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Title: Curious, if True
       Strange Tales

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell

Release Date: March 21, 2008 [EBook #24879]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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CURIOUS, IF TRUE


STRANGE TALES



Mrs Gaskell




Contents


The Old Nurse's Story        1

The Poor Clare              26

Lois the Witch              88

The Grey Woman             187

Curious, if True           249




THE OLD NURSE'S STORY


You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child;
and I daresay you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up
in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village
school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if
there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty
proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up, and spoke
of me being a good girl at my needle, and a steady, honest girl, and
one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor. I
thought I should like nothing better than to serve the pretty young
lady, who was blushing as deep as I was, as she spoke of the coming
baby, and what I should have to do with it. However, I see you don't
care so much for this part of my story, as for what you think is to
come, so I'll tell you at once. I was engaged and settled at the
parsonage before Miss Rosamond (that was the baby, who is now your
mother) was born. To be sure, I had little enough to do with her when
she came, for she was never out of her mother's arms, and slept by her
all night long; and proud enough was I sometimes when missis trusted
her to me. There never was such a baby before or since, though you've
all of you been fine enough in your turns; but for sweet, winning ways,
you've none of you come up to your mother. She took after her mother,
who was a real lady born; a Miss Furnivall, a grand-daughter of Lord
Furnivall's, in Northumberland. I believe she had neither brother nor
sister, and had been brought up in my lord's family till she had
married your grandfather, who was just a curate, son to a shopkeeper in
Carlisle--but a clever, fine gentleman as ever was--and one who was a
right-down hard worker in his parish, which was very wide, and
scattered all abroad over the Westmoreland Fells. When your mother,
little Miss Rosamond, was about four or five years old, both her
parents died in a fortnight--one after the other. Ah! that was a sad
time. My pretty young mistress and me was looking for another baby,
when my master came home from one of his long rides, wet and tired, and
took the fever he died of; and then she never held up her head again,
but just lived to see her dead baby, and have it laid on her breast,
before she sighed away her life. My mistress had asked me, on her
death-bed, never to leave Miss Rosamond; but if she had never spoken a
word, I would have gone with the little child to the end of the world.

The next thing, and before we had well stilled our sobs, the executors
and guardians came to settle the affairs. They were my poor young
mistress's own cousin, Lord Furnivall, and Mr. Esthwaite, my master's
brother, a shopkeeper in Manchester; not so well to do then as he was
afterwards, and with a large family rising about him. Well! I don't
know if it were their settling, or because of a letter my mistress
wrote on her death-bed to her cousin, my lord; but somehow it was
settled that Miss Rosamond and me were to go to Furnivall Manor House,
in Northumberland, and my lord spoke as if it had been her mother's
wish that she should live with his family, and as if he had no
objections, for that one or two more or less could make no difference
in so grand a household. So, though that was not the way in which I
should have wished the coming of my bright and pretty pet to have been
looked at--who was like a sunbeam in any family, be it never so
grand--I was well pleased that all the folks in the Dale should stare
and admire, when they heard I was going to be young lady's maid at my
Lord Furnivall's at Furnivall Manor.

But I made a mistake in thinking we were to go and live where my lord
did. It turned out that the family had left Furnivall Manor House fifty
years or more. I could not hear that my poor young mistress had never
been there, though she had been brought up in the family; and I was
sorry for that, for I should have liked Miss Rosamond's youth to have
passed where her mother's had been.

My lord's gentleman, from whom I asked as many questions as I durst,
said that the Manor House was at the foot of the Cumberland Fells, and
a very grand place; that an old Miss Furnivall, a great-aunt of my
lord's, lived there, with only a few servants; but that it was a very
healthy place, and my lord had thought that it would suit Miss Rosamond
very well for a few years, and that her being there might perhaps amuse
his old aunt.

I was bidden by my lord to have Miss Rosamond's things ready by a
certain day. He was a stern, proud man, as they say all the Lords
Furnivall were; and he never spoke a word more than was necessary. Folk
did say he had loved my young mistress; but that, because she knew that
his father would object, she would never listen to him, and married Mr.
Esthwaite; but I don't know. He never married, at any rate. But he
never took much notice of Miss Rosamond; which I thought he might have
done if he had cared for her dead mother. He sent his gentleman with us
to the Manor House, telling him to join him at Newcastle that same
evening; so there was no great length of time for him to make us known
to all the strangers before he, too, shook us off; and we were left,
two lonely young things (I was not eighteen) in the great old Manor
House. It seems like yesterday that we drove there. We had left our own
dear parsonage very early, and we had both cried as if our hearts would
break, though we were travelling in my lord's carriage, which I thought
so much of once. And now it was long past noon on a September day, and
we stopped to change horses for the last time at a little smoky town,
all full of colliers and miners. Miss Rosamond had fallen asleep, but
Mr. Henry told me to waken her, that she might see the park and the
Manor House as we drove up. I thought it rather a pity; but I did what
he bade me, for fear he should complain of me to my lord. We had left
all signs of a town, or even a village, and were then inside the gates
of a large wild park--not like the parks here in the south, but with
rocks, and the noise of running water, and gnarled thorn-trees, and old
oaks, all white and peeled with age.

The road went up about two miles, and then we saw a great and stately
house, with many trees close around it, so close that in some places
their branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew; and some
hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of the
place;--to lop the wood, or to keep the moss-covered carriage-way in
order. Only in front of the house all was clear. The great oval drive
was without a weed; and neither tree nor creeper was allowed to grow
over the long, many-windowed front; at both sides of which a wing
protected, which were each the ends of other side fronts; for the
house, although it was so desolate, was even grander than I expected.
Behind it rose the Fells; which seemed unenclosed and bare enough; and
on the left hand of the house, as you stood facing it, was a little,
old-fashioned flower-garden, as I found out afterwards. A door opened
out upon it from the west front; it had been scooped out of the thick,
dark wood for some old Lady Furnivall; but the branches of the great
forest-trees had grown and overshadowed it again, and there were very
few flowers that would live there at that time.

When we drove up to the great front entrance, and went into the hall, I
thought we would be lost--it was so large, and vast and grand. There
was a chandelier all of bronze, hung down from the middle of the
ceiling; and I had never seen one before, and looked at it all in
amaze. Then, at one end of the hall, was a great fire-place, as large
as the sides of the houses in my country, with massy andirons and dogs
to hold the wood; and by it were heavy, old-fashioned sofas. At the
opposite end of the hall, to the left as you went in--on the western
side--was an organ built into the wall, and so large that it filled up
the best part of that end. Beyond it, on the same side, was a door; and
opposite, on each side of the fire-place, were also doors leading to
the east front; but those I never went through as long as I stayed in
the house, so I can't tell you what lay beyond.

The afternoon was closing in, and the hall, which had no fire lighted
in it, looked dark and gloomy, but we did not stay there a moment. The
old servant, who had opened the door for us, bowed to Mr. Henry, and
took us in through the door at the further side of the great organ, and
led us through several smaller halls and passages into the west
drawing-room, where he said that Miss Furnivall was sitting. Poor
little Miss Rosamond held very tight to me, as if she were scared and
lost in that great place; and as for myself, I was not much better. The
west drawing-room was very cheerful-looking, with a warm fire in it,
and plenty of good, comfortable furniture about. Miss Furnivall was an
old lady not far from eighty, I should think, but I do not know. She
was thin and tall, and had a face as full of fine wrinkles as if they
had been drawn all over it with a needle's point. Her eyes were very
watchful, to make up, I suppose, for her being so deaf as to be obliged
to use a trumpet. Sitting with her, working at the same great piece of
tapestry, was Mrs. Stark, her maid and companion, and almost as old as
she was. She had lived with Miss Furnivall ever since they both were
young, and now she seemed more like a friend than a servant; she looked
so cold, and grey, and stony, as if she had never loved or cared for
any one; and I don't suppose she did care for any one, except her
mistress; and, owing to the great deafness of the latter, Mrs. Stark
treated her very much as if she were a child. Mr. Henry gave some
message from my lord, and then he bowed good-by to us all,--taking no
notice of my sweet little Miss Rosamond's outstretched hand--and left
us standing there, being looked at by the two old ladies through their
spectacles.

I was right glad when they rung for the old footman who had shown us in
at first, and told him to take us to our rooms. So we went out of that
great drawing-room and into another sitting-room, and out of that, and
then up a great flight of stairs, and along a broad gallery--which was
something like a library, having books all down one side, and windows
and writing-tables all down the other--till we came to our rooms, which
I was not sorry to hear were just over the kitchens; for I began to
think I should be lost in that wilderness of a house. There was an old
nursery, that had been used for all the little lords and ladies long
ago, with a pleasant fire burning in the grate, and the kettle boiling
on the hob, and tea-things spread out on the table; and out of that
room was the night-nursery, with a little crib for Miss Rosamond close
to my bed. And old James called up Dorothy, his wife, to bid us
welcome; and both he and she were so hospitable and kind, that
by-and-by Miss Rosamond and me felt quite at home; and by the time tea
was over, she was sitting on Dorothy's knee, and chattering away as
fast as her little tongue could go. I soon found out that Dorothy was
from Westmoreland, and that bound her and me together, as it were; and
I would never wish to meet with kinder people than were old James and
his wife. James had lived pretty nearly all his life in my lord's
family, and thought there was no one so grand as they. He even looked
down a little on his wife; because, till he had married her, she had
never lived in any but a farmer's household. But he was very fond of
her, as well he might be. They had one servant under them, to do all
the rough work. Agnes they called her; and she and me, and James and
Dorothy, with Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark, made up the family; always
remembering my sweet little Miss Rosamond! I used to wonder what they
had done before she came, they thought so much of her now. Kitchen and
drawing-room, it was all the same. The hard, sad Miss Furnivall, and
the cold Mrs. Stark, looked pleased when she came fluttering in like a
bird, playing and pranking hither and thither, with a continual murmur,
and pretty prattle of gladness. I am sure, they were sorry many a time
when she flitted away into the kitchen, though they were too proud to
ask her to stay with them, and were a little surprised at her taste;
though to be sure, as Mrs. Stark said, it was not to be wondered at,
remembering what stock her father had come of. The great, old rambling
house was a famous place for little Miss Rosamond. She made expeditions
all over it, with me at her heels; all, except the east wing, which was
never opened, and whither we never thought of going. But in the western
and northern part was many a pleasant room; full of things that were
curiosities to us, though they might not have been to people who had
seen more. The windows were darkened by the sweeping boughs of the
trees, and the ivy which had overgrown them; but, in the green gloom,
we could manage to see old china jars and carved ivory boxes, and great
heavy books, and, above all, the old pictures!

Once, I remember, my darling would have Dorothy go with us to tell us
who they all were; for they were all portraits of some of my lord's
family, though Dorothy could not tell us the names of every one. We had
gone through most of the rooms, when we came to the old state
drawing-room over the hall, and there was a picture of Miss Furnivall;
or, as she was called in those days, Miss Grace, for she was the
younger sister. Such a beauty she must have been! but with such a set,
proud look, and such scorn looking out of her handsome eyes, with her
eyebrows just a little raised, as if she wondered how anyone could have
the impertinence to look at her, and her lip curled at us, as we stood
there gazing. She had a dress on, the like of which I had never seen
before, but it was all the fashion when she was young; a hat of some
soft white stuff like beaver, pulled a little over her brows, and a
beautiful plume of feathers sweeping round it on one side; and her gown
of blue satin was open in front to a quilted white stomacher.

'Well, to be sure!' said I, when I had gazed my fill. 'Flesh is grass,
they do say; but who would have thought that Miss Furnivall had been
such an out-and-out beauty, to see her now.'

'Yes,' said Dorothy. 'Folks change sadly. But if what my master's
father used to say was true, Miss Furnivall, the elder sister, was
handsomer than Miss Grace. Her picture is here somewhere; but, if I
show it you, you must never let on, even to James, that you have seen
it. Can the little lady hold her tongue, think you?' asked she.

I was not so sure, for she was such a little sweet, bold, open-spoken
child, so I set her to hide herself; and then I helped Dorothy to turn
a great picture, that leaned with its face towards the wall, and was
not hung up as the others were. To be sure, it beat Miss Grace for
beauty; and, I think, for scornful pride, too, though in that matter it
might be hard to choose. I could have looked at it an hour, but Dorothy
seemed half frightened at having shown it to me, and hurried it back
again, and bade me run and find Miss Rosamond, for that there were some
ugly places about the house, where she should like ill for the child to
go. I was a brave, high-spirited girl, and thought little of what the
old woman said, for I liked hide-and-seek as well as any child in the
parish; so off I ran to find my little one.

As winter drew on, and the days grew shorter, I was sometimes almost
certain that I heard a noise as if someone was playing on the great
organ in the hall. I did not hear it every evening; but, certainly, I
did very often, usually when I was sitting with Miss Rosamond, after I
had put her to bed, and keeping quite still and silent in the bedroom.
Then I used to hear it booming and swelling away in the distance. The
first night, when I went down to my supper, I asked Dorothy who had
been playing music, and James said very shortly that I was a gowk to
take the wind soughing among the trees for music; but I saw Dorothy
look at him very fearfully, and Bessy, the kitchen-maid, said something
beneath her breath, and went quite white. I saw they did not like my
question, so I held my peace till I was with Dorothy alone, when I knew
I could get a good deal out of her. So, the next day, I watched my
time, and I coaxed and asked her who it was that played the organ; for
I knew that it was the organ and not the wind well enough, for all I
had kept silence before James. But Dorothy had had her lesson, I'll
warrant, and never a word could I get from her. So then I tried Bessy,
though I had always held my head rather above her, as I was evened to
James and Dorothy, and she was little better than their servant. So she
said I must never, never tell; and if ever I told, I was never to say
_she_ had told me; but it was a very strange noise, and she had heard
it many a time, but most of all on winter nights, and before storms;
and folks did say it was the old lord playing on the great organ in the
hall, just as he used to do when he was alive; but who the old lord
was, or why he played, and why he played on stormy winter evenings in
particular, she either could not or would not tell me. Well! I told you
I had a brave heart; and I thought it was rather pleasant to have that
grand music rolling about the house, let who would be the player; for
now it rose above the great gusts of wind, and wailed and triumphed
just like a living creature, and then it fell to a softness most
complete, only it was always music, and tunes, so it was nonsense to
call it the wind. I thought at first, that it might be Miss Furnivall
who played, unknown to Bessy; but one day, when I was in the hall by
myself, I opened the organ and peeped all about it and around it, as I
had done to the organ in Crosthwaite church once before, and I saw it
was all broken and destroyed inside, though it looked so brave and
fine; and then, though it was noon-day, my flesh began to creep a
little, and I shut it up, and run away pretty quickly to my own bright
nursery; and I did not like hearing the music for some time after that,
any more than James and Dorothy did. All this time Miss Rosamond was
making herself more and more beloved. The old ladies liked her to dine
with them at their early dinner. James stood behind Miss Furnivall's
chair, and I behind Miss Rosamond's all in state; and after dinner, she
would play about in a corner of the great drawing-room as still as any
mouse, while Miss Furnivall slept, and I had my dinner in the kitchen.
But she was glad enough to come to me in the nursery afterwards; for,
as she said, Miss Furnivall was so sad, and Mrs. Stark so dull; but she
and I were merry enough; and by-and-by, I got not to care for that
weird rolling music, which did one no harm, if we did not know where it
came from.

That winter was very cold. In the middle of October the frosts began,
and lasted many, many weeks. I remember one day, at dinner, Miss
Furnivall lifted up her sad, heavy eyes, and said to Mrs. Stark, 'I am
afraid we shall have a terrible winter,' in a strange kind of meaning
way. But Mrs. Stark pretended not to hear, and talked very loud of
something else. My little lady and I did not care for the frost; not
we! As long as it was dry, we climbed up the steep brows behind the
house, and went up on the Fells, which were bleak and bare enough, and
there we ran races in the fresh, sharp air; and once we came down by a
new path, that took us past the two old gnarled holly-trees, which grew
about half-way down by the east side of the house. But the days grew
shorter and shorter, and the old lord, if it was he, played away, more
and more stormily and sadly, on the great organ. One Sunday
afternoon--it must have been towards the end of November--I asked
Dorothy to take charge of little missy when she came out of the
drawing-room, after Miss Furnivall had had her nap; for it was too cold
to take her with me to church, and yet I wanted to go. And Dorothy was
glad enough to promise, and was so fond of the child, that all seemed
well; and Bessy and I set off very briskly, though the sky hung heavy
and black over the white earth, as if the night had never fully gone
away, and the air, though still, was very biting and keen.

'We shall have a fall of snow,' said Bessy to me. And sure enough, even
while we were in church, it came down thick, in great large flakes,--so
thick, it almost darkened the windows. It had stopped snowing before we
came out, but it lay soft, thick and deep beneath our feet, as we
tramped home. Before we got to the hall, the moon rose, and I think it
was lighter then--what with the moon, and what with the white dazzling
snow--than it had been when we went to church, between two and three
o'clock. I have not told you that Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark never
went to church; they used to read the prayers together, in their quiet,
gloomy way; they seemed to feel the Sunday very long without their
tapestry-work to be busy at. So when I went to Dorothy in the kitchen,
to fetch Miss Rosamond and take her upstairs with me, I did not much
wonder when the old woman told me that the ladies had kept the child
with them, and that she had never come to the kitchen, as I had bidden
her, when she was tired of behaving pretty in the drawing-room. So I
took off my things and went to find her, and bring her to her supper in
the nursery. But when I went into the best drawing-room, there sat the
two old ladies, very still and quiet, dropping out a word now and then,
but looking as if nothing so bright and merry as Miss Rosamond had ever
been near them. Still I thought she might be hiding from me; it was one
of her pretty ways,--and that she had persuaded them to look as if they
knew nothing about her; so I went softly peeping under this sofa, and
behind that chair, making believe I was sadly frightened at not finding
her.

'What's the matter, Hester?' said Mrs. Stark, sharply. I don't know if
Miss Furnivall had seen me, for, as I told you, she was very deaf, and
she sat quite still, idly staring into the fire, with her hopeless
face. 'I'm only looking for my little Rosy Posy,' replied I, still
thinking that the child was there, and near me, though I could not see
her.

'Miss Rosamond is not here,' said Mrs. Stark. 'She went away, more than
an hour ago, to find Dorothy.' And she, too, turned and went on looking
into the fire.

My heart sank at this, and I began to wish I had never left my darling.
I went back to Dorothy and told her. James was gone out for the day,
but she, and me, and Bessy took lights, and went up into the nursery
first; and then we roamed over the great, large house, calling and
entreating Miss Rosamond to come out of her hiding-place, and not
frighten us to death in that way. But there was no answer; no sound.

'Oh!' said I, at last, 'can she have got into the east wing and hidden
there?'

But Dorothy said it was not possible, for that she herself had never
been in there; that the doors were always locked, and my lord's steward
had the keys, she believed; at any rate, neither she nor James had ever
seen them: so I said I would go back, and see if, after all, she was
not hidden in the drawing-room, unknown to the old ladies; and if I
found her there, I said, I would whip her well for the fright she had
given me; but I never meant to do it. Well, I went back to the west
drawing-room, and I told Mrs. Stark we could not find her anywhere, and
asked for leave to look all about the furniture there, for I thought
now that she might have fallen asleep in some warm, hidden corner; but
no! we looked--Miss Furnivall got up and looked, trembling all
over--and she was nowhere there; then we set off again, every one in
the house, and looked in all the places we had searched before, but we
could not find her. Miss Furnivall shivered and shook so much, that
Mrs. Stark took her back into the warm drawing-room; but not before
they had made me promise to bring her to them when she was found.
Well-a-day! I began to think she never would be found, when I bethought
me to look into the great front court, all covered with snow. I was
upstairs when I looked out; but, it was such clear moonlight, I could
see, quite plain, two little footprints, which might be traced from the
hall-door and round the corner of the east wing. I don't know how I got
down, but I tugged open the great stiff hall-door, and, throwing the
skirt of my gown over my head for a cloak, I ran out. I turned the east
corner, and there a black shadow fell on the snow; but when I came
again into the moonlight, there were the little foot-marks going up--up
to the Fells. It was bitter cold; so cold, that the air almost took the
skin off my face as I ran; but I ran on crying to think how my poor
little darling must be perished and frightened. I was within sight of
the holly-trees, when I saw a shepherd coming down the hill, bearing
something in his arms wrapped in his maud. He shouted to me, and asked
me if I had lost a bairn; and, when I could not speak for crying, he
bore towards me, and I saw my wee bairnie, lying still, and white, and
stiff in his arms, as if she had been dead. He told me he had been up
the Fells to gather in his sheep, before the deep cold of night came
on, and that under the holly-trees (black marks on the hill-side, where
no other bush was for miles around) he had found my little lady--my
lamb--my queen--my darling--stiff and cold in the terrible sleep which
is frost-begotten. Oh! the joy and the tears of having her in my arms
once again! for I would not let him carry her; but took her, maud and
all, into my own arms, and held her near my own warm neck and heart,
and felt the life stealing slowly back again into her little gentle
limbs. But she was still insensible when we reached the hall, and I had
no breath for speech. We went in by the kitchen-door.

'Bring me the warming-pan,' said I; and I carried her upstairs and
began undressing her by the nursery fire, which Bessy had kept up. I
called my little lammie all the sweet and playful names I could think
of,--even while my eyes were blinded by my tears; and at last, oh! at
length she opened her large blue eyes. Then I put her into her warm
bed, and sent Dorothy down to tell Miss Furnivall that all was well;
and I made up my mind to sit by my darling's bedside the live-long
night. She fell away into a soft sleep as soon as her pretty head had
touched the pillow, and I watched by her till morning light; when she
wakened up bright and clear--or so I thought at first--and, my dears,
so I think now.

She said, that she had fancied that she should like to go to Dorothy,
for that both the old ladies were asleep, and it was very dull in the
drawing-room; and that, as she was going through the west lobby, she
saw the snow through the high window falling--falling--soft and steady;
but she wanted to see it lying pretty and white on the ground; so she
made her way into the great hall; and then, going to the window, she
saw it bright and soft upon the drive; but while she stood there, she
saw a little girl, not so old as she was, 'but so pretty,' said my
darling, 'and this little girl beckoned to me to come out; and oh, she
was so pretty and so sweet, I could not choose but go.' And then this
other little girl had taken her by the hand, and side by side the two
had gone round the east corner.

'Now you are a naughty little girl, and telling stories,' said I. 'What
would your good mamma, that is in heaven, and never told a story in her
life, say to her little Rosamond, if she heard her--and I daresay she
does--telling stories!'

'Indeed, Hester,' sobbed out my child, 'I'm telling you true. Indeed I
am.'

'Don't tell me!' said I, very stern. 'I tracked you by your foot-marks
through the snow; there were only yours to be seen: and if you had had
a little girl to go hand-in-hand with you up the hill, don't you think
the footprints would have gone along with yours?'

'I can't help it, dear, dear Hester,' said she, crying, 'if they did
not; I never looked at her feet, but she held my hand fast and tight in
her little one, and it was very, very cold. She took me up the
Fell-path, up to the holly-trees; and there I saw a lady weeping and
crying; but when she saw me, she hushed her weeping, and smiled very
proud and grand, and took me on her knee, and began to lull me to
sleep; and that's all, Hester--but that is true; and my dear mamma
knows it is,' said she, crying. So I thought the child was in a fever,
and pretended to believe her, as she went over her story--over and over
again, and always the same. At last Dorothy knocked at the door with
Miss Rosamond's breakfast; and she told me the old ladies were down in
the eating parlour, and that they wanted to speak to me. They had both
been into the night-nursery the evening before, but it was after Miss
Rosamond was asleep; so they had only looked at her--not asked me any
questions.

'I shall catch it,' thought I to myself, as I went along the north
gallery. 'And yet,' I thought, taking courage, 'it was in their charge
I left her; and it's they that's to blame for letting her steal away
unknown and unwatched.' So I went in boldly, and told my story. I told
it all to Miss Furnivall, shouting it close to her ear; but when I came
to the mention of the other little girl out in the snow, coaxing and
tempting her out, and willing her up to the grand and beautiful lady by
the holly-tree, she threw her arms up--her old and withered arms--and
cried aloud, 'Oh! Heaven forgive! Have mercy!'

Mrs. Stark took hold of her; roughly enough, I thought; but she was
past Mrs. Stark's management, and spoke to me, in a kind of wild
warning and authority.

'Hester! keep her from that child! It will lure her to her death! That
evil child! Tell her it is a wicked, naughty child.' Then, Mrs. Stark
hurried me out of the room; where, indeed, I was glad enough to go; but
Miss Furnivall kept shrieking out, 'Oh, have mercy! Wilt Thou never
forgive! It is many a long year ago----'

I was very uneasy in my mind after that. I durst never leave Miss
Rosamond, night or day, for fear lest she might slip off again, after
some fancy or other; and all the more, because I thought I could make
out that Miss Furnivall was crazy, from their odd ways about her; and I
was afraid lest something of the same kind (which might be in the
family, you know) hung over my darling. And the great frost never
ceased all this time; and, whenever it was a more stormy night than
usual, between the gusts, and through the wind, we heard the old lord
playing on the great organ. But, old lord, or not, wherever Miss
Rosamond went, there I followed; for my love for her, pretty, helpless
orphan, was stronger than my fear for the grand and terrible sound.
Besides, it rested with me to keep her cheerful and merry, as beseemed
her age. So we played together, and wandered together, here and there,
and everywhere; for I never dared to lose sight of her again in that
large and rambling house. And so it happened, that one afternoon, not
long before Christmas-day, we were playing together on the
billiard-table in the great hall (not that we knew the right way of
playing, but she liked to roll the smooth ivory balls with her pretty
hands, and I liked to do whatever she did); and, by-and-by, without our
noticing it, it grew dusk indoors, though it was still light in the
open air, and I was thinking of taking her back into the nursery, when,
all of a sudden, she cried out,

'Look, Hester! look! there is my poor little girl out in the snow!'

I turned towards the long narrow windows, and there, sure enough, I saw
a little girl, less than my Miss Rosamond--dressed all unfit to be
out-of-doors such a bitter night--crying, and beating against the
window-panes, as if she wanted to be let in. She seemed to sob and
wail, till Miss Rosamond could bear it no longer, and was flying to the
door to open it, when, all of a sudden, and close upon us, the great
organ pealed out so loud and thundering, it fairly made me tremble; and
all the more, when I remembered me that, even in the stillness of that
dead-cold weather, I had heard no sound of little battering hands upon
the windowglass, although the phantom child had seemed to put forth all
its force; and, although I had seen it wail and cry, no faintest touch
of sound had fallen upon my ears. Whether I remembered all this at the
very moment, I do not know; the great organ sound had so stunned me
into terror; but this I know, I caught up Miss Rosamond before she got
the hall-door opened, and clutched her, and carried her away, kicking
and screaming, into the large, bright kitchen, where Dorothy and Agnes
were busy with their mince-pies.

'What is the matter with my sweet one?' cried Dorothy, as I bore in
Miss Rosamond, who was sobbing as if her heart would break.

'She won't let me open the door for my little girl to come in; and
she'll die if she is out on the Fells all night. Cruel, naughty
Hester,' she said, slapping me; but she might have struck harder, for I
had seen a look of ghastly terror on Dorothy's face, which made my very
blood run cold.

'Shut the back-kitchen door fast, and bolt it well,' said she to Agnes.
She said no more; she gave me raisins and almonds to quiet Miss
Rosamond; but she sobbed about the little girl in the snow, and would
not touch any of the good things. I was thankful when she cried herself
to sleep in bed. Then I stole down to the kitchen, and told Dorothy I
had made up my mind. I would carry my darling back to my father's house
in Applethwaite; where, if we lived humbly, we lived at peace. I said I
had been frightened enough with the old lord's organ-playing; but now
that I had seen for myself this little moaning child, all decked out as
no child in the neighbourhood could be, beating and battering to get
in, yet always without any sound or noise--with the dark wound on its
right shoulder; and that Miss Rosamond had known it again for the
phantom that had nearly lured her to her death (which Dorothy knew was
true); I would stand it no longer.

I saw Dorothy change colour once or twice. When I had done, she told me
she did not think I could take Miss Rosamond with me, for that she was
my lord's ward, and I had no right over her; and she asked me would I
leave the child that I was so fond of just for sounds and sights that
could do me no harm; and that they had all had to get used to in their
turns? I was all in a hot, trembling passion; and I said it was very
well for her to talk; that knew what these sights and noises betokened,
and that had, perhaps, had something to do with the spectre child while
it was alive. And I taunted her so, that she told me all she knew at
last; and then I wished I had never been told, for it only made me more
afraid than ever.

She said she had heard the tale from old neighbours that were alive
when she was first married; when folks used to come to the hall
sometimes, before it had got such a bad name on the country side: it
might not be true, or it might, what she had been told.

The old lord was Miss Furnivall's father--Miss Grace, as Dorothy called
her, for Miss Maude was the elder, and Miss Furnivall by rights. The
old lord was eaten up with pride. Such a proud man was never seen or
heard of; and his daughters were like him. No one was good enough to
wed them, although they had choice enough; for they were the great
beauties of their day, as I had seen by their portraits, where they
hung in the state drawing-room. But, as the old saying is, 'Pride will
have a fall;' and these two haughty beauties fell in love with the same
man, and he no better than a foreign musician, whom their father had
down from London to play music with him at the Manor House. For, above
all things, next to his pride, the old lord loved music. He could play
on nearly every instrument that ever was heard of, and it was a strange
thing it did not soften him; but he was a fierce dour old man, and had
broken his poor wife's heart with his cruelty, they said. He was mad
after music, and would pay any money for it. So he got this foreigner
to come; who made such beautiful music, that they said the very birds
on the trees stopped their singing to listen. And, by degrees, this
foreign gentleman got such a hold over the old lord, that nothing would
serve him but that he must come every year; and it was he that had the
great organ brought from Holland, and built up in the hall, where it
stood now. He taught the old lord to play on it; but many and many a
time, when Lord Furnivall was thinking of nothing but his fine organ,
and his finer music, the dark foreigner was walking abroad in the woods
with one of the young ladies; now Miss Maude, and then Miss Grace.

Miss Maude won the day and carried off the prize, such as it was; and
he and she were married, all unknown to any one; and before he made his
next yearly visit, she had been confined of a little girl at a
farm-house on the Moors, while her father and Miss Grace thought she
was away at Doncaster Races. But though she was a wife and a mother,
she was not a bit softened, but as haughty and as passionate as ever;
and perhaps more so, for she was jealous of Miss Grace, to whom her
foreign husband paid a deal of court--by way of blinding her--as he
told his wife. But Miss Grace triumphed over Miss Maude, and Miss Maude
grew fiercer and fiercer, both with her husband and with her sister;
and the former--who could easily shake off what was disagreeable, and
hide himself in foreign countries--went away a month before his usual
time that summer, and half-threatened that he would never come back
again. Meanwhile, the little girl was left at the farm-house, and her
mother used to have her horse saddled and gallop wildly over the hills
to see her once every week, at the very least; for where she loved she
loved, and where she hated she hated. And the old lord went on
playing--playing on his organ; and the servants thought the sweet music
he made had soothed down his awful temper, of which (Dorothy said) some
terrible tales could be told. He grew infirm too, and had to walk with
a crutch; and his son--that was the present Lord Furnivall's
father--was with the army in America, and the other son at sea; so Miss
Maude had it pretty much her own way, and she and Miss Grace grew
colder and bitterer to each other every day; till at last they hardly
ever spoke, except when the old lord was by. The foreign musician came
again the next summer, but it was for the last time; for they led him
such a life with their jealousy and their passions, that he grew weary,
and went away, and never was heard of again. And Miss Maude, who had
always meant to have her marriage acknowledged when her father should
be dead, was left now a deserted wife, whom nobody knew to have been
married, with a child that she dared not own, although she loved it to
distraction; living with a father whom she feared, and a sister whom
she hated. When the next summer passed over, and the dark foreigner
never came, both Miss Maude and Miss Grace grew gloomy and sad; they
had a haggard look about them, though they looked handsome as ever.
But, by-and-by, Maude brightened; for her father grew more and more
infirm, and more than ever carried away by his music; and she and Miss
Grace lived almost entirely apart, having separate rooms, the one on
the west side, Miss Maude on the east--those very rooms which were now
shut up. So she thought she might have her little girl with her, and no
one need ever know except those who dared not speak about it, and were
bound to believe that it was, as she said, a cottager's child she had
taken a fancy to. All this, Dorothy said, was pretty well known; but
what came afterwards no one knew, except Miss Grace and Mrs. Stark, who
was even then her maid, and much more of a friend to her than ever her
sister had been. But the servants supposed, from words that were
dropped, that Miss Maude had triumphed over Miss Grace, and told her
that all the time the dark foreigner had been mocking her with
pretended love--he was her own husband. The colour left Miss Grace's
cheek and lips that very day for ever, and she was heard to say many a
time that sooner or later she would have her revenge; and Mrs. Stark
was for ever spying about the east rooms.

One fearful night, just after the New Year had come in, when the snow
was lying thick and deep; and the flakes were still falling--fast
enough to blind any one who might be out and abroad--there was a great
and violent noise heard, and the old lord's voice above all, cursing
and swearing awfully, and the cries of a little child, and the proud
defiance of a fierce woman, and the sound of a blow, and a dead
stillness, and moans and wailings dying away on the hill-side! Then the
old lord summoned all his servants, and told them, with terrible oaths,
and words more terrible, that his daughter had disgraced herself, and
that he had turned her out of doors--her, and her child--and that if
ever they gave her help, or food, or shelter, he prayed that they might
never enter heaven. And, all the while, Miss Grace stood by him, white
and still as any stone; and, when he had ended, she heaved a great
sigh, as much as to say her work was done, and her end was
accomplished. But the old lord never touched his organ again, and died
within the year; and no wonder! for, on the morrow of that wild and
fearful night, the shepherds, coming down the Fell side, found Miss
Maude sitting, all crazy and smiling, under the holly-trees, nursing a
dead child, with a terrible mark on its right shoulder. 'But that was
not what killed it,' said Dorothy: 'it was the frost and the cold.
Every wild creature was in its hole, and every beast in its fold, while
the child and its mother were turned out to wander on the Fells! And
now you know all! and I wonder if you are less frightened now?'

I was more frightened than ever; but I said I was not. I wished Miss
Rosamond and myself well out of that dreadful house for ever; but I
would not leave her, and I dared not take her away. But oh, how I
watched her, and guarded her! We bolted the doors, and shut the
window-shutters fast, an hour or more before dark, rather than leave
them open five minutes too late. But my little lady still heard the
weird child crying and mourning; and not all we could do or say could
keep her from wanting to go to her, and let her in from the cruel wind
and the snow. All this time I kept away from Miss Furnivall and Mrs.
Stark, as much as ever I could; for I feared them--I knew no good could
be about them, with their grey, hard faces, and their dreamy eyes,
looking back into the ghastly years that were gone. But, even in my
fear, I had a kind of pity for Miss Furnivall, at least. Those gone
down to the pit can hardly have a more hopeless look than that which
was ever on her face. At last I even got so sorry for her--who never
said a word but what was quite forced from her--that I prayed for her;
and I taught Miss Rosamond to pray for one who had done a deadly sin;
but often when she came to those words, she would listen, and start up
from her knees, and say, 'I hear my little girl plaining and crying
very sad--oh, let her in, or she will die!'

One night--just after New Year's Day had come at last, and the long
winter had taken a turn, as I hoped--I heard the west drawing-room bell
ring three times, which was the signal for me. I would not leave Miss
Rosamond alone, for all she was asleep--for the old lord had been
playing wilder than ever--and I feared lest my darling should waken to
hear the spectre child; see her, I knew she could not. I had fastened
the windows too well for that. So I took her out of her bed, and
wrapped her up in such outer clothes as were most handy, and carried
her down to the drawing-room, where the old ladies sat at their
tapestry-work as usual. They looked up when I came in, and Mrs. Stark
asked, quite astounded, 'Why did I bring Miss Rosamond there, out of
her warm bed?' I had begun to whisper, 'Because I was afraid of her
being tempted out while I was away, by the wild child in the snow,'
when she stopped me short (with a glance at Miss Furnivall), and said
Miss Furnivall wanted me to undo some work she had done wrong, and
which neither of them could see to unpick. So I laid my pretty dear on
the sofa, and sat down on a stool by them, and hardened my heart
against them, as I heard the wind rising and howling.

Miss Rosamond slept on sound, for all the wind blew so Miss Furnivall
said never a word, nor looked round when the gusts shook the windows.
All at once she started up to her full height, and put up one hand, as
if to bid us to listen.

'I hear voices!' said she. 'I hear terrible screams--I hear my father's
voice!'

Just at that moment my darling wakened with a sudden start: 'My little
girl is crying, oh, how she is crying!' and she tried to get up and go
to her, but she got her feet entangled in the blanket, and I caught her
up; for my flesh had begun to creep at these noises, which they heard
while we could catch no sound. In a minute or two the noises came, and
gathered fast, and filled our ears; we, too, heard voices and screams,
and no longer heard the winter's wind that raged abroad. Mrs. Stark
looked at me, and I at her, but we dared not speak. Suddenly Miss
Furnivall went towards the door, out into the ante-room, through the
west lobby, and opened the door into the great hall. Mrs. Stark
followed, and I durst not be left, though my heart almost stopped
beating for fear. I wrapped my darling tight in my arms, and went out
with them. In the hall the screams were louder than ever; they seemed
to come from the east wing--nearer and nearer--close on the other side
of the locked-up doors--close behind them. Then I noticed that the
great bronze chandelier seemed all alight, though the hall was dim, and
that a fire was blazing in the vast hearth-place, though it gave no
heat; and I shuddered up with terror, and folded my darling closer to
me. But as I did so the east door shook, and she, suddenly struggling
to get free from me, cried, 'Hester! I must go. My little girl is
there! I hear her; she is coming! Hester, I must go!'

I held her tight with all my strength; with a set will, I held her. If
I had died, my hands would have grasped her still, I was so resolved in
my mind. Miss Furnivall stood listening, and paid no regard to my
darling, who had got down to the ground, and whom I, upon my knees now,
was holding with both my arms clasped round her neck; she still
striving and crying to get free.

All at once, the east door gave way with a thundering crash, as if torn
open in a violent passion, and there came into that broad and
mysterious light, the figure of a tall old man, with grey hair and
gleaming eyes. He drove before him, with many a relentless gesture of
abhorrence, a stern and beautiful woman, with a little child clinging
to her dress.

'Oh, Hester! Hester!' cried Miss Rosamond; 'it's the lady! the lady
below the holly-trees; and my little girl is with her. Hester! Hester!
let me go to her; they are drawing me to them. I feel them--I feel
them. I must go!'

Again she was almost convulsed by her efforts to get away; but I held
her tighter and tighter, till I feared I should do her a hurt; but
rather that than let her go towards those terrible phantoms. They
passed along towards the great hall-door, where the winds howled and
ravened for their prey; but before they reached that, the lady turned;
and I could see that she defied the old man with a fierce and proud
defiance; but then she quailed--and then she threw up her arms wildly
and piteously to save her child--her little child--from a blow from his
uplifted crutch.

And Miss Rosamond was torn as by a power stronger than mine and writhed
in my arms, and sobbed (for by this time the poor darling was growing
faint).

'They want me to go with them on to the Fells--they are drawing me to
them. Oh, my little girl! I would come, but cruel, wicked Hester holds
me very tight.' But when she saw the uplifted crutch, she swooned away,
and I thanked God for it. Just at this moment--when the tall old man,
his hair streaming as in the blast of a furnace, was going to strike
the little shrinking child--Miss Furnivall, the old woman by my side,
cried out, 'Oh father! father! spare the little innocent child!' But
just then I saw--we all saw--another phantom shape itself, and grow
clear out of the blue and misty light that filled the hall; we had not
seen her till now, for it was another lady who stood by the old man,
with a look of relentless hate and triumphant scorn. That figure was
very beautiful to look upon, with a soft, white hat drawn down over the
proud brows, and a red and curling lip. It was dressed in an open robe
of blue satin. I had seen that figure before. It was the likeness of
Miss Furnivall in her youth; and the terrible phantoms moved on,
regardless of old Miss Furnivall's wild entreaty,--and the uplifted
crutch fell on the right shoulder of the little child, and the younger
sister looked on, stony, and deadly serene. But at that moment, the dim
lights, and the fire that gave no heat, went out of themselves, and
Miss Furnivall lay at our feet stricken down by the palsy--death-stricken.

Yes! she was carried to her bed that night never to rise again. She lay
with her face to the wall, muttering low, but muttering always: 'Alas!
alas! what is done in youth can never be undone in age! What is done in
youth can never be undone in age!'




THE POOR CLARE

Chapter 1


December 12th, 1747.--My life has been strangely bound up with
extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
connection with the principal actors in them, or, indeed, before I even
knew of their existence. I suppose, most old men are, like me, more
given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond
interest and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the
events--though these may have far more interest for the
multitude--immediately passing before their eyes. If this should be the
case with the generality of old people, how much more so with me!... If
I am to enter upon that strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must
begin a long way back. I myself only came to the knowledge of her
family history after I knew her; but, to make the tale clear to any one
else, I must arrange events in the order in which they occurred--not
that in which I became acquainted with them.

There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part
they call the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named
Craven. Starkey Manor-House is rather like a number of rooms clustered
round a grey, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall. Indeed, I
suppose that the house only consisted of the great tower in the centre,
in the days when the Scots made their raids terrible as far south as
this; and that after the Stuarts came in, and there was a little more
security of property in those parts, the Starkeys of that time added
the lower building, which runs, two stories high, all round the base of
the keep. There has been a grand garden laid out in my days, on the
southern slope near the house; but when I first knew the place, the
kitchen-garden at the farm was the only piece of cultivated ground
belonging to it. The deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room
windows, and might have browsed quite close up to the house if they had
not been too wild and shy. Starkey Manor-House itself stood on a
projection or peninsula of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills
that form the sides of the Trough of Bolland. These hills were rocky
and bleak enough towards their summit; lower down they were clothed
with tangled copsewood and green depths of fern, out of which a grey
giant of an ancient forest-tree would tower here and there, throwing up
its ghastly white branches, as if in imprecation, to the sky. These
trees, they told me, were the remnants of that forest which existed in
the days of the Heptarchy, and were even then noted as landmarks. No
wonder that their upper and more exposed branches were leafless, and
that the dead bark had peeled away, from sapless old age.

Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently of the
same date as the keep, probably built for some retainers of the family,
who sought shelter--they and their families and their small flocks and
herds--at the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them had pretty much
fallen to decay. They were built in a strange fashion. Strong beams had
been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other
ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape
of one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much
larger. The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers,
rubbish, mortar--anything to keep out the weather. The fires were made
in the centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the
only chimney. No Highland hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher
construction.

The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century,
was a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey. His family had kept to the old faith,
and were staunch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to marry any
one of Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to
embrace the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick Starkey's father had been a
follower of James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign
of that monarch, he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss
Byrne, as zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself. He
had returned to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her,
bearing her back to the court at St. Germains. But some licence on the
part of the disorderly gentlemen who surrounded King James in his
exile, had insulted his beautiful wife, and disgusted him; so he
removed from St. Germains to Antwerp, whence, in a few years' time, he
quietly returned to Starkey Manor-House--some of his Lancashire
neighbours having lent their good offices to reconcile him to the
powers that were. He was as firm a Roman Catholic as ever, and as
staunch an advocate for the Stuarts and the divine right of kings; but
his religion almost amounted to asceticism, and the conduct of those
with whom he had been brought in such close contact at St. Germains
would little bear the inspection of a stern moralist. So he gave his
allegiance where he could not give his esteem, and learned to respect
sincerely the upright and moral character of one whom he yet regarded
as an usurper. King William's government had little need to fear such a
one. So he returned, as I have said, with a sobered heart and
impoverished fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had fallen sadly
to ruin while the owner had been a courtier, a soldier, and an exile.
The roads into the Trough of Bolland were little more than cart-ruts;
indeed, the way up to the house lay along a ploughed field before you
came to the deer-park. Madam, as the country-folk used to call Mrs.
Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her husband, holding on to him with a
light hand by his leather riding-belt. Little master (he that was
afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his pony by a
serving-man. A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong
step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and, high up on the
mails and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on the
topmost trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart
rocked and shook in the heavy roads of late autumn. The girl wore the
Antwerp faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and altogether
her appearance was such that the old cottager, who described the
procession to me many years after, said that all the country-folk took
her for a foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge,
made up the company. They rode silently along, looking with grave,
serious eyes at the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to
bow or curtsy to the real Squire, 'come back at last,' and gazed after
the little procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of
the foreign language in which the few necessary words that passed among
them were spoken. One lad, called from his staring by the Squire to
come and help about the cart, accompanied them to the Manor-House. He
said that when the lady had descended from her pillion, the middle-aged
woman whom I have described as walking while the others rode, stepped
quickly forward, and taking Madam Starkey (who was of a slight and
delicate figure) in her arms, she lifted her over the threshold, and
set her down in her husband's house, at the same time uttering a
passionate and outlandish blessing. The Squire stood by, smiling
gravely at first; but when the words of blessing were pronounced, he
took off his fine feathered hat, and bent his head. The girl with the
black mantle stepped onward into the shadow of the dark hall, and
kissed the lady's hand; and that was all the lad could tell to the
group that gathered round him on his return, eager to hear everything,
and to know how much the Squire had given him for his services.

From all I could gather, the Manor-House, at the time of the Squire's
return, was in the most dilapidated state. The stout grey walls
remained firm and entire; but the inner chambers had been used for all
kinds of purposes. The great withdrawing-room had been a barn; the
state tapestry-chamber had held wool, and so on. But, by-and-by, they
were cleared out; and if the Squire had no money to spend on new
furniture, he and his wife had the knack of making the best of the old.
He was no despicable joiner; she had a kind of grace in whatever she
did, and imparted an air of elegant picturesqueness to whatever she
touched. Besides, they had brought many rare things from the Continent;
perhaps I should rather say, things that were rare in that part of
England--carvings, and crosses, and beautiful pictures. And then,
again, wood was plentiful in the Trough of Bolland, and great log-fires
danced and glittered in all the dark, old rooms, and gave a look of
home and comfort to everything.

Why do I tell you all this? I have little to do with the Squire and
Madam Starkey; and yet I dwell upon them, as if I were unwilling to
come to the real people with whom my life was so strangely mixed up.
Madam had been nursed in Ireland by the very woman who lifted her in
her arms, and welcomed her to her husband's home in Lancashire.
Excepting for the short period of her own married life, Bridget
Fitzgerald had never left her nursling. Her marriage--to one above her
in rank--had been unhappy. Her husband had died, and left her in even
greater poverty than that in which she was when he had first met with
her. She had one child, the beautiful daughter who came riding on the
waggon-load of furniture that was brought to the Manor-House. Madam
Starkey had taken her again into her service when she became a widow.
She and her daughter had followed 'the mistress' in all her fortunes;
they had lived at St. Germains and at Antwerp, and were now come to her
home in Lancashire. As soon as Bridget had arrived there, the Squire
gave her a cottage of her own, and took more pains in furnishing it for
her than he did in anything else out of his own house. It was only
nominally her residence. She was constantly up at the great house;
indeed, it was but a short cut across the woods from her own home to
the home of her nursling. Her daughter Mary, in like manner, moved from
one house to the other at her own will. Madam loved both mother and
child dearly. They had great influence over her, and, through her, over
her husband. Whatever Bridget or Mary willed was sure to come to pass.
They were not disliked; for, though wild and passionate, they were also
generous by nature. But the other servants were afraid of them, as
being in secret the ruling spirits of the household. The Squire had
lost his interest in all secular things; Madam was gentle,
affectionate, and yielding. Both husband and wife were tenderly
attached to each other and to their boy; but they grew more and more to
shun the trouble of decision on any point; and hence it was that
Bridget could exert such despotic power. But if every one else yielded
to her 'magic of a superior mind,' her daughter not unfrequently
rebelled. She and her mother were too much alike to agree. There were
wild quarrels between them, and wilder reconciliations. There were
times when, in the heat of passion, they could have stabbed each other.
At all other times they both--Bridget especially--would have willingly
laid down their lives for one another. Bridget's love for her child lay
very deep--deeper than that daughter ever knew; or I should think she
would never have wearied of home as she did, and prayed her mistress to
obtain for her some situation--as waiting-maid--beyond the seas, in
that more cheerful continental life, among the scenes of which so many
of her happiest years had been spent. She thought, as youth thinks,
that life would last for ever, and that two or three years were but a
small portion of it to pass away from her mother, whose only child she
was. Bridget thought differently, but was too proud ever to show what
she felt. If her child wished to leave her, why--she should go. But
people said Bridget became ten years older in the course of two months
at this time. She took it that Mary wanted to leave her. The truth was,
that Mary wanted for a time to leave the place, and to seek some
change, and would thankfully have taken her mother with her. Indeed,
when Madam Starkey had gotten her a situation with some grand lady
abroad, and the time drew near for her to go, it was Mary who clung to
her mother with passionate embrace, and, with floods of tears, declared
that she would never leave her; and it was Bridget, who at last
loosened her arms, and, grave and tearless herself, bade her keep her
word, and go forth into the wide world. Sobbing aloud, and looking back
continually, Mary went away. Bridget was still as death, scarcely
drawing her breath, or closing her stony eyes; till at last she turned
back into her cottage, and heaved a ponderous old settle against the
door. There she sat, motionless, over the grey ashes of her
extinguished fire, deaf to Madam's sweet voice, as she begged leave to
enter and comfort her nurse. Deaf, stony, and motionless, she sat for
more than twenty hours; till, for the third time, Madam came across the
snowy path from the great house, carrying with her a young spaniel,
which had been Mary's pet up at the hall, and which had not ceased all
night long to seek for its absent mistress, and to whine and moan after
her. With tears Madam told this story, through the closed door--tears
excited by the terrible look of anguish, so steady, so immovable--so
the same to-day as it was yesterday--on her nurse's face. The little
creature in her arms began to utter its piteous cry, as it shivered
with the cold. Bridget stirred; she moved--she listened. Again that
long whine; she thought it was for her daughter; and what she had
denied to her nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature
that Mary had cherished. She opened the door, and took the dog from
Madam's arms. Then Madam came in, and kissed and comforted the old
woman, who took but little notice of her or anything. And sending up
Master Patrick to the hall for fire and food, the sweet young lady
never left her nurse all that night. Next day, the Squire himself came
down, carrying a beautiful foreign picture: Our Lady of the Holy Heart,
the Papists call it. It is a picture of the Virgin, her heart pierced
with arrows, each arrow representing one of her great woes. That
picture hung in Bridget's cottage when I first saw her; I have that
picture now.

Years went on. Mary was still abroad. Bridget was still and stern,
instead of active and passionate. The little dog, Mignon, was indeed
her darling. I have heard that she talked to it continually; although,
to most people, she was so silent. The Squire and Madam treated her
with the greatest consideration, and well they might; for to them she
was as devoted and faithful as ever. Mary wrote pretty often, and
seemed satisfied with her life. But at length the letters ceased--I
hardly know whether before or after a great and terrible sorrow came
upon the house of the Starkeys. The Squire sickened of a putrid fever;
and Madam caught it in nursing him, and died. You may be sure, Bridget
let no other woman tend her but herself; and in the very arms that had
received her at her birth, that sweet young woman laid her head down,
and gave up her breath. The Squire recovered, in a fashion. He was
never strong--he had never the heart to smile again. He fasted and
prayed more than ever; and people did say that he tried to cut off the
entail, and leave all the property away to found a monastery abroad, of
which he prayed that some day little Squire Patrick might be the
reverend father. But he could not do this, for the strictness of the
entail and the laws against the Papists. So he could only appoint
gentlemen of his own faith as guardians to his son, with many charges
about the lad's soul, and a few about the land, and the way it was to
be held while he was a minor. Of course, Bridget was not forgotten. He
sent for her as he lay on his death-bed, and asked her if she would
rather have a sum down, or have a small annuity settled upon her. She
said at once she would have a sum down; for she thought of her
daughter, and how she could bequeath the money to her, whereas an
annuity would have died with her. So the Squire left her her cottage
for life, and a fair sum of money. And then he died, with as ready and
willing a heart as, I suppose, ever any gentleman took out of this
world with him. The young Squire was carried off by his guardians, and
Bridget was left alone.

I have said that she had not heard from Mary for some time. In her last
letter, she had told of travelling about with her mistress, who was the
English wife of some great foreign officer, and had spoken of her
chances of making a good marriage, without naming the gentleman's name,
keeping it rather back as a pleasant surprise to her mother; his
station and fortune being, as I had afterwards reason to know, far
superior to anything she had a right to expect. Then came a long
silence; and Madam was dead, and the Squire was dead; and Bridget's
heart was gnawed by anxiety, and she knew not whom to ask for news of
her child. She could not write, and the Squire had managed her
communication with her daughter. She walked off to Hurst; and got a
good priest there--one whom she had known at Antwerp--to write for her.
But no answer came. It was like crying into the awful stillness of
night.

One day, Bridget was missed by those neighbours who had been accustomed
to mark her goings-out and comings-in. She had never been sociable with
any of them; but the sight of her had become a part of their daily
lives, and slow wonder arose in their minds, as morning after morning
came, and her house-door remained closed, her window dead from any
glitter, or light of fire within. At length, some one tried the door;
it was locked. Two or three laid their heads together, before daring to
look in through the blank, unshuttered window. But, at last, they
summoned up courage; and then saw that Bridget's absence from their
little world was not the result of accident or death, but of
premeditation. Such small articles of furniture as could be secured
from the effects of time and damp by being packed up, were stowed away
in boxes. The picture of the Madonna was taken down, and gone. In a
word, Bridget had stolen away from her home, and left no trace whither
she was departed. I knew afterwards, that she and her little dog had
wandered off on the long search for her lost daughter. She was too
illiterate to have faith in letters, even had she had the means of
writing and sending many. But she had faith in her own strong love, and
believed that her passionate instinct would guide her to her child.
Besides, foreign travel was no new thing to her, and she could speak
enough of French to explain the object of her journey, and had,
moreover, the advantage of being, from her faith, a welcome object of
charitable hospitality at many a distant convent. But the country
people round Starkey Manor-House knew nothing of all this. They
wondered what had become of her, in a torpid, lazy fashion, and then
left off thinking of her altogether. Several years passed. Both
Manor-House and cottage were deserted. The young Squire lived far away
under the direction of his guardians. There were inroads of wool and
corn into the sitting-rooms of the Hall; and there was some low talk,
from time to time, among the hinds and country people, whether it would
not be as well to break into old Bridget's cottage, and save such of
her goods as were left from the moth and rust which must be making sad
havoc. But this idea was always quenched by the recollection of her
strong character and passionate anger; and tales of her masterful
spirit, and vehement force of will, were whispered about, till the very
thought of offending her, by touching any article of hers, became
invested with a kind of horror: it was believed that, dead or alive,
she would not fail to avenge it.

Suddenly she came home; with as little noise or note of preparation as
she had departed. One day, some one noticed a thin, blue curl of smoke,
ascending from her chimney. Her door stood open to the noon-day sun;
and, ere many hours had elapsed, some one had seen an old
travel-and-sorrow-stained woman dipping her pitcher in the well; and
said, that the dark, solemn eyes that looked up at him were more like
Bridget Fitzgerald's than any one else's in this world; and yet, if it
were she, she looked as if she had been scorched in the flames of hell,
so brown, and scared, and fierce a creature did she seem. By-and-by
many saw her; and those who met her eye once cared not to be caught
looking at her again. She had got into the habit of perpetually talking
to herself; nay, more, answering herself, and varying her tones
according to the side she took at the moment. It was no wonder that
those who dared to listen outside her door at night, believed that she
held converse with some spirit; in short, she was unconsciously earning
for herself the dreadful reputation of a witch.

Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her,
was her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days. Once he
was ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had then
been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals. Whatever this man
did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks, intermingled
with blessings (that were rather promises of good fortune than
prayers), looked grave at his good luck when, next year, his ewes
twinned, and his meadow-grass was heavy and thick.

Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven,
one of the guardians of the young Squire, a certain Sir Philip Tempest,
bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his ward's
property; and, in consequence, he brought down four or five gentlemen,
of his friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall. From all
accounts, they roystered and spent pretty freely. I never heard any of
their names but one, and that was Squire Gisborne's. He was hardly a
middle-aged man then; he had been much abroad, and there, I believe, he
had known Sir Philip Tempest, and done him some service. He was a
daring and dissolute fellow in those days: careless and fearless, and
one who would rather be in a quarrel than out of it. He had his fits of
ill-temper beside, when he would spare neither man nor beast.
Otherwise, those who knew him well, used to say he had a good heart,
when he was neither drunk, nor angry, nor in any way vexed. He had
altered much when I came to know him.

One day, the gentlemen had all been out shooting, and with but little
success, I believe; anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had had none, and was in a
black humour accordingly. He was coming home, having his gun loaded,
sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he turned
out of the wood by Bridget's cottage. Partly for wantonness, partly to
vent his spleen upon some living creature, Mr. Gisborne took his gun,
and fired--he had better have never fired gun again, than aimed that
unlucky shot. He hit Mignon; and at the creature's sudden cry, Bridget
came out, and saw at a glance what had been done. She took Mignon up in
her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with
his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all
covered with blood. Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of sullen penitence:

'You should have kept the dog out of my way--a little poaching
varmint.'

At this very moment, Mignon stretched out his legs, and stiffened in
her arms--her lost Mary's dog, who had wandered and sorrowed with her
for years. She walked right into Mr. Gisborne's path, and fixed his
unwilling, sullen look with her dark and terrible eye.

'Those never throve that did me harm,' said she. 'I'm alone in the
world, and helpless; the more do the Saints in Heaven hear my prayers.
Hear me, ye blessed ones! hear me while I ask for sorrow on this bad,
cruel man. He has killed the only creature that loved me--the dumb
beast that I loved. Bring down heavy sorrow on his head for it, O ye
Saints! He thought that I was helpless, because he saw me lonely and
poor; but are not the armies of Heaven for the like of me?'

'Come, come,' said he, half-remorseful, but not one whit afraid.
'Here's a crown to buy thee another dog. Take it, and leave off
cursing! I care none for thy threats.'

'Don't you?' said she, coming a step closer, and changing her
imprecatory cry for a whisper which made the gamekeeper's lad,
following Mr. Gisborne, creep all over. 'You shall live to see the
creature you love best, and who alone loves you--ay, a human creature,
but as innocent and fond as my poor, dead darling--you shall see this
creature, for whom death would be too happy, become a terror and a
loathing to all, for this blood's sake. Hear me, O holy Saints, who
never fail them that have no other help!'

She threw up her right hand, filled with poor Mignon's life-drops; they
spirted, one or two of them, on his shooting-dress,--an ominous sight
to the follower. But the master only laughed a little, forced, scornful
laugh, and went on to the Hall. Before he got there, however, he took
out a gold piece, and bade the boy carry it to the old woman on his
return to the village. The lad was 'afeard,' as he told me in after
years; he came to the cottage, and hovered about, not daring to enter.
He peeped through the window at last; and by the flickering wood-flame,
he saw Bridget kneeling before the picture of our Lady of the Holy
Heart, with dead Mignon lying between her and the Madonna. She was
praying wildly, as her outstretched arms betokened. The lad shrank away
in redoubled terror; and contented himself with slipping the gold-piece
under the ill-fitting door. The next day it was thrown out upon the
midden; and there it lay, no one daring to touch it.

Meanwhile Mr. Gisborne, half curious, half uneasy, thought to lessen
his uncomfortable feelings by asking Sir Philip who Bridget was? He
could only describe her--he did not know her name. Sir Philip was
equally at a loss. But an old servant of the Starkeys, who had resumed
his livery at the Hall on this occasion--a scoundrel whom Bridget had
saved from dismissal more than once during her palmy days--said:--

'It will be the old witch, that his worship means. She needs a ducking,
if ever woman did, does that Bridget Fitzgerald.'

'Fitzgerald!' said both the gentlemen at once. But Sir Philip was the
first to continue:

'I must have no talk of ducking her, Dickon. Why, she must be the very
woman poor Starkey bade me have a care of; but when I came here last
she was gone, no one knew where. I'll go and see her tomorrow. But mind
you, sirrah, if any harm comes to her, or any more talk of her being a
witch--I've a pack of hounds at home, who can follow the scent of a
lying knave as well as ever they followed a dog-fox; so take care how
you talk about ducking a faithful old servant of your dead master's.'

'Had she ever a daughter?' asked Mr. Gisborne, after a while.

'I don't know--yes! I've a notion she had; a kind of waiting-woman to
Madam Starkey.'

'Please your worship,' said humbled Dickon, 'Mistress Bridget had a
daughter--one Mistress Mary--who went abroad, and has never been heard
on since; and folk do say that has crazed her mother.'

Mr. Gisborne shaded his eyes with his hand.

'I could wish she had not cursed me,' he muttered. 'She may have
power--no one else could.' After a while, he said aloud, no one
understanding rightly what he meant, 'Tush! it's impossible!'--and
called for claret; and he and the other gentlemen set to to a
drinking-bout.




Chapter 2


I now come to the time in which I myself was mixed up with the people
that I have been writing about. And to make you understand how I became
connected with them, I must give you some little account of myself. My
father was the younger son of a Devonshire gentleman of moderate
property; my eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his forefathers,
my second became an eminent attorney in London, and my father took
orders. Like most poor clergymen, he had a large family; and I have no
doubt was glad enough when my London uncle, who was a bachelor, offered
to take charge of me, and bring me up to be his successor in business.

In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle's house, not far from
Gray's Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour
with him in his office. I was very fond of the old gentleman. He was
the confidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to his
present position as much by knowledge of human nature as by knowledge
of law; though he was learned enough in the latter. He used to say his
business was law, his pleasure heraldry. From his intimate acquaintance
with family history, and all the tragic courses of life therein
involved, to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of arms
that came across his path was as good as a play or a romance. Many
cases of disputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy, were
brought to him, as to a great authority on such points. If the lawyer
who came to consult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him
a long lecture on the importance of attending to heraldry; if the
lawyer was of mature age and good standing, he would mulct him pretty
well, and abuse him to me afterwards as negligent of one great branch
of the profession. His house was in a stately new street called Ormond
Street, and in it he had a handsome library; but all the books treated
of things that were past; none of them planned or looked forward into
the future. I worked away--partly for the sake of my family at home,
partly because my uncle had really taught me to enjoy the kind of
practice in which he himself took such delight. I suspect I worked too
hard; at any rate, in seventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from
well, and my good uncle was disturbed by my ill looks.

One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk's room at the dingy
office in Gray's Inn Lane. It was the summons for me, and I went into
his private room just as a gentleman--whom I knew well enough by sight
as an Irish lawyer of more reputation than he deserved--was leaving.

My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands together and considering. I was
there two or three minutes before he spoke. Then he told me that I must
pack up my portmanteau that very afternoon, and start that night by
post-horse for West Chester. I should get there, if all went well, at
the end of five days' time, and must then wait for a packet to cross
over to Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a certain town named
Kildoon, and in that neighbourhood I was to remain, making certain
inquiries as to the existence of any descendants of the younger branch
of a family to whom some valuable estates had descended in the female
line. The Irish lawyer whom I had seen was weary of the case, and would
willingly have given up the property, without further ado, to a man who
appeared to claim them; but on laying his tables and trees before my
uncle, the latter had foreseen so many possible prior claimants, that
the lawyer had begged him to undertake the management of the whole
business. In his youth, my uncle would have liked nothing better than
going over to Ireland himself, and ferreting out every scrap of paper
or parchment, and every word of tradition respecting the family. As it
was, old and gouty, he deputed me.

Accordingly, I went to Kildoon. I suspect I had something of my uncle's
delight in following up a genealogical scent, for I very soon found
out, when on the spot, that Mr. Rooney, the Irish lawyer, would have
got both himself and the first claimant into a terrible scrape, if he
had pronounced his opinion that the estates ought to be given up to
him. There were three poor Irish fellows, each nearer of kin to the
last possessor; but, a generation before, there was a still nearer
relation, who had never been accounted for, nor his existence ever
discovered by the lawyers, I venture to think, till I routed him out
from the memory of some of the old dependants of the family. What had
become of him? I travelled backwards and forwards; I crossed over to
France, and came back again with a slight clue, which ended in my
discovering that, wild and dissipated himself, he had left one child, a
son, of yet worse character than his father; that this same Hugh
Fitzgerald had married a very beautiful serving-woman of the Byrnes--a
person below him in hereditary rank, but above him in character; that
he had died soon after his marriage, leaving one child, whether a boy
or a girl I could not learn, and that the mother had returned to live
in the family of the Byrnes. Now, the chief of this latter family was
serving in the Duke of Berwick's regiment, and it was long before I
could hear from him; it was more than a year before I got a short,
haughty letter--I fancy he had a soldier's contempt for a civilian, an
Irishman's hatred for an Englishman, an exiled Jacobite's jealousy of
one who prospered and lived tranquilly under the government he looked
upon as an usurpation. 'Bridget Fitzgerald,' he said, 'had been
faithful to the fortunes of his sister--had followed her abroad, and to
England when Mrs. Starkey had thought fit to return. Both her sister
and her husband were dead; he knew nothing of Bridget Fitzgerald at the
present time: probably Sir Philip Tempest, his nephew's guardian, might
be able to give me some information.' I have not given the little
contemptuous terms; the way in which faithful service was meant to
imply more than it said--all that has nothing to do with my story. Sir
Philip, when applied to, told me that he paid an annuity regularly to
an old woman named Fitzgerald, living at Coldholme (the village near
Starkey Manor-House). Whether she had any descendants he could not say.

One bleak March evening, I came in sight of the places described at the
beginning of my story. I could hardly understand the rude dialect in
which the direction to old Bridget's house was given.

'Yo' see yon furleets,' all run together, gave me no idea that I was to
guide myself by the distant lights that shone in the windows of the
Hall, occupied for the time by a farmer who held the post of steward,
while the Squire, now four or five and twenty, was making the grand
tour. However, at last, I reached Bridget's cottage--a low, moss-grown
place; the palings that had once surrounded it were broken and gone;
and the underwood of the forest came up to the walls, and must have
darkened the windows. It was about seven o'clock--not late to my London
notions--but, after knocking for some time at the door and receiving no
reply, I was driven to conjecture that the occupant of the house was
gone to bed. So I betook myself to the nearest church I had seen, three
miles back on the road I had come, sure that close to that I should
find an inn of some kind; and early the next morning I set off back to
Coldholme, by a field-path which my host assured me I should find a
shorter cut than the road I had taken the night before. It was a cold,
sharp morning; my feet left prints in the sprinkling of hoar-frost that
covered the ground; nevertheless, I saw an old woman, whom I
instinctively suspected to be the object of my search, in a sheltered
covert on one side of my path. I lingered and watched her. She must
have been considerably above the middle size in her prime, for when she
raised herself from the stooping position in which I first saw her,
there was something fine and commanding in the erectness of her figure.
She drooped again in a minute or two, and seemed looking for something
on the ground, as, with bent head, she turned off from the spot where I
gazed upon her, and was lost to my sight. I fancy I missed my way, and
made a round in spite of the landlord's directions; for by the time I
had reached Bridget's cottage she was there, with no semblance of
hurried walk or discomposure of any kind. The door was slightly ajar. I
knocked, and the majestic figure stood before me, silently awaiting the
explanation of my errand. Her teeth were all gone, so the nose and chin
were brought near together; the grey eyebrows were straight, and almost
hung over her deep, cavernous eyes, and the thick white hair lay in
silvery masses over the low, wide, wrinkled forehead. For a moment, I
stood uncertain how to shape my answer to the solemn questioning of her
silence.

'Your name is Bridget Fitzgerald, I believe?' She bowed her head in
assent.

'I have something to say to you. May I come in? I am unwilling to keep
you standing.'

'You cannot tire me,' she said, and at first she seemed inclined to
deny me the shelter of her roof. But the next moment--she had searched
the very soul in me with her eyes during that instant--she led me in,
and dropped the shadowing hood of her grey, draping cloak, which had
previously hid part of the character of her countenance. The cottage
was rude and bare enough. But before that picture of the Virgin, of
which I have made mention, there stood a little cup filled with fresh
primroses. While she paid her reverence to the Madonna, I understood
why she had been out seeking through the clumps of green in the
sheltered copse. Then she turned round, and bade me be seated. The
expression of her face, which all this time I was studying, was not
bad, as the stories of my last night's landlord had led me to expect;
it was a wild, stern, fierce, indomitable countenance, seamed and
scarred by agonies of solitary weeping; but it was neither cunning nor
malignant.

'My name is Bridget Fitzgerald,' said she, by way of opening our
conversation.

'And your husband was Hugh Fitzgerald, of Knock-Mahon, near Kildoon, in
Ireland?'

A faint light came into the dark gloom of her eyes.

'He was.'

'May I ask if you had any children by him?'

The light in her eyes grew quick and red. She tried to speak, I could
see; but something rose in her throat, and choked her, and until she
could speak calmly, she would fain not speak at all before a stranger.
In a minute or so she said:

'I had a daughter--one Mary Fitzgerald,'--then her strong nature
mastered her strong will, and she cried out, with a trembling, wailing
cry: 'Oh, man! what of her?--what of her?'

She rose from her seat, and came and clutched at my arm, and looked in
my eyes. There she read, as I suppose, my utter ignorance of what had
become of her child; for she went blindly back to her chair, and sat
rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not
daring to speak to the lone and awful woman. After a little pause, she
knelt down before the picture of our Lady of the Holy Heart, and spoke
to her by all the fanciful and poetic names of the Litany.

'O Rose of Sharon! O Tower of David! O Star of the Sea! have you no
comfort for my sore heart? Am I for ever to hope? Grant me at least
despair!'--and so on she went, heedless of my presence. Her prayers
grew wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders
of madness and blasphemy. Almost involuntarily, I spoke as if to stop
her.

'Have you any reason to think that your daughter is dead?'

She rose from her knees, and came and stood before me.

'Mary Fitzgerald is dead,' said she. 'I shall never see her again in
the flesh. No tongue ever told me. But I know she is dead. I have
yearned so to see her, and my heart's will is fearful and strong: it
would have drawn her to me before now, if she had been a wanderer on
the other side of the world. I wonder often it has not drawn her out of
the grave to come and stand before me, and hear me tell her how I loved
her. For, sir, we parted unfriends.'

I knew nothing but the dry particulars needed for my lawyer's quest,
but I could not help feeling for the desolate woman; and she must have
read the unusual sympathy with her wistful eyes.

'Yes, sir, we did. She never knew how I loved her; and we parted
unfriends; and I fear me that I wished her voyage might not turn out
well, only meaning,--O, blessed Virgin! you know I only meant that she
should come home to her mother's arms as to the happiest place on
earth; but my wishes are terrible--their power goes beyond my
thought--and there is no hope for me, if my words brought Mary harm.'

'But,' I said, 'you do not know that she is dead. Even now, you hoped
she might be alive. Listen to me,' and I told her the tale I have
already told you, giving it all in the driest manner, for I wanted to
recall the clear sense that I felt almost sure she had possessed in her
younger days, and by keeping up her attention to details, restrain the
vague wildness of her grief.

She listened with deep attention, putting from time to time such
questions as convinced me I had to do with no common intelligence,
however dimmed and shorn by solitude and mysterious sorrow. Then she
took up her tale; and in few brief words, told me of her wanderings
abroad in vain search after her daughter; sometimes in the wake of
armies, sometimes in camp, sometimes in city. The lady, whose
waiting-woman Mary had gone to be, had died soon after the date of her
last letter home; her husband, the foreign officer, had been serving in
Hungary, whither Bridget had followed him, but too late to find him.
Vague rumours reached her that Mary had made a great marriage; and this
sting of doubt was added,--whether the mother might not be close to her
child under her new name, and even hearing of her every day, and yet
never recognising the lost one under the appellation she then bore. At
length the thought took possession of her, that it was possible that
all this time Mary might be at home at Coldholme, in the Trough of
Bolland, in Lancashire, in England; and home came Bridget, in that vain
hope, to her desolate hearth, and empty cottage. Here she had thought
it safest to remain; if Mary was in life, it was here she would seek
for her mother.

I noted down one or two particulars out of Bridget's narrative that I
thought might be of use to me; for I was stimulated to further search
in a strange and extraordinary manner. It seemed as if it were
impressed upon me, that I must take up the quest where Bridget had laid
it down; and this for no reason that had previously influenced me (such
as my uncle's anxiety on the subject, my own reputation as a lawyer,
and so on), but from some strange power which had taken possession of
my will only that very morning, and which forced it in the direction it
chose.

'I will go,' said I. 'I will spare nothing in the search. Trust to me.
I will learn all that can be learnt. You shall know all that money, or
pains, or wit can discover. It is true she may be long dead: but she
may have left a child.'

'A child!' she cried, as if for the first time this idea had struck her
mind. 'Hear him, Blessed Virgin! he says she may have left a child. And
you have never told me, though I have prayed so for a sign, waking or
sleeping!'

'Nay,' said I, 'I know nothing but what you tell me. You say you heard
of her marriage.'

But she caught nothing of what I said. She was praying to the Virgin in
a kind of ecstacy, which seemed to render her unconscious of my very
presence.

From Coldholme I went to Sir Philip Tempest's. The wife of the foreign
officer had been a cousin of his father's, and from him I thought I
might gain some particulars as to the existence of the Count de la Tour
d'Auvergne, and where I could find him; for I knew questions _de vive
voix_ aid the flagging recollection, and I was determined to lose no
chance for want of trouble. But Sir Philip had gone abroad, and it
would be some time before I could receive an answer. So I followed my
uncle's advice, to whom I had mentioned how wearied I felt, both in
body and mind, by my will-o'-the-wisp search. He immediately told me to
go to Harrogate, there to await Sir Philip's reply. I should be near to
one of the places connected with my search, Coldholme; not far from Sir
Philip Tempest, in case he returned, and I wished to ask him any
further questions; and, in conclusion, my uncle bade me try to forget
all about my business for a time.

This was far easier said than done. I have seen a child on a common
blown along by a high wind, without power of standing still and
resisting the tempestuous force. I was somewhat in the same predicament
as regarded my mental state. Something resistless seemed to urge my
thoughts on, through every possible course by which there was a chance
of attaining to my object. I did not see the sweeping moors when I
walked out: when I held a book in my hand, and read the words, their
sense did not penetrate to my brain. If I slept, I went on with the
same ideas, always flowing in the same direction. This could not last
long without having a bad effect on the body. I had an illness, which,
although I was racked with pain, was a positive relief to me, as it
compelled me to live in the present suffering, and not in the visionary
researches I had been continually making before. My kind uncle came to
nurse me; and after the immediate danger was over, my life seemed to
slip away in delicious languor for two or three months. I did not
ask--so much did I dread falling into the old channel of
thought--whether any reply had been received to my letter to Sir
Philip. I turned my whole imagination right away from all that subject.
My uncle remained with me until nigh summer, and then returned to his
business in London; leaving me perfectly well, although not completely
strong. I was to follow him in a fortnight; when, as he said, 'we would
look over letters, and talk about several things.' I knew what this
little speech alluded to, and shrank from the train of thought it
suggested, which was so intimately connected with my first feelings of
illness. However, I had a fortnight more to roam on those invigorating
Yorkshire moors.

In those days, there was one large, rambling inn at Harrogate, close to
the Medicinal Spring; but it was already becoming too small for the
accommodation of the influx of visitors, and many lodged round about,
in the farm-houses of the district. It was so early in the season, that
I had the inn pretty much to myself; and, indeed, felt rather like a
visitor in a private house, so intimate had the landlord and landlady
become with me during my long illness. She would chide me for being out
so late on the moors, or for having been too long without food, quite
in a motherly way; while he consulted me about vintages and wines, and
taught me many a Yorkshire wrinkle about horses. In my walks I met
other strangers from time to time. Even before my uncle had left me, I
had noticed, with half-torpid curiosity, a young lady of very striking
appearance, who went about always accompanied by an elderly companion,
hardly a gentlewoman, but with something in her look that prepossessed
me in her favour. The younger lady always put her veil down when any
one approached; so it had been only once or twice, when I had come upon
her at a sudden turn in the path, that I had even had a glimpse of her
face. I am not sure if it was beautiful, though in after-life I grew to
think it so. But it was at this time over-shadowed by a sadness that
never varied: a pale, quiet, resigned look of intense suffering, that
irresistibly attracted me, not with love, but with a sense of infinite
compassion for one so young yet so hopelessly unhappy. The companion
wore something of the same look: quiet, melancholy, hopeless, yet
resigned. I asked my landlord who they were. He said they were called
Clarke, and wished to be considered as mother and daughter; but that,
for his part, he did not believe that to be their right name, or that
there was any such relationship between them. They had been in the
neighbourhood of Harrogate for some time, lodging in a remote
farm-house. The people there would tell nothing about them; saying that
they paid handsomely, and never did any harm; so why should they be
speaking of any strange things that might happen? That, as the landlord
shrewdly observed, showed there was something out of the common way: he
had heard that the elderly woman was a cousin of the farmer's where
they lodged, and so the regard existing between relations might help to
keep them quiet.

'What did he think, then, was the reason for their extreme seclusion?'
asked I.

'Nay, he could not tell, not he. He had heard that the young lady, for
all as quiet as she seemed, played strange pranks at times.' He shook
his head when I asked him for more particulars, and refused to give
them, which made me doubt if he knew any, for he was in general a
talkative and communicative man. In default of other interests, after
my uncle left, I set myself to watch these two people. I hovered about
their walks, drawn towards them with a strange fascination, which was
not diminished by their evident annoyance at so frequently meeting me.
One day, I had the sudden good fortune to be at hand when they were
alarmed by the attack of a bull, which, in those unenclosed grazing
districts, was a particularly dangerous occurrence. I have other and
more important things to relate, than to tell of the accident which
gave me an opportunity of rescuing them; it is enough to say, that this
event was the beginning of an acquaintance, reluctantly acquiesced in
by them, but eagerly prosecuted by me. I can hardly tell when intense
curiosity became merged in love, but in less than ten days after my
uncle's departure I was passionately enamoured of Mrs. Lucy, as her
attendant called her; carefully--for this I noted well--avoiding any
address which appeared as if there was an equality of station between
them. I noticed also that Mrs. Clarke, the elderly woman, after her
first reluctance to allow me to pay them any attentions had been
overcome, was cheered by my evident attachment to the young girl; it
seemed to lighten her heavy burden of care, and she evidently favoured
my visits to the farm-house where they lodged. It was not so with Lucy.
A more attractive person I never saw, in spite of her depression of
manner, and shrinking avoidance of me. I felt sure at once, that
whatever was the source of her grief, it rose from no fault of her own.
It was difficult to draw her into conversation; but when at times, for
a moment or two, I beguiled her into talk, I could see a rare
intelligence in her face, and a grave, trusting look in the soft, grey
eyes that were raised for a minute to mine. I made every excuse I
possibly could for going there. I sought wild flowers for Lucy's sake;
I planned walks for Lucy's sake; I watched the heavens by night, in
hopes that some unusual beauty of sky would justify me in tempting Mrs.
Clarke and Lucy forth upon the moors, to gaze at the great purple dome
above.

It seemed to me that Lucy was aware of my love; but that, for some
motive which I could not guess, she would fain have repelled me; but
then again I saw, or fancied I saw, that her heart spoke in my favour,
and that there was a struggle going on in her mind, which at times (I
loved so dearly) I could have begged her to spare herself, even though
the happiness of my whole life should have been the sacrifice; for her
complexion grew paler, her aspect of sorrow more hopeless, her delicate
frame yet slighter. During this period I had written, I should say, to
my uncle, to beg to be allowed to prolong my stay at Harrogate, not
giving any reason; but such was his tenderness towards me, that in a
few days I heard from him, giving me a willing permission, and only
charging me to take care of myself, and not use too much exertion
during the hot weather.

One sultry evening I drew near the farm. The windows of their parlour
were open, and I heard voices when I turned the corner of the house, as
I passed the first window (there were two windows in their little
ground-floor room). I saw Lucy distinctly; but when I had knocked at
their door--the house-door stood always ajar--she was gone, and I saw
only Mrs. Clarke, turning over the work-things lying on the table, in a
nervous and purposeless manner. I felt by instinct that a conversation
of some importance was coming on, in which I should be expected to say
what was my object in paying these frequent visits. I was glad of the
opportunity. My uncle had several times alluded to the pleasant
possibility of my bringing home a young wife, to cheer and adorn the
old house in Ormond Street. He was rich, and I was to succeed him, and
had, as I knew, a fair reputation for so young a lawyer. So on my side
I saw no obstacle. It was true that Lucy was shrouded in mystery; her
name (I was convinced it was not Clarke), birth, parentage, and
previous life were unknown to me. But I was sure of her goodness and
sweet innocence, and although I knew that there must be something
painful to be told, to account for her mournful sadness, yet I was
willing to bear my share in her grief, whatever it might be.

Mrs. Clarke began, as if it was a relief to her to plunge into the
subject.

'We have thought, sir--at least I have thought--that you know very
little of us, nor we of you, indeed; not enough to warrant the intimate
acquaintance we have fallen into. I beg your pardon, sir,' she went on,
nervously; 'I am but a plain kind of woman, and I mean to use no
rudeness; but I must say straight out that I--we--think it would be
better for you not to come so often to see us. She is very unprotected,
and----'

'Why should I not come to see you, dear madam?' asked I, eagerly, glad
of the opportunity of explaining myself. 'I come, I own, because I have
learnt to love Mistress Lucy, and wish to teach her to love me.'

Mistress Clarke shook her head, and sighed.

'Don't, sir--neither love her, nor, for the sake of all you hold
sacred, teach her to love you! If I am too late, and you love her
already, forget her,--forget these last few weeks. O! I should never
have allowed you to come!' she went on, passionately; 'but what am I to
do? We are forsaken by all, except the great God, and even He permits a
strange and evil power to afflict us--what am I to do? Where is it to
end?' She wrung her hands in her distress; then she turned to me: 'Go
away, sir; go away, before you learn to care any more for her. I ask it
for your own sake--I implore. You have been good and kind to us, and we
shall always recollect you with gratitude; but go away now, and never
come back to cross our fatal path!'

'Indeed, madam,' said I, 'I shall do no such thing. You urge it for my
own sake. I have no fear, so urged--nor wish, except to hear more--all.
I cannot have seen Mistress Lucy in all the intimacy of this last
fortnight, without acknowledging her goodness and innocence; and
without seeing--pardon me, madam--that for some reason you are two very
lonely women, in some mysterious sorrow and distress. Now, though I am
not powerful myself, yet I have friends who are so wise and kind, that
they may be said to possess power. Tell me some particulars. Why are
you in grief--what is your secret--why are you here? I declare solemnly
that nothing you have said has daunted me in my wish to become Lucy's
husband; nor will I shrink from any difficulty that, as such an
aspirant, I may have to encounter. You say you are friendless--why cast
away an honest friend? I will tell you of people to whom you may write,
and who will answer any questions as to my character and prospects. I
do not shun inquiry.'

She shook her head again. 'You had better go away, sir. You know
nothing about us.'

'I know your names,' said I, 'and I have heard you allude to the part
of the country from which you came, which I happen to know as a wild
and lonely place. There are so few people living in it that, if I chose
to go there, I could easily ascertain all about you; but I would rather
hear it from yourself.' You see I wanted to pique her into telling me
something definite.

'You do not know our true names, sir,' said she, hastily.

'Well, I may have conjectured as much. But tell me, then, I conjure
you. Give me your reasons for distrusting my willingness to stand by
what I have said with regard to Mistress Lucy.'

'Oh, what can I do?' exclaimed she. 'If I am turning away a true friend
as he says?--Stay!' coming to a sudden decision--'I will tell you
something--I cannot tell you all--you would not believe it. But,
perhaps, I can tell you enough to prevent your going on in your
hopeless attachment. I am not Lucy's mother.'

'So I conjectured,' I said. 'Go on.'

'I do not even know whether she is the legitimate or illegitimate child
of her father. But he is cruelly turned against her; and her mother is
long dead; and, for a terrible reason, she has no other creature to
keep constant to her but me. She--only two years ago--such a darling
and such a pride in her father's house! Why, sir, there is a mystery
that might happen in connection with her any moment; and then you would
go away like all the rest; and, when you next heard her name, you would
loathe her. Others, who have loved her longer, have done so before now.
My poor child, whom neither God nor man has mercy upon--or, surely, she
would die!'

The good woman was stopped by her crying. I confess, I was a little
stunned by her last words; but only for a moment. At any rate, till I
knew definitely what was this mysterious stain upon one so simple and
pure, as Lucy seemed, I would not desert her, and so I said; and she
made answer:

'If you are daring in your heart to think harm of my child, sir, after
knowing her as you have done, you are no good man yourself; but I am so
foolish and helpless in my great sorrow, that I would fain hope to find
a friend in you. I cannot help trusting that, although you may no
longer feel towards her as a lover, you will have pity upon us; and
perhaps, by your learning, you can tell us where to go for aid.'

'I implore you to tell me what this mystery is,' I cried, almost
maddened by this suspense.

'I cannot,' said she, solemnly. 'I am under a deep vow of secrecy. If
you are to be told, it must be by her.' She left the room, and I
remained to ponder over this strange interview. I mechanically turned
over the few books, and with eyes that saw nothing at the time,
examined the tokens of Lucy's frequent presence in that room.

When I got home at night, I remembered how all these trifles spoke of a
pure and tender heart and innocent life. Mistress Clarke returned; she
had been crying sadly.

'Yes,' said she, 'it is as I feared: she loves you so much that she is
willing to run the fearful risk of telling you all herself--she
acknowledges it is but a poor chance; but your sympathy will be a balm,
if you give it. To-morrow, come here at ten in the morning; and as you
hope for pity in your hour of agony, repress all show of fear or
repugnance you may feel towards one so grievously afflicted.'

I half smiled. 'Have no fear,' I said. It seemed too absurd to imagine
my feeling dislike to Lucy.

'Her father loved her well,' said she, gravely, 'yet he drove her out
like some monstrous thing.'

Just at this moment came a peal of ringing laughter from the garden. It
was Lucy's voice; it sounded as if she were standing just on one side
of the open casement--and as though she were suddenly stirred to
merriment--merriment verging on boisterousness, by the doings or
sayings of some other person. I can scarcely say why, but the sound
jarred on me inexpressibly. She knew the subject of our conversation,
and must have been at least aware of the state of agitation her friend
was in: she herself usually so gentle and quiet. I half rose to go to
the window, and satisfy my instinctive curiosity as to what had
provoked this burst of ill-timed laughter; but Mrs. Clarke threw her
whole weight and power upon the hand with which she pressed and kept me
down.

'For God's sake!' she said, white and trembling all over, 'sit still;
be quiet. Oh! be patient. To-morrow you will know all. Leave us, for we
are all sorely afflicted. Do not seek to know more about us.'

Again that laugh--so musical in sound, yet so discordant to my heart.
She held me tight--tighter; without positive violence I could not have
risen. I was sitting with my back to the window, but I felt a shadow
pass between the sun's warmth and me, and a strange shudder ran through
my frame. In a minute or two she released me.

'Go,' repeated she. 'Be warned, I ask you once more. I do not think you
can stand this knowledge that you seek. If I had had my own way, Lucy
should never have yielded, and promised to tell you all. Who knows what
may come of it?'

'I am firm in my wish to know all. I return at ten to-morrow morning,
and then expect to see Mistress Lucy herself.'

I turned away; having my own suspicions, I confess, as to Mistress
Clarke's sanity.

Conjectures as to the meaning of her hints, and uncomfortable thoughts
connected with that strange laughter, filled my mind. I could hardly
sleep. I rose early; and long before the hour I had appointed, I was on
the path over the common that led to the old farm-house where they
lodged. I suppose that Lucy had passed no better a night than I; for
there she was also, slowly pacing with her even step, her eyes bent
down, her whole look most saintly and pure. She started when I came
close to her, and grew paler as I reminded her of my appointment, and
spoke with something of the impatience of obstacles that, seeing her
once more, had called up afresh in my mind. All strange and terrible
hints, and giddy merriment were forgotten. My heart gave forth words of
fire, and my tongue uttered them. Her colour went and came, as she
listened; but, when I had ended my passionate speeches, she lifted her
soft eyes to me, and said:

'But you know that you have something to learn about me yet. I only
want to say this: I shall not think less of you--less well of you, I
mean--if you, too, fall away from me when you know all. Stop!' said
she, as if fearing another burst of mad words. 'Listen to me. My father
is a man of great wealth. I never knew my mother; she must have died
when I was very young. When first I remember anything, I was living in
a great, lonely house, with my dear and faithful Mistress Clarke. My
father, even, was not there; he was--he is--a soldier, and his duties
lie abroad. But he came, from time to time, and every time I think he
loved me more and more. He brought me rarities from foreign lands,
which prove to me now how much he must have thought of me during his
absences. I can sit down and measure the depth of his lost love now, by
such standards as these. I never thought whether he loved me or not,
then; it was so natural, that it was like the air I breathed. Yet he
was an angry man at times, even then; but never with me. He was very
reckless, too; and, once or twice, I heard a whisper among the servants
that a doom was over him, and that he knew it, and tried to drown his
knowledge in wild activity, and even sometimes, sir, in wine. So I grew
up in this grand mansion, in that lonely place. Everything around me
seemed at my disposal, and I think every one loved me; I am sure loved
them. Till about two years ago--I remember it well--my father had come
to England, to us; and he seemed so proud and so pleased with me and
all I had done. And one day his tongue seemed loosened with wine, and
he told me much that I had not known till then,--how dearly he had
loved my mother, yet how his wilful usage had caused her death; and
then he went on to say how he loved me better than any creature on
earth, and how, some day, he hoped to take me to foreign places, for
that he could hardly bear these long absences from his only child. Then
he seemed to change suddenly, and said, in a strange, wild way, that I
was not to believe what he said; that there was many a thing he loved
better--his horse--his dog--I know not what.

'And 'twas only the next morning that, when I came into his room to ask
his blessing as was my wont, he received me with fierce and angry
words. 'Why had I,' so he asked, 'been delighting myself in such wanton
mischief--dancing over the tender plants in the flower-beds, all set
with the famous Dutch bulbs he had brought from Holland?' I had never
been out of doors that morning, sir, and I could not conceive what he
meant, and so I said; and then he swore at me for a liar, and said I
was of no true blood, for he had seen me doing all that mischief
himself--with his own eyes. What could I say? He would not listen to
me, and even my tears seemed only to irritate him. That day was the
beginning of my great sorrows. Not long after, he reproached me for my
undue familiarity--all unbecoming a gentlewoman--with his grooms. I had
been in the stable-yard, laughing and talking, he said. Now, sir, I am
something of a coward by nature, and I had always dreaded horses;
besides that, my father's servants--those whom he brought with him from
foreign parts--were wild fellows, whom I had always avoided, and to
whom I had never spoken, except as a lady must needs from time to time
speak to her father's people. Yet my father called me by names of which
I hardly know the meaning, but my heart told me they were such as shame
any modest woman; and from that day he turned quite against me;--nay,
sir, not many weeks after that, he came in with a riding-whip in his
hand; and, accusing me harshly of evil doings, of which I knew no more
than you, sir, he was about to strike me, and I, all in bewildering
tears, was ready to take his stripes as great kindness compared to his
harder words, when suddenly he stopped his arm mid-way, gasped and
staggered, crying out, 'The curse--the curse!' I looked up in terror.
In the great mirror opposite I saw myself, and, right behind, another
wicked, fearful self, so like me that my soul seemed to quiver within
me, as though not knowing to which similitude of body it belonged. My
father saw my double at the same moment, either in its dreadful
reality, whatever that might be, or in the scarcely less terrible
reflection in the mirror; but what came of it at that moment I cannot
say, for I suddenly swooned away; and when I came to myself I was lying
in my bed, and my faithful Clarke sitting by me. I was in my bed for
days; and even while I lay there my double was seen by all, flitting
about the house and gardens, always about some mischievous or
detestable work. What wonder that every one shrank from me in
dread--that my father drove me forth at length, when the disgrace of
which I was the cause was past his patience to bear. Mistress Clarke
came with me; and here we try to live such a life of piety and prayer
as may in time set me free from the curse.'

All the time she had been speaking, I had been weighing her story in my
mind. I had hitherto put cases of witchcraft on one side, as mere
superstitions; and my uncle and I had had many an argument, he
supporting himself by the opinion of his good friend Sir Matthew Hale.
Yet this sounded like the tale of one bewitched; or was it merely the
effect of a life of extreme seclusion telling on the nerves of a
sensitive girl? My scepticism inclined me to the latter belief, and
when she paused I said:

'I fancy that some physician could have disabused your father of his
belief in visions----'

Just at that instant, standing as I was opposite to her in the full and
perfect morning light, I saw behind her another figure--a ghastly
resemblance, complete in likeness, so far as form and feature and
minutest touch of dress could go, but with a loathsome demon soul
looking out of the grey eyes, that were in turns mocking and
voluptuous. My heart stood still within me; every hair rose up erect;
my flesh crept with horror. I could not see the grave and tender
Lucy--my eyes were fascinated by the creature beyond. I know not why,
but I put out my hand to clutch it; I grasped nothing but empty air,
and my whole blood curdled to ice. For a moment I could not see; then
my sight came back, and I saw Lucy standing before me, alone, deathly
pale, and, I could have fancied, almost, shrunk in size.

'IT has been near me?' she said, as if asking a question.

The sound seemed taken out of her voice; it was husky as the notes on
an old harpsichord when the strings have ceased to vibrate. She read
her answer in my face, I suppose, for I could not speak. Her look was
one of intense fear, but that died away into an aspect of most humble
patience. At length she seemed to force herself to face behind and
around her: she saw the purple moors, the blue distant hills, quivering
in the sunlight, but nothing else.

'Will you take me home?' she said, meekly.

I took her by the hand, and led her silently through the budding
heather--we dared not speak; for we could not tell but that the dread
creature was listening, although unseen,--but that IT might appear and
push us asunder. I never loved her more fondly than now when--and that
was the unspeakable misery--the idea of her was becoming so
inextricably blended with the shuddering thought of IT. She seemed to
understand what I must be feeling. She let go my hand, which she had
kept clasped until then, when we reached the garden gate, and went
forwards to meet her anxious friend, who was standing by the window
looking for her. I could not enter the house: I needed silence,
society, leisure, change--I knew not what--to shake off the sensation
of that creature's presence. Yet I lingered about the garden--I hardly
know why; I partly suppose, because I feared to encounter the
resemblance again on the solitary common, where it had vanished, and
partly from a feeling of inexpressible compassion for Lucy. In a few
minutes Mistress Clarke came forth and joined me. We walked some paces
in silence.

'You know all now,' said she, solemnly.

'I saw IT,' said I, below my breath.

'And you shrink from us, now,' she said, with a hopelessness which
stirred up all that was brave or good in me.

'Not a whit,' said I. 'Human flesh shrinks from encounter with the
powers of darkness: and, for some reason unknown to me, the pure and
holy Lucy is their victim.'

'The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,' she said.

'Who is her father?' asked I. 'Knowing as much as I do, I may surely
know more--know all. Tell me, I entreat you, madam, all that you can
conjecture respecting this demoniac persecution of one so good.'

'I will; but not now. I must go to Lucy now. Come this afternoon, I
will see you alone; and oh, sir! I will trust that you may yet find
some way to help us in our sore trouble!'

I was miserably exhausted by the swooning affright which had taken
possession of me. When I reached the inn, I staggered in like one
overcome by wine. I went to my own private room. It was some time
before I saw that the weekly post had come in, and brought me my
letters. There was one from my uncle, one from my home in Devonshire,
and one, re-directed over the first address, sealed with a great coat
of arms. It was from Sir Philip Tempest: my letter of inquiry
respecting Mary Fitzgerald had reached him at Liege, where it so
happened that the Count de la Tour d'Auvergne was quartered at the very
time. He remembered his wife's beautiful attendant; she had had high
words with the deceased countess, respecting her intercourse with an
English gentleman of good standing, who was also in the foreign
service. The countess augured evil of his intentions; while Mary, proud
and vehement, asserted that he would soon marry her, and resented her
mistress's warnings as an insult. The consequence was, that she had
left Madame de la Tour d'Auvergne's service, and, as the Count
believed, had gone to live with the Englishman; whether he had married
her, or not, he could not say. 'But,' added Sir Philip Tempest, 'you
may easily hear what particulars you wish to know respecting Mary
Fitzgerald from the Englishman himself, if, as I suspect, he is no
other than my neighbour and former acquaintance, Mr. Gisborne, of
Skipford Hall, in the West Riding. I am led to the belief that he is no
other by several small particulars, none of which are in themselves
conclusive, but which, taken together, make a mass of presumptive
evidence. As far as I could make out from the Count's foreign
pronunciation, Gisborne was the name of the Englishman: I know that
Gisborne of Skipford was abroad and in the foreign service at that
time--he was a likely fellow enough for such an exploit, and, above
all, certain expressions recur to my mind which he used in reference to
old Bridget Fitzgerald, of Coldholme, whom he once encountered while
staying with me at Starkey Manor-House. I remember that the meeting
seemed to have produced some extraordinary effect upon his mind, as
though he had suddenly discovered some connection which she might have
had with his previous life. I beg you to let me know if I can be of any
further service to you. Your uncle once rendered me a good turn, and I
will gladly repay it, so far as in me lies, to his nephew.'

I was now apparently close on the discovery which I had striven so many
months to attain. But success had lost its zest. I put my letters down,
and seemed to forget them all in thinking of the morning I had passed
that very day. Nothing was real but the unreal presence, which had come
like an evil blast across my bodily eyes, and burnt itself down upon my
brain. Dinner came, and went away untouched. Early in the afternoon I
walked to the farm-house. I found Mistress Clarke alone, and I was glad
and relieved. She was evidently prepared to tell me all I might wish to
hear.

'You asked me for Mistress Lucy's true name; it is Gisborne,' she
began.

'Not Gisborne of Skipford?' I exclaimed, breathless with anticipation.

'The same,' said she, quietly, not regarding my manner. 'Her father is
a man of note; although, being a Roman Catholic, he cannot take that
rank in this country to which his station entitles him. The consequence
is that he lives much abroad--has been a soldier, I am told.'

'And Lucy's mother?' I asked.

She shook her head. 'I never knew her,' said she. 'Lucy was about three
years old when I was engaged to take charge of her. Her mother was
dead.'

'But you know her name?--you can tell if it was Mary Fitzgerald?'

She looked astonished. 'That was her name. But, sir, how came you to be
so well acquainted with it? It was a mystery to the whole household at
Skipford Court. She was some beautiful young woman whom he lured away
from her protectors while he was abroad. I have heard said he practised
some terrible deceit upon her, and when she came to know it, she was
neither to have nor to hold, but rushed off from his very arms, and
threw herself into a rapid stream and was drowned. It stung him deep
with remorse, but I used to think the remembrance of the mother's cruel
death made him love the child yet dearer.'

I told her, as briefly as might be, of my researches after the
descendant and heir of the Fitzgeralds of Kildoon, and added--something
of my old lawyer spirit returning into me for the moment--that I had no
doubt but that we should prove Lucy to be by right possessed of large
estates in Ireland.

No flush came over her grey face; no light into her eyes. 'And what is
all the wealth in the whole world to that poor girl?' she said. 'It
will not free her from the ghastly bewitchment which persecutes her. As
for money, what a pitiful thing it is; it cannot touch her.'

'No more can the Evil Creature harm her,' I said. 'Her holy nature
dwells apart, and cannot be defiled or stained by all the devilish arts
in the whole world.'

'True! but it is a cruel fate to know that all shrink from her, sooner
or later, as from one possessed--accursed.'

'How came it to pass?' I asked.

'Nay, I know not. Old rumours there are, that were bruited through the
household at Skipford.'

'Tell me,' I demanded.

'They came from servants, who would fain account for everything. They
say that, many years ago, Mr. Gisborne killed a dog belonging to an old
witch at Coldholme; that she cursed, with a dreadful and mysterious
curse, the creature, whatever it might be, that he should love best;
and that it struck so deeply into his heart that for years he kept
himself aloof from any temptation to love aught. But who could help
loving Lucy?'

'You never heard the witch's name?' I gasped.

'Yes--they called her Bridget; they said he would never go near the
spot again for terror of her. Yet he was a brave man!'

'Listen,' said I, taking hold of her arm, the better to arrest her full
attention; 'if what I suspect holds true, that man stole Bridget's only
child--the very Mary Fitzgerald who was Lucy's mother; if so, Bridget
cursed him in ignorance of the deeper wrong he had done her. To this
hour she yearns after her lost child, and questions the saints whether
she be living or not. The roots of that curse lie deeper than she
knows: she unwittingly banned him for a deeper guilt than that of
killing a dumb beast. The sins of the fathers are indeed visited upon
the children.'

'But,' said Mistress Clarke, eagerly, 'she would never let evil rest on
her own grandchild? Surely, sir, if what you say be true, there are
hopes for Lucy. Let us go--go at once, and tell this fearful woman all
that you suspect, and beseech her to take off the spell she has put
upon her innocent grandchild.'

It seemed to me, indeed, that something like this was the best course
we could pursue. But first it was necessary to ascertain more than what
mere rumour or careless hearsay could tell. My thoughts turned to my
uncle--he could advise me wisely--he ought to know all. I resolved to
go to him without delay; but I did not choose to tell Mistress Clarke
of all the visionary plans that flitted through my mind. I simply
declared my intention of proceeding straight to London on Lucy's
affairs. I bade her believe that my interest on the young lady's behalf
was greater than ever, and that my whole time should be given up to her
cause. I saw that Mistress Clarke distrusted me, because my mind was
too full of thoughts for my words to flow freely. She sighed and shook
her head, and said, 'Well, it is all right!' in such a tone that it was
an implied reproach. But I was firm and constant in my heart, and I
took confidence from that.

I rode to London. I rode long days drawn out into the lovely summer
nights: I could not rest. I reached London. I told my uncle all, though
in the stir of the great city the horror had faded away, and I could
hardly imagine that he would believe the account I gave him of the
fearful double of Lucy which I had seen on the lonely moor-side. But my
uncle had lived many years, and learnt many things; and, in the deep
secrets of family history that had been confided to him, he had heard
of cases of innocent people bewitched and taken possession of by evil
spirits yet more fearful than Lucy's. For, as he said, to judge from
all I told him, that resemblance had no power over her--she was too
pure and good to be tainted by its evil, haunting presence. It had, in
all probability, so my uncle conceived, tried to suggest wicked
thoughts and to tempt to wicked actions; but she, in her saintly
maidenhood, had passed on undefiled by evil thought or deed. It could
not touch her soul: but true, it set her apart from all sweet love or
common human intercourse. My uncle threw himself with an energy more
like six-and-twenty than sixty into the consideration of the whole
case. He undertook the proving Lucy's descent, and volunteered to go
and find out Mr. Gisborne, and obtain, firstly, the legal proofs of her
descent from the Fitzgeralds of Kildoon, and, secondly, to try and hear
all that he could respecting the working of the curse, and whether any
and what means had been taken to exorcise that terrible appearance. For
he told me of instances where, by prayers and long fasting, the evil
possessor had been driven forth with howling and many cries from the
body which it had come to inhabit; he spoke of those strange New
England cases which had happened not so long before; of Mr. Defoe, who
had written a book, wherein he had named many modes of subduing
apparitions, and sending them back whence they came; and, lastly, he
spoke low of dreadful ways of compelling witches to undo their
witchcraft. But I could not endure to hear of those tortures and
burnings. I said that Bridget was rather a wild and savage woman than a
malignant witch; and, above all, that Lucy was of her kith and kin; and
that, in putting her to the trial, by water or by fire, we should be
torturing--it might be to the death--the ancestress of her we sought to
redeem.

My uncle thought awhile, and then said, that in this last matter I was
right--at any rate, it should not be tried, with his consent, till all
other modes of remedy had failed; and he assented to my proposal that I
should go myself and see Bridget, and tell her all.

In accordance with this, I went down once more to the wayside inn near
Coldholme. It was late at night when I arrived there; and, while I
supped, I inquired of the landlord more particulars as to Bridget's
ways. Solitary and savage had been her life for many years. Wild and
despotic were her words and manner to those few people who came across
her path. The country-folk did her imperious bidding, because they
feared to disobey. If they pleased her, they prospered; if, on the
contrary, they neglected or traversed her behests, misfortune, small or
great, fell on them and theirs. It was not detestation so much as an
indefinable terror that she excited.

In the morning I went to see her. She was standing on the green outside
her cottage, and received me with the sullen grandeur of a throneless
queen. I read in her face that she recognised me, and that I was not
unwelcome; but she stood silent till I had opened my errand.

'I have news of your daughter,' said I, resolved to speak straight to
all that I knew she felt of love, and not to spare her. 'She is dead!'

The stern figure scarcely trembled, but her hand sought the support of
the door-post.

'I knew that she was dead,' said she, deep and low, and then was silent
for an instant. 'My tears that should have flowed for her were burnt up
long years ago. Young man, tell me about her.'

'Not yet,' said I, having a strange power given me of confronting one,
whom, nevertheless, in my secret soul I dreaded.

'You had once a little dog,' I continued. The words called out in her
more show of emotion than the intelligence of her daughter's death. She
broke in upon my speech:

'I had! It was hers--the last thing I had of hers--and it was shot for
wantonness! It died in my arms. The man who killed that dog rues it to
this day. For that dumb beast's blood, his best-beloved stands
accursed.'

Her eyes distended, as if she were in a trance and saw the working of
her curse. Again I spoke:

'O, woman!' I said, 'that best-beloved, standing accursed before men,
is your dead daughter's child.'

The life, the energy, the passion came back to the eyes with which she
pierced through me, to see if I spoke truth; then, without another
question or word, she threw herself on the ground with fearful
vehemence, and clutched at the innocent daisies with convulsed hands.

'Bone of my bone! flesh of my flesh! have I cursed thee--and art thou
accursed?'

So she moaned, as she lay prostrate in her great agony. I stood aghast
at my own work. She did not hear my broken sentences; she asked no
more, but the dumb confirmation which my sad looks had given that one
fact, that her curse rested on her own daughter's child. The fear grew
on me lest she should die in her strife of body and soul; and then
might not Lucy remain under the spell as long as she lived?

Even at this moment, I saw Lucy coming through the woodland path that
led to Bridget's cottage; Mistress Clarke was with her: I felt at my
heart that it was she, by the balmy peace which the look of her sent
over me, as she slowly advanced, a glad surprise shining out of her
soft quiet eyes. That was as her gaze met mine. As her looks fell on
the woman lying stiff, convulsed on the earth, they became full of
tender pity; and she came forward to try and lift her up. Seating
herself on the turf, she took Bridget's head into her lap; and, with
gentle touches, she arranged the dishevelled grey hair streaming thick
and wild from beneath her mutch.

'God help her!' murmured Lucy. 'How she suffers!'

At her desire we sought for water; but when we returned, Bridget had
recovered her wandering senses, and was kneeling with clasped hands
before Lucy, gazing at that sweet sad face as though her troubled
nature drank in health and peace from every moment's contemplation. A
faint tinge on Lucy's pale cheeks showed me that she was aware of our
return; otherwise it appeared as if she was conscious of her influence
for good over the passionate and troubled woman kneeling before her,
and would not willingly avert her grave and loving eyes from that
wrinkled and careworn countenance.

Suddenly--in the twinkling of an eye--the creature appeared, there,
behind Lucy; fearfully the same as to outward semblance, but kneeling
exactly as Bridget knelt, and clasping her hands in jesting mimicry as
Bridget clasped hers in her ecstasy that was deepening into a prayer.
Mistress Clarke cried out--Bridget arose slowly, her gaze fixed on the
creature beyond: drawing her breath with a hissing sound, never moving
her terrible eyes, that were steady as stone, she made a dart at the
phantom, and caught, as I had done, a mere handful of empty air. We saw
no more of the creature--it vanished as suddenly as it came, but
Bridget looked slowly on, as if watching some receding form. Lucy sat
still, white, trembling, drooping--I think she would have swooned if I
had not been there to uphold her. While I was attending to her, Bridget
passed us, without a word to any one, and, entering her cottage, she
barred herself in, and left us without.

All our endeavours were now directed to get Lucy back to the house
where she had tarried the night before. Mistress Clarke told me that,
not hearing from me (some letter must have miscarried), she had grown
impatient and despairing, and had urged Lucy to the enterprise of
coming to seek her grandmother; not telling her, indeed, of the dread
reputation she possessed, or how we suspected her of having so
fearfully blighted that innocent girl; but, at the same time, hoping
much from the mysterious stirring of blood, which Mistress Clarke
trusted in for the removal of the curse. They had come, by a different
route from that which I had taken, to a village inn not far from
Coldholme, only the night before. This was the first interview between
ancestress and descendant.

All through the sultry noon I wandered along the tangled wood-paths of
the old neglected forest, thinking where to turn for remedy in a matter
so complicated and mysterious. Meeting a countryman, I asked my way to
the nearest clergyman, and went, hoping to obtain some counsel from
him. But he proved to be a coarse and common-minded man, giving no time
or attention to the intricacies of a case, but dashing out a strong
opinion involving immediate action. For instance, as soon as I named
Bridget Fitzgerald, he exclaimed:

'The Coldholme witch! the Irish papist! I'd have had her ducked long
since but for that other papist, Sir Philip Tempest. He has had to
threaten honest folk about here over and over again, or they'd have had
her up before the justices for her black doings. And it's the law of
the land that witches should be burnt! Ay, and of Scripture, too, sir!
Yet you see a papist, if he's a rich squire, can overrule both law and
Scripture. I'd carry a fagot myself to rid the country of her!'

Such a one could give me no help. I rather drew back what I had already
said; and tried to make the parson forget it, by treating him to
several pots of beer, in the village inn, to which we had adjourned for
our conference at his suggestion. I left him as soon as I could, and
returned to Coldholme, shaping my way past deserted Starkey
Manor-House, and coming upon it by the back. At that side were the
oblong remains of the old moat, the waters of which lay placid and
motionless under the crimson rays of the setting sun; with the
forest-trees lying straight along each side, and their deep-green
foliage mirrored to blackness in the burnished surface of the moat
below--and the broken sun-dial at the end nearest the hall--and the
heron, standing on one leg at the water's edge, lazily looking down for
fish--the lonely and desolate house scarce needed the broken windows,
the weeds on the door-sill, the broken shutter softly flapping to and
fro in the twilight breeze, to fill up the picture of desertion and
decay. I lingered about the place until the growing darkness warned me
on. And then I passed along the path, cut by the orders of the last
lady of Starkey Manor-House, that led me to Bridget's cottage. I
resolved at once to see her; and, in spite of closed doors--it might be
of resolved will--she should see me. So I knocked at her door, gently,
loudly, fiercely. I shook it so vehemently that at length the old
hinges gave way, and with a crash it fell inwards, leaving me suddenly
face to face with Bridget--I, red, heated, agitated with my so
long-baffled efforts--she, stiff as any stone, standing right facing
me, her eyes dilated with terror, her ashen lips trembling, but her
body motionless. In her hands she held her crucifix, as if by that holy
symbol she sought to oppose my entrance. At sight of me, her whole
frame relaxed, and she sank back upon a chair. Some mighty tension had
given way. Still her eyes looked fearfully into the gloom of the outer
air, made more opaque by the glimmer of the lamp inside, which she had
placed before the picture of the Virgin.

'Is she there?' asked Bridget, hoarsely.

'No! Who? I am alone. You remember me.'

'Yes,' replied she, still terror-stricken. 'But she--that creature--has
been looking in upon me through that window all day long. I closed it
up with my shawl; and then I saw her feet below the door, as long as it
was light, and I knew she heard my very breathing--nay, worse, my very
prayers; and I could not pray, for her listening choked the words ere
they rose to my lip. Tell me, who is she?--what means that double girl
I saw this morning? One had a look of my dead Mary; but the other
curdled my blood, and yet it was the same!'

She had taken hold of my arm, as if to secure herself some human
companionship. She shook all over with the slight, never-ceasing tremor
of intense terror. I told her my tale, as I have told it you, sparing
none of the details.

How Mistress Clarke had informed me that the resemblance had driven
Lucy forth from her father's house--how I had disbelieved, until, with
mine own eyes, I had seen another Lucy standing behind my Lucy, the
same in form and feature, but with the demon-soul looking out of the
eyes. I told her all, I say, believing that she--whose curse was
working so upon the life of her innocent grandchild--was the only
person who could find the remedy and the redemption. When I had done,
she sat silent for many minutes.

'You love Mary's child?' she asked.

'I do, in spite of the fearful working of the curse--I love her. Yet I
shrink from her ever since that day on the moor-side. And men must
shrink from one so accompanied; friends and lovers must stand afar off.
Oh, Bridget Fitzgerald! loosen the curse! Set her free!'

'Where is she?'

I eagerly caught at the idea that her presence was needed, in order
that, by some strange prayer or exorcism, the spell might be reversed.

'I will go and bring her to you,' I exclaimed. But Bridget tightened
her hold upon my arm.

'Not so,' said she, in a low, hoarse voice. 'It would kill me to see
her again as I saw her this morning. And I must live till I have worked
my work. Leave me!' said she, suddenly, and again taking up the cross.
'I defy the demon I have called up. Leave me to wrestle with it!'

She stood up, as if in an ecstasy of inspiration, from which all fear
was banished. I lingered--why, I can hardly tell--until once more she
bade me begone. As I went along the forest way, I looked back, and saw
her planting the cross in the empty threshold, where the door had been.

The next morning Lucy and I went to seek her, to bid her join her
prayers with ours. The cottage stood open and wide to our gaze. No
human being was there: the cross remained on the threshold, but Bridget
was gone.




Chapter 3


What was to be done next? was the question that I asked myself. As for
Lucy, she would fain have submitted to the doom that lay upon her. Her
gentleness and piety, under the pressure of so horrible a life, seemed
over-passive to me. She never complained. Mrs. Clarke complained more
than ever. As for me, I was more in love with the real Lucy than ever;
but I shrunk from the false similitude with an intensity proportioned
to my love. I found out by instinct that Mrs. Clarke had occasional
temptations to leave Lucy. The good lady's nerves were shaken, and,
from what she said, I could almost have concluded that the object of
the Double was to drive away from Lucy this last and almost earliest
friend. At times, I could scarcely bear to own it, but I myself felt
inclined to turn recreant; and I would accuse Lucy of being too
patient--too resigned. One after another, she won the little children
of Coldholme. (Mrs. Clarke and she had resolved to stay there, for was
it not as good a place as any other to such as they? and did not all
our faint hopes rest on Bridget--never seen or heard of now, but still
we trusted to come back, or give some token?) So, as I say, one after
another, the little children came about my Lucy, won by her soft tones,
and her gentle smiles, and kind actions. Alas! one after another they
fell away, and shrunk from her path with blanching terror; and we too
surely guessed the reason why. It was the last drop. I could bear it no
longer. I resolved no more to linger around the spot, but to go back to
my uncle, and among the learned divines of the city of London, seek for
some power whereby to annul the curse.

My uncle, meanwhile, had obtained all the requisite testimonials
relating to Lucy's descent and birth, from the Irish lawyers, and from
Mr. Gisborne. The latter gentleman had written from abroad (he was
again serving in the Austrian army), a letter alternately passionately
self-reproachful and stoically repellent. It was evident that when he
thought of Mary--her short life--how he had wronged her, and of her
violent death, he could hardly find words severe enough for his own
conduct; and from this point of view, the curse that Bridget had laid
upon him and his was regarded by him as a prophetic doom, to the
utterance of which she was moved by a Higher Power, working for the
fulfilment of a deeper vengeance than for the death of the poor dog.
But then, again, when he came to speak of his daughter, the repugnance
which the conduct of the demoniac creature had produced in his mind,
was but ill disguised under a show of profound indifference as to
Lucy's fate. One almost felt as if he would have been as content to put
her out of existence, as he would have been to destroy some disgusting
reptile that had invaded his chamber or his couch.

The great Fitzgerald property was Lucy's; and that was all--was
nothing.

My uncle and I sat in the gloom of a London November evening, in our
house in Ormond Street. _I_ was out of health, and felt as if I were in
an inextricable coil of misery. Lucy and I wrote to each other, but
that was little; and we dared not see each other for dread of the
fearful Third, who had more than once taken her place at our meetings.
My uncle had, on the day I speak of, bidden prayers to be put up, on
the ensuing Sabbath, in many a church and meeting-house in London, for
one grievously tormented by an evil spirit. He had faith in prayers--I
had none; I was fast losing faith in all things. So we sat--he trying
to interest me in the old talk of other days, I oppressed by one
thought--when our old servant, Anthony, opened the door, and, without
speaking, showed in a very gentlemanly and prepossessing man, who had
something remarkable about his dress, betraying his profession to be
that of the Roman Catholic priesthood. He glanced at my uncle first,
then at me. It was to me he bowed. 'I did not give my name,' said he,
'because you would hardly have recognised it; unless, sir, when in the
north, you heard of Father Bernard, the chaplain at Stoney Hurst?'

I remembered afterwards that I had heard of him, but at the time I had
utterly forgotten it; so I professed myself a complete stranger to him;
while my ever-hospitable uncle, although hating a papist as much as it
was in his nature to hate anything, placed a chair for the visitor, and
bade Anthony bring glasses and a fresh jug of claret.

Father Bernard received this courtesy with the graceful ease and
pleasant acknowledgment which belongs to the man of the world. Then he
turned to scan me with his keen glance. After some slight conversation,
entered into on his part, I am certain, with an intention of
discovering on what terms of confidence I stood with my uncle, he
paused, and said gravely:

'I am sent here with a message to you, sir, from a woman to whom you
have shown kindness, and who is one of my penitents, in Antwerp--one
Bridget Fitzgerald.'

'Bridget Fitzgerald!' exclaimed I. 'In Antwerp? Tell me, sir, all that
you can about her.'

'There is much to be said,' he replied. 'But may I inquire if this
gentleman--if your uncle is acquainted with the particulars of which
you and I stand informed?'

'All that I know, he knows,' said I, eagerly laying my hand on my
uncle's arm, as he made a motion as if to quit the room.

'Then I have to speak before two gentlemen who, however they may differ
from me in faith, are yet fully impressed with the fact, that there are
evil powers going about continually to take cognizance of our evil
thoughts; and, if their Master gives them power, to bring them into
overt action. Such is my theory of the nature of that sin, of which I
dare not disbelieve--as some sceptics would have us do--the sin of
witchcraft. Of this deadly sin, you and I are aware Bridget Fitzgerald
has been guilty. Since you saw her last, many prayers have been offered
in our churches, many masses sung, many penances undergone, in order
that, if God and the Holy Saints so willed it, her sin might be blotted
out. But it has not been so willed.'

'Explain to me,' said I, 'who you are, and how you come connected with
Bridget. Why is she at Antwerp? I pray you, sir, tell me more. If I am
impatient, excuse me; I am ill and feverish, and in consequence
bewildered.'

There was something to me inexpressibly soothing in the tone of voice
with which he began to narrate, as it were from the beginning, his
acquaintance with Bridget.

'I had known Mr. and Mrs. Starkey during their residence abroad, and so
it fell out naturally that, when I came as chaplain to the Sherburnes
at Stoney Hurst, our acquaintance was renewed; and thus I became the
confessor of the whole family, isolated as they were from the offices
of the Church, Sherburne being their nearest neighbour who professed
the true faith. Of course, you are aware that facts revealed in
confession are sealed as in the grave; but I learnt enough of Bridget's
character to be convinced that I had to do with no common woman; one
powerful for good as for evil. I believe that I was able to give her
spiritual assistance from time to time, and that she looked upon me as
a servant of that Holy Church, which has such wonderful power of moving
men's hearts, and relieving them of the burden of their sins. I have
known her cross the moors on the wildest nights of storm, to confess
and be absolved; and then she would return, calmed and subdued, to her
daily work about her mistress, no one witting where she had been during
the hours that most passed in sleep upon their beds. After her
daughter's departure--after Mary's mysterious disappearance--I had to
impose many a long penance, in order to wash away the sin of impatient
repining that was fast leading her into the deeper guilt of blasphemy.
She set out on that long journey of which you have possibly heard--that
fruitless journey in search of Mary--and during her absence, my
superiors ordered my return to my former duties at Antwerp, and for
many years I heard no more of Bridget.

'Not many months ago, as I was passing homewards in the evening, along
one of the streets near St. Jacques, leading into the Meer Straet, I
saw a woman sitting crouched up under the shrine of the Holy Mother of
Sorrows. Her hood was drawn over her head, so that the shadow caused by
the light of the lamp above fell deep over her face; her hands were
clasped round her knees. It was evident that she was some one in
hopeless trouble, and as such it was my duty to stop and speak. I
naturally addressed her first in Flemish, believing her to be one of
the lower class of inhabitants. She shook her head, but did not look
up. Then I tried French, and she replied in that language, but speaking
it so indifferently, that I was sure she was either English or Irish,
and consequently spoke to her in my own native tongue. She recognised
my voice; and, starting up, caught at my robes, dragging me before the
blessed shrine, and throwing herself down, and forcing me, as much by
her evident desire as by her action, to kneel beside her, she
exclaimed:

'"O Holy Virgin! you will never hearken to me again, but hear him; for
you know him of old, that he does your bidding, and strives to heal
broken hearts. Hear him!"

'She turned to me.

'"She will hear you, if you will only pray. She never hears me: she and
all the saints in Heaven cannot hear my prayers, for the Evil One
carries them off, as he carried that first away. O, Father Bernard,
pray for me!"

'I prayed for one in sore distress, of what nature I could not say; but
the Holy Virgin would know. Bridget held me fast, gasping with
eagerness at the sound of my words. When I had ended, I rose, and,
making the sign of the Cross over her, I was going to bless her in the
name of the Holy Church, when she shrank away like some terrified
creature, and said:

'"I am guilty of deadly sin, and am not shriven."

'"Arise, my daughter," said I, "and come with me." And I led the way
into one of the confessionals of St. Jacques.

'She knelt; I listened. No words came. The evil powers had stricken her
dumb, as I heard afterwards they had many a time before, when she
approached confession.

'She was too poor to pay for the necessary forms of exorcism; and
hitherto those priests to whom she had addressed herself were either so
ignorant of the meaning of her broken French, or her Irish-English, or
else esteemed her to be one crazed--as, indeed, her wild and excited
manner might easily have led any one to think--that they had neglected
the sole means of loosening her tongue, so that she might confess her
deadly sin, and after due penance, obtain absolution. But I knew
Bridget of old, and felt that she was a penitent sent to me. I went
through those holy offices appointed by our church for the relief of
such a case. I was the more bound to do this, as I found that she had
come to Antwerp for the sole purpose of discovering me, and making
confession to me. Of the nature of that fearful confession I am
forbidden to speak. Much of it you know; possibly all.

'It now remains for her to free herself from mortal guilt, and to set
others free from the consequences thereof. No prayer, no masses, will
ever do it, although they may strengthen her with that strength by
which alone acts of deepest love and purest self-devotion may be
performed. Her words of passion, and cries for revenge--her unholy
prayers could never reach the ears of the Holy Saints! Other powers
intercepted them, and wrought so that the curses thrown up to Heaven
have fallen on her own flesh and blood; and so, through her very
strength of love, have bruised and crushed her heart. Henceforward her
former self must be buried,--yea, buried quick, if need be,--but never
more to make sign, or utter cry on earth! She has become a Poor Clare,
in order that, by perpetual penance and constant service of others, she
may at length so act as to obtain final absolution and rest for her
soul. Until then, the innocent must suffer. It is to plead for the
innocent that I come to you; not in the name of the witch, Bridget
Fitzgerald, but of the penitent and servant of all men, the Poor Clare,
Sister Magdalen.'

'Sir,' said I, 'I listen to your request with respect; only I may tell
you it is not needed to urge me to do all that I can on behalf of one,
love for whom is part of my very life. If for a time I have absented
myself from her, it is to think and work for her redemption. I, a
member of the English Church--my uncle, a Puritan--pray morning and
night for her by name: the congregations of London, on the next
Sabbath, will pray for one unknown, that she may be set free from the
Powers of Darkness. Moreover, I must tell you, sir, that those evil
ones touch not the great calm of her soul. She lives her own pure and
loving life, unharmed and untainted, though all men fall off from her.
I would I could have her faith!'

My uncle now spoke.

'Nephew,' said he, 'it seems to me that this gentleman, although
professing what I consider an erroneous creed, has touched upon the
right point in exhorting Bridget to acts of love and mercy, whereby to
wipe out her sin of hate and vengeance. Let us strive after our
fashion, by almsgiving and visiting of the needy and fatherless, to
make our prayers acceptable. Meanwhile, I myself will go down into the
north, and take charge of the maiden. I am too old to be daunted by man
or demon. I will bring her to this house as to a home; and let the
Double come if it will! A company of godly divines shall give it the
meeting, and we will try issue.'

The kindly brave old man! But Father Bernard sat on musing.

'All hate,' said he, 'cannot be quenched in her heart; all Christian
forgiveness cannot have entered into her soul, or the demon would have
lost its power. You said, I think, that her grandchild was still
tormented?'

'Still tormented!' I replied, sadly, thinking of Mistress Clarke's last
letter.

He rose to go. We afterwards heard that the occasion of his coming to
London was a secret political mission on behalf of the Jacobites.
Nevertheless, he was a good and a wise man.

Months and months passed away without any change. Lucy entreated my
uncle to leave her where she was,--dreading, as I learnt, lest if she
came, with her fearful companion, to dwell in the same house with me,
that my love could not stand the repeated shocks to which I should be
doomed. And this she thought from no distrust of the strength of my
affection, but from a kind of pitying sympathy for the terror to the
nerves which she observed that the demoniac visitation caused in all.

I was restless and miserable. I devoted myself to good works; but I
performed them from no spirit of love, but solely from the hope of
reward and payment, and so the reward was never granted. At length, I
asked my uncle's leave to travel; and I went forth, a wanderer, with no
distincter end than that of many another wanderer--to get away from
myself. A strange impulse led me to Antwerp, in spite of the wars and
commotions then raging in the Low Countries--or rather, perhaps, the
very craving to become interested in something external, led me into
the thick of the struggle then going on with the Austrians. The cities
of Flanders were all full at that time of civil disturbances and
rebellions, only kept down by force, and the presence of an Austrian
garrison in every place.

I arrived in Antwerp, and made inquiry for Father Bernard. He was away
in the country for a day or two. Then I asked my way to the Convent of
Poor Clares; but, being healthy and prosperous, I could only see the
dim, pent-up, grey walls, shut closely in by narrow streets, in the
lowest part of the town. My landlord told me, that had I been stricken
by some loathsome disease, or in desperate case of any kind, the Poor
Clares would have taken me, and tended me. He spoke of them as an order
of mercy of the strictest kind, dressing scantily in the coarsest
materials, going barefoot, living on what the inhabitants of Antwerp
chose to bestow, and sharing even those fragments and crumbs with the
poor and helpless that swarmed all around; receiving no letters or
communication with the outer world; utterly dead to everything but the
alleviation of suffering. He smiled at my inquiring whether I could get
speech of one of them; and told me that they were even forbidden to
speak for the purposes of begging their daily food; while yet they
lived, and fed others upon what was given in charity.

'But,' exclaimed I, 'supposing all men forgot them! Would they quietly
lie down and die, without making sign of their extremity?'

'If such were their rule, the Poor Clares would willingly do it; but
their founder appointed a remedy for such extreme case as you suggest.
They have a bell--'tis but a small one, as I have heard, and has yet
never been rung in the memory of man: when the Poor Clares have been
without food for twenty-four hours, they may ring this bell, and then
trust to our good people of Antwerp for rushing to the rescue of the
Poor Clares, who have taken such blessed care of us in all our
straits.'

It seemed to me that such rescue would be late in the day; but I did
not say what I thought. I rather turned the conversation, by asking my
landlord if he knew, or had ever heard, anything of a certain Sister
Magdalen.

'Yes,' said he, rather under his breath; 'news will creep out, even
from a convent of Poor Clares. Sister Magdalen is either a great sinner
or a great saint. She does more, as I have heard, than all the other
nuns put together; yet, when last month they would fain have made her
mother-superior, she begged rather that they would place her below all
the rest, and make her the meanest servant of all.'

'You never saw her?' asked I.

'Never,' he replied.

I was weary of waiting for Father Bernard, and yet I lingered in
Antwerp. The political state of things became worse than ever,
increased to its height by the scarcity of food consequent on many
deficient harvests. I saw groups of fierce, squalid men, at every
corner of the street, glaring out with wolfish eyes at my sleek skin
and handsome clothes.

At last Father Bernard returned. We had a long conversation, in which
he told me that, curiously enough, Mr. Gisborne, Lucy's father, was
serving in one of the Austrian regiments, then in garrison at Antwerp.
I asked Father Bernard if he would make us acquainted; which he
consented to do. But, a day or two afterwards, he told me that, on
hearing my name, Mr. Gisborne had declined responding to any advances
on my part, saying he had abjured his country, and hated his
countrymen.

Probably he recollected my name in connection with that of his daughter
Lucy. Anyhow, it was clear enough that I had no chance of making his
acquaintance. Father Bernard confirmed me in my suspicions of the
hidden fermentation, for some coming evil, working among the 'blouses'
of Antwerp, and he would fain have had me depart from out the city; but
I rather craved the excitement of danger, and stubbornly refused to
leave.

One day, when I was walking with him in the Place Verte, he bowed to an
Austrian officer, who was crossing towards the cathedral.

'That is Mr. Gisborne,' said he, as soon as the gentleman was past.

I turned to look at the tall, slight figure of the officer. He carried
himself in a stately manner, although he was past middle age, and from
his years, might have had some excuse for a slight stoop. As I looked
at the man, he turned round, his eyes met mine, and I saw his face.
Deeply lined, sallow, and scathed was that countenance; scarred by
passion as well as by the fortunes of war. 'Twas but a moment our eyes
met. We each turned round, and went on our separate way.

But his whole appearance was not one to be easily forgotten; the
thorough appointment of the dress, and evident thought bestowed on it,
made but an incongruous whole with the dark, gloomy expression of his
countenance. Because he was Lucy's father, I sought instinctively to
meet him everywhere. At last he must have become aware of my
pertinacity, for he gave me a haughty scowl whenever I passed him. In
one of these encounters, however, I chanced to be of some service to
him. He was turning the corner of a street, and came suddenly on one of
the groups of discontented Flemings of whom I have spoken. Some words
were exchanged, when my gentleman out with his sword, and with a slight
but skilful cut drew blood from one of those who had insulted him, as
he fancied, though I was too far off to hear the words. They would all
have fallen upon him had I not rushed forwards and raised the cry, then
well known in Antwerp, of rally, to the Austrian soldiers who were
perpetually patrolling the streets, and who came in numbers to the
rescue. I think that neither Mr. Gisborne nor the mutinous group of
plebeians owed me much gratitude for my interference. He had planted
himself against a wall, in a skilful attitude of fence, ready with his
bright glancing rapier to do battle with all the heavy, fierce, unarmed
men, some six or seven in number. But when his own soldiers came up, he
sheathed his sword; and, giving some careless word of command, sent
them away again, and continued his saunter all alone down the street,
the workmen snarling in his rear, and more than half-inclined to fall
on me for my cry for rescue. I cared not if they did, my life seemed so
dreary a burden just then; and, perhaps, it was this daring loitering
among them that prevented their attacking me. Instead, they suffered me
to fall into conversation with them; and I heard some of their
grievances. Sore and heavy to be borne were they, and no wonder the
sufferers were savage and desperate.

The man whom Gisborne had wounded across his face would fain have got
out of me the name of his aggressor, but I refused to tell it. Another
of the group heard his inquiry, and made answer:

'I know the man. He is one Gisborne, aide-de-camp to the
General-Commandant. I know him well.'

He began to tell some story in connection with Gisborne in a low and
muttering voice; and while he was relating a tale, which I saw excited
their evil blood, and which they evidently wished me not to hear, I
sauntered away and back to my lodgings.

That night Antwerp was in open revolt. The inhabitants rose in
rebellion against their Austrian masters. The Austrians, holding the
gates of the city, remained at first pretty quiet in the citadel; only,
from time to time, the boom of a great cannon swept sullenly over the
town. But, if they expected the disturbance to die away, and spend
itself in a few hours' fury, they were mistaken. In a day or two, the
rioters held possession of the principal municipal buildings. Then the
Austrians poured forth in bright flaming array, calm and smiling, as
they marched to the posts assigned, as if the fierce mob were no more
to them than the swarms of buzzing summer flies. Their practised
manoeuvres, their well-aimed shot, told with terrible effect; but in
the place of one slain rioter, three sprang up of his blood to avenge
his loss. But a deadly foe, a ghastly ally of the Austrians, was at
work. Food, scarce and dear for months, was now hardly to be obtained
at any price. Desperate efforts were being made to bring provisions
into the city, for the rioters had friends without. Close to the city
port nearest to the Scheldt, a great struggle took place. I was there,
helping the rioters, whose cause I had adopted. We had a savage
encounter with the Austrians. Numbers fell on both sides; I saw them
lie bleeding for a moment; then a volley of smoke obscured them; and
when it cleared away, they were dead--trampled upon or smothered,
pressed down and hidden by the freshly-wounded whom those last guns had
brought low. And then a grey-robed and grey-veiled figure came right
across the flashing guns, and stooped over some one, whose life-blood
was ebbing away; sometimes it was to give him drink from cans which
they carried slung at their sides, sometimes I saw the cross held above
a dying man, and rapid prayers were being uttered, unheard by men in
that hellish din and clangour, but listened to by One above. I saw all
this as in a dream: the reality of that stern time was battle and
carnage. But I knew that these grey figures, their bare feet all wet
with blood, and their faces hidden by their veils, were the Poor
Clares--sent forth now because dire agony was abroad and imminent
danger at hand. Therefore, they left their cloistered shelter, and came
into that thick and evil melee.

Close to me--driven past me by the struggle of many fighters--came the
Antwerp burgess with the scarce-healed scar upon his face; and in an
instant more, he was thrown by the press upon the Austrian officer
Gisborne, and ere either had recovered the shock, the burgess had
recognised his opponent.

'Ha! the Englishman Gisborne!' he cried, and threw himself upon him
with redoubled fury. He had struck him hard--the Englishman was down;
when out of the smoke came a dark-grey figure, and threw herself right
under the uplifted flashing sword. The burgess's arm stood arrested.
Neither Austrians nor Anversois willingly harmed the Poor Clares.

'Leave him to me!' said a low stern voice. 'He is mine enemy--mine for
many years.'

Those words were the last I heard. I myself was struck down by a
bullet. I remember nothing more for days. When I came to myself, I was
at the extremity of weakness, and was craving for food to recruit my
strength. My landlord sat watching me. He, too, looked pinched and
shrunken; he had heard of my wounded state, and sought me out. Yes! the
struggle still continued, but the famine was sore; and some, he had
heard, had died for lack of food. The tears stood in his eyes as he
spoke. But soon he shook off his weakness, and his natural cheerfulness
returned. Father Bernard had been to see me--no one else. (Who should,
indeed?) Father Bernard would come back that afternoon--he had
promised. But Father Bernard never came, although I was up and dressed,
and looking eagerly for him.

My landlord brought me a meal which he had cooked himself: of what it
was composed he would not say, but it was most excellent, and with
every mouthful I seemed to gain strength. The good man sat looking at
my evident enjoyment with a happy smile of sympathy; but, as my
appetite became satisfied, I began to detect a certain wistfulness in
his eyes, as if craving for the food I had so nearly devoured--for,
indeed, at that time I was hardly aware of the extent of the famine.
Suddenly, there was a sound of many rushing feet past our window. My
landlord opened one of the sides of it, the better to learn what was
going on. Then we heard a faint, cracked, tinkling bell, coming shrill
upon clear and distinct from all other sounds. 'Holy Mother!' exclaimed
my landlord, 'the Poor Clares!'

He snatched up the fragments of my meal, and crammed them into my
hands, bidding me follow. Down-stairs he ran, clutching at more food,
as the women of his house eagerly held it out to him; and in a moment
we were in the street, moving along with the great current, all tending
towards the Convent of the Poor Clares. And still, as if piercing our
ears with its inarticulate cry, came the shrill tinkle of the bell. In
that strange crowd were old men trembling and sobbing, as they carried
their little pittance of food; women with the tears running down their
cheeks, who had snatched up what provisions they had in the vessels in
which they stood, so that the burden of these was in many cases much
greater than that which they contained; children, with flushed faces,
grasping tight the morsel of bitten cake or bread, in their eagerness
to carry it safe to the help of the Poor Clares; strong men--yea, both
Anversois and Austrians--pressing onwards with set teeth, and no word
spoken; and over all, and through all, came that sharp tinkle--that cry
for help in extremity.

We met the first torrent of people returning with blanched and piteous
faces: they were issuing out of the convent to make way for the
offerings of others. 'Haste, haste!' said they.

'A Poor Clare is dying! A Poor Clare is dead for hunger! God forgive
us, and our city!'

We pressed on. The stream bore us along where it would. We were carried
through refectories, bare and crumbless; into cells over whose doors
the conventual name of the occupant was written. Thus it was that I,
with others, was forced into Sister Magdalen's cell. On her couch lay
Gisborne, pale unto death, but not dead. By his side was a cup of
water, and a small morsel of mouldy bread, which he had pushed out of
his reach, and could not move to obtain. Over against his bed were
these words, copied in the English version: 'Therefore, if thine enemy
hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.'

Some of us gave him of our food, and left him eating greedily, like
some famished wild animal. For now it was no longer the sharp tinkle,
but that one solemn toll, which in all Christian countries tells of the
passing of the spirit out of earthly life into eternity; and again a
murmur gathered and grew, as of many people speaking with awed breath,
'A Poor Clare is dying! a Poor Clare is dead!'

Borne along once more by the motion of the crowd, we were carried into
the chapel belonging to the Poor Clares. On a bier before the high
altar, lay a woman--lay sister Magdalen--lay Bridget Fitzgerald. By her
side stood Father Bernard, in his robes of office, and holding the
crucifix on high while he pronounced the solemn absolution of the
Church, as to one who had newly confessed herself of deadly sin. I
pushed on with passionate force, till I stood close to the dying woman,
as she received extreme unction amid the breathless and awed hush of
the multitude around. Her eyes were glazing, her limbs were stiffening;
but when the rite was over and finished, she raised her gaunt figure
slowly up, and her eyes brightened to a strange intensity of joy, as,
with the gesture of her finger and the trance-like gleam of her eye,
she seemed like one who watched the disappearance of some loathed and
fearful creature.

'She is freed from the curse!' said she, as she fell back dead.

                     *      *      *      *      *

Now, of all our party who had first listened to my Lady Ludlow, Mr.
Preston was the only one who had not told us something, either of
information, tradition, history, or legend. We naturally turned to him;
but we did not like asking him directly for his contribution, for he
was a grave, reserved, and silent man.

He understood us, however, and, rousing himself as it were, he said:

'I know you wish me to tell you, in my turn, of something which I have
learnt or heard during my life. I could tell you something of my own
life, and of a life dearer still to my memory; but I have shrunk from
narrating anything so purely personal. Yet, shrink as I will, no other
but those sad recollections will present themselves to my mind. I call
them sad when I think of the end of it all. However I am not going to
moralize. If my dear brother's life and death does not speak for
itself, no words of mine will teach you what may be learnt from it.'




LOIS THE WITCH

Chapter 1


In the year 1691, Lois Barclay stood on a little wooden pier, steadying
herself on the stable land, in much the same manner as, eight or nine
weeks ago, she had tried to steady herself on the deck of the rocking
ship which had carried her across from Old to New England. It seemed as
strange now to be on solid earth as it had been, not long ago, to be
rocked by the sea, both by day and by night; and the aspect of the land
was equally strange. The forests which showed in the distance all
round, and which, in truth, were not very far from the wooden houses
forming the town of Boston, were of different shades of green, and
different, too, in shape of outline to those which Lois Barclay knew
well in her old home in Warwickshire. Her heart sank a little as she
stood alone, waiting for the captain of the good ship Redemption, the
kind rough old sailor, who was her only known friend in this unknown
continent. Captain Holdernesse was busy, however, as she saw, and it
would probably be some time before he would be ready to attend, to her;
so Lois sat down on one of the casks that lay about, and wrapped her
grey duffle cloak tight around her, and sheltered herself under her
hood, as well as might be, from the piercing wind, which seemed to
follow those whom it had tyrannized over at sea with a dogged wish of
still tormenting them on land. Very patiently did Lois sit there,
although she was weary, and shivering with cold; for the day was severe
for May, and the Redemption, with store of necessaries and comforts for
the Puritan colonists of New England, was the earliest ship that had
ventured across the seas.

How could Lois help thinking of the past, and speculating on the
future, as she sat on Boston pier, at this breathing-time of her life?
In the dim sea-mist which she gazed upon with aching eyes (filled,
against her will, with tears, from time to time), there rose the little
village church of Barford (not three miles from Warwick--you may see it
yet), where her father had preached ever since 1661, long before she
was born. He and her mother both lay dead in Barford churchyard; and
the old low grey church could hardly come before her vision without her
seeing the old parsonage too, the cottage covered with Austrian roses,
and yellow jessamine, where she had been born, sole child of parents
already long past the prime of youth. She saw the path, not a hundred
yards long, from the parsonage to the vestry door: that path which her
father trod daily; for the vestry was his study, and the sanctum, where
he pored over the ponderous tomes of the Father, and compared their
precepts with those of the authorities of the Anglican Church of that
day--the day of the later Stuarts; for Barford Parsonage at that time
scarcely exceeded in size and dignity the cottages by which it was
surrounded: it only contained three rooms on a floor, and was but two
stories high. On the first, or ground floor, were the parlour, kitchen,
and back or working kitchen; up-stairs, Mr. and Mrs. Barclay's room,
that belonging to Lois, and the maid-servant's room. If a guest came,
Lois left her own chamber, and shared old Clemence's bed. But those
days were over. Never more should Lois see father or mother on earth;
they slept, calm and still, in Barford churchyard, careless of what
became of their orphan child, as far as earthly manifestations of care
or love went. And Clemence lay there too, bound down in her grassy bed
by withes of the briar-rose, which Lois had trained over those three
precious graves before leaving England for ever.

There were some who would fain have kept her there; one who swore in
his heart a great oath unto the Lord that he would seek her sooner or
later, if she was still upon the earth. But he was the rich heir and
only son of the Miller Lucy, whose mill stood by the Avon-side in the
grassy Barford meadows, and his father looked higher for him than the
penniless daughter of Parson Barclay (so low were clergymen esteemed in
those days!); and the very suspicion of Hugh Lucy's attachment to Lois
Barclay made his parents think it more prudent not to offer the orphan
a home, although none other of the parishioners had the means, even if
they had the will, to do so.

So Lois swallowed her tears down till the time came for crying, and
acted upon her mother's words:

'Lois, thy father is dead of this terrible fever, and I am dying. Nay,
it is so, though I am easier from pain for these few hours, the Lord be
praised! The cruel men of the Commonwealth have left thee very
friendless. Thy father's only brother was shot down at Edgehill. I,
too, have a brother, though thou hast never heard me speak of him, for
he was a schismatic; and thy father and he had words, and he left for
that new country beyond the seas, without ever saying farewell to us.
But Ralph was a kind lad until he took up these new-fangled notions,
and for the old days' sake he will take thee in, and love thee as a
child, and place thee among his children. Blood is thicker than water.
Write to him as soon as I am gone--for Lois, I am going--and I bless
the Lord that has letten me join my husband again so soon.' Such was
the selfishness of conjugal love; she thought little of Lois's
desolation in comparison with her rejoicing over her speedy reunion
with her dead husband! 'Write to thine uncle, Ralph Hickson, Salem, New
England (put it down, child, on thy tablets), and say that I, Henrietta
Barclay, charge him, for the sake of all he holds dear in heaven or on
earth,--for his salvation's sake, as well as for the sake of the old
home at Lester-bridge,--for the sake of the father and mother that gave
us birth, as well as for the sake of the six little children who lie
dead between him and me,--that he take thee into his home as if thou
wert his own flesh and blood, as indeed thou art. He has a wife and
children of his own, and no one need fear having thee, my Lois, my
darling, my baby, among his household. Oh, Lois, would that thou wert
dying with me! The thought of thee makes death sore!' Lois comforted
her mother more than herself, poor child, by promises to obey her dying
wishes to the letter, and by expressing hopes she dared not feel of her
uncle's kindness.

'Promise me'--the dying woman's breath came harder and harder--'that
thou wilt go at once. The money our goods will bring--the letter thy
father wrote to Captain Holdernesse, his old schoolfellow--thou knowest
all I would say--my Lois, God bless thee!'

Solemnly did Lois promise; strictly she kept her word. It was all the
more easy, for Hugh Lucy met her, and told her, in one great burst of
love, of his passionate attachment, his vehement struggles with his
father, his impotence at present, his hope and resolves for the future.
And, intermingled with all this, came such outrageous threats and
expressions of uncontrolled vehemence, that Lois felt that in Barford
she must not linger to be a cause of desperate quarrel between father
and son, while her absence might soften down matters, so that either
the rich old miller might relent, or--and her heart ached to think of
the other possibility--Hugh's love might cool, and the dear play-fellow
of her childhood learn to forget. If not--if Hugh were to be trusted in
one tithe of what he said--God might permit him to fulfil his resolve
of coming to seek her out before many years were over. It was all in
God's hands, and that was best, thought Lois Barclay.

She was roused out of her trance of recollections by Captain
Holdernesse, who, having done all that was necessary in the way of
orders and directions to his mate, now came up to her, and, praising
her for her quiet patience, told her that he would now take her to the
Widow Smith's, a decent kind of house, where he and many other sailors
of the better order were in the habit of lodging, during their stay on
the New England shores. Widow Smith, he said, had a parlour for herself
and her daughters, in which Lois might sit, while he went about the
business that, as he had told her, would detain him in Boston for a day
or two, before he could accompany her to her uncle's at Salem. All this
had been to a certain degree arranged on ship-board; but Captain
Holdernesse, for want of anything else that he could think of to talk
about, recapitulated it as he and Lois walked along. It was his way of
showing sympathy with the emotion that made her grey eyes full of
tears, as she started up from the pier at the sound of his voice. In
his heart he said, 'Poor wench! poor wench! it's a strange land to her,
and they are all strange folks, and, I reckon, she will be feeling
desolate. I'll try and cheer her up.' So he talked on about hard facts,
connected with the life that lay before her, until they reached Widow
Smith's; and perhaps Lois was more brightened by this style of
conversation, and the new ideas it presented to her, than she would
have been by the tenderest woman's sympathy.

'They are a queer set, these New Englanders,' said Captain Holdernesse.
'They are rare chaps for praying; down on their knees at every turn of
their life. Folk are none so busy in a new country, else they would
have to pray like me, with a "Yo-hoy!" on each side of my prayers, and
a rope cutting like fire through my hand. Yon pilot was for calling us
all to thanksgiving for a good voyage, and lucky escape from the
pirates; but I said I always put up my thanks on dry land, after I had
got my ship into harbour. The French colonists, too, are vowing
vengeance for the expedition against Canada, and the people here are
raging like heathens--at least, as like as godly folk can be--for the
loss of their charter. All that is the news the pilot told me; for, for
all he wanted us to be thanksgiving instead of casting the lead, he was
as down in the mouth as could be about the state of the country. But
here we are at Widow Smith's! Now, cheer up, and show the godly a
pretty smiling Warwickshire lass!'

Anybody would have smiled at Widow Smith's greeting. She was a comely,
motherly woman, dressed in the primmest fashion in vogue twenty years
before, in England, among the class to which she belonged. But,
somehow, her pleasant face gave the lie to her dress; were it as brown
and sober-coloured as could be, folk remembered it bright and cheerful,
because it was a part of Widow Smith herself.

She kissed Lois on both cheeks, before she rightly understood who the
stranger maiden was, only because she was a stranger, and looked sad
and forlorn; and then she kissed her again, because Captain Holdernesse
commended her to the widow's good offices. And so she led Lois by the
hand into her rough, substantial log-house, over the door of which hung
a great bough of a tree, by way of sign of entertainment for man and
horse. Yet not all men were received by Widow Smith. To some she could
be as cold and reserved as need be, deaf to all inquiries save
one--where else they could find accommodation? To this question she
would give a ready answer, and speed the unwelcome guest on his way.
Widow Smith was guided in these matters by instinct: one glance at a
man's face told her whether or not she chose to have him as an inmate
of the same house as her daughters; and her promptness of decision in
these matters gave her manner a kind of authority which no one liked to
disobey, especially as she had stalwart neighbours within call to back
her, if her assumed deafness in the first instance, and her voice and
gesture in the second, were not enough to give the would-be guest his
dismissal. Widow Smith chose her customers merely by their physical
aspect; not one whit with regard to their apparent worldly
circumstances. Those who had been staying at her house once, always
came again, for she had the knack of making every one beneath her roof
comfortable and at his ease. Her daughters, Prudence and Hester, had
somewhat of their mother's gifts, but not in such perfection. They
reasoned a little upon a stranger's appearance, instead of knowing at
the first moment whether they liked him or no; they noticed the
indications of his clothes, the quality and cut thereof, as telling
somewhat of his station in society; they were more reserved, they
hesitated more than their mother; they had not her prompt authority,
her happy power. Their bread was not so light, their cream went
sometimes to sleep when it should have been turning into butter, their
hams were not always 'just like the hams of the old country,' as their
mother's were invariably pronounced to be; yet they were good, orderly,
kindly girls, and rose and greeted Lois with a friendly shake of the
hand, as their mother, with her arm round the stranger's waist, led her
into the private room which she called her parlour. The aspect of this
room was strange in the English girl's eyes. The logs of which the
house was built, showed here and there through the mud plaster,
although before both plaster and logs were hung the skins of many
curious animals,--skins presented to the widow by many a trader of her
acquaintance, just as her sailor guests brought her another description
of gift--shells, strings of wampum-beads, sea-birds' eggs, and presents
from the old country. The room was more like a small museum of natural
history of these days than a parlour; and it had a strange, peculiar,
but not unpleasant smell about it, neutralized in some degree by the
smoke from the enormous trunk of pinewood which smouldered on the
hearth.

The instant their mother told them that Captain Holdernesse was in the
outer room, the girls began putting away their spinning-wheel and
knitting-needles, and preparing for a meal of some kind; what meal,
Lois, sitting there and unconsciously watching, could hardly tell.
First, dough was set to rise for cakes; then came out of a corner
cupboard--a present from England--an enormous square bottle of a
cordial called Golden Wasser; next, a mill for grinding chocolate--a
rare unusual treat anywhere at that time; then a great Cheshire cheese.
Three venison steaks were cut ready for broiling, fat cold pork sliced
up and treacle poured over it, a great pie something like a mince-pie,
but which the daughters spoke of with honour as the 'punken-pie,' fresh
and salt fish brandered, oysters cooked in various ways. Lois wondered
where would be the end of the provisions for hospitably receiving the
strangers from the old country. At length everything was placed on the
table, the hot food smoking; but all was cool, not to say cold, before
Elder Hawkins (an old neighbour of much repute and standing, who had
been invited in by Widow Smith to hear the news) had finished his
grace, into which was embodied thanksgivings for the past and prayers
for the future lives of every individual present, adapted to their
several cases, as far as the elder could guess at them from
appearances. This grace might not have ended so soon as it did, had it
not been for the somewhat impatient drumming of his knife-handle on the
table with which Captain Holdernesse accompanied the latter half of the
elder's words.

When they first sat down to their meal, all were too hungry for much
talking; but as their appetites diminished their curiosity increased,
and there was much to be told and heard on both sides. With all the
English intelligence Lois was, of course, well acquainted; but she
listened with natural attention to all that was said about the new
country, and the new people among whom she had come to live. Her father
had been a Jacobite, as the adherents of the Stuarts were beginning at
this time to be called. His father, again, had been a follower of
Archbishop Laud; so Lois had hitherto heard little of the conversation,
and seen little of the ways of the Puritans. Elder Hawkins was one of
the strictest of the strict, and evidently his presence kept the two
daughters of the house considerably in awe. But the widow herself was a
privileged person; her known goodness of heart (the effects of which
had been experienced by many) gave her the liberty of speech which was
tacitly denied to many, under penalty of being esteemed ungodly if they
infringed certain conventional limits. And Captain Holdernesse and his
mate spoke out their minds, let who would be present. So that on this
first landing in New England, Lois was, as it were, gently let down
into the midst of the Puritan peculiarities, and yet they were
sufficient to make her feel very lonely and strange.

The first subject of conversation was the present state of the
colony--Lois soon found out that, although at the beginning she was not
a little perplexed by the frequent reference to names of places which
she naturally associated with the old country. Widow Smith was
speaking: 'In the county of Essex the folk are ordered to keep four
scouts, or companies of minute-men; six persons in each company; to be
on the look-out for the wild Indians, who are for ever stirring about
in the woods, stealthy brutes as they are! I am sure, I got such a
fright the first harvest-time after I came over to New England, I go on
dreaming, now near twenty years after Lothrop's business, of painted
Indians, with their shaven scalps and their war-streaks, lurking behind
the trees, and coming nearer and nearer with their noiseless steps.'

'Yes,' broke in one of her daughters; 'and, mother, don't you remember
how Hannah Benson told us how her husband had cut down every tree near
his house at Deerbrook, in order that no one might come near him, under
cover; and how one evening she was a-sitting in the twilight, when all
her family were gone to bed, and her husband gone off to Plymouth on
business, and she saw a log of wood, just like a trunk of a felled
tree, lying in the shadow, and thought nothing of it, till, on looking
again a while after, she fancied it was come a bit nearer to the house,
and how her heart turned sick with fright, and how she dared not stir
at first, but shut her eyes while she counted a hundred, and looked
again, and the shadow was deeper, but she could see that the log was
nearer; so she ran in and bolted the door, and went up to where her
eldest lad lay. It was Elijah, and he was but sixteen then; but he rose
up at his mother's words, and took his father's long duck-gun down, and
he tried the loading, and spoke for the first time to put up a prayer
that God would give his aim good guidance, and went to a window that
gave a view upon the side where the log lay, and fired, and no one
dared to look what came of it, but all the household read the
Scriptures, and prayed the whole night long, till morning came and
showed a long stream of blood lying on the grass close by the log,
which the full sunlight showed to be no log at all, but just a Red
Indian covered with bark, and painted most skilfully, with his
war-knife by his side.'

All were breathless with listening, though to most the story, or such
like it, were familiar. Then another took up the tale of horror:

'And the pirates have been down at Marblehead since you were here,
Captain Holdernesse. 'Twas only the last winter they landed,--French
Papist pirates; and the people kept close within their houses, for they
knew not what would come of it; and they dragged folk ashore. There was
one woman among those folk--prisoners from some vessel, doubtless--and
the pirates took them by force to the inland marsh; and the Marblehead
folk kept still and quiet, every gun loaded, and every ear on the
watch, for who knew but what the wild sea-robbers might take a turn on
land next; and, in the dead of the night, they heard a woman's loud and
pitiful outcry from the marsh, 'Lord Jesu! have mercy on me! Save me
from the power of man, O Lord Jesu!' And the blood of all who heard the
cry ran cold with terror, till old Nance Hickson, who had been
stone-deaf and bedridden for years, stood up in the midst of the folk
all gathered together in her grandson's house, and said, that as they,
the dwellers in Marblehead, had not had brave hearts or faith enough to
go and succour the helpless, that cry of a dying woman should be in
their ears, and in their children's ears, till the end of the world.
And Nance dropped down dead as soon as she had made an end of speaking,
and the pirates set sail from Marblehead at morning dawn; but the folk
there hear the cry still, shrill and pitiful, from the waste marshes,
"Lord Jesu! have mercy on me! Save me from the power of man, O Lord
Jesu!"'

'And by token,' said Elder Hawkins's deep bass voice, speaking with the
strong nasal twang of the Puritans (who, says Butler,

    "Blasphemed custard through the nose"),

'godly Mr. Noyes ordained a fast at Marblehead, and preached a
soul-stirring discourse on the words; "Inasmuch as ye did it not unto
one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it not unto me." But it
has been borne in upon me at times, whether the whole vision of the
pirates and the cry of the woman was not a device of Satan's to sift
the Marblehead folk, and see what fruit their doctrine bore, and so to
condemn them in the sight of the Lord. If it were so, the enemy had a
great triumph, for assuredly it was no part of Christian men to leave a
helpless woman unaided in her sore distress.'

'But, Elder,' said Widow Smith, 'it was no vision; they were real
living men who went ashore, men who broke down branches and left their
footmarks on the ground.'

'As for that matter, Satan hath many powers, and if it be the day when
he is permitted to go about like a roaring lion, he will not stick at
trifles, but make his work complete. I tell you, many men are spiritual
enemies in visible forms, permitted to roam about the waste places of
the earth. I myself believe that these Red Indians are indeed the evil
creatures of whom we read in Holy Scripture; and there is no doubt that
they are in league with those abominable Papists, the French people in
Canada. I have heard tell, that the French pay the Indians so much gold
for every dozen scalps off Englishmen's heads.'

'Pretty cheerful talk this,' said Captain Holdernesse to Lois,
perceiving her blanched cheek and terror-stricken mien. 'Thou art
thinking that thou hadst better have stayed at Barford, I'll answer for
it, wench. But the devil is not so black as he is painted.'

'Ho! there again!' said Elder Hawkins. 'The devil is painted, it hath
been said so from old times; and are not these Indians painted, even
like unto their father?'

'But is it all true?' asked Lois, aside, of Captain Holdernesse,
letting the elder hold forth unheeded by her, though listened to,
however, with the utmost reverence by the two daughters of the house.

'My wench,' said the old sailor, 'thou hast come to a country where
there are many perils, both from land and from sea. The Indians hate
the white men. Whether other white men' (meaning the French away to the
north) 'have hounded on the savages, or whether the English have taken
their lands and hunting-grounds without due recompense, and so raised
the cruel vengeance of the wild creatures--who knows? But it is true
that it is not safe to go far into the woods, for fear of the lurking
painted savages; nor has it been safe to build a dwelling far from a
settlement; and it takes a brave heart to make a journey from one town
to another, and folk do say the Indian creatures rise up out of the
very ground to waylay the English; and then offers affirm they are all
in league with Satan to affright the Christians out of the heathen
country over which he has reigned so long. Then, again, the seashore is
infested by pirates, the scum of all nations: they land, and plunder,
and ravage, and burn, and destroy. Folk get affrighted of the real
dangers, and in their fright imagine, perchance, dangers that are not.
But who knows? Holy Scripture speaks of witches and wizards, and of the
power of the Evil One in desert places; and even in the old country we
have heard tell of those who have sold their souls for ever for the
little power they get for a few years on earth.'

By this time the whole table was silent, listening to the captain; it
was just one of those chance silences that sometimes occur, without any
apparent reason, and often without any apparent consequence. But all
present had reason, before many months had-passed over, to remember the
words which Lois spoke in answer, although her voice was low, and she
only thought, in the interest of the moment, of being heard by her old
friend the captain.

'They are fearful creatures, the witches! and yet I am sorry for the
poor old women, whilst I dread them. We had one in Barford, when I was
a little child. No one knew whence she came, but she settled herself
down in a mud hut by the common side; and there she lived, she and her
cat.' (At the mention of the cat, Elder Hawkins shook his head long and
gloomily.) 'No one knew how she lived, if it were not on nettles and
scraps of oatmeal and such-like food given her more for fear than for
pity. She went double, always talking and muttering to herself. Folk
said she snared birds and rabbits, in the thicket that came down to her
hovel. How it came to pass I cannot say, but many a one fell sick in
the village, and much cattle died one spring, when I was near four
years old. I never heard much about it, for my father said it was ill
talking about such things; I only know I got a sick fright one
afternoon, when the maid had gone out for milk and had taken me with
her, and we were passing a meadow where the Avon, circling, makes a
deep round pool, and there was a crowd of folk, all still--and a still,
breathless crowd makes the heart beat worse than a shouting, noisy one.
They were all gazing towards the water, and the maid held me up in her
arms to see the sight above the shoulders of the people; and I saw old
Hannah in the water, her grey hair all streaming down her shoulders,
and her face bloody and black with the stones and the mud they had been
throwing at her, and her cat tied round her neck. I hid my face, I
know, as soon as I saw the fearsome sight, for her eyes met mine as
they were glaring with fury--poor, helpless, baited creature!--and she
caught the sight of me, and cried out, "Parson's wench, parson's wench,
yonder, in thy nurse's arms, thy dad hath never tried for to save me,
and none shall save thee when thou art brought up for a witch." Oh! the
words rang in my ears, when I was dropping asleep, for years after. I
used to dream that I was in that pond, all men hating me with their
eyes because I was a witch; and, at times, her black cat used to seem
living again, and say over those dreadful words.'

Lois stopped: the two daughters looked at her excitement with a kind of
shrinking surprise, for the tears were in her eyes. Elder Hawkins shook
his head, and muttered texts from Scripture; but cheerful Widow Smith,
not liking the gloomy turn of the conversation, tried to give it a
lighter cast by saying, 'And I don't doubt but what the parson's bonny
lass has bewitched many a one since, with her dimples and her pleasant
ways--eh, Captain Holdernesse? It's you must tell us tales of this
young lass' doings in England.'

'Ay, ay,' said the captain, 'there's one under her charms in
Warwickshire who will never get the better of it, I'm thinking.'

Elder Hawkins rose to speak; he stood leaning on his hands, which were
placed on the table: 'Brethren,' said he, 'I must upbraid you if ye
speak lightly; charms and witchcraft are evil things. I trust this
maiden hath had nothing to do with them, even in thought. But my mind
misgives me at her story. The hellish witch might have power from Satan
to infect her mind, she being yet a child, with the deadly sin. Instead
of vain talking, I call upon you all to join with me in prayer for this
stranger in our land, that her heart may be purged from all iniquity.
Let us pray.'

'Come, there's no harm in that,' said the captain; 'but, Elder Hawkins,
when you are at work, just pray for us all, for I am afeard there be
some of us need purging from iniquity a good deal more than Lois
Barclay, and a prayer for a man never does mischief.'

Captain Holdernesse had business in Boston which detained him there for
a couple of days, and during that time Lois remained with the Widow
Smith, seeing what was to be seen of the new land that contained her
future home. The letter of her dying mother was sent off to Salem,
meanwhile, by a lad going thither, in order to prepare her Uncle Ralph
Hickson for his niece's coming, as soon as Captain Holdernesse could
find leisure to take her; for he considered her given into his own
personal charge, until he could consign her to her uncle's care. When
the time came for going to Salem, Lois felt very sad at leaving the
kindly woman under whose roof she had been staying, and looked back as
long as she could see anything of Widow Smith's dwelling. She was
packed into a rough kind of country cart, which just held her and
Captain Holdernesse, beside the driver. There was a basket of
provisions under their feet, and behind them hung a bag of provender
for the horse; for it was a good day's journey to Salem, and the road
was reputed so dangerous that it was ill tarrying a minute longer than
necessary for refreshment. English roads were bad enough at that period
and for long after, but in America the way was simply the cleared
ground of the forest; the stumps of the felled trees still remaining in
the direct line, forming obstacles, which it required the most careful
driving to avoid; and in the hollows, where the ground was swampy, the
pulpy nature of it was obviated by logs of wood laid across the boggy
part. The deep green forest, tangled into heavy darkness even thus
early in the year, came within a few yards of the road all the way,
though efforts were regularly made by the inhabitants of the
neighbouring settlements to keep a certain space clear on each side,
for fear of the lurking Indians, who might otherwise come upon them
unawares. The cries of strange birds, the unwonted colour of some of
them, all suggested to the imaginative or unaccustomed traveller the
idea of war-whoops and painted deadly enemies. But at last they drew
near to Salem, which rivalled Boston in size in those days, and boasted
the name of one or two streets, although to an English eye they looked
rather more like irregularly built houses, clustered round the
meeting-house, or rather one of the meeting-houses, for a second was in
process of building. The whole place was surrounded with two circles of
stockades; between the two were the gardens and grazing ground for
those who dreaded their cattle straying into the woods, and the
consequent danger of reclaiming them.

The lad who drove them flogged his spent horse into a trot, as they
went through Salem to Ralph Hickson's house. It was evening, the
leisure time for the inhabitants, and their children were at play
before the houses. Lois was struck by the beauty of one wee toddling
child, and turned to look after it; it caught its little foot in a
stump of wood, and fell with a cry that brought the mother out in
affright. As she ran out, her eye caught Lois's anxious gaze, although
the noise of the heavy wheels drowned the sound of her words of inquiry
as to the nature of the hurt the child had received. Nor had Lois time
to think long upon the matter, for the instant after, the horse was
pulled up at the door of a good, square, substantial wooden house,
plastered over into a creamy white, perhaps as handsome a house as any
in Salem; and there she was told by the driver that her uncle, Ralph
Hickson, lived. In the flurry of the moment she did not notice, but
Captain Holdernesse did, that no one came out at the unwonted sound of
wheels, to receive and welcome her. She was lifted down by the old
sailor, and led into a large room, almost like the hall of some English
manor-house as to size. A tall, gaunt young man of three or four and
twenty, sat on a bench by one of the windows, reading a great folio by
the fading light of day. He did not rise when they came in, but looked
at them with surprise, no gleam of intelligence coming into his stern,
dark face. There was no woman in the house-place. Captain Holdernesse
paused a moment, and then said:

'Is this house Ralph Hickson's?'

'It is,' said the young man, in a slow, deep voice. But he added no
word further.

'This is his niece, Lois Barclay,' said the captain, taking the girl's
arm, and pushing her forwards. The young man looked at her steadily and
gravely for a minute; then rose, and carefully marking the page in the
folio which hitherto had lain open upon his knee, said, still in the
same heavy, indifferent manner, 'I will call my mother, she will know.'

He opened a door which looked into a warm bright kitchen, ruddy with
the light of the fire over which three women were apparently engaged
in cooking something, while a fourth, an old Indian woman, of a
greenish-brown colour, shrivelled up and bent with apparent age, moved
backwards and forwards, evidently fetching the others the articles they
required.

'Mother,' said the young man; and having arrested her attention, he
pointed over his shoulder to the newly-arrived strangers, and returned
to the study of his book, from time to time, however, furtively
examining Lois from beneath his dark shaggy eyebrows.

A tall, largely made woman, past middle life, came in from the kitchen,
and stood reconnoitring the strangers.

Captain Holdernesse spoke.

'This is Lois Barclay, Master Ralph Hickson's niece.'

'I know nothing of her,' said the mistress of the house, in a deep
voice, almost as masculine as her son's.

'Master Hickson received his sister's letter, did he not? I sent it off
myself by a lad named Elias Wellcome, who left Boston for this place
yester morning.'

'Ralph Hickson has received no such letter. He lies bedridden in the
chamber beyond. Any letters for him must come through my hands;
wherefore I can affirm with certainty that no such letter has been
delivered here. His sister Barclay, she that was Henrietta Hickson, and
whose husband took the oaths to Charles Stuart, and stuck by his living
when all godly men left theirs----'

Lois, who had thought her heart was dead and cold a minute before at
the ungracious reception she had met with, felt words come up into her
mouth at the implied insult to her father, and spoke out, to her own
and the captain's astonishment:

'They might be godly men who left their churches on that day of which
you speak, madam; but they alone were not the godly men, and no one has
a right to limit true godliness for mere opinion's sake.'

'Well said, lass,' spoke out the captain, looking round upon her with a
kind of admiring wonder, and patting her on the back.

Lois and her aunt gazed into each other's eyes unflinchingly, for a
minute or two of silence; but the girl felt her colour coming and
going, while the elder woman's never varied; and the eyes of the young
maiden were filling fast with tears, while those of Grate Hickson kept
on their stare, dry and unwavering.

'Mother!' said the young man, rising up with a quicker motion than any
one had yet used in this house, 'it is ill speaking of such matters
when my cousin comes first among us. The Lord may give her grace
hereafter, but she has travelled from Boston city to-day, and she and
this seafaring man must need rest and food.'

He did not attend to see the effect of his words, but sat down again,
and seemed to be absorbed in his book in an instant. Perhaps he knew
that his word was law with his grim mother, for he had hardly ceased
speaking before she had pointed to a wooden settle; and smoothing the
lines on her countenance, she said, 'What Manasseh says is true. Sit
down here, while I bid Faith and Nattee get food ready; and meanwhile I
will go tell my husband, that one who calls herself his sister's child
is come over to pay him a visit.'

She went to the door leading into the kitchen, and gave some directions
to the elder girl, whom Lois now knew to be the daughter of the house.
Faith stood impassive, while her mother spoke, scarcely caring to look
at the newly-arrived strangers. She was like her brother Manasseh in
complexion, but had handsomer features, and large, mysterious-looking
eyes, as Lois saw, when once she lifted them up, and took in, as it
were, the aspect of the sea-captain and her cousin with one swift
searching look. About the stiff, tall, angular mother, and the scarce
less pliant figure of the daughter, a girl of twelve years old, or
thereabouts, played all manner of impish antics, unheeded by them, as
if it were her accustomed habit to peep about, now under their arms,
now at this side, now at that, making grimaces all the while at Lois
and Captain Holdernesse, who sat facing the door, weary, and somewhat
disheartened by their reception. The captain pulled out tobacco, and
began to chew it by way of consolation; but in a moment or two, his
usual elasticity of spirit came to his rescue, and he said in a low
voice to Lois:

'That scoundrel Elias, I will give it him! If the letter had but been
delivered, thou wouldst have had a different kind of welcome; but as
soon as I have had some victuals, I will go out and find the lad, and
bring back the letter, and that will make all right, my wench. Nay,
don't be downhearted, for I cannot stand women's tears. Thou'rt just
worn out with the shaking and the want of food.'

Lois brushed away her tears, and looking round to try and divert her
thoughts by fixing them on present object, she caught her cousin
Manasseh's deep-set eyes furtively watching her. It was with no
unfriendly gaze, yet it made Lois uncomfortable, particularly as he did
not withdraw his looks after he must have seen that she observed him.
She was glad when her aunt called her into an inner room to see her
uncle, and she escaped from the steady observance of her gloomy, silent
cousin.

Ralph Hickson was much older than his wife, and his illness made him
look older still. He had never had the force of character that Grace,
his spouse, possessed, and age and sickness had now rendered him almost
childish at times. But his nature was affectionate, and stretching out
his trembling arms from where he lay bedridden, he gave Lois an
unhesitating welcome, never waiting for the confirmation of the missing
letter before he acknowledged her to be his niece.

'Oh! 'tis kind in thee to come all across the sea to make acquaintance
with thine uncle; kind in Sister Barclay to spare thee!'

Lois had to tell him that there was no one living to miss her at home
in England; that in fact she had no home in England, no father nor
mother left upon earth; and that she had been bidden by her mother's
last words to seek him out, and ask him for a home. Her words came up,
half choked from a heavy heart, and his dulled wits could not take
their meaning in without several repetitions; and then he cried like a
child, rather at his own loss of a sister, whom he had not seen for
more than twenty years, than at that of the orphan's standing before
him, trying hard not to cry, but to start bravely in this new strange
home. What most of all helped Lois in her self-restraint was her aunt's
unsympathetic look. Born and bred in New England, Grace Hickson had a
kind of jealous dislike to her husband's English relations, which had
increased since of late years his weakened mind yearned after them, and
he forgot the good reason he had had for his self-exile, and moaned
over the decision which had led to it as the great mistake of his life.
'Come,' said she, 'it strikes me that, in all this sorrow for the loss
of one who died full of years, ye are forgetting in Whose hands life
and death are!'

True words, but ill-spoken at that time. Lois looked up at her with a
scarcely disguised indignation; which increased as she heard the
contemptuous tone in which her aunt went on talking to Ralph Hickson,
even while she was arranging his bed with a regard to his greater
comfort.

'One would think thou wert a godless man, by the moan thou art always
making over spilt milk; and truth is, thou art but childish in thine
old age. When we were wed, thou left all things to the Lord; I would
never have married thee else. Nay, lass,' said she, catching the
expression on Lois's face, 'thou art never going to browbeat me with
thine angry looks. I do my duty as I read it, and there is never a man
in Salem that dare speak a word to Grace Hickson about either her works
or her faith. Godly Mr. Cotton Mather hath said, that even he might
learn of me; and I would advise thee rather to humble thyself, and see
if the Lord may not convert thee from thy ways, since he has sent thee
to dwell, as it were, in Zion, where the precious dew falls daily on
Aaron's beard.'

Lois felt ashamed and sorry to find that her aunt had so truly
interpreted the momentary expression of her features; she blamed
herself a little for the feeling that had caused that expression,
trying to think how much her aunt might have been troubled with
something before the unexpected irruption of the strangers, and again
hoping that the remembrance of this little misunderstanding would soon
pass away. So she endeavoured to reassure herself, and not to give way
to her uncle's tender trembling pressure of her hand, as, at her aunt's
bidding, she wished him good night, and returned into the outer, or
'keeping'-room, where all the family were now assembled, ready for the
meal of flour cakes and venison-steaks which Nattee, the Indian
servant, was bringing in from the kitchen. No one seemed to have been
speaking to Captain Holdernesse while Lois had been away. Manasseh sat
quiet and silent where he did, with the book open upon his knee, his
eyes thoughtfully fixed on vacancy, as if he saw a vision, or dreamed
dreams. Faith stood by the table, lazily directing Nattee in her
preparations; and Prudence lolled against the door-frame, between
kitchen and keeping-room, playing tricks on the old Indian woman as she
passed backwards and forwards, till Nattee appeared to be in a strong
state of expressed irritation, which he tried in vain to repress, as
whenever she showed any sign of it, Prudence only seemed excited to
greater mischief. When all was ready, Manasseh lifted his right hand,
and 'asked a blessing,' as it was termed; but the grace became a long
prayer for abstract spiritual blessings, for strength to combat Satan,
and to quench his fiery darts, and at length assumed, so Lois thought,
a purely personal character, as if the young man had forgotten the
occasion, and even the people present, but was searching into the
nature of the diseases that beset his own sick soul, and spreading them
out before the Lord. He was brought back by a pluck at the coat from
Prudence; he opened his shut eyes, cast an angry glance at the child,
who made a face at him for sole reply, and then he sat down, and they
all fell to. Grace Hickson would have thought her hospitality sadly at
fault, if she had allowed Captain Holdernesse to go out in search of a
bed. Skins were spread for him on the floor of the keeping-room; a
Bible, and a square bottle of spirits were placed on the table, to
supply his wants during the night; and in spite of all the cares and
troubles, temptations, or sins of the members of that household, they
were all asleep before the town clock struck ten.

In the morning, the captain's first care was to go out in search of the
boy Elias, and the missing letter. He met him bringing it with an easy
conscience, for, thought Elias, a few hours sooner or later will make
no difference; to-night or the morrow morning will be all the same. But
he was startled into a sense of wrong-doing by a sound box on the ear,
from the very man who had charged him to deliver it speedily, and whom
he believed to be at that very moment in Boston city.

The letter delivered, all possible proof being given that Lois had a
right to claim a home from her nearest relations, Captain Holdernesse
thought it best to take leave.

'Thou'lt take to them, lass, maybe, when there is no one here to make
thee think on the old country. Nay, nay! parting is hard work at all
times, and best get hard work done out of hand. Keep up thine heart, my
wench, and I'll come back and see thee next spring, if we are all
spared till then; and who knows what fine young miller mayn't come with
me? Don't go and get wed to a praying Puritan, meanwhile. There,
there--I'm off! God bless thee!'

And Lois was left alone in New England.




Chapter 2


It was hard up-hill work for Lois to win herself a place in this
family. Her aunt was a woman of narrow, strong affections. Her love for
her husband, if ever she had any, was burnt out and dead long ago. What
she did for him she did from duty; but duty was not strong enough to
restrain that little member the tongue; and Lois's heart often bled at
the continual flow of contemptuous reproof which Grace constantly
addressed to her husband, even while she was sparing no pains or
trouble to minister to his bodily ease and comfort. It was more as a
relief to herself that she spoke in this way, than with any desire that
her speeches should affect him; and he was too deadened by illness to
feel hurt by them; or, it may be, the constant repetition of her
sarcasms had made him indifferent; at any rate, so that he had his food
and his state of bodily warmth attended to, he very seldom seemed to
care much for anything else. Even his first flow of affection towards
Lois was soon exhausted; he cared for her because she arranged his
pillows well and skilfully, and because she could prepare new and
dainty kinds of food for his sick appetite, but no longer for her as
his dead sister's child. Still he did care for her, and Lois was too
glad of this little hoard of affection to examine how or why it was
given. To him she could give pleasure, but apparently to no one else in
that household. Her aunt looked askance at her for many reasons: the
first coming of Lois to Salem was inopportune, the expression of
disapprobation on her face on that evening still lingered and rankled
in Grace's memory, early prejudices, and feelings, and prepossessions
of the English girl were all on the side of what would now be called
Church and State, what was then esteemed in that country a
superstitious observance of the directions of a Popish rubric, and a
servile regard for the family of an oppressing and irreligious king.
Nor is it to be supposed that Lois did not feel, and feel acutely, the
want of sympathy that all those with whom she was now living manifested
towards the old hereditary loyalty (religious as well as political
loyalty) in which she had been brought up. With her aunt and Manasseh
it was more than want of sympathy; it was positive, active antipathy to
all the ideas Lois held most dear. The very allusion, however
incidentally made, to the little old grey church at Barford, where her
father had preached so long,--the occasional reference to the troubles
in which her own country had been distracted when she left,--and the
adherence, in which she had been brought up, to the notion that the
king could do no wrong, seemed to irritate Manasseh past endurance. He
would get up from his reading, his constant employment when at home,
and walk angrily about the room after Lois had said anything of this
kind, muttering to himself; and once he had even stopped before her,
and in a passionate tone bade her not talk so like a fool. Now this was
very different to his mother's sarcastic, contemptuous way of treating
all poor Lois's little loyal speeches. Grace would lead her on--at
least she did at first, till experience made Lois wiser--to express her
thoughts on such subjects, till, just when the girl's heart was
opening, her aunt would turn round upon her with some bitter sneer that
roused all the evil feelings in Lois's disposition by its sting. Now
Manasseh seemed, through all his anger, to be so really grieved by what
he considered her error, that he went much nearer to convincing her
that there might be two sides to a question. Only this was a view, that
it appeared like treachery to her dead father's memory to entertain.

Somehow, Lois felt instinctively that Manasseh was really friendly
towards her. He was little in the house; there was farming, and some
kind of mercantile business to be transacted by him, as real head of
the house; and as the season drew on, he went shooting and hunting in
the surrounding forests, with a daring which caused his mother to warn
and reprove him in private, although to the neighbours she boasted
largely of her son's courage and disregard of danger. Lois did not
often walk out for the mere sake of walking, there was generally some
household errand to be transacted when any of the women of the family
went abroad; but once or twice she had caught glimpses of the dreary,
dark wood, hemming in the cleared land on all sides,--the great wood
with its perpetual movement of branch and bough, and its solemn wail,
that came into the very streets of Salem when certain winds blew,
bearing the sound of the pine-trees clear upon the ears that had
leisure to listen. And from all accounts, this old forest, girdling
round the settlement, was full of dreaded and mysterious beasts, and
still more to be dreaded Indians, stealing in and out among the
shadows, intent on bloody schemes against the Christian people;
panther-streaked, shaven Indians, in league by their own confession, as
well as by the popular belief, with evil powers.

Nattee, the old Indian servant, would occasionally make Lois's blood
run cold as she and Faith and Prudence listened to the wild stories she
told them of the wizards of her race. It was often in the kitchen, in
the darkening evening, while some cooking process was going on, that
the old Indian crone, sitting on her haunches by the bright red wood
embers which sent up no flame, but a lurid light reversing the shadows
of all the faces around, told her weird stories while they were
awaiting the rising of the dough, perchance, out of which the household
bread had to be made. There ran through these stories always a ghastly,
unexpressed suggestion of some human sacrifice being needed to complete
the success of any incantation to the Evil One; and the poor old
creature, herself believing and shuddering as she narrated her tale in
broken English, took a strange, unconscious pleasure in her power over
her hearers--young girls of the oppressing race, which had brought her
down into a state little differing from slavery, and reduced her people
to outcasts on the hunting-grounds which had belonged to her fathers.
After such tales, it required no small effort on Lois's part to go out,
at her aunt's command, into the common pasture round the town, and
bring the cattle home at night. Who knew but what the double-headed
snake might start up from each blackberry-bush--that wicked, cunning,
accursed creature in the service of the Indian wizards, that had such
power over all those white maidens who met the eyes placed at either
end of his long, sinuous, creeping body, so that loathe him, loathe the
Indian race as they would, off they must go into the forest to seek but
some Indian man, and must beg to be taken into his wigwam, abjuring
faith and race for ever? Or there were spells--so Nattee said--hidden
about the ground by the wizards, which changed that person's nature who
found them; so that, gentle and loving as they might have been before,
thereafter they took no pleasure but in the cruel torments of others,
and had a strange power given to them of causing such torments at their
will. Once Nattee, speaking low to Lois, who was alone with her in the
kitchen, whispered out her terrified belief that such a spell had
Prudence found; and when the Indian showed her arms to Lois, all
pinched and black and blue by the impish child, the English girl began
to be afraid of her cousin as of one possessed. But it was not Nattee
alone, nor young imaginative girls alone, that believed in these
stories. We can afford to smile at them now; but our English ancestors
entertained superstitions of much the same character at the same
period, and with less excuse, as the circumstances surrounding them
were better known, and consequently more explicable by common sense
than the real mysteries of the deep, untrodden forests of New England.
The gravest divines not only believed stories similar to that of the
double-headed serpent, and other tales of witchcraft, but they made
such narrations the subjects of preaching and prayer; and as cowardice
makes us all cruel, men who were blameless in many of the relations of
life, and even praiseworthy in some, became, from superstition, cruel
persecutors about this time, showing no mercy towards any one whom they
believed to be in league with the Evil One.

Faith was the person with whom the English girl was the most intimately
associated in her uncle's house. The two were about the same age, and
certain household employments were shared between them. They took it in
turns to call in the cows, to make up the butter which had been churned
by Hosea, a stiff old out-door servant, in whom Grace Hickson placed
great confidence; and each lassie had her great spinning-wheel for
wool, and her lesser for flax, before a month had elapsed after Lois's
coming. Faith was a grave, silent person, never merry, sometimes very
sad, though Lois was a long time in even guessing why. She would try in
her sweet, simple fashion to cheer her cousin up, when the latter was
depressed, by telling her old stories of English ways and life.
Occasionally, Faith seemed to care to listen, occasionally she did not
heed one word, but dreamed on. Whether of the past or of the future,
who could tell?

Stern old ministers came in to pay their pastoral visits. On such
occasions, Grace Hickson would put on clean apron and clean cap, and
make them more welcome than she was ever seen to do no one else,
bringing out the best provisions of her store, and setting of all
before them. Also, the great Bible was brought forth, and Hosea and
Nattee summoned from their work to listen while the minister read a
chapter, and, as he read, expounded it at considerable length. After
this all knelt, while he, standing, lifted up his right hand, and
prayed for all possible combinations of Christian men, for all possible
cases of spiritual need; and lastly, taking the individuals before him,
he would put up a very personal supplication for each, according to his
notion of their wants. At first Lois wondered at the aptitude of one or
two prayers of this description to the outward circumstances of each
case; but when she perceived that her aunt had usually a pretty long
confidential conversation with the minister in the early part of his
visit, she became aware that he received both his impressions and his
knowledge through the medium of 'that godly woman, Grace Hickson;' and
I am afraid she paid less regard to the prayer 'for the maiden from
another land, who hath brought the errors of that land as a seed with
her, even across the great ocean, and who is letting even now the
little seeds shoot up into an evil tree, in which all unclean creatures
may find shelter.'

'I like the prayers of our Church better,' said Lois, one day to Faith.
'No clergyman in England can pray his own words, and therefore it is
that he cannot judge of others so as to fit his prayers to what he
esteems to be their case, as Mr. Tappau did this morning.'

'I hate Mr. Tappau!' said Faith, shortly, a passionate flash of light
coming out of her dark, heavy eyes.

'Why so cousin? It seems to me as if he were a good man, although I
like not his prayers.'

Faith only repeated her words, 'I hate him.'

Lois was sorry for this strong bad feeling; instinctively sorry, for
she was loving herself, delighted in being loved, and felt a jar run
through her at every sign of want of love in others. But she did not
know what to say, and was silent at the time. Faith, too, went on
turning her wheel with vehemence, but spoke never a word until her
thread snapped, and then she pushed the wheel away hastily and left the
room.

Then Prudence crept softly up to Lois's side. This strange child seemed
to be tossed about by varying moods: to-day she was caressing and
communicative, to-morrow she might be deceitful, mocking, and so
indifferent to the pain or sorrows of others that you could call her
almost inhuman.

'So thou dost not like Pastor Tappau's prayers?' she whispered.

Lois was sorry to have been overheard, but she neither would nor could
take back her words.

'I like them not so well as the prayers I used to hear at home.'

'Mother says thy home was with the ungodly. Nay, don't look at me
so--it was not I that said it. I'm none so fond of praying myself, nor
of Pastor Tappau for that matter. But Faith cannot abide him, and I
know why. Shall I tell thee, cousin Lois?'

'No! Faith did not tell me, and she was the right person to give her
own reasons.'

'Ask her where young Mr. Nolan is gone to, and thou wilt hear. I have
seen Faith cry by the hour together about Mr. Nolan.'

'Hush, child, hush!' said Lois, for she heard Faith's approaching step,
and feared lest she should overhear what they were saying.

The truth was that, a year or two before, there had been a great
struggle in Salem village, a great division in the religious body, and
Pastor Tappau had been the leader of the more violent, and, ultimately,
the successful party. In consequence of this, the less popular
minister, Mr. Nolan, had had to leave the place. And him Faith Hickson
loved with all the strength of her passionate heart, although he never
was aware of the attachment he had excited, and her own family were too
regardless of manifestations of mere feeling to ever observe the signs
of any emotion on her part. But the old Indian servant Nattee saw and
observed them all. She knew, as well as if she had been told the
reason, why Faith had lost all care about father or mother, brother and
sister, about household work and daily occupation, nay, about the
observances of religion as well. Nattee read the meaning of the deep
smouldering of Faith's dislike to Pastor Tappau aright; the Indian
woman understood why the girl (whom alone of all the white people she
loved) avoided the old minister,--would hide in the wood-stack sooner
than be called in to listen to his exhortations and prayers. With
savage, untutored people, it is not 'Love me, love my dog,' they are
often jealous of the creature beloved; but it is, 'Whom thou hatest I
will hate;' and Nattee's feeling towards Pastor Tappau was even an
exaggeration of the mute unspoken hatred of Faith.

For a long time, the cause of her cousin's dislike and avoidance of the
minister was a mystery to Lois; but the name of Nolan remained in her
memory whether she would or no, and it was more from girlish interest
in a suspected love affair, than from any indifferent and heartless
curiosity, that she could not help piecing together little speeches and
actions, with Faith's interest in the absent banished minister, for an
explanatory clue, till not a doubt remained in her mind. And this
without any further communication with Prudence, for Lois declined
hearing any more on the subject from her, and so gave deep offence.

Faith grew sadder and duller as the autumn drew on. She lost her
appetite, her brown complexion became sallow and colourless, her dark
eyes looked hollow and wild. The first of November was near at hand.
Lois, in her instinctive, well-intentioned efforts to bring some life
and cheerfulness into the monotonous household, had been telling Faith
of many English customs, silly enough, no doubt, and which scarcely
lighted up a flicker of interest in the American girl's mind. The
cousins were lying awake in their bed in the great unplastered room,
which was in part store-room, in part bedroom. Lois was full of
sympathy for Faith that night. For long she had listened to her
cousin's heavy, irrepressible sighs, in silence. Faith sighed because
her grief was of too old a date for violent emotion or crying. Lois
listened without speaking in the dark, quiet night hours, for a long,
long time. She kept quite still, because she thought such vent for
sorrow might relieve her cousin's weary heart. But when at length,
instead of lying motionless, Faith seemed to be growing restless even
to convulsive motions of her limbs, Lois began to speak, to talk about
England, and the dear old ways at home, without exciting much attention
on Faith's part, until at length she fell upon the subject of
Hallow-e'en, and told about customs then and long afterwards practised
in England, and that have scarcely yet died out in Scotland. As she
told of tricks she had often played, of the apple eaten facing a
mirror, of the dripping sheet, of the basins of water, of the nuts
burning side by side, and many other such innocent ways of divination,
by which laughing, trembling English maidens sought to see the form of
their future husbands, if husbands they were to have, then Faith
listened breathlessly, asking short, eager questions, as if some ray of
hope had entered into her gloomy heart. Lois went on speaking, telling
her of all the stories that would confirm the truth of the second sight
vouchsafed to all seekers in the accustomed methods, half believing,
half incredulous herself, but desiring, above all things, to cheer up
poor Faith.

Suddenly, Prudence rose up from her truckle-bed in the dim corner of
the room. They had not thought that she was awake, but she had been
listening long.

'Cousin Lois may go out and meet Satan by the brook-side if she will,
but if thou goest, Faith, I will tell mother--ay, and I will tell
Pastor Tappau, too. Hold thy stories, Cousin Lois, I am afeard of my
very life. I would rather never be wed at all, than feel the touch of
the creature that would take the apple out of my hand, as I held it
over my left shoulder.' The excited girl gave a loud scream of terror
at the image her fancy had conjured up. Faith and Lois sprang out
towards her, flying across the moonlit room in their white nightgowns.
At the same instant, summoned by the same cry, Grace Hickson came to
her child.

'Hush! hush!' said Faith, authoritatively.

'What is it, my wench?' asked Grace. While Lois, feeling as if she had
done all the mischief, kept silence.

'Take her away, take her away!' screamed Prudence. 'Look over her
shoulder--her left shoulder--the Evil One is there now, I see him
stretching over for the half-bitten apple.'

'What is this she says?' said Grace, austerely.

'She is dreaming,' said Faith; 'Prudence, hold thy tongue.' And she
pinched the child severely, while Lois more tenderly tried to soothe
the alarms she felt that she had conjured up.

'Be quiet, Prudence,' said she, 'and go to sleep. I will stay by thee
till thou hast gone off into slumber.'

'No, go! go away,' sobbed Prudence, who was really terrified at first,
but was now assuming more alarm: than she felt, if from the pleasure
she received at perceiving herself the centre of attention. 'Faith
shall stay by me, not you, wicked English witch!'

So Faith sat by her sister; and Grace, displeased and perplexed,
withdrew to her own bed, purposing to inquire more into the matter in
the morning. Lois only hoped it might all be forgotten by that time,
and resolved never to talk again of such things. But an event happened
in the remaining hours of the night to change the current of affairs.
While Grace had been absent from her room, her husband had had another
paralytic stroke: whether he, too, had been alarmed by that eldritch
scream no one could ever know. By the faint light of the rush candle
burning at the bedside, his wife perceived that a great change had
taken place in his aspect on her return: the irregular breathing came
almost like snorts--the end was drawing near. The family were roused,
and all help given that either the doctor or experience could suggest.
But before the late November morning light, all was ended for Ralph
Hickson.

The whole of the ensuing day, they sat or moved in darkened rooms, and
spoke few words, and those below their breath. Manasseh kept at home,
regretting his father, no doubt, but showing little emotion. Faith was
the child that bewailed her loss most grievously; she had a warm heart,
hidden away somewhere under her moody exterior, and her father had
shown her far more passive kindness than ever her mother had done, for
Grace made distinct favourites of Manasseh, her only son, and Prudence,
her youngest child. Lois was about as unhappy as any of them, for she
had felt strongly drawn towards her uncle as her kindest friend, and
the sense of his loss renewed the old sorrow she had experienced at her
own parents' death. But she had no time and no place to cry in. On her
devolved many of the cares, which it would have seemed indecorous in
the nearer relatives to interest themselves in enough to take an active
part: the change required in their dress, the household preparations
for the sad feast of the funeral--Lois had to arrange all under her
aunt's stern direction.

But a day or two afterwards--the last day before the funeral--she went
into the yard to fetch in some fagots for the oven; it was a solemn,
beautiful, starlit evening, and some sudden sense of desolation in the
midst of the vast universe thus revealed touched Lois's heart, and she
sat down behind the woodstack, and cried very plentiful tears.

She was startled by Manasseh, who suddenly turned the corner of the
stack, and stood before her.

'Lois crying!'

'Only a little,' she said, rising up, and gathering her bundle of
fagots, for she dreaded being questioned by her grim, impassive cousin.
To her surprise, he laid his hand on her arm, and said:

'Stop one minute. Why art thou crying, cousin?'

'I don't know,' she said, just like a child questioned in like manner;
and she was again on the point of weeping.

'My father was very kind to thee, Lois; I do not wonder that thou
grievest after him. But the Lord who taketh away can restore tenfold. I
will be as kind as my father--yea, kinder. This is not a time to talk
of marriage and giving in marriage. But after we have buried our dead,
I wish to speak to thee.'

Lois did not cry now, but she shrank with affright. What did her cousin
mean? She would far rather that he had been angry with her for
unreasonable grieving, for folly.

She avoided him carefully--as carefully as she could, without seeming
to dread him--for the next few days. Sometimes she thought it must have
been a bad dream; for if there had been no English lover in the case,
no other man in the whole world, she could never have thought of
Manasseh as her husband; indeed, till now, there had been nothing in
his words or actions to suggest such an idea. Now it had been
suggested, there was no telling how much she loathed him. He might be
good, and pious--he doubtless was--but his dark fixed eyes, moving so
slowly and heavily, his lank black hair, his grey coarse skin, all made
her dislike him now--all his personal ugliness and ungainliness struck
on her senses with a jar, since those few words spoken behind the
haystack.

She knew that sooner or later the time must come for further discussion
of this subject; but, like a coward, she tried to put it off, by
clinging to her aunt's apron-string, for she was sure that Grace
Hickson had far different views for her only son. As, indeed, she had,
for she was an ambitious, as well as a religious woman; and by an early
purchase of land in Salem village, the Hicksons had become wealthy
people, without any great exertions of their own; partly, also, by the
silent process of accumulation, for they had never cared to change
their manner of living from the time when it had been suitable to a far
smaller income than that which they at present enjoyed. So much for
worldly circumstances. As for their worldly character, it stood as
high. No one could say a word against any of their habits or actions.
The righteousness and godliness were patent to every one's eyes. So
Grace Hickson thought herself entitled to pick and choose among the
maidens, before she should meet with one fitted to be Manasseh's wife.
None in Salem came up to her imaginary standard. She had it in her mind
even at this very time--so soon after her husband's death--to go to
Boston, and take counsel with the leading ministers there, with worthy
Mr. Cotton Mather at their head, and see if they could tell her of a
well-favoured and godly young maiden in their congregations worthy of
being the wife of her son. But, besides good looks and godliness, the
wench must have good birth, and good wealth, or Grace Hickson would
have put her contemptuously on one side. When once this paragon was
found, the ministers had approved, Grace anticipated no difficulty on
her son's part. So Lois was right in feeling that her aunt would
dislike any speech of marriage between Manasseh and herself.

But the girl was brought to bay one day in this wise. Manasseh had
ridden forth on some business, which every one said would occupy him
the whole day; but, meeting the man with whom he had to transact his
affairs, he returned earlier than any one expected. He missed Lois from
the keeping-room where his sisters were spinning, almost immediately.
His mother sat by at her knitting--he could see Nattee in the kitchen
through the open door. He was too reserved to ask where Lois was, but
he quietly sought till he found her--in the great loft, already piled
with winter stores of fruit and vegetables. Her aunt had sent her there
to examine the apples one by one, and pick out such as were unsound,
for immediate use. She was stooping down, and intent upon this work,
and was hardly aware of his approach, until she lifted up her head and
saw him standing close before her. She dropped the apple she was
holding, went a little paler than her wont, and faced him in silence.

'Lois,' he said, 'thou rememberest the words that I spoke while we yet
mourned over my father. I think that I am called to marriage now, as
the head of this household. And I have seen no maiden so pleasant in my
sight as thou art, Lois!' He tried to take her hand. But she put it
behind her with a childish shake of her head, and, half-crying, said:

'Please, Cousin Manasseh, do not say this to me. I dare say you ought
to be married, being the head of the household now; but I don't want to
be married. I would rather not.'

'That is well spoken,' replied he, frowning a little, nevertheless. 'I
should not like to take to wife an over-forward maiden, ready to jump
at wedlock. Besides, the congregation might talk, if we were to be
married too soon after my father's death. We have, perchance, said
enough, even now. But I wished thee to have thy mind set at ease as to
thy future well-doing. Thou wilt have leisure to think of it, and to
bring thy mind more fully round to it.' Again he held out his hand.
This time she took hold of it with a free, frank gesture.

'I owe you somewhat for your kindness to me ever since I came, Cousin
Manasseh; and I have no way of paying you but by telling you truly I
can love you as a dear friend, if you will let me, but never as a
wife.'

He flung her hand away, but did not take his eyes off her face, though
his glance was lowering and gloomy. He muttered something which she did
not quite hear, and so she went on bravely although she kept trembling
a little, and had much ado to keep from crying.

'Please let me tell you all. There was a young man in Barford--nay,
Manasseh, I cannot speak if you are so angry; it is hard work to tell
you any how--he said that he wanted to marry me; but I was poor, and
his father would have none of it, and I do not want to marry any one;
but if I did, it would be--' Her voice dropped, and her blushes told
the rest. Manasseh stood looking at her with sullen, hollow eyes, that
had a glittering touch of wilderness in them, and then he said:

'It is borne in upon me--verily I see it as in a vision--that thou must
be my spouse, and no other man's. Thou canst not escape what is
foredoomed. Months ago, when I set myself to read the old godly books
in which my soul used to delight until thy coming, I saw no letters of
printers' ink marked on the page, but I saw a gold and ruddy type of
some unknown language, the meaning whereof was whispered into my soul;
it was, "Marry Lois! marry Lois!" And when my father died, I knew it
was the beginning of the end. It is the Lord's will, Lois, and thou
canst not escape from it.' And again he would have taken her hand and
drawn her towards him. But this time she eluded him with ready
movement.

'I do not acknowledge it be the Lord's will, Manasseh,' said she. 'It
is not "borne in upon me," as you Puritans call it, that I am to be
your wife. I am none so set upon wedlock as to take you, even though
there be no other chance for me. For I do not care for you as I ought
to care for my husband. But I could have cared for you very much as a
cousin--as a kind cousin.'

She stopped speaking; she could not choose the right words with which
to speak to him of her gratitude and friendliness, which yet could
never be any feeling nearer and dearer, no more than two parallel lines
can ever meet.

But he was so convinced, by what he considered the spirit of prophecy,
that Lois was to be his wife, that he felt rather more indignant at
what he considered to be her resistance to the preordained decree, than
really anxious as to the result. Again he tried to convince her that
neither he nor she had any choice in the matter, by saying:

'The voice said unto me "Marry Lois," and I said, "I will, Lord."'

'But,' Lois replied, 'the voice, as you call it, has never spoken such
a word to me.'

'Lois,' he answered, solemnly, 'it will speak. And then wilt thou obey,
even as Samuel did?'

'No, indeed I cannot!' she answered, briskly. 'I may take a dream to be
truth, and hear my own fancies, if I think about them too long. But I
cannot marry any one from obedience.'

'Lois, Lois, thou art as yet unregenerate; but I have seen thee in a
vision as one of the elect, robed in white. As yet thy faith is too
weak for thee to obey meekly, but it shall not always be so. I will
pray that thou mayest see thy preordained course. Meanwhile, I will
smooth away all worldly obstacles.'

'Cousin Manasseh! Cousin Manasseh!' cried Lois after him, as he was
leaving the room, 'come back. I cannot put it in strong enough words.
Manasseh, there is no power in heaven or earth that can make me love
thee enough to marry thee, or to wed thee without such love. And this I
say solemnly, because it is better that this should end at once.'

For a moment he was staggered; then he lifted up his hands, and said,

'God forgive thee thy blasphemy! Remember Hazael, who said, "Is thy
servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?" and went straight
and did it, because his evil courses were fixed and appointed for him
from before the foundation of the world. And shall not thy paths be
laid out among the godly as it hath been foretold to me?'

He went away; and for a minute or two Lois felt as if his words must
come true, and that, struggle as she would, hate her doom as she would,
she must become his wife; and, under the circumstances, many a girl
would have succumbed to her apparent fate. Isolated from all previous
connections, hearing no word from England, living in the heavy,
monotonous routine of a family with one man for head, and this man
esteemed a hero by most of those around him, simply because he was the
only man in the family,--these facts alone would have formed strong
presumptions that most girls would have yielded to the offers of such a
one. But, besides this, there was much to tell upon the imagination in
those days, in that place, and time. It was prevalently believed that
there were manifestations of spiritual influence--of the direct
influence both of good and bad spirits--constantly to be perceived in
the course of men's lives. Lots were drawn, as guidance from the Lord;
the Bible was opened, and the leaves allowed to fall apart, and the
first text the eye fell upon was supposed to be appointed from above a
direction. Sounds were heard that could not be accounted for; they were
made by the evil spirits not yet banished from the desert places of
which they had so long held possession. Sights, inexplicable and
mysterious, were dimly seen--Satan, in some shape, seeking whom he
might devour. And at the beginning of the long winter season, such
whispered tales, such old temptations and hauntings, and devilish
terrors, were supposed to be peculiarly rife. Salem was, as it were,
snowed up, and left to prey upon itself. The long, dark evenings, the
dimly-lighted rooms, the creaking passages, where heterogeneous
articles were piled away out of reach of the keen-piercing frost, and
where occasionally, in the dead of night, a sound was heard, as of some
heavy falling body, when, next morning, everything appeared to be in
its right place--so accustomed are we to measure noises by comparison
with themselves, and not with the absolute stillness of the
night-season--the white mist, coming nearer and nearer to the windows
every evening in strange shapes, like phantoms,--all these, and many
other circumstances, such as the distant fall of mighty trees in the
mysterious forests girdling them round, the faint whoop and cry of some
Indian seeking his camp, and unwittingly nearer to the white men's
settlement than either he or they would have liked could they have
chosen, the hungry yells of the wild beasts approaching the
cattle-pens,--these were the things which made that winter life in
Salem, in the memorable time of 1691-2, seem strange, and haunted, and
terrific to many: peculiarly weird and awful to the English girl in her
first year's sojourn in America.

And now imagine Lois worked upon perpetually by Manasseh's conviction
that it was decreed that she should be his wife, and you will see that
she was not without courage and spirit to resist as she did, steadily,
firmly, and yet sweetly. Take one instance out of many, when her nerves
were subjected to a shock, slight in relation it is true, but then
remember that she had been all day, and for many days, shut up within
doors, in a dull light, that at mid-day was almost dark with a
long-continued snow-storm. Evening was coming on, and the wood fire was
more cheerful than any of the human beings surrounding it; the
monotonous whirr of the smaller spinning-wheels had been going on all
day, and the store of flax down stairs was nearly exhausted, when Grace
Hickson bade Lois fetch down some more from the store-room, before the
light so entirely waned away that it could not be found without a
candle, and a candle it would be dangerous to carry into that apartment
full of combustible materials, especially at this time of hard frost,
when every drop of water was locked up and bound in icy hardness. So
Lois went, half-shrinking from the long passage that led to the stairs
leading up into the storeroom, for it was in this passage that the
strange night sounds were heard, which every one had begun to notice,
and speak about in lowered tones. She sang, however, as she went, 'to
keep her courage up'--sang, however, in a subdued voice, the evening
hymn she had so often sung in Barford church:

    'Glory to Thee, my God, this night--'

and so it was, I suppose, that she never heard the breathing or motion
of any creature near her till, just as she was loading herself with
flax to carry down, she heard some one--it was Manasseh--say close to
her ear:

'Has the voice spoken yet? Speak, Lois! Has the voice spoken yet to
thee--that speaketh to me day and night, "Marry Lois?"'

She started and turned a little sick, but spoke almost directly in a
brave, clear manner:

'No! Cousin Manasseh. And it never will.'

'Then I must wait yet longer,' he replied, hoarsely, as if to himself.
'But all submission--all submission.'

At last a break came upon the monotony of the long, dark winter. The
parishioners once more raised the discussion whether--the parish
extending as it did--it was not absolutely necessary for Pastor Tappau
to have help. This question had been mooted once before; and then
Pastor Tappau had acquiesced in the necessity, and all had gone on
smoothly for some months after the appointment of his assistant, until
a feeling had sprung up on the part of the elder minister, which might
have been called jealousy of the younger, if so godly a man as Pastor
Tappau could have been supposed to entertain so evil a passion. However
that might be, two parties were speedily formed, the younger and more
ardent being in favour of Mr. Nolan, the elder and more
persistent--and, at the time, the more numerous--clinging to the old
grey-headed, dogmatic Mr. Tappau, who had married them, baptized their
children, and was to them literally as a 'pillar of the church.' So Mr.
Nolan left Salem, carrying away with him, possibly, more hearts than
that of Faith Hickson's; but certainly she had never been the same
creature since.

But now--Christmas, 1691--one or two of the older members of the
congregation being dead, and some who were younger men having come to
settle in Salem--Mr. Tappau being also older, and, some charitably
supposed, wiser--a fresh effort had been made, and Mr. Nolan was
returning to labour in ground apparently smoothed over. Lois had taken
a keen interest in all the proceedings for Faith's sake,--far more than
the latter did for herself, any spectator would have said. Faith's
wheel never went faster or slower, her thread never broke, her colour
never came, her eyes were never uplifted with sudden interest, all the
time these discussions respecting Mr. Nolan's return were going on. But
Lois, after the hint given by Prudence, had found a clue to many a sigh
and look of despairing sorrow, even without the help of Nattee's
improvised songs, in which, under strange allegories, the helpless love
of her favourite was told to ears heedless of all meaning, except those
of the tender-hearted and sympathetic Lois. Occasionally, she heard a
strange chant of the old Indian woman's--half in her own language, half
in broken English--droned over some simmering pipkin, from which the
smell was, to say the least, unearthly. Once, on perceiving this odour
in the keeping-room, Grace Hickson suddenly exclaimed:

'Nattee is at her heathen ways again; we shall have some mischief
unless she is stayed.'

But Faith, moving quicker than ordinary, said something about putting a
stop to it, and so forestalled her mother's evident intention of going
into the kitchen. Faith shut the door between the two rooms, and
entered upon some remonstrance with Nattee; but no one could hear the
words used. Faith and Nattee seemed more bound together by love and
common interest, than any other two among the self-contained
individuals comprising this household. Lois sometimes felt as if her
presence as a third interrupted some confidential talk between her
cousin and the old servant. And yet she was fond of Faith, and could
almost think that Faith liked her more than she did either mother,
brother, or sister; for the first two were indifferent as to any
unspoken feelings, while Prudence delighted in discovering them only to
make an amusement to herself out of them.

One day Lois was sitting by herself at her sewing table, while Faith
and Nattee were holding one of the secret conclaves from which Lois
felt herself to be tacitly excluded, when the outer door opened, and a
tall, pale young man, in the strict professional habit of a minister,
entered. Lois sprang up with a smile and a look of welcome for Faith's
sake, for this must be the Mr. Nolan whose name had been on the tongue
of every one for days, and who was, as Lois knew, expected to arrive
the day before.

He seemed half surprised at the glad alacrity with which he was
received by this stranger: possibly he had not heard of the English
girl, who was an inmate in the house where formerly he had seen only
grave, solemn, rigid, or heavy faces, and had been received with a
stiff form of welcome, very different from the blushing, smiling,
dimpled looks that innocently met him with the greeting almost of an
old acquaintance. Lois having placed a chair for him, hastened out to
call Faith, never doubting but that the feeling which her cousin
entertained for the young pastor was mutual, although it might be
unrecognised in its full depth by either.

'Faith!' said she, bright and breathless. 'Guess--no,' checking herself
to an assumed unconsciousness of any particular importance likely to be
affixed to her words, 'Mr. Nolan, the new pastor, is in the
keeping-room. He has asked for my aunt and Manasseh. My aunt is gone to
the prayer meeting at Pastor Tappau's, and Manasseh is away.' Lois went
on speaking to give Faith time, for the girl had become deadly white at
the intelligence, while, at the same time, her eyes met the keen,
cunning eyes of the old Indian with a peculiar look of half-wondering
awe, while Nattee's looks expressed triumphant satisfaction.

'Go,' said Lois, smoothing Faith's hair, and kissing the white, cold
cheek, 'or he will wonder why no one comes to see him, and perhaps
think he is not welcome.' Faith went without another word into the
keeping-room, and shut the door of communication. Nattee and Lois were
left together. Lois felt as happy as if some piece of good fortune had
befallen herself. For the time, her growing dread of Manasseh's wild,
ominous persistence in his suit, her aunt's coldness, her own
loneliness, were all forgotten, and she could almost have danced with
joy. Nattee laughed aloud, and talked and chuckled to herself: 'Old
Indian woman great mystery. Old Indian woman sent hither and thither;
go where she is told, where she hears with her ears. But old Indian
woman'--and here she drew herself up, and the expression of her face
quite changed--'know how to call, and then white man must come; and old
Indian have spoken never a word, and white man have hear nothing with
his ears.' So, the old crone muttered.

All this time, things were going on very differently in the
keeping-room to what Lois imagined. Faith sat stiller even than usual;
her eyes downcast, her words few. A quick observer might have noticed a
certain tremulousness about her hands, and an occasional twitching
throughout all her frame. But Pastor Nolan was not a keen observer upon
this occasion; he was absorbed with his own little wonders and
perplexities. His wonder was that of a carnal man--who that pretty
stranger might be, who had seemed, on his first coming, so glad to see
him, but had vanished instantly, apparently not to reappear. And,
indeed, I am not sure if his perplexity was not that of a carnal man
rather than that of a godly minister, for this was his dilemma. It was
the custom of Salem (as we have already seen) for the minister, on
entering a household for the visit which, among other people and in
other times, would have been termed a 'morning call,' to put up a
prayer for the eternal welfare of the family under whose roof-tree he
was. Now this prayer was expected to be adapted to the individual
character, joys, sorrows, wants, and failings of every member present;
and here was he, a young pastor, alone with a young woman, and he
thought--vain thoughts, perhaps, but still very natural--that the
implied guesses at her character, involved in the minute supplications
above described, would be very awkward in a tete-a-tete prayer; so,
whether it was his wonder or his perplexity, I do not know, but he did
not contribute much to the conversation for some time, and at last, by
a sudden burst of courage and impromptu hit, he cut the Gordian knot by
making the usual proposal for prayer, and adding to it a request that
the household might be summoned. In came Lois, quiet and decorous; in
came Nattee, all one impassive, stiff piece of wood,--no look of
intelligence or trace of giggling near her countenance. Solemnly
recalling each wandering thought, Pastor Nolan knelt in the midst of
these three to pray. He was a good and truly religious man, whose name
here is the only thing disguised, and played his part bravely in the
awful trial to which he was afterwards subjected; and if at the time,
before he went through his fiery persecutions, the human fancies which
beset all young hearts came across his, we at this day know that these
fancies are no sin. But now he prays in earnest, prays so heartily for
himself, with such a sense of his own spiritual need and spiritual
failings, that each one of his hearers feels as if a prayer and a
supplication had gone up for each of them. Even Nattee muttered the few
words she knew of the Lord's Prayer; gibberish though the disjointed
nouns and verbs might be, the poor creature said them because she was
stirred to unwonted reverence. As for Lois, she rose up comforted and
strengthened, as no special prayers of Pastor Tappau had ever made her
feel. But Faith was sobbing, sobbing aloud, almost hysterically, and
made no effort to rise, but lay on her outstretched arms spread out
upon the settle. Lois and Pastor Nolan looked at each other for an
instant. Then Lois said:

'Sir, you must go. My cousin has not been strong for some time, and
doubtless she needs more quiet than she has had to-day.'

Pastor Nolan bowed, and left the house; but in a moment he returned.
Half opening the door, but without entering, he said:

'I come back to ask, if perchance I may call this evening to inquire
how young Mistress Hickson finds herself?'

But Faith did not hear this; she was sobbing louder than ever.

'Why did you send him away, Lois? I should have been better directly,
and it is so long since I have seen him.'

She had her face hidden as she uttered these words, and Lois could not
hear them distinctly. She bent her head down by her cousin's on the
settle, meaning to ask her to repeat what she had said. But in the
irritation of the moment, and prompted possibly by some incipient
jealousy, Faith pushed Lois away so violently that the latter was hurt
against the hard, sharp corner of the wooden settle. Tears came into
her eyes; not so much because her cheek was bruised, as because of the
surprised pain she felt at this repulse from the cousin towards whom
she was feeling so warmly and kindly. Just for the moment, Lois was as
angry as any child could have been; but some of the words of Pastor
Nolan's prayer yet rang in her ears, and she thought it would be a
shame if she did not let them sink into her heart. She dared not,
however, stoop again to caress Faith, but stood quietly by her,
sorrowfully waiting, until a step at the outer door caused Faith to
rise quickly, and rush into the kitchen, leaving Lois to bear the brunt
of the new-comer. It was Manasseh, returned from hunting. He had been
two days away, in company with other young men belonging to Salem. It
was almost the only occupation which could draw him out of his secluded
habits. He stopped suddenly at the door on seeing Lois, and alone, for
she had avoided him of late in every possible way.

'Where is my mother?'

'At a prayer meeting at Pastor Tappau's. She has taken Prudence. Faith
has left the room this minute. I will call her.' And Lois was going
towards the kitchen, when he placed himself between her and the door.

'Lois,' said he, 'the time is going by, and I cannot wait much longer.
The visions come thick upon me, and my sight grows clearer and clearer.
Only this last night, camping out in the woods, I saw in my soul,
between sleeping and waking, the spirit come and offer thee two lots,
and the colour of the one was white, like a bride's, and the other was
black and red, which is, being interpreted, a violent death. And when
thou didst choose the latter the spirit said unto me, 'Come!' and I
came, and did as I was bidden. I put it on thee with mine own hands, as
it is preordained, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice and be my
wife. And when the black and red dress fell to the ground, thou wert
even as a corpse three days old. Now, be advised, Lois, in time. Lois,
my cousin, I have seen it in a vision, and my soul cleaveth unto
thee--I would fain spare thee.'

He was really in earnest--in passionate earnest; whatever his visions,
as he called them, might be, he believed in them, and this belief gave
something of unselfishness to his love for Lois. This she felt at this
moment, if she had never done so before, and it seemed like a contrast
to the repulse she had just met with from his sister. He had drawn near
her, and now he took hold of her hand, repeating in his wild, pathetic,
dreamy way:

'And the voice said unto me, "Marry Lois!"' And Lois was more inclined
to soothe and reason with him than she had ever been before, since the
first time of his speaking to her on the subject,--when Grace
Hickson--and Prudence entered the room from the passage. They had
returned from the prayer meeting by the back way, which had prevented
the sound of their approach from being heard.

But Manasseh did not stir or look round; he kept his eyes fixed on
Lois, as if to note the effect of his words. Grace came hastily
forwards, and lifting up her strong right arm, smote their joined hands
in twain, in spite of the fervour of Manasseh's grasp.

'What means this?' said she, addressing herself more to Lois than to
her son, anger flashing out of her deep-set eyes.

Lois waited for Manasseh to speak. He seemed, but a few minutes before,
to be more gentle and less threatening than he had been of late on this
subject, and she did not wish to irritate him. But he did not speak,
and her aunt stood angrily waiting for an answer.

'At any rate,' thought Lois, 'it will put an end to the thought in his
mind when my aunt speaks out about it.'

'My cousin seeks me in marriage,' said Lois.

'Thee!' and Grace struck out in the direction of her niece with a
gesture of supreme contempt. But now Manasseh spoke forth:

'Yea! it is preordained. The voice has said it, and the spirit has
brought her to me as my bride.'

'Spirit! an evil spirit then. A good spirit would have chosen out for
thee a godly maiden of thine own people, and not a prelatist and a
stranger like this girl. A pretty return, Mistress Lois, for all our
kindness.'

'Indeed, Aunt Hickson, I have done all I could--Cousin Manasseh knows
it--to show him I can be none of his. I have told him,' said she,
blushing, but determined to say the whole out at once, 'that I am all
but troth-plight to a young man of our own village at home; and, even
putting all that on one side, I wish not for marriage at present.'

'Wish rather for conversion and regeneration. Marriage is an unseemly
word in the mouth of a maiden. As for Manasseh, I will take reason with
him in private; and, meanwhile, if thou hast spoken truly, throw not
thyself in his path, as I have noticed thou hast done but too often of
late.'

Lois's heart burnt within her at this unjust accusation, for she knew
how much she had dreaded and avoided her cousin, and she almost looked
to him to give evidence that her aunt's last words were not true. But,
instead, he recurred to his one fixed idea, and said:

'Mother, listen! If I wed not Lois, both she and I die within the year.
I care not for life; before this, as you know, I have sought for death'
(Grace shuddered, and was for a moment subdued by some recollection of
past horror); 'but if Lois were my wife I should live, and she would be
spared from what is the other lot. That whole vision grows clearer to
me day by day. Yet, when I try to know whether I am one of the elect,
all is dark. The mystery of Free-Will and Fore-Knowledge is a mystery
of Satan's devising, not of God's.'

'Alas, my son! Satan is abroad among the brethren even now; but let the
old vexed topics rest. Sooner than fret thyself again, thou shalt have
Lois to be thy wife, though my heart was set far differently for thee.'

'No, Manasseh,' said Lois. 'I love you well as a cousin, but wife of
yours I can never be. Aunt Hickson, it is not well to delude him so. I
say, if ever I marry man, I am troth-plight to one in England.'

'Tush, child! I am your guardian in my dead husband's place. Thou
thinkest thyself so great a prize that I would clutch at thee whether
or no, I doubt not. I value thee not, save as a medicine for Manasseh,
if his mind get disturbed again, as I have noted signs of late.'

This, then, was the secret explanation of much that had alarmed her in
her cousin's manner: and if Lois had been a physician of modern times,
she might have traced somewhat of the same temperament in his sisters
as well--in Prudence's lack of natural feeling and impish delight in
mischief, in Faith's vehemence of unrequited love. But as yet Lois did
not know, any more than Faith, that the attachment of the latter to Mr.
Nolan was not merely unreturned, but even unperceived, by the young
minister.

He came, it is true--came often to the house, sat long with the family,
and watched them narrowly, but took no especial notice of Faith. Lois
perceived this, and grieved over it; Nattee perceived it, and was
indignant at it, long before Faith slowly acknowledged it to herself,
and went to Nattee the Indian woman, rather than to Lois her cousin,
for sympathy and counsel.

'He cares not for me,' said Faith. 'He cares more for Lois's little
finger than for my whole body,' the girl moaned out in the bitter pain
of jealousy.

'Hush thee, hush thee, prairie bird! How can he build a nest, when the
old bird has got all the moss and the feathers? Wait till the Indian
has found means to send the old bird flying far away.' This was the
mysterious comfort Nattee gave.

Grace Hickson took some kind of charge over Manasseh that relieved Lois
of much of her distress at his strange behaviour. Yet at times he
escaped from his mother's watchfulness, and in such opportunities he
would always seek Lois, entreating her, as of old, to marry
him--sometimes pleading his love for her, oftener speaking wildly of
his visions and the voices which he heard foretelling a terrible
futurity.

We have now to do with events which were taking place in Salem, beyond
the narrow circle of the Hickson family; but as they only concern us in
as far as they bore down in their consequences on the future of those
who formed part of it, I shall go over the narrative very briefly. The
town of Salem had lost by death, within a very short time preceding the
commencement of my story, nearly all its venerable men and leading
citizens--men of ripe wisdom and sound counsel. The people had hardly
yet recovered from the shock of their loss, as one by one the
patriarchs of the primitive little community had rapidly followed each
other to the grave. They had been beloved as fathers, and looked up to
as judges in the land. The first bad effect of their loss was seen in
the heated dissension which sprang up between Pastor Tappau and the
candidate Nolan. It had been apparently healed over; but Mr. Nolan had
not been many weeks in Salem, after his second coming, before the
strife broke out afresh, and alienated many for life who had till then
been bound together by the ties of friendship or relationship. Even in
the Hickson family something of this feeling soon sprang up; Grace
being a vehement partisan of the elder pastor's more gloomy doctrines,
while Faith was a passionate, if a powerless, advocate of Mr. Nolan.
Manasseh's growing absorption in his own fancies, and imagined gift of
prophecy, making him comparatively indifferent to all outward events,
did not tend to either the fulfilment of his visions, or the
elucidation of the dark mysterious doctrines over which he had pondered
too long for the health either of his mind or body; while Prudence
delighted in irritating every one by her advocacy of the views of
thinking to which they were most opposed, and retailing every gossiping
story to the person most likely to disbelieve, and be indignant at what
she told, with an assumed unconsciousness of any such effect to be
produced. There was much talk of the congregational difficulties and
dissensions being carried up to the general court, and each party
naturally hoped that, if such were the course of events, the opposing
pastor and that portion of the congregation which adhered to him might
be worsted in the struggle.

Such was the state of things in the township when, one day towards the
end of the month of February, Grace Hickson returned from the weekly
prayer meeting; which it was her custom to attend at Pastor Tappau's
house, in a state of extreme excitement. On her entrance into her own
house she sat down, rocking her body backwards and forwards, and
praying to herself: both Faith and Lois stopped their spinning, in
wonder at her agitation, before either of them ventured to address her.
At length Faith rose, and spoke:

'Mother, what is it? Hath anything happened of an evil nature?'

The brave, stern, old woman's face was blenched, and her eyes were
almost set in horror, as she prayed; the great drops running down her
cheeks.

It seemed almost as if she had to make a struggle to recover her sense
of the present homely accustomed life, before she could find words to
answer:

'Evil nature! Daughters, Satan is abroad,--is close to us. I have this
very hour seen him afflict two innocent children, as of old he troubled
those who were possessed by him in Judea. Hester and Abigail Tappau
have been contorted and convulsed by him and his servants into such
shapes as I am afeard to think on; and when their father, godly Mr.
Tappau, began to exhort and to pray, their howlings were like the wild
beasts of the field. Satan is of a truth let loose amongst us. The
girls kept calling upon him as if he were even then present among us.
Abigail screeched out that he stood at my very back in the guise of a
black man; and truly, as I turned round at her words, I saw a creature
like a shadow vanishing, and turned all of a cold sweat. Who knows
where he is now? Faith, lay straws across on the door-sill.'

'But if he be already entered in,' asked Prudence, 'may not that make
it difficult for him to depart?'

Her mother, taking no notice of her question, went on rocking herself,
and praying, till again she broke out into narration:

'Reverend Mr. Tappau says, that only last night he heard a sound as of
a heavy body dragged all through the house by some strong power; once
it was thrown against his bedroom door, and would, doubtless, have
broken it in, if he had not prayed fervently and aloud at that very
time; and a shriek went up at his prayer that made his hair stand on
end; and this morning all the crockery in the house was found broken
and piled up in the middle of the kitchen floor; and Pastor Tappau
says, that as soon as he began to ask a blessing on the morning's meal,
Abigail and Hester cried out, as if some one was pinching them. Lord,
have mercy upon us all! Satan is of a truth let loose.'

'They sound like the old stories I used to hear in Barford,' said Lois,
breathless with affright.

Faith seemed less alarmed; but then her dislike to Pastor Tappau was so
great, that she could hardly sympathise with any misfortunes that
befell him or his family.

Towards evening Mr. Nolan came in. In general, so high did party spirit
run, Grace Hickson only tolerated his visits, finding herself often
engaged at such hours, and being too much abstracted in thought to show
him the ready hospitality which was one of her most prominent virtues.
But to-day, both as bringing the latest intelligence of the new horrors
sprung up in Salem, and as being one of the Church militant (or what
the Puritans considered as equivalent to the Church militant) against
Satan, he was welcomed by her in an unusual manner.

He seemed oppressed with the occurrences of the day: at first it
appeared to be almost a relief to him to sit still, and cogitate upon
them, and his hosts were becoming almost impatient for him to say
something more than mere monosyllables, when he began:

'Such a day as this, I pray that I may never see again. It is as if the
devils whom our Lord banished into the herd of swine, had been
permitted to come again upon the earth. And I would it were only the
lost spirits who were tormenting us; but I much fear, that certain of
those whom we have esteemed as God's people have sold their souls to
Satan, for the sake of a little of his evil power, whereby they may
afflict others for a time. Elder Sherringham hath lost this very day a
good and valuable horse, wherewith he used to drive his family to
meeting, his wife being bedridden.'

'Perchance,' said Lois, 'the horse died of some natural disease.'

'True,' said Pastor Nolan; 'but I was going on to say, that as he
entered into his house, full of dolour at the loss of his beast, a
mouse ran in before him so sudden that it almost tripped him up, though
an instant before there was no such thing to be seen; and he caught at
it with his shoe and hit it, and it cried out like a human creature in
pain, and straight ran up the chimney, caring nothing for the hot flame
and smoke.'

Manasseh listened greedily to all this story, and when it was ended he
smote upon his breast, and prayed aloud for deliverance from the power
of the Evil One; and he continually went on praying at intervals
through the evening, with every mark of abject terror on his face and
in his manner--he, the bravest, most daring hunter in all the
settlement. Indeed, all the family huddled together in silent fear,
scarcely finding any interest in the usual household occupations. Faith
and Lois sat with arms entwined, as in days before the former had
become jealous of the latter; Prudence asked low, fearful questions of
her mother and of the pastor as to the creatures that were abroad, and
the ways in which they afflicted others; and when Grace besought the
minister to pray for her and her household, he made a long and
passionate supplication that none of that little flock might ever so
far fall away into hopeless perdition as to be guilty of the sin
without forgiveness--the sin of Witchcraft.




Chapter 3


'The sin of witchcraft.' We read about it, we look on it from the
outside; but we can hardly realize the terror it induced. Every
impulsive or unaccustomed action, every little nervous affection, every
ache or pain was noticed, not merely by those around the sufferer, but
by the person himself, whoever he might be, that was acting, or being
acted upon, in any but the most simple and ordinary manner. He or she
(for it was most frequently a woman or girl that was the supposed
subject) felt a desire for some unusual kind of food--some unusual
motion or rest her hand twitched, her foot was asleep, or her leg had
the cramp; and the dreadful question immediately suggested itself, 'Is
any one possessing an evil power over me, by the help of Satan?' and
perhaps they went on to think, 'It is bad enough to feel that my body
can be made to suffer through the power of some unknown evil-wisher to
me, but what if Satan gives them still further power, and they can
touch my soul, and inspire me with loathful thoughts leading me into
crimes which at present I abhor?' and so on, till the very dread of
what might happen, and the constant dwelling of the thoughts, even with
horror, upon certain possibilities, or what were esteemed such, really
brought about the corruption of imagination at least, which at first
they had shuddered at. Moreover, there was a sort of uncertainty as to
who might be infected--not unlike the overpowering dread of the plague,
which made some shrink from their best-beloved with irrepressible fear.
The brother or sister, who was the dearest friend of their childhood
and youth, might now be bound in some mysterious deadly pact with evil
spirits of the most horrible kind--who could tell? And in such a case
it became a duty, a sacred duty, to give up the earthly body which had
been once so loved, but which was now the habitation of a soul corrupt
and horrible in its evil inclinations. Possibly, terror of death might
bring on confession and repentance, and purification. Or if it did not,
why away with the evil creature, the witch, out of the world, down to
the kingdom of the master, whose bidding was done on earth in all
manner of corruption and torture of God's creatures! There were others
who, to these more simple, if more ignorant, feelings of horror at
witches and witchcraft, added the desire, conscious or unconscious, of
revenge on those whose conduct had been in any way displeasing to them.
Where evidence takes a supernatural character, there is no disproving
it. This argument comes up: 'You have only the natural powers; I have
supernatural. You admit the existence of the supernatural by the
condemnation of this very crime of witchcraft. You hardly know the
limits of the natural powers; how then can you define the supernatural?
I say that in the dead of night, when my body seemed to all present to
be lying in quiet sleep, I was, in the most complete and wakeful
consciousness, present in my body at an assembly of witches and wizards
with Satan at their head; that I was by them tortured in my body,
because my soul would not acknowledge him as its king; and that I
witnessed such and such deeds. What the nature of the appearance was
that took the semblance of myself, sleeping quietly in my bed, I know
not; but admitting, as you do, the possibility of witchcraft, you
cannot disprove my evidence.' This evidence might be given truly or
falsely, as the person witnessing believed it or not; but every one
must see what immense and terrible power was abroad for revenge. Then,
again, the accused themselves ministered to the horrible panic abroad.
Some, in dread of death, confessed from cowardice to the imaginary
crimes of which they were accused, and of which they were promised a
pardon on confession. Some, weak and terrified, came honestly to
believe in their own guilt, through the diseases of imagination which
were sure to be engendered at such a time as this.

Lois sat spinning with Faith. Both were silent, pondering over the
stories that were abroad. Lois spoke first.

'Oh, Faith! this country is worse than ever England was, even in the
days of Master Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder. I grow frightened of
every one, I think. I even get afeard sometimes of Nattee!'

Faith coloured a little. Then she asked,

'Why? What should make you distrust the Indian woman?'

'Oh! I am ashamed of my fear as soon as it arises in my mind. But, you
know, her look and colour were strange to me when first I came; and she
is not a christened woman; and they tell stories of Indian wizards; and
I know not what the mixtures are which she is sometimes stirring over
the fire, nor the meaning of the strange chants she sings to herself.
And once I met her in the dusk, just close by Pastor Tappau's house, in
company with Hota, his servant--it was just before we heard of the sore
disturbance in his house--and I have wondered if she had aught to do
with it.'

Faith sat very still, as if thinking. At last she said:

'If Nattee has powers beyond what you and I have, she will not use them
for evil; at least not evil to those whom she loves.'

'That comforts me but little,' said Lois. 'If she has powers beyond
what she ought to have, I dread her, though I have done her no evil;
nay, though I could almost say she bore me a kindly feeling. But such
powers are only given by the Evil One; and the proof thereof is, that,
as you imply, Nattee would use them on those who offend her.'

'And why should she not?' asked Faith, lifting her eyes, and flashing
heavy fire out of them at the question.

'Because,' said Lois, not seeing Faith's glance, 'we are told to pray
for them that despitefully use us, and to do good to them that
persecute us. But poor Nattee is not a christened woman. I would that
Mr. Nolan would baptize her; it would, maybe, take her out of the power
of Satan's temptations.'

'Are you never tempted?' asked Faith, half scornfully; 'and yet I doubt
not you were well baptized!'

'True,' said Lois, sadly; 'I often do very wrong, but, perhaps, I might
have done worse, if the holy form had not been observed.'

They were again silent for a time.

'Lois,' said Faith, 'I did not mean any offence. But do you never feel
as if you would give up all that future life, of which the parsons
talk, and which seems so vague and so distant, for a few years of real,
vivid blessedness to begin to-morrow--this hour, this minute? Oh! I
could think of happiness for which I would willingly give up all those
misty chances of heaven----'

'Faith, Faith!' cried Lois, in terror, holding her hand before her
cousin's mouth, and looking around in fright. 'Hush! you know not who
may be listening; you are putting yourself in his power.'

But Faith pushed her hand away, and said, 'Lois, I believe in him no
more than I believe in heaven. Both may exist, but they are so far away
that I defy them. Why, all this ado about Mr. Tappau's house--promise
me never to tell living creature, and I will tell you a secret.'

'No!' said Lois, terrified. 'I dread all secrets. I will hear none. I
will do all that I can for you, cousin Faith, in any way; but just at
this time, I strive to keep my life and thoughts within the strictest
bounds of godly simplicity, and I dread pledging myself to aught that
is hidden and secret.'

'As you will, cowardly girl, full of terrors, which, if you had
listened to me, might have been lessened, if not entirely done away
with.' And Faith would not utter another word, though Lois tried meekly
to entice her into conversation on some other subject.

The rumour of witchcraft was like the echo of thunder among the hills.
It had broken out in Mr. Tappau's house, and his two little daughters
were the first supposed to be bewitched; but round about, from every
quarter of the town, came in accounts of sufferers by witchcraft. There
was hardly a family without one of these supposed victims. Then arose a
growl and menaces of vengeance from many a household--menaces deepened,
not daunted by the terror and mystery of the suffering that gave rise
to them.

At length a day was appointed when, after solemn fasting and prayer,
Mr. Tappau invited the neighbouring ministers and all godly people to
assemble at his house, and unite with him in devoting a day to solemn
religious services, and to supplication for the deliverance of his
children, and those similarly afflicted, from the power of the Evil
One. All Salem poured out towards the house of the minister. There was
a look of excitement on all their faces; eagerness and horror were
depicted on many, while stern resolution, amounting to determined
cruelty, if the occasion arose, was seen on others.

In the midst of the prayer, Hester Tappau, the younger girl, fell into
convulsions; fit after fit came on, and her screams mingled with the
shrieks and cries of the assembled congregation. In the first pause,
when the child was partially recovered, when the people stood around
exhausted and breathless, her father, the Pastor Tappau, lifted his
right hand, and adjured her, in the name of the Trinity, to say who
tormented her. There was a dead silence; not a creature stirred of all
those hundreds. Hester turned wearily and uneasily, and moaned out the
name of Hota, her father's Indian servant. Hota was present, apparently
as much interested as any one; indeed, she had been busying herself
much in bringing remedies to the suffering child. But now she stood
aghast, transfixed, while her name was caught up and shouted out in
tones of reprobation and hatred by all the crowd around her. Another
moment and they would have fallen upon the trembling creature and torn
her limb from limb--pale, dusky, shivering Hota, half guilty-looking
from her very bewilderment. But Pastor Tappau, that gaunt, grey man,
lifting himself to his utmost height, signed to them to go back, to
keep still while he addressed them; and then he told them, that instant
vengeance was not just, deliberate punishment; that there would be need
of conviction, perchance of confession--he hoped for some redress for
his suffering children from her revelations, if she were brought to
confession. They must leave the culprit in his hands, and in those of
his brother ministers, that they might wrestle with Satan before
delivering her up to the civil power. He spoke well, for he spoke from
the heart of a father seeing his children exposed to dreadful and
mysterious suffering, and firmly believing that he now held the clue in
his hand which should ultimately release them and their
fellow-sufferers. And the congregation moaned themselves into
unsatisfied submission, and listened to his long, passionate prayer,
which he uplifted even while the hapless Hota stood there, guarded and
bound by two men, who glared at her like bloodhounds ready to slip,
even while the prayer ended in the words of the merciful Saviour.

Lois sickened and shuddered at the whole scene; and this was no
intellectual shuddering at the folly and superstition of the people,
but tender moral shuddering at the sight of guilt which she believed
in, and at the evidence of men's hatred and abhorrence, which, when
shown even to the guilty, troubled and distressed her merciful heart.
She followed her aunt and cousins out into the open air, with downcast
eyes and pale face. Grace Hickson was going home with a feeling of
triumphant relief at the detection of the guilty one. Faith alone
seemed uneasy and disturbed beyond her wont, for Manasseh received the
whole transaction as the fulfilment of a prophecy, and Prudence was
excited by the novel scene into a state of discordant high spirits.

'I am quite as old as Hester Tappau,' said she; 'her birthday is in
September and mine in October.'

'What has that to do with it?' said Faith, sharply.

'Nothing, only she seemed such a little thing for all those grave
ministers to be praying for, and so many folk come from a
distance--some from Boston they said--all for her sake, as it were.
Why, didst thou see, it was godly Mr. Henwick that held her head when
he wriggled so, and old Madam Holbrook had herself helped upon a chair
to see the better. I wonder how long I might wriggle, before great and
godly folk would take so much notice of me? But, I suppose, that comes
of being a pastor's daughter. She'll be so set up there'll be no
speaking to her now. Faith! thinkest thou that Hota really had
bewitched her? She gave me corn-cakes, the last time I was at Pastor
Tappau's, just like any other woman, only, perchance, a trifle more
good-natured; and to think of her being a witch after all!'

But Faith seemed in a hurry to reach home, paid no attention to
Prudence's talking. Lois hastened on with Faith, for Manasseh was
walking alongside of his mother, and she kept steady to her plan of
avoiding him, even though she pressed her company upon Faith, who had
seemed of late desirous of avoiding her.

That evening the news spread through Salem, that Hota had confessed her
sin--had acknowledged that she was a witch. Nattee was the first to
hear the intelligence. She broke into the room where the girls were
sitting with Grace Hickson, solemnly doing nothing, because of the
great prayer-meeting in the morning, and cried out, 'Mercy, mercy,
mistress, everybody! take care of poor Indian Nattee, who never do
wrong, but for mistress and the family! Hota one bad wicked witch, she
say so herself; oh, me! oh me!' and stooping over Faith, she said
something in a low, miserable tone of voice, of which Lois only heard
the word 'torture.' But Faith heard all, and turning very pale, half
accompanied, half led Nattee back to her kitchen.

Presently, Grace Hickson came in. She had been out to see a neighbour;
it will not do to say that so godly a woman had been gossiping; and,
indeed, the subject of the conversation she had held was of too serious
and momentous a nature for me to employ a light word to designate it.
There was all the listening to and repeating of small details and
rumours, in which the speakers have no concern, that constitutes
gossiping; but in this instance, all trivial facts and speeches might
be considered to bear such dreadful significance, and might have so
ghastly an ending, that such whispers were occasionally raised to a
tragic importance. Every fragment of intelligence that related to Mr.
Tappau's household was eagerly snatched at; how his dog howled all one
long night through, and could not be stilled; how his cow suddenly
failed in her milk only two months after she had calved; how his memory
had forsaken him one morning, for a minute or two, in repeating the
Lord's Prayer, and he had even omitted a clause thereof in his sudden
perturbation; and how all these forerunners of his children's strange
illness might now be interpreted and understood--this had formed the
staple of the conversation between Grace Hickson and her friends. There
had arisen a dispute among them at last, as to how far these
subjections to the power of the Evil One were to be considered as a
judgment upon Pastor Tappau for some sin on his part; and if so, what?
It was not an unpleasant discussion, although there was considerable
difference of opinion; for as none of the speakers had had their
families so troubled, it was rather a proof that they had none of them
committed any sin. In the midst of this talk, one, entering in from the
street, brought the news that Hota had confessed all--had owned to
signing a certain little red book which Satan had presented to her--had
been present at impious sacraments--had ridden through the air to
Newbury Falls--and, in fact, had assented to all the questions which
the elders and magistrates, carefully reading over the confessions of
the witches who had formerly been tried in England, in order that they
might not omit a single inquiry, had asked of her. More she had owned
to, but things of inferior importance, and partaking more of the nature
of earthly tricks than of spiritual power. She had spoken of carefully
adjusted strings, by which all the crockery in Pastor Tappau's house
could be pulled down or disturbed; but of such intelligible
malpractices the gossips of Salem took little heed. One of them said
that such an action showed Satan's prompting, but they all preferred to
listen to the grander guilt of the blasphemous sacraments and
supernatural rides. The narrator ended with saying that Hota was to be
hung the next morning, in spite of her confession, even although her
life had been promised to her if she acknowledged her sin; for it was
well to make an example of the first-discovered witch, and it was also
well that she was an Indian, a heathen, whose life would be no great
loss to the community. Grace Hickson on this spoke out. It was well
that witches should perish off the face of the earth, Indian or
English, heathen or, worse, a baptized Christian who had betrayed the
Lord, even as Judas did, and had gone over to Satan. For her part, she
wished that the first-discovered witch had been a member of a godly
English household, that it might be seen of all men that religious folk
were willing to cut off the right hand, and pluck out the right eye, if
tainted with this devilish sin. She spoke sternly and well. The last
comer said, that her words might be brought to the proof, for it had
been whispered that Hota had named others, and some from the most
religious families of Salem, whom she had seen among the unholy
communicants at the sacrament of the Evil One. And Grace replied that
she would answer for it, all godly folk would stand the proof, and
quench all natural affection rather than that such a sin should grow
and spread among them. She herself had a weak bodily dread of
witnessing the violent death even of an animal; but she would not let
that deter her from standing amidst those who cast the accursed
creature out from among them on the morrow morning.

Contrary to her wont, Grace Hickson told her family much of this
conversation. It was a sign of her excitement on the subject that she
thus spoke, and the excitement spread in different forms through her
family. Faith was flushed and restless, wandering between the
keeping-room and the kitchen, and questioning her mother particularly
as to the more extraordinary parts of Hota's confession, as if she
wished to satisfy herself that the Indian witch had really done those
horrible and mysterious deeds.

Lois shivered and trembled with affright at the narration, and the idea
that such things were possible. Occasionally she found herself
wandering off into sympathetic thought for the woman who was to die,
abhorred of all men, and unpardoned by God, to whom she had been so
fearful a traitor, and who was now, at this very time--when Lois sat
among her kindred by the warm and cheerful firelight, anticipating many
peaceful, perchance happy, morrows--solitary, shivering,
panic-stricken, guilty, with none to stand by her and exhort her, shut
up in darkness between the cold walls of the town prison. But Lois
almost shrank from sympathising with so loathsome an accomplice of
Satan, and prayed for forgiveness for her charitable thought; and yet,
again, she remembered the tender spirit of the Saviour, and allowed
herself to fall into pity, till at last her sense of right and wrong
became so bewildered that she could only leave all to God's disposal,
and just ask that He would take all creatures and all events into His
hands.

Prudence was as bright as if she were listening to some merry
story--curious as to more than her mother would tell her--seeming to
have no particular terror of witches or witchcraft, and yet to be
especially desirous to accompany her mother the next morning to the
hanging. Lois shrank from the cruel, eager face of the young girl as
she begged her mother to allow her to go. Even Grace was disturbed and
perplexed by her daughter's pertinacity.

'No!' said she. 'Ask me no more. Thou shalt not go. Such sights are not
for the young. I go, and I sicken at the thoughts of it. But I go to
show that I, a Christian woman, take God's part against the devil's.
Thou shalt not go, I tell thee. I could whip thee for thinking of it.'

'Manasseh says Hota was well whipped by Pastor Tappau ere she was
brought to confession,' said Prudence, as if anxious to change the
subject of discussion.

Manasseh lifted up his head from the great folio Bible, brought by his
father from England, which he was studying. He had not heard what
Prudence said, but he looked up at the sound of his name. All present
were startled at his wild eyes, his bloodless face. But he was
evidently annoyed at the expression of their countenances.

'Why look ye at me in that manner?' asked he. And his manner was
anxious and agitated. His mother made haste to speak:

'It was but that Prudence said something that thou hast told her--that
Pastor Tappau defiled his hands by whipping the witch Hota. What evil
thought has got hold of thee? Talk to us, and crack not thy skull
against the learning of man.'

'It is not the learning of man that I study: it is the word of God. I
would fain know more of the nature of this sin of witchcraft, and
whether it be, indeed, the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. At
times I feel a creeping influence coming over me, prompting all evil
thoughts and unheard-of deeds, and I question within myself, "Is not
this the power of witchcraft?" and I sicken, and loathe all that I do
or say, and yet some evil creature hath the mastery over me, and I must
needs do and say what I loathe and dread. Why wonder you, mother, that
I, of all men, strive to learn the exact nature of witchcraft, and for
that end study the word of God? Have you not seen me when I was, as it
were, possessed with a devil?'

He spoke calmly, sadly, but as under deep conviction. His mother rose
to comfort him.

'My son,' she said, 'no one ever saw thee do deeds, or heard thee utter
words, which any one could say were prompted by devils. We have seen
thee, poor lad, with thy wits gone astray for a time, but all thy
thoughts sought rather God's will in forbidden places, than lost the
clue to them for one moment in hankering after the powers of darkness.
Those days are long past; a future lies before thee. Think not of
witches or of being subject to the power of witchcraft. I did evil to
speak of it before thee. Let Lois come and sit by thee, and talk to
thee.'

Lois went to her cousin, grieved at heart for his depressed state of
mind, anxious to soothe and comfort him, and yet recoiling more than
ever from the idea of ultimately becoming his wife--an idea to which
she saw her aunt reconciling herself unconsciously day by day, as she
perceived the English girl's power of soothing and comforting her
cousin, even by the very tones of her sweet cooing voice.

He took Lois's hand.

'Let me hold it. It does me good,' said he. 'Ah, Lois, when I am by you
I forget all my troubles--will the day never come when you will listen
to the voice that speaks to me continually?'

'I never hear it, Cousin Manasseh,' she said, softly; 'but do not think
of the voices. Tell me of the land you hope to enclose from the
forest--what manner of trees grow on it?'

Thus, by simple questions on practical affairs, she led him back, in
her unconscious wisdom, to the subjects on which he had always shown
strong practical sense. He talked on these with all due discretion till
the hour for family prayer came round, which was early in those days.
It was Manasseh's place to conduct it, as head of the family; a post
which his mother had always been anxious to assign to him since her
husband's death. He prayed extempore; and to-night his supplications
wandered off into wild, unconnected fragments of prayer, which all
those kneeling around began, each according to her anxiety for the
speaker, to think would never end. Minutes elapsed, and grew to
quarters of an hour, and his words only became more emphatic and
wilder, praying for himself alone, and laying bare the recesses of his
heart. At length his mother rose, and took Lois by the hand, for she
had faith in Lois's power over her son, as being akin to that which the
shepherd David, playing on his harp, had over king Saul sitting on his
throne. She drew her towards him, where he knelt facing into the
circle, with his eyes upturned, and the tranced agony of his face
depicting the struggle of the troubled soul within.

'Here is Lois,' said Grace, almost tenderly; 'she would fain go to her
chamber.' (Down the girl's face the tears were streaming.) 'Rise, and
finish thy prayer in thy closet.'

But at Lois's approach he sprang to his feet,--sprang aside.

'Take her away, mother! Lead me not into temptation. She brings me evil
and sinful thoughts. She overshadows me, even in the presence of my
God. She is no angel of light, or she would not do this. She troubles
me with the sound of a voice bidding me marry her, even when I am at my
prayers. Avaunt! Take her away!'

He would have struck at Lois if she had not shrunk back, dismayed and
affrighted. His mother, although equally dismayed, was not affrighted.
She had seen him thus before; and understood the management of his
paroxysm.

'Go, Lois! the sight of thee irritates him, as once that of Faith did.
Leave him to me.'

And Lois rushed away to her room, and threw herself on her bed, like a
panting, hunted creature. Faith came after her slowly and heavily.

'Lois,' said she, 'wilt thou do me a favour? It is not much to ask.
Wilt thou arise before daylight, and bear this letter from me to Pastor
Nolan's lodgings? I would have done it myself, but mother has bidden me
to come to her, and I may be detained until the time when Hota is to be
hung; and the letter tells of matters pertaining to life and death.
Seek out Pastor Nolan wherever he may be, and have speech of him after
he has read the letter.'

'Cannot Nattee take it?' asked Lois.

'No!' Faith answered, fiercely. 'Why should she?'

But Lois did not reply. A quick suspicion darted through Faith's mind,
sudden as lightning. It had never entered there before.

'Speak, Lois. I read thy thoughts. Thou wouldst fain not be the bearer
of this letter?'

'I will take it,' said Lois, meekly. 'It concerns life and death, you
say?'

'Yes!' said Faith, in quite a different tone of voice. But, after a
pause of thought, she added: 'Then, as soon as the house is still, I
will write what I have to say, and leave it here, on this chest; and
thou wilt promise me to take it before the day is fully up, while there
is yet time for action.'

'Yes! I promise,' said Lois. And Faith knew enough of her to feel sure
that the deed would be done, however reluctantly.

The letter was written--laid on the chest; and, ere day dawned, Lois
was astir, Faith watching her from between her half-closed
eyelids--eyelids that had never been fully closed in sleep the livelong
night. The instant Lois, cloaked and hooded, left the room, Faith
sprang up, and prepared to go to her mother, whom she heard already
stirring. Nearly every one in Salem was awake and up on this awful
morning, though few were out of doors, as Lois passed along the
streets. Here was the hastily erected gallows, the black shadow of
which fell across the street with ghastly significance; now she had to
pass the iron-barred gaol, through the unglazed windows of which she
heard the fearful cry of a woman, and the sound of many footsteps. On
she sped, sick almost to faintness, to the widow woman's where Mr.
Nolan lodged. He was already up and abroad, gone, his hostess believed,
to the gaol. Thither Lois, repeating the words 'for life and for
death!' was forced to go. Retracing her steps, she was thankful to see
him come out of those dismal portals, rendered more dismal for being in
heavy shadow, just as she approached. What his errand had been she knew
not; but he looked grave and sad, as she put Faith's letter into his
hands, and stood before him quietly waiting, until he should read it,
and deliver the expected answer. But, instead of opening it, he held it
in his hand, apparently absorbed in thought. At last he spoke aloud,
but more to himself than to her:

'My God! and is she then to die in this fearful delirium? It must
be--can be--only delirium, that prompts such wild and horrible
confessions. Mistress Barclay, I come from the presence of the Indian
woman appointed to die. It seems, she considered herself betrayed last
evening by her sentence not being respited, even after she had made
confession of sin enough to bring down fire from heaven; and, it seems
to me, the passionate, impotent anger of this helpless creature has
turned to madness, for she appalls me by the additional revelations she
has made to the keepers during the night--to me this morning. I could
almost fancy that she thinks, by deepening the guilt she confesses, to
escape this last dread punishment of all, as if, were a tithe of what
she say true, one could suffer such a sinner to live. Yet to send her
to death in such a state of mad terror! What is to be done?'

'Yet Scripture says that we are not to suffer witches in the land,'
said Lois, slowly.

'True; I would but ask for a respite till the prayers of God's people
had gone up for His mercy. Some would pray for her, poor wretch as she
is. You would, Mistress Barclay, I am sure?' But he said it in a
questioning tone.

'I have been praying for her in the night many a time,' said Lois, in a
low voice. 'I pray for her in my heart at this moment; I suppose; they
are bidden to put her out of the land, but I would not have her
entirely God-forsaken. But, sir, you have not read my cousin's letter.
And she bade me bring back an answer with much urgency.'

Still he delayed. He was thinking of the dreadful confession he came
from hearing. If it were true, the beautiful earth was a polluted
place, and he almost wished to die, to escape from such pollution, into
the white innocence of those who stood in the presence of God.

Suddenly his eyes fell on Lois's pure, grave face, upturned and
watching his. Faith in earthly goodness came over his soul in that
instant, 'and he blessed her unaware.'

He put his hand on her shoulder, with an action half paternal--although
the difference in their ages was not above a dozen years--and, bending
a little towards her, whispered, half to himself, 'Mistress Barclay,
you have done me good.'

'I!' said Lois, half affrighted--'I done you good! How?'

'By being what you are. But, perhaps, I should rather thank God, who
sent you at the very moment when my soul was so disquieted.'

At this instant, they were aware of Faith standing in front of them,
with a countenance of thunder. Her angry look made Lois feel guilty.
She had not enough urged the pastor to read his letter, she thought;
and it was indignation at this delay in what she had been commissioned
to do with the urgency of life or death, that made her cousin lower at
her so from beneath her straight black brows. Lois explained how she
had not found Mr. Nolan at his lodgings, and had had to follow him to
the door of the gaol. But Faith replied, with obdurate contempt:

'Spare thy breath, cousin Lois. It is easy seeing on what pleasant
matters thou and the Pastor Nolan were talking. I marvel not at thy
forgetfulness. My mind is changed. Give me back my letter, sir; it was
about a poor matter--an old woman's life. And what is that compared to
a young girl's love?'

Lois heard but for an instant; did not understand that her cousin, in
her jealous anger, could suspect the existence of such a feeling as
love between her and Mr. Nolan. No imagination as to its possibility
had ever entered her mind; she had respected him, almost revered
him--nay, had liked him as the probable husband of Faith. At the
thought that her cousin could believe her guilty of such treachery, her
grave eyes dilated, and fixed themselves on the flaming countenance of
Faith. That serious, unprotesting manner of perfect innocence must have
told on her accuser, had it not been that, at the same instant, the
latter caught sight of the crimsoned and disturbed countenance of the
pastor, who felt the veil rent off the unconscious secret of his heart.
Faith snatched her letter out of his hands, and said:

'Let the witch hang! What care I? She has done harm enough with her
charms and her sorcery on Pastor Tappau's girls. Let her die, and let
all other witches look to themselves; for there be many kinds of
witchcraft abroad. Cousin Lois, thou wilt like best to stop with Pastor
Nolan, or I would pray thee to come back with me to breakfast.'

Lois was not to be daunted by jealous sarcasm. She held out her hand to
Pastor Nolan, determined to take no heed of her cousin's mad words, but
to bid him farewell in her accustomed manner. He hesitated before
taking it, and when he did, it was with a convulsive squeeze that
almost made her start. Faith waited and watched all, with set lips and
vengeful eyes. She bade no farewell; she spake no word; but grasping
Lois tightly by the back of the arm, she almost drove her before her
down the street till they reached their home.

The arrangement for the morning was this: Grace Hickson and her son
Manasseh were to be present at the hanging of the first witch executed
in Salem, as pious and godly heads of a family. All the other members
were strictly forbidden to stir out, until such time as the low-tolling
bell announced that all was over in this world for Hota, the Indian
witch. When the execution was ended, there was to be a solemn
prayer-meeting of all the inhabitants of Salem; ministers had come from
a distance to aid by the efficacy of their prayers in these efforts to
purge the land of the devil and his servants. There was reason to think
that the great old meeting-house would be crowded, and when Faith and
Lois reached home, Grace Hickson was giving her directions to Prudence,
urging her to be ready for an early start to that place. The stern old
woman was troubled in her mind at the anticipation of the sight she was
to see, before many minutes were over, and spoke in a more hurried and
incoherent manner than was her wont. She was dressed in her Sunday
best; but her face was very grey and colourless, and she seemed afraid
to cease speaking about household affairs, for fear she should have
time to think. Manasseh stood by her, perfectly, rigidly still; he also
was in his Sunday clothes. His face, too, was paler than its wont, but
it wore a kind of absent, rapt expression, almost like that of a man
who sees a vision. As Faith entered, still holding Lois in her fierce
grasp, Manasseh started and smiled; but still dreamily. His manner was
so peculiar, that even his mother stayed her talking to observe him
more closely; he was in that state of excitement which usually ended in
what his mother and certain of her friends esteemed a prophetic
revelation. He began to speak, at first very low, and then his voice
increased in power:

'How beautiful is the land of Beulah, far over the sea, beyond the
mountains! Thither the angels carry her, lying back in their arms like
one fainting. They shall kiss away the black circle of death, and lay
her down at the feet of the Lamb. I hear her pleading there for those
on earth who consented to her death. O Lois! pray also for me, pray for
me, miserable!'

When he uttered his cousin's name all their eyes turned towards her. It
was to her that his vision related! She stood among them, amazed,
awe-stricken, but not like one affrighted or dismayed. She was the
first to speak:

'Dear friends, do not think of me; his words may or may not be true. I
am in God's hands all the same, whether he have the gift of prophecy or
not. Besides, hear you not that I end where all would fain end? Think
of him, and of his needs. Such times as these always leave him
exhausted and weary, when he comes out of them.'

And she busied herself in cares for his refreshment, aiding her aunt's
trembling hands to set before him the requisite food, as he now sat
tired and bewildered, gathering together with difficulty his scattered
senses.

Prudence did all she could to assist and speed their departure. But
Faith stood apart, watching in silence with her passionate, angry eyes.

As soon as they had set out on their solemn, fatal errand, Faith left
the room. She had not tasted food or touched drink. Indeed, they all
felt sick at heart. The moment her sister had gone up stairs, Prudence
sprang to the settle on which Lois had thrown down her cloak and hood:

'Lend me your muffles and mantle, Cousin Lois. I never yet saw a woman
hanged, and I see not why I should not go. I will stand on the edge of
the crowd; no one will know me, and I will be home long before my
mother.'

'No!' said Lois, 'that may not be. My aunt would be sore displeased. I
wonder at you, Prudence, seeking to witness such a sight.' And as she
spoke she held fast her cloak, which Prudence vehemently struggled for.

Faith returned, brought back possibly by the sound of the struggle. She
smiled--a deadly smile.

'Give it up, Prudence. Strive no more with her. She has bought success
in this world, and we are but her slaves.'

'Oh, Faith!' said Lois, relinquishing her hold of the cloak, and
turning round with passionate reproach in her look and voice, 'what
have I done that you should speak so of me; you, that have loved as I
think one love a sister?'

Prudence did not lose her opportunity, but hastily arrayed herself in
the mantle, which was too large for her, and which she had, therefore,
considered as well adapted for concealment; but, as she went towards
the door, her feet became entangled in the unusual length, and she
fell, bruising her arm pretty sharply.

'Take care, another time, how you meddle with a witch's things,' said
Faith, as one scarcely believing her own words, but at enmity with all
the world in her bitter jealousy of heart. Prudence rubbed her arm and
looked stealthily at Lois.

'Witch Lois! Witch Lois!' said she at last, softly, pulling a childish
face of spite at her.

'Oh, hush, Prudence! Do not bandy such terrible words. Let me look at
thine arm. I am sorry for thy hurt, only glad that it has kept thee
from disobeying thy mother.'

'Away, away!' said Prudence, springing from her. 'I am afeard of her in
very truth, Faith. Keep between me and the witch, or I will throw a
stool at her.'

Faith smiled--it was a bad and wicked smile--but she did not stir to
calm the fears she had called up in her young sister. Just at this
moment, the bell began to toll. Hota, the Indian witch, was dead. Lois
covered her face with her hands. Even Faith went a deadlier pale than
she had been, and said, sighing, 'Poor Hota! But death is best.'

Prudence alone seemed unmoved by any thoughts connected with the
solemn, monotonous sound. Her only consideration was, that now she
might go out into the street and see the sights, and hear the news, and
escape from the terror which she felt at the presence of her cousin.
She flew up stairs to find her own mantle, ran down again, and past
Lois, before the English girl had finished her prayer, and was speedily
mingled among the crowd going to the meetinghouse. There also Faith and
Lois came in due course of time, but separately, not together. Faith so
evidently avoided Lois, that she, humbled and grieved, could not force
her company upon her cousin, but loitered a little behind,--the quiet
tears stealing down her face, shed for the many causes that had
occurred this morning.

The meeting-house was full to suffocation; and, as it sometimes happens
on such occasions, the greatest crowd was close about the doors, from
the fact that few saw, on their first entrance, where there might be
possible spaces into which they could wedge themselves. Yet they were
impatient of any arrivals from the outside, and pushed and hustled
Faith, and after her Lois, till the two were forced on to a conspicuous
place in the very centre of the building, where there was no chance of
a seat, but still space to stand in. Several stood around, the pulpit
being in the middle, and already occupied by two ministers in Geneva
bands and gowns, while other ministers, similarly attired, stood
holding on to it, almost as if they were giving support instead of
receiving it. Grace Hickson and her son sat decorously in their own
pew, thereby showing that they had arrived early from the execution.
You might almost have traced out the number of those who had been at
the hanging of the Indian witch, by the expression of their
countenances. They were awestricken into terrible repose; while the
crowd pouring in, still pouring in, of those who had not attended the
execution, looked all restless, and excited, and fierce. A buzz went
round the meeting, that the stranger minister who stood along with
Pastor Tappau in the pulpit was no other than Dr. Cotton Mather
himself, come all the way from Boston to assist in purging Salem of
witches.

And now Pastor Tappau began his prayer, extempore, as was the custom.
His words were wild and incoherent, as might be expected from a man who
had just been consenting to the bloody death of one who was, but a few
days ago, a member of his own family; violent and passionate, as was to
be looked for in the father of children, whom he believed to suffer so
fearfully from the crime he would denounce before the Lord. He sat down
at length from pure exhaustion. Then Dr. Cotton Mather stood forward:
he did not utter more than a few words of prayer, calm in comparison
with what had gone before, and then he went on to address the great
crowd before him in a quiet, argumentative way, but arranging what he
had to say with something of the same kind of skill which Antony used
in his speech to the Romans after Caesar's murder. Some of Dr. Mather's
words have been preserved to us, as he afterwards wrote them down in
one of his works. Speaking of those 'unbelieving Sadducees' who doubted
the existence of such a crime, he said: 'Instead of their apish shouts
and jeers at blessed Scripture, and histories which have such undoubted
confirmation as that no man that has breeding enough to regard the
common laws of human society will offer to doubt of them, it becomes us
rather to adore the goodness of God, who from the mouths of babes and
sucklings has ordained truth, and by the means of the sore-afflicted
children of your godly pastor, has revealed the fact that the devils
have with most horrid operations broken in upon your neighbourhood. Let
us beseech Him that their power may be restrained, and that they go not
so far in their evil machinations as they did but four years ago in the
city of Boston, where I was the humble means, under God, of loosing
from the power of Satan the four children of that religious and blessed
man, Mr. Goodwin. These four babes of grace were bewitched by an Irish
witch; there is no end to the narration of the torments they had to
submit to. At one time they would bark like dogs, at another purr like
cats; yea, they would fly like geese, and be carried with an incredible
swiftness, having but just their toes now and then upon the ground,
sometimes not once in twenty feet, and their arms waved like those of a
bird. Yet at other times, by the hellish devices of the woman who had
bewitched them, they could not stir without limping, for, by means of
an invisible chain, she hampered their limbs, or, sometimes, by means
of a noose, almost choked them. One in especial was subjected by this
woman of Satan to such heat as of an oven, that I myself have seen the
sweat drop from off her, while all around were moderately cold and well
at ease. But not to trouble you with more of my stories, I will go on
to prove that it was Satan himself that held power over her. For a very
remarkable thing it was, that she was not permitted by that evil spirit
to read any godly or religious book, speaking the truth as it is in
Jesus. She could read Popish books well enough, while both sight and
speech seemed to fail her when I gave her the Assembly's Catechism.
Again, she was fond of that prelatical Book of Common Prayer, which is
but the Roman mass-book in an English and ungodly shape. In the midst
of her sufferings, if one put the Prayer-book into her hands it
relieved her. Yet mark you, she could never be brought to read the
Lord's Prayer, whatever book she met with it in, proving thereby
distinctly that she was in league with the devil. I took her into my
own house, that I, even as Dr. Martin Luther did, might wrestle with
the devil and have my fling at him. But when I called my household to
prayer, the devils that possessed her caused her to whistle, and sing,
and yell in a discordant and hellish fashion.'

At this very instant, a shrill, clear whistle pierced all ears. Dr.
Mather stopped for a moment:

'Satan is among you!' he cried. 'Look to yourselves!' And he prayed
with fervour, as if against a present and threatening enemy; but no one
heeded him. Whence came that ominous, unearthly whistle? Every man
watched his neighbour. Again the whistle, out of their very midst! And
then a bustle in a corner of the building, three or four people
stirring, without any cause immediately perceptible to those at a
distance, the movement spread, and, directly after, a passage even in
that dense mass of people was cleared for two men, who bore forwards
Prudence Hickson, lying rigid as a log of wood, in the convulsive
position of one who suffered from an epileptic fit. They laid her down
among the ministers who were gathered round the pulpit. Her mother came
to her, sending up a wailing cry at the sight of her distorted child.
Dr. Mather came down from the pulpit and stood over her, exorcising the
devil in possession, as one accustomed to such scenes. The crowd
pressed forward in mute horror. At length, her rigidity of form and
feature gave way, and she was terribly convulsed--torn by the devil, as
they called it. By-and-by the violence of the attack was over, and the
spectators began to breathe once more, though still the former horror
brooded over them, and they listened as if for the sudden ominous
whistle again, and glanced fearfully around, as if Satan were at their
backs picking out his next victim.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mather, Pastor Tappau, and one or two others were
exhorting Prudence to reveal, if she could, the name of the person, the
witch, who, by influence over Satan, had subjected the child to such
torture as that which they had just witnessed. They bade her speak in
the name of the Lord. She whispered a name in the low voice of
exhaustion. None of the congregation could hear what it was. But the
Pastor Tappau, when he heard it, drew back in dismay, while Dr. Mather,
knowing not to whom the name belonged, cried out, in a clear, cold
voice,

'Know ye one Lois Barclay; for it is she who hath bewitched this poor
child?'

The answer was given rather by action than by word, although a low
murmur went up from many. But all fell back, as far as falling back in
such a crowd was possible, from Lois Barclay, where she stood,--and
looked on her with surprise and horror. A space of some feet, where no
possibility of space had seemed to be not a minute before, left Lois
standing alone, with every eye fixed upon her in hatred and dread. She
stood like one speechless, tongue-tied, as if in a dream. She a witch!
accursed as witches were in the sight of God and man! Her smooth,
healthy face became contracted into shrivel and pallor, but she uttered
not a word, only looked at Dr. Mather with her dilated, terrified eyes.

Some one said, 'She is of the household of Grace Hickson, a God-fearing
woman.' Lois did not know if the words were in her favour or not. She
did not think about them, even; they told less on her than on any
person present. She a witch! and the silver glittering Avon, and the
drowning woman she had seen in her childhood at Barford,--at home in
England,--were before her, and her eyes fell before her doom. There was
some commotion--some rustling of papers; the magistrates of the town
were drawing near the pulpit and consulting with the ministers. Dr.
Mather spoke again:

'The Indian woman, who was hung this morning, named certain people,
whom she deposed to having seen at the horrible meetings for the
worship of Satan; but there is no name of Lois Barclay down upon the
paper, although we are stricken at the sight of the names of some----'

An interruption--a consultation. Again Dr. Mather spoke:

'Bring the accused witch, Lois Barclay, near to this poor suffering
child of Christ.'

They rushed forward to force Lois to the place where Prudence lay. But
Lois walked forward of herself.

'Prudence,' she said, in such a sweet, touching voice, that, long
afterwards, those who heard it that day, spoke of it to their children,
'have I ever said an unkind word to you, much less done you an ill
turn? Speak, dear child. You did not know what you said just now, did
you?'

But Prudence writhed away from her approach, and screamed out, as if
stricken with fresh agony.

'Take her away! take her away! Witch Lois, witch Lois, who threw me
down only this morning, and turned my arm black and blue.' And she
bared her arm, as if in confirmation of her words. It was sorely
bruised.

'I was not near you, Prudence!' said Lois, sadly. But that was only
reckoned fresh evidence of her diabolical power.

Lois's brain began to get bewildered. Witch Lois! she a witch, abhorred
of all men! Yet she would try to think, and make one more effort.

'Aunt Hickson,' she said, and Grace came forwards--'am I a witch, Aunt
Hickson?' she asked; for her aunt, stern, harsh, unloving as she might
be, was truth itself, and Lois thought--so near to delirium had she
come--if her aunt condemned her, it was possible she might indeed be a
witch.

Grace Hickson faced her unwillingly.

'It is a stain upon our family for ever,' was the thought in her mind.

'It is for God to judge whether thou art a witch, or not. Not for me.'

'Alas, alas!' moaned Lois; for she had looked at Faith, and learnt that
no good word was to be expected from her gloomy face and averted eyes.
The meeting-house was full of eager voices, repressed, out of reverence
for the place, into tones of earnest murmuring that seemed to fill the
air with gathering sounds of anger, and those who had at first fallen
back from the place where Lois stood were now pressing forwards and
round about her, ready to seize the young friendless girl, and bear her
off to prison. Those who might have been, who ought to have been, her
friends, were either averse or indifferent to her; though only Prudence
made any open outcry upon her. That evil child cried out perpetually
that Lois had cast a devilish spell upon her, and bade them keep the
witch away from her; and, indeed, Prudence was strangely convulsed when
once or twice Lois's perplexed and wistful eyes were turned in her
direction. Here and there girls, women uttering strange cries, and
apparently suffering from the same kind of convulsive fit as that which
had attacked Prudence, were centres of a group of agitated friends, who
muttered much and savagely of witchcraft, and the list which had been
taken down only the night before from Hota's own lips. They demanded to
have it made public, and objected to the slow forms of the law. Others,
not so much or so immediately interested in the sufferers, were
kneeling around, and praying aloud for themselves and their own safety,
until the excitement should be so much quelled as to enable Dr. Cotton
Mather to be again heard in prayer and exhortation.

And where was Manasseh? What said he? You must remember, that the stir
of the outcry, the accusation, the appeals of the accused, all seemed
to go on at once amid the buzz and din of the people who had come to
worship God, but remained to judge and upbraid their fellow-creature.
Till now Lois had only caught a glimpse of Manasseh, who was apparently
trying to push forwards, but whom his mother was holding back with word
and action, as Lois knew she would hold him back; for it was not for
the first time that she was made aware how carefully her aunt had
always shrouded his decent reputation among his fellow-citizens from
the least suspicion of his seasons of excitement and incipient
insanity. On such days, when he himself imagined that he heard
prophetic voices, and saw prophetic visions, his mother would do much
to prevent any besides his own family from seeing him; and now Lois, by
a process swifter than reasoning, felt certain, from her one look at
his face, when she saw it, colourless and deformed by intensity of
expression, among a number of others all simply ruddy and angry, that
he was in such a state that his mother would in vain do her utmost to
prevent his making himself conspicuous. Whatever force or argument
Grace used, it was of no avail. In another moment he was by Lois's
side, stammering with excitement, and giving vague testimony, which
would have been of little value in a calm court of justice, and was
only oil to the smouldering fire of that audience.

'Away with her to gaol!' 'Seek out the witches!' 'The sin has spread
into all households!' 'Satan is in the very midst of us!' 'Strike and
spare not!' In vain Dr. Cotton Mather raised his voice in loud prayers,
in which he assumed the guilt of the accused girl; no one listened, all
were anxious to secure Lois, as if they feared she would vanish from
before their very eyes; she, white, trembling, standing quite still in
the tight grasp of strange, fierce men, her dilated eyes only wandering
a little now and then in search of some pitiful face--some pitiful face
that among all those hundreds was not to be found. While some fetched
cords to bind her, and others, by low questions, suggested new
accusations to the distempered brain of Prudence, Manasseh obtained a
hearing once more. Addressing Dr. Cotton Mather, he said, evidently
anxious to make clear some new argument that had just suggested itself
to him: 'Sir, in this matter, be she witch or not, the end has been
foreshown to me by the spirit of prophecy. Now, reverend sir, if the
event be known to the spirit, it must have been foredoomed in the
councils of God. If so, why punish her for doing that in which she had
no free will?'

'Young man,' said Dr. Mather, bending down from the pulpit and looking
very severely upon Manasseh, 'take care! you are trenching on
blasphemy.'

'I do not care. I say it again. Either Lois Barclay is a witch, or she
is not. If she is, it has been foredoomed for her, for I have seen a
vision of her death as a condemned witch for many months past--and the
voice has told me there was but one escape for her, Lois--the voice you
know--' In his excitement he began to wander a little, but it was
touching to see how conscious he was that by giving way he would lose
the thread of the logical argument by which he hoped to prove that Lois
ought not to be punished, and with what an effort he wrenched his
imagination away from the old ideas, and strove to concentrate all his
mind upon the plea that, if Lois was a witch, it had been shown him by
prophecy; and if there was prophecy there must be foreknowledge; if
foreknowledge, foredoom; if foredoom, no exercise of free will, and,
therefore, that Lois was not justly amenable to punishment.

On he went, plunging into heresy, caring not--growing more and more
passionate every instant, but directing his passion into keen argument,
desperate sarcasm, instead of allowing it to excite his imagination.
Even Dr. Mather felt himself on the point of being worsted in the very
presence of this congregation, who, but a short half-hour ago, looked
upon him as all but infallible. Keep a good heart, Cotton Mather! your
opponent's eye begins to glare and flicker with a terrible yet
uncertain light--his speech grows less coherent, and his arguments are
mixed up with wild glimpses at wilder revelations made to himself
alone. He has touched on the limits,--he has entered the borders of
blasphemy, and with an awful cry of horror and reprobation the
congregation rise up, as one man, against the blasphemer. Dr. Mather
smiled a grim smile, and the people were ready to stone Manasseh, who
went on, regardless, talking and raving.

'Stay, stay!' said Grace Hickson--all the decent family shame which
prompted her to conceal the mysterious misfortune of her only son from
public knowledge done away with by the sense of the immediate danger to
his life. 'Touch him not. He knows not what he is saying. The fit is
upon him. I tell you the truth before God. My son, my only son, is
mad.'

They stood aghast at the intelligence. The grave young citizen, who had
silently taken his part in life close by them in their daily lives--not
mixing much with them, it was true, but looked up to, perhaps, all the
more--the student of abstruse books on theology, fit to converse with
the most learned ministers that ever came about those parts--was he the
same with the man now pouring out wild words to Lois the witch, as if
he and she were the only two present! A solution of it all occurred to
them. He was another victim. Great was the power of Satan! Through the
arts of the devil, that white statue of a girl had mastered the soul of
Manasseh Hickson. So the word spread from mouth to mouth. And Grace
heard it. It seemed a healing balsam for her shame. With wilful,
dishonest blindness, she would not see--not even in her secret heart
would she acknowledge, that Manasseh had been strange, and moody, and
violent long before the English girl had reached Salem. She even found
some specious reason for his attempt at suicide long ago. He was
recovering from a fever--and though tolerably well in health, the
delirium had not finally left him. But since Lois came, how headstrong
he had been at times! how unreasonable! how moody! What a strange
delusion was that which he was under, of being bidden by some voice to
marry her! How he followed her about, and clung to her, as under some
compulsion of affection! And over all reigned the idea that, if he were
indeed suffering from being bewitched, he was not mad, and might again
assume the honourable position he had held in the congregation and in
the town, when the spell by which he was held was destroyed. So Grace
yielded to the notion herself, and encouraged it in others, that Lois
Barclay had bewitched both Manasseh and Prudence. And the consequence
of this belief was, that Lois was to be tried, with little chance in
her favour, to see whether she was a witch or no; and if a witch,
whether she would confess, implicate others, repent, and live a life of
bitter shame, avoided by all men, and cruelly treated by most; or die
impenitent, hardened, denying her crime upon the gallows.

And so they dragged Lois away from the congregation of Christians to
the gaol, to await her trial. I say 'dragged her,' because, although
she was docile enough to have followed them whither they would, she was
now so faint as to require extraneous force--poor Lois! who should have
been carried and tended lovingly in her state of exhaustion, but,
instead, was so detested by the multitude, who looked upon her as an
accomplice of Satan in all his evil doings, that they cared no more how
they treated her than a careless boy minds how he handles the toad that
he is going to throw over the wall.

When Lois came to her full senses, she found herself lying on a short
hard bed in a dark square room, which she at once knew must be a part
of the city gaol. It was about eight feet square, it had stone walls on
every side, and a grated opening high above her head, letting in all
the light and air that could enter through about a square foot of
aperture. It was so lonely, so dark to that poor girl, when she came
slowly and painfully out of her long faint. She did so want human help
in that struggle which always supervenes after a swoon; when the effort
is to clutch at life, and the effort seems too much for the will. She
did not at first understand where she was; did not understand how she
came to be there, nor did she care to understand. Her physical instinct
was to lie still and let the hurrying pulses have time to calm. So she
shut her eyes once more. Slowly, slowly the recollection of the scene
in the meeting-house shaped itself into a kind of picture before her.
She saw within her eyelids, as it were, that sea of loathing faces all
turned towards her, as towards something unclean and hateful. And you
must remember, you who in the nineteenth century read this account,
that witchcraft was a real terrible sin to her, Lois Barclay, two
hundred years ago. The look on their faces, stamped on heart and brain,
excited in her a sort of strange sympathy. Could it, oh God!--could it
be true, that Satan had obtained the terrific power over her and her
will, of which she had heard and read? Could she indeed be possessed by
a demon and be indeed a witch, and yet till now have been unconscious
of it? And her excited imagination recalled, with singular vividness,
all she had ever heard on the subject--the horrible midnight sacrament,
the very presence and power of Satan. Then remembering every angry
thought against her neighbour, against the impertinences of Prudence,
against the overbearing authority of her aunt, against the persevering
crazy suit of Manasseh, the indignation--only that morning, but such
ages off in real time--at Faith's injustice; oh, could such evil
thoughts have had devilish power given to them by the father of evil,
and, all unconsciously to herself, have gone forth as active curses
into the world? And so, on the ideas went careering wildly through the
poor girl's brain--the girl thrown inward upon herself. At length, the
sting of her imagination forced her to start up impatiently. What was
this? A weight of iron on her legs--a weight stated afterwards, by the
gaoler of Salem prison, to have been 'not more than eight pounds.' It
was well for Lois it was a tangible ill, bringing her back from the
wild illimitable desert in which her imagination was wandering. She
took hold of the iron, and saw her torn stocking,--her bruised ankle,
and began to cry pitifully, out of strange compassion with herself.
They feared, then, that even in that cell she would find a way to
escape. Why, the utter, ridiculous impossibility of the thing convinced
her of her own innocence, and ignorance of all supernatural power; and
the heavy iron brought her strangely round from the delusions that
seemed to be gathering about her.

No! she never could fly out of that deep dungeon; there was no escape,
natural or supernatural, for her, unless by man's mercy. And what was
man's mercy in such times of panic? Lois knew that it was nothing;
instinct more than reason taught her, that panic calls out cowardice,
and cowardice cruelty. Yet she cried, cried freely, and for the first
time, when she found herself ironed and chained. It seemed so cruel, so
much as if her fellow-creatures had really learnt to hate and dread
her--her, who had had a few angry thoughts, which God forgive! but
whose thoughts had never gone into words, far less into actions. Why,
even now she could love all the household at home, if they would but
let her; yes, even yet, though she felt that it was the open accusation
of Prudence and the withheld justifications of her aunt and Faith that
had brought her to her present strait. Would they ever come and see
her? Would kinder thoughts of her,--who had shared their daily bread
for months and months,--bring them to see her, and ask her whether it
were really she who had brought on the illness of Prudence, the
derangement of Manasseh's mind?

No one came. Bread and water were pushed in by some one, who hastily
locked and unlocked the door, and cared not to see if he put them
within his prisoner's reach, or perhaps thought that physical fact
mattered little to a witch. It was long before Lois could reach them;
and she had something of the natural hunger of youth left in her still,
which prompted her, lying her length on the floor, to weary herself
with efforts to obtain the bread. After she had eaten some of it, the
day began to wane, and she thought she would lay her down and try to
sleep. But before she did so, the gaoler heard her singing the Evening
Hymn:

    Glory to thee, my God, this night,
    For all the blessings of the light.

And a dull thought came into his dull mind, that she was thankful for
few blessings, if she could tune up her voice to sing praises after
this day of what, if she were a witch, was shameful detection in
abominable practices, and if not--. Well, his mind stopped short at
this point in his wondering contemplation. Lois knelt down and said the
Lord's Prayer, pausing just a little before one clause, that she might
be sure that in her heart of hearts she did forgive. Then she looked at
her ankle, and the tears came into her eyes once again, but not so much
because she was hurt, as because men must have hated her so bitterly
before they could have treated her thus. Then she lay down, and fell
asleep.

The next day, she was led before Mr. Hathorn and Mr. Curwin, justices
of Salem, to be accused legally and publicly of witchcraft. Others were
with her, under the same charge. And when the prisoners were brought
in, they were cried out at by the abhorrent crowd. The two Tappaus,
Prudence, and one or two other girls of the same age were there, in the
character of victims of the spells of the accused. The prisoners were
placed about seven or eight feet from the justices and the accusers
between the justices and them; the former were then ordered to stand
right before the justices. All this Lois did at their bidding, with
something of the wondering docility of a child, but not with any hope
of softening the hard, stony look of detestation that was on all the
countenances around her, save those that were distorted by more
passionate anger. Then an officer was bidden to hold each of her hands,
and Justice Hathorn bade her keep her eyes continually fixed on him,
for this reason--which, however, was not told to her--lest, if she
looked on Prudence, the girl might either fall into a fit, or cry out
that she was suddenly and violently hurt. If any heart could have been
touched of that cruel multitude, they would have felt some compassion
for the sweet young face of the English girl, trying so meekly to do
all that she was ordered, her face quite white, yet so full of sad
gentleness, her grey eyes, a little dilated by the very solemnity of
her position, fixed with the intent look of innocent maidenhood on the
stern face of Justice Hathorn. And thus they stood in silence, one
breathless minute. Then they were bidden to say the Lord's Prayer. Lois
went through it as if alone in her cell; but, as she had done alone in
her cell the night before, she made a little pause, before the prayer
to be forgiven as she forgave. And at this instant of hesitation--as if
they had been on the watch for it--they all cried out upon her for a
witch, and when the clamour ended the justices bade Prudence Hickson
come forwards. Then Lois turned a little to one side, wishing to see at
least one familiar face; but when her eyes fell upon Prudence, the girl
stood stock-still, and answered no questions, nor spoke a word, and the
justices declared that she was struck dumb by witchcraft. Then some
behind took Prudence under the arms, and would have forced her forwards
to touch Lois, possibly esteeming that as a cure for her being
bewitched. But Prudence had hardly been made to take three steps before
she struggled out of their arms, and fell down writhing as in a fit,
calling out with shrieks, and entreating Lois to help her, and save her
from her torment. Then all the girls began 'to tumble down like swine'
(to use the words of an eye-witness) and to cry out upon Lois and her
fellow-prisoners. These last were now ordered to stand with their hands
stretched out, it being imagined that if the bodies of the witches were
arranged in the form of a cross they would lose their evil power.
By-and-by Lois felt her strength going, from the unwonted fatigue of
such a position, which she had borne patiently until the pain and
weariness had forced both tears and sweat down her face, and she asked
in a low, plaintive voice, if she might not rest her head for a few
moments against the wooden partition. But Justice Hathorn told her she
had strength enough to torment others, and should have strength enough
to stand. She sighed a little, and bore on, the clamour against her and
the other accused increasing every moment; the only way she could keep
herself from utterly losing consciousness was by distracting herself
from present pain and danger, and saying to herself verses of the
Psalms as she could remember them, expressive of trust in God. At
length she was ordered back to gaol, and dimly understood that she and
others were sentenced to be hanged for witchcraft. Many people now
looked eagerly at Lois, to see if she would weep at this doom. If she
had had strength to cry, it might--it was just possible that it
might--have been considered a plea in her favour, for witches could not
shed tears, but she was too exhausted and dead. All she wanted was to
lie down once more on her prison-bed, out of the reach of men's cries
of abhorrence, and out of shot of their cruel eyes. So they led her
back to prison, speechless and tearless.

But rest gave her back her power of thought and suffering. Was it,
indeed, true that she was to die? She, Lois Barclay, only eighteen, so
well, so young, so full of love and hope as she had been, till but
these little days past! What would they think of it at home--real, dear
home at Barford, in England? There they had loved her; there she had
gone about, singing and rejoicing all the day long in the pleasant
meadows by the Avon side. Oh, why did father and mother die, and leave
her their bidding to come here to this cruel New England shore, where
no one had wanted her, no one had cared for her, and where now they
were going to put her to a shameful death as a witch? And there would
be no one to send kindly messages by to those she should never see
more. Never more! Young Lucy was living, and joyful--probably thinking
of her, and of his declared intention of coming to fetch her home to be
his wife this very spring. Possibly he had forgotten her; no one knew.
A week before, she would have been indignant at her own distrust in
thinking for a minute that he could forget. Now, she doubted all men's
goodness for a time; for those around her were deadly, and cruel, and
relentless.

Then she turned round, and beat herself with angry blows (to speak in
images), for ever doubting her lover. Oh! if she were but with him! Oh!
if she might but be with him! He would not let her die; but would hide
her in his bosom from the wrath of this people, and carry her back to
the old home at Barford. And he might even now be sailing on the wide
blue sea, coming nearer, nearer every moment, and yet be too late after
all.

So the thoughts chased each other through her head all that feverish
night, till she clung almost deliriously to life, and wildly prayed
that she might not die; at least, not just yet, and she so young!

Pastor Tappau and certain elders roused her up from a heavy sleep, late
on the morning of the following day. All night long she had trembled
and cried, till morning had come peering in through the square grating
up above. It soothed her, and she fell asleep, to be awakened, as I
have said, by Pastor Tappau.

'Arise!' said he, scrupling to touch her, from his superstitious idea
of her evil powers. 'It is noonday.'

'Where am I?' said she, bewildered at this unusual wakening, and the
array of severe faces all gazing upon her with reprobation.

'You are in Salem gaol, condemned for a witch.'

'Alas! I had forgotten for an instant,' said she, dropping her head
upon her breast.

'She has been out on a devilish ride all night long, doubtless, and is
weary and perplexed this morning,' whispered one, in so low a voice
that he did not think she could hear; but she lifted up her eyes, and
looked at him, with mute reproach.

'We are come' said Pastor Tappau, 'to exhort you to confess your great
and manifold sin.'

'My great and manifold sin!' repeated Lois to herself, shaking her
head.

'Yea, your sin of witchcraft. If you will confess, there may yet be
balm in Gilead.'

One of the elders, struck with pity at the young girl's wan, shrunken
look, said, that if she confessed, and repented, and did penance,
possibly her life might yet be spared.

A sudden flash of light came into her sunk, dulled eye. Might she yet
live? Was it yet in her power?

Why, no one knew how soon Ralph Lucy might be here, to take her away
for ever into the peace of a new home! Life! Oh, then, all hope was not
over--perhaps she might still live, and not die. Yet the truth came
once more out of her lips, almost without any exercise of her will.

'I am not a witch,' she said.

Then Pastor Tappau blindfolded her, all unresisting, but with languid
wonder in her heart as to what was to come next. She heard people enter
the dungeon softly, and heard whispering voices; then her hands were
lifted up and made to touch some one near, and in an instant she heard
a noise of struggling, and the well-known voice of Prudence shrieking
out in one of her hysterical fits, and screaming to be taken away and
out of that place. It seemed to Lois as if some of her judges must have
doubted of her guilt, and demanded yet another test. She sat down
heavily on her bed, thinking she must be in a horrible dream, so
compassed about with dangers and enemies did she seem. Those in the
dungeon--and by the oppression of the air she perceived that they were
many--kept on eager talking in low voices. She did not try to make out
the sense of the fragments of sentences that reached her dulled brain,
till, all at once, a word or two made her understand they were
discussing the desirableness of applying the whip or the torture to
make her confess, and reveal by what means the spell she had cast upon
those whom she had bewitched could be dissolved. A thrill of affright
ran through her; and she cried out, beseechingly:

'I beg you, sirs, for God's mercy sake, that you do not use such awful
means. I may say anything--nay, I may accuse any one if I am subjected
to such torment as I have heard tell about. For I am but a young girl,
and not very brave, or very good, as some are.'

It touched the hearts of one or two to see her standing there; the
tears streaming down from below the coarse handkerchief tightly bound
over her eyes; the clanking chain fastening the heavy weight to the
slight ankle; the two hands held together as if to keep down a
convulsive motion.

'Look!' said one of these. 'She is weeping. They say no witch can weep
tears.'

But another scoffed at this test, and bade the first remember how those
of her own family, the Hicksons even, bore witness against her.

Once more she was bidden to confess. The charges, esteemed by all men
(as they said) to have been proven against her, were read over to her,
with all the testimony borne against her in proof thereof. They told
her that, considering the godly family to which she belonged, it had
been decided by the magistrates and ministers of Salem that he should
have her life spared, if she would own her guilt, make reparation, and
submit to penance; but that if not, she, and others convicted of
witchcraft along with her, were to be hung in Salem market-place on the
next Thursday morning (Thursday being market day). And when they had
thus spoken, they waited silently for her answer. It was a minute or
two before she spoke. She had sat down again upon the bed meanwhile,
for indeed she was very weak. She asked, 'May I have this handkerchief
unbound from my eyes, for indeed, sirs, it hurts me?'

The occasion for which she was blindfolded being over, the bandage was
taken off, and she was allowed to see. She looked pitifully at the
stern faces around her, in grim suspense as to what her answer would
be. Then she spoke:

'Sirs, I must choose death with a quiet conscience, rather than life to
be gained by a lie. I am not a witch. I know not hardly what you mean
when you say I am. I have done many, many things very wrong in my life;
but I think God will forgive me them for my Saviour's sake.'

'Take not His name on your wicked lips,' said Pastor Tappau, enraged at
her resolution of not confessing, and scarcely able to keep himself
from striking her. She saw the desire he had, and shrank away in timid
fear. Then Justice Hathorn solemnly read the legal condemnation of Lois
Barclay to death by hanging, as a convicted witch. She murmured
something which nobody heard fully, but which sounded like a prayer for
pity and compassion on her tender years and friendless estate. Then
they left her to all the horrors of that solitary, loathsome dungeon,
and the strange terror of approaching death.

Outside the prison walls, the dread of the witches, and the excitement
against witchcraft, grew with fearful rapidity. Numbers of women, and
men, too, were accused, no matter what their station of life and their
former character had been. On the other side, it is alleged that
upwards of fifty persons were grievously vexed by the devil, and those
to whom he had imparted of his power for vile and wicked
considerations. How much of malice, distinct, unmistakable personal
malice, was mixed up with these accusations, no one can now tell. The
dire statistics of this time tell us, that fifty-five escaped death by
confessing themselves guilty, one hundred and fifty were in prison,
more than two hundred accused, and upwards of twenty suffered death,
among whom was the minister I have called Nolan, who was traditionally
esteemed to have suffered through hatred of his co-pastor. One old man,
scorning the accusation, and refusing to plead at his trial, was,
according to the law, pressed to death for his contumacy. Nay, even
dogs were accused of witchcraft, suffered the legal penalties, and are
recorded among the subjects of capital punishment. One young man found
means to effect his mother's escape from confinement, fled with her on
horseback, and secreted her in the Blueberry Swamp, not far from
Taplay's Brook, in the Great Pasture; he concealed her here in a wigwam
which he built for her shelter, provided her with food and clothing,
and comforted and sustained her until after the delusion had passed
away. The poor creature must, however, have suffered dreadfully, for
one of her arms was fractured in the all but desperate effort of
getting her out of prison.

But there was no one to try and save Lois. Grace Hickson would fain
have ignored her altogether. Such a taint did witchcraft bring upon a
whole family, that generations of blameless life were not at that day
esteemed sufficient to wash it out. Besides, you must remember that
Grace, along with most people of her time, believed most firmly in the
reality of the crime of witchcraft. Poor, forsaken Lois, believed in it
herself, and it added to her terror, for the gaoler, in an unusually
communicative mood, told her that nearly every cell was now full of
witches; and it was possible he might have to put one, if more came, in
with her. Lois knew that she was no witch herself; but not the less did
she believe that the crime was abroad, and largely shared in by
evil-minded persons who had chosen to give up their souls to Satan; and
she shuddered with terror at what the gaoler said, and would have asked
him to spare her this companionship if it were possible. But, somehow,
her senses were leaving her, and she could not remember the right words
in which to form her request, until he had left the place.

The only person who yearned after Lois--who would have befriended her
if he could--was Manasseh: poor, mad Manasseh. But he was so wild and
outrageous in his talk, that it was all his mother could do to keep his
state concealed from public observation. She had for this purpose given
him a sleeping potion; and, while he lay heavy and inert under the
influence of the poppy-tea, his mother bound him with cords to the
ponderous, antique bed in which he slept. She looked broken-hearted
while she did this office, and thus acknowledged the degradation of her
first-born--him of whom she had ever been so proud.

Late that evening, Grace Hickson stood in Lois's cell, hooded and
cloaked up to her eyes. Lois was sitting quite still, playing idly with
a bit of string which one of the magistrates had dropped out of his
pocket that morning. Her aunt was standing by her for an instant or two
in silence, before Lois seemed aware of her presence. Suddenly she
looked up, and uttered a little cry, shrinking away from the dark
figure. Then, as if her cry had loosened Grace's tongue, she began:

'Lois Barclay, did I ever do you any harm?' Grace did not know how
often her want of loving-kindness had pierced the tender heart of the
stranger under her roof; nor did Lois remember it against her now.
Instead, Lois's memory was filled with grateful thoughts of how much
that might have been left undone, by a less conscientious person, her
aunt had done for her, and she half stretched out her arms as to a
friend in that desolate place, while she answered:

'Oh no, no you were very good! very kind!'

But Grace stood immovable.

'I did you no harm, although I never rightly knew why you came to us.'

'I was sent by my mother on her death-bed,' moaned Lois, covering her
face. It grew darker every instant. Her aunt stood, still and silent.

'Did any of mine ever wrong you?' she asked, after a time.

'No, no; never, till Prudence said--Oh, aunt, do you think I am a
witch?' And now Lois was standing up, holding by Grace's cloak, and
trying to read her face. Grace drew herself, ever so little, away from
the girl, whom she dreaded, and yet sought to propitiate.

'Wiser than I, godlier than I, have said it. But oh, Lois, Lois! he was
my first-born. Loose him from the demon, for the sake of Him whose name
I dare not name in this terrible building, filled with them who have
renounced the hopes of their baptism; loose Manasseh from his awful
state, if ever I or mine did you a kindness!'

'You ask me for Christ's sake,' said Lois. 'I can name that holy
name--for oh, aunt! indeed, and in holy truth, I am no witch; and yet I
am to die--to be hanged! Aunt, do not let them kill me! I am so young,
and I never did any one any harm that I know of.'

'Hush! for very shame! This afternoon I have bound my first-born with
strong cords, to keep him from doing himself or us a mischief--he is so
frenzied. Lois Barclay, look here!' and Grace knelt down at her niece's
feet, and joined her hands as if in prayer--'I am a proud woman, God
forgive me! and I never thought to kneel to any save to Him. And now I
kneel at your feet, to pray you to release my children, more especially
my son Manasseh, from the spells you have put upon them. Lois, hearken
to me, and I will pray to the Almighty for you, if yet there may be
mercy.'

'I cannot do it; I never did you or yours any wrong. How can I undo it?
How can I?' And she wrung her hands in intensity of conviction of the
inutility of aught she could do.

Here Grace got up, slowly, stiffly, and sternly. She stood aloof from
the chained girl, in the remote corner of the prison cell near the
door, ready to make her escape as soon as she had cursed the witch, who
would not, or could not, undo the evil she had wrought. Grace lifted up
her right hand, and held it up on high, as she doomed Lois to be
accursed for ever, for her deadly sin, and her want of mercy even at
this final hour. And, lastly, she summoned her to meet her at the
judgment-seat, and answer for this deadly injury done to both souls and
bodies of those who had taken her in, and received her when she came to
them an orphan and a stranger.

Until this last summons, Lois had stood as one who hears her sentence
and can say nothing against it, for she knows all would be in vain. But
she raised her head when she heard her aunt speak of the judgment-seat,
and at the end of Grace's speech she, too, lifted up her right hand, as
if solemnly pledging herself by that action, and replied:

'Aunt! I will meet you there. And there you will know my innocence of
this deadly thing. God have mercy on you and yours!'

Her calm voice maddened Grace, and making a gesture as if she plucked
up a handful of dust of the floor, and threw it at Lois, she cried:

'Witch! witch! ask mercy for thyself--I need not your prayers. Witches'
prayers are read backwards. I spit at thee, and defy thee!' And so she
went away.

Lois sat moaning that whole night through. 'God comfort me! God
strengthen me!' was all she could remember to say. She just felt that
want, nothing more,--all other fears and wants seemed dead within her.
And when the gaoler brought in her breakfast the next morning, he
reported her as 'gone silly;' for, indeed, she did not seem to know
him, but kept rocking herself to and fro, and whispering softly to
herself, smiling a little from time to time.

But God did comfort her, and strengthen her too late on that Wednesday
afternoon, they thrust another 'witch' into her cell, bidding the two,
with opprobrious words, keep company together. The new comer fell
prostrate with the push given her from without; and Lois, not
recognizing anything but an old ragged woman lying helpless on her face
on the ground, lifted her up; and lo! it was Nattee--dirty, filthy
indeed, mud-pelted, stone-bruised, beaten, and all astray in her wits
with the treatment she had received from the mob outside. Lois held her
in her arms, and softly wiped the old brown wrinkled face with her
apron, crying over it, as she had hardly yet cried over her own
sorrows. For hours she tended the old Indian woman--tended her bodily
woes; and as the poor scattered senses of the savage creature came
slowly back, Lois gathered her infinite dread of the morrow, when she
too, as well as Lois, was to be led out to die, in face of all that
infuriated crowd. Lois sought in her own mind for some source of
comfort for the old woman, who shook like one in the shaking palsy at
the dread of death--and such a death.

When all was quiet through the prison, in the deep dead midnight, the
gaoler outside the door heard Lois telling, as if to a young child, the
marvellous and sorrowful story of one who died on the cross for us and
for our sakes. As long as she spoke, the Indian woman's terror seemed
lulled; but the instant she paused, for weariness, Nattee cried out
afresh, as if some wild beast were following her close through the
dense forests in which she had dwelt in her youth. And then Lois went
on, saying all the blessed words she could remember, and comforting the
helpless Indian woman with the sense of the presence of a Heavenly
Friend. And in comforting her, Lois was comforted; in strengthening
her, Lois was strengthened.

The morning came, and the summons to come forth and die came. They who
entered the cell found Lois asleep, her face resting on the slumbering
old woman, whose head she still held in her lap. She did not seem
clearly to recognize where she was, when she awakened; the 'silly' look
had returned to her wan face; all she appeared to know was, that
somehow or another, through some peril or another, she had to protect
the poor Indian woman. She smiled faintly when she saw the bright light
of the April day; and put her arm round Nattee, and tried to keep the
Indian quiet with hushing, soothing words of broken meaning, and holy
fragments of the Psalms. Nattee tightened her hold upon Lois as they
drew near the gallows, and the outrageous crowd below began to hoot and
yell. Lois redoubled her efforts to calm and encourage Nattee,
apparently unconscious that any of the opprobrium, the hootings, the
stones, the mud, was directed towards her herself. But when they took
Nattee from her arms, and led her out to suffer first, Lois seemed all
at once to recover her sense of the present terror. She gazed wildly
around, stretched out her arms as if to some person in the distance,
who was yet visible to her, and cried out once with a voice that
thrilled through all who heard it, 'Mother!' Directly afterwards, the
body of Lois the Witch swung in the air, and every one stood, with
hushed breath, with a sudden wonder, like a fear of deadly crime,
fallen upon them.

The stillness and the silence were broken by one crazed and mad, who
came rushing up the steps of the ladder, and caught Lois's body in his
arms, and kissed her lips with wild passion. And then, as if it were
true what the people believed, that he was possessed by a demon, he
sprang down, and rushed through the crowd, out of the bounds of the
city, and into the dark dense forest, and Manasseh Hickson was no more
seen of Christian man.

The people of Salem had awakened from their frightful delusion before
the autumn, when Captain Holdernesse and Ralph Lucy came to find out
Lois, and bring her home to peaceful Barford, in the pleasant country
of England. Instead, they led them to the grassy grave where she lay at
rest, done to death by mistaken men. Ralph Lucy shook the dust off his
feet in quitting Salem, with a heavy, heavy heart; and lived a bachelor
all his life long for her sake.

Long years afterwards, Captain Holdernesse sought him out, to tell him
some news that he thought might interest the grave miller of the
Avonside. Captain Holdernesse told him that in the previous year, it
was then 1713, the sentence of excommunication against the witches of
Salem was ordered, in godly sacramental meeting of the church, to be
erased and blotted out, and that those who met together for this
purpose 'humbly requested the merciful God would pardon whatsoever sin,
error, or mistake was in the application of justice, through our
merciful High Priest, who knoweth how to have compassion on the
ignorant, and those that are out of the way.' He also said that
Prudence Hickson--now woman grown--had made a most touching and pungent
declaration of sorrow and repentance before the whole church, for the
false and mistaken testimony she had given in several instances, among
which she particularly mentioned that of her cousin Lois Barclay. To
all which Ralph Lucy only answered:

'No repentance of theirs can bring her back to life.'

Then Captain Holdernesse took out a paper, and read the following
humble and solemn declaration of regret on the part of those who signed
it, among whom Grace Hickson was one:

    'We, whose names are undersigned, being, in the year 1692, called
    to serve as jurors in court of Salem, on trial of many who were by
    some suspected guilty of doing acts of witchcraft upon the bodies
    of sundry persons; we confess that we ourselves were not capable to
    understand, nor able to withstand, the mysterious delusions of the
    powers of darkness, and prince of the air, but were, for want of
    knowledge in ourselves, and better information from others,
    prevailed with to take up with such evidence against the accused,
    as, on further consideration, and better information, we justly
    fear was insufficient for the touching the lives of any (Deut.
    xvii. 6), whereby we fear we have been instrumental, with others,
    though ignorantly and unwittingly, to bring upon ourselves and this
    people of the Lord the guilt of innocent blood; which sin, the Lord
    saith in Scripture, he would not pardon (2 Kings, xxiv. 4), that
    is, we suppose, in regard of his temporal judgments. We do,
    therefore, signify to all in general (and to the surviving
    sufferers in special) our deep sense of, and sorrow for, our
    errors, in acting on such evidence to the condemning of any person;
    and do hereby declare, that we justly fear that we were sadly
    deluded and mistaken, for which we are much disquieted and
    distressed in our minds, and do therefore humbly beg forgiveness,
    first of God for Christ's sake, for this our error; and pray that
    God would not impute the guilt of it to ourselves nor others; and
    we also pray that we may be considered candidly and aright by the
    living sufferers, as being then under the power of a strong and
    general delusion, utterly unacquainted with, and not experienced
    in, matters of that nature.

    'We do heartily ask forgiveness of you all, whom we have justly
    offended; and do declare, according to our present minds, we would
    none of us do such things again on such grounds for the whole
    world; praying you to accept of this in way of satisfaction for our
    offence, and that you would bless the inheritance of the Lord, that
    he may be entreated for the land.

    'FOREMAN, THOMAS FISK, &C.'

To the reading of this paper Ralph Lucy made no reply save this, even
more gloomily than before:

'All their repentance will avail nothing to my Lois, nor will it bring
back her life.'

Then Captain Holdernesse spoke once more, and said that on the day of
the general fast, appointed to be held all through New England, when
the meeting-houses were crowded, an old, old man with white hair had
stood up in the place in which he was accustomed to worship, and had
handed up into the pulpit a written confession, which he had once or
twice essayed to read for himself, acknowledging his great and grievous
error in the matter of the witches of Salem, and praying for the
forgiveness of God and of his people, ending with an entreaty that all
then present would join with him in prayer that his past conduct might
not bring down the displeasure of the Most High upon his country, his
family, or himself. That old man, who was no other than Justice Sewall,
remained standing all the time that his confession was read; and at the
end he said, 'The good and gracious God be pleased to save New England
and me and my family.' And then it came out that, for years past, Judge
Sewall had set apart a day for humiliation and prayer, to keep fresh in
his mind a sense of repentance and sorrow for the part he had borne in
these trials, and that this solemn anniversary he was pledged to keep
as long as he lived, to show his feeling of deep humiliation.

Ralph Lucy's voice trembled as he spoke:

'All this will not bring my Lois to life again, or give me back the
hope of my youth.'

But--as Captain Holdernesse shook his head (for what word could he say,
or how dispute what was so evidently true?)--Ralph added, 'What is the
day, know you, that this justice has set apart?'

'The twenty-ninth of April.'

'Then on that day will I, here at Barford in England, join my prayer as
long as I live with the repentant judge, that his sin may be blotted
out and no more had in remembrance. She would have willed it so.'




THE GREY WOMAN

Portion 1


There is a mill by the Neckar-side, to which many people resort for
coffee, according to the fashion which is almost national in Germany.
There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill;
it is on the Mannheim (the flat and unromantic) side of Heidelberg. The
river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound; the
out-buildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept
dusty quadrangle. Again, further from the river, there is a garden full
of willows, and arbours, and flower-beds not well kept, but very
profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the
arbours together. In each of these arbours is a stationary table of
white painted wood, and light moveable chairs of the same colour and
material.

I went to drink coffee there with some friends in 184--. The stately
old miller came out to greet us, as some of the party were known to him
of old. He was of a grand build of a man, and his loud musical voice,
with its tone friendly and familiar, his rolling laugh of welcome, went
well with the keen bright eye, the fine cloth of his coat, and the
general look of substance about the place. Poultry of all kinds
abounded in the mill-yard, where there were ample means of livelihood
for them strewed on the ground; but not content with this, the miller
took out handfuls of corn from the sacks, and threw liberally to the
cocks and hens that ran almost under his feet in their eagerness. And
all the time he was doing this, as it were habitually, he was talking
to us, and ever and anon calling to his daughter and the serving-maids,
to bid them hasten the coffee we had ordered. He followed us to an
arbour, and saw us served to his satisfaction with the best of
everything we could ask for; and then left us to go round to the
different arbours and see that each party was properly attended to;
and, as he went, this great, prosperous, happy-looking man whistled
softly one of the most plaintive airs I ever heard.

'His family have held this mill ever since the old Palatinate days; or
rather, I should say, have possessed the ground ever since then, for
two successive mills of theirs have been burnt down by the French. If
you want to see Scherer in a passion, just talk to him of the
possibility of a French invasion.'

But at this moment, still whistling that mournful air, we saw the
miller going down the steps that led from the somewhat raised garden
into the mill-yard; and so I seemed to have lost my chance of putting
him in a passion.

We had nearly finished our coffee, and our 'kucken,' and our cinnamon
cake, when heavy splashes fell on our thick leafy covering; quicker and
quicker they came, coming through the tender leaves as if they were
tearing them asunder; all the people in the garden were hurrying under
shelter, or seeking for their carriages standing outside. Up the steps
the miller came hastening, with a crimson umbrella, fit to cover every
one left in the garden, and followed by his daughter, and one or two
maidens, each bearing an umbrella.

'Come into the house--come in, I say. It is a summer-storm, and will
flood the place for an hour or two, till the river carries it away.
Here, here.'

And we followed him back into his own house. We went into the kitchen
first. Such an array of bright copper and tin vessels I never saw; and
all the wooden things were as thoroughly scoured. The red tile floor
was spotless when we went in, but in two minutes it was all over slop
and dirt with the tread of many feet; for the kitchen was filled, and
still the worthy miller kept bringing in more people under his great
crimson umbrella. He even called the dogs in, and made them lie down
under the tables.

His daughter said something to him in German, and he shook his head
merrily at her. Everybody laughed.

'What did she say?' I asked.

'She told him to bring the ducks in next; but indeed if more people
come we shall be suffocated. What with the thundery weather, and the
stove, and all these steaming clothes, I really think we must ask leave
to pass on. Perhaps we might go in and see Frau Scherer.'

My friend asked the daughter of the house for permission to go into an
inner chamber and see her mother. It was granted, and we went into a
sort of saloon, over-looking the Neckar; very small, very bright, and
very close. The floor was slippery with polish; long narrow pieces of
looking-glass against the walls reflected the perpetual motion of the
river opposite; a white porcelain stove, with some old-fashioned
ornaments of brass about it; a sofa, covered with Utrecht velvet, a
table before it, and a piece of worsted-worked carpet under it; a vase
of artificial flowers; and, lastly, an alcove with a bed in it, on
which lay the paralysed wife of the good miller, knitting busily,
formed the furniture. I spoke as if this was all that was to be seen in
the room; but, sitting quietly, while my friend kept up a brisk
conversation in a language which I but half understood, my eye was
caught by a picture in a dark corner of the room, and I got up to
examine it more nearly.

It was that of a young girl of extreme beauty; evidently of middle
rank. There was a sensitive refinement in her face, as if she almost
shrank from the gaze which, of necessity, the painter must have fixed
upon her. It was not over-well painted, but I felt that it must have
been a good likeness, from this strong impress of peculiar character
which I have tried to describe. From the dress, I should guess it to
have been painted in the latter half of the last century. And I
afterwards heard that I was right.

There was a little pause in the conversation.

'Will you ask Frau Scherer who this is?'

My friend repeated my question, and received a long reply in German.
Then she turned round and translated it to me.

'It is the likeness of a great-aunt of her husband's.' (My friend was
standing by me, and looking at the picture with sympathetic curiosity.)
'See! here is the name on the open page of this Bible, "Anna Scherer,
1778." Frau Scherer says there is a tradition in the family that this
pretty girl, with her complexion of lilies and roses, lost her colour
so entirely through fright, that she was known by the name of the Grey
Woman. She speaks as if this Anna Scherer lived in some state of
life-long terror. But she does not know details; refers me to her
husband for them. She thinks he has some papers which were written by
the original of that picture for her daughter, who died in this very
house not long after our friend there was married. We can ask Herr
Scherer for the whole story if you like.'

'Oh yes, pray do!' said I. And, as our host came in at this moment to
ask how we were faring, and to tell us that he had sent to Heidelberg
for carriages to convey us home, seeing no chance of the heavy rain
abating, my friend, after thanking him, passed on to my request.

'Ah!' said he, his face changing, 'the aunt Anna had a sad history. It
was all owing to one of those hellish Frenchmen; and her daughter
suffered for it--the cousin Ursula, as we all called her when I was a
child. To be sure, the good cousin Ursula was his child as well. The
sins of the fathers are visited on their children. The lady would like
to know all about it, would she? Well, there are papers--a kind of
apology the aunt Anna wrote for putting an end to her daughter's
engagement--or rather facts which she revealed, that prevented cousin
Ursula from marrying the man she loved; and so she would never have any
other good fellow, else I have heard say my father would have been
thankful to have made her his wife.' All this time he was rummaging in
the drawer of an old-fashioned bureau, and now he turned round, with a
bundle of yellow MSS. in his hand, which he gave to my friend, saying,
'Take it home, take it home, and if you care to make out our crabbed
German writing, you may keep it as long as you like, and read it at
your leisure. Only I must have it back again when you have done with
it, that's all.'

And so we became possessed of the manuscript of the following letter,
which it was our employment, during many a long evening that ensuing
winter, to translate, and in some parts to abbreviate. The letter began
with some reference to the pain which she had already inflicted upon
her daughter by some unexplained opposition to a project of marriage;
but I doubt if, without the clue with which the good miller had
furnished us, we could have made out even this much from the
passionate, broken sentences that made us fancy that some scene between
the mother and daughter--and possibly a third person--had occurred just
before the mother had begun to write.

                     *      *      *      *      *

'Thou dost not love thy child, mother! Thou dost not care if her heart
is broken!' Ah, God! and these words of my heart-beloved Ursula ring in
my ears as if the sound of them would fill them when I lie a-dying. And
her poor tear-stained face comes between me and everything else. Child!
hearts do not break; life is very tough as well as very terrible. But I
will not decide for thee. I will tell thee all; and thou shalt bear the
burden of choice. I may be wrong; I have little wit left, and never had
much, I think; but an instinct serves me in place of judgement, and
that instinct tells me that thou and thy Henri must never be married.
Yet I may be in error. I would fain make my child happy. Lay this paper
before the good priest Schriesheim; if, after reading it, thou hast
doubts which make thee uncertain. Only I will tell thee all now, on
condition that no spoken word ever passes between us on the subject. It
would kill me to be questioned. I should have to see all present again.

My father held, as thou knowest, the mill on the Neckar, where thy
new-found uncle, Scherer, now lives. Thou rememberest the surprise with
which we were received there last vintage twelvemonth. How thy uncle
disbelieved me when I said that I was his sister Anna, whom he had long
believed to be dead, and how I had to lead thee underneath the picture,
painted of me long ago, and point out, feature by feature, the likeness
between it and thee; and how, as I spoke, I recalled first to my own
mind, and then by speech to his, the details of the time when it was
painted; the merry words that passed between us then, a happy boy and
girl; the position of the articles of furniture in the room; our
father's habits; the cherry-tree, now cut down, that shaded the window
of my bedroom, through which my brother was wont to squeeze himself, in
order to spring on to the topmost bough that would bear his weight; and
thence would pass me back his cap laden with fruit to where I sat on
the window-sill, too sick with fright for him to care much for eating
the cherries.

And at length Fritz gave way, and believed me to be his sister Anna,
even as though I were risen from the dead. And thou rememberest how he
fetched in his wife, and told her that I was not dead, but was come
back to the old home once more, changed as I was. And she would scarce
believe him, and scanned me with a cold, distrustful eye, till at
length--for I knew her of old as Babette Mueller--I said that I was
well-to-do, and needed not to seek out friends for what they had to
give. And then she asked--not me, but her husband--why I had kept
silent so long, leading all--father, brother, every one that loved me
in my own dear home--to esteem me dead. And then thine uncle (thou
rememberest?) said he cared not to know more than I cared to tell; that
I was his Anna, found again, to be a blessing to him in his old age, as
I had been in his boyhood. I thanked him in my heart for his trust; for
were the need for telling all less than it seems to me now I could not
speak of my past life. But she, who was my sister-in-law still, held
back her welcome, and, for want of that, I did not go to live in
Heidelberg as I had planned beforehand, in order to be near my brother
Fritz, but contented myself with his promise to be a father to my
Ursula when I should die and leave this weary world.

That Babette Mueller was, as I may say, the cause of all my life's
suffering. She was a baker's daughter in Heidelberg--a great beauty, as
people said, and, indeed, as I could see for myself I, too--thou sawest
my picture--was reckoned a beauty, and I believe I was so. Babette
Mueller looked upon me as a rival. She liked to be admired, and had no
one much to love her. I had several people to love me--thy grandfather,
Fritz, the old servant Kaetchen, Karl, the head apprentice at the
mill--and I feared admiration and notice, and the being stared at as
the 'Schoene Muellerin,' whenever I went to make my purchases in
Heidelberg.

Those were happy, peaceful days. I had Kaetchen to help me in the
housework, and whatever we did pleased my brave old father, who was
always gentle and indulgent towards us women, though he was stern
enough with the apprentices in the mill. Karl, the oldest of these, was
his favourite; and I can see now that my father wished him to marry me,
and that Karl himself was desirous to do so. But Karl was rough-spoken,
and passionate--not with me, but with the others--and I shrank from him
in a way which, I fear, gave him pain. And then came thy uncle Fritz's
marriage; and Babette was brought to the mill to be its mistress. Not
that I cared much for giving up my post, for, in spite of my father's
great kindness, I always feared that I did not manage well for so large
a family (with the men, and a girl under Kaetchen, we sat down eleven
each night to supper). But when Babette began to find fault with
Kaetchen, I was unhappy at the blame that fell on faithful servants; and
by-and-by I began to see that Babette was egging on Karl to make more
open love to me, and, as she once said, to get done with it, and take
me off to a home of my own. My father was growing old, and did not
perceive all my daily discomfort. The more Karl advanced, the more I
disliked him. He was good in the main, but I had no notion of being
married, and could not bear any one who talked to me about it.

Things were in this way when I had an invitation to go to Carlsruhe to
visit a schoolfellow, of whom I had been very fond. Babette was all for
my going; I don't think I wanted to leave home, and yet I had been very
fond of Sophie Rupprecht. But I was always shy among strangers. Somehow
the affair was settled for me, but not until both Fritz and my father
had made inquiries as to the character and position of the Rupprechts.
They learned that the father had held some kind of inferior position
about the Grand-duke's court, and was now dead, leaving a widow, a
noble lady, and two daughters, the elder of whom was Sophie, my friend.
Madame Rupprecht was not rich, but more than respectable--genteel. When
this was ascertained, my father made no opposition to my going; Babette
forwarded it by all the means in her power, and even my dear Fritz had
his word to say in its favour. Only Kaetchen was against it--Kaetchen and
Karl. The opposition of Karl did more to send me to Carlsruhe than
anything. For I could have objected to go; but when he took upon
himself to ask what was the good of going a-gadding, visiting strangers
of whom no one knew anything, I yielded to circumstances--to the
pulling of Sophie and the pushing of Babette. I was silently vexed, I
remember, at Babette's inspection of my clothes; at the way in which
she settled that this gown was too old-fashioned, or that too common,
to go with me on my visit to a noble lady; and at the way in which she
took upon herself to spend the money my father had given me to buy what
was requisite for the occasion. And yet I blamed myself, for every one
else thought her so kind for doing all this; and she herself meant
kindly, too.

At last I quitted the mill by the Neckar-side. It was a long day's
journey, and Fritz went with me to Carlsruhe. The Rupprechts lived on
the third floor of a house a little behind one of the principal
streets, in a cramped-up court, to which we gained admittance through a
doorway in the street. I remember how pinched their rooms looked after
the large space we had at the mill, and yet they had an air of grandeur
about them which was new to me, and which gave me pleasure, faded as
some of it was. Madame Rupprecht was too formal a lady for me; I was
never at my ease with her; but Sophie was all that I had recollected
her at school: kind, affectionate, and only rather too ready with her
expressions of admiration and regard. The little sister kept out of our
way; and that was all we needed, in the first enthusiastic renewal of
our early friendship. The one great object of Madame Rupprecht's life
was to retain her position in society; and as her means were much
diminished since her husband's death, there was not much comfort,
though there was a great deal of show, in their way of living; just the
opposite of what it was at my father's house. I believe that my coming
was not too much desired by Madame Rupprecht, as I brought with me
another mouth to be fed; but Sophie had spent a year or more in
entreating for permission to invite me, and her mother, having once
consented, was too well bred not to give me a stately welcome.

The life in Carlsruhe was very different from what it was at home. The
hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was
weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer,
the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant.
We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little; but
we sat in a circle, talking together, only interrupted occasionally by
a gentleman, who, breaking out of the knot of men who stood near the
door, talking eagerly together, stole across the room on tiptoe, his
hat under his arm, and, bringing his feet together in the position we
called the first at the dancing-school, made a low bow to the lady he
was going to address. The first time I saw these manners I could not
help smiling; but Madame Rupprecht saw me, and spoke to me next morning
rather severely, telling me that, of course, in my country breeding I
could have seen nothing of court manners, or French fashions, but that
that was no reason for my laughing at them. Of course I tried never to
smile again in company. This visit to Carlsruhe took place in '89, just
when every one was full of the events taking place at Paris; and yet at
Carlsruhe French fashions were more talked of than French politics.
Madame Rupprecht, especially, thought a great deal of all French
people. And this again was quite different to us at home. Fritz could
hardly bear the name of a Frenchman; and it had nearly been an obstacle
to my visit to Sophie that her mother preferred being called Madame to
her proper title of Frau.

One night I was sitting next to Sophie, and longing for the time when
we might have supper and go home, so as to be able to speak together, a
thing forbidden by Madame Rupprecht's rules of etiquette, which
strictly prohibited any but the most necessary conversation passing
between members of the same family when in society. I was sitting, I
say, scarcely keeping back my inclination to yawn, when two gentlemen
came in, one of whom was evidently a stranger to the whole party, from
the formal manner in which the host led him up, and presented him to
the hostess. I thought I had never seen any one so handsome or so
elegant. His hair was powdered, of course, but one could see from his
complexion that it was fair in its natural state. His features were as
delicate as a girl's, and set off by two little 'mouches,' as we called
patches in those days, one at the left corner of his mouth, the other
prolonging, as it were, the right eye. His dress was blue and silver. I
was so lost in admiration of this beautiful young man, that I was as
much surprised as if the angel Gabriel had spoken to me, when the lady
of the house brought him forward to present him to me. She called him
Monsieur de la Tourelle, and he began to speak to me in French; but
though I understood him perfectly, I dared not trust myself to reply to
him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of
soft lisp that I thought charming. But, before the end of the evening,
I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his
manners, and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the
effect of making all the company turn round and look at me. Madame
Rupprecht was, however, pleased with the precise thing that displeased
me. She liked either Sophie or me to create a sensation; of course she
would have preferred that it should have been her daughter, but her
daughter's friend was next best. As we went away, I heard Madame
Rupprecht and Monsieur de la Tourelle reciprocating civil speeches with
might and main, from which I found out that the French gentleman was
coming to call on us the next day. I do not know whether I was more
glad or frightened, for I had been kept upon stilts of good manners all
the evening. But still I was flattered when Madame Rupprecht spoke as
if she had invited him, because he had shown pleasure in my society,
and even more gratified by Sophie's ungrudging delight at the evident
interest I had excited in so fine and agreeable a gentleman. Yet, with
all this, they had hard work to keep me from running out of the salon
the next day, when we heard his voice inquiring at the gate on the
stairs for Madame Rupprecht. They had made me put on my Sunday gown,
and they themselves were dressed as for a reception.

When he was gone away, Madame Rupprecht congratulated me on the
conquest I had made; for, indeed, he had scarcely spoken to anyone
else, beyond what mere civility required, and had almost invited
himself to come in the evening to bring some new song, which was all
the fashion in Paris, he said. Madame Rupprecht had been out all
morning, as she told me, to glean information about Monsieur de la
Tourelle. He was a proprietaire, had a small chateau on the Vosges
mountains; he owned land there, but had a large income from some
sources quite independent of this property. Altogether, he was a good
match, as she emphatically observed. She never seemed to think that I
could refuse him after this account of his wealth, nor do I believe she
would have allowed Sophie a choice, even had he been as old and ugly as
he was young and handsome. I do not quite know--so many events have
come to pass since then, and blurred the clearness of my
recollections--if I loved him or not. He was very much devoted to me;
he almost frightened me by the excess of his demonstrations of love.
And he was very charming to everybody around me, who all spoke of him
as the most fascinating of men, and of me as the most fortunate of
girls. And yet I never felt quite at my ease with him. I was always
relieved when his visits were over, although I missed his presence when
he did not come. He prolonged his visit to the friend with whom he was
staying at Carlsruhe, on purpose to woo me. He loaded me with presents,
which I was unwilling to take, only Madame Rupprecht seemed to consider
me an affected prude if I refused them. Many of these presents
consisted of articles of valuable old jewellery, evidently belonging to
his family; by accepting these I doubled the ties which were formed
around me by circumstances even more than by my own consent. In those
days we did not write letters to absent friends as frequently as is
done now, and I had been unwilling to name him in the few letters that
I wrote home. At length, however, I learned from Madame Rupprecht that
she had written to my father to announce the splendid conquest I had
made, and to request his presence at my betrothal. I started with
astonishment. I had not realized that affairs had gone so far as this.
But when she asked me, in a stern, offended manner, what I had meant by
my conduct if I did not intend to marry Monsieur de la Tourelle--I had
received his visits, his presents, all his various advances without
showing any unwillingness or repugnance--(and it was all true; I had
shown no repugnance, though I did not wish to be married to him,--at
least, not so soon)--what could I do but hang my head, and silently
consent to the rapid enunciation of the only course which now remained
for me if I would not be esteemed a heartless coquette all the rest of
my days?

There was some difficulty, which I afterwards learnt that my
sister-in-law had obviated, about my betrothal taking place from home.
My father, and Fritz especially, were for having me return to the mill,
and there be betrothed, and from thence be married. But the Rupprechts
and Monsieur de la Tourelle were equally urgent on the other side; and
Babette was unwilling to have the trouble of the commotion at the mill;
and also, I think, a little disliked the idea of the contrast of my
grander marriage with her own.

So my father and Fritz came over to the betrothal. They were to stay at
an inn in Carlsruhe for a fortnight, at the end of which time the
marriage was to take place. Monsieur de la Tourelle told me he had
business at home, which would oblige him to be absent during the
interval between the two events; and I was very glad of it, for I did
not think that he valued my father and my brother as I could have
wished him to do. He was very polite to them; put on all the soft,
grand manner, which he had rather dropped with me; and complimented us
all round, beginning with my father and Madame Rupprecht, and ending
with little Alwina. But he a little scoffed at the old-fashioned church
ceremonies which my father insisted on; and I fancy Fritz must have
taken some of his compliments as satire, for I saw certain signs of
manner by which I knew that my future husband, for all his civil words,
had irritated and annoyed my brother. But all the money arrangements
were liberal in the extreme, and more than satisfied, almost surprised,
my father. Even Fritz lifted up his eyebrows and whistled. I alone did
not care about anything. I was bewitched,--in a dream,--a kind of
despair. I had got into a net through my own timidity and weakness, and
I did not see how to get out of it. I clung to my own home-people that
fortnight as I had never done before. Their voices, their ways were all
so pleasant and familiar to me, after the constraint in which I had
been living. I might speak and do as I liked without being corrected by
Madame Rupprecht, or reproved in a delicate, complimentary way by
Monsieur de la Tourelle. One day I said to my father that I did not
want to be married, that I would rather go back to the dear old mill;
but he seemed to feel this speech of mine as a dereliction of duty as
great as if I had committed perjury; as if, after the ceremony of
betrothal, no one had any right over me but my future husband. And yet
he asked me some solemn questions; but my answers were not such as to
do me any good.

'Dost thou know any fault or crime in this man that should prevent
God's blessing from resting on thy marriage with him? Dost thou feel
aversion or repugnance to him in any way?'

And to all this what could I say? I could only stammer out that I did
not think I loved him enough; and my poor old father saw in this
reluctance only the fancy of a silly girl who did not know her own
mind, but who had now gone too far to recede.

So we were married, in the Court chapel, a privilege which Madame
Rupprecht had used no end of efforts to obtain for us, and which she
must have thought was to secure us all possible happiness, both at the
time and in recollection afterwards.

We were married; and after two days spent in festivity at Carlsruhe,
among all our new fashionable friends there, I bade good-by for ever to
my dear old father. I had begged my husband to take me by way of
Heidelberg to his old castle in the Vosges; but I found an amount of
determination, under that effeminate appearance and manner, for which I
was not prepared, and he refused my first request so decidedly that I
dared not urge it. 'Henceforth, Anna,' said he, 'you will move in a
different sphere of life; and though it is possible that you may have
the power of showing favour to your relations from time to time, yet
much or familiar intercourse will be undesirable, and is what I cannot
allow.' I felt almost afraid, after this formal speech, of asking my
father and Fritz to come and see me; but, when the agony of bidding
them farewell overcame all my prudence, I did beg them to pay me a
visit ere long. But they shook their heads, and spoke of business at
home, of different kinds of life, of my being a Frenchwoman now. Only
my father broke out at last with a blessing, and said, 'If my child is
unhappy--which God forbid--let her remember that her father's house is
ever open to her.' I was on the point of crying out, 'Oh! take me back
then now, my father! oh, my father!' when I felt, rather than saw, my
husband present near me. He looked on with a slightly contemptuous air;
and, taking my hand in his, he led me weeping away, saying that short
farewells were always the best when they were inevitable.

It took us two days to reach his chateau in the Vosges, for the roads
were bad and the way difficult to ascertain. Nothing could be more
devoted than he was all the time of the journey. It seemed as if he
were trying in every way to make up for the separation which every hour
made me feel the more complete between my present and my former life. I
seemed as if I were only now wakening up to a full sense of what
marriage was, and I dare say I was not a cheerful companion on the
tedious journey. At length, jealousy of my regret for my father and
brother got the better of M. de la Tourelle, and he became so much
displeased with me that I thought my heart would break with the sense
of desolation. So it was in no cheerful frame of mind that we
approached Les Rochers, and I thought that perhaps it was because I was
so unhappy that the place looked so dreary. On one side, the chateau
looked like a raw new building, hastily run up for some immediate
purpose, without any growth of trees or underwood near it, only the
remains of the stone used for building, not yet cleared away from the
immediate neighbourhood, although weeds and lichens had been suffered
to grow near and over the heaps of rubbish; on the other, were the
great rocks from which the place took its name, and rising close
against them, as if almost a natural formation, was the old castle,
whose building dated many centuries back.

It was not large nor grand, but it was strong and picturesque, and I
used to wish that we lived in it rather than in the smart,
half-furnished apartment in the new edifice, which had been hastily got
ready for my reception. Incongruous as the two parts were, they were
joined into a whole by means of intricate passages and unexpected
doors, the exact positions of which I never fully understood. M. de la
Tourelle led me to a suite of rooms set apart for me, and formally
installed me in them, as in a domain of which I was sovereign. He
apologised for the hasty preparation which was all he had been able to
make for me, but promised, before I asked, or even thought of
complaining, that they should be made as luxurious as heart could wish
before many weeks had elapsed. But when, in the gloom of an autumnal
evening, I caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors,
which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the many
candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the
half-furnished salon, I clung to M. de la Tourelle, and begged to be
taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage, he seemed angry
with me, although he affected to laugh, and so decidedly put aside the
notion of my having any other rooms but these, that I trembled in
silence at the fantastic figures and shapes which my imagination called
up as peopling the background of those gloomy mirrors. There was my
boudoir, a little less dreary--my bedroom, with its grand and tarnished
furniture, which I commonly made into my sitting-room, locking up the
various doors which led into the boudoir, the salon, the passages--all
but one, through which M. de la Tourelle always entered from his own
apartments in the older part of the castle. But this preference of mine
for occupying my bedroom annoyed M. de la Tourelle, I am sure, though
he did not care to express his displeasure. He would always allure me
back into the salon, which I disliked more and more from its complete
separation from the rest of the building by the long passage into which
all the doors of my apartment opened. This passage was closed by heavy
doors and portieres, through which I could not hear a sound from the
other parts of the house, and, of course, the servants could not hear
any movement or cry of mine unless expressly summoned. To a girl
brought up as I had been in a household where every individual lived
all day in the sight of every other member of the family, never wanted
either cheerful words or the sense of silent companionship, this grand
isolation of mine was very formidable; and the more so, because M. de
la Tourelle, as landed proprietor, sportsman, and what not, was
generally out of doors the greater part of every day, and sometimes for
two or three days at a time. I had no pride to keep me from associating
with the domestics; it would have been natural to me in many ways to
have sought them out for a word of sympathy in those dreary days when I
was left so entirely to myself, had they been like our kindly German
servants. But I disliked them, one and all; I could not tell why. Some
were civil, but there was a familiarity in their civility which
repelled me; others were rude, and treated me more as if I were an
intruder than their master's chosen wife; and yet of the two sets I
liked these last the best.

The principal male servant belonged to this latter class. I was very
much afraid of him, he had such an air of suspicious surliness about
him in all he did for me; and yet M. de la Tourelle spoke of him as
most valuable and faithful. Indeed, it sometimes struck me that
Lefebvre ruled his master in some things; and this I could not make
out. For, while M. de la Tourelle behaved towards me as if I were some
precious toy or idol, to be cherished, and fostered, and petted, and
indulged, I soon found out how little I, or, apparently, any one else,
could bend the terrible will of the man who had on first acquaintance
appeared to me too effeminate and languid to exert his will in the
slightest particular. I had learnt to know his face better now; and to
see that some vehement depth of feeling, the cause of which I could not
fathom, made his grey eye glitter with pale light, and his lips
contract, and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions. But all
had been so open and above board at home, that I had no experience to
help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under the same
roof. I understood that I had made what Madame Rupprecht and her set
would have called a great marriage, because I lived in chateau with
many servants, bound ostensibly to obey me as a mistress. I understood
that M. de la Tourelle was fond enough of me in his way--proud of my
beauty, I dare say (for he often enough spoke about it to me)--but he
was also jealous, and suspicious, and uninfluenced by my wishes, unless
they tallied with his own. I felt at this time as if I could have been
fond of him too, if he would have let me; but I was timid from my
childhood, and before long my dread of his displeasure (coming down
like thunder into the midst of his love, for such slight causes as a
hesitation in reply, a wrong word, or a sigh for my father), conquered
my humorous inclination to love one who was so handsome, so
accomplished, so indulgent and devoted. But if I could not please him
when indeed I loved him, you may imagine how often I did wrong when I
was so much afraid of him as to quietly avoid his company for fear of
his outbursts of passion. One thing I remember noticing, that the more
M. de la Tourelle was displeased with me, the more Lefebvre seemed to
chuckle; and when I was restored to favour, sometimes on as sudden an
impulse as that which occasioned my disgrace, Lefebvre would look
askance at me with his cold, malicious eyes, and once or twice at such
times he spoke most disrespectfully to M. de la Tourelle.

I have almost forgotten to say that, in the early days of my life at
Les Rochers, M. de la Tourelle, in contemptuous indulgent pity at my
weakness in disliking the dreary grandeur of the salon, wrote up to the
milliner in Paris from whom my corbeille de mariage had come, to desire
her to look out for me a maid of middle age, experienced in the
toilette, and with so much refinement that she might on occasion serve
as companion to me.




Portion 2


A Norman woman, Amante by name, was sent to Les Rochers by the Paris
milliner, to become my maid. She was tall and handsome, though upwards
of forty, and somewhat gaunt. But, on first seeing her, I liked her;
she was neither rude nor familiar in her manners, and had a pleasant
look of straightforwardness about her that I had missed in all the
inhabitants of the chateau, and had foolishly set down in my own mind
as a national want. Amante was directed by M. de la Tourelle to sit in
my boudoir, and to be always within call. He also gave her many
instructions as to her duties in matters which, perhaps, strictly
belonged to my department of management. But I was young and
inexperienced, and thankful to be spared any responsibility.

I daresay it was true what M. de la Tourelle said--before many weeks
had elapsed--that, for a great lady, a lady of a castle, I became sadly
too familiar with my Norman waiting-maid. But you know that by birth we
were not very far apart in rank: Amante was the daughter of a Norman
farmer, I of a German miller; and besides that, my life was so lonely!
It almost seemed as if I could not please my husband. He had written
for some one capable of being my companion at times, and now he was
jealous of my free regard for her--angry because I could sometimes
laugh at her original tunes and amusing proverbs, while when with him I
was too much frightened to smile.

From time to time families from a distance of some leagues drove
through the bad roads in their heavy carriages to pay us a visit, and
there was an occasional talk of our going to Paris when public affairs
should be a little more settled. These little events and plans were the
only variations in my life for the first twelve months, if I except the
alternations in M. de la Tourelle's temper, his unreasonable anger, and
his passionate fondness.

Perhaps one of the reasons that made me take pleasure and comfort in
Amante's society was, that whereas I was afraid of everybody (I do not
think I was half as much afraid of things as of persons), Amante feared
no one. She would quietly beard Lefebvre, and he respected her all the
more for it; she had a knack of putting questions to M. de la Tourelle,
which respectfully informed him that she had detected the weak point,
but forebore to press him too closely upon it out of deference to his
position as her master. And with all her shrewdness to others, she had
quite tender ways with me; all the more so at this time because she
knew, what I had not yet ventured to tell M. de la Tourelle, that
by-and-by I might become a mother--that wonderful object of mysterious
interest to single women, who no longer hope to enjoy such blessedness
themselves.

It was once more autumn; late in October. But I was reconciled to my
habitation; the walls of the new part of the building no longer looked
bare and desolate; the _debris_ had been so far cleared away by M. de
la Tourelle's desire as to make me a little flower-garden, in which I
tried to cultivate those plants that I remembered as growing at home.
Amante and I had moved the furniture in the rooms, and adjusted it to
our liking; my husband had ordered many an article from time to time
that he thought would give me pleasure, and I was becoming tame to my
apparent imprisonment in a certain part of the great building, the
whole of which I had never yet explored. It was October, as I say, once
more. The days were lovely, though short in duration, and M. de la
Tourelle had occasion, so he said, to go to that distant estate the
superintendence of which so frequently took him away from home. He took
Lefebvre with him, and possibly some more of the lacqueys; he often
did. And my spirits rose a little at the thought of his absence; and
then the new sensation that he was the father of my unborn babe came
over me, and I tried to invest him with this fresh character. I tried
to believe that it was his passionate love for me that made him so
jealous and tyrannical, imposing, as he did, restrictions on my very
intercourse with my dear father, from whom I was so entirely separated,
as far as personal intercourse was concerned.

I had, it is true, let myself go into a sorrowful review of all the
troubles which lay hidden beneath the seeming luxury of my life. I knew
that no one cared for me except my husband and Amante; for it was clear
enough to see that I, as his wife, and also as a _parvenue_, was not
popular among the few neighbours who surrounded us; and as for the
servants; the women were all hard and impudent-looking, treating me
with a semblance of respect that had more of mockery than reality in
it; while the men had a lurking kind of fierceness about them,
sometimes displayed even to M. de la Tourelle, who on his part, it must
be confessed, was often severe even to cruelty in his management of
them. My husband loved me, I said to myself, but I said it almost in
the form of a question. His love was shown fitfully, and more in ways
calculated to please himself than to please me. I felt that for no wish
of mine would he deviate one tittle from any predetermined course of
action. I had learnt the inflexibility of those thin delicate lips; I
knew how anger would turn his fair complexion to deadly white, and
bring the cruel light into his pale blue eyes. The love I bore to any
one seemed to be a reason for his hating them, and so I went on pitying
myself one long dreary afternoon during that absence of his of which I
have spoken, only sometimes remembering to check myself in my
murmurings by thinking of the new unseen link between us, and then
crying afresh to think how wicked I was. Oh, how well I remember that
long October evening! Amante came in from time to time, talking away to
cheer me--talking about dress and Paris, and I hardly know what, but
from time to time looking at me keenly with her friendly dark eyes, and
with serious interest, too, though all her words were about frivolity.
At length she heaped the fire with wood, drew the heavy silken curtains
close; for I had been anxious hitherto to keep them open, so that I
might see the pale moon mounting the skies, as I used to see her--the
same moon--rise from behind the Kaiser Stuhl at Heidelberg; but the
sight made me cry, so Amante shut it out. She dictated to me as a nurse
does to a child.

'Now, madame must have the little kitten to keep her company,' she
said, 'while I go and ask Marthon for a cup of coffee.' I remember that
speech, and the way it roused me, for I did not like Amante to think I
wanted amusing by a kitten. It might be my petulance, but this
speech--such as she might have made to a child--annoyed me, and I said
that I had reason for my lowness of spirits--meaning that they were not
of so imaginary a nature that I could be diverted from them by the
gambols of a kitten. So, though I did not choose to tell her all, I
told her a part; and as I spoke, I began to suspect that the good
creature knew much of what I withheld, and that the little speech about
the kitten was more thoughtfully kind than it had seemed at first. I
said that it was so long since I had heard from my father; that he was
an old man, and so many things might happen--I might never see him
again--and I so seldom heard from him or my brother. It was a more
complete and total separation than I had ever anticipated when I
married, and something of my home and of my life previous to my
marriage I told the good Amante; for I had not been brought up as a
great lady, and the sympathy of any human being was precious to me.

Amante listened with interest, and in return told me some of the events
and sorrows of her own life. Then, remembering her purpose, she set out
in search of the coffee, which ought to have been brought to me an hour
before; but, in my husband's absence, my wishes were but seldom
attended to, and I never dared to give orders.

Presently she returned, bringing the coffee and a great large cake.

'See!' said she, setting it down. 'Look at my plunder. Madame must eat.
Those who eat always laugh. And, besides, I have a little news that
will please madame.' Then she told me that, lying on a table in the
great kitchen, was a bundle of letters, come by the courier from
Strasburg that very afternoon: then, fresh from her conversation with
me, she had hastily untied the string that bound them, but had only
just traced out one that she thought was from Germany, when a
servant-man came in, and, with the start he gave her, she dropped the
letters, which he picked up, swearing at her for having untied and
disarranged them. She told him that she believed there was a letter
there for her mistress; but he only swore the more, saying, that if
there was it was no business of hers, or of his either, for that he had
the strictest orders always to take all letters that arrived during his
master's absence into the private sitting-room of the latter--a room
into which I had never entered, although it opened out of my husband's
dressing-room.

I asked Amante if she had not conquered and brought me this letter. No,
indeed, she replied, it was almost as much as her life was worth to
live among such a set of servants: it was only a month ago that Jacques
had stabbed Valentin for some jesting talk. Had I never missed
Valentin--that handsome young lad who carried up the wood into my
salon? Poor fellow! he lies dead and cold now, and they said in the
village he had put an end to himself, but those of the household knew
better. Oh! I need not be afraid; Jacques was gone, no one knew where;
but with such people it was not safe to upbraid or insist. Monsieur
would be at home the next day, and it would not be long to wait.

But I felt as if I could not exist till the next day, without the
letter. It might be to say that my father was ill, dying--he might cry
for his daughter from his death-bed! In short, there was no end to the
thoughts and fancies that haunted me. It was of no use for Amante to
say that, after all, she might be mistaken--that she did not read
writing well--that she had but a glimpse of the address; I let my
coffee cool, my food all became distasteful, and I wrung my hands with
impatience to get at the letter, and have some news of my dear ones at
home. All the time, Amante kept her imperturbable good temper, first
reasoning, then scolding. At last she said, as if wearied out, that if
I would consent to make a good supper, she would see what could be done
as to our going to monsieur's room in search of the letter, after the
servants were all gone to bed. We agreed to go together when all was
still, and look over the letters; there could be no harm in that; and
yet, somehow, we were such cowards we dared not do it openly and in the
face of the household.

Presently my supper came up--partridges, bread, fruits, and cream. How
well I remember that supper! We put the untouched cake away in a sort
of buffet, and poured the cold coffee out of the window, in order that
the servants might not take offence at the apparent fancifulness of
sending down for food I could not eat. I was so anxious for all to be
in bed, that I told the footman who served that he need not wait to
take away the plates and dishes, but might go to bed. Long after I
thought the house was quiet, Amante, in her caution, made me wait. It
was past eleven before we set out, with cat-like steps and veiled
light, along the passages, to go to my husband's room and steal my own
letter, if it was indeed there; a fact about which Amante had become
very uncertain in the progress of our discussion.

To make you understand my story, I must now try to explain to you the
plan of the chateau. It had been at one time a fortified place of some
strength, perched on the summit of a rock, which projected from the
side of the mountain. But additions had been made to the old building
(which must have borne a strong resemblance to the castles overhanging
the Rhine), and these new buildings were placed so as to command a
magnificent view, being on the steepest side of the rock, from which
the mountain fell away, as it were, leaving the great plain of France
in full survey. The ground-plan was something of the shape of three
sides of an oblong; my apartments in the modern edifice occupied the
narrow end, and had this grand prospect. The front of the castle was
old, and ran parallel to the road far below. In this were contained the
offices and public rooms of various descriptions, into which I never
penetrated. The back wing (considering the new building, in which my
apartments were, as the centre) consisted of many rooms, of a dark and
gloomy character, as the mountain-side shut out much of the sun, and
heavy pine woods came down within a few yards of the windows. Yet on
this side--on a projecting plateau of the rock--my husband had formed
the flower-garden of which I have spoken; for he was a great cultivator
of flowers in his leisure moments.

Now my bedroom was the corner room of the new buildings on the part
next to the mountains. Hence I could have let myself down into the
flower-garden by my hands on the window-sill on one side, without
danger of hurting myself; while the windows at right angles with these
looked sheer down a descent of a hundred feet at least. Going still
farther along this wing, you came to the old building; in fact, these
two fragments of the ancient castle had formerly been attached by some
such connecting apartments as my husband had rebuilt. These rooms
belonged to M. de la Tourelle. His bedroom opened into mine, his
dressing-room lay beyond; and that was pretty nearly all I knew, for
the servants, as well as he himself, had a knack of turning me back,
under some pretence, if ever they found me walking about alone, as I
was inclined to do, when first I came, from a sort of curiosity to see
the whole of the place of which I found myself mistress. M. de la
Tourelle never encouraged me to go out alone, either in a carriage or
for a walk, saying always that the roads were unsafe in those disturbed
times; indeed, I have sometimes fancied since that the flower-garden,
to which the only access from the castle was through his rooms, was
designed in order to give me exercise and employment under his own eye.

But to return to that night. I knew, as I have said, that M. de la
Tourelle's private room opened out of his dressing-room, and this out
of his bedroom, which again opened into mine, the corner-room. But
there were other doors into all these rooms, and these doors led into a
long gallery, lighted by windows, looking into the inner court. I do
not remember our consulting much about it; we went through my room into
my husband's apartment through the dressing-room, but the door of
communication into his study was locked, so there was nothing for it
but to turn back and go by the gallery to the other door. I recollect
noticing one or two things in these rooms, then seen by me for the
first time. I remember the sweet perfume that hung in the air, the
scent bottles of silver that decked his toilet-table, and the whole
apparatus for bathing and dressing, more luxurious even than those
which he had provided for me. But the room itself was less splendid in
its proportions than mine. In truth, the new buildings ended at the
entrance to my husband's dressing-room. There were deep window recesses
in walls eight or nine feet thick, and even the partitions between the
chambers were three feet deep; but over all these doors or windows
there fell thick, heavy draperies, so that I should think no one could
have heard in one room what passed in another. We went back into my
room, and out into the gallery. We had to shade our candle, from a fear
that possessed us, I don't know why, lest some of the servants in the
opposite wing might trace our progress towards the part of the castle
unused by any one except my husband. Somehow, I had always the feeling
that all the domestics, except Amante, were spies upon me, and that I
was trammelled in a web of observation and unspoken limitation
extending over all my actions.

There was a light in the upper room; we paused, and Amante would have
again retreated, but I was chafing under the delays. What was the harm
of my seeking my father's unopened letter to me in my husband's study?
I, generally the coward, now blamed Amante for her unusual timidity.
But the truth was, she had far more reason for suspicion as to the
proceedings of that terrible household than I had ever known of. I
urged her on, I pressed on myself; we came to the door, locked, but
with the key in it; we turned it, we entered; the letters lay on the
table, their white oblongs catching the light in an instant, and
revealing themselves to my eager eyes, hungering after the words of
love from my peaceful, distant home. But just as I pressed forward to
examine the letters, the candle which Amante held, caught in some
draught, went out, and we were in darkness. Amante proposed that we
should carry the letters back to my salon, collecting them as well as
we could in the dark, and returning all but the expected one for me;
but I begged her to return to my room, where I kept tinder and flint,
and to strike a fresh light; and I remained alone in the room, of which
I could only just distinguish the size, and the principal articles of
furniture: a large table, with a deep, overhanging cloth, in the
middle, escritoires and other heavy articles against the walls; all
this I could see as I stood there, my hand on the table close by the
letters, my face towards the window, which, both from the darkness of
the wood growing high up the mountain-side and the faint light of the
declining moon, seemed only like an oblong of paler purpler black than
the shadowy room. How much I remembered from my one instantaneous
glance before the candle went out, how much I saw as my eyes became
accustomed to the darkness, I do not know, but even now, in my dreams,
comes up that room of horror, distinct in its profound shadow. Amante
could hardly have been gone a minute before I felt an additional gloom
before the window, and heard soft movements outside--soft, but
resolute, and continued until the end was accomplished, and the window
raised.

In mortal terror of people forcing an entrance at such an hour, and in
such a manner as to leave no doubt of their purpose, I would have
turned to fly when first I heard the noise, only that I feared by any
quick motion to catch their attention, as I also ran the danger of
doing by opening the door, which was all but closed and to whose
handlings I was unaccustomed. Again, quick as lightning, I bethought me
of the hiding-place between the locked door to my husband's
dressing-room and the portiere which covered it; but I gave that up, I
felt as if I could not reach it without screaming or fainting. So I
sank down softly, and crept under the table, hidden as I hoped, by the
great, deep table-cover, with its heavy fringe. I had not recovered my
swooning senses fully, and was trying to reassure myself as to my being
in a place of comparative safety, for, above all things, I dreaded the
betrayal of fainting, and struggled hard for such courage as I might
attain by deadening myself to the danger I was in by inflicting intense
pain on myself. You have often asked me the reason of that mark on my
hand; it was there, in my agony, I bit out a piece of flesh with my
relentless teeth, thankful for the pain, which helped to numb my
terror. I say, I was but just concealed within I heard the window
lifted, and one after another stepped over the sill, and stood by me so
close that I could have touched their feet. Then they laughed and
whispered; my brain swam so that I could not tell the meaning of their
words, but I heard my husband's laughter among the rest--low, hissing,
scornful--as he kicked something heavy that they had dragged in over
the floor, and which layed near me; so near, that my husband's kick, in
touching it, touched me too. I don't know why--I can't tell how--but
some feeling, and not curiosity, prompted me to put out my hand, ever
so softly, ever so little, and feel in the darkness for what lay
spurned beside me. I stole my groping palm upon the clenched and chilly
hand of a corpse!

Strange to say, this roused me to instant vividness of thought. Till
this moment I had almost forgotten Amante; now I planned with feverish
rapidity how I could give her a warning not to return; or rather, I
should say, I tried to plan, for all my projects were utterly futile,
as I might have seen from the first. I could only hope she would hear
the voices of those who were now busy in trying to kindle a light,
swearing awful oaths at the mislaid articles which would have enabled
them to strike fire. I heard her step outside coming nearer and nearer;
I saw from my hiding-place the line of light beneath the door more and
more distinctly; close to it her footstep paused; the men inside--at
the time I thought they had been only two, but I found out afterwards
there were three--paused in their endeavours, and were quite still, as
breathless as myself, I suppose. Then she slowly pushed the door open
with gentle motion, to save her flickering candle from being again
extinguished. For a moment all was still. Then I heard my husband say,
as he advanced towards her (he wore riding-boots, the shape of which I
knew well, as I could see them in the light):

'Amante, may I ask what brings you here into my private room?'

He stood between her and the dead body of a man, from which ghastly
heap I shrank away as it almost touched me, so close were we all
together. I could not tell whether she saw it or not; I could give her
no warning, nor make any dumb utterance of signs to bid her what to
say--if, indeed, I knew myself what would be best for her to say.

Her voice was quite changed when she spoke; quite hoarse, and very low;
yet it was steady enough as she said, what was the truth, that she had
come to look for a letter which she believed had arrived for me from
Germany. Good, brave Amante! Not a word about me. M. de la Tourelle
answered with a grim blasphemy and a fearful threat. He would have no
one prying into his premises; madame should have her letters, if there
were any, when he chose to give them to her, if, indeed, he thought it
well to give them to her at all. As for Amante, this was her first
warning, but it was also her last; and, taking the candle out of her
hand, he turned her out of the room, his companions discreetly making a
screen, so as to throw the corpse into deep shadow. I heard the key
turn in the door after her--if I had ever had any thought of escape it
was gone now. I only hoped that whatever was to befall me might soon be
over, for the tension of nerve was growing more than I could bear. The
instant she could be supposed to be out of hearing, two voices began
speaking in the most angry terms to my husband, upbraiding him for not
having detained her, gagged her--nay, one was for killing her, saying
he had seen her eye fall on the face of the dead man, whom he now
kicked in his passion. Though the form of their speech was as if they
were speaking to equals, yet in their tone there was something of fear.
I am sure my husband was their superior, or captain, or somewhat. He
replied to them almost as if he were scoffing at them, saying it was
such an expenditure of labour having to do with fools; that, ten to
one, the woman was only telling the simple truth, and that she was
frightened enough by discovering her master in his room to be thankful
to escape and return to her mistress, to whom he could easily explain
on the morrow how he happened to return in the dead of night. But his
companions fell to cursing me, and saying that since M. de la Tourelle
had been married he was fit for nothing but to dress himself fine and
scent himself with perfume; that, as for me, they could have got him
twenty girls prettier, and with far more spirit in them. He quietly
answered that I suited him, and that was enough. All this time they
were doing something--I could not see what--to the corpse; sometimes
they were too busy rifling the dead body, I believe, to talk; again
they let it fall with a heavy, resistless thud, and took to
quarrelling. They taunted my husband with angry vehemence, enraged at
his scoffing and scornful replies, his mocking laughter. Yes, holding
up his poor dead victim, the better to strip him of whatever he wore
that was valuable, I heard my husband laugh just as he had done when
exchanging repartees in the little salon of the Rupprechts at
Carlsruhe. I hated and dreaded him from that moment. At length, as if
to make an end of the subject, he said, with cool determination in his
voice:

'Now, my good friends, what is the use of all this talking, when you
know in your hearts that, if I suspected my wife of knowing more than I
chose of my affairs, she would not outlive the day? Remember Victorine.
Because she merely joked about my affairs in an imprudent manner, and
rejected my advice to keep a prudent tongue--to see what she liked, but
ask nothing and say nothing--she has gone a long journey--longer than
to Paris.'

'But this one is different to her; we knew all that Madame Victorine
knew, she was such a chatterbox; but this one may find out a vast deal,
and never breathe a word about it, she is so sly. Some fine day we may
have the country raised, and the gendarmes down upon us from Strasburg,
and all owing to your pretty doll, with her cunning ways of coming over
you.'

I think this roused M. de la Tourelle a little from his contemptuous
indifference, for he ground an oath through his teeth, and said, 'Feel!
this dagger is sharp, Henri. If my wife breathes a word, and I am such
a fool as not to have stopped her mouth effectually before she can
bring down gendarmes upon us, just let that good steel find its way to
my heart. Let her guess but one tittle, let her have but one slight
suspicion that I am not a "grand proprietaire," much less imagine that
I am a chief of chauffeurs, and she follows Victorine on the long
journey beyond Paris that very day.'

'She'll outwit you yet; or I never judged women well. Those still
silent ones are the devil. She'll be off during some of your absences,
having picked out some secret that will break us all on the wheel.'

'Bah!' said his voice; and then in a minute he added, 'Let her go if
she will. But, where she goes, I will follow; so don't cry before
you're hurt.'

By this time, they had nearly stripped the body; and the conversation
turned on what they should do with it. I learnt that the dead man was
the Sieur de Poissy, a neighbouring gentleman, whom I had often heard
of as hunting with my husband. I had never seen him, but they spoke as
if he had come upon them while they were robbing some Cologne merchant,
torturing him after the cruel practice of the chauffeurs, by roasting
the feet of their victims in order to compel them to reveal any hidden
circumstances connected with their wealth, of which the chauffeurs
afterwards made use; and this Sieur de Poissy coming down upon them,
and recognising M. de la Tourelle, they had killed him, and brought him
thither after nightfall. I heard him whom I called my husband, laugh
his little light laugh as he spoke of the way in which the dead body
had been strapped before one of the riders, in such a way that it
appeared to any passer-by as if, in truth, the murderer were tenderly
supporting some sick person. He repeated some mocking reply of double
meaning, which he himself had given to some one who made inquiry. He
enjoyed the play upon words, softly applauding his own wit. And all the
time the poor helpless outstretched arms of the dead lay close to his
dainty boot! Then another stooped (my heart stopped beating), and
picked up a letter lying on the ground--a letter that had dropped out
of M. de Poissy's pocket--a letter from his wife, full of tender words
of endearment and pretty babblings of love. This was read aloud, with
coarse ribald comments on every sentence, each trying to outdo the
previous speaker. When they came to some pretty words about a sweet
Maurice, their little child away with its mother on some visit, they
laughed at M. de la Tourelle, and told him that he would be hearing
such woman's drivelling some day. Up to that moment, I think, I had
only feared him, but his unnatural, half-ferocious reply made me hate
even more than I dreaded him. But now they grew weary of their savage
merriment; the jewels and watch had been apprised, the money and papers
examined; and apparently there was some necessity for the body being
interred quietly and before daybreak. They had not dared to leave him
where he was slain for fear lest people should come and recognise him,
and raise the hue and cry upon them. For they all along spoke as if it
was their constant endeavour to keep the immediate neighbourhood of Les
Rochers in the most orderly and tranquil condition, so as never to give
cause for visits from the gendarmes. They disputed a little as to
whether they should make their way into the castle larder through the
gallery, and satisfy their hunger before the hasty interment, or
afterwards. I listened with eager feverish interest as soon as this
meaning of their speeches reached my hot and troubled brain, for at the
time the words they uttered seemed only to stamp themselves with
terrible force on my memory, so that I could hardly keep from repeating
them aloud like a dull, miserable, unconscious echo; but my brain was
numb to the sense of what they said, unless I myself were named, and
then, I suppose, some instinct of self-preservation stirred within me,
and quickened my sense. And how I strained my ears, and nerved my hands
and limbs, beginning to twitch with convulsive movements, which I
feared might betray me! I gathered every word they spoke, not knowing
which proposal to wish for, but feeling that whatever was finally
decided upon, my only chance of escape was drawing near. I once feared
lest my husband should go to his bedroom before I had had that one
chance, in which case he would most likely have perceived my absence.
He said that his hands were soiled (I shuddered, for it might be with
life-blood), and he would go and cleanse them; but some bitter jest
turned his purpose, and he left the room with the other two--left it by
the gallery door. Left me alone in the dark with the stiffening corpse!

Now, now was my time, if ever; and yet I could not move. It was not my
cramped and stiffened joints that crippled me, it was the sensation of
that dead man's close presence. I almost fancied--I almost fancy
still--I heard the arm nearest to me move; lift itself up, as if once
more imploring, and fall in dead despair. At that fancy--if fancy it
were--I screamed aloud in mad terror, and the sound of my own strange
voice broke the spell. I drew myself to the side of the table farthest
from the corpse, with as much slow caution as if I really could have
feared the clutch of that poor dead arm, powerless for evermore. I
softly raised myself up, and stood sick and trembling, holding by the
table, too dizzy to know what to do next. I nearly fainted, when a low
voice spoke--when Amante, from the outside of the door, whispered,
'Madame!' The faithful creature had been on the watch, had heard my
scream, and having seen the three ruffians troop along the gallery down
the stairs, and across the court to the offices in the other wing of
the castle, she had stolen to the door of the room in which I was. The
sound of her voice gave me strength; I walked straight towards it, as
one benighted on a dreary moor, suddenly perceiving the small steady
light which tells of human dwellings, takes heart, and steers straight
onward. Where I was, where that voice was, I knew not; but go to it I
must, or die. The door once opened--I know not by which of us--I fell
upon her neck, grasping her tight, till my hands ached with the tension
of their hold. Yet she never uttered a word. Only she took me up in her
vigorous arms, and bore me to my room, and laid me on my bed. I do not
know more; as soon as I was placed there I lost sense; I came to myself
with a horrible dread lest my husband was by me, with a belief that he
was in the room, in hiding, waiting to hear my first words, watching
for the least sign of the terrible knowledge I possessed to murder me.
I dared not breathe quicker, I measured and timed each heavy
inspiration; I did not speak, nor move, nor even open my eyes, for long
after I was in my full, my miserable senses. I heard some one treading
softly about the room, as if with a purpose, not as if for curiosity,
or merely to beguile the time; some one passed in and out of the salon;
and I still lay quiet, feeling as if death were inevitable, but wishing
that the agony of death were past. Again faintness stole over me; but
just as I was sinking into the horrible feeling of nothingness, I heard
Amante's voice close to me, saying:

'Drink this, madame, and let us begone. All is ready.'

I let her put her arm under my head and raise me, and pour something
down my throat. All the time she kept talking in a quiet, measured
voice, unlike her own, so dry and authoritative; she told me that a
suit of her clothes lay ready for me, that she herself was as much
disguised as the circumstances permitted her to be, that what
provisions I had left from my supper were stowed away in her pockets,
and so she went on, dwelling on little details of the most commonplace
description, but never alluding for an instant to the fearful cause why
flight was necessary. I made no inquiry as to how she knew, or what she
knew. I never asked her either then or afterwards, I could not bear
it--we kept our dreadful secret close. But I suppose she must have been
in the dressing-room adjoining, and heard all.

In fact, I dared not speak even to her, as if there were anything
beyond the most common event in life in our preparing thus to leave the
house of blood by stealth in the dead of night. She gave me
directions--short condensed directions, without reasons--just as you do
to a child; and like a child I obeyed her. She went often to the door
and listened; and often, too, she went to the window, and looked
anxiously out. For me, I saw nothing but her, and I dared not let my
eyes wander from her for a minute; and I heard nothing in the deep
midnight silence but her soft movements, and the heavy beating of my
own heart. At last she took my hand, and led me in the dark, through
the salon, once more into the terrible gallery, where across the black
darkness the windows admitted pale sheeted ghosts of light upon the
floor. Clinging to her I went; unquestioning--for she was human
sympathy to me after the isolation of my unspeakable terror. On we
went, turning to the left instead of to the right, past my suite of
sitting-rooms where the gilding was red with blood, into that unknown
wing of the castle that fronted the main road lying parallel far below.
She guided me along the basement passages to which we had now
descended, until we came to a little open door, through which the air
blew chill and cold, bringing for the first time a sensation of life to
me. The door led into a kind of cellar, through which we groped our way
to an opening like window, but which, instead of being glazed, was only
fenced with iron bars, two of which were loose, as Amante evidently
knew, for she took them out with the ease of one who had performed the
action often before, and then helped me to follow her out into the
free, open air.

We stole round the end of the building, and on turning the corner--she
first--I felt her hold on me tighten for an instant, and the next step
I, too, heard distant voices, and the blows of a spade upon the heavy
soil, for the night was very warm and still.

We had not spoken a word; we did not speak now. Touch was safer and as
expressive. She turned down towards the high road; I followed. I did
not know the path; we stumbled again and again, and I was much bruised;
so doubtless was she; but bodily pain did me good. At last, we were on
the plainer path of the high road.

I had such faith in her that I did not venture to speak, even when she
paused, as wondering to which hand she should turn. But now, for the
first time, she spoke:

'Which way did you come when he brought you here first?'

I pointed, I could not speak.

We turned in the opposite direction; still going along the high road.
In about an hour, we struck up to the mountainside, scrambling far up
before we even dared to rest; far up and away again before day had
fully dawned. Then we looked about for some place of rest and
concealment: and now we dared to speak in whispers. Amante told me that
she had locked the door of communication between his bedroom and mine,
and, as in a dream, I was aware that she had also locked and brought
away the key of the door between the latter and the salon.

'He will have been too busy this night to think much about you--he will
suppose you are asleep--I shall be the first to be missed; but they
will only just now be discovering our loss.'

I remember those last words of hers made me pray to go on; I felt as if
we were losing precious time in thinking either of rest or concealment;
but she hardly replied to me, so busy was she in seeking out some
hiding-place. At length, giving it up in despair, we proceeded onwards
a little way; the mountain-side sloped downwards rapidly, and in the
full morning light we saw ourselves in a narrow valley, made by a
stream which forced its way along it. About a mile lower down there
rose the pale blue smoke of a village, a mill-wheel was lashing up the
water close at hand, though out of sight. Keeping under the cover of
every sheltering tree or bush, we worked our way down past the mill,
down to a one-arched bridge, which doubtless formed part of the road
between the village and the mill.

'This will do,' said she; and we crept under the space, and climbing a
little way up the rough stonework, we seated ourselves on a projecting
ledge, and crouched in the deep damp shadow. Amante sat a little above
me, and made me lay my head on her lap. Then she fed me, and took some
food herself; and opening out her great dark cloak, she covered up
every light-coloured speck about us; and thus we sat, shivering and
shuddering, yet feeling a kind of rest through it all, simply from the
fact that motion was no longer imperative, and that during the daylight
our only chance of safety was to be still. But the damp shadow in which
we were sitting was blighting, from the circumstance of the sunlight
never penetrating there; and I dreaded lest, before night and the time
for exertion again came on, I should feel illness creeping all over me.
To add to our discomfort, it had rained the whole day long, and the
stream, fed by a thousand little mountain brooklets, began to swell
into a torrent, rushing over the stones with a perpetual and dizzying
noise.

Every now and then I was wakened from the painful doze into which I
continually fell, by a sound of horses' feet over our head: sometimes
lumbering heavily as if dragging a burden, sometimes rattling and
galloping; and with the sharper cry of men's voices coming cutting
through the roar of the waters. At length, day fell. We had to drop
into the stream, which came above our knees as we waded to the bank.
There we stood, stiff and shivering. Even Amante's courage seemed to
fail.

'We must pass this night in shelter, somehow,' said she. For indeed the
rain was coming down pitilessly. I said nothing. I thought that surely
the end must be death in some shape; and I only hoped that to death
might not be added the terror of the cruelty of men. In a minute or so
she had resolved on her course of action. We went up the stream to the
mill. The familiar sounds, the scent of the wheat, the flour whitening
the walls--all reminded me of home, and it seemed to me as if I must
struggle out of this nightmare and waken, and find myself once more a
happy girl by the Neckar side. They were long in unbarring the door at
which Amante had knocked: at length, an old feeble voice inquired who
was there, and what was sought? Amante answered shelter from the storm
for two women; but the old woman replied, with suspicious hesitation,
that she was sure it was a man who was asking for shelter, and that she
could not let us in. But at length she satisfied herself, and unbarred
the heavy door, and admitted us. She was not an unkindly woman; but her
thoughts all travelled in one circle, and that was, that her master,
the miller, had told her on no account to let any man into the place
during his absence, and that she did not know if he would not think two
women as bad; and yet that as we were not men, no one could say she had
disobeyed him, for it was a shame to let a dog be out such a night as
this. Amante, with ready wit, told her to let no one know that we had
taken shelter there that night, and that then her master could not
blame her; and while she was thus enjoining secrecy as the wisest
course, with a view to far other people than the miller, she was
hastily helping me to take off my wet clothes, and spreading them, as
well as the brown mantle that had covered us both, before the great
stove which warmed the room with the effectual heat that the old
woman's failing vitality required. All this time the poor creature was
discussing with herself as to whether she had disobeyed orders, in a
kind of garrulous way that made me fear much for her capability of
retaining anything secret if she was questioned. By-and-by, she
wandered away to an unnecessary revelation of her master's whereabouts:
gone to help in the search for his landlord, the Sieur de Poissy, who
lived at the chateau just above, and who had not returned from his
chase the day before; so the intendant imagined he might have met with
some accident, and had summoned the neighbours to beat the forest and
the hill-side. She told us much besides, giving us to understand that
she would fain meet with a place as housekeeper where there were more
servants and less to do, as her life here was very lonely and dull,
especially since her master's son had gone away--gone to the wars. She
then took her supper, which was evidently apportioned out to her with a
sparing hand, as, even if the idea had come into her head, she had not
enough to offer us any. Fortunately, warmth was all that we required,
and that, thanks to Amante's cares, was returning to our chilled
bodies. After supper, the old woman grew drowsy; but she seemed
uncomfortable at the idea of going to sleep and leaving us still in the
house. Indeed, she gave us pretty broad hints as to the propriety of
our going once more out into the bleak and stormy night; but we begged
to be allowed to stay under shelter of some kind; and, at last, a
bright idea came over her, and she bade us mount by a ladder to a kind
of loft, which went half over the lofty mill-kitchen in which we were
sitting. We obeyed her--what else could we do?--and found ourselves in
a spacious floor, without any safeguard or wall, boarding, or railing,
to keep us from falling over into the kitchen in case we went too near
the edge. It was, in fact, the store-room or garret for the household.
There was bedding piled up, boxes and chests, mill sacks, the winter
store of apples and nuts, bundles of old clothes, broken furniture, and
many other things. No sooner were we up there, than the old woman
dragged the ladder, by which we had ascended, away with a chuckle, as
if she was now secure that we could do no mischief, and sat herself
down again once more, to doze and await her master's return. We pulled
out some bedding, and gladly laid ourselves down in our dried clothes
and in some warmth, hoping to have the sleep we so much needed to
refresh us and prepare us for the next day. But I could not sleep, and
I was aware, from her breathing, that Amante was equally wakeful. We
could both see through the crevices between the boards that formed the
flooring into the kitchen below, very partially lighted by the common
lamp that hung against the wall near the stove on the opposite side to
that on which we were.




Portion 3


Far on in the night there were voices outside reached us in our
hiding-place; an angry knocking at the door, and we saw through the
chinks the old woman rouse herself up to go and open it for her master,
who came in, evidently half drunk. To my sick horror, he was followed
by Lefebvre, apparently as sober and wily as ever. They were talking
together as they came in, disputing about something; but the miller
stopped the conversation to swear at the old woman for having fallen
asleep, and, with tipsy anger, and even with blows, drove the poor old
creature out of the kitchen to bed. Then he and Lefebvre went on
talking--about the Sieur de Poissy's disappearance. It seemed that
Lefebvre had been out all day, along with other of my husband's men,
ostensibly assisting in the search; in all probability trying to blind
the Sieur de Poissy's followers by putting them on a wrong scent, and
also, I fancied, from one or two of Lefebvre's sly questions, combining
the hidden purpose of discovering us.

Although the miller was tenant and vassal to the Sieur de Poissy, he
seemed to me to be much more in league with the people of M. de la
Tourelle. He was evidently aware, in part, of the life which Lefebvre
and the others led; although, again, I do not suppose he knew or
imagined one-half of their crimes; and also, I think, he was seriously
interested in discovering the fate of his master, little suspecting
Lefebvre of murder or violence. He kept talking himself, and letting
out all sorts of thoughts and opinions; watched by the keen eyes of
Lefebvre gleaming out below his shaggy eyebrows. It was evidently not
the cue of the latter to let out that his master's wife had escaped
from that vile and terrible den; but though he never breathed a word
relating to us, not the less was I certain he was thirsting for our
blood, and lying in wait for us at every turn of events. Presently he
got up and took his leave; and the miller bolted him out, and stumbled
off to bed. Then we fell asleep, and slept sound and long.

The next morning, when I awoke, I saw Amante, half raised, resting on
one hand, and eagerly gazing, with straining eyes, into the kitchen
below. I looked too, and both heard and saw the miller and two of his
men eagerly and loudly talking about the old woman, who had not
appeared as usual to make the fire in the stove, and prepare her
master's breakfast, and who now, late on in the morning, had been found
dead in her bed; whether from the effect of her master's blows the
night before, or from natural causes, who can tell? The miller's
conscience upbraided him a little, I should say, for he was eagerly
declaring his value for his housekeeper, and repeating how often she
had spoken of the happy life she led with him. The men might have their
doubts, but they did not wish to offend the miller, and all agreed that
the necessary steps should be taken for a speedy funeral. And so they
went out, leaving us in our loft, but so much alone, that, for the
first time almost, we ventured to speak freely, though still in hushed
voice, pausing to listen continually. Amante took a more cheerful view
of the whole occurrence than I did. She said that, had the old woman
lived, we should have had to depart that morning, and that this quiet
departure would have been the best thing we could have had to hope for,
as, in all probability, the housekeeper would have told her master of
us and of our resting-place, and this fact would, sooner or later, have
been brought to the knowledge of those from whom we most desired to
keep it concealed; but that now we had time to rest, and a shelter to
rest in, during the first hot pursuit, which we knew to a fatal
certainty was being carried on. The remnants of our food, and the
stored-up fruit, would supply us with provision; the only thing to be
feared was, that something might be required from the loft, and the
miller or someone else mount up in search of it. But even then, with a
little arrangement of boxes and chests, one part might be so kept in
shadow that we might yet escape observation. All this comforted me a
little; but, I asked, how were we ever to escape? The ladder was taken
away, which was our only means of descent. But Amante replied that she
could make a sufficient ladder of the rope lying coiled among other
things, to drop us down the ten feet or so--with the advantage of its
being portable, so that we might carry it away, and thus avoid all
betrayal of the fact that any one had ever been hidden in the loft.

During the two days that intervened before we did escape, Amante made
good use of her time. She looked into every box and chest during the
man's absence at his mill; and finding in one box an old suit of man's
clothes, which had probably belonged to the miller's absent son, she
put them on to see if they would fit her; and, when she found that they
did, she cut her own hair to the shortness of a man's, made me clip her
black eyebrows as close as though they had been shaved, and by cutting
up old corks into pieces such as would go into her cheeks, she altered
both the shape of her face and her voice to a degree which I should not
have believed possible.

All this time I lay like one stunned; my body resting, and renewing its
strength, but I myself in an almost idiotic state--else surely I could
not have taken the stupid interest which I remember I did in all
Amante's energetic preparations for disguise. I absolutely recollect
once the feeling of a smile coming over my stiff face as some new
exercise of her cleverness proved a success.

But towards the second day, she required me, too, to exert myself; and
then all my heavy despair returned. I let her dye my fair hair and
complexion with the decaying shells of the stored-up walnuts, I let her
blacken my teeth, and even voluntarily broke a front tooth the better
to effect my disguise. But through it all I had no hope of evading my
terrible husband. The third night the funeral was over, the drinking
ended, the guests gone; the miller put to bed by his men, being too
drunk to help himself. They stopped a little while in the kitchen,
talking and laughing about the new housekeeper likely to come; and
they, too, went off, shutting, but not locking the door. Everything
favoured us. Amante had tried her ladder on one of the two previous
nights, and could, by a dexterous throw from beneath, unfasten it from
the hook to which it was fixed, when it had served its office; she made
up a bundle of worthless old clothes in order that we might the better
preserve our characters of a travelling pedlar and his wife; she
stuffed a hump on her back, she thickened my figure, she left her own
clothes deep down beneath a heap of others in the chest from which she
had taken the man's dress which she wore; and with a few francs in her
pocket--the sole money we had either of us had about us when we
escaped--we let ourselves down the ladder, unhooked it, and passed into
the cold darkness of night again.

We had discussed the route which it would be well for us to take while
we lay perdues in our loft. Amante had told me then that her reason for
inquiring, when we first left Les Rochers, by which way I had first
been brought to it, was to avoid the pursuit which she was sure would
first be made in the direction of Germany; but that now she thought we
might return to that district of country where my German fashion of
speaking French would excite least observation. I thought that Amante
herself had something peculiar in her accent, which I had heard M. de
la Tourelle sneer at as Norman patois; but I said not a word beyond
agreeing to her proposal that we should bend our steps towards Germany.
Once there, we should, I thought, be safe. Alas! I forgot the unruly
time that was overspreading all Europe, overturning all law, and all
the protection which law gives.

How we wandered--not daring to ask our way--how we lived, how we
struggled through many a danger and still more terrors of danger, I
shall not tell you now. I will only relate two of our adventures before
we reached Frankfort. The first, although fatal to an innocent lady,
was yet, I believe, the cause of my safety; the second I shall tell
you, that you may understand why I did not return to my former home, as
I had hoped to do when we lay in the miller's loft, and I first became
capable of groping after an idea of what my future life might be. I
cannot tell you how much in these doubtings and wanderings I became
attached to Amante. I have sometimes feared since, lest I cared for her
only because she was so necessary to my own safety; but, no! it was not
so; or not so only, or principally. She said once that she was flying
for her own life as well as for mine; but we dared not speak much on
our danger, or on the horrors that had gone before. We planned a little
what was to be our future course; but even for that we did not look
forward long; how could we, when every day we scarcely knew if we
should see the sun go down? For Amante knew or conjectured far more
than I did of the atrocity of the gang to which M. de la Tourelle
belonged; and every now and then, just as we seemed to be sinking into
the calm of security, we fell upon traces of a pursuit after us in all
directions. Once I remember--we must have been nearly three weeks
wearily walking through unfrequented ways, day after day, not daring to
make inquiry as to our whereabouts, nor yet to seem purposeless in our
wanderings--we came to a kind of lonely roadside farrier's and
blacksmith's. I was so tired, that Amante declared that, come what
might, we would stay there all night; and accordingly she entered the
house, and boldly announced herself as a travelling tailor, ready to do
any odd jobs of work that might be required, for a night's lodging and
food for herself and wife. She had adopted this plan once or twice
before, and with good success; for her father had been a tailor in
Rouen, and as a girl she had often helped him with his work, and knew
the tailors' slang and habits, down to the particular whistle and cry
which in France tells so much to those of a trade. At this
blacksmith's, as at most other solitary houses far away from a town,
there was not only a store of men's clothes laid by as wanting mending
when the housewife could afford time, but there was a natural craving
after news from a distance, such news as a wandering tailor is bound to
furnish. The early November afternoon was closing into evening, as we
sat down, she cross-legged on the great table in the blacksmith's
kitchen, drawn close to the window, I close behind her, sewing at
another part of the same garment, and from time to time well scolded by
my seeming husband. All at once she turned round to speak to me. It was
only one word, 'Courage!' I had seen nothing; I sat out of the light;
but I turned sick for an instant, and then I braced myself up into a
strange strength of endurance to go through I knew not what.

The blacksmith's forge was in a shed beside the house, and fronting the
road. I heard the hammers stop plying their continual rhythmical beat.
She had seen why they ceased. A rider had come up to the forge and
dismounted, leading his horse in to be re-shod. The broad red light of
the forge-fire had revealed the face of the rider to Amante, and she
apprehended the consequence that really ensued.

The rider, after some words with the blacksmith, was ushered in by him
into the house-place where we sat.

'Here, good wife, a cup of wine and some galette for this gentleman.'

'Anything, anything, madame, that I can eat and drink in my hand while
my horse is being shod. I am in haste, and must get on to Forbach
to-night.'

The blacksmith's wife lighted her lamp; Amante had asked her for it
five minutes before. How thankful we were that she had not more
speedily complied with our request! As it was, we sat in dusk shadow,
pretending to stitch away, but scarcely able to see. The lamp was
placed on the stove, near which my husband, for it was he, stood and
warmed himself. By-and-by he turned round, and looked all over the room,
taking us in with about the same degree of interest as the inanimate
furniture. Amante, cross-legged, fronting him, stooped over her work,
whistling softly all the while. He turned again to the stove,
impatiently rubbing his hands. He had finished his wine and galette,
and wanted to be off.

'I am in haste, my good woman. Ask thy husband to get on more quickly.
I will pay him double if he makes haste.'

The woman went out to do his bidding; and he once more turned round to
face us. Amante went on to the second part of the tune. He took it up,
whistled a second for an instant or so, and then the blacksmith's wife
re-entering, he moved towards her, as if to receive her answer the more
speedily.

'One moment, monsieur--only one moment. There was a nail out of the
off-foreshoe which my husband is replacing; it would delay monsieur
again if that shoe also came off.'

'Madame is right,' said he, 'but my haste is urgent. If madame knew my
reasons, she would pardon my impatience. Once a happy husband, now a
deserted and betrayed man, I pursue a wife on whom I lavished all my
love, but who has abused my confidence, and fled from my house,
doubtless to some paramour; carrying off with her all the jewels and
money on which she could lay her hands. It is possible madame may have
heard or seen something of her; she was accompanied in her flight by a
base, profligate woman from Paris, whom I, unhappy man, had myself
engaged for my wife's waiting-maid, little dreaming what corruption I
was bringing into my house!'

'Is it possible?' said the good woman, throwing up her hands.

Amante went on whistling a little lower, out of respect to the
conversation.

'However, I am tracing the wicked fugitives; I am on their track' (and
the handsome, effeminate face looked as ferocious as any demon's).
'They will not escape me; but every minute is a minute of misery to me,
till I meet my wife. Madame has sympathy, has she not?'

He drew his face into a hard, unnatural smile, and then both went out
to the forge, as if once more to hasten the blacksmith over his work.

Amante stopped her whistling for one instant.

'Go on as you are, without change of an eyelid even; in a few minutes
he will be gone, and it will be over!'

It was a necessary caution, for I was on the point of giving way, and
throwing myself weakly upon her neck. We went on; she whistling and
stitching, I making semblance to sew. And it was well we did so; for
almost directly he came back for his whip, which he had laid down and
forgotten; and again I felt one of those sharp, quick-scanning glances,
sent all round the room, and taking in all.

Then we heard him ride away; and then, it had been long too dark to see
well, I dropped my work, and gave way to my trembling and shuddering.
The blacksmith's wife returned. She was a good creature. Amante told
her I was cold and weary, and she insisted on my stopping my work, and
going to sit near the stove; hastening, at the same time, her
preparations for supper, which, in honour of us, and of monsieur's
liberal payment, was to be a little less frugal than ordinary. It was
well for me that she made me taste a little of the cider-soup she was
preparing, or I could not have held up, in spite of Amante's warning
look, and the remembrance of her frequent exhortations to act
resolutely up to the characters we had assumed, whatever befell. To
cover my agitation, Amante stopped her whistling, and began to talk;
and, by the time the blacksmith came in, she and the good woman of the
house were in full flow. He began at once upon the handsome gentleman,
who had paid him so well; all his sympathy was with him, and both he
and his wife only wished he might overtake his wicked wife, and punish
her as she deserved. And then the conversation took a turn, not
uncommon to those whose lives are quiet and monotonous; every one
seemed to vie with each other in telling about some horror; and the
savage and mysterious band of robbers called the Chauffeurs, who
infested all the roads leading to the Rhine, with Schinderhannes at
their head, furnished many a tale which made the very marrow of my
bones run cold, and quenched even Amante's power of talking. Her eyes
grew large and wild, her cheeks blanched, and for once she sought by
her looks help from me. The new call upon me roused me. I rose and
said, with their permission my husband and I would seek our bed, for
that we had travelled far and were early risers. I added that we would
get up betimes, and finish our piece of work. The blacksmith said we
should be early birds if we rose before him; and the good wife seconded
my proposal with kindly bustle. One other such story as those they had
been relating, and I do believe Amante would have fainted.

As it was, a night's rest set her up; we arose and finished our work
betimes, and shared the plentiful breakfast of the family. Then we had
to set forth again; only knowing that to Forbach we must not go, yet
believing, as was indeed the case, that Forbach lay between us and that
Germany to which we were directing our course. Two days more we
wandered on, making a round, I suspect, and returning upon the road to
Forbach, a league or two nearer to that town than the blacksmith's
house. But as we never made inquiries I hardly knew where we were, when
we came one night to a small town, with a good large rambling inn in
the very centre of the principal street. We had begun to feel as if
there were more safety in towns than in the loneliness of the country.
As we had parted with a ring of mine not many days before to a
travelling jeweller, who was too glad to purchase it far below its real
value to make many inquiries as to how it came into the possession of a
poor working tailor, such as Amante seemed to be, we resolved to stay
at this inn all night, and gather such particulars and information as
we could by which to direct our onward course.

We took our supper in the darkest corner of the salle-a-manger, having
previously bargained for a small bedroom across the court, and over the
stables. We needed food sorely; but we hurried on our meal from dread
of any one entering that public room who might recognize us. Just in
the middle of our meal, the public diligence drove lumbering up under
the _porte-cochere_, and disgorged its passengers. Most of them turned
into the room where we sat, cowering and fearful, for the door was
opposite to the porter's lodge, and both opened on to the wide-covered
entrance from the street. Among the passengers came in a young,
fair-haired lady, attended by an elderly French maid. The poor young
creature tossed her head, and shrank away from the common room, full of
evil smells and promiscuous company, and demanded, in German French, to
be taken to some private apartment. We heard that she and her maid had
come in the coupe, and, probably from pride, poor young lady! she had
avoided all association with her fellow-passengers, thereby exciting
their dislike and ridicule. All these little pieces of hearsay had a
significance to us afterwards, though, at the time, the only remark
made that bore upon the future was Amante's whisper to me that the
young lady's hair was exactly the colour of mine, which she had cut off
and burnt in the stove in the miller's kitchen in one of her descents
from our hiding-place in the loft.

As soon as we could, we struck round in the shadow, leaving the
boisterous and merry fellow-passengers to their supper. We crossed the
court, borrowed a lantern from the ostler, and scrambled up the rude
step to our chamber above the stable. There was no door into it; the
entrance was the hole into which the ladder fitted. The window looked
into the court. We were tired and soon fell asleep. I was wakened by a
noise in the stable below. One instant of listening, and I wakened
Amante, placing my hand on her mouth, to prevent any exclamation in her
half-roused state. We heard my husband speaking about his horse to the
ostler. It was his voice. I am sure of it. Amante said so too. We durst
not move to rise and satisfy ourselves. For five minutes or so he went
on giving directions. Then he left the stable, and, softly stealing to
our window, we saw him cross the court and re-enter the inn. We
consulted as to what we should do. We feared to excite remark or
suspicion by descending and leaving our chamber, or else immediate
escape was our strongest idea. Then the ostler left the stable, locking
the door on the outside.

'We must try and drop through the window--if, indeed, it is well to go
at all,' said Amante.

With reflection came wisdom. We should excite suspicion by leaving
without paying our bill. We were on foot, and might easily be pursued.
So we sat on our bed's edge, talking and shivering, while from across
the court the laughter rang merrily, and the company slowly dispersed
one by one, their lights flitting past the windows as they went
upstairs and settled each one to his rest.

We crept into our bed, holding each other tight, and listening to every
sound, as if we thought we were tracked, and might meet our death at
any moment. In the dead of night, just at the profound stillness
preceding the turn into another day, we heard a soft, cautious step
crossing the yard. The key into the stable was turned--some one came
into the stable--we felt rather than heard him there. A horse started a
little, and made a restless movement with his feet, then whinnied
recognition. He who had entered made two or three low sounds to the
animal, and then led him into the court. Amante sprang to the window
with the noiseless activity of a cat. She looked out, but dared not
speak a word. We heard the great door into the street open--a pause for
mounting, and the horse's footsteps were lost in distance.

Then Amante came back to me. 'It was he! he is gone!' said she, and
once more we lay down, trembling and shaking.

This time we fell sound asleep. We slept long and late. We were wakened
by many hurrying feet, and many confused voices; all the world seemed
awake and astir. We rose and dressed ourselves, and coming down we
looked around among the crowd collected in the court-yard, in order to
assure ourselves _he_ was not there before we left the shelter of the
stable.

The instant we were seen, two or three people rushed to us.

'Have you heard?--Do you know?--That poor young lady--oh, come and
see!' and so we were hurried, almost in spite of ourselves, across the
court, and up the great open stairs of the main building of the inn,
into a bed-chamber, where lay the beautiful young German lady, so full
of graceful pride the night before, now white and still in death. By
her stood the French maid, crying and gesticulating.

'Oh, madame! if you had but suffered me to stay with you! Oh! the
baron, what will he say?' and so she went on. Her state had but just
been discovered; it had been supposed that she was fatigued, and was
sleeping late, until a few minutes before. The surgeon of the town had
been sent for, and the landlord of the inn was trying vainly to enforce
order until he came, and, from time to time, drinking little cups of
brandy, and offering them to the guests, who were all assembled there,
pretty much as the servants were doing in the court-yard.

At last the surgeon came. All fell back, and hung on the words that
were to fall from his lips.

'See!' said the landlord. 'This lady came last night by the diligence
with her maid. Doubtless, a great lady, for she must have a private
sitting-room--'

'She was Madame the Baroness de Roeder,' said the French maid.

--'And was difficult to please in the matter of supper, and a
sleeping-room. She went to bed well, though fatigued. Her maid left
her--'

'I begged to be allowed to sleep in her room, as we were in a strange
inn, of the character of which we knew nothing; but she would not let
me, my mistress was such a great lady.'

--'And slept with my servants,' continued the landlord. 'This morning
we thought madame was still slumbering; but when eight, nine, ten, and
near eleven o'clock came, I bade her maid use my pass-key, and enter
her room----'

'The door was not locked, only closed. And here she was found--dead is
she not, monsieur?--with her face down on her pillow, and her beautiful
hair all scattered wild; she never would let me tie it up, saying it
made her head ache. Such hair!' said the waiting-maid, lifting up a
long golden tress, and letting it fall again.

I remembered Amante's words the night before, and crept close up to
her.

Meanwhile, the doctor was examining the body underneath the
bed-clothes, which the landlord, until now, had not allowed to be
disarranged. The surgeon drew out his hand, all bathed and stained with
blood; and holding up a short, sharp knife, with a piece of paper
fastened round it.

'Here has been foul play,' he said. 'The deceased lady has been
murdered. This dagger was aimed straight at her heart.' Then putting on
his spectacles, he read the writing on the bloody paper, dimmed and
horribly obscured as it was:

             NUMERO UN.
    Ainsi les Chauffeurs se vengent.

'Let us go!' said I to Amante. 'Oh, let us leave this horrible place!'

'Wait a little,' said she. 'Only a few minutes more. It will be
better.'

Immediately the voices of all proclaimed their suspicions of the
cavalier who had arrived last the night before. He had, they said, made
so many inquiries about the young lady, whose supercilious conduct all
in the _salle-a-manger_ had been discussing on his entrance. They were
talking about her as we left the room; he must have come in directly
afterwards, and not until he had learnt all about her, had he spoken of
the business which necessitated his departure at dawn of day, and made
his arrangements with both landlord and ostler for the possession of
the keys of the stable and _porte-cochere_. In short, there was no
doubt as to the murderer, even before the arrival of the legal
functionary who had been sent for by the surgeon; but the word on the
paper chilled every one with terror. Les Chauffeurs, who were they? No
one knew, some of the gang might even then be in the room overhearing,
and noting down fresh objects for vengeance. In Germany, I had heard
little of this terrible gang, and I had paid no greater heed to the
stories related once or twice about them in Carlsruhe than one does to
tales about ogres. But here in their very haunts, I learnt the full
amount of the terror they inspired. No one would be legally responsible
for any evidence criminating the murderer. The public prosecutor shrank
from the duties of his office. What do I say? Neither Amante nor I,
knowing far more of the actual guilt of the man who had killed that
poor sleeping young lady, durst breathe a word. We appeared to be
wholly ignorant of everything: we, who might have told so much. But how
could we? we were broken down with terrific anxiety and fatigue, with
the knowledge that we, above all, were doomed victims; and that the
blood, heavily dripping from the bed-clothes on to the floor, was
dripping thus out of the poor dead body, because, when living, she had
been mistaken for me.

At length Amante went up to the landlord, and asked permission to leave
his inn, doing all openly and humbly, so as to excite neither ill-will
nor suspicion. Indeed, suspicion was otherwise directed, and he
willingly gave us leave to depart. A few days afterwards we were across
the Rhine, in Germany, making our way towards Frankfort, but still
keeping our disguises, and Amante still working at her trade.

On the way, we met a young man, a wandering journeyman from Heidelberg.
I knew him, although I did not choose that he should know me. I asked
him, as carelessly as I could, how the old miller was now? He told me
he was dead. This realization of the worst apprehensions caused by his
long silence shocked me inexpressibly. It seemed as though every prop
gave way from under me. I had been talking to Amante only that very day
of the safety and comfort of the home that awaited her in my father's
house; of the gratitude which the old man would feel towards her; and
how there, in that peaceful dwelling, far away from the terrible land
of France, she should find ease and security for all the rest of her
life. All this I thought I had to promise, and even yet more had I
looked for, for myself. I looked to the unburdening of my heart and
conscience by telling all I knew to my best and wisest friend. I looked
to his love as a sure guidance as well as a comforting stay, and,
behold, he was gone away from me for ever!

I had left the room hastily on hearing of this sad news from the
Heidelberger. Presently, Amante followed.

'Poor madame,' said she, consoling me to the best of her ability. And
then she told me by degrees what more she had learned respecting my
home, about which she knew almost as much as I did, from my frequent
talks on the subject both at Les Rochers and on the dreary, doleful
road we had come along. She had continued the conversation after I
left, by asking about my brother and his wife. Of course, they lived on
at the mill, but the man said (with what truth I know not, but I
believed it firmly at the time) that Babette had completely got the
upper hand of my brother, who only saw through her eyes and heard with
her ears. That there had been much Heidelberg gossip of late days about
her sudden intimacy with a grand French gentleman who had appeared at
the mill--a relation, by marriage--married, in fact, to the miller's
sister, who, by all accounts, had behaved abominably and ungratefully.
But that was no reason for Babette's extreme and sudden intimacy with
him, going about everywhere with the French gentleman; and since he
left (as the Heidelberger said he knew for a fact) corresponding with
him constantly. Yet her husband saw no harm in it all, seemingly;
though, to be sure, he was so out of spirits, what with his father's
death and the news of his sister's infamy, that he hardly knew how to
hold up his head.

'Now,' said Amante, 'all this proves that M. de la Tourelle has
suspected that you would go back to the nest in which you were reared,
and that he has been there, and found that you have not yet returned;
but probably he still imagines that you will do so, and has accordingly
engaged your sister-in-law as a kind of informant. Madame has said that
her sister-in-law bore her no extreme good-will; and the defamatory
story he has got the start of us in spreading, will not tend to
increase the favour in which your sister-in-law holds you. No doubt the
assassin was retracing his steps when we met him near Forbach, and
having heard of the poor German lady, with her French maid, and her
pretty blonde complexion, he followed her. If madame will still be
guided by me--and, my child, I beg of you still to trust me,' said
Amante, breaking out of her respectful formality into the way of
talking more natural to those who had shared and escaped from common
dangers--more natural, too, where the speaker was conscious of a power
of protection which the other did not possess--'we will go on to
Frankfort, and lose ourselves, for a time, at least, in the numbers of
people who throng a great town; and you have told me that Frankfort is
a great town. We will still be husband and wife; we will take a small
lodging, and you shall house-keep and live in-doors. I, as the rougher
and the more alert, will continue my father's trade, and seek work at
the tailors' shops.'

I could think of no better plan, so we followed this out. In a back
street at Frankfort we found two furnished rooms to let on a sixth
story. The one we entered had no light from day; a dingy lamp swung
perpetually from the ceiling, and from that, or from the open door
leading into the bedroom beyond, came our only light. The bedroom was
more cheerful, but very small. Such as it was, it almost exceeded our
possible means. The money from the sale of my ring was almost
exhausted, and Amante was a stranger in the place, speaking only
French, moreover, and the good Germans were hating the French people
right heartily. However, we succeeded better than our hopes, and even
laid by a little against the time of my confinement. I never stirred
abroad, and saw no one, and Amante's want of knowledge of German kept
her in a state of comparative isolation.

At length my child was born--my poor worse than fatherless child. It
was a girl, as I had prayed for. I had feared lest a boy might have
something of the tiger nature of its father, but a girl seemed all my
own. And yet not all my own, for the faithful Amante's delight and
glory in the babe almost exceeded mine; in outward show it certainly
did.

We had not been able to afford any attendance beyond what a
neighbouring sage-femme could give, and she came frequently, bringing
in with her a little store of gossip, and wonderful tales culled out of
her own experience, every time. One day she began to tell me about a
great lady in whose service her daughter had lived as scullion, or some
such thing. Such a beautiful lady! with such a handsome husband. But
grief comes to the palace as well as to the garret, and why or
wherefore no one knew, but somehow the Baron de Roeder must have
incurred the vengeance of the terrible Chauffeurs; for not many months
ago, as madame was going to see her relations in Alsace, she was
stabbed dead as she lay in bed at some hotel on the road. Had I not
seen it in the _Gazette_? Had I not heard? Why, she had been told that
as far off as Lyons there were placards offering a heavy reward on the
part of the Baron de Roeder for information respecting the murderer of
his wife. But no one could help him, for all who could bear evidence
were in such terror of the Chauffeurs; there were hundreds of them she
had been told, rich and poor, great gentlemen and peasants, all leagued
together by most frightful oaths to hunt to the death any one who bore
witness against them; so that even they who survived the tortures to
which the Chauffeurs subjected many of the people whom they plundered,
dared not to recognise them again, would not dare, even did they see
them at the bar of a court of justice; for, if one were condemned, were
there not hundreds sworn to avenge his death?

I told all this to Amante, and we began to fear that if M. de la
Tourelle, or Lefebvre, or any of the gang at Les Rochers, had seen
these placards, they would know that the poor lady stabbed by the
former was the Baroness de Roeder, and that they would set forth again
in search of me.

This fresh apprehension told on my health and impeded my recovery. We
had so little money we could not call in a physician, at least, not one
in established practice. But Amante found out a young doctor for whom,
indeed, she had sometimes worked; and offering to pay him in kind, she
brought him to see me, her sick wife. He was very gentle and
thoughtful, though, like ourselves, very poor. But he gave much time
and consideration to the case, saying once to Amante that he saw my
constitution had experienced some severe shock from which it was
probable that my nerves would never entirely recover. By-and-by I shall
name this doctor, and then you will know, better than I can describe,
his character.

I grew strong in time--stronger, at least. I was able to work a little
at home, and to sun myself and my baby at the garret-window in the
roof. It was all the air I dared to take. I constantly wore the
disguise I had first set out with; as constantly had I renewed the
disfiguring dye which changed my hair and complexion. But the perpetual
state of terror in which I had been during the whole months succeeding
my escape from Les Rochers made me loathe the idea of ever again
walking in the open daylight, exposed to the sight and recognition of
every passer-by. In vain Amante reasoned--in vain the doctor urged.
Docile in every other thing, in this I was obstinate. I would not stir
out. One day Amante returned from her work, full of news--some of it
good, some such as to cause us apprehension. The good news was this;
the master for whom she worked as journeyman was going to send her with
some others to a great house at the other side of Frankfort, where
there were to be private theatricals, and where many new dresses and
much alteration of old ones would be required. The tailors employed
were all to stay at this house until the day of representation was
over, as it was at some distance from the town, and no one could tell
when their work would be ended. But the pay was to be proportionately
good.

The other thing she had to say was this: she had that day met the
travelling jeweller to whom she and I had sold my ring. It was rather a
peculiar one, given to me by my husband; we had felt at the time that
it might be the means of tracing us, but we were penniless and
starving, and what else could we do? She had seen that this Frenchman
had recognised her at the same instant that she did him, and she
thought at the same time that there was a gleam of more than common
intelligence on his face as he did so. This idea had been confirmed by
his following her for some way on the other side of the street; but she
had evaded him with her better knowledge of the town, and the
increasing darkness of the night. Still it was well that she was going
to such a distance from our dwelling on the next day; and she had
brought me in a stock of provisions, begging me to keep within doors,
with a strange kind of fearful oblivion of the fact that I had never
set foot beyond the threshold of the house since I had first entered
it--scarce ever ventured down the stairs. But, although my poor, my
dear, very faithful Amante was like one possessed that last night, she
spoke continually of the dead, which is a bad sign for the living. She
kissed you--yes! it was you, my daughter, my darling, whom I bore
beneath my bosom away from the fearful castle of your father--I call
him so for the first time, I must call him so once again before I have
done--Amante kissed you, sweet baby, blessed little comforter, as if
she never could leave off. And then she went away, alive.

Two days, three days passed away. That third evening I was sitting
within my bolted doors--you asleep on your pillow by my side--when a
step came up the stair, and I knew it must be for me; for ours were the
top-most rooms. Some one knocked; I held my very breath. But some one
spoke, and I knew it was the good Doctor Voss. Then I crept to the
door, and answered.

'Are you alone?' asked I.

'Yes,' said he, in a still lower voice. 'Let me in.' I let him in, and
he was as alert as I in bolting and barring the door. Then he came and
whispered to me his doleful tale. He had come from the hospital in the
opposite quarter of the town, the hospital which he visited; he should
have been with me sooner, but he had feared lest he should be watched.
He had come from Amante's death-bed. Her fears of the jeweller were too
well founded. She had left the house where she was employed that
morning, to transact some errand connected with her work in the town;
she must have been followed, and dogged on her way back through
solitary wood-paths, for some of the wood-rangers belonging to the
great house had found her lying there, stabbed to death, but not dead;
with the poniard again plunged through the fatal writing, once more;
but this time with the word 'un' underlined, so as to show that the
assassin was aware of his precious mistake.

              Numero _Un_.
    Ainsi les Chauffeurs se vengent.

They had carried her to the house, and given her restoratives till she
had recovered the feeble use of her speech. But, oh, faithful, dear
friend and sister! even then she remembered me, and refused to tell
(what no one else among her fellow workmen knew), where she lived or
with whom. Life was ebbing away fast, and they had no resource but to
carry her to the nearest hospital, where, of course, the fact of her
sex was made known. Fortunately both for her and for me, the doctor in
attendance was the very Doctor Voss whom we already knew. To him, while
awaiting her confessor, she told enough to enable him to understand the
position in which I was left; before the priest had heard half her tale
Amante was dead.

Doctor Voss told me he had made all sorts of _detours_, and waited
thus, late at night, for fear of being watched and followed. But I do
not think he was. At any rate, as I afterwards learnt from him, the
Baron Roeder, on hearing of the similitude of this murder with that of
his wife in every particular, made such a search after the assassins,
that, although they were not discovered, they were compelled to take to
flight for the time.

I can hardly tell you now by what arguments Dr. Voss, at first merely
my benefactor, sparing me a portion of his small modicum, at length
persuaded me to become his wife. His wife he called it, I called it;
for we went through the religious ceremony too much slighted at the
time, and as we were both Lutherans, and M. de la Tourelle had
pretended to be of the reformed religion, a divorce from the latter
would have been easily procurable by German law both ecclesiastical and
legal, could we have summoned so fearful a man into any court.

The good doctor took me and my child by stealth to his modest dwelling;
and there I lived in the same deep refinement, never seeing the full
light of day, although when the dye had once passed away from my face
my husband did not wish me to renew it. There was no need; my yellow
hair was grey, my complexion was ashen-coloured, no creature could have
recognized the fresh-coloured, bright-haired young woman of eighteen
months before. The few people whom I saw knew me only as Madame Voss; a
widow much older than himself, whom Dr. Voss had secretly married. They
called me the Grey Woman.

He made me give you his surname. Till now you have known no other
father--while he lived you needed no father's love. Once only, only
once more, did the old terror come upon me. For some reason which I
forget, I broke through my usual custom, and went to the window of my
room for some purpose, either to shut or to open it. Looking out into
the street for an instant, I was fascinated by the sight of M. de la
Tourelle, gay, young, elegant as ever, walking along on the opposite
side of the street. The noise I had made with the window caused him to
look up; he saw me, an old grey woman, and he did not recognize me! Yet
it was not three years since we had parted, and his eyes were keen and
dreadful like those of the lynx.

I told M. Voss, on his return home, and he tried to cheer me, but the
shock of seeing M. de la Tourelle had been too terrible for me. I was
ill for long months afterwards.

Once again I saw him. Dead. He and Lefebvre were at last caught; hunted
down by the Baron de Roeder in some of their crimes. Dr. Voss had heard
of their arrest; their condemnation, their death; but he never said a
word to me, until one day he bade me show him that I loved him by my
obedience and my trust. He took me a long carriage journey, where to I
know not, for we never spoke of that day again; I was led through a
prison, into a closed court-yard, where, decently draped in the last
robes of death, concealing the marks of decapitation, lay M. de la
Tourelle, and two or three others, whom I had known at Les Rochers.

After that conviction Dr. Voss tried to persuade me to return to a more
natural mode of life, and to go out more. But although I sometimes
complied with his wish, yet the old terror was ever strong upon me, and
he, seeing what an effort it was, gave up urging me at last.

You know all the rest. How we both mourned bitterly the loss of that
dear husband and father--for such I will call him ever--and as such you
must consider him, my child, after this one revelation is over.

Why has it been made, you ask. For this reason, my child. The lover,
whom you have only known as M. Lebrun, a French artist, told me but
yesterday his real name, dropped because the blood-thirsty republicans
might consider it as too aristocratic. It is Maurice de Poissy.




CURIOUS, IF TRUE

(EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM RICHARD WHITTINGHAM, ESQ.)


You were formerly so much amused at my pride in my descent from that
sister of Calvin's, who married a Whittingham, Dean of Durham, that I
doubt if you will be able to enter into the regard for my distinguished
relation that has led me to France, in order to examine registers and
archives, which, I thought, might enable me to discover collateral
descendants of the great reformer, with whom I might call cousins. I
shall not tell you of my troubles and adventures in this research; you
are not worthy to hear of them; but something so curious befell me one
evening last August, that if I had not been perfectly certain I was
wide awake, I might have taken it for a dream.

For the purpose I have named, it was necessary that I should make Tours
my head-quarters for a time. I had traced descendants of the Calvin
family out of Normandy into the centre of France; but I found it was
necessary to have a kind of permission from the bishop of the diocese
before I could see certain family papers, which had fallen into the
possession of the Church; and, as I had several English friends at
Tours, I awaited the answer to my request to Monseigneur de----, at
that town. I was ready to accept any invitation; but I received very
few; and was sometimes a little at a loss what to do with my evenings.
The _table d'hote_ was at five o'clock; I did not wish to go to the
expense of a private sitting-room, disliked the dinnery atmosphere of
the _salle a manger_, could not play either at pool or billiards, and
the aspect of my fellow guests was unprepossessing enough to make me
unwilling to enter into any _tete-a-tete_ gamblings with them. So I
usually rose from table early, and tried to make the most of the
remaining light of the August evenings in walking briskly off to
explore the surrounding country; the middle of the day was too hot for
this purpose, and better employed in lounging on a bench in the
Boulevards, lazily listening to the distant band, and noticing with
equal laziness the faces and figures of the women who passed by.

One Thursday evening, the 18th of August it was, I think, I had gone
further than usual in my walk, and I found that it was later than I had
imagined when I paused to turn back. I fancied I could make a round; I
had enough notion of the direction in which I was, to see that by
turning up a narrow straight lane to my left I should shorten my way
back to Tours. And so I believe I should have done, could I have found
an outlet at the right place, but field-paths are almost unknown in
that part of France, and my lane, stiff and straight as any street, and
marked into terribly vanishing perspective by the regular row of
poplars on each side, seemed interminable. Of course night came on, and
I was in darkness. In England I might have had a chance of seeing a
light in some cottage only a field or two off, and asking my way from
the inhabitants; but here I could see no such welcome sight; indeed, I
believe French peasants go to bed with the summer daylight, so if there
were any habitations in the neighbourhood I never saw them. At last--I
believe I must have walked two hours in the darkness,--I saw the dusky
outline of a wood on one side of the weariful lane, and, impatiently
careless of all forest laws and penalties for trespassers, I made my
way to it, thinking that if the worst came to the worst, I could find
some covert--some shelter where I could lie down and rest, until the
morning light gave me a chance of finding my way back to Tours. But the
plantation, on the outskirts of what appeared to me a dense wood, was
of young trees, too closely planted to be more than slender stems
growing up to a good height, with scanty foliage on their summits. On I
went towards the thicker forest, and once there I slackened my pace,
and began to look about me for a good lair. I was as dainty as
Lochiel's grandchild, who made his grandsire indignant at the luxury of
his pillow of snow: this brake was too full of brambles, that felt damp
with dew; there was no hurry, since I had given up all hope of passing
the night between four walls; and I went leisurely groping about, and
trusting that there were no wolves to be poked up out of their summer
drowsiness by my stick, when all at once I saw a chateau before me, not
a quarter of a mile off, at the end of what seemed to be an ancient
avenue (now overgrown and irregular), which I happened to be crossing,
when I looked to my right, and saw the welcome sight. Large, stately,
and dark was its outline against the dusky night-sky; there were
pepper-boxes and tourelles and what-not fantastically going up into the
dim starlight. And more to the purpose still, though I could not see
the details of the building that I was now facing, it was plain enough
that there were lights in many windows, as if some great entertainment
was going on.

'They are hospitable people, at any rate,' thought I. 'Perhaps they
will give me a bed. I don't suppose French proprietaires have traps and
horses quite as plentiful as English gentlemen; but they are evidently
having a large party, and some of their guests may be from Tours, and
will give me a cast back to the Lion d'Or. I am not proud, and I am
dog-tired. I am not above hanging on behind, if need be.'

So, putting a little briskness and spirit into my walk, I went up to
the door, which was standing open, most hospitably, and showing a large
lighted hall, all hung round with spoils of the chase, armour, &c., the
details of which I had not time to notice, for the instant I stood on
the threshold a huge porter appeared, in a strange, old-fashioned
dress, a kind of livery which well befitted the general appearance of
the house. He asked me, in French (so curiously pronounced that I
thought I had hit upon a new kind of patois), my name, and whence I
came. I thought he would not be much the wiser, still it was but civil
to give it before I made my request for assistance; so, in reply, I
said:

'My name is Whittingham--Richard Whittingham, an English gentleman,
staying at ----.' To my infinite surprise, a light of pleased
intelligence came over the giant's face; he made me a low bow, and said
(still in the same curious dialect) that I was welcome, that I was long
expected.

'Long expected!' What could the fellow mean? Had I stumbled on a nest
of relations by John Calvin's side, who had heard of my genealogical
inquiries, and were gratified and interested by them? But I was too
much pleased to be under shelter for the night to think it necessary to
account for my agreeable reception before I enjoyed it. Just as he was
opening the great heavy _battants_ of the door that led from the hall
to the interior, he turned round and said:

'Apparently Monsieur le Geanquilleur is not come with you.'

'No! I am all alone; I have lost my way,'--and I was going on with my
explanation, when he, as if quite indifferent to it, led the way up a
great stone staircase, as wide as many rooms, and having on each
landing-place massive iron wickets, in a heavy framework; these the
porter unlocked with the solemn slowness of age. Indeed, a strange,
mysterious awe of the centuries that had passed away since this chateau
was built, came over me as I waited for the turning of the ponderous
keys in the ancient locks. I could almost have fancied that I heard a
mighty rushing murmur (like the ceaseless sound of a distant sea,
ebbing and flowing for ever and for ever), coming forth from the great
vacant galleries that opened out on each side of the broad staircase,
and were to be dimly perceived in the darkness above us. It was as if
the voices of generations of men yet echoed and eddied in the silent
air. It was strange, too, that my friend the porter going before me,
ponderously infirm, with his feeble old hands striving in vain to keep
the tall flambeau he held steadily before him,--strange, I say, that he
was the only domestic I saw in the vast halls and passages, or met with
on the grand staircase. At length we stood before the gilded doors that
led into the saloon where the family--or it might be the company, so
great was the buzz of voices--was assembled. I would have remonstrated
when I found he was going to introduce me, dusty and travel-smeared, in
a morning costume that was not even my best, into this grand _salon_,
with nobody knew how many ladies and gentlemen assembled; but the
obstinate old man was evidently bent upon taking me straight to his
master, and paid no heed to my words.

The doors flew open, and I was ushered into a saloon curiously full of
pale light, which did not culminate on any spot, nor proceed from any
centre, nor flicker with any motion of the air, but filled every nook
and corner, making all things deliciously distinct; different from our
light of gas or candle, as is the difference between a clear southern
atmosphere and that of our misty England.

At the first moment, my arrival excited no attention, the apartment was
so full of people, all intent on their own conversation. But my friend
the porter went up to a handsome lady of middle age, richly attired in
that antique manner which fashion has brought round again of late
years, and, waiting first in an attitude of deep respect till her
attention fell upon him, told her my name and something about me, as
far as I could guess from the gestures of the one and the sudden glance
of the eye of the other.

She immediately came towards me with the most friendly actions of
greeting, even before she had advanced near enough to speak. Then,--and
was it not strange?--her words and accent were that of the commonest
peasant of the country. Yet she herself looked highbred, and would have
been dignified had she been a shade less restless, had her countenance
worn a little less lively and inquisitive expression. I had been poking
a good deal about the old parts of Tours, and had had to understand the
dialect of the people who dwelt in the Marche au Vendredi and similar
places, or I really should not have understood my handsome hostess, as
she offered to present me to her husband, a henpecked, gentlemanly man,
who was more quaintly attired than she in the very extreme of that
style of dress. I thought to myself that in France, as in England, it
is the provincials who carry fashion to such an excess as to become
ridiculous.

However, he spoke (still in the _patois_) of his pleasure in making my
acquaintance, and led me to a strange uneasy easy-chair, much of a
piece with the rest of the furniture, which might have taken its place
without any anachronism by the side of that in the Hotel Cluny. Then
again began the clatter of French voices, which my arrival had for an
instant interrupted, and I had leisure to look about me. Opposite to me
sat a very sweet-looking lady, who must have been a great beauty in her
youth, I should think, and would be charming in old age, from the
sweetness of her countenance. She was, however, extremely fat, and on
seeing her feet laid up before her on a cushion, I at once perceived
that they were so swollen as to render her incapable of walking, which
probably brought on her excessive _embonpoint_. Her hands were plump
and small, but rather coarse-grained in texture, not quite so clean as
they might have been, and altogether not so aristocratic-looking as the
charming face. Her dress was of superb black velvet, ermine-trimmed,
with diamonds thrown all abroad over it.

Not far from her stood the least little man I had ever seen; of such
admirable proportions no one could call him a dwarf, because with that
word we usually associate something of deformity; but yet with an elfin
look of shrewd, hard, worldly wisdom in his face that marred the
impression which his delicate regular little features would otherwise
have conveyed. Indeed, I do not think he was quite of equal rank with
the rest of the company, for his dress was inappropriate to the
occasion (and he apparently was an invited, while I was an involuntary
guest); and one or two of his gestures and actions were more like the
tricks of an uneducated rustic than anything else. To explain what I
mean: his boots had evidently seen much service, and had been
re-topped, re-heeled, re-soled to the extent of cobbler's powers. Why
should he have come in them if they were not his best--his only pair?
And what can be more ungenteel than poverty? Then again he had an
uneasy trick of putting his hand up to his throat, as if he expected to
find something the matter with it; and he had the awkward habit--which
I do not think he could have copied from Dr. Johnson, because most
probably he had never heard of him--of trying always to retrace his
steps on the exact boards on which he had trodden to arrive at any
particular part of the room. Besides, to settle the question, I once
heard him addressed as Monsieur Poucet, without any aristocratic 'de'
for a prefix; and nearly every one else in the room was a marquis, at
any rate.

I say, 'nearly every one;' for some strange people had the entree;
unless, indeed, they were, like me, benighted. One of the guests I
should have taken for a servant, but for the extraordinary influence he
seemed to have over the man I took for his master, and who never did
anything without, apparently, being urged thereto by this follower. The
master, magnificently dressed, but ill at ease in his clothes as if
they had been made for some one else, was a weak-looking, handsome man,
continually sauntering about, and I almost guessed an object of
suspicion to some of the gentlemen present, which, perhaps, drove him
on the companionship of his follower, who was dressed something in the
style of an ambassador's chasseur; yet it was not a chasseur's dress
after all; it was something more thoroughly old-world; boots half way
up his ridiculously small legs, which clattered as he walked along, as
if they were too large for his little feet; and a great quantity of
grey fur, as trimming to coat, court mantle, boots, cap--everything.
You know the way in which certain countenances remind you perpetually
of some animal, be it bird or beast! Well, this chasseur (as I will
call him for want of a better name) was exceedingly like the great
Tom-cat that you have seen so often in my chambers, and laughed at
almost as often for his uncanny gravity of demeanour. Grey whiskers has
my Tom--grey whiskers had the chasseur: grey hair overshadows the upper
lip of my Tom--grey mustachios hid that of the chasseur. The pupils of
Tom's eyes dilate and contract as I had thought cats' pupils only could
do, until I saw those of the chasseur. To be sure, canny as Tom is, the
chasseur had the advantage in the more intelligent expression. He
seemed to have obtained most complete sway over his master or patron,
whose looks he watched, and whose steps he followed, with a kind of
distrustful interest that puzzled me greatly.

There were several other groups in the more distant part of the saloon,
all of the stately old school, all grand and noble, I conjectured from
their bearing. They seemed perfectly well acquainted with each other,
as if they were in the habit of meeting. But I was interrupted in my
observations by the tiny little gentleman on the opposite side of the
room coming across to take a place beside me. It is no difficult matter
to a Frenchman to slide into conversation, and so gracefully did my
pigmy friend keep up the character of the nation, that we were almost
confidential before ten minutes had elapsed.

Now I was quite aware that the welcome which all had extended to me,
from the porter up to the vivacious lady and meek lord of the castle,
was intended for some other person. But it required either a degree of
moral courage, of which I cannot boast, or the self-reliance and
conversational powers of a bolder and cleverer man than I, to undeceive
people who had fallen into so fortunate a mistake for me. Yet the
little man by my side insinuated himself so much into my confidence,
that I had half a mind to tell him of my exact situation, and to turn
him into a friend and an ally.

'Madame is perceptibly growing older,' said he, in the midst of my
perplexity, glancing at our hostess.

'Madame is still a very fine woman,' replied I.

'Now, is it not strange,' continued he, lowering his voice, 'how women
almost invariably praise the absent, or departed, as if they were
angels of light while as for the present, or the living'--here he
shrugged up his little shoulders, and made an expressive pause. 'Would
you believe it! Madame is always praising her late husband to
monsieur's face; till, in fact, we guests are quite perplexed how to
look: for, you know, the late M. de Retz's character was quite
notorious,--everybody has heard of him.' All the world of Touraine,
thought I, but I made an assenting noise.

At this instant, monsieur our host came up to me, and with a civil look
of tender interest (such as some people put on when they inquire after
your mother, about whom they do not care one straw), asked if I had
heard lately how my cat was? 'How my cat was!' What could the man mean?
My cat! Could he mean the tailless Tom, born in the Isle of Man, and
now supposed to be keeping guard against the incursions of rats and
mice into my chambers in London? Tom is, as you know, on pretty good
terms with some of my friends, using their legs for rubbing-posts
without scruple, and highly esteemed by them for his gravity of
demeanour, and wise manner of winking his eyes. But could his fame have
reached across the Channel? However, an answer must be returned to the
inquiry, as monsieur's face was bent down to mine with a look of polite
anxiety; so I, in my turn, assumed an expression of gratitude, and
assured him that, to the best of my belief, my cat was in remarkably
good health.

'And the climate agrees with her?'

'Perfectly,' said I, in a maze of wonder at this deep solicitude in a
tailless cat who had lost one foot and half an ear in some cruel trap.
My host smiled a sweet smile, and, addressing a few words to my little
neighbour, passed on.

'How wearisome those aristocrats are!' quoth my neighbour, with a
slight sneer. 'Monsieur's conversation rarely extends to more than two
sentences to any one. By that time his faculties are exhausted, and he
needs the refreshment of silence. You and I, monsieur, are, at any
rate, indebted to our own wits for our rise in the world!'

Here again I was bewildered! As you know, I am rather proud of my
descent from families which, if not noble themselves, are allied to
nobility,--and as to my 'rise in the world'--if I had risen, it would
have been rather for balloon-like qualities than for mother-wit, to
being unencumbered with heavy ballast either in my head or my pockets.
However, it was my cue to agree: so I smiled again.

'For my part,' said he, 'if a man does not stick at trifles, if he
knows how to judiciously add to, or withhold facts, and is not
sentimental in his parade of humanity, he is sure to do well; sure to
affix a _de_ or _von_ to his name, and end his days in comfort. There
is an example of what I am saying'--and he glanced furtively at the
weak-looking master of the sharp, intelligent servant, whom I have
called the chasseur.

'Monsieur le Marquis would never have been anything but a miller's son,
if it had not been for the talents of his servant. Of course you know
his antecedents?'

I was going to make some remarks on the changes in the order of the
peerage since the days of Louis XVI.--going, in fact, to be very
sensible and historical--when there was a slight commotion among the
people at the other end of the room. Lacqueys in quaint liveries must
have come in from behind the tapestry, I suppose (for I never saw them
enter, though I sate right opposite to the doors), and were handing
about the slight beverages and slighter viands which are considered
sufficient refreshments, but which looked rather meagre to my hungry
appetite. These footmen were standing solemnly opposite to a
lady,--beautiful, splendid as the dawn, but--sound asleep in a
magnificent settee. A gentleman who showed so much irritation at her
ill-timed slumbers, that I think he must have been her husband, was
trying to awaken her with actions not far removed from shakings. All in
vain; she was quite unconscious of his annoyance, or the smiles of the
company, or the automatic solemnity of the waiting footman, or the
perplexed anxiety of monsieur and madame.

My little friend sat down with a sneer, as if his curiosity was
quenched in contempt.

'Moralists would make an infinity of wise remarks on that scene,' said
he. 'In the first place, note the ridiculous position into which their
superstitious reverence for rank and title puts all these people.
Because monsieur is a reigning prince over some minute principality,
the exact situation of which no one has as yet discovered, no one must
venture to take their glass of eau sucre till Madame la Princesse
awakens; and, judging from past experience, those poor lacqueys may
have to stand for a century before that happens. Next--always speaking
as a moralist, you will observe--note how difficult it is to break off
bad habits acquired in youth!'

Just then the prince succeeded, by what means I did not see, in awaking
the beautiful sleeper. But at first she did not remember where she was,
and looking up at her husband with loving eyes, she smiled and said:

'Is it you, my prince?'

But he was too conscious of the suppressed amusement of the spectators
and his own consequent annoyance, to be reciprocally tender, and turned
away with some little French expression, best rendered into English by
'Pooh, pooh, my dear!'

After I had had a glass of delicious wine of some unknown quality, my
courage was in rather better plight than before, and I told my cynical
little neighbour--whom I must say I was beginning to dislike--that I
had lost my way in the wood, and had arrived at the chateau quite by
mistake.

He seemed mightily amused at my story; said that the same thing had
happened to himself more than once; and told me that I had better luck
than he had on one of these occasions, when, from his account, he must
have been in considerable danger of his life. He ended his story by
making me admire his boots, which he said he still wore, patched though
they were, and all their excellent quality lost by patching, because
they were of such a first-rate make for long pedestrian excursions.
'Though, indeed,' he wound up by saying, 'the new fashion of railroads
would seem to supersede the necessity for this description of boots.'

When I consulted him as to whether I ought to make myself known to my
host and hostess as a benighted traveller, instead of the guest whom
they had taken me for, he exclaimed, 'By no means! I hate such
squeamish morality.' And he seemed much offended by my innocent
question, as if it seemed by implication to condemn something in
himself. He was offended and silent; and just at this moment I caught
the sweet, attractive eyes of the lady opposite--that lady whom I named
at first as being no longer in the bloom of youth, but as being
somewhat infirm about the feet, which were supported on a raised
cushion before her. Her looks seemed to say, 'Come here, and let us
have some conversation together;' and, with a bow of silent excuse to
my little companion, I went across to the lame old lady. She
acknowledged my coming with the prettiest gesture of thanks possible;
and, half apologetically, said, 'It is a little dull to be unable to
move about on such evenings as this; but it is a just punishment to me
for my early vanities. My poor feet, that were by nature so small, are
now taking their revenge for my cruelty in forcing them into such
little slippers ... Besides, monsieur,' with a pleasant smile, 'I
thought it was possible you might be weary of the malicious sayings of
your little neighbour. He has not borne the best character in his
youth, and such men are sure to be cynical in their old age.'

'Who is he?' asked I, with English abruptness.

'His name is Poucet, and his father was, I believe, a woodcutter, or
charcoal burner, or something of the sort. They do tell sad stories of
connivance at murder, ingratitude, and obtaining money on false
pretences--but you will think me as bad as he if I go on with my
slanders. Rather let us admire the lovely lady coming up towards us,
with the roses in her hand--I never see her without roses, they are so
closely connected with her past history, as you are doubtless aware.
Ah, beauty!' said my companion to the lady drawing near to us, 'it is
like you to come to me, now that I can no longer go to you.' Then
turning to me, and gracefully drawing me into the conversation, she
said, 'You must know that, although we never met until we were both
married, we have been almost like sisters ever since. There have been
so many points of resemblance in our circumstances, and I think I may
say in our characters. We had each two elder sisters--mine were but
half-sisters, though--who were not so kind to us as they might have
been.'

'But have been sorry for it since,' put in the other lady.

'Since we have married princes,' continued the same lady, with an arch
smile that had nothing of unkindness in it, 'for we both have married
far above our original stations in life; we are both unpunctual in our
habits, and, in consequence of this failing of ours, we have both had
to suffer mortification and pain.'

'And both are charming,' said a whisper close behind me. 'My lord the
marquis, say it--say, "And both are charming."'

'And both are charming,' was spoken aloud by another voice. I turned,
and saw the wily cat-like chasseur, prompting his master to make civil
speeches.

The ladies bowed with that kind of haughty acknowledgement which shows
that compliments from such a source are distasteful. But our trio of
conversation was broken up, and I was sorry for it. The marquis looked
as if he had been stirred up to make that one speech, and hoped that he
would not be expected to say more; while behind him stood the chasseur,
half impertinent and half servile in his ways and attitudes. The
ladies, who were real ladies, seemed to be sorry for the awkwardness of
the marquis, and addressed some trifling questions to him, adapting
themselves to the subjects on which he could have no trouble in
answering. The chasseur, meanwhile, was talking to himself in a
growling tone of voice. I had fallen a little into the background at
this interruption in a conversation which promised to be so pleasant,
and I could not help hearing his words.

'Really, De Carabas grows more stupid every day. I have a great mind to
throw off his boots, and leave him to his fate. I was intended for a
court, and to a court I will go, and make my own fortune as I have made
his. The emperor will appreciate my talents.'

And such are the habits of the French, or such his forgetfulness of
good manners in his anger, that he spat right and left on the
parquetted floor.

Just then a very ugly, very pleasant-looking man, came towards the two
ladies to whom I had lately been speaking, leading up to them a
delicate, fair woman, dressed all in the softest white, as if she were
_vouee au blanc_. I do not think there was a bit of colour about her. I
thought I heard her making, as she came along, a little noise of
pleasure, not exactly like the singing of a tea-kettle, nor yet like
the cooing of a dove, but reminding me of each sound.

'Madame de Mioumiou was anxious to see you,' said he, addressing the
lady with the roses, 'so I have brought her across to give you a
pleasure!' What an honest, good face! but oh! how ugly! And yet I liked
his ugliness better than most persons' beauty. There was a look of
pathetic acknowledgement of his ugliness, and a deprecation of your too
hasty judgement, in his countenance that was positively winning. The
soft, white lady kept glancing at my neighbour the chasseur, as if they
had had some former acquaintance, which puzzled me very much, as they
were of such different rank. However, their nerves were evidently
strung to the same tune, for at a sound behind the tapestry, which was
more like the scuttering of rats and mice than anything else, both
Madame de Mioumiou and the chasseur started with the most eager look of
anxiety on their countenances, and by their restless movements--madame's
panting, and the fiery dilation of his eyes--one might see that
commonplace sounds affected them both in a manner very different to the
rest of the company. The ugly husband of the lovely lady with the roses
now addressed himself to me.

'We are much disappointed,' he said, 'in finding that monsieur is not
accompanied by his countryman--le grand Jean d'Angleterre; I cannot
pronounce his name rightly'--and he looked at me to help him out.

'Le grand Jean d'Angleterre!' now who was le grand Jean d'Angleterre?
John Bull? John Russell? John Bright?

'Jean--Jean'--continued the gentleman, seeing my embarrassment. 'Ah,
these terrible English names--"Jean de Geanquilleur!"'

I was as wise as ever. And yet the name struck me as familiar, but
slightly disguised. I repeated it to myself. It was mighty like John
the Giant-killer, only his friends always call that worthy 'Jack'. I
said the name aloud.

'Ah, that is it!' said he. 'But why has he not accompanied you to our
little reunion to-night?'

I had been rather puzzled once or twice before, but this serious
question added considerably to my perplexity. Jack the Giant-killer had
once, it is true, been rather an intimate friend of mine, as far as
(printer's) ink and paper can keep up a friendship, but I had not heard
his name mentioned for years; and for aught I knew he lay enchanted
with King Arthur's knights, who lie entranced until the blast of the
trumpets of four mighty kings shall call them to help at England's
need. But the question had been asked in serious earnest by that
gentleman, whom I more wished to think well of me than I did any other
person in the room. So I answered respectfully that it was long since I
had heard anything of my countryman; but that I was sure it would have
given him as much pleasure as it was doing myself to have been present
at such an agreeable gathering of friends. He bowed, and then the lame
lady took up the word.

'To-night is the night when, of all the year, this great old forest
surrounding the castle is said to be haunted by the phantom of a little
peasant girl who once lived hereabouts; the tradition is that she was
devoured by a wolf. In former days I have seen her on this night out of
yonder window at the end of the gallery. Will you, ma belle, take
monsieur to see the view outside by the moonlight (you may possibly see
the phantom-child); and leave me to a little _tete-a-tete_ with your
husband?'

With a gentle movement the lady with the roses complied with the
other's request, and we went to a great window, looking down on the
forest, in which I had lost my way. The tops of the far-spreading and
leafy trees lay motionless beneath us in the pale, wan light, which
shows objects almost as distinct in form, though not in colour, as by
day. We looked down on the countless avenues, which seemed to converge
from all quarters to the great old castle; and suddenly across one,
quite near to us, there passed the figure of a little girl, with the
'capuchon' on, that takes the place of a peasant girl's bonnet in
France. She had a basket on one arm, and by her, on the side to which
her head was turned, there went a wolf. I could almost have said it was
licking her hand, as if in penitent love, if either penitence or love
had ever been a quality of wolves,--but though not of living, perhaps
it may be of phantom wolves.

'There, we have seen her!' exclaimed my beautiful companion. 'Though so
long dead, her simple story of household goodness and trustful
simplicity still lingers in the hearts of all who have ever heard of
her; and the country-people about here say that seeing that
phantom-child on this anniversary brings good luck for the year. Let us
hope that we shall share in the traditionary good fortune. Ah! here is
Madame de Retz--she retains the name of her first husband, you know, as
he was of higher rank than the present.' We were joined by our hostess.

'If monsieur is fond of the beauties of nature and art,' said she,
perceiving that I had been looking at the view from the great window,
'he will perhaps take pleasure in seeing the picture.' Here she sighed,
with a little affectation of grief. 'You know the picture I allude to,'
addressing my companion, who bowed assent, and smiled a little
maliciously, as I followed the lead of madame.

I went after her to the other end of the saloon, noting by the way with
what keen curiosity she caught up what was passing either in word or
action on each side of her. When we stood opposite to the end wall, I
perceived a full-length picture of a handsome, peculiar-looking man,
with--in spite of his good looks--a very fierce and scowling
expression. My hostess clasped her hands together as her arms hung down
in front, and sighed once more. Then, half in soliloquy, she said:

'He was the love of my youth; his stern yet manly character first
touched this heart of mine. When--when shall I cease to deplore his
loss!'

Not being acquainted with her enough to answer this question (if,
indeed, it were not sufficiently answered by the fact of her second
marriage), I felt awkward; and, by way of saying something, I remarked:

'The countenance strikes me as resembling something I have seen
before--in an engraving from an historical picture, I think; only, it
is there the principal figure in a group: he is holding a lady by her
hair, and threatening her with his scimitar, while two cavaliers are
rushing up the stairs, apparently only just in time to save her life.'

'Alas, alas!' said she, 'you too accurately describe a miserable
passage in my life, which has often been represented in a false light.
The best of husbands'--here she sobbed, and became slightly
inarticulate with her grief--'will sometimes be displeased. I was young
and curious, he was justly angry with my disobedience--my brothers were
too hasty--the consequence is, I became a widow!'

After due respect for her tears, I ventured to suggest some commonplace
consolation. She turned round sharply:--

'No, monsieur: my only comfort is that I have never forgiven the
brothers who interfered so cruelly, in such an uncalled-for manner,
between my dear husband and myself. To quote my friend Monsieur
Sganarelle--"Ce sont petites choses qui sont de temps en temps
necessaires dans l'amitie; et cinq ou six coups d'epee entre gens qui
s'aiment ne font que ragaillardir l'affection." You observe the
colouring is not quite what it should be?'

'In this light the beard is of rather a peculiar tint,' said I.

'Yes: the painter did not do it justice. It was most lovely, and gave
him such a distinguished air, quite different from the common herd.
Stay, I will show you the exact colour, if you will come near this
flambeau!' And going near the light, she took off a bracelet of hair,
with a magnificent clasp of pearls. It was peculiar, certainly. I did
not know what to say. 'His precious lovely beard!' said she. 'And the
pearls go so well with the delicate blue!'

Her husband, who had come up to us, and waited till her eye fell upon
him before venturing to speak, now said, 'It is strange Monsieur Ogre
is not yet arrived!'

'Not at all strange,' said she, tartly. 'He was always very stupid, and
constantly falls into mistakes, in which he comes worse off; and it is
very well he does, for he is credulous and cowardly fellow. Not at all
strange! If you will'--turning to her husband, so that I hardly heard
her words, until I caught--'Then everybody would have their rights, and
we should have no more trouble. Is it not, monsieur?' addressing me.

'If I were in England, I should imagine madame was speaking of the
reform bill, or the millennium,--but I am in ignorance.'

And just as I spoke, the great folding-doors were thrown open wide, and
every one started to their feet to greet a little old lady, leaning on
a thin black wand--and--

'Madame la Feemarraine,' was announced by a chorus of sweet shrill
voices.

And in a moment I was lying in the grass close by a hollow oak-tree,
with the slanting glory of the dawning day shining full in my face, and
thousands of little birds and delicate insects piping and warbling out
their welcome to the ruddy splendour.






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