The Catholic World Volume I Part 56

(TRANSLATION.)

O Lord, O my G.o.d, I have hoped but in thee; Jesu, my dearest, now liberate me: In hard chains, in fierce pains, I am longing for thee: Languis.h.i.+ng, groaning and bending the knee, I adore, I implore thou wouldst liberate me!

ASTLEY H. BALDWIN.

{398}

From The Lamp.

MANY YEARS AGO AT UPFIELD.

In the last decade of the last century, Upfield was a very healthy, pretty, prosperous town in Suffolk. Its centre was a green; undulating, irregular, and from four to five acres in area. Round it were laborers' cottages, a forge, the inn, the veterinary surgeon's house, the doctor's, the vicarage, and the Grey House, each with land proportioned to its character. A little, very little way off, was the church; belonging anciently to a Carthusian monastery, of which some ruins still existed; and beyond that, but within a quarter of a mile of Upfield, was Edward's Hall, the fine baronial residence of the Scharderlowes, who had owned it since the reign of Henry IV., and never forsaken the Catholic faith. Upfield was eloquent about the past, as well as actually charming. The church, early English, was little injured exteriorly. Inside it reminded one of a nun compelled to wear a masquerade dress. The beautiful arches and lofty roof had defied time and the vulgar rage of vicious fanaticism; so had the pavement, rich in slabs imploring humbly prayers for the repose of the dead who lay under it; but devotion and taste mourned over the changed use of the sacred building, and the characteristics thereof; for instance, a singing-gallery in the western end, with the royal arms done in red and gilded plaster, fastened to it; high deal pews for the ma.s.s of the congregation, and the squire's praying-made-comfortable one within the carved oak screen in the south transept, where had been the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

The Grey House was low, rambling, picturesque; the _beau-ideal _of a happy, hospitable old English home. It had been built by instalments, at distant intervals; and had derived its name from a Lord Grey, of Codnoure, who had formerly possessed lands in the neighborhood. At the time whence this story starts, it had been for a hundred years or more in the family of the Wickhams, who claimed to be descended collaterally from William of Wykeham--whether they were or not, had never been discussed, and therefore never formally established; nor did any one in the neighborhood, except Mr. Scharderlowe and his family, know that a former Wickham had bartered his religion for a wealthy Protestant wife, and allowed her to bring up their children in her own way. In January, 1790, George Wickham, the head of the family, died at the Grey House, of inflammation of the lungs, in his forty-second year, and no one was ever more regretted. A kinder-hearted man had never breathed. His attachments had been warm and numerous; he had helped every one whom he could help, been peculiarly gentle to the poor and his dependents, hated nothing but wickedness, and believed in that only when it was impossible to be blind to it. "Poor dear Mr. Wickham," said Mrs. Scharderlowe, when her husband told her the news; "I'm heartily sorry. I always thought he would become a Catholic--he was so liberal in all his feelings; only the last time we met, conversation taking that turn--I forget why--he said it was too bad that we could not wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as we pleased, without suffering for it; and that he was ashamed of Englishmen who forgot that their n.o.blest laws were made, and their most glorious victories won, in Catholic times. What a loss he will be to Upfield and his family!" "Yes," returned her husband, "that poor pretty little widow is about as helpless and ignorant of the world as possible; she never had occasion to think of anything but how to make {399} home happy, which I believe she did; they were a particularly united family. I hope he made a will; but I think it is likely he did not; his illness was short and painful, and previously to it no one ever had a fairer prospect of long life than he had."

Mr. Wickham's funeral was talked of in Upfield and the neighborhood many years afterward. Mr. Scharderlowe sent his carriage; the county member, and persons of every cla.s.s, attended. The clergyman from an adjacent parish, who had been requested to perform the burial-service, because the vicar, Mr. Wickham's nephew, felt unequal to it, burst into tears, and had to pause some minutes to recover himself. The widow fainted; and her eldest son Robert, a youth in his nineteenth year, tried to jump into the vault when his father's coffin was lowered.

There was a will, made during Mr. Wickham's last illness, and the vicar was sole executor and trustee, with a legacy of 500. There was ample provision for the younger children; and Robert was, when of age, to succeed to a brewery, which his father had started many years previously, and which was the most lucrative in the county. He was to learn its management from James Deane, the confidential clerk, whose salary was to be raised, and to whom 100 was left in token of Mr.

Wickham's appreciation of his services. The Grey House, and everything in it, with 200 a year, was to be Mrs. Wickham's, and at her disposal at death.

The brewery was half a mile from Upfield; Mr. Wickham had built it where it would not injure the prospect, and Deane had a pretty cottage attached to it, where he, a widower, lived with his sister and only child, a daughter. He was a Catholic, son of a former steward of Mr.

Scharderlowe's, and extremely attached to Mr. Wickham, who had taken him when a boy into the brewery, and advanced him steadily. He was a well-principled, intelligent man, who had improved himself by taking lessons in geography, grammar, and algebra, as the opportunities offered; and he was, from his position, well-known in the neighborhood. He told his sister that he feared that Mr. Wickham's death was only the beginning of trouble for his family; for he distrusted Mr. William, the vicar. "It isn't that he's a dishonorable man, Lizzy; but it isn't likely that a crack shot, a bold rider after the hounds, a gentleman who is as fond of a ball as anyone, and who takes no trouble about his own affairs, will do justice to a dead man's, though I don't doubt he means it now."

"But what harm can he do, James?"

"Why, he can ruin the younger children. Everything except the brewery and what is left to Mrs. Wickham is as much in his power as it was in his uncle's. I doubt if the poor dear gentleman wouldn't have arranged differently if he'd had longer time: it's an awful lesson to be always prepared for death; I'm sure I thought Mr. Wickham might live to be a hundred. No doubt pain and sorrow confused his mind, and anyhow it was natural that he should trust his own relations."

"He had better have trusted you, James."

"That was not to be expected, Lizzy, and I mightn't have been fit for it. There's plenty on my hands. It is a large, increasing business, and I have to teach it to Mr. Robert; and one can't tell how he'll take to it; I've been afraid he would be unsteady, but he has taken his father's death to heart uncommonly, and I hope he'll try to be as good a man."

About this time people had begun to remark that Polly Deane, then in her fifteenth year, was growing up a remarkably pretty girl; she was an old established pet of the Wickhams; her mother had been the daughter of a tenant, and so great a favorite that when she married Deane, the wedding was celebrated at the Grey House. When, two years later, she was dying of fever, Mr. and Mrs. Wickham promised to watch over her child. All that {400} they undertook they carried out generously, and Polly lived as much with them as with Aunt Lizzie, who did her part toward her well--loving her fondly, keeping her fresh, healthy, and merry, checking her quick temper, teaching her her prayers, and taking her often to Mr. Scharderlowe's, to get his chaplain's--Father Armand's--blessing; and when she was old enough, to ma.s.s and the sacraments. The fact of the Wickhams having no daughter increased their tenderness for her, and her father was delighted and flattered by Mrs. Wickham's watchfulness over her dress and manner, and Mr. Wickham's care for her education; it was the best that could be had in Upfield, and good enough to make her as charming as she need be. She did plain sewing extremely well, and some quaint embroidery of hideous designs in wool and floss silks; she had worked a cat in tent-st.i.tch, and a parrot of unknown species in cross; her sampler was believed to be the finest in the county; she could read aloud very pleasantly, spell wonderfully, write a clear, stiff hand, which one might decipher without gla.s.ses at eighty; she could not have gone up for honors in grammar, but she talked very prettily; she had never had occasion to write a letter; as to geography, she believed that the world was round, for her father and Mr. Wickham said so, and she had heard that Captain Cook had been round it; but only that she was ashamed, she would have liked to ask some one how it could be, and how it was found out; it was such a contradiction of observation, if only because of the sea; she had never seen the sea, but she believed in it, and could understand water remaining on level ground; there was the horse-pond, for instance, but that thousands of miles of roaring, angry, deep water should hold on to a round world was too much for her. You could not puzzle her in the multiplication table, but she did not take kindly to weights and measures. She had learned no history, her father could not get a Catholic to teach her, and would trust no one else, but she had picked up a few facts and notions; for instance, she had heard of Alfred the Great and his lanterns; of St. Edward the Confessor, and that he made good laws; of King Charles I., and those wicked men--she fancied Guy Fawkes was one of them--had cut his head off; when he lived she was not sure, and she hoped Mr. Wickham would never ask her, for she should not like to say that she did not know, and she was sometimes afraid that he would when he talked of Carlo's being a King Charles spaniel. It was puzzling, because she remembered Carlo a puppy, and she was sure that the king's name had been George ever since she was born. She had an exquisite ear for music, and a voice of great promise. Mr. Wickham was pa.s.sionately fond of music, and therefore, appreciating peculiarly this talent of Polly's, had engaged a good master from the county-town to teach her to play on the piano. She had profited well by his instructions, and only a few days before Mr. Wickham was taken ill, she had played the accompaniment when he sang "From the white-blossomed thorn my dear Chloe requested,"

"O lady fair," and "Oh life is a river, and man is the boat;" and he had patted her head and kissed her, and asked her for the "Slow movement in Artaxerxes" and "The harmonious Blacksmith," and--she was so glad--she had played them without one mistake. Of course she danced, and made cakes and pastry, beauty-washes, elder-wine, and various preserves and salves; knitted her father's stockings and her aunt's mittens, and read a romance whenever she could get one, but that was very rarely.

The vicar made, at any rate, a good start, fulfilling his uncle's instructions exactly; apprenticed his second son, Alfred, to the College of Surgeons--that was the most liberal way in those days of entering the medical profession--and placed him {401} to board with an old family friend, an opulent pract.i.tioner. The third son was articled to an eminent attorney; the others were sent to school. The void made by the death of those even most important and most fondly loved is soon filled up externally; how otherwise could justice be done to the living? The widow acquiesced in the separation from her children; it was her husband's plan, and for their advantage. She was sure she could not long survive him; she might even be sinful enough to wish to die, but for her sons' sakes, she was so utterly lonely. They loved her truly, the darlings; but they could not understand her, never would, unless--which G.o.d in his great mercy forbid--they ever came to suffer as she suffered. To lose such a husband! so manly, yet so tender and thoughtful. She had always looked forward to his nursing her in her last illness, and receiving her last breath. He would have grieved for her truly, she was sure of that; but he could have borne it better; he would have been of more use to the boys. Thus she mused often, weeping plentifully; but she never denied that she had many consolations. No one could have suited her better than Polly, and she was never more than a day or two absent from her. They were alike in character--simple, self-sacrificing, and affectionate in an uncommon degree. Polly's caresses seldom failed to arouse her; the gentle girl felt how much more she could have done had Mrs. Wickham been accessible to the comfort in which her own, the dear old faith, abounded; and prayed daily that it might soon be hers, and did her best. She never attempted direct consolation, but interested the mourner in some trifle, or coaxed her into conversation or employment.

Sometimes she really could not arrange some obstinate flowers; sometimes her work was all wrong, and no one but Mrs. Wickham could show her how to put it right, and Mary Hodge's baby ought to have the garment that evening. Once, when all her ingenuity failed, she was actually delighted by Betty's running in with her darling kitten, wet to the skin, just saved out of the water-b.u.t.t; Mrs. Wickham dried her eyes, and pitied it, and watched Polly wiping it, and arranging a cus.h.i.+on inside the fender for it; and at last smiled at the endearing nonsense she talked, and told her she was more than a mother to it.

Robert was quite steady; regular at the brewery, pleasant at home. Of course it would have been dull for him without Polly: her youth, beauty, and sisterly at-homeness made a glow in the dear old house.

Did he or his mother ever calculate on what was likely to come of that near companions.h.i.+p? No: their actual life engrossed them. He first drew his mother to look on while he and Polly played cribbage or backgammon, and then to play herself a little. He took in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and showed her the curious old prints, and read the odds and ends of news aloud. Music was unendurable to her for some months; but she conquered herself by degrees, and came to enjoy it.

Then Robert and Polly sang every evening, she playing the accompaniments. Summer brought the boys home for holidays, and that did good. When the anniversary of the father's death came round, its melancholy a.s.sociations pressed evidently on the widow, and she spent the greater portion of the day in her room; but she was resigned, and better than those who watched her lovingly expected her to be.

The great feature of those Christmas holidays was Alfred's return in an altered character. He had left Upfield a lout--the despair of his mother and the maids; who were the more provoked, because he was undeniably the handsomest of the family. To keep him clean, or make him put on his clothes properly, had been impossible. He had credit for talent; for, when sufficiently excited, he wrote what were deemed wonderfully pretty {402} verses, and he was quick at repartee and sarcasm; but he had been in perpetual disgrace at school, and silent and awkward--sulky as a bear, his brothers called him at home. He made a great sensation on the first evening of his return from London: he was fluent in conversation, perfectly well dressed, and--chief marvel--had clean, carefully-shaped nails. Polly smiled, wondered, and said to herself that he was really very handsome, and sang beautifully. All the Wickhams sang, but none of them, she thought, could be compared to him. The change was not agreeable to Robert, and he showed it; grumbled in an undertone about fops; and asked his brother if he could play cricket or quoits, or skate, or take a five-barred gate, or shoot snipe.

Alfred yawned, and replied:

"My dear Bob, don't you remember that I was never fond of trouble?

Those rough amus.e.m.e.nts are very well for country gentlemen and farmers; and I give them up to them with all my heart. As to skating, you none of you know anything about it; you should see the gentlemen, and elegant ladies too, cutting out flowers, and other complicated figures, on the Serpentine."

Then addressing himself to his mother and Polly--Robert's countenance lowering as he observed the innocent girl's natural interest in such-topics--he talked about the last drawing-room and the fas.h.i.+onable plays. He had seen _The School for Scandal_ and _The Haunted Tower,_ at Drury Lane; _Oth.e.l.lo_ and _The Conscious Lovers_, at Covent Garden, and he recited--really well--some of the tender pa.s.sages in _Oth.e.l.lo_.

Next he described the lying-in-state of the Duke of c.u.mberland; the trial and execution of Jobbins and Lowe for arson; the recent storms, which had not touched Upfield, but had been terrible elsewhere--chimneys killing people in their beds, the lightning flowing like a stream of fluid from a gla.s.shouse. And no one interrupted him, till Robert said, savagely:

"That fellow will talk us all deaf."

"Not this time, Bob: you and I will sing 'Love in thine eyes' now. I know Polly will play for us."

They did it; Alfred directing the sentiment to her, so as to make her feel shy and uncomfortable, and his brother vowing inwardly that "he'd give that puppy a good thras.h.i.+ng before he went back to London, if he didn't mind what he was about."

Alfred had seen a good deal of what country folk call "finery" in London; but he declared that breakfast at home was unrivalled, particularly in winter. There was the superb fire of coal and oak blocks, throwing a glow on the ma.s.sive family plate and fine, spotless damask: such a silver urn and teapot were not often seen. Further, the young gentleman inherited a family predilection for an abundant show of viands; liked to see--as was usual at an everyday breakfast there--a ham just cut, a cold turkey, round of beef, and delicate clear honey, with other sweet things, for which his mother's housekeeping was famed. This was not all. The room formed one side of a light angle in the picturesque old house, and from two sides of the table one could see a magnificent pyrocanthus, the contrast between its scarlet berries and the table-cloth positively delicious.

Robert and Alfred lingered one morning after the rest of the family had left this room. Alfred was considering that it might be possible to enjoy life in the country; Robert was watching him, half-curiously, half-jealously: he did not believe that his brother was handsomer than himself; but he detested the ease of manner and ready wit that gave him ascendancy disproportioned to his years. He threw himself back in a large armchair, stretched his legs, and said: "I'm not sure that I don't envy you, Bob, after all."

"Your condescension is great certainly. Have you been all this time finding out that it is a good thing to be George Wickham's eldest son?"

{403}

"Ah, yes!--eldest son. Well, it's a comfort for the younger ones that there's no superior merit in being born first. But I'm not going to philosophize; it's too much trouble, and not your line. But, really, to breakfast here every morning in all this splendid comfort, the prettiest and gentlest of mothers pressing you to eat and drink more than is good for you; and that lovely fairy, Polly--that perfect Hebe --flitting about--is more than even an eldest son ought to enjoy. How sorry you will be next year, when you come of age, unless"--and he looked searchingly, through half-closed eyes, at Bob.

"Why, pray? And unless what?"

"Only that I conclude you will then set up a house of your own, unless-- as it is evident my mother could not part from pretty Polly--unless you arrange to live here, and marry our pet."

Strange flus.h.i.+ngs and palenesses pa.s.sed over Robert's face, and he had to master a choking in his throat and heaving of his chest before he spoke. He had never had his hidden feelings put into words before--he had not even any definite intention about the young girl whom his eye followed stealthily every where, and whose voice, the rustling of whose dress even, was music to him. He only knew that he should throttle any one who laid a finger on her. He had not guessed that any one connected him with her, even in thought; and now here was all that was most secret and sacred in his heart dragged out, and held mockingly before him by a boy two years younger than himself. It seemed to him hours instead of seconds before he spoke, and his voice had the pa.s.sionate tremulousness which betrays great interior tumult; he was sure that he should say something he would rather not say, but conscious every moment's delay gave an advantage to his abhorred tormentor. Without raising his eyes, he said hoa.r.s.ely, "The Wickhams are proud--they don't make low marriages."

"Upon my word, Bob," returned his brother patronizingly, "I respect you; I did not give you credit for so much good sense. The girl's a perfect beauty, no doubt. What a sensation she'd make in London! But, after all, she's our servant's daughter, and old Molly Brown's grandchild. Then, again, that unlucky religion of hers! The Scharderlowes throw a respectability over it here, for they are well-born and wealthy, but anywhere else it would be extremely awkward for you. I confess I had a motive for sounding you. Farmer Briggs's eldest son hinted to me yesterday that he should be happy to lay West Hill at Polly's feet."

"He 's an insolent rascal!" said Robert furiously.

"My dearest Bob, why? The poor fellow has eyes, and uses them; and one would not wish our Hebe to be an old maid."

"I say," reiterated Robert, deadly pale, and stamping, "he's an insolent rascal; and if I catch him coming to this house I'll tell him so. A rustic boor like that to hint at marrying a girl who has always been my parents' pet, and is my mother's favorite companion--"

He stopped abruptly; and his brother, who was a perfect mimic, continued in precisely his tone, "And is so dear to Robert Wickham, that he will not hear her name coupled with another man's--"

He had gone too far; Robert's indignation boiled over--he sprang at him--and before he had time to stir, struck him a blow between the eyes, which brought sparks from them, and blood from his nose. A crash and struggle followed, which Polly heard. She ran to the room, antic.i.p.ating nothing more than that some of the large dogs, privileged to roam about the house, were quarrelling over the cold meat. Amazed, beyond all power of words, she stood silent and very pale. Then, feeling, young as she was, instinctive womanly power over the disgraced young men, and holding herself {404} so erect that she looked a head taller than usual, she said, coldly and firmly, "I am ashamed of you!"

By that time they were ashamed of themselves. Alfred, covering his disfigured face with his handkerchief, left the room slowly. Robert, who had received no visible hurt, threw up a sash, jumped out, and when he turned to shut the window, looked earnestly and sadly at Polly, so as to bring a strange unwelcome sensation to her heart.

There was an awkwardness at dinner that day. Polly had removed the traces of the fray, and kept her counsel; but Alfred's features defied concealment. He stayed in his room with raw beef on them, and mutton-broth and barley-water for his regimen. His mother and Betty could get nothing out of him but that Bob was a fool, and had licked him for teasing him. He was by no means given to repentance; but his bruises, and a message from the vicar, desiring to see him early next morning, led him to the conclusion that he had better have "kept his tongue within his teeth." He was sufficiently humbled to receive silently unusually severe reproofs from his guardian, who had informed him that he had sent for him in order to avoid the risk of paining his excellent mother. It was not only that he knew all that Betty could tell of "the row" between the brothers, and that he denounced the "ruffianliness" of "brawling in a widowed mother's house," but that Mr. Kemp, in whose house in London he lived, had inclosed bills of disgraceful amount, in a letter complaining that Alfred's taste for pleasure threatened to be his ruin; and regretting that justice to his own family compelled him to decline retaining him as an inmate after the approaching midsummer. The young man's unusual power of pleasing, he said, made his example peculiarly dangerous.

"And now," said the vicar, "I ask you if your heart is not touched by the thought of the pain that this letter would give your dead father, were he living; and if you could bear your mother to know it? It is only for her sake that I spare you. I will beg Mr. Kemp to retract his resolution to dismiss you, if you become steadier, and I shall charge him to let it be known that I will not pay any bills that exceed the limit of your very handsome allowance: and I warn you that my natural easiness and indolence shall not prevent my being severe if you require it. As to the affair yesterday, I shall not inquire into it; but I warn you that the recurrence of anything so disgraceful shall prevent your spending your vacations at home; and I am sorry to say to one of my good uncle's sons, that I am glad he must return to town the day after to-morrow."

Alfred was surprised and alarmed, and made professions of penitence, and promises of amendment.