The broken vow : a story of here and hereafter

Preface

The story wliicli follows was written, with, other like trifles, at a time when, by severe illness, I was precluded from attempting more serious work.

To transcribe Lady Dorothy's MS. was then to me a pleasant diversion from graver and more troubling thoughts. It was done, for the most part, in the course of two or three nights, which otherwise would have been of excessive tedium from sleeplessness or pain. The stoiy, therefore— such as it is — may, perhaps, 1 think, serve to brighten or to while away some weary hour for others. If it should, I shall hope that the time employed upon it has not been altogether wasted, and so that I shall not have to blame myself iv Preface.

for spending a few stray sad hours on anything that may seem so fanciful and slender.

Though it is, in a sense, " a ghost story," it cannot pretend to the dignity of being thorough-going and terrible; and should any kind reader (for are not readers proverbially " kind " ?) open this little volume in the expectation of finding something tragic, startling, and crowned with a crashing close, I am bound, in honest}-, to beg him or her to allow the crash to come at once, and the close to synchronize with the beginning.

In a sense, of course, it is a romance, but it may be said with truth that it is not a mere romance, for the preternatural part of it has seemed to me to have at least some sort of foundation in the mystic dreamland of spiritual experience; and the rest to represent, in some sense, real and more tangible fact. And should any who have cars to hear find in it allegory or speculation not all uninteresting to them, I shall be glad to think that they are not unmoved

Preface. v

by what is full of mystery and interest to myself.

However this may be, at least I have tried to place before my readers one of the simplest, purest, and most sincere of characters that I have ever known. If they do not love and admire Lady Dorothy as I do, let them believe — I would beseech — that the fault is not in her, but rather in the failure of " this low-pulsed, forthright, craftsman's hand of mine."

W. J. Kxox Little.

Preface To The Third Edition

The issue of a third edition of " The Broken Vow " gives me an opportunity of expressing the pleasure I feel at the kindness of its reception. Of the various reviews of it which I have seen, all (which have any claim to serious attention) have been intelligent, and kindly, and fair. By these, and by the still more valuable criticisms of eminent men who have conveyed their views in private correspondence, I am led to notice two things : —

(1) Serious and thoughtful people, I think, seem now much more than at one time to be alive to the reality, nearness and beauty of the unseen world, and to the fact of the continuity between the life of the spirit in this its scene of human probation and its further life in the region beyond the grave. In consequence, probably, of this — notwithstanding, of course, the existence still of plenty of bigotry and unbelief — there appears to be among us less, of that most heartless and unchristian neglect of duty — neglect of praying for the dead.

(2) And, again, this seems true; — there are many, of course, who are completely

Preface to the Third Edition. vii

enthralled by the (so-called) " scientific spirit." To them anything beyond what is visible and tangible seems a mere dream. They do not, it is true, deny themselves the luxury of high flights of imagination, nor fail to put a considerable strain on the powers of faith possessed by their disciples ; but all this is in the region of material things, and of the laws which seem to govern them. The moment it is a question of their own human souls, and of the mystery of souls no longer "in the body," they brush the matter aside with contempt as mere "transcendentalism." None the less, I observe there is an increasing number who are not victims to this kind of spiritual insensibility. They approach facts of the spiritual and unseen in a more really scientific temper, and they recognize that the question of sensible or conscious contact with the living who are dead is not a question for cheap but stupid ridicule, but for evidence and thought.

" La sensation trop intense de la vie aspire a la mort." The highest, happiest, noblest things in this life stimulate the prisoned spirit in us to a closer sense of the other world ; and some of the purest and simplest of characters have not been viii Preface to the Third Edition.

-weakened but strengthened by a calm and habitual contemplation of the state of those who live upon " the farther shore."

As one reviewer, I notice, seems to think — not unnaturally — that the idea of the ghostly funeral in Chapter Y must have been suggested by " The Beleaguered City," it may not be uninteresting to my readers to learn that notes of that scene were taken by me from a personal experience some two years before " The Beleaguered City " was published, and — with the entire approval of the person who had so strange an experience — were made use of, mutatis mutandis, in " The Broken Yow."

I desire here and now to thank many " unknown friends " who have assured me that my slender effort has not been valueless ; — that I have given them pleasure, that they have been interested by my book in questions to me of deepest interest, and — last, not least — that it has seemed to them that my love and admiration for my little heroine have not been misplaced or overstrained.

"W J. Knox Little.

Hoar Cross, Staffordshire.

September Ifh, 1887.

THE BBOKEN VOW:

A STORY OF HERE AND HEREAFTER.

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The following story I have written down partly from a MS. in my mother's handwriting, given to me by herself, partly from her own dictation. Perhaps this is too strong an expression, for all that the dictation supplied was only a few additions and corrections in some minor details. The story, in the main, she herself read to me on the morning of the very day on which she was so suddenly taken from us. Everything in it, therefore, rests upon her authority.

B

My father and mother were much beloved by all who knew them. They were both remarkably handsome : I have always thought — though of course I am no impartial witness — the two very handsomest people I have ever seen. Indeed no one who came near them could fail to be struck with something about them altogether exceptionally attractive. It was not merely that their love to one another was to the last most noble and perfect, a love possessing all the grace and courtesy of highminded youthful lovers, with all the deepening tenderness of those who had been " true and tried, " " well and long, " — but in both of them there was also a striking simplicity and limpid clearness of character which seemed to connect itself with a faith complete and practical in the unseen world.

As my brother — the present Earl — and myself grew older, vague stories reached us of something out of the common in the history of their courtship ; and the strange and impressive words which fell from them when in the remotest degree we ventured to approach the subject, convinced us both that these stories were not without foundation in fact.

After our dear father's death — -just one year to the very day before my mother's — we begged the latter to let us know the truth. She told us that it was my father's wish that she should do so, and the result was the following story.

In it she touches lightly upon the general tenor of her girlish days, but it is chiefly concerned with three startling incidents, of which the last is to me the most moving. These incidents, in their extraordinary and

b 2 supernatural character, are, I think, most remarkable. I suppose there are many who would — not unnaturally — attribute her entire belief in the facts she narrates to her peculiar temperament, and perhaps in no small measure to her lonely life. I need not discuss the question, as I rather wish to leave her to tell her own tale for what it is worth. To her, however, these incidents were most real, and — I may add without offence — they are so to me. What moves me most in them is a shadowy thread of meaning which seems to connect them together, and no one will blame me for being deeply and tenderly touched by the last act of all. Indeed it will, I think, be seen that she narrates just so much of her life as is necessary in order to the understanding of this same extraordinary incident which immediately preceded her marriage, and which brings the story to its close. This incident, taken in connection with the others, is so remarkable, and appears so calculated to throw some further light upon a very mysterious subject, viz. our relations with the unseen world, that a perusal of the whole may, I think, be interesting to many outside our more immediate family.

Beyond this, however, ivhyl love her story is because it so unconsciously furnishes the reader with a faithful photograph of herself— of the simplest, purest, most sincere, most lovable character I have ever known.

In days like those in which we live, the rush of life is so overwhelming that, on the one hand, the supernatural world is almost forgotten, and on the other — by force of contrast, I suppose — when it does touch us closely, it is very keenly felt.

If so the strangeness of her story, together with the remarkable calm which broods over it all, cannot fail to give it an interest. For indeed — at least I know she would have felt it so — an approach to the unseen is not so much startling as soothing and solemnizing, amidst the quick succession of passing excitements in a busy world. At any rate this is true, that my dear brother, who is a business-like, sensible Englishman — if ever there was one — has been quite as much impressed by it as I am myself. To us, of course, who love the old people and the old place — but I think also to others who love to catch a glimpse of the life of the Past — the mere picture of this year or two of my mother's girlish days must have an attraction all its own.

I may perhaps add, in order to make things more clearly intelligible, that in accordance with a clause in the original patent, on my grandfather's death my mother succeeded to the title and estates of Eavensthorpe as Countess in her own right, and my brother has since become her successor.

My father also, while retaining his own title as Baronet, had my mother's family name prefixed to his own, and I — who have succeeded to my father's property — have borne, and indeed bear the courtesy title belonging to the daughter of an Earl. Oddly enough — as if prophetically of what was to happen — provision for all this, where not made in the original patent, was found in an addendum dating from the time of King Charles II. So the king was pleased to command.

Dorothy Holt Masham.

My mo tlier's MS. with my additions runs as follows : —

I

Tee old Hall at Ravensthorpe stands to-day almost exactly as it stood three centuries ago. Modern improvements have of course been introduced in matters of detail, but in the main the old place is as it was when its owners fought long ago in the Wars of the Roses, and — in the less distant years of the Great Rebellion — in the cause of the king.

The house occupies almost three sides of a quadrangle ; almost, for the northern wing is shorter than that which runs parallel to it on the south. On the fourth side there stretches an antique paling of metal-work, and this is carried on at right angles to meet the northern wing, and so, in a way, to complete what is wanting in its length, and thus to make it match the opposite building.

In the centre of the quadrangle so formed is a plot of smooth green grass, and this again is centred by a basin in which there is a continual plash of falling water from a stone pipe which opens beneath the feet of a gigantic figure of a warrior — carved also in stone — who stands grasping in his right hand a club, and holding in his left a shield surmounted with a raven with wings partly spread, and encircled with a motto in the French language— the arms of the house of Ravens thorpe.

Behind the Hall are stately trees, and in the foreground greensward, where some of the deer make a home, and then on one side rise hills covered with bent and tufts of ling, which trend upward to the distant stretches of the moors ; while on io The Broken Vow.

the other, from a bend in the coast, they terminate in threatening headlands above the sea. But in front there is an expanse of park, with groups of trees here and there, and, towards the right, far-extending woods ; while on the left the house is sheltered by a smaller copse, beyond which lies the Parish Church, which has from time immemorial, until quite recently, served the purpose also of private chapel to the family. This venerable building is surrounded by a graveyard, rich in tombs of many periods, and in gnarled and troubled yew-trees, and the graveyard again is itself protected by a low moss-grown wall.

Nothing can exceed the beauty of the view in front, — of smooth grass, and then wilder ground, and then glades of oak, rich with undergrowth of bracken — tall and green in the spring time, and russet in the autumn, browsed by herds of timid deer, — winch stretches away beyond the broad terraces of quaint flower-beds and yew walks immediately fronting the Hall. Beyond the deer forest, however, and to the south-east, the country becomes level and uninteresting, and stretches in dreary flats to the sea. As the crow flies the distance is not more than a few miles from the great front door across the marsh to the coastline, and the trees have an ominous bend westward which tells of the easterly winds in spring and in winter ; and the " sea frets " — as the people call the fogs which roll up from the east — though they really fertilize the meadow grass, carry with them a taste of the salt waves.

On the left, looking from the fronting windows, the coast trends inland, and only a few hundred yards beyond the church the surf breaks with a hissing sound on a stretch of sand, and the waves sob and swell against a flanking barrier, half rock, half marl.

The church itself stands really within the boundary of the park. In its present condition it dates from the close of the 15th and opening of the 16th century. It seems to have been half private chapel, half collegiate church in its first intention. The nave and flanking aisles are comparatively short, and their roofing much lower than the choir. It is deep and lofty and splendid. The roof is of groined stone ; the immense windows which light it from above are filled with ancient glass, in which the ranks of angels shine out in heavenly vestments, and at their feet are shields and arms of the "forebears" of the family. The eastern window is of the richest tracery, and the subjects of the glass have been evidently chosen with care to commemorate the various saintly persons who have illustrated the Church's life in this part of England.

Beneath the window and behind the high altar the eastern wall is rich with a wealth of angels under canopies of exquisite workmanship. In the centre a crucifix in brass is let into the stone, and the angels immediately around it bear the emblems of the Passion or the symbols of the Sacrament, and right and left of all these groups are tiers of bishops and abbots in cope and mitre, and bearing the pastoral staff.

How all these escaped the iconoclastic fanaticism of the Puritans it is hard to say; but this is certain, that they remain almost in their primitive delicacy and beauty to the present hour.

To the south of the chancel is a chantry. In this there is also an altar which either escaped the fanatics, or was restored again by one of the lords of Ravensthorpe, and in the chantry also are splendid windows, displaying figures of the Great Archangel and the warrior Saints, and the tender and blessed Angels of the Passion and Eesurrection, bearing scrolls which carry verses of comfort and hope, chosen from the old offices of the Church, in relation to the blessed dead.

Of these, many generations — all of the house of Ravensthorpe — rest in the vault below; and sepulchral slabs laid into the pavement, and crosses, or flat plates of brass fastened in the walls, record their names. There are, however, in the chantry but three monumental tombs. Of these, one lies close in on the south-eastern corner, and another in the corresponding corner, north-east, the altar standing between them.

They are remarkable tombs ; both are covered with flat smooth slabs of purbeck marble, and on the face of the slab in each case is the simple, touching, and unusual inscription —

Jesu

Mercy

Pray for the repose of this poor soul.

Bound the slanting edge of each is the record of name and date of death. On the tomb north of the altar, the inscription informs us that " Here lyeth the bodye of the Ladye Dorothy, daughter of Eoger Mashame, third Earl of Arkworth, who departed this life in the year of our Lord God, mdclil, aged xix. years. Kinswoman (so it is added) of the house of

Bavensthorpe." On the corresponding slab is an inscription of later date, but, mutatis mutandis, precisely similar, which bears the record of " Sir Everard Holt Banneret, Lord of the Manor of Bavensthorpe, who departed this life in the year of our Lord God, mdcliii., aged xxv. years."

The third tomb is more modern and very different. It is a magnificent monumental tomb. The sides of the vertical slabs are filled in with coats-ofarms of the house of Bavensthorpe and kindred families, and on the horizontal slab is the figure of a lady, exquisitely carved in white marble. She lies in splendid folding robes, with a face of benign beauty and serenit}^ -worn with lines of furrowing care, and with an expression of tender melancholy. The hands are folded on the breast, and beneath them is a plain broad cross. The tomb is overshadowed by a glorious arch, and protected by a grille of elaborate metal-work, which guards it on the chancel side and forms a barrier between it and the choir of the church. It lies considerably to the west of the altar, and at several feet from the altar-steps. This tomb is named in the inscription as that of the Lady Dorothy Agnes, third Countess of Ravensthorpe.

II

This third tomb is the tomb of my mother.

I who tell this strange story, am the sole surviving child of my father, third Earl of Ravensthorpe, and of Dorothy Agnes his wife. My only brother died in

1 8 The Broken Vcw.

infancy, but my father's family has ever had the privilege of remainder in the female line.

My mother is my earliest and always my dearest memory- I write of the time when I was sixteen years of age, but she had gone to her rest some seven or eight years before.

My father had loved my mother with the most tender affection. When she died I was far too young to know with what unchanging grief he was destined to journey on alone to his grave ; but this I know, that during these seven or eight years of his widowed life, while he had proved himself the tenderest of fathers, he had been practically a broken-hearted man. I had dim recollections of a gayer life in the old Hall before my dear mother's death ; but since that solemn day when, in my mourning dress, I stood clasping my father's hand by her grave, our life at Ravensthorpe had been generally quiet and secluded in the extreme.

My father had paid short visits to London to attend to his parliamentary duties, and relatives had from time to time visited us in the days when the gardens were in their summer beauty, and again, not seldom, at Michaelmas, and often in the winter about Christmastide ; but for the most part we had been alone. My governess had left us two years before the date of my story, and since then my father had spent several morning hours daily in helping me with my studies, and in the evening hours had loved to hear me play to him on the piano in the drawing-room, or on the organ in the chapel — for now we had a tiny but beautiful chapel in

c 2 the Hall, where daily morning prayers were said.

He himself was no despicable performer on the pianoforte, and often accompanied me on my violin. I believe young ladies nowadays pay more attention to that unrivalled instrument, but in those days such proficiency was not so common. I had learnt it so long that I had no remembrance of the beginning, and in many a lonely hour of life it has been my dearest companion and friend. I remember well how my father threw his whole soul into the ducts wc played together, — the tender melodies of Mozart and the pathetic harmonies of Spohr.

My other chief companions were my dear dog Cogser (a name of home manufacture), a collie of the Highland breed, sensitive, gifted and loving, as those creatures are, and my horse — a nervous, high-spirited little mare — whom I called Hedwig, after the heroine of a German romance which my father and I had read together during a short visit to Dresden.

That short visit and the better part of a winter in Rome when I was only nine years old, comprised my foreign experience. My father had taken pains with my German and Italian, for he had always been a student, and much devoted to foreign literature, and indeed in these later years he had spent much of the day and, I think, most of the night in his library.

The people on my father's estate were, I think, a happy people. As I grew from ten to sixteen I had gradually learnt from him the view he strongly held and always taught me, that whatever any of us may appear to have, there is in fact nothing our own, and especially that a great landed proprietor with many dependants really possesses nothing himself, but is a tenant at will, and only an administrator for Almighty God, holding an office which requires him to dispense what is placed in his hands for the benefit of those who depend upon him, and for the discharge of which he must one day render a strict account. This lesson I have been grateful for all my life. I think in later years it has helped me, and one very dear to me, to do our duty, and I believe that, on the whole, it is the sense of this which has made the English gentry and aristocracy a real blessing to our dear country.

Among the regular visitors at Ravensthorpe were one or two persons of whom I must say a word in passing.

My aunt Miriam was my father's elder sister. She was a maiden lady, and to me, from my earliest days, she appeared always to be old. She had been, in her younger days, much about Court, and had stately and courtly ways. She was at all times splendidly dressed, and her inexhaustible varieties of gowns, ever with a touch of the antique about them, were to me objects of awe and admiration. In these later years she always walked with a handsome gold-headed ebony stick, sat bolt upright, and disdained any assistance, only that I had found out that over our slippery oak floors she never refused- my arm, which therefore was always at her service. Some people thought her severe, and, if they spoke to her, feared a snub. I am bound to acknowledge she had the trick of being at times somewhat contradictory; but she was a noble old soul, she hated hypocrisy or pretence in any shape, and could endure pain without a wince.

I loved Aunt Miriam, and I knew she loved me ; though anything like effusion, or what in these times is called " gush," she would have treated with withering scorn. I used to think she had been " born out of due time " and had missed her opportunity ; for had she only been in the days when it was fashionable for noble ladies to die on the scaffold, she would have played her part with a stately grace such as to do honour to the occasion, and would have made the people dip their handkerchiefs in her blood, and her executioner feel thoroughly repentant and ashamed of himself. In her unbending moments she called my father " my Lord," but in softer hours she spoke to him as " Ravensthorpe," with a tender look in her dear old eyes that spoke volumes of her love and devotion. I noticed also that my father she never contradicted. He was the head of her house, and to attribute error to him she would have deemed an act of black and degrading treason. In this, I confess I cordially agreed with her; indeed I think every one held the same opinion. I suppose it was an almost universal belief because he in no way shared it himself, but was always so sweet and patient and reasonable. But why I loved Aunt Miriam most, I think, was because she so entirely loved my mother.

" There was never any one like your mother, child," she used to say ; " she was the sweetest, the cleverest, the most beautiful woman I ever saw," and then she would add a saying which possessed me with a strong fascination: " I think," she was fond o£ saying, " there were always angels in attendance on your mother."

On two points Aunt Miriam was wont to unbend — not as to her back, for that was always in the perpendicular, — indeed I used to fancy she must sleep in a sitting or standing posture — but I mean morally. She loved three rubbers of whist, neither less nor more, and always believed that if she were beaten, either her partner was under-educated, or there was some secret unfairness; unless, indeed, my father played against her, and then she was almost venomous if she were victorious. Another trait : when at Ravensthorpe, she liked every afternoon to drive for two hours. She said there was no neighbourhood so really beautiful, and that she loved to enjoy the country. I was often her companion in these drives, and I knew that as a matter of fact she always went fast asleep within a few yards of the great gates, and woke up only when we again reached the door. I never dared to hint at such a thing. And the only approach to duplicity which I ever noticed in Aunt Miriam was, that when I told incidents of our drive to my father at dinner, she guarded a stately silence. Only once do I remember that she made any remark in our drives. Once the coachman pulled up suddenly to spare a young woman who ran across the horses' heads, and then she observed with great severity, " Young ladies don't comport themselves nowadays, child, as they used to do when I was young. Your mother would never have done that." I remember laughing inwardly at this. The notion of my dear mother, whom I knew only as a sweet and graceful vision, or in the calm repose of her monumental tomb, running, tickled my imagination so acutely !

Dear Aunt Miriam ! she was a beautiful old lady- With all her unbending ways, she was so true, so kind. She was what is called "game to the backbone," but her heart was in the right place, and that is, after all, the great thing in this sad world ! She always seemed to me about a hundred, aud now for many years she has slept the sleep of the just under the chantry floor. May she rest in peace !

Our other chronic visitors in summer and at Christmas were Eleanor Hordle, the sister of a late vicar, good and kind and commonplace, but really devoted to the clothing-club and the poor; and then there was a certain Miss Marjoribanks, who I believe had been a "companion," or something, in my mother's family, and a certain Miss Marjory Blackwood, who had a small property of her own about twenty miles from Ravensthorpe, and had always been a friend of our people.