Canonbury Holt: a life's problem stated

Front matter

CANONBURY HOLT: $. life's IpaUlzm Salved. BY EMMA JANE WORBOISE, Author of '" Chrystabel," "Nobly Born," " Thornycroft Hall," " Overrfah " Grey and Gold" &*c, &c. " A still small voice spake unto me, 1 Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be ? 'Twere better not to breathe or speak Than cry for strength, remaining weak, And seem to find, but still to seek.' A second voice was at mine ear, A little whisper, silver-clear, A murmur, ' Be of better cheer.' Such seemed the whisper at my side ; ' What is it thou knowest, sweet voice ? ' I cried ; ' A hidden hope,' the voice replied." Qanhaxt : JAMES CLARKE AND CO., 13, FLEET STREET. HODDER & STOUGHTON, 27, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1872. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. — CHALFONTS ..... I II. — ANNE AND AMY ... 7 III. — lyulph's MASTER . . . -'9 IV.

AT THE FARM . . . . 27 V. — AT THE HOLT . . . -37 VI. — SUNDAY MORNING ... 48 VII. — THE LADY OF THE MIST . . -54 VIII. — A PASTORAL VISIT ... 67 IX. — CHRISTMAS-EVE . . . -75 X. — NEAV A'EAR'S-EVE . . . 82 XI. — COCKLEHAM BAY . . . -95 XII. WANTED A GOA'ERNESS. . . 105 XIII. — COCKLERS AND FLOORERS . . . I r 5 XIV. — BY THE KITCHEN FIRE . . I 25 XV. AMY GIVES HER OPINION . . . 1 32 XVI. — CONVALESCENCE . . . 1 43 XVII. MRS. TEMPLE REQUIRES SA'MPATHY . 1 55 XVIII. AN INTERIOR . . . . 165 XIX. — THE SETTING MOON . . .176 XX. — THE RIVER'S BRINK . . . 1 Contents. IV CHAPTER PAGE XXI. — LEFT COMFORTABLY . . . 1 94 XXII. — A CUP OF TEA . . . 205 XXIII. — A TALK ON THE MOORS . . . 2l6 XXIV. CHALFONTS' OPINION . . . 225 XXV. MADAME GERARD IS SEA-SICK . .236 XXA'I. — AN OLD POSSESSION . • . . 246 XXA'II.

HUSBAND AND AVIFE . . .251 XXVIII. — BACK TO CHALFONTS . . . 263 XXIX. THE ABBEY RUINS . . .271 XXX. DARK DAYS .... 279 XXXI. — ANNE AND CLARICE . . . 290 XXXII. ANNE'S ArICTORY . . . 3OO XXXIII. — BERTIE AT HOME .... 307 XXXIV. — QUITE HAPPY . . . . 3 I 8 XXXV. ONCE MORE . . . . 325 XXXA'I. — AN INVASION . . . . 337 XXXVII. MISS ADELINE .... 346 XXXVIII.- — CLARICE TELLS HER TROUBLES . 353 XXXIX. THE METHODY PARSON . . -364 XL. THE HIGH TIDE . . . 373 XLI. — THE RESCUE .... 380 XLII. BETTER FAR . . . . 5rM XLIII. — THE PROBLEM SOLVED . . . Jt life's Solved.

Chapter I. Chalfonts

A fairer spot than Chalfonts I think the sun never shone upon. It lies in a luxuriantly wooded and well watered valley, shut in north, east, and partly west, by low green hills ; to the south are swelling ridgy moorlands, overlooking the sea, which forms here a charming little bay, between two bold, rugged headlands — Abbot's Head and Bigland Point. The moorlands are glorious with brake and heather in the summer-time, and always they are " right bonnie," as the Chalfonts people tell you, because you can see from them such a marvellous prospect as you can only see in that wild and beautiful north country. You can see the great bay, of which Cockleham Bay is but an inlet. You can see a vast sweep of country beyond the shining sands — the treacherous sands, that cover many an unknown grave, — grey fells and rocky scaur ; and beyond them all to the south-west, the dark, wavy line of the Lunechester Fells ; and still farther, quite away to the west, the mighty, square-browed Ingleborough.

Chalfonts is a town, a veritable market-town, with rights and privileges that were accorded to it in the elder days. Considering its ancient pretensions, it must once have been of some importance, and perhaps of some extent, so far as the nature of the ground on which it stood would permit it to extend itself; but now, as you come upon it suddenly, turning the corner of the wild road that wanders round the base of several hills, you think that if a giant haply passed that way he might pick it up, and with a little contrivance put it all comfortably into one of the west-end or west-central squares of London. It is, how ever, larger than it looks, for the great Priory-church alone occupies much ground ; and as you gaze down on Chalfonts from the hill-road, by which, in spite of the con veniences of the new railway, so many people approach it, it seems to you that Chalfonts is all church, so entirely does the ancient sanctuary reduce to insignificance the quaint, grey little town that lies around it.

It tells its own story instantly — men came there to build a minster, to found a priory that should endure for ages, and attest to genera tions yet unborn the piety of their forefathers ; they built the church, grander far than many of our minor cathedrals ; and between the two rivers, overlooked by wooded hills and rugged moorland, yet within a short distance of the salt-sea water, and not many miles from the fastnesses of the mountains, arose a pile of wondrous beauty — lofty choir, and dark-carved stalls, and battlemented towers, — and by-and-by, as a natural result, a quiet, grave, monastic little town. There is nothing now of monasticism about Chalfonts, save the air which is given to it by its glorious church, and its antique, time-worn buildings, here and there sur viving from the wreck of the Priory itself.

It is a cheery little town, when you are fairly in its market-place, about which on a hot summer's afternoon, if it be not market day, you may haply see a dog or two, and a showy chanti cleer, with his clucking hens, but scarcely a human crea ture, unless it be some one at the door of one of the quaint houses, " speering aboot," and wondering who the stranger may be, and if he wants the clerk, who keeps the keys of Chalfonts. 3 the wonderful Priory-church, and shows it very knowledge ably. You are soon through the town, and you can, if you please, go on to Aldingham Hall, where there is a sylvan park, with beautiful views of the mountain-land beyond, and a gallery of pictures well worth the seeing. In fact, Aldingham is a celebrated show-place, as all in the county know. Or you can by going north get into the ravines, which will lead you into a grander region than that in which Chalfonts luxuriates ; or, turning south and skirting the moors, you may get upon " the mosses," peat lands long ago redeemed from the sea ; and you may sketch Rusholm Tower, that grey ruin to the right ; or go down and talk with the fishwives and cocklers, in Cockle ham, or roam along the lonely shore, not so lonely, how ever, but that from time to time a train dashes by, on its. way to the good town of St. Ulpha's, where there is iron ore, and something like a population.

About a mile from Chalfonts, in a rich little valley of its own, stands an old manor-house, commonly called the Holt Farm, being indeed an appendage of a grand, but rather dilapidated mansion, at the head of one of the " mosses," commanding extensive views both over land and sea, and called Canonbury Holt. The foundations of the Holt were said to antedate those of the Priory. There were even legends, and plausible ones too, of the Holt as a building of renown, having existed in the time of the Saxons ; but the present edifice certainly took its rise in the fourteenth century, when a certain canon of the venerable Abbey of Bekanks-Gill was interred there in a private chapel by his brother, the Prior of Chalfonts — hence the name of the estate, Canon's Bury. The Holt was then a mere irregular mass of farm-buildings, kept up for the convenience of the good brethren of Chalfonts ; but soon it became a handsome and spacious mansion ; park lands were enclosed, and certain manorial privileges were i — assigned to it by the Prior of Chalfonts and the Abbot of Bekanks-Gill, on the borders of whose joint territories it lay.

Centuries rolled on, and Chalfonts, together with Canon bury, and the more stately abbey before referred to, prospered exceedingly in their deep seclusion of sea and crag and hill. In 1537 Bekanks-Gill surrendered to the King, and the monastic institution at Chalfonts was immediately afterwards suppressed, though the beautiful Priory-church was suffered to remain uninjured. But all the territories which had hitherto been in the hands of the monks of Chalfonts reverted to the Crown, and as years passed away, became the property of several persons. The vast estates of Bekanks were at last settled in the possession of the Duke of Aldingham ; Chalfonts was variously dis tributed, and in the reign of Elizabeth, Canonbury Holt and the farm thereunto appertaining, with certain rights of "jetsam and flotsam," and lordship of certain rocky heights, supposed to contain vast treasures of lead and iron ores, devolved to a family of ancient and good repute, of the name of Thurston.

Many a year went and came ; the Stuart reigned and fell ; Cromwell's Ironsides swept victoriously over the hard-won field of Marston Moor ; the ungracious and un grateful Charles returned to the throne of his ancestors ; the second James departed from these realms, and Dutch William and the daughters of the fallen Prince reigned in his stead ; and " good old George the Third," as people loved, and perhaps still love to call him, was in his youthful prime, when the first waves began to ebb in the full tide of the prosperity of the Thurstons. They had farmed and they had mined, and greatly increased their possessions ; their sons were a gallant stock, and bore themselves full proudly as the masters of the soil, and their daughters, fair and stately dames, had matched them selves with some of the best families in that part of the country ; and with their pride — perhaps I ought to call it Chalfonts. 5 rather their dignity — was mingled rare benevolence and courtesy.

All the outlying lands about Chalfonts, and some of the fisheries of Cockleham and Flookbridge, be longed to them, and numerous were their tenants and dependants ; yet, when the evil day arrived, not one voice but was uplifted in sorrow and dismay, not one tenant gloried in a tyrant's fall, not one peasant laughed to know that the haughty had fallen from his place. How the reverses which laid low this honourable house arose, it boots not here to tell. It would seem as if the hand of the Almighty were laid upon it, so that for a season it might thrive no more ; nothing the Thurstons touched, after a certain period, would prosper, even though it had succeeded in other hands, and succeeded again when the Holt people had lost their interest in it. At last there came a day when ruin presented itself as in evitable.

Walter Thurston, older in care and sorrow than in years, died very suddenly, leaving his grandson, a mere youth, still in his minority, to an inheritance such as had never before devolved on one of his name. Indeed, the name, still stainless, still revered, was about all that he could honourably lay claim to. The Holt was still his own, but he had no means of keeping it up, and for the last twenty years it had been suffering from lack of needful repairs. The whole estate was in the hands of creditors ; and after awhile Raymond Thurston, a sad and solitary man, went away, no one certainly knew whither. Some said he went to fight in the war that just then broke out in America ; others that he was in India ; others that he was on the European continent. Presently, Canonbury Holt was sold — not, however, without much litigation, and many misgivings on the part of its new owners, lest their title should be in any way unsound, and certainly in the terms of the purchase there was one clause which, in point of fact, reduced the position of the new masters of the Holt from that of absolute possessors to leasehold tenants.

It was specially provided by this clause that if the Thurstons could repurchase their lost estates at any time within one hundred years, they should, upon due and stipulated notice, be given up to them. For many a day the townspeople of quaint old Chal fonts, and the cottagers among the hills, and the fisher men upon the lonely shore, spoke among themselves of the time when the Thurstons should enjoy their own again, very much as the Jacobites a few years earlier had expressed their sanguine anticipations of the Stuart's return. But as time rolled on its way, and the century waned to its close, fewer and fewer of the old men who remembered the dark day of the Thurstons were left alive ; a new generation arose, to whom the old family of Canonbury Holt was a mere shadowy reminiscence. The almost feudal feeling which had distinguished the followers of the ancient house died out.

The Holt changed owners or tenants more than once, and finally, in the early part of the present century, it passed into the possession of a rich Manchester family, in whom the sturdy dalesmen and the old-fashioned townsfolk took little interest. Then the heirs of this wealthy parvenu family quarrelled among themselves — quarrelled bitterly, furiously, and to the death, as only kinsmen estranged can quarrel. There was a tedious lawsuit, which terminated in a still more tedious Chancery case, and finally Canonbury Holt was shut up, only a small staff of servants being left on the premises, who were paid by, and accountable to, a Ribbleton lawyer, who in his turn was responsible to a greater man in London. Again the years rolled on, and it came to be noised abroad in the quiet valley of Chalfonts that the great Canonbury Case was ended.

But no one knew how it ended ; no one knew to whom the Holt actually belonged ; no one, in fact, cared very much about it. The Irish O'Grady's had not propitiated the people of the district ; their free-and-easy hospitality and rollicking manners had not won the hearts of the tenantry, or of the county families, who at first seemed inclined to cultivate such in macy as distances and wild, cross-country roads and a rather formal etiquette permitted. Still less had either party inclined to the Clegsons, the autocrats of the cotton market, and their desertion of the mansion, and their sub sequent disasters, sometimes furnished matter fora winter's tale, or a summer's gossip by the stream, but was well-nigh forgotten at the period when my story commences, as it was thirty years since the notable quarrel and law-suit, "Clegson versus Clegson," first took its rise.

The story of the Thurstons had become a mere legend of the past ; no one ever dreamed of a true heir to the estates making his appearance ; no one had any idea whether the name of Thurston was extinct or not; no one seemed to suppose that the solitary old mansion would ever be inhabited again. Thus matters stood when the first half of the nineteenth century was approaching its comple tion. The " St. Ulpha's Railway" was talked about, and that was all ; two coaches, one going north, the other south, passed through Chalfonts twice a week, and the quaint little town wore its old-world aspect, almost as in the days when the Thurstons were masters of the land.

Chapter II. Anne And Amy

" Anne ! Cousin Anne ! Will you walk a little slower ? Really, if you were to march at such a rate through the parks, or in Kensington Gardens, or in any civilised place, indeed, you would be stared at — really stared at ! " " I beg your pardon, Amy, I had no idea that I was going beyond my ordinary pace." " Perhaps you are not ; but then, what a pace that is ! I am really out of breath. And this horrible hilly country! I do not believe there is a whole acre of really flat land anywhere in it. Nature seems to delight in making you pant up these mountain sides, just on purpose to go shak ing down again. It must be very trying to the lungs ; I wonder all the Fellshire girls do not die of consumption before they are twenty-one." " No danger of that, Amy. Kensington girls are infi nitely more in danger of decline than we Fellshire maidens, who climb the hills day after day, and inhale that perfection of all atmospheres — mountain and sea breezes mingled.

You will be quite another woman when you go back south again." The speakers were two girls : the one called Cousin Anne was the elder, but she could not be more than twoand-twenty years of age. She was rather tall if you came actually to take her inch by inch, but she was so perfectly proportioned that she did not seem above the middle stature. Her figure was well developed, lithe, and graceful ; there was something singularly free and elastic in the light, quick step, which scarcely pressed the turfy path. A clear and lustrous rather than brilliant eye ; crisp, glossy curls, flowing in rich luxuriance, and complexion far from delicate, but pure and healthy in its colouring ; rosy lips and regular, faultless teeth, made a very pretty picture of a north-country maiden in her bloom, and testified beside to a sound constitution and a thorough organisation.

In the light of her earnest eyes, that might be any colour till you came to look into them ; in her expressive smile, in her easy tread, and perfectly unstudied but most graceful motion ; above all, in her soft, ringing tones, you could read that Anne Musgrave was a young woman of great energy and decision of character ; cheerful as the day, yet thoughtful, and even in some measure reserved : full of life and hope, yet gentle in her tendencies, and always sweet and feminine in speech and action. That Anne had a brave, true spirit of her own you could not doubt, if only once you met her quiet, steady gaze ; that a matchless constancy was inherent in her nature you would soon perceive, if you talked with her gravely, and were worthy to comprehend a soul so deep and pure as hers ; and if you were gifted with those intuitive perceptions which to some few stand nearly in the place of second sight, you could not fail to discern that her patience was unfailing, her powers of endurance marvellous.

She had had little to endure so far, for she lived quite happily alone with her mother and brother at the Holt Farm. She was a gentlewoman by birth, her thorough bred air and tone proclaimed that fact at once ; but she had not been educated to consider attention to household duties vulgar or degrading. Hers, from the very hour of leaving school, had been a busy life, but yet a life of such calm, perfect happiness, as would seem to a careless looker-on almost idyllic in its quiet, but not inactive beauty. Her companion was Amy Temple, her eldest cousin, and the daughter of Mrs. Musgrave's only brother, who had married and settled in the neighbourhood of London. Miss Temple was just nineteen, and she had been for some time in a languishing state of health, and after trying Brighton, and Hastings, and Cromer, and cod-liver oil, and medicated baths, and port wine and quinine, and tonics generally, it occurred one day to her father that it might be a good thing to send her to her aunt for a few months, that the effect of early hours, bracing air, and outdoor exercise might at least be tried.

Mrs. Temple protested against this plan ; she could not bear the idea of her delicate daughter being banished to a region so uncivilised — to a land where fashions slowly travelled, where balls were never, or at least very seldom given, where the last new novel was unattainable, where there was no " society," no flower-shows, no concerts, no promenade, no beaux, no anything! Only farmhouse ways, and keen blasts to give Amy inflammation of the chest, and rude hectoring blasts from the coast and from the mountain sides to roughen Amy's ivory skin, and turn her delicate blush-roses to flaming red, and, in short, ruin her exquisite complexion. But Mr. Temple had taken counsel with the family physician, and he had spoken his mind very plainly, and declared to the anxious parent that there was really very little the matter with Miss Temple ; but that still her constitution, never very robust, was now so injured by late hours, overheated rooms, and a life of dissipated idleness, that it had become a sort of soil wherein the seeds of actual disease, once sown, would take deep root, nor be easily eradicated.

In short, the young girl might, if not treated properly, become an invalid for life. What treatment then could be " proper" was the father's anxious question. Change of air had already been tried, and regimen, and medicines, and with no good result. The ungallant M.D. suggested that the young lady should make the beds, or knead the dough for family consumption, or, best of all, turn milkmaid, or anything that would make her honestly tired, instead of dishonestly languid ; anything that would give her lungs free play, and take her into the open air. Now, though the good doctor's advice was certainly far-fetched and impracticable, the mention of the milkmaid brought to Mr. Temple's recol lection the healthy atmosphere of Chalfonts. Five years before he had visited his sister, and he had been charmed with the peaceful seclusion of her home ; he had entered with zest into farming theories and practice ; he had felt his chest expand and his heart grow light as he stood upon the breezy moorland, drinking in the sweet, pure airs that wandered over land and sea.

Above all things, he had admired and appreciated Anne ! Her ceaseless dili gence, her quiet happiness, her blooming countenance, her song, so like the lark's, and her cultivated mind, had charmed him, as he, the fastidious man of literature, was rarely charmed ; and he had quitted the Holt Farm, pro mising to return in the course of the next summer, and to bring his two eldest girls, Amy and Bertie, to make acquaintance with their cousin Anne. We all know how easy it is to make such promises with the firm intention of redeeming them, and how equally easy it is, when the time draws near for their fulfilment, to find excuses, plausible enough, and to break one's word, — or at least break it for a season, meaning to make all right some day, when opportunity shall favour. Mr. Temple was perfectly sincere when he assured his sister and his niece that a few months would reunite them, and bring new friends to their threshold ; but a score of hindrances arose.

Mrs. Temple had no opinion of the semi-barbarous north, and for a woman of decidedly lymphatic temperament, and a passivity of character that would have been amusing had it not been tiresome, was violently angry at her elegant, accomplished town-bred girls being compared with a mere rosy rustic like Anne Musgrave. At least, it would have been violent anger in any one else ; but in Mrs. Temple it, whatever it was, discontent, annoyance, or maternal jealousy, vented itself in a flood of weak, vapouring words, and plaintive lamentations on her own hard lot, in having a husband who always wanted something that he could not have, and on her children's luckless fate in having a father who could not appreciate their singular perfections. So she threw every hindrance in her power in the way of the projected visit, and though her hindrances were so feeble and so puerile that Mr. Temple scarcely noted them, they had their weight, for he thought that over her young daughters her maternal influence, so far as it was not decidedly injurious, should be unchecked.

And so time passed on, and Amy " came out," and nearly killed herself in a sort of half-hearted pursuit of pleasure, and her mother, to whom the exertion of playing chaperone was a real trouble, declared that society was quite too much for her, and that the girls — there were four more after Amy — must in future go out with their father. In excuse for Mrs. Temple's indolence, I must just say that she was born in the West Indies, that she had a tropi cal constitution, and her training had fitted her for siestas and for reveries, and for little else. She had been eminently beautiful, and was still a fair, sweet-looking woman, and Mr. Temple, in spite of a thousand disap pointments, loved her heartily, and strove by every means in his power to atone for her deficiencies. He was a man of good private fortune ; and literature — to which he had devoted himself in the first place merely to occupy his leisure time, and perhaps to still the craving for compa nionship which he knew he could never find in his wife — became to him, in process of years, not only his life-work, but the source of a large increase of income.

So it was determined that Amy should be sent to her Aunt Musgrave, and Bertie, only one year younger than herself, was to accompany her. Mrs. Temple, in her languid way, still protested, saying, " Really, Mr. Temple, it is very strange of you to think of sending the girls where they can have no advantages, and where they will certainly lose tone." Mr. Temple was slightly displeased. " Lose tone, Emilia ? You forget that Mrs. Musgrave is my sister ! " " Ah ! I did not mean that. I meant — I am not quite sure what I meant, my dear ; but you know one does not find much style among the rustics ; and though of course Hannah and her daughter are quite the thing, still, you know — " and Mrs. Temple's sentence died away in incoherent murmurs ; she never could so arrange her thoughts as to express herself fully and lucidly ; the mental effort was too much for her, and a serious conversation on any subject always ended in a fit of nervous depression or a headache.

"As for advantages," resumed Mr. Temple, "there will be more than I can name. The clear, bracing air, the lovely walks, the ' early to bed, and early to rise,' the new milk, Anne's society " " A strong, hearty girl like Anne Musgrave will never understand the delicacy of a fragile blossom like my Amy." " You don't know Anne ; she has astonishingly quick perceptions, and sympathy is a part of her very nature. But as Bertie is going too, Amy will have some one at hand who will understand her weaknesses and her re quirements. I always promised my little Bertie that she should see the mountains." " I am not sure that Bertie will be a comfort to her sister. Bertie is so rapid in her movements ; she takes things so violently. There is not the least repose about her." Now, Bertie was a bright-eyed, lively little maiden of eighteen ; she was quick-tempered and warm-hearted, but in her horror of tortuous ways, and in her love of indepen dent thought and action, she sometimes wounded sorely when she intended but to counsel, even perhaps to com fort.

She was decidedly her father's favourite child, for there were certain affinities between them which drew them together constantly, and it was a real sacrifice to Mr. Temple to send away the only one of his household with whom he could happily and reasonably converse ; but he was an unselfish man, and his love was not of that species which regards chiefly its own gratification. He knew that Bertie would gain health of body as well as of mind in that sweet northern land ; and he thought also that intercourse with Anne, and the motherly influence of his sister, Mrs. Musgrave, would tend to confirm Bertie in all the goodness that was in her, and also to smooth away certain roughnesses and inequalities of character which threatened to make her anything but an universal favourite. It was already late in the autumn, and Mr. Temple anxiously inquired if it were not too late for the north coun try.

" No ! " was the doctor's prompt reply ; " with common prudence, and plenty of warm clothing, there is nothing to be afraid of. As a rule, a northern winter has a worse character than it deserves, and Miss Amy wants bracing, bracing in every way, Mr. Temple. Let me hear of her sliding on the pools, and snow-balling on the moors, and walking herself warm on a clear cold morning when the mercury is down to 25 degrees. Let me hear of her eating brown bread and butter, and drinking new milk, and help ing Mrs. Musgrave's dairy-maid — then I shall have some hopes of her ; as for Miss Bertie, let us hope all the blood in her veins may not be turned into quicksilver, lest, running wild among the mountains, we may never be able to catch her any more ! " Mrs. Temple talked a good deal about the clothing that must be procured : but it was Bertie and her father who saw to furs, and winseys, and water-proofs ; they made all the purchases, from seal-skin cloaks to dreadnought boots, and they made all arrangements for the journey ; and Mrs. Temple only roused herself on the morning of their departure to wonder whether they had everything they wanted.