we have seen seated at the table with her young mistresses, was one of a class wholly extinct in our days. She was a dependent, but not a servant. She had, some fifty years before this, been Madam Passmore's nurse, and she now filled a nondescript position in the family of her nursling. She was always ready to help or advise, and considered nothing beneath her which could add to the comfort of any member of the family; but she took all her meals in the parlor, and was essentially one of themselves. She was the confidante of everybody, and all knew that she never abused a trust. Madam Passmore would as soon have thought of turning the dog out of the room before making a confidential communication, as of turning out Cicely, simply because Cicely's dog-like fidelity was completely above suspicion.
The tea was now finished. Lucy, who had not yet arrived at the dignity of a tea-drinker, was roaming about the room as Cicely departed with the tea-tray.
"There is Harry!" she exclaimed, looking out of the window. "He must have some news—he is waving something above his head. Henrietta, may I run and meet him?"
Henrietta gave consent, and away went Lucy at the top of her speed down the broad avenue which led from the house through the park. The young officer was trotting up on Bay Fairy, with his spaniel Pero panting after him; but he reined in his horse as Lucy came up to him.
"A victory!" he cried. "A victory at Malplaquet! a glorious victory! Run, Lucy!—a race! who will tell Father first?"
Lucy—if it were possible; there was very little doubt of that. She ran back as fast as she had come, turning her head once to see how Harry was getting on. He was not urging his horse beyond a walk; it was evident that he meant to give her a chance of winning. She ran towards the stable-yard, where she knew that the Squire was, and at last, arriving triumphantly first at the yard-gate, burst suddenly into the arms of her father, as he was just opening the gate to come out.
"Hallo!" said the Squire, when this unexpected apparition presented itself. "Hoity-toity! What is the matter, Lucibelle?"
"A—victory!" was all that Lucy could utter.
"Where? who told you?" he asked, excitedly.
"Harry," said the panting Lucy. "Somewhere in—France, I think—'tis a—queer name."
"In France, Sir, at Malplaquet," said Harry, who now rode up quickly, having good-naturedly allowed his little sister the pleasure of winning the race; "a great victory under the Duke of Marlborough." And he handed the Gazette to his father.
"That is glorious!" said the Squire. "I will go in and tell Mother."
Not that Mother—that is, Madam Passmore—cared anything about victories, but she liked to see her husband pleased, and would have welcomed equally a victory or a defeat which had wrought that desirable end. Harry walked into the house with his father, and Lucy, having regained her breath, followed them.
"Why, Charley, where have you been?" asked the Squire, as that young gentleman made his appearance. "Here is a splendid victory over the French, and you are not here to cheer!"
"Where have I been?" repeated Charley, in a very glum tone. "Well, I like that! I have been at home, Sir, kicking my heels together for want of anything else to do: your party and Harry had taken all the horses."
"I did not know you wanted Fairy, Charley," said Harry, kindly. "I am sorry I took her."
"Come, my lad, no use in crying over spilt milk," said the Squire. "It is Saturday night, Charley, and people ought to be at peace on Saturday night."
"I hate Saturday nights, and Sundays too, and I don't want to be at peace!" said Charley, walking off.
On that afternoon, while Harry was riding home with the news of the victory of Malplaquet, an event was taking place in London Which the family at Ashcliffe little imagined, yet which very nearly concerned one of them.
In an upper room of a house in Holborn Bars sat half a dozen men in conclave. The door of the chamber was double, the inner of green baize, the outer of strong oak, barred and bolted, as if the conference were desirous to avoid eavesdroppers.
At one side of the table sat three men, all of whom had passed middle age. We have little to do with them, so they may be succinctly described as two short men and one tall one. Opposite stood three others, who were all young; and it is with one of these alone that we are intimately concerned.
He was about twenty-six years of age, tall and slight; he wore a black wig, and his eyes, also black, were peculiarly brilliant and penetrating. Yet his complexion was moderately fair, and he was not devoid of a fresh, healthy color. There was great quickness, combined with some natural grace, in all his motions; and he evidently comprehended the meaning of his elder and slower companions before their sentences were above half-finished.
"Here, Brother Cuthbert, are your instructions," the tall man was saying. "You remember, I am sure, the private orders which I gave you a week past, with reference to certain information to be gained and brought to the King?"
"Perfectly, Father—all of them," replied Cuthbert, in a clear, pleasant voice.
"Very well. Now listen to another order. My Lady Ingram writ to the General a month past, to send on an errand for her—(if it might be done with any other we should have)—one of our number, who could be trusted for secrecy, speed, diligence, and discretion. We have named you."
Brother Cuthbert bowed low in answer.
"This matter of her Ladyship's," pursued the tall man, "is, of course, of secondary importance, and may not, indeed, directly conduce to the interests of the Church. It must, nevertheless, be borne in mind, that should the sons die unmarried (as it is desirable the elder should), the daughter will become heir to the Ingram estates. I mentioned something of this to you last night."
Brother Cuthbert bowed again.
"Moreover, for other reasons known to the General, it was thought desirable to grant her Ladyship's request. Your destination, in the first place, is Exeter, where you will be met by my Lady Ingram's gentleman-usher, Mr. Gilbert Irvine, who is able to give you any information concerning her affairs which you may find it necessary to ask. From Exeter, you will proceed (after doing your business there) to Ashcliffe Hall, an old mansion on the road to Moreton Hampstead, belonging to one John Passmore, a Whig country gentleman. Here is a sealed paper, which you will open at Exeter. It contains further instructions, a plan of Ashcliffe Hall, and various notes which you may find useful. And here are ten guineas, which my Lady Ingram has transmitted. Mr. Irvine will accompany you to Ashcliffe; and you can employ or dismiss him at that place, as circumstances may arise. In the mean time, we recommend to you not on any consideration to neglect either the general and constant necessity of serving the Church, as the opportunity may present itself, nor the special secret service on which you go, touching the King and cause. If you require more money, apply to any one of us three. We rely upon you, not, on the one hand, to be more lavish of either time or money than is necessary, nor, on the other, to leave the work only half-finished."
"I will do my utmost, Father, to order myself by your instructions," replied Cuthbert, lifting his head.
"You will supply yourself with a surname, which even Mr. Irvine must not know not to be your real name. Select one which shall not be so uncommon as to attract notice, nor so common that letters would be likely to miscarry. You can consider this at your leisure, and let us know to-morrow of what name you have thought, since we shall not require you to set out before to-morrow evening."
"What say you to 'Stevens?'" suggested Cuthbert in a moment.
A grave consultation among the elder Jesuits followed, ending with the approval of Cuthbert's suggestion.
"You are very young, my Brother, to be trusted with so grave and important a matter as His Majesty's errands are," warned the elder priest in conclusion. "We have relied upon your ingenuity and devotion. Let us not have cause to regret choosing you."
"You will not do that, Father," answered Cuthbert, not so much proudly as coolly and confidently.
And making his adieux to the conclave, Mr. Cuthbert Stevens—for so we must henceforth call him—withdrew from the room.
We shall see him again shortly; but for the present we must return (rather more rapidly than he could travel) to Ashcliffe Hall.
"Celia!" said Lucy to her sister, a few hours later, as the latter tucked her up in bed, "do you think—is it very—did you hear what Charley said about Sunday?"
"Yes, dear. Charley was in a passion, and did not mean what he said, I hope."
"But do you think that it is—very wicked—to get so tired on Sunday?" asked Lucy, slowly, as if she were half afraid of bringing her thoughts to light. "For I do get dreadfully tired, Celia. Sermons, endless sermons all day long! for, as if the sermon in church were not enough, Father must needs read another at home on Sunday nights! Celia, do you think it is very wrong to get tired of sermons?"
"I suppose," said Celia, thoughtfully, "that must depend on the sort of sermon."
"I never seem to get a chance of hearing any sort but one," said Lucy; "and I can't understand them."
"Well, Lucy, it is not pleasant to be obliged to sit still and listen to what you do not understand," Celia admitted.
"Oh, I get so tired!" said Lucy, flinging herself on another part of the bed, as if the very thought of the coming Sunday fatigued her. "Don't take the light away just yet, Celia."
"No, dear; I have my clean ruffles to sew on for to-morrow," answered Celia, sitting down to her work.
"Celia, do you understand Dr. Braithwaite's sermons?"
"Not always. Remember what a learned man he is, Lucy; we must not expect very wise men to talk like you and me."
"I wish he did not know quite so much, then," said Lucy. "I could understand him if he would talk like you."
"Aught I can do for you, Mrs. Celia, my dear?" asked old Cicely, looking in. "Prithee give me those ruffles. You have been sewing all day."
"Cicely," asked Lucy, returning to the charge, "do you understand Dr. Braithwaite's sermons?"
"No, my dear, scarce a word," said Cicely.
"I wonder at your listening so quietly!"
"Well, you see, my dear, I has my thoughts," said Cicely, fitting the ruffle. "If aught goes on that I can't understand, why, I has my thoughts. When Master reads a sermon of an evening, well, sometimes I understand, and sometimes not. If I do, well and good; but if I don't, I can sit and think. And I think, Miss Lucy, that there's a deal of difference between you and me; but there's a cruel deal bigger difference between either of us and Him up yonder. It must be a sight harder for us to understand Him than it is to understand Parson Braithwaite."
"But what has that to do with it, Cicely?" asked Lucy, wonderingly.
"Why, my dear, ben't that what all sermons is for—to teach us to understand God? Just the beginning, you know, must be hard; it always is. Why, when Madam had me learned to read—old Madam, your grandmother, my dears—do you think I liked learning the Christ-Cross-Row?[[2]] Wasn't it very hard, think you, keeping day after day a-saying, 'A, B, C, D,' when there wasn't no sense in it? But 'tis all through the Christ-Cross-Row that I've learned to read the Book. Eh! but I have thanked old Madam many a hundred times for having me learned to read the Book! Well, my dears, 'tis always hard at the beginning; and sure the beginning of learning Him must be harder nor learning to read."
"Why, Cicely, you are as bad to understand as Dr. Braithwaite!"
"Maybe so, my dear. If a little one asked you for to tell him what big A was like, I think you'd scarce make him understand without showing him. And if you want to know what He is like, I think you must read the Book. 'Tis like a picture of Him. I don't know any other way, without you read the Book."
"Do you mean the Bible, Cicely? But Dr. Braithwaite does not say much about that."
"I haven't got nought to say about Parson Braithwaite, Miss Lucy. But surely all that is good in any sermon or aught else must come out of the Book."
"But we could read that at home."
"So we could, my dear; more's the pity as we don't! But there's somewhat in the Book about that—as we ben't to stop going to church."[[3]]
"Where is that, Cicely? I never saw it."
"I haven't a good memory, not for particular words, my dear, and I can't tell you without I had the Book; but 'tis there, certain sure."
Celia had been quietly looking in her little book-case while Cicely was speaking. It contained many things beside books—baskets, pincushions, bottles of Hungary and lavender water, and other heterogeneous articles. But there were about half a dozen books absolutely her own, and one of them was a Bible—a Bible which she very rarely opened, she acknowledged to herself, with a feeling of shame. Looking for it, and bringing it out, she secretly wiped the dust from the covers, and offered it to Cicely.
"Here is one, Cicely; can you show us what you mean?"
"Not in your Book, Mrs. Celia. If I had my own Book, I could. My dear, 'tis choke-full of marks—bits of worsted mostly. I often have it lying open by me when I'm a-darning stockings or some such work, and if I finds a particular nice bit, why, down there goes a bit of worsted into him. Eh! but I have some fine bits marked with them worsted! My dears, if you haven't read the Book you don't know what nice reading there is."
"I think I will read it," said Lucy, gaping.
"You can't without you have glasses, my dear," said Cicely, quietly, finishing off the ruffle.
"Glasses! Why Cicely!" exclaimed Lucy.
"Yes, Miss Lucy, glasses," was Cicely's persistent answer. "Not such like as I works with, my dear: them is earthly glasses. But there is heavenly glasses, and you can't rend the Book without, and you must ask Him for them. He is sure to give them if you ask Him. I think I could find that bit, Mrs. Celia, if you will give me bold."
Celia passed the Bible to the old woman, and she, opening at the first chapter of St. Matthew, slowly traced the lines until she reached the passage which she wanted.
"Now, look here, Mrs. Celia. This is him."
Celia took the book, and read where Cicely pointed.
"'If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?'"[[4]]
"Stop a bit!" said old Cicely; "that ben't just the one I meant. Let's look a bit on."
After a little more searching she discovered her text. "Read that, please, Mrs. Celia," she said.
Celia read in a low tone: "'If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?'"[[5]]
Lucy seemed to have dropped asleep.
"Cicely," asked Celia, "how shall we know if we have the Holy Spirit?"
"Feel Him, my dear,—feel Him!" said Cicely, with a light in her eyes. "I reckon you don't want telling whether you are happy or not, do you?"
"No, indeed," replied Celia, smiling.
"No more you'll want to be told whether you have Him," resumed old Cicely, triumphantly.
"But how did you get Him given?" pursued Celia.
"Why, my dear, I wanted Him, and I asked for Him, and I got Him. 'Tis just so simple as that. I never knew aught about it till I read the Book. I'm only a very simple, ignorant, old woman, my dear. Maybe the reason why I don't know no more is just that I am such a dunce. He can't learn me no more, because I haven't no wits to be learned. You've got plenty of wit, Mrs. Celia—you try! Why, just think the lots of things you know more than me! You can write, and make figures, and play pretty music, and such like, and I know nought but sewing, and dressing meat and drink, and reading the Book. Mayhap the Lord gives me fine things to think about, just because I know so little of other things—a sort of making up like, you see. But you try it, Mrs. Celia, my dear!"
"I fear I scarce have your glasses, Cicely," answered Celia, with a sigh.
"I've done the ruffles now," said Cicely, rising. "You come to me into my little room when you've time, Mrs. Celia, and I'll show you some of them fine bits—any time you like. And as to the glasses, you ask for 'em. Good-night, Mrs. Celia."
Ashcliffe Hall was up at six on week-days, but when the Sunday came round, it was not its custom to rise before eight. Costumes were resplendent on that day, and took some time in assuming. On Sundays and special gala-days only, the young ladies wore hoop-petticoats and patched their faces.[[6]] Their attire to-day comprised quilted petticoats of light-blue satin, silk brocaded gowns, extremely long in the waist, cornettes of lace, lace-trimmed muslin aprons, white silk stockings, and shoes with silver buckles. Their gowns, too, had trains, which for comfort were fastened up behind, looking like a huge burden on the back of the wearer. They looked very stiff as they rustled down the stairs,—all except Lucy, whom no costume on earth could stiffen, though even she wore a graver and more demure air than usual, which perhaps was partly due to the coming sermons. The girls drank their tea, Lucy joining them in the meal, but using milk instead of the fashionable beverage. By the time they had done, Madam Passmore and the Squire were down-stairs; they always breakfasted in their own room on Sunday mornings. Then John, the old coachman, slowly drove up to the front door the great family-coach, drawn by two large, dappled, long-maned and heavy-looking horses. The coach held eight inside, so that it conveniently accommodated all the family, Cicely included, with the exception of Charley, who generally perched himself on the great box, which was quite large enough to admit him between John and the footman. The church was barely half a mile from the Hall, but none of the Ashcliffe family ever thought of walking there; such a proceeding would have involved a loss of dignity. It was a fine old Gothic edifice, one of those large stately churches which here and there seem dropped by accident into a country village, whose population has dwindled far below its ancient standard. The pews were about five feet high, the church having been recently and fashionably repewed. There was a great pulpit, with a carved oak sounding-board, an equally large reading-desk, and a clerk's desk, the last occupied by a little old man who looked coeval with the church. The Squire bestowed great attention upon the responses, which he uttered in a loud, sonorous tone; but when the psalm was over—one of Sternhold and Hopkins' version, for Ashcliffe Church was much too old and respectable to descend to the new version of Tate and Brady—and when the clergyman had announced his text, which the Squire noted down, that in the evening he might be able to question Charley and Lucy concerning it—no further notice did anything obtain from the owner of Ashcliffe Hall. Settling himself into a comfortable attitude, he laid his head back, and in a few minutes was snoring audibly. Madam Passmore generally made efforts, more or less violent, to remain awake, for about a quarter of an hour; and then, succumbing to the inevitable, followed her husband's example. Henrietta kept awake and immovable; so did Harry; but Isabella generally slept for above half the sermon, and Lucy would have followed her example had she dared, the fear of her eldest sister just opposite her keeping her decorous. The discourse was certainly not calculated to arouse a somnolent ear. Dr. Braithwaite generally began his sermon in some such style as this:—"That most learned doctor of the schools, styled by them of his age the Angelical Doctor,[[7]] whose words were as honey, yea, were full of sweetness and delight unto the ears of such as followed him, did in that greatest and most mellifluent of the writings wherewith he regaled his study, did, I say, observe, for the edification of the whole Church, and the great profit of them that should come after"—and then came a shower-bath of Latin dashing down upon the unlearned ears of his congregation. Greek he rarely quoted, since there was no one in the parish who understood it but himself; so that it was but seldom that he impressed the farmers with a due sense of the heights and depths of his learning by uttering a few words of that classic tongue; and whether his quotation were from Pindar or St. Paul, made no difference to them.
Until her conversation with Lucy and old Cicely on the previous evening, Celia had been in the habit of considering the sermon as something with which she had nothing to do, except to sit it out with patience and decorum. She was beginning to think differently now, and she tried hard to follow Dr. Braithwaite this morning through his discourse of an hour and three-quarters. But the sentences were long, the style involved, and the worthy Doctor had got hold of a very unpromising subject. He was preaching upon the ceremony of baptism in the primitive Church, and its relation to the heresy of the Manichæans; and after half an hour, during which she felt confused amid a throng of exorcisms, white robes, catechumens, deacons, immersions, fire-worshippers, Arians, Pelagians, and Gnostics, Celia gave up her hopeless task. Old Cicely sat quite still, her eyes fixed on the closed prayer-book on her knee, a soft, pleased smile every now and then flitting across her countenance; and Celia longed to know of what she was thinking, which appeared to be so much more interesting than Dr. Braithwaite's Manichæans.
In a cheery, sunny little room, on the afternoon of the same Sunday, sat old Cicely, with her Bible on her lap. There were several unoccupied rooms in Ashcliffe Hall, and Cicely had chosen this as hers, where the evening sun came lovingly in, and dwelt for a season with lingering beams on walls and furniture. The same pleased smile rested on the old woman's lips, as she slowly traced the words with her finger along the page, for Cicely read with little fluency; and she said half aloud, though she was alone,—"'He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.'[[8]] Ben't that good, now?"
"May I come in, Cicely?" asked a soft voice at the door.
"Surely, my dear, surely," was the answer. "I'm just a-looking over some of them fine bits where I has my marks. I'll set a chair, Mrs. Celia."
But the chair was set already, and Celia sat down by the old woman.
"Now show me what you like best," she said.
"Well, my dear, I do read most of these here four. 'Tis all good, you know—the very best of reading, of course; but I can understand these here best—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There's nice reading in Luke—very pretty reading indeed; but the beautifullest of 'em all, my dear, that's John. He is up-and-down like, is John. You see I can't get used to the Book like as you would. There's five bits of John—two long uns and two little uns, and one middling. Now the last of 'em I don't understand; 'tis main hard, only a bit here and there; but when I do come to a bit that I can understand, 'tis fine, to be sure! But 'tis this piece of him after Luke that I reads mostly, and the next piece of him after that. Look!"
It was an old, worn book, bound in plain brown calf, which lay on Cicely's lap. The pages were encumbered with an infinitude of ends of worsted,—black, brown, and gray. These were Cicely's guide-posts. She was slowly pursuing the lines with her finger, till she came upon the passage which she wished to find.
"Now, my dear, you read that."
Celia read, "'And this is the promise which He hath promised us, even eternal life.'"[[9]]
"Wait a bit!" cried old Cicely; "there's another in this big piece—a rare good un. Let me find him!"
And turning hastily over the leaves of her book, she picked out, by the help of the worsteds, the verse she wished.
"Read that, Mrs. Celia."
"'And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.'"[[10]]
"Ben't that nice?" delightedly asked old Cicely.
"But how are we to know Him?" said Celia, wearily. "O Cicely! I wanted to ask you of what you were thinking this morning in the sermon which pleased you so mightily. You smiled as if you were so happy."
"Did I, my dear?" answered old Cicely, smiling again. "Well, I dare say I did. And I was cruel happy, that's sure! 'Twas just these two verses, Mrs. Celia, as I've been a-showing you. I'd read 'em last thing yesterday, and surely they did feel just like honey on my tongue. So, as I couldn't nohow make out what Parson Braithwaite were a-saying about them many keys, I falls back, you see, on my two verses. Well, thinks I, if He has promised us, sure we need not be afeard of losing none of it. If you promise somebody somewhat, my dear, mayhap afore you come to do it you'll feel sorry as you've promised, and be thinking of harking back, as Jack says; but there is no harking back with Him. I think, afore He promises, He looks of all sides, and you know, if he sees everything, no wonder He promises so sure. Well, then, I thinks again, what has He promised us? Eternal life. Why, that's another bolt, like, put on the door. If 'tis eternal life, surely we can't never let it go no more."
"But, Cicely," interrupted Celia, "don't you feel that you are often doing wrong?"
"Of course I am so, my dear!" said Cicely. "Every day in the year—ay, and every minute in the day. But then, you see, I just go to the Book. Look what I was a-reading when you came in."
She pointed to the verse which had engaged her. "For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we should be made the righteousness of God in Him."
"Look there, Mrs. Celia! Here's One that did no sin, and yet bare the punishment that our sin must needs have. And if He bare the punishment that did no sin, then belike we must go free for whom He bare it. Don't you see? 'Tis just a matter of fair dealing. The law can't punish both—him as did the wrong and him as didn't. So the other must go free."
"But we must do something to please God, Cicely? We must have something to bring to Him? It cannot be that Jesus Christ hath done all for us, and we have but to take to ourselves what He hath done, and to live as we list!"
"Well, my dear," said Cicely, "I've got my thoughts upon that, too. You look here! I don't find as ever I did a thing to please God afore I took Him that died to stand for me. I never cared aught about pleasing Him; and do you think He'd be like to be pleased with such work as that? If He can see into our hearts, why, it must be just like talking. And do you think Madam would be pleased with me, however well I sewed and swept, if I just went saying forever, ''Tis not to please you I'm working; I don't care a bit about you?'
"I think I do want to please Him," said Celia slowly.
"Don't you stick at thinking, child," said old Cicely, with a pleased look; "go on to knowing, my dear. Well, then, as to bringing something to Him, look here in this other part."
Cicely turned to Isaiah, and after a little search, pointed out a verse which Celia read.
"'But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.'"[[11]]
"If the Queen was a-coming this way, my dear, and we was all of us a-going out to see her, what would you think of me if you see me ransacking the house for all the foul clothes I could find, to tie up in a bundle, and saying, 'There! I'm a-going to give these to the Queen!' Wouldn't you think I was only fit for Bedlam? You see it don't say 'all our iniquities are as filthy rags;' we should be ready to own that. Dear, no! 'tis all our righteousnesses. Will you tell me, then, what we have to bring to Him that is above all Kings and Lords? Well, and last of all, as to living as we list. I do find that mostly when we have made it up like with Him, we list to live after His ways. Not always—surely not always!" she added, sadly shaking her head; "truly we are a pack of good-for-noughts, e'en the best of us; yet it do hurt to think as we've grieved Him when we come to see all He has done and will do for us. Them's my thoughts upon that, Mrs. Celia."
"Why did you never speak to me—to any of us—in this way before now, Cicely?" asked Celia, very thoughtfully and gravely.
"Truly, my dear, I take shame to myself that I never did," replied Cicely; "but you see there was two reasons. Firstly, 'tisn't so very long since I come to know it myself—leastwise not many years. Then, you see, when I did know, I hadn't the face, like, for a good while. Seemed so bold and brassy like for me to be a-talking i' thatn's to the likes of you, as knowed so much more than me. And somehow it never seemed to come natural till last night, and then it come all at once out of what Miss Lucy she said about Parson's sermons."
Celia remained silent for a minute. The mention of Dr. Braithwaite's sermons had opened up a vein of thought. She wondered if anywhere there were men who preached sermons of a different kind from his, such as she and even old Cicely might understand, and from which they could derive benefit. Was there any preacher who, instead of enlarging on the Angelical Doctor, was satisfied to keep to Jesus Christ and Him crucified? A wild desire sprang up in her heart to go to London, and hear the great men who preached before the Queen. She did not mention this to Cicely. Celia knew full well that it would appear to her not only preposterous, but absolutely perilous. Harry was the only member of the family who had ever visited the metropolis, and this by virtue of Her Majesty's commission. The Squire considered it a hot-bed of all evil, physical, moral, and political. Had he walked down the Strand, he would honestly have suspected every man he met to be a Jesuit in disguise, or at the least a Jacobite, which he thought scarcely better. He believed that the air of the capital was close and pestilential, that all honesty and morality were banished from its borders, that all the men in it—with the exception of the Duke of Marlborough and the Whig Ministers—were arrant rogues, and all the women—excluding the Queen and the Duchess of Marlborough—were heartless and unprincipled. There was some ground for his belief, but he sometimes excepted the wrong persons.
All these facts and feelings floated through Celia's mind, and she felt that to bring her wishes to light would probably hinder their accomplishment. She sat silent and thoughtful.
"Cicely," she asked at length, rather abruptly, "do you not find some parts of the Bible very hard to understand?"
"A vast sight, my dear!" said Cicely; "a vast sight! Sure there's a deal that's main hard to a poor old ignorant body such as me."
"Then what do you do, Cicely, when you come to a piece that you cannot understand?"
"Leave it alone, my dear. There's somewhat about the middle of the Book—I can't say the words right, never has 'em pat—about the road being made so straight and smooth like that the very fools can't shape to lose the way. Well, I think the Book's a bit like that itself. For I am a fool, Mrs. Celia, and I won't go to deny it. Surely God will show me all I want, and all that's meant for me, thinks I; and so what I can't understand I think ben't for the likes of me, and I leave it to them 'tis meant for."
"Now all about those Jews, on their way to the Promised Land, and the forty years they spent in the wilderness,—I cannot see what that has to do with us."
"Eh! Mrs. Celia, my dear, don't you go to say that!" urged old Cicely, earnestly. "Wasn't they hard-hearted and stiff-necked folks? and ben't we hard-hearteder and stiff-neckeder?"
"But is it not very gloomy, Cicely, to be always thinking of death, and judgment, and such horrid things?" said Celia, with a little shudder.
"Never thinks about 'em, my dear," was old Cicely's short answer.
"Why, Cicely! I thought religious people were always thinking about them?"
"Don't know nought about religious people, as you call 'em," said Cicely; "never came across one. All I know is, I never thinks—not any while—about death, and judgment, and such like. You see, I haven't got to die just now,—when I have, it'll be a hard pull, I dare say; but there's dying grace, and there's living grace. He don't give dying grace—at least so I think—till we come to dying. So I leave that alone. He knows when I'm to die, and He'll be sure to see to it that I have grace to die with. And as to the judgment, my dear, I have no more to do with that than the other,—a sight less, it seems to me. For we have all got to die; but if I understand the Book right, them that trust in Him haven't no judgment for to stand. If He has taken all my sins away, what am I to be judged for? Don't you see, Mrs. Celia? Eh, no! 'tis not we need think over the judgment, but the poor souls that have to stand it—who will not take Christ, and have nought of their own."
Celia sat silently gazing out of the window on the fair sward and trees of Ashcliffe Park. She had not found any answer when Lucy burst in, with no previous ceremony, and with the exclamation, "What are you doing here, Celia? Didn't you hear the bell for the sermon? Oh, me! I wish it was over!"
Perhaps Lucy was not the only person who wished it. The Sunday-evening sermon at Ashcliffe was a rather fearful institution to more mature and sedate persons than she. First, one of the Squire's sons—Harry, when he was at home, Charley, if not—read the Psalms and Lessons for the day, and it was necessary that they should be read very loud. This was disagreeable when they contained a number of Hebrew names, which Charley, at least, had no idea how to pronounce. He was consequently reduced to make hits at them, which passed muster in all but very flagrant cases, as, fortunately for him, his father was little wiser than himself. This ordeal over, the sermon itself was read by the Squire, and commonly lasted about an hour and a half. It was never very entertaining, being most frequently a discourse on the moral virtues, in tone heathenish, and in style dreary beyond measure. After the sermon, the whole family repeated the Lord's Prayer,—any other prayers the Squire, being a layman, would have thought it semi-sacrilege to read. Then, all remaining in their places, Charley and Lucy were called up to repeat their catechism, each answering alternately, and standing in as stiff a position as possible. When this was over, they had to repeat the text of Dr. Braithwaite's sermon, and that one who remembered it best was rewarded with a silver groat. This was the last act of the drama, the young lady and gentleman being then pounced upon by Cicely and ordered off to bed, after saying good-night all round. The Squire finished the day with a bowl of punch, and a game of cards or backgammon, in which it never occurred to him to see any incongruity with his previous occupations. Later came supper, after which the ladies retired, leaving the Squire to finish his punch alone; and the whole household was in bed by ten at the latest.
The sermon this evening was a discourse upon covetousness—a vice to which none of the hearers were addicted; and after listening to a learned prologue concerning the common derivation of misery and miser, with a number of quotations and instances to show it, Celia's thoughts began to wander, and roamed off once more to her conversation with old Cicely.
"The Gazette, Sir!" said Harry, coming into the room in boots and spurs one morning about three months after the Sunday in question. "Great tumults in London regarding one Dr. Sacheverell,[[12]] who hath preached a Jacobite sermon and much inflamed the populace; and 'tis said the Queen will not consent to his being deprived. Likewise"—
"Hang all Jacobites!" cried the Squire.
"Likewise," pursued his son, "'tis said the Pretender will take a journey to Rome to speak with the Pope, and"—
"Hang the Pretender twice over, and the Pope three times!" thundered his father.
"Hardly necessary, Sir, though you might find it agreeable," observed Harry, in his courtly way. "Moreover, 'tis thought he is gathering an army, wherewith he means to come against our coasts, if any evil should chance to Her Majesty."
"Let him come!" growled the Squire. "We'll send him packing in half the time! Anything else?"
"I see nothing of import," replied Harry, handing the newspaper to him.
"Who is Dr. Sacheverell, Harry?" asked Celia from the window, where she sat with her work.
"There is but little regarding him," was the answer. "He is of Derbyshire family, and was sometime tutor at Oxford. 'Twas on the 5th of November, Gunpowder Plot day last, that he preached before the corporation of London, saith one of the newspapers—I brought the News-Letter as well as the Gazette—and speaking upon 'perils among false brethren,' which he chose for his discourse, he denounced the Bishops and the Lord Treasurer,[[13]] and spake of the Lords who aided in the Revolution as men that had done unpardonable sin."
"Where is all that in the Gazette?" asked the Squire, turning the little sheet of paper about, and looking down the columns to catch the name of the obnoxious preacher.
"Not in the Gazette, what I said last, Sir," answered Harry; "'tis in the sermon, whereof I brought a copy, thinking that you might wish to see it. The bookseller of whom I had it told me that a prodigious number had been sold. Methinks he said thirty thousand."
"Thirty thousand sermons!" exclaimed Lucy, under her breath.
"Leather and prunella!" observed the Squire from behind his Gazette.
"Maybe so, Sir," responded Harry, very civilly. "Yet a sermon sold by the thousand, one would think, should be worth reading."
"Hold your tongue, lad! men don't buy what is worth reading by the cart-load!" growled the Squire. "'Tis only trash that is disposed of in that way."
"Very likely, Sir," responded Harry as before. "Yet give me leave to ask how many prayer-books have been printed in England since the reign of Queen Elizabeth?"
The Squire only grunted, being deep in the Gazette, and Harry turned his attention elsewhere.
"I should like to have heard Dr. Sacheverell," said Celia, timidly.
"Nonsense, Celia!" answered Isabella from her embroidery-frame. "You don't want to hear a man preach treason!"
"I was not thinking of the treason," sighed Celia.
"Celia, why do you want to hear Dr. Sacheverell?" asked Charley, as he sat on the step of the dais which elevated the window above the rest of the chamber.
Celia hesitated, colored, and went on with her work without answering. She and Charley were alone in the room.
"If you wanted to hear what he had to say about what they call treason, you don't need to be afraid of telling me," said Charley. "I don't know whether I shall not take up with treason myself."
"O Charley!" exclaimed Celia. "Don't talk in that way. Think how angry Father would be if he heard you!"
"O Celestina!" exclaimed Charley in his turn. This was his pet name for his favorite sister. Had she possessed a long name, he would probably have abbreviated it; as she had a short one, he extended it. "O Celestina! I am so tired of being good! I am tired of Sundays, and grammar, and the catechism, and sermons, and keeping things tidy, and going to church, and being scolded, and—I'm tired of everything!" said Charley, suddenly lumping together the remainder of his heterogeneous catalogue.
"Charley!" said Celia, slowly and wonderingly.
"I am! And I am half determined to go off, and have no more of it! Father may say what he likes about treason, and hang the Pretender as often as he pleases; but I say 'tis a grand thing to think of the King's son, whom we have kicked out, living on charity in a foreign land, and trying with such wonderful patience to recover the throne of his fathers! I should like to be with him, and bivouac—isn't that what Harry calls it?—bivouac in forests, and march on day after day, always seeing something new, and then at last have a battle! Wouldn't it be glorious?"
"For you to fight with Harry, and one of you kill the other? No, I don't think it would."
"I didn't say anything about fighting with Harry," resumed Charley, a little sulkily. "No, I should not like that. But as to anything else, I just tell you, Celia, that if some day I am not to be found, you will know I am gone to St. Germains to fight for the King—the King!" And Charley drew himself up at least two inches as he said the last words.
"Hush, Charley, do!"
"I won't hush! And I really mean it!"
"Charley, I shall have to tell Father, if you talk any more nonsense like that!" said Celia, really alarmed.
"Celia, do you know what it is to feel downright wicked?" asked Charley, in a different tone.
"Yes—no—not as you mean, I fancy."
"No, I don't think you do. I wish you did."
"Charley!"
"Well, I mean, I wish I didn't! Father talks of hanging things; I feel sometimes as if I could hang everything."
"Me?" demanded Celia, smiling.
"No, I wouldn't hang you; and I wouldn't hang Mother," pursued Charley, meditatively. "Nor Bay Fairy, nor Lucy, nor the black cat; nor Harry—I think not; nor Cicely, except first thing in a morning when she rouses me up out of a nice sleep, or last thing at night when she packs me off to bed whether I will or not. I am not sure about Father. As to the rest, they would have to look out for themselves."
"Now, Charley!" said Celia, laughing.
"Celia, you don't know what it is to feel wicked, I wish I could get something to make me—not keep good, because I have to do—but make me want to be good."
Celia was silent for a moment. Then she said, very slowly and hesitatingly, "Charley, I suppose we shall only want to be good, when we want to please God, and to be like Jesus Christ."
"I don't know anything about that," said Charley, turning round to look at her.
"I know very little about it," said Celia, blushing. "But I have begun to think, Charley—only just lately—that we ought to care more about pleasing God than anything else."
"Is that what makes you such a darling of a sister?" said Charley. "I'll think about it if it be. You are always trying to please everybody, it seems to me. But I don't think I could keep it up, Celia. I don't care much about pleasing anybody but myself."
"Charley," said his sister, with a great effort, "there is a verse in the Bible which I was reading this morning—'Even Christ pleased not Himself.'" She spoke very shyly; but she loved this younger brother dearly, and longed to see him grow up a really great and good man. And she found it easier to talk to Charley, Lucy, and Cicely than to others. She would not have dared to quote a text to Henrietta.
"Well, but you know we can't be like Him," said Charley, reverently.
"We must, before we can go to heaven."
"Well, then, I might as well give up at once!" answered Charley, beginning to whistle.
"Oh no, Charley dear!" said Celia, so earnestly, that Charley stopped whistling, and looked up in her face. "He will help us to do right if we try. I do want you to grow up a good man, loving God and doing good to men. Won't you ask Him, Charley?"
"Well, perhaps—I'll see about it," said Charley, as his sister stroked the light hair affectionately away from his brow. "At any rate, I don't think I'll go to St. Germains just yet. You are a dear old Celestina!"
[[1]] Tennyson, "Idylls of the King"—Enid.
[[2]] The alphabet, which in the hornbooks was surmounted with a cross and the lines:
"Christ's cross be my speed
In these letters to my need."
[[3]] Heb. x. 25.
[[4]] Matt. vii. 11.
[[5]] Luke xi. 13.
[[6]] Patches, scraps of black court-plaster, or gummed velvet cut in shapes—stars, crescents, circles, lozenges, and even more elaborate and absurd forms—became fashionable about 1650, and remained so for many years. In the reign of Queen Anne, ladies showed their political proclivities by their patches—those who patched on one side of the face only being Tories, and on the other, Whigs. Neutrals patched on both sides.
[[7]] Thomas Aquinas bore this flattering epithet.
[[8]] 2 Cor. v. 21.
[[9]] John ii. 25.
[[10]] John xvii. 3.
[[11]] Isaiah lxiv. 6.
[[12]] Henry Sacheverell, born at Marlborough in 1672, began life as a Whig, but finding that unprofitable, became a fervid Tory and High Churchman. He was presented to St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1705. His celebrated trial, which followed the sermon noticed above, began February 27, and ended March 20, 1710. The Queen presented him to St. Andrew's, Holborn, in 1713; and after some years spent in comparative obscurity, he died on the 5th of June 1724.
[[13]] Sidney Godolphin, Earl of Godolphin.
II.
A BAT BEHIND THE WAINSCOT.
"He gazed on the river that gurgled by,
But he thought not of the reeds;
He clasped his gilded rosary,
But he did not tell the beads:
If he looked to the heaven, 'twas not to invoke
The Spirit that dwelleth there;
If he opened his lips, the words they spoke
Had never the tone of prayer.
A pious priest might the Abbot seem,—
He had swayed the crosier well;
But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream,
The Abbot were loath to tell."
W. M. PRAED.
"Harry!" said Celia, coming down with her cloak and hood on, one fine day in the following spring, "one of the pegs in the closet in our room is loose; will you make it secure for us while we are walking?"
The whole family were going for an excursion in the woods, as it was Lucy's birthday, and Harry's sprained ankle kept him at home. He could stand without pain for a short time, but could not walk far; and a horse would not have been able to carry him through the thick underwood. Delay was suggested; but, as Lucy very truly, if somewhat selfishly, asserted, another day would not have been her birthday. All things considered, the Squire had decided that the excursion should not be put off, and the party set out accordingly. After they were gone, Harry went up to Celia's room, to see what would be required. The setting to rights of the offending peg was soon effected. He was retiring from the closet, when he set his foot upon a little round substance, which he guessed to be the head of a nail sticking up from the floor of the closet close to one of the back panels.
"Ah!" observed Harry, apostrophizing the nail, "you must come out. You will be tearing Miss Lucy's gown, and she won't like having to mend it."
Harry accordingly proceeded to attempt the removal of the nail. But he found to his surprise that neither his hand nor his tools seemed strong enough to pull it out. Its position, close to the back of the closet, made it all the more difficult. Was it really a nail? He looked at it more closely. It had a brass head, and Harry came to the conclusion that it was a knob placed there on purpose. But for what purpose? It would go neither backwards nor forwards; but when Harry tried to pull it to one side, to his astonishment a little door flew open, so neatly fitted into the closet floor as to defy detection, the nail or knob being fixed in the midst. Below the little door appeared a tiny box, with a second brass knob fixed in it. At the bottom was a brass plate, from a small round hole in which the knob protruded.
"Now then," remarked Harry, "let me look at you. What are you for?"
He very soon discovered that upon touching it. The moment that the little knob was pushed inwards, the whole panel in the back of the closet suddenly sprang back, showing that it was in reality a concealed door, the catch closing it having been liberated by pressing the little knob in the tiny box. What was behind the door it was impossible to see without a candle, for the closet was a deep one, and the opening of its door cut off the light from the bedroom window. Harry quietly came out of the closet, locked the bedroom door, and went to his own chamber to fetch a taper and his sword. He was determined to follow up his discovery.
The light of the candle revealed no array of skeletons, but a narrow passage, which he saw, on stepping into it, to be the head of a very narrow spiral staircase. With the candle in one hand, and the sword in the other, Harry, in whose mental vocabulary fear had no place, calmly walked down the staircase. The excitement of the adventure overpowered any pain which he felt from his ankle. A faint smell of dried roses met him at the foot of the stairs. On the right hand stood a heavy door. Harry gave it a strong push, and being unlatched, it slowly opened and admitted him. He stood in a very small square chamber. There was no window. A table was in the middle, two chairs stood against the wall, and in one corner was a handsome chest on which two books were lying. All the furniture was of carved oak. Harry opened the books, and then the chest. The former were a Latin missal and breviary; the latter was occupied by a set of church vestments, a crucifix, a thurible, and sundry other articles, whose use was no mystery to the travelled discoverer.
"So you are a priest's hiding-place," said Harry, dryly, to the concealed chamber. "So much is plain. They say mass at this table. Well, I did not know we had one of these at Ashcliffe. I wonder how many years it is since this was inhabited? I protest!—upon my word, I do believe it is inhabited now!"
He had suddenly perceived that while on the stairs the dust lay thick, there was none resting on the furniture within the chamber. Books, chest, chairs, table—all bore evidence of having been used so recently, that no considerable accumulation of dust had time to gather on them. Harry looked coolly around, and descried another door, opposite to the one by which he had entered. Opening this, he found himself at the summit of a second spiral staircase, down which he went—down, down, until he fancied that he must be descending below the foundations of the house. At length the spiral form of the staircase ended, and a further flight of steps ran straight down. Harry wondered whether he was going into the bowels of the earth, but he kept onwards, until once more stopped by a door. This door opened readily, being unlatched like the others, and he looked out into darkness. Casting his eyes upwards, he saw, in the direction wherein he supposed the sky should be, a small round patch of blue.
"Well, you were a cunning fox who planned this hole!" thought he. "One end opens into the closet in Celia's room, and the other into the old well in the garden. There must be some means of climbing up out of the well, I presume, and the worthy gentleman who makes this his abode is probably well acquainted with them. I wonder if my father and mother know of this? If not, I had better make up the entrance, and not tell them. My mother would be too frightened to sleep in any peace if she knew that such a place was hidden in the house, and my father would rouse all Devonshire about it. I wonder, too, who they are that use it? Are they still priests, or Jacobite fugitives? or are they highwaymen? Whatever they be, I must make up this door, as soon as I am a little better able to exert myself."
Thus thinking, Harry withdrew from the secret chamber, and regained Celia's room. Pulling to the door, he found that the panel and the hidden box closed each with a spring. He left the bedroom, and went down-stairs meditating upon his discovery.[[1]]
A fortnight later, when his ankle had regained strength, he took the opportunity, when both the sisters were out, to make a second visit to the secret chamber. He found its arrangements slightly altered—a proof that its mysterious occupant had been there within a few days. The books were gone, and one of the chairs was now standing by the table. Harry dragged some ponderous logs of wood to the outer door which led into the well, and by means of these barricaded the door effectually against any return of the refugee.
During the interval he had taken the opportunity of asking a few questions of different persons, which might give him some idea whether they were aware of the existence of this concealed chamber.
"Mother," he asked, one evening, when Madam Passmore had been lamenting the sad fact that things wore out much sooner than when she was a girl, "had you ever any of that fine carved furniture like Madam Harvey's?"
"No, my dear, not a bit," said his mother.
"Bell," he asked, on another occasion, "do you ever hear rats or mice in your wainscot?"
"Oh, they tease me infinitely!" answered Isabella. "They make noises behind the wainscot till I cannot sleep, and for the last week I have put cotton wool in my ears to keep out the sound."
"Cicely," he inquired, lastly, "did you ever see a ghost?"
"No, Master Harry, I never have," replied Cicely, mysteriously, thus hinting that there might be some people who had done so. "I never see one, nor never want. But they do haunt old houses, that's a truth."
"How do you know that if you never saw one?" laughed Harry.
"Well, my dear!" exclaimed Cicely, "if you'd a been down with me in the scullery one night last week—I couldn't sleep, and I went down for to get a bit of victuals, and washed my hands in the scullery—I say, if you'd a-heard the din they made over my head, you might have thought somewhat."
"Who made it, Cicely?"
"Them!" said Cicely, in a mysterious whisper. "Nay, I never saw none, but my grandmother's aunt's mother-in-law, she did."
"Ah! she is a good way off us," said Harry, satirically. "But you know, this house is rather too new for ghosts. A fine old castle, now, with all manner of winding stairs and secret passages—that would be the place to see a ghost."
"Eh! my dear, don't you give me the horrors!" cried Cicely. "Why, I could never sleep in my bed if I lived in a place where them secret places and such was—no, never lie quiet, I couldn't! Nay, Master Harry, nobody never seed no ghosteses in this house. I've lived here eight-and-twenty year come Martlemas, and I ought to know."
"And pray, Cicely, who was your great-grandmother's first cousin's niece, or whatever she were? and what did she see?"
"My grandmother's aunt's mother-in-law, Master," corrected Cicely. "She see a little child in a white coat."
"How very extraordinary!" commented Harry gravely.
"Master Harry, I'm certain sure you don't believe a word of it, for all you look so grave," said old Cicely, shaking her head sorrowfully.
"I can't say that I do at present. But you see I have not heard the particulars yet."
"Then you shall, Master," said old Cicely, rather excitedly. "'Twas at Dagworth in Suffolk, in the house of one Master Osborne, where she served as chambermaid. He had been a while in the house, had the ghost, and nobody couldn't get to see him—no, not the parson, though he used to reason with him on doctrine and godliness. They oft heard him a-calling for meat and drink, with the voice of a child of one year, which meat being put in a certain place was no more seen. He said his name was Malke. And after a while, one day she spoke to him and begged him for a sight of him, promising not to touch him. Whereupon he appeared to her as a young child in a white coat, and told her that he was a mortal child, stole by the good-folk,[[2]] and that he was born at Lanaham, and wore a hat that made him invisible, and so, quoth he, doth many another. He spoke English after the manner of the country, and had many roguish and laughter-stirring sayings, that at last they grew not to fear him."[[3]]
"How long did he stay there?"
"Now you are asking me more than I know, Master. But don't you never go to say again that there's no such things as ghosteses, when my grandmother's aunt's mother-in-law seen him with her own two eyes!"
"And Mr. Osborne kept no dogs, or cats, I suppose?"
"Master Harry, you don't believe it! Well, to be sure, I never did! You'll be saying next thing that there's no such things as the good-folk, when I've seen their dancing-rings on the grass many a hundred times! I'm sore afeared, Master Harry, that it haven't done you no good a-going for a soldier—I am."
And Harry found that all his arguments produced no further effect than the conviction of old Cicely that he had been in bad company. From the information thus gained, however, he formed these conclusions:—First, His mother knew nothing about the secret chamber. Secondly, Cicely was equally ignorant. Thirdly, It was situated, as he had surmised—above the scullery or behind it—probably both—and below his sister Isabella's bedroom. Fourthly, It had been inhabited as recently as the preceding week. All the more reason, he thought, for stopping up the means of ingress; and all the more for not revealing to old Cicely that her ghost was in all probability a Popish priest.
On the evening of the spring day upon which Harry thus barred the refugee out of his hiding-place, Celia was strolling through the park alone. She fed the fawns and the swans on the ornamental water, and wandered on with no definite object, until she reached the boundary of her father's grounds. She sat down on the grass near a large laurel, and became lost in thought. There happened at this place to be a small gap in the hedge near her, through which her position was plainly observable from the road. She started as she heard a sudden appeal made to her:
"Young Madam, pray you a penny, for the love of God!"
Celia turned and looked at the speaker. He was a dark, good-looking man, dressed in clothes which had once been handsome, but were now ragged and thread-bare. His eyes, dark, sunken, and very bright, were fixed earnestly upon her. She held out to him the penny for which he asked, when he said, abruptly:
"Your pardon, Madam! but are you Squire Passmore's daughter?"
"Yes, I am Celia Passmore," she replied, thinking nothing of the query.
"Be not too certain of it," answered the stranger, softly. "God and our Lady bless you!"
And gently taking the offered coin from Celia's hand, he withdrew before she could recover from her horror at the discovery that she had been conversing with a Papist. When she recovered herself, his words came back to her with strange meaning. The blessing she took to be merely his way of thanking her for the alms which she had bestowed. But had he not told her not to be too sure of something? Of what? Had she said anything to him beyond telling her name? Celia concluded that the poor fellow must have been wrong in his head, and began to feel very compassionate towards him. She sauntered back to the house, and into old Cicely's room, where she found its occupant mending stockings, with her old brown Bible lying open on the table before her.
"Cicely, I have had such an odd adventure."
"Have you so, Mrs. Celia? What was it, my dear?"
"Why, a poor man begged of me over the hedge, and said such strange things!—asked me my name, and told me not to be too sure of it! Was it not droll?"
Instead of a laugh rising to her lips, as Celia expected, a strange light sprang to old Cicely's eyes as she lifted her head and gazed at her. Not a glad light—far from it; a wild, startled, sad expression, which Celia could not understand.
"Ay, sweetheart!" said the old woman, in a voice not like her usual tones. "Did he so? And what manner of man?"
"Oh, not bad-looking," answered Celia. "A comely man, with black hair and eyes. His clothes had been good, but they were very bad now, and he was a Papist, for he said, 'Our Lady bless you.'"