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CHAPTER XXXIV
NOT IN VAIN

 
‘Then cheerly to your work again,
   With hearts new braced and set
To run untired love’s blessed race,
As meet for those who face to face
   Over the grave their Lord have met.’
 

Keble.

That dying request could not but be held sacred, and overtures were made to Griffith, who returned an odd sort of answer, friendly and affectionate, but rather as if my father were the offending party in need of forgiveness.  He and his wife were obliged for the invitation, but could not accept it, as they had taken a house near Melton-Mowbray for the hunting season, and were entertaining friends.

In some ways it was disappointing, in others it was a relief, not to have the restraint of Lady Peacock’s presence during the last days we were to have with the Fordyces.  For a fresh loss came upon us.  Beachharbour was a fishing-village on the north-western coast, which, within the previous decade, had sprung into importance, on the one hand as a fashionable resort, on the other as a minor port for colliers.  The living was wretchedly poor, and had been held for many years by one of the old inferior stamp of clergy, scarcely superior in habits or breeding to the farmers, and only outliving the scandals of his youth to fall into a state of indolent carelessness.  It was in the gift of a child, for whom Sir Horace Lester was trustee, and that gentleman had written, about a fortnight before Ellen’s death, to consult Mr. Fordyce on its disposal, declaring the great difficulties and deficiencies of the place, which made it impossible to offer it to any one without considerable private means, and also able to attract and improve the utterly demoralised population.  He ended, almost in joke, by saying, ‘In fact, I know no one who could cope with the situation but yourself; I wish you could find me your own counterpart, or come yourself in earnest.  It is just the air that suits my sister—bracing sea-breezes; the parsonage, though a wretched place, is well situated, and she would be all the stronger; but in poor Ellen’s state there is no use in talking of it, and besides I know you are wedded to your fertile fields and Somersetshire clowns.’

That letter (afterwards shown to us) had worked on Mr. Fordyce’s mind during those mournful days.  He was still young enough to leave behind him Parson Frank and the ‘squarson’ habits of Hillside in which he had grown up; and the higher and more spiritual side of his nature had been fostered by the impressions of the last year.  He was conscious, as he said, that his talk had been overmuch of bullocks, and that his farm had engrossed him more than he wished should happen again, though a change would be tearing himself up by the roots; and as to his own people at Hillside, the curate, an active young man, had well supplied his place, and, in his truly humble opinion, though by no means in theirs, introduced several improvements even in that model parish.

What had moved him most, however, was a conversation he had had with Ellen, with whom during this last year he had often held deep and serious counsel, with a growing reverence on his side.  He had read her uncle’s letter to her, and to his great surprise found that she looked on it as a call.  Devotedly fond as she herself was of Hillside, she could see that her father’s abilities were wasted on so small a field, in a manner scarcely good for himself, and she had been struck with the greater force of his sermons when preaching to educated congregations abroad.  If no one else could or would take efficient charge of these Beachharbour souls, she could see that it would weigh on his conscience to take comparative ease in his own beloved meadows, among a flock almost his vassals.  Moreover, she relieved his mind about her mother.  She had discovered, what the good wife kept out of sight, that the north-country woman never could entirely have affinities with the south, and she had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Fordyce’s spirits would be heavily tried by settling down at Hillside in the altered state of things.

After this talk, Mr. Fordyce had suggested a possible incumbent to his brother-in-law, but left the matter open; and when Sir Horace came down to the funeral, it was more thoroughly discussed; and, as soon as Mrs. Fordyce saw that departure would not break her husband’s heart, she made no secret of the way that both her opinion and her inclinations lay.  She told my mother that she had always believed her own ill-health was caused by the southern climate, and that she hoped that Anne would grow up stronger than her sister in the northern breezes.

Poor little Anne!  Of all the family, to her the change was the greatest grief.  The tour on the Continent had been a dull affair to her; she was of the age to weary of long confinement in the carriage and in strange hotels, and too young to appreciate ‘grown-up’ sights.  Picture-galleries and cathedrals were only a drag to her, and if the experiences that were put into Rosella’s mouth for the benefit of her untravelled sisters could have been written down, they would have been as unconventional as Mark Twain’s adventures.  Rosella went through the whole tour, and left a leg behind in the hinge of a door, but in compensation brought home a Paris bonnet and mantle.  She seemed to have been her young mistress’s chief comfort, next to an occasional game of play with her father, or a walk, looking in at the shop windows and watching marionettes, or, still better, the wonderful sports of brown-legged street children, without trying to make her speak French or Italian—in her eyes one of the inflictions of the journey, in those of her elders the one benefit she might gain.  She had missed the petting to which she had been accustomed from her grandfather and from all of us; and she had absolutely counted the days till she could get home again, and had fallen into dire disgrace for fits of crying when Ellen’s weakness caused delays.  Martyn’s holidays had been a time of rapture to her, for there was no one to attend much to her at home, and she was too young to enter into the weight of anxiety; so the two had run as wild together as a gracious well-trained damsel of ten and a fourteen-year-old boy with tender chivalry awake in him could well do.  To be out of the way was all that was asked of her for the time, and all old delights, such as the robbers’ cave, were renewed with fresh zest.

 
‘It was the sweetest and the last.’
 

And though Martyn was gone back to school, the child felt the wrench from home most severely.  As she told me on one of those sorrowful days, ‘She did think she had come back to live at dear, dear little Hillside all the days of her life.’  Poor child, we became convinced that this vehement attachment to Griffith’s brothers was one factor in Mrs. Fordyce’s desire to make a change that should break off these habits of intimacy and dependence.

Pluralities had not become illegal, and Frank Fordyce, being still the chief landholder in Hillside, and wishing to keep up his connection with his people, did not resign the rectory, though he put the curate into the house, and let the farm.  Once or twice a year he came to fulfil some of a landlord’s duties, and was as genial and affectionate as ever, but more and more absorbed in the needs of Beachharbour, and unconsciously showing his own growth in devotion and activity; while he brought his splendid health and vigour, his talent, his wealth, and, above all, his winning charm of manner and address, to that magnificent work at Beachharbour, well known to all of you; though, perhaps, you never guessed that the foundation of all those churches and their grand dependent works of piety, mercy, and beneficence was laid in one young girl’s grave.  I never heard of a fresh achievement there without remembering how the funeral psalm ends with—

 
‘Prosper Thou the work of our hands upon us,
O prosper Thou our handiwork.’
 

And Emily?  Her drooping after the loss of her friend was sad, but it would have been sadder but for the spirit Ellen had infused.  We found the herbs to heal our woe round our pathway, though the first joyousness of life had departed.  The reports Mr. Henderson and the Hillside curate brought from Oxford were great excitements to us, and we thought and puzzled over church doctrine, and tried to impart it to our scholars.  We I say, for Henderson had made me take a lads’ class, which has been the chief interest of my life.  Even the roughest were good to their helpless teacher, and some men, as gray-headed as myself, still come every Sunday to read with Mr. Edward, and are among the most faithful friends of my life.

CHAPTER XXXV
GRIFF’S BIRD

 
‘Shall such mean little creatures pretend to the fashion?
Cousin Turkey Cock, well may you be in a passion.’
 

The Peacock at Home.

It was not till the second Christmas after dear Ellen Fordyce’s death that my eldest brother brought his wife and child to Chantry House, after an urgent letter to Lady Peacock from my mother, who yearned for a sight of Griffith’s boy.

I do not wish to dwell on that visit.  Selina, or Griff’s bird, as Martyn chose to term her, was certainly handsome and stylish; but her complexion had lost freshness and delicacy, and the ladies said her colour was rouge, and her fine figure due to other female mysteries.  She meant to be very gracious, and patronised everybody, especially Emily, who, she said, would be quite striking if not sacrificed by her dress, and whom she much wished to take to London, engaging to provide her with a husband before the season was over, not for a moment believing my mother’s assurance that it would be a trial to us all whenever we had to resign our Emily.  Nay, she tried to condole with the poor moped family slave, and was received with such hot indignation as made her laugh, for, to do her justice, she was good-natured and easy-tempered.  However, I saw less of her than did the others, for I believe she thought the sight of me made her ill.  Griff, poor old fellow, was heartily glad to be with us again, but quite under her dominion.  He had lost his glow of youth and grace of figure, his complexion had reddened, and no one would have guessed him only a year older than Clarence, whose shoulders did indeed reveal something of the desk, but whose features, though pale, were still fair and youthful.  The boy was another Clarence, not so much in compliment to his godfather as because it was the most elegant name in the family, and favoured an interesting belief, current among his mother’s friends, that the king had actually stood sponsor to the uncle.  Poor little man, his grandmother shut herself into the bookroom and cried, after her first sight of him.  He was a wretched, pinched morsel of humanity, though mamma and Emily detected wonderful resemblances; I never saw them, but then he inherited his mother’s repulsion towards me, and roared doubly at the sight of me.  My mother held that he was the victim of Selina’s dissipations and mismanagement of herself and him, and gave many matronly groans at his treatment by the smart, flighty nurse, who waged one continual warfare with the household.

Accustomed to absolute supremacy in domestic matters, it was very hard for my mother to have her counsels and experience set at naught, and, if she appealed to Griff, to find her notions treated with the polite deference he might have shown to a cottage dame.

A course of dinner-parties could not hinder her ladyship from finding Chantry House insufferably dull, ‘always like Sunday;’ and, when she found that we were given to Saints’ Day services, her pity and astonishment knew no bounds.  ‘It was all very well for a poor object like Edward,’ she held, ‘but as to Mr. Winslow and Clarence, did they go for the sake of example?  Though, to be sure, Clarence might be a Papist any day.’

Popery, instead of Methodism, was just beginning to be the bugbear set up for those whom the world held to be ultra-religious, and my mother was so far disturbed at our interest in what was termed Oxford theology that the warning would have alarmed her if it had come from any other quarter.  However, Lady Peacock was rather fond of Clarence, and entertained him with schemes for improving Chantry House when it should have descended to Griffith.  The mullion rooms were her special aversion, and were all to be swept away, together with the vaultings and the ruin—‘enough to give one the blues, if there were nothing else,’ she averred.

We really felt it to the credit of our country that Sir George Eastwood sent an invitation to an early dance to please his young daughters; and for this our visitors prolonged their stay.  My mother made Clarence go, that she might have some one to take care of her and Emily, since Griff was sure to be absorbed by his lady.  Emily had not been to a ball since those gay days in London with Ellen.  She shrank back from the contrast, and would have begged off; but she was told that she must submit; and though she said she felt immeasurably older than at that happy time, I believe she was not above being pleased with the pale pink satin dress and wreath of white jessamine, which my father presented to her, and in which, according to Martyn, she beat ‘Griff’s bird all to shivers.’

Clarence had grown much less bashful and embarrassed since the Tooke affair had given him a kind of position and a sense of not being a general disgrace.  He really was younger in some ways at five-and-twenty than at eighteen; he enjoyed dancing, and especially enjoyed the compliments upon our sister, whom in our usual fashion we viewed as the belle of the ball.  He was standing by my fire, telling me the various humours of the night, when a succession of shrieks ran through the house.  He dashed away to see what was the matter, and returned, in a few seconds, saying that Selina had seen some one in the garden, and neither she nor mamma would be satisfied without examination—‘though, of course, I know what it must be,’ he added, as he drew on his coat.

‘Bill, are you coming?’ said Griff at the door.  ‘You needn’t, if you don’t like it.  I bet it is your old friend.’

‘I’m coming!  I’m coming!  I’m sure it is,’ shouted Martyn from behind, with the inconsistent addition, ‘I’ve got my gun.’

‘Enough to dispose of any amount of robbers or phantoms either,’ observed Griff as they went forth by the back door, reinforced by Amos Bell with a lantern in one hand and a poker in the other.

My father was fortunately still asleep, and my mother came down to see whether I was frightened.

She said she had no patience with Selina, and had left her to Emily and her maid; but, before many words had been spoken, they all came creeping down after her, feeling safety in numbers, or perhaps in her entire fearlessness.  The report of a gun gave us all a shock, and elicited another scream or two.  My mother, hoping that no one was hurt, hastened into the hall, but only to meet Griff, hurrying in laughing to reassure us with the tidings that it was only Martyn, who had shot the old sun-dial by way of a robber; and he was presently followed by the others, Martyn rather crestfallen, but arguing with all his might that the sun-dial was exactly like a man; and my mother hurried every one off upstairs without further discussion.

Clarence was rather white, and when Martyn demanded, ‘Do you really think it was the ghost?  Fancy her selection of the bird!’ he gravely answered, ‘Martyn, boy, if it were, it is not a thing to speak of in that tone.  You had better go to bed.’

Martyn went off, somewhat awed.  Clarence was cold and shivering, and stood warming himself.  He was going to wind up his watch, but his hand shook, and I did it for him, noting the hour—twenty minutes past one.

It appeared that Selina, on going upstairs, recollected that she had left her purse in Griff’s sitting-room before going to dress, and had gone in quest of it.  She heard strange shouts and screams outside, and, going to one of the old windows, where the shutters were less unmanageable than elsewhere, she beheld a woman rushing towards the house pursued by at least a couple of men.  Filled with terror she had called out, and nearly fainted in Griff’s arms.

‘It agrees with all we have heard before,’ said Clarence, ‘the very day and hour!’

‘As Martyn said, the person is strange.’

‘Villagers, less concerned, have seen the like,’ he said; ‘and, indeed, all unconsciously poor Selina has cut away the hope of redress,’ he sighed.  ‘Poor, restless spirit! would that I could do anything for her.’

‘Let me ask, do you ever see her now?’

‘N-no, I suppose not; but whenever I am anxious or worried, the trouble takes her form in my dreams.’

Lady Peacock had soon extracted the ghost story from her husband, and, though she professed to be above the vulgar folly of belief in it, her nerves were so upset, she said, that nothing would have induced her to sleep another night in the house.  The rational theory on this occasion was that one of the maids must have stolen out to join in the Christmas entertainment at the Winslow Arms, and been pursued home by some tipsy revellers; but this explanation was not productive of goodwill between the mother and daughter-in-law, since mamma had from the first so entirely suspected Selina’s smart nurse as actually to have gone straight to the nursery on the plea of seeing whether the baby had been frightened.  The woman was found asleep—apparently so—said my mother, but all her clothes were in an untidy heap on the floor, which to my mother was proof conclusive that she had slipped into the house in the confusion, and settled herself there.  Had not my mother with her own eyes watched from the window her flirtations with the gardener, and was more evidence requisite to convict her?  Mamma entertained the hope that her proposal would be adopted of herself taking charge of her grandson, and fattening his poor little cheeks on our cows’ milk, while the rest of the party continued their round of visits.

Lady Peacock, however, treated it as a personal imputation that her nurse should be accused instead of any servant of Mrs. Winslow’s own, though, as Griff observed, not only character, but years and features might alike acquit them of any such doings; but even he could not laugh long, for it was no small vexation to him that such offence should have arisen between his mother and wife.  Of course there was no open quarrel—my mother had far too much dignity to allow it to come to that—but each said in private bitter things of the other, and my lady’s manner of declining to leave her baby at Chantry House was almost offensive.

Poor Griffith, who had been growing more like himself every day, tried in vain to smooth matters, and would have been very glad to leave his child to my mother’s management, though, of course, he acquitted the nurse of the midnight adventure.  He privately owned to us that he had no opinion of the woman, but he defended her to my mother, in whose eyes this was tantamount to accusing her own respectable maids, since it was incredible that any rational person could accept the phantom theory.

Gladly would he have been on better terms, for he had had to confess that his wife’s fortune had turned out to be much less than common report had stated, or than her style of living justified, and that his marriage had involved him in a sea of difficulties, so that he had to beg for a larger allowance, and for assistance in paying off debts.

The surrender of the London house and of some of the chief expenses were made conditions of such favours, and Griffith had assented gratefully when alone with his father; but after an interview with his wife, demonstrations were made that it was highly economical to have a house in town, and horses, carriages, and servants and that any change would be highly derogatory to the heir of Earlscombe and the sacred wishes of the late Sir Henry Peacock.

In fact, it was impressed on us that we were mere homely, countrified beings, who could not presume to dictate to her ladyship, but who had ill requited her condescension in deigning to beam upon us.