Jacob's Ladder [Short stories, etc, in prose and verse.] ... With musical illustrations by A. H. Brown

Front matter

BLOB'S ♦ Haddgr. BY BARBARA WORDSWORTH. "Witb 01fc usual BEIlttstrattoas u BY ARTHUR HENRY BROWN, COMPOSER OF "MISSA SERAPHICA," " A CENTURY OF HYMN TUNES," "ORGAN HARMONIES FOR THE GREGORIAN PSALM TONES," ETC LONDON : WYMAN & SONS, 75, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S-INN FIELDS. 1880. wyman and sons, printers, great queen street, lincoln's-inn fields, london, w.c. TO MY MOTHER There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. URELY I was desolate. But a little while ago the adoring child of a tender mother, whose overshadowing had stood between me and all rough blasts of Fortune, and taken the fiery sting from every trial. I was desolate, indeed, when more than a year ago they laid her down to rest ; and thrice desolate now when Death, who had been busy among my dear ones ever since, had just parted me from the last of those who were bound to me by ties of kindred, and in whose love earth still held for me a home.

Mother, father, brother, sister, were names that I should speak familiarly no more. My lot was among strangers ; and for kindness I must look thenceforward to that pity B which, while it is said to be akin to love, may, to my thinking, be but her foster-sister after all. Household words put aside — no longer serviceable. No more use for the " I remember," " Do not you remember?" which give their highest zest to the recallings of the past. Old associations, tender memories, light words fraught with subtle meanings, thoughts half expressed, stirring whole trains of laughter, love and tears— all well-nigh valueless as broken shells. So was it with me, and with such reflections was my heart engaged, on the morning of a day that stands out in my memory in bold relief against its fellows of that dreary time — that shines rosy-tinted among the cheerless shadows of those other, empty days.

I had been dreaming over night. They were waking dreams, in which I had lost myself in the late summer twilight, making the most of a short and, as it seemed to me, well-earned freedom. Some words I had lately met in a book of Julian Hawthorne's, joined to the inevitable direction of my thoughts when left to wander free — an indulgence which it was one of my most irksome, but, I considered, most obvious duties never to accord them in the busy hours — conspired to set me wondering, dreaming, longing for some knowledge of the life " behind the veil ! " Did those I had lost no longer care for me ? Did my mother's gentle hand no more stretch itself out to me with a mother's yearning need to comfort all my woe ? If, from afar off, I were visible to her, might she not also show herself to me ? It would not cause me any shock of fear, I thought, while tears of self-pity, excusable perhaps in such an utter loneliness, were gathering in my eyes.

Chapter I

Ruhig mag ich euch erscheinen, Ruhig gehen sehn. Eure Augen stilles weinen Kann ich nicht verstehn. H E story of a life. So I may truly call it, though I am only five-and-thirty now, and scarcely feel so old — with one half of me at least ; yet I doubt not that the last page worthy to be called historical in the book of my earthly existence was turned over 1 two years ago, and is done with for ever on this side Jordan's wave Mine was a lonely young life. I never had a mother from the day that I was born. My father had me christened Gladys, and for short used to call me Glad. I have often thought he might more suitably have named me Mara, for the bitter cost my advent had exacted at his hands. But I suppose he was too good to think of it so, and that, so far GLADYS. 11 as it was possible, I was some sort of consolation in his loneliness.

There was not a very close sympathy between us two. Many were the solitary hours we were wont to spend under one roof — how occupied by him I often wonder, even now. He was not a reading man. He had been intended by my grandfather for the Church. He was sent to the University in pursuance of this plan, but at the end of his first term came down, declaring it was only a waste of time and money to keep him there ; that he had no vocation to the holy office ; and that he would rather join his uncle in business, as he had once had the offer of doing from Geoffery Home himself — who was a shipowner, very rich, rather old, easy-tempered, and a bachelor. My grandfather had not done very well in the world — refusing to join the business, and living on the fortune brought him by his wife. He had only one son and one daughter ; so, as father used to say, they did very well.

But, when his son preferred a seat in his uncle's counting house to an ecclesiastical career, my grandfather was not so much aggrieved as his friends expected to see him, having, perhaps, lived long enough to repent the error of his own youth. Before my father married, his uncle, Geoffery Home, was dead ; and before that he had been made a partner in the firm of Home, Martyn, & Home. The firm always retained its name. At Geoffery's death it should have been called Martyn & Home, and afterwards Home & Martyn ; but I have never seen anything but Home, Martyn, & Home GLAD YS. at the top of the sheets of blue paper that now and then find their way from the office to my sylvan nest above the sea. It was many years before my father married again. A second daughter was born to him when I was nearly ten years old.

By this time my father only rode over to the office at Durling two or three times a week. Young Martyn began coming over to Burnside about this time, on the other days, with papers from the office for father to see to, or his letters, or a business message from old Martyn. He was quite a boy, and of no account whatever at Durling then ; but my father liked him, and often told me that he thought young Martyn would make a man ; and that he would rather trust him even now with some matters than old Willis, the senior clerk, who had grown gray in the office. My father was surely in one respect a most unfortunate man. When little Agatha was two years old she caught a fever ; and in nursing her, we supposed, her young mother also caught it, and died. A second time his infant child was spared to him.

A second time poor father lost his wife. Of course he said to me, " You must be a mother to her, Glad ! " And to the best of my power I filled the vacant place. Between me and Agatha grew up a devotion almost, if not entirely, filial and maternal in its kind, until it sank, or softened, into a pure, deep, sisterly regard. The child became a woman early. To outward seeming we were almost equals before she was fifteen. No real equality, indeed, existed. No equality of inward growth is possible between a little GLADYS. 13 girl of fourteen and a woman of three-and-twenty, unless it may be so when they have been reared at the opposite poles of society. When I was about sixteen James Evered Martyn fell in love with me. My father's health had failed considerably. He was never a strong man. He now rode over to business one day in every week, and on nearly every one of the remaining six young Martyn visited our home.

Father could not do without him. Five days the young man often came over for his pleasure, and on Sunday for his own. Frequently he stayed to tea with us. We always kept early hours. Father liked it ; and it interfered with no one for us to dine at one and sup at eight, as we kept no company, and consequently seldom joined in the social gatherings of our few and scattered neighbours. Father could not bear a noise. He shrank, on the rare occasions of our dining out, from the clatter of plates and the jargon of voices at the dinner-table ; and, above all, from the introduction of songs, pianoforte solos, &c, during the evening. " It was all noise," he used to say ; and the verdict could not always be disputed. But his horror of being assailed by any but single sounds grew on him to an extent that was most inconvenient, both to himself and others.

Latterly, therefore, we had given up society, and were almost entirely secluded from our kind. Acquaintance was kept up between us and a few families, but the intercourse it engendered was very slight. " James Martyn is a quiet young man," my father used to say, "and never makes any noise." He did not — in my father's presence ; but sometimes, when his back was GLAD YS. 14 turned and we three were together, our youthful spirits indemnified themselves for all restraint. I remember — yes, very well — one afternoon, when young Martyn had come over early to Burnside on business and had stayed to dinner. My father was comfortably settled for his after-dinner nap. James Martyn asked me to go with him down to the Burn — the wild nook I loved, on the shore at the end of our glorious sea-home. Passing through our lower garden-gate, you come to the stepping-stones across the little stream.

Thence it descends in a tiny cascade to the sea. Agatha, of course, would go with us, and I recollect sending the child to fetch her hat. James told me to "come along ! We did not want Agsie." He was the only one of us who gave her a pet name. We thought her real one of Agatha too truly good to shorten or to spoil. But to him she was only a plaything. No solemn recollections, no tender windings of early matured solicitude and love bound her to him, as was the case with us. I said I should wait for the little one. We had stepped out of the long, low drawing-room, through the verandah, on to the lawn. The verandah ran along the back of the house in front of the two sitting-rooms which, by its own shadow and by that of the growth of ivy, roses, and myrtles trained up its supports, it rendered somewhat dark.

The long lawn stretched before us glowing in summer sunlight, we standing in the shadow of the house. The lawn ends abruptly in a short but steep descent of cliff on to the beach below. From the house, however, the GLADYS. 15 shore-line is invisible ; beyond the green lawn is nothing to be seen except the blue-green sea. Beside it, on either hand, extends a dark screen of luxuriant evergreens ; on the left, interspersed with elms, between the stems of which you get glimpses of the old, old church, and the white stone crosses in the churchyard, and the red and yellow roses climbing over the lowly porch. The church has been long disused except for funerals ; and yet its little cross-crowned tower stands calmly pointing to the break of everlasting Day. Cor miserabile, corpus inutile, non erit ultra ; Nulla cadavera, nullaque funera, nulla sepulchra.

Looking hereon, I have often to my own heart quoted the verse of a beloved poet : — Lone little churchyard, There by the sea, Mid thy rugged graves Let my grave be ! Though it is no great matter. Behind the house, looking from the lawn, rises the broad and swelling bosom of St. Cuthbert — the grand old hill on whose steep sides I have so often watched the mist roll down in rainy weather, with a joy not to be translated. Often our fair retreat has seemed to me a green island in the midst of a gray mist of sea below and a white upper mist of hills and sky, and Gladys Home its happy, lonely queen. Well, we stood together in the shadow, on the upper end of the lawn, this midsummer afternoon, waiting for Agatha. No mist, but a blue and golden glory was on sea and sky. GLAD YS. The child was long in coming.

Young Martyn put his two hands on my shoulders, and looked down at me from his height ; then he stooped and kissed me thrice — on my hair, on my forehead, on my lips— and said vehemently that he loved me, and would marry me, and that he hoped I under stood. I did understand; and retreated precipitately (but only a little way) from this first attack— being quite unprepared for battle. I had known for some time that he cared for me. I do not believe much about girls not being able to see that. But I had not in the least expected a declaration. I was only sixteen ; and I thought that perhaps some day, when I was old enough to marry, James Martyn might ask me to be his wife — if he had not long before got over his fancy, and married some other woman nearer his own age. For, although young Martyn was then only two-and-twenty, to me he always looked and seemed much older than his years — for which I liked him the more.

I had thought a great deal of James Evered Martyn before this. He was a part of our life; and, moreover, had begun to appear to me in the pleasant light of a lover. But I had built no serious hopes on the issue of his attachment. I retreated, as I have said, confused, before the first onset. Nevertheless, when Agatha appeared — she having gone down to the Burn by the Church-yard path, and, not finding us there, returned to the house to seek us we were plighted lovers. I, a young, warm-hearted, ignorant, motherly child, had promised to be the wife of the wise and gifted, the gentle and great-hearted James Evered Martyn. We all went down to the Burn together, we three all GLAD YS. 17 gleeful and careless, and two of us happy, so happy, in the glamour of our first young love. As we went, Agatha's sweet child-voice sang snatches of " Douglas, Douglas, tender and true," and I " heard and not heard," and let the cruse of my youthful gladness unheeded overflow.

How father laughed when James told him about it all. A cloud came over young Martyn's cheery face, and a look of pride into his clear brown eyes at the sight of his amusement. " My dear fellow," Mr. Home said quietly, " there is no one on this earth I would choose for a son-in-law in front of you. It's Glad I'm laughing at. Let the poor, dear, good child finish her education, do ! " And he burst out laughing again as loudly as ever. This time it was I who crimsoned with vexation at the scant respect that was paid to my dignity ; though I could fain have laughed in unison, I did so feel with father in my heart. When young Martyn insisted, on the ground of my father's expressly-stated good-will, Mr. Home looked ex tremely grave. I did not then know that there was some anxiety in the firm at this time on account of our affairs in China.

McGuiness, our agent at Tchoo-loo, was lately dead, and it was thought that some trustworthy person should, to prevent confusion, or, I think, to repair some disorder which had already taken place, be immediately despatched to the East. Old Martyn, not willing to part from his only son, had desired to send Mr. Brown, a gentleman well known to an old friend of his own, and who had offered himself for the post. My father, I afterwards learned, had demurred to this c GLADYS. plan, as he not unnaturally turned to young Martyn, in whose talents and integrity he placed a confidence at once so gratifying and so just. Thus affairs stood when young Martyn, believing that Richard Brown was appointed to succeed Mr. McGuiness in China, proposed to my father for my hand. I afterwards well understood the thought that troubled my father as soon as he found the proposal was no laughing matter with James or with me.

He feared, no doubt, that, even if old Martyn could be won over, there would now be no likelihood of obtaining James Evered's consent to so dreary a banishment from the home of his lady-love. As to a speedy marriage, and my going out with young Martyn, I do not suppose the thought ever entered his head. At last Mr. Home consented, with a sigh, to let our engagement stand, but stipulated that it should be a long one. We were content. I, indeed, was pleased that it should be so ; and James, in his young resolution, had no doubt of being able to shorten the term of probation. A week after the date of our engagement my father was attacked with a sudden, serious illness, from which he never wholly recovered. As soon as he began to grow better, anxious cares that had before been pressing on his mind returned with double vigour.

It was my constant and painful task to watch over his convalescence. It was almost impossible to interest him in anything that was going on around us. He would sit brooding and abstracted, moving his lips with frowning brow, as if talking mentally on some perplexino theme. " What is it, dad ? " I used to say, rousing him ; GLAD YS. 19 and, though he always replied, " Nothing — nothing at all, my dear ! " my foreboding heart too clearly answered, " China." By this time I was acquainted with the state of affairs in that quarter, and I guessed what my father's wish had been, and still was. He would never be well, we used to think, while business troubles thus weighed him down. Young Martyn was the only one in whose society he seemed to find relief. In his weakness he confessed to James his earnest desire that he, and not Richard Brown, should have been chosen for the mission to Tchoo-loo.

James told me immediately. He was pale and very grave, and it seemed as if he were searching my heart's core with his bright eyes. They could at times be stern. I did not know then how cruelly selfish it was of me to brighten up (as I am sure I did) when he told me father wished him to go to China, and to say : "Oh, James, I knew it ! What a relief it would be to him ! " " And to you, Gladys ? " The look recalled me : losing you." Yes dear, if it were not for He turned away, and I imagined him completely satisfied. We were watching father one morning. He had dropped asleep ; he looked so pale and wan. James Evered had said no more. I was wondering, would he offer to sail ? I should be sorry to lose him, very sorry ; but the poor thin face, so white, so drawn, so old ! The burdened heart, so twice bereaved of its best earthly comforter !

I hoped young Martyn would offer to sail. I even felt a little angry with c GLAD YS. 20 him that he had as yet said no more. I turned from father's face to his, and began to watch that— I suppose too closely ; for at last James Evered said : " Do not look at me any more like that, Gladys, opening your big gray eyes. I know what you would have me say. Have you no thought how hard it is to me ? " " Oh, James, you mean to go ? " I did try not to look glad, but I doubt if I succeeded. I could not help it. He loved me, and I knew it. I loved him, or I thought I did. But what does an unimpassioned baby of sixteen know of love ? It was soon all arranged. I was very, very sorry for young Martyn, and I was sorry for myself. I am sure I shed some tears. But father was so delighted when James won old Martyn over, and promised, as time was now pressing, to set sail in six days.

And I was so young, and the years would so quickly pass. I was not heartless over it. James Evered Martyn was shedding life-drops from his heart in place of the storm-tears that had made my eyes red for an hour. In some sort I was aware of this, and wondered. I knew that he did it for me. I vaguely felt how grand a thing a brave, true man may be. I was grateful, and sorry. But, oh me ! I was ungrateful, and so glad. I saw that I grieved James Evered by my want of feeling; and I confess that I slightly resented his being aggrieved, though I would not let him perceive it. It galled me also, without my knowing why, to see him pale and stern, as if constantly setting himself to bear a great pain. I was small enough, it would seem, to chafe at the silent, unintended GLADYS. 21 reproach of an emotion strong though repressed, which, while I inwardly reprobated, I vainly essayed to prove.

The day of farewell soon came. Where was that anguish of parting that love must surely feel when about to be sundered by dreary wastes of sea, by time that cannot be measured, from the dearer being which is its life of life ? In James Evered Martyn's breast. In one great loving, patient, self-devoted soul. There only. He went, and blessed me in going ; warning me also, in the name of Him who blesses, to be true. I was not quite happy for nearly a week after young Martyn set sail for the Chinese coast ; but there was much to cheer me at this season in father's improved state of spirits, and, consequently, of bodily health.

Chapter II

I freighted my bark with the rich and rare, Alice of Ormskirk, all for thee. Little I reckoned of cost or care, But I launched her out on a summer sea. A summer sea and a smiling sky — Never a ripple and never a frown, Never a token of shipwreck nigh. TWO years afterwards our father died. I never knew I could have missed him, as I did, till he was gone. Little as I had been to him — far less, I doubt not, than I GLAD YS. might and ought to have been — yet I was all he had, except the child. Since young Martyn's departure, father had found more need of me than in my life before. And the loss that fell so heavily upon me when he died was that which is perhaps, in kind, the greatest of all losses : the miss of being missed; the want of being wanted, in season and out of season —of being sought for and leant upon continually, though not always consciously — not by the natural depen dence of childhood, but by the time-won confidence of a mind at once venerable and dear.

If anything could have drawn me and Agatha more closely together, it would have been the loss of our mutual friend and father. But ours was a love that is only strengthened by time, and ever sweetened by constant and closest intercourse. A strange life we two girls led together — strangely isolated and strangely full. Agatha is like her mother — ■ with one half of her nature. Fond of reading, till study became a passion at one time ; but with her other self blithe and careless as a child. Though given to reading, too, in some measure, I have never been greedy of books and learning in the way that Agatha was. Her face, too, is like her young mother's. Very fair, and but slightly tinged with red, with blue eyes, really blue and rarely beautiful, and soft brown hair that is somehow exactly like my own, though in all else we are different.

My dark gray eyes and brown skin, warmly coloured, are the com pletest contrast to the soft, exquisite tinting of my child's lovely face. Agatha is taller and more slenderly built than I GLAD YS. 23 am, though the outline of her form — but that is no matter : I was talking of our life. A very quiet one it was, and we wished it no other. It was pretty well understood in the neighbourhood that the Miss Homes did not go out. We had no wish to push our selves forward, or even to drift into society, after father's death. Agatha, indeed, was still a child ; and what I loved best on earth, after Agatha (my absent lover not perhaps excepted), was the face of Nature, shining in that spot of beauty in which I lived and revelled. None can ever under stand what that home is to me — in what voices, peculiar to the haunt, the sea is ever speaking to me there ; sometimes like spirit-words from an absent friend, sometimes like a message of peace or power from a holier land ; never silent ; never saying things unheeded to a heart that, whether it mourns or rejoices, whether it is pensive or merry, whether it repents or looks forward, always turns for strength or sympathy to the grand, ever-changing melody of the restless, restful deep — and, I think, without idolatry, believes she finds it there.

The few friends we had who cared for us were welcome in our home, and we were glad if they would sojourn with us there from time to time. The natural beauties of the spot, its simple pleasures, the unbroken serenity, the happy freedom of our life, these were such gifts as we had to offer. Freely we had received, and, though not courting society, to give such our hearts were freely open to all who valued them. But oftenest we two were alone together. When Agatha's GLAD YS. governess left her, the child took to reading with double assiduity and vigour. Many a summer afternoon — so many that it seems to me, looking back to such, as if life had been always summer for a time — we used to sit in the shade of the laurels bordering the lawn, the broad sea lying blue and calm before us in the sunshine, while Agatha devoured her books of history or science (philology being her favourite one — and the dear child had much ado to speak ten con secutive words of her mother-tongue with grammatical pro priety), and I sat sewing, and watching my studious sister, growing so learned and so fair, and looked out to sea, and listened to the gentle plashing on the beach, and drank the warm loveliness of earth and sky, and dreamed and built castles to my heart's content.

I shame a little when I think what a secondary part in those airy dreams James Evered Martyn used to play. You see he was too young for me now. I had grown past him. For, although I reasoned against it, it was with us as with Gabriel and Evangeline. I could not think of him as dif derent to what he was when we parted. Young Martyn was young Martyn still to me, and even younger than he had seemed before. When I was sixteen I had felt him to be as far removed from me in years as he was in wisdom and worth. Now, when I looked back to him as he then was, I recalled a very young man, ardent and fresh in the untried vigour of his youth, whom I had already passed on the road of life by absolute counting of years, and, I supposed, by the development which comes with time, even when not much aided by experience.

GLADYS. 25 This feeling had gained on me in the latter years of his absence. James Martyn's return had been regularly post poned for six months every year from the time first fixed for it, which was a date of three years from his arrival at Tchoo-loo. Five times it was thus deferred, so that he had been gone between eight and nine years when I had the long looked-for, now almost unexpected, letter which told me he was really coming home. All this time James had written to me by every mail. The ocean on which was launched the bark of James Evered Martyn's love seemed now to be full and fair. Rich and costly, a good man's best, was the cargo that vessel was freighted withal. I do not think the loyal heart wavered once in all that time. Think I I should be mad to doubt about a change in him. It was pleasant to me to think of, and, in a certain way, to look for my absent lover.

Yet I was serene. I cannot recall any vivid imaginings of future happiness drawn from my thoughts of him. It was nice to know that he was coming ; it would be no nicer, that I knew of, when he came. So I went on building those airy castles, that I am a little ashamed of now. Sometimes in them young Martyn would prove faithless, and turn to some younger, fairer bride, more suited to that image of himself which I chose to retain in my memory unchanged. In the old days, before our engagement, my imaginary rival was wont to be mature. Now that I seemed to have passed him by, I would regard him as a lad, good and true, and of a fair promise, but not ripe to win 4 woman's serious regard — conscious all the while of the GLAD YS. absurd incongruity of such a thought. But, when his supposed unfaithfulness had left me free to choose among the heroes of my mind's eye one who should be grand and grave enough, and of a sufficiently high order of intelligence, to mate with a person of my enlarged understanding and generally exalted views, I was usually smitten with remorse ; and, to avoid taking my own true love for a hero, would cut him altogether out of the field — that he should not, at least, have a pitiful part assigned to him — and indulge in bootless visions of a life in which he had never had a share.