Our saints. A family story

Front matter

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BY ROSE PORTER.

Part First

“ The Bible Saints were not the heroes of romance , for then they might have been painted spotless . They were the men of real life , and the details of that life sometimes guilty enough. But , then , life was an earnest thing with them. It was transgression , if you will, but then it was sore, buffeting struggle after that. — It was the penitence of men bent manfully on turning back to God. And so they fought their way back till they struggled out of the thick darkness into the clear light of day and peace.

“ Let. us lay this to heart. It is not the having been ‘ far-off ’ that makes peace impossible, it is anything which keeps a man away from Christ

ROBERTSON.

A FAMILY STORY.

I

r I ''HERE are only two of us left in this home-nest, — all the others flew away long ago.

But when my story begins there were four sisters, and four brothers. — Such a troop of young ones for a little mother to guide and control, the oldest not out of his teens, and the youngest only a six-year-old girl.

We were as equally divided, my mother used to say, as the halves of a globe-shaped gem. Four with eyes as blue as the sky, thorough Saxons in feature, and fair tinting of complexion, and hair, — and with Saxon hearts too, that loved old England so well, we thought it, — as many another has, — the happiest land the sun shone on.

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Four with dark eyes, and features clear cut, nut-brown hair, and that piquant grace of gesture and varying expression which belonged to our mother, who was a daughter of France ; and with natures a bit fiery, tempers a bit quick perchance, but spite this, my darkeyed brothers, Hugh and Yvo, my sisters, Zita and Eulalie, had loving and true hearts.

We others were Francis, — and he is the brother who still calls this old nest, home, and who has persuaded me to write this record of our lives, — Herbert and Bridget, whom we always call Britta, our shining light, — Bridget, who was named for the grandmother of Irish descent, and myself Maud, in memory of Saint Maud, daughter of the old Saxon count with whom far back in the centuries my father traced kinship.

Saint Maud, who from childhood, as the old record tells, lived the life of the pure in heart who see God, and thus possessed the truest greatness. — Saint Maud, who lived in the world, and yet was not of it.

My mother chose our names, with, as we

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came to know even while we were yet children, a deeper meaning than mere musical sound and harmony of utterance. — She had some quaint fancies, this mother of ours, that were closely linked with the early associations of her childhood’s home in sunny France, where Sabbath after Sabbath, and on festival and saints’ days, she had. gone with her father and mother to worship in the village church, or to learn from the parish priest.

A good old man, with that charity of heart and mind that recognized, “ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all,” underlying the many creeds of many sects, and peoples.

I think it was because she had been thus early trained in a school of Love, because her dear heart was so permeated with “ that love which looketh kindly, and the wisdom which looketh soberly bn all things,” that my mother was able to so easily assimilate with the change in form and worship, that held sway in this English home, to which my father brought her.

H

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She was of a deeply earnest nature, that responded like the chords of a musical harp to the lightest touch of beauty, and vibrated to every high-toned elevating influence. And often during the latter years of her dear life, did she tell me, how from the very first hour of their meeting, my father uplifted her heart and mind, as the oak uplifts the vine, that clings to it for support.

A common enough metaphor, but nevertheless like most commonplace things full of tender significance, for while the oak uplifts , how often the tendrils of the vine reach out and beyond the massive branches to which it clings.

The significance of the commonplace ! — If I had been a scholar I would have penned more than one page on this subject, choosing for a text Aaron’s rod that budded.

My mother’s parents had married late in life, and happy in the most happy wedded love, scarcely ever left the old Chateau, her childhood’s home.

Hence she grew up a child in all the sweet qualities of a child-like heart, yet with a gentle gravity of thought, blended with bright gleams of vivacity, as light and shade blend on meadow-grass, when the day is sunshiny, save for the fleecy cloudlets that dance in the blue above.

The angel-winged clouds, as the peasant children in far-away France call them.

She was only a girl of eighteen when my father wooed, wed, and brought her to this English manor-house, — Glentwood Hall, — our home, as indeed it has been the home of our ancestors for many and many a century.

For the Glentwoods of Glentwood Hall, rank among the oldest, of the many old families of this ancient county of Devonshire.

II

1 AM tempted to linger and describe this dear home, — my home ever since I can remember, with but that brief spring-time, when I went forth one April a smiling bride, and returned before the May days had slipped into June, — a widow.

But I do not like that word, — for he is mine still I think, only, — he is with God in heaven, — and, — God is with me on earth, — yet, though God is with us both, there is such a difference between heaven and earth, such a dif-

ference !

And yet it is written, the kingdom of heaven is within you,— and “ it is not distance that separates us from the spirit land.”

Our home, — from well-nigh every high outlook for miles and miles around you can catch a view of its gable roof, and tower, though as you approach by the way of the park, you (16)

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have scarcely more than an occasional glimpse through the opening trees of the ivy-covered walls, and mullioned, diamond-latticed windows.

The Hall is in the parish of Milton-Abbot, a beautifully situated village on the river Tamar, and the parish church is almost as dear to us, as our home, and to my eyes there never was a more beautiful church, though I know full well its beauty of arches, mould-, ings, and windows, is much mutilated by time, and sorely needs renovating, or restoring, as the modern enterprisers call it, but which to my conservative notions, always seems akin to destroying.

During the spring and summer time, the door that is prefaced by the porch, — that fills the square of the tower — almost always stands wide open. Preaching as an open church-door ever does by suggestion, the never-ceasing call of the church’s Master, — “ Come unto Me, ye weary, I will give you rest.”

I often go within for a quiet tarrying, on my way to and from the village, where I i8

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have many parish duties, for our old Rector has neither wife or daughter, and there are so many parish calls that need a woman’s heart, and hands to answer.

Curtains of deep crimson, somewhat faded, and in places almost threadbare, are loosely drawn from before the door-way, and as they gently sway in the s.oft air of the spring and summer days, they

“ Cast over arch and roof a crimson glow,

But ne’ertheless all is silence and all shade, .... Save only for the rippling flow Of their long foldings, when the sweet air Sighs through the casements of the house of prayer.”

Back of the church are old ruins, much ivy draped, and fast crumbling away, yet among them, there still remain some walls of the conventual church, which was dedicated to Saint Gregory, with at the east end, lancetshaped windows, coeval with the foundation.

Graves are clustered about the churchyard almost as close together as primroses in the hedge-rows, some marked by ancient head-

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stones, on which the records are much timedefaced and hidden by the gray clinging moss, that belongs to graveyard stones. — Other marble slabs glow white and clear in the sunshine, and moonlight, every letter on them easy to read. — And the flowers that grow on the ancient mounds, and the recent, are as unlike, as old sorrow and .new.

But, does real sorrow ever grow old ?

The old mounds are covered with thick growths of tbe deep glossy leaves of the blue-eyed periwinkle, while the more recent, are Lent-lily, and rose planted, and fresh flowers strewn from April to December.

To one with courage and strength to climb the steep hill, eastward of the village, there awaits a rich reward whatever the season, so varied and beautiful are the wide outlooks on every side.

In truth, no other county in old England can rival I think our Devonshire in picturesque and romantic views, antiquarian remains, and geological riches, as well as in extreme diversity of general scenery. The

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central part of the western district extending as it does, from the vale of Exeter to the banks of the Tamar, chiefly consists of barren and uncultivated Dartmoor, a region wild and dreary, made up of lofty hills, craggy rocks, and narrow valleys strewn with great masses of granite, that seem to have fallen in some wild struggle of nature from the surrounding heights. — Such a contrast to the vale of Exeter, bounded as it is, by a range of undulating hills, and the mountainous ridge of Blackdown.

“ The garden of Devonshire ” is my favorite section of the county, — a garden walled in with goodly protective barriers, Dartmoor and the heights of Chudleigh on the north, the river Plym and Plymouth Sound on the west, Torbay on the east, and southward, by the blue waters of the Channel, that broad pathway, that leads to the open sea. As children and young folk, we brothers and sisters needed no longer journeys in search of adventure, change of air, or the expansion of mind variety of scene gives, than our own county

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afforded, and my brothers, while still growing lads, knew Dartmoor forest, and were as familiar, at least by name, with the many and entensive deer parks, the rivers, and their tributary streams, and the legends of the coast, as they were with their best conned lessons.

As for us sisters, even as children we could count the most beautiful of the beautiful prospects with which the county abounded, with as much ease, as we repeated the multiplication table, while our interest in the “ Valley of Stones ” was unfailing, and as we grew older, there was the deeper interest of the Cathedral, and the ruins of Rougemount Castle in Exeter, as well as the remains of numerous abbeys, and churches, with their manifold traces of Ecclesiastical architecture. The castles and the ancient mansions were always full, too, of romance, while the Druidical or Celtic remains on Dartmoor, and in other parts of the county, seemed voiceful with weird strange echoes of mystical significance, from the long bygone years.

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It was by these comparatively near home associations, that our mother sought to expand our opening minds, and she often said, when we returned from some excursion that perchance had extended over days, — every one now an amulet in memory, — that we came back from every new glimpse of God’s wondrous creation, and man’s courageous work, like diamonds that sparkled with brighter lustre for every new sun-ray they caught.

As for home itself, there was education in a certain way in every nook and corner of it, for the Hall is a quaint old-time building, — and like so many English mansions, — with a central tower, and long low wings extending on either side.

The red brick of the massive walls of the northern wing is almost hidden by ivy, — while vines that love the sunshine creep up and twine about the gable windows, and overhanging eaves of the southern end, which bows out on the lower floor toward the lawn, and is encircled by a broad veranda, that in summer time is like a bower-room, it is so shut in by

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climbing roses, flowering honeysuckle, and sweet briar.

ir

As for the tower, some by-gone ancestor, who had wearied of the red brick walls, had caused it to be stuccoed, and though to my taste, the warm glow of the original color, best suited the old structure, the sombre tint of gray caught through the thick glossy leaves of the close-clinging ivy, gave perchance a still more venerable look.

A broad flight of steps leads to the portico, which opens straightway into the vast hall, where in winter, from Christmas eve on to twelfth night,* the ruddy gleam of the yulelog burning with a steady flame in the wide operi-hearted fireplace, throws a mystic charm of mingled light and shadow, over the old portraits, curiously wrought tapestry, and blazing shields and armor, with which the walls are hung.

All the principal apartments open from the hall, though they are not many, neither are they remarkable for size, but every one is adorned with some rare work of art, and in

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arrangement, even to this day, reveal the exquisite taste my mother possessed, combined with her quick appreciation and value of every relic of the past, that holds a deeper meaning than mere age, — though that is a touchstone, I always think, to thought-laden backwardlooks, and forward, too, for that matter.

The dining-room is wainscoted, and over the fireplace, and in the four corners of the room, are shelved niches, well filled with treasures of old china, and rare specimens of what we

moderns call, u bric-a-brac.” This room

commands from its windows finer views than any apartment on the lower floor.

The library, brother Francis’ special room, is opposite, and though comparatively small, it contains a well-chosen supply of books, and huge portfolios of companion prints, that serve to illustrate the volumes of history, art, or travel.

My nook opens from the library, and is in fact little more than a projecting bay, that my mother had curtained off, and where by her planning, in place of the diamond lattice, a

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single pane of glass was inserted ; through which a beautiful outlook is caught, and no sooner caught than reflected in an opposite mirror.

It is a sort of wonder-land glimpse, overarched by mingled and harmonious color, in which the tinting of beech and yew, blend with clear-toned greens of maple and elm, and the feathery, misty foliage of laburnum and acacia, with rugged stately boughs of cedar and oak, — those great trees, that count a century but as a day.

A glen-like terrace opens out below the leafy arch, at the far end of which, as though framed by a mosaic of leaf and twig, is an alpine-like, wild, picturesque glimpse of nature.

It is at the boundary of the park, and toward the part of the grounds that we always call our miniature Switzerland, — for just there, the banks of the Tamar are wild and rugged ; and the woods that fringe the park are ascended by a zigzag climb, that leads to a tiny rustic lodge, a veritable Swiss cottage, with exterior staircase, and gallery leading to the

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one upper room ; from which you can see far down the river, and across the marsh meadows, over to the hills beyond.

The cottage was built when we were children, as a surprise for Zita, — she so loved rural scenes and rural life, — and it is furnished too, k la Suisse, with wooden inlaid chairs and table, and supplied with horn spoons, and cups, wooden plates, and platters, and has been the scene of many a joyous feast, on holiday and festival.

But, if its near surroundings are Swiss-like, the meadows across the river are thoroughly English in their suggestions.

The dear meadows, that are all aglow now in the spring-time with marsh marigolds, the flower

“That shines like fire, in swamps, and hollows gray,” while,

“ By the meadow trenches bloom faint sweet cuckooflowers.”

the “ lady smock all silver white wavy reeds, wild grasses, and osiers grow there too. All

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of them seeming at this season, hints of the blooms out on the hill-sides, lanes, and fieldpaths, — the cowslips and the crowfoot, primroses and daisies, and the many and dear flowers of rural England, that are nodding and peeping out from every hedge-row and nook where a bud or a blossom can find space to smile up toward the blue of the sky, or the overhanging green of tree and shrub.

III

EVER since I can remember, I have had a fancy for beginning any new undertaking in the spring-time ; thus I am especially glad that brother Francis wished me to begin this history at this season ; and that yesterday, when we talked it over, was one of those perfect days, when all nature seemed pulsing with a hymn of praise, that rivalled the. birds, that were wooing and wedding among the greentipped branches of the old trees out in the park.

As well they might be, for it was “ cuckoo day,” the fifteenth of April.

Ah, how they sang, the livelong hours through ; first the larks, heralding the morning as they floated sky-ward on their russet pinions ; while the gray-linnets chose noon-time for their special carol-hour ; and the thrushes

and the blackbirds, the robins and the meekly- (28)

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chirping sparrows, kept up a perpetual festival of song all the time ; — a song chorused by the many, many songsters of old England, with a melody that was sweetest and most music-full as the day waned ; for then it held the tender note of the evening song, and held too, as a prayer holds an amen, the first faint note of a nightingale, the June bird, that by mistake breathed a song in April, like Mrs. Browning’s white rose, not waiting for the summer.

Do you remember?

“ For if I wait,” said she,

“ Till time for roses be, —

For the musk-rose and the moss-rose. Royal-red and maiden-blush-rose, —

" What glory then for me In such a company ?

Roses plenty, roses plenty,

And one nightingale for twenty ?

Nay let me in,” said she.

Before the rest are free. —

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“ For I would lonely stand,

Uplifting my white hand, —

On a mission, on a mission,

To declare the coming vision.”

Like our nightingale I repeat, who by that one delicate note, a mere tracery of song, brought before us like a vision, the glory, and the beauty of summer, — only a vision, for it was a song note that lasted but for a moment, and then was merged and lost in the universal, complex, and yet care-free bird melody.

Yes, care -free, that is the very joy of bird songs to me, for,

“ No Future taunts them with its fears or hopes.

No cares their Present fret ;

The Past for them no dismal vista opes Of useless, dark regret.

“ Below, Earth blooms for them ; and above Heaven smiles in boundless blue ;

Joy is in all things, and the song of Love Thrills* their whole being through.

“ Ah ! we who boast we are the crown of things, Like them are never glad ;

By doubts and dreams and dark self-questionings We stand besieged and sad.

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“ What know we of that rare felicity The unconscious birdling knows ;

That no misgiving spoils ; that frank and free From merely living grows.”

Thinking thus of the birds, one can readily believe the legend of the old monk of Heisterbach, to whom as he listened to the song of a forest warbler, a hundred years appeared as one day.

So many memories, that have long been silent, wake up and become voiceful, as I begin to pen this family record, I find myself well-nigh bewildered as to how to arrange it.

The truth is, while a family history is verily like a bit of tapestry, a thing woven of many colors, yet as every color has its own special tint, so every brother and sister in our band of eight, even from earliest infancy, had as distinctly marked an individuality, as Jacob’s sons in the Bible story.

I wonder, were those brothers thus portrayed as characteristically so totally unlike each other, that parents, all through the ages, might be comforted, when they find faults in

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one child, not in another; though both are trained in the same home school, and guarded and prayed for by the same parental hearts of love?

I expressed something of this to Francis yesterday, as I appealed to him for advice, as to how I could tell the story of our eight individual lives, if I interblended them in one commingled record.

And by his counsel, I decide to divide my recital into eight parts, just as God has divided our lives, giving us each a soul, and a body, as unlike each other, as flowers are unlike one another in form and hue.

Flowers, that are so typical of these souls of ours, because like them they come straight from the hand of God.

I will be greatly aided in my task by a folio of closely-written pages, marked, “ Reminiscences of my Children,” that I found not long ago in the topmost drawer of my mother’s ebony cabinet ; and from which I shall copy extracts, as they contain brief outline histories that are like pictures in suggestion, not only

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of our early, but later years too, as my mother kept these records up to a recent date, and she lived to see what mothers are wont to call the future of their children ; for last midsummer, when God called her, Francis was over fifty, and Britta, our little Britta, well on in the thirties — and yet, we were all children still to our mother.

It is such a tender truth that one can never grow old to a mother, — never, even though a mother become like a child to son or daughter ; even though the hand that guided the uncertain steps of childhood clings at last for sup- - port, in the weakening days of age, to the child-hand ; that has grown strong and firm in its clasp with the coming and going of the years, — yet, — count they ever so many, those years, a child, is still a child, to a parent’s heart !

IV

"OEFORE copying a word from my mother’s reminiscences, I must pause to tell that my father was an officer in the army.

A true soldier, not only for the glory and honor of his native land, but a commander, too, in that battle-field where it is hardest to win victory, — his own heart, — because as our mother always told us, in the conflict he waged there, he never fought in his own strength.

I remember as though it were but a yesterday by-gone, the gloomy March day, when in the gloaming, our mother called us about her, and told us we were fatherless.

It was not a long story, — and, alas! so commonplace, for many another brave soldier’s wife and children wept that day all the land over ; for the victory for which a nation re- (34)

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joiced, was won at so costly a price to England’s sons and daughters !

Not one of the many pictures that have looked down on me from the familiar home walls all the days of my life, is more real to me than the picture memory holds of that hour.

We were in the library, all grouped about the low-burning embers . on the hearth, for it had been a chill March day. Rain was falling, and every passing gust of wind sent a shower of drops pattering against the window pane, with a dreary sound, that was only a prelude to the after moan of the wind, as it sighed around the eaves and corners of the old Hall.

A light was burning on the centre-table, but its rays were dim, as though it, and the waning day, were at strife ; the one refusing to yield to the other’s sway.

My mother sat on her low chair, — so changed, — that dear little mother, from the mother of yesterday ; truly it was as though in a moment, the shadow which we call eclipse, had passed before the light and sunshine of her life, and left all darkness, and yet, —

even in that supreme hour of anguish our mother murmured,

“ His will be done,

Who seeth not as we see, whose way Is not as ours ! ”

But I will not linger over that scene, — enough, the sorrow had come, — the shadow had fallen, and this I understood, though I was then too young to fully comprehend the changes my father’s death brought into our home and lives.

I only knew we all felt from the oldest to the youngest of us, that after it, life meant more in earnestness than it had ever done before.—

And if this feeling through our mother’s influence was clothed in something of metaphor; if it made our daily life something of a living allegoiyr, I never have felt regret that it was so ; or that it came from the fact, that my mother had, as I have said before, many quaint fancies and customs, that blossomed

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out from the associations of her early home, like roses, making the oftentime discipline they involved, sweet and fragrant, as the rose makes the thorn-set stem.

Chief among these fancies was the naming of her children ; and that hour, when we sat in the gloom and the awe of great sorrow, she told us why she had chosen to call us after saints of old.

And, as she told, grief more than once interrupted her words, — more than once, she spoke only by tears ; so inwoven with memories of my father, were the thoughts that were linked with our naming.

Francis held my mother's right hand as she spoke, and she bowed her head on his shoulder as he knelt by her side.

Only a brief fortnight before, Francis had celebrated his nineteenth birthday, and then all the future had been bright as a pleasant dream to him, seeming like a meadow of waving grain, over which sunlight played, and which stood strong and fair, waiting for his young hand to reap the full harvest that he thought would be his by right of inheritance , but that lay now bruised and beaten before the storm of adversity.

For though I did not know it till long afterward, by my father’s death Francis’ prospects and plans for life were all changed.

The facts were, my father’s claim to the Glentwood estate was involved by one condition, and that was the existence of an heir, to whom, by the right of will, the broad acres and ancestral Hall were to pass if he survived father.

But as cousin Reginald, the heir, was a man much older than my father in years, — though younger in lineal descent, — and in extremely delicate health too, my parents had naturally come to feel that father would survive him, and thus Francis become the legal heir and future head of the house; and Francis had perchance, unconsciously to them and to himself, grown up to share this feeling, as well as to take more of an oversight and interest in the details of the estate than most lads of his age would have done. An interest

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which was augmented because my father’s profession involved his frequent and long absence from home.

But I repeat, on my father’s death all was changed, and cousin Reginald, — as true and noble-hearted a man as ever lived, — straightway became master, with something more of actual ownership even than father had possessed ; for his claim was not a mere life tenure, as my father’s had been, as he inherited the light to will the estate to whom he pleased.

Dear cousin Reginald, he would not hear of our leaving the Hall, but immediately he made it over to my mother, and us brothers and sisters, as a home to be jointly owned by us all, as long as we lived, — and his gift included the near park, garden, and pasture meadows eastward of the Hall.

Thus, as far as we younger children were concerned, we did not note or feel our altered condition ; but to my mother, the grown lads, Zita and Eulalie, too, the sudden loss of the ample revenue derived from the outlying farms, village tenantry, and vast

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tracts of woodland, caused many a care and perplexity, and made early and independent effort for self-support necessary, on the part of my brothers at least.