Leaves from the ash

Front matter

LONDON : GILBERT AND KIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. BY MARGARET FIELD. Ho ntfon : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1880. [All rights reserved.) DEDICATION To the girls luhose minds have pondered, more or less con sciously, the meaning of what often seems the sorrowful riddle of life, I dedicate these few Leaves of the Mysterious Tree — the roots of which are in the depths, but whose crown is in Heaven — in the hope that, having been written from my heart, they may speak to theirs ; and may at least hint to them what is that beauty and glory of blossom and fruit, towards which the tree Lgdrasil itself is ever growing and yearning.

Preface

. "All Life is figured by the Norsemen as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has its roots deep down in the kingdom of Hela, or Death • its trunk reaches up heaven high, spreads its boughs over the whole Universe : it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit three Nomas, Fates — the Past, Present, Future — watering its roots from the Sacred Well. Its boughs — with their buddings and disleafings, events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes — stretch themselves through all lands and times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word ? Its boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human passion rustling through it — or storm-tost, the storm-wind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence." Carlyle, Heroes and Hero- Worship. CONTENTS.

Chapter I

cobwebs. " Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever ; Do noble things, not dream them all day long ; And so make Life, Death, and that vast For Ever One grand sweet song." Charles Kingsley. 'i his is a quiet story, and the scene of it is a quiet place, a country village in the north of Yorkshire, Aytoun by name. It was rather a large village for those parts, having nearly eight hundred inhabitants, but was neither an active nor a stirring place, for it was far from any manufacturing district, and its people were chiefly agricultural labourers, with the quiet habits of their class. It was not a specially pretty place, yet it possessed a certain homely charm. There was one long street with a common in the middle, bordered on either side, by cottages, not so pretty as the thatched cottages of the south, yet picturesque, with their irregular, dull red roofs, and the bright little strips of garden which each possessed.

From this main street branched off various lanes and alleys, tolerably clean and pleasant-looking, except one which was remarkably the reverse, spite of its quaintly B pretty north-country name of Beck Lane, derived from the little stream (beck) which flowed at its foot. At the head of the village was the church, a fine old Norman building, standing on a hill in the middle of the pretty churchyard, with a range of long, low hills for a background. There was nothing grand or sublime about these hills ; they were low, and for the most part thickly wooded, with here and there a stretch of bare moorland or a bold cliff; but they had a beauty of their own, chiefly owing to their changeful colours, misty grey or purple, with wonderful flickering gleams of light, passing into blackest shade, or deepest, purest blue.

Whatever was their colour, they had always a look of rest even in changefulness, and gave to the whole scene an air of peace. Two girls were walking up the village street on the winter afternoon on which my story begins. The elder would have attracted notice anywhere for her rare and well-nigh perfect beauty. She was tall and slight, with a certain statuesque dignity of figure and carriage, and a face which in its setting of golden hair, with its low, white forehead, its serene, untroubled blue eyes, its classically perfect out line, was pale, passionless, and pure as that of Artemis, the stately vestal queen. It was lovely as the dream of artist or poet, but keen observers sometimes complained that it wanted softness ; it lacked as yet the crown of love and sorrow which the years would bring.

Some people even found Annie Hilton's companion and my heroine more attractive, though there was no com parison between the two in point of beauty. Margaret Eversley was not generally considered even " good-looking." The abundant wavy masses of hair, a rich, warm brown in hue, which were coiled round her well-shaped head, were indeed very pretty • and the large, Cobwebs. 3 soft, brown eyes were beautiful in shape and colour, but the other features were irregular, and nowise remarkable, except for a refinement of outline not very common. Yet, if the face were studied, there was somethiug striking in it ; originality, intellect, a subtle, charming smile which came and went occasionally, waking the lines of the mouth into beauty. But the prevailing expression of Margaret Evers ley's face was a certain wistful trouble, as of a soul looking out into the world and not comprehending the meaning of what it saw there, with a sorrowful perception of depths which it could not sound, mysteries beyond its power to fathom, and for which the necessity of its own nature forced it to seek some explanation.

The conversation between the two friends had paused for a moment, when they met a young man walking quickly down the street, who raised his hat from his close, fair curls, and passed them with a word of greeting and a peculiarly sunshiny smile. It was jack Raymond, a young doctor from a neighbouring village of Kirkdale, who had several patients in Aytoun. " How very young-looking Mr. Raymond is ! " remarked Annie Hilton, when he was out of hearing ; " I was quite surprised when Tom told me that he was six-and-twenty. He has such a bright face, too, as if he had never known sorrow." " Do you think so?" replied Margaret; "to me it seems something deeper than the mere buoyant brightness of youth and ignorance of pain. Have you never noticed the restful look there is sometimes in his keen dark eyes ?"

" Yes ; it is a very uncommon expression. He is wonderfully popular with the people here. He is so kind to them ; and then he is a ' real gentleman,' as they say." B Leai'es from the Ash. 4 " I should be a doctor if I were a man. Have you ever thought that you would like to be a man, Annie ?" " Certainly not ; it would be the last thing that I should wish. Surely you would not ?" " I sometimes fancy that I would rather be anything than what I am — a young lady in the nineteenth century. A man has always some work in the world." "So has a woman." " I don't know. There does not seem to be much for a girl to do that is worth the doing. You would be shocked at me, Annie, if you knew half the wild thoughts that come into my head sometimes. I know it is wicked to be as discontented as I am, but I can't help it.

I do think that I would rather have lived at any other period of the world's history than the present. Surely at no other was the world so worn out and irretrievably prosaic as in this ' age of progress.' It seems to me that it is progress towards the dead level of monotony. Do you never feel it, Annie ? " " I don't think it troubles me. But then I am of a prosaic nature, Margaret. I am very well satisfied with life at present, and I think one can always find work in it of some sort." " But the question is, what is the use of it at all ? Do you ever ask yourself what is the meaning of existence ? Don't you get weary of the cut-and-dried explanations of it that one gets ? don't you feel that it is not all plain sailing, according to rule and line, but that there i_ something deeper underneath?

It may be quite true that if one follows certain directions which the good books give, rather as if they were a recipe for making a pudding, one is sure to arrive safely at the end. But what of those who do not follow them, and who get wrecked by the way ? And what if one does not understand one's chart, or the storms come, Cobivcbs. 5 and the reckoning is lost ? What of the strange, awful sin and misery in the world, the lost lives, the wasted loves, the terrible despair of human hearts, the wreck of great souls?" It was nothing new for Annie Hilton to be somewhat perplexed by her friend. She answered the latter part of her speech only. " What is the good of thinking of those things, Margaret ? It is not as if we could help them. Since one cannot, I do not see the use of making oneself miserable with imagining them.

And then there is the other side of life, which is just as true. The world is not made up of wrecked lives and wasted loves." " Which is the other side ? The narrow littleness, the low aims, the petty views of all things — of religion even — which make up one's ordinary life ? I am by no means sure that that is not the darker side of the two. And the same wide heaven over both ! Not think of it ? How is one to help thinking of it ? I know it does no good. That is just the misery of it. If one could help — but there, Annie," as she saw the look of perplexity on her friend's face," " don't let these cobwebs of my brain tease you. You know what a misty brain it always was, but it is only occasionally that these thoughts trouble me. I get on as well as most people generally; I suppose_ everybody has dark days sometimes.

And here our paths divide, so good night." Margaret was the younger daughter of Squire Eversley, of Aytoun Manor House. The family, besides herself, consisted of the Squire, a kindly English gentleman, frank, intelligent, and open-hearted; his wife, a fair, sweet, motherly woman ; and another daughter, Mary. The latter was a good, sensible, thoroughly pleasant girl of two-andtwenty, somewhat matter-of-fact, and altogether different in character from Margaret, between whom and herself there existed a very strong affection nevertheless. For many reasons Margaret stood somewhat alone in the family. She was the youngest, and the pet of them all ; but notwithstanding the love which surrounded her, she felt that she was hardly understood among them. Her nature was essentially poetic, and she was often conscious of a different way of looking at things from that of the world around.

Ordinary people, even her own family, often jarred upon her — their words and thoughts appeared to her low and mean ; the world seemed to be composed of people ruled by motives which were base and sordid com pared with her dreams of noble living ; she shrank with youthful intolerance from the commonplace. So she lived very much in a world of dreams, hardly realizing that she had any part in the actual duties of life, or rather not seeing clearly what those duties were for her. She was not very happy, for she met with little sympathy for the " obstinate questionings of invisible things " which haunted her, and she was conscious of capacities for a fuller, wider life than seemed open to her. The Eversleys' most intimate friends were the Hiltons, who lived just out of Aytoun, at a house known as The Grange.

The family consisted of a widow, her son and daughter. The latter we have already seen, but we must devote a few words to the son, Tom. He was a young man of seven-and-twenty, the owner of the small property on which he lived w7ith his mother and sister. It was a life which suited him, for he was no uncommon type of a York shire country gentlemana big, tall fellow, with a shrewd, kindly face, not highly cultured, but honest, warm-hearted, and affectionate, though with the northern dislike of de- Cobzvebs. 7 monstrativeness. His was a thoroughly wholesome nature, delighting in all manly exercises, and possessing the strong, racy common-sense belonging to the good old Yorkshire stock from which he came. It was curious that this character, so essentially different from Margaret Eversley's, with its nervous organization, its vague dreams and poetic fancies, should yet be singularly attracted by it.

There had always been a close friendship between the two families. Squire Eversley and Tom Hilton's father had been friends from boyhood, and on the early death of the latter the Squire had been the widow's chief stay and support, and had cared for her children like his own. They had indeed almost grown up together, and lately Tom had come to look on Margaret with a feeling warmer than friendship. She had always been his especial pet ; he had borne with and soothed, though he utterly failed to understand, the restless cravings and vague un happiness of her fitful childhood, and had almost uncon sciously grown to look forward to a future in which she was the central figure. He had a real and deep, though not a sentimental affection for her — an affection rooted in habit and association, quite apart from comprehension of her character.

He had little conception of the heights and depths of her nature ; but he dimly perceived its noble capacities, and he perhaps loved her the better for the moods which he failed to understand. Tom's chief friend was the young doctor, Jack Raymond, whom we have already mentioned. They had been at school together, and the boyish friendship formed there was renewed when Jack Raymond came as assistant to old Dr. Maurice, at Kirkdale, about three years before my story begins. Tom was not singular in his affection for him ; indeed, it was rare to find any one who did not like Jack Raymond, who, to many noble qualities of mind and heart, added a singular and indescribable charm of manner, a chivalrous courtesy and grace, which I know of no word to express, except the old English "debonair," which has unhappily almost died out of the language.

One evening in December there was a kind of informal dinner-party at Aytoun Manor. The Squire was always bringing people in " promiscous-like," as the old cook indignantly complained. He had met Jack Raymond in the afternoon, and made him come home with him ; and finding Tom and Annie Hilton at the Manor, he insisted on their staying also. The Eversleys had a visitor too, an old lady named Miss Gittings, who was Margaret's godmother. She was an old maid of nearly seventy, who wore her years honestly and gracefully, without clinging passionately to the remains of a faded beauty, as single women often do. She was a good woman, though a solitary life had developed certain oddi ties and eccentricities which sometimes caused a smile among her friends. But she was loved as well as laughed at, and the lonely life was rich in kindness to many who perhaps never knew the hand that blessed them.

The drawing-room at the Manor was a very pleasant, homelike room, especially on evenings like the present, when, after dinner, the whole circle gathered round the cheery winter fire. Some chance remark caused the con versation to turn on Christian names. " Is Margaret called after you, Miss Gittings ? " asked Annie Hilton. " No, my name is not a pretty one, ' Penelope Ann.' I do not think that Margaret would have thanked me for calling her that." Cobwebs. 9 " I am afraid not," answered Margaret, smiling. " I would not change my name for any that I know." " It is a very beautiful one," said Jack Raymond. " Of course you know its meaning ? " "Yes; 'a pearl.'" " That is the one which is usually given ; but I have seen another derivation which makes it come from a Persian word meaning ' child of the light' Either is beautiful."

"What is your other name, Mr. Raymond ? " asked Mrs. Eversley. " I have noticed that you always sign yourself 'John V. Raymond.'" "'Vyvyan.' It is a family name. The Vyvyans are a Cornish family who have married and intermarried with ours, so that now all our branch of the Raymonds have adopted the name." " Cornwall is not your native county ? " "No, I was born in Devonshire. My mother is a York shirewoman, though, and I seem now almost to belong to the north country." " Vyvyan is pretty," said Mrs. Eversley ; " and John is the name I like almost better than any other. It has a beautiful meaning, too, 'the grace of God.'" " Don't you think it is a great pity that meaning is not regarded more in choosing names ? " said Mary Eversley. " It is positively cruel to give children the names they are sometimes saddled with.

What a stress is laid in the Bible, too, on the giving of names ! " " I think that we neglect an important means of education by our carelessness in this respect," said Jack. " We should give children names with a beautiful meaning, and teach them that they are bound to act up to it. The spirit of ' noblesse oblige ' should make a Beatrice indeed ' a blessing,' a Dorothy the true ' gift of God,' a Richard royal-hearted ; should make it impossible for a Constance to be fickle, or a Godfrey quarrelsome." " I think that the last is one of the most beautiful of all," said Mary, " ' God's peace ! ' " " Well," remarked Miss Gittings, " I fear that significance was no more regarded than beauty in the choice of my name, for I believe Penelope means ' a turkey.' " " But Ann is ' grace.' " " Worse and worse !

" whispered Margaret to Tom ; " a graceful turkey ! " " Never mind, Miss Gittings," said the Squire, " Penelope was a very fine character, and has made her name significant of faithfulness for ever." Margaret learnt in after-days the meaning of the shadow of pain which flitted across Miss Gitting's face at the Squire's words. Now she wondered at it somewhat. " It always seems to me that her faithfulness was rather thrown away on Ulysses," she said. " He strikes one as such an extremely unattractive character, at least in the ' Iliad.' His sufferings excite our sympathy for him rather more in the 'Odyssey.' Don't look alarmed, Tom, I am not going to quote the ' original Greek.' All I know of Homer is from Pope, and that, I suppose, is not Homer. Whether or not, it is the only poetry of Pope's which I ever enjoyed."

"Are you going to Helmsdale on New Year's Eve, Mrs. Eversley?" asked Tom presently. " Yes, I believe so. I suppose it will be quite a grand entertainment." " What sort of a fellow has that boy Grenville turned out, Tom ? " asked the Squire. " No one seems to know very much about him. 1 think, from what I have seen of him, that he is a manly, pleasant Cobwebs. 11 fellow enough. His mother has done her best to spoil him, 1 suppose." " Yes," answered the Squire, with a sigh. " Poor thing ! she never was a very wise woman, and that awful shock was enough to weaken a stronger brain." " What was it ? " asked Jack. " I have never heard the facts of the case." " The father of this boy, Wilfred Grenville, came into the Helmsdale property at two-and-twenty, and soon after married a Miss Hume, the present Mrs. Grenville, who was then one of the prettiest girls I ever saw.

Grenville himself was a fine fellow — a high-spirited, handsome, gallant man — a sort of Harry Hotspur ; but as affectionate as a child, and devoted to his wife. He was a splendid rider, and delighted in it more than any man I ever knew. He was out hunting one day about a year after his marriage ; he was on a nasty-tempered horse— a new one, which he was trying. He would not take a leap which Grenville wanted him to— it was a stifhsh fence — but the horse could have done it if he had liked, and Grenville was resolved that he should. I did not see it, for I had ridden round ; but I heard that there was an accident, and when I rode up, Grenville was lying dead ! " The Squire paused a moment. " I cannot think of it without a shudder to this day," he continued presently. " We sent some one on to tell Mrs. Grenville, but she was out walking, and by some terrible chance she met them as they were carrying him home."

An exclamation of horror broke from the girls. " It was the most painful scene ! She fainted, poor thing ! They thought for a long time that it would have killed her. Then her baby was born — the son and heir poor Grenville would have so rejoiced in. It lived, and grew up strong and healthy ; but I never saw such a terrible change in any woman as in Mrs. Grenville. She sank into permanent ill-health, and is the mere wreck of the lovely girl she was." " I shall never forget how the contrast struck me when I first saw her afterwards," said Mrs. Eversley. " Only the day before the accident she had driven over here with her husband. She was in the gayest possible spirits ; such a bright, brilliant creature ; the two were a perfect picture; and then to see her in her widow's weeds, her face looking so thin and small in the mass of crape, and all the happiness dead !

She was only twenty then." " It had a bad effect on her morally, too," remarked the Squire. " She had not the strength of character to recover from the blow, and she became utterly helpless. She seems to have no energy left, except in her affection for her son, and she worships him blindly, I believe. I know very little of them now, however, for she was away for a long time, and she never goes out or sees visitors. I am a little surprised at this party ; but I suppose Master Wilfred wants to see something of the world, and to celebrate his coming of age in proper style, poor boy ! " *3

Chapter II. Pygmalion And Galatea

" Leon.— ' Would you not deem it breathed, and that those veins Did verily bear blood ? ' Pol. — ' Masterly done ! The very life is warm upon the lip. ' " Shakespeare, Winter's Tale. Wf. have heard the outline of Wilfred Grenville's history from the Squire ; but before describing his birthday festivi ties, it may be as well to give the reader some idea of the young man himself, which the Squire knew too little of him to do. He had been left almost entirely to his mother's manage ment, and she idolized him passionately with a love utterly without wisdom. Thanks to a naturally fine disposition, he was not ruined by indulgence ; and his affection for her, as well as the religious principle which, in spite of her weakness, she had striven to teach him, had kept him from any absolute evil. But all his life he had been the most important person in his own little world, and he had never known any other ; for his mother had not dared to trust him to the tender mercies of a public school, and he had been taught by a private tutor, a good man, who had trained him well, but had indulged him almost as much as Mrs. Grenville herself.

Wilfred was always accustomed to be first in everything ; his will was the law of his mother's life, and he scarcely knew what it was to be crossed. He had hardly ever had any companions, partly because his mother was weakly jealous of his affection being given to any one but herself, and partly because she feared his learning evil from boys brought up in an ordinary way. Happily, Wilfred was naturally manly in character, so that he had escaped the priggishness which this system would have developed in a weaker boy, and the worst effects which it had produced were an overweening idea of his own importance ; a certain amount of selfishness, which it would have been a marvel indeed if he had escaped ; and a passionate temper, which he had never been taught to restrain. These faults, and the pride and exclusiveness which his education had fostered, made him rather unpopular in general society ; but there was plenty of good in the lad, which the discipline of life would probably develope.

His estate had been managed — and in many respects mismanaged — by an agent named Barker. Wilfred's guardian was his father's cousin, an easy-going, indolent man, who lived in the south ; and who, not being very fond of Mrs. Grenville, had not taken much trouble about his ward. The condition of the estate was not bad on the whole ; the part which was immediately under Wilfred's eye was fairly prosperous; but the latter was indolent, and not fond of business, and he had never been taught that he had any special duties as a landlord, so that many evils had crept in out of sight. Wilfred came of age on New Year's Eve, as we have heard, and for once Mrs. Grenville had resolved to shake off her weakness, and rouse herself sufficiently to give a dance in honour of the event. Wilfred's cousins, the Misses Hughes, came and stayed in the house, and to a great extent took the burden of arrangement off her shoulders.

The proceedings of the evening were to begin with tableaux vivants, at their suggestion. There was a fine old hall which presented admirable facilities for them ; and as they were rather a novelty in that neighbourhood, the idea had been eagerly caught up. But at the beginning of the evening, as Wilfred stood near the door, receiving his guests with a boyish but not ungraceful cordiality, Maud Hughes came up to him ex claiming, — " Oh, Wilfred, almost our best tableau is spoilt ! Your mother has just had a note from Clara Lynton to say that she has fallen and sprained her ankle, and cannot possibly come. She was to have been 'Galatea.' No one else will do for it, and it would have been the prettiest of all!" " What a pity ; what will Carrington say ?" " I don't know. I am dreadfully sorry.

Oh, Wilfred, who is that girl just come in ?— the one dressed in cream colour, with the golden hair? She would make a splendid 'Galatea!' Who is she?" " It is Miss Hilton. You are right, Maud, she would do. Come with me ; I will introduce you, and then you can ask her." Maud accordingly explained her difficulty, and asked Annie if she would mind taking the place left vacant by Miss Lynton's defection. " I would gladly do so," answered Annie, " but I have never taken part in anything of the kind." " You will have absolutely nothing to do but to stand still ; even that you need not be too particular about, as a little motion will fit in with the story. Let me introduce 'Pygmalion' to you. Mr. Carrington, Miss Hilton has kindly consented to be ' Galatea.' Mr. Carrington, Miss Hilton." He bowed, and Annie glanced at him curiously.

She saw a man of about four-and-twenty, tall and dark, and with a somewhat stately bearing. He had a proud face, too, but there was a melancholy expres sion in the full grey eyes which attracted women. The key of the face, however, was a full, eager, flexible mouth, which told of a nature, passionate yet weak, and inclined to follow its impulses wherever they might lead. Annie did not read all this ; she had only given him a momentary glance when her attention was again claimed by Maud Hughes, who was explaining the details of the tableau. " However," broke off Maud, " Mr. Carrington will tell you all this, and I know I am wanted. You will excuse my leaving you ? Mr. Carrington, please take Miss Hilton to the 'Green Room.' You will find my sister there, Miss Hilton, and she will show you your costume.

You can have a rehearsal, if you like." " Now please tell me the story, Mr. Carrington," said Annie, " for I have only a vague idea of it. Miss Hughes would not admit any doubt as to my capabilities, but I am by no means confident of them myself." " I do not think you will have any difficulty." (Nature has taken care of the most essential part, he thought.) " The story is this. Pygmalion was a Greek artist, who made a statue of the nymph Galatea, of suchwondrous beauty that it seemed as if all it lacked was the living soul ; and, because he was a devout worshipper of the gods, Pallas breathed life into the statue while he was sleeping. The moment chosen for the tableau is that of his waking. It is a pretty legend, is it not?" " Very ! what does it mean ? for I suppose all those old myths had a meaning."