My Home in the Shires. A romance. Author's edition

Front matter

MY HOME m THE SHIRES. MY HOME IN THE SHIRES JV giomana. BY ROSA MACKENZIE KETTLE '> AUTHOR CF "SMUGGLERS AND FORESTERS," "THE WRECKERS," "the MISTRESS OF LANGDALE HALL," "HILLESDEN ON THE MOORS,' "SUMMER SHADE AND WINTER SUNSHINE." " Stray leaves of later bloom, When life's long Summer-day hath told its story, And Autumn comes, with less of sweet perfume. But mellower glory. I scarce to thee these russet leaves may give, But that thy dear approval bids them live. " Stray leaves from distant hills Or dales, where we have often strolled together ; Olive and Palm, grown near Italian rills, Or spines of Heather. Memorials sweet I could not bring to thee, Had not Love's fingers gathered them for me." — C. E. Mudie. A UTHORS EDITION. LONDON : JAMES WEIR, 283, REGENT STREET. 1S76. [All Eights Reserved.] all' onorevole SIGNOR C 0 X T E COMMENDATORE CARLO PEPOLI, SENATORE DEL REGNO D' ITALIA, etc., etc., etc. <E gUikato tynzsto pbro. CION RISPETTO AFFETTUOSISSIMO, DALL' AUTORE.

Chapter I

" In a fair sunny garden of old Romance I dreamed away childhood's hours, Where no darker shade on my young life fell Than the clouds cast over the flowers ; The tir and the yew were the spectres dim That haunted my childish brain, And the song of the birds and the insects' hum Brought courage and joy again." R . M. K. I AM not going to say in which of four Midland Counties, which border on and intersect each other, my home in childhood was situated. In some respects that fair domain partook of the characteristics of each of those fertile shires • and the inhabitants of either Leicester, Stafford, Derby, or "Warwickshire may, if they care to do so, claim my rural picture as their own. There are many goodly English mansions like the old Hall belonging to the L'Estranges; backed by ancient woods, resounding with the notes of wild birds and the song of rejoicing waters ; but none so fair to me.

Let me try if I can make others see the place as clearly as it always rises before me. I think the first time when I noticed its beauty was at a harvest-supper which took place when I was quite a little child. It was also the first occasion on which I clearly recollect noticing my mother's re markable loveliness. She was by birth a Piedmontese lady, dark-eyed, but fair-complexioned, with flowing locks of gold, " chiome d'oro ;" very pale, tall, and slender. I remember very well seeing her under the clear li<dit of the moon, which was at the full that night ; with a black lace mantilla thrown over her head and shoulders, standing on the lawn, for a few moments, near the tables covered with good cheer, while she thanked the men, who stood up bareheaded to receive her simple words, for their kind wishes for herself and her little girl.

I was clinging timidly, hiding my face at first in her long skirts ; but when she bade me look up, I did so, and I have never for gotten that picture. Lady L'Estrange, my own dear mother, stood just in front of a projecting porch, deeply embowered in yellow and white jasmine. The moon lighted up the starry flowers so plainly, that they seemed to twinkle, like gold and silver stars, among their dark MY HOME IX THE SHIRES. green leaves. All round the higharched windows, and turrets, and gables of the Hall, twisted and twined some kind of greenery ; climbing roses, honey suckle, passion-vine, and Virginian-creeper. Some people said the beautiful lines of the Elizabethan architecture were too much hidden, but I never thought so. Certainly, at that time, I was no critic ; but I remember to this day the darkly bright and softly sombre aspect of the picturesque gables, and buttresses, and diamond-paned casements, all set open in the hot August night, and glimmering in the moonbeams ; my mother's tall, fragile form, robed in white, with the black lace hanging round her, and falling softly over her delicate neck and shoulders and white hands.

She had stepped beyond the shade of the porch on to the broad gravel-walk which passed in front of the windows ; and stood motionless and white as a statue, till the men began to cheer her : then the red blood mounted to her usually pale cheeks, and she suddenly pulled me forward, and made me stand in front of her. I thought she was frightened, and, as I had now recovered my spirits, and knew most of the people's faces, I tried to make myself look tall, to protect her ; but I trembled a little when another deafening peal of hurrahs rent the air, and I distinguished my own name among the cheers. Then my 1—2 mother made a sign to the foreign maid who waited on her, and Angelica, who was taller than her mistress, lifted me up, and carried me indoors. I looked back over her shoulder, feeling quite safe and happy now, and waved my hand to the crowd on the lawn, who were shouting more energetically than ever.

My mother followed us slowly. Her strength was quite exhausted, and I heard, afterwards, that the unusual excitement did her much harm. She was never strong enough to appear in public after that harvest gather ing. My childish sympathy in her almost constant suffering was very strong, and mingled with the grief I shared with her for my father's untimely death in a foreign land ; sending a current of sad thoughts through my young life. The wind in the great Scotch fir-trees opposite to my nursery-windows sounded like voices from another land. I often sat up in my little white-curtained bed in the moonlight, watching the swaying of the twin monsters, and listening to the breeze murmuring through their stiff, dark boughs, till I fancied that my parents were talk ing to each other ; though I could scarcely remember seeing them together.

Near the house the old garden had been much altered, to please my mother, into the semblance of one which lay under the waUs of the quaint, half-French, half-Italian Chateau from which she had been transplanted to wither before her time. Long after her health failed, the tender plants she had brought with her were nourishing gaily. Beyond the Italian garden, as it was called, and the sunk-fence, the grounds at the back of the house were left in their old-fashioned condition. There were winding walks, which had no aim or end but general pleasantness, and quantities of flowering shrubs and perennials which are too much banished from modern gardens. At no time of year did those wide borders, and beds, and clumps look duU. In spring there were blossoming almonds and abounding lilacs, laburnums, syringas, guelder-roses, and horse-chestnuts, with man)7 other flowering shrubs and trees : while underneath, growing wild among the grass in the shrubberies, or set in quaintly-shaped beds, were masses of anemones, ranunculus, primroses, polyanthus, and innumerable crocuses, saow-drops, aconite, squills, lily of the vaUey, violets, and other humbler favourites of all ages, climbing, clustering, meandering' scattering their seeds, and spreading their roots, increasing and multiplying year after year.

It needed but little trouble to keep our borders gay. For my part I liked best the dark shrubberies, here and there enlivened by golden showers of laburnum, andfringed with lilacs. Under the yew trees theground seemed always dry ; and, though I dared not touch the bright crimson berries, which even now I can scarcely believe not to be poisonous, I liked to sit in the deep shadow of the boughs, and weave such romances as children do concoct, and never remember after wards. What were the wild thoughts flitting through my brain then I cannot venture to say, but I know that they charmed and saddened me alternately, more than any romance of human moulding has power to do now; and they were always in some manner connected with the objects of nature which surrounded me, as I sat in my airy perch on a labur num bough that stretched over a pailing, on which my feet rested firmly; or nestled under the yew boughs for shelter in a sharp swift shower, which fancy con verted into a storm.

" Those straight boughs crossing 'twixt me and the sun, Or thunder-clouds darkening the sky, Betokened the changes that life must bring To o'ershadow my destiny. My heart had a string and a tone to accord With the voices of heavenly birth, And a cloud or a mist that obscured the sun Would sadden the child of earth." Beyond the garden, on the other side of a wide piece of water which I likened to the unknown sea, lay green sloping fields, and meadows full of cowslips and all sorts of wild flowers ; banks on which scented blue violets might be found by those who knew their haunts; a deep belt of woodland, and one solitary hill which I magnified into a mountain. I was never allowed to go beyond the Hall-pond alone, but Angelica was fond of walking, luckily for me, and we took long rambles together, when my mother could spare her, through the woods and copses which fringed the margin of a broad brawling stream.

The wood was more full of visions than any other place ; and I often rambled about, not quite fearlessly, while the foreign waiting-maid forgot my absence over some perplexing piece of the intricate embroidery she had learnt to work in a foreign convent. Were there gipsies, robbers, murderers, hidden away in those green depths ? Should I some day or other meet with an outlaw in those thickets ? Sherwood and Need wood used to be full of such wild merry-men ! What should I say — above all, what would they say, or do, if I encountered them ? These terrors were far from lessening the charms of the intricate wood-paths in which I often lost my way, but, alas ! met with no more interesting specimen of humanity than a wide eyed, wondering child, or rustic, good-natured enough to help me to find the track I had lost.

Quite at the farther end of the wood, overhung by flowering chestnuts and acacias, and with game-coops all about it from which, at the proper season, issued troops of feathery balls, bright coloured or brown, pheasants and partridges, hereafter to be destroyed by the sportsman, which thought in no way troubled me, was our bailiff or gamekeeper's cottage, which Angelica and I often visited. The owner, busily occupied all day, was generally absent; but his wife, a constant invalid, never left the cottage. In summer she sat sometimes in the porch, where Angelica would join her, and sit working, and watching the young broods; while the little adopted child who waited tenderly upon the sick woman, who had no family of her own, profited gladly by the opportunity to ramble with me in the dark wild woodland behind the cottage.

I do not think I could have ventured there alone, but Rotha knew every turning, and how to avoid the traps set for poachers. This little girl was the only friend I possessed at all near my own age ; and in spite of the differ ence in our positions, we were intimate com panions. I had taught her aU my own limited store of knowledge, and my childish stories were passed on to her as to a younger sister. Rotha was three years younger and much smaller than I was. Angelica and Mrs. Alwyn said that we sometimes looked like sisters. From being so much together, she learned to imitate my manner ; and I often gave her little ornaments like my own, which she put on after my fashion, just as she copied my way of speaking and walking. She had never been allowed to go to school, and scarcely saw anyone but Mr. L'Estrange's bailiff and Ms wife, with whom she lived.

Mrs. Alwyn had received a good education, and was well able to in struct her little affectionate companion. The very few MY HOME IN THE SHIRES. persons who ever visited the lonely cottage, called her a dull child. But I never found her so. The larks and linnets did not chatter more blithely, nor the young pheasants and partridges scud along more swiftly and merrily than the bttle forest maiden and I, under the arching boughs of the green wood.

Chapter II

" The sunset glory, ere it faded, flung Tints of soft crimson on the pale green sky, And kept those colours there, Until a passing cloud as pure as snow Drew near and formed the centre of an arch, Whose hues, alternate white and red and green, Won the admiring gaze of every eye ! The sea in turn took up its part, Not silently, but with a glorious roar Of music from a hundred vaulted caves, And dashed the broad white foam of its green waves Against the rocks still crimsoned by the sun. The Tricolor !— Why should it be a crime To blend red, white, and green In pretty banners on a gala day ?" 0. E. Mudie. Though I was very often solitary, I did not live alone at the old Hall. My mother, indeed, seldom went beyond her own apartments on the ground floor, and the Itaban garden into which they opened ; but the ancient mansion had other and more active inmates.

My Aunt Joanna — Miss L'Estrange, as every one but myself called her — was a most energetic person ; and my grandmother, La Contessa, was al ways ready to tell me stories of long past days in Italy, to which I listened unweariedly. She was, bke my mother, very tall and slender, and had been in youth excessively beautiful. I have seen a modern rose, called Perle des Blanches, which resembles their pearly complexions more than any other thing which I can call to mind. The elder lady's stately form was a little bent by age, but it was still flexible and graceful ; while the " chiome d'oro" of the mother had turned to silver, and shone even more brightly than the darker tresses, on which Time had laid his hand more bghtly, of her child. La Contessa and her husband had been devoted adhe rents of Charles Albert, and my grandfather and uncle were among the four thousand Piedmontese who laid down their livesfor Italian independence at Novara.

By the side of the heroic monarch, who courted death in vain, and gave up his crown to gain peace for his country, the gallant officer and his brave son sank down to rise no more in this world. My grandfather left his widow and beautiful daughter to the care of one who was destined to restore the hopes of their common country — Camillo Benso di Cavour — who, almost alone in that dark hour, discerned that the waste of noble blood and treasure had not been made in vain. " We have got the Italian tricolor instead of the flag of Savoy for our standard. Well, in my opinion, we have not paid too dear a price." These words of Cavour's, often repeated by the Con tessa, when telbng me of the fight at Novara, fixed themselves in my memory, as weU as tbe brief ejaculation of Victor Emanuel, " II Re Galant'uomo," when all appeared to be lost, as he shook his sword at the Austrian camp, exclaiming, in the teeth of all probabilities, " LTtalia sara."

Cavour, who had been held at the font by Paubne Buonaparte, as proxy for her husband, Prince Camillo Borghese, always re tained the French preddections, which clung also to Carlo Alberto after his semi-exile, when, as Prince de Savoy-Carignan, he led a secluded bfe in France. My grandmother adored the memory of Charles Albert ; whose ardent courage and piety — somewhat confused and mystical like his politics — were hallowed by heroism and misfortune. Her own sentiments were all in favour of France. She spoke French more easdy than Italian, and affirmed that it was the language of courts; and that Savoy, having been formerly one of the great dependencies of France, had a claim to her aid. I think this feebng entered into all her patriotic fancies ; and she loved to tell me the old traditions of the land at the foot of the mountains, and to speak of the royal Marguerites and princely Dukes who ruled and prospered long before the iron heel of Austrian despotism stamped itself into the soil.

The one passionate pleasure of the far-seeing, though otherwise cautious statesman — gambbng — had been my father, Sir Percy L'Estrange's, ruin. He did not pursue it, bke Cavour, for the love of studying the chances of the game, but fell headlong into the snare ; impoverishing his family, and staking health, even life in the contest. Severely wounded in India, my father, after receiving a pension and the honour of knighthood, had been ordered home, and then to Italy. His devoted sister accompanied him to Turin, where he met and fell in love with my mother ; be coming involved in the stormy vortex of Itaban pobtics, as well as in a whirl of dissipation and high play, and giving way in turn to every succeeding influence that ruled the hour. The only flower that survived the wreck, when mind and body gave way, and his lovely young wife became a widow, was the friendship between his only surviving sister and the widowed Contessa and her bereaved daughter.

Together these faithful women came to England ; scarcely aware whether they had preserved anything from the common ruin of all their prospects and earthly happiness, but the little child, whose sex had caused Sir Percy bitter disappoint ment. Had I been a boy, he said, he might have made some arrangement with his next heir, Guy L'Estrange, MY HOME IN THE SHIKES. by whose permission we were, as I learned a bttle later from my mother, to my sorrow, alone enabled to reside at the Hall. He was at present a wanderer on the face of the earth ; but at any time when it so pleased him he could eject us, and send forth the three feeble women, with one bttle girl-child, who had taken refuge in, and clung for shelter to the old home in England. I did not often indulge in these bitter reflections, but when they came across me, I hated the very name of Guy L'Estrange, and wished that I had been, like my little friend Rotha, a child of low degree.

Our Norman ancestors, in such despairing moments, seemed robbers and lawless conquerors ; and Guy L'Estrange, my father's distant cousin, the embodiment of all that was hateful and oppressive — as bad, nay worse, than the Austrians in Italy. It was quite in vain that Aunt Joanna, who was a L'Estrange to her heart's core, and exasperatingly logical, strove to scold or argue me out of these moods of stubborn, as she chose to call it, unjust passion. As the head of the family, she tried to per suade me that Mr. L'Estrange — my father's was only a military title, which, of course, he did not inherit — was entitled to our respect ; and he had, she main tained, acted most kindly by us all. It was through his goodness that we were inmates of the dear, beautiful old Hall. That might be true, but it did not reconcile me in the least to the fact that instead of being its born future mistress, I was only, at the best, a pensioner on our unknown cousin's bounty — there by sufferance.

This was only one of the subjects on which my aunt and I disagreed, we were always at variance. The marvel to me was that she and my mother and grandmother always agreed so well, though their natures were inherently dissimilar. But then they never interfered with anyone, whilst Aunt Joanna and I were always, so to speak, whether we wished it or not, flying in each other's faces. Though not a lover of animals any more than of children, she was always kind to Carlo and Alberto, my mother's Itaban greyhounds ; and even condoned the mischief they often committed when they ran races up and down the walks, and across the turf of the Itaban garden, some times upsetting vases and making marks in the trim borders. My poor grave-eyed duskycoated Bruno, on the contrary, whom everyone else loved and re spected, was always in disgrace with my sharp-tem pered aunt, who accused him of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanours which he would have scorned to com mit.

It is true that he behaved worse to her than to any other member of the establishment; always growl ing if she went towards him, and assuming a perfectly ferocious aspect if she came near my especial domain or offered to touch any of my property. Perhaps I rather encouraged him in his misbehaviour, for I should have been much oftener in trouble than I was, and that was not necessary, if a timely growl or bark had not warned me of Aunt Joanna's approach, in time to allow me to make my escape or change my occupation or amusement. I used to think there was no pleasing her ; if she saw me reading she wondered I wasted my time over idle stories ; if at work, she hoped I had learnt my lessons. If I were dressed for a ramble in the woods, she reminded me that I ought to be practising my dancing, and did I think I could dance debcate French steps with those clumsy boots !

Above all, she trusted I was not going to waste more of my time in low company. She could not approve of my excessive intimacy with a bailiff's family. I dressed up that conceited Rotha Alwyn, and taught her nonsensical romantic fancies till she thought herself a lady. When it came to this point I always ran away, followed gladly by Bruno, who never was a bit like himself in my aunt's society. With the Contessa and my mother, he was always the very pink of politeness, and he took quite a fatherly interest in the little strangers, Carlo and Alberto ; sitting demurely at the corner of the gravel walks to watch their games and races, and flying furiously at any dog who ventured to approach their clipped and trim domain, bordered by cypress and obve trees, and dotted over with urns and vases.

Chapter III

" My Rotha worships at no stately shrine, Nor doth her hand a blazoned missal hold, Before no carved saint her knees incline, By her no precious rosary is told, Of consecrated coral wrought with gold ; She occupies no penitential nook In the dim aisle of some Cathedral old, Nor weareth in her face a gloomy look, Like that of solemn Saint in mediæval book. " She kneeleth in her quiet chamber lone, Knowing there is for her no holier place Thau that where He who all her thoughts had known From earliest childhood had revealed His grate ; Reflecting in her bright uplifted face The glory of His own. Her secret prayer Is answered openly. All eyes may trace The visible answer in the very air Of all her life and work at home and everywhere." C. E. Mudie. My mother had always respected her husband's wish that their child should belong to the Church of Eng land.

La Contessa and Angelica never interfered with 9. her, and the good old Padre, who occasionally visited the Hall, and received their confessions, regarded me as an alien. I am not sure that Aunt Joanna's rigid orthodoxy would not have made me take refuge with those gentle souls, had it not been for the pure un sectarian piety which I saw practised, and felt to be the guiding spirit and motive in the dwelling of the Alwyns. As a bttle child, I often, at her request, read por tions of the Holy Scriptures to Rotha's adopted mother, sitting at the cottage door, when her head ached too painfully to allow her to fix her eyes on the page. I could see her lips move and sometimes hear a low earnest -word as she repeated sentence after sentence after me, of what was written in her heart ; but still she bked us to read to her, and when the pain from which she suffered passed off,' she would gather us both together beside her knees, and teach us the meaning of the parable ; illustrating her simple lesson by images borrowed from the waving rustling wood land all around us ; pointing out to us how every leaf differed from its neighbour, and the good use that might be made of the lowbest plants and herbs.

The protection Nature, or rather Providence,' gave them, in making the lower leaves of the holly prickly, and, higher up, beyond the reach of the wandering cattle, smooth and plain ; the quiet industry underground of the little smooth-coated moles whose runs crossed our paths, the care of the birds for their young, when they flew screaming away to distract our prying glances from their nests ; the cunning of the weazel, and the w7onderful provisions by which the wild animals baffled the cruel skfll of man, or of their other antagonists ; aU these simple facts brought forward as proofs of the wisdom of Him who had made all things well, and without whose knowledge not a sparrow fell to the ground. Her husband was a north country yeoman, and had been Avell instructed, after a stern substantial simple fashion.

In the exercise of his vocation he was very humane, never putting God's creatures to unnecessary torment. He had a great respect for his wife's very superior education and gentle manners, always hushing his loud voice in her presence. Mrs. Alwyn bterally gathered under her wing all the weary and suffering that came within her reach. The little pheasants and partridges crept close up to her to feed upon her skirts, the pigeons perched upon her shoulders and took crumbs from her lips, and Rotha did her bidding and followed her example, widening her limited sphere of usefulness. I liked to see the big burly dalesman sit down in some interval of leisure, bare-headed, at the cottage door, with the large Bible on his knee, reading a chapter to his ailing wife, who always bstened to him with the deepest attention.

The cottage was a long way from any place of worship, the debcate woman and child 2 were never able to attend church, and Alwyn himself went but seldom, saying that more wicked people were abroad Sundays than other days in the week, and that it behoved him to look after the game ; but still the Sabbath was religiously observed. The woods looked different, I always thought, on that day from any other. There was a holy serenity in the air, and Rotha's pretty psalms and hymns fell on the ear soothingly. She had a beautiful voice, and I liked nothing better than to sit with her by the brook-side, a few paces from the cottage door, where the invabd could see and hear her, and call her if wanted, and bsten to her soft singing of sacred songs at eventide. On Sunday mornings I always went with Miss L'Estrange to the parish church — a very barn-like edifice, sorely neglected — where she said that we heard the Gospel preached in all its purity.

I was not old enough, perhaps, to be a good judge ; but I confess the prayers — read in a very low, monotonous voice by the old Rector, and responded to more loudly by the clerk, unsupported by the congregation — the dusty hassocks, and dingy curtains, and worm-eaten boards of the large, square, family pew, impressed me less than Alwyn's simple reading of a Scripture history, his wife's quiet exposition of a parable, and Rotha's hymns, sung to the accompaniment of the murmuring stream and rustbng leaves, and the chorus of thrushes and blackbirds. Aunt Joanna retired in the afternoon, in company with certain severe-looking dark-bound volumes, to her private sanctuary; and I was free to escape with Angebca to the simple wor ship of the bailiff's home. This was all tempo di festa for Angelica, who knitted away under the trees, glad to escape from Aunt Joanna's gibes against the unholy practice.

Though she had travelled far and wide, nothing would reconcile my aunt in her own country to this devia tion from the rules of an English Sabbath. Even Carlo and Alberto should not have jingled their bells and run races if she could have prevented it ; but within my mother's garden my aunt's rule ceased. It was true that there was nothing to annoy her in the demean our of the two gentle Italian ladies, who were too thoroughly good to shock her prejudices in any way. In the summer evenings La Contessa generally sat on the terrace, reading or talking gently to her invabd daughter ; while the fountains threw up their slender, sunbt columns into the air, and the ripples chased each other in the basins of water, as the wind blew across them, the stiff cypresses cast black shadows on the gravel walks, and the little dogs raced merrily to and fro.

My mother and grandmother were rather Inclined to sympathise with Aunt Joanna in wondering what pleasure I could find in visiting such people as the Alwyns ; but knowing how duU and sobtary my life was, they did not interfere with my few pleasures. Neither of them had the smallest sympathy with the lower orders, and it would have been impossible to persuade them that the same feelings actuated different classes. Gentle and kind as they both were, they could not enter into my sympathy with the pea santry, in whose cottages I met always with a wel come. It would have been impossible for me to sit in the Itaban garden, with my hands folded, doing nothing, watching the little dogs running races, the shadows shifting and changing, and the fountains throwing sparkling columns high in air. But then I was not a Contessa or Contessina, white-handed, soft voiced, musical and melancholy.