Shellburn

Preface

. The character of our works of fiction has in these times undergone a great change — the consequence, no doubt, of a corresponding change in the public mind. It is not easy to tell the nature of this alteration. To express it, generally, by saying that it consists in a tendency to a greater apprecia tion of the real, in contradistinction to the ideal, is not telling us much that is intelligible, while to go into analyses would be endless. We are on safer ground when we proceed to remark that, at one time, it was the man of genius who elicited and formed the literary taste of the people. Now it is the public that gives the law to the man of genius — if, indeed, we should not rather say the

PREFACE.

. VI man of tact — for genius seems to be scared by the trammels of a people's wishes and likings. So much is this the case that we find works of idiosyncrasy of great power and beauty exposed to a still-birth, while the reflected forms of every day-life dislo cated by forced coincidents, if cleverly7 rendered and made piquant by catastrophes and crimes, prove a success. Ancl thus it is, too, that we observe more than ever that puzzling, double for tune of books — many praised by competent and hopeful critics, and left unread; others ignored by reviews, and ardently run after. The phenomenon is not hopeful. We fear we must admit that, however cleverly written — and there can be no doubt of the talent everywhere, through a thousand sources, brought into play — the greater part of our fiction is little better than a camera-obscura reflection of portions of society in a state of distemper, where we see the figures moving, notice their acts, and observe their nods and grimaces, but without getting any insight into human nature. As for the once-valued artistic part — the complex, yet natural plot, the peculiar

PREFACE.

. VII characters, the play of the passions, the passions' speech, the denotement, the reward of virtue, or, as we term it, the moral — we find too often that these are the exceptions. The rule seems to be signally fulfilled either by a mere piquing of the curiosity, with or without a due result, or what is more common, an easy chit-chat, rendered dolorous by7 catastrophes, blotched by crime, and debased by immoralities. If we consider the almost incalculable im portance of fiction as a means of moulding the heart and inclining the affections towards what is good and loveable — wherein we suspect it pos sesses more influence than even the school or the pulpit — it becomes a question how far the " easy reading," with the love of excitement demanded peremptorily by a peculiar age — civilized it may be, yet with tendencies in many ways towards a relaxation of the old vigour — might not be recon ciled with more literature, higher aspirations after the beautiful in nature and character, and a better developed morality. I do not say this is not being tried ; we have excellent examples of such efforts,

PREFACE.

. much better executed than anything I could offer. What we want to see is more and more successful reSults, till the desired change for the better is effected ; and if I have contributed, even in a very small degree, to this good enterprise, I shall be sufficiently rewarded for " Shellburn." A. L. York Lodge, Trinity, Edinburgh, 1865. S HELLBURN.

Chapter I

As the dregs of liquor fall to the bottom of the bottle, so often the secrets of a big house descend, by their specific gravity, no doubt, to the kitchen. It is pretty certain at least, that if one wants to know what is going on upstairs, and cannot get any information from the actors themselves, he has only to go below and find the story nicely put together by the hands of artists. We suspect it has always been so. " When the king sitteth at his table, the spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof; " and certainly we clown here know more of the doings of the gods than they do themselves. r* i SHELLBURN. So there may be some profit and small condescension if, in the beginning of our story, we go for some of our knowledge of the peculiar people in Shellburn House to the bubbling, if not babbling, well spring ; in which, moreover, we have excellent authority in a certain king who got his intelligence of the doings in his palace from his own domestics.

We have only to enter by the back gate, and threading a somewhat dark passage, we open a door and discover one of those snuggeries — a kind of bower-bird-home in the wastes of human life — which the humbler people are so good at getting up — no other than a cheerful tea-parlour. There was such a blaze of light from the parrot -coal (it was towards the end of August, when the fire, having its turn with the birds, begins to be cheerful) that the brass lamp on the table seemed to be unnecessary, except to bring out the off-sides of the cups and saucers ; for we need make no secret of the truth, that the pleasant room was that set apart for Mrs. Margaret Pringle, the nurse ; and the occasion was a sacrifice of tea to love — not an inapt one in many respects, besides the recollection that the Grecian dames carried all tlieir offerings in canisters.

SHELLBURN. 3 The other party interested in this oblation w7as Joseph Carnaby, the coachman ; a Scotsman with a good share of the peculiarities of his country men, except, perhaps, that he spoke very narrow Scotch — a great part of the breadth having been pared away by what the Scotch, out of derision, call the " Enghsh clip." Joseph was no new admirer of her, that is, Mrs. Margaret Pringle, whom in his familiarity — not, by-the-by, altogether relished by the dame — he called Peggot. Nay, he had actually begun to love her twenty years before, that is, before their master, Sir George Rowley, brought home his first wife ; and as soon, indeed, as he had come to know that she had lodged the first ten-pound note in the Westburgh Bank. We may even hazard the opinion, that his affection had all this long time gone on increas ing in the exact ratio of Mrs. Pringle's accumu lations ; and now on the evening we are concerned with, when the entire savings with the added interest amounted to five hundred pounds, we are entitled, by the rules of arithmetic, to assume that Joseph's love had culminated to the point of in flammation.

Not that Mrs. Pringle was indifferent to her calculating lover ; but that, although when 1—2 SHELLBURN. the sum had amounted to three or four hundred she had been asked by Mr. Carnaby to be his wife, she had, as yet, preferred ministering to the wants and wishes of her dear young lady, Miss Alice, to blowing the fire of comfort for the red nose of her loving coachman. She had, in short, intended to wait till Miss Alice was married and out of the reach of her stepmother, the present Lady Rowley, before she would succumb even to a Scotch ardour ; which, though it could not melt gold, might, nevertheless, be very well able to transfer it from one account in a bank to another. All conversations are hung upon pegs. It was not likely that a Scotch wooer, such as Joseph, would make a peg of the five hundred pounds with the interest since the last settlement.

He chose rather, for very evident reasons, to make one out of some incipient, but very catching-like grey hairs wliich the depilatory fingers of Mrs. Pringle had not been able to reach on her still natural frontlet. Mr. Carnabywas innocent of anything hke intended offence. He had alluded to them tenderly and modestly as a reason why Mrs. Pringle should quickly make up her mind to the match. SHELLBURN. 5 The consequence was a suspension in the con versation. She was offended, looked defiant, even threatening ; but Joseph was easy because he was considerate. " You needna' look glum, Peggot," saicl he ; " for that parrot-coal tells tales upon me as well as y-ou. Look ye here into my beard; it's still brown, but I wager ye'll find a dozen o' these grey marks o' time for every one in these bonny locks o' thine."

No mark was ever better hit since the clay when a certain lady stole a purple hair out of her father's head. Mrs. Pringle was appeased, nay, she became tender — something in the strain of Mrs. " John Anderson," described by Robert Burns. " You are right, Joseph," said she, as she put another lump of sugar into his cup. "It's time we were looking to it." " Ay, and mair," replied he ; " it's now four years " — a period which he counted from the time when the sum in the Westburgh Bank was four hundred — "since I took ye to John Mearn's cottage by the Shellburn, and showed ye the honeysuckles and white roses I got John to plant by the SHELLBURN. side o' the door, as if they had been all for him self and his old woman, whereas they were for y-ou and me by the time when John should be dead, and we should be married.

And isn't John dead, and his woman too, without ever having known what I wanted the honeysuckles and the roses for ? Ay, and as well too, for the never a bush would he have planted, if he had known that I in our Scotch way was just stealing a march upon him and the auld carle Time. Mrs. Pringle smiled, as well she might, for she had seen the said roses and honeysuckles many a time without knowing how they came there. " And how do you know that Sir George will give you the cottage ? " inquired she. Whereat Mr. Carnaby put on so grave a face that Mrs. Margaret could not help laughing, for somehow or another gravityhad an effect upon all Joseph's face except the eyes, which would twinkle do what he would to look serious. " Because I can demand it," said he. " Yes, Peggot," he continued, as he struggled to look awful, " Sir George is iu my power !

" Mrs. Pringle, during all these twenty years SHELLBURN. 7 when he was watching the accumulation in the bank, had never seen him look so before. If he had been drinking whisky, she might have known what to think ; but for so simple a man to get so swollen of some awful power and purpose upon mere tea was a riddle. She looked at him again to see the state of his face, and there again was the eye committing such ravage among the muscles that she was relieved of something like fear, ancl began to laugh again. "Of course he is," said she; "you are his coachman, and can overturn him into a ditch any night ; ay, and I wish you would, and my lady too, for the way they are treating Miss Alice." But Joseph was not to be cajoled out of his seriousness merely because it had pleased Heaven to give him a curious eye.

"That's no it," said he; "it's no an overturn in a ditch I mean; no, nor any kind o' bodily injury. I tell y7e that I coulcl say something that would make your ears ring, and your een reel." " Don't, Joseph, for Heaven's sake, don't ! " replied the nurse, again getting alarmed at the strange manner of her once simple-minded SHELLBURN. admirer. Really I don't wish my ears and eyes to do such things ; I hked you better when you wrere talking about the cottage and the roses and honeysuckles, only I fear Janet Mearn's ghost may come and pluck the flowers when she knows how you cheated her. I daresay Sir George will give us the cottage without your threatening these terrible things ; but mind, I tell you I will not put a foot into the cottage as Mrs. Carnaby, till my young lady is mistress of Arlington."

" And when do you expect that to be ? " in quired Joseph, in his usual way. " Ah ! who know-s ? " continued Peggy7. " I could play strange tricks on your ears and eyes too, if I chose." " And I want you to chose." " Well, then," continued she, assuming the air ofthe mystagogue ; "Lady Rowley is hinting that Miss Alice is not the real Miss Rowley7." " Real ! she's the realest and the lealest creature that ever spoke the truth and shamed the deevil." "Hush, man, and your wicked Scotch," rejoined Mrs. Pringle. " Think you it makes the name of the father of lies sound any better to pro nounce it in that soft way ? It isn't that Miss Alice SHELLBURN. 9 isn't real, truthful, and good, but that she isn't the real lawful daughter of Sir George." " Is that because she's no like him?" said Joseph. "If he denies her because she is weel-favoured, what would he do if she had carried a hump on her back ?

" " It isn't that either," said she ; " it is because Lady Rowley is trying to make it doubtful whether Sir George and Alice's mother were married, and if the young Laird of Arlington wrere to hear the news, who knows how long it might be before you and I were in John Mearn's cottage, snuffing up the scent [of the honeysuckles and the white roses ? " Whereupon Mr. Carnaby relapsed once more into his gravity, marked as it was by the old leer which he could not help — menacing to say some thing which might indicate that he had something to say, but wouldn't say. " Oh, you may save yourself the trouble," cried she, " of trying to affect my ears and eyes in the strange way y7ou threatened a little ago; you know nothing about it, y7ou know you don't, but if you feel inclined to say y7ou do, just take a good drink of tea, ancl the feeling will wear off."

SHELLBURN. A httle speech in Mrs. Pringles best way, which having been followed up by the entry of the housekeeper, is unfortunately the last part of the conversation of the lovers which we have an opportunity of recording.

Chapter II

In a cleugh or hollow on the face of the round spreading elevation which formed the principal portion of the fine birch-wooded property of Arlington, situated on the northern side of Shell burn, and divided from it by the noisy brook of that name, we find, on the day succeeding the little party in Mrs. Pringle's room, a group of three individuals, all of a somewhat recherche" order. They were reclining on the grass, and their spirits seemed to take on the languor of an August sun, which, hanging high and solemn in the heavens, illuminated a wide-spread haze as a glory vindicated to himself, yet surely shared in by the tall slender birches as they reared their graceful heads in the golden light, and gave out a volume of sweet sounds from the small choristers among their leaves. SHELLBURN. The first of the group 'was no other than the proprietor of the property.

So far we can be definite, but if you wish to know any peculiar external qualities to distinguish him by, we may refer you to the first man of a hundred or two, of whom we can conscientiously say, " There goes a man cast in the first mould." The inner parts we must leave to development, with the promise to show you they7 amounted to a character. The second was a young lady about nineteen or twenty — Miss Alice Rowley — who has already, on the authority of one competent to judge, been hinted at 'as having a right to sympathy7, not less than admiration, but in regard to whom we cannot help being under an obligation to pique y7ou a little, by asserting that she was every whit as fair as any one of the many thousands who have been sung into immortality by7 poetical lovers. As for the third of the group, her name was Esther Western ; she was somewhere about the age of Miss Rowley, that is, if we count by years, but a great deal older if we calculate by that know ledge which comes of self-love.

In one respect, the two were scarcely even balanced, for while the one, Miss Western, was heiress of the property SHELLBURN. of Carrol, lying to the east of Arlington and Shellburn, and could lay claim only to a fabulous lion on the diploma of her lineage ; Miss Rowley, with a real living knight in her pedigree (maugre Lady Rowley's insinuations), was cut out of her inheritance by the recent birth of a son of the second marriage. Having said so much, we fear we have already exposed a conjuncture, from which you may con clude that the Patrick Græme, of whom we have very favourable things to say, was something of the gentle Artemon, who had so many love-affairs on his hand that he did not know where to look for the trouble of bewitching eyes. A conclusion this which you are not entitled to make, though we admit that, if you see three speckled deer on a hill-side with their heads down, you are entitled to conclude they are nibbling grass.

So far we are safe enough, nor will we commit any offence against the rules of our art if we afford you some insight into the conversation in which our three admirers of sylvan scenery were engaged — a task to which we are the more inclined, as therein we may find some foreshadowings of what is to come. We can even tell how that SHELLBURN. conversation began — no otherwise than by Miss Rowley having sported a charming little paradox, which Græme asserted she had got out of that great repository of wisdom called " The copy-line school of moral philosophy7," where you are almost certain to be taught that " evil communications corrupt good manners," " honesty is the best policy," and so forth. However obtained, there can be no doubt that the paradox of the gentle, if not simple-minded Alice was worthy even of that high origin, for it comprehended the truth, that no evil can come to the good.

We choose to use the word " truth," rather than " maxim," because we have heard of a good many moral maxims that are not true. But, be this as it may, it is certain that Esther, according to her very different form of mind, was amused with, if she did not laugh at, the gravity of her companion, for we are to remember that Miss Western was a true daughter of that big woman Society, a mother who teaches all her children rules of etiquette as the true means of happiness, to the almost total ex clusion of moral maxims, a kind of thing the old lady does not admire, perhaps for the reason that she does not understand them. SHELLBURN. " If, Alice," said she, " you were to be pricked with the spine of this moss-rose, or any other thing that is sharp " " Except a certain arrow of a certain little god," interposed Græme.

" Yes, with that exception," continued Esther, " would you not feel pain ? " A question which staggered the pretty melan choly moralist, who could reply nothing but that she did not mean bodily evil. Whereat Miss Western laughed again, for she had not philosophy enough — who has ? — to enable her to make the distinction as regards the bearable ness between evils of the body and those of the mind. While Græme looked on in the expectation of some amusement from the contest of the two fair casuists. " I think you have a stepmother ? " rejoined Esther — a remark which sounded harsh in the midst of that sleeping haze of gold, the bloom of wild thyme, and the songs of birds, and brought a sigh from Alice, as well as a soft, sympathizing look from Græme, directed to her pensive face. The indication was not unnoticed by Esther, who had seen something of the same kind before, not- SHELLBURN. withstanding the care he had taken to show no marks of preference of the one over the other, at least when they were both present.

" Then," continued Esther, with something like a flush of envy in her dark eye, "whether do you think the prick of the rose or a touch of the soft tongue of Lady Rowley would be the easier borne ? " " The prick of the rose, dear Esther," replied Alice, whose perfect simplicity blinded her to the envy of her friend. " Then you see where you are," rejoined the casuist, " with your pretty nonsense about good people and goodness." "But were I more good, I might feel less," was the mdd reply of Miss Rowley. " Who knows ? " " Yes, who knows ? You may well ask that ; but really I can't tell you." A spice of sarcasm which Alice did not feel — a proof, to a small extent, of the truth of her (at least) amiable doctrine, but not unnoticed by7 Græme. " I have read somewhere," said he, as he assumed a little mock grandiloquence, and look- SHELLBURN. 17 ing archly at Esther, who repaid the expression handsomely — " I need not say where, for the good reason, Esther, that as the author is not that great personage who wrote Little Red Riding Hood, or that other genius wdio wrote Jack the Giant Killer, you cannot be expected to know him — that 'a great spirit is above injury, injustice, grief, and mockery, and would be invulnerable, but for his compassion.' " " A wonderful saying," remarked Alice, as a cheerful light broke from her blue eyes.

" I should like to know more of that author." " Wonderful nonsense," rejoined Esther. " Why, the man does not mention even the word ' stepmother.' " " No more he does," said Græme ; " but he mentions those acts generally attributed to the tender second wives, and against which the noble spirit is proof, except for compassion. So you see Alice cannot be happy, for I know she pities Lady Rowley." " Pity one who uses you ill ! " exclaimed the girl, with her eyes widened by wonder ment. " Quite possible, Esther." SHELLBURN. 18 " Why," again rejoined Esther, " I thought that when one ill-uses you, you naturally hate, and ought to hate him or her, as it may be." " You think so, my Olympia, because the great genius did not inform you that Jack did not pity the giant : now the fact is, that Jack, though a wonderful man at arms, is described nowhere in the historical account of him as a great sphit."

Wliich bantering might not have been gratefully accepted by a young ladyof Miss Western's temper, had it not been for two reasons : the first whereof was, that she knew the young laird of Arlington and his versatile ways ; and the second you may guess by means of a moderate perspicacity. Meanwhile Alice's eye had been drinking up meanings from Græme's, which showed how the sympathy was flowing ; and the discomfited young heiress of Carrol, who, no doubt, thought herself a more suitable match for our Artemon than Alice, who was already cut out by a son of the said ominous stepmother, sat in silence. But it was not the silence about which Xenocrites made the famous aphorism, and which has been said to be golden; for it was the silence of watchfulness to discover the food of envy — a position which SHELLBURN. 19 brought out a contrast between her and her com panion ; for Alice not only saw nothing of Esther's feeling, but she w7ould not have believed a word against her, even if it had been sworn to by the man she honoured above aU the world, that very Patrick Græme himself.

And so, not troubled with any suspicions of Esther's devotion to her, which, by the rule of simple-hearted friendship, she thought equal to her own, she encouraged Græme to continue the theme which was dear to her soul, for the reason that at Shellburn, with all its grandeur, she had much to suffer and more to bear. " Then," said she, reverting to the quotation he had made from the foresaid dme cridule, " It is a certain nobleness or greatness of spirit which enables us to bear the ills of life ; mere goodness is not enough ? " " It seems so," replied Græme, who knew from his reading that the question lay pretty equally between two sects, both long ago cashiered by modern wisdom, and wras not inclined at the time to be much more serious with Alice than he had been with Esther. " But you are to remember," he continued, " that the nobleness of spirit of 2 — SHELLBURN. which we speak is founded upon goodness, and includes it; but as for the goodness itself, it is osten only a pretty simplicity, which is the oppor tunity of the wicked.

Tou are merely the tender infant that makes the dainty morsel for the ogress, and it would be rather too much for your philo sophy to maintain that the said infant could resist the pain of being pretty well masticated. And then the ogress has a crooked henchman with a hump between his shoulders, who is ready, at the nod of her head, to seize and put the tender morsel into her mouth." " Yet that henchman is my own father," sighed Alice. " Yes, and he has a capacity, too, for eating," continued the y-outh, " for he wants to gobble up my property of Arlington." A remark which lighted up the somewhat sullen eye of her who sat in the shade of the poisoned tree of envy-, for she sawsome chance that bv losing his estate, he might be the more ready to become through her the master of Carrol. " But let him try," he continued, more seriously than was consistent with his mercurial tempera ment.

" I once, when the satchel was on my SHELLBURN. 21 back, raised his wrath by raising my shoulders in imitation of his hump ; but now I am a man, and if he dares to touch a partridge on Arlington, I will flutter the owls on Shellburn." And now Esther might surely be in the way of being pleased, for how could Græme be on such terms with the father and run any fair chance of marrying the daughter? But the hope which thus rose in her mind had a formidable enemy in the look of sympathy towards Alice with wliich he had accompanied his denunciation of the hunch back. He saw he had touched a tender chord in the susceptible heart of Alice, and regretted it, as he detected some moisture in her eye, which glistened there in the bright light of the sun even, as the poets say, like a dewdrop on a white rose.

Nay, so far did this feeling carry him, that he put his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. No sooner had he done so, than he knew the amount of his indiscretion by the fiery eye of Esther, wliich met him as he turned again his head ; but then Græme was generally master of his position, even when he appeared to be playing himself, and suddenly performing the same opera tion on Esther, he not only placed them on an SHELLBURN. equipoise, but rendered a reason for restoring the equilibrium by saying, — "I know Esther, you are too good not to sympathize with the unfortunate." Yet probably he miscalculated, for Miss Western, though apparently pleased, was not the woman to forget that the moisture on his lips was the falling tear of a rival. If she had been a bas bleu classic — which she could not be with those unclassical feelings of hers — she might have been ingenious in remembering the fable that, w-hen Aurora imbued Tithon with long hfe by means of the vapour she exhaled from her breast, he thereby got his lips softened for kissing the daughters of men.

But if Miss Western was thus forced to play a second part in this rural drama, in place of, according to her ambition, the assoluta, she was presently to find a salve for her hurt vanity, if not a far more tender and irritable sore in the appearance of Mrs. Græme, the mother of Patrick, who had been wandering through the grounds and come upon them unexpectedly. She was — we may take the opportunity of saying — a woman of considerable presence; only a good judge of SHELLBURN. appearances would have seen that in her the relaxed sinews of rural negligence were occa sionally under the tightening call of town man ners. She had once got in London a shock of etiquette, with all the effects of galvanism ; with this difference, that the jerkings remained after the influence passed. Not that she permitted this to interfere with a kind of natural dignity, but that the extraneous thing might have been distin guished from the intraneous, and a lover of con sistency and simplicity would have liked better to have had the natural as unadorned adorned the most.