Chapter II: Part 2

'There will be some difficulty about finding a man,' answered Mr. Battishill. 'We do not keep one in the house, and the cottages are at a distance. You will not find your way to them by night. Do not trouble about the trunks; leave them till morning. No one will touch them.'

'I prefer removing them. When the post-boy returns from Okehampton with the doctor, I will secure his assistance.'

Cicely had lighted a lantern whilst her father was speaking. She offered it to John Herring. 'I will go for you to the cottages,' she said; 'I will send some men to help you.' She accompanied him to the door. 'It is quite right that the things should not be left out all night on the moor. There are tramps on the Exeter road, and the Cobbledicks are close by.' She opened the door, and the light fell on Joyce.

'Why, Joyce, you here still? I thought you had gone back to the Giant's Table.'

'If I were to go back to vaither, he'd kill me. I ha' lost he his old barril, and him won't sleep under the table a'cos mother be there wi' her playful ways, tormenting of he.'

'What do you mean, Joyce?'

'I means this, miss. His barril be rolled away down hill, and I dunnow where her be rolled to. Where be vaither to sleep?'

'Under the Giant's Table.'

'That won't do, 'cos o' mother. Her be lively o' nights when vaither be there. 'Tain't wickedness, it be her playful ways. Her leaves me alone right enough. But vaither won't go there. Now if he might sleep i' one o' your linnies,[1] he'd be right vast enough as a nail in a door.'

[1] Lean-to sheds.

'By all means let him sleep there, Joyce, at least for a while, till you can recover the cask.'

'Then I can go back to he. If I hadn't that to say, he'd ha' killed me. Now he'll go snuggle into the straw like a heckamall[2] in a rick. That's beautiful!'

[2] A heckamall or heckanoddy is a tomtit.

'Joyce,' said Cicely, 'this gentleman is going to the broken carriage. Perhaps you can assist him to remove some of the trunks. They must not be left out where they are.'

'There be some scatt right abroad,'[3] answered Joyce; 'I seed mun, and the things be coming out like.'

[3] Broken to pieces.

'More the reason why they should be collected and brought under cover.'

'I'll go right on end,' said Joyce. 'And vaither may sleep in the linney?'

'Yes, he may.'

'Oh, rallaluley, he'll be glad!'

So Joyce led the way, followed by Herring, and Miss Cicely Battishill went in quest of assistance.

When Herring and Joyce reached the scene of the accident, they discovered Old Grizzly hopping about amidst the wreck, pulling the pieces of the broken carriage apart. He had made some clearance in the confusion, but not from disinterested motives. Everything in the shape of cushion and cloak had disappeared, and the old wrecker was engaged in collecting chips of the broken wood for firing.

John Herring did not notice particularly what he was about; it was too dark to distinguish much. He went directly to the boxes.

Of his own goods there was little to take care of save one valise, and that was safe. The rest of the trunks and portmanteaus belonged to Mr. Strange and his daughter. The trunks lay, some still corded, on the top of the chaise; others thrown off, one with its lock sprung. This box had either been very much shaken by the fall, or Grizzly's arm had been turning it over, for the lid would no longer close over the confused and overflowing contents.

Grizzly Cobbledick decamped when he saw the lantern brought to bear on the wreck. Joyce called after him, but he made no reply. Then she went in pursuit to announce to him the glad news that he was to sleep in the straw of the calves' linney at West Wyke.

'I wonder,' mused John Herring, 'whether that old rascal can have stolen anything of value. If he has, there is no one to bring him to book. The owner is dead, and the daughter probably knows nothing of the contents of the boxes.'

If he had known!

*CHAPTER IV.*

*MIRELLE.*

It is aggravating to the reader to be asked to move backwards when he has been well started in a story. He resents it, as he resents the backing of a train when he has left the station where he took his ticket, and is impatient to reach his destination.

The author is aware that he is trying the patience of the reader when he asks him to turn into a side alley which bends in the same direction as his starting point. He would avoid asking him to turn if it were possible to do so. But it is not always possible. To a drama, to the farce of half an hour, is prefixed the list of characters. In taking up one of Lacy's acting copies, the reader learns at a glance that Box is a journeyman printer, and Cox a journeyman hatter, and that Mrs. Bouncer is a lodging-house keeper. He learns a great deal about them before he comes to a word of dialogue. He is informed that Box wears 'small swallow-tailed black coat, short buff waistcoat, light drab trousers (short, turned up at the bottom), black stockings, white canvas boots with black tips, cotton neckcloth, and shabby black hat;' further, that Cox is apparelled in 'brown Newmarket coat, long white waistcoat, black plaid trousers, boots, white hat, black stock;' that Mrs. Bouncer is costumed in 'coloured cotton gown, apron, cap, &c.' He feels at once that he knows all about these characters. He reads their past in their costume, they wear their souls on their limbs. Note that 'turned up at the bottom'--the words illumine the abysses of the character of Box, and make them clear to us.

But the novelist is debarred what is allowed the dramatist. He must haul up his curtain on a situation without an introductory word, and then, when the reader is puzzled as to the characters, antecedents, and purposes of the _dramatis personae_, he is obliged to step forward, stick in hand, as in a wax-work, point out the several personages and describe them. This is the way of novelists. It is a bad way, it is inartistic, but it is exacted by the reader.

Now, in describing the characters of a novel it is not sufficient to give minute accounts of the costume--in the case of the Cobbledicks this is done in a word; the author is required to give his readers a key to the inner mechanism of his puppets, to show why they walk or pirouette, and what may be expected to be the limits of their powers. He can rarely do this without retrogression.

That Mirelle may be understood and not be judged with undue severity, we must step back to a period before her birth; but we shall be as rapid in our survey as we can, and shall resume the thread of our story after a very short divagation.

The Countess Garcia de Cantalejo was a poor Spanish lady sent out to Brazil by her relatives, who were by no means near, to be got rid of by marriage, malaria, or mosquitoes, as might be, but anyhow to be got rid of.

She was handsome, but, like the milkmaid in the ballad, 'her face was her fortune.' Now in Spain pretty women abound, and ugly women are exceptional. Marriageable men look out more for money, which is scarce, than for beauty, which is a drug. Money, moreover, they know, in prudent hands will wax; beauty they know, however well conserved, will wane.

In Brazil she was seen and admired by Mr. Strange, a diamond merchant, and she consented to give him her cold hand, intending at the earliest opportunity to supplement it with the cold shoulder. She married him because no one else would have her, and because he was well off. She was proud of her family, and it was a condescension on her part--like that of the sun which stoops to kiss the puddle--for her to link the proud name of Garcia with that of Strange, and Cantalejo--which was territorial, with a blank, for the Stranges had never owned any more ground than the six foot allotted them as graves, and that only till they had mouldered. They had made, but not coined, their money, certainly never had hung men on their own gallows.

Mr. Strange, and the Countess Garcia de Cantalejo lived together for a few years like oil and water. At length the Countess became the mother of a daughter, who was baptized Mirelle at the font in the Cathedral of Bahia, by the Cardinal Archbishop himself. After this Donna Garcia informed her husband that their separation was inevitable. The child could not be decently suckled, weaned, and educated in a colony, certainly not in a city so mean as Bahia. The child, the heiress of the coronet and of the name with its territorial tail, must go to Europe.

The Countess did not purpose returning to Spain; there were circumstances attending her departure from her native country which had embittered her against her relatives there. No! she would go to Paris, the centre of the civilised world.

Mr. Strange raised no objections. He was weary of association with a woman full of caprice, of fading charms, and of intolerable pride. He was a reserved and a disappointed man. To every bird comes its time of song; to the swan only at death, to the nightingale in balmy spring while mating; it is only the chatterers that chatter ever. The song time, the flowering time, the moment when the dullest life breaks into poetry, is the moment of love. Mr. Strange had gone through this and had been disenchanted, and thenceforth his life became dull, prosaic, without melody and colour, unimpassioned. His heart had flamed, and his wife had extinguished its fires with ice.

Mr. Strange had no love for babies. Babies are to men objects as offensive as naked infant rabbits. A doe eats her young rather than expose them to the strange eye before their fur is grown. If women were as wise as does they would never exhibit the contents of their nursery till the children could talk and run about.

Mr. Strange heard a squalling in the house; the object his wife had produced was thrust under his eyes and nose with indecent haste. It dribbled when teething, erupted with the thrush, and had a difficulty in keeping down its milk. Consequently, when the Countess proposed to remove the babe to Paris, Mr. Strange gave a cheerful consent, and this consent was made doubly cheerful by the certainty that the mother would accompany her child.

If Mr. Strange acted in a somewhat callous manner in granting this separation between himself and his wife and child, he was in other particulars generous. He made the Countess an allowance which, for his circumstances, was handsome, and as the child grew, and greater demands were made on his purse, he met these demands without remonstrance.

Arrived in Paris, the Countess Garcia had not long to swim before her feet touched ground. She had a perfectly legitimate right to her title, her pedigree was unassailable, her manners were polished. She appeared at the balls of the Spanish ambassador, and associated with the best French and Spanish families belonging to the old noblesse. It was well known that she had married a moneyed Englishman, of no birth, nor station, nor religion. It was known that she had married for money. No one spoke of Mr. Strange. The great people among whom she moved would as soon have inquired about a boil that troubled her as about the husband whom 'for her sins' she had saddled on her. No persons of breeding invite their friends to introduce them to the family skeleton.

Mirelle was brought up by the Countess to think of her father as a man who had taken a mean advantage of her mother's poverty. He was her father by sufferance; _de facto_, alas, not _de jure_. She had inherited her mother's complexion, eyes, and hair; the blood in her veins was her mother's, Spanish and aristocratic; her sentiments were her mother's, as also her prejudices and her faith. It was hard to say what she derived from her father except her living and schooling for which he paid. For that she owed him nothing. He was fulfilling his duty, and a privilege he ought to value. What was he, to be the husband of a Garcia and the father of a Garcia? He was English, he was a heretic, worst of all he was bourgeois.

The Countess bought herself silks with Mr. Strange's money, wore the diamonds he sent her, hired good rooms in an aristocratic quarter, and paid for them from his remittances. She had nothing whatever of her own. She owed him everything, to her handkerchiefs and her shoestrings. She knew this perfectly, and writhed under the knowledge. The greater the debt she owed him, the deeper the detestation with which she regarded him. Each present he sent her was repaid by instilling a drop of bitterness into the heart of his child towards him.

One stipulation with regard to his daughter's education Mr. Strange had made. He insisted that she should have an English nurse, and that when she grew older she should have English playmates and English governesses. When old enough to go to school her mother sent her to English nuns, because Mr. Strange refused to allow her to go to any other convent than one of English sisters. Thus it was that Mirelle grew up to speak English fluently and well, and to thoroughly understand the tongue. But of English ways of thinking and of feeling she had not the faintest conception. Proud, cold, selfish, and bigoted her mother had been, and the ambition of Mirelle was to model herself on her mother. Thus she, too, became proud, cold, selfish, and bigoted. It was not her fault--the fault lay in her training.

The Countess was a woman of the world, who combined religious zeal with worldly self-seeking. She was a vain woman, and though she did her utmost to conserve her beauty it withered, and the child blooming into lovely maidenhood at her side made the contrast distressing, because noticeable. This was the reason why she placed Mirelle in a convent in her fourteenth year. She saw the girl often, but never, if she could help it, was seen in her company.

This separation from her mother was of advantage to Mirelle. It preserved her simplicity. There was no craft in her; she was absolutely guileless, distressingly frank, and innocent of the trickery as well as of the wickedness of the social world. She was cold, because the spring had not yet come to her frozen heart. She loved her mother, but without passion, for her mother was too selfish to awaken passionate love. Her nurses and governesses had changed so often that she could not count them. Among the cold sisters, lilies of virtue, the exhibition of emotion was, if not sinful, yet smacking of imperfection. Natural affections were weaknesses of the moral spine, to be conquered by wearing a perpetual back-board.

Suddenly the Countess died--died in her chair before the looking-glass, reciting the Litany of Loreto, whilst her face was being enamelled. The beautifier entreated Madame la Comtesse not to draw her mouth down on one side, it was cracking the enamel before it was dry---just when she had arrived at the 'tower of ivory.' Then Madame la Comtesse gave a gasp and the enamel came off, washed away from her brow by the sweat of death, and running in a milky river down her nose and cheeks, and dripping on the peignoir under her chin. The beautifier rang the bell, and said, 'Sacre mille diables! To whom shall I send in the bill? Madame is no more in condition to pay.'

When Mr. Strange heard of his wife's death, he settled his affairs in Brazil. He was a strictly conscientious man, and he felt that now it was his duty to look after the child. He had no idea that the child had sprung up into maidenhood, and was a tall, lovely girl, lovelier than her mother had ever been. His wife had not taken the trouble to send him a miniature of his daughter. Miniatures are expensive, and the Countess wanted all the money she received for herself. She did, indeed, once send him a bit of her hair, tied with blue silk; but then, that cost nothing. Mr. Strange thought of his child as a limp piece of mortality in a long white garment, with a frill round the red head like that put round a ham-bone--a thing of squeals, that in its squealing showed a pair of toothless gums, a quivering red tongue, and a crinkled white palate. He could hardly believe his eyes when introduced to his daughter. She received him with perfect self-possession, without raising her eyes from the ground to look at him, for the sisters had taught her the custody of the eyes. According to S. Paul, there is but one Man of Sin, and he is in the future; to the religious all men are men of sin, and in the present.

Mirelle curtsied gracefully. She spoke the best copy-book sentiments of filial respect, and assured him (out of the Catechism) of the obligation to filial duty under which she lay.

Then he took her away from the nuns of the Sacred Heart, and carried her about Paris, sight-seeing, in the hope of making her unbend.

The decorator sent in a bill for two thousand francs, his charge for beautifying madame, hoping to get fifty, and ready to accept five. Mr. Strange tore the bill, and lit his cigar with it.

An old woman who had laid madame out asked five francs for her pains. Then timidly produced a lock of hair she had cut off madame's head as she laid her in the coffin. The hair was beautiful still! and, oh! madame had looked so sweet, so peaceful, like a holy angel, actually young again. Then Mr. Strange took the lock reverently, turned his face away, and did not speak. Something in his throat troubled him. He thought of twenty years ago--of the time when his heart bounded, of the singing of the nightingale, of the flowering of the wheat, of the short dream of poetry. Then he recovered himself, and put something in the old woman's hand. The old woman went chuckling away. When she reached the street she said, 'That was a brave invention. Madame's complexion was that of a toad's belly. She was hideous as a monkey. I could not pick the paint off her skin. Some adhered, the rest flaked away. That lock of hair was part of her false front. Mon Dieu! how soft men's hearts are!' Mr. Strange speedily discovered that he and his daughter had about as many subjects in common as an Esquimaux has with a native of equatorial Africa. She was above all things a Catholic, he a Protestant. She was religious, and, because religious, somewhat conscientious. He conscientious, and, because conscientious, somewhat religious. His religion was to his life what stockings are to a traveller's portmanteau, something to fill corners with where nothing else will go. With Mirelle religion was the chief packing of her life, and this was a condition incomprehensible to her father. She had artistic instincts; she loved pictures and music. Now, pictures and music happen to be two things not to be got in Brazil, except in such an execrable state of degradation as to be unendurable. But he liked the theatre, and to attend the theatre Mirelle considered wicked. Mirelle had learned history from the sisters of the Sacre Coeur--that is, she had learned that every modern political idea is positively evil, that absolutism is ideal perfection, that the mediaeval times were the only times in which it was worth living, for then the popes gave and withdrew crowns, kings kissed their feet, and emperors held their stirrups. She had been taught geography out of French manuals, and had learned that France is to the rest of the European powers as the sun to the planets; from it they derive their light, and about it they rotate.

Mirelle had her acquaintances, the Princess L'Amoureuse, Prince Punchkin, Countesses, Baronesses by the score, the mothers and aunts of her schoolfellows and friends of her mother. Not one of these was known to Mr. Strange even by name, and when she spoke of them she might have been, for aught he cared, reciting the list of European lepidoptera.

Even in their eating their tastes were opposed. Mr. Strange was fond of pickles, Mirelle loved sweets. Chillies tickled his palate, chocolate soothed hers; crystallised angelica carried her into heaven, and plunged him into purgatory, for he had a hollow tooth. Mr. Strange endeavoured to talk to Mirelle of her mother. Now that the Countess was dead some of the old romance that had surrounded his wooing reappeared, and his heart softened to the memory of the woman. Mirelle was ready enough to speak of her, but she had nothing to say that vibrated a chord in his heart. She spoke of her mother as a fashionable lady, living in society, dressing for balls, driving in the Bois de Boulogne, or holding a plate at the door of the Madeleine--not of her as a woman feeling, loving, suffering.

This condition of affairs was becoming intolerable. How was Mr. Strange to live with a young lady with whom he was utterly out of sympathy, whose head was where his feet stood, and her feet at his head? They saw different worlds, they breathed different air.

The first thing to be done was to get her away from France. That was a plain necessity. On English soil common interests might spring up.

Mr. Strange had a friend of former times living at Avranches, a friend of whom he had lost sight for many years. He knew his address, and he knew also that he was married to a French lady.

Mr. Strange's nearest relative, a cousin, had lived formerly at Falmouth, and, he supposed, lived there still. Mr. Strange resolved to visit his old friend at Avranches, and go on in the packet from St. Malo to Falmouth. He would consult both on what was to be done with Mirelle. He had other reasons, which will appear in the sequel.

So he hurried away from Paris, and went to Avranches. His old friend was delighted to see him, shook hands--both hands, with the utmost cordiality, asked half a dozen times after his wife and children, and forgot as frequently when told that his wife was dead, and that there was but one child, a daughter. He insisted on carrying his dear friend Strange with him to the cafe, and on his drinking with him a glass of _eau sucree_ flavoured with syrup of orange, and eating with him sponge biscuits. Would he further, in recollection of old times, favour him with a game of dominoes? The Frenchified Englishman did not introduce Mr. Strange to his wife, or ask him to bring Mirelle from the hotel to his house, and finally, looking at his watch, remembered he was due to take his wife a drive, shook hands with his dear old friend with effusion, and begged, if he were again passing through Avranches on his way to or from Brazil, not to omit to call and drink again with him sugar and water and eat a sponge cake.

Mr. Strange departed, his grave face looking graver. After a rough passage, in which Mirelle suffered extremely, and her father smoked and looked at the waves unconcernedly, they arrived at Falmouth. Cato, when at sea, jumped overboard, saying he would rather die than endure another half-hour of sickness. Cato was a stoic philosopher, Mirelle was neither a philosopher nor a stoic. She was profoundly wretched, and looked ghastly when she landed in a drizzle at Falmouth. Thus her first arrival in England was not encouraging. Mr. Strange inquired for his cousin, and learned that he was no longer at Falmouth; he had removed to Launceston. Mr. Strange heard such an unsatisfactory account of his cousin that he was greatly disconcerted. His cousin's name was Trampleasure. He found a universal consensus of opinion at Falmouth that Mr. Trampleasure was a man unprincipled and unscrupulous, and that he had moved to Launceston only because he had made Falmouth too hot for him.

Mr. Strange remained a couple of nights at Falmouth, and then took coach to Launceston. There he neither called on his cousin nor stayed. He found at the inn a young gentleman equally anxious with himself to push on to Exeter, and he offered him a seat in the chaise he had hired. Thus it was that Mr. John Herring was with him and his daughter when the accident occurred. Before leaving Brazil Mr. Strange had made his will, bequeathing everything he possessed to his cousin, Mr. Sampson Trampleasure, and to his Avranches friend, in trust for his daughter, and had constituted them her guardians. This will was in his desk. He did not unpack his desk at Falmouth and cancel his will; there was time enough to do that on his arrival at Exeter. Man proposes: God disposes.

*CHAPTER V.*

*THE OWLS' NEST.*

West Wyke is a perfect specimen of a small country gentleman's house of the sixteenth century. Two or three hundred years ago every parish in the West of England contained several gentle families, not acred up to their lips, but with moderate possessions. These small squires farmed a large part of their own estates themselves, gave moderate portions to their daughters, who were not ashamed to marry yeomen and even tradesmen, and their younger sons went to sea, or were apprenticed to merchants in the towns.[1]

[1] Thus, in the Visitation of Devon of 1620, a Cholmondeley enters his brothers as 'silkman on London Bridge,' and 'prentice in London,' and a Wolston registers his sisters as married respectively to a 'labourer' and a 'clothier'; a daughter of Glanville married a blacksmith of Tavistock.

When the heralds came round to hold their courts and examine into the claims of gentility and right to rode to court with their title-deeds in their saddle-bags and their signet rings on their hands, and showed convincingly that they had held their acres for many generations and had borne coat armour. Hard drinking, gambling, an extravagant style of living, have destroyed these little gentry, and the same causes have effected the extermination of the yeomanry.

In the parish of South Tawton two hundred years ago there were seven families of gentle blood--the Weekes of North Wyke, the Burgoynes of Zeal, the Northmores of Will, the Oxenhams of Oxenham, the Battishills of West Wyke, the Mylfords, and the Fursdons. All have gone; their place is only known by the old houses they have left behind, and a few tombstones with their heraldic bearings on them in the church. The grand old mansion of the Weekes is now parted in twain, one half a farmhouse, the other a labourer's cottage. The park is cut down, the ceilings are falling, the panelling is decaying. The house of the Burgoynes is now a village tavern; Will, a cottage, its grand old gateway levelled with the dust; West Wyke is a farmhouse.

If we would know how our gentle ancestors lived, let us look closely at West Wyke--it deserves a visit and a description.

The house stands on the moor, in the midst of a little patch of reclaimed land. The situation is too lofty and exposed to allow of trees to flourish. A few ash stems attempt to live there, and they are twisted from the south-west. A few feet below the surface the roots reach the rock, and when the taproot touches stone the doom of the tree is sealed.

West Wyke House was built in 1583--the date is on it--by William Battishill. It is a house which a substantial farmer nowadays would scorn to inhabit. It consists, on the basement, of one hall, a ladies' bower, a kitchen, and a large dairy--that is all. And that is the basement plan of many hundreds of similar mansions in the West, once tenanted by proud squires and their ladies, well born, well bred, and well attired. Look at their portraits--they were gentlemen of breed and honour, they carry it in their faces; they were ladies of pure and noble souls, refined in mind, simple in life. It is written on their brows.

In 1656 Roger Battishill, the reigning lord of the manor, walled in a garden in front of the house, and at the side built an embattled gateway, only twelve feet high to the crown of the battlements; a gateway of shaped granite blocks and carved granite mouldings; and over the centre, proudly also sculptured in granite, the arms of Battishill, the cross crosslet in sal tire between four great owls. He planted the garden with lilies, white and orange, with honesty, golden-rod, and white rocket. These flourished here, sheltered from the winds by the inclosing walls; and a monthly rose ran up the side of the house, about the hall window, and bloomed up to New Year's day.

No road led to the embattled gateway. No carriages were used in those days, and for the horses' hoofs there was the spongy turf. When a rough track had been trampled through the moor grass, and made black with oozing peat water, the riders rode afield and made another way till the first had grassed itself over again.

Observe the date on the embattled gateway. Charles I. was executed in 1649, Cromwell had issued his edict in 1655 for exacting the tenth penny from the Cavaliers, in order, as he pretended, to make them pay the expenses to which their mutinous disposition exposed the nation. To raise this impost, which passed by the name of the decimation, the Protector appointed major-generals, and divided the kingdom into military jurisdictions under them. These men had power to subject whom they would to decimation, and to imprison any person who should be exposed to their jealousy or suspicion. Now Roger Battishill had been a Royalist, but his twin brother Richard had been a Roundhead. There were two other brothers, Robert and Ralph. Now, when the commissioner came to Okehampton to levy decimation, he summoned Squire Battishill before him; whereupon the four brothers, all habited in grey, with very erect hair, protruding ears, and staring eyes, and a general puzzle-headed expression in their faces, appeared before him, and so bewildered the commissioner with their Roger and Richard, and Robert and Ralph, and their extraordinary likeness to each other, and their profound puzzle-headedness, which made it impossible for Roger to speak without involving Richard and Robert and Ralph, and so through the rest--that he dismissed them undecimated, fully impressed that the Royalist was Ralph, who, being only just of age, could not have been in the past a dangerous recusant. Thereupon the four brothers rode home to West Wyke, hooting with joy, and in commemoration of this achievement set up the embattled gateway, to shut themselves in and the world and politics out for ever. Over the gateway they carved the four owls, their arms, said Roger and Richard, and Robert and Ralph--their own portraits said the malicious world of South Tawton.

Some account of the hall has been already given. In our day the oak panelling has disappeared as fuel for the great hearth, but in the granite mullioned window is still preserved in stained glass the cognizance of the Battishills, the four owls impaled with, azure, three towers argent, on which are squatted three white birds.

A gentleman of the present day, if not exacting, might possibly accommodate himself in the lower part of the house, but would hardly acquiesce in the upstairs arrangements, for there all the bedrooms were _en suite_. In the centre slept the squire and his lady, when he had one; on the right were rooms for the men; in the furthest slept the apprentices, in the nearest the sons and brothers of the family. On the left were three rooms all in communication. The first was the state guest room, the next that allotted to the young ladies; beyond that, over the cow-shed, the room for the servant maids.

We have a great deal to learn from our ancestors, and we are learning much. We copy their architecture, we reproduce their dyes, we affect their costume, but we do not go back to their sleeping arrangements.

Some days passed. Mirelle remained at West Wyke; John Herring was lodged in the inn at Zeal, not far distant in the valley. He devoted himself to the affairs of Mirelle. Mr. Battishill was most kind, but quite unable to be of real use. He was prepared to discuss with Herring what must be done, and he would undertake to do what he thought desirable, but he never did anything. The dead man might have lain a month, three months, a year upstairs, before Mr. Battishill took steps for his interment. He had a theory of his own relative to the disposal of the dead. He believed that elm was an unsuitable wood for the making of coffins. Alder was the proper timber, because alder grew in swamps, and was presumably damp-resisting. It was in vain that Herring explained to him that alders did not attain a sufficient size to be sawn into planks. That was because alders were not suffered to grow; they were treated as weeds and cut down. 'Grow them,' said Mr. Battishill; 'give them time and see for yourself.' He would have allowed the dead man to occupy the spare room till the alders were grown.

Then, again, he had a theory that coffins ought to be filled with that powerful antiseptic, brown Norwegian pitch, pitch from the pine, none of your villainous coal tar, but brown pitch like old treacle. And so on, from coffins to alders, and to Norway tar, and the dead man waiting for the alders to grow and the pitch to be extracted. John Herring was obliged to see to everything, to arrange with the undertaker, and to fix the funeral. Then, again, Mirelle might have remained on till she married or died for all that Mr. Battishill would have done to discover her relations; perhaps it would have been better had it been so. We take infinite pains to do what is just and kind, and find afterwards that everything would have been better had we put our hands in our pockets. We give in charity and pauperise; we effect reforms which bring in a state of affairs worse than existed before. There is more mischief wrought by doing good than by doing nothing.

Before the funeral, Herring discovered that the deceased had an account with an Exeter bank. He found this through a letter in the pocket-book of the deceased addressed to him in Paris from Exeter, acknowledging the receipt of several thousand pounds, transferred by a Brazilian bank, and notifying the opening of an account in Mr. Strange's name.

Herring communicated with this bank, stated what had taken place, and the banker allowed him to draw a limited sum for funeral expenses. The young man requested, even insisted, on Mr. Battishill being present when he examined the dead man's pocket-book and purse, and he required him to sign a statement of the amount of money found on him.

Mirelle remained perfectly passive; she took her residence with the Battishills as a matter of course. The accident had happened near their house, on their land; it was only proper that they should shelter her. If she gave the matter a thought, this is the result of her cogitation, but actually it did not trouble her. She had always been provided for, and had never had to consider how she was to be provided for. She did not excuse herself for taking advantage of the hospitality of strangers, for it did not occur to her that such an excuse was necessary. Herring was obliged to take on himself what Mirelle omitted. He apologised for her. A strange chance had constituted him her guardian, at least for a while. She allowed him to arrange everything. If he asked her to advise him as to her wishes, she replied that she was without any; he must act as he thought proper. She knew nothing of the ways of England; he must do whatever was conventional.

It did not enter her head that his journey was interrupted on her account, and that he was put to very serious inconvenience by his difficulty in leaving her without a protector. To trust Mr. Battishill to do what was requisite was to trust a piece of bread and butter not to fall butter downwards.

Mirelle took it for granted that Herring was doing his duty or following his pleasure. She accepted his services as she accepted those of the girl who blacked her boots. Each fulfilled a function for which they were called into existence. She neither thanked him nor rewarded him with a look. What he was like she did not know, neither did she care. He wore very big and shapeless boots, but that was proper; boots like these became a bumpkin.

At the funeral he wore black, and gave her his arm. He and she were the sole mourners. She did not wish to attend. She supposed that only men attended the funerals of males; but when it was explained to her that this was not the custom in England, she submitted.

Mr. Battishill did not follow the coffin. There was a difficulty with him about black clothes. He had one best suit, but that was dark blue with brass buttons. He was not provided with ready money, and a new suit of clothes would cripple him for some years, as it would have to be paid for in instalments, a leg and an arm at intervals of a quarter; the coat-tails at equal and similar intervals. Mr. Battishill did not like to admit this, so he was prostrated with a convenient attack of the gout the day before the funeral, and sat in his chair with the lame foot swaddled on a stool before him. We laugh at the shifts of the gentle poor, and label them meannesses, whereas they are necessities. Cicely remained at home. There was but one servant kept at West Wyke, a cook, housemaid, parlour maid, kitchen maid, laundress, condensed into one, and Cicely had sufficient to do to keep the house in order. A funeral, moreover, entails extra work--eating, drinking, and doleful making merry.

Herring gave her some money from Mr. Strange's purse, telling her that it was to be spent on things necessary, and would be accounted for to the executors. It was not right nor reasonable, it was not in the least necessary, that the Battishills should be put to expense by reason of the funeral of a man who was an entire stranger. The deceased was well off, and the small expenses of his funeral would be nothing deducted from the six thousand pounds which they knew was at the bank, and would go to his daughter.

Cicely frankly accepted the money, and made greater preparations than she could otherwise have made. She put more saffron and currants in the cakes, and with these necessary condiments the luxury of candied peel. Instead of providing cyder she put sherry on the table, and gave the bearers and undertaker cold round of beef instead of squab pie.

As Herring and Mirelle left the churchyard after the funeral, she took her hand off his arm, and in their walk back to West Wyke she was interested in the ferns and mosses of the banks. Herring spoke to her occasionally, trying to begin a conversation; but she answered shortly, and either dropped behind to examine a fern or was arrested by the view through a gate, plainly showing him that she declined to converse.

When they were on the moor, John Herring suddenly stopped and picked a tuft of white heath. He offered it to Mirelle, and she accepted it indifferently.

'Although this be a day of sadness, Countess, yet here is an omen that some brightness is in store for you. It is said in the West that the white heath brings good luck to the person that secures it.'

'You found it, monsieur, not I.'

'But I pass on my luck to you. Keep it; I hope it may always spring up in your path as it has this day.'

She made no reply, but gathered a sprig of pink heath.

On reaching the gate of West Wyke Cicely met them; she had been looking out for their return.

'Voyez!' said Mirelle, 'I have picked a lovely bouquet of ferns and moss and wild flowers on my way. We have no ferns in France, at least I have never seen such. In this one particular you surpass us.'

She showed her bunch. The white heath was not there.

'Oh!' exclaimed Herring, incautiously, 'the best flower of all has fallen--the white heath.'

'So it is,' said Mirelle. 'I am sorry; my hand was full.'

'Shall I go back for it?'

'No, it has fallen in the mire, and is trodden under foot. I shall doubtless find my own good luck some day myself.'

*CHAPTER VI.*

*THAT OLD TRAMPLARA.*

As they entered the garden, Mirelle was about to take Cicely's arm, and walk round it with her, looking at the flowers, when John Herring stayed her--

'Excuse me, Countess, I must trouble you one moment. I think it time that we should make an attempt to find out your father's relatives or connections in England.'

'I do not suppose that he had any.'

'Why not?'

'He did not speak to me of any. Besides, these people do not hang together like persons who have pedigrees.'

'But something must be done. Whither are you to go? What is to become of you?'

'Comme le bon Dieu veut!'

'You cannot remain here till some one turns up to claim you.'

'Why not?'

Mr. Herring was staggered. He could not reply, and say that she was trespassing on the hospitality of entire strangers. She turned to continue her walk.

'That is a fine orange lily,' she said to Cicely.

'You must really allow me to detain you,' pursued Herring. 'All I ask now is, may Mr. Battishill and I look through your father's desk that is in his trunk? His bunch of keys has been given to you. Will you open the desk, or shall we do it with your sanction?'

'Do what you like, Mr. Fish.'

Cicely looked reprovingly at Mirelle, and ventured on a correction. 'Mr. Herring, you mean.'

Mirelle's cheek tinged faintly.

'I beg your pardon, sir. Your name had escaped me. I am not yet familiar with English names, which seem to me harsh or grotesque. I remembered that you belonged to the fishes, but to which particular family of fish I did not recall.'

Herring bit his lip, then said quietly, 'Would you prefer opening your father's desk yourself, Countess?'

'Mon Dieu, non!'

'Then will you give me the key, and allow us to examine the contents of the desk?'

'Certainly. But I do not know which is the key. Here, take the bunch, and do as you will.' Then she turned impatiently round, and walked away.

When Herring had entered the house, Cicely said gently, 'I think, Mirelle, you are bound to try and remember poor Mr. Herring's name.'

'Why should I? It in no way concerns me.'

'But you hurt his feelings. I saw he was pained.'

'Oh, but no! that is not possible. He cannot care about such a droll name. Herring!--red herring--pickled herring!--the thing is ridiculous. When the name is historical, then--c'est bien autre chose. But when it is ignoble, and, in addition, is ridiculous, what is there to be proud of? If there be no pride, there can be no wound. These people, moreover, have not the feelings that we have--I mean about their names. I should resent it were I called anything but what I am. But then the Garcias fought the Moors. Don Luis de Garcia with one blow cleft a Saracen through his turban, 'twixt his eyes, to the very saddle, and the saddle itself was cloven. We had the saddle and the sword in our armoury three hundred years ago. We held the county of Cantalejo, we coined our own money, and hung on our own gallows. But the Herrings! they swim in the vast sea along with the sprats and the congers, the common plaice and the little dabs. They have no history. They spawn ten thousand at a time; they are the bread of the nobler fish. No--a Herring has no cause to be offended if his name be forgotten. There,' Mirelle laughed, 'I have said my say.'

'He is a gentleman,' said Cicely, with some warmth; 'I know nothing of his family, but I judge by his manners and appearance.'

'I have noticed neither. I do not consider those who in no way concern me. I cannot describe to you the colour of the eyes and hair of the postillion who upset us, and I know and care as little about the nobody who had the bad fortune to be upset with us. Il m'ennuie, c'est tout dire.'

'He has been very considerate towards you. He has done a great deal for you deserving of gratitude.'

'For what else did the good God create men but to be useful--to assist the ladies? He made the dog the servant of man, and man the dog of the woman. The man does not thank or consider the dog that fetches him a stick out of the water, and the woman has no occasion to pat and praise the man who executes foolish trifles for her. If the dog shakes himself near his master, when emerging from the water, then the stick he brought is applied to his sides, and when the man makes himself over officious, woman turns her back on him.'

'You have an odd idea of the reason why men are placed in the world.'

'I have a perfectly just idea. At the convent of the Sacre Coeur the good sisters kept several tame men. There was old Jean who sawed the firewood for them, and ancient Jacques who gardened. There was even a devout sweep who cleaned their chimneys, and though his face was black, his soul was white. There was a venerable chaplain who heard confessions, and there was a domesticated notary who did their legal business. The sisters worried these men a great deal, especially the notary and the confessor; the latter made a good end in a lunatic asylum. They all took it in good part. Their backs were made to bear their burden.'

'You will not forget his name again?'

'Whose name? What! ce bon Poisson! I will remember for your sake.'

John Herring brought down the dead man's desk into the hall, that Mr. Battishill and he might examine its contents together. Mr. Battishill hastily put his leg up as Herring entered.

'Sorry that I could not attend the funeral,' said the old gentleman, 'but the sins of the fathers are visited on their children. I endure the gout because my father and grandfather tippled port. Sit down, Herring, and I will tell you a good story. In the grand old days when there were many squires about here, and the Knapmans were at Wansdon, and the Whiddons at Whiddon, the old Squire Knapman was getting into a bad way financially, like me. He was invited to dinner at Whiddon, and drove there in his great coach. After dinner, Squire Whiddon saw him into his overcoat in the hall, and was about to accompany him to the door when old Knapman said, "No, no! you will catch cold; keep in, man." But the squire was too hospitable for that, and he attended Knapman to the coach. "Don't come out, for heaven's sake, you will get your death of cold," said Knapman. "Why!" exclaimed Whiddon, "what is the meaning of this, Knapman? Going to ride on the box instead of inside, a night like this?" "I prefer it," answered Squire Knapman, proceeding to ascend to the box. But Whiddon would not allow it; he went to the coach-door and opened it--when, lo! he found it full of hay.'

'How came that?' asked Herring.

'Why, do you not see? Old Knapman was badly off for hay for his horse, and when he went out anywhere to dinner he told his coachman to fill the carriage with hay from his host's rick, and himself went home on the box.'

'A good story, sir; but I think we had better examine the contents of this desk before we tell any more.'

'Sit down, sit down, man. Do not drive the willing horse, and let an old man give you a piece of advice. Let well alone, and do not precipitate yourself, as Orlando says, "from the smoke into the smother."'

'But you forget, sir, this that you advise me to leave alone is not well at all. The young lady is an orphan, and we know nothing of her relatives.'

'Go on, then! How full of briars is this working-day world! What do you propose to do with the lady?'

'I cannot tell till I have ascertained whether she has relatives in England.'

'If she has not, she must be made a ward in Chancery, or you must marry her, and so take her affairs into your own hands.'

'Mr. Battishill!' John Herring flushed to his temples and looked down.

'I am putting an alternative case. Now, to make her a ward in Chancery is to put a fly into a cobweb. Her few thousand pounds will be bled away. By-the-by, talking of thousands, do you know any one inclined to speculate in silver lead? I have a rare lode on my property, but I have not the means to work it. I have set three men on the shode, and they have been engaged there for several days. There is no mistaking that grey-blue stuff that comes up. But I cannot go on myself. If I could, the property would be cleared in no time. As it is, I am crushed by that damned old Tramplara. Do you remember how Sinbad had to carry the Old Man of the Sea on his shoulders who picked all the apples and ate them himself, whilst Sinbad perished of hunger? Do what he would, Sinbad was powerless to dislodge the horrible creature astride on his back.'

'Yes, I remember,'

'Well, I am in the same predicament; I have got that old Tramplara on my back.'

'Who is Tramplara, sir?'

'Tramplara! Not know Tramplara? I thought every one knew and had felt him. He is a Cornish lawyer, who lived at Falmouth, till Falmouth passed him on to Launceston, having had enough of him. He has lent me money. He knew that I wanted to improve my property; I was hot on draining at one time, and thought if I drained my marshes I should fill my purse. But, Herring, draining does not pay in all lands. It don't pay in clay at all. The only thing I drained effectually was my pocket. Then I was drawn on to speculate in Cornish mines that old Tramplara whispered great things of to me. As a particular favour he put me up to splendid investments before they were opened to the public. By all the saints in Cornwall--and they are more numerous than those in Paradise--that mining did for me completely.' The old man stamped his gouty foot on the ground. 'It was a swindle. And now I am entangled in the toils of old Tramplara, and cannot get out. Ah! Herring, if I could but work the lead mine myself, I should clear myself of Tramplara. But I cannot do it; the cursed rascal robs me of all my rents, and I am unable to nurse the mine until it can run on its own legs. I must call in strangers to form a company, and that means they are to swallow the cup and give me the dregs. Moreover, I am afraid of Tramplara finding it out. If he does; if he suspects what a lode there is at Upaver, he will foreclose, take the property, and work the mine himself.'

'I have no capital at my disposal,' said Herring.

'I do not suppose you have. But only think! Supposing that Mr. Strange had come here alone, to recover of his fall, and that I could have induced him to sink some of his thousands here! Come along with me; I will take you to Upaver and you shall judge for yourself.' The old man jumped up, and walked across the hall to his hat.

'Your gout, sir!'

'Oh, that is all right now. A walk will do it good.'