Chantry House

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> Chantry House

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'May I ask, Winslow, if you have any plans for that poor boy?'

'Edward?' said my father, almost wilfully misunderstanding. 'His
ambition is to be curator of something in the British Museum, isn't
it?'

Mr. Castleford explained that he meant the other, and my father
sadly answered that he hardly knew; he supposed the only thing was
to send him to a private tutor, but where to find a fit one he did
not know and besides, what could be his aim? Sir John Griffith had
said he was only fit for the Church, 'But one does not wish to
dispose of a tarnished article there.'

'Certainly not,' said Mr. Castleford; and then he spoke words that
rejoiced my heart, though they only made my father groan, bidding
him remember that it was not so much actual guilt as the accident of
Clarence's being in the Navy that had given so serious a character
to his delinquencies. If he had been at school, perhaps no one
would ever have heard of them, 'Though I don't say,' added the good
man, casting a new light on the subject, 'that it would have been
better for him in the end.' Then, quite humbly, for he knew my
mother especially had a disdain for trade, he asked what my father
would think of letting him give Clarence work in the office for the
present. 'I know,' he said, 'it is not the line your family might
prefer, but it is present occupation; and I do not think you could
well send a youth who has seen so much of the world back to
schooling. Besides, this would keep him under your own eye.'

My father was greatly touched by the kindness, but he thought it
right to set before Mr. Castleford the very worst side of poor
Clarence; declaring that he durst not answer for a boy who had
never, in spite of pains and punishments, learnt to speak truth at
home or abroad, repeating Captain Brydone's dreadful report, and
even adding that, what was most grievous of all, there was an
affectation of piety about him that could scarcely be anything but
self-deceit and hypocrisy. 'Now,' he said, 'my eldest son,
Griffith, is just a boy, makes no profession, is not--as I am afraid
you have seen--exemplary at church, when Clarence sits as meek as a
mouse, but then he is always above-board, frank and straightforward.
You know where to have a high-spirited fellow, who will tame down,
but you never know what will come next with the other. I sometimes
wonder for what error of mine Providence has seen fit to give me
such a son.'

Just then an important message came for Mr. Winslow, and he had to
hurry away, but Mr. Castleford still remained, and presently said,

'Edward, I should like to know what your eyes have been trying to
say all this time.'

'Oh, sir,' I burst out, 'do give him a chance. Indeed he never
means to do wrong. The harm is not in him. He would have been the
best of us all if he had only been let alone.'

Those were exactly my own foolish words, for which I could have
beaten myself afterwards; but Mr. Castleford only gave a slight
grave smile, and said, 'You mean that your brother's real defect is
in courage, moral and physical.'

'Yes,' I said, with a great effort at expressing myself. 'When he
is frightened, or bullied, or browbeaten, he does not know what he
is doing or saying. He is quite different when he is his own self;
only nobody can understand.'

Strange that though the favoured home son and nearly sixteen years
old, it would have been impossible to utter so much to one of our
parents. Indeed the last sentence felt so disloyal that the colour
burnt in my cheeks as the door opened; but it only admitted
Clarence, who, having heard the front door shut, thought the coast
was clear, and came in with a load of my books and dictionaries.

'Clarence,' said Mr. Castleford, and the direct address made him
start and flush, 'supposing your father consents, should you be
willing to turn your mind to a desk in my counting-house?'

He flushed deeper red, and his fingers quivered as he held by the
table. 'Thank you, sir. Anything--anything,' he said hesitatingly.

'Well,' said Mr. Castleford, with the kindest of voices, 'let us
have it out. What is in your mind? You know, I'm a sort of
godfather to you.'

'Sir, if you would only let me have a berth on board one of your
vessels, and go right away.'

'Aye, my poor boy, that's what you would like best, I've no doubt;
but look at Edward's face there, and think what that would come to
at the best!'

'Yes, I know I have no right to choose,' said Clarence, drooping his
head as before.

''Tis not that, my dear lad,' said the good man, 'but that packing
you off like that, among your inferiors in breeding and everything
else, would put an end to all hope of your redeeming the past--
outwardly I mean, of course--and lodge you in a position of
inequality to your brothers and sister, and all--'

'That's done already,' said Clarence.

'If you were a man grown it might be so,' returned Mr. Castleford,
'but bless me, how old are you?'

'Seventeen next 1st of November,' said Clarence.

'Not a bit too old for a fresh beginning,' said Mr. Castleford
cheerily. 'God helping you, you will be a brave and good man yet,
my boy--' then as my master rang at the door--'Come with me and look
at the old shop.'

Poor Clarence muttered something unintelligible, and I had to own
for him that he never went out without accounting for himself.
Whereupon our friend caused my mother to be hunted up, and explained
to her that he wanted to take Clarence out with him--making some
excuse about something they were to see together.

That walk enabled him to say something which came nearer to cheering
Clarence than anything that had passed since that sad return, and
made him think that to be connected with Mr. Castleford was the best
thing that could befall him. Mr. Castleford on his side told my
father that he was sure that the boy was good-hearted all the time,
and thoroughly repentant; but this had the less effect because
plausibility, as my father called it, was one of the qualities that
specially annoyed him in Clarence, and made him fear that his friend
might be taken in. However, the matter was discussed between the
elders, and it was determined that this most friendly offer should
be accepted experimentally. It was impressed on Clarence, with
unnecessary care, that the line of life was inferior; but that it
was his only chance of regaining anything like a position, and that
everything depended on his industry and integrity.

'Integrity!' commented Clarence, with a burning spot on his cheek
after one of these lectures; 'I believe they think me capable of
robbing the office!'

We found out, too, that the senior partner, Mr. Frith, a very crusty
old bachelor, did not like the appointment, and that it was made
quite against his will. 'You'll be getting your clerks next from
Newgate!' was what some amiable friend reported him to have said.
However, Mr. Castleford had his way, and Clarence was to begin his
work with the New Year, being in the meantime cautioned and lectured
on the crime and danger of his evil propensities more than he could
well bear. 'Oh!' he groaned, 'it serves me right, I know that very
well, but if my father only knew how I hate and abhor all those
things--and how I loathed them at the very time I was dragged into
them!'

'Why don't you tell him so?' I asked.

'That would make it no better.'

'It is not so bad as if you had gone into it willingly, and for your
own pleasure.'

'He would only think that another lie.'

No more could be said, for the idea of Clarence's untruthfulness and
depravity had become so deeply rooted in our father's mind that
there was little hope of displacing it, and even at the best his
manner was full of grave constrained pity. Those few words were
Clarence's first approach to confidence with me, but they led to
more, and he knew there was one person who did not believe the
defect was in the bent of his will so much as in its strength.

All the time the prospect of the counting-house in comparison with
the sea was so distasteful to him that I was anxious whenever he
went out alone, or even with Griffith, who despised the notion of,
as he said, sitting on a high stool, dealing in tea, so much that he
was quite capable of aiding and abetting in an escape from it. Two
considerations, however, held Clarence back; one, the timidity of
nature which shrank from so violent a step, and the other, the
strong affections that bound him to his home, though his sojourn
there was so painful. He knew the misery his flight would have been
to me; indeed I took care to let him see it.

And Griffith's return was like a fresh spring wind dispersing
vapours. He had gained an excellent scholarship at Brazenose, and
came home radiant with triumph, cheering us all up, and making a
generous use of his success. He was no letter-writer, and after
learning that the disaster and disgrace were all too certain, he
ignored the whole, and hailed Clarence on his return as if nothing
had happened. As eldest son, and almost a University man, he could
argue with our parents in a manner we never presumed on. At least I
cannot aver what he actually uttered, but probably it was a revised
version of what he thundered forth to me. 'Such nonsense! such a
shame to keep the poor beggar going about with that hang dog look,
as if he had done for himself for life! Why, I've known fellows do
ever so much worse of their own accord, and nothing come of it. If
it was found out, there might be a row and a flogging, and there was
an end of it. As to going about mourning, and keeping the whole
house in doleful dumps, as if there was never to be any good again,
it was utter folly, and so I've told Bill, and papa and mamma, both
of them!'

How this was administered, or how they took it, there is no knowing,
but Griff would neither skate nor go to the theatre, nor to any
other diversion, without his brother; and used much kindly force and
banter to unearth him from his dismal den in the back drawing-room.
He was only let alone when there were engagements with friends, and
indeed, when meetings in the streets took place, by tacit agreement,
Clarence would shrink off in the crowd as if not belonging to his
companion; and these were the moments that stung him into longing to
flee to the river, and lose the sense of shame among common sailors:
but there was always some good angel to hold him back from desperate
measures--chiefly just then, the love between us three brothers, a
love that never cooled throughout our lives, and which dear old
Griff made much more apparent at this critical time than in the old
Win and Slow days of school. That return of his enlivened us all,
and removed the terrible constraint from our meals, bringing us
back, as it were, to ordinary life and natural intercourse among
ourselves and with our neighbours.

CHAPTER VI--THE VALLEY OF HUMILIATION

'But when I lay upon the shore,
Like some poor wounded thing,
I deemed I should not evermore
Refit my wounded wing.
Nailed to the ground and fastened there,
This was the thought of my despair.'

ABP. TRENCH.

Clarence's debut at the office was not wholly unsuccessful. He
wrote a good hand, and had a good deal of method and regularity in
his nature, together with a real sense of gratitude to Mr.
Castleford; and this bore him through the weariness of his new
employment, and, what was worse, the cold reception he met with from
the other clerks. He was too quiet and reserved for the wilder
spirits, too much of a gentleman for others, and in the eyes of the
managers, and especially of the senior partner, a disgraced,
untrustworthy youth foisted on the office by Mr. Castleford's weak
partiality. That old Mr. Frith had, Clarence used to say, a
perfectly venomous way of accepting his salute, and seemed always
surprised and disappointed if he came in in time, or showed up
correct work. Indeed, the old man was disliked and feared by all
his subordinates as much as his partner was loved; and while Mr.
Castleford, with his good-natured Irish wife and merry family, lived
a life as cheerful as it was beneficent, Mr. Frith dwelt entirely
alone, in rooms over the office, preserving the habits formed when
his income had been narrow, and mistrusting everybody.

At the end of the first month of experiment, Mr. Castleford declared
himself contented with Clarence's industry and steadiness, and
permanent arrangements were made, to which Clarence submitted with
an odd sort of passive gratitude, such as almost angered my father,
who little knew how trying the position really was, nor how a
certain home-sickness for the seafaring life was tugging at the
lad's heart, and making each morning's entrance at the counting-
house an effort--each merchant-captain, redolent of the sea, an
object of envy. My mother would have sympathised here, but Clarence
feared her more than my father, and she was living in continual
dread of some explosion, so that her dark curls began to show
streaks of gray, and her face to lose its round youthfulness.

Lent brought the question of Confirmation. Under the influence of
good Bishop Blomfield, and in the wave of evangelical revival--then
at its flood height--Confirmation was becoming a more prominent
subject with religious people than it had probably ever been in our
Church, and it was recognised that some preparation was desirable
beyond the power of repeating the Church Catechism. This was all
that had been required of my father at Harrow. My mother's
godfather, a dignified clergyman, had simply said, 'I suppose, my
dear, you know all about it;' and as for the Admiral, he remarked,
'Confirmed! I never was confirmed anything but a post-captain!'

Our incumbent was more attentive to his duties, or rather recognised
more duties, than his predecessor. He preached on the subject, and
formed classes, sixteen being then the limit of age,--since the idea
of the vow, having become far more prominent than that of the
blessing, it was held that full development of the will and
understanding was needful.

I was of the requisite age, and my father spoke to the clergyman,
who called, and, as I could not attend the classes, gave me books to
read and questions to answer. Clarence read and discussed the
questions with me, showing so much more insight into them, and
fuller knowledge of Scripture than I possessed, that I exclaimed,
'Why should you not go up for Confirmation too?'

'No,' he answered mournfully. 'I must take no more vows if I can't
keep them. It would just be profane.'

I had no more to say; indeed, my parents held the same view. It was
good Mr. Castleford who saw things differently. He was a
clergyman's son, and had been bred up in the old orthodoxy, which
was just beginning to put forth fresh shoots, and, as a quasi-
godfather, he held himself bound to take an interest in our
religious life, while the sponsors, whose names stood in the family
Bible, and whose spoons reposed in the plate-chest, never troubled
themselves on the matter. I remember Clarence leaning over me and
saying, 'Mr. Castleford thinks I might be confirmed. He says it is
not so much the promise we make as of coming to Almighty God for
strength to keep what we are bound by already! He is going to speak
to papa.'

Perhaps no one except Mr. Castleford could have prevailed over the
fear of profanation in the mind of my father, who was, in his old-
fashioned way, one of the most reverent of men, and could not bear
to think of holy things being approached by one under a stigma, nor
of exposing his son to add to his guilt by taking and breaking
further pledges. However, he was struck by his friend's arguments,
and I heard him telling my mother that when he had wished to wait
till there had been time to prove sincerity of repentance by a
course of steadiness, the answer had been that it was hard to
require strength, while denying the means of grace. My mother was
scarcely convinced, but as he had consented she yielded without a
protest; and she was really glad that I should have Clarence at my
side to help me at the ceremony. The clergyman was applied to, and
consented to let Clarence attend the classes, where his knowledge,
comprehension, and behaviour were exemplary, so that a letter was
written to my father expressive of perfect satisfaction with him.
'There,' said my father, 'I knew it would be so! It is not THAT
which I want.'

The Confirmation seemed at the time a very short and perfunctory
result of our preparation; and, as things were conducted or
misconducted then, involved so much crowding and distress that I
recollect very little but clinging to Clarence's arm under a strong
sense of my infirmities,--the painful attempt at kneeling, and the
big outstretched lawn sleeves while the blessing was pronounced over
six heads at once, and then the struggle back to the pew, while the
silver-pokered apparitor looked grim at us, as though the maimed and
halt had no business to get into the way. Yet this was a great
advance upon former Confirmations, and the Bishop met my father
afterwards, and inquired most kindly after his lame son.

We were disappointed, and felt that we could not attain to the
feelings in the Confirmation poem in the Christian Year--Mr.
Castleford's gift to me. Still, I believe that, though encumbered
with such a drag as myself, Clarence, more than I did,

'Felt Him how strong, our hearts how frail,
And longed to own Him to the death.'

But the evangelical belief that dejection ought to be followed by a
full sense of pardon and assurance of salvation somewhat perplexed
and dimmed our Easter Communion. For one short moment, as Clarence
turned to help my father lift me up from the altar-rail, I saw his
face and eyes radiant with a wonderful rapt look; but it passed only
too fast, and the more than ordinary glimpse his spiritual nature
had had made him all the more sad afterwards, when he said, 'I would
give everything to know that there was any steadfastness in my
purpose to lead a new life.'

'But you are leading a new life.'

'Only because there is no one to bully me,' he said. Still, there
had been no reproach against him all the time he had been at Frith
and Castleford's, when suddenly we had a great shock.

Parties were running very high, and there were scurrilous papers
about, which my father perfectly abhorred; and one day at dinner,
when declaiming against something he had seen, he laid down strict
commands that none should be brought into the house. Then, glancing
at Clarence, something possessed him to say, 'You have not been
buying any.'

'No, sir,' Clarence answered; but a few minutes later, when we were
alone together, the others having left him to help me upstairs, he
exclaimed, 'Edward, what is to be done? I didn't buy it; but there
is one of those papers in my great-coat pocket. Pollard threw it on
my desk; and there was something in it that I thought would amuse
you.'

'Oh! why didn't you say so?'

'There I am again! I simply could not, with his eye on me!
Miserable being that I am! Oh, where is the spirit of ghostly
strength?'

'Helping you now to take it to papa in the study and explain!' I
cried; but the struggle in that tall fellow was as if he had been
seven years old instead of seventeen, ere he put his hand over his
face and gave me his arm to come out into the hall, fetch the paper,
and make his confession. Alas! we were too late. The coat had been
moved, the paper had fallen out; and there stood my mother with it
in her hand, looking at Clarence with an awful stony face of mute
grief and reproach, while he stammered forth what he had said
before, and that he was about to give it to my father. She turned
away, bitterly, contemptuously indignant and incredulous; and my
corroborations only served to give both her and my father a certain
dread of Clarence's influence over me, as though I had been either
deceived or induced to back him in deceiving them. The unlucky
incident plunged him back into the depths, just as he had begun to
emerge. Slight as it was, it was no trifle to him, in spite of
Griffith's exclamation, 'How absurd! Is a fellow to be bound to
give an account of everything he looks at as if he were six years
old? Catch me letting my mother pry into my pockets! But you are
too meek, Bill; you perfectly invite them to make a row about
nothing!'

CHAPTER VII--THE INHERITANCE

'For he that needs five thousand pound to live
Is full as poor as he that needs but five.
But if thy son can make ten pound his measure,
Then all thou addest may be called his treasure.'

GEORGE HERBERT.

It was in the spring of 1829 that my father received a lawyer's
letter announcing the death of James Winslow, Esquire, of Chantry
House, Earlscombe, and inviting him, as heir-at-law, to be present
at the funeral and opening of the will. The surprise to us all was
great. Even my mother had hardly heard of Chantry House itself, far
less as a possible inheritance; and she had only once seen James
Winslow. He was the last of the elder branch of the family, a third
cousin, and older than my father, who had known him in times long
past. When they had last met, the Squire of Chantry House was a
married man, with more than one child; my father a young barrister;
and as one lived entirely in the country and the other in town,
without any special congeniality, no intercourse had been kept up,
and it was a surprise to hear that he had left no surviving
children. My father greatly doubted whether being heir-at-law would
prove to avail him anything, since it was likely that so distant a
relation would have made a will in favour of some nearer connection
on his wife's or mother's side. He was very vague about Chantry
House, only knowing that it was supposed to be a fair property, and
he would hardly consent to take Griffith with him by the Western
Royal Mail, warning him and all the rest of us that our expectations
would be disappointed.

Nevertheless we looked out the gentlemen's seats in Paterson's Road
Book, and after much research, for Chantry House lay far off from
the main road, we came upon--'Chantry House, Earlscombe, the seat of
James Winslow, Esquire, once a religious foundation; beautifully
situated on a rising ground, commanding an extensive prospect--'

'A religious foundation!' cried Emily. 'It will be a dear delicious
old abbey, all Gothic architecture, with cloisters and ruins and
ghosts.'

'Ghosts!' said my mother severely, 'what has put such nonsense into
your head?'

Nevertheless Emily made up her mind that Chantry House would be
another Melrose, and went about repeating the moonlight scene in the
Lay of the Last Minstrel whenever she thought no one was there to
laugh at her.

My father and Griffith returned with the good news that there was no
mistake. Chantry House was really his own, with the estate
belonging to it, reckoned at 5000 pounds a year, exclusive of a
handsome provision to Miss Selby, the niece of the late Mrs.
Winslow, a spinster of a certain age, who had lived with her uncle,
and now proposed to remove to Bath. Mr. Winslow had, it appeared,
lost his only son as a schoolboy, and his daughters, like their
mother, had been consumptive. He had always been resolved that the
estate should continue in the family; but reluctance to see any one
take his son's place had withheld him from making any advances to my
father; and for several years past he had been in broken health with
failing faculties.

Of course there was much elation. Griff described as charming the
place, perched on the southern slope of a wooded hill, with a broad
fertile valley lying spread out before it, and the woods behind
affording every promise of sport. The house, my father said, was
good, odd and irregular, built at different times, but quite
habitable, and with plenty of furniture, though he opined that mamma
would think it needed modernising, to which she replied that our
present chattels would make a great difference; whereat my father,
looking at the effects of more than twenty years of London blacks,
gave a little whistle, for she was always the economical one of the
pair.

Emily, with glowing cheeks and eager eyes, entreated to know whether
it was Gothic, and had a cloister! Papa nipped her hopes of a
cloister, but there were Gothic windows and doorway, and a bit of
ruin in the garden, a fragment of the old chapel.

My father could not resign his office without notice, and, besides,
he wished Miss Selby to have leisure for leaving her home of many
years; after which there would be a few needful repairs. The delay
was not a great grievance to any of us except little Martyn. We
were much more Cockney than almost any one is in these days of
railways. We were unusually devoid of kindred on both sides, my
father's holidays were short, I was not a very movable commodity,
and economy forbade long journeys, so that we had never gone farther
than Ramsgate, where we claimed a certain lodging-house as a sort of
right every summer.

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