Geoffrey Stirling. A novel

Front matter

GEOFFEEY 8TIELING. dflf^OLDS' 3/6 SERIES OF POPULAR NOVELS, Bv WELL-KNOWN AUTHORS. (Crown Svo., Cloth.) Uniform with "Geoffrey Stirling." i. LOUIS DRAVCOTT. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd Edition. 2. GEOFFREY STIRLING. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 5th Edition. 3. BONNIE KATE. By Mrs. Leith Adams. 2nd Edition. 4. A NEW OTHELLO. By Hon. Iza Duffus Hardy. 2nd Edition. 5. THE MAID OF LONDON BRIDGE. By Somerville Gicney. 6. EVELINE WELLWOOD. By Major Norris Paul. 7. OLD LATTIMER'S LEGACY. By J. S. Fletcher. 8. THAT LITTLE GIRL. By Curtis Yorke. 4th Edition. 9. DUDLEY. By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 10. THE WILD RUTHVENS. By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 11. THE BROWN PORTMANTEAU, and other Stories. By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 12. HUSH ! By Curtis Yorke. 3rd Edition. 13. ONCE! By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 14. A ROMANCE OF MODERN LONDON.

By Curtis Yorke. 2nd Edition. 15. HIS HEART TO WIN. By Curtis Yorke. [Now Ready. ] .6. DARRELLCHEVASNEY. By Curtis Yorke. [In thePicss ] .7. BETWEEN THE^fENGt^. By Curtis Yorke. tS> [Ready November.} OTHERS IN PREPARATION. LONDON: JARROLD &> SONS, ,oa«d n, Warwick Lane. GEOFFREY STIRLING sa £lobt\. BY MRS. LEITH ADAMS — — V* (Mrs. r. S. DE COURCY LAFFAK), Author of "Aunt Hepsy's Foundling," " Madelon Lemoine,' "Louis Draycott" "Bonnie Kate," _jc. "The evil that men do lives after them."— Julius Cæsar. FIFTH EDITION. LONDON : JARROLD & SONS, 10 & 11, WARWICK LANE, E.C [AU rights reserved.] Œo MY DEAR SON FEANCIS WILLIAM LAUDERDALE ADAMS AND HIS WIFB EDYTH P R E F A C E. In presenting a new edition of this book before the public, I should like to make some allusion to the many letters I have received from people quite un known to me, asking to be told the authorship of the exquisite love-poem quoted from in so many pages of my story.

It is by the late Charles Dickens, and may be found iu an operetta written by him, entitled " The Village Coquettes." DERTIIA LAFFAN. CONTENTS. BOOK FIRST. cnir. _•_.__: I. THE GREY DAWN ...... 9 II. EUIN UPON RUIN. ROUT ON ROUT . . .20 III. AN APPEAL . 32 IV. TUB ANGEL ON TUB THRESHOLD . . .48 V. A LOVE SONO Gi VI. HER WEARY yUEST . . ... 77 VII. MRS. BUNNYCASTLE's LANDLORD . . .91 VIII. TILE WIDOW'S CURS3. ..... 103 BOOK SECOND. IX. TnE BOY DAVIE 116 X. TIIE OLD ORDER CHANGETH .... 127 XI. YIELDING PLACE TO NEW 136 XII. fortune's WHEEL 117 XIII. HAUNTED. ■ 159 XIV. FAE ABOVE RUBIES ...... 171 XV. IN TnE TOILS 182 XVI. davie's task 1^3 CONTENTS. cha?. PAGE XVII. HUNTED DOWN ....•• "05 xvni. death's counterfeit . . . . 214 xix. hester's good work ..... 225 xx. nemesis • 233 xxi. toiled ........ 246 BOOK THIRD.

Chapter I. The Grey Dawn

TnE present century was in its thirties. Life in those days seems like a far-off time, but more from the vast expanse of human progress that lies betvven then and now than from actual lapse of years. Electricity — that marvellous agency by which in these days knowledge flashes from one portion of the globe to another, more swiftly than light itself — had but just awakened at the touch of science, and was hovering upon the threshold of a career of activity at once beautiful and terrible. Since the knowledge of passing events could not " run to and fro in the earth " as now, people were content to dwell longer and more closely upon this or that marvel ; nor did wonders of all kinds and incidents of every colour jostle ea:h other, a motley crowd, to gain the public ear, like a crush at a ticket-seller's window where each is ardent to be lirst, and none willing to be last.

The century was in its thirties — well on iu them. The year was in its wane ; but only as a fruit that is over-ripe may be said to be so ; failing rather from excess of maturity than from any sign of decay. Not only was the year in its wane, but the night too — the early autumn night, whose crown of stars began to shine a little faintly. The hour had come which is rather the death of the night than the birth of the day ; which partakes of both life and death, and is wholly neither. Though the town of Becklington and its surrounding country still lay lapped in silence, one voice there was that sang unceasingly, yet sang so soft and sweet and low that it rather added to the slumberous nature of things than otherwise, as might a mother's lullaby over a sleeping child. This was the fall and murmur of a river that took its rise in the far-off hills, and found its outlet to the sea through a network of deep watercourses, taking here and there a twist or turn so quaint and unexpected that you were ready to fancy the foolish stream must have repented leaving the quiet upland haunts that had seen its birth, and was trying to make its way back again, scared by the rush and noise of the sea which lay some way ahead, and the busy life of the town.

One of these tributary branches was broader than th rest, and standing at equal distances along its banks, sentinel wise, were pollards, each with its shadow sleeping at its feet; stirring with the faint ripple of a tide just on the turn, and with the stirring of their actual selves in the breath of a faint chill breeze that came up from the coast, gently buffet ing the drowsy heads of the flowers, as a hint that it would 60on be time to be up and ready to greet the day. The face of the water everywhere began to give back the faint grey light. The streets and buildings of the town showed grey with closely-curtained windows. Never a figure was yet astir, though from the stables here and there came a sound that told of horses shaking their head-stalls, and moving lazily among their straw as conscious that the day's work was not far off.

Becklington was an irregularly built but picturesque town with a central gathering of streets and squares clustered about an ancient market-place, and arms of newer buildings stretching down towards the sea, that showed as a blue line beyond the many mouths of tlie river. In the midst of what was called the Meadows, a broad expanse of grass-land dotted with clumps of trees, stood the old square towered church. In the midst of the market-place was the Market-Cross, moss-grown and venerable, round which on market-day innumerable bargains were made with much chatter, and frequent disputations of a complicated nature. This cross was said to have been brought to Becklington during the time of the Plague, and was looked upon in the light of a talisman, garlands of leaves being hung upon it during hay-carrying, to ensure a continuance of fine weather.

Market-day at Becklington was a very busy and exciting time, few such occasions passing without some frightened stirk or obstinate pig becoming unmanageable, and having a mind to investigate the contents of one or other of the shops which abutted on the mart. Besides these casual chances of interesting events, the whole place was gay with sfculls and booths, while they in their turn were bright with store of posies from the country, bunches of all old-fashioned flowers, lupins and columbine, London pride and golden marigolds, backed by sweetbriar and thyme, and tied together with green wythes. There too might be seen pyramids of snow-white new-laid eggs, and butter yellow as the cowslips that helped to make the milk whence it was churned. At distances outside the town were sprinkled homesteads, r.nd more pretentious dwellings still ; one pre-eminent among the rest for the beauty of its situation and a long avenue of yews, well-nigh black with age, that led to its portal.

This was Dale End, the seat of Sir Boland Ashby, the " great man " of the neighbourhood, but one whose greatness had not hitherto availed to save him from certain domestic trials and embarrassments, in the details of which his humbler neighbours took a sympathetic interest, not untainted by a subtle undercurrent of satisfaction. "Wealth and rank, though they may elevate a man above his fellows, do not always lift him out of the reach of sorrow, as the Ashbys of Dale End had of late found to their bitter cost; and, in consequence of this being so, many heads of many wiseacres were sagely shaken in Becklington, while moral sentiments of the most edifying description were quoted without stint on all sides. Along the side of BeckliDgton market-places /an the town hall, a building of which the townsfolk were not a little proud — a pride that few unprejudiced beholders felt them selves in a condition to regard in the light of a thing that stood upon just and sure foundation, for an uglier piece of architecture never emanated from the architectural brain.

Facing this was Stirling's Bank, an edifice that had apparently taken the bit between its teeth, bolted into a corner, jammed its head against the wall of the lower end of the marktt-place, and taken up such a position that the rest of it jutted out into a space as a rocky promontory into a bay, so that it fronted two ways — indeed was a double-faced sort of a place altogether, cleverly keeping an eye on the passers-by in two thoroughfares at once. Its entrance-door was at the end of a dark and narrow passage in an odd and out-of-the-way corner, shrinking from the general eye of the public, as if, in the interests of financial matters, it had some reason for being hidden and secret in its ways. In truth, strangers visiting Stirling's Bank, doubtless to deposit therein large sums of money, had been known to wander round and round under the impression that there was a proper and dignified front door somew here if they could only find it, and to consider themselves injured, and to look upon their personal dignity as wounded, because, there being no other way in, they were constrained at last to be content with the meanness of the dark and narrow entry and the shabby door.

Perhaps they tried to persuade themselves that it was all part and parcel of a crafty design for the safety of the — presumably — immense treasure contained in the bank, and out of this frame of mind grew a comfortable satisfaction as to the safety of their own particular fraction of that treasure for all time to come, and an inclination to look upon the sneaking door as they might have looked upon the slit in a huge money box, through which it was the easiest thing in the world to put money in, and an almost impossible feat to get it out. The chimneys of this building were wiae and low, and b.re no sort of family resemblance to each other. One of the lowest and widest of all was clasped, and wreathed, and made a regular jack-in-the-green of by an ivy-plant, which, having its origin in some hidden cranny or cid de sat; suddenly appeared in the form of sundry bare serpent-like stems crawling up the wall and over the slates, to burst into wonderful vigour, and display a marvellous wealth of green leaves and blackberries, causing no doubt, the vari ms sparrows who chirped and fluttered about it to imagine they lived in the country, and had a vast advantage over their fellows who frequented the adjacent streets and houses.

And now, just as the pollards on the river-bank wero becoming conscious of their own shadows ; just as the flowers were bending iu the fields, and every bough was swaying ever so gently in the earliest breeze of dawn; just as an odd rook or two uttered a sleepy " caw," standing on the edge of his nest and ruffling the feathers of his long-folded wings ; a blue filmy smoke that had been rising from this ivy-bound chimney, veiling the stars when they shone their brightest, began to wano as they waned, grew more vapour-like, grew indistinct, grew fainter still, was Seen no more. Surely some busy toiler burnt the midnight oil, some active brain kept vigil, while all the world around was sleeping, in Becklington Bank ; and now, as grey lines began to cross the eastern sky, as the river, and, far beyond, the sea stirred and trembled beneath the first touch of dawn, that toiler sought a welcome and well-earned repose.

If this were so, then Nature soon reversed this order of things, waking to renewed activity after her night's sleep. Robin, rousing himself from his slumbers, preened his rosy waistcoat and straightway set himself to look by the still uncertain light for that early worm promisjd by the proverb to the bird who shall be up betimes. The sparrows, a cross ill-tempered crew, put in an appearance in the market-place, hoping for scattered grain, spilt fiom un steady hands at the market of the day but one before, while as for the swallows, whose minds were in a turmoil as to the near necessity of gathering themselves together for their yearly flight, they performed such acrobatic feats in the way of clinging on to the walls of the eburch tower, and then swooping away into the town and hanging them selves up against chimneys and in gables, making such a pretty flutter, and twittering over it all, that surely the sparrows, to a man — if one may be allowed such an expression — must have wished themselves swallows.

And even Robin No ; Robin could never bring himself to barter the glory of his crimson breast, and all the love we give him because he braves the keenest winter to cheer our hearts in the long cold days with his pretty piping, for any length of flight or swiftness of wing ! With the passing of each moment the shadows of the pollards grew more distinct, always trembling with the stirring of the tide, but more and more clearly defined in the growing light — the light that from silvery grey began to turn to gold. For the sun was rising, and his gladsome greeting was given back to him in gladness by the world on which he set himself to shine with such goodwill. A little later still, and the red-tiled roofs of the home steads glowed with a burnished brightness at once ruddy and golden, and could anyone have turned himself into a bird, and taken a bird's-eye view of Becklington and its surroundings, he would have seen the river running molten gold, and all its many outlets mouths of fire; while the tip of every bough on every tree would have borne golden leaves.

Even the wings of the swallows, as they flew circling hither and thither in a sea of blue, caught the reflection and were flecked with gold for the nonce, while, as to the vane on Becklington town-hall, it was a dazzling sight, and must have made the swallows blink again as they neared it. It was in truth a beauteous morning which now broke upon the rather lazy town, and little Jake, the cobbler, thought as much to himself as he came to his shop-door and surveyed Nature as represented by Becklington market place, and what could be seen of the roofs of adjacent houses from that standpoint, with the dignity becoming a man who stood upon his own threshold, and had a boy under him to take the shutters down while he looked on. The weazened old cobbler had so long been spoken of and to as little Jake, that it appeared likely both he and his neighbours had forgotten any other and more definite appellation which might have belonged to him in the remote ages, but assuredly had not stuck to him.

He would doubtless have had to hesitate a moment if asked suddenly to take oath a3 to whether Jake was his family or baptismal name, or neither. Jake was the greatest gossip in the market-place. Nor did he hide this qualification under a bushel, rather did he set it on a hill, and chuckled as he laid claim to knowing " more nor twenty men — aye, nor women-folk either — and that's a bold thing to say, neighbours, for one as knows their ways — of what goes on i' Becklington, and many a mile o' country round about it too." All day long Jake sat on a low, broad bench facing his shop-window (of which the ledge was so low as to be on a level with his knees, and which was merely an unglazed square opening with a double shutter), with his tools beside him, and somebody's boot or somebody's shoe upon his knee.

Jake had a way of tucking his legs (such spindle-shanks as they were, mere apologies for the ordinary lower limbs of man) under this bench, as if conscious of their deficien cies, still further shrouding them from public view by a vast leathern apron coloured bronze and black with long service. In and out, in and out, flew his busy awl ; on and on wagged his busy tongue, while he made or mended, patched or heeled. Every passer-by lingered to have a word with Jake, for all the town had grown to look upon him as a sort of newspaper in human form edited by himself, and sure to be in possession of the last bit of news, the latest tit-bit of town or county scandal. For there was scandal in those days that seem so far away (only seem, for in reality they are but a span off), though it was not diffused so rapidly as now, and had perhaps a greater chance of holding some shadow of truth in it, since it was not passed from hand to hand so quickly, nor flung so far.

Workmen going home to dinner ; tradesmen on their way to or from the making of wonderful bargains ; farmers' men driving big top-heavy carts of hay that were pulled up with many a s morous " Whoa ! " and " Stand by, there ! " opposite the cobbler's stall, and there made of themselves fragrant sweet-scented obstructions in the king's highway ; these and many others stayed to have a word with Jake. Nor were loiterers d a better condition lacking, such as the Rev. Cuthbert Deane, own cousin to Sir Roland Ashby, a divine much beloved and trusted both by rich and poor ; and Dr. Turtle, genteelest of physicians ; while even that young bmk, Sir Roland's son and heir — of whom none in Becklington or out of it had a good word to say — had been known to bid Jake the time of day and prate of his own ill doings, as to which he was never shy or shame-faced, but rather boasted of them before the world.

Jake's spectacles had a trick of resting half-way down his nose, so that he could the more conveniently watch the progress of his work ; but the boy before alluded to — one Abel Dibbs by name — did solemnly declare that when " Maister Jake " looked over his spectacles he saw just as well as, if not better than, when he looked through them. Now he held them in his hand as he surveyed the morning — always with an eye to the boy, though — and as he held them they caught in their turn the gleam of the golden sunlight, twinkling as though they were living eyes and not mere glass for other eyes to look through. In time to come, when Jake told the story of that day's fair dawn, he was apt to assert that he — the boy of course went for nothing — was the first living thing abroad in the old market-place.

" And, deary me, how peaceful it all did look ! " he would say, with his head on one side, and those spindles, his legs, wavering as he talked ; " how quiet and serene ! As lovely a day as ever I set eyes on, with the sun a shinin' and the birds a singin' and Amos Callender opposite a shavin' him self at an upper window as simple and unsuspectin' as tbe child unborn. I can't well call to mind a finer mornin', and there I stood, at peace with all the world, as one may say " — again the boy counted for nothing, for Jake was never at peace with the boy — " but still a voice within me seemed to say : ' Jake, my good man, there's a storm a brewin' as shall shake that there market-place, and you along wi' it to the very centre of its bein'.' " By this it will be seen that the cobbler was what may be called a "knowledgeable man" — one who took in a weekly newspaper and read it aloud to a select circle on a Saturday night at The Safe Retreat, interspersing the letter press with comments of his own that were looked upon by his hearers as a costly mental embroidery more valuable bv far than the stuff which formed their groundwork — ergo, his impressions of the peacefulness of the golden morning in question were things not to be slighted, nor yet without a certain significance of their own.

As there are spots upon the sun, so were there flaws in Jake's knowledgeableness, for this mental embroidery of his had at times a tendency to become too elaborate ; in other words, his fancy bolted with him as though it had been a fiery and unmanageable steed, and carried him, as his friend and neighbour Amos Callender fceliugly remarked, " the Lord knows where." Jake dreamed dreams and saw visions, and then tried to palm them off upon the world as facts — or may be, in his infinite belief in himself, himself mistook them for realities, as on the present occasion, when there is not the slightest reason to suppose that he was conscious of any evil presenti ment at all, as he stood in the sunlight on his own door step, and ruminated how much he should charge Dr. Turtle for the "job" of putting a patch on his left-foot riding-boot and levelling the heel of its fellow.

In the matter of claiming to be the first man a^tir in the market-place on that eventful morning in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and thirty-seen, it is probable that Jake had better justification. True that in the farms that were scattered round Beck lington warm milk from full udders had spin ted into the milking cans, making a merry music of its own, an hour ago ; yard-dogs had come out of their kennels with mighty yawns and stretchings of cramped limbs, and had set to work to bark at nothing, and to warn nobody off the premises, that being the way in which every well-bred watch-dog naturally begins the day; cocks had defied one another, answering from farm to farm like rival clarions from rival castles ; the ducks had set their flat bills to gabble in the gutters, and the swirl of the churns might have teen heard in the sweet cool dairies.

But Town, that modish lady, is never such an early riser as the fairer, simpler wench, her sister, Country, so all this counts for nothing as set against Jake's boastful statement. There was the lamplighter of course, he who felt a certain ■2. pride in his occupation of an evening, when, going on his rounds, he found himself not without some following of admiring urchins, ardent to watch him set his flecks of light at distances, like flowers in a garden, but was apt to regard the street-lamps as his bitterest enemies when they had to be put out at an hour when happier mortals were still burrowing in sleepy pillows. He didn't count for much. There was no merit in his early rising. What is obligatory can never be meritorious; and, had that lamplighter failed in his matutinal duties, would not the town council and corpor ation have dismissed him with ignominy, taken his little ladder from him, and never let him run up and down it any more !

Oh yes, he knew on which side his bread was buttered ; and though he might like his evening duties best because there was more glory to be got out of them, and they showed him up in the light of a kind of public benefactor, there was no few he would shirk the morning work, as long as the post was well paid, and the gentry tipped the holder of it at Christmas time ! So the lamplighter also went to the wall, looked upon as a point to be made against Jake's claims. The fact was Jake's boy was a proverb for a lie-abed, and his master had to play the part of clarion. Else would Abel be found " snoring his head off" at an hour the shutters should be down, the shop tidied up, and pine-sticks crackling in the back-room grate. Truly, if snoring could have taken Abel's head off, that interesting youth would have been decapitated long since, for a style of breathing that would have meant apoplexy in anybody else, only meant healthy slumber in Abel ; he being, as his mother owned with tears on the occasion of his apprenticeship to the shoemaking trade, a " heavy feeder," and in consequence " a bit hard to drive."

Therefore did Jake survey the awakening world, always keeping an eye upon the boy. Before long all the sounds and sights of daily life made themselves perceptible. Here and there a blind was raised, like a lazy eye opening, and the worthy man Callender no longer enjoyed the monopoly of the upper windows, while passers-by became frequent in the market-place. Right merrily shone the sun as he rose higher and higher in the heavens, winking and blinking in Jake's spectacles, and setting Dr. Turtle's silver snuff-box on fire, as that talented and elegant physician came tripping across that market-place, stepping as delicately as though the round stones with which it was paved were eggs, and he was afraid of breaking them. Discreetly and professionally attired in black stockings, knee-breeches, long skirted coat, and many-folded kerchief, fastened with a dainty pin about his neck, the Bejklington Æsculapius was a pleasant sight to see.

As the result of an inveterate habit of snuffing, he was apt to be a little powdery, but was none the worse for that in the eyes of his admirers. His was the most loyal of souls, the " ocean to the river of his thoughts " being the coronation of a girl queen in the month of roses. So absorbing was his delight in this fair and patriotic subject that it was never long absent from his discourse, and he had some ado to keep it out of his prescriptions. Dr. Turtle wore a wig, he said from a love for a bygo/ie fashion ; the evil-minded vowed from a cause more urgent, and asserted that so sensitive was he as to the baldness of his pate, that, when ill, he lay abed in his wig, and had left directions in his will that he was to be buried in it. It was a rather full and very becoming wig, dark-brown, and curly at the ends, and from out this penthouse looked his handsome eyes, dark and twinkling, ever ready to see the droll side of everything, and finding a suitably grave expression difficult to attain to on certain sorrowful pro fessional occasions.

His smile was buoyant, the teeth it displayed excellent, his age a mystery, his skill undeniable. " Out early, doctor," said Jake, touching his scrubby tow coloured locks respectfully, and shaking a furtive fist at the boy, who stood to gape at the new comer. " Tes ; a patient to see betimes. No bad thing either, Jake, to have to be out on such a morning. Queen's weather — queen's weather ! Just such a day, you may be sure, as shone upon that sweet young creature Hey day ! they're slugabeds over yonder," cried the doctor, breaking the thread of his sentence off sharp, and almost pirouetting on the stones in the velocity with which he turned himself about. " What's this ?— what's this ? " GEOFFREY STH.LING. Jake rubbed his eyes and rumpled his sparse locks. The boy, for once unrebuked, stared in the same direction as the other two, opening his mouth at the same time as his eyes, the better to take in the unwonted aspect of affairs.

" Lord bless my soul ! " ejaculated the doctor, hastily pocketing his snuff-box, and setting his glasses gingerly astride his nose. "Are they all murdered in their beds over there ? " Assuredly the employes of the Becklington Bank had overslept themselves, for, though every puddle left in the market-place by the rain of the day before laughed aud dimpled in the sunshine — though the garish light beat upon barred windows as if to try and shame them for shutting out anything so bright and beautiful, there was no sign of life or stir about the place. The doctor stared ; Jake stared ; the boy stared hardest of all. Presently others came to help them. Little groups of two or three gathered at the corners of the streets, and every eye was fixed upon the bank, which stared blankly, as a blind man might.