WOODBURN GRANGE.

WOODBURN GRANGE.

A Story of English Country Life.

BY

WILLIAM HOWITT.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
CHARLES W. WOOD, 13, TAVISTOCK ST., STRAND.
1867.
[Right of Translation reserved.]

LONDON:

BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

WOODBURN GRANGE.

CHAPTER I.

THE CLAVERINGS AND HERITAGES.

On the morning after the frolic on the island, as the young friends called it, when the breakfast was over, where the merriment of the affair, and the return of Henry Clavering had been discussed, and the ladies were left to themselves, topics were introduced which belonged only to the initiated, that is, to the womenkind.

“How well Mr. Clavering looks,” said Mrs. Woodburn, “and how kind and amiable he is. What a joy it is to George to have him back again, and you, Ann?”

“Oh! I am very glad indeed that he is come back; poor Sir Emanuel must have been so lonely by himself up in that great house.”

“True,” said Mrs. Woodburn. “But you, Ann? Has he altered his opinions at all?”

Ann shook her head, the tears started to her eyes, and she said, “No, dear mother, he is just the same; it is very sad.”

“It is sad,” said Mrs. Woodburn; “but let us wait God’s time, my dear child; I will still hope that so excellent a young man, with such sense and such a heart, must come right at last.”

Ann again shook her head, and said, sorrowfully, “I don’t know; pray God it may be so,” and went on with her sewing.

As a conversation between Mr. Clavering and Miss Woodburn happened to come to my ear, as it does so often come, by means of the little bird which carries so many arcana to authorly ears, I may throw a little light on the mysterious words of Mrs. Woodburn and her daughter. For a long time there had been a strong and tender attachment betwixt Henry Clavering and Ann Woodburn. Mr. Clavering, George’s old schoolfellow, and almost constant companion since, had been most intimate at Woodburn Grange. The whole family loved and admired him, for his sound sense, high moral feeling, and unassuming kindly disposition. The attachment betwixt Ann and him had grown up almost insensibly. He made a direct offer to Ann, and this was warmly seconded by every one of her family. Independently of the splendid fortune and title which Mr. Clavering would inherit, and the fortunate nearness of his abode, no woman could expect to find in a husband a more agreeable person, a more rich possessor of moral and intellectual endowments and qualities. What, then, stood in the way? There was an obstacle, to Ann’s religious and conscientious nature, which in her opinion was insurmountable. Mr. Clavering had no faith in Christianity: he had but a doubtful one in the existence of man after death.

Sir Emanuel Clavering, as we have seen, was accredited in the mind of the common people round with the practice of the black art. For that, of course, there was no foundation; but as there cannot well be smoke where there is no fire, there was a certain foundation for this notion. Sir Emanuel, in the ardent pursuit of astronomical science, had acquired the most profound idea of the wondrous construction and illimitable extent of the universe. That it was produced and upheld in such beautiful order by some great invisible power co-extensive with itself, he could not doubt; but he felt an invincible difficulty in imagining that this could be any living being. He believed it rather to be an intelligent principle or force producing all things—the soul, as it were, of all visible creation. In a word, he was what we understand by a Pantheist. If there were a God, he conceived it must be a sentient principle rather than a concentrated mind, inhabiting some localised vehicle perceptible even to spiritual beings, if there were such. It was to him something illimitable, unapproachable, incomprehensible: the infinite, impossible to be conceived of, or perceived by the finite. For these reasons, he disbelieved the whole narrative of God taking a human form and coming down and dying for mankind.

Mrs. Heritage, deeply grieved at such notions in a man otherwise excellent and so agreeable, had felt herself drawn to meet him, and reason with him on this head. Admitting that the infinite must be incomprehensible to the finite, she asked him if he could understand his own existence? Yet he did exist, and so did God. Had no such scheme as this earth, and of human beings living in so complicated a machine of flesh, blood, nerves, and their sensations, supported by vegetables converted by digestive process into this flesh and blood; of the growth of all animals, and of man himself; of all vegetables, of the mightiest trees, with all their varied and delicious fruits and essences—not been exhibited to intellectual beings capable of observing it, she urged that such beings could by no possibility have conceived the idea of so marvellous a creation.

Sir Emanuel admitted the force of her arguments, and thanked her most warmly for presenting them to his mind, but he could by no means bring himself to believe, amidst the myriads of worlds which the telescope revealed to the eye—far as its powers could open up the inconceivable distances of the heavens—that God could condescend to come down to this one little planet, and take upon himself the weaknesses and inconveniences of humanity, and be insulted and killed by his own creatures. It revolted, he said, the totality of his reason.

Mrs. Heritage reminded him that he had just admitted that everything around him was beyond the grasp of reason, and he ought to content himself with the unquestionable facts of a thoroughly authenticated history.

Sir Emanuel smiled, and said that he must think of that part of the subject, and concluded the conversation by thanking Mrs. Heritage, and asking her to go and look at some American deer that he had just received from the United States. Mrs. Heritage often afterwards renewed the conversation with Sir Emanuel, and he had always received her remarks in the kindest and most courteous manner, but remained apparently as fixed in his old views as ever. In these views Henry Clavering, his only son, had grown up. They had never been expressly taught him by his father, but he had listened to conversations on these topics so often, and had such respect for the talents and honourable nature of his father, whilst his mother had been lost to him when very young, that these ideas were to him as part of his mental constitution.

It was this knowledge that had been Ann Woodburn’s stumbling-block and most painful trial. Loving Mr. Clavering with all the strength of her deeply-feeling nature, she could not bring herself to contemplate an alliance with a man who was not a Christian, whatever else he might be. Oh, many a long and deep struggle it had occasioned her; many a restless and sleepless night; many a sorrowful, miserable day. Sometimes her agony rose to such desperation that she had locked herself in her bedroom and flung herself on the floor, and rolled there in a frenzy of grief. All her eloquence had been used to induce Henry Clavering to read works of our great divines on the subject; all the arguments with which they had furnished her she had zealously urged on him; but without any effect but that of making him as wretched as herself. He told her that most gladly would he be convinced, most earnestly he wished that he could think as she did; but he could not, and would not conceal from her the truth. After long endeavours and waitings on the part of Ann, and a state of mind most wearing to Mr. Clavering himself, Ann had told him that she felt that she never could consent to a union whilst their opinion on so vital a point remained as they were and though to her it was like dividing soul and body, she would not remain a tie upon him; she left him free as the winds to choose some more fortunate and, as he might think, more reasonable woman.

To this proposal Henry Clavering would not listen. “No,” said he, “my dearest Ann, I cannot change my heart and soul at pleasure. With you or with no one must I unite my life. I feel the greatness of your self-sacrifice, but it is not in your power to set me free. I am what I am, and must be. My love for you is rooted into the deepest region of my heart—neither you nor I can tear it out at will. I will wait for you as long as you like—and you or I may change.”

Sir Emanuel Clavering had seconded the proposal of his son with the most zealous advocacy. He said he rejoiced at the idea of seeing Cotmanhaye Manor lit up and warmed and graced by such a mistress. He told Ann that she must not make herself and Henry wretched by silly scruples. They were both as good as they could be, and they might well leave all the rest to the winding-up of time. But then Sir Emanuel let slip a word which would have spoiled all had there been any chance of Ann’s acquiescence.

“Come,” said he, “dismiss any more girlish fancies; let me see you my dear daughter-in-law, and at Cotmanhaye we will make you as pretty a little infidel as can be wished.”

“God forbid!” said Ann, shuddering; and these words sunk deep into her soul. She travelled on in thought to the time when she might be the mother of precious children, and the idea of their growing up in such an atmosphere of infidelity made her resolve irrevocable. In vain had Henry Clavering assured her that in the event of a family, she should indoctrinate the children as she pleased. Not a word from him, and he thought he might answer for his father, should ever be let fall to mar her maternal counsels.

“But,” said Ann, “you would not even say one word which should accord with my teachings, and what a predicament for the quick sagacity of childhood!”

Such was the state of things which had induced Henry Clavering to go abroad, and had made him a wanderer through far countries for two years. It was this which had made Ann Woodburn, however outwardly calm and occasionally smiling, inwardly sad and anxious, and had deepened with a proportionate force her religious feelings. As the party of young people walked home in the evening of yesterday through the woods, Mr. Clavering had gradually fallen behind with Ann, and, taking her hand affectionately, had said, with a tone full of feeling:—

“What news, my dear Ann? Have your scruples vanished? May we hope for better days?”

“No, dear Henry,” replied Ann, sorrowfully. “My scruples, as you call them, can never leave me; and I fear from your question that your views have undergone no change.”

“I must confess,” said Mr. Clavering, “that they have not.”

“Then,” said Ann, after a long silence, “let us not renew that subject. Let us leave it to God. But I say again, Henry, why should you waste your existence in useless regrets and unrequited affections for such a simple country maiden as me, when a brilliant world is open to you, and so many fitter and livelier companions within the scope of your choice? I do not say, forget me—let us be friends; but, be free from all thought of me.”

Henry Clavering held affectionately her hand, and they walked on in silence; but he felt that hand quiver, and saw that she trembled violently.

“Well, let us leave this topic,” he said, “at least for the present. I shall not make you miserable. We will still look onward, and hope.”

Ann Woodburn gave him a look of most loving thankfulness, wiped her tears from her face, and they went on, hand in hand, in silence till they came up with their companions. Let us now return to the conversation of the mother and daughters at the Grange.

“I think,” said Letty, looking rather knowingly, “that ‘the course of true love’ really seldom does run smooth.”

“Yours, Letty, I think, runs smooth enough,” said Ann, brightening up. “Really, it is not for you to say that, with Mr. Thorsby’s declaration and your worthy parents’ consent given but yesterday.”

“Oh!” said Letty, blushing and looking very happy, “I was not thinking of myself, but of Millicent Heritage.”

“Of Millicent Heritage!” exclaimed her mother and sister; “why, what of her?”

“I am sure,” continued Ann, “Dr. Leroy is over head and ears in love with her. Never did I see a young man’s eyes always resting with such affectionate expression on any one as his do on Miss Heritage; and really she seems very fond of him; and a most accomplished and amiable man he is.”

“True, all true,” said Letty, taking a folded paper from her pocket. “I told you I would read you a bit of Miss Heritage’s poetry; and when you have heard it—well, then you can judge. This poem was given to Miss Drury by Millicent, and she has allowed me to copy it.”

“Oh, let us have it!” said both the ladies, “we never heard a line of Quaker poetry—not even that Mr. Moon’s you mentioned.”

“Moon James,” said Letty; “but now—” she began—

COME TO ME.

Come to me, loved one, from thy heaven descending,

Come to me softly, with the falling dews;

Come when the shadows and the lights are blending,

And the heart fondly all its past renews.

Come to me, loved one,

As I sit and muse.

Come to me in the hushed, dark midnight hour,

Fall with thy spirit gladness on my heart,

Let me embrace thee in the deathless power

Of that which once cemented cannot part.

Come to me, loved one,—

Spirit though thou art.

Come to me, loved one, when the breeze is sighing,

And the far sky shines with a lonely light;

Where loving lips to loving words replying,

Make even this cloudy world divinely light.

Come to me, loved one,

Let our souls unite!

For I would live, and love, and ever be

A part of that, and those, the sacred few,

With whom my heart has grown in such degree

Of deep endearment as the heavens renew.

Come to me, loved one,

Say—the dead are true.

Come, when the days are dark, the storms are raving,

When friends are passing, and the heart is low,

Come, when the soul is sick, and inly craving

For what it hopes and dreams and fain would know.

Come to me, loved one,

In thy star-like glow.

Come in God’s freedom of the souls set free;

No startling touch, no vision dread be mine—

Enfold me in thy presence—let me be

Soul of thy soul in all its life divine.

Come to me, loved one,

Whisper—thine, still thine!

“Is that Miss Heritage’s?” asked Mrs. Woodburn. “Is it really? I did not think so much was in her. It is rather lugubrious; but for so young a girl, there is stuff in it.”

“But you know, father says these Quakers are extraordinary people,” said Letty. “You don’t know all at once what is in them.”

“It is very good,” said Ann. “I should like a copy of it. It is much better, I undertake to say, than that Mr. Moon’s.”

“Moon James,” reiterated Letty, “but, as mother says, a little lugubrious, and reminds me of that ‘sentimental’ Miss Bailey, who says she does so love melancholy subjects.”

“And who,” asked Mrs. Woodburn, “can this apostrophised beloved one be? A mere girl’s fancy, I expect.”

“No,” said Letty; “Miss Drury says it was some young fellow of a cousin who got drowned in the Trent when he was about eighteen, bathing. I wonder what Dr. Leroy would say to this poem?”

“He would not mind,” said Mrs. Woodburn. “Miss Heritage is not likely to pine in reality after a youth drowned years ago, with such a good-looking and clever lover as Dr. Frank Leroy. Perhaps it was a good thing the lad did get drowned. These Friends make too many cousin-marriages.”

“Dear mother!” exclaimed both the daughters, “would you drown off the young Friends who were in danger of marrying cousins?”

“No, no,” replied Mrs. Woodburn, laughing, “not so bad as that; I would only send such mischievous young fellows to Botany Bay.”

With a burst of good-natured merriment at Mrs. Woodburn’s proposal for curing Quaker cousin-marriages, the conversation ended, Mrs. Woodburn going away to her household duties, and Letty to copy her poem.

We have now given a pretty full picture of the life at Woodburn Grange, and a few glimpses into Friend life, as it was then. The reader, no doubt, thinks with us, that it is about time that our story marched at something more than a goose-step, with which I fully accord, and shall set forward with it accordingly after one more observation. Many readers, accustomed only to the measured manners betwixt masters and mistresses and domestic servants of to-day, and especially in towns, will probably think the free and often very personal speech of Betty Trapps out of nature, or, at least, out of place. Those who lived then in the country, perhaps some living there now, will recollect female servants who were quite as free-spoken and as brusquely-unflattering as Betty Trapps, and who, nevertheless, lived their twenty and thirty years in a family. Their industry, fidelity, and attachment to the family which they served, made a grand set-off against their unceremonious freedom. Such servants were not only tolerated but greatly valued, and it would have been a severe trial to part with them. A sort of relationship, approaching to kinship, seemed to grow up with such long and free service, and many of the old servants came to be called by the name of the family they lived in. Very probably Betty Trapps was often called in the village and neighbourhood, Betty at Woodburns’, and, at length, Betty Woodburn. One such Betty I knew, who used to hunt us children up, wash us, and pack us off to the village school. I should never forget her, were it only for rubbing my nose so hardly and crumplingly with the napkin after washing me. But I remember her still more for many a kind office, many a token of affection, many an absorbing story as we sate round the great blazing wood fire in the house-place of a winter’s evening, and Betty travelled back amongst the days and acquaintance of her youth, and found things that were to her still “very cutting,” and which we yet called for again and again.

CHAPTER II.

A WILD GALLOP.

Whilst these things were transpiring, and a pleasant intercourse of friendship was progressing in and about Woodburn, things and feelings of a very different character were laying the foundations of future complications in the same, as yet, happy neighbourhood.

Mr. Degge had taken and furnished a cottage in Hillmartin, very near his own house, for his mother. The yet hale and cheerful woman of fifty, was much fonder of a house more resembling in size and furnishing her former humble habitation by the Castleborough meadows, than the large house of her son called Hillmartin Hall. She could not here work and get up linen, but she could spin and look after a little garden. She must have some employment: and Simon Degge knew that his mother would feel much more happy in a house of her own than in a great house, even though her son and daughter-in-law showed her every honour and all affection. She could come in and out as she pleased, and yet have a house to return to where she was mistress, and felt that everything was her own. She had one little maid-servant, and her cottage was as cheerful and pleasant as plenty and a love of neatness and order could make it. She had her little garden, and cultivated flowers, especially the old English flowers, pinks, double-daisies, daffodils, wall-flowers, polyanthuses, and the like. The roses and honeysuckles that covered her garden porch and peeped in at her windows, saw the balm-of-Gilead and egg plants and geraniums looking out at them and seeming to say, “we are all happy.”

Old Mrs. Degge, if old she could be called, had her cat and her great green-baize covered bible, and she could do with such company much better than some people can with whole crowds. Mrs. Degge—we shall distinguish her daughter-in-law as Mrs. Simon Degge—had beyond these things a source of satisfaction which, next to the happiness and prosperity of her son and his family, was the grand satisfaction of her life. Mrs. Degge was a Methodist, and was a most notable acquisition to the society at Hillmartin. There were a considerable number of Methodists in the village, but chiefly amongst the poorer class. There was no appointed preacher at the chapel, but local preachers, often working men at Castleborough, officiated there. Sometimes there came a greater gun—a round-preacher, as he was called—one appointed by Conference to preach at different places within a certain round, or district. Besides these, there were occasional amateur preachers—gentlemen, who felt it a duty to assist in preaching the gospel.

To these different labourers in the great field, there had wanted a comfortable hostel, as it were, or house where they could receive such rest and refreshment as the outer man requires, however strong and unwearied the inner man might be. Exactly such a pleasant, home-like domicile could Mrs. Degge now offer them. There the preachers could go direct, with the feeling of a welcome as sincere as it was acceptable. The poor servant of the gospel who had to foot it from the town, up the long hill, often in sweltering hot weather, often amid the snow and storms of winter, there found always a cheerful hearth, a ready cushioned arm-chair, a smiling, pious face, and a heart always ready to give the sure tokens of welcome and comfort. There they could dine and rest betwixt the morning and evening services: there they could take tea, and enjoy the company of one or other of the esteemed brethren who dropped in. There was a chamber, clean, snug, and quiet, if there were need of stopping the night. The richer brother who came on horseback knew that his horse was as welcome and would be ministered to as cordially in the stable of Mr. Degge, as he himself would be at his mother’s. Mr. Degge had assured them himself of this, and often stepped in and had a friendly chat with these apostles of the people. He told his mother that she was not to spare any expense in making her house a resort most agreeable to her friends; and Mrs. Degge, knowing that this was as genuinely said as she herself could say it, made her house the pleasant resort of the prophets of her community as much as the Shunamite woman of old did her little room on the wall to Elisha.

A class met at Mrs. Degge’s house; and at any cottage in the village where any members of the society lived, Mrs. Degge was a most welcome visitor, always ready to carry help and comfort wherever there was need, or sickness, or want of counsel. Mr. Degge not only enabled her to do all that “she found in her heart to do,” but he paid off an old debt on the chapel, for at that time of day, few country chapels of the Wesleyans were without such a debt, whatever they may now be; and he frequently contributed liberally, as well as enabling his mother to contribute liberally, to the subscriptions ever and anon called for.

But these favours to the religious friends of his mother were fresh aggravations of his offences against the fixed prejudices of the neighbouring squirearchy. Sir Roger Rockville had driven the Methodists with a high hand out of his village and beyond his domains, and here was this odious money-bag of Castleborough fostering them to the utmost of his and his old washer-woman mothers’ ability in Hillmartin almost under his nose. Every neighbouring squire sympathised with Sir Roger, and afresh denounced Simon Degge as a nuisance.

Of this feeling he had very soon a proof. In the churchyard at Hillmartin was a large brick vault, which had belonged to the family who had been years ago the owners of the house and land now purchased by Simon Degge. As this family had long been extinct, and there was ample space unoccupied in the vault, Mr. Degge proferred to purchase this vault of the vicar. This gentleman did not reside at Hillmartin but at Gotham, and preached once a week, that is, on the Sunday afternoons, at Hillmartin. Mr. Degge made his proposal for the vault, intending to arrange the leaden coffins of the old family at one end, and build a wall across in front of them, so as to leave his portion a complete vault of itself. The clergyman appeared quite willing, and said he would consider what would be a fair price. But time went on, and Mr. Degge received no answer. He applied again and again, but the vicar had not come to a decision. At length he said, on being pressed, that he was very agreeable to make over the vault to Mr. Degge, but that he found there was a little difficulty in the matter. This difficulty he did not explain, and the delay went on again for a long time. When pressed as to where this difficulty lay, he said it lay with the bishop.

Mr. Degge at once wrote to the bishop, begging for an explanation of the difficulty, and received a note from the bishop saying that he was himself quite favourable to his desire, but that there lay a little difficulty elsewhere. Mr. Degge pressed to know where, and at length learned from the bishop that it lay with the vicar. This opened his eyes; and he ceased any further application, saying he was very foolish for entering into negotiation for a vault while mother earth was ready in a most friendly manner to receive the remains of himself or of any one belonging to him. His friend, Thomas Clavering, however, on hearing of this piece of poor equivocation, told him he might build a vault, as large as he liked, in the churchyard at Cotmanhaye any day.

Another circumstance greatly embittered the minds of the squires against Mr. Degge. The difficulty which he found in procuring the conviction of a person for any offence against his property, or of defending any of his work-people or the villagers against vexatious warrants issued by one or other of these gentlemen on the suggestions of their bailiffs or keepers, induced him to desire to be made a magistrate of the county as well as the town, which he was. Sir Emanuel Clavering was willing at all times to give him his support, but then he was only one opposed to half a-dozen, or, if they chose to carry the matter to the sessions, many more. Sir Emanuel strongly recommended this step, as although it would leave him in a very slender minority, there were cases which they could deal with on their united warrants, and their influence would be felt altogether more effectual. This object was accomplished through the intervention of Lord Netherland, the Recorder of Castleborough, but to the infinite disgust of the squirearchy, of the stamp described, all round. The epithets of “pauper” and “upstart” were heard once more in every cadence of indignation. Here was this tradesman, this unabashed, irrepressible plebeian, now not only planting himself down in the very midst of them, but usurping their honourable magisterial functions, and mounting the very bench hallowed by their time-honoured dulnesses. Sir Roger Rockville was in a condition of the most deplorable effervescence.

Scarcely had this odious apparition started up amongst them, and desecrated the arena of their justiciary operations, when a circumstance occurred which startled them with a proof of the inconveniences which they had to apprehend.

A labourer and his son, a boy about ten years of age, was returning from the fields towards Hillmartin village, and were following the footpath through a copse, when the lad saw a thrush’s nest on one of the lowest boughs of a spruce-fir, temptingly nestled close to the stem, not more than a yard from the ground. Away he ran towards it, his father stopping for him on the path. Arrived near the tree, the lad as he ran struck his foot against something and fell, but jumping up, said,

“Oh father, here is a great chain!”

He was stooping to lift it up, when the father cried out,

“Let it alone! let it alone! it is a man-trap!”

The boy stood terrified at the dreaded name of a man-trap. The father advanced carefully, poking the ground, which was covered with dead leaves, with a long pole which he picked up. When he came to the spot where the boy stood, he saw part of a strong chain laid bare, and lifting it up, discovered close to his feet a stout iron pin, which was driven into the ground and thus confined the chain. Telling the boy not to move, he gradually lifted the chain till he felt it again fast.

“There,” he said, “is the trap.”

He looked round, and discovering a large stone, he fetched it, and discharged it into the place where he supposed the centre of the trap to be. At once with a horrid snap and clang, the jaws of the huge trap sprung out of the concealing leaves and clashed together with a direful shock. Father and son stood rooted fast with terror. There was revealed the great iron engine in a half circle of at least half a yard high, with its hideous iron teeth closed and grinning terribly.

“There!” said the father—“take care, Tom, how you goon a bird-nesting into woods. If this had caught you, it would have snapped you in the very middle of your body, and these devil’s teeth would have a’most met in your flesh. Nobody but the wretch of a keeper as set it could have got you out, and if you had bin by yersen you mun ha’ died afore anybody had fun ye.”

The man immediately, on reaching the village, asked permission to see Mr. Degge, who heard the account with great indignation, and taking another strong man with him, went to the place to see this truly “infernal machine.” He found it within five yards of the footpath through the copse, and expressing his astonishment and abhorrence of an act then become as illegal as it was monstrous, he ordered the men to take it and carry it to the village. There they deposited it by the public stocks, and chained it, and made it fast by a padlock to it,—fitting companions. The exhibition, and the place in which this horrid engine was found, created a most indignant sensation against Sir Roger Rockville and his keeper. Such were the diabolical machines that used to be set in our game preserves half a century ago or more, almost as commonly as the lesser trap is yet set for lesser animals. Such is the wonderful effect of custom and of selfish interests, that these dire engines of a demoniac cruelty could be planted here and there in English woods, and which might catch and hold in their hideous fangs human creatures, and keep them in inexpressible tortures for perhaps twelve hours or more; whilst all the time the gentlemen and the ladies on those estates were sleeping comfortably in their beds. Such was the force of these man-traps, that they required a man with an iron winch to open them by a mechanism attached for the purpose.

These barbarous machines had now been made illegal by act of parliament, yet Sir Roger and others continued to use them, as I know, for I myself had long after this period a narrow escape, when botanizing, of being caught in one in the woods of Strelley, near Nottingham; and that within a few yards of a foot-road!

There was a great running from all parts of the village to see this monument of the tender mercies of Sir Roger Rockville, and many were the inverted blessings showered on his head. Very soon, however, the keeper came in hot haste to reclaim his trap, and Mr. Degge immediately apprehended him by warrant, and committed him to the house of correction and hard labour for six months.

The sensation with which the news of this event was received by Sir Roger, and amongst his confreres of the woods and the bench, it would be impossible to describe. The audacity of Simon Degge had reached a pitch which surpassed all their bounds of conception. Why, he was daring to treat them as they had treated the humble villagers for centuries. At first there was a great talk of Mr. Degge having committed a robbery, of having carried off Sir Roger’s property from his own ground. But soon his cautious clerk advised him that Mr. Degge, as a magistrate, could seize an unlawful instrument anywhere. The man-trap was accordingly secured to the public stocks by strong rivets, and there it remained for many years. Whilst the event was fresh, many gentlemen and ladies drove or rode to Hillmartin to have a look at this relic of ancient savagery. On the Sunday following, hundreds of the working people, men, women, and children, flocked thither to see it, and as they returned by Rockville Hall gave very hearty groans for Sir Roger.

There was a mighty consulting amongst this little group of the worst kind of country squires; and it was resolved to sign unanimously, of course, short of Mr. Degge and Sir Emanuel Clavering, an order for the release of the keeper—but the cautious clerk of the bench again advised against this. He represented that the man was legally committed for a legal offence, and such was the spirit of Mr. Degge, who was also now Mayor of Castleborough, that he would compel them by mandamus to show cause for such release, and this would make the affair still more widely commented upon. As it was, the liberal newspapers far and wide had published the account, and made most cutting criticisms upon it. They even called for the seizure of Sir Roger by warrant, and his committal to the treadmill. Nothing for a long time had excited such a paroxysm of public indignation.

The breach betwixt the Rockville, Bullockshed and Tenterhook class and that of Woodburn, Hillmartin and Cotmanhaye was enormously widened. Simon Degge, Mayor of Castleborough, and county magistrate of Hillmartin, was regarded as a pestilent demagogue of the first rank: and all those who fraternized with him, as the Claverings, Woodburns, Heritages, and indeed many of the more enlightened county families, and the whole of the Castleborough population, were looked on as a crooked generation, hostile to all the ancient institutions of the country. In woods and kennels, and in several country halls, Simon Degge and his friends were cursed before all the gods of the game-laws; in town and village everywhere Simon Degge was the hero of the people. All looked to him as their friend and powerful protector. “One of ourselves,” they said, “he does not desert us, he remains one of ourselves.” Whoever saw him, saw a man as little like a restless mischievous demagogue as it was possible to conceive. For a great part of the day he was in town, partly attending to his own mercantile affairs, partly to the affairs of his office. When he got to Hillmartin, he might be seen riding quietly over his farm, or at home happy and gay as possible amidst three or four children, now enlivening his house: or he was taking a quiet drive with his mother and wife, as if he had no care on him, and no desire in him to do battle with any one. Of the feeling abroad amongst the Nimrod class and their followers, a circumstance soon occurred to make him more deeply sensible.

On a fine summer evening, George and Letty Woodburn had ridden to Hillmartin, and Simon Degge had mounted his horse and accompanied them a few miles further on the road beyond Gotham. Letty was mounted on a handsome light bay mare, which had been newly purchased for her. She was delighted with it, and praised the easy paces of the creature.

“She is very handsome,” said Simon Degge, “but there is occasionally a rather vicious look in her eye that I don’t like. I would advise you to ride her with a martingale, and a curb-bit rather than with that snaffle.”

“Do you think so?” said Letty, “she is very fresh, certainly, but I think quite gentle and amiable,” and she patted her on the neck.

“She does sometimes cast side-glances with her eyes,” said George, “that are a little suspicious, and she is rather hard-mouthed. I shall adopt your advice, Mr. Degge, as safest.”

At this moment Letty found it rather hard work to hold her in. She had a short, dancing, impatient action, and seemed to long to be off at a smart rate. All at once there was a blow on the high hawthorn hedge on the left hand of the road, and off went the mare. She took the bit between her teeth, stretched out her neck as straight as a dart, laid back her ears, and away! George and Mr. Degge endeavoured to spring on before her and seize her by the bridle-rein, but this only set her off more impetuously than before. In vain Letty pulled her in with all her power, and endeavoured to pluck, by a sudden jerk, the bit out of her teeth. She held it as fast as if in a vice, and went off, spite of her efforts, at a furious rate. George and Mr. Degge were in the utmost alarm. Any attempt to pursue her only made the frantic animal dash on more madly. One thing appeared in Letty’s favour; there was a long, ascending, though not very steep hill, and her friends trusted that the mare would wind herself before she got to the top, and so allow herself to be pulled in. George, without daring to gallop after her at full speed, yet kept on at a smart pace, taking the grassy borders of the road, so as not to let the flying animal hear him more than he could help. Mr. Degge, who stopped a moment to look over a gate into the field, to see whence the alarm had come, was now galloping rapidly after. Letty kept her seat like a capital horsewoman as she was; and George felt confident that unless something caused the mare to start aside or to fall, she would go on safely home with her. But there might be people coming who might attempt to stop the mare, and cause her to swerve suddenly aside, or she might dash madly against one of the two turnpike gates and kill both herself and rider. The speed at which she flew on was frightful. God’s providence could alone prevent some fatal disaster. In one place there was a broken spot in the middle of the road, over which she sprang with a tremendous leap, but Letty sate securely, and away! away! they went like the wind: the two gentlemen in breathless terror following as near as they dare approach.

Anon, the flying maniac steed came to a steep and considerable descent. “If Letty keeps her seat there,” said or rather thought George, “it will all be well.” He gazed with fixed eyes and suspended breath as he himself sped along, expecting to see his sister lose in that rapid, shaking descent, her equilibrium, and perhaps fly over the horse’s head, but no,—unmoved, undaunted, as it would appear by her steady figure and attitude, on she flew, a cloud of dust coming driving thickly behind her.

Again she dashed up another ascent, and now was on a long level road—there! one of the toll-bars, but standing wide open. Through dashed the horse and rider. Out rushed a woman—threw her arms aloft over her head, and stood, as the two gentlemen rushed past, like a picture of ghastly and petrified terror. On, away! away! the next toll-bar, but this time the gate shut. George was all horror, expecting, in chill desperation, a terrible tragedy. On went the mare, without stop or stay, dashed against the gate, which flew aside, and on they went, more frightfully than ever. “God send,” said George in his soul, “that no waggon may be coming this way—the furious beast would dash right upon it, and——”

But now the race was nearly at an end. Four miles were they distant when the mare started off, and now they were flying down the sandy road under the cliff towards Woodburn Grange. As their horses made little noise in the deep sand of the road, George and Mr. Degge spurred on, and saw, as they turned the bend of the road, the mare dash right up to the gates of the stable-yard, and stop in an instant. George expected to see Letty pitched right over the yard gates, which were not higher than the horse’s shoulder. She was thrown only on its neck, and there lay a moment as if stunned. By the time George rode up, she had recovered herself, and had sprung to the ground, where she stood, pale, still, and as in a dream. George sprung from his horse, and catching her in his arms, said, “Thank God that all is well.”

Letty made no answer, but broke into loud hysterical laughter, and then fainted. Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn and the servants had all rushed out as they saw the mare coming at mad speed, covered with foam and dust, and Letty riding as if she had no fear, for she was silent, and made no gesture of alarm. It was the courage of desperation; one moment’s loss of self-control, and her destruction would have been instant. Such had been the speed of that wild ride, that it had occupied but a few minutes. George carried Letty in amid frantic exclamations from the women that she was dead, was killed. But he told them she was not hurt, and bade them be quiet. He laid her on the sofa, and amid the bustle and the terror around her, there she lay as in a trance, pale, fair, and beautiful as a spirit.

In awhile she revived, and said, smilingly, that by God’s blessing, she was quite well, but as she attempted to rise, she exclaimed, “Oh! my head! my head! how dizzy! all is swimming—going round!” and she lay down again. This dizziness returned at any attempt to lift her head. Mr. Degge had already ridden off for Dr. Leroy, and soon came gallopping back with him. He had brought such remedies as suggested themselves to him, and proceeded to bathe her temples and forehead with ether, which Letty found delightfully cool. He gave her some anodyne or other, and requested her to lie as quiet and as tranquilly in mind as possible. He said that the violent strain on the nervous system, and excitement of the brain, would show their effects for some time; and so it proved. The dizziness continued still on any motion, and during the night she awoke repeatedly in great alarm, and with piercing cries, dreaming she was again riding that fearful race, though during it she had shown nothing but the most calm courage. For some weeks she continued to feel the effects of the great terror and effort through which she had gone. In all the rushing fury of the flight, she said she had only prayed for a clear course, and that the horse might keep its footing.

The praises of her courageous bearing, and the indignation of every one at the dastardly fellow who had occasioned the frightful occurrence, were pretty equal. Mr. Degge, who had ridden to the place immediately after and traced out the man, said he was a keeper of Mr. Sheepshanks, and that he had no doubt the thing was purposely done; though the fellow said he was only trying to start a rabbit, that had gone into the hedge there. It was not long, however, before a Hillmartin labourer, who had met the fellow in a public-house, heard him say, that he thought it had been Mrs. Degge, and he had rather it had been. As for that Miss Woodburn, however, he was glad she came to no harm, for there was no woman in that county or the next that could stick in a saddle like her. Mr. Degge and every member of the Woodburn, and of hundreds of other families except Letty herself, longed to be able to fix the charge of purposed mischief on him, but it could not be done.

By the time that Letty was all right again, George had, by repeated trials with a curb bridle and martingale, ascertained that the mare was perfectly manageable. It was clear that so long as she was prevented getting the full stretch of her neck and head, she would make no attempt at running away with her rider. George rode her daily, and tried her in all ways, and pronounced her safe as a rocking-horse, or a rocking-chair. Letty ere long mounted her again, though amid much nervous terror of all the women at the Grange, and found her most obedient to the hand, and became much attached to her. The incidents of this chapter had, however, shown that the feeling of antagonism in the Rockville party to our friends of Hillmartin, Woodburn, and one or two other houses, had intensified itself to a dangerous degree.

CHAPTER III.

AN ADVENT AND AN EXIT.

The visit of Elizabeth Drury at Woodburn Grange was a short time of mutual endearment—one in which true souls and genial natures recognise and draw near to each other. It would be difficult to say which of the family came to love her most, or which of them she came to love most; yet, if there was a deeper, more sympathetic feeling, it was betwixt their guest and George and Ann. George Woodburn looked on Elizabeth Drury as the perfect ideal of womanhood. Her graceful and cheerful form, her bright and enjoying nature, her clear intelligence and sunny spirits, were his increasing admiration. Betwixt Ann and Miss Drury close and confidential conversations revealed the kinship of their tastes, and their deep aspirations after the same intellectual and sacred objects. They made discoveries of thought and feeling which created in them a sisterhood. But scarcely less did Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn and Letty affectionately estimate their guest, or she them—the warm-heartedness of Mrs. Woodburn, the sterling character of Mr. Woodburn, the joyous impulsiveness of Letty.

Miss Drury pressed the two young ladies to pay her a visit of some weeks in Yorkshire; and as soon as the corn-harvest was got in they took their flight thither. Their reception was as glowingly kind as it was possible to be. Elizabeth Drury and her father met them at the next town, and drove them to Garnside Farm, their home, in one of the beautiful dales for which that part of Yorkshire is famous. The house was old but spacious, handsomely furnished, and surrounded by a large garden. A great extent of barns and out-buildings near it, presented almost the aspect of a village. A wide prospect along a broad valley, through which ran a rapid and clear stream, and, over the valley, of dark woods bounded by long azure hills or fells, was a constant charm for the eye from the windows. Mr. Trant Drury was a tall, gentlemanly, rather sparely-built man of middle age, always clad in a blue lapelled coat with gilt buttons, a pale yellow kerseymere striped waistcoat, cord small-clothes, and handsome top-boots. He was energetic and somewhat impetuous in his manner, whilst Mrs. Drury, a tall, slight woman, had something timid and over-gentle in hers. Miss Drury was the same natural and loveable person as they had seen her on her visit. She seemed to form a free and unconstrained medium betwixt father and mother, where otherwise the mother might have sunk into a mere automaton, obeying with a certain dread the dominant temperament of her husband.

Mr. Drury was evidently a man full of the science and business of his life. His bookcase displayed all the chief works on agriculture and bucolics, from Virgil and Columella down to Tull, Kames, Arthur Young, Sinclair, and the rest of the great georgic writers. His sheds and waggon yards displayed all the varieties of modern machines for facilitating the operations of rural culture. His barns and cattle-houses, his stables, with their drainage and ventilations, his threshing and winnowing, and chaff and turnip-cutting, his oat and furze-bruising engines, his riding and team horses, herds of Holderness cattle, and his flocks of mixed Cheviot and Merino sheep, were all objects of a pride and interest that knew no bounds. The Misses Woodburn, as the daughters of a gentleman farmer, must turn out with him and visit them all. He very soon had them on foot all over his farm, and pointed out his corn and grass lands, the evident effects of his drainings on his higher lands and sluicings on his meadows, his already-springing wheat, his exquisitely neat ploughing, his turnips and beet-root. Elizabeth, ever at their side, endeavoured to enliven their agricultural survey by, ever and anon, pointing out some beauty of the landscape, or relating some amusing story of the country people living around.

She proposed in a few days to make excursions to the celebrated ruins and lovely scenery of Riveaux and Fountains Abbey; but in these excursions Mr. Drury gave them his company, and was so zealous in pointing out all the beauties or curiosities of the place, that Elizabeth had repeatedly to remind her father that they were ladies whom he was ciceroning, and could not follow him across water-meadows, or through rough dingles without wet feet or torn garments. But Mr. Drury was deaf to all such remonstrances. He pooh-poohed the idea of people coming to see places of interest and not seeing them. “Come along, girls,” he would say, seizing each by an arm, “you must see this,” or “you must see that,” and he bore them away rapidly over rocks or across brooks, or through meadows up to the knees in wet grass. Miss Drury protested that he would give his friends their deaths, and the young ladies themselves, finding hesitation useless, made the best of the situation, followed, full of laughter, and glowing with warmth, and on the principle of Walter Scott, that—

“A summer night in greenwood spent
Is but to-morrow’s merriment.”

Elizabeth Drury had, before starting, however, warned them to take with them dry stockings and shoes, and on returning to their inn they found the wisdom of the precaution.

Time flew happily away at Garnside, and our young friends, at the end of three weeks, returned to Woodburn, in raptures with their Yorkshire visit; with redoubled attachment to Elizabeth Drury, and with many amusing anecdotes of the empressé temperament of Mr. Drury, who was a high authority in the West Riding in all branches of agricultural life and stock. He attended all meetings on such topics, made speeches which were received with great respect, and was consulted by gentlemen and noblemen on all questions of rural economy. Yet, said they, his lease was on the point of expiring, and Elizabeth had expressed a zealous wish that he might find a farm somewhere in Nottinghamshire, not far from her new but beloved friends. Mr. Drury had fallen in readily with the idea. He liked the account of the country, as Elizabeth had given it to him, of the people, and liked the idea of trying his skill on a new kind of ground, and, perhaps, of introducing some proofs of it amongst a fresh class and in a fresh field.

“That,” said Mr. Woodburn, “is a thing not so easy of accomplishment. Farms in a fertile and pleasant neighbourhood like this, are not easily picked up. There are generally ten candidates for any one farm that falls out.”

The girls said thoughtfully that this was true.

“Well,” said George, who had listened markedly to this conversation, “I don’t know that such a project is impracticable. I have been told by Barrowclouch of Bilts’ Farm, that he would not object to dispose of his lease to a responsible man who could pay the whole money down.”

“Did he say that?” asked Mr. Woodburn.

“He did,” said George, “for he has another farm in Leicestershire, which he prefers; and he had no doubt that his landlady, who lives in London, would accept a good responsible tenant of his recommendation as direct holder of the lease, so that he might be himself freed from all responsibility, without which he could not give up the farm.”

“Well, that is a chance, indeed,” said Mr. Woodburn. “I should not have dreamed of such a thing.”

The ladies were in raptures at the prospect of having Elizabeth Drury so near them. They proposed to write off at once to her, and tell her of this opening.

“Not so fast,” said George, “let me see Barrowclouch, and know whether he remains in the same mind. Men often talk of things when they are not very definite or near, which they draw out of when the thing is put nakedly before them.”

George rode up to Bilts’ Farm, made the inquiry, and returned, saying that Barrowclouch stuck to his expressed intention, and Ann was authorised to write to Elizabeth with the news. This was done; a prompt reply brought the joyful assurance that her father was delighted with the opportunity, and would in another week be at Woodburn Grange to see the Farm. Great was the exultation in the Woodburn family. All rejoiced in the prospect of having Elizabeth so near, and Mr. Woodburn in the prospect of so accomplished an agriculturist coming amongst them.

In the specified time Mr. Trant Drury made his appearance by coach at Castleborough, where he was received by George and driven over to Woodburn. His pleasure in the beauty and fertility of the country was great. He thought it rather too much encumbered with wood and hedges, but still it was a fine and, he was sure, a responding country to the cultivator. Mr. Woodburn and George accompanied Mr. Trant Drury to Bilts’ Farm. This farm lay on the ascending ground betwixt Woodburn and Hillmartin. It was well cultivated, and all the fences in good order. It consisted of three hundred acres, one half in tillage and the other in pasture. The house was a large red brick house, tall and square, standing at the western end of a large square garden inclosed in a high brick wall. The house occupied the greater portion of the western end, and within the garden was a perfect retirement. Near the house were flower beds, but the principal part of the garden was occupied with vegetables, with espalier fruit-trees along the walks, and fruit-trees on the walls. A summer-house in one corner offered a pleasant place for enjoyment in fine weather, and, as appeared very common in that part of the country, an upper room gave a view over the country round, which was shut out below. There were extensive farm buildings near the house, and a fine collection of hay and corn ricks, showing the abundant produce of the land. A few very tall and large oak trees grew about near the house and farm-yard, but in general the farm was rather naked of wood, and had unobstructed view of its finely ploughed lands on its slopes, and flocks and herds tranquilly grazing in its pastures.

Farmer Barrowclouch received the gentlemen in a straightforward way. Took them over the house, the garden, the buildings, the land. Showed the drainage to be good; stated how many quarters of corn it would produce per acre, how many tons of hay, how many sheep or cattle it would graze; and detailed the chief principles of his management. Mr. Drury, like a good man of business, who was about to make a bargain, did not attempt to depreciate the farm, its situation, or its produce, but was careful not to express any decided enthusiasm about it. He said he would candidly avow that he thought it a good workable farm; and proceeded at once to ask what Mr. Barrowclouch expected as good-will, and what was the rental, as well as the rates and taxes. All these particulars being given and entered by him in his note-book, he took a day or two to reflect on the subject, and they made their adieus. This day or two was spent at Mr. Drury’s desire in riding about with George or Mr. Woodburn, or both, to see the general condition of the farms around. Mr. Drury then paid a visit alone to Mr. Barrowclouch, where, like an able negotiant, he battled out the terms with him, and returned saying that he had agreed to take and enter on the farm at Lady-day. The memorandum of agreement was drawn up and mutually signed, and a more formal one would be sent him from Mr. Barrowclouch’s solicitor. In the meantime Mr. Barrowclouch would endeavour to procure the consent of his landlady to receive Mr. Drury as sole holder of the lease—the agreement being contingent on this circumstance. They had, he said, settled the amount of good-will, and had formed a general idea of the value of the crops in the ground to be taken at Lady-day, subject to their then condition: and a valuer for each party and umpire were to be agreed upon. These contingencies falling out favourably, which he quite expected, they would see him at Bilts’ Farm at Lady-day. Much satisfaction was felt and expressed both at Woodburn Grange and Garnside Farm, and we may leave these affairs thus well and prospectively arranged, to note one or two other events of the interim.

During the later autumn months, Henry Clavering said that his father was far from being right. He had ceased to take interest in his observatory, had not once gone out with his gun, was busy amongst his papers, and, though apparently cheerful, had a sort of shadow on his countenance that he did not like. He had wished him to consult Dr. Leroy, but he said, “Why should I? nothing ails me.” Henry Clavering had, however, asked Dr. Leroy to come and dine with them, and then said, before his father, that he did not think his father was quite well. He wished he would have a little conversation with Sir Emanuel.

“What nonsense!” said Sir Emanuel; “I never was better. In good spirits, indeed, I am not. Who can be, in this hangman weather, with the air charged with vapour, with the heaviest atmospheric pressure, and the watery clouds lying almost on the ground? In a gloom of Cimmeria itself—how can one be bright?”

Dr. Leroy, however, talked cheerfully with Sir Emanuel about his health; felt his pulse,—said it was rather sluggish, but that there was no organic mischief that he could perceive, but recommended cheerful society, and everything that exhilarated the spirits. To Henry he remarked afterwards that he must not say a word to lower the tone of Sir Emanuel’s spirits, but that he must say to himself privately that there was a tendency in his father to that mysterious condition called a breaking-up, which required nothing so much as a cordial and pleasant tone of life around the patient. His father, certainly, had no specific disease—but at the same time he certainly was not well. Mr. Clavering said that was precisely his own idea, and he engaged Dr. Leroy to come up often, as if coming to see and chat with himself, so that he might judge of his father’s actual state. Whenever asked about his father at Woodburn Grange, Henry Clavering said he could not say that he was well; he could not say, from time to time, that he was so well as he had been. He perceived in him a gradual decline of activity and good spirits, yet he would not confess to any ailment. It made him very melancholy.

In mid-winter, and at midnight, and such a midnight!—the winds roaring and tearing furiously through the trees, snow driving thickly before the tyrannous blast, darkness profound adding to the bewildering effect of the whirling pother of the snow-flakes,—there was a loud ringing at the lodge-gate of Fair Manor. Sylvanus Crook looked out of his chamber window, half stifled by the blast that rushed in upon him, and demanded who was there.

“Mr. Clavering,” said the well known voice of Henry Clavering. “Call up Mrs. Heritage, I must see her. It is a case of life and death.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Sylvanus, quickly shutting the window. In a very little time he had the gates open, and told the coachman to drive in.

“The family have been in bed two hours,” said Sylvanus: “but they will soon hear,” stoutly pulling a bell at the door which communicated with the upper storey of the house.

“I am afraid we shall greatly alarm them,” said Henry Clavering, in a mournful tone.

“No,” said Sylvanus, “no; such calls are not unfrequent here. My mistress will understand it.”

Very quickly there was a casement open, and a voice asked what was wanted.

“Henry Clavering desires to see our mistress,” said Sylvanus.

“I will open the door,” said the voice, and in a very little time, the great front door was thrown open, and a servant appeared with a light. It was the tall prim form of Sukey Priddo, the housekeeper.

“Oh! do come in, Mr. Clavering!” she said, as she stood guarding the lamp from the furious wind that swept in the wild surges of the snow. “What a night for any mortal to be out in.”

“And yet I must ask Mrs. Heritage to venture into it,” said Mr. Clavering.

“She will soon be ready,” said Mrs. Priddo, as a matter of course, leading the way into a large but very plainly-furnished room. She then took Mr. Clavering’s cloak, which in the brief moment of leaving the carriage, and mounting the stairs, was covered with a white load. This she gave to another servant to shake out, and then breaking up a large coal on the fire, called the “raking-coal” in that part of the country, and which is put on to burn slowly through the night, she immediately set on a small kettle to boil water for coffee. In a few minutes a tray with tea-cups was set on the table, and soon after Mrs. Heritage entered, wrapped in a thick cloak, and with a black quilted hood on her head. As she advanced to take the hand of Henry Clavering, he was struck with her resemblance to some handsome middle-aged abbess, her fine, solemn, but kindly features, showing with a monastic gravity and grace within her hood.

“I fear thou bringest us but indifferent tidings of thy dear father’s health,” she said, most sympathetically. Henry found himself unable to reply, but sat down, buried his face in his hands, and sobbed violently.

“We must not grieve too much,” said Mrs. Heritage; “all things are in our Father’s hand, and are surely for the best. He does not afflict us willingly, and he afflicts us only to instruct and improve. Let me give thee a cup of coffee; we must not delay.” She handed a cup of warm coffee to Henry, which he took and held mechanically. “Drink it, dear friend,” she said, “it will do thee good on our way,” and ringing the bell, she said, taking up another cup and handing it to the servant, “give that to the coachman: poor man, what a night for him.”

“And what a night for you!” said Henry Clavering. “How can I ask you to brave such a night? and yet your presence would be such a comfort to my dear father.”

“Dear friend,” said Mrs. Heritage, smiling tenderly, “it is what our dear Lord expects of us. In life or in death, it is our duty and our privilege to follow Him. Now, shall we go?”

Henry Clavering had set down his cup of coffee untasted. Mrs. Heritage, however, compelled him to take it, and having taken one herself, and tied a warm woollen handkerchief around her throat, she led the way to the door. Henry Clavering gave her his arm down the steps, where Sylvanus Crook stood with the carriage-door in his hand ready to open it and shut them in, looking more like a pillar of snow than a man, and the coachman on his seat, looking a living snow-pile.

Silently rolled the carriage away through the mass of snow, and with difficulty hitting the gateway, disappeared beyond. The story of that drive of only two miles, if related at full, would leave only the wonder that it was accomplished at all. Darkness, deep snowdrifts, that blew down across the way, and the blinding, bewildering effect of the snowstorm, amid the roar and fury of the winds, made every step one of the highest daring, peril, and difficulty. Repeatedly Henry Clavering had to get out, and assist the coachman in forcing his way through some huge track of snow, or in rounding the extremity of some fallen tree, without overturning into a ditch or down some steep descent. But through all Mrs. Heritage sate calm and resigned, expressing no care on her own account, but much concern for Henry Clavering, the coachman, and the poor horses.

At length the terrible journey was completed, and Mrs. Heritage, taking off her upper garments, was conducted by Henry Clavering to his father’s chamber. The whole household was up, and wearing the solemn aspect, and moving about with the silent steps, of those who seem to feel that the angel of death is amongst them. As they ascended the ample staircase, hung with the portraits of the ancestors of five hundred years, and embellished with steel casques of rare workmanship, supported on consoles, and suits of ancient, dusky, or more recent and brightly burnished armour, richly inlaid with gold—suits borne valiantly by their owners in fields renowned in English history, the grave Friend said to herself, “No, not all these things can detain those whom the Lord calls. These all, in their places, tell the tale of departures.”

The next moment her conductor opened softly a chamber door and as softly closed it after her. He led her forward through the dimly-lighted room to the bed in which lay Sir Emanuel Clavering, pale and wasted, but with a bright eye which turned towards her, watching earnestly her approach, and as she drew near extending his hand to grasp hers. Around were several relatives, whom Mrs. Heritage did not particularly notice.

“How kind, how very kind,” he said, warmly clasping her hand. “I could not leave, without seeing you. How very kind to come at such an hour.” His son had fallen on his knees by the bed, and laying his clasped hands on his father’s arm pressed his face against it. In a chair close to the bedhead Mrs. Heritage perceived Thomas Clavering, Sir Emanuel’s brother, the rector, who rose up, took the left hand of Mrs. Heritage, pressed it to his lips passionately, and sat down again without a word.

“Give Mrs. Heritage a chair,” said Sir Emanuel; “I want to talk to her a little.” The rector gave her his chair with a rapid courtesy, and fell on his knees by his nephew.

“I did so long for you, dear Mrs. Heritage,” said Sir Emanuel. “I wanted to say that your good wishes for me and labour with me, I trust, are not quite thrown away. I have thought much and deeply on all that you have said. Yes, truly this is a world in which gigantic difficulties present themselves to our reason. I cannot surmount those difficulties, but I have resolved to leave them. How can I or any man fathom the depths of the Infinite? It is vain—it is foolish to expect it—we will leave the illimitable to clear itself up in the illimitable of existence.”

“Thou dost well,” said Mrs. Heritage.

“It is true, dear madam—it is true that as all visible things are slipping away—as the foundations of this existence are sinking beneath me, I feel the want of some hand to lay hold on; some power to bear me up and save me. My nature calls for a saviour—and it is only in the Saviour you have so often pointed out to me that I find what my soul craves. They are the divine assurances which He gives in the Gospel that alone meet the demands of my inner being. But oh! my dear friend, can I hope to receive the gracious acceptance of Him whom I have through the whole of a proud life rejected and refused to believe necessary.”

Mrs. Heritage took from her pocket a small New Testament, and read the parable of the Prodigal Son. Then laying down the book on the bed, she said: “Dear friend—dear brother, thou hast had the divine answer of our blessed Redeemer. It is only the narrowness of our conceptions, the coldness of our hearts, that render doubtful the offer of Almighty Love. He who sent down His only Son to seek and save sinners; He who came down to convince them by His death of the infinity of love; He who said, ‘If thy brother sin against thee not seventy, but seventy times seven, forgive him,’ shall He not forgive more abundantly? ‘Fear not little flock, for it is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’” Then laying aside her hood, she softly sunk on her knees, and in her plain muslin cap, and with an uplifted, and as it seemed, glorified countenance, as her hand still retained that of the dying man, she said,—

“Oh, dear Father, receive this dear son to Thy love and Thy eternal peace. It is Thou who hast raised in his soul the cry for Thy help and forgiveness. It is Thou who hast winged his soul with fears that he might the more eagerly fly to Thy divine arms. It is Thou who hast shown him the emptiness of earth, the fathomless gulf of absence from Thee—the alone eternal and substantial foundation of all life. All these are the calls of Thy measureless affection for Thy repentant creature. And now, O Lord! let the mantle of Thy peace, the living spirit of Thy consolation, fall on his heart. Into the mansions of the glorified, into the assembly of the spirits of just men made perfect, receive his tendered and regenerated soul. Amen!”

“Amen!” said the quivering voice of the rector. “Amen!” said the faint voice of the dying man. The ministering Friend, as she still continued on her knees, felt a short, quick tremor of the hand still in hers. She arose, stood calm and stately, and said, “All is well with our dear brother, he has entered into peace, now and for ever. Blessed be the Lord!”

The two relatives knew the meaning of those words, and the tears gushed forth in fresh torrents. Mrs. Heritage sat still and prayerful by them. She knew that words were useless, but that the sympathy of a loving friend was felt in such an hour. She did not leave the house of mourning till the next morning, but assisted Mrs. Thomas Clavering in making all the arrangements necessary on so solemn an occasion.

“I knew he would not be long,” said Mrs. Clavering, “for a few weeks ago he said one Sunday morning, ‘Let everybody go to church.’ Such a thing he had never said in his life before.”

As Mrs. Heritage drove home, the storm had spent itself. The covering of snow lay deep over the landscape, and glittered in the pale sunbeams falling from a sky of deep and cloudless blue. There were tremendous drifts of snow which lay across her way, and fantastic wreaths swept down from the hedges which formed caves and twisted pillars of the radiant substance. But Mr. Heritage had despatched men with spades to cut a way for the carriage through the drifts, and had thus made the return easy through the hushed and reposing scene, in keeping with the solemn tone of Mrs. Heritage’s feelings.

CHAPTER IV.

LETTY’S WEDDING.

The wild, tempestuous weather, which attended the death of Sir Emanuel Clavering, renewed itself at his funeral. In the interval betwixt these events there had been calm, clear days. The snow lay white and dazzling over the whole landscape; the nights were brilliant with stars, which seemed to derive double lustre from the frost. The funeral of Sir Emanuel took place in the little church just by, and was conducted by a neighbouring clergyman, a friend of the rector’s. None were invited but the immediate relatives, and the tenants, who received a notice that their presence at the church would be regarded as a mark of respect. But in the middle of the night preceding the day of the funeral, the wind again rose, snow began to fall, and the two elements seemed as if they had concerted to make the scene as miserable as possible. The winds raged, the snow fell, and drove as in a riotous madness. A stupendous ash-tree on the lawn, under which Sir Emanuel had been fond of sitting and reading, was blown down; the windows of his observatory on the hill, on the north side were driven in, and a small turret on the house, in which he kept piles of papers, fell inwards, and buried them. It was necessary to cut a way from the hall door to the church door, through the deep snows, amidst which six stout yeomen bore the coffin, staggering in the howling, tossing winds. Such was the war of the storm in the trees about the church and the rector’s house, that the voice of the clergyman could scarcely be heard as he read the burial service. The tenants, who came from some distance, gained their homes with much difficulty. For three or four days the weather continued its riotous character, and a winter of unremittent severity followed. The snows covered the hedges of the fields so completely that, when hard frozen, people walked over them as on a highway. Great numbers of sheep were lost in the mountain districts, and many people in different parts of the kingdom perished on heaths and moors amid the snows. Farmers were at their wits’-end for food for their cattle, which had all to be kept up. Alternate thaws and frosts hung from the eaves of buildings icicles a yard or more long, and a sudden frost following on driving rain, froze the wings of birds to their bodies, and in that condition incalculable numbers were seized and destroyed. The spring was late in coming, and was attended by floods, doing immense damage in their headlong course.

Such an outburst of weather at the death and funeral of Sir Emanuel Clavering was certain to excite in the imagination of the country people round the most awful ideas of the mortal exit of a man who had acquired so mysterious a reputation. It is a favourite idea that tempests of a fearful character often attend the departure of men remarkable for their daring deeds in life—deeds not very scrupulous regarding the rights or lives of men. Such was the case at the deaths of Cromwell and many other great innovators or troublers of the earth. The people believe that the great enemy of mankind thus comes to signalise the departure of those who have been his devoted servants on a large scale. The country people about Cotmanhaye, and far around, did Sir Emanuel the honour of classing him with this satanically distinguished tribe, though they could point to no actions but such as were kindly and benevolent.

But the black art was ample enough, in their opinions, for any disturbances of nature, and this they firmly believed that he had practised. The driving in of his observatory windows, the fall of the little turret where he kept his mysterious papers, were facts of a significance not to be withstood. They did not take into their consideration that this tempestuous and severe winter extended far beyond any influence or knowledge of Sir Emanuel—that it extended, indeed, not only over the whole kingdom, but over the whole of Europe. Their knowledge and experience lay only within a very minute circle; but then Sir Emanuel died, and those furious elements battled over his dying head. That was enough. Many were the stories, by the cottage and the village inn firesides, of the horrors of that night at Cotmanhaye Manor. Of the strange sights, strange sounds, burning blue of the fire-flames, the howling of dogs, and the strange neighing of horses in the turmoil of the winds.

It was said that all the clergy had been collected for miles round to endeavour to lay the devil, and prevent him seizing on his victim—the only clergyman present being poor, dear Thomas Clavering, who was too much overwhelmed with grief to be able to articulate more than a few words of affection, and of confidence in the love and merits of the Saviour. It was said that Mrs. Heritage had been sent for when all the efforts of the clergy failed, and that in the midst of her prayers the turret fell, the observatory windows flew shivered to atoms, and then all was still. The devil had thus gone off in a fury of disappointment. All remembered the calm, clear weather that attended this good woman back, and which lasted till the funeral, when it broke out again, and raged on for days and weeks. Not all the reasonings of a Bacon, or the eloquence of a Chatham, could have driven from the minds of the rural population the fixed idea that Sir Emanuel had been accustomed to practices of an awful character, or that the pre-eminent piety of Mrs. Heritage had most signally triumphed over the Prince of Darkness. For twenty years after, the grand epoch of all relative dates was the hard winter when Sir Emanuel Clavering died.

In the little circle of Woodburn his departure left another gap. Of late years Sir Emanuel had lived more and come out more amongst his neighbours; and, where he had been known intimately, he was greatly beloved. In the families of Woodburn, Heritage, and Degge, he left a deep and lasting regret.

During the winter Henry Clavering, now Sir Henry, was for the most part in London, attending to family affairs. He had not ventured to call at Woodburn Grange before leaving, being much affected by the death of his father, the Claverings having strong family attachments; but he wrote a very kind farewell through a letter to Ann, and to her expressed a hope of a more cheerful prospect as regarded their relationship to each other. Ann herself could not help cherishing an idea that the change of sentiment in his father at last would operate a change in his own mind. Several times in the course of the winter he wrote more and more happily, and promised himself much of her society in spring.

As for other matters at Woodburn Grange, they were by no means dull. The wedding of Letty with Thorsby was to take place in May, and Thorsby was there every few days overflowing with fun and animal spirits. Since Betty Trapps knew that this marriage was inevitable, though she continued privately to shake her head over it, she endeavoured to be more respectful to Thorsby, out of respect to Letty; but Thorsby’s ebullient temperament sometimes tried her very hard, especially when he indulged himself with making merry over the Methodists, which he was very apt to do when Betty was waiting at table. Betty said “some people were hetter and some were heeler (that is, irritable or calm in disposition). For her part, she did not pretend to be ower heeler—tread on a worm, and it would turn—and if people would pinch her, she was pretty sure, she said, to cry out.” One day Thorsby was very merry over a master manufacturer in Castleborough, who was a great leader amongst the Methodists, and kept a horse for the use of the preachers who went into the country round, and rather irreverently called it God’s horse. Betty defended the title, and thought the profanity was in laughing at the manufacturer who kept it. The next time that Thorsby was obliged by the weather to stay all night at the Grange, he found that Betty had made him an “apple-pie bed;” that is, she had turned up the upper sheet to the pillow, so that, on getting into bed, he found himself stopped half-way. This, however, was nothing to the expression of her indignation conveyed to him by a frog, a bit of furze, or even a wasp, being put into his bed.

Thorsby, on another occasion, excited Betty’s wrath by asserting that he thought he could preach better than a favourite preacher of Betty’s. “Preach, i’ faith!” said Betty, as she shifted Thorsby plate—“Ay, may be, as well as old Parson Markham, of Rockville, who buzzes like a dumbledore[1] in a pitcher.” The conversation turning on somebody who had been unfortunate, Thorsby remarked that people ought not to expect to get on who did not exert themselves. “Oh, beleddy”—a great word of Betty’s, meaning, by-lady, from the old phrase, “By our lady”—Betty remarked, “I always see folks run to help a lazy duck that lies on its back and quackles, while stirring ducks may take care of themselves as they can.”

Such little skirmishes, however, only served to enliven the dinner-table; but Thorsby was quite as fond of quizzing his Quaker acquaintance, which was nearly as repugnant to Betty’s feelings, who had a profound admiration of Mrs. Heritage; and who said she did not like to hear any religious people fleered at. Thorsby was very merry one day at the expense of Sylvanus Crook, who, on hearing some one say that he could find any text in the Bible that any one could mention, had asked him where was the text which spoke of twenty-nine knives and never a fork. The man, who was a Methodist too, had stoutly declared that there was no such text, and Thorsby was of his opinion. Betty Trapps said Mr. Thorsby had something to learn yet, before he began to preach, for there was such a text, and it was in the first chapter and ninth verse of the book of Ezra. Thorsby jumped up and got a Bible, and found in the list of the vessels and other apparatus of the Temple nine-and-twenty knives.

“But,” said Thorsby, “it does not say ‘and never a fork.’”

“It need not,” said Betty, “because there was never a fork.”

“Ah!” said Thorsby, “I see now—that was Crook’s way of putting it. But they are not always so sharp, these Quakers,” added Thorsby. “There is Solomon Jordan, the draper, you should have seen him one fine evening last summer; he is one of the plainest of the plain in his attire. Slipping on his warehouse stairs, he had dislocated his collar-bone and had his left arm in a sling. Sitting at his desk near his shop window, he observed an old militia officer, who had been at a festive dinner with the officers of his regiment, drop his spectacles in the middle of the street. Being well charged with wine, he made many vain attempts to stoop and take up the spectacles. Every time he staggered past them, and turned round to make an attempt equally hopeless. Solomon Jordan, believing the officer to lodge at a house just opposite, hastened out, picked up the spectacles, and offered his right arm to conduct the officer to his lodgings. The old captain was full of the most grateful acknowledgments of this politeness; but, on arriving at the door, he looked up and exclaimed,—‘But, my dear sir, these are not my lodgings; mine are away ever so far up the street.’

“They began to march on, but the officer perceiving that Mr. Jordan was without his hat, suddenly stopped, took off his cap and feather, and put them on the head of the astonished Friend.

“‘Take it off!’ exclaimed Solomon; ‘take it off, friend!’

“‘No, no’, replied the officer, energetically, ‘I could not think of such a thing as your going bare-headed up the street, and you so extremely kind to me.’

“‘Take off thy cap!’ exclaimed Solomon, more loudly, ‘or I’ll not go another step with thee.’

“As Solomon would not move, notwithstanding all the protestations of the officer, and could not get away, the officer holding his arm as in a vice; and as he could not raise the other arm, which was lamed, to take the cap off, the scene became highly ludicrous. The people in the street, and there were many, saw the dilemma and began to laugh, and the boys to run from all sides, crying, ‘Mr. Jordan is ’listed for a soldier,—Mr. Jordan is ’listed!’ There was a great running, and soon a great crowd, in the midst of which the Friend was angrily demanding the officer to take off the offensive cap; and the officer, with equal zeal, protesting against the Friend proceeding bareheaded. Sometimes the officer, for a moment, would concede the point to Solomon and replace his cap on his own head, but almost directly would whip it off again and put it on Solomon’s, which was the signal for a fresh roar of laughter from the people. Thus they advanced, now stopping and parleying—now moving on again; the cap sometimes on the soldier’s head, sometimes on the Friend’s, till they reached the officer’s lodgings with half the idle people of Castleborough at their heels. I think,” added Thorsby, “Friend Jordan will never again take compassion on a disabled soldier.”

“More’s the pity that he did,” said Betty Trapps. “I’d have left the intossicated old fellow to plough the street up with his nose afore I’d ha’ helped him; but such things are just egg and milk for some folks:” meaning that such satirical stories were delicious to Thorsby.

In March a great excitement was occasioned at Woodburn by the arrival of the Drurys to take possession of their farm. Mr. Drury took up his quarters at the Grange during the transfer of the farm with its crops and stock to him, for he had disposed of his own stock to his successor, and took to that on Bilts’ farm, as the most suitable to the country; for, with all Mr. Trant Drury’s theoretical notions, he had great faith in the fact, that experience of the character of a particular country and of the stock most suitable to it, was a guide not to be lightly neglected. He brought with him, however, a variety of new apparatus, and some teams and waggons, which excited the curiosity of his agricultural neighbours. The Woodburns, as friends of Mr. Drury’s, declined being engaged for him, or either of them, as his valuer, but recommended Mr. Norton, of Peafield. All seemed to go on well in the valuation, till one day Mr. Drury came home very pale and ill, saying he had had a fall down Mr. Barrowclouch’s cellar-steps as they descended to examine those regions, and Mr. Drury blamed Mr. Barrowclouch extremely for having his cellar-steps where there was a sudden turn in them unguarded by a handrail. Mr. Drury had evidently received a great shake, though no bones were broken, and was under the doctor’s hands for a fortnight, greatly to his chagrin at such a crisis. He continually murmured to himself that it was “most unfortunate—most unfortunate.” Mr. Woodburn and George, however, assured him that in the hands of Mr. Norton all would go as well as in his own. Mr. Drury looked rather astonished at such an opinion, and shook his head incredulously. It was evident that he thought his absence on the occasion, although all was left in the hands of two most competent and honourable men, a grand misfortune.

All, however, came to an end as everything does; the valuation was brought in, examined by Mr. Drury, and the amount paid with the remark, that it might have been worse. Before Mr. Barrowclouch left, and before Mr. Drury had got out again, Mr. Woodburn went up to say good-bye to his neighbour of many years, the worthy old farmer.

“I hope all has gone off satisfactorily,” said Mr. Woodburn, “in the valuation. Mr. Drury seems satisfied.”

“Oh, is he?” said the farmer; “then I am sure I ought to be. They say it is an ill wind as blows nobody any profit, and bless me, if Mr. Drury had not fallen down those cellar-steps, I don’t think I should be worth so much by a thousand pound as I am. Pray God that he gets all right soon, and then I’m sure we shall both be right.”

“But how do you mean?” asked Mr. Woodburn. “Mr. Drury, of course, could not interfere with the valuers.”

“Well, no,” said Mr. Barrowclouch, laughing, “if valuers were always as stiff and peremptory as they should be. But my man was rather a soft one, and Mr. Drury is such a hurrying sort of man; bless me! he seemed as though he would ride rough shod right over us all. ‘Oh!’ he would say, ‘that is but a poor affair—that is not worth more than so and so, and that’s hardly worth valuing at all;’ and he kept hurrying along, saying time was precious, and had the valuers here and there and yonder, quick as lightning. ‘Mr. Drury,’ said I, ‘let you and me go away, and leave the gentlemen to their cool judgment, we have no business to say a word.’ ‘Oh no!’ he would say, ‘he must see how all was done, and the gentlemen could settle all afterwards.’ But I could see my man began to be quite flabbergasted, and to get a wonderful opinion of your Mr. Drury, and my heart began to sink in me. I felt that my effects would go very cheap, when, all at once, some taters were mentioned in the cellar. ‘Let’s see ’em,’ says Mr. Drury, and off he goes to the house, and calls for a candle. ‘Hold hard!’ said I, ‘hold hard! have a care! the cellar steps are dangerous to a stranger. Let me go first with a light.’ ‘Dangerous,’ said he, in his off-hand way, ‘how can cellar steps in a decent house be dangerous?’ Up he catches the light and hurries on. ‘For God’s sake,’ said I, ‘keep back;’ but it was no use, on he goes, holding up his light, and down he goes bang to the bottom. Oh Lors! oh Lors! I made sure he were killed, and I heard a dreadful groan, and there he lay as dead.”

“You had no handrail, Mr. Drury says.”

“No, that’s true,” said the farmer; “nor there’s been none since it was a house, but I never heard of anybody afore tumbling down. Everybody is warned when they come fresh, and they awllis tak’ a light, and look where they goon’. But Mr. Drury is such a hurrying, driving sort of a man; he seems as if he’d drive sun and moon, and th’ seven stars afore him. However, I hope he’ll be no worse for it. I am sure I’m not.”

Mr. Woodburn thought there was something very characteristic of his new neighbour in Mr. Barrowclouch’s remarks; he thought he saw symptoms of the same on-driving, overweening temperament in him, even in conversation. He was destined to see this only too fully confirmed.

A few weeks saw the Drurys settled at Bilts’ Farm. The furniture had arrived, and was all arranged—the house had become the fit residence for a gentleman. Elizabeth Drury, to her great delight and theirs, was living permanently amid her new friends. The reader can imagine the joy of the young people,—the Woodburns and Miss Heritage: the visitings and re-visitings at the Grange, at Fair Manor, at Bilts’ Farm. Elizabeth Drury had her own handsome horse, and joined her friends in their rides. The spring was advancing in light and daily growth of beauty and sweetness. May, and the marriage of Thorsby and Letty were approaching. Busy was the time at Woodburn Grange in the various preparations for it. Thorsby was all life and jollity. His house in Castleborough had been put into the most perfect order for the great event.

At length May sent forth one of her fairest, most lovely, and odorous mornings for the occasion. There was an unusual bustle in every house and cottage in Woodburn. All was expectation in every dwelling to see the carriages driving up from the Grange, and there they came! But why need we particularise the persons and details of the scene? There, however, were three charming bridesmaids, Miss Woodburn, Miss Degge, and Miss Drury, in their white dresses and white veils, in the first carriage, followed by Sir Simon and Lady Degge, in their most splendid equipage, then Mr. and Mrs. Drury, accompanied by George Woodburn, and lastly, Mr. and Mrs. Woodburn, with the lovely, blushing Letty, with somewhat flushed cheeks, and eyes in which joy and tears stood together. Every creature was out as they passed through the village, and bows and curtseys, and women with apron corners to their eyes, and yet with the most beaming delight on their faces. At the church appeared already, Harry Thorsby, in superb costume, and his best man, Sir Henry Clavering, his mother, and two or three other friends. The ceremony was performed by the worthy old Thomas Clavering, assisted by Mr. Markham. All went off well. You, dear readers, may see the carriages dashing away again down to the Grange, and the streaming eyes, noddings, and waving hands of the villagers, and dancings and skippings of the children; you may imagine the déjeuner, and all the speeches, and—away the happy pair are gone to the Highlands of Scotland, where, no doubt, they will enjoy themselves amid the rocks, and hills, and lakes, and heather.

Meantime a certain blank and another degree of shade, have fallen on Woodburn Grange. When Letty, that sunbeam which was ever darting here and there, yet always making bright the house, returns, it will be to Castleborough. Not far off, to be sure, but still not exactly at Woodburn. Meantime, Ann and George, too, have their friend, Miss Drury, to enliven them by her genial and ever lively society. There are frequent passings between the Grange and Bilts’ Farm, where Mr. Trant Drury is always busy, though there really, just now, seems little to do, but for the dews to fall, and the crops to grow in the sunshine.

A month after the wedding Mr. and Mrs. Thorsby returned, full of happiness and health, to commence their new life in Castleborough—to receive Letty’s new circle of friends. That over, things resumed something of their old routine. Though Letty was no longer a resident at Woodburn Grange, but of Castleborough, greatly admired by a wide circle of new friends, yet she was frequently taking that way in her drives, and bringing in floods of sunshine and life with her; and she and Thorsby generally spent their Sundays there. Visits to the town were more attractive to the Woodburns, and more frequent. George always dined at his sister’s on market-day, and Mrs. Woodburn and Ann found a considerable number of shoppings and bargainings to make in town. Every one saw, and every one approved, the growing regard of George Woodburn and Elizabeth Drury. No formal engagement was yet made, but both at the Grange and at Bilts’ Farm it was looked on as a settled affair, and that with mutual pride and satisfaction. Then there was a little loving intercourse going on at Fair Manor. Dr. Frank Leroy seemed to have found perfect favour with Miss Heritage, and with her parents. Every one thought him a fortunate fellow with such a lovely and amiable wife, and such a fortune in view: and every one thought that he deserved both, for he was extremely admired for the modesty which clothed so gracefully great knowledge and talent, and esteemed for his good and generous nature. Dr. Leroy was a member of the Society of Friends, though the orthodox did not class him as a “consistent member;” for he dressed and spoke as any other gentleman, having seen a great deal of the world at home and abroad, and learned that religion does not consist of caps and coats, but of great and ennobling principles.

Taking a sober view of the facts just stated, a not very sanguine calculation would conclude that in much less than two years there would be a succession of weddings in this quarter; that Frank Leroy and Millicent Heritage, George Woodburn and Elizabeth Drury, and, perhaps, Sir Henry Clavering and Ann Woodburn, would have each and all passed into the holy state of matrimony, and that all the romance of that transitive epoch, that young elective life of love merging into sober domestic union, would be passed and gone. Let us see.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Humble-bee.

CHAPTER V.

MILLICENT HERITAGE AT THE YEARLY MEETING.

Two years have passed, and not one of these marriages has taken place. Causes have been at work which no one without the eye of a seer could well have detected, and yet they all lay in the nature of things. To trace out their operation into events will require some considerable detail. Let us begin at Fair Manor. There we saw everything tending apparently to a happy issue. The strongest affection existed betwixt Dr. Leroy and the fair Millicent. Dr. Leroy was every day extending his practice, and through it his reputation and usefulness. The brief hours that he could steal from his duties he spent at Fair Manor, and the happy lovers might be seen taking their rides together in the neighbouring country. They often alighted at Woodburn Grange and at Bilts’ Farm, and brought an atmosphere of gladness with them. Many pleasant evenings were spent by this little circle of friends at Fair Manor. The marriage of the doctor and Millicent was regarded as a near event. In the very month, however, of May of the year following Letty Woodburn’s marriage, the Heritages went up to the Friends’ yearly meeting. Mr. and Mrs. Heritage had frequently gone on these occasions, for Mr. Heritage had his banking connections in the capital, at whose houses he saw the most influential Friends in the kingdom, and Mrs. Heritage had often what was called in the Friends’ language, a concern upon her in relation to that annual national assembling. Her appearances, as they are termed, in the ministry, both in inspirational speaking and in supplication, that is, in preaching and prayer, were often very powerful and extraordinary. In them, she often rose into the loftiest and most solemn strains of eloquence. Sometimes these depicted the general, spiritual, and moral condition of the Society; sometimes they were directed to the states of particular individuals, and opened up in such force and startling discernment the minor trials, tendencies, temptations and perils of some person or persons un-named, as caused a silence like death to fall on the meeting,—a hush, in which the spirit of the Allseeing seemed to hover awfully and palpably over it; and in one instance, suicide itself was said to have been driven in horror from the soul which contemplated it. Sometimes the very walls of the meeting-house have seemed to shake under the rush and thunder of the power thus mysteriously let loose over the assembly by the words of a woman, and the whole of the assembled Quakerism then left the place in a still and reflective mood, giving only a fervid shake of the hand to each other and saying, but not till they had reached their particular abodes,—“that was a very precious opportunity.”

Around Mr. and Mrs. Heritage the most orthodox persons moved, and the most orthodox spirit reigned during these great annual visits, and they returned home much refreshed and invigorated for the daily trials of life. Sylvanus Crook would say of them, on such occasions, that the dews of Hermon and of Carmel seemed to have fallen on them, and that they had evidently been in the Lord’s banqueting-house, where His banner over them was love.

They had never before taken Millicent with them; but they thought, as she was likely soon to leave their protecting roof and guidance, it were well that she should see one of these great gatherings; see the order and wisdom in which everything was administered, and hear the gifted ministers, both men and women, from all parts of the kingdom, and make acquaintance with their particular friends and their children. To Millicent, who had spent the greater part of her life in the society of a country town, this visit was the occasion of much delightful anticipation and some nervousness. She had heard of the enormous wealth of some of the London Friends, and that their style and mode of living much differed from their own simple habits. She had an inward shrinking from undergoing the criticism of young men and women who lived in the centre of life and intelligence, and whose eyes must be quick to detect any of the slightest evidences of country breeding. The roar and bustle of London at first confounded her. All appeared hurry, noise, and the long-sought-after perpetual motion. The millionaire bankers, the Messrs. Barrington, were the London agents of her father. They lived a few miles out of town; but at these times their houses were so full of their relatives and most intimate connections, that they did not ask the Heritages to take up their quarters with them. They went to airy and ample private lodgings in the outskirts of the city, yet within a short drive to meeting; and Mr. Samuel Barrington, Mr. Heritage’s particular friend, and through whom he generally transacted business, invited them to dine and spend the evenings with them after the meetings were over, as often as, according to his phrase, was agreeable to them; and when the yearly meeting was concluded, Millicent was to make a visit of some weeks at their house.

Except to a young lady Friend, no idea can be given of the impression which the first view, and the subsequent attendances of the yearly meetings, made on Millicent. The silence, the calmness, the order with which several hundreds of Friends, men and women, assembled was something very imposing to a youthful imagination. True, Millicent had seen a simple image of this fuller assembly in the quarterly meetings of her own county; but there she knew almost every individual, their history and connections. There still existed a plainness of manner and of mind, a sort of equality of character and condition, that was familiar to her thoughts. Here came together a class of persons of a position, a wealth, and an education to which she was unaccustomed, and which made her feel as if she were a novice in a higher range of life.

The general aspect of the assembly was plain. The men were almost wholly dressed in the peculiar garb and cut of the Society, still, with differences, advancing from the most marked and almost grotesque formality of costume to a very near approach to the fashion, but the plainest fashion, of the outer world. Amongst the women, the distinctions were still more prominent. There was a delightfully neat and pure character of dress throughout the whole female side of the meeting, for the men and women sate separated. A general tendency to dove-colour prevailed in both dresses and bonnets; but the younger portion displayed a smarter tint of colour, even in the dove, and a certain elegance of style, especially in the bonnets, which showed that taste, and even fashion, could no more be excluded from the younger branches of the Friend world, especially the affluent Friend world, than light and air. Youth and beauty would assert their rights as strongly, if unobtrusively, as the more solemn attributes of strong sense, and spiritual development in the older members. Millicent saw with great delight the many charming faces enclosed by the exquisitely neat and often white bonnets. Other young ladies had abandoned the silk bonnet, and assumed straw ones, though of a modest style, and furnished only with the simplest ribbon to tie them with. No gay bows and ultra-fashion makes had yet dared to invade that ancient sanctuary of plainness and worldly abnegation. In our day all that rigid stand by the order in the outward has fallen like the leaves of autumn, and has not reappeared at spring. The Friend has, in a majority of cases, assimilated himself to the world; and it is a still more satisfactory truth, that the world has, in many things, interiorly assimilated itself to the Friend.

During the course of the yearly meeting, both in the general meetings for worship and in the separate meetings to which the ladies retired to transact their own affairs—for Quakerism was the first institution to invite woman to consider that she had affairs which she could best transact, and that she had faculties intended for use—Millicent saw, with the lively interest of youth, the long row of ministers in the gallery at the head of the meeting, men and women, and heard, sometimes with astonishment, the addresses there made by persons of both sexes. None, however, appeared to greater advantage than her own mother; and the high admiration in which she found her held, gave her a deep feeling of gratified pride. In the women’s meetings she was equally struck with the ability with which certain ladies addressed this assembly on matters of business, and the practical eloquence to which they had attained. These meetings, and the society which she enjoyed in the evenings at different houses of wealthy and leading Friends, impressed her with a high idea of the solid merits and highly moral and philanthropic tone of the Society. She heard continually discussed those great topics of humanity which have always occupied the mind and aims of Friends. Opposition to slavery and the slave-trade and to war, plans and operations for the reform of prisons, for the extension of education amongst the poor, were everywhere the subjects of conversation. On these points there were manuscripts read and tracts handed about; and though they had no foreign missions—not being able, on their peculiar religious principles, to establish such works for the propagation of the faith, or to co-operate in those established by other bodies of Christians, unless they were directly moved thereto by the spirit—yet they had “public Friends,” as they termed them, occasionally in America or the West Indies, or elsewhere, who were under concern to minister there, and from one or other of these favoured individuals had letters, which they read for the edification of the rest.

Such was the aspect which the Society wore to Millicent during the continuance of the great meeting, which lasted about ten days. She saw, wherever she went, abundant evidence of wealth in the houses of the leading Friends, united to a certain plainness of style. The furniture was good, handsome, and substantial, but made no pretensions to splendour or fashionable elegance. No works of art adorned those plain walls, except everywhere one large framed engraving, which, from its subject, had procured for it the privilege of breaking through the Friends’ law concerning painting and sculpture,—a law with them as strict as that of the Jews,—it was the Treaty of William Penn with the American Indians, from the picture by Benjamin West. This engraving was familiar to Millicent in her own father’s dining-room, and greeted her here in every considerable house that she entered. It was well worthy of such an honour, as the memorial, to use the words of Voltaire, “of the only treaty ever made without an oath, and the only one which never was broken.” It was deserving of its universal honour, as perhaps the grandest practical disproof which genuine Christian principle has ever triumphantly given to the sophistries and the aggressive crimes of soidisant Christian governments. It was deserving of this pre-eminent distinction, for that great action represented by it still towers aloft, high above the highest moral reach of the most vaunted statesman. Well, therefore, was it in the Friends to break a little law regarding art, in order to exalt that great eternal law of God, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”—whether that neighbour be found in the city dwelling or in the wild forest of untutored man. It was an everyday testimony of the Friends that they at least, on some occasions, really believed the words of the Universal Father, that he is no respecter of persons.

But the Yearly Meeting was over, the Friends were hurrying simultaneously away to their different, and many of them very distant, homes by the long coach journeys of those days. Mr. and Mrs. Heritage had taken a loving leave of their dear child, and she was the guest of Mr. Samuel Barrington, at his suburban house. This was truly a very pleasant home. It was a large old country brick-house, in extensive grounds. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Barrington, one son, Edmund, and three daughters, all grown up. Two other sons were married, and lived not far off.

The routine of the household very much resembled that of Fair Manor, and of most Friends of that day. Immediately after breakfast, the whole household assembled, and Mr. Barrington read a chapter from the Bible. This over, the carriage appeared at the door, which drove the father and son to business. Dinner was on the table at two o’clock, for the city Friends had not yet fallen into the fashionable evening hours for that meal, even the fashionable hour being rarely later than five o’clock. The gentlemen dined in town, and returned to tea at six. During the day the ladies amused themselves for some hours with their needlework and talk, or took Millicent for a drive, to call on some other Friends, or made a shopping visit to the city. After tea, Mr. Edmund would propose a ride, in which Millicent and one or more—perhaps all—of his sisters would accompany him. They were extremely kind to Millicent, and she soon found herself a marked object of attention. Her peculiar style of beauty—that fair complexion, and those clear blue eyes, in combination with those long dark eyelashes, those finely-arched and jetty eyebrows, and rich raven hair,—that oriental tout ensemble was extremely piquant, even to the sober young men of the Society. Then it was whispered that she was a very wealthy heiress, which by no means detracted from her charms; and the quiet grace and modesty of her manners were in themselves, unknown to her, as distingué as if she had been Lady Millicent, instead of simple Millicent, the Friends’ Child, as Elizabeth Drury was fond of calling her.

By degrees it dawned on Millicent that there was a side to the Friends’ life in London, at least amongst the opulent, of which she had not dreamed. The Misses Barrington, in their conversations in their own room, launched into topics which at first startled Millicent. They asked her if she had ever been at the theatres, the opera, or at morning and evening concerts? With unfeigned surprise, she replied, “Oh, certainly not! Surely no Friends went to such places!” A pleasant smile passed over the faces of the young ladies: and one of them said to Millicent, patting her gently on the shoulder, “Oh, dear Simplicity! don’t thou think we all do nothing but attend meetings and study prison discipline!” They informed her that they frequently went to all these places of amusement.

“But,” said Millicent, “it is against the rules of the Society. What do your parents say? How do you answer the Queries?” (Certain queries put to and answered by each particular and monthly meeting, regarding the maintenance of the principles and practices of the Society.)

“My dear child,” said the young Friends, “we leave the meetings to settle all that. They don’t know, in fact,—though perhaps they guess a little,—half of what we do: why should they? We don’t want to break any moral law, but we cannot live like nuns in a convent when all the London stream of rational enjoyments is flowing around us.”

“But your dear parents,” said Millicent, “what do they say? Surely they do not approve of such indulgences? Why, I heard Mrs. Barrington myself in the meeting, advocating the careful adherence to our great testimonies, as she called them.”

“Dear, good mother!” said these gay young Quakeresses—“yes, she advocates paying all the tithes of mind and conscience, though those are the only tithes Friends will pay, and we advocate seeing a little pleasure whilst we are young. We don’t interfere with her advocacy, and only wish her not to interfere with our little snatches of amusement.”

Millicent was all astonishment; but her young friends assured her that they were not peculiar in these habits—plenty of young Friends indulged in the same.

“But,” said Millicent, “are you not very much stared at in such public places in your Friend’s dress?”

There was a general burst of merriment,—“Oh, dear, dear little Simplicity,” said they, “we should no doubt attract a tolerable share of attention if we did sport our Friends attire there: but dress does not grow fast to our bodies. We can suit the dress to the occasion. We have the warrant of an apostle, for ‘being all things to all men.’”

Millicent was shocked. “No, don’t quote Scripture,” she said, “that is worse than all.”

“Forgive me,” said the one who used the expression, “it was wrong; but, dear Millicent, we do not wish thee to do anything which thou thinkst is wrong. We, however, see no wrong in an occasional indulgence in a good moral play or opera, with excellent music. We believe them all capable of strengthening what is good in us.”

Millicent shook her head. “But I want to know,” she continued, “what your parents say—do they willingly permit you to go to such places?”

“We don’t ask them,” said the young ladies, “we don’t want to hurt their feelings; perhaps they know all about it, and don’t want to see too deeply, knowing that we would do nothing really wrong. But to leave them as unconcerned as possible, we generally go to tea at one of our brothers and drive thence.”

“Dear! dear!” said Millicent, with a sigh, “I wonder what my dear mother would say to all this?”

“Oh, she would not like it, of course,” said the ladies; “but then she has lived so much in the country, and in the strictest habits of Friendism, that she cannot do otherwise; and yet all these things may be, and we firmly believe are, very innocent.” Edmund, their brother, treated Millicent’s scruples still more lightly.

“Why,” he said, “my dear young friend, you don’t pin your faith, surely, on all the old fogies stickle about. We must rub a little of this country rust off you. You don’t think we are such very wicked people, do you?”—he forgot his thee and thou in speaking of such things. “But never mind, don’t trouble your little head about these matters; all things come naturally.”

And Millicent saw every reason to regard her young friends as good and conscientious in most essential respects. They were extremely benevolent, and the sums of money which the family spent on philanthropic objects would have been the fortune of many people. They introduced her to Mrs. Fry, and accompanied her to that lady’s meetings with the prisoners in Newgate. They took her to sewing meetings, and book-meetings, and to many a poor abode that they visited with comfort and intelligence. The more she saw of them, the more her heart drew near to them in sympathy. They were what some classed as “Gay Friends,” but they were, notwithstanding their vast wealth and position, extremely unassuming and amiable. But gradually Millicent found the circle of her intercourse widening and extending into the regions beyond Quakerdom. She was invited with them not only to drive to the houses of the married brothers, where a much more affluent display of plate, wines, and men-servants was found, but to their aristocratic friends at the West-end, where the splendour and luxury astonished her. In these parties her young companions no longer retained a trace of the Quaker costume or language. She had observed that Edmund when going to business or to meeting, wore the collarless coat; but when he went out in an evening it was in the full dress of ordinary society. To avoid bringing their departures too prominently before the eyes of their parents, they generally dressed at the house of one of the married brothers, and there changed their dress on their return. Did Mr. and Mrs. Barrington know this? It was a point that Millicent could never clear up, but she rather imagined that they were willingly ignorant, deeming that a current was running in modern society, with which their children mixed, which it was useless to oppose. They were early people, too, like the past generation, and were in bed long before the young people returned from their evening parties.

By degrees the charms of this life had produced their effect on Millicent. The scenes of luxurious affluence that she witnessed; the tables loaded with silver or silver-gilt plate,—a fortune almost in itself; the elegance of the whole array of the dinner-tables, the trains of richly-liveried servants; the waiting perfect to a movement; the after drawing-room company the music, the introduction to distinguished people, the marked notice which she herself excited, were not without their effect upon a poetical and sensitive nature like that of Millicent Heritage. She seemed to live in a new world—in a fairy land—in a dream rather than a reality, and was enchanted by it, whilst she continued to ask herself whether she ought to be so.

The time fixed for her visit had expired; but it was renewed at the earnest request of her friends, both old and young. It was impossible, they said, for her to go yet, she had seen nothing of London. Her mother wrote rather anxiously, fearing that her dear Millicent was leading too gay a life, though with such good people: and yet, with a nice instinct, Millicent had not indulged in her letters home in more than a dry and matter-of-fact account of her doings. She had said that the Barringtons saw a deal of company, and that the splendour and luxury that she witnessed was truly wonderful. Her mother hoped that so much grandeur would not spoil her for her own simple, unostentatious life at home.

One day Mr. Edmund Barrington told Millicent that he had a treat for her. On the morrow Handel’s “Messiah” was to be performed, and he had taken tickets for his sisters, for her, and for himself. Millicent objected that she was sure her parents would not like her to go, and, therefore, they must please to leave her at home with Mrs. Barrington.

“What!” said Edmund, “do you object to sacred music? Can there possibly be anything wrong in listening to music so pure, so edifying, so ennobling? It was a perfect perversion of intellect to object to such a thing. She must go. He would not hear of anything else.” His sisters joined in the assertion, that it would be really high treason against virtue itself not to go. Millicent made a strong resistance, but it was a sense of duty battling with the innate tastes of her nature, and she went.

“Good and right as it is,” said Edmund Barrington, “don’t tell your mother about it. She cannot surmount her educational prejudices, and why trouble her?”

Millicent was, however, troubled. Charmed as she was by the noble music, which bore her away in a trance-like state to regions of new and lofty pleasure, she could not avoid feeling that it was wrong to conceal anything from her mother. The uneasy feeling hung about her, and came often in the midst of the pleasantest society with a painful start. But there were other influences at work, which, though she did not perceive them, were yet acting upon her. Everywhere Edmund Barrington was at hand to accompany her into society—to ride out with her. To take her to see sights in London, with one or more of his sisters. One evening he told her that he had brought her a trifling present, and put into her hand a case containing a gold bracelet with a diamond clasp of a very beautiful pattern. Millicent was dumb with amazement. Recovering a little her self-possession, she thanked him very earnestly, but said that it was impossible for her to accept it. It was of too great a value as a gift from a friend whose friendship had yet been of so short a duration. Besides, she could never wear it. To her it would be useless. To some other friend of his it might be different.

The colour rose into Mr. Barrington’s face; he looked deeply chagrined, and said, “Nonsense, Millicent! you can wear it at least here, and at home you can keep it to remind you of your friends in London.”

“Oh! I shall never need anything to remind me of my dear, kind friends; of the happy time I have spent here. But please excuse me receiving this. My parents would regard it as a proof of my folly and vanity.”

“No,” said Mr. Barrington, “do not offend me—do not wound me by the refusal of so trifling a token of my regard.”

He hurried away, and Millicent, in deepest trouble, sought one of his sisters to express her embarrassment to. She found them all together, and with some confusion and with gushing tears, begged of them to prevail on their brother to receive the bracelet back, and give her something of less value as a testimony of his friendship. But the sisters unanimously expressed their pleasure in the gift; were charmed with its beauty, and told her that she thought too much of its mere money value. They instantly clasped it on her wrist, declared it was the very thing which she wanted on occasions of high dress, and that she must by no means hurt their brother’s feelings by declining it. They all, they said, wanted to give her something in memory of this visit, so dear to them. They then replaced the bracelet in its case, kissed her affectionately, and one of them carrying it into her bedroom, placed it on the toilette-table.

Dark and sleepless was that night to Millicent Heritage. The gift of the bracelet opened her eyes to what they might have been opened long before, the assiduous attentions and zealous courtesies of Edmund Barrington: the more than ordinary affection of his sisters. It was not the gift which startled her, but the state of her own feelings which it revealed to her. She could not see without terror the dimness of the image of Dr. Leroy in her heart, the space and intensity which that of Edmund Barrington had assumed there. The agreeable person, the courteous manners, the good sense and happy gaiety of this young man living amongst the proud, the powerful, the intellectually and politically distinguished, and destined to so immense a fortune, and who had been ever ready to attend, to serve, and to introduce her wherever enjoyment or social honour were to be found, had gained, unperceived by her, a hold on her regard, that only now stood revealed in its fullest proportions. What had made her so supremely happy in this visit—in this family? The love, she said to herself, of every individual in it. Mr. and Mrs. Barrington had treated her with the tenderness of parents. The daughters had received and treated her as one of them; the son, rather haughty as he was generally deemed, had been all devotion—a devotion never relaxing, always finding some new occasion of affording her pleasure. And Dr. Leroy? She saw with shame and compunction that her correspondence with him had declined. His letters had to her been as frequent as ever, as glowing with affection; but hers—they had certainly become fewer and colder. She had excused herself for not writing oftener, or at greater length, by the constant round of engagements in which she lived, and promised him ample details of what she called her adventures on her return. But were these assurances capable of satisfying the quick sense of a genuine lover? She knew that they had not been so. Dr. Leroy had complained, though in the gentlest and kindest manner, that the gaieties and friends of London seemed to have utterly eclipsed the sober life and friends of the country. Her mother had just now written that she was afraid Millicent had not been very attentive to Dr. Leroy, who seemed out of spirits, and who confessed that he seldom heard from her.

All her sins rushed over her memory and conscience. She hastened away to her bedroom: opened the drawer in which she kept the letters of her family and of Frank Leroy, and saw to her shame that there were many of his letters that she had scarcely read, many that she had never answered—some, actually with their seals unbroken. She sank down in a chair, and sat long motionless as in a trance. But in that outwardly trance-like state, her mind was in full and fiercest activity. She asked herself whether then such a change had really taken place in her. Whether she was prepared to abandon an ardent lover, a noble-spirited man, and to attach herself to a person of but yesterday’s acquaintance? Could she really be so fickle! She wished to break the spell of such strange enchantment, and seized pen and paper, and wrote a long letter to Dr. Leroy—but on reading it over, she was terrified to perceive that it was but words, words, words—the old life and love did not exist in it. It was like the dead shell of the chrysalis; the winged Psyche of love had flown—whither? Ah! too well she could follow and find it.

The bell for dinner rang, and she hurried down-stairs to take her part in the conversation as best she might. Every one observed her silence, her absence of mind, her want of interest in what was passing—and asked whether she was unwell, or had received bad news. To plead indisposition would have been to bring immediate attentions of the most perplexing kind upon her. She had no ill-tidings to report, and could only excuse herself by saying that she thought she was a little fatigued. This enabled her to retire early, and she sat down and wrote a letter to her mother, begging to be forgiven for the apparent neglect to herself and Dr. Leroy, but that the bustle of London, and its hurrying stream of engagements she thought had turned her head. Ah! poor thing! it would have been well had this been all, but they had turned something more serious—her heart!

The next day was Sunday, and whatever might be the social licence with which the young Barringtons overleaped the pale of the Society on the week-days, they all duly attended the morning meetings in town. The large family carriage regularly rolled up to the Meeting House gates in Houndsditch, and they descended to an hour and a half’s quiet musing of some sort in that still and shady tabernacle. Ah! that stillness! How little it suited the beating heart and tortured bosom of Millicent Heritage. Charles Lamb says, that he once got into a Quaker’s meeting, and never went through such a process of spiritual inquisition before. He found himself asking himself more questions in one short hour, than he could have answered in a year. What, then, must have been the condition of Millicent Heritage? Loving, sensitive, educated in a straight line of honour, purity, and truth—and guilty? Who shall depict the tortures of that age-long hour and a half? She went back to her past life; to its peace, its innocence, her deep enjoyment of existence and of nature; and then she turned a scared eye on the purple cloud and rapturous whirlwind in which she had lately been floating far above the darkened scenes and landscapes of the past. What would her father and mother say—if she proved faithless to her most solemn vows and most sacred engagements? Could she really give up Dr. Leroy for another—honourable, gifted, learned, and amiable as he was? Ay,—but that was no longer the question; did she, could she still love him? The answer from that strange thing, the heart, made a thrill of sickening cold pass through her. There was a spirit in it that mocked her; a chill that she could not cast out, a fire in another quarter of it, that she could not command. A sense of despair seized her that was more terrible than death, she prayed to die, and had she been alone, could have flung herself on the floor and cried aloud for death.

At this moment arose an aged woman in the gallery opposite to her. She was clad in the simplest garb of grey, and over it a light cloak of grey. She laid down her bonnet of the most rigorously antiquated make and material, and displayed a coarse muslin cap over her grey hair, as destitute of grace or ornament as any human hand could fashion. Millicent knew her well. She was from Ireland, and bore the unambitious name of Grubb.

In a voice clear and solemn she said, “Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe unto the world, because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! Therefore, if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee; for it is better to enter into life halt and maimed rather than having two hands, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell-fire.”

In words at first slow and with pauses between, as if the inspiration came but measuredly, she described the soul that is tempted by ambition, by avarice, or by the very affections of its weak nature to sin against itself or others. She drew a picture of the temptation of Judas Iscariot to betray even the Lord of Life, and the agonies of remorse that afterwards seized on him. She described him as hastening to the Sanhedrim, and flinging down the price of blood in the midst of the priests and scribes, and their taunt of “See thou to that!” As she warmed in her discourse, her language became rapid, loud, impassioned,—her small, slender frame seemed to expand, to rise, as it were, into the air, and all the spirit of the prophet to be upon her. She drew a picture of the horrors of such a soul as, tempted by the passions, pleasures, or even otherwise innocent endearments of life, selling what was sacred for the mere coinage of self-indulgence, and condemning the righteous to injury and woe!

At that word she suddenly stopped. There was a silence as of death. Dropping abruptly from the high-wrought pitch of inspired passion, she went on again in a tone of deep and solemn feeling, saying, “If there be a soul here thus hard beset by a strong temptation of any kind, to betray the innocent, or to sell the pure uprightness of a precious and immortal spirit, let him or her”—and she seemed to pause on the latter word—“pause, and cut off the offending part, even should it be some tender, quivering portion of the heart itself, and preserve unscathed the glorious, eternal heritage of a good conscience!”

A deep sigh seemed to issue from the bosom of the whole united congregation. There was a breathing, as of a sudden relief, and after a short silence the meeting broke up. Many a one asked of his neighbour for whom this could be meant. There was one who could have answered; but she was walking as in a dream. She entered the waiting carriage, shrunk into a corner, only answering, “A most awful sermon!” to a question of what she thought of it. She hastened to her chamber, and there found a relief in a torrent of tears, and in vows to stand firm to her duty, if it cost her her life.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT CAME OF MILLICENT’S VISIT.

For some days Millicent’s distress was too obvious to escape the attention of her loving friends. They inquired again if she were ill; if she had received any bad news. She was obliged to lay the blame of her pale face and sad aspect on indisposition, and then had to fight off the doctor, who was eagerly pressed upon her. She said a few days would set her right again she did not doubt; and immediately pleasant drives and cheerful calls on agreeable friends were recommended. The young ladies proposed a drive into the parks, and their brother stayed to accompany them. Millicent had often driven across the parks, and admired their pleasant greenness amid the vast brick wilderness of London; but she had no idea of what this drive was to be. About four in the afternoon they entered Hyde Park, and found themselves at once in a splendid cavalcade of fine horses, fine carriages, and fine people, which made Millicent exclaim, “What is all this about? Where are all these fashionable people going?”

“They are about what we are about; they are going just where we are going,” said the Friends. “These are the aristocracy taking their daily airing before dinner.”

As Millicent gazed in astonishment at the trains of handsome equipages, superb horses, superbly liveried servants, and handsome young men and women on magnificent horses, she said, “And this every day! What an amazing scene!”

“Not so amazing,” said Edmund; “if you consider that whilst Parliament is sitting, not only the wealth of a world’s commerce, but that of all the rest of the United Kingdom, is being expended here; that here you see the élite of the British aristocracy of rank, affluence, and political influence, assembled. Now you may form some little idea of the riches, the beauty, and taste of England. The world has no such scene besides—not the Prater at Vienna—not even the Bois de Boulogne of Paris.” And as they drove, he pointed out to Millicent, men of distinguished rank, ministers, judges, great lawyers, ambassadors of different countries, great Parliamentary orators, and the most noted beauties of the fashionable world.

“Well,” said Millicent, “it is worth seeing; but I am glad I form no part of it.”

“Why not?” asked Edmund.

“Oh!” said Millicent—“what a butterfly life it seems to me! What a very gay whirligo-round; much finer than that of children at a fair; but still, only a whirligo-round. I should grow as sick of it as a squirrel must of his ever round-spinning cage. Give me a good brisk canter over a moor, or along the bowery lanes of my own dear country.”

“Yes! and why not have them too?” said her friends. “You do not consider that these people are, during the season, cooped up in London—many by severe and unavoidable duties, and this is the only thing they can get at all resembling country exercise. In the autumn they will return, most of them, to enjoy their gallops over moors and along lanes, as much as yourself.”

“I am glad of it,” said Millicent; “and yet thousands who have no express business in town spend their springs and summers here, and love this Vanity Fair dearly—this seeing and being seen—this rivalry of fine horses, dresses, and equipages. I don’t envy them.”

“Oh dear no! Nor do they envy you, Millicent,” said her friends. “There speaks the Quaker in you; that might be your mother talking.”

“I am glad you think I talk at all like my dear mother,” said Millicent; “for if it be anything like her talk it must have some sense in it. But, though I would not like this sort of life myself, I am much obliged by your making me acquainted with it.”

The trouble which Millicent had shown on account of the bracelet, and the evident distress, from some cause, which was upon her, made her loving friends apparently desirous to neutralise the effect a little by the sisters bringing her elegant presents—beautifully bound books, and the like. One of them asked her to let her look at her watch; and, taking off the plain black woven band by which it was held, replaced it by a pretty gold chain.

“My dear creature!” exclaimed Millicent, “of what use would such a thing be to me? I could never wear it. I should have a deputation from the meeting to visit me about it!”

“Never mind that,” said her friend; “thou must teach them better. There is no particular sin in gold; it is a gift of God, and ought not to be rejected; and the art which shaped it so beautifully surely deserves encouragement.”

“All that I grant,” said Millicent; “but only think of wearing a gold chain in a meeting where the plainest ribbon or a bonnet-tie excites remark; where an extra plait in a cap brings down a censure from some zealous woman Friend or other.”

“For that very reason,” said her companion, “you, who know better, ought to break through this silly narrowness. It is time that Friends gave up their sectarian notions that ‘they are the people, and that wisdom must die with them.’”

“Really that is too bad for anything!” exclaimed Millicent, and yet could not help joining in the general merriment.

“Be sure, dear Millicent,” said her young friends, “these things do good. It is high time that Friends should see that their real strength lies in the great principles which they hold, and which have already so usefully leavened society at large, and that their little Phariseeisms are of no consequence whatever. Quakerism is like a fine statue in a public place, on which the dust and smoke have fallen. You may wipe off these sullying particles, and you only restore the statue to its true beauty. The greater minds of our society are beginning to see this, and one day there will come a grand reform amongst us.”

There were still other scenes to which these “gay young Friends,” as they were called, wished to introduce Millicent, and amongst these were the theatre, the opera, and morning and evening concerts. Against these she made a stout stand. Her parents would greatly disapprove of it, and she would not for the world grieve them. Besides, plays and operas were vain, and often wicked things: they could do her no good, and she did not wish to see them.

“But,” said they, “you, Millicent, are a poetess and a lover of knowledge. You ought to see life if you are to understand or describe it.”

“But I don’t want to describe it,” said Millicent.

“Still,” added they, “you should know it, though it were only to know it; you need not frequent such scenes again if you do not like them. Don’t you know what the Grand Duke of Weimar, the friend of Goethe, the great German poet, says? But you don’t read German. He often said to Goethe that he would wish to experience everything. He would like to go into the lower regions even for a few days, to see how they manage to make their life there tolerable under such momentous disadvantages. He remarked that we are told a great deal about the life above, and which he thought not very attractive, if it consisted almost entirely of psalm-singing and waving of palms; but he fancied that such a very miserable existence as that of the lower world must have called forth the utmost ingenuity of the human or superhuman mind, and that there must be some very curious inventions down there.”

“My curiosity,” said Millicent, “will never induce me to wish to visit those regions. I am quite willing that the Grand Duke should have the benefit of such a journey all to himself.”

But what avails a strong will, and what are good intentions, when the heart has received a treacherous bias. Millicent was every day more drawn by affection towards Edward Barrington, more deeply attached to his kind sisters, who, with all their gaiety, were full of the truest feminine feelings, and active in the best duties and philanthropies of life. In less than three weeks, which she still spent with them, she had been at the theatre, the opera, at different concerts, and at a fête champêtre given in the suburban grounds of a nobleman, where there was a splendid military band, and a concourse of company, including even persons of royal blood; and her own oriental style of beauty, which some ladies said looked more like Arabia or Circassia than England, drew much attention.

Millicent, in spite of her solemn and tearful resolves, had given her heart wholly to her indefatigable admirer, Edmund Barrington, and his sisters rejoiced in the knowledge of it. But Mrs. Barrington, who could not be blind to what was so obviously growing up, was in great trepidation and anxiety. She told both Edmund and her daughters that she understood distinctly from Mrs. Heritage that Millicent was engaged to a young physician in her own neighbourhood; and could they think it honourable, knowing that, to draw away the young girl’s affections whilst under their own roof and care?

“Dear mother!” said her daughters, “hast thou seen the portrait of this young man? We have, and Oh! such a simple, smooth-faced Simon it is! Can it be right, can it be honourable to allow a young, clever creature like Millicent to engage herself in her years of inexperienced country life, to a person far unworthy of her; and to retain such an engagement after a more extended knowledge of society, to her life-long unhappiness? No, surely it is better that it should come to a speedy end.”