Chapter IV: The Ball (2)

"A sporting excursion in Oude," in the spring of 1836, comes next in order of time; and in regular order we accordingly take it, though it has pleased either Mr Colburn or the colonel to place it after the voyage down the Ganges. The colonel left Lucknow, March 2; and three days later the whole party rendezvoused at Khyrabad, consisting of "Mrs, Miss, and Brigadier Churchill, Colonel Arnold, Major Cureton, Lieut. Waugh, Dr Ross of her Majesty's 16th Lancers, and the writer of these amiable records;" to whom was soon after added, in the capacity of guide and hanger-on, "Sam Lall, by birth a Chuttree or Rajpoot, by profession a zemindar, and by inclination a sycophant and shikarree, (hunter.)" Indian field sports, with their concomitants of hogs, hogdeer, jungles, elephants, tigers, and nullahs, have been of late years rendered so familiar to stay-at-home travellers, that we shall but concisely notice the colonel's exploits in this forest campaign, which present no remarkable novelty, though detailed _con amore_, and with the two-fold zest of a sportsman and an epicure. With all deference, indeed, to the colonel, we have shrewd doubts whether the latter feeling was not the predominant one; for the death of a tiger, nine of which fell during the three weeks' foray before the rifles of himself and his companions, is evidently chronicled with less of heart-felt enthusiasm than characterises his encomiums on the hogdeer soup, the delicate floricans and black partridges, (in the preparation of bread sauce, for which, with his own hands, he earned immortal renown,) and the other materials for good living poured forth from the cornucopia of an Indian game-bag. His gastronomic fervour during this jaunt reaches at times an ecstatic pitch, which, as old Weller says, "werges on the poetical." "For him (the gastronomist) the dark rocks and arid plains of the dry Dekkan produce their purple grapes, and cunning but goodly bustard; for him burning Bundelcund its wonderful rock pigeon and ortolan inimitable; the Jumna, most ancient of rivers, its large rich Kala banse, and tasty crabs; for him yields the low and marshy Terace her elegant florican; the mighty Gunga its melting mahaseer; the Goomtee its exquisite mullet. And shall he not eat and delight in her fruits? ... Let the ass eat its thistles, and the swallow its flies _au naturel_; you and I, reader, know better!"

One day, while wading on their elephants through a deep marsh in pursuit of a tiger, the chasseurs suddenly stumbled upon a pleasant family party--"a labyrinth of huge boa-constrictors or pythons, sound asleep, floating on a bed of crushed _nurkool_, (a gigantic species of reed,) the least of them twenty feet long, and two feet in circumference. A more beautiful natural mosaic cannot be imagined: they appeared, from being wet, as if recently varnished. Perhaps they were from twenty to thirty in number, and occupied a spot of about twenty feet square. No sooner did the dreadful glistening reptiles hear the click of my rifle, and feel its ball, than they shot forth with all their vigour, and diving, disappeared in an instant under the matted roots of the tall nurkool, and, although I tried, I could not get another glimpse." One of these giant serpents, seventeen feet long, and eighteen inches in circumference, which the colonel calls a small one, was shot a few days afterwards by Colonel Arnold. The marsh and jungle swarmed with peacocks, jungle-fowl, and wild-fowl of all sorts, affording glorious sport; and, besides the smaller kinds of deer, several specimens occurred of a magnificent species of stag with twelve-tyned horns, called _baru-singa_--apparently allied to the _sambur_ and _rusa_ of the Dekkan. The comparatively small number of tigers killed was, however, a source of disappointment; since the utility of these battues, in which the superior fire-arms and appliances of the English are brought into action for the destruction of these ferocious animals, may be estimated from the damage done by them in the wilder parts of India, "which is beyond the belief even of Indo-European residents, and must, consequently, appear an exaggeration to distant Englishmen. General (then Captain) Briggs, when resident at Dhoolia in Candeish, in 1821, where his potails, or head men, were obliged to keep a register of the oxen (exclusive of sheep and goats) destroyed in their villages, reported that no less than 21,000 had been killed in three years! As no register is kept in Oude, it is impossible to register the number."

On the banks of the Mohun-nuddee the party was joined by Rajah Ruttun Sing, a chief holding a considerable tract of country under the suzerainté of Oude, who favoured them with his company while they remained in his district--a compliment which he expected to be acknowledged, as he distinctly intimated on taking leave, by the gift of a valuable fowling-piece; but this modest request was parried by the rejoinder, that none of their guns were good enough for his highness! During one of the halts, an incident occurred which strongly illustrates the inhuman apathy of the Hindoos towards any one not connected with them by the ties of caste. A man was found sitting under a tree near the camp, uttering strange cries, and the servants were desired to order him to withdraw; "they returned, saying carelessly that he was a _nutt_, or gipsy, who had been robbed." A robbery _from_ a gipsy was such a strange contradiction of terms, that the colonel went personally to enquire into the matter, when he was horror-struck by finding, that the man had been, not only plundered of his earnings by a band of Bunjarras, but frightfully mutilated and wounded, a trifle which the Hindoo servants had not thought worth mentioning. The poor wretch's arm was amputated by Dr Ross; and, being carried with the camp and carefully tended, he was at last dismissed, with a fair prospect of recovery, and with a gift of sixty rupees subscribed among the party; but not even the example of the _sahibs_ could teach the Hindoos humanity, and only the peremptory commands of Dr Ross could prevail upon his bearer to place a mattress under the sufferer! On their return march, the party were further honoured by visits from several rajahs and zemindars, all of whom were "loud in complaint against the extortions of the aumils, who constantly attempted to gather more, and sometimes twice and a half as much, as the stipulated rent, in consequence of which the zemindars were compelled to rebel;" a view of the political condition of Oude which naturally results from its anomalous position, under a sovereign nominally independent, who is at once too weak to control his own subjects, and fearful of diminishing the shadow of authority left to him by calling in the only available aid. On the 29th of March the party again reached Khyrabad, the appointed place of their separation, as it had been of their meeting; and here the narrative, as before, breaks off abruptly.

The concluding part, in order of time, of the colonel's lucubrations, contains his narrative of a voyage on the Ganges, from Allahabad, by Dhacca, to Calcutta; but the features and incidents of this navigation have been so frequently described by travellers of all sorts and kinds, from Bishop Heber and Captain Bellew to our own much-esteemed Kerim Khan, that we shall devote but brief space to it. He quitted Allahabad, as he informs us, December 5, 1839, so deeply regretted by the native population, that they determined to perpetuate his memory by the erection of a new ghât or landing-place, every brick of which was to be stamped with the letter D--a distinction which he had, no doubt, deserved by the _bonhommie_ towards both Hindoo and Moslem, which forms one of the most favourable traits in the jovial colonel's character. The Tribeenee Ghât, immediately below Allahabad, where the streams of the Jumna and the Ganges unite, is one of the holiest spots in India; to which pilgrims resort from all quarters, in the hope of securing paradise by dying at the junction of the sacred waters. The spirit of religious exclusiveness prevails here as well as in other places; and the colonel mentions his having been once an eyewitness of some rough treatment received by a _chumar_, or leather-dresser, (one of the lowest castes,) at the hands of some high caste sepoys, who were highly indignant that so mean a carcass should presume to defile the holy ground! Leaving the ghâts and devotees behind him, however, and floating down the stream in his capacious three-roomed budgerow, he passed Mirzapoor, Chunar, and even the holy city of Benares, (which he perversely spells Bunarus,) without halting; and reached without adventure or mishap the mouth of the Goomtee, where his attention was attracted by a party of eighteen young elephants, the property of the king of Oude, bathing in the river. "Of all animals, saving the Bundela goat, there is none that suffers more from change of climate than the elephant: of the numbers caught on the eastern frontier, probably not one in four survives a journey to Delhi. Bred in the darkest and most gloomy forests, they are in a great measure sheltered from heat by the eternal moisture of the cool shady bower under which they rove; and are then expected to bear all on a sudden the most intense heat, acting directly on their jet-black skins, when brought into the plains of Upper India. A very clever native told me he could make money by any thing but young elephants." Another curious fact relative to the elephant, mentioned in a subsequent chapter on the authority of Captain Broadfoot of the Madras commissariat, is, that both wild and tame elephants are extremely subject to a pulmonary disease, which proved on dissection to be tubercular--in fact, consumption! It was found to yield, however, to copious bleedings, if taken in its early stages.

The colonel's pages, at this point, are filled with digressions and dissertations on subjects somewhat miscellaneous--Aberdeen pale ale--the enormities of Warren Hastings' government--the late James Prinsep and the moral precepts of the Rajah Piyâdâsee--and a most incomprehensible rhapsody about "a red mustached member of the Bengal civil service," of which we profess ourselves utterly incompetent to make either head or tail, and strongly recommend the colonel to expunge it if the work reaches another edition. The voyage presents no incidents but the usual ones of pelicans, alligators, and porpoises: and on January 15, he arrived at Dhacca, "the once famous city of muslins." But the muslin trade has now almost wholly disappeared; and with it "the thousands of families of muslin weavers, who, from the extreme delicacy of their manufacture, were obliged to work in pits, sheltered from the heat of the sun and changes of the weather; and even after that precaution, only while the dew lay on the ground, as the increasing heat destroyed the extremely delicate thread." The jungle is in consequence advancing close upon the city, which is thus rendered almost uninhabitable from malaria--the only manufacturers which continue to flourish being those of violins, bracelets, made from a peculiar shell resembling the _Murex tulipa_, and--idols for Hindoo worship!

The colonel remained at Dhacca till February 4, awaiting ulterior orders from headquarters, and had, consequently, abundance of leisure for making himself acquainted with the place and its people. These researches, however, were not always unattended with danger; for on one occasion, while viewing the city from an elevated building, a piece of plaster was struck from the cornice near where he stood by a matchlock ball--a delicate hint that the Mussulmans disliked being overlooked. The Nawab, apparently the son of Bishop Heber's acquaintance, Shumseddowlah, still resides in the palace of his ancestors, but is described as an extravagant, uneducated youth, who has mortgaged away his income from 5000 to 200 rupees per mensem--that is, from L.6000 to L.240 per annum. The inhabitants were a mixture of almost all the creeds and nations of Asia--Chinese, Thibetans, Mugs from Arracan, Burmese, Malays, etc.; but the great majority are Hindoos, whose sanguinary goddess Kalee is adored in not less than fifty temples. The Greeks and Armenians also have each a church, the services of which, as described by the colonel, are conducted in much the same form as at Constantinople:--"But among the (Armenian) matrons only was any appearance of devotion visible; one of them, most gorgeously appareled in the Armenian fashion, with a magnificent tiara of jewels on her brow, and wearing a superb shawl, threw herself on the ground, with her head sunk between her arms, towards the altar, and remained in that position nearly five minutes. The others, being dressed _à l'Anglaise_, with stiff stays and fashionable bonnets, could not afford to indulge in such a position." The Armenians were formerly numerous in Dhacca, and are still an influential and wealthy body; the Greeks are now "few and far between," but in the palmy days of Dhacca they were a flourishing community.

Dhacca was a place abounding in strange characters from all parts of the world; and among others whom the colonel encountered, was a singular specimen of a cosmopolite, a native of Fez, who called himself a Moslem, but whom our friend vehemently suspected of being a Jew. He had been almost as great a traveller as his countryman the famous Sheikh Ebn Batuta, whose wanderings are immortalized in the pages of Maga,[10] and came last from Moulmein, with a cargo of black pepper and rubies. He had resided seventeen years in India, and proposed to the colonel, whom he claimed as a brother, "since from his own home he could reach England in ten days," that they should jointly freight a vessel with valuables, and go _home_ together! And, among other scattered facts, a casual encounter with some Chinese in the employ of the Assam Tea Company, whom the colonel considerably astonished by addressing them in their own language, introduces "the very curious fact," that at Tipperah, a civil station not more than fifty or sixty miles from Dhacca, the natives have from time immemorial used the tea which grows there abundantly, and is prepared after a fashion of their own. "And yet" (continues the colonel--and we fear there is too much truth in his remarks) "the existence of the tea-plant is but a recent discovery! Any other nation would have established a tea-manufactory at Tipperah, immediately after the first settlement, and the Yankees would have 'progressed' railroads and steam-boats for its success. India is at this moment a mine of unexplored wealth. No sooner had steam-boats appeared than coal has been discovered in every direction!" The manufacture of native iron in Bengal, which had been pressed upon Lord Hastings, as the colonel seems to imply, by himself, and at first warmly adopted by him, was objected to in the council, and ultimately abandoned, "on the grounds that it would militate against the commercial interests of Great Britain--that is, against the profits of those India stockholders, possessing votes, who followed the trade of ironmongers!" There is many a true word spoken in jest; and this and other side-cuts of the colonel at the shortsighted proceedings of the Bahadurs at Calcutta, though sometimes queerly worded, contain now and then some unpalatable facts. The administration of the present Governor-General has shown at least some _promise_ of a better state of things--and if the impulse now given to the development of the resources of India be steadily followed up, this reproach will erelong be taken away. The receipt of his final orders, however, which pointed out China as his destination, put an end to the colonel's speculations; and re-embarking on the stream of the Booree Gunga, he passed, with little incident worth noticing, through the numerous branches of the river, and the picturesque jungles of the Soonderbunds, and arrived safely, after an absence of twenty-one years, at the city of palaces--and there we leave him.

[10] May 1841.

The subject of the manufactures and products of India, is not, however, the only point connected with the internal administration, respecting which some inconvenient facts find their way to light in the colonel's pages--and with one or two of these revelations, we shall conclude our extracts. The majority of those Anglo-Indian employés, who have favoured the world with "Reminiscences" and "Narratives," are singularly free from the charge of what is familiarly termed "telling tales out of school." According to their account, nowhere is justice so efficiently administered, or its functionaries so accessible, as in our Indian empire; but here, whether from the native frankness of the colonel's disposition, or from his having nothing more to hope or fear from the old Begum in Leadenhall Street, we find this important subject placed, on several occasions, in rather a different light from that in which it is usually represented. It is well known that Sir David Ochterlony, a short time before his death, discovered by mere accident that he was enrolled as a pensioner to a large amount on the civil list of almost every native prince in Upper India, from the emperor of Delhi downwards--his principal moonshee, or native secretary, having thrown out intelligible hints, as though from his master, that such douceurs would not be without their use in securing his powerful interest at Calcutta--the moonshee himself quietly pocketing the proceeds. This was certainly an outrageous instance; but it is the direct interest of every native subordinate to screen his own misdeeds and extortions, by promoting to the utmost, in his European superior, that inaccessibility to which he is naturally but too much inclined--and the extent to which this system of exclusion is carried, may be inferred from the following anecdote. The colonel had been requested by a native landholder of high respectability, to introduce him to the house of a civilian; and on asking why he could not go by himself, was told, "I dare not approach the very compound of the house he lives in! If his head man should hear that I ventured to present myself before the gentleman without his permission, he would immediately harass me by some false complaint, or even by instituting an enquiry into the very title-deeds of my estate, which might, however falsely, terminate in my ruin. It is not long since I paid eleven hundred rupees to ---- to suppress false claims, which, if they had actually gone into court, would have cost me ten times the sum."

Of the practical effects of criminal punishments, the colonel does not speak more highly. "In the real Hindoostanee view of the subject, a convict in chains is nearly a native gentleman--a little roué, perhaps--employed on especial duties in the Company's service, for which he is well fed, and has little labour. A jail-bird can easily be distinguished after the first six months, by his superior bodily condition. On his head maybe seen either a kinkhâb (brocade) or embroidered cap, or one of English flowered muslin, enriched with a border of gold or silver lace. Gros de Naples is coming into fashion, but slowly.... Was he low-spirited, he could, for a trifling present, send to the bazar, and enjoy a nautah from the hour the judge went to sleep till daybreak next morning--nay, under proper management, he might be gratified by the society of his wife and family.... See him at work, the burkandauze (policeman) is smoking _his_ chillum, while he and his friends are sound asleep, _sub tegmine fagi_. All of a sudden there is an alarm--the judge is coming! up they all start, and work like devils for ten or fifteen seconds, and then again to repose. This is working in chains on the roads! In fact, after a man is once used to the comforts of an Indian prison, there's no keeping him out!"

All this, no doubt, is broad caricature--but "ridentem dicere verum quid vetat?" a motto which the colonel could not do better than adopt for any future edition of his eccentric lucubrations. And so Rookhsut! Colonel Sahib! may your favourite tomata sauce never pall upon your palate; and though perhaps you would hardly thank us for the usual oriental good wish, that your shadow may continue to increase, may it at least never be diminished by that worst of all fiends, indigestion!

* * * * *

BELFRONT CASTLE.

A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.

One half of the world was surprised that Reginald Belfront married Jane Holford--and the other half was equally surprised that Jane Holford married Reginald Belfront; for, considering the experience that both halves of the world must have had, it is amazing how subject they still are to surprise. To us, who have not the pleasure to belong to either half, there is very little surprising in the matter. Reginald had been for some time on a visit at the house of a distant relation--old Sir Hugh de Mawley. He had wandered through the great woods of the estate, and found them very tiresome; had strolled in the immense park, and found it dull; and, in the long evenings, had sat in the stately hall, and listened to the endless, whispered anecdotes of his host, and found them both intolerable. No wonder he started with joyful surprise when, one day in the drawing-room, he heard the rustle of a silk gown; caught the glancing of some beautiful real flowers on the top of a bright-green bonnet; and, more wonderful than all, the smile of the prettiest lips, and the glances of the clearest eyes he had ever seen in his life. The gown, the bonnet, the smiles, and eyes, all belonged to Jane Holford; and Reginald, who had, up to this time, made no great progress in the study of comparative physiology, now made such rapid strides, that he could have told you every point in which the possessor of the above-named attributes differed from the stiff and prim Miss de Mawley, who had hitherto been the sole representative of the female sex in Mawley Court. The neck and shoulders--the chin--nose--arms-- ankles--feet--not to mention the hair and eyebrows--of the new specimen, were minutely studied; and, in spite of the usual antipathy he entertained against all scientific pursuits, he felt a strong inclination to be the owner of it himself, in order to pursue his investigations at full leisure. He was no genius--hated books--disliked clever people--but prided himself on his horsemanship, his play at quarterstaff, his personal strength, and, above all, in his fine old castle in a somewhat inaccessible part of Yorkshire, which had remained in the possession of his family ever since the Conquest. Jane, on the other hand, had no castle to boast of; and probably had no ancestor whatever at any period preceding the year 1750, when her grandfather had bought an estate near Mawley Court--which had gone on improving with the improvement of the times, till her father found himself the possessor of a rent-roll of fifteen hundred a year, four sons, and six grown-up daughters. It will easily be believed that no objections to the match were raised on the part of a middle-aged gentleman, with so many reasons for agreeing to the marriage settlement proposed by Reginald Belfront; consisting, as it did, of a jointure to the widow, and the use of Belfront Castle for life, without the remotest allusion to any portion or other contingent advantage on the other side; and as Jane herself was, if possible, still more satisfied on the subject than her father, all the arrangements were rapidly made, and in less than three months after the apparition of the silk gown and other etceteras in the drawing-room, the indissoluble knot was tied, and Miss Cecilia, the second daughter, was advanced to the dignity of Miss Holford, vice Jane--promoted.

The church was all decked out with roses and other pleasing emblems of the unfading nature of connubial bliss; wreaths of sunflowers, with the same comfortable moral, were hung up over the great gate of Mawley Court; while Miss de Mawley, representing in her own person the evergreens omitted in the garlands, received the happy couple on their return from the ceremony at the head of all the female domestics, from the housekeeper down to the kitchenmaid, and led the bride and bridegroom to the table in the great hall, where old Sir Hugh was sitting in great state. They kneeled down before his chair; and, laying his hand on their heads, he began blessing; but not having practised that style of oratory so much as he ought, it rapidly degenerated into a grace--and, as lunch in the mean time was brought in, and the Holford family, and one or two of the neighbours who had been present at the ceremony, had now arrived, the eloquence of Sir Hugh was not altogether thrown away. There were several speeches and toasts, and sundry attempts at jocularity; and Sir Hugh began the story of the French countess and the waterfall at Fountainbleau; and Reginald availed himself of the somnolency of the rest of the party to slip out with his bride without being observed, just as the royal family began to suspect the secret--and, long before the incensed husband sent the challenge, the happy pair were careering onward as fast as the postboy could drive, on the first stage of their wedding tour.

A month afterwards they were in a country inn in Wales. The window at which they sat commanded a view of the beautiful vale of Cwmcwyllchly--a small river glided down in winding mazes, hiding itself behind wooded knolls, and brawling over rocks in the most playful and picturesque manner imaginable. The sun had begun to set, and was taking a last look at the prospect, with his vast chin rested on the top of Penchymcrwm, presenting to the poetical mind an image of a redfaced farmer looking over a five-barred gate--every thing, in short, that is generally met with in Tourists' Guides, as constituting a splendid view, was assembled on this favoured spot; and yet Jane heaved a deep sigh, and appeared to take no notice of the landscape.

"You're tired, my love," said Reginald; "you have walked too far up these Welsh mountains."

"I hope to get used to climbing," answered Jane; "there are plenty of hills at Belfront--aren't there?"

"Yes, we have plenty of hills; but why don't you call it home, Jane?"

"Because I have never lived there," she replied; "and a place can scarcely be called home that one has never seen."

"But you have never said you wished to see it."

"Oh, but I have wished it all the same--may we--may we go--home?"

She said the word at last, and Reginald was delighted.

"Home! to be sure--to-morrow, at daybreak; for, to tell you the truth, I don't care sixpence for fine views--in fact, I don't think there is any difference between any two landscapes--except that there may be hills in one, and none in another, or woods, or a river--but they are all exactly the same in reality. So, let us go home, my love, as fast as we can, or I'm very much afraid Mr Peeper won't like it."

"Mr Peeper?" enquired Jane. "Who is Mr Peeper?"

"You will know him in good time," said Reginald; "and I hope he will like you."

"I hope he will--I hope all your friends will like me--I will do every thing in my power to please them."

"You're a very good girl, Jane; and Mr Peeper can't help but be pleased, and I am glad of it; for it ought to be our first study to make ourselves agreeable to _him_."

"Agreeable to Mr Peeper!" thought Jane. "How strange that I never was told about him before this moment! Does he live in the castle, Reginald?" she asked.

"Certainly. One of his family has lived there ever since one of mine did; so there is a connexion between us of a few hundred years."

"Have you any other friends who live in the castle?" enquired the bride.

"I don't know whether Phil Lorimer is there just now or not; he has a room whenever he comes; and a knife and fork at table."

"Who is he?"

"A capital fellow--full of wit--and makes funnier faces and better songs than any man in Yorkshire. You will like Phil Lorimer."

"And I hope he will like me!"

"If he don't, I'll break every bone in his body."

"Oh! I beg you won't," said the bride with a smile, and looking up in Reginald's face to assure herself he spoke in joke. It was as earnest a face as if it had been of cast-iron; and she saw that Mr Lorimer's only chance of preserving a whole skin was to like her with all his might.

"Is there any one else?"

"There's Mr Peeper's assistant, Mark Lutter--a clever man, and a great scholar. I hate scholars, so he dines in the servants' hall, or far down the table--below the salt."

"Are you serious?" enquired Jane.

"Do you not like scholars?"

"What's the use of them? I never could see what they were good for--and, besides, Mr Peeper hates them too."

"Then why does he keep this man as his assistant?"

"Because if he didn't, the fellow would rebel."

"Well, you could turn him off."

"We never turn any body off at Belfront Castle. If they go of their own accord, we punish them for it if we can--if they stay, they are welcome. Mr Peeper must look to it, or Lutter will make a disturbance."

"What a curious place this castle must be," thought Jane, "and what odd people they are that live in it!" She asked no more questions, but determined to restrain her curiosity till she could satisfy it on the spot; and, luckily, she had not long to wait. Next day they started on their homeward way. As they drew nearer their destination, Jane's anxiety to gain the first glimpse of her future home increased with every mile. She had, of course, formed many fancy pictures of it in her own mind; and, as love lent the brush and most obligingly compounded the colours, there can be no doubt they made out a very captivating landscape of it between them.

"At the top of the next hill," said Reginald, "you will see the keep."

Jane stretched her head forward, and looked through the front window as if she could pierce the hill that lay between her and home. On went the horses; but the next hill seemed an incredible way off; it was now getting late, and the shadows of evening, like a flock of tired black sheep, began to lie down and rest thenselves on the vast dreary moor they were travelling over. At last Jane felt that they were beginning an ascent; and a sickly moon, that seemed to have undergone a severe operation, and lost nearly all her limbs, lifted up her pale face in the sky. The wind, too, began to whistle in long low gusts, and Reginald, who was not of a poetical temperament, as we have already observed, was nearly asleep. They reached the hill top at last, and a great expanse of rugged and broken country lay before them.

"Where is it?--on which hand?" said Jane.

"Straight before you," replied the husband; "it is only three miles off; the high-road turns off to the left, but we go through fields right on."

Jane looked with almost feverish anxiety. At a good distance in front, rose a tall black structure, like the chimney of a shot manufactory--a single, square, gigantic tower--throwing a darker mass against the darkened sky, and sicklied o'er on one of the faces with the yellow-green moonlight. There were no lights in it, nor any sign of habitation; and Jane would have indulged in various enquiries and exclamations, if the carriage had allowed her; but it had by this time left the main road, and sank up to the axles in the ruts; it bounded against stones, and wallowed in mire alternately; and all that she could do, was to hold on by one of the arm rests, as if she had been in the cabin of a storm-toss'd ship.

"For mercy's sake, Reginald, will this last long?" she said, out of breath with her exertions.

"We are about a mile from the drawbridge. I hope they have not drawn it up."

"Could we not get into the castle if they have?"

"We might fall into the moat if we tried the postern."

"Oh, gracious!--is there a moat?"--and instinctively she put her hand to her throat, for her mother had brought her up with a salutary dread of colds, and she felt a sensation of choking at the very name.

At this moment, the agonized carriage, after several groans that would have moved the heart of a highway commissioner, gave a rush downward, and committed suicide in the most determined manner, by dashing its axle on the ground--the wheels endeavouring in vain to fathom the profundity of the ruts, and the horses totally unable to move the stranded equipage. The sudden jerk knocked Reginald's hat over his eyes against the roof of the carriage, and Jane screamed when she felt the top of her bonnet squeezed as flat as a pancake by the same process, but neither of them, luckily, was hurt.

"We must get out and walk," said the husband; "it isn't more than half a mile, and we will send Phil Lorimer, or some of them, for the trunks."

He put his arm round Jane's waist, and helped her over the almost impassable track.

"We must try to get the road mended," said Jane.

"It has never been mended in our time," was the reply; and it was said in a tone which showed that the fact so announced was an unanswerable argument against the proposition of the bride.

"A few stones well broken would do it all," she urged.

"We never break stones at Belfront," was the rejoinder; and in silence, and with some difficulty, they groped their unsteady way. At last they emerged from a thick overgrown copse, in which the accident had happened, and, after sundry narrow escapes from sprained ankles and broken arms, they reached the gate. It was an immense wooden barrier, supported at each end by little round buildings--like a slice of toast laid lengthways between two half pounds of butter. It was thickly studded with iron nails, and the round piers were of massive stone, partly overgrown with ivy, and as solid as if they had been formed of one mass.

"Does any body live in those lodges?" enquired Jane.

"There is a warder in the inner court," said Reginald. "These are merely the supporters of the outer gate."

"And how are we to get in?"

"We must blow, I suppose." And so saying, Reginald lifted up a horn that was hung by an iron chain from one of the piers, and executed a flourish that made Jane put her fingers to her ears.

In a short time the creaking of an iron chain--whose recollection of oil must have been of the most traditionary nature--gave intimation that its intentions were decidedly hospitable; and with many squeaks and grunts the enormous portal turned at last on its hinges, and exposed to view a narrow winding road between two walls, which, in a short time, conducted the visitors to a long wooden bridge over a piece of stagnant water--the said bridge having only that moment been let down from the lofty position in which its two halves were kept by an immense wooden erection, which bore an awful resemblance to a scaffold. When they got over the bridge, Reginald turned round, and, imprinting a kiss on the pale cheek of the astonished bride, said--

"Welcome home, dear Jane. This is Belfront Castle!"

Jane looked round a spacious courtyard, and saw a square of low dark-looking buildings, with the enormous tower she had seen from the top of the hill rearing its thick head above all at one corner. They proceeded across the roughly-paved quadrangle, and entered a low door; ascended three steps, and opened another door. They then found themselves in a large and lofty hall, with fitful flashes of red light flickering on the walls, as the flame of the wood fire on the hearth rose or fell beneath the efforts of a half distinguishable figure, extended at full length on the floor, and puffing the enormous log with a pair of gigantic bellows. In the palpable obscure, Jane could scarcely make out the persons of the occupants of the apartment; but when the flame burnt up a little more powerfully than usual, she observed the figure of a tall man dressed in black, who shook hands with Reginald, and bowed very coldly and formally to her, when he was introduced as Mr Peeper. He seemed about fifty or sixty years of age, but very much enfeebled. He stooped and coughed, and was very infirm in his motions; but when the red glare from the hearth fell upon his eyes, they fixed themselves on Jane with such a piercing expression, that she turned away her face almost in fear. His hair was snow-white, and yet it was impossible to decide whether he was a man of the years we have stated, with the premature appearance of age, or a person of extraordinary longevity, retaining the vigorous eyes and active spirit of youth. However it was, Mr Peeper was too harsh and haughty in his approaches, and exacted too much deference from the youthful bride, to be very captivating at first. He said no welcome to the new-comer, and was stiff and unkind even to the owner of the castle. Candles were soon brought in, and Jane took the opportunity of looking round. The individual who had been busy blowing the fire now rose from his humble position, and was presented to the lady as Phil Lorimer. He bowed and smiled, and was proceeding with a compliment, in which, however, he advanced no further than the summer sun bringing out the roses, when Reginald pushed him out of the hall, with orders to get the luggage brought in from the carriage, and to be back in time for supper. Phil Lorimer seemed a man of thirty, strongly built, with a sweet voice and friendly smile; but what station he filled in the household--whether a servant, a visitor, a poor relation, or what he could be, Jane could not make out, either from his manner or the way he was treated.

"Mr Lorimer is very good-natured--very obliging, to take care of the luggage, I am sure," said Jane.

"Better that than talking nonsense about roses," replied Reginald. "Did you expect us this evening, Mr Peeper?"

"I did, Mr Reginald, and have invited a few of the neighbours to meet you."

"Who are coming?"

"Sir Bryan De Barreilles, Hasket of Norland, Maulerer of Phascald, and old Dr Howlet. They will be here soon, so you had better make haste."

"I had better not appear, love," said Jane; "no ladies are coming, and among so many gentlemen my presence might be awkward."

"By no means," replied the husband. "It wouldn't be right, Mr Peeper, for my wife to be absent from the supper-table?"

"Certainly not. It is to see _her_ the neighbours are coming."

Is this Mr Peeper to have the control of all my actions? thought Jane. Who can he be?

She took another glance at the object of her thoughts, but caught his eye fixed on her with the same penetrating brightness as before; and she cast her looks on the ground; and, whether from anger or fear, she felt her cheeks glowing with blushes.

"You will not be long gone, if you please," he said to Jane as she retired to change her dress.

"You don't seem pleased to see us, Mr Peeper," said Reginald, when Jane had gone to her room under the guidance of a very tall old woman, who walked before her, holding out a tremendously long candle, as if it were a sword, and she was at the head of a military procession.

"No, sir," replied Mr Peeper; "I am not pleased with the person you have brought here. You have gone too far from home for a wife. None of the Belfronts have ever married out of Yorkshire, and it may give rise to troubles."

"I am very sorry my wife's relations would not allow me to send for you to perform the ceremony."

"It is a bad omen," said the old man; "my predecessors have married your predecessors without a break since the conquest. It bodes no good."

"I trust no harm will happen, and that you will soon forget the disappointment."

"None of my family forget, but we will not _talk_ of it." So saying, he turned away, and arranged a goodly array of bottles on the sideboard. Reginald sat down on an oak chair beside the fire, and gazed attentively into the log.

In the mean time, Jane had followed her gigantic conductor through half a mile of passages, and reached a small room at one end of the quadrangle, and through the window (of which half the panes were broken, as if on purpose) she caught the melodious murmur of a rapid river, that chafed against the foundation walls of the castle. On looking round, the prospect was not very encouraging. Tattered tapestries hung down the walls, and waved in a most melancholy and ghost-like fashion in the wind; the floor was thinly littered over with some plaited rushes, to supply the place of a carpet; and a few long high-backed oak chairs kept guard against the wall. The fire had died an infant in its iron cradle, the grate; and the curtain of the bed waved to and fro in mournful sympathy with the tapestry round the room. Jane was so cold that she could hardly go through her toilette, simple as it was; but having at last achieved a very slight alteration in her dress, and left her bonnet on the head of an owl, which formed the ornament of one of the high-backed chairs, she endeavoured to retrace her steps; and after a few pauses and mistakes, she found her way once more into the hall.

The guests in the mean time were assembled and had seated themselves at table. On Jane's entrance they all rose, and on being respectively named by their host, bowed with cold and stately courtesy, and sat down again. The four strangers seemed all of the same ages, fifty or thereabouts--tall, hale, and dignified in their manners. Sir Bryan de Barreilles had a patch on his right eye; Hasket of Norland a deep scar on his forehead, that cut his left eyebrow into two parts, and gave a very extraordinary expression to his rigid countenance; Maulerer of Phascald had the general effect of very handsome features, marred by the want of his nose; not that there was actually no nose, but that it did not occupy the prominent position it usually holds on the human face divine, but was inserted deep between the cheeks--in fact, was a nose not set on after the fashion of a knocker, but a fine specimen of _basso-relievo_, indented after the manner of Socrates's head on a seal, and would probably have made a very fine impression. Dr Howlet was perfectly blind, and from the tone in which he was addressed by the other gentlemen, Jane concluded he was also very nearly deaf. Besides these, there were present Mr Peeper, at the foot of the table next to Reginald, and on the other side of him a thick square-built man, with a fine hilarious open countenance, who was perhaps of too low a rank to be introduced to the lady of the castle--no other in fact than the redoubtable Mr Lutter, of whom Jane had heard on her journey home.

After the serving men, with some difficulty, had brought in the supper, consisting of enormous joints of meat, hot and cold, and deposited on the sideboard vast tankards of strong ale and other potent beverages, Mr Peeper rose, and folding his hands across his breast, and bending forward his head with every appearance of devotion, muttered some words evidently intended to represent a grace; but so indistinct that it was utterly impossible to make the slightest guess at their meaning, whereupon they all fell to with prodigious activity, and cut and slashed the enormous dishes as if they had been famished for a year. Mr Lutter, after making an observation that true thankfulness was as much shown by moderate enjoyment of good gifts as by long prayers said over them, made a most powerful assault on the cold sirloin, and, of all the party, was the only one who had the politeness to send a helping to Jane. She was tired and hungry, and felt really obliged by the attention, but could scarcely do justice to the viands from surprise at the conversation of the guests.

"Ho, ho!" said Sir Bryan de Barreilles, "I once knew a thing--such a thing it was too--ho! ho!" And partly the vividness of the recollection, and principally an enormous mouthful of beef, produced a long fit of coughing--"'twill make you laugh," he continued--"'twas a rare feat--ho! ho!--even this lady will be pleased to hear it."

Jane bowed in expectation of an amusing anecdote.

"One of my tenants was going to be married; his bride was a very young creature, not more than eighteen, and on the wedding-day, as I always was ready for a joke in those days--ah! 'tis thirty years ago, or more--I asked the bridal party to the Tower. Ho! ho! such laughing we had!--Giles Mallet and Robin Henslow fought with redhot brands out of the fire, till I thought we should all have died; and Giles--the cleverest fellow and the wittiest, ho! ho!--such a fellow was Giles!--he took up the poker instead of the fir-log, and watched his opportunity, ho! ho!--it was redhot too--a good stout poker as ever you saw--and ran it clean through his cheek--you heard the tongue fizz! as it licked the hot iron--'twas a famous play. How Robin roared, to be sure, and couldn't speak plain--ho! ho! Well, the games went on; and nothing would please some of the young ones but we should see the Oubliette. 'Twas a dark hole where my forefathers imprisoned their refractory vassals, and sad stories were told about it--how that voices were heard from the bottom of it, and groans, and sometimes gory heads were seen at the top of it, looking up to the skylight, and struggling to escape, but ever tumbling back into the deep dark hole, with screams and smothered cries; a rare place for a man's enemies--but it had not been used for many years. Well--nothing would do, but when we were all merry with ale, we should all go and see the Oubliette, and a kiss of the bride was promised to the one who should go down the furthest. Now, the stone steps were very narrow at best; and were all worn away--and that was the best of it--all along the passages we went, and past the dungeon grating, till we came to the open mouth of the Oubliette. Ho! ho! how you'll laugh. Down a step went one--no kiss from the bride for him--two steps went another--some went down six steps, and one bold fellow went down so far that we lost sight of him in the darkness. Then the bridegroom, a stout young yeoman--thought it shame to let anyone beat him in daring, for so rich a prize as a kiss from the rosy lips of his bride, and down--down--he went--step after step--till finally, far down in the gloom, we heard a loud scream--such a scream--ho! ho! I can't help laughing yet when I think of it--and in a minute or two, whose voice should we hear but Giles Mallet's! _There_ was Giles, hollowing and roaring for us to send down a rope but _how_ he had got down, or _when_ he had gone down, nobody knew. However, a rope was got, and merrily, stoutly, we all pulled, but no Giles came up. Instead of him, we drew forth the bridegroom! but such a changed man. His eyes were fixed, and his face as white as silver--his mouth was wide open, and his great tongue went lolling about from side to side--and he shook his head, and mumbled and slavered--he was struck all of a sudden into idiocy, and knew nobody; not even his bride. She was sinking before him, but he never noticed her, but went moaning, and muttering, and shaking his head. Ho! ho! 'twas the comicalest thing I ever saw. And when Giles came up he explained it all. Giles had gone down deeper than any of them, and waited for the others on a ledge in the cavern; and just when the bridegroom reached it, Giles seized him by the leg, and said--'Your soul is mine'--ho! ho! 'Your soul is mine,' said Giles--and the bridegroom uttered only the loud, long scream we had all heard, and stood and shook and trembled. 'Twas a rare feat; and if you had come down last year"--he added, turning to Jane--"you would have seen the bridegroom going from door to door, followed by all the boys in the village--he never recovered. There he went, shake, shaking his head--and gape gaping with his mouth. "Twas good sport to teaze him. I've set my dogs on him myself; but he never took the least notice. 'Twas a good trick--I never knew better."

"And the bride?" enquired Jane.

"Oh, she died in a week or two after the adventure! A silly hussy--I wished to marry her, by the left hand, to my forester, but she kept on moping and looking at the idiotical bridegroom, and died--a poor fool."

"Ah! we've grown dull since those merry times," said Hasket of Norland, looking, round the empty hall, and then towards Reginald, as if reproaching him with the absence of the ancient joviality. "There were three men killed at my marriage--in fair give and take fight--in the hall, at the wedding supper. There is the mark of blood on the floor yet."

"I lost my eye at the celebration of a christening," said Sir Bryan de Barreilles. "My uncle of Malmescott pushed it in with the handle of his dagger."

"I got this wound on my forehead at a feast after a funeral," said Hasket of Norland. "I quarreled with Morley Poyntz, and he cut my eyebrow with an axe. 'Twas a merry party in spite of that."

"The Parson of Pynsent jumped on my face at a festival in honour of the birth of Sir Ranulph Berlingcourt's heir," said Maulerer of Phascald. "I had been knocked on the floor by the Archdeacon of Warleileigh, and the Parson of Pynsent trode on my nose. He was the biggest man in Yorkshire, and squeezed my nose out of sight--a rare jovial companion, was the Parson of Pynsent, and many is the joke we have had about the weight of his foot. Ah! we have no fun now--no fighting, no grinning through a horse-collar, no roasting before a fire, no singing"--

"Yes," said Reginald, "we have Phil Lorimer."

"Let him come--let us hear him," said some of the party.

"I hate songs," said Dr Howlet; "and think all ballads should be burned."

"And the writers of them, too," added Mr Peeper, with a fierce glance towards the fireplace, from which Phil Lorimer emerged.

"Oh no! I think songs an innocent diversion," said Mr Lutter, "and softening to the heart. Sit near me, Mr Lorimer."

"Make a face, Phil," cried the knight; "I would rather see a grin than hear your ballad."

"Jump, Phil," said Hasket of Norland, applying his fork to Phil's leg as he passed, "you are a better morris-dancer than a poet."

Phil, who was imperturbably good-natured, did as he was told. He opened his mouth to a preternatural size, turned one eye to the ceiling, and the other down to the floor, till Sir Bryan was in ecstasies at his achievement. He then sprang to an incredible height in that air, and danced once or twice through the hall, throwing himself into the most grotesque attitudes imaginable, and the table was nearly shaken in pieces by the thumpings with which the party showed their satisfaction.

"Now then, Phil; here's a cup of sherry-wine--drink it, boy, and sing a sweet song to the lady," said Reginald.

"Songs are an invention of the devil," said Mr Peeper.

"Unless they are sung through the nose," said Mr Lutter, with a sneer.

"You approve of songs then?" inquired Mr Peeper, with a fierce look.

"Certainly," said Mr Lutter, "when their subject is good, and the language modest."

"Then you are an atheist," retorted Mr Peeper.

"What has a ballad to do with atheism?" enquired Mr Lutter, looking angry.

"You approve of wicked songs, and therefore are an atheist."

"A man is more like an atheist," retorted Mr Lutter, "who is ungrateful to God for the gift of song, and shuts up the sweetest avenue by which the spirit approaches its Creator. I admire poetry, and respect poets."

"Any one who holds such diabolic doctrines is not fit to remain in Belfront Castle."

"Nay," replied Mr Lutter, "Belfront Castle would be infinitely improved if such doctrines were adopted in it."

"Gentlemen," said Reginald, "you are both learned men; and I know nothing about the questions you discuss."

"Your lady shall judge between us," said Mr Lutter.

"She shall not," said Mr Peeper; "I am the sole judge in matters of the kind."

"Let us hear Phil's song in the mean time," said Reginald. "Come, Lorimer."