The Haven under the Hill. A novel

Front matter

THE HAArEN UNDER THE HILL. THE HAVEN UNDER THE HILL. Jl £To»cI. by MARY LIN SKILL, AUTHOR OF 'BETWEEN THE HEATHER AND THE NORTHERN SEA,' ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, ■publishers in ©ruinarg to Der <stLtjest!) the 1886. [All Rights Reserved.] THIS BOOK i |lf Hcati TO MY FRIEND, AI R S. JOHN LUPTON, OF MOORLANDS, A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HER UNFAILING KINDNESS, AND OF HER AVISE AND UNDERSTANDING SYMPATHY, MADE VISIBLE THROUGH MANY YEARS. CONTENTS OF VOL. I CHAPTER PAGE I. ' AVHERE THE KEEN SEA-CURRENT GRINDS AND FRETS' .... 1 II. MAINLY TRADITIONAL- - - -22 IIL THE STORY OF CÆDMON - - - 36 IA\ THE HOUSE BY WIGGONER'S AVHARF - -45 V. AA'ILD WORK - - - - - 57 VI. AN ANCIENT MARINER - - - 69 VII. A PRICELESS GIFT, AND UNFORGOT - - 87 VIII. 'HATH NOT A JEW EYES?' - - - 104 IX.

THE AA7AY OF LIFE AT HILD's HAVEN- - 116 X. MICHAEL SALVAIN - - - - 130 XI. 'THE PAST HE CALMLY HATH REVIEWED' - 145 XII. FAIR LAUGHS THE MORN - - - 164 XIII. 'BUSY DREAMS AND FANCIES WILD'- - 172 XIV. 'HATH HE MEDDLED AVITH ALAM, OUR HOLY FATHER'S MARCHANDISE f - - CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XV. JOANNA - ... 200 XVI. ' AH ! AVHAT A SWEET RECESS, THOUGHT I, IS HERE ' - - - - - 225 XVII. DAFFODILS ----- 244 XVIII. TAVO VOICES - - - - 263 XIX. 'IS ONE DAY MORE SO LONG TO AVAIT V - 274 XX. ' SO FAREWELL, THOU WHOM I HAVE KNOWN TOO LATE ' - - - - - THE HAVEN UNDER THE HILL. CHAPTEE I. ' AVHERE THE KEEN SEA-CURRENT GRINDS AND FRETS.' ' As a child She still was simple — rather shall I say More simple than a child, as being lost In deeper admirations and desires.' Sir Henry Taylor : The Eve of the Conquest. ■HE finest and highest peace is that which is wrought out of strife and pain ; the most thrilling harmony, life's Vesper Hymn, heard when the burden and heat of the day is over ; but the peace and harmony of the early morning is sweet and pleasant to the memory.

The Haven Under the Hill was not less bright vol. i. and picturesque, not less quaintly beautiful when Dorigen Gower was a child than it is now. In those days the old sea-town was, so to speak, an undiscovered place, alike unknown of artists, tourists, speculators, or Railway Kings. Yet the charm of the old haven was not the less strong and striking because no one painted it, or sang of it, or wrote of it. Nay, is there not now to those who knew it and loved it then a sense of discord, of loss and intrusion, of broken unity, of sweet silence interrupted by jarring sound ? Is there not pain in the increasing pressure of modern rush and hurry, upon the place that was anciently so restful and so still ? Is there nothing to lament in the incursion of modern use and fashion upon ways of life that were distinctive, peculiar, well-nigh unique ?

Chapter II. Mainly Traditional

' Let mebut see the man That in one tract can show the wonders that I can. Like Whitbies seise, I think, there's none can show but I, O'er whose attractive earth there may no wild geese flie, But presently they fall from off their wings to ground. If this no wonder be, where's there a wonder found ? And stones like serpents there. Yet may ye more behold, That in their natural gyres are up together rol'd.' Drayton : Polyolbion. HE glory of Hild's Haven is its past history — history not written only in books, not spoken only in the words of legend and tradition, but still remaining in solemn and majestic presence, an embodi ment in lofty tower, heavenward-pointing pin nacle, and delicately can7ed arch of the fact that 'men had then a soul — not by hearsay alone, and as a figure of speech, but as a truth that they knew, and practically Avent, upon.' MAINLY TRADITIONAL. 23 From all the country round about, from wild moorland and upland plain, from the rugged rocks and cliffs that skirt the coast on either hand, and from far out over the lone, perilous waters of the Northern Sea, the Abbey of St. Hild can be discerned.

For well-nigh seven centuries it has stood there on the dark, wind swept height. Within its precincts men have lived and toiled and prayed ; generation after generation has suffered and sinned, and passed away from about it and below it ; centuries of weary, storm-tossed mariners haA7e hailed it as a landmark. They hail it yet, though no pharos light gleams now from the fallen tower. Are there any who dream that other hidden uses may lie in its wondrous beauty ? Like all beautiful things, it touches the soul to trouble, and the soul knows not why. The great grey walls rise majestically from the green plain, the light of heaven falls upon turret and gable, and comes slanting through the windows of the clerestory, falling upon carved canopies and broken arches. Here there is a worn, patient face — -how long has it borne that stone burden behind upon its shoulders \ Hoav long has the grotesque face just opposite mocked at the calm patience 1 Is there any sense of time up in that world of carved masonry, that seems near enough to heaven to catch the song of the morning stars 1 To look seems almost to listen.

It is as when one stands on a silent mountain height, and feels the silence full of voices that plead with his better self. Down in the world below there are troubles that darken a man's spiritual insight, but here in the Abbey of St. Hild you are conscious of that sense of increased light and expansion of soul that only comes by utter calm and peacefulness of environment. John Gower and the child had entered by way of the little white gate in the cloister wall. They had passed close by the massive western front, Avith its yet beautiful gateway, and its sharply arched window, where the tracery is broken into graceful fragments, that droop like icicles of stone. It was strange, almost oppressiA7e, to be so near the big Aveather-Avorn buttresses, that seemed as if they had been washed by the sea itself.

They looked very strong in their decay — mighty to resist, though marked for all time that remains to them by resistance past. There is a great heap of masonry, the debris of the toAver, lying in the roofless nave — the whole building is roofless with the exception of the north aisle of the choir. A grey clustered pillar still stands by the north AA-all ; the grass MAINE Y TRADITIONAL. 25 has groAA-n over the \7ast uneven mound of fallen stone ; huge rugged blocks, held together by coarse mortar, peep out from between patches of ragwort and other rank Aveeds ; russet and olive mosses creep about, many-tinted lichens haA7e fastened upon the brown and grey and yellow Avails of aisle and transept. On this summer morning a single spray of wallflower Avas blooming over where an altar had stood ; above, a big black crow looked solemnly down from under the carved canopy that sheltered the niche where a saint had been.

After a time John Gower sat down on the craggy, grass-grown pile within the nave, and his little daughter sat almost at his feet. The sea was shining beyond the edge of the green cliff; it was visible through the broken yet ex quisite tracery of the north windows ; the square tower of the church on the cliff-top could be dis cerned through the Abbey gateway. The top mast of a large ship in the river could be seen over the roofs of the east-side houses, its pennon hanging still and colourless in the haze that was deepening over the town. Everything was still up there. The Manor House, which stands in the shadowy green space where the cloisters were, seemed like a great tomb where all the records and histories of the past might each in its turn have received honoured burial. The blank Avindows that were all along the front of it were like closed eyes, that might never open, or by any glance or sign betray ; and the big dark door was grown up with waving grass, every blade of which seemed to tell of the years that had passed since any went out or in.

This Avas not the real front of the house, but a skeleton front of a dead banqueting-hall, that had been built by the brave Sir Hugh Cholmley, and was blown down one stormy night about a hundred years ago. It is nearly all of the ancient dwelling-place of the lords of the manor that can be seen from the Abbey ; and it is quite in keeping Avith the old wall of the cloisters, the leaning gateAvays, and the wide, bleak, treeless upland, every rood of which seems charged with some strong spell of its own — a spell that nothing can touch, nor diminish, nor riv7al for an hour in the hearts of those who cannot recall the day when they were strangers to its influence. Dorigen Gower was but a child, yet, as we have seen, she was a child of sufficiently vivid conceptions, sufficiently ideal imaginations, and to all children such as she life conies by bounds and leaps rather than by ordinary modes of pro gression.

In after life all behind this Sunday morning seemed like a landscape with a lowlying mist upon it, through Avhich here and there an object higher than the rest stood out against the sky. But upon this clay no mist ever gathered, nor any cloud. She sat quite still. A robin on the top of a clustered column close by broke the silence with a curt ' cheep! cheep!' and then flew away. The after-stillness was more marked for the bird-note that had broken upon the sunshine, then ceased. Other voices had ceased also. The quickest conscience at eight years old is not apt to be per sistent when its sting lies in the sense of a general inadequacy. The burst of penitence and new resolve that had troubled the child in the church yard by the edge of the cliff was far away now. She could not have told you how or why it had given way to a new and strange quietness ; she could not even ask herself whether this new mood was born of the day and the place, or of the confused weight of knowledge, and ignorance, and vague speculation that beset her. ' The cygnet finds the water, but the man Is born in ignorance of his element, And feels out blind at first.' There was a look in Dorigen's eyes and about her firmly-closed mouth that kept John Gower as silent for a time as the child herself was.

Then he turned to her kindly — more kindly than usual, because it was Sunday, and he had more leisure to be kind. And there was also a characteristic quaintness in his phrase and accent that was seldom noticeable in the stressful days of labour and care ; but the inflexions that he used Avere, in a sense, peculiar to himself, and not to be represented by any change of orthography. ' Well, little girl,' he said, looking down and putting his hand on her shoulder, ' what think you of it all % It is a long time since you saw the ships through the Abbey windows, isn't it? Hoav much can you remember V ' I don't know if I do remember ; I think it isn't the same.' ' No ? Where is the change, then % 'Everywhere,' said the child, looking round in perplexity. 'It Avas nearly dark when I was here last time ; there was only a little light, and it Avas a long way off.

And there was music — such beautiful music ! I think Uncle Than told me after that it was an organ. And then some singing began that was more beautiful than the music. I couldn't see the people that Avere singing, and — and I think they were angels. They were up above, and a cloud came between, and then the voices went farther away ... I couldn't help crying then, because I wanted them ■2C, to come near. I wanted to ask them about little Elsie.' The child had spoken with quite rev7erent gravity. She had no idea that she was relating a vivid dream, or a yet more vivid imagining. Dreams, imaginings, real events had played about equal parts in her small life so far. It was a puzzling experience for a man gifted AA'ith a certain amount of perspicuity — too much to permit him to fall into the mistake of comfort ing himself with the idea that this child of his was but as other children ; too little to enable him to penetrate into the recesses of her mental being.

His ideas of children in general Avere strangely vague and uncertain ; and so far as he had studied the one child-nature that was open to him for study, he had not yet found any element that might cause his ideas to crystallize or arrange themselves into any definite form. This state of things might be partly OAving to the fact that he had had but few7 opportunities of being alone with his little daughter. He could hardly remember the moment Avhen they had sat to gether as they were sitting now ; yet it was quite unawares that he was drawn into an experimental mood — a mood that reacted upon himself curiously, seeming to unlock certain of his mental faculties, and set him free from his ordinary reserve, and in a way that would have been slightly wonderful even to himself if he had noted it. ' I don't know what you're thinking of, little Avoman,' he said after a time of silence, ' nor do I know what strange stories old Than has been telling you.

I'm afraid that, like some other sailors I know, he's got a habit of spinning yarns that require to be taken with a grain more salt than belongs to them naturally. You mustn't take for granted all he says, especially Avhen he talks about abbeys and organs.' Dorigen looked saddened for a moment — the slightest passing impression, now and always, making itself fully visible on her sensitive features. Presently an eager look lighted up her face. ' But some of the things he says are true, father,' she said protestingly. ' He told me about the snakes, and they are there, you know, down on the scaur. I've seen them eA'er so many times.' ' What exactly did he tell you V 'He told me that once in all the country round about there were so many snakes — live ones — that no one knew what to do. And they were poisonous snakes, and they bit the people till they died — just like those that bit the Israelites in the wilderness.

And Lady Hilda went and stood on the edge of the cliff, and she prayed, and all the snakes came up out of the Avoods and fields, and from the moor ; and when they were all round about her, she took a cross and held it up, and then all the snakes' heads dropped off — or Lady Hilda cut them off — Uncle Than couldn't be quite sure which ; but they couldn't see, and they Avent OA'er the cliff down on to the scaur, and were turned to stone. IVe seen them there, father, all coiled up quite round, and not one has a head on. Than says that Government has offered a reward if anybody finds one with a head.' John Gower raised his eyes in due astonish ment at this conclusive announcement, and the half-repressed smile that the child was always glad to see played about his lips for an amused moment or two ; but he made no reply — shall it be confessed that he had no satisfactory reply to make ?

The legend that Dorigen had narrated with such earnestness of belief had been accepted by himself until he was at least thrice her age ; and even then the place of full acceptance had been filled by a sense of doubt and mystery with Avhich he had not cared to grapple. He had duly read his 'Marmion,' and he remembered, Avith all the exactness and tenacity of men who have but little to remember, that Sir Walter Scott, in his note to the poem, had not seemed to dwell with any favour on the views of modern scientists. ' The relics of the snakes whicli in fested the precincts of the convent, and were, at the abbess's prayer, not only beheaded, but petri fied, are still found about the rocks, and are termed by Protestant fossilists Ammonitœ !' So the poet concludes his note, and what could be added in the way of explanation by a man so utterly innocent of any science as John Gower ?

There were no primers in those days to lay bare the mysteries of all creation to Avhomsoever might possess a shilling and a spare hour. Books had been rare luxuries to this man, and time for reading them a luxury rarer still ; so that it was small wonder that his once strong inclination toward literature should all but hav7e departed from him. But the fact that he had at one time desired knowledge with some eagerness disposed him to decided sympathy Avith the evidently similar desires of his child. Her omnivorous appetite for books had been, so far, thAvarted as much as it had been in Mrs. Gower's power to thwart it ; but her father had a growing conviction that at some not distant clay it would be his duty to assert his OAvn authority in the matter. Again he broke the silence with a question. ' And Avhat other wonderful stories has old Than been telling you V he asked, just arresting the kindly smde. ' Oh, not many stories,' said the chdd. ' He hardly knows an)7.

But he tells me about real things, and I like that better . . . Did he ever tell you about the sea-birds, and why they never fly over the abbey ?' ' No ; I've never heard it from him,' was the reply. ' Did somebody else tell you ?' ' Yes ; my grandfather.' ' Your grandfather ? What did he say V ' He said that a great many of the birds of passage that fly over to this coast from Norway and Denmark are so exhausted by the long flight that they sink down as soon as they touch the ground, and rest for days before going any farther.' Dorigen looked away, silent between incre dulity and disappointment. ' Is that the same as Than's story V ' No ; it was nothing like that,' said the child, with a slight touch of the dignity that comes of reserved opinion. ' What, then, precisely was it like ?' ' It was because of Lady Hilda, Uncle Than vol. I. said.

She was very good, and the birds fly low when they come to the place where she lived, because she was a saint.' ' Ah ! That is very different . . . Was there anything else about the Lady Hilda V ' Only about her dying, and the vision that the nun at Hackness saw just at the time when she died . . . Uncle Than says that some people can see her yet. He had an aunt who saw her — I believe it was Miss Rountree's mother. She walked seven times round the church one night when it was moonlight, and then looked up at the Abbey, and Lady Hilda was standing there by a window in a white shining dress.' ' Suppose we should see her now !' Dorigen did not smile, nor did she shrink, or look afraid. She had told the legends in the same ordinary and commonplace language in which they had been told to her, giving the same commonplace details, but these had not represented the attitude of her own mind.

Her natural bent was toward an intense reverence for whatsoever things were surrounded by spiritual mystery and solemnity. The vastness and the tranquil sacredness of the place seemed to deepen this natural feeling, and the child was yielding herself to it more completely with every moment that went by. ' I didn't know you had such a wide acquaint ance with the legends of Hild's Haven,' her father said presently. ' I wonder how much you know of the real history of the place. Who was Lady Hilda ?' Dorigen turned her childish, wrondering eyes upon him rather vacantly. It was needless for her to admit that she did not know. Lady Hdda was for her a beautiful, white-robed saint, who had lived on this very spot, and had wrought many miracles there. The picture of her in Dorigen's brain was a picture of a tall, shining figure rising out of mists and shadows, and moving among arches and pillars that had ne\7er been carved by mortal hands. . . .

These were not details that could be reproduced in words for the benefit of a father who seemed to be relapsing into an exact and catechetical mood. ' Ah ! so I thought,' he said, after waiting with due patience and some curiosity for an answer. ' Now you seem to have remembered all old Thau's tales with wonderful exactness. If I tell you another, how long will you remember mine, do you think V 1 1 never forget things, father,' was the grave and not inaccurate reply. 3—2

Chapter III. The Story Of

CÆDMON. ' Above the small and land-locked harbour of Whitby rises and juts out towards the sea the dark cliff where Hild's monastery stood, looking out over the German Ocean. It is a wild wind-swept upland, and the sea beats furiously beneath, and standing there one feels that it is a fitting birthplace for the poetry of a sea-ruling nation.' — Stopford Brooke : On English Literature. ISTORIANS having awakened to the beauty and value of the tale that John Gower told to his child that summer Sunday morning — the story of the founding of the Abbey of Streonshalh by St. Hild, of how she made it ' the Westminster of Northumbria,' and became herself ' a North umbrian Deborah, whose counsel was sought even by bishops and kings,' these matters may not be touched upon here. But the story of Cædmon, a coAvherd of the monastery, a man so THE STORY OF CÆDMON. 37 utterly unlearned as to be unable to read or write, must perforce haA7e mention if the later pages of this history are to be understood to any real purpose.

We speak of him reverently to-day, and count him ' the Father of English song,' ' the Milton of our forefathers.' But the opening note of Cæd mon's story, as it has come down to us, is a note of sadness, a special note that could only have been struck in the soul of a sensitive and much suffering man. ' He was of middle age,' says the ancient writer, ' and had never learned any poem ; and, he therefore often in convivial society, when for the sake of mirth it was resolved that they all in turn should sing to the harp, when he saAV the harp approaching him, then for shame he would rise from the assembly and go home. ' When he so on a certain time did, that he left the house of the convivial meeting, and was gone out to the stall of the cattle, the care of which had been committed to him, when he there at proper time placed his limbs on the bed and slept, then stood some man by him, and hailed and greeted him, and named him by his name, saying, " Cædmon, sing me something."

Then he answered and said, " I cannot sing anything, and therefore I went out from this convivial meeting and returned hither, because I could not." Again he who was speaking with him said, " Yet you must sing to me." Cædmon said, " What shall I sing V And he said, " Sing me the origin of things." 'AVhen Cædmon received this answer, then he began forthwith to sing in praise of God, the Creator, the verses and the words which he had never heard. Then he arose from sleep, and had fast in mind all that he sleeping had sung, and to those words forthwith joined many words of song worthy of God in the same measure.'* It is probable that the grand old story was never listened to in a less critical attitude of mind. It was true beyond question ; it was beautiful beyond description ; it was sacred beyond realization.

Dorigen made no remark, but John Gower did not fail to note the intentness of the small, eager face beside him, the quick changing of the colour on the cheek, the dilation of the dark, expressive, . wondering eyes. Some of these things he had perceived from the beginning ; but when the story of the divine illumination of Cædmon had been added to the rest, the strong c* Vide Bede's ' Ecclesiastical History ;' also Thorpe's ' Trans lation of Cædmon's Metrical Paraphrase.' THE STORY OF CÆDMON. 39 emotion of the child became less controllable. It was as if every nerve quivered to the sound ing of the chord of latent sympathy that had been touched, and touched finely. To what fine or other issues it is one purpose of this record to show. Johann Wolfgang Mozart writing his concerto for the harpsichord at fiv7e years old ; Lawrence taking his pencil portraits at the same age ; Landseer painting pictures to be exhibited at the Royal Academy in his thirteenth year ; Shelley writing wild romances to be published while he was yet a schoolboy — these and scores of others are cited commonly as instances of precocious development, and the citation is made admiringly, as if the prematurely-burdened child were worthy of all honour and praise.

If such a childhood — the inner life of it, the inevitable suffering of it — could be accurately recorded, there is no compassionate man or woman in whose heart praise would not turn to pity even while the record was being read. There is but one childhood to a human life ; but one time of freedom from care, of exemption from strife, of ignorance of life's bafflings, its meanness, its complications. If this be marred, it is an ill for which existence has no compensa tion. All his life a man shall go sadly for the child that died, not having known the glories and illusions of a happy childhood. It is quite in vain to blame circumstance, to cast reflections on this child's mother or that child's father. The originating force lies beyond these, though it be transmitted through them, and they shall not be accounted responsible for activities that lie outside their comprehension.

To have hatched an ugly duckling is not the ambition of the maternal hen, and none but the hard-hearted would refuse to sympathize with her inevitable dismay when the un desired creature persists in taking to its native element. Her anxiety is but increased by the vagueness of her knowledge of the untried dangers, and to be made to recognise the fact that you have given life to an organism that is daily and hourly passing beyond your ken, can ne\7er add to that comfortable acquiescence in the things that are, which is so legitimate an object of desire. Perfect immunity from anxiety on this head can only lie in perfect obtuseness, and this being a quality liable to the shocks and jars by which enlightenment of all kinds has a trick of coming, can seldom be depended upon for perfect tran quillity.

Even Mrs. Gower had made disturbing discoveries, and it was hardly likely that her more perceptive husband should escape alto- THE STOP Y OF CÆDMON. 41 gether. He had no desire to escape ; on the contrary, as we have seen, he had this morning fallen into a mood that might be termed ex perimental. Yet he was not prepared for this display of overmastering emotion. The child had risen to her feet ; the small, nervous hands moved outward to his impulsively ; her voice betrayed the fervour of her bewildered faith. ' But who was it that came to Cædmon in the night, father 1 Was it God Himself ? or was it an angel that God sent ?' ' That I cannot tell,' John Gower replied reverently, feeling that the question was one that required attention of the same kind as he had often been led to bestow upon the question as to the nature of Him Avho wrestled with Jacob at Penuel. ' That I cannot tell,' he said.

Then after pausing a moment he added, ' It is said in the Bible that the prophets spake as they were mo\7ed by the Holy Spirit !' ' But that was inspiration ! . . . Mother says that only the Bible is inspired !' Here again John Gower hesitated. He had no wish to shake his wife's authority, knowing well that his own vieAvs were not sufficiently definite to be of much value on such matters. ' I suspect it depends on how you take the word " inspiration," ' he said vaguely. THE HA VEN UNDER THE HLLL. He was not satisfied with his reply, being aware of a certain cowardice behind it. ' Are there two kinds of inspiration, then V the child asked quickly. ' That I can't tell ; I should say there might be. I've thought about it before to-day, and I remember there's a passage somewhere in the Epistles that says, " God, at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake unto the fathers."