Masston: a story of these modern days

Front matter

MASSTON: A STORY OF THESE MODERN DA YS. SBattiintUne tyxm BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON MASSTON: A STORY OF THESE MODERN DAYS. BV A. J. DUFFIELD AND W. H. POLLOCK. " Some there be that shadows kiss; Such have but a shadow's bliss : There be fools alive, I wis, Silver'd o'er; and so was this." — Merchant of Venice, ii. g. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE. i877. [All rights reserved.] MASSTON: A STOR Y OF THESE MODERN DA YS.

Chapter I

So, when my path seems dark and drear, And when no more your voice can cheer My failing strength, and when no more I, struggling through the surf to shore, Can see far shining in your eyes, Past where the angry breakers rise The light that shows me which way lies The one clear course ; and when I think ; Not seeing it, that I must sink, My soul with sore fatigue down prest Shall still in thoughts of you find rest. The farm called the Hermitage, to which on a memorable occasion Dr. Cumberladge had conveyed Sarah Armstrong, was a dismantled dilapidated place at that time — that is to say, it offered about as many facilities to live in as a spider's web does to the larger and the VOL. II. A MASSTON. lesser, the painted and the buzzing, flies. There was a certain central part where a limited number of people might find tolerable comfort ; the rest was a wilderness, and it was beyond the Doctor's power to subdue to order the chaos which was his inheritance from his ancestors.

This chaos had, like that of planets, many elements of brightness and strength, but they had been for a long time floating uncombined in the embrace of fog, for lack of some forming hand to give them shape and comeliness. Soon after, by the Doctor's use of Sarah's misapprehension, her son vanished from her, she longed for some object on which to lavish her love. She had forgotten, or rather had put away from her memory, her father and mother. She had for a time merged her love for them in a new love, which she thought included and glorified her filial love. All the drudgery she had en dured at their farm, viewed through the light of this new love, became refined and refining MASSTON. 3 worship. With what delight did she tell Robert Warner of her home experiences — of the sweet breath of the kine as she milked them — of the yet sweeter breath of the early morning, when, as she fed the poultry, the sun came out and warmed her for the labour of the new-born day.

She would tell him, too, of her fancies — of how the flowers kissed each other as they awoke ; how from the hedgerows which had been their pillows she saw the wild flowers rise to deck the day and lighten her tasks ; how the birds carolled with her in pure joy, and carried their joy with her morning prayers to heaven. All this did she de light to tell him. And the posy which we have seen her carry to him one evening at the Oxford Works, bore in it, had he but known it, the memory of all these things, and with it his salvation. And Warner, and all those other memories likewise, had been put away. But after the dream which she finished as MASSTON. 4 she slept on the shoulder of Trusty, the great dog, who earned a silver collar by shielding her from the cold stones, she woke in the presence of the Doctor and Dame Cumber ladge to the first instinct of a new life which was to find its full unfolding in her care of the Hermitage Farm.

And upon this ancient place was bestowed the love that was in Sarah Armstrong, and which could not be killed even by the treachery of Robert Warner. It seemed as if this love gave its own form ing life to the gray walls upon which it fell. Like the sun itself it searched out the hidden places in which the damp cold collected. Even the mosses, hitherto smothered in silent tears, burst into flower. It brought to the dark places it visited the remembrance and capa city of pleasure and good cheer, as the presence of a kind nurse brings comfort to the neglected bed of a sick child. Its warmth appeared to arrest decay, but cared most of all to linger on the walls of the old chapel, MASSTON. 5 once the shrine of saints and the goal of knights, now the home of emptiness and the habitation of weeds.

In this chapel there were niches where stood the Cumberladges of old, who looked down upon her in their stony panoply and by their very^ stillness seemed to shame the restless turmoil raging near them. There was some thing reproachful in their silent dignity ; some thing which seemed not so much to regret the wisdom of a past time, as to mourn the folly of the present, insomuch that Dr. Cumber ladge, who, although a practical man had in him some inherited tinge of superstition, was loath to enter the chapel in a half light alone ; he would say the sightless eyes of the statues looked through him and chilled his bones. But a short while after Sarah had taken the knights under her care, the Doctor strolled into the chapel to find what change she had wrought, and on coming out he met her, and said with one of his meaning smiles — , MASSTON.

" Why, Sarah, you have brought the knights to life again." To which she answered, " Surely not ; they have only been forgotten. It is they who have given new life to me." What Sarah had done for the knights, who of course were the most difficult people to manage, she had done for the rest of the farm — that is, she had given a living, happy, human expression to every abject corner of a dying world. This the Doctor discovered in due time, and, like the sensible man he was, put his discovery to admirable use. Thus did Sarah Armstrong, in return for the life that the Doctor had re stored to her, prepare for him and his a new life in an old home which the stress of life had filled with the triumph of decay. Pleased but not content with Sarah's handi work, he would add to it that touch of grace which the artist alone is able to supply, and this touch he thought to find in the handiwork MASSTON. 7 of Paul Blanchard, who became known to him through his association with Jeavons.

Indeed it was as much to know the artist as to obtain his work that the Doctor proposed to Blan chard to come to the farm, to see what could be done with the chapel, and to choose his own day for the visit. Now there dawned some days in Masston which neither its smoke nor its black mud could sully; and there were some people ill content to live in it, who had left in them so much sympathy with the brightness of nature as made them take delight in these days, and spend them if they could in the green fields instead of in the murky, noisy streets. It was on such a day that Blanchard set out for the Hermitage. To have remained in the hideous den of a town on such a morning would have been as craven as for a prisoner to remain in his sickly cell after the door had been thrown open by his deliverer.

To us who have much love for Blanchard, it MASSTON. is unpleasant to confess that on this particular morning he had reasons of his own for seeking whatever air and freshness he could. On the day before the month, during which he had promised to Jeavons that he would taste no more spirits, was out, and the result, which was perhaps not unnatural, had followed, Blanchard was at work on a very delicate piece of designing, and found that neither his brain nor his hand would move with the skill and rapidity he desired. And more from instinct than resolve, he attempted to overcome his depression by so drowning it that neither it nor any other human feeling should affect him. In short, he got very drunk. And it was perhaps as much to avoid the shame of meeting Jeavons as for any other reason, that he left Masston the next day.

By a coincidence which, although com mon, is still very strange, as Blanchard walked across the fields to the Hermitage, the Doctor drove into Masston by the road. It was a restoring walk ; the trees were very MASSTON. 9 dear to him, and the sky which peeped through their branches, and the red and yellow flowers, which stood in the ranks of the grass as officers in fine accoutrements stand among their men. And although he imagined that these superior beings had seen him in his gross stupidities and his helpless vices — his eyes squinting, and his tongue swaying his brain in vulgar mas tery — yet he also knew their divine charity. They would not chide ; and it was perhaps by their silence that he was won back to their love. "Is Dr. Cumberladge at home ? " the de signer asked of a neat maiden who opened the door.

" Master has gone to the town for to bring Mr. Blanchard." " My name is Blanchard ; can you show me the way to the chapel ? " Paul was led across an old-fashioned garden, in which wallflowers and double daisies formed the flowering aristocracy, on the other side of MASSTON. which, hidden behind a clump of trees, stood the chapel. " You will find the door open," said the maid, pointing it out to him, and went back to the house. Blanchard passed through a half-open door, in an ivy-hung porch, and found himself in the presence of the knights. He had come into an atmosphere of that sweet tranquillity for which his morning's walk had prepared him. Above the heads of the stone Cumberladges hung a series of pictures which not only gladdened his eyes but instructed them. Vivid pictures they were, of trees and sky framed in the chapel windows, from which the stained glass had long since fallen, and these had taken its place.

They were the same trees and sky he had seen in his walk, but thus seen they begat in him a desire to know the Artist ; and they had for him some special significance, which gave a definite shape to the crowding memories of a time before they MASSTON. I I were defiled with the touch of Masston. From beholding the windows his eyes fell to the floor, and from the floor they rose again to the pillars, whose capitals were lost among the cobwebs of the ages, here and there defaced and broken by cruelties which brought the present and the past together with the shock of an out rage. And the people who had wrought this ruin were no more conscious of what they were about, than are two irresponsible forces which meet and clash in a dark hole called a tunnel. " There's little for me to do here," said Blanchard reflectively, as he looked through the cluster of pillars in the darkest corner of the chapel.

From this, as the designer spoke, there seemed to come a gleam of sudden light, which under his gaze resolved itself into a white figure that the sun, which had been over clouded for a moment, greeted with a swift beam falling upon it through one of the ancient windows. As the form advanced towards MASSTON. Blanchard, who watched its coming with an astonished reverence, he discovered more clearly the face above it. There are men in whom, for themselves at least, the spirit of prophecy yet survives ; who at certain moments are forced by it to say within themselves, " This thing, or person, will influence and alter the course of my life, and of all life, in so far as life shall have any preciousness for me." It is not strange that this should be so. What men call the gift of prophecy, is but the power of being able to concentrate into a momentary space the calculation of cause and effect, which is gene rally extended over a long time.

Blanchard was a man of quick perceptions. In spite of the dulling influence of liquor, which has the same effect on some minds as frost has on window-panes, he had feelers and tentacles in every direction which conveyed to him, with the swiftness of the harp in discovering its music, what common men or others dis- MASSTON. 13 ferently endowed arrive at only by toil and weariness ; and perhaps, in his present mood of reaction, these feelers were in an unusually excited state. Be that as it may : they told him with an insistance he knew to be war ranted, that Sarah Armstrong, — for the sweet figure which came from behind the pillars was hers, — would have some potent sway over his being. When she drew near him with the sun light still caressing her she said — " You must, I think, be Mr. Blanchard.' Paul bowed in answer.

" The Doctor told me of your coming," she continued, " and I came to take a last look at these pillars, and try to find out why men are so fond of pulling down old things, and replac ing them by things which speedily rot or tar nish or rust. I cannot tell you how glad I am to have heard the words you said." She paused, as if expecting some reply, but the designer only raised his eyes to hers, and let them fall again, making a bow, into which he MASSTON. 14 threw an earnest expression of sympathy, de votion, and obedience. What could he do, or say ? being burdened with the sweetest yoke a man can have laid upon him ; his heart full of rapture, and his mind with ecstacy too great for aught but silence ? He stood looking at her as a prisoner, watching the sky through his iron bars, regards the little bird which has suddenly alighted on his sill, afraid to move or speak lest he should frighten it away.

Sarah, who saw in Paul's glance that she was understood, continued — '•' I have grown to love this chapel very dearly ; I have saved it from the disease of decay which threatened it with death ; and, as time has gone by, have grown to think — you will say it is only my fancy — that the walls, the pillars, the statues, have some knowledge of me, and some love for the care I have be stowed upon them." Blanchard looked up again at her, and said, MASSTON. 15 " I could well imagine it. I have heard from Dr. Cumberladge what this place was once. I see what it is now, and I repeat there is little for me to do here. A piece of pavement, some mason's art to heal the bruise of time, or the ill-usage of men, or swine, anything more would be out of place. As for introducing any new design, or any old design furbished into new ness, I could not even dream of it."

"And I had been dreading your coming," said Sarah, "lest you should change the old order that I love." " No. I am a designer, but in spite of that I have some reverence left for the work of better men than myself. Sooner than restore, as it is miscalled, one of these statues, I would break it to pieces." Sarah looked at him with gratitude and admiration, and said, "The statues, happily, are out of the reach of idle and cruel hands. They are less hurt than the things nearer the ground." MASSTON. " Yes," replied Blanchard ; " to be above the reach of the touch of cruelty or corruption is safety indeed." There was a mournful cadence in the voice which caught Sarah's ear ; in his attitude there was a dejection which perhaps only a woman's eye can espy in a man — for she only possesses the helping pity that ripens into love — and she seldom sees a trouble or a sorrow but she longs to turn it into joy.

Presently she said, " "Will you tell me what you think should be done to the pillars, and would you open this window ? " Paul had not observed the blocked-up window, and many another thing had escaped him which Sarah pointed out. Nor did he seem to notice cornice or mullion, moulding or chamfer, when she brought him to them, so occupied was he with her — with the sound of her voice, the motion of her limbs, and the music which appeared to him to come from her whole figure when in repose. Till then he had never seen a woman's lips, or known that even MASSTON. 17 these portals of love can give forth light as sweet and swift as the glance of an eye. Till then he did not know that all the sweet but silent influences of heaven and earth have their conductors to a man's soul even as the light ning has to the heart of oaks and the centre of rocks.

They went together to talk of ruins, and discuss repairs, and wander through fallen frag ments and over dislocated stones carved by human hands, and lo ! their speech changed ; and they found themselves talking indeed of ruins and of polished stones and of a temple, but one not made with hands. Sarah spoke much to Paul ; but it was of the present — the very present then before them — with no more of the past clinging to it than there clings of the cold green of fruit to its warm and purple ripeness. Paul, on the other hand, was thrown on his regrets, like a school-boy sent back to pick up his lesson which he has dropped in the play- VOL. II. b MASSTON. ground — a waste of time often attended with tears and shame. Sarah learnt from what Paul said of himself, and from the nature of his sayings, now timid, now acid, now bold even to laughter, that he had believed much in his own powers to do some good work, and that this belief was passing from him. o " It is too late now," he said with a sigh, too prolonged and deep to be born of the moment.

" I see the straight road, and would give much to walk in it. But my feet have too long learned to travel in crooked ways." And half in vexation and half in courtesy he turned abruptly to examine some metal-work on the door near which they stood and said, " I have no right to bring my empty com plaints to one whom I have met thus sud denly." He wished to add that in spite of this he felt it easy to open his heart to her as if she were an old friend whom he had discovered after a long and vain search. But MASSTON. 19 the words lost themselves on their way to his lips. "If I could help you from any trouble you have," she answered, " I would be glad." " I fear any one who tried to help me for long, would be dragged into the mud of my own hopelessness. Once my oldest friend came out to meet me in the dark, and brought his lantern, without which we could not find our way through clay and mire, or pass the yawning mouths of old pits, without danger of falling into them.

I, being strong in self-will and folly, would do nothing but carry the lantern, and no sooner had I taken it, than I stumbled and fell, and the light went out, when there were two benighted fools instead of one." " You should unlearn that fear, and you would feel more trust in yourself." He pon dered a moment at these words — he had heard them before, but this time they were set to a fresh accompaniment — and he said in a voice MASSTON. attuned to the new music, " I have one friend who has stuck by me so far, and I must not disappoint him." " Think," said Sarah, with her thrice-blessed naturalness, "that you have two." Blanchard's eyes expressed his thanks for these words, his voice dared not. Immediately afterwards he went away, saying, " I must come here again to see the Doctor; shall I see you there, and," " hope for further speech, and further love, and strength," he would have said, had he not been stopped by the confu sion into which he was plunged, like a horse that is checked by his rider in the middle of a leap.

" I am always here, and most likely I shall see you when you come." Blanchard then left the chapel, revolving many things in his swift mind which had no place there when he entered it. As he crossed the belt of trees, Sarah looked after him till he was out of sight. MASSTON. 21 When next she saw Dame Cumberladge, who made some general inquiries regarding Paul Blanchard's visit, Sarah answered that he had most soft brown eyes, — a reply which Dame Cumberladge reported to the Doctor.

Chapter II

' The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new lights through chinks that Time has made." — Waller. Amadis was not more proud in discovering Oriana than was Dr. Cumberladge in finding Sarah Armstrong. It is true that the master passion of the knight was love, that of the Doctor compassion. Both have their martyr dom, also their unfading joys; and he who would reap a harvest of the one, must be prepared to pass through the fires of the other. In many cases the costly benevolence which the good Doctor had poured into the laps of those who turned out to be nothing but worthless wretches, had been returned in nought else than revilings. Even his wife had once been inclined to cast in his teeth the charge of MASSTON. 23 extravagance and folly, but she had resisted that temptation, and for ever after remained steadfast to her husband in all he did.

When the Doctor found his wife loving Sarah Arm strong with a love mixed with admiration and delight, he lost all recollection of the scoffs and jeers and ingratitude which now and then came on him, as come plagues and diseases on those who set themselves to do battle with them, and he even forgot the chagrin and disgust which had followed almost all his efforts to do good to sinful men and faithless women. Ninety-nine of these had told him to his face that they had no need of him ; and had gone on prospering in their own way — turning his mercy into what cannot be other wise called than bestial success. But this one out of the hundred, was worth all the ninety nine put together ; and in Sarah Armstrong, the good Cumberladge found an enduring joy. And yet he must pay a heavy price for his possession.

Full fifteen years had rolled on MASSTON. since the drizzling night in which the dog Trusty was promised his silver collar for the good service he had done ; and there had not come and gone one single day of every year of those fifteen years, but had borne its own most precious fruit of unexpected blessing. The payment for this was to be full ten years of constant daily pain, not only to Dr. Cumber ladge, but likewise to his wife. Sarah had never quitted the Hermitage since the events already recorded. The Cumber ladges had made it an occasional resort until the little Cumberladges became numerous, and the Doctor made it a permanent home. The life and soul of this home was Sarah, and she it was who gave it to him, in return for the home he had provided for her, when her own father and mother had forsaken her.

Good and strong, and thoroughly healthy as Cumberladge was, he was glad to leave the trickery and shifts, the cruelty and lies, daily enacted before his face in Masston. Why MASSTON. 25 should he not be likewise swept along by the Masston stream into the same gulf to which it sped ? His family had increased — was growing apace, with its needs and cares, and all the fiery trials which make red hot a man's minted coin, so that it can neither stay in his pocket, nor stick to his fingers, and he must go and live there where the earth was a little closer to heaven than it was in Masston. So he went to the Hermitage ; it was the result of an accident after all. When Sarah's son had proved to Dr. Cum berladge that he intended to live, and gave manifest token of possessing sound limbs and a bright and happy spirit, he was brought from the forest cottage where he had been nurtured, and to which he had been taken immediately after his anonymous appearance in the world, to be a playmate for Master Shirley Cumber ladge, a delicate little prince of nearly his own age.

The ambition of this five-year-old Cumberladge was to go out into all the world MASSTON. and kill dragons, and deliver maidens from the hands of monstrous giants who dwelt in castles, whose towers touched the stars. He did this, by lying prone on the hearth-rug all day, reading books, and dreaming of what he had read at night, whether asleep or wide-awake. The consequence was that the child sickened ; but his sickness increased when they took away from him his chronicles, and he would inevit ably have died if the Doctor his father had not prescribed for him. The prescription was Sarah's son, wrho, under the name of Robert Hugh Armitage, became minister of health at the age of six to Shirley Cumberladge. The two children grew up to gether, slept in the same room together, wore the same style and kind of clothing, read the same books, sat on the same form in the same school, and won equal prizes in all contests.

One day the two boys fought. The boy Hugh, more able than Shirley, had finished his school work, and was busy making a clean MASSTON. 2 7 copy of verses he had written to his mother, whose birthday was due on the morrow. Shirley, in a fit of irritation, or mischief, or both, dropped a blot of ink on to the gold-bor dered sheet of paper bought by the poet, and spoilt it. The poet's soul was fired with anger, and he exclaimed in high tones, " My mother shall know of this." " She is not your mother," retorted the prince with scorn, and slapped the poet in the face. Then came the fight, and prince and poet most cruelly demonstrated that they were both of them sound in wind and limb, and that the Doctor's prescription for Master Shirley had proved effectual. "Why, Hugh, what on earth is the matter ?

" exclaimed Dame Cumberladge, as the boy, with blood on his garments, and fear, mingled with wrath in his eyes, presented himself to her. " Are you not my mother ? " he asked in a troubled voice, and with a tumult in his whole MASSTON. being as grown men have been known to suffer when they have asked themselves if they were awake or only dreaming. " My poor boy," was the only reply he received, together with the touch of a friendly hand that pressed his little head against the lady's silk dress. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, was the whole world filled with misery and pain for one of its children. He had no mother — that is to say, this most loving lady, whose eyes to him were as soft as flowers, whose morning kiss was heaven's dowry, and whose love was his patent of life, was, as his enemy had said, not his mother.

But she was the mother of him who had struck him in the face. He had not felt that blow till now. It separated him from all that he possessed, and what was worse, it opened his eyes to the sea of cruelty which he knew not to exist until he found himself in the midst of its awful billows. Sorrow often brings with it light and wisdom, MASSTON. 29 even though it be too late to be of other use than to luxuriate in its possession. Sorrow may show us the land of promise in a moment's time, but will not help us to lift one leg before another to enter it. And some light did sorrow bring even to this child ; whether a light of life or of death, sorrow could not tell him — it could only urge him to follow it, and he did ; and that light led him to a land he knew nothing of and which knew nothing of him.

He fled, for he could do nothing else than fly from him who had struck him a blow which had gone to his heart and spilt its warmest blood ; and, cruellest of all, had cut him off from her whom he had loved, as one who has a right to love the dearest and best of all human beings. Then, perhaps, sorrow is a revolving light, which, when it shines on one, turns darkness on to another. For, when Dr. Cumberladge came to know all the day's work, and found that his god-son — the son of his friend — the MASSTON. son of his own mercy, whom he had designed to be a ministering angel, or an avenging Astræa — had really fled from him into the very same world from which he had rescued his mother, that her son, as it would seem, might only come to the greater grief, such sorrow laid hold of Dr. Cumberladge as only comes to those who are able to discern that it is without remedy or removal.