Lanherst: a story of sixty years ago

Front matter

■ LANHERST. LANHERST: A STORY OF SIXTY YEARS AGO. " Amongst the untrodden ways." Wordsworth. BY MRS. ENSELL, authoress ok j^»» "meta's letters," "the pastor's family," etc., etc. LONDON : ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROAV, E.C. 1885. [All Rights Reserve,iZ\ Eo MY DEAR FRIENDS AT QUARRY HOWE, THIS STORY #_i Un_Scrtbfa, WITH MANY LOVING AND GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCES. ERRATUM. The last two lines on page 154 should be transferred to the top of page 159. PREFATORY. ADDRESSED TO MY FRIENDS IN THE VALLEA'S. Brain-sick and wandering in fevered dreams, I once got tangled in a maze of song ; A network many -tinted like the beams The prism shows. Tunes I had known for long : Nursery ballads ; Erin's melodies ; AVild airs that wander over Scotia's hills ; Songs salted with the wash of stormy seas ; Love-ditties trickling gently as the rills ; AA'ar-cries and funeral dirges manifold ; Sweet songs of Mendelssohn that have no words, But violet odours wafted in the gold Of sunset breezes on Æolian chords.

But never one could my sick brain complete ; No strain was ended and no strain begun ; But shifting ever, like the dancers' feet, Like rolling waves or flickerings of the sun, It grew at last a nightmare agony, From which in vain I struggled for release, Till one familiar strain remained with me, And murmuring " Home, sweet home," I woke in peace. Oft in my waking dreams, heart-sick and sore, Along the noisy thoroughfares of life, I weave a tissue with the threads of yore, AVherein again the prism's hues are rife. I see dear mountains where the shadows lie, And valleys far away that catch the sun, And streams all laughter-fraught that hurry by To hide in golden meres when day is done. PREFATORY. And caiaracts that fall like wreaths of snow Adown the rugged gorge, 'mid bristling rocks ; And gentle pastures where the shepherds go To gather in at night the straggling flocks.

And sweet low dwellings nestling 'mid the trees ; And blue smoke curling in the ambient air, And notes of music borne upon the breeze, That waken up the echoes slumbering there. The larch's tassels and the cherry blooms Flushing in light upon the purple fells, The sweet pale primrose and wild thyme's perfumes, And islands pallid with the lily bells. All these, and, ah ! how many pictures more ! Mingle their coloured rays upon the glass, Where memory cons her flitting treasures o'er, And vainly tries to fix them as they pass. Where is my valley ? Ask those rainbow gleams That, baffling wildered reason, go and come, I only know 1 saw it in my dreams, And that my heart sang ever, " Home, sweet home." E. J. E. Caldecote, April ejth, 1885. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. A WHIFF FROM THE OUTER WORLD - - - I II.

Chapter I

A WHIFF FROM THE OUTER WORLD. " Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife ; Their sober wishes never learned to stray : Along the cool sequestered vale of life They kept the noiseless tenour of their way." Gray. The old Vicarage was a study for an artist on that summer evening long ago. The sober bricks and tiles were ruddy in the declining light, and enriched by the delicate contrasts of green and yellow, brown and grey, that in every variety of form and tint glittered upon the salient points or melted into fathomless depth in the rifts and hollows of the timeworn fabric. The shadows were projected clear and sharp from pointed gable and mullioned window, and from those giant stacks of chimneys, at which one gazed with a kind of reverential admiration that such an upright bearing, so much lofty dignity and stern resolve, could outlast the wear and tear of time.

Small wonder that the climbing plants should cling to the hale old edifice with such a fond embrace, such a tender appreciation of the task they had undertaken to fulfil ; the modest beautifying of beauty, the delicate veiling of decay. How lovingly had the green ivy crept into the open chinks and over the worn edges of the bricks, laying its shining leaves upon the rich umber as if conscious that their colours mutually enhanced each other ; and what LANHERST. wreathings there were of jessamine and clematis, honeysuckle and roses, all vying with each other in their gentle work without a particle of jealousy or envy, buds and blossoms of every hue nestling side by side or peeping from their verdant shade to watch the happy progress of a sister bud or flower. " Do look, Mervie ; it has climbed to the very eaves, and what a bunch of blossom it is !

I wish she could see it." The speaker was a girl of nineteen, tall, fair, and very lovely, not with what we call regular beauty, but with that in definable grace and sweetness which seem to set all rules at defiance, and to charm us we know not why. " See it ! AA'hy, of course she sees it ! Oh, my Flo, you are a kind of infidel. I declare you are !" "Nay, Mervie ; I am only not gifted like you with what father calls the handmaid of faith. I can believe what I am plainly told to believe, but all this is surely in the realm of fancy." " Perhaps ; but it is strange how often I feel her near me. She has never seemed to go quite away from us." " Ah, I wish I could feel like that. To me it is all so lonely, and she so far." And as Flo spoke the shadow of a cloud seemed to pass over her sunny face, while her sister's brightened with a kind of dreamy joy which made her thoughtful and delicately chiselled features glow with a subdued light.

She was two years older than her sister, much shorter, and in complexion almost a brunette, so that they formed a very striking contrast. They had been stripping the rose-trees of some of their withered blossoms and watering some pet plants, and now they were hastily filling two baskets with flowers, with which they presently emerged through the little wicket-gate of the parsonage garden which led directly to the village and the church. A WHIFF FROM THE OUTER WORLD. 3 It was a very old-fashioned village, not owning one slate roof, nor one pane of plate-glass, nor the vestige of a castiron railing. But there were rustic palings in abundance ; stone walls crumbling with age and bristling with botanical specimens, destined ere long to be torn ruthlessly from their resting-places by the encroaching hands of science ; there were gables eloquent of antiquity, with roof-lines in every variety of that kind of deformity which painters call picturesque; wonderful windows of many lights with their massive frames and leaded panes; eaves projecting like umbrellas, and no doubt famous for centuries in the traditional lore of the swallows ; and there was a public-house, a very model of its kind, the glory and pride of the whole district.

The sign of the Red Lion had been swinging from its rude posts at least since the reign of Henry VII., and one could hardly attribute to a later date the skeleton ribs of old timber, black as ebony, and covered with quaint devices and antique letters, that testified to the primitive style of the architecture. And what treasures of carved oak did that old house contain ! Chests and tables, cabinets and panels, to no end ; and alas ! of how many has it been robbed by the pride of wealth and the greed of gain ! But it is vain to lament over such spoliations, or lamentations would never cease. The Red Lion, though stripped of many of its hoary honours, still stands in that village street ; its venerable sign-board still swings from its black posts, and the sign itself, though disfigured by many successive daubings, still rampages in helpless wrath ; and still under a gable projecting far across the road may be seen many a tired rustic smoking his pipe of peace as he watches the lengthening of the evening shadows.

Artists in those olden days had not yet found their way into every picturesque nook and cranny of Old England ; but we are much mistaken if this time-honoured inn of Lanherst has not more i — LANHERST. 4 than once figured in the pages of that almost forgotten guide to art, " Rodwell and Martin's Lithographic Drawing-book.'* AA'hat a foreground for a sketch would that gipsy maiden and her Saxon sister have been as they issued from the little garden-gate in their broad-leaved hats, and their baskets overflowing with flowers ! So the strangers may have thought ; for the inn was in all the pleasant bustle of a new arrival. Two young men in shooting-jackets and straw-hats had jumped from an open trap, and were giving directions for the bestowal of their bachelors' modicum of luggage, when they suddenly turned, with a kind of startled interest, and looked after the sisters, who were walking with rather hurried steps towards the church.

" Visitors ?" said one of them interrogatively to the inn keeper, who was bustling about. " No, sir — no. They are only our young ladies — the Vicar's daughters, you know; and a bonnie pair they be !" " Ay, and as good as they are bonnie," added portly Mrs. Huins, as she bustled in with directions for " readding up the front parlour and making up two beds in No. 6." " AVe are later than usual," said Mervine, glancing at the old church clock as they passed on towards the long narrow churchyard that stretched behind it ; and threading their way carefully beside the swelling mounds of grass, marked by stones and flowers, they reached a quiet corner, where two graves and a piece of unused ground, railed off by a little wooden fence, lay under the shadow of an old yew-tree. At the head of one grave was a plain white cross, bearing this inscription : En Robing .stlcmort; of RUPERT, The Only Son of Owen and Alice Lloyd, Drowned while bathing at B , June ioth, 18 — , Aged fourteen years.

" He took me, He drew me out of many waters." A WHIFF FROM THE OUTER WORLD. 5 On the grave beside it was a stone : cS-tmb to thc (ctttmoru as ALICE, The Beloved AVife of the Rev. Owen Lloyd, Vicar of this Parish. " So He giveth His beloved sleep." The date was six months later. It was a very simple memorial, and there was little imagination needed to fill the gap. The shock had proved too much for the mother's delicate constitution, and her broken heart was soon taken to the place where hearts are healed for ever. " It is my turn to do the cross," said Flo, as she proceeded to cull from her basket the evergreens and flowers that would last longest, and wreath them on the white marble, carefully avoiding any concealment of the inscription. " Father always reads it over and over," she said. " I should not like to hide a letter."

Mervine was filling her little trough in silence. It, too, was in the form of a cross, and lay embedded in the grass below the headstone. Presently she began to murmur something, but Flo knew her way. The words were not for her. " These are the roses off your own tree, mother," she said, " the one that you planted by the wall ; and these are from the rockery in your own garden ; and these from Flo's ; and these from mine. Father has sent you this. It grew right over the study-window." AVhile they were thus occupied, the two young visitors to the Red Lion had sauntered also into the churchyard, and being unnoticed by the sisters, had ample time to make their own observations. "AVell, they are bonnie, true enough ! AVho could imagine that those toddlers would grow like that ! And their hats !

Did you ever see anything so picturesque ? And those trim skirts, showing their tiny little feet and well- LANHERST. turned ankles. If one could just transport them to Regent Street or Piccadilly, how they would make the grand world stare !" These short ejaculations had been dropping alternately from both speakers, and one of them had burst into subdued laughter ; the other looked too intent on his observations to laugh, and at last relapsed into total silence, not heeding the continued babble ofhis companion. " Come, come," said the silent one at last, " we must not be caught prying. Here they are — puff away, Dick !" and handing his companion a lighted cigar, he obeyed his own injunctions to Dick, and puffed away too, not looking once behind, until they reached an old tombstone close beside the footway, bearing this quaint inscription : " Here lies poor Tom, come here to die, From the battles of Dettingen and Fontenoy."

"Oh, how well I remember it!" said Dick; "and that little Flo not up to my knee trying to spell it out, with her fat finger in the hollow of the letters. I can even recall the pathetic tone of her little voice saying : " ' Poo Tom turn hee to die.' " There, they are quite out of sight now," said the other, who had stolen a last look, as the girls disappeared through the lych-gate. " AVell, it is luck one hardly expected — a gipsy queen and a perfect bluebell of a Flora ; and such weather ! and such scenery ! How one does change, to be sure ! all that" — indicating with his outstretched hand the landscape before him — " I never saw when I was here before, nor, I venture to say, did you." "All that," rejoined the other. "Yes, of course I saw it. How could I help seeing it ?" " Oh yes ; but there is seeing and seeing.

It never looked like that to me when I was here before." A WHIFF FROM THE OUTER WORLD. 7 The horizon was bounded by a range of mountains now wearing the rich purple hues of twilight, and the nearer hills, in every variety of crag and peak, seemed to fold into each other at their bases, leaving between them a rugged gorge, into which more than one cascade might be seen falling like loosened snow ; while nearer still the gorge melted into a smiling valley, plentifully sprinkled with trees and cottages, and a river like a silver thread wound through emerald meadows dotted with sheep and cows ; and nearer still the river widened into a silver lake, from which it again issued, a brawling brook, until at last you could hear it, with the voice of many waters, foaming, and rushing, and tumbling over its stony bed, in the hollow below the old churchyard.

" I declare the air is fragrant with — what do you think, father ?" " Let me see," said the stately gentleman, fresh from his study, and deep in the " Horæ Paulinæ," but relaxing into a patient smile. " Let me see — rather let me smell — roses and honeysuckle, I think." " No, no ; try again." " Thenlet me smell again. Ah, I have it now — roast chicken and sausages ! How stupid of me ! My olfactory organs have been receiving hints of a good supper. I always notice what a particularly good supper I have on Saturdays." " Because you are so naughty, you know, about eating on Sundays. But you have missed again, father." " Then I give up." " Cigars, papa ! An arrival at the Red Lion ! Two young men in straw-hats trimmed all round with lines and flies, and a perfect load of fishing-tackle." " Ah, I am sorry to hear it.

These kind of people always come on Saturdays, I observe, that they may have an early start in desecrating the Lord's day. Fishing on Sundays LANHERST. and almost in consecrated ground, within sight of the church windows, and on the very verge of God's acre ! Such an example for our people ! It is hard to bear it." " But, dear father, we must hope for better things. These young men may be quite different. There must be good people in the world." "Yes, plenty of good people, I dare say, my little philan thropist. Sometimes we even entertain angels unawares, but I own to a dread of straggling tourists and fishing gentle men. There is an old saying, ' AA'hen poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window ;' but I have some times experienced the converse of that axiom : ' AArhen wealth and worldliness with all the evils in their train come in at the door, love, and reverence, and simplicity, and in dependence, and hosts of other good things, are very apt to fly out of the window.' But ' the mountains stand round about Lanherst,' and so — so — you know the rest.

By the way, I think I must prepare a little sermon on the sin of fishing on the Lord's day." " That would be labour in vain, papa," said both the girls, bursting into involuntary laughter, " if none of the trans gressors are there to hear you ; and if they are, you would still be wrong, for they would not deserve your reproof." "At fault again, my little philosophers. A bird of the air may carry it to them. God's words are like seeds ; they drop to the earth, they fall upon stony places, but God's winds bear them hither and thither, and His winged messengers drop them from their greedy little beaks we know not where. Yes; assuredly, God helping me, I will preach on the sin of Sunday fishing."

Chapter II. The Vicar's Sermon

" Judge not the preacher, for he is thy judge : If thou mislike him, thou conceiv'st him not. God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge To pick up treasures from an earthen pot. The worst speak something good ; if all want sense, God takes a text and preacheth patience." George Herbert. It may fairly be supposed that when the congregation was assembling on the following day, " our young ladies " cast more than one furtive glance towards the Red Lion pew ; and that at sight of Mr. Huins' guests entering in Sunday apparel, and with all due decorum in proper time, an involuntary smile passed over their countenances, a breach of strict propriety which we regret to say was repeated when their good father, in his usually frigid and solemn manner, gave out his text : " My land shall enjoy her Sabbaths."

His treatment of the subject was somewhat peculiar, the sin of transgressors against the Lord of the Sabbath being less dwelt upon than the flagrant wrong to all the inferior creatures, to whom this one day in seven has been given by inalienable right, as a time of utter freedom from the oppressive power of man, a period when that dominion which has been given to him over the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea is by the same divine authority suspended, and those creatures who together with him are groaning and travailing in pain, obtain, whether they know it or not, a foretaste of creation's everlasting rest. LANHERST. " Dear, now ! but that was a fine discourse — a remarkable discourse, I should say !" exclaimed Mrs. Tonkin, a portly and well-dressed personage, who evidently held no mean rank amongst that goodly portion of the congregation which filed off through the Church Lane.

" To think of them little trout having a right and title to the Sunday same as we. But it's true as true when one comes to think of it. He do put everything as plain as a finger-post." "Ay, there's a share of truth in it, no doubt," said a thin and rather sour-looking man of the party. " It wouldn't be easy to put so many words together and not hap upon some thing that was true ; but the main point was left out, to my thinking — not a word amongst 'em all about the plan of salvation. That's the way I like to see the finger-post a pointing." " Just like you, Brother Sam ! Always looking at things on one side, as if you was born with a squint ; and worse luck, it's always on the wrong side you look. Doesn't a finger-post point every way, and doesn't every good step we take " " That's not the way I look at it," interrupted Brother Sam.

" There's but one road to heaven that ever I heard on ; and if looking that way makes me squint, why, I wish — I wish, begging your pardon, neighbours, I wish you was all a-squinting." This produced a general laugh ; and on the further edge of the group there was a suppressed titter, and a murmur of " Nay, nay ; one rueful Sam is plenty for we. AA'e don't want another pair of eyes to be always looking at the wrong side of ' God speed,' " etc., etc. This was by no means gratifying to Mrs. Tonkin, who, though she considered herself at liberty to comment upon her brother's weaknesses in public, felt very sore when any one else presumed to do so. She was fond of sticking to her point, however, even when she did not feel quite equal to the occasion ; so, turning to a man who was walking by her side, and who, though apparently not much her junior, was really her son-in-law : "Now, John Davis," she said, "will you put the rights of it all before him?

I see it all plain enough myself ; but I can't turn it out ready-cut and squared as you can" — an illustration of mental power no doubt suggested by the daily occupation of the person she addressed, who was in fact the chief tailor of the district, and whose Sunday suit of black broadcloth might have proved a profitable advertisement in more fashionable regions than the secluded vale of Lanherst. He was a man deserving of notice on more accounts than his well-cut coat or the mere physical features of his outer man, which, if the truth must be told, were tailorish enough. A frame of medium height, not highly developed ; stooping shoulders, and a somewhat shambling gait that betrayed sedentary occupation ; and hands, thin and delicate, showing tokens of the constant use of the thimble and needle : but there was a poetic richness in his hair, which fell in half curled waves around a finely formed head, and a forehead of singular breadth and power.

His brows were heavy, though sufficiently far apart, and beneath them were eyes not remarkable for shape or size or colour, but in their expression simply wonderful. Such an expression we see transiently in many eyes ; but the wonder of John Davis's eyes was that the look never passed away. It was as though, at some time or other, he had gazed with longing love and wonder upon " a thing of beauty," and that it had remained, not merely a mental treasure to be taken sometimes from its casket from the " chambers of imagery," from the archives of memory, and looked at and delighted in, but that it had been crystallized in the depths of those grey eyes and there lived on " a joy for ever." " The rights of what, mother ?" he asked, an amused LANHERST. 12 expression, that only bordered on a smile, playing about the lines of his mouth — a mouth that expressed sweetness and firmness in no common degree — "The rights of the sermon, or the rights of the finger-post, or the rights of Uncle Sam's wrongs ?'' " Ah, you know well enough, John Davis !

Is it needful, think you, that parson should put the way of salvation into* every sermon on every Sunday, and keep us spelling a b, ab, and b a, ba, to our dying day ?" " AA'ell, mother, I am afraid it is just the thing that we do want from beginning to end. I am afraid no sermon can do without the Gospel any more than a book can be printed without the letters of the alphabet." " Ay, the Gospel, if you like ; for all the New Testament, as I take it, is the Gospel; but Sam doesn't mean that." " No, I don't," repeated Sam very emphatically ; " I mean that every sermon should preach to we poor sinners about Jesus Christ." " Quite right, Uncle Sam ; I think so, too. For every sermon ought to teach us something about our duty, or give us some warning or some help on our road to heaven : and what could we learn about all this without Jesus Christ, ' expressed or understood,' as the grammar says.

The Sermon on the Mount, for instance." " Ay, ay ; but this 'ere sermon about the Sunday and the river and the trout : it have just stuck like a bone in my throat, I can tell ye, man ; and it was all along of them two sparks at the Red Lion. Just like him, a-scolding the hand ful of folks that's at the right side of the door, because the rest is on the wrong side ; just as if it was any fault of their'n. It puts me in mind of the boy that used to be whipped because the little king didn't learn his lessons. Fine justice that !" " Well, you see," said John, now fairly laughing, for the vinegar of Uncle Sam's remarks, like most things that are never corked down, had long lost its power to bite — " you see, he wants to keep you at the right side ; and the other folks will get their share all the same ; for parson is a long headed man, and knows what he's after, and that his sermons are the talk of the place for all the week till the Sunday comes round again."

This was true enough. There were no penny newspapers in those days, no cheap literature ; and if there had been, Lanherst was too remote from the centres of civilization, the roads too bad, and the means of communication with other places too uncertain and infrequent to admit of any im mediate benefit accruing to this isolated region from the progress of the outer world. "Anyway," resumed the pertinacious Mrs. Tonkin, "if good food sticks in folks' throats, they'd better have the doctor to see to their windpipes. The fault isn't in the meat. For my part, it did me good to think of the great Father taking care of the fishes. It reminded me of the sparrows, and that's always comforting to think on, let alone the hairs of our heads. But mind you, Bill," she said, ad dressing her little boy, whose best hat was on the very point of capturing a splendid peacock butterfly.

" Didn't you hear what the parson said ? Leave be that poor little beastie on the Lord's day ; and hark ye, Bill, I'll have no more legs and wings pulled off them unfortunate flies, leastwise on the Sunday." " Nay, nor on any other day," added his father. " We have no license to be cruel, Sundays or Mondays." The party of pedestrians had been gradually dropping off as they reached their several destinations, always with a neighbourly salutation to the party left behind, which was at last reduced to the Tonkin family, including rueful Sam. The road which turned off from the Church Lane wound LANHERST. 14 sor about a quarter of a mile through green meadows bordered with hedgerows ; then by the river's bank, where reeds and willows for a long way fringed the stream, until a rough old wooden bridge of a singularly quaint and picturesque character led to the lake-side, and thence the road branched off to the higher ground, and the remainder of the walk was a constant ascent.

" AVell, this road do keep telling me how old I am grow ing," said Mrs. Tonkin, panting for breath, and vigorously fanning herself with the corner of her shawl. " Or rather how fat you are growing," said her husband, laughing. " Lean people like Sam and me can stump it as well as ever." " You can speak for yourself," said Sam, " but there's a mighty difference to me, I can tell ye. I remember running the whole way up many a day when I was hungry for my dinner, and if I never got a dinner till I ran for it now, I'm afraid I'd be hungry long enough. Nay, man, things don't mend for us in this life, whether we be fat or lean. They gets worse and worse, to my thinking." " AVell, we don't get longer in the wind, for sure," answered his sister. " It isn't in reason we should : so if I were you I'd save all I had to cool my porridge, or what's more to the point, to blow up the fire, and make a cosy chimney corner for your old age.

Grumbling never mended broken bones nor short wind neither. Flesh and blood isn't everything, brother Sam." " I don't see the sense of that 'ere observation, Sally Tonkin," responded Sam, in a very offended tone. " I have no broken bones to mend that I know on, and I can blow a fire with most folks, though my bellows is none of the newest ; and as to flesh and blood — bless the woman, I'm not such a haythen as to think that them is everything and we no better than the ' brutes that perish.' " " That's it, Sam. If we be above the brutes, things should get better and better with us as we grow older, instead of worse and worse." " And they do get better for us all, mother," said John Davis, looking as he spoke into Sam Blaylock's sour and at this moment very annoyed face with a perfectly radiant smile.