'Love and Quiet Life.' Somerset Idylls

Chapter I Sutton Town

At the entrance to the little village of Sutton stands a small square house. At the back lies a Somersetshire moor ; and in front a ridge of hills, not high, but suddenly rising steep and abrupt, and crowned with copse, alternating with large patches of gorse. The slope is checkered like a chess-board, with fields, both arable and grass. But for a few gentle undulations, the hill-top lies even against the sky ; and the edge of the moor below draws a line as level as the water which formerly lapped the foot of the hill. The town (for town it was called, although never more than half a score of houses) consisted of one undeviating street, with cottages and small home steads on either side. Hidden from the moor by dark orchards, its position was indicated by an irregular row of tall poplar trees.

In summer-time, a thin film of grey smoke hanging along the hill side betrayed the presence of this cluster of human habitations. In winter, thatch and gables and a " Love and Quiet Life " 2 corner of the old church tower peeped between the leafless trees. But everything was sheltered and secluded, except the solitary house standing alone on the margin of the moor. That was whitewashed, and might be seen for miles — with its square windows, sometimes black as ink and sometimes glistening in the sun like gems, its slate roof, rising like a pyramid from the square walls, with a square chimney at the point. From the distance it looked like one of those small meeting-houses not uncommon in that part of the country ; but drawing near you found the windows curtained and the garden carefully kept.

In the early summer of the Year of Grace 1830, two girls were standing by the border between the path and the laurel hedge. The one holding the water-pot was tall and thin, with dark hair and large black eyes. Her dress was very plain, almost Puritanical, but marked with that daintiness which results from instinctive attention to the person. The other, who waited on her, in a print frock with bare arms, brought buckets, one in each hand, with a hoop to keep them from her skirts. She was younger, but stouter, stronger, richer in physique, and the sunlight falling on her brown hair tinged it with red. " I almost think, Tamsin, that will be enough." "La! Miss Marion. An' to think that's the last bucket I shall carr' vor ee," said Tamsin, stepping forward to replenish the pot. "But it is not far to Mrs. Culliford's. And when you come down to the village you must not forget to look in and see me.

And you must keep up your reading and writing and — why have you tied up your apron like that ? " The girl blushed, her lip quivered, and she glanced quickly round the garden to assure herself that they were free from observation. " I thought, Miss Marion — if you 'ood n' take offence — I thought where or no. I mean, I cou'dn' a-bear to goo an' " " Oh, Tamsin ! You shouldn't. You really shouldn't." From her apron she had taken a dog, a large, white, china dog with a gold chain around its neck, such as may still be sometimes seen upon a cottage mantelpiece. The choice had taxed her thought. The expenditure had not been unimportant. Of the liberty taken she was well aware. And now in the supreme moment her action seemed doubtful, and she was on the verge of tears. " Of course I am delighted, Tamsin.

Really delighted. But it must have cost you so much. I shall value it more than anything, and keep it in my own room." " Love and Quiet Life " 4 " Do ee like un, Miss Marion ? " The girl's face had brightened with delight. " I do, indeed." " I thought you 'ood. I never ca'n't abide them there liver-coloured ones myself. An' you've a'ways a-bin so kind a-larnen o' me. I shall never forget ee so long as I do live. An' oh ! Miss Marion. Not pay my money if vather do slip in vor the box. Not but what mother's so good as I be myself." " I will be very discreet. Now carry this in, Tamsin, to my room. I will not show it to father to-night. I am coming, too." They went upstairs to the bedroom looking out upon the moor. The china dog was safely placed upon the mantel-shelf. " I must kiss you, Tamsin."

There were also tears in the eyes of Marion Burt ; for the house would be quite strange when Tamsin was gone, and she loved her. An elderly man came from the further end of the garden, between the espalier trees and the filbert bushes, glanced at the buckets, and waited in the porch. " Marion ! Are you ready for our walk ? " " Coming, Father." In rain or sunshine, keeping closer accuracy than the clock in the church tower, at nine in the morning and three in the afternoon, in winter, but in summer at six, James Burt and his daughter passed through the iron gate at the end of the path and walked out into the world. They never varied from day to day, but only with the seasons. They took always the same direction. Past the cottage of the Sandboys, built upon a strip of way side waste ; past Josiah's homestead with the gigantic stone porch, and the wall of Abraham Bartlett's barton.

Then across the road to the raised causeway before the door of Mrs. Carew, and so down the street. By the west wall of the graveyard there opened, in those days, a narrow passage, called by the country people a " drang " ; thus they entered a lane leading by a hollow through the wood and away over the hill. Slowly they passed along the hill-top, sometimes strangely magnified against the sky, descended the winding path beyond the gorse, and returned home by the willow-bounded road skirting the moor. The lack of imagination implied in this never-varying routine astonished even Sutton. As Mrs. Culliford remarked to Mrs. Carew, not once, nor twice, but hundreds of times : — " If Mr. Burt and his maid mus' goo the very same walk twice every day o' their lives, why not sometimes take un t'other way about ?

" " An' that's what I do zay," said Mrs. Carew. " Love and Quiet Life " 6 Sutton itself was less imaginative than prone to minute observation, and not particularly apt to be severe upon absurdities, of which it unconsciously committed not a few. Yet it felt dissatisfied with the demeanour of James Burt. To this village, where the ancestry, the business, the opinions of everybody were known to all, he had come, a stranger, when the girl was a little child. Now she was nineteen, and nobody one whit the wiser. Young and old turned to look at her ; but painfully conscious of attracting attention, as she passed along the causeway she used to quicken her pace. With lagging steps her father followed a few yards behind, thus favouring a tradition that this strange couple did not talk. He was of less than middle height and past middle age.

His features were fine and regular to severity, but the soft grey eyes beneath his shaggy eyebrows appeared incapable of wrath. That his hair was white as silver did not add to his years, for there was a quality of sad serenity about his countenance begotten rather of sorrow than of age. His face, always closely shaven, indicated much intellectual power, but this proved no recom mendation amongst people prone to regard a new idea as a dangerous explosive. His mouth was vacillating, but sweetly benevolent. He would step off the causeway to make room for the humblest villager. But in Sutton meekness was no passport to public favour. The inhabitants of Sutton might easily have been divided into two classes. The one, coarsely boisterous in its enjoyment of life, laughed merrily at these incomprehensible neighbours ; the other, grimly perceiving how small a section of humanity would be qualified for enjoyment in the life to come, abstained from laughter in anticipation of eternal joy.

They loved one text and lived by it — "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." They emphasized the paucity of the elect. There was comfort in this vast exclusive ness. In a topsy-turvy world, where the rich and high-born are not always the brightest examples of piety, it did the hearts of the chosen good to know themselves a spiritual aristocracy. With them unsatisfied curiosity was closely akin to suspicion. A vague notion existed in Sutton that Mr. Burt had at one time been a minister. He habitually dressed in black. His clothes, though dull and threadbare, were carefully brushed, but his trousers were grotesquely short. This, even with the more serious-minded, could not fail to detract from the veneration due to the dignity of his face ; unless, of course, they knew his doctrine sound, in which case a short trouser-leg might easily add a spiritual " Love and Quiet Life " 8 grace.

He wore a soft felt hat and a white necktie. " An 'eet," as Mrs. Culliford, the farmer's wife who lived at the old Manor House, said to Mrs. Carew, the sharp-featured elderly little widow who lived " down street," " If he's a minister, why do the man never testify? If he were ever a pastor, where did he leave his vlock ? " The meeting-house at Upton, a mile over the hill, was irregularly supplied with preachers from neighbouring towns, and thither Sutton folk often times repaired of a Sunday evening in the sum mer. Mr. Burt himself occasionally attended divine worship in that place. Whether regarded therefore as a question or an argument, Mrs. Culli ford's words were cogent and unanswerable. Mrs. Culliford had walked down that evening to tea with Mrs. Carew, and they were sitting at the downstair window, looking out upon the street.

" Bless my heart alive ! " cried Mrs. Culliford. " How Miss Burt have a-shot up, to be sure. Why, she's taller an' her father by half a head. An' 't wer' but the wick avore last, so to speak, she wer' but a little slip of a maid not sweetheart high." " An' now she's a 'ooman. Sure she mus' put on clean collar an' cuffs every other day." " An' so she mus'. Sure there's a main deal o' trouble wi' the washen o' them-there broidery collars." " Ah ! An' the ironen so well, Mrs. Culliford. Oh aye ! The ironen so well." " An' so 'tes." " But there she've a-got all her time for certain. Her father mus' ha' property, for sure. Sim to I they mus' be quality volk a-comed down. Critchell the butcher o' Bridgetown do call twice a wick, Mondays an' Thursdays, an' nothen ever booked, but the money a-brought out to door so reg'lar as the sun.

We can zee all do pass vrom little dairy-house winder, but never a stranger in or out, leastways if so 'tes unbeknown to me — an' I do rather think I should zee, too." " To be sure you would. Now that's the worst I do like about being perked up there to Manor House. The grass do come early I don't deny, an' we be out o' the way o' the floods. But there's noo look out. You mid live from year's-end to year's-end, an' never zee a soul but what do come to the house. An' if you do hear wheels in the road, 'tes a-gone like a flash, afore you can get out in time to see what 'tes." " But what I say is this," reflected Mrs. Carew, weighing the probability of Mr. Burt's gentility with grave deliberation. " Gentry do know gentry. I hope your tea's to your liking, Mrs. Culliford." " Love and Quiet Life " 10 " Terr'ble good, thank ee."

"They do git their tea to Bridgetown too, in half-poun' packets six-and-six the poun', an' nothen less. I do know that, for the young man, the out-ride, told me so out of his own mouth. But then to be sure it can't be much, for they be but two, an' that do make all the difference." " An' so do," assented Mrs. Culliford, nodding cordial corroboration. In this condition of isolation Marion Burt grew into womanhood without associates of her own age, and with no friend but her father. During her childhood there had been a housekeeper at the cottage, an ancient dame, who taught her the use of the needle and the mysteries of house keeping, but of late no other inmate but Tamsin. Her father had educated her, not only with patient care, but, finding her apt, with the enthusiasm of a scholar ; and under his guidance learning became a delight.

She mastered Latin and knew some Greek. She was familiar with the heroes of antiquity, and Julius Cæsar crossing the Rubicon was to her a more living reality than jolly farmer John Culliford jogging homewards on his old mare from Bridgetown market across the moor. Nor were the daily walks so monoto nous as they appeared to the lively imaginations of Mrs. Culliford and Mrs. Carew. Upon one of the shelves of her father's library Marion had found White's " Natural History of Selbome," and learned from it the delight of a close observa tion of nature. They listened to the chiff-chaff in the spring. They noted the coming and going of the martins in the sandy hollow ; and waited expectant for the cuckoo's call. They drank in every sight, from the silvering of the thorn to the gilding of the maple ; and every sound, from the first note of the thrush to the solitary song of the robin in the winter tree.

Thus to the occasional observer they appeared to loiter aimlessly and look at nothing, and Mrs. Culliford said to Mrs. Carew, with the rich re dundancy of negation which is one of the chief charms of that neighbourhood, that she never didn't think they could'n ever be quite right. Yet how beautiful was life to these two simple people. The village little dreamt that sometimes of a starlight night when all was still, and every soul in Sutton slept the sleep of the just, they walked out into the garden, or even wandered away across the moor to note the planets and call the constella tions by their names. The breath of night sighed through the sedges and the willow trees. The stars looked down upon the still water of the rhine. The unbounded arc of heaven bent over the unbroken " Love and Quiet Life " 12 plain.

How vast it was ! how wonderful ! And ever above and behind the innumerable host was hidden the eternal Majesty, who governs them with His infinite wisdom. This thought was always present to James Burt. On these occasions he was wont to pour it forth in reverential awe ; and Marion, listening, drank it into her soul. Thus in isolation, but in that rarefied atmosphere of fine feeling which surrounds the summit of elevated thought, the girl grew up unconscious of the flesh and-blood of human existence. Once only had nature startled her with a strange, inexplicable note. They were returning to the house from one of these expeditions, on a night in early winter. The wind had risen ; clouds were driving across the sky ; and everything was hidden and obscured. She drew closer to her father, for the road had become very dark.

A row of pollard willows loomed on either side, and suddenly above their heads came a wild whirring of wings, and one solitary wailing cry. It was not love — this longing of a wild-bird flying south — but the involuntary expression of some unknown restless want. The yearning of it echoed in her ears, the memory remained to haunt her heart.

Chapter II The Ivory Miniature

Of their history previous to settling in Sutton, Marion knew little. She could dimly remember her father in a black gown, leaning over the pulpit with extended arm. And someone else — it must have been her mother — sitting in the corner of a high-backed pew, looking down at the hassock. Yet even that seemed little more than a dream. And there was present some inexplicable incongruity, perceived at that time by her infant mind and still retained, which made the recollection perplexing and unreal. To question her father was useless. He set the matter aside in a nervous, hurried way, which reduced her to silence, leaving her with a sense of having pained him. But with increasing years, the desire to learn something of the past had grown into a passion. Was she never to know anything of the woman who bore her ?

Never to hear one word of story, nor feel one touch of tender reminiscence ? What was she like ? Was she short ? Was she tall ? Was she beautiful ? J3 " Love and Quiet Life " 14 The longing became none the less importunate because there was none to answer it. Beneath the roof was a small attic, used as a lumber-room ; and there one day, a ray of sunlight came slanting through the little window, pointing like a finger to an old deal box which lay in the corner, carefully corded, but forgotten long ago. Never before had Marion noticed the inscription roughly pencilled on the lid : " Sermons, etc." At once she felt a wish to examine the contents. There could be no harm in that, and she need not bother her father. Without hesitation she knelt down upon the floor, and with some difficulty unfastened the knots.

The box was full of writings, neatly tied in bundles. Written in her father's small, clear hand were sermons upon sermons — some of surpassing eloquence, many of inordinate length ; but all pencilled at the head of the sheet, just above the text, with the dates of composition and delivery. One after another she took them out with rapid inquisitiveness, promising herself to read them every one at leisure. It would truly be a delight and recreation to her. But as she replaced them in the box, a parcel smaller than the rest attracted her attention. It was quite different to the others, and eagerly opening it, she found a number of letters and a small miniature portrait painted on The Ivory Miniature 15 ivory. With a thrill of delight she rose, crossed the room, and stood under the window, holding the picture in the clear light.

The head of a young woman, with a beautiful but almost childish face, with large dark eyes and a witching, wayward mouth. Her hair, black as jet, was arranged in loose ringlets around her forehead and on the sides of her head. Perhaps the artist had idealized the dainty beauty of the delicate mouth and chin, yet none could doubt that the picture was a likeness, and as Marion looked, it became more and more familiar, until she clearly recognised the mother she had lost so long ago. She stood gazing at it with loving emotion. She knew it was her mother. Then how pitiable that this only relic she had ever seen should lie thus coffined, neglected and forgotten. It was a sort of sacrilege to leave it like a worthless thing, hidden away and unheeded. And yet the tenderness of her father's nature forbade her to accuse him of coldness or want of affection.

Doubtless his very sensibility led him thus to lay aside everything which might awaken sad memories, just as it prevented any reference to the love which he had lost. She could understand that. With trembling fingers she untied the bundle of letters, all so fair writ in the style of faultless symmetry of the days when penmanship was an " Love and Quiet Life " 16 art. They were written before marriage, five-and twenty years ago, and the ink was faded, having long outlived the tale of love it told. Marian felt no hesitation in reading. It was all so remote that to do so seemed more like an inquiry into history than a peeping behind the privacy of life. But as she read her heart beat fast, and her cheek flushed. The words were wild, and without self-restraint in their extravagant expression of passionate and romantic love.

Yet they had been very real to the writer, and now they were very real to her who read. There were difficulties — a hint of something clandestine in the correspondence, followed by avowals of unalterable fidelity and undying love. It was afternoon in early spring, and Marion had just returned from her usual walk when she began to read ; but she continued until dusk, drawing closer to the window as the writing faded into illegibility. She had time to learn the whole love story. Even to the withdrawal of opposition, and the reference to future marriage with which the unintentional record suddenly closed. The last reflected glow of sunset had tinged the darkening clouds with blood. From the topmost twig of an elm tree on the hill-side a thrush was pouring forth his last song, startling the soft air with interjected phrases bursting from his throb- The Ivory Miniature 17 bing throat.

The girl could read no longer, but she still remained holding the letters in her hand. She had drunk the love potion. It quickened her heart and made her head swim, like wine with one who has never before tasted it. Yet how could she, as yet untouched by passion, sound the depth of this turbulent emotion into which she looked ? In the sweet atmosphere of youth and spring, she saw only the beauty, but never questioned the unalter able quality of Love. And thus she understood the happiness her father once possessed — and lost. " Marion ! " His voice recalled her. She quickly re-tied the letters, to return them to the box. They were mostly signed " Marion," but one in full, " Marion Holbyn," and thus she learned at last her mother's maiden name. But she did not replace the portrait. She pressed it to her lips, kissing it again and again in an ecstasy of delight.

It was as if a great vacancy had been filled, a long-felt want supplied. She could now picture the mother of whom hitherto she had only vaguely dreamed ; and the beauty of the face was a source of exultation and delight. She quickly unbuttoned her dress, and hid upon her bosom the tiny oval likeness in its smooth, black frame. Then she ran downstairs in response to her father's call. " Love and Quiet Life" 18 For several days Marion thus carried her new found treasure, but as the first excitement wore away, she began to suffer misgivings, and to doubt whether she ought thus to appropriate that which had been so carefully hidden from sight. The spirit of gentleness and simple candour marking all her father's actions rendered it impossible to practise deceit upon him. She felt assured he would not deny to her this relic, which sorrow alone could have driven him to remove from sight.

More than this, she longed to know it an absolute posses sion ; and yet she hesitated to speak. At last this desire overcame her fear, and one morning she summoned courage to enter his study. It was a small room looking out upon the moor. The walls were hidden with books. The chairs were old-fashioned, of rosewood with horsehair seats, and ornamented with brass-headed nails. In a corner stood a celestial globe, by aid of which they sometimes worked out problems as an intel lectual recreation. Busily writing at a table covered with manuscripts, it was easy to believe him engaged on some interminable book. As she entered, he glanced up, but continued his work. Presently he laid aside his pen, and asked with his habitual tranquility and sweetness — " Do you want any help, Marion ?" " No, dear Father.

It was not that. But the The Ivory Miniature 19 other day I found this. May I keep it ? " And she held the miniature towards him. He became so agitated that his lip quivered, and for a moment he could not speak. Then, with an effort he subdued his emotion, and answered : — " Yes. Keep it." " It is my mother ? " He sighed, rose from the table, and crossed to the window looking out upon the moor. She could not see his face, only his figure dark against the glass. He seemed to tremble, and she thought he was in tears. " Yes. Your mother." Her heart melted with pity for his bereavement. She had touched his sorrow ; re-opened the wound ; and she suffered an agony of self-reproach. Yet the question was so importunate, she could not help asking it. "One word more, Father! How old was I when my mother died ?

" He raised his hand to his forehead as if to con centrate his thoughts and fix his attention on the distant past. For a full minute there was silence. Then he answered quite calmly, as if he had only waited to consider. " She was taken from me — when you were three years of age."

Chapter III Tranter Coombs

That summer was the "most catchingest" ever experienced in the memory of man. It had been " terr'ble teasen for the haymaken " ; but Mr. John Culliford, of the Manor Farm at Sutton, had come almost to the last load. Seated on his white cob he encouraged the workers. The great yellow wagon slowly proceeded between the "weales," as they used to call the long ridges of fresh-made hay, whilst the pitchers lifted and the loaders spread the sweet-smelling crop. The women-folk in cotton frocks and sun-bonnets were busy with rakes. The group stood out in bold relief against a background of elm trees ; but the rick was in a distant field, and the white gate stood open in the hedgerow. In a corner of the field children had come to play, and Johnny Sandboy was running after Mary Eliza Clarke. He caught her, smothered her in hay, and the child screamed.

Then one of the women stopped raking, turned round, and called in a shrill voice : — " Les the little maid alone, young huzburd, or I'll put the little stick about your back." Experience and a large family had taught Mrs. Sandboy that it was never unwise to check the exuberance of youth. " 'Tes somethen to do wi' the childern," she said, half to herself. " 'Tes a'most time the bwoy were to work." " Zo 'tes, Missus. Zo 'tes," said Mr. John Culli ford. Then he glanced at the sun above the little spinney on the hillside, turned his horse's head, and rode slowly towards the house. He dismounted, threw the rein over the barton gate-post, and stood at his full height a moment, stretching his limbs. He was tall enough — five feet eleven or so — and broad beyond the dreams of ambition. More than three score years of age, he was still erect as in youth, standing as straight as one of his own cider-butts, which, although possessed of a rich rotundity, does not in spirit depart from the perpendicular.

Again he glanced at the sun, his customary clock, now rising above the cowl of the tall kitchen chimney. Then he strolled leisurely into the road — a road white and dusty, passing without hedgerows through the open fields — and shading his eyes with his hand, gazed into the distance. At last he turned back to the house, passed through " Love and Quiet Life " 22 the garden, and stood by the porch before the open door. " Missus ! Missus ! " Mr. John Culliford's utter ances often betrayed a latent excitability scarcely to be suspected from the deliberation of his movements. " What is it, John ? " " Here's Tranter Coombs have a-turned the top of the hill." There was a deal of colour about Farmer John Culliford, standing there in the shadow of the grey old building. Little flat brass buttons glistened above his blue hose at the knees of his cord breeches, and down one side of his red waistcoat, wide open because of the warm weather.

For the same reason he wore no coat, and his shirt-sleeves were snowy white. Around his throat was a cotton neckcloth of a little sprig pattern tied in a bow, and his face was round and rosy, rosy from every conceivable reason — from the sun, from a moderate consumption of cider, from shaving with a doubtful razor, and above all from a thorough good English heart which thumped within his bosom. " Come, Missus ! Come ! " Then Mrs. Culliford, comely and comfortable as himself, came into the porch, a brown cup in one hand, a willow-patterned plate with a crust of bread and cheese in the other. " 'Tes a wonderful sight o' grapes to-year if they do but ripen," she said, glancing at the vine which covered one side of the house, between the tall mullioned windows. " But the thunderstorm have a-beat about the flower-knot shameful."

And so they contentedly waddled down to the gate to await the tranter. The old Manor House at Sutton stands remote from the remainder of the parish. Even in those days it had ceased to be a mansion for more than a century and a half, and the added farm buildings were already in a condition of respectable decay. There was no large landed proprietor resident in the village, and the Cullifords had been the prin cipal inhabitants time out o' mind. They always held land in Sutton, and had rented the house for many generations. Their cider-butts filled the old baronial hall, and they kept a chain-harrow in the ancient kitchen. But the little ivy-covered chapel with Gothic windows, and ornamented with the faded escutcheons of a forgotten race, still remained in good preservation, and had never suffered de secration.