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(the New York Public Library)
THE FATE:
A TALE OF STIRRING TIMES.
BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.,
AUTHOR OF
"THE COMMISSIONER," "HENRY SMEATON," "THE OLD OAK CHEST," "THE WOODMAN,"
"GOWRIE," "RUSSELL," "THE FORGERY," "BEAUCHAMP," "RICHELIEU,"
"DARK SCENES OF HISTORY," &c., &c.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
PEARL STREET, FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1864.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, by
George P. R. James,
in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
Change of scene I believe to be as invigorating to the mind as change of air is to the body, refreshing the weary and exhausted powers, and affording a stimulus which prompts to activity of thought. To a writer of fiction, especially, the change may be necessary, not only on account of the benefits to be derived by his own mind from the invigorating effects of a new atmosphere, but also on account of the fresh thoughts suggested by the different circumstances in which he is placed.
We are curiously-constructed creatures, not unlike the mere brute creation in many of our propensities; and the old adage, that "custom is a second nature," is quite as applicable to the mind as to the body. If we ride a horse along a road to which he is accustomed, he will generally make a little struggle to stop at a house where his master has been in the habit of calling, or to turn up a by-lane through which he has frequently gone. The mind, too, especially of an author, has its houses of call and by-lanes in plenty; and, so long as it is in familiar scenes, it will have a strong hankering for its accustomed roads and pleasant halting-places. Every object around us is a sort of bough from which we gather our ideas; and it is very well, now and then, to pluck the apples of another garden, of a flavor different from our own.
Whether I have in any degree benefited by the change from one side of the Atlantic to the other--a change much greater when morally than when physically considered--it is not for me to say; but I trust that, at all events, the work which is to follow these pages will not show that I have in any degree or in any way suffered from my visit to and residence in America. I have written it with interest in the characters portrayed and the events detailed; and I humbly desire--without even venturing to hope--that I may succeed in communicating some portion of the same interest to my readers.
A good deal of laudatory matter has been written upon the landscape-painting propensities of the author; and one reviewer, writing in Blackwood's Magazine, has comprehended and pointed out what has always been one of that author's especial objects in describing mere scenes of inanimate nature. In the following pages I have indulged very little in descriptions of this kind; but here, as every where else, I have ever endeavored to treat the picture of any particular place or scene with a reference to man's heart, or mind, or fate--his thoughts, his feelings, his destiny--and to bring forth, as it were, the latent sympathies between human and mere material nature. There is, to my mind, a likeness (a shadowing forth--a symbolism) in all the infinite variations which we see around us in the external world, to the changeful ideas, sensations, sentiments--as infinite and as varied--of the world of human life; and I can not think that the scenes I have visited, or the sights that I have seen, in this portion of the earth--the richness, the beauty, the grandeur, the sublimity--can have been without influence upon myself; can have left the pages of nature here a sealed book to one who has studied their bright, mysterious characters so diligently in other lands.
Nay, more, I have met with much, in social life, well calculated to expand the heart, as well as to elevate the mind, which I should be ungrateful not to mention--kindness, hospitality, friendship, where I had no claim, and enlightened intercourse with powerful minds, in which I expected much, and found much more.
Sweet and ineffaceable impressions, ye can not have served to deaden the feelings or to obscure the intellect!
I will rest, then, in hope that this work, the first which I have commenced and completed in America, may not be worse than its many literary brethren, and merely pray that it may be better. Let the critics say, Amen!
G. P. R. James.
Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 30th July, 1851.
THE FATE.
CHAPTER I.
There is no mistake more common among historians, no mistake more mischievous, than to take for granted, without deduction, all the statements of the satirists and splenetics of past-by ages as to the manners and customs of their own times, and of the people with whom they mingled. There are half a dozen, at least, of the pleasant little passions of human nature which lead men, especially men of letters, to decry their companions, their friends, and their neighbors--nay, even their countrymen and their country. To say nothing of "envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness"--sins common enough to be wisely prayed against--pride, vanity, and levity point the pen, direct the words, or furnish forth a little drop of gall to every man who is giving an account of the times in which he lives and the country in which he dwells, for those who are living or to live at a distance of space or time from himself. It is pleasant to place our own brightness on a dark back-ground; and the all but universal propensity of mankind to caricature derives an extraordinary zest in its exercise, when, by rendering others around us contemptible or odious, we can bring out our own characters in bolder relief. But there are other, perhaps even meaner motives still, which induce men frequently to portray their own times in broad and distorted sketches. The faculty of admiration is a very rare one; the faculty of just appreciation a rarer one still; but every one loves to laugh; every one feels himself elevated by the contemplation of absurdities in others. There is a vain fondness for the grotesque lurking in the bosoms of most men; and a consciousness that sly or even gross satire, and delicate or coarse caricature, are the best means of giving pleasure to the great mass of mankind, is probably one reason why we find such depreciatory exaggeration in the writings of all those who have given pictures of their own times. The letters of Petrarch, the statements of Hollingshed, the pictures of Hogarth, the romances of Smollett and Fielding, all furnish, it is true, certain sketches of their own times from which we can derive some valuable information, but so distorted by passion, by prejudice, by a satirical spirit, or a love of the ridiculous, that the portrait can be no more relied upon, in its details, than Bunbury's caricature of a Cantab for the general appearance of Cambridge scholars.
To give such pictures is mischievous in itself; but I can not help thinking that for an historian to follow them without allowance is more mischievous still. If there be a deviation on either side--though any deviation should be avoided, if possible--surely it would be better for every moral object to paint the past more bright rather than more foul, as the past alone contains the just objects of imitation, though we may emulate contemporary virtue or aspire to ideal perfection in the future.
Truth--plain, simple truth, with such reflections upon the verities of the past as may tend to benefit mankind in the present and the future, forms all that the historian can desire; but he might as well hope to draw truth from the pages of the satirists of any age, as a future portrait painter might represent Lord John Russell or Lord Brougham from the caricatures in Punch, where a certain likeness is kept up, but every peculiarity is exaggerated with the grossest extravagance.
I enter my caveat against the picture given of the state of England in the year 1685 by Mr. Macaulay, in his great and fanciful historical work, and especially against that part of it which refers to the English country gentlemen of those times, and to the English country clergy. That such men did exist as those from which he has drawn his statement, there can be no doubt; that they did exist in a greater proportion than at present, there can be no doubt either; but that the great mass were such as he has represented, may be very safely denied. Pickwicks, and Tupmans, and Winkles are full of truth; but society is not made up of these; and the reign of Victoria would appear very ill in history if, by misfortune, it should have for its future historian one inclined to paint the state of England in 1850 from similar sources to those which have been pressed into the service of Mr. Macaulay.
Nor does his reasoning afford any support to his statements; for, when important elements are left out of calculation, the result can never be admitted. Thus, when he says, "A country gentleman who witnessed the revolution was probably in receipt of about a fourth part of the rent which his acres now yield to his posterity. He was, therefore, as compared with his posterity, a poor man, and was generally under the necessity of residing with little interruption on his estate." The historian forgets to state what was the comparative value of money at the period he speaks of, and therefore can not draw as a fair inference from the amount of rent, that the country gentleman of those days was condemned by poverty to perpetual seclusion in the country, which is, in fact, what he attempts to show. The tastes, the habits of a country gentleman of that period kept him probably more in the country; but it was not poverty. Even in the eighteenth century, we find gentlemen of an estate producing two thousand pounds a year keeping a pack of hounds without burdening their property, and every true picture of country life which has descended to us shows that the country gentlemen in general lived more at their ease than the same class in the present day, and were as numerous in proportion to the population. If their enjoyments were not so refined, it was because the age was not so refined; and though the picture of Squire Alworthy may be a pleasing exaggeration on the one hand, that of Squire Western is an unpleasant caricature on the other, while the truth lay between, and a multitude of country gentlemen existed of a very fair degree of polish, without all the refined virtues of the one or the brutal coarseness of the other.
CHAPTER II.
On the borders of Lincolnshire stood an old building, which had preserved the name given to it more than two centuries before, though the purpose which had given significance and propriety to that name had passed away. It was a long, tall edifice of stone, somewhat like the body of a church, and, as if to give it more resemblance still to a religious edifice, another building had been added to the end of the first, a story higher, and having some resemblance to a tower. This additional part was built of brick; but moss and lichen had reduced both stone and brick to very nearly one color; for though, when viewed nearer, a variety of hues were to be discovered in the cryptogamous vegetation which covered the walls, at a distance the general tint was a brownish gray. The windows in the longer portion of the building were placed in pointed arches, somewhat rudely and carelessly decorated; those in the taller and newer portion were, on the contrary, generally square, with a stone label above them, though some had that flattened arch peculiarly characteristic of the worst Tudor architecture. The whole building was not very large, and it was clear, at first sight, that the long portion was devoted to barns, stables, cart-houses, &c., while the other was separated for human habitation. At the distance of some sixty or seventy yards from the house, a long triple row of old elms topped a high bank, affording nesting-place for innumerable rooks; and a little, clear stream, not unconscious of trout, ran babbling along, mixing its melody with the music of the birds. A stone wall, breast high, and in some decay, encircled the whole, with two large uncouth posts ornamented with fragments of urns, giving entrance, unimpeded by any gate between them, to any one who might wish to approach the front door of the dwelling-house. There probably had been a gate there once, for some iron work on the posts seemed to show that they had been intended to support something; but if so, the gate had long been gone--made into pikes in the civil war for aught I know.
The scene around this old house, when viewed from the top of the bank, was desolate enough. A wide, fenny piece of uninclosed land stretched out far toward the north and east, only interrupted at the distance of some three miles by an undulating rise of woodland. But, nevertheless, the coloring was often fine, especially on autumnal evenings, when the moor assumed a solemn, intense blue tint, and the pools and distant river gleamed like rubies in the rich light of the setting sun.
On the other side, behind the house, the country had a more cheerful look, with some well-cultivated fields sloping up, as the land rose to the west, and many a knoll and gentle wave, and scattered trees, with a thicker wood beyond, while sweeping away southward were hedgerows and a hamlet here and there, the tower of a village church, and the chimneys of a distant manor-house.
Such was the aspect of the building and the scene around it; and now let us say a word of its history and its name.
In former years, when Plantagenet was the royal name of England, when popes were powerful in the land, and it was sinful to eat beef on Friday, among the best fed and best taught people of the country were the abbots and priors of the various monasteries, who somehow, notwithstanding vigil, prayer, and fasting--nay, even occasionally vows of voluntary poverty--got fat, prosperous, and wealthy. Large domains had these good men, and productive fields, besides tithes and dues of various sorts, which were usually paid in kind. As the abbot, and the abbot's bailiff, and other officers made their little profit upon the sale of such commodities as they did not consume; and as, in a benevolent and Christian spirit, they took good heed to have plentiful stores laid up to aid the people in time of scarcity, it was requisite that they should be provided with barns and garners to preserve the fruits of the earth which they received. These barns were called granges, and very often had a small farm attached to them. The masonry of the edifice was generally solid, and the style of the architecture in some degree ecclesiastical. When the grange was built near the abbey, it usually stood by itself, without any dwelling-house attached; but when it was at a distance, on one of the abbey farms, as was frequently the case, a good mansion for grieve or farmer was often added by the care of the monks; and a farmer who had pretty daughters, or brewed good beer, generally contrived to get very comfortably accommodated.
The house I have been describing was still called The Grange, and such as I have stated had been its original destination. The long building had been the real grange or barn of a neighboring abbey; the taller building had been added afterward for the convenience of the abbot's bailiff. When the monasteries were suppressed by the arch plunderer Henry VIII., we all know how many and how great were those who shared in the pickings of the defunct fowl of Rome. The Grange and the farm attached to it fell to the lot of a nobleman in the neighborhood, together with much other valuable property. He bestowed it upon a younger son; and from that younger son it had descended in unbroken line to its present possessor. The fortunes of the house had varied considerably; some had proved gamblers, some had been soldiers, some had been profuse, some penurious, some had even made love matches, and now the farm, and the house, and the family were all in a state not very prosperous, not very disastrous, somewhere between decay and preservation. It was lucky, indeed, that the owner thereof had but one son; for, had he been blessed with as many babes as a curate, there might have been some danger of a dearth in the pantry. As it was, he could afford comforts--an occasional bottle even of claret. Punch was a frequent accessory to digestion, and good sound ale, which would have done honor to any Cambridge audit, was never wanting for a friend or a poor man.
The owner of that house, however, was a man of a peculiar disposition, which prevented him from enjoying as much as he might have done the favorable position in which fate had placed him. I do not mean to say that he was of a discontented mood, nor that he was precisely a melancholy man. He was whimsical, somewhat cynical, and certain it is he had always the art, though a good and kind man at heart, of discovering the bad or ridiculous side of every thing. He was a learned man withal, and could often fit an occasion with a quaint quotation, often twisted considerably from its just application, but always serving his own purpose very well. He had passed a long time at the University, and gained odd habits and some distinction. He had then suddenly married a very beautiful woman of good family and small fortune. For her sake he determined to exert himself, to strive with the crowd for honors and distinctions, to place her in the same position in which his ancestors and hers had stood. For this purpose he went to the bar, around which he had been indolently buzzing for some time previous. He was engaged in one cause: circumstances favored him; the senior counsel was taken ill; the weight, the responsibility fell upon the junior, but with them the opportunity. He made a brilliant speech, a powerful argument, carried the court and jury along with him, and saved his client from fine and imprisonment.
Then came the heaviest blow of his life. His wife died and left him with one infant. The law was thrown up; the object of ambition was gone; all his old habits returned, more wrinkled and stiff than ever. He retired to his small property at The Grange; and there he had lived ever since, cultivating his acres and his oddities. But let us venture within the old walls, and see the proprietor in his glory.
Mark the knocker as you pass, reader--that great truncheon of iron, I mean, suspended by a ring surrounded by a marvelously cut plate of steel, with a large boss at the lower part, just beneath the obtuse end of the hammer. The door, too, is worth a look, with oak enough in it to build a modern house. Then we come to a low passage, none of the widest, and diminished in space by two chairs with tall backs, each back having round rods or bars joining the two sides together, ornamented with round, movable pieces of wood, which may be rattled from side to side, and resemble exactly those upon the curious machine with which in popular schools we teach the infant mind to count, now that we have discarded nature's original numeration table furnished by our own ten fingers. Between the chairs, in order not to leave space for intruders to pass too readily, is a suit of complete armor, somewhat rusty, while on the other side are three cuirasses and three steel caps, with sundry pikes, swords, and gauntlets, arranged with some taste and garnished with much dust and many cobwebs.
Now, take care! There is a step--not up, but down; for the floor is made to accommodate the ground, not the ground leveled to accommodate the floor. Then this small door on the left hand, with sundry names and capital letters carved in it with a penknife, to prove the universality of idle habits in all ages and countries, leads into the room where we would be.
But, ere we enter, let us take a glance around.
Seated at a small table, near a fire, with one foot resting on the massive carved brass dog's head which ornaments the end of the andiron, at the imminent risk of burning the slipper, and with the other drawn up under his chair--which, by-the-way, was as tall and stiff-backed as a corporal of dragoons, and would have been a most uncomfortable seat had it not been well cushioned and partially covered with Genoa velvet--sat a gentleman of perhaps five-and-fifty years of age. He wore his own gray hair, though wigs were even then beginning to domineer over the crown, and the somewhat slovenly easiness of his whole apparel forbade the supposition that he would have ever consented to embarrass his cranium with a load of horsehair only fitted to stew the brains of the wearer into an unintellectual mass of jelly. He had upon his back a brocade dressing-gown, which might have been handsome at some former epoch--say twenty years before; but which, though not actually dirty, was faded, and though not actually ragged, was patched. He wore stockings of gray thread, and breeches of a chocolate color, and by some antipathy between the waistband thereof and the fawn-colored silk waistcoat above, a large portion of that part of his shirt which covered the pit of his stomach was exposed to view; but then that shirt was of the very finest and cleanest linen. Every man has somewhere a point of coxcombry about him, and fine linen was his weak spot. The ruffles and the cravat were of lawn, and white as snow.
On the table before him was a large candle, shedding its light upon an open book; and ever and anon, as he read, he raised one finger and rubbed a spot a little above the temple, which, by long labor of the same kind, he had contrived to render quite bald.
The room was by no means a large one, and the ceiling was of black oak, which rendered its appearance even smaller than the reality; but the greater part of three sides was covered with book-cases, and an immense number of curious and antiquated pieces of furniture encumbered the floor. The chairs were of all sizes and all descriptions then in use; the tables were as numerous and as various as the chairs. The latter, moreover, were loaded with large glass tankards, curious specimens of Delftware--some exceedingly coarse in material and coloring, but remarkable in device or ornament--richly-covered wooden-bound books, strange daggers, and fragments of goldsmith's work, with one or two pieces of China and enamel of great value, besides coins and small pictures inestimable in the eyes of an antiquary. The large center-table was tolerably clear, for supper-time was approaching, and on it he took his frugal evening meal, although he had a dining-room on the other side of the passage, furnished with the most remarkable simplicity, and paved with hard flag-stones. It was enough for him, however, to be disturbed once a day; and he visited what was called the eating hall no oftener.
This elderly gentleman, however, was not the only tenant of the room. On the other side, as far as he could get from the fire--for the evening, though in early spring, was by no means cold--sat the son of the master of the house, a young man of about one-and-twenty years of age. The father might have been pronounced a good-looking man, had he taken any care of his personal appearance; but the son had inherited his mother's beauty, with a more manly character; and although youth was still very evident, though the mustache was scant and downy, and the face fair and unwrinkled, there was a good deal of thoughtful decision about the eyes, and a world of resolute firmness about the mouth and chin.
He, too, was reading; and sometimes the book beneath his eyes excited a smile, sometimes engaged his attention deeply, but more frequently his mind seemed to wander from the page. He would fall into deep fits of thought; he would play with a knife which lay beside him; but, more often still, he raised his eyes, and fixed them anxiously, thoughtfully upon his father's face. It seemed as if there was something working in his mind to which he wished to give utterance, and it was not long before he spoke; but let us reserve what followed for another chapter. It affected too much the fate and the immediate course of the personages before us to be treated briefly at the end of a mere descriptive passage.
CHAPTER III.
The father looked up from his book, and closed it with a slap, saying, "'Et tamen alter, si fecisset idem, caderet sub judice morum.' It is a bad book, and if another had written it he would have been put in the stocks or whipped at the cart's tail. But this man will get fame, and honor, and wealth by it; not that I am affected by the 'tristitia de bonis alienis.' Each man should rejoice when he sees a worthy neighbor successful, even if he may detect some flaw or fault in his performances, for envy is the basest and most destructive of passions. 'Nulla pestis humano generi pluris stetit;' but when one sees a man of some ability direct all his efforts to produce that which can only work evil to his fellow-creatures, gild vice, decorate folly, and corroborate falsehood, and yet be lauded and rewarded, it does excite anger, and produces a sad conviction of the unworthiness of our kind."
This was not a very auspicious commencement of the conversation to which the young man was looking with some anxiety for an opening to propound certain schemes and purposes of his own. Nevertheless, it was some satisfaction to him that his father had left off reading, for that was an occupation not to be interrupted; and he hastened to make a reply, in hopes that some turn would afford the opportunity he desired.
"Bad books are sometimes very useful, I think, sir," he said, with a good-humored smile.
"Ever in paradoxes, Ralph!" said his father "how may they be useful, boy?"
"By giving better men than their authors occasion to refute them," replied Ralph; "not that I mean to say"--he continued, knowing the peculiar argumentative character of his father's mind--"that the mere refutation would be sufficient, for that would leave matters just where they were before" (his father waved his hand), "but because, in the act of refutation, a thousand new arguments would be drawn forth in favor of truth and right, which might not occur to the multitude if no controversy ever elicited them."
"You have not put your case as strongly as you might have done, Ralph," replied his father; "complete refutation would not absolutely leave matters exactly where they were before. It is with a truth, with a principle, as with a sword-blade: its strength can not be fully known till it is tried. True, the strength, whatever it is, remains the same, but to those who have to use it, the trial adds confidence. It is not of half as much importance to be armed with a good sword as to have one and know that it is good from having proved it. The abstract truth of any proposition remains the same, whether it be assailed and defended or not; but the question before us involves another element, namely, the effect of the assault and defense upon the minds of men; and therefore, as you say, books assailing truth may sometimes be useful by calling forth a complete vindication of the truth. But the man who writes them is equally culpable; for even were we to admit that he might desire to establish truth more firmly by calling forth a strong defense, he would fall into the offense of promulgating falsehood with the knowledge that it was false, and truth refuses to be served by deceit."
He paused for the moment, and his son carefully abstained from furnishing new matter for subtle arguments, well knowing that his father had no mercy upon hobby-horses.
At length the old gentleman laid his hand, smilingly, upon the tome, saying, "I do not suppose that you intend to refute this work, Ralph: first, because I imagine that you do not know what it is, and, next, because I have remarked any thing but a vaulting ambition in you, my dear boy; indeed, perhaps too little. Now,
'Ambire semper stulta confidentia est,
Ambire nunquam deses arrogantia est,'
as has been said, in not the sweetest Latin that ever flowed--"
"Your pardon, dear father," replied Ralph, "I am very ambitious; not, indeed, of refuting the book of any author, living or dead; that I leave to you, in every way fitted for the task, if falsehood be the opponent. But anxious am I--most anxious, 'ambire palmam,' on the great stage of human life. To speak straightforwardly, I have been thinking for some time of asking your permission to go forth and try my fortune on a wider stage. I think I have not done ill at Cambridge" (the father nodded his head approvingly); "but yet none of the paths which a collegiate life opens to a man have temptations for me, and I would fain see whether I can not carve out one for myself."
"What, at the court?" asked the father, shaking his head; "Ralph, Ralph, you forget the means, and know not half the expenses which a court life requires even before the slightest advantage can be gained. With the rich and the courtly, only the rich and the courtly find favor. 'Sus sui, canis cani, bos bovi, et asinus asino, pulcherrimus videtur.'"
"Oh no!" cried Ralph, "no courtly life for me, sir. Some powerful friends I may need, but those I know you can procure me; for not only they who are connected with you by blood, but they also who have had the stronger bond of personal friendship with you in former years, will assuredly value your recommendation too highly to slight your son. As to means, the small sum I receive from my college, and a part of what you were kind enough to allow me there, will be ample."
His father shook his head with a somewhat doubtful air, and asked, "But if you should fail, Ralph?"
"I can but return here," said the young man, "and matters will be just where they were before."
"You are fond of that phrase, Ralph," replied his father, "but you are mistaken--all are mistaken who use it; nothing that has passed through any change is ever the same as it was before. There is always something gained or something lost. It will be so with you; and who shall say, in all the various complexities of circumstance and character, of accident and conduct, which life in the great world implies, how the balance may incline when you visit this old dwelling again."
He fell into deep thought after uttering the last words, and his son would not disturb his revery; for the ice was broken, the first announcement made, and he was very certain of gaining his point in the end. Oh how eagerly did the youth long for the attainment of that point! What was it that attracted him so strongly? No truant disposition; no idle weariness of the spot where his ancestors had dwelt; no gilded dreams of sport and pleasure; no overcolored picture of the world's brightness. But it offered him hope; one small spark of that sacred fire, the extinction of which is death. He felt within him strong energies; he had proved somewhat severely his own abilities; he had a great purpose before him, a strong passion to lead him, and all he wanted was hope and opportunity. He dared not tell his father all that was in his heart, for there is a cold mist about age in which the flame of hope will hardly burn; and if prescience were equal to experience, youth would never struggle on so far and overcome so much, for want of sunshine on the way.
The father sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire; the son remained with his head leaning on his hand, till both started at a sharp rap upon the door of the house from the heavy iron knocker which I have mentioned.
There was, indeed, no need of starting, for both knew they were to have a visitor that night, to taste a bowl of punch and chat over the affairs of the country round. But they had been so deeply involved in personal feelings that they had forgotten the flight of time, and the guest was upon them ere either was aware that the usual hour of his visit on a Wednesday night was actually come.
The father buttoned up a portion of his waist coat, and drew on again a slipper which, under the pressure of cogitation, he had kicked off his foot. The son put straight several of the chairs, which somehow or another had got into a state of confusion; and in the mean while was heard a sound, such as might have proceeded from a seal new caught scrambling about in the bottom of a boat, but which, in reality, was caused by the movement through the passage of a short, fin-legged maid-servant, eager to open the door without delay to his reverence the parson, of whose weekly visitation she had been more mindful than her master. Hardly two minutes elapsed after the stroke upon the outer door when that of the little library opened, and not one visitor, but two, presented themselves, and both bedecked with cassocks.
I can not but regret the rubbing of the face off the coin wherever I see it in society. I love local color; I love class costume, though not class interests, however they may be disguised. Every profession, every calling, honorably exercised, is honorable, and there is nothing so vain as the vanity, nothing so pitiful as the pride which would conceal any external indication of a position we have no right to be ashamed of occupying. The Norman peasant girl, in love with her immemorial white cap, would feel herself degraded were you to dress her head up in hat and feathers. The New Haven fish-wife has an honest pride in her yellow petticoat. The doctor in former times could still be known by red roquelaur and gold-headed cane; the divine by the garments of his order. The soldier aped not the civilian, nor the civilian the soldier; each ship carried its own colors, and could be known by those that sailed by it. I see not those inconveniences of the system, which have produced a change in our day. However, in the times of which I write, each parson could be known by his clerical garments; and both the two gentlemen who now entered were evidently churchmen, though very different both in appearance and demeanor from each other.
The first was a fat, rosy personage, in a bran new cassock, glossy and black as a raven's wing. In personal appearance he was no mean representative of the old friar, wanting, however, the shaven crown and the bare feet. The glance he gave around the room had just such a degree of strangeness in it as might imply that he was not a frequent visitor there, though not altogether unknown.
The second was an older man, perhaps sixty years of age, tall, pale, and thin, with garments well worn, yet whole and decent. His hands, though they not unfrequently held the spade in his own garden, were peculiarly fine and delicate, and his face had seemingly been very handsome in early life.
Now, from the time of the suppression of monasteries and the reformation of the Church of England under Henry VIII. (if reformation that movement could be called which took place under the wife-slayer) to the present day, some five or six complete revolutions have occurred in the state and character of the clergy of Great Britain. Those are now living who remember one or two. By a very natural reaction, the fishing, and shooting, and hunting parson of the early part of the nineteenth century, the man unmindful of all outward observances, and very little careful of even the more solemn duties of his calling, has given place either to the man of forms and ceremonies, of surplices and genuflexions, of crosses and candlesticks, or to the eager, laborious, anxious evangelical minister, ever visiting the sick, attending to the school, or frightening the wicked with vivid pictures of damnation, and diversifying labors, almost too much in themselves for any one man, with missionary meetings, propagation of the Gospel societies, and tract and Bible distribution. The parson Trulliber (I know not if I spell the name aright, as I have no books with me), the parson Adams, the Vicar of Wakefield--although each certainly very much overdrawn, if we consider them as representatives of a class--give us some idea of the various phases of the clerical state in the last century; and innumerable memoirs, histories, and essays show the real condition of the clergy in the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. At none of these periods, be it however remembered, was there not among the clergy of the day an infinite difference, in manners, character, and condition, between different individuals, according to circumstances. The man placed at a distance from refined society, in some remote country parish, was apt to lose the more polished manners acquired at college. This was especially the case where, as sometimes happened, the shameful smallness of the stipend compelled the parish priest or curate to eke out the means of subsistence by hard manual labor. But even then it was not always the case; and hands that have held the plow or dug the glebe have often, washed and clean, during the evening hours, penned words of fire, which have not only found their way to the hearts of men, kindling a flame of pure religion in the breast, but have lighted the writer himself on the road to high preferment.
Again, the chaplain of the lord or great landed proprietor, depending upon his patron for advancement in the Church, and sometimes even for his dinner, was often inclined to be subservient and lickspittle, to undertake degrading and sometimes shameless offices, to forget the dignity of his calling and the dignity of man. But this was merely occasionally; and occasionally, also, you would find a chaplain as stern and harsh as the most fierce reformer, keeping the whole household in awe, and even reproving the faults of his lord himself. These, however, were the extremes, and the general course lay between. There you would find the domestic priest, plodding on quietly in his duties, doing as much good as a not very zealous character could accomplish, bearing the crosses of his situation meekly, and looking forward to a better and a freer day when the long-expected living should be bestowed.
All the coarse caricature daubing in the world can not alter the lines of the picture left to us by the authentic records of those days, and, though it may make the idle smile and the ignorant applaud, yet it will not deceive those who are really conversant with the manners and customs of other times.
Two clergymen of the seventeenth century are now before us, reader, but they belong to neither extreme, and the difference between them, though very great, only serves to show that even the middle ground admitted of much variety. The first who entered advanced, after a momentary look around him, directly toward the master of the house, and took him by the hand with kindly warmth.
"Mr. Woodhall," he said, with the slightest possible touch on an Irish accent, "I am delighted to see you again. It is full six months since we last met, for I stayed behind my lord, being obliged to remain in London on account of having to go to Dublin about some little affairs of my own; my dear aunt having at length thought fit to take her departure for the realms of bliss, when, faith, I thought she had put off the journey altogether. She left me--God bless her!--a neat little comfortable income of two hundred pounds English, a large China bowl, and a pair of Tangier slippers. Heaven reward her, as I am sure it should, for she never troubled it till she could not help it."
"I am glad to see you back, Mr. M'Feely," replied the master of the house; "you have been much wanted to bless the venison up at the hall."
"Oh, the currant-jelly does that mighty well without me," replied the chaplain. "Mr. Ralph, I am right glad to see you. Alma Mater abandoned, I hear. Done with the old lady, eh? Well, it must be so with all fathers and mothers. Children will quit them, must quit them; and there is no use of going cackling about like a hen after a brood of young ducklings when first she sees them take to the water. Every animal knows its own element, and will find it sooner or later. My poor mother, rest her soul, was sadly afraid that I might fall into the errors of popery, and yield to the seductions of the scarlet woman; but, faith, I had no turn for vows of celibacy, and so I came over to England to be out of harm's way. No, no, wedlock is an honorable estate--especially when there is another estate to back it; and as to being married to the Church, upon my soul and conscience I never yet saw the church, be it stone or wood, that I would like to marry any how."
While this part of the worthy gentleman's discourse was going on, addressed to the son, the father had been welcoming his other guest, the parson of the parish.
"Good evening, doctor, give you good evening," he said; "you have caught me here, the lean and slippered pantaloon; but, good faith, Ralph and I were so earnest in talk that I forgot how time went. Nevertheless, 'tis well as it is. Conversation never walks so much at ease as when slipshod; and we will scant ceremony to-night. Come, lay aside your periwig, and we will have a bowl of punch anon."
We will pass over the brewing of the punch and the conversation which sweetened it, whether that conversation turned upon the decline of lemons, which the chaplain declared were not half as juicy as when he was a boy, or upon the enormous price of sugar, which the good parson mourned over sincerely. After the two first ladlefuls had passed round, however, other more important topics were started; rumors from London, tales from France, an epigram, a court ball, a passage of Lucan, and a newly-discovered method of solving some very puzzled questions connected with conic sections were all mentioned and discussed.
Ralph Woodhall had no interest in any of these things. Of some he was ignorant, of some he was tired; and at length he rose, saying he would go out and take a walk for half an hour.
"To study the stars, Ralph?" said his father.
"Nay, to write a sonnet to the pale-faced moon," replied his son, laughing, and away he went.
"The boy has lost his wits," said the Irish clergyman, "to leave such a bowl as this, and such edifying conversation for a green lane and a moonbeam. He must be melancholic."
"Indeed, he has been somewhat heavy and thoughtful of late," said the father, "but he always loved these rural walks, visere sÆpÈ amnes nitidas."
"But not by darkness," replied the parson; "he was never a night-walker."
"The lad's in love," exclaimed the Irishman; "that is the plain truth, as sure as my name is M'Feely. You never see a lad of about twenty get moping and walking by moonlight, looking into babbling brooks, or sitting with his hat off under an elm-tree, but you may be sure that he is infected with that sauntering, heigh-ho, lamentable idleness, love, rightly called a passion, if passion means suffering, and as rightly called a madness or a disease by some doctors, whether the seat thereof be in the liver, or the midriff, or the brain, or the heart."
"Hold, hold, doctor," exclaimed Mr. Woodhall; "pray make some distinctions. There are various kinds of love: some honest, noble, ennobling, others base, evil, and degrading. To say nothing of divine love, holy love, and all kinds and descriptions of honest affection, even the love of man for woman is often too pleasing and blessing to be called a disease. It may perhaps be termed a sort of mental titillation, which, when not extravagant or in excess, is agreeable and even salutary. Many Eastern nations take the greatest delight in being gently tickled; the Chinese enjoy having the soles of their feet titillated either with the finger or a feather, and yet we know that, carried to excess, the tickling of the feet has produced convulsion and death. All depends upon moderation: every excess is evil, on whichever side it be committed: nay, I hold that an excess of abstinence is more sinful than an excess of indulgence, for the one is a despising of God's good gifts, while the other is merely a superfluous enjoyment of them. I can not but think that the saint who stood on a pillar, and the anchorites of the Thebaid, were not only great fools, but blasphemous fools; for, if they did not convey by speech, they signified by action, a foul and false imputation upon the character of the Deity, for which they deserved to be burned--if ever any men did merit such a fate."
"But if your son be in love, who is the person with whom he is in love?" asked the parson. "There is no one in the parish for whom I think it at all likely that he should conceive such a passion."
"He is not in love at all," replied the father; "the truth is, my reverend friend, he has conceived a strong desire to go forth and seek his fortune in the world, and we were speaking of that very subject when you came in. I had neither consented nor prohibited; and probably, doubt--the most painful of all modes or conditions of the mind--has made him wander forth to-night."
"The boy's in love!" grumbled Mr. M'Feely, authoritatively; "the boy's in love! But as to sending him forth to seek his fortune, that is the very best thing that can be done for him. It is the best remedy for love in the world. He'll puff and sigh like an angry cub for the first fortnight. Then he'll find there is something else to be done in life than sigh. Then he'll struggle on, all for the loved one's sake! Then he'll forget the loved one in the struggle. Then he'll find she has forgotten him, and he'll console himself by saying, 'There are more fish in the sea.' Bless your soul, Mr. Woodhall, when I left Ireland, with what I could scrape together, to study at your University of Oxford here, I was dying for love of no less than nine of the prettiest girls in all the north of Ireland. Not one of them didn't swear she would die a maid for my sake; and yet you see I'm a bachelor over forty, and they are all matrons--some of them grandmothers, I fancy."
"What do you say to it, my worthy friend Barry?" asked Mr. Woodhall, addressing the parson. "I do not like to part with my son so soon after his return from college; I do not like to throw a lad like that upon the wide world without any decided prospect before him. Yet if it be for his good, I will cast away parental fondness and parental anxiety, and let him go."
"You will let him go in the end, Woodhall, whatever you determine now," replied the clergyman, with a look of kindly meaning, "and it is better to do that graciously which you will do eventually. Besides, I think you will do right. The most important part of education is the education of the world. Those who keep their children back from this till they are themselves gone, leave them to receive the hard instruction, without any one at hand to render it more easy. You have given Ralph every preparation. His mind and his heart have been cultivated highly. Let him go to receive the lessons of experience, while you are still here to give aid in case of need."
"Well, he shall go," said Mr. Woodhall, with a sigh; "I have still some friends left in the great world who will lend a helping hand, and to them he shall have letters."
"I have but one," said Mr. Barry, "but he is a good and faithful one; and Ralph must know him."
"Bless your soul, I will get him twenty letters from my lord in a jiffy," exclaimed Dr. M'Feely; "the lad is a great favorite of his, and I have nothing to do but to write them, and my lord will sign and address them."
Thus was it determined that Ralph Woodhall should go forth to try the world.
CHAPTER IV.
I mentioned the stream--surely I mentioned the stream. Oh dear, yes, I certainly did, although, in the hurry of telling a story, one is sometimes apt to forget small particulars. But I know I informed the reader, in describing The Grange, that there was a small, pleasant stream, not unconscious of trout, which wandered past the back of the old house, and then, as if it had a peculiar affection for the place, made a graceful turn round one of the sides, serving for a fence--even if there had not been a dilapidated old wall there for that purpose.
It was a very beautiful little river, for it deserved a grander name than rivulet, seeing that it was at that spot some twelve or fourteen feet broad; and although the country to the north and east was flat, yet a number of little hills and eminences, and a general sloping tendency of the country to the south and west, from which it descended, had contrived to give it a rapid and hurried motion, which was accelerated by several miniature cascades and rapids. There were trees growing by its side, too, and often overhanging it, canopying its glistening waters with interlacing boughs, and green, shimmering foliage. Sometimes they swept afar, leaving broad, open meadows, where the angler might throw his fly with fearless sweep of arm; but sometimes they crept close to the bank, so close that their great brown rounded roots would obtrude from the rugged bank, mingling with the mossy turf and oozy rock, and curl down into the stream with many a twist and many an aperture, affording fit concealment for the hole of the water-rat or otter.
On the left-hand bank, however, whether along green meadow or among the dim, shadowy trees, close to the margin of the stream, and following all its turns and windings, ran a broad, dry, well-kept path; and as beautiful and pleasant a walk it furnished for any one who loved quiet musing, or was studious of the tranquil face of nature, as could well be found in the wide world. The very bounding, rush, garrulous boyhood of the stream, as it rushed on, struggling with the rocks and impediments in its way, overleaping some difficulties, rushing round other obstacles, and still, in spite of all, making its way onward, might furnish fancies to a poet and thoughts to a philosopher. Then the view over some of the open fields, often, indeed, broken with hedgerows, and often dotted with church spire, and cottage, and farmhouse, but not unfrequently extending for miles and miles away over blue fen and dusky moor, had something wide and expansive in it, which seemed to open the heart and make the breast heave more freely; and where the trees fringed the stream, the eye could still wander far, for there was no thick wood, but a mere belt of planting without undergrowth, leaving smooth banks and grassy slopes between the old trunks and stems, over which the sight might range along tracks of sunshine, and often catch a glimpse through the green avenues of a far-extending distance beyond.
Oh! the homilies of nature, how they pour into the heart of those who will hear them lessons of peace, tranquillity, and love, which might well reform this harsh and jarring world if man would but study there. The characters which man's hand traces, even if spared by the wearing course of time, whether written on parchment or graved upon the rock, pass from comprehension--become a riddle or a mystery. The learned scrutinize, the bold or the wise interpret; but the interpretation is denied, and the dead man's tongue becomes a matter of dispute and contention to the living. But the wisdom of the page ever open before our eyes is written in the universal language, and man has but to look and read to find himself wiser, better, greater from the permitted commune with a spirit above his own.
It was a fair and pleasant walk that path beside the stream--pleasant in the early morning, when dew was upon the grass and flowers, and the slant rays peeped under the green branches as if the first glance of the day at the new world were timid and doubtful; pleasant at noon, when the green boughs afforded shade, and the brief walk across the meadow rendered the shade more grateful, and the fresh air from the ever-moving stream more sweet; pleasant at evening, when the rosy light tinctured leaf and moss, and blade of grass, and painted the old trunks of trees, and sprinkled the foam with rubies. Pleasant also was it, most pleasant, when the yellow moon was hanging high in air, and her beams, weaving themselves with the shadowy branches, spread the way with a net-work of black and silver. Then how the stream would seem to dance, and gambol, and leap up, as if to meet the looks of the Queen of Night; and how every little cascade and rapid would sport with the shower of diamonds that fell upon it from on high!
Along that path, under the moonbeam, Ralph Woodhall took his way, with slow and thoughtful pace, while the next step in his future course was under discussion in his father's house. He paused at the first meadow and looked up to the broad moon, and then moved on again, sometimes gazing at the stream and drawing dreamy images from its flashing waters, sometimes fixing his eyes upon the path and giving up his whole mind to commune with his own thoughts. They were somewhat sad and dark--at least the ground-work was so; but still a gleam of hope stole through, and checkered with brightness the gloom of the untried future. Onward he went for about half a mile. There the stream approached the little village, yet it came not too near; but, sweeping past the foot of the little rise on which it stood, left a single field dotted with one clump of trees between its bank and the first house. Ralph paused there and looked up at the church, and strange fancies passed through his mind. They were like those embodied in Schiller's song of the Bell, full of association, partly sad, partly joyful. Oh! how many a scene, and himself an actor in them, all passed pageant-like before his eyes during the brief moment that he spent there--all life's great epochs--all their emblems--the cradle--the bridal ring--the coffin.
He walked on musing. He came to a low wall, with a stile of hewn stone and thick trees beyond; and passing over, he followed the path, still running by the side of the stream. Through the trees the moonlight could be seen resting upon the open, waving ground, with many a dell and glade, and here and there a deer lifting up its antlered head at the sound of a footfall. Presently another sort of light gleamed between the branches, but more directly on his path--a redder, less placid beam; and shortly after, a tall, irregular house was seen upon a terrace, to the foot of which the path approached very close, with a bright blaze coming forth from three casements on the lower story, while a ray or two shone out of the lattices above.
The young man took a few steps aside to a spot where the trees approached nearest to the house, but remained under their shade, and gazed up at one particular casement with a look intent but sorrowful. What might be his thoughts and feelings at that moment? What might they not be? The ringing sound of merry laughter came from the fully-lighted windows below. There were men there carousing jovially, but their merriment had no music for his ear. Did he envy them? Oh no! Perhaps he might think how strangely Fate shaped men's lots; perhaps he might ask why he, in whose veins flowed the same blood as in some of those rejoicing there within, who was conscious of as high a mind, as bold and true a heart, should be placed in comparative poverty, should be looked upon as in an inferior position, because his father's great-grandfather, about a couple of centuries before, had chanced, without his own consent, to be born a younger son. Yet he envied them not; he coveted not aught that they possessed; nay, of all within those walls, longed for but one thing; but for that how he did long! He could not obtain it; and yet the only bar was the lack of that which those revelers possessed. That thought added to the objects of desire; but their wealth, their rank, their station were only coveted as means--means to the great end and objects of all his heart's desire.
Thoughts came in crowds; but still he fixed his eyes upon the lattice. A shadow crossed it, and he said to himself, "She knows not I am gazing here." Then, again, he said, with some bitterness, "If she did, what would she care?" but the next moment added, "yet I wrong her; she would care--she would grieve--perhaps she would come forth to cheer me--at all events, to bid me farewell. Would I could let her know."
He was taking a step forward with some unfixed purpose in his mind, when a small door at the side of the building, not far from the bright casements, emitted a momentary light, which was instantly obscured again. The next instant a figure--a woman's figure, passed along the terrace, crossing the blaze from the hall, and Ralph advanced a step or two; but he retreated as rapidly, for the figure turned suddenly from the sound of the revelry, descended the steps of the terrace, and approached the very path by which he had come.
Oh how his heart beat at that moment; hers, perhaps, might have throbbed wildly had she known who was near. But it was quite still, though somewhat busy, and she took her way on, paused for an instant to look up at the sky where the moonbeams vailed the stars, and then entered the path beneath the overhanging boughs. Ralph Woodhall took a step forward; it fell upon some of the withered leaves of the last year, and the sound startled her. She stopped suddenly; and, fearful that she would turn and fly, he pronounced her name.
"Margaret," he said, "Margaret, be not afraid; it is Ralph. I am glad you have come out, for they seem merry-making at the hall, and I did not like to go in, though I longed to see you."
Margaret gave him her hand; and whose heart was beating then?
"They are making a terrible noise," she replied; "more than usual, I think, though perhaps it may be that my head aches, and that makes their mirth sound louder than at other times. I fancied that the cool air would do me good, and therefore came out to stroll along by the stream."
"I will guard you on your walk, Margaret," replied Ralph; "it may be the last time I can do so for a long time to come."
"The last time!" said the young girl--for she could not be more than seventeen or eighteen; "you are not going to leave us, Ralph!"
"Yes, indeed, for a time, dear Margaret," he replied; "I am going away into the wide world to seek my fortune--at least I have asked my father's leave to do so."
"Fortune!" said Margaret; in a musing tone, walking on slowly along the path; "what can there be in fortune, that makes men sacrifice so much to seek it?"
"Nothing in itself," replied Ralph, "but every thing as a means--to me, at least, every thing."
"I see not why it should be more to you than to others," answered Margaret; "why is it?"
"I will tell you in an instant," replied her companion; "here I am hardly at home from college, when I wish to go away again, to part from my father, and you, and all my friends. That is what you would say, I know, dear Margaret. But if I stay at home, content with the little that Fate has given me, without an effort to make it more, or to win honor, and station, and renown, there must come a bitterer parting still; I must see the one I love best in all the world leave me for another home, not only deny me her presence, but deny me her thoughts, bestow heart and hand upon another, and be to me almost as a stranger."
Margaret trembled, but answered nothing, and Ralph went on: "Shall I wait tamely, Margaret, and, without an effort, see all this come rapidly; or shall I, with a strong heart, battle with Fortune, and try to conquer her for the hope of her I love?"
"Oh, yes; go, go!" cried the girl, eagerly.
"I may not succeed, perhaps," continued Ralph; "all my efforts may fail--it is very likely. I may have to endure the same pang, to undergo the same loss, notwithstanding the utmost exertions--that is in God's hand; but, at all events, I shall have one consolation--I shall have striven, I shall have labored, I shall have done my part; and you, Margaret, you will think better of me; you will remember me and my disappointments with sorrow; you will pity, if you must not love me."
"I shall always love you, Ralph," she replied, in perfect simplicity; but then suddenly stopped, adding, with a deep sigh, "I speak foolishly, I fear; but you will not misunderstand me."
"Margaret," he said, in a tone of deep feeling, "Margaret, we must fully understand each other. I love you, Margaret; I shall always love you; I shall never love any but you. Yet hear me, dear girl, and do not tremble so," he continued, drawing her arm within his; "I seek to bind you by no tie to one in whose dark fortunes it needs the eye of eager love to see one spark or hope. I ask of you no promise to be mine, for I know right well that in my present state it were well-nigh madness for either you or me to dream of such a far-off bliss. I have that madness, Margaret, for I still dare to hope; but I would not have you share it, lest my own bitter disappointment should be doubled by breaking your heart too. It is well for me to go, and leave you free to act as your own heart may dictate or circumstances may impel; it is well for me to go, and to seek with the energy which only love can give for all those bright jewels of the world which are but too estimable in the eyes of those in whose hands your destiny must lie. So long as you are Margaret Woodhall, hope will live, exertion will continue, and strength will be given me to struggle on; but should I ever hear of you by another name, the light of life will have gone out, and, as my father has done, I will sit down to fade in darkness."
"What shall I do? what shall I say?" murmured Margaret, as if speaking to herself. "Oh, Ralph, if I could add to your hopes, if I could strengthen your efforts, how gladly would I do it; but my fate is in the hands of others. I have no right to promise any thing. And yet a promise might strengthen me myself; it might give me vigor to resist, should resistance be needful. Still, my father has been very kind to me and to you. Ought we, Ralph--ought we to do or say any thing that he would blame and condemn?"
"No--oh no," answered Ralph Woodhall, firmly; "I ask it not, Margaret. I only ask, let me still hope. Keep your heart and hand for me as long as may be, and though it may seem wild, rash, insane to dream that in a few short years I may accomplish enough to lessen the disparity between your state and mine, yet, so long as the beacon burns before me, I will go on, let the road be ever so rough and perilous. These are strange and stirring times, Margaret; changes come suddenly and often; all men are struggling; let me struggle too; and if Margaret will but bid me hope, my heart shall never fail."
Margaret laid her fair hand upon his, and, looking up in his face, replied, "Hope, Ralph! hope--hope all--hope always. I too will hope, and struggle likewise."
As she spoke the moonlight poured through the branches on her fair face and lighted her beautiful eyes. The look and the words were too much to be resisted. Ralph bent his head over her, and their lips met.
"Hark!" said Ralph, after a moment's trembling pause, "I hear footsteps coming up the path. Let us turn back toward the hall."
"Yes, yes, let us turn back," said Margaret, unclasping his arms from around her, yet gently, kindly; and then, as if she would not leave him wholly comfortless, she added, in a low voice, as they walked onward, "there is at least one thing I may promise, Ralph, I will not plight my faith to another; I will not yield to any entreaty--nay, or command--till I have given you notice, and allowed time sufficient for you to come and deliver me from that which would be a thousand-fold worse than death, if deliver me you can. But now let us be calm, for I hear the steps coming quick behind us."
When those steps were nearer still, Margaret was more calm than her lover, for such is woman's nature. Perhaps he had been less deeply moved than she had been--he could not be more; but the stronger spirit, like the deeper water, when once in motion, remains longer agitated.
"Ah ha! Mister Ralph," said the voice of Doctor M'Feely behind them a moment after, "upon my life and soul, this is my country's way of taking a solitary ramble. You go out to walk alone with a companion, eh? Why, fair Miss Margaret, does my lord know of your night roaming?"
"Quite well," replied Margaret, with very little sign of emotion; "I often walk through the park in the moonlight, doctor, but do not often have such good luck as to-night in meeting Ralph to keep me company. Ralph loves books better than the moon, I fancy."
"He loves a pretty face wherever he can find it, I fancy, be it the moon's or not," replied the chaplain.
"As to my solitary ramble, doctor," said Ralph, "I believed, when I set out, it would be solitary enough; but I can not say it has been less unpleasant for not being so."
"Ay, devil doubt you," said M'Feely to himself; "but moonlight walks are pretty dangerous things, as I know to my cost; there was the widow Macarthy--but no matter for that. The moon is considered a cold planet, but, on my faith, I think she has a greater knack of scorching than any sun I ever saw."
All this was uttered in an under tone, so that no distinct sense was conveyed to the two by whose side he now walked. It was evident, however, that his suspicions were excited, and Ralph, somewhat impetuous in disposition, and ever ready to confront a danger, asked boldly, "What are you talking to yourself about, doctor?"
"Oh, nothing at all, but some of the queer freaks of nature, my boy," replied the other; and Margaret interposed, saying, "Ralph has been telling me of a queer freak of his, doctor. He says he is going to travel, and leave us all here in this dull place. He has not been home from college a month, and is weary of us already. Can not you persuade him to stay a little, if but for civility's sake?"
"By my conscience, but that is the last thing I shall do," replied Doctor M'Feely; "it is the best thing for him to go and see the world, and may be just as well for other people too. No, no, I have promised the old gentleman to get my lord, your father, to give him letters to all the great folks he knows, who may help him on in life, and the sooner they are given the better."
"Well, I do not know what I shall do when he is gone," said Margaret, following unconsciously a policy almost instinctive in woman's heart, and showing a portion in order to conceal the whole; "I shall have no one to talk to but you, doctor, and no one to draw me out of the river if I fall in, as Ralph did when I was a little girl, for you would never wet your cassock for my sake."
"Wouldn't I, though, darling?" cried the jolly priest; "I can help you at a pinch, and will, depend upon it; and as to conversation, mine will do you a world more good than that of any young scape-grace in the land. But now, as to asking my lord about these letters, can it be done to-night? is he in a fit state to be talked to, Mistress Margaret? There was an array of bottles on the table when I left, and the Bordeaux was none of the worst."
"Fit to be talked to!" cried Margaret; "fy, doctor, to be sure he is. Would you have me tell papa that you think he gets tipsy every night?"
"No, no! For Heaven's sake not such a word, or there goes the living!" cried Doctor M'Feely. "Oh, you little fox, so you have turned the tables upon me! Well, you shall see how discreet I can be, and you be discreet also, and don't say a word. We'll keep one another's counsel; and mind, my darling, when you have an opportunity, speak a good word for me about the living. I have been ten years in the house--ever since you were a little thing not up to my knee--and not a benefice has been offered me but that horrid marshy hole of Agueborough cum Flushing-gap, where I should have had to read prayers to yellow-bellied frogs, and preach to the seamews. I shall never be a bishop at this rate, and I am resolved to comfort my arms in lawn if it be possible. But now we are coming near. You trot up to your own room, Mistress Margaret, and I and Ralph will go in; then the old lord will never be a bit the wiser as to your moonlight rambles."
"On the contrary, I shall go straight in," said Margaret, boldly, "that is to say, if all these drunken sots are gone, and will ask my father for the letters for Ralph myself. You are altogether mistaken, my reverend friend, if you suppose that I care about my father knowing where I have been, or that I met Ralph accidentally. Only take care not to put any wrong construction upon my walk, doctor," she added, in a warning tone; "for the plain truth, I fear not."
When they reached the house, however, it was found that the party in the Hall had not yet broken up, and the sounds that issued forth warned Margaret that it was no scene for her to appear in. Doctor M'Feely judged, also, that his presence would not be acceptable, and the three parted at the door. It can not be said that Ralph's fingers did not press more warmly on Margaret's hand than on that of the chaplain as he bade them severally adieu.
CHAPTER V.
It was too much for the warmth of those lovers' hearts to part in the cold, frozen solitude of even the little world around them. The many makes a solitude for the few. No prison walls are harder, sterner; no fetters more rigid, more binding; no penitentiary cell more silent, more solitary, than the wall of hard human faces, than the fetters of conventional forms, than the dull, hemming in, unresponsive circle of an unsympathizing crowd for hearts that feel together, and would speak to the ears that can comprehend.
They could not bear it; they risked all for the sake of pouring out the thoughts of each bosom to the other; and on one bright morning, the day before Ralph's departure over the brown heaths and moors--Heaven knows how they found the opportunity; they hardly knew themselves: it was the impulse of the moment--fortune favored; the skies winked at the lovers' wish, and there they were. No eye, it would seem, perceived their going forth; none whom they knew met them in the lonely lane; and once in the wild commons, they were but a speck upon the wide extent.
