Chantry House

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Mrs. Fordyce tearfully kissed him; her husband called him a little
hero, as if in joke, then gravely blessed him; and he looked,
Clarence related, as if he had been in the greatest possible
disgrace.

It was the second time that one of us had saved a life from
drowning, but there was none of the exultation we had felt that time
before in London. It was a much graver feeling, where the danger
had really been greater, and the rescue had been of one so dear to
us. It was tempered likewise by anxiety about our dear Ellen--ours,
alas, no longer! She was laid up for several days, and it was
thought better that she should not see Emily till she had recovered;
but after a week had passed, her father drove over to discuss some
plans for the Poor-Law arrangements, and begged my sister to go back
in the carriage and spend the day with his daughter.

We brothers could now look forward to some real intelligence; we
became restless; and in the afternoon Clarence and I set out with
the donkey-chair on the woodland path to meet Emily. We gained more
than we had hoped, for as we came round one of the turns in the
winding path, up the hanging beech-wood, we came on the two friends-
-Ellen, a truly Una-like figure, in her white dress with her black
scarf making a sable stole. Perhaps we betrayed some confusion, for
there was a bright flush on her cheeks as she came towards us, and,
standing straight up, said, 'Clarence, Edward, I am so glad you are
here; I wanted to see you. I wanted--to say--I know he could not
help it. It was his generosity--helping those that need it; and--
and--I'm not angry. And though that's all over, you'll always be my
brothers, won't you?'

She held her outstretched hands to us both. I could not help it, I
drew her down, and kissed her brow; Clarence clasped her other hand
and held it to his lips, but neither of us could utter a word.

She turned back and went quietly away through the wood, while Emily
sank down under the beech-tree in a paroxysm of grief. You may see
which it was, for Clarence cut out 'E. M. F., 1835' upon the bark.
He soothed and caressed poor Emily as in old nursery troubles; and
presently she told us that it would be long before we saw that dear
one again, for Mrs. Fordyce was going to take her away on the
morrow.

Mrs. Fordyce had seen Emily in private, before letting her go to
Ellen. There was evidently a great wish to be kind. Mrs. Fordyce
said she could never forget what she owed to us all, and could not
think of blaming any of us. 'But,' she said, 'you are a sensible
girl, Emily,'--'how I hate being called a sensible girl,' observed
the poor child, in parenthesis,--'and you must see that it is
desirable not to encourage her to indulge in needless discussion
after she once understands the facts.' She added that she thought a
cessation of present intercourse would be wise till the sore was in
some degree healed. She had not been satisfied about her daughter's
health for some time, and meant to take her to Bath the next day to
consult a physician, and then decide what would be best. 'And, my
dear,' she said, 'if there should be a slackening of correspondence,
do not take it as unkindness, but as a token that my poor child is
recovering her tone. Do not discontinue writing to her, but be
guarded, and perhaps less rapid, in replying.'

It was for her friendship that poor Emily wept so bitterly--the
first friendship that had been an enthusiasm to her; looking at it
as a cruel injustice that Griff's misdoing should separate them.
The prediction that all might be lived down and forgotten was too
vague and distant to be much consolation; indeed, we were too young
to take it in.

We had it all over again in a somewhat grotesque form when, at
another turn in the wood, we came upon Martyn and Anne, loaded with
treasures from their robbers' cave, some of which were bestowed in
my chair, the others carried off between Anne and her not very
willing nursery-maid.

Anne kissed us all round, and augured cheerfully that she should lay
up a store of shells and rocks by the seaside to make 'a perfect
Robinson Crusoe cavern,' she said, 'and then Clarence can come and
be the Spaniards and the savages. But that won't be till next
summer,' she added, shaking her head. 'I shall get Ellen to tell
Emily what shells I find, and then she can tell Martyn; for mamma
says girls never write to boys unless they are their brothers! And
now Martyn will never be my brother,' she added ruefully.

'You will always be our darling,' I said.

'That's not the same as your sister,' she answered. However, amid
auguries of the combination of robbers and Robinson Crusoe, the
parting was effected, and Anne borne off by the maid; while we had
Martyn on our hands, stamping about and declaring that it was very
hard that because Griff chose to be a faithless, inconstant ruffian,
all his pleasure and comfort in life should be stopped! He said
such outrageous things that, between scolding him and laughing at
him, Emily had been somewhat cheered by the time we reached the
house.

My father had written to Griffith, in his first displeasure, curt
wishes that he might not have reason to repent of the step he had
taken, though he had not gone the right way to obtain a blessing.
As it was not suitable that a man should be totally dependent on his
wife, his allowance should be continued; but under present
circumstances he must perceive that he and Lady Peacock could not be
received at Chantry House. We were shown the letter, and thought it
terribly brief and cold; but my mother said it would be weak to
offer forgiveness that was not sought, and my father was specially
exasperated at the absence of all contrition as to the treatment of
Ellen. All Griff had vouchsafed on that head was--the rupture had
been the Fordyces' doing; he was not bound. As to intercourse with
him, Clarence and I might act as we saw fit.

'Only,' said my father, as Clarence was leaving home, 'I trust you
not to get yourself involved in this set.'

Clarence gave a queer smile, 'They would not take me as a gift,
papa.'

And as my father turned from the hall door, he laid his hand on his
wife's arm, and said, 'Who would have told us what that young fellow
would be to us.'

She sighed, and said, 'He is not twenty-three; he has plenty of
money, and is very fond of Griff.'

CHAPTER XXXIII--THE RIVER'S BANK

'And my friend rose up in the shadows,
And turned to me,
"Be of good cheer," I said faintly,
For He called thee.'

B. M.

Mr. Fordyce waited at Hillside till after Sunday, and then went to
Bath to hear the verdict of the physician. He returned as much
depressed as it was in his sanguine nature to be, for great delicacy
of the lungs had been detected; and to prevent the recent chill from
leaving permanent injury, Ellen must have a winter abroad, and warm
sea or mountain air at once. Whether the disease were
constitutional and would have come on at all events no one could
tell.

Consumption was much less understood half a century ago; codliver
oil was unknown; and stethoscopes were new inventions, only used by
the more advanced of the faculty. The only escape poor Parson Frank
had from accepting the doom was in disbelieving that a thing like a
trumpet could really reveal the condition of the chest. Moreover,
Mrs. Fordyce had had a brother who had, under the famous cowhouse
cure, recovered enough to return home, and be killed by the
upsetting of a stage coach.

Mrs. Fordyce took her daughter to Lyme, and waited there till her
husband had found a curate and made all arrangements. It must have
been very inconvenient not to come home; but, no doubt, she wanted
to prevent any more partings. Then they went abroad, travelling
slowly, and seeing all the sights that came in their way, to
distract Ellen's thoughts. She was not allowed to hear what ailed
her; but believed her languor and want of interest in everything to
be the effect of the blow she had received, struggling to exert
herself, and to enter gratefully into the enjoyments provided for
her. She was not prevented from writing to Emily; indeed, no one
liked to hinder anything she wished, but they were guide-book
letters, describing all she saw as a kind of duty, but scarcely
concealing the trouble it was to look. Such sentences would slip
out as 'This is a nice quiet place, and I am happy to say there is
nothing that one ought to see.' Or, 'I sat in the cathedral at
Lucerne while the others were going round. The organ was playing,
and it was such rest!' Or, again, after a day on the Lago di Como,
'It was glorious, and if you and Edward were here, perhaps the
beauty would penetrate my sluggish soul!'

Ellen's sluggish soul!--when we remembered her keen ecstasy at the
Valley of Rocks.

Those letters were our chief interest in an autumn which seemed
dreary to us, in spite of friendly visitors; for had not our family
hope and joy been extinguished? There was no direct communication
with Griffith after his unpleasant reply to my father's letter; but
Clarence saw the newly married pair on their return to Lady
Peacock's house in London, and reported that they were very kind and
friendly to him, and gave him more invitations than he could accept.
Being cross-examined when he came home for Christmas, he declared
his conviction that Lady Peacock had married Griff entirely from
affection, and that he had been--well--flattered into it. They
seemed very fond of each other now, and were launching out into all
sorts of gaieties; but though he did not tell my father, he confided
to me that he feared that Griffith had been disappointed in the
amount of fortune at his wife's disposal.

It was at that Christmas time, one night, having found an intrusive
cat upon my bed, Clarence carried her out at the back door close to
his room, and came back in haste and rather pale. 'It is quite true
about the lady and the light being seen out of doors,' he said in an
awe-stricken voice, 'I have just seen her flit from the mullion room
to the ruin.'

We only noted the fact in that ghost-diary of ours--we told nobody,
and looked no more. We already believed that these appearances on
the lawn must be the cause that every window, up to the attics on
the garden side of the house, were so heavily shuttered and barred
that there was no opening them without noise. Indeed, those on the
ground floor had in addition bells attached to them. No doubt the
former inhabitants had done their best to prevent any one from
seeing or inquiring into what was unacknowledged and unaccountable.
It might be only a coincidence, but we could not help remarking that
we had seen and heard nothing of her during the engagement which
might have united the two families; though, of course, it would be
ridiculous to suppose her cognisant of it, like the White Lady of
Avenel, dancing for joy at Mary's marriage with Halbert Glendinning.

The Fordyces had settled at Florence, where they suffered a great
deal more from cold than they would have done at Hillside; and there
was such a cessation of Ellen's letters that Emily feared that Mrs.
Fordyce had attained her wish and separated the friends effectually.
However, Frank Fordyce beguiled his enforced leisure with long
letters to my father on home business, Austrian misgovernment, and
the Italian Church and people, full of shrewd observations and new
lights; and one of these ended thus, 'My poor lassie has been in bed
for ten days with a severe cold. She begs me to say that she has
begun a letter to Emily, and hopes soon to finish it. We had
thought her gaining ground, but she is sadly pulled down. Fiat
voluntas.'

The letter, which had been begun, never came; but, after three long
weeks, there was one from the dear patient herself, mentioning her
illness, and declaring that it was so comfortable to be allowed to
be tired, and to go nowhere and see nothing except the fragment of
beautiful blue sky, and the corner of a campanile, and the flowers
Anne brought in daily.

As soon as she could be moved, they took her to Genoa, where she
revived enough to believe that she should be well if she were at
home again, and to win from her parents a promise to take her to
Hillside as soon as the spring winds were over. So anxious was she
that, as soon as there was any safety in travelling, the party began
moving northwards, going by sea to Marseilles to avoid the Corniche,
so early in the year. There were many fluctuations, and it was only
her earnest yearning for home and strong resolution that could have
made her parents persevere; but at last they were at Hillside, just
after Whitsuntide, in the last week of May.

Frank Fordyce walked over to see us on the very evening after their
arrival. He was much altered, his kindly handsome face looked
almost as if he had gone through an illness; and, indeed, apart from
all his anxiety and sorrow, he had pined in foreign parts for his
human flock, as well as his bullocks and his turnips. He had also
read, thought, and observed a great deal, and had left his long
boyhood behind him, during a space for study and meditation such as
he had never had before.

He was quite hopeless of his daughter's recovery, and made no secret
of it. In passing through London the best advice had been taken,
but only to obtain the verdict that the case was beyond all skill,
and that it was only a matter of weeks, when all that could be done
was to give as much gratification as possible. The one thing that
Ellen did care about was to be at home--to have Emily with her, and
once more see her school children, her church, and her garden.
Tired as she was she had sprung up in the carriage at the first
glimpse of Hillside spire, and had leant forward at the window,
nodding and smiling her greetings to all the villagers.

She had been taken at once to her room and her bed, but her father
had promised to beg Emily to come up by noon on the morrow. Then he
sat talking of local matters, not able to help showing what infinite
relief it was to him to be at home, and what music to his ears was
the Somersetshire dialect and deep English voice 'after all those
thin, shrill, screeching foreigners.'

Poor Emily! It was in mingled grief and gladness that she set off
the next day, with the trepidation of one to whom sickness and decay
were hitherto unknown. When she returned, it was in a different
mood, unable to believe the doctors could be right, and in the
delight of having her own bright, sweet Ellen back again, all
herself. They had talked, but more of home and village than of
foreign experiences; and though Ellen did not herself assist, she
had much enjoyed watching the unpacking of the numerous gifts which
had cost a perfect fortune at the Custom House. No one seemed
forgotten--villagers, children, servants, friends. Some of these
tokens are before me still. The Florentine mosaic paper-weight she
brought me presses this very sheet; the antique lamp she gave my
father is on the mantelpiece; Clarence's engraving of Raffaelle's
St. Michael hangs opposite to me on the wall. Most precious in our
eyes was the collection of plants, dried and labelled by herself,
which she brought to Emily and me--poor mummies now, but redolent of
undying affection. Her desire was to bestow all her keepsakes with
her own hands, and in most cases she actually did so--a few daily,
as her strength served her. The little figures in costume, coloured
prints, Swiss carvings, French knicknacks, are preserved in many a
Hillside cottage as treasured relics of 'our young lady.' Many
years later, Martyn recognised a Hillside native in a back street in
London by a little purple-blue picture of Vesuvius, and thereby
reached the soft spot in a nearly dried-up heart.

So bright and playful was the dear girl over all her old familiar
interests that we inexperienced beings believed not only that the
wound to her affections was healed, but that she either did not know
or did not realise the sentence that had been pronounced on her; but
when this was repeated to her mother, it was met by a sad smile and
the reply that we only saw her in her best hours. Still, through
the summer, it was impossible to us to accept the truth; she looked
so lovely, was so cheerful, and took such delight in all that was
about her.

With the first cold, however, she seemed to shrivel up, and the bad
nights extended into the days. Emily ascribed the change to the
lack of going out into the air, and always found reasons for the
increased languor and weakness; till at last there came a day when
my poor little sister seemed as if the truth had broken upon her for
the first time, when Ellen talked plainly to her of their parting,
and had asked us both, 'her dear brother and sister,' to be with her
at her Communion on All Saints' Day.

She had written a little letter to Clarence, begging his forgiveness
for having cut him, and treated him with the scorn which, I believe,
was the chief fault that weighed upon her conscience; and, hearing
my father's voice in the house, she sent a message to beg him to
come and see her in her mother's dressing-room--that very window
where I had first heard her voice, refusing to come down to 'those
Winslows.' She had sent for him to entreat him to forgive Griffith
and recall the pair to Chantry House. 'Not now,' she said, 'but
when I am gone.'

My father could deny her nothing, though he showed that the sight of
her made the entreaty all the harder to him; and she pleaded, 'But
you know this was not his doing. I never was strong, and it had
begun before. Only think how sad it would have been for him.'

My father would have promised anything with that wasted hand on his,
those fervent eyes gazing on him, and he told her he would have
given his pardon long ago, if it had been sought, as it never had
been.

'Ah! perhaps he did not dare!' she said. 'Won't you write when all
this is over, and then you will be one family again as you used to
be?'

He promised, though he scarcely knew where Griffith was. Clarence,
however, did. He had answered Ellen's letter, and it had made him
ask for a few days' leave of absence. So he came down on the
Saturday, and was allowed a quarter of an hour beside Ellen's sofa
in the Sunday evening twilight. He brought away the calm, rapt
expression I had sometimes seen on his face at church, and Ellen
made a special entreaty that he might share the morrow's feast.

There are some things that cannot be written of, and that was one.
Still we had not thought the end near at hand, though on Tuesday
morning a message was sent that Ellen was suffering and exhausted,
and could not see Emily. It was a wild, stormy day, with fierce
showers of sleet, and we clung to the hope that consideration for my
sister had prompted the message. In the afternoon Clarence battled
with a severe gale, made his way to Hillside, and heard that the
weather affected the patient, and that there was much bodily
distress. For one moment he saw her father, who said in broken
accents that we could only pray that the spirit might be freed
without much more suffering, 'though no doubt it is all right.'

Before daylight, before any one in the house was up, Clarence was
mounting the hill in the gusts that had done their work on the trees
and were subsiding with the darkness. And just as he was beginning
the descent, as the sun tipped the Hillside steeple with light, he
heard the knell, and counted the twenty-one for the years of our
Ellen--for ours she will always be.

'Somehow,' he told me, 'I could not help taking off my hat and
giving thanks for her, and then all the drops on all the boughs
began sparkling, and there was a hush on all around as if she were
passing among the angels, and a thrush broke out into a regular song
of jubilee!'

CHAPTER XXXIV--NOT IN VAIN

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

KEBLE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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