[Transcriber's notes]
This text is derived from THE CATHOLIC WORLD,
http://www.archive.org/details/catholicworld02pauluoft
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40068
It is the collection of serialized chapters for the convenience of the reader who wishes to read the whole work.
[End Transcriber's notes]
From The Literary Workman.
JENIFER'S PRAYER.
BY OLIVER CRANE.
IN THREE PARTS.
PART I.
He and she stood in a room in an inn in the town of Hull--and how she wept! Crying as a child cries, with a woman's feelings joining exquisite pain to those tears; which tears, in a way wonderful and peculiar to beautiful women, scarcely disordered her face, or gave anything worse to her countenance than an indescribably pathetic tenderness.
He was older than she was by full ten years. He only watched her. And if the most acute of my readers had watched him, they would have been no wiser for their scrutiny.
At last she left the room; he had opened the door and offered his hand to her. It was night; and she changed her chamber-candle from her right hand to her left, and gave that right hand to him. He held it, while he said: "I spoke because I dread the influence of the house we are going to, and of those whom you will meet there."
"Thank you. Good night" And so she got to a great dark bed-room, and knelt down, like a good girl as she was, and cried no more, but was in bed and asleep before he had left the place he had taken by the side of the sitting-room fire, leaning thoughtfully against the mantel-shelf, when her absence had made the room lonely.
Then he ran down stairs and rushed out into the streets of the kingly Hull--Kingston of the day of Edward I. The man we speak of was no antiquary, and he troubled himself neither with the Kingston of the royal Edward nor the Vaccaria of the abbot from whom the place was bought; he walked at a quick pace through streets dim and streets lighted, toward the ships, or among the houses; to where he could see the great headland of Holderness, or behold nothing at all but the brick wall that prevented his going further, and told him by strong facts that he had lost his way. So he wandered, walking fast often--again, walking slowly; his head bowed down, his features working, and his eyes flashing--clenched hands, or hands clasped on his breast, as if to keep down the surging waves of memory, which carried on their crests many things which now he could only gnash his teeth at in withering vexation.
He and she had come from Scotland. I have said that she was beautiful--she was English, too; but he was Scotch born and bred, and not dark and stem, or really wild or poetic, as a Scotchman in a story ought to be. He was simply a strong, well-formed man, of dark, ruddy complexion, and fine, thick, waving brown hair. He might have been a nobleman, or a royal descendant of Hull's own king. He looked it all, without being downright handsome. But he was, in fact, only one of the many men who have come into a thousand a year too soon for the preservation of prudence. Between sixteen, when he succeeded to it, and twenty-one, when he could spend it, he had committed many follies, and found friends who turned out worse than declared enemies--since twenty-one he had fallen in love more than once. He had been praised, blamed, accused, acquitted. But whether or not this man was good or bad, no living soul could tell. He was well off, well looking, well read, and in good company. He re-entered the inn at Hull that April night, stood by the fire smoking, asked for a cup of strong coffee, went to bed.
The next morning the two met at breakfast They were going south. No matter where. Whether to the dreamy vales of Devonshire, to verdant Somersetshire, or the gardens of Hampshire--no matter. They were going to what the north Britons call the south. And it did not mean Algeria. Railways were not everywhere then as railways are now. They had to travel nearly all day, then to "coach it" to a great town, in whose history coaches have now long been of the past. Then to get on a second day by the old "fast four-horse," and to arrive about five o'clock at a little quiet country town, where a carriage would take them to the friends and the house whose influence he dreaded.
In fact, that night, in the inn sitting-room, he had offered marriage to the girl whom he had in charge for safe guardianship on so long a journey to her far-off home where he was to be a guest. She had felt that he had abused his trust and taken an unfair advantage of her; also, she was in that peculiarly feminine state of mind which is neither expressed by no nor by yes. She had upbraided him. He, pleading guilty in his soul, was in a horror at the thought of losing her; losing her in that way too, because he had done wrong. Being miserable, he had shown his misery as a strong man may. He spoke, and self-reproachfully; but, as he pleaded, he betrayed all he felt. The girl saw his clasped hands, his bent form, as he leaned down from the chair on which he sat in the straggling attitude which expressed a disordered mind. He spoke, looking at the carpet, not loud nor long, but with a terrible earnestness that frightened the girl, and then she cried all the more, and seemed to shrink away as if in alarm, and yet almost angrily. Why would he speak so fiercely--why had he taken this advantage of her?
Then he had risen up quickly, and said, "Well, you know all now. We will talk of something else." But she only shook her head and moved away, and, as we have seen, went to bed.
The next morning they met calmly enough. On his side it was done with an effort; on hers without effort, yet with a little trembling fear, which went when she saw his calm, and she poured out tea, and he drank it, and only a rather extraordinary silence told of too much having being said the night before.
Now, why was all this? Why were this man and this young English girl travelling thus to the sweet south coast, and to expecting friends?
While they are travelling on their way, we, you and I, dear reader, will not only get on before them, but also turn back the pages of life's story, and read its secrets.
They were going to a great house in a fine park, where fern waved its tall, mounted feathers of green, and hid the dappled deer from sight-- where great ancestral oaks spread protecting branches; where hawthorn trees, that it had taken three generations of men to make, stood, large, thick, knotted, twisted--strange, dark, stunted looking trees they looked, till spring came, and no green was like their green, and the glory of their flower-wreaths people made pilgrimages to see. The place was called Beremouth.
A mile and a half off was a town; one of those odd little old places which tell of days and fashions past away. A very respectable place. There had lived in Marston the dowager ladies of old country families, in houses which had no pretensions to grandeur as you passed them in the extremely quiet street, but which on the other side broke out into bay windows, garden fronts, charming conservatories, and a good many other things which help to make life pleasant. So the inhabitants of Marston were not all mere country-town's people. They knew themselves to be somebodies and they never forgot it.
Now, in this town dwelt a certain widow lady; poor she was, but she had a pedigree and two beautiful daughters. Mary and Lucia Morier were not two commonly, or even uncommonly, pretty girls; they were wonderfully beautiful, people said, and nothing less. So lovers came a courting. One married a Scotchman, a Mr. Erskine. They liked each other quite well enough, Lucia thought, when she made her promises, and received his; and so they did. They lived happily; did good; wished for children but never had any, and so adopted Mr. Erskine's orphan nephew--namely, the very man who behaved with such strange imprudence in the inn at
Mary Morier did differently. She married at twenty, her younger sister having married the month before at eighteen. Mary did differently, for she did imprudently. They had had a brother who was an agent for certain mines thirty miles off; and there he lived; but he came home often enough, and made the house in the old town gay. A year before the sister married, in fact while that sister was away on a visit to friends in Scotland, the brother came home ill. He was ill for six months. It is wonderful how much expense is incurred by a mother in six months for a son who is sick. It made life very difficult. The money to pay for Lucia's journey home had to be thought of. To be sure, she was not there to eat and drink, but then her extra finery had cost something. George had only earned one hundred a year. It had not been more than enough to keep him. He came home ill with ten pounds in his pocket, beside his half-year's rent, which would be due the next month--certainly money at this time was wanted, for our friends were sadly pinched. But the one most exemplary friend and servant Jenifer was paid her wages, and tea and sugar money to the day; and the doctor got so many guineas that he grew desperate and suddenly refused to come--then repented, and made a Christian-like bargain, that he would go on coming on condition that he never saw another piece of any kind of money.
Mary and her mother looked each other in the face one day, and that look told all. There was some plate, and they had watches, and a little fine old-fashioned jewelry--yes, they must go. They were reduced to poverty at last--this was more than "limited means"--hard penury had them with a desperate grasp.
Fortune comes in many shapes, and not often openly, and with a flourish of trumpets--neither did she come in that way now; but shamefacedly, sneakingly, and ringing the door-bell with a meek, not to say tremulous pull; and her shape was that of a broad-built, short, wide-jawed, lanky-haired, pig-eyed, elderly man, with a curious quantity of waistcoat showing, yet, generally, well dressed. "Your mistress at home?" "Yes, Mr. Brewer." "Mr. George better?" "No. Never will be, sir." "Bless me! I beg your pardon!" "Granted before 'tis asked, sir." "Ah! yes; I have a little business to transact with your mistress. Can I see her alone?" Mr. Brewer was shown by Jenifer into the little right-hand parlor. He gravely took out a huge pocket-book, and then a small parchment-covered account-book appeared. I believe he had persuaded himself that he was really going to transact business, and not to perform the neatest piece of deception that a respectable gentleman ever attempted. A lady entered the room. "Madam, jour son has been my agent for mines three years--my mine and land agent since Christmas. He takes the additional work at seventy-five pounds a year extra. The half of that is now due to him. I pay that myself. I have brought it" And thirty-seven pounds ten shillings Mr. Brewer put on the table, saying, "I will take your receipt, madam. Don't trouble Georges's head about business; for when you do speak of that you will have, I am sorry to say, to inform him that in both his places I have had to put another man. I have to give George three months' payment at the rate of one hundred and seventy pounds a year, as I gave him no quarter's warning. That is business, do you understand?" asked Mr. Brewer. "It is for my son to discharge himself, sir--since he cannot"--the mother's voice faltered. "Ah--only he didn't, and I did," said Mr. Brewer. "Your receipt? When your son recovers, let him apply to me. I am sorry to end our connexion so abruptly. But it is business. Business, you know"--and there Mr. Brewer stopped, for Mary Morier was in the room, and her beauty filled it, or seemed to do so. And Mr. Brewer departed muttering, as he had muttered before often, "the most beautiful girl in the world." Still, he had an uncomfortable sensation, for he felt he was an underhand sneak, and that Mary had found him out; and so she had. She knew that her brother had been "discharged" only to afford a pretext for giving the quarter's money; and she was sure that his being land agent, at an additional seventy-five pounds a year, was a pure unadulterated fiction.
Mr. Brewer was an extraordinary man. He had a turn for the supernatural. He would have liked above all things to have worked miracles. He did do odd things, such as we have seen, which he made, by means of the poetic quality that characterized him, a purely natural act. He was praising George for a saving, prudent, industrious young man, who had never drawn the whole of his last year's salary, before an hour was over. And his story looked so like truth that he believed it himself.
Mr. Brewer was what people call "a risen man." But then his father had been rising--and, for the matter of that, his grandfather too. All their fortunes had flowed into the life of the man who has got into this story; and he, having had a tide of prosperity exceeding all others, in height, and strength, and riches, had found himself stranded on the great shore of society, at forty years of age, with more thousands a year than he liked to be generally known. Could he have transformed himself into a benignant fairy he would have been very happy, and acts of mercy would have abounded on the earth. But no--Mr. Brewer was Mr. Brewer, and anything less poetic to look at--more impossible as to wands, and wings, and good fairy appendages, it is difficult to imagine. Mr. Brewer was a middle-aged man, with hands in his pockets; plain truth is always respectable. There it is.
But there was a Mrs. Brewer. Now Mrs. Brewer was an excellent woman, but not excellent after the manner of her husband. She was three years older. They had not been in love. They had married at an epoch in Mr. Brewer's life when public affairs occupied his time so entirely as to make it desirable to have what people call a "missus;" we are afraid that Mr. Brewer himself so called the article, a "missus, at home." Mrs. Brewer had been "a widow lady--young--of a sociable and domestic disposition" who "desired to be housekeeper--to be treated confidentially, and as one of the family--to a widower--with or without children." On inquiry, it was found that young Mrs. Smith had not irrevocably determined that the owner of the house that she was to keep should have been the husband of one wife, undoubtedly dead; the widower was an expression only, a sort of modest way of putting the plain fact of a single man, or a man capable of matrimony--the expression meant all that; and when Mrs. Smith entered on the housekeeping, she acted up to the meaning of the advertisement, and married Mr. Brewer. Neither had ever repented. Let that be understood. Only, Mr. Brewer, when he knew he could live in a great house, dine off silver, keep a four-in-hand, or a pack of hounds, or enter on any other legitimate mode of spending money, did none of them; but eased his mind and his pocket by such contrivances as we have seen resorted to in the presence of the beautiful Mary Morier. He tried curious experiments of what a man would do with ten pounds. He had dangerous notions as to people addicted to certain villanies being cured of their moral diseases by the administration of a hundred a year. In some round-about ways he had put the idea to the proof, and not always with satisfactory results. He held as an article of faith--nobody could guess where he found it--that there were people in the world who could go straighter in prosperity than in adversity. He never would believe that adversity was a thing to be suffered. He had replied to a Protestant divine on that subject, illustrated in the case of a starving family, that that might be, only it was no concern of his, and he would not act upon the theory. And the result
Mr. Brewer had a daughter, Claudia was her name. "A Bible name," said Mr. Brewer, and bowed his head, and felt he had done his duty by the girl. What more could he do? She went to school, and was at school when he was paying money in Mrs. Morier's parlor. She was then ten years old; and being a clever child, she had, in the holidays just over, chosen to talk French, and nothing else, to a friend whom she had been allowed to bring with her. A thing that had caused great perturbation in the soul of her honest father, who prayed in a wordless, but real anxiety, that the Bible name might not be thrown away on the glib-tongued little gipsy. It will be perceived that Claudia was a difficulty.
Now, when Mr. Brewer was gone out of Mrs. Morier's house, the mother took up the money, wiped her eyes, and said, "What a good boy George was." And Mary said "Yes;" and knew in her heart that if there had been any chance of George living, Mr. Brewer would never have done that.
George died. There was money, just enough for all wants. Lucia came home engaged to the married to Mr. Erskine. And when she was gone there went with her a certain seven hundred pounds, her fortune, settled--what a silly mockery Mr. Erskine thought it--on her children. The loss made the two who were left very poor. Lucia sent her mother gifts, but the regular and to be reckoned on eight-and-twenty pounds a year were gone. She who had eaten, drank, and dressed was gone too--but still it was a loss; and Mary and her mother were poor. Also, Mary had long been engaged to be married to the son of a younger branch of a great county family house, Lansdowne Lorimer by name. He was in an attorney's office in Marston. In that old-world place, the attorney, himself of a county family, was a great man. It was hard to see Lucia marry a man of money and land, young Lorimer thought, so he advised Mary to assert their independence of all earthly considerations, and marry too. And they did so.
The young man had no father or mother. He had angry uncles and insolent aunts, and family friends, all to be respected, and prophets of evil, every one of them. He had, also, a place in the office, a clear head, a determined will, a handsome person, a good pedigree, and a beautiful wife. She, also, had her eight-and-twenty pounds a year. But they gave it back regularly to Mrs. Morier; for, you know, they, the young people, were young, and they could work. Mrs. Morier never spent this money. She and Jenifer, the prime minister of that court of loyal love, put it by, against the evil day, and they had just enough for themselves and the cat to live upon without it.
The county families asked their imprudent kinsman to visit them with his bride. How they flouted her. How they advised her. How they congratulated her that she had always been poor. How they assured her that she would be poor for ever. How, too, they feared that Lansdowne would never bear hard work, nor anxiety, nor any other of those troubles which were so very sure to happen. How surprised they were at the three pretty silk dresses, the one plain white muslin, and the smart best white net. How they scorned when they heard that she and Jenifer, and her mother, and a girl at eightpence a day, had made them all. And, then, how they sunned themselves in her wonderful beauty, and accepted the world's praises of it, and kept the triumph themselves, and handed over to her the gravest warnings of its being a dangerous gift.
Dangerous, indeed! it was the pride of Lorimer's life. And Mary was accomplished, far more really accomplished than the lazy, half-taught creatures who had never said to themselves that they might have to play and sing, and speak French and Italian, for their or their children's bread. Mary had said it to herself many a time since her heart had been given to the man who was her husband. A true, brave, loving heart it was, and that which her common sense had whispered to it that heart was strong to do, and would be found doing if the day of necessity ever came. So, at that Castle Dangerous where the bride and bridegroom were staying, Mary outshone others, and was not the better loved for that; and one old Lady Caroline crowned the triumph by ordering a piano-forte for the new home at Marston, with a savage "Keep up what you know, child; you may be glad of it one day." Old Lady Caroline was generally considered as a high-bred privileged savage. But that was the only savage thing she ever said to Mary. She told Lorimer that he was a selfish, unprincipled brute for marrying anybody so perfect and so pretty. And Lorimer bore her misrepresentations with remarkable patience, only making her a ceremonious bow, and saying in a low voice, "You know better." "I know you will starve," and she walked off without an answer.
They did not starve. In fact, they prospered, till one sad day when Lorimer caught cold--and again and again caught cold--cough, pain, symptoms of consumption--a short, sad story; and then the great end, death. Mary was a widow three years after her wedding day, with a child of two years of age at her side, and an income from a life insurance made by her husband of one hundred a year. We have seen the child--grown to a beautiful girl of seventeen--we have seen her in the room with Mr. Erskine, at the inn at Hull.
Mrs. Lorimer went back to live with her mother, Jenifer, and the great white cat.
The year after this great change, Mrs. Brewer died, and Claudia at thirteen was a greater difficulty than ever. The first holidays after the departure of the good mother, the puzzled father had written to the two Miss Gainsboroughs to bring the child to Marston and stay at his house during the holidays. He entertained them for a week, and then went off on a tour through Holland. The next holidays he proposed that they should take a house at Brighton, and that he should pay all expenses. This, too, was done, and Mr. Brewer went to a hotel and there made friends with his precocious daughter in a way that surprised and pleased him. He visited the young lady, and she entertained him. He hired horses, and they rode together. He took boxes at the theatre, and they made parties and went together. He gave the girl jewelry and fine clothes, and they really got to know each other, and to enjoy life together as could never have been the case had they not been thus left to their own way. The child no longer felt herself of a different world from that of her parents--the father had a companion in the child who could grace his position, and keep her own. They parted with love and anxious lookings forward to the summer meeting. They were both in possession of a new happiness. When Mr. Brewer got back to Marston, he led a dull, dreamy life--a year and a half of widowhood passed--then he went to Mrs. Morier's, saw Mary, and asked her to be his wife. It is not easy to declare why Mary Lorimer said--after some weeks of wondering-mindedness--why she said "Yes." She knew all Mr. Brewer's goodness. She preferred, no doubt, not to wound a heart that had so often sympathized with the wounded. She never, in her life, could have borne to see him vexed without great vexation herself. She liked that he should be rewarded. She was interested in Claudia. She liked the thought of two hundred a year settled on her mother. She liked to feel that her own little Mary might be brought up as grandly as any of those little saucy "county family" damsels, her cousins, who already looked down on her, and scorned her pink spotted calico frock.
Mary and Mr. Brewer walked quietly to church; Mrs. Morier still in astonishment, and Jenifer "dazed;" bat all the working people loved Mr. Brewer. And they walked back, man and wife, to her mother's house, and had a quiet substantial breakfast before they started for London. And when there Mr. Brewer told her that they were not to return to the respectable
In due time, after perhaps six months of wandering, and of preparation, Mr. and Mrs. Brewer arrived at their new home, made glorious by all that taste and art could do, with London energy working with the power of gold. With them came Claudia. The child loved her new mother with an abandonment of heart and a perfect approval. She was still too young to argue, but she was not too young to feel. The mother she had now got, though not much more than ten years older than herself, was the mother to love, admire, delight in--is the mother who could understand her.
Then Beremouth just suited this young lady's idea of what was worth having in this world; and without any evil thought of the homely mother who had gone, there was a thought that "Mother-Mary," as Mrs. Brewer was called by her step-daughter, looked right at Beremouth, and that another class of person would have looked wrong there--so wrong that her father under such circumstances would never have put himself in the position of trying the experiment.
Minnie Lorimer was very happy in her great play-ground; for all the world, and all life, was play to little Minnie. She loved her new sister; and the new sister patronized and petted her, so all seemed right. It was, indeed, a great happiness for Claudia that her father had chosen Mary Lorimer. Claudia was a vixenish, little handsome gipsy; very clever, very high-spirited, full of life, health, and fun--a girl who could have yielded to very few, and who brought the homage of heart and mind to "Mother-Mary," and rejoiced in doing it. These two grew to be great friends, and when after three years Claudia came home and came out, all parties were happy.
In the meantime Mr. Brewer's way in the world had been straight, plain, and rapidly travelled. The county was at his feet. Mary was no longer congratulated on having been brought up to poverty. Behind her back there were plenty of people to say that Mr. Brewer was happy in having for his wife a well connected gentlewoman. Her pedigree was told, her poverty forgotten. Her singing and playing, dancing and drawing, were none the worse for unknown thousands a year. And people wondered less openly at the splendor of velvets and diamonds than they had at the new muslin gown. To Mary herself life was very different in every way. Daily, more and more, she admired her husband, and approved of him. It was the awakening into life of a new set of feelings. She knew none of the love and devotion she had felt for her first husband. Mr. Brewer never expected any of it. But he intended that she should, in some other indescribable manner, fall in love with him, and she was doing it every day--which thing her husband saw, and welcomed life with great satisfaction in consequence.
It was when Claudia came out that the man we have seen, Horace Erskine, first came to them. He was just of age. Mary did not like him. She could give no reason for it. Her sister had always praised him--but Mary could not like him. He came to them for a series of gay doings, and Mr. Brewer admired him, and Claudia--poor little Claudia! She gave him that strong heart of hers; that spirit that could break sooner than bend was quite enslaved--she loved him, and he had asked for her love, and vowed a hundred times that he could never be happy without it. He asked her of her father, and Mr. Brewer consented. It was not for Mary to say no; but her heart went cold in its fear, and she was very sorry.
The Erskines in Scotland were delighted--all deemed doing well. But when Horace Erskine talked to Mr. Brewer about money, he was told that Claudia would have on her marriage five thousand pounds; and ten thousand more if she survived him would be forthcoming on his death-- that was all. "Enough for a woman," said Mr. Brewer; and Erskine was silent. It went on for a few weeks, Horace, being flighty and odd, Claudia, for the first time in her life, humble and endearing. Then he told her that to him money was necessary; then he asked her to appeal to her father for more; then she treated the request lightly, and, at last, positively refused. If she had not enough, he could leave her. If he left her, would she take the blame on herself? It would injure him in his future hopes and prospects to have it supposed to be his doing if they parted? Yes, she said. It was the easiest thing in the world. Who cared?--not he of course--and, certainly, not Claudia Brewer. It broke her heart to find him vile. But she was too discerning not to see the truth; her great thought now was to hide it. To hide too from every one, even from "Mother-Mary," that her heart felt death-struck--that the whole place was poisoned to her--that life at Beremouth was loathsome.
She took a strange way of hiding it.
A county election was going on. The man whom Mr. Brewer hoped to see elected was a guest at Beremouth. An old, grey-haired, worldly, statesmanlike man. A man who petted Claudia, and admired her; and who suddenly woke up one day to a thought--a question--a species of amusing suggestion, which grew into a profound wonder, and then even warmed into a hope--surely that pretty bright young heiress liked him, had a fancy to be the second Lady Greystock. It was a droll thought at first, and he played with it; a flattering fancy, and he encouraged it. He was an honest man. He knew that he was great, clever, learned. Was there anything so wonderful in a woman loving him? He settled the question by asking Claudia. And she promised to be his wife with a real and undisguised gladness. Her spirit and her determination were treading the life out of her heart. She was sincere in her gladness. She thought she could welcome any duties that took her away from life at Beremouth, and gave her place and position elsewhere.
Mary suspected much, and feared everything. But Claudia felt and knew too much to speak one word of the world of hope and joy and love that had gone away from her. She declared that she liked her old love, and gloried in his grey hairs, and in the great heart that had stooped to ask for hers.
Now what are we to say of Horace Erskine? Was he wholly bad? First, he had never loved Claudia with a real devotion. He had admired her; she had loved him. He had gambled--green turf and green cloth--gambled and recklessly indulged himself till he had got upon the way to ruin, and had begun the downward path, and was glad to be stopped in that slippery descent by a marriage with an heiress. There was a sparkle, an originality, about Claudia. It was impossible not to be taken with her. But Claudia with only that fortune was of no use to him. He knew she was brave and true-hearted; so he boldly asked her to guard his name--in fact, to give him up, and not injure his next chance with a better heiress by telling the truth. He told her the truth; that he wanted money, and money he must have. She would not tell him that the worst part of her trial was the loss of her idol. It was despising him that broke her heart. But because he had been her idol she would never injure him--never tell.
So the day came, and at Marston church she married Sir Geoffrey Greystock, "Mother-Mary" wondering; Mr. Brewer believing, in the innocence of his heart, that the fancy for Horace Erskine had been a bit of the old wilfulness. "The last bit--the last," he said, as he spoke of it to her that very day, making her chilled heart knock against her side as he spoke, and kissed her, and sent her with blessings from the Beremouth that
To get away--it had more to do with her marrying than any other thought. To get away from the house, the spreading pastures, the bright garden, and above all from the old deer pond in the park--the most beautiful of all the many lovely spots that nature and art, and time and taste, had joined to create and adorn Beremouth. The old deer pond in the park! Sheltered by ancient oak; backed by interlacing boughs of old hawthorn trees; shadowed by tall, shining, dark dense holly, that glowed through the winter with its red berries, and contrasted with the long fair wreaths of hawthorn flowers in the sweet smiling spring. There, in this now dreaded place, Horace Erskine had first spoken of love; and there how often had he promised her the happiness that had gone out of her life--for ever. In the terrible nights, when her broken-hearted pains were strongest, this deer pond in the park had been before her closed eyes like a vision. In its waters she saw in her sleep her face and his, so happy, so loving, so trusting, so true. Then the picture in that water changed, and she watched it in her feverish dreams with horror, but yet was obliged to gaze, and the truth went out of his face, and the terror came into hers. And, worse and worse, he grew threatening--he was cold--he had never loved--he was killing her; and she fell, fell from her height of happiness; no protecting arm stayed her, and the dark waters opened, and she heard the rushing sound of their deadly waves closing over her, as she sunk--sunk--again and again, night after night Oh, to get away, to get away! And she blessed Sir Geoffrey, and when he said he was too old to wait for a wife she was glad, for she had no wish to wait. Change, absence, another home, another life, another world--these things she wanted, and they had come. Is it any wonder that she took them as the man who is dying of thirst takes the longed-for draught, and drains the cup of mercy to the dregs?
It was a happy day to marry. Mr. Brewer had not only an excuse, but a positively undeniable reason for being bountiful and kind. For once he could openly, and as a matter of duty, make the sad hearts in Marston--and elsewhere--sing for joy. His blessings flowed so liberally that he had to apologize. It was only for once--he begged everybody's pardon, but it could never happen again; he had but this one child, and she was a bride, and so if they would forgive everything this once! And many a new life of gladness was begun that day; many a burden then lost its weight; many a record went up to the Eternal memory to meet that man at the inevitable hour.
Little Mary was the loveliest bridesmaid the world ever saw; standing alone like an angel by her dark sister's side. She was the only thing that Claudia grieved to leave. She was glad to flee away from "Mother-Mary." She dreaded lest those sweet wistful eyes should read her heart one day; and she could not help rejoicing to get away from that honest, open-hearted father's sight. Her poor, wrecked, shrunken heart--her withered life, could not bear the contrast with his free, kind, bounteous spirit that gave such measure of love, pressed down and running over, to all who wanted it. Her old husband, Sir Geoffrey, resembled that great good heart in whose love she had learnt to think all men true, more than did her young lover Horace Erskine--she could be humble and thankful to Sir Geoffrey; a well-placed approval was a better thing than an ill-placed love. So with that little vision of beauty, Minnie Lorimer, by her side, Claudia became Sir Geoffrey's wife.
Four months past, the bride and bridegroom were entertaining a grand party at their fine ancestral home, and Mr. Brewer was the father of a son and heir. Horace Erskine read both announcements in the paper one morning, and ground his teeth with vexation. He went to his desk and took out three letters, a long lock of silky hair, a small miniature--these things he had begged to keep. Laughing, he had argued that he was almost a relation. His uncle had married "Mother-Mary's" sister. She had had no strength to debate with him. She had chosen to wear the mask of indifference, too, to him. He now made these things into a parcel and sent them to Sir Geoffrey Greystock without one word of explanation. When they were gone he wrote to his uncle, begged for some money, got it, and started for Vienna. The money met him in London, and he crossed to France the same day.
In the midst of great happiness the strong heart of good Sir Geoffrey stood still. His wife sought him. She found him in his chair in a fit. On a little table by his side was the parcel just received. Claudia knew all. She took the parcel into the room close by, called her dressing room, rung for help, but in an hour Sir Geoffrey was dead; and Claudia had burnt the letters and the lock of silky hair.
The business of parliament, the excitement attendant on his marriage with that beautiful girl, the entertainment of that great house full of company--these reasons the world reckoned up, and found sufficient to answer the questions and the wonderings on Sir Geoffrey's death. But when those solemn walls no longer knew their master, Claudia, into whose new life the new things held but an unsteady place, grew ill. First of all, sleepless nights: how could she sleep with the sound of those waters by the deer pond in her ears? How could she help gazing perpetually at the picture on the pond's still surface: Horace and Sir Geoffrey, and herself not able to turn aside the death-stroke, but standing, fettered by she knew not what, in powerless misery, only obliged to see the changing face of her husband till the dead seemed to be again before her, and Horace melted out of sight, and she woke, dreading fever and praying against delirium? She was overcome at last. Terrible hours came, and "Mother-Mary's" sweet face mingling with some strong, subduing, life-endangering dream, was the first thing that seemed to bring her back to better things, and to restore her to herself.
In fact, Claudia had had brain fever, and whether or not she was ever to know real health again was a problem to be worked out by time. Would she come back to her father's house? No! The very name of Beremouth was to be avoided. Would she go abroad? Oh, no; there was a dread of separation upon her. "Somewhere where you can easily hear of me, and I of you; where you can come and see me, for I shall never see Beremouth again." It was her own thought, and so, about five miles from Beremouth, in the house of a Doctor Rankin, who took ladies out of health into his family, Claudia determined to go. It was every way the best thing that could be done, for every day showed more strongly than the last that Claudia would never be what is emphatically called "herself" again. So people said.
Dr. Rankin was kind, learned, and wise; Mrs. Rankin warm-hearted and friendly. Other patients beside Lady Greystock were there. It was not a private asylum, and Claudia was not mad; it was really what it called itself, a home which the sick might share, with medical attendance, cheerful company, and out-door recreations in a well-kept garden and extensive grounds of considerable beauty. Claudia had known Dr. and Mrs. Rankin, and had called with her father at Blagden, where they lived. And there her father and "Mother-Mary" took her three months after her husband's death, looking really aged, feeble, and strangely sad.
After a time--it was a long time--Claudia was said to be well. "Perfectly recovered," said Dr. Rankin, "and in really satisfactory health." So she was when Minnie Lorimer stood in the room at the inn in Hull, talking to that very Horace Erskine, who was bringing her home from her aunt's in Scotland to her mother at Beremouth.
"Sweet seventeen!" Very sweet and beautiful, pleasing the eye, gratifying the mind, filling the heart with hope, and setting imagination at play--Minnie Lorimer was beautiful, and with all that peculiar beauty about her that belongs to "a spoilt child" who has not been spoilt after all.
Claudia--how old she looked! Claudia, with that one only shadow on her once bright face, was still living with Dr. and Mrs. Rankin. It was Lady Greystock's pleasure to live with them. She said she had grown out of the position of a patient, and into their hearts as a friend. "Was it not so?" she asked. It was impossible to deny that which really brought happiness to everybody. "Well, then, I shall build on a few rooms to the house, and I shall call them mine, and I shall add to the coach-house, and hire a cottage for my groom and his wife--I shall live here. Why not? You will take care of me, and feed me, and scold me, and find me a good guidable creature. You know I shall be ill if you refuse."
It all happened as she chose. Hers was the prettiest carriage in the county, the best horses, the most perfectly appointed little household--for she had her own servants. Among her most devoted friends were the good doctor and his wife. Lady Greystock was as positive and as much given to govern as the clever little Claudia in school-girl days. But the arrangement was a success, and "Mother-Mary," who saw her constantly, was very glad. Only one trouble survived; Claudia would never go and stay at Beremouth. She would drive her ponies merrily to the door, and even spend an hour or two within the house, but never would she stay there--never! She used to say to herself that she dared not trust herself with the things that had witnessed her love, her sorrow, her marriage--with the things that told her of him who had ruined everything like a murderer--as he was.
And so, to save appearances, she used to say that she never stayed away from Blagden for a single night, and she never left off black. It was not that she wore a widow's dress, or covered up the glories of her beautiful hair. She was but twenty-nine at the moment recorded in the first page of this story. She was very thin and pale, but she was a strong woman, and one who required no more care than any other person; but she had determined never again to see Horace Erskine. What he had done had become known to her, as we have seen. She only bargained with life, as it were, in this way, that that man should be out of it for ever. And for this it was that she made her resolution and kept it.
Horace Erskine had been abroad for some years; but though she had felt safe in that fact, she had looked into the future and kept her resolution. And so she lived on at Blagden, doing good, blessing the poor, comforting the afflicted, visiting the sick, and beautifying all things, and adorning all places that came within her reach. Certain things she was young enough to enjoy greatly; the chief of these was the contemplation of Frederick Brewer, her half-brother, a fine boy of nine years old, for nine years of widowhood had been passed, and through all that time this boy, her dear father's son, had been Lady Greystock's delight. She loved "Mother-Mary" all the better for having given him to her father, and she felt a strong, unutterable thanksgiving that, his birth having been expected, the test of whether or not Horace Erskine loved her for herself had been applied before she had become chained to so terrible a destiny as that of being wife to a thankless, disappointed man. Terrible as her great trial had been, she might have suffered that which, to one of her temper, would have been far worse. So Fred Brewer would ride over to see his sister. Day after day the boy's bright face would be laid beside her own, and to him, and only to him, would she talk of Sir Geoffrey. Then they would ride together down to Marston to see Mrs. Morier and Jenifer, who was a true friend, and lived on those terms with the lady who loved her well; then to the market-place where the old home stood, now turned into an almshouse of an eccentric sort, with all rules included under one head, that the dear old souls were to have just whatever they wanted. Did Martha Gannet keep three parrots, and did they eat as much as a young heifer? and scream, too? ah, that was their nature--never go against a dumb creature's nature, Mr. Brewer said there was always cruelty in that--and did they smell, and give trouble, and would they be mischievous, and tear Mrs. Betty's cap? Indeed. Mr. Brewer was delighted. An excellent excuse for giving new caps to all the inmates, and to look up all troubles, and mend everybody's griefs--such an excellent thing it was that the fact of three parrots should lead to the discovery of so many disgraceful neglects that Mr. Brewer begged leave to apologize very heartily and sincerely while he diligently repaired them. It was a very odd school to bring up young Freddy in. But we are obliged to say that he was not at all the worse for it.
And here we must say what we have not said before. Mr. Brewer was a Catholic. He and Jenifer were Catholics; Mrs. Brewer had not been a Catholic; and Claudia had been left to her mother's teaching. When Freddy was born, Mr. Brewer considered his ways. And what he saw in his life we may see shortly. He had been born of a Catholic mother who had died, and made his Protestant father promise to send him to a Catholic school. He had stood alone in the world, he had always stood alone in the world. He seemed to see nothing else. Three miles from Marston was a little dirty sea-port, also a sort of fishing place. A place that bore a bad character in a good many ways. Some people would have finished that character by saying that there were Papists there. To that place every Sunday Mr. Brewer went to mass. Many and many a lift he had given to Jenifer on those days. How much Jenifer's talk assisted his choice of Mary for his wife, we may guess. When Freddy was born Jenifer said her first words on the subject of religion to Mr. Brewer: "You will have him properly baptized:" "Of course." "Order me the pony cart, and I'll go to Father Daniels." "I must tell Mrs. Brewer." "Leave that to me--just send for the cart." It was left to Jenifer. By night the priest had come and gone. It had not been his first visit. He had been there many times, and had known that he was welcome. The Clayton mission had felt the blessing of Mr. Brewer's gold. He had seldom been at the house in the market-place in Marston, but at Beremouth Mary had plucked her finest flowers, and sent them back in the old gentleman's gig, and he had been always made welcome in her husband's house with a pretty grace and many pleasant attentions. Now, when Freddy was baptized, Mr. Brewer went to his wife and bent over her, and said solemnly, "Mary--my dear wife; Mary--I thank thee, darling. I thank thee, my love." And the single tear that fell on her cheek she never forgot.
Then Mr. Brewer met Jenifer at his wife's door. "It's like a new life, Jenifer." And the steady-mannered woman looked in his bright eyes and saw how true his words were.
"It's a steady life of doing good to everybody that you have ever led, sir. It was a lonely life once, no doubt. I was dazed when she married you. But, eh, master; I have that to think about, and that to pray for, that a'most makes me believe in anything happening to you for good, when so much is asked for, day and night, in my own prayer."
"Put us into it; let me and mine be in Jenifer's prayer," he said, and passed on.
PART II.
Mary Lorimer returned in safety to Beremouth under Horace Erskine's care, welcomed as may be supposed by the adopted father and her mother. Not that "Mother Mary," as Lady Greystock in the old Claudia Brewer days used to call her, could ever welcome Horace. She had never liked him; she had always felt that there was some unknown wrong about his seeking and his leaving Claudia; she had been glad that a long absence abroad had kept him from them while her darling Mary had been growing up; and it was with a spasm of fear that she heard of his spending that autumn at her sister's. And yet she had consented to his bringing Mary home. Yes, she had consented, for Mr. Brewer in his overflowing hospitality had asked him to come to them--had regretted
Nine years does a great deal; it may even pay people's debts sometimes. But it had not paid Horace Erskine's debts: on the contrary, it had added to them with all the bewildering peculiarities that belong to calculations of interests and compound interests. He had got to waiting for another man's death. How many have had to become in heart death-dealers in this way! It was known that he would be his uncle's heir, and his uncle added to what he supposed Horace possessed a good sum yearly; making the man rich as he thought, and causing occasionally a slight passing regret that Horace was so saving. "He might do so much more if he liked on his good income," the elder Mr. Erskine would say. But he did not know of the many sums for ever paying to keep things quiet till death, the great paymaster, should walk in and demand stern rights of himself, the elder, and pass on the gold that we all must leave behind to the nephew, the younger one.
But in the nine years that had passed since the coward took his revenge on a brave woman by doing that which killed her husband, great things had happened to pretty Minnie Lorimer. The "county people" had been after her--those same old families who had flouted her mother, and prophesied eternal poverty to her poor pet baby--fatherless, too! a fact that finished the story of their faults with a note of peculiar infamy.
That a man of good family should marry without money, become the father of a lovely child, and die--that the mother should go back to that old poverty-stricken home where that stiff-looking maid-servant looked so steadily into the faces of all who stood and asked admittance--that they should pretend to be happy!--altogether, it was really too bad.
Why did not Mrs. Lorimer, widow, go out as a governess? Who was to bring up that unfortunate child on a paltry one hundred a year? Of course she begged for help. Of course they were supported by Mr. Erskines's charity. A pretty humiliation of Lorimer's friends and relations!
Altogether, the whole of the great Lansdowne Lorimer connection had pronounced that to have that young widow and her daughter belonging to them was a trial very hard to bear. They had not done talking when Mary made that quiet walk to church--no one but her mother and Jenifer being in the secret--and reappeared in the county after a few months' absence as mistress of Beremouth. Mr. Brewer had counted his money, and had told the world what it amounted to. And this time he never apologized, he only confessed himself a person scarcely deserving of respect, because he had done so little good with the mammon of unrighteousness. But Mary now would tell him how to manage. He did perhaps take a little to the humble line. He hoped the world would forget and forgive his former shortcomings; such conduct would assuredly not now be persevered in; and that resolution was fulfilled without any doubt. The splendors of Beremouth were something to talk about, and the range of duties involved in a large hospitality were admirably performed.
Old Lady Caroline, whose pianoforte survived in Mrs. Morier's house at Marston, considered the matter without using quite as many words as her neighbors. "That man will be giving money to Lorimer's child." She was quite right. He had already invested five thousand pounds for Minnie. Lady Caroline (what an odd pride hers was!) went to Beremouth, and got upon business matter with "Mother Mary."
She would give that child five thousand pounds in her will if Mr. Brewer would not give her anything. Alas! it was already given. Mr. Brewer used to count among his faults that, with him, it was too much a word and a blow, especially when a good action was in question, and this curious unusual fault he had decidedly committed in the case of Minnie Lorimer. The money was hers safe enough, invested in the hands of trustees. "Safe enough," said Mr. Brewer exultingly; and then, looking with a saddened air on Lady Caroline, he added, gravely, that it couldn't be helped! "The man's a saint or a fool, I can't tell which," was Lady Caroline's very cute remark. "The most unselfish idiot that ever lived. Does Mary like him, or laugh at him, I wonder?"
But Lady Caroline cultivated Mr. Brewer's acquaintance. Not in an evil way, but because she had been brought up to use the world, and to slave all mankind who would consent to such persecution. Not wickedly, I repeat, but with a fixed intention she cultivated Mr. Brewer, and she got money out of him.
Mr. Brewer still made experiments with ten pounds. He helped Lady Caroline in her many charities, as long as her charities were confined to food and clothing, so much a week to the poor, and getting good nursing for the sick. But once Lady Caroline used that charity purse for purposes of "souping"--it has become an English word, so I do not stop to explain it--and then Mr. Brewer scolded her. Nobody had ever disputed any point with Lady Caroline. But Mr. Brewer explained, with a most unexpected lucidity, how it would be right for him to make her a Catholic, and yet wrong for her to try her notions of conversion on him.
Lady Caroline kept up the quarrel for two years. She upbraided him for his neglect, on his own principles, of Claudia. She abused him for the different conduct pursued about his son. Mr. Brewer confessed his faults and stood by his rights at the same time. Two whole years Lady Caroline quarrelled, and Mr. Brewer never left the field. And afterward, some time after, when Lady Caroline was in her last illness, she said: "I believe that man Brewer may be right after all." When she was dead young Mary Lorimer had double the sum that had been originally offered, and Freddy her largest diamond ring.
But another thing had to come out of all this. Mrs. Brewer became a Catholic; and that fact had made her recall her daughter to her side--that fact had made Horace Erskine say, at the inn at Hull, that he dreaded for the girl he, spoke to the influence of the home and the people she was going to--that fact had brought that passion of tears to Mary Lorimer's eyes, and had made her feel so angrily that he had taken an advantage of her.
Here, then, we are back again to the time at which we began the story. Mary got home and was welcomed.
The day after their arrival, if we leave Beremouth and its people, and go into Marston to Mrs. Morier, "old Mrs. Morier" they called her now, we shall see Jenifer walk into the pleasant upstairs drawing-room, where the china glittered on comer-shelves, and large jars stood under the long inlaid table, and say to her mistress: "Eleanor is come, if you please, ma'am."
Mrs. Morier looked up from her knitting. She had been sitting by the window, and the beautiful old lady looked like a picture, as Jenifer often declared, as she turned the face shadowed by fine lace toward her servant with a sweet, gentle air, and smiling said, "And so you want to go to Clayton--and Eleanor is to stay till you come back?" "Yes, ma'am--it's the anniversary." "Go, then," said the gentle lady. "And you must not leave me out of your prayers, my good Jenifer; for you may be sure that I respect and value them." "I'll be back in good time," said Jenifer; and the door closed, and Mrs. Morier continued her knitting.
Soon she saw from the window that incomparable Jenifer. Her brown light stuff gown, the black velvet trimming looking what Jenifer called rich upon the same. Buttons as big as pennies all the way down the front--the good black shawl with the handsome border that had been Mr. Brewer's own present to her on the occasion of his wedding; the fine straw bonnet and spotless white ribbon--the crowning glory of the black lace veil--oh, Jenifer was somebody, I can tell you, at Marston; and Jenifer looked it.
It was with nothing short of a loving smile that Mrs. Morier watched her servant. Servant indeed, but true, tried, and trusty friend also; and when the woman was
I think that this Eleanor was perhaps about eight-and-twenty years of age. She was strikingly beautiful. Perhaps few people have ever seen anything more faultlessly handsome than this young woman's form and face. She looked younger than she was. The perfectly smooth brow and the extraordinary fair complexion made her look young. No one would have thought, when looking at Eleanor, that she had ever worked. If the finest and loveliest gentlewoman in the world had chosen to put on a lilac cotton gown, and a white checked muslin apron, and bring up Mrs. Morier's early tea, she would perhaps have looked a little like Eleanor; provided her new employment had not endowed her with a momentary awkwardness. But admiration, when looking at this woman, was a little checked by a sort of atmosphere of pain--or perhaps it was only patience--that surrounded the beautiful face, and showed in every gesture and movement, and rested on the whole being, as it were.
Eleanor suffered. And it was the pain of the mind and heart, not of the body--no one who had sufficient sensibility to see what I have described could ever doubt that the inner woman, not the outer fleshly form of beauty, suffered; and that the woe, whatever it was, had written patience on that too placid brow.
"And are they all well at Dr. Rankin's?" "Very well, ma'am, I believe. I saw Lady Greystock in her own rooms an hour before I came away. I said that I was coming here, and she said"--Eleanor smiled--"Lady Greystock said, ma'am, 'My duty to grandmamma Morier--mind you give the message right.'"
"Ah," said Mrs. Morier, "Lady Greystock is wonderfully well." "There is nothing the matter with her, ma'am." "Except that she never goes to Beremouth." What made the faint carnation mount to Eleanor's face?--what made the woman pause to collect herself before she spoke?--"Oh, ma'am, she is right not to try herself. She'll go there one day." "I suppose you like being at Dr. Rankin's?" "Very much. My place of wardrobe-woman is not hard, but it is responsible. It suits me well. And Mrs. Rankin is very good to me. And I am near Lady Greystock." "How fond you are of her!" "There is not anything I would not do for her," said the woman with animation. "I hope, indeed Dr. Rankin tells me to believe, that I have had a great deal to do with Lady Greystock's cure. She has treated me like a sister; and I can never feel for any one what I feel for her." "Lady Greystock always speaks of you in a truly affectionate way. She says you have known better days." "Different days; I don't say better. I have nothing to wish for. Ever since the time that Lady Greystock determined on staying at Blagden, I have been quite happy." "You came just as she came." "Only two months after." "And did you like her from the first?" "Oh, Mrs. Morier, you know she was very ill when she came. I never thought of love, but of every care and every attention that one woman could show to another. Had it been life for life, I am sure she might have had my life--that was all that I then thought. But when she recovered and loved me for what I had done for her, then it was love for love. Lady Greystock gave me a new life, and I will serve her as long as I may for gratitude, and as a thanksgiving."
When Eleanor was gone, her pleasant manner, her beauty, the music of her voice, and the indescribable grace that belonged to her remained with Mrs. Morier as a pleasant memory, and dwelling on it, she lingered over her early tea, and ate of hashed mutton, making meditation on how Eleanor had got to be Jenifer's great friend; and whether their both being Catholics was enough to account for it.
This while Jenifer walked on toward Clayton. She stood at last on the top of a wide table-land, and looked from the short grass where the wild thyme grew like green velvet, and the chamomile gave forth fragrance as you trod it under foot, down a rugged precipice into the little seaport that sheltered in the cove below. The roofs of the strange, dirty, tumble-down houses were packed thickly below her. The nature of the precipitous cliff was to lie in terraces, and here and there goats and donkeys among the branching fern gave a picturesque variety to the scene, and made the practical Jenifer say to herself that Clayton Cove was not "that altogether abominable" when seen to the best advantage on the afternoon of a rich autumn day. A zigzag path, rather difficult to get upon on account of the steepness of the broken edge and the rolling stones, led from Jenifer's feet down to the terraces; short cuts of steps and sliding stones led from terrace to terrace, and these paths ended, as it appeared to the eye, in a chimney-top that sent up a volume of white smoke, and a pleasant scent of wood and burning turf. By the side of the house that owned the chimney, which was whitewashed carefully, and had white blinds inside the green painted wood-work of small sash windows, appeared another roof, long, high, narrow, with a cross on the eastern gable, and that was the Catholic chapel--the house Father Daniels lived in; and after a moment's pause down the path went Jenifer with all the speed that a proper respect for her personal safety permitted. When the woman got to the last terrace, she opened a wicket gate, and was in a sunny garden, still among slopes and terraces, and loaded with flowers. Common flowers no doubt, but who ever saw Father Daniels's Canterbury bells and forgot them? There, safe in the bottom walk, wide, and paved with pebbles from the beach, Jenifer turned not to the right where the trellised back-door invited, but to the left, where the west door of the chapel stood open--and she walked in. There was no one there. She knelt down. After a while she rose, and kneeling before the image of our Lady, said softly: "Mother, she had no mother! Eleven years this day since that marriage by God's priest, and at his holy altar--eleven years this day since that marriage which the laws of the men of this country deny and deride. Mother, she had no mother! Oh, mighty Mother! forget neither of them. Remember her for her trouble, and him for his sin." Not for vengeance but for salvation, she might have added; but Jenifer had never been accustomed to explain her prayers. Then she knelt before the adorable Presence on the altar, and her prayer was very brief--"My life, and all that is in it!"--was it a vain repetition that she said it again and again? Again and again, as she looked back and thought of what it had been; as she thought of that which it was; and knew of the future that, blessed by our Lady's prayers, she should take it, whatever it might be, as the will of God. And so she said it; by so doing offering herself. One great thing had colored all her life; had, to her, been life-- her life; she, with that great shadow on the past, with the weight of the cross on the present, with the fear of unknown ill on the future, gathered together all prayer, all hope, all fear, and gave it to God in those words of offering that were, on her lips, an earnest prayer; the prayer of submission, of offering, of faith--"My life, and all that is in it."
Jenifer could tell out her wishes to the Mother of God, and had told them, in the words she had used, but it was this woman's way to have no wishes when she knelt before God himself. "My life, and all that is in it;" that was Jenifer's prayer.
After a time she left the chapel, putting pieces of money, many, into the church box, and went into the house. She knew Mrs. Moore, the priest's housekeeper, very well. She was shown into Father Daniels's sitting-room. He was
"And what is his real name?"
"Horace Erskine," said Jenifer.
"What!" exclaimed Father Daniels, with an unusual tone of alarm in his voice. "The man who was talked of for Lady Greystock before she married--the nephew of Mrs. Brewer's sister's husband!" "Yes, sir." "Is she sure?" "No. She has not seen him. But she has traced him, she thinks. Corny Nugent, who is her second cousin, and knew them both when the marriage took place, went as a servant to the elder Mr. Erskine, and knew Henry Evelyn, as they called him in Ireland, when he came back from abroad. He thought he knew him. Then Horace Erskine, finding he was an Irishman, would joke him about his religion, and how he was the only Catholic in the house, and how he was obliged to walk five miles to mass. Time was when Mr. Erskine, the uncle, would not have kept a Catholic servant. But since Mr. and Mrs. Brewer married, he has been less bigoted. He took Corny Nugent in London. It was just a one season's engagement. But when they were to return to Scotland they proposed to keep him on, and he stayed. After a little Horace Erskine asked him about Ireland; and even if he knew such and such places; and then he came by degrees to the very place--the very people--to his own knowledge of them. Corny gave crafty answers. But he disliked the sight of the man, and the positions he put him into. So he left. He left three months ago. And he found out Eleanor's direction, and told her that surely--surely and certainly--her husband, Henry Evelyn, was no other than his late master's nephew, who had been trying to marry more than one, only always some unlooked-for and unaccountable thing had happened to prevent it. Our Lady be praised, for her prayers have kept off that last woe--I make no doubt--thank God!"
"How many years is it since they married?" "Eleven, to-day. I keep the anniversary. He is older than he looks. He is thirty-two, this year, if he did not lie about his age, as well as everything else. He told Father Power he was of age. He said, too--God forgive him--that he was a Catholic."
"But when I followed Father Power at Rathcoyle," said the priest, "there was no register of the marriage. I was sent for on the afternoon of the marriage day. I found Father Power in a dying state. He was an old man, and had long been infirm. The marriage was not entered. It was known to have taken place. Your niece and her husband were gone. I walked out that evening to your brother's farm. He knew nothing of the marriage. He had received a note to say that Eleanor was gone with her husband, and that they would hear from them when they got to England. Why Father Power, who was a saintly man, married them, I do not know. It was unlawful for him to marry a Catholic and a Protestant. If your sister went through no other marriage, she has no claim on her Protestant husband. If she could prove that he passed himself off as a Catholic, she might have some ground against him--but, can she?"
"No, sir; on the contrary, she knew that she was marrying a Protestant; she had hopes of converting him; she learnt from himself, afterward, that he had deceived the priest. She had said to him that she would many him if Father Power consented. He came back and said that the consent had been given. He promised to marry her in Dublin conformably to the license he had got there--or there he had lived the proper time for getting one, so he declared. But I have ceased to believe anything he said. Then my brother wrote the girl a dreadful letter to the direction in Liverpool that she had sent to him. Then, after some months, she wrote to me at Marston. She was deserted, and left in the Isle of Man. She supported herself there for more than a year. I told Mr. Brewer that I knew a sad story of the daughter of a friend, and one of her letters, saying her last gold was changed into silvery and that she was too ill and worn oat to win more, was so dreadful, that I feared for her mind. So Mr. Brewer went to Dr. Rankin, and got her taken in as a patient, at first, and when she got well she was kept on as wardrobe-woman. She had got a tender heart; when she heard of Lady Greystock's trial, she took to her. Dr. Rankin says he could never have cured Lady Greystock so perfectly nor so quickly, but for Eleanor."
"That is curious," said Father Daniels, musingly. "Have you been in Ireland since the girl left it with her husband?"
"I never was there in my life. My mother was Irish, and she lived as a servant in England. She married an Englishman, and she had two daughters, my sister--Eleanor's mother--and myself. My mother went back to Ireland a year after her husband's death, on a visit, and she left my sister and me with my father's family. She married in Ireland almost directly, and married well, a man with a good property, a farmer. She died, and left one son. My sister and I were four and five years older than this half-brother of ours. Then time wore on and my sister Ellen went to Ireland, and she married there, and the fever came to the place where they lived, and carried them both off, and she left me a legacy--my niece Eleanor--oh, sir I with such a holy letter of recommendation from her death-bed. Poor sister! Poor, holy soul! Our half-brother asked to have Eleanor to stay with him when she knew enough to be useful on the farm. He was a good Christian, and I let him take the girl. She was very pretty, people said, and I wished her to marry soon. Then there came--sent, he said, by a great rich English nobleman--a man who called himself a gardener, or something of that sort. He lodged close by; he made friends with my brother. He was often off after rare bog-plants, and seemed to lead a busy if an easy life. He would go to mass with them. But they knew he was a Protestant. Eleanor knew that her uncle would not consent to her marrying a Protestant. But, poor child, she gave her heart away to the gentleman in disguise. He had had friends there--a fishing party. Sir, he never intended honorably; but they were married by the priest, and he got over the holy man, whom everybody loved and honored, with his falseness, as he had got over the true-hearted and trusting woman whom he had planned to desert."
"Well," said Father Daniels, "you know I succeeded this priest for a short time at Rathcoyle. He died on that wedding day. I never understood how it all happened. I left a record to save Eleanor's honor; but she has no legal claim on her husband--it ought not to have been done." Jenifer shrank beneath the plainness of that truth--"My life, and all that is in it," her heart said, sinking, as it were, at the sorrow that had come on the girl whom her sister had left to her with her dying breath.
"She ought not to have trusted a man who was a Protestant, and not
"And if this Henry Evelyn should turn out to be Horace Erskine, why, he will marry some unhappy woman some time, of course, and the law of the land will give him one wife, and by the law of God another woman will claim him. Oh, if people would but obey holy church, and not try to live under laws of their own inventing." "My life, and all that is in it!" Again, only that could have made Jenifer bear the trials that were presented to her.
"And if gossip spoke truth he was very near marrying Lady Greystock once--Mr. Brewer, himself, thought it was going to be." One more great act of submission--"My life, and all that is in it!"--came forth from Jenifer's heart. She loved Mr. Brewer, with a faithful sort of worship--if such a trial as that had come on him through her trouble!--that was over; that had been turned aside; but the thought gave rise to a question, even as she thanked God for the averted woe.
'"Is it Eleanor's duty to find out if Henry Evelyn and Horace Erskine are one?" "Yes," said the priest "Yes; it is. It is everybody's duty to prevent mischief. It is her duty, as far as lies in her power, to prevent sin."
"And if it proves true--that which Corny Nugent says, what then?"
"Be content for the present. It is a very difficult case to act in."
Poor Jenifer felt the priest to be sadly wanting in sympathy--she turned again to him who knows all and feels all, and she offered up the disappointment that would grow up in her heart--"My life, and all that is in it!"
She turned to go; and then Father Daniels spoke so kindly, so solemnly, with such a depth of sympathy in the tone of his voice--"God bless you, my child;" and the sign of the cross seemed to bless her sensibly. "Thank you, father!" And, without lifting her eyes, she left the room and the house; and still saying that prayer that had grown to be her strength and her help, she went up the steep rugged path to the spreading down; and then she turned round and looked on the great sea heaving, lazily under the sunset rays, that painted it in the far distance with gold and red, and a silvery light, till it touched the ruby-colored sky, and received each separate ray of glory on its breast just where earth and heaven seemed to meet--just where you could fancy another world looking into the depths of the great sea that flowed up into its gates. It seemed to do Jenifer good. The whole scene was so glorious, and the glory was so far-spreading--all the world seemed to rest around her bathed in warm light and basking in the smile of heaven. She stood still and said again, in a sweet soft voice: "My life, and all that is in it!"