Nobly Born

Front matter

NOBLY BORN. BY EMMA JANE WORBOISE, Author of "Mr. Montmorency's Money," "Grey and Gold," " Overdale," <&_■. &C. " The nobly born are not the only noble ; There is a line more royal, more majestic Than is the sceptred line of mighty crowns ; An ancestry so bright with glorious names, That he who truly feels himself akin to such, May stand before the throne, noble Amidst the noblest, kingly amid kings." LONDON : JAMES CLARKE AND CO., 13, FLEET STREET HODDER & STOUGHTON, 2J, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1871. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. EAGLESMERE ..... I II. — EAVES-DROPPING . . . . 1 4. III. — GOING SOUTH . . . 32 IV. — MARTIN WRAY'S PROMISE . . 38 V. — THE GATE-HOUSE . . . 46 VI. — MR. DUCKETT'S CONFIDENCES . . 55 VII. — SUNDAY MORNING . . . . bl VIII. — THE CHANCEL PEWS ... 69 IX. — GOING TO THE CASTLE . . • 7S X. — THE MARCHIONESS AND I . . 83 XI.

MARGERY'S VICTORY . . . .101 XII. — "DO YOU LIKE JAM-TARTS?"' . . 107 XIII. A MOTHER'S RIGHTS. . . I 14. XIV. — LADY OLIVE . . . . 1 23 XV. — FOUR YEARS . . . . .129 XVI. — AMONG THE ALPS . . . 141 XVII. — PROFESSOR RIGG'S STORY . . . 1 49 XVIII. — SCHLOSS WANTERFELS . . 1 5 + XIX. — MEURICE'S . . . . .166 XX. — FAIRY-LAND . . . . 171 XXI. — THE PORTRAIT . . . . 1 74. XXII. — MY LEGAL ADVISER . . . 1 90 XXIII. — ASSUMED RELATIONSHIPS . . .196 XXIV. — " FAITHFU' AND SURE" . . . 204. XXV. — "GUDE neet" .... 212. Contents. IV chapter page xxvi.— among the breakers • • 2i7 xxvii. — my visitor . 227 xxviii. — captain hyde's revelations . 234 xxix. — phœbe resolves to be a lady • 240 xxx. — the wanderer returns . • 255 xxxi. — a gentleman of family . .260 xxxii. — i take counsel with my friends . 27 1 xxxiii. — snakes in the grass . . • 27^ xxxiv.- — "le bon temps viendra " . . 284 xxxv. — the east end . . - • 294 xxxvi. — once more at eaglesmere . . 303 xxxvii. — humble fare . . • ■ 3°^ xxxviii. — my new home . . • 3r5 xxxix.

"my' own familiar friend " . . 327 xl. — " too late ! too late ! " . . 335 xli. — another night journey . . 347 xlii. nunc dimittis . . ■ 353 xliii. — on the battlements . . . 360 xliv. — "one family" . . . 377 xlv. — i yield to circumstances . . 392 xlvi.- — before the wedding . . 404 xlvii. an evening at wimbledon . . 412 xlviii. — high festival at dovercourt . 422 xlix. a sprig of white heather . • 43 2 l. beyond the veil . . . 438 li. my daughter .... 449 lii. — what the doctors said . . 457 liii. — conclusion .... NOBLY BORN.

Chapter I. Eaglesmere

I was a very queer child. It had been said so often and so persistently, under so many different circumstances, and by so many different people, that I quite believed it, feeling that I laboured under some mysterious disadvantage, which could not be helped although it might reasonably be deplored. One day, when I was quite a little fellow, I remember asking somebody what "queer" meant, for, baby as I was, I began to feel uncomfortable when the epithet was applied to myself in my hearing, and involuntarily I attached to it an idea of disparagement and inferiority. The good woman, the wife of one of our dalesmen, to whom I put the question, stared at me in amaze, and burst out laughing. "Just hearken to him," she cried to some one who happened to be in the house-place with her ; " did you ever know such a queer child ?

He always wants to know what things mean, and why people do things, and he keeps wondering what's going to happen presently. I should think the Wrays have a precious handful with him, and he no kith nor kin of theirs, as I've heard. There, bairn, there's a piece of white bread and honey. Go home to yer granny, and don't sticky your clean pinner." Thus baffled, I asked no more questions, but kept on the alert and formed my own conclusions. That word "queer" was continually cropping up, sometimes as applied to things and events, sometimes to people, and not unfrequently to myself. Putting this and that together, I decided that to be queer was not to be wicked, not even Nobly Bom. 2 to be naughty, that it was not to be stupid or idle, but that it was to be unlike other people, and to be, to some extent, unfortunate, and deserving of pity rather than of blame.

Still, queerness was a defect, or people would not shake their heads and look so compassionately ; and somehow I shrank from their pity, and did not like to be commise rated ; and the older I grew the shyer I became, the more I loved solitude, the more I thought and reasoned. Heaven help me, what a queer jumble of thinking and reasoning it was ! and I grew stranger, no doubt, and I read more books than were good for me, and pondered curiously on what I read, and on myself, and wondered, till my wonder grew to pain, why I was unlike other boys of my age, who by good rights ought to have been my companions, but with whom I had no notion of consorting. Now, as a rule, people have, or have had, two parents. I had had a father ; I knew that he was a sea-captain, and he had died on a distant voyage, and been buried in the deep.

Old Martin and old Margery, with whom I lived at Eaglesmere, and whom I called grand-dad and granny, sometimes, though not often, spoke of him as " the Cap tain," or Captain Vassall, or as "poor little Hughy's father." But it seemed to me that I never had a mother ; no one ever spoke of her ; she was never referred to ; and as for myself, I had no recollection of any other home than that which now sheltered me at Eaglesmere. Nevertheless, I knew — I am sure I do not know how — that Martin and Margery Wray were not my grandparents. Martin Wray was a shoemaker by trade, and the parish clerk of Eaglesmere. He made boots and shoes for all the country round, and prided himself upon turning out his work substantially and well finished. He was a really good man, a very superior man for his station, and I be lieve he shared with me, so far as his neighbours were concerned, the opprobrium of "queerness."

Margery, his wife, was kind and motherly, but except for a certain re serve and reticence far from usual in persons of her rank, she was decidedly common-place. She could scold, too, in right feminine fashion, and Martin and I were a little afraid of her tongue, and tried to get out of her way when ever we perceived a storm impending. But I am bound to say she was one of those whose deeds are better than Eaglesmere. 3 their words ; to quote an old Scotch proverb, " Her bark was waur na' her bite ; " her fiercest anger quickly spent itself, and generally evaporated entirely in a few sharp, peevish utterances for which nobody was very much the worse. Poor dear granny ! I am sure she was very sorry when one of her explosions reduced Phœbe and me to tears and drove away her husband to the church or to the dark little den called the shop, where, singing hymns and psalms, and chanting portions of the Church service, he ordinarily carried on his craft.

For Martin never forgot that he was parish clerk. I am quite sure he believed himself to be in some sort of holy orders, and as we had no resident squire at Eaglesmere, he accounted himself, in virtue of his office, the second person in the parish — " his reverence" being undeniably the first. Phœbe, whom I have just mentioned, was three years younger than myself, and she was really the grandchild of Martin and Margery. She was an orphan, but everybody knew all about her, and her father and mother, John and Alice Milner, lay buried in the churchyard near at hand. John, a stalwart young farmer, and the best wrestler and quoit player in the dale, had been stricken down with fever in the midst of harvest ; and Alice his wife, the daughter and only surviving child of the Wrays, very quickly followed him, and the little Phœbe, not two years old, was taken to the home and heart of her grandparents, who found in her their greatest earthly joy and surest consolation.

Phœbe was a very pretty child, quick-tempered, but gene rous and loving, and I always called her my sister, thjpugh I knew perfectly well that we were not at all related. Eaglesmere in those days was a very lonely place ; though actually in the " Lake district " it was quite out of the way of all ordinary tourists. Now and lien in the autumn came an artist, who took up his qu»ers at the humble little inn, which was all the hqstd^ we had to boast of; and occasionally a pedestrian, and staff, trudged through the pass which shut in our quiet valley, and stayed among us a few hours or days as the case might be, and brought us tidings of a world which might have been in another planet for all the relation it seemed to bear to us or us to it, for we knew nothing of railways. No coach passed nearer than ten or twelve B miles, and letters and newspapers, if any one expected them, had to be fetched from the nearest " town," which was three miles on the other side of the pass, — a town, by the way, consisting of an old church, a score or two of grey stone houses jumbled together, and a number of out lying cottages and small farms such as are to be found only in the remoter districts of the north country.

In the winter, Nature herself not unfrequently established a cordon of her own, and shut us up securely in our secluded dale, permitting none to leave it and none to enter it for weeks together. Eaglesmere was not a village, for it had no regular street. There was no post-office, and only one shop — a general shop of course, retailing the most incongruous articles on the smallest possible scale. Jenny Walker pro fessed to keep "something of everything;" but the " something" was generally so limited as to preclude any rash idea of selection, which the purchaser might be in clined to entertain, and not unfrequently the good dame was "out of" articles required for weeks together. Once a quarter she shut up her shop, and journeyed to Kendal in a covered cart, replenishing her own stock-in-trade, and ■executing all manner of commissions on behalf of her neighbours.

Eaglesmere had a weird, wild beauty of its own ; it was nearly shut in by high dark mountains, and the lower fells which rose up sheer from the small lake or tarn, which gave the place its name, were steep and barren, and cast sombre shadows in the limpid waters at their base. Round this lakelet, especially round its head, were scat tered small, lone houses, little old-fashioned tenements, scantily furnished, for the most part thatched, and many of them consisting of one storey only, with perhaps a loft like garret in the roof. Our house, which was called Waterhead from its position, was one of the better sort ; it was tiled or slated, it had three upper rooms and a real staircase, though for steepness it almost rivalled the ladders which many of our neighbours were fain to be contented with.

The " house-place," as the principal apartment was called, had a stone floor, a wide, open fire-place, and a small-paned window, letting in the smallest possible allowance of light. Yet in the deep window-seat, and on Eaglesmere. 5 the table under the window, Margery kept a number os geraniums, chiefly of the old-fashioned scarlet and scented sort, and there was one tall arum lily, which was expected to flower every summer, only it never did ; and several snaky, deformed-looking cactuses that never seemed to grow an inch, and something that I think must have been an attenuated mesembryanthemum hanging up to the ceiling, and sending down over the sides of its pot long, clinging, spider-like tendrils or limbs, which in the almost continual semi-twilight of the room gave it a horrible centipede appearance.

Margery took great pride in her plants, though, in spite of all her cares and hopes, they conducted themselves so unsatisfactorily, commonly re fusing to flower, or else sending up scant, sickly, straggling pale blossoms of the most degenerate character. Sometimes, in the summer, she turned them all out of doors, for an airing as she said ; and on such occasions I always rejoiced, for I thought the poor things must be so glad to feel the soft, warm air wandering among their leaves, and the glorious sunshine flooding them with its brilliance from crown to root. The furniture of the house place was considered highly respectable, but it was mon strously heavy and ugly, and of course quite out of date ; the legs of the wooden-bottomed chairs had feet like hoofs ; the oblong dining-table matched the chairs ; the sofa was a delusion and a snare, for it was only a superior sort of settle, covered with patchwork, with an apology for a cushion.

In one corner was the inevitable family chest of dark carved oak ; by the stair-foot door stood a loud-ticking eight-day clock that was kept on principle rather more than an hour too fast, and that struck in a hurried, sneezy fashion, as if protesting against its own un truthful proclamations. The front door, of course, opened straight into this state apartment, for such indeed it was ; and another door led into the kitchen, and another into a closet-like room with an earthen and pebbled floor, called, I know not why, the parlour, but used as a pantry, in which food was spoiled rather than stored, through the universal dampness ; and there was yet another door opening into a cavernous den under the stair-head, in which Phœbe and I were fond of hiding, till one day we found out that the rats resented our intrusion.

With so many doors no wonder that the house-place was rather draughty — not that any one cared particularly about draughts, neither Martin nor Margery ever thinking of attributing to them, or to the stone floors, the rheumatism from which they suffered. The rats were a great trouble ; they scampered about from dark to dawn ; they had runs from the great barn, which was under the same roof as the dwelling-house, through the walls, and under the upper floors ; and the "attocks," as Margery always called the uninhabitable lofts under the slates, they had all to themselves ; and night after night, and sometimes all night long, they chased each other up and down, dancing, scrambling, scuttering, rushing in a style that struck terror to my childish heart as I lay trembling underneath the bed clothes, for a sad habit of sleeplessness was one of the traits which were noticed and commented on as being " queer."

Sometimes the rats gnawed their way through into the rooms, especially into the room where Martin and Margery slept, the reason of this preference being that they kept at their bed-head sacks of corn, which the rats naturally wished to investigate. Now and then we tried wholesale poisoning. Martin went to Kendal and brought back a pot of something that smelt like lucifer matches, and we spread it daintily on thick slices of bread and lard and cut it up genteelly, and placed it where the rats were sure tq find it, and then there used to be a lull in their proceedings, the survivors taking warning and decamping lest they should share the fate of their more luckless companions. They always came back, however, in course of time, and, as I had an insurmountable horror of the creatures, they were a perpetual source of misery, and caused me many a wakeful night and many a frightful dream.

Martin and Margery lived very hard, as did most of the dalespeople at that time ; white bread was very seldom seen at Eaglesmere, except at the Vicarage, where Dame Foster, the vicar's housekeeper, baked wheaten loaves and cakes twice every week. Butcher's meat was indeed a luxury, for there was no regular butcher in the place, and if there had been he would have been minus cus tomers, a few slices of bacon and occasionally fish from Eaglesmere. 7 the lakes and the becks forming the staple of the festival dinners of the good folks of Eaglesmere. Buttermilk was plentiful, and so was spruce-beer, which everybody brewed, and Margery was considered quite an important person because she always kept in the house a bottle of "red wine " in case of sickness, the said wine being, in truth, a villanous doctored port, obtained from the public-house at Crampton, the little town I spoke of on the other side of the Pass, and which was, luckily for the consumers, administered always in homœopathic doses.

But though Maria and Margery were content to eat coarse oaten bread, and to feed chiefly on porridge the whole year round, and to count as luxuries fried bacon and berry pasties, I was by no means confined to the same frugal fare. I had milk, unless I chose buttermilk ; I had butter to my bread, and every week Mrs. Foster at the Vicarage baked me a nice white cake. If I liked tea I could have it, with plenty of sugar in it too. I was allowed eggs and custard puddings ; when at rare intervals the butcher's cart came round, a piece of meat was always purchased, and, as I soon discovered, principally on my account. The best bed and the best room in the house were given up to me, and I was better dressed — though that is not saying much — than any other boy in the neighbourhood. The only school at Eaglesmere was kept by an old woman, who taught reading, writing, and ciphering on easy terms.

She had a collection of tattered primers and cracked and broken slates, and a few dilapidated Bibles for the first class, who were supposed to be fully graduated when they could read, or rather stumble through a chapter in the Old Testament, the good lady judiciously permitting all sorts of opinions with regard to pronunciation, and giving unlimited licence in the matter of " hard names." But to this select academy I did not go ; Martin taught me to read and write, though with respect to the latter accomplishment I had subsequently to unlearn all that I learnt from him. Dame Foster brought me a bran-new spelling-book from Kendal, and every day I committed to memory a portion of a column, going straight through the small volume till I came at length to " Elegant Extracts " at the end, which puzzled and pleased me about equally.

When I had gone through my spelling-book, and could read the Psalms in excellent imitation of Martin's clerkly twang, and could say the Church Catechism without many mistakes, and could find the proper lessons for Sundays and holy days, my preceptor looked blankly at me, wondering what he could teach me next. I think he had a dim idea of making me learn the Baptismal and Marriage Services, or the Communion Service, which he always said was one of the finest compositions in the English language ! I could say by heart many of the Psalms as metrically arranged at the end of the Prayer-book; also several ballads which I have never seen in print, but which were among the traditions of our dale ; as far as I can recal them they were entirely disqualified from a place in the catalogue of any pure-literature society ; in fact, they were slightly immoral, which did not, however, matter very much, as I quite failed to comprehend the evil that was in them.

At this critical juncture, when my education threatened to stand still, the vicar himself interposed. Martin asked his advice, confessing that he had exhausted his own stock of erudition, alternately exulting in my precocious genius, and deploring his own shortcomings. Arrangements were entered into, and henceforth I went to the Vicarage five days in the week, nominally for two hours, but frequently for whole mornings and afternoons. It did me immense good to find out how little I knew, for having appropriated all poor Martin's store, I had begun to marvel what the vicar himself could teach me, unless it were preaching, and the due performance of the orthodox rubrical cere monies. I quickly discovered that my education could not be said to have fairly commenced, and I had not studied a month with Mr. Gibson before I was fairly confounded and almost aghast at the unexplored fields which I could just discern lying dim and vast before me.

Also it was an incalculable advantage to be associated with a scholar and a gentleman, as Mr. Gibson was, and by-and-by I began to be conscious of new ideas, new aspirations, and totally new visions of the life which I might lead. To be a clergyman like my friend the vicar was the height of my ambition. Of ecclesiastical degrees I knew nothing, but I fancied it must be the summit of earthly grandeur to Eaglesmere. 9 know Latin, to wear a surplice and gown, to be looked up to by everybody, to possess so many books, and to live in such a fine house as the Vicarage, which after all was only a better sort of cottage very poorly furnished. Other thoughts too haunted me, but I never gave them utterance. I knew that I was not Martin Wray's grandson ; that Phœbe's mother was his only child ; that I was not, as far as I could learn, related in any way to him or to Margery his wife.

Who, then, was I ? And who was Captain Vassall ? , And how came I to be living at Eagles mere ? And my mother — for I must have had one once — what had become of her ? Was she too buried in the deep sea, or was she buried anywhere, and why was I never told about her ? And the sense of mystery grew stronger and stronger, and I longed to get at the secret if indeed there was one ; and when I was not busy with my books I brooded over my perplexities, and wondered and wondered till I grew sick of wondering, and tired of thc subject of my unprofitable meditations — myself. I was fast growing into a selfish, self-absorbed, self-conscious, morbid boy, combining in my character much of the child's simplicity and ignorance, with a large admixture of the vanity, and ambition, and wild dreams, and introspec tive talent which frequently marks that period of adoles cence immediately preceding manhood.

It was the ioth of August and my birthday. I was eleven years old. It was Saturday, and I was not study ing as usual with Mr. Gibson, for the last day of the week it was supposed that he devoted entirely to preparations for his Sunday services. But I had lessons to prepare at home — a page of geography, a portion of Latin grammar, and a chapter of English history, on which I was to be questioned on Monday morning. They were not difficult, these appointed tasks ; I gave my mind to them, and by four o'clock in the afternoon I had mastered them com pletely, and felt that the evening was my own to spend exactly as I pleased. I resolved to go up the fell with Phœbe to a certain point that I knew of, where I could watch the sunset, which I felt sure from the look of the sky and the state of the atmosphere would be singularly beautiful.

Putting away my books, I went in search of Margery to ask for Phœbe, as well as to get something nice to eat to carry with us up the mountain. I found granny in the kitchen making girdle-cakes, an unwonted luxury, sacred to birthdays and similar high festivals. I preferred my petitions, both of them, and received for answer — " Well, yes, you may gang, I guess, if you'll pro mise not to be mischiefful nor to get the li'le bairn into any trouble. You mustn't let her get into the bogmucky ing her new shoes, and you must neither of you pull the bramble-berries ; they ain't ripe, nor near it, and they'll only give you both the gripes. I'll make ye a pasty with the windfalls you brought in o' Thursday, and you shall have it for yer supper ; but don't go eating o' the bramble berries, which isn't Christian food the whiles they're red."

Margery used a strong Border dialect, which I shall not attempt to transcribe, partly because it would be to general readers so unintelligible as to be tedious, and partly because I am not sure that I could now render correctly the broad vernacular of my boyhood. I will content myself with a word here and there, as being peculiarly distinctive of the northern speech with which I was once so perfectly familiar. I promised to take good care of Phœbe, and to turn my face homewards the moment the sun sank behind the Golden Crags, and then Margery proceeded to put the girdle-cakes and a little bottle of milk into an old basket which generally accompanied us on such excursions, and once more bade me be careful and steady, for " I was eleven years old that day." All of a sudden I said, "Granny, how do you know I am eleven years old ?

" Margery was so startled that she almost dropped the basket. " How do I ken ? " she replied, in some con fusion, and in a tone which betokened a slight exaspera tion of temper. " Why, I do ken ! — don't ask foolish questions." "But who told you ?" I persisted. " Why should I want telling ? Don't I know Phœbe's age to an hour, and why shouldn't I know yours ? Bless the lad, — but he's a queer one." " You must have been told mine," was my sturdy re joinder. As I grew older I was less and less afraid of her temper, and cared very little for what Martin, with a sad want of conjugal respect, called "her tantrums." "You Eaglesmere. 11 may well know how old Phœbe is, because you are really her grandmother ; and I've heard you say she was born in the white cottage at Hollow End, where Tim the carpenter lives now.

Granny, I want to know who I am." "You are just the Captain's son — Captain Vassall's own son ; he was a good and an honest man, and you were born in lawful wedlock, and that's enough for you to know ; so dinna bother my head off with questions I can't answer." " But why am I here ? Did Captain Vassall live at Eaglesmere ? and what became of my mother ? for, granny, I'm old enough now to know that I must have had a mother, and yet I've never heard anybody mention her." " You're old enough to bother a body's brains out, I see. No, Captain Vassall never was in the dale that I know of; but when you lost both father and mother Martin and I agreed to take care of you, and treat you like as our own. And that's all I've got to say ; so don't ask me no more." "Then my mother is dead ?" I continued.

" Didn't I say ye had lost baith father and mother ? Hech, sirs ! but ye're an awfu' bairn." " Was Captain Vassall a gentleman ? " Margery coolly took me by the shoulders, and pushed me out of the house-place where we were both standing into the garden ; then she put out my basket and shut and bolted the door, thus intimating her resolve to hear and answer no more questions. I went round the house looking for Phœbe, but could not find her ; and not being in the most amiable mood, I resolved not to trouble myself any further, but to go alone and indulge myself in chew ing the cud of my own weariful meditations. So, after looking hastily into the barn and calling Phœbe once or twice, I set out, first, however, drinking my milk, and carrying two girdle-cakes in my hand, while I left the basket under one of the half-wild rose-trees which flourished among the cabbages and berry-bushes.