The Brudenells of Brude

Front matter

A THE BRUDENELLS OF BRUDE. THE BBUDENELLS OE BKUDE. BY EMMA JANE WOEBOISE, Author of "The Grey House at Eadlestone," "Robert Wreford's Daughter, "St. Beefha'a,'* " Overdale," <£c, le. " We have not wings, we cannot soar ; But we have feet to scale and climb By slow degrees, by more and more, The cloudy summits of our time. " Standing on what too long we bore With shoulders bent and downcast eyes, We may discern — unseen before — A path to higher destinies. " Nor deem the irrevocable Past As wholly wasted, wholly vain, If, rising on its wrecks, at last To something nobler we attain." 3loituon : JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET. HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27 & 31, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1878. CONTENTS. C**APIEB PAGE I. The Family Chronicle 1 II. Sunset Talk 12 III. A Letter from Australia 23 IV.

Next Morning 34, V. Spending Money 44 VI. Mabel's Guardian 55 VII. Pelham Place 66 VIII. A Sabbath-Day's Journey 77 IX. The Tea-Bell 88 X. An Unsigned Contract -. 93 XI. "I'll Sleep upon it ! " 108 XII. Mabel's Morning Visitor 117 XIII. Another Journey 127 XIV. A Happy Visit 137 XV. Maitland Hall 148 XVI. Mabel's Letter 159 XVII. Asking Advice 170 XVIII. Pluck and Patience 181 XFX. Muscular Christianity 191 XX. The Ancient Mariner 201 XXI. The Invitation 212 XXII. Moss Farm CONTEN'J S. VI CHAPTEP. PAGE XXIII. Never Too Late to Mend 234 XXIV. In the Lower Eoad 247 XXV. Cuddie Disappears 259 XXVI. Going to London 271 XXVII. Luckie has her Say 281 XXVIII. The Flower of the Family 293 XXIX. " Where's Nicholas ? " 304 XXX. ADarkDay 317 XXXI. What the Neighbours Said 329 XXXII. Sunset 339 XXXIII.

Mr. Freeman's Journey 351 XXXIV. The Lonely Shore 361 XXXV. The Smugglers' Castle 373 XXXVI. The End of the Conference 385 XXXVII. St. Edmund's Chapel 395 XXXVIII. Autumn Days 405 XXXIX. The Lady of Brude 415 XL. Cissy Tells her Story 426 XLI. A Quiet Sunday 437 XLII. Who Did It? 448 XLIII. Not a Ghost 460 XLIV. "Be Ye Also Ready" , 470 l. XL V. New Beginnings 480 XLVI. New Year's Eve 490 XLVII. The End of the Holidays 501 XL VIII. Changes at Brude 511 XLIX. After Two Years 522 L. The Last Chronicle

Chapter I. The Family Chronicle

" There's nae luck about the house, There's nae luck at a'." It was the first day of summer. The long, cold, nngenial spring was over at last ; the wind had gone out of the east, where, with few and brief variations, it had per sistently tarried for — I dare scarcely say how many — weeks, and was blowing softly and sweetly from tbe balmy south. A full choir of skylarks was rapturously singing far up in the blue, unclouded arch that spanned the glittering wide sea and the green, sunlighted land ; the trees — there were so few of them you might almost count them on your fingers — were rustling pleasantly about the lonely farm house that occupied the centre of a great bare piece of tableland lying between the cliffs and the swelling up lands, that were commonly called " downs." The house was not only solitary, but desolate-looking.

It was large and weather-beaten ; its stained and lichen covered walls were unmantled by ivy or creeper ; its roof, unskilfully patched in places, seemed anything but water proof, and the whole place was wofully in need of a coat or two of paint. There were barns enough to hold bounteous harvests of ripe grain, and there was room for any reasonable number of stacks in the paved yard and in the grassy close beyond ; but the barns were apparently empty, the stacks were few and badly made, and doors and gates, for the most part, were hanging from their hinges, or fastened by any sort of device that at the same time answered the purpose and gave as little trouble as possible. The fowls scratched and pecketted np to the front door of the house ; a lean, tethered cow was grazing on what once had been a well-kept lawn, and around it grew, in curious combination, spindly cabbages, winter-greens running into seed, roses, fast losing every sign of culture, tall scarlet poppies, dead-nettles, and ancient gooseberry bushes, handsomely festooned with garlands of field convolvulus, and trailing branches of the wild white briony.

And still there was something about the place which spoke of better days. Over the porch, and under a deep oriel window, was a coat-of-arms, well cut into the solid stones of which the walls were built ; in the middle of the grass-plot was a fine old sun-dial, well mossed and weather-stained, but evidently a relic of older and far more prosperous times ; there was stabling for quite a stud of horses, and a great kennel, which, in a less dilapidated condition, might have served the Master of the Hounds. And Master of the Hounds a former owner of Brude Farm had been ; but that was half a century before, and the farm was then called, by gentle and simple, Brude Manor House ! To call it so now would have been a sheer mockery. Manorial rights Nicholas Brndenell had none, and the house itself was nothing more than a great, ugly, ramshackle farmhouse, that would surely have tumbled down had it not been built, by the long-since dead and gone Brudenells, of the most substantial materials, and in a solid and workmanlike fashion, that defied alike the keen sea-blasts, and the neglect of its later supine or un fortunate possessors.

Bright as the day was, there was very little sign of active life about the farm. The hens clucked and pecketted, and the cock — a splendid bird, of pure English breed — strutted on before his wives, who followed meekly in his wake ; the cow cropped the coarse grass within her reach ; a few common pigeons fluttered here and there ; a very fat pig lay idly before one of the half-hingeless barn doors ; and at some distance from the house, in a low walled paddock, were two or three rough colts stretched in the sun, upon the flowery turf. The windows, most of them curtainless, were all shut, except perhaps two or three ; the heavy front-door was closed and knockerless. There was no sound of daily labour, or of idle chatter even, about the forlorn and drowsy homestead ; and no thing was to be heard save the hum of the busy bees, the singing of the larks, the clucking of the fowls, and the satisfied, low grunting of the lazy pig.

Only that, sounding through and over all, came the ceaseless, solemn murmur of the sea, breaking on the rocky shore, that was scarce half a mile away. As the afternoon shadows lengthened, however, a girl with some coarse knitting in her hand and a young man, perhaps nine or ten years her senior — for she was certainly not more than sixteen — came round from the back of the house, and as ter strolling leisurely once or twice round the boundaries of the neglected garden, seated themselves on the broad steps at the foot of the ancient sun-dial. As soon as she was fairly settled, the girl's fingers began to move briskly ; the young man lounged idly on the lowest step, staring up at the deep blue sky, apparently counting the larks that were still pouring out their thrilling lay, far, far above the earth, and all but shrouded from mortal gaze in their " privacy of glorious light."

He was small and thin — painfully so. His face was pale and sad, his slight fingers had the pecnliar conformation that invariably betokens confirmed ill-health, and is not infrequently an evidence of incipient consumption. His manner was listless, his expression melancholy. He had the air of one who was altogether weary of his life. The girl, on the contrary, seemed full of energy. She plied her shining needles with a will. She was knitting a stocking of dark and coarse grey worsted. She was the picture of health. Her figure was full and unusually rounded for her age, and the colour in her cheeks, though far too florid for beauty, seemed warranted to wear. She wore grey stockings, like those she was knitting, very thick and clumsy boots, a short stuff petti coat of undefinable hne and shade, and a blue linsey 1—2 jacket, with sleeves that terminated just below the elbows, revealing a pair of sturdy, well-browned arms, stout wrists, and hands that had already done many a good day's work, and might do more in the years that were to come.

"You are tired, Amyas ? " she said, looking gently at her companion. Her voice was soft and rather sweet, but she spoke with an accent that accorded with her rustic appearance and surroundings. The young man had the same uncouth accent, as he replied, " Tired ? Tes ! when am I not tired, Mab ? I often wish you didn't look so monstrously busy, and so desperately full of energy. Why ! I have done nothing, or next to nothing, all the day, while yon have been at some task or other ever since five o'clock this morning, and yet I am longing for bed time, and you seem fit to go on, if need be, till midnight, without any great inconvenience." " I am stronger than you are, Amyas ; and, when I do go to bed, I sleep — oh, as sound as sound ! I am like the girl who complained that her nights were no comfort to her, because the moment she laid down her head she dropped off without a thought, and never awoke for an instant until it was time to jump up and dress.

Now, you have bad nights, you know, and then yonr poor back hurts you whenever you try to be industrious. Some folks are made for hard work, and some ain't. I was born a drudge, I suppose ; you couldn't drudge, however you might try." " I'm a drone iu the hive, I know, and being a drone, it's out of the question that I should make any honey." " The worst of it is, Amyas, there is not mnch honey in the hive for anybody, and never will be. Things don't get a bit better, and every year we are a little more to the bad. I'm sure I don't know whose fault it is ! It's all onr faults, Aunt Hepzibah says, though whether she counts herself as one of us I can't say. She says there's a curse on the Brudenells, and for all the ill-luck they have had, and are having, and will have, most likely, to the end of the chapter, it does seem like it.

"What do you think, Amyas ? " " Well, I don't exactly believe in that sort of thing. It seems to me, Mab, that to suppose a whole family, generation after generation, is under a curse because of some thing somebody did centuries ago, is to charge God with a shocking .o.-Christian spirit. And it's a very easy way of shifting off ourselves lots of stupid mistakes and all our responsibilities, to declare that all our troubles are judg ments, handed down to us from that wicked ancestor — he was an Amyas, by the way ! — who lived in the time of Charles I. or Charles II., I don't remember which." " And yet, Amyas, we do pay for other folks' sins, both. for those who came before us and for those who are living still. If people don't do their duty, big or little, some body else suffers always ; leastways that's how it seems to me.

I don't think I can quite make you understand, for I can always ponder over things better than I can say them out. I can't put things clear, that's what I mean. But I do believe that if everybody did their best, and nobody did their worst, it would be a world better for all the other bodies that belong to them, or are descended from them. There ! it's all a muddle when I begin to talk about it ; but I see it plain as daylight in my mind. And yet some people have luck, and some haven't, that's certain. Some people get on without much pains, and some can't get on at all, for all their striving. And it seems to me, Amyas, that if one don't rise, one is sure to sink ; there's no standing still, and keeping just the same in life ; you must get a little richer or else a little poorer continually ; perhaps a good deal poorer !

One's fortunes are like the tide down yonder — they are always on the flow, or on the ebb. The tide is sure to turn, though ; but I'm afraid our luck won't. I wish it would, for things can't hold together much longer if it don't." " And it won't," replied the young man, gloomily. " I can't believe in the curses and judgments that Hepzibah is always going on about, but I do sometimes feel as if Providence had forgotten us, and left us to our own stupid, lazy, unthrifty ways. And ' money breeds money,' they say ; if that's true, there won't be much bred at Brude. There hasn't been for many and many days ; and yet we stick to the old place." " We should not like to leave it, I guess ; it's our own, BEUDE. what's left of it ! I should not like uncles and cousins to be only tenant farmers ; the Brudenells always lived on their own lands from time immemorial."

" Their own land isn't much now. See there, Mab ! — a hundred years ago the Brudenells were lords of the soil from Wrapstone Hill right down to the sea ; and they had flotsam and jetsam, and all the rest of it. Tivo hundred years ago, they were great folk indeed. They were real grandees, and matched with the noblest in the land. They spent part of every year in London, and, like the rich man in the Gospel, they wore purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day. The men were warriors and courtiers; the women were stately dames, fit companions for queens and princesses. And now, Mab, the male kind till the soil — after a fashion — and shoot a little ; I'm horribly afraid, between ourselves, that Isaac and Larry poach a little — on the broad lands that once belonged to old Brnde Manor.

The female kind bake and brew, and scour and scrub, and even do a hand's turn at outdoor work occasionally ! and instead of velvet trains they wear stuff petticoats ! and as to jewels — well, they have to do without them." " Not quite. I have my mother's garnet necklace, and Cissy has a coral something to hang round her neck, and Aunt Hepzibah has a splendid Scotch pebble brooch she is keeping for little Luckie when she's old enough to wear it. Then there's Uncle Nicholas' seal of real cornelian, with the Brudenell arms engraved upon it ; only he never uses that, nor his signet-ring either, because, as he says, they don't match with other things, and, also, because there's a tax on what are called armorial bearings, and it would be just stupid to pay a tax on what we can do quite as well without, when we want money so badly for common necessaries.

Besides, Aunt Hepzibah says crests and such like are worldly vanities." "Nicholas is quite right, Mab. People would only laugh at us if we presumed upon our good descent. Nothing is more stupid, more senseless, than to take your stand not on what is, but on what used to be. As for your garnet necklace and Cissy's coral neglige, I am afraid they would not count for much if our ' family jewels ' came to a valuation. And my great grandmother had diamonds of her own, besides those that were heirlooms of the Brudenells. There was a celebrated diamond locket once, you know, a keepsake from a queen of France to one of our ancestresses, a certain Dame Amabel, and nobody can find out what became of it." " I dare say it was sold — or pawned. There's one comfort, we can't be very much worse off than we are now."

" Don't say that, Mab ; we may have to sell up every stick and stone, and to part with the last mortgaged acre, and we may be scattered north, south, east, and west. When once the old home there is broken up, we must separate. Take the nest, and the nestlings must disperse, and shift as best they can." " Do you know, Amyas, I have been thinking that it might be a great deal better if we did disperse and shift for ourselves. We are too thick on the ground ; there's too many to drink out of one cup and eat off one platter ; and that's the truth of it. Why shouldn't some of us go out into the world and earn a living ? " " What could I do, for instance ? " " Yon might, if you took a little trouble, be a schoolmaster. Your fingers are weak, but they cau make pot hooks and straight strokes ; and you've got brains, if you've no backbone worth speaking of."

" I've thought of that myself, sometimes. I am the scholar of the family, though that's not saying much, and I've taught Cissy and Luckie pretty well all they know." " And me, too ; only I'm no credit to you. I've always had too much to do for book-learning. I never had any time for reading, except a bit on Sunday afternoons. But I'll tell you what has been in my thoughts all the winter and all this dreary spring. Amyas, I've a great mind to go out myself." " Go out yourself ? Whatever can you mean, Mab ? Yon can't read a chapter in the Bible without stumbling ; and it's as much as you can do to write your name — - Mabel Brudenell — so that people can read it. I might be a village schoolmaster if I gave myself to it, but you could never be even the humblest sort of schoolmistress." CRUDE. "Schoolmistress!

As if I ever thought of such a thing! I should like to go to school well enough; I should like it dearly, but it would be to learn and not to teach. No, Amyas ; what I mean is, that I could go into regular service. Why ! Fanny Flowers, that is maid-of all-work at Lincoln, gets £12 a year for her wage! and, of course, she has her board and lodging free, and there's presents besides. She dresses quite like a lady when she comes once a year to see her annt, Miss Jayne ; and she's money in the Savings Bank — think of that ! And I'm quite as strong as she is; and, though I say it that shouldn't say it, I know I've more wit, and could manage my work a sight readier. Cissy and Luckie are getting big enough to be of use ; and I think it might be better for them in every way if I left home, and went out into the world to fend for myself, as finer folks than I have done before me."

" Mab, you don't mean it. You wouldn't go out as a paid servant, for any wage, would you ? Think of living in a kitchen ! " " I live in a kitchen now ; I very seldom sit in the parlour, you know, and I don't want to. If ever I do sit down with my hands before me and try to make believe that I am Miss Brudenell of Brude, I'm sure to remember something that must be attended to. Then the parlour is always chilly and damp in winter ; and as for the grander rooms that are shut up, they are worse ; only the south parlour makes a fine laundry and drying place in wet weather. Give me the kitchen, where everything's to hand, and where there's a warm corner for everybody. Since Uncle Roger and I made that screen, and you mended the pantry-window with oiled paper, there has been no draught to complain of."

" Our own kitchen is one thing, and other folks' kitchens another, Mab. I don't suppose you could work harder than you do ; but think of the disgrace " " No disgrace at all ! " And the girl looked up from her knitting, actually dropping a stitch in her excitement. She had fine, expressive eyes, a firm, yet tender mouth, and a chin that spoke loudly to a physiognomist of its owner's determination of will and persistency of character. Truth to tell, but for Mab's stolid bravery and resolu tion, her family must have gone to the dogs, wherever that may be, several years ago ; but woe-betide the household wherein the men play not their part, and only a woman's thought and courage keep the wolf from the door. As for scaring the animal quite off the premises, that was an impossibility; his howls were always to be heard, especially on certain occasions when any ready money was due, or when it was necessary to spend ever so little on the farm.

And every year the wolf came nearer, and showed fight more plainly. A little while, and he wonld peremptorily demand admittance, and obtain it, too — so it appeared to both Mab and Amyas that it must be ! And then, there would be Brudenells and a place called Brude ; but Brudenells of Brude there would be no longer, and, in all probability, nevermore ! Who were these luckless Brudenells, do you ask ? You will have discovered already that they were people of ancient family ; that they had once been of some note in their own country, and were received at the Court of the reigning monarch some two centuries before their lineal descendants, Amyas and Mabel Brudenell, talked over their affairs on that summer afternoon, while the skylarks were singing, and the waters of the German Ocean chanting their "billowy anthem" all along the rocky shore.

Amyas and Mabel were not brother and sister, as yon may have concluded, nor were they even cousins ; they were uncle and niece, albeit they looked as if they belonged to the same generation. Mabel, commonly called " Mab," was the only child of the eldest son of the House of Brudenell. Amyas was the youngest born of the same father by a second marriage — that is to say, he and Mab's father were half-brothers, with a difference of five-and-twenty years between them. Mab was an orphan ; her mother had died several months after her birth, and her father, Ralph Brudenell, had not long survived his wife. Then Nicholas, the next in age, and already married to " Aunt Hepzibah," became the head of the family. He had three sons — Cnthbert, Isaac, and Lawrence; and two daughters — Cicely and Lucretia.

They all lived at Brude Farm, and Mabel with them : also Uncle Roger, a bachelor of about forty years of age ; and Amyas, who never received the avuncular title from his irreverent nephews and nieces, who generally treated him as one of themselves. So you can easily understand what Mab meant when she said that they were as a family " too thick upon the ground." Always the Brudenells had stuck to Brude. They had been, according to the records of the race, country gentle men, squires, or farmers, according to their fortunes, which had sunk persistently ever since a certain Amyas Brudenell had eloped to France with a fair and frail matron of the profligate Court of Charles II., and after wards in a duel killed her justly-exasperated husband. A few of them had been soldiers, and one had made his name famous in his time as a gallant privateer.

Trade they had ever eschewed and despised as something utterly unworthy of a Brudenell of Brude, and now they were working-farmers, tilling the soil of such few acres as they still called their own — heavily mortgaged as they were — with their own hands, and literally eating their daily bread, and no superfluity of that, in the sweat of their faces. They kept no servants, for they could afford none ; they lived in a few rooms of the great bare house, shutting np the rest, wherein their wealthier ancestors had feasted and revelled to their hearts' content. They dressed like peasants, and I am sorry to say they talked, and to some extent thought, like peasants ; but they never heid much intercourse with their neighbours, for pride, as well as poverty, was the inheritance of the unlucky Brudenells of Brude.

People who are proud and poor are unvariably unpopular, nor were the Brudenells any exception to the rule; moreover, their "want of luck" was proverbial ; "as unlucky as the Brudenells ! " "unfortunate enough for a Brudenell!" were common sayings in that part of the country. There they all lived on, from hand to mouth as it were ; every season of seedtime and harvest as it came, and every winter and summer, sinking them deeper in the mire of pecuniary embarrassment. There was not really enough for Nicholas and his three sons, and for Uncle Roger to do ; but then, not one of them put his shoulder to the wheel. Cuthbert — more familiarly, Cuddie — was what his mother styled " bone-lazy," and he never did a turn of work that was not absolutely required of him. Isaac and Larry were more energetic, but they were far fonder of sport than of useful labour ; they shot and they fished, they kept their guns and their fishing-tackle in excellent order, and they would have had a large number of dogs at Brude, had not their father, with rare decision, expressly forbidden the accumulation of unnecessary live stock on the farm.

They were not, however, clever at husbandry, and the elders sometimes grumbled that the lads did more mischief than good upon the land, and, as labourers, were scarcely worth their bread-and-cheese. Nevertheless, it never occurred to one of them to go ont into the world, and seek his fortune ! they all stayed on at Brude, making a pretence at farming, the younger ones getting a bad name as poachers among the more respectable families, and being from time to time sus pected by the coastguard. Amyas was an invalid ; there had been something wrong with his spine from his infancy, and he was generally supposed to be given to book-lore ; hence Mab's proposition that he should qualify himself for a schoolmaster. Once only a Brudenell of Brude had gone out of the beaten track, despising alike the poverty and the exclu siveness of his family.

An elder Cuthbert, the uncle of Mab's dead father, and consequently of Nicholas, Roger, and Amyas — had emigrated about thirty years before, going out to try if, perchance, there might not be better luck in Australia than in England ! He kept up some communication with his kindred, but not much, giving but scanty account of his proceedings ; on the whole, it was current among the Brudenells that he had made money, — in short, that he was a successful man ; and it was hoped that some day he would come back to the old country, rolling in riches, and miraculously, as it were, restore the Brudenells to their primitive estate as landed gentry and prosperous county people.

Chapter II. Sunset Talk

" But let me live my life." Later that evening, when the sun was going down, Amyas and Mabel resumed their conversation. They had been interrupted by Cissy and Luckie, who had finished their tasks of sewing, and were ready for a chat or a ramble, as should seem most expedient. Cissy was a fine grown girl of fifteen, with an excellent opinion of her own capacities, and no small amount of independence and self sufficiency in her tone. Luckie, otherwise Lucretia — a family name with the Brudenells, who stuck fast to the appellatives of their ancestors — -was not more than twelve, and looked full two years younger, so childlike was her speech, so innocently simple her pretty face, and so delicate and fairy-like her proportions. A very short time spent in her society showed her to be the pet and play thing of the household.

Neither their young uncle nor their cousin Mab cared to discuss the subject of the decaying fortunes of their family before these girls ; for Cissy had grand, romantic notions of her own, entertained also to some extent by her brothers, but useless and visionary in the highest degree ; and Luckie, who could not understand why grown-up people should not have everything they wanted, and do exactly as they pleased, generally began to cry if any grave conversation on the vexed question of ways and means took place in her presence. "Have you finished work, Mab ? " said Amyas, as he lay, book in hand, on the clumsy old sofa, that had been fitted up and made comfortable, entirely on his behalf, when some five years before, the great doctor from Tringley had sentenced him to a recumbent position for at least eighteen hours ont of the twenty-four.