Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/The Herberts of Elfdale - Part 1

by Catherine Crowe

THE HERBERTS OF ELFDALE.
A STORY IN SIX CHAPTERS.

BY MRS. CROWE,
Author of “Susan Hopley,” “The Night-Side of Nature,” &c., &c.

CHAPTER I.

The world is so over-run with biographies, memoirs, and reminiscences, in these days, that a man should consider seriously before he adds to the number. I suppose, indeed, everybody does; he considers seriously what sum the publisher will give him for them; but that is not exactly the kind of consideration I wish to enforce. What I mean is that, before we intrude our private history on society, we should consider whether what we have to tell will be of any service to it.

I am now an old man, and if I open my lips after so many years’ silence, it is because, after much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that there is a useful lesson to be learnt from my story.

I was born at Elfdale, in Derbyshire, the seat of my father, Reginald Herbert, and amongst our collateral ancestors we reckon the famous Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and his no less famous brother George, after whom I am called. Elfdale being situated in one of the wildest parts of that romantic country, we had no very near neighbours, except Sir Ralph Wellwood, whose manor of Staughton adjoined our estate; and one of my earliest recollections is being flogged by my father for climbing to the top of the wall that alone divided the two parks, in order to kiss Clara Wellwood, a rosy fair-eyed child, somewhat younger than myself, whom one of the gardeners obligingly lifted up for the purpose, whilst the nursery-maids stood by laughing at our youthful flirtation, and declaring that we should make a charming couple, and ought to be married some day. I confess I thought so too; for although scarcely out of petticoats, I was, after my own manner, in love with Clara; and I believe I was about to make her serious proposals, when I was interrupted by a blow with a stick, and on turning round I saw my father, who had trod lightly over the turf and caught me flagranti delicto; for I had been forbidden to speak to Clara a dozen times, though I am afraid the prohibition was only attended to as long as I thought there was nobody on our side near enough to detect me.

I had some excuse, however, for this disobedience; for I was an only child, without play-fellows or companions, and I had the gloomiest home that ever poor boy was condemned to live in. I fancy my father must have been naturally a very austere man, although the circumstances that time has disclosed to me had doubtless augmented the severity of his character. Certain it is, that every creature in the house stood in awe of him, and nobody so much as my poor mother. My recollections of her, indeed, are very indistinct; but there is one scene, the memory of which the long years that have elapsed have not faded, though I must have been a mere infant when the circumstance occurred. I was sleeping in a small room within that in which my parents slept—I suppose it was the dressing-room. I remember that I was lying in a little bed with white curtains, and I have a vague recollection of seeing my father sitting before a glass in that room whilst his valet shaved him. But on the occasion in question I was awakened in the middle of the night—or at least it appeared to me so—by a light, and my father’s voice loud and in anger; and when I opened my eyes, I saw him standing with his back to me, and my mother kneeling at his feet, weeping violently. I think I hear her sobs now, and the plaintive voice in which she said, “Oh, Reginald, be merciful! Trample on me, if you will! Insult me as you do daily! Torture me in every way but one, and I’ll not complain; but, oh, don’t say I shall not be allowed to see him! It will break my heart; it will, indeed!”

What my father would have responded to this appeal I do not know, for, terrified by the scene, I began to howl so loud that they both forgot their own quarrel whilst they tried to pacify me.

“We should not come here,” said my father, bitterly, “nor make him the confidant of our shame. Go to sleep, my boy; go to sleep,” he added, drawing the clothes over me before he left the room. My mother, poor soul!—I sigh whilst I write it—bent over me and gave me a passionate kiss as she whispered, “Don’t be frightened, darling; it’s only a trifling misunderstanding betwixt papa and me; we shall be all right again to-morrow.”

I went to sleep; and when I awoke in the morning, although I remembered very well what had occurred, an instinctive delicacy I suppose prevented my ever mentioning the circumstance even to my mother, much less to the servants.

Of my mother’s person I have a very indistinct recollection; but when, many years afterwards, a garret was opened at Elfdale, which had always been used as a lumber-room, and kept locked, a picture of her, which in my early recollections hung over the mantel-piece in the dining-room, was found sown up in a packing-cloth. It was a beautiful thing, independent of its being, as I feel certain it was, an admirable likeness. She is represented standing before a mirror, trying the effect of some wild flowers in her hair; an open music-book, with the name of Rose Callender legibly inscribed on it, lies on the floor; whilst a straw hat tied with blue ribbons, and an open glass door with a glimpse of a green pasture beyond, indicate that she has just come in from the walk in which she has plucked them. A second door which opens into the interior of the house is also ajar, and a man’s head, with smiling face, which I should never have recognised to be that of my father, is looking in; the beautiful, blooming, fair-haired creature being, however, too much occupied with the lovely vision she was contemplating in the mirror to be aware of the presence of the intruder. I have since learnt that there was an especial interest attached to this picture, which was painted for my father before the marriage took place, in order to commemorate his first interview with his future wife. By what circumstances that interview was brought about, I shall relate by-and-by.

In that early portrait of my mother, I can discern a resemblance to what I was myself in my youth, and it is thus I judge of its fidelity; for, according to my own imperfect recollections, she was pale and thin, gliding about the house with a quiet, noiseless step, as if she did not wish to wake the echoes with her foot. The face of glad surprise looking in at the door is still more unlike the wan, haggard, austere countenance of my father as I remember it; and the contrast betwixt the picture and the image of the originals, as they live in my mind, tells a sad tale of woe, considering the few years that had elapsed betwixt the period of its execution and that from which I date my recollections.

I can recall another scene, though I cannot say whether it was antecedent or subsequent to the one above described as occurring in my bed-room—in which I know, although I cannot tell how I know it, that Sir Ralph Wellwood was an actor. It was in our own park, not far from the spot where I was detected kissing Clara, and consequently only divided by the wall from the Staughton grounds. I see it as a tableau—how we got to the place, I cannot tell; but my mother is leaning against a tree—I even know which tree it was—it is an elm; and I have lately had it surrounded by rails, on which I have placed an inscription, requesting my successors at Elfdale, whoever they may be, not to cut down that tree; although why I do this I scarcely know myself. Against this tree she is leaning; in tears, and holding her handkerchief to her eyes. A little distance from her stands a tall, handsome man, whom I recognise as Sir Ralph Wellwood; he is talking earnestly, I think beseechingly, and near him stands a lady—Lady Wellwood, I think. I had an imperfect comprehension at the time, that some matter of great importance was under discussion. I even understood that the conversation referred to my mother’s unhappiness; and that Sir Ralph was entreating Lady Wellwood to do something—what I know not. Neither do I know what followed; for there the curtain falls, and I see no more.

There is another person mixed up with these childish recollections—a lady who was always dressed in black, and who wore a strange, mysterious kind of cap upon her head. This was my grandmother, and the cap—which combined with the feelings of awe and dislike she inspired, made me fancy her something allied to a witch—was a widow’s cap of the most lugubrious fashion, which she wore from the period of her husband’s death to her own. To my childish eyes she looked preternaturally old, though she could not have been so in reality; but I believe she suffered from rheumatism, and that the joints of her fingers were considerably enlarged; which, not understanding it to be the result of disease, added to the mystery of her being, and augmented my terrors. There was a large arm-chair appropriated I to the especial use of this lady, which being of black leather, studded with brass nails, I associated with certain funereal notions connected with a hearse and a coffin—notions vague and undefined, but not the less chilling and depressing. When the servants told me that if I was naughty Old Bogie would have me, I immediately thought of my grandmother; and in moving about the room, I always gave her chair as wide a berth as I could, lest I should be arrested by the awful clutch of those mysterious looking fingers.

Of all days in the week I hated Sunday; for then, whilst my father and mother, and most of the servants, went to the church, which was some miles distant, I was left at home to keep company with this dreaded personage: who, besides reading prayers to me and the remnant of the establishment, taught me my Catechism and the Ten Commandments; but as I detested the teacher, and did not in the smallest degree understand the object of what she taught, as may be imagined my progress was not considerable. My father and mother always called her Ma’am; and I believe the latter feared, and probably disliked, her as I did. The former, on the contrary, was very much attached to her; and I fancy his character was formed on the model of hers, and that there was a strong sympathy between them.

I have no recollection of any other persons coming about the house; I do not think my father ever received company; and as the building we inhabited, although situated amidst the most romantic scenery in England, was itself extremely dismal, with low-roofed rooms, wainscoted with dark oak, and small, high windows in deep embrasures, that admitted but a scanty allowance of light, perhaps childhood has seldom had a less cheery home. There was a small village near us, through which I sometimes passed when driving in the carriage with my parents, and well I can recall the envy with which I looked at the dirty children playing in the mud! I thought how happy they must be! They had no Bogie at home, sitting on her funereal throne in dreadful majesty! They were not condemned to wear spotless clothes! They might make a litter and a noise if they pleased—I was never allowed to make a noise; and as for play, I had nobody to play with. I remember one of the maids, I suppose pitying my forlorn childhood, once brought me a ball from a neighbouring fair; but the next day, being Sunday, I unluckily dropped it from under my pinafore, where I was fingering it, whilst my grandmother was reading prayers, and it rolled over to her footstool. Nothing could exceed the good lady’s horror and indignation at such an instance of irreverence on my part; and, besides taking away the ball, she asked me what I supposed God Almighty could think of me. I could not tell, of course; but I know what I thought of him; I thought he was another Bogie, only less disagreeable than my grandmother because I did not see him. How could I think otherwise, when she informed me every Sunday that, if I did not learn my Catechism and obey the Ten Commandments, he would burn me in everlasting fire? Now, with respect to the Commandments, there were some of them I did not understand; and others I found it impossible to obey. I couldn’t keep the Sabbath holy, according to my grandmother’s views, for such poor amusements as I had I wanted as much on that day as on any other; whereas her injunctions were, that I was to be kept strictly to the above studies, and to spelling out a certain number of chapters in the Bible; read them I could not; for learning was presented to me in such an ungracious form, that I was a very backward child. Then with regard to coveting other people’s goods, I was conscious of coveting a vast variety of things, which I suppose arose from my having nothing I could call my own. I coveted the gardener’s rakes and spades, and wheelbarrows, and rollers, none of which I was permitted to touch. I eagerly coveted the donkey driven every Tuesday and Friday to the back door by the butcher’s boy. I coveted a flageolet that belonged to one of the footmen; and indeed this I broke the eighth commandment by ultimately stealing; and I longed madly for a beautiful Shetland pony, which sometimes passed the carriage when we were driving along the road to Castleton, with a happy-looking little boy on its back.

Then, against the fifth commandment, according to which I was enjoined to honour my father and my grandmother, I rebelled. If to fear was to honour, I certainly did my duty; but I was perfectly conscious that I hated them both, and that I would have liked to kill them, as I sometimes did the spiders and earwigs. With regard to my mother, who had disappeared from Elfdale before the period I now write of, I was not taught to honour her; and in the book from which I learnt my Catechism, the word grand was substituted in legible characters for the word mother.

The stealing of the flageolet was a dreadful business, for if I was unhappy till I got it, I was twenty times worse afterwards. The possession of it was torture; and whoever has read a whimsical article published some years since in The Household Words, detailing the feelings of a man supposed to have stolen the Koh-i-noor, will be able to conceive mine. It describes them exactly.

As the diamond was of no use to the possessor unless he could turn it into money, so was the flageolet of no use to me unless I could play upon it; or at least make the attempt to do so; of my success I had not a doubt. I thought the tunes were inside of it, and that I had only to blow into the holes and I should produce as good music as the footman. But how to do this and not be heard, was the question. In the house it was impossible; in the grounds, I never could tell that there was not a gardener or a gamekeeper, or even my father, within hearing; and beyond their boundaries I was not permitted to stray. I took it to bed with me every night, and when I heard the bell ring for family prayers, which was immediately before supper, I hid my head under the clothes, and ventured to utter a low squeak, which set me glowing with delight. With similar precautions by day, in some remote part of the grounds, after scrutinising every tree and bush, I would venture to put the cherished instrument to my lips; but although persuaded that I only required sufficient scope for my abilities to play a tune, yet such was my terror of discovery that I never could get beyond a single note, or at the most two, without stopping to look round and listen; so that the enjoyment of my stolen treasure was dreadfully circumscribed and disturbed.

 

CHAPTER II.

In the meantime, Thomas, who was considerably annoyed at the loss of his flageolet, had accused the groom, with whom he was not on good terms, of stealing it; and, at length, the accusation being repeated under aggravating circumstances, a quarrel arose, which led to a scuffle in which the groom was worsted; whereupon he gave his master warning, alleging his reasons for relinquishing his situation.

By this means the disappearance of the flageolet came to my father’s ears; and as Thomas declared his perfect conviction that it had been stolen by somebody in the house, since it had been taken out of his own bedroom—which, I am sorry to say, was quite true—the whole establishment was interrogated about it, the idea that we were harbouring a thief being exceedingly alarming to my grandmother. I was not present at this investigation, but my father had already asked me if I had seen anything of Thomas’s flageolet, and I had answered in the negative. It may, therefore, be imagined what my terrors were, and how anxiously I now desired to get rid of my Koh-i-noor, which was at that moment lying at the back of the drawer where I kept my lesson-books, which nobody ever opened but myself. For the future, however, I did not think that place of concealment sufficiently secure; and as I could not make up my mind either to burn the source of my woe, or throw it into the fish-pond, I buried it in a corner of the garden, where it might probably have remained to this day if I could have let it alone. But I could not. I was always hovering about the spot, and removing the earth that covered it, to make sure it was still there; till at last one of the gardeners, called Phibbs, who was an ill-natured fellow and my enemy, taking it in his head that I was sowing seeds, and trying to raise some flowers for myself, stuck his spade into the ground, and turned up the unfortunate flageolet.

Never shall I forget my fright when he grasped me with one iron hand and held up the broken instrument with the other, for the spade had struck it and snapt it in two. In vain I cried; in vain I prayed that he would not tell my father; he was not to be moved. I had often vexed him, no doubt; for having nothing to divert me, I was apt to indulge myself in a little mischief in the garden occasionally; and I am afraid my conscience was not quite clear with regard to the wall-fruit; but I had managed my depredations cunningly, and he had never been able to detect me. It was his turn now, however; and so he told me, as roaring and struggling he dragged me towards the house. How little people who make light of the troubles of children know what they are! It is true they are generally transitory; but, on the other hand, they are dreadfully intense. What anguish I suffered during our progress on that occasion! No criminal going to execution could suffer more! It happened fortunately, however, for me that on our way we had to pass the dairy, where Matty, the dairy-maid, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked lass, who was busy with her milk-pans, hearing my screams, came to the door to inquire what the matter was; whereupon, seizing hold of her apron, I clung to her like a shipwrecked mariner to his plank, conjuring her to save me; and as the man was endeavouring to recommend himself to her good graces at the time, she prevailed on him to let me off.

But I remember, poor thing, that it was on the condition of some concession on her part that he yielded, which I thought nothing of at the moment, being wholly engrossed with my own peril; but circumstances that occurred some time after I had left home recalled what had passed on that occasion strongly to my recollection. It was during my residence at Mr. Carter’s school that one day, whilst reading the papers, he said to me, “Isn’t your father’s place called Elfdale?” I answered that it was; whereupon he handed me the journal, saying, “Something has happened to one of the servants there—the dairy-maid; and there seems some suspicion of foul play.”

Poor Matty’s beneficent interference at that critical moment of my life—for heaven knows from what tortures moral and physical she had redeemed me by the concessions she had made to her brutal lover—instantly recurred to my mind, and I read with painful interest an account of the discovery of her body in the fish-pond after she had been some days missing. How she had come there remained uncertain. She might have fallen in or thrown herself in; but as she had exhibited no depression of spirits, the latter supposition seemed improbable. Then there was a small wound on the back of her head, that might have been either the result of a blow or of her striking against a stone at the bottom of the water. The event was rendered more distressing by the fact that she was on the point of marriage with a farmer’s son in the neighbourhood, and to whom she was very much attached, as he was to her; and as it was a better match than she could reasonably have expected, there seemed nothing connected with that affair likely to have led to the catastrophe.

There was no evidence adduced against anybody at the inquest, and the jury brought in a verdict of Accidental Death, in spite of which, boy as I was, my mind reverted to Phibbs the gardener, and the words I had heard pass betwixt him and poor Martha Penning at the door of the dairy. I remembered how savagely he had first responded to her intercession, and how she had appeased him by promising not to walk on the Sunday with somebody, whose name I did not hear. It occurred to me that perhaps this somebody was the young farmer, whose regard for Martha, which time had ripened, might then have been beginning to show itself, and it seemed highly probable that the jealousy which Phibbs had then exhibited might have been wrought to some extremity by the prospects of their approaching marriage. However, as I never heard from Elfdale, my grandmother being by this time dead and my father on the Continent, I did not even know whether the man was still living there, or indeed living at all, and my suspicions spread no farther than to one of my schoolfellows, till they were revived some weeks afterwards by a paragraph in one of the papers pointed out to me by Mr. Carter, whereby it appeared there had been a quarrel betwixt two of the servants at Elfdale, which had terminated in the death of one of them. They were both gardeners, and it was Phibbs who had killed his adversary by a blow under the left ear; nevertheless, as it was given in fair fight, and the deceased was considered to have led on to the catastrophe by a series of aggravating taunts and insults in reference to the fate of Martha Penning, the survivor got off with a year’s imprisonment. But it was the source of the quarrel, as it was revealed at the inquest, that interested me, and re-awakened my suspicions, which had evidently been shared by poor Goring, who had got his quietus for giving them utterance.

It appeared that, my father being absent, there was but a small establishment at Elfdale, just enough to keep the place in order. The servants retained were left on board wages, with liberty of using the vegetables out of the garden, and the pike out of the pond, at the discretion of the head gardener, the latter privilege being granted to prevent the pike getting too much ahead of the other fish, which they were apt to devour. As the housekeeper had a savoury way of dressing the pike, the dish was in high favour, and with nobody more than with Phibbs, who had been known to give up going to a flower-show at Buxton, where some of his own productions were to be exhibited, because just as he was setting off, dressed in his Sunday attire, he was told there was a fine pike for dinner. In spite of this decided and acknowledged predilection for the fish, however, he had latterly declined to eat it. If this refusal had only dated from the period of poor Matty’s body being found in the pond, he would only have been doing what all the rest did—the fish, since that painful discovery, being left to eat each other if they liked—but the remarkable feature in the case was, that this squeamishness on the part of Phibbs had been nearly simultaneous with the poor girl’s disappearance. It appears to have been Goring who first remarked this coincidence; and, when the body was found, he called the attention of the other servants to the circumstance. Whether the others drew any conclusion from it or not remained doubtful. If they did, they had the discretion to keep their thoughts to themselves; but Goring, more impetuous, or possibly from being an out-door servant having other reasons for suspicion, could not “keep his tongue quiet,” as one of the witnesses said, when examined before the Coroner with respect to Matty’s death. He would be continually throwing something in Phibbs’s teeth about the pike, taunting him with turning as white as a cauliflower whenever it was brought to table.

It came out, in the course of the inquiry, that all the witnesses had observed the same particularity, and that Phibbs had even become so ill as to be obliged to leave the room, one day, when out of jest, they had forced some of the fish upon his plate. They also unanimously agreed that this distaste had shown itself, about the period the dairy-maid was missed, and at a time that nobody had the slightest suspicion of her being in the pond.

Phibbs admitted at once that he had taken a dislike to the dish, assigning as a reason, that the last time he had eaten it, possibly from partaking of it too fully, it had made him very ill. “He thought he’d got a surfeit,” he said; and it was admitted by everybody that he had been for some time looking unwell, and that his appetite was not what it used to be.

Whether Goring could have thrown any more light on the affair, had he been alive, there is no saying. As it was, the mystery of poor Matty’s death remained unrevealed; and Phibbs escaped with the penalty of a homicide, instead of a murder, which in my heart I believed him to deserve.

I, however, kept my thoughts to myself, not choosing to confess the story of the flageolet to Mr. Carter, lest it should reach my father’s ears.

To return from this digression to the course of my life at Elfdale, I fancy the dull and even tenor of it can have furnished very little worth relating; for scarcely an incident survives in my memory, except those trifling ones I have mentioned; the uniformity of our existence, however, was interrupted by two events of more importance, the last of which completely changed the current of mine. The first of these was the sudden disappearance of my mother from Elfdale; to me it was actually a disappearance, for I knew neither the manner nor the moment of her going; I had observed no preparations for her departure; nor did I hear any comments made upon her absence after she was gone. As, I fancy, she had no authority in the house, my grandmother having usurped it all, everything went on as before. Her name was never mentioned, at least in my presence; I suppose the servants had been forbidden to mention it; and I only gradually learnt to understand that she was really gone, and that her return was not looked for. Of my father and grandmother I never asked questions; but when nearly a whole day had passed without my seeing her, I said to one of the maids:

“Where’s mamma?”

“I don’t know, sir!” was the answer; and as every time I made the inquiry the response was the same, whilst the person I addressed, whoever it might be, made off from me as fast as he or she could, I soon ceased to trouble them, or myself, about the matter; but it did not escape me that her picture, which hung in the dining-room, was removed, and replaced by a large landscape.

What a child hears or sees nothing of he soon forgets; at least that was the case with me: and indeed the departure of my mother made little change in my daily life; she having, I suspect, been under considerable restraints even in regard to her intercourse with me. In short, my grandmother had contrived completely to place herself betwixt us; and although she had certainly not usurped my affections, she had completely arrested them in their natural course, which ought to have been towards my mother, who, I believe, to the utmost of her power was kind to me, though small, indeed, was that power. But she was, I fancy, so depressed and subdued; so snubbed and neglected; so tabooed, in short, whilst at the same time she was conscious of being surrounded by spies, and rigidly overlooked, that she had not the means of awakening my affection or gratitude by the bestowal of any substantial indulgences; whilst I, accustomed to see her treated with this kind of indignity and disrespect, insensibly grew up to look upon her, as she glided silently about the house, with indifference, perhaps tinctured a little with contempt.

(See p. 452.)

The reader will here probably express his disgust at my want of feeling, and call me a very unamiable child. I dare say I was; and certainly that was the opinion of my father and my grandmother; but be pleased, gentle reader, to recollect that there are considerable excuses to be made for a miserable little urchin brought up by two such austere people as those I have described; and on a system from which love, either to nun or God, was wholly excluded. The truth is, that I feared and, therefore, disliked almost everybody about me, except my mother, to whom, as I have hinted, I was, at the best, indifferent. The servants, some of them, might possibly have shown me favour; but they were forbidden to speak to me except for necessary purposes; besides, I was so completely cowed that they could never have relied on my fidelity. I should have betrayed them the moment my grandmother clutched me.

I felt, in short, as if all mankind was in a conspiracy, and I was the wretched victim of their tyranny; whilst behind them loomed the terrible figure of God, whom fancy pictured as a frightful, gigantic man, with hands like my grandmother's, wherewith he was waiting to seize and cast me into the fires of hell.

My mother had been long gone, and I had nearly forgotten her existence; when one day that I had been saying a lesson to my grandmother, which, as usual, I did not know, she sent me with my book to learn it in the corner of the room. Whilst I was sobbing and snivelling over the dog's-eared leaves, I suddenly heard a noise behind me, which causing me to turn my head, I with amazement beheld her stretched her length upon the floor. She had either fallen out of her chair, or tript in attempting to rise—I imagined the latter; and expecting to see her get upon her legs again, I did not venture to leave my corner for some minutes, till observing that she continued to lie there, I cautiously stole towards the spot in order to survey her a little closer. She lay on her breast, with her arms stretched out, her hands trying to clutch the carpet, and her head raised, so that three parts of her face were visible; her eyes were open, and I believe she saw me; whilst her lips moved with an ineffectual effort to speak. There was a gurgling sound from her throat; but no words. I stood transfixed, staring at her; half-frightened and half-pleased; for it occurred to me that she was going to die—or as I termed the phrase in my own mind, that “there was going to be an end of her—” and the idea delighted me. I had even a vague notion that she was appealing to me for assistance; and that she wanted me to ring the bell, or call the servants; but I did neither. Presently, a convulsion passed over her features, and she struggled so much, that thinking she would succeed in rising from the floor, I rushed to the door that I might be ready to make my escape; but it was the last struggle, which ended by her falling over on her back. When I saw that she lay quite still, I approached her again; and after watching her for a minute or two, I laid my finger on her cheek; and finding she took no notice of that liberty, I proceeded to greater; pinching her nose, and poking at her with the toe of my boot. Shocking! as the reader will exclaim; but “as ye sow ye shall reap;” I hated her; and I had no respect for death. I was too ignorant to have any; and my heart was too contracted. All I felt was triumph to think that I had the best of her now. She could not clutch me with those awful hands, nor make me learn the Catechism and the Ten Commandments any more. I jumped for joy; and it was whilst I was in the midst of expressing my satisfaction in a fandango, that my father entered the room, and I felt his fingers on my collar; but immediately afterwards, perceiving his mother on the floor, he flung me off, and was kneeling beside her, calling on her name in an agony of grief, and giving vent to the strongest expressions of despair; for he perceived at once that she was gone beyond recall; and although medical assistance was summoned, it was but a form. Death was too plainly written on her face to leave room for a hope.

From this time I saw very little of my father. What his feelings might have previously been towards me I do not know, but doubtless his affection was not augmented by the manner in which he found me testifying my satisfaction at a catastrophe which, I believe, he looked upon as the greatest misfortune that it remained for fate to inflict.

If the house was dull before, it was twenty times more so now. The bereaved son shut himself up in his library to moan unseen, and the servants, under the influence of the housekeeper and butler, moved about on tiptoe, and scarcely spoke above their breaths, that is to say, whilst they were within hearing of these functionaries. Out of doors there was a good deal of larking and fun, as I had occasion to see; for my father, unused I suppose to think of me, having given no directions to the contrary, I was left to roam about the grounds at pleasure. In short, as I had expected, I found my situation considerably ameliorated by what had occurred, and many a time I clapped my hands and kicked up my heels for joy that old Bogie was dead.

Her funeral was splendid—as the undertakers’ phrase is—and, no doubt, it cost a great deal of money. I was arrayed in a new suit of sables to attend it, and rode in the same carriage as my father. This was the first time I had seen him since he interrupted my fandango, and I felt dreadfully alarmed; but he was too much absorbed in his grief to think of me or my misdemeanors just then. Child as I was, I observed how much he was altered. He looked dreadfully ill; and—shall I confess it—I felt a hope that he was going to die too.

On the third day after this, I was informed by the servant who assisted me to dress that I was going to be sent away to school. I had a very obscure notion of what school was, and the idea of being sent away anywhere being agreeable, I felt quite elated at the news. I ate my breakfast in a pleasing state of excitement unknown to me before, till it being announced that the carriage was at the door, I was informed that I must go and bid papa good bye. A chill came over me at the thought of it, and yet I am inclined to think, now, that he had not treated me so very ill, nor even, perhaps, so very harshly; but, on the other hand, he never gave many evidences of affection. He supported my grandmother in whatever she chose to do, and I believe fancied she could never be wrong; and then his whole demeanor, as well as his countenance, were so sombre, dry, and austere, that it was impossible he could inspire a child like me with any other sentiments than those of fear and dislike.

When I went in, or rather was pushed into the library, he was sitting at the opposite end of it, at a table strewn with letters and papers. Some were tied up in packets, bound with red tape, and sealed. A basket filled with the fragments of those he had torn up stood beside him. He held one in his hand, which he was reading, when I entered. The servant, as he softly closed the green baize door behind me, gave me another push, indicating that I was to go forward, but I was in no hurry to advance, and, as the room was thickly carpeted, and everything since my grandmother’s death was performed in the most piano key, my father remained unconscious of my presence. I did not then know whether that was the case, or whether he did not choose to see me, so I stood still, scarcely breathing, with my eyes fixed upon his face, not wishing to accelerate the awful moment, and feeling something as a mouse might do that was shut up in the cage of a rattlesnake.

Presently, to my surprise, I saw the tears—big tears—begin to stream over his wan cheeks and fall upon the paper. He brushed them away and went on reading; but they gathered again and again. I had never seen any grown person weep before. I thought, indeed, nobody ever did weep but me. I was amazed and moved. I suppose there was a vague feeling, an unconscious estimate, of what an enormous amount of grief that must be which could have loosed the arid fountain of those tears. As his passion grew, my breast began to heave, till at length, when he dropt the letter on the table, and covering his face with his hands, gave free vent to his anguish in convulsive sobs, I, too, lifted up my wailing voice.

“Child!” exclaimed my father, uncovering his face, and suddenly rising from his seat, “What brings you here? Oh! I forgot. Come here, George.” And when he saw I did not move, he added, “Come here, my boy!” Then I went. “I’m going to send you to school,” he continued, placing one hand on my head, and grasping my arm with the other. “You’re going to Mr. Carter’s at Exeter; he’s a very good man, and I daresay you’ll be very happy there; that is, if you learn to be a good boy. Will you try?”

I sobbed out that I would, for somehow my heart was thawed, and for the first time in my life I was shedding tears neither of passion nor of fear, though what the exact source of them was I did not know then, nor do I now.

I imagine my father thought I was crying at leaving home and him, for he was certainly touched, and he spoke to me with a tenderness I was quite unaccustomed to. He gave me a great deal of good advice, and two guineas out of his purse that lay full of gold upon the table—the first money I ever had in my life.

I confess that from the moment he placed the gold in my hand my tears were dried, and I listened to no more of the advice; nor do I recollect how my father took leave of me, nor anything that followed. I only know that one of the servants travelled with me, and that in due time we reached Mr. Carter’s school at Exeter.

 

(To be continued.)