Grasping at Shadows

Chapter I. Sandycombe Lodge

The breaking of the rough waves on the shingles and against the tall dark cliffs of that wild Yorkshire coast, was the first welcome I received to my new home. The next that greeted me came from the voice of a stern visaged, but decidedly handsome woman, who introduced herself to me as the aunt with whom I had come to live, and who was standing, when the coach stopped at the inn door, waiting with meritorious patience for the small live freight that vehicle from the far south was expected to bring her. vol. i. GBASPING AT SHADOWS. "So you are Blanche Greyling," she said, lifting me down to the pavement as lightly and easily as if I had been but a feather in her powerful grasp — " a young and puny bird to take such a long flight alone. I suppose you are glad enough to have reached home at last."

" I have not reached home," I answered, calling back with resolute child will the hot tears that, though they had flowed unchecked all night and all day, were ready to burst forth again. — " I have come away from my home, and I never saw this place before, nor you either : and I am cold and tired and hungry — How far off do you live ?" " Not very far, Blanche," said my Aunt Gri selda, passing over the want of courtesy I mani fested, in consideration, I suppose, of the piti able bodily discomforts I had enumerated — " and the walk will warm your chilled hands and feet. I will send for your box by and by, so come along at once ; we can take the road under the cliffs, as the tide is going out, and you will then be able to make a nearer acquaintance with the sea that must have been giving you audible tokens of its vicinity for the last hour or so."

To which condescending speech I ventured no answer at all, because the keen sense of weariness and hunger and desolation was becoming too strong for pride or strength of mind, or both united, to enable me, except by absolute silence, to conceal. So hand in hand my aunt and myself com menced our walk along the somewhat rough path under the frowning cliffs that appeared to my childish imagination on that wintry day hideous exceedingly, and from which I turned with a feeling of positive relief and refreshment, to the dancing, sparkling waves which, fast retreating now, had been so recently coquetting fearlessly with the grim giants that guarded them. " You like the sea then ?" said my com panion after we had walked, mostly over wet sand or shingles, for nearly ten minutes without exchanging a word.

" It isn't so ugly as the cliffs," was my churlish reply, " but I don't know what there is to like in it. Papa told me the sea was beautiful, and that your house was close to the sea. Why don't we come to your house ? 1 o _ _/ This is a nasty walk and my boots are getting quite wet — and I am tired and cold and — very miserable." At this point I broke down utterly, scattering dignity and self-control to the winds, and giving free course to the tears which proclaimed loudly and recklessly at last the agony of a child's heart in its first severance from all that has hitherto filled up its small, but perfect measure of contentment. J My aunt looked down upon me as my sobs became audible, but noticed them no further than by quickening our pace as much as the uneven nature of the ground would permit, while I was conscious that she held my hand with a somewhat loosened clasp, thereby show ing that the sense of my helplessness and deso lation gave me no increased claim that she was disposed to recognize upon her sympathy and compassion.

I felt this hardness of her nature without understanding it, even then, and my tears flowed the faster — as it is the nature of some tears to do — because nobody took the trouble to say to me, " why do you cry ?" Alas ! in the coming years I grew used to the absence of sympathy in far graver cares and trials, and in the lonely and unpitied weepings of that later time it would have seemed stranger to me to hear a human voice enquiring the cause of my grief, than now it seemed to be allowed to mingle my fretful sobs with the plaintive music of the waves, unquestioned and unchecked. We were beginning however to make rapid progress over the ground that appeared to me so long and tedious between the village we had left behind, and the haven of rest and refresh ment that I was so anxious to reach.

The rough shingles and chalky stones were becoming fewer, and the sand firmer and more unbroken, while the dark cliffs diminished a little in height and grimness, showing every now and then a narrow fissure running up to level ground, and flat, grey-looking commons above. At length my aunt stopped abruptly and, taking me by the shoulders, wheeled me very unceremoniously about to the right. " There is my house, Blanche. If you have not blinded yourself by crying, you may see it perched on the top of that next opening in the cliffs. We shall have to clamber up to it, but the path is easier than it looks at this distance, and you will soon learn to run up and down like a squirrel. Now, child, can you see?" I raised my head and saw through a mist of tears a very plain, square, brick house, standing far back in a garden, the low wall of which seemed built on the very edge of the cliff, giving the cheerful idea, looking at it from below, of only requiring a moderately strong gust of wind to make it topple over.

" What an ugly place !" I exclaimed out of the fulness of my aching heart. " I shan't like living there at all. Why do you live in a prison instead of in a pretty house like papa's, Aunt Griselda? I shall ask him to let me go back veiy soon to him and my little brother." " You are a silly child," retorted my strong minded relative more crossly than she had yet spoken. " There is nothing the matter with my house that I have ever discovered. It has been quite good enough for me these fifteen years, and I should suppose" (with a sudden savageness of voice that almost terrified me) "it will be good enough for Agnes Greyling's daughter. Mind how you step, now, Blanche," she added, with a quick return to her former calm demeanour, " there are some deep salt pools about here, and if you put your foot in one of them your complaint of wet boots will have, some reason in it."

So I had to leave off crying out of respect to my personal safety ; and with the help of sundry jerks and pulls at the right moment on the part of Miss Griselda, I managed to climb to the summit of that horrible little pathway with no worse mishap than half a bushel of sand and about a quart of salt water in either of my boots, and an aching in all my joints that was as un familiar as it was unpleasant to them. " Here we are, then," said my aunt, pausing herself to draw breath at the green wooden gates that gave entrance to her lonesome domain. " This is your new home, Blanche — ' Sandycombe Lodge' it is called, and here I hope you will learn to be a good girl, and to look upon life and its duties otherwise than you have hitherto been taught to do. Anyhow, as I have undertaken the charge of you, I must do my best to help you in this very important matter."

Although my aunt's language was scarcely suited to the capacity of a child of eleven years old, I understood enough of what she said, to think to myself that I should be likely at Sandycombe Lodge to learn the lesson she considered so desirable without any special assistance from her ; but I only for the present relieved my overwrought feelings by the utterance of something between a sob and a sigh, as, trailing my weary feet heavily after me, I followed the mistress of Sandycombe Lodge up the neat, gravelled path that skirted the lawn, and conducted at length to the front door of the mansion. Instead of knocking or ringing, my aunt took a big key from her pocket and admitted us into the house herself. No one appeared as we crossed the dismal looking hall, though our entrance had not been effected without a certain amount of noise which must have been heard from below ; and with a suddenly sharpened sense of hunger and thirst I reflected on the dreary probability of the servants being out, and of my having to wait an indefinite time for the food I was so sorely in need of.

" Come up stairs at once, Blanche, and get your wet boots off. I can lend you some shoes till your own things arrive. You will find everything essential to comfort at Sandycombe Lodge, and it will be your fault if you are not perfectly happy and contented here." I was beginning already to listen and to obey like a person in a dream. Grief and exhaustion were fast deadening my mental perceptions, and very hazy and indistinct is my recollection of the next scenes of the unamusing drama in which I was playing so compulsory a part ; of my impressions of the large, scantily furnished room into which my aunt ushered me, telling me it was henceforth my own ; of the being made comfortable — so Miss Griselda called it — in huge grey worsted stockings with slippers to match, of being taken down stairs again into another meagrely furnished room with a small, smoky fire, evidently trying how not to burn at one end of it, and a square horsehair sofa, suggestive of aching bones, at the other.

Finally, at having a cup of very weak tea, with some thick bread ornamented by an almost invisible layer of jam, administered to me by my austere relative, who at the conclusion of this economical meal (I think she partook of the feeble liquid herself) said something about my appearing sleepy, and glanced at the horsehair sofa as if doubtful whether she were quite justified in indulging me in the luxury of the repose it offered. Possibly my half shut eyes decided the question at last ; for certain it is that without any volition of my own I was borne to the square, hard couch, a woollen shawl thrown over my shivering little form, and the great gulf of sleep mercifully allowed to intervene for awhile, between all that related to the unattractive and unsympathizing Miss Griselda Muir and myself.

Chapter II

miss griselda's orthodoxy. It was dark when I awoke from dreams of home and pleasures past, to the very uninviting realities of the new life I had entered upon. My aunt sat reading at a table on which burned one solitary candle, dimly lighting up the space immediately surrounding her, but consigning the rest of the room to the most pitiable obscurity — for the fire, innocent of even smoke now, had dwindled to a few miserable embers, and seemed on the point of going out altogether. On first opening my eyes I was still too dizzy and stupid, and my tired limbs felt too stiff, to dispose me to the exertion of rising, so I lay quite still, watching Miss Griselda with a sort of drowsy interest, and comparing my own G HASPING AT SHADOWS. fate with that of the luckless princesses in the fairy tales I loved, forlorn damsels who, for their virtues rather than for their sins, were carried off bodily by wicked and malicious genii, and im mured in enchanted castles, to whose locality terrestrial geography has hitherto given us no satisfactory clue.

My only comfort was that Miss Griselda, not being a fairy, but only a mortal of somewhat large proportions, could have no power to detain me in her prison against my will. If the worst came to the worst — that is, if my father would not have me home again — I could run away, and lead the merriest life imaginable, with nuts and blackberries for my daily food. Being just in that languid physical condition, when castle-building becomes the easiest and most natural thing in the world, I had soon laid the foundation-stone of a magnificent edifice, and was rapidly collecting materials for running it up to perfection, when Miss Griselda suddenly laid down her book, uttered a weary sigh, and then turned towards the sofa before I had time to reclose my eyes. "Awake, Blanche?" she said, with some as perity in her voice.

" Why didn't you get up before? Come here, child, to me. I want to talk to you." I obeyed this command very reluctantly, shivering and grumbling as I moved towards the other end of the room. " It is so cold, aunt, and you have no fire. Why don't you ring for the servants to make it up. Hav'n't you got any servants ?" I think I must have had an instinctive idea, even then, that asking questions annoyed Miss Griselda Muir, for I was in a very bad temper, and I certainly asked this question without in the least suspecting the state of things it assumed. " I am not cold, Blanche," was the severe answer I received — " and you are more than twenty years younger than myself. I hope you will soon learn to do without luxuries, for I tell you candidly you will find few at Sandycombe Lodge. My means are not large, and I think it my duty as a Christian to deny myself that I may have to give to others.

The Bible tells us to be content with food and raiment. It is my wish to obey this precept ; but I suppose you know more about silly story books than about the Holy Scriptures. Is it not so, Blanche ?" " I have got a New Testament," I answered, somewhat sulkily, for all this talk was dis tasteful and wearisome exceedingly to my childish ears — "but I do like reading fairy tales much better. I wish there were fairies now-a days, for then I should ask one to come and take me away from this cold, dismal place. Hav'n't you got any servants, though, Aunt Griselda?" I returned, you see, very obstinately to my first charge, because I already regarded Miss Muir as my personal enemy, and enjoyed skir mishing with her, in my ignorant way ; and, also, because the sight of any other human being would have been an unspeakable relief to me in the gloom and dissatisfaction that were fast settling on my worn and harassed spirits.

" I have no servants residing in the house," she condescended to answer now — " and, that you may lay aside your curiosity on the subject — little girls should never be curious — I will explain at once why this is. When I came to reside at N\ton, nearly fifteen years ago, I brought with me one male and one female attendant. They were both comparatively young then ; and, after we had been here a year or two, they took it into their silly heads to marry, thinking I should be weak enough to keep them on all the same. I was not weak enough to do this, but I had a cottage built for them at the end of a field which belongs to me, and joins my kitchen garden. Thomas looks after this, and does my errands to the village still. He has also a fishing-boat, and makes a little money in that way. Mary does as much of my house work as she is able ; but they have five children, and her time is greatly taken up at home.

I warned her that if she married she would have trouble in the flesh, but she would listen to no advice, and, when wisdom came, it came too late to be of any use to her. One of her girls is dying now of typhus fever, and that is the reason I have to wait on myself and on you, to-day. The world is full of trouble, Blanche ; and, by and by, it will seem a small thing to you that vour bands and feet should be numbed with cold. It will be bed-time soon, and then you will get warm enough." I should, probably, have indulged in another fit of grumbling at the extinct fire, in spite of my aunt's moralizing, had not my mind taken instant hold of one item in her gratuitous com munications. " How old is the girl who is dying, aunt, and what is her name ? Will you please to let me go and see her to-morrow ?"

My sudden courtesy and submissiveness had, of course, reference to the favour I was asking, and, from the look my aunt gave me, I believe she guessed as much. She only said, however — " Her name is Polly, and she is about eight years old, I fancy. You must not go near the house, Blanche, or you will be very likely to catch the fever. Why do you wish to see tbis poor little girl ?" " Because," I replied, without a moment's hesitation — " if she is really dying, and going to Heaven, I should like to send a message to mamma." Had a cannon-ball suddenly whizzed past Miss Griselda's ear, she could scarcely have started more, or exhibited a countenance of greater horror and dismay than she did now. " Merciful powers, Blanche Greyling, what are you dreaming about ! Can your darkness and ignorance really amount to this ?"

Here she paused, and looked very much as if she should enjoy shaking me — some very ex cellent people cannot help indulging the belief that folly and naughtiness may be shaken, phy sically, out of children — but, before I could offer any explanation, she had resumed — " It is perfectly awful to reflect that your unfortunate mother should have taught you no better theology than you seem in possession of, Blanche, or that your father should not have done something to atone for his wife's culpable neglect. I knew my half-brother was a careless, indolent man, but I should have thought he would have seen that his children were not brought up as heathens. Are you not aware, Blanche, that the Heaven which you allude to with so little reverence is a place for good and holy people who have led Christian lives on earth, and that no others can be admitted there ?

It absolutely frightens, as well as deeply grieves me, to hear you talk." I had all my weapons ready long before her VOL. I. a speech was finished, and I hurled them at her vengefully, the moment I had a chance of doing so. " You are a very wicked and a very cruel woman, Aunt Griselda, to speak against my papa and my poor mamma, who is with the angels in Heaven, whatever you may think about it. Beautiful people must become angels when they die, and mamma was beautiful. I will hate you as long as I live, if you don't say you know mamma is in Heaven." Less angry, I believe, with my insolence and violence, than bewildered by my heterodoxy, Miss Griselda sat gazing at my flushed and scowling face for some seconds without speaking. When at length she found words that she deemed suitable, they fell like an ice blast upon the ear and heart unused to such loveless ad monitions.

" Blanche, we will dismiss this subject at once and for ever. I ought to have reckoned upon your being mad and intemperate where your mother was concerned, since your father has sent you from him because he could not put up longer with your obstinate and childish fretting after her. Poor man ! it was ever his way to turn his back upon trouble, if he could any how manage it. He will forget his loss amongst his old friends in Ireland, with only a baby that he'll rarely look at, to remind him of his dead wife. For my part, I've no sympathy with such light natures, though in that respect he was ad mirably matched — but sit down, Blanche," she added, seeming suddenly to recollect who was her hearer — " and read me the church catechism right through. To-morrow you shall begin to learn it." " O, I can say the whole of the catechism, and several chapters out of the Bible as well," I replied, with a toss of the head that conveyed but a fraction of the contempt I presumed to feel towards my stern mentor — " but, if they taught me to think that mamma was not an angel in Heaven, I would never say them again.

It is people who are spiteful, and tell stories, and think ill of their neighbours, that can't get to Heaven. My nurse says so, and she is a good woman, and can pray without a book. These sort of wicked people" (and here no doubt my looks at my aunt were neither charitable nor 2—2 polite) " go when they die to the lake of fire and brimstone that burneth for ever and ever." Even at this distance of time I can remember the sudden and peculiar whiteness that came into Miss Griselda's face as I thus daringly and maliciously expressed my thoughts and creed. I felt the instant the words were out of my mouth how wrong and unauthorized they were, and, if she had shaken me then, I should cer tainly have experienced no surprise at the well merited punishment. But nothing of the kind occurred. I wish it had.

My aunt only lifted her hand, which trembled visibly, to her colourless face, pushed back in an absent manner, a stray lock of wavy and but slightly grizzled hair, and then suddenly, (with a passionate movement) burying her head between both her arms on the table, exclaimed aloud — " God pardon me, if I find the cross I have taken up too heavy for me — if, even on the threshold I draw back, and confess myself too weak to carry it !" Confused, mystified, and half inclined to beg my aunt's pardon for the impertinence which I supposed was grieving her, I had advanced a step nearer to where she was sitting, when the door opened abruptly, and a woman — with a sweet, kind, motherly countenance, which, in spite of its present saddened aspect, won my heart the instant I beheld it — came a little way into the room.

" Can 1 do anything for you, or for the young lady, ma'am ?" she asked, as Miss Griselda looked up, and resumed her calm demeanour. " Polly has fell asleep at last — and Thomas, he is minding the other children. The little lady will be very tired from her journey, I've been thinking." "Take Miss Blanche to bed, Mary, if you please," my aunt replied, without looking towards me, and speaking in a tone of utter weariness, though it was quite free from the passion that had mingled in her solemn appeal to Heaven a minute ago — " I shall not need you after you have done this ; but you can return here just to tell me how your poor child is getting on." I said "good night" quite humbly, and fol lowed my new conductress to the large room up-stairs ; but, as she seemed in no mood for talking, I contented myself with asking how Polly was, and then, seeing the mother's eyes fill with tears, suffered her to undress me quickly, and tuck me up in the wide, old fashioned bed (in which I am sure I felt as much lost and cast away that first night as Robinson Crusoe could have felt on his desert island) without another word.

She said, " God bless you, dear," and gave me a hearty kiss as she left me — for which gentle deed of love, falling as it did like dew upon my poor, thirsty soul, may this loving, tender hearted woman long ago have had her reward.

Chapter III. The Stolen Visit

My dreams that night were full of the kind, comely face that had last looked into mine, and which had already done more than I was then conscious of towards reconciling me to the dreary unpromising future that lay before me as the pupil and daily companion of Miss Griselda Muir. I remembered on awaking in the morning every incident of the previous day, as well as every word that during the evening had passed between my aunt and myself. But much as I had been impressed at the time by Miss Griselda's severity and even cruelty, as it appeared to me ; much too as I had wondered at the strangeness of her habits and manners, I could put all these things in the back ground now in favour of the more absorbing interest that had been awakened in my mind on the subject of the little girl who was dying at so short a distance from me.

I had never been taught to fear death. My nurse was a strict Methodist whose piety I chiefly estimated at that time by the fact of her being able to pray without a book ; but I have little doubt that she really was a sincere, God fearing woman, with something less of narrow mindedness than is often found amongst her sect and class. She must have taken considerable pains in her simple teachings — and for this I can scarcely be too grateful — to dissociate the idea of death from the usual fearful and gloomy images with which so many instructors of the young love to connect it. I never remember being told of the " black pit hole," or of the worms waiting to devour the poor cold body ; or of any of the other inevitable accessories to our mortal circumstances which to young and old, especially where imagination predominates, make death a phantom of terror and despair.

Then too I had been allowed to look for a short space of time at my beautiful dead mother, before the least change (apart from that marble paleness which even in life had occasionally dis tinguished her) had come over her sweet and girlish face. There was nothing to repel or alarm the most timid soul in death as represented by that half smiling, motionless figure of a young and lovely woman, called suddenly from life in the midst of health and strength and happiness. Had I seen her even a day later, all my im pressions might have been changed ; but those who had the care of me, and whom my violent and passionate grief might well have confused, as it undoubtedly distressed, had the wisdom to grant me that one look, and no more. My love for my mother had been a madness rather than natural affection, a madness because it was not born of any especial recognition or consciousness of her love for me (she was as I remember her, and as others have since told me, a calm, gentle, undemonstrative woman,) but of an unreasoning, unchildlike, passionate admiration, which I cannot help believing now to have been quite independent of any filial instinct.

I am at least very sure that it grew and strengthened upon the coldness with which it was met, a sweet, inoffensive coldness, certainly, for nothing but sweetness could have emanated from Agnes Greyling, but still a coldness tha would have frozen up and withered into hope less annihilation any love, even any child's love, less ardent and self supporting than mine. Yes, I had " fretted obstinately after her." That was the way in which Miss Griselda Muir had expressed her view of the state of things which had ended in banishing me from my home, and consigning me to her own evidently unwilling guardianship ; and I suppose Miss Griselda Muir was right. When my mother died, something went out from my life which even my very immature wisdom taught me could never by any possibility come into it again.

And because this some thing was dear to me as well as necessary to me as the air I breathed, my refusing to be com forted for its loss was considered obstinate fretting, and treated accordingly. Doubtless my father, though he had loved his beautiful young wife very fondly too, was worried beyond endurance by the sight of my constant tears, which having no power to bring the dead to life again, were idle and stupid as well as wrong. And so he had delivered me over to the tender mercies of his strong minded half sister, who would know how to reason or shake my childish folly out of me, while he him self, with the wee, fair son his Agnes had left him, would seek comfort for his aching heart amongst the old, admiring friends he still possessed in his native Ireland. And here I was, alone in the strictest sense of the word, in a new, cold land — a little ignorant, wilful, passionate-hearted child, living as yet upon memory, yearning blindly for sym pathy and affection, but wholly incredulous that any could ever be bestowed upon me that I should value as I had valued the very faintest demonstration of love from the mother whose loss I deemed irreparable.