Title: The Poor Clare
Author: Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn
Language: English
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Transcribed from the 1896 “Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales” Macmillan and
Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org.  Proofed by Audrey
Emmitt and Eugenia Corbo.



                              THE POOR CLARE


CHAPTER I.


DECEMBER 12th, 1747.—My life has been strangely bound up with
extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I even
knew of their existence.  I suppose, most old men are, like me, more
given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest
and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events—though these
may have far more interest for the multitude—immediately passing before
their eyes.  If this should be the case with the generality of old
people, how much more so with me! . . . If I am to enter upon that
strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back.  I
myself only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her;
but, to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the
order in which they occurred—not that in which I became acquainted with
them.

There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part they
called the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named Craven.
Starkey Manor-house is rather like a number of rooms clustered round a
gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall.  Indeed, I suppose
that the house only consisted of a great tower in the centre, in the days
when the Scots made their raids terrible as far south as this; and that
after the Stuarts came in, and there was a little more security of
property in those parts, the Starkeys of that time added the lower
building, which runs, two stories high, all round the base of the keep.
There has been a grand garden laid out in my days, on the southern slope
near the house; but when I first knew the place, the kitchen-garden at
the farm was the only piece of cultivated ground belonging to it.  The
deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and might
have browsed quite close up to the house if they had not been too wild
and shy.  Starkey Manor-house itself stood on a projection or peninsula
of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills that form the sides of
the Trough of Bolland.  These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards
their summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled copsewood and
green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of an ancient forest-tree
would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly white branches, as if
in imprecation, to the sky.  These trees, they told me, were the remnants
of that forest which existed in the days of the Heptarchy, and were even
then noted as landmarks.  No wonder that their upper and more exposed
branches were leafless, and that the dead bark had peeled away, from
sapless old age.

Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently, of the same
date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the family, who
sought shelter—they and their families and their small flocks and
herds—at the hands of their feudal lord.  Some of them had pretty much
fallen to decay.  They were built in a strange fashion.  Strong beams had
been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other
ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape of
one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger.
The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish,
mortar—anything to keep out the weather.  The fires were made in the
centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only
chimney.  No Highland hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher
construction.

The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century, was
a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey.  His family had kept to the old faith, and
were stanch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to marry any one of
Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to embrace
the Romish religion.  Mr. Patrick Starkey’s father had been a follower of
James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign of that
monarch he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as
zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself.  He had returned
to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her, bearing her back
to the court at St. Germains.  But some licence on the part of the
disorderly gentlemen who surrounded King James in his exile, had insulted
his beautiful wife, and disgusted him; so he removed from St. Germains to
Antwerp, whence, in a few years’ time, he quietly returned to Starkey
Manor-house—some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent their good
offices to reconcile him to the powers that were.  He was as firm a
Catholic as ever, and as stanch an advocate for the Stuarts and the
divine rights of kings; but his religion almost amounted to asceticism,
and the conduct of these with whom he had been brought in such close
contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection of a stern
moralist.  So he gave his allegiance where he could not give his esteem,
and learned to respect sincerely the upright and moral character of one
whom he yet regarded as an usurper.  King William’s government had little
need to fear such a one.  So he returned, as I have said, with a sobered
heart and impoverished fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had fallen
sadly to ruin while the owner had been a courtier, a soldier, and an
exile.  The roads into the Trough of Bolland were little more than
cart-ruts; indeed, the way up to the house lay along a ploughed field
before you came to the deer-park.  Madam, as the country-folk used to
call Mrs. Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her husband, holding on to
him with a light hand by his leather riding-belt.  Little master (he that
was afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his pony by a
serving-man.  A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong
step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and high up on the mails
and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on the topmost
trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the cart rocked and
shook in the heavy roads of late autumn.  The girl wore the Antwerp
faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and altogether her
appearance was such that the old cottager, who described the possession
to me many years after, said that all the country-folk took her for a
foreigner.  Some dogs, and the boy who held them in charge, made up the
company.  They rode silently along, looking with grave, serious eyes at
the people, who came out of the scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to
the real Squire, “come back at last,” and gazed after the little
procession with gaping wonder, not deadened by the sound of the foreign
language in which the few necessary words that passed among them were
spoken.  One lad, called from his staring by the Squire to come and help
about the cart, accompanied them to the Manor-house.  He said that when
the lady had descended from her pillion, the middle-aged woman whom I
have described as walking while the others rode, stepped quickly forward,
and taking Madam Starkey (who was of a slight and delicate figure) in her
arms, she lifted her over the threshold, and set her down in her
husband’s house, at the same time uttering a passionate and outlandish
blessing.  The Squire stood by, smiling gravely at first; but when the
words of blessing were pronounced, he took off his fine feathered hat,
and bent his head.  The girl with the black mantle stepped onward into
the shadow of the dark hall, and kissed the lady’s hand; and that was all
the lad could tell to the group that gathered round him on his return,
eager to hear everything, and to know how much the Squire had given him
for his services.

From all I could gather, the Manor-house, at the time of the Squire’s
return, was in the most dilapidated state.  The stout gray walls remained
firm and entire; but the inner chambers had been used for all kinds of
purposes.  The great withdrawing-room had been a barn; the state
tapestry-chamber had held wool, and so on.  But, by-and-by, they were
cleared out; and if the Squire had no money to spend on new furniture, he
and his wife had the knack of making the best of the old.  He was no
despicable joiner; she had a kind of grace in whatever she did, and
imparted an air of elegant picturesqueness to whatever she touched.
Besides, they had brought many rare things from the Continent; perhaps I
should rather say, things that were rare in that part of
England—carvings, and crosses, and beautiful pictures.  And then, again,
wood was plentiful in the Trough of Bolland, and great log-fires danced
and glittered in all the dark, old rooms, and gave a look of home and
comfort to everything.

Why do I tell you all this?  I have little to do with the Squire and
Madame Starkey; and yet I dwell upon them, as if I were unwilling to come
to the real people with whom my life was so strangely mixed up.  Madam
had been nursed in Ireland by the very woman who lifted her in her arms,
and welcomed her to her husband’s home in Lancashire.  Excepting for the
short period of her own married life, Bridget Fitzgerald had never left
her nursling.  Her marriage—to one above her in rank—had been unhappy.
Her husband had died, and left her in even greater poverty than that in
which she was when he had first met with her.  She had one child, the
beautiful daughter who came riding on the waggon-load of furniture that
was brought to the Manor-house.  Madame Starkey had taken her again into
her service when she became a widow.  She and her daughter had followed
“the mistress” in all her fortunes; they had lived at St. Germains and at
Antwerp, and were now come to her home in Lancashire.  As soon as Bridget
had arrived there, the Squire gave her a cottage of her own, and took
more pains in furnishing it for her than he did in anything else out of
his own house.  It was only nominally her residence.  She was constantly
up at the great house; indeed, it was but a short cut across the woods
from her own home to the home of her nursling.  Her daughter Mary, in
like manner, moved from one house to the other at her own will.  Madam
loved both mother and child dearly.  They had great influence over her,
and, through her, over her husband.  Whatever Bridget or Mary willed was
sure to come to pass.  They were not disliked; for, though wild and
passionate, they were also generous by nature.  But the other servants
were afraid of them, as being in secret the ruling spirits of the
household.  The Squire had lost his interest in all secular things; Madam
was gentle, affectionate, and yielding.  Both husband and wife were
tenderly attached to each other and to their boy; but they grew more and
more to shun the trouble of decision on any point; and hence it was that
Bridget could exert such despotic power.  But if everyone else yielded to
her “magic of a superior mind,” her daughter not unfrequently rebelled.
She and her mother were too much alike to agree.  There were wild
quarrels between them, and wilder reconciliations.  There were times
when, in the heat of passion, they could have stabbed each other.  At all
other times they both—Bridget especially—would have willingly laid down
their lives for one another.  Bridget’s love for her child lay very
deep—deeper than that daughter ever knew; or I should think she would
never have wearied of home as she did, and prayed her mistress to obtain
for her some situation—as waiting maid—beyond the seas, in that more
cheerful continental life, among the scenes of which so many of her
happiest years had been spent.  She thought, as youth thinks, that life
would last for ever, and that two or three years were but a small portion
of it to pass away from her mother, whose only child she was.  Bridget
thought differently, but was too proud ever to show what she felt.  If
her child wished to leave her, why—she should go.  But people said
Bridget became ten years older in the course of two months at this time.
She took it that Mary wanted to leave her.  The truth was, that Mary
wanted for a time to leave the place, and to seek some change, and would
thankfully have taken her mother with her.  Indeed when Madam Starkey had
gotten her a situation with some grand lady abroad, and the time drew
near for her to go, it was Mary who clung to her mother with passionate
embrace, and, with floods of tears, declared that she would never leave
her; and it was Bridget, who at last loosened her arms, and, grave and
tearless herself, bade her keep her word, and go forth into the wide
world.  Sobbing aloud, and looking back continually, Mary went away.
Bridget was still as death, scarcely drawing her breath, or closing her
stony eyes; till at last she turned back into her cottage, and heaved a
ponderous old settle against the door.  There she sat, motionless, over
the gray ashes of her extinguished fire, deaf to Madam’s sweet voice, as
she begged leave to enter and comfort her nurse.  Deaf, stony, and
motionless, she sat for more than twenty hours; till, for the third time,
Madam came across the snowy path from the great house, carrying with her
a young spaniel, which had been Mary’s pet up at the hall; and which had
not ceased all night long to seek for its absent mistress, and to whine
and moan after her.  With tears Madam told this story, through the closed
door—tears excited by the terrible look of anguish, so steady, so
immovable—so the same to-day as it was yesterday—on her nurse’s face.
The little creature in her arms began to utter its piteous cry, as it
shivered with the cold.  Bridget stirred; she moved—she listened.  Again
that long whine; she thought it was for her daughter; and what she had
denied to her nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature that
Mary had cherished.  She opened the door, and took the dog from Madam’s
arms.  Then Madam came in, and kissed and comforted the old woman, who
took but little notice of her or anything.  And sending up Master Patrick
to the hall for fire and food, the sweet young lady never left her nurse
all that night.  Next day, the Squire himself came down, carrying a
beautiful foreign picture—Our Lady of the Holy Heart, the Papists call
it.  It is a picture of the Virgin, her heart pierced with arrows, each
arrow representing one of her great woes.  That picture hung in Bridget’s
cottage when I first saw her; I have that picture now.

Years went on.  Mary was still abroad.  Bridget was still and stern,
instead of active and passionate.  The little dog, Mignon, was indeed her
darling.  I have heard that she talked to it continually; although, to
most people, she was so silent.  The Squire and Madam treated her with
the greatest consideration, and well they might; for to them she was as
devoted and faithful as ever.  Mary wrote pretty often, and seemed
satisfied with her life.  But at length the letters ceased—I hardly know
whether before or after a great and terrible sorrow came upon the house
of the Starkeys.  The Squire sickened of a putrid fever; and Madam caught
it in nursing him, and died.  You may be sure, Bridget let no other woman
tend her but herself; and in the very arms that had received her at her
birth, that sweet young woman laid her head down, and gave up her breath.
The Squire recovered, in a fashion.  He was never strong—he had never the
heart to smile again.  He fasted and prayed more than ever; and people
did say that he tried to cut off the entail, and leave all the property
away to found a monastery abroad, of which he prayed that some day little
Squire Patrick might be the reverend father.  But he could not do this,
for the strictness of the entail and the laws against the Papists.  So he
could only appoint gentlemen of his own faith as guardians to his son,
with many charges about the lad’s soul, and a few about the land, and the
way it was to be held while he was a minor.  Of course, Bridget was not
forgotten.  He sent for her as he lay on his death-bed, and asked her if
she would rather have a sum down, or have a small annuity settled upon
her.  She said at once she would have a sum down; for she thought of her
daughter, and how she could bequeath the money to her, whereas an annuity
would have died with her.  So the Squire left her her cottage for life,
and a fair sum of money.  And then he died, with as ready and willing a
heart as, I suppose, ever any gentleman took out of this world with him.
The young Squire was carried off by his guardians, and Bridget was left
alone.

I have said that she had not heard from Mary for some time.  In her last
letter, she had told of travelling about with her mistress, who was the
English wife of some great foreign officer, and had spoken of her chances
of making a good marriage, without naming the gentleman’s name, keeping
it rather back as a pleasant surprise to her mother; his station and
fortune being, as I had afterwards reason to know, far superior to
anything she had a right to expect.  Then came a long silence; and Madam
was dead, and the Squire was dead; and Bridget’s heart was gnawed by
anxiety, and she knew not whom to ask for news of her child.  She could
not write, and the Squire had managed her communication with her
daughter.  She walked off to Hurst; and got a good priest there—one whom
she had known at Antwerp—to write for her.  But no answer came.  It was
like crying into the’ awful stillness of night.

One day, Bridget was missed by those neighbours who had been accustomed
to mark her goings-out and comings-in.  She had never been sociable with
any of them; but the sight of her had become a part of their daily lives,
and slow wonder arose in their minds, as morning after morning came, and
her house-door remained closed, her window dead from any glitter, or
light of fire within.  At length, some one tried the door; it was locked.
Two or three laid their heads together, before daring to look in through
the blank unshuttered window.  But, at last, they summoned up courage;
and then saw that Bridget’s absence from their little world was not the
result of accident or death, but of premeditation.  Such small articles
of furniture as could be secured from the effects of time and damp by
being packed up, were stowed away in boxes.  The picture of the Madonna
was taken down, and gone.  In a word, Bridget had stolen away from her
home, and left no trace whither she was departed.  I knew afterwards,
that she and her little dog had wandered off on the long search for her
lost daughter.  She was too illiterate to have faith in letters, even had
she had the means of writing and sending many.  But she had faith in her
own strong love, and believed that her passionate instinct would guide
her to her child.  Besides, foreign travel was no new thing to her, and
she could speak enough of French to explain the object of her journey,
and had, moreover, the advantage of being, from her faith, a welcome
object of charitable hospitality at many a distant convent.  But the
country people round Starkey Manor-house knew nothing of all this.  They
wondered what had become of her, in a torpid, lazy fashion, and then left
off thinking of her altogether.  Several years passed.  Both Manor-house
and cottage were deserted.  The young Squire lived far away under the
direction of his guardians.  There were inroads of wool and corn into the
sitting-rooms of the Hall; and there was some low talk, from time to
time, among the hinds and country people whether it would not be as well
to break into old Bridget’s cottage, and save such of her goods as were
left from the moth and rust which must be making sad havoc.  But this
idea was always quenched by the recollection of her strong character and
passionate anger; and tales of her masterful spirit, and vehement force
of will, were whispered about, till the very thought of offending her, by
touching any article of hers, became invested with a kind of horror: it
was believed that, dead or alive, she would not fail to avenge it.

Suddenly she came home; with as little noise or note of preparation as
she had departed.  One day some one noticed a thin, blue curl of smoke
ascending from her chimney.  Her door stood open to the noonday sun; and,
ere many hours had elapsed, some one had seen an old
travel-and-sorrow-stained woman dipping her pitcher in the well; and
said, that the dark, solemn eyes that looked up at him were more like
Bridget Fitzgerald’s than any one else’s in this world; and yet, if it
were she, she looked as if she had been scorched in the flames of hell,
so brown, and scared, and fierce a creature did she seem.  By-and-by many
saw her; and those who met her eye once cared not to be caught looking at
her again.  She had got into the habit of perpetually talking to herself;
nay, more, answering herself, and varying her tones according to the side
she took at the moment.  It was no wonder that those who dared to listen
outside her door at night believed that she held converse with some
spirit; in short, she was unconsciously earning for herself the dreadful
reputation of a witch.

Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her, was
her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days.  Once he was
ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had then
been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals.  Whatever this man
did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks, intermingled with
blessings (that were rather promises of good fortune than prayers),
looked grave at his good luck when, next year, his ewes twinned, and his
meadow-grass was heavy and thick.

Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven, one
of the guardians of the young squire, a certain Sir Philip Tempest,
bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his ward’s property;
and in consequence he brought down four or five gentlemen, of his
friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall.  From all accounts, they
roystered and spent pretty freely.  I never heard any of their names but
one, and that was Squire Gisborne’s.  He was hardly a middle-aged man
then; he had been much abroad, and there, I believe, he had known Sir
Philip Tempest, and done him some service.  He was a daring and dissolute
fellow in those days: careless and fearless, and one who would rather be
in a quarrel than out of it.  He had his fits of ill-temper besides, when
he would spare neither man nor beast.  Otherwise, those who knew him
well, used to say he had a good heart, when he was neither drunk, nor
angry, nor in any way vexed.  He had altered much when I came to know
him.

One day, the gentlemen had all been out shooting, and with but little
success, I believe; anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had none, and was in a black
humour accordingly.  He was coming home, having his gun loaded,
sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he turned
out of the wood by Bridget’s cottage.  Partly for wantonness, partly to
vent his spleen upon some living creature.  Mr. Gisborne took his gun,
and fired—he had better have never fired gun again, than aimed that
unlucky shot, he hit Mignon, and at the creature’s sudden cry, Bridget
came out, and saw at a glance what had been done.  She took Mignon up in
her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the poor dog looked at her with
his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his tail and lick her hand, all
covered with blood.  Mr. Gisborne spoke in a kind of sullen penitence:

“You should have kept the dog out of my way—a little poaching varmint.”

At this very moment, Mignon stretched out his legs, and stiffened in her
arms—her lost Mary’s dog, who had wandered and sorrowed with her for
years.  She walked right into Mr. Gisborne’s path, and fixed his
unwilling, sullen look, with her dark and terrible eye.

“Those never throve that did me harm,” said she.  “I’m alone in the
world, and helpless; the more do the saints in heaven hear my prayers.
Hear me, ye blessed ones! hear me while I ask for sorrow on this bad,
cruel man.  He has killed the only creature that loved me—the dumb beast
that I loved.  Bring down heavy sorrow on his head for it, O ye saints!
He thought that I was helpless, because he saw me lonely and poor; but
are not the armies of heaven for the like of me?”

“Come, come,” said he, half remorseful, but not one whit afraid.  “Here’s
a crown to buy thee another dog.  Take it, and leave off cursing!  I care
none for thy threats.”

“Don’t you?” said she, coming a step closer, and changing her imprecatory
cry for a whisper which made the gamekeeper’s lad, following Mr.
Gisborne, creep all over.  “You shall live to see the creature you love
best, and who alone loves you—ay, a human creature, but as innocent and
fond as my poor, dead darling—you shall see this creature, for whom death
would be too happy, become a terror and a loathing to all, for this
blood’s sake.  Hear me, O holy saints, who never fail them that have no
other help!”

She threw up her right hand, filled with poor Mignon’s life-drops; they
spirted, one or two of them, on his shooting-dress,—an ominous sight to
the follower.  But the master only laughed a little, forced, scornful
laugh, and went on to the Hall.  Before he got there, however, he took
out a gold piece, and bade the boy carry it to the old woman on his
return to the village.  The lad was “afeared,” as he told me in after
years; he came to the cottage, and hovered about, not daring to enter.
He peeped through the window at last; and by the flickering wood-flame,
he saw Bridget kneeling before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart,
with dead Mignon lying between her and the Madonna.  She was praying
wildly, as her outstretched arms betokened.  The lad shrunk away in
redoubled terror; and contented himself with slipping the gold piece
under the ill-fitting door.  The next day it was thrown out upon the
midden; and there it lay, no one daring to touch it.

Meanwhile Mr. Gisborne, half curious, half uneasy, thought to lessen his
uncomfortable feelings by asking Sir Philip who Bridget was?  He could
only describe her—he did not know her name.  Sir Philip was equally at a
loss.  But an old servant of the Starkeys, who had resumed his livery at
the Hall on this occasion—a scoundrel whom Bridget had saved from
dismissal more than once during her palmy days—said:—

“It will be the old witch, that his worship means.  She needs a ducking,
if ever a woman did, does that Bridget Fitzgerald.”

“Fitzgerald!” said both the gentlemen at once.  But Sir Philip was the
first to continue:—

“I must have no talk of ducking her, Dickon.  Why, she must be the very
woman poor Starkey bade me have a care of; but when I came here last she
was gone, no one knew where.  I’ll go and see her to-morrow.  But mind
you, sirrah, if any harm comes to her, or any more talk of her being a
witch—I’ve a pack of hounds at home, who can follow the scent of a lying
knave as well as ever they followed a dog-fox; so take care how you talk
about ducking a faithful old servant of your dead master’s.”

“Had she ever a daughter?” asked Mr. Gisborne, after a while.

“I don’t know—yes!  I’ve a notion she had; a kind of waiting woman to
Madam Starkey.”

“Please your worship,” said humbled Dickon, “Mistress Bridget had a
daughter—one Mistress Mary—who went abroad, and has never been heard on
since; and folk do say that has crazed her mother.”

Mr. Gisborne shaded his eyes with his hand.

“I could wish she had not cursed me,” he muttered.  “She may have
power—no one else could.”  After a while, he said aloud, no one
understanding rightly what he meant, “Tush! it is impossible!”—and called
for claret; and he and the other gentlemen set-to to a drinking-bout.



CHAPTER II.


I NOW come to the time in which I myself was mixed up with the people
that I have been writing about.  And to make you understand how I became
connected with them, I must give you some little account of myself.  My
father was the younger son of a Devonshire gentleman of moderate
property; my eldest uncle succeeded to the estate of his forefathers, my
second became an eminent attorney in London, and my father took orders.
Like most poor clergymen, he had a large family; and I have no doubt was
glad enough when my London uncle, who was a bachelor, offered to take
charge of me, and bring me up to be his successor in business.

In this way I came to live in London, in my uncle’s house, not far from
Gray’s Inn, and to be treated and esteemed as his son, and to labour with
him in his office.  I was very fond of the old gentleman.  He was the
confidential agent of many country squires, and had attained to his
present position as much by knowledge of human nature as by knowledge of
law; though he was learned enough in the latter.  He used to say his
business was law, his pleasure heraldry.  From his intimate acquaintance
with family history, and all the tragic courses of life therein involved,
to hear him talk, at leisure times, about any coat of arms that came
across his path was as good as a play or a romance.  Many cases of
disputed property, dependent on a love of genealogy, were brought to him,
as to a great authority on such points.  If the lawyer who came to
consult him was young, he would take no fee, only give him a long lecture
on the importance of attending to heraldry; if the lawyer was of mature
age and good standing, he would mulct him pretty well, and abuse him to
me afterwards as negligent of one great branch of the profession.  His
house was in a stately new street called Ormond Street, and in it he had
a handsome library; but all the books treated of things that were past;
none of them planned or looked forward into the future.  I worked
away—partly for the sake of my family at home, partly because my uncle
had really taught me to enjoy the kind of practice in which he himself
took such delight.  I suspect I worked too hard; at any rate, in
seventeen hundred and eighteen I was far from well, and my good uncle was
disturbed by my ill looks.

One day, he rang the bell twice into the clerk’s room at the dingy office
in Grey’s Inn Lane.  It was the summons for me, and I went into his
private room just as a gentleman—whom I knew well enough by sight as an
Irish lawyer of more reputation than he deserved—was leaving.

My uncle was slowly rubbing his hands together and considering.  I was
there two or three minutes before he spoke.  Then he told me that I must
pack up my portmanteau that very afternoon, and start that night by
post-horse for West Chester.  I should get there, if all went well, at
the end of five days’ time, and must then wait for a packet to cross over
to Dublin; from thence I must proceed to a certain town named Kildoon,
and in that neighbourhood I was to remain, making certain inquiries as to
the existence of any descendants of the younger branch of a family to
whom some valuable estates had descended in the female line.  The Irish
lawyer whom I had seen was weary of the case, and would willingly have
given up the property, without further ado, to a man who appeared to
claim them; but on laying his tables and trees before my uncle, the
latter had foreseen so many possible prior claimants, that the lawyer had
begged him to undertake the management of the whole business.  In his
youth, my uncle would have liked nothing better than going over to
Ireland himself, and ferreting out every scrap of paper or parchment, and
every word of tradition respecting the family.  As it was, old and gouty,
he deputed me.

Accordingly, I went to Kildoon.  I suspect I had something of my uncle’s
delight in following up a genealogical scent, for I very soon found out,
when on the spot, that Mr. Rooney, the Irish lawyer, would have got both
himself and the first claimant into a terrible scrape, if he had
pronounced his opinion that the estates ought to be given up to him.
There were three poor Irish fellows, each nearer of kin to the last
possessor; but, a generation before, there was a still nearer relation,
who had never been accounted for, nor his existence ever discovered by
the lawyers, I venture to think, till I routed him out from the memory of
some of the old dependants of the family.  What had become of him?  I
travelled backwards and forwards; I crossed over to France, and came back
again with a slight clue, which ended in my discovering that, wild and
dissipated himself, he had left one child, a son, of yet worse character
than his father; that this same Hugh Fitzgerald had married a very
beautiful serving-woman of the Byrnes—a person below him in hereditary
rank, but above him in character; that he had died soon after his
marriage, leaving one child, whether a boy or a girl I could not learn,
and that the mother had returned to live in the family of the Byrnes.
Now, the chief of this latter family was serving in the Duke of Berwick’s
regiment, and it was long before I could hear from him; it was more than
a year before I got a short, haughty letter—I fancy he had a soldier’s
contempt for a civilian, an Irishman’s hatred for an Englishman, an
exiled Jacobite’s jealousy of one who prospered and lived tranquilly
under the government he looked upon as an usurpation.  “Bridget
Fitzgerald,” he said, “had been faithful to the fortunes of his
sister—had followed her abroad, and to England when Mrs. Starkey had
thought fit to return.  Both his sister and her husband were dead, he
knew nothing of Bridget Fitzgerald at the present time: probably Sir
Philip Tempest, his nephew’s guardian, might be able to give me some
information.”  I have not given the little contemptuous terms; the way in
which faithful service was meant to imply more than it said—all that has
nothing to do with my story.  Sir Philip, when applied to, told me that
he paid an annuity regularly to an old woman named Fitzgerald, living at
Coldholme (the village near Starkey Manor-house).  Whether she had any
descendants he could not say.

One bleak March evening, I came in sight of the places described at the
beginning of my story.  I could hardly understand the rude dialect in
which the direction to old Bridget’s house was given.

“Yo’ see yon furleets,” all run together, gave me no idea that I was to
guide myself by the distant lights that shone in the windows of the Hall,
occupied for the time by a farmer who held the post of steward, while the
Squire, now four or five and twenty, was making the grand tour.  However,
at last, I reached Bridget’s cottage—a low, moss-grown place: the palings
that had once surrounded it were broken and gone; and the underwood of
the forest came up to the walls, and must have darkened the windows.  It
was about seven o’clock—not late to my London notions—but, after knocking
for some time at the door and receiving no reply, I was driven to
conjecture that the occupant of the house was gone to bed.  So I betook
myself to the nearest church I had seen, three miles back on the road I
had come, sure that close to that I should find an inn of some kind; and
early the next morning I set off back to Coldholme, by a field-path which
my host assured me I should find a shorter cut than the road I had taken
the night before.  It was a cold, sharp morning; my feet left prints in
the sprinkling of hoar-frost that covered the ground; nevertheless, I saw
an old woman, whom I instinctively suspected to be the object of my
search, in a sheltered covert on one side of my path.  I lingered and
watched her.  She must have been considerably above the middle size in
her prime, for when she raised herself from the stooping position in
which I first saw her, there was something fine and commanding in the
erectness of her figure.  She drooped again in a minute or two, and
seemed looking for something on the ground, as, with bent head, she
turned off from the spot where I gazed upon her, and was lost to my
sight.  I fancy I missed my way, and made a round in spite of the
landlord’s directions; for by the time I had reached Bridget’s cottage
she was there, with no semblance of hurried walk or discomposure of any
kind.  The door was slightly ajar.  I knocked, and the majestic figure
stood before me, silently awaiting the explanation of my errand.  Her
teeth were all gone, so the nose and chin were brought near together; the
gray eyebrows were straight, and almost hung over her deep, cavernous
eyes, and the thick white hair lay in silvery masses over the low, wide,
wrinkled forehead.  For a moment, I stood uncertain how to shape my
answer to the solemn questioning of her silence.

“Your name is Bridget Fitzgerald, I believe?”

She bowed her head in assent.

“I have something to say to you.  May I come in?  I am unwilling to keep
you standing.”

“You cannot tire me,” she said, and at first she seemed inclined to deny
me the shelter of her roof.  But the next moment—she had searched the
very soul in me with her eyes during that instant—she led me in, and
dropped the shadowing hood of her gray, draping cloak, which had
previously hid part of the character of her countenance.  The cottage was
rude and bare enough.  But before the picture of the Virgin, of which I
have made mention, there stood a little cup filled with fresh primroses.
While she paid her reverence to the Madonna, I understood why she had
been out seeking through the clumps of green in the sheltered copse.
Then she turned round, and bade me be seated.  The expression of her
face, which all this time I was studying, was not bad, as the stories of
my last night’s landlord had led me to expect; it was a wild, stern,
fierce, indomitable countenance, seamed and scarred by agonies of
solitary weeping; but it was neither cunning nor malignant.

“My name is Bridget Fitzgerald,” said she, by way of opening our
conversation.

“And your husband was Hugh Fitzgerald, of Knock Mahon, near Kildoon, in
Ireland?”

A faint light came into the dark gloom of her eyes.

“He was.”

“May I ask if you had any children by him?”

The light in her eyes grew quick and red.  She tried to speak, I could
see; but something rose in her throat, and choked her, and until she
could speak calmly, she would fain not speak at all before a stranger.
In a minute or so she said—“I had a daughter—one Mary Fitzgerald,”—then
her strong nature mastered her strong will, and she cried out, with a
trembling wailing cry: “Oh, man! what of her?—what of her?”

She rose from her seat, and came and clutched at my arm, and looked in my
eyes.  There she read, as I suppose, my utter ignorance of what had
become of her child; for she went blindly back to her chair, and sat
rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not daring
to speak to the lone and awful woman.  After a little pause, she knelt
down before the picture of Our Lady of the Holy Heart, and spoke to her
by all the fanciful and poetic names of the Litany.

“O Rose of Sharon!  O Tower of David!  O Star of the Sea! have ye no
comfort for my sore heart?  Am I for ever to hope?  Grant me at least
despair!”—and so on she went, heedless of my presence.  Her prayers grew
wilder and wilder, till they seemed to me to touch on the borders of
madness and blasphemy.  Almost involuntarily, I spoke as if to stop her.

“Have you any reason to think that your daughter is dead?”

She rose from her knees, and came and stood before me.

“Mary Fitzgerald is dead,” said she.  “I shall never see her again in the
flesh.  No tongue ever told me; but I know she is dead.  I have yearned
so to see her, and my heart’s will is fearful and strong: it would have
drawn her to me before now, if she had been a wanderer on the other side
of the world.  I wonder often it has not drawn her out of the grave to
come and stand before me, and hear me tell her how I loved her.  For,
sir, we parted unfriends.”

I knew nothing but the dry particulars needed for my lawyer’s quest, but
I could not help feeling for the desolate woman; and she must have read
the unusual sympathy with her wistful eyes.

“Yes, sir, we did.  She never knew how I loved her; and we parted
unfriends; and I fear me that I wished her voyage might not turn out
well, only meaning,—O, blessed Virgin! you know I only meant that she
should come home to her mother’s arms as to the happiest place on earth;
but my wishes are terrible—their power goes beyond my thought—and there
is no hope for me, if my words brought Mary harm.”

“But,” I said, “you do not know that she is dead.  Even now, you hoped
she might be alive.  Listen to me,” and I told her the tale I have
already told you, giving it all in the driest manner, for I wanted to
recall the clear sense that I felt almost sure she had possessed in her
younger days, and by keeping up her attention to details, restrain the
vague wildness of her grief.

She listened with deep attention, putting from time to time such
questions as convinced me I had to do with no common intelligence,
however dimmed and shorn by solitude and mysterious sorrow.  Then she
took up her tale; and in few brief words, told me of her wanderings
abroad in vain search after her daughter; sometimes in the wake of
armies, sometimes in camp, sometimes in city.  The lady, whose
waiting-woman Mary had gone to be, had died soon after the date of her
last letter home; her husband, the foreign officer, had been serving in
Hungary, whither Bridget had followed him, but too late to find him.
Vague rumours reached her that Mary had made a great marriage: and this
sting of doubt was added,—whether the mother might not be close to her
child under her new name, and even hearing of her every day; and yet
never recognizing the lost one under the appellation she then bore.  At
length the thought took possession of her, that it was possible that all
this time Mary might be at home at Coldholme, in the Trough of Bolland,
in Lancashire, in England; and home came Bridget, in that vain hope, to
her desolate hearth, and empty cottage.  Here she had thought it safest
to remain; if Mary was in life, it was here she would seek for her
mother.

I noted down one or two particulars out of Bridget’s narrative that I
thought might be of use to me: for I was stimulated to further search in
a strange and extraordinary manner.  It seemed as if it were impressed
upon me, that I must take up the quest where Bridget had laid it down;
and this for no reason that had previously influenced me (such as my
uncle’s anxiety on the subject, my own reputation as a lawyer, and so
on), but from some strange power which had taken possession of my will
only that very morning, and which forced it in the direction it chose.

“I will go,” said I.  “I will spare nothing in the search.  Trust to me.
I will learn all that can be learnt.  You shall know all that money, or
pains, or wit can discover.  It is true she may be long dead: but she may
have left a child.”

“A child!” she cried, as if for the first time this idea had struck her
mind.  “Hear him, Blessed Virgin! he says she may have left a child.  And
you have never told me, though I have prayed so for a sign, waking or
sleeping!”

“Nay,” said I, “I know nothing but what you tell me.  You say you heard
of her marriage.”

But she caught nothing of what I said.  She was praying to the Virgin in
a kind of ecstasy, which seemed to render her unconscious of my very
presence.

From Coldholme I went to Sir Philip Tempest’s.  The wife of the foreign
officer had been a cousin of his father’s, and from him I thought I might
gain some particulars as to the existence of the Count de la Tour
d’Auvergne, and where I could find him; for I knew questions _de vive
voix_ aid the flagging recollection, and I was determined to lose no
chance for want of trouble.  But Sir Philip had gone abroad, and it would
be some time before I could receive an answer.  So I followed my uncle’s
advice, to whom I had mentioned how wearied I felt, both in body and
mind, by my will-o’-the-wisp search.  He immediately told me to go to
Harrogate, there to await Sir Philip’s reply.  I should be near to one of
the places connected with my search, Coldholme; not far from Sir Philip
Tempest, in case he returned, and I wished to ask him any further
questions; and, in conclusion, my uncle bade me try to forget all about
my business for a time.

This was far easier said than done.  I have seen a child on a common
blown along by a high wind, without power of standing still and resisting
the tempestuous force.  I was somewhat in the same predicament as
regarded my mental state.  Something resistless seemed to urge my
thoughts on, through every possible course by which there was a chance of
attaining to my object.  I did not see the sweeping moors when I walked
out: when I held a book in my hand, and read the words, their sense did
not penetrate to my brain.  If I slept, I went on with the same ideas,
always flowing in the same direction.  This could not last long without
having a bad effect on the body.  I had an illness, which, although I was
racked with pain, was a positive relief to me, as it compelled me to live
in the present suffering, and not in the visionary researches I had been
continually making before.  My kind uncle came to nurse me; and after the
immediate danger was over, my life seemed to slip away in delicious
languor for two or three months.  I did not ask—so much did I dread
falling into the old channel of thought—whether any reply had been
received to my letter to Sir Philip.  I turned my whole imagination right
away from all that subject.  My uncle remained with me until nigh
midsummer, and then returned to his business in London; leaving me
perfectly well, although not completely strong.  I was to follow him in a
fortnight; when, as he said, “we would look over letters, and talk about
several things.”  I knew what this little speech alluded to, and shrank
from the train of thought it suggested, which was so intimately connected
with my first feelings of illness.  However, I had a fortnight more to
roam on those invigorating Yorkshire moors.

In those days, there was one large, rambling inn, at Harrogate, close to
the Medicinal Spring; but it was already becoming too small for the
accommodation of the influx of visitors, and many lodged round about, in
the farm-houses of the district.  It was so early in the season, that I
had the inn pretty much to myself; and, indeed, felt rather like a
visitor in a private house, so intimate had the landlord and landlady
become with me during my long illness.  She would chide me for being out
so late on the moors, or for having been too long without food, quite in
a motherly way; while he consulted me about vintages and wines, and
taught me many a Yorkshire wrinkle about horses.  In my walks I met other
strangers from time to time.  Even before my uncle had left me, I had
noticed, with half-torpid curiosity, a young lady of very striking
appearance, who went about always accompanied by an elderly
companion,—hardly a gentlewoman, but with something in her look that
prepossessed me in her favour.  The younger lady always put her veil down
when any one approached; so it had been only once or twice, when I had
come upon her at a sudden turn in the path, that I had even had a glimpse
at her face.  I am not sure if it was beautiful, though in after-life I
grew to think it so.  But it was at this time overshadowed by a sadness
that never varied: a pale, quiet, resigned look of intense suffering,
that irresistibly attracted me,—not with love, but with a sense of
infinite compassion for one so young yet so hopelessly unhappy.  The
companion wore something of the same look: quiet melancholy, hopeless,
yet resigned.  I asked my landlord who they were.  He said they were
called Clarke, and wished to be considered as mother and daughter; but
that, for his part, he did not believe that to be their right name, or
that there was any such relationship between them.  They had been in the
neighbourhood of Harrogate for some time, lodging in a remote farm-house.
The people there would tell nothing about them; saying that they paid
handsomely, and never did any harm; so why should they be speaking of any
strange things that might happen?  That, as the landlord shrewdly
observed, showed there was something out of the common way he had heard
that the elderly woman was a cousin of the farmer’s where they lodged,
and so the regard existing between relations might help to keep them
quiet.

“What did he think, then, was the reason for their extreme seclusion?”
asked I.

“Nay, he could not tell,—not he.  He had heard that the young lady, for
all as quiet as she seemed, played strange pranks at times.”  He shook
his head when I asked him for more particulars, and refused to give them,
which made me doubt if he knew any, for he was in general a talkative and
communicative man.  In default of other interests, after my uncle left, I
set myself to watch these two people.  I hovered about their walks drawn
towards them with a strange fascination, which was not diminished by
their evident annoyance at so frequently meeting me.  One day, I had the
sudden good fortune to be at hand when they were alarmed by the attack of
a bull, which, in those unenclosed grazing districts, was a particularly
dangerous occurrence.  I have other and more important things to relate,
than to tell of the accident which gave me an opportunity of rescuing
them, it is enough to say, that this event was the beginning of an
acquaintance, reluctantly acquiesced in by them, but eagerly prosecuted
by me.  I can hardly tell when intense curiosity became merged in love,
but in less than ten days after my uncle’s departure I was passionately
enamoured of Mistress Lucy, as her attendant called her; carefully—for
this I noted well—avoiding any address which appeared as if there was an
equality of station between them.  I noticed also that Mrs. Clarke, the
elderly woman, after her first reluctance to allow me to pay them any
attentions had been overcome, was cheered by my evident attachment to the
young girl; it seemed to lighten her heavy burden of care, and she
evidently favoured my visits to the farmhouse where they lodged.  It was
not so with Lucy.  A more attractive person I never saw, in spite of her
depression of manner, and shrinking avoidance of me.  I felt sure at
once, that whatever was the source of her grief, it rose from no fault of
her own.  It was difficult to draw her into conversation; but when at
times, for a moment or two, I beguiled her into talk, I could see a rare
intelligence in her face, and a grave, trusting look in the soft, gray
eyes that were raised for a minute to mine.  I made every excuse I
possibly could for going there.  I sought wild flowers for Lucy’s sake; I
planned walks for Lucy’s sake; I watched the heavens by night, in hopes
that some unusual beauty of sky would justify me in tempting Mrs. Clarke
and Lucy forth upon the moors, to gaze at the great purple dome above.

It seemed to me that Lucy was aware of my love; but that, for some motive
which I could not guess, she would fain have repelled me; but then again
I saw, or fancied I saw, that her heart spoke in my favour, and that
there was a struggle going on in her mind, which at times (I loved so
dearly) I could have begged her to spare herself, even though the
happiness of my whole life should have been the sacrifice; for her
complexion grew paler, her aspect of sorrow more hopeless, her delicate
frame yet slighter.  During this period I had written, I should say, to
my uncle, to beg to be allowed to prolong my stay at Harrogate, not
giving any reason; but such was his tenderness towards me, that in a few
days I heard from him, giving me a willing permission, and only charging
me to take care of myself, and not use too much exertion during the hot
weather.

One sultry evening I drew near the farm.  The windows of their parlour
were open, and I heard voices when I turned the corner of the house, as I
passed the first window (there were two windows in their little
ground-floor room).  I saw Lucy distinctly; but when I had knocked at
their door—the house-door stood always ajar—she was gone, and I saw only
Mrs. Clarke, turning over the work-things lying on the table, in a
nervous and purposeless manner.  I felt by instinct that a conversation
of some importance was coming on, in which I should be expected to say
what was my object in paying these frequent visits.  I was glad of the
opportunity.  My uncle had several times alluded to the pleasant
possibility of my bringing home a young wife, to cheer and adorn the old
house in Ormond Street.  He was rich, and I was to succeed him, and had,
as I knew, a fair reputation for so young a lawyer.  So on my side I saw
no obstacle.  It was true that Lucy was shrouded in mystery; her name (I
was convinced it was not Clarke), birth, parentage, and previous life
were unknown to me.  But I was sure of her goodness and sweet innocence,
and although I knew that there must be something painful to be told, to
account for her mournful sadness, yet I was willing to bear my share in
her grief, whatever it might be.

Mrs. Clarke began, as if it was a relief to her to plunge into the
subject.

“We have thought, sir—at least I have thought—that you knew very little
of us, nor we of you, indeed; not enough to warrant the intimate
acquaintance we have fallen into.  I beg your pardon, sir,” she went on,
nervously; “I am but a plain kind of woman, and I mean to use no
rudeness; but I must say straight out that I—we—think it would be better
for you not to come so often to see us.  She is very unprotected, and—”

“Why should I not come to see you, dear madam?” asked I, eagerly, glad of
the opportunity of explaining myself.  “I come, I own, because I have
learnt to love Mistress Lucy, and wish to teach her to love me.”

Mistress Clarke shook her head, and sighed.

“Don’t, sir—neither love her, nor, for the sake of all you hold sacred,
teach her to love you!  If I am too late, and you love her already,
forget her,—forget these last few weeks.  O!  I should never have allowed
you to come!” she went on passionately; “but what am I to do?  We are
forsaken by all, except the great God, and even He permits a strange and
evil power to afflict us—what am I to do!  Where is it to end?” She wrung
her hands in her distress; then she turned to me: “Go away, sir! go away,
before you learn to care any more for her.  I ask it for your own sake—I
implore!  You have been good and kind to us, and we shall always
recollect you with gratitude; but go away now, and never come back to
cross our fatal path!”

“Indeed, madam,” said I, “I shall do no such thing.  You urge it for my
own sake.  I have no fear, so urged—nor wish, except to hear more—all.  I
cannot have seen Mistress Lucy in all the intimacy of this last
fortnight, without acknowledging her goodness and innocence; and without
seeing—pardon me, madam—that for some reason you are two very lonely
women, in some mysterious sorrow and distress.  Now, though I am not
powerful myself, yet I have friends who are so wise and kind that they
may be said to possess power.  Tell me some particulars.  Why are you in
grief—what is your secret—why are you here?  I declare solemnly that
nothing you have said has daunted me in my wish to become Lucy’s husband;
nor will I shrink from any difficulty that, as such an aspirant, I may
have to encounter.  You say you are friendless—why cast away an honest
friend?  I will tell you of people to whom you may write, and who will
answer any questions as to my character and prospects.  I do not shun
inquiry.”

She shook her head again.  “You had better go away, sir.  You know
nothing about us.”

“I know your names,” said I, “and I have heard you allude to the part of
the country from which you came, which I happen to know as a wild and
lonely place.  There are so few people living in it that, if I chose to
go there, I could easily ascertain all about you; but I would rather hear
it from yourself.”  You see I wanted to pique her into telling me
something definite.

“You do not know our true names, sir,” said she, hastily.

“Well, I may have conjectured as much.  But tell me, then, I conjure you.
Give me your reasons for distrusting my willingness to stand by what I
have said with regard to Mistress Lucy.”

“Oh, what can I do?” exclaimed she.  “If I am turning away a true friend,
as he says?—Stay!” coming to a sudden decision—“I will tell you
something—I cannot tell you all—you would not believe it.  But, perhaps,
I can tell you enough to prevent your going on in your hopeless
attachment.  I am not Lucy’s mother.”

“So I conjectured,” I said.  “Go on.”

“I do not even know whether she is the legitimate or illegitimate child
of her father.  But he is cruelly turned against her; and her mother is
long dead; and for a terrible reason, she has no other creature to keep
constant to her but me.  She—only two years ago—such a darling and such a
pride in her father’s house!  Why, sir, there is a mystery that might
happen in connection with her any moment; and then you would go away like
all the rest; and, when you next heard her name, you would loathe her.
Others, who have loved her longer, have done so before now.  My poor
child! whom neither God nor man has mercy upon—or, surely, she would
die!”

The good woman was stopped by her crying.  I confess, I was a little
stunned by her last words; but only for a moment.  At any rate, till I
knew definitely what was this mysterious stain upon one so simple and
pure, as Lucy seemed, I would not desert her, and so I said; and she made
me answer:—

“If you are daring in your heart to think harm of my child, sir, after
knowing her as you have done, you are no good man yourself; but I am so
foolish and helpless in my great sorrow, that I would fain hope to find a
friend in you.  I cannot help trusting that, although you may no longer
feel toward her as a lover, you will have pity upon us; and perhaps, by
your learning you can tell us where to go for aid.”

“I implore you to tell me what this mystery is,” I cried, almost maddened
by this suspense.

“I cannot,” said she, solemnly.  “I am under a deep vow of secrecy.  If
you are to be told, it must be by her.”  She left the room, and I
remained to ponder over this strange interview.  I mechanically turned
over the few books, and with eyes that saw nothing at the time, examined
the tokens of Lucy’s frequent presence in that room.

When I got home at night, I remembered how all these trifles spoke of a
pure and tender heart and innocent life.  Mistress Clarke returned; she
had been crying sadly.

“Yes,” said she, “it is as I feared: she loves you so much that she is
willing to run the fearful risk of telling you all herself—she
acknowledges it is but a poor chance; but your sympathy will be a balm,
if you give it.  To-morrow, come here at ten in the morning; and, as you
hope for pity in your hour of agony, repress all show of fear or
repugnance you may feel towards one so grievously afflicted.”

I half smiled.  “Have no fear,” I said.  It seemed too absurd to imagine
my feeling dislike to Lucy.

“Her father loved her well,” said she, gravely, “yet he drove her out
like some monstrous thing.”

Just at this moment came a peal of ringing laughter from the garden.  It
was Lucy’s voice; it sounded as if she were standing just on one side of
the open casement—and as though she were suddenly stirred to
merriment—merriment verging on boisterousness, by the doings or sayings
of some other person.  I can scarcely say why, but the sound jarred on me
inexpressibly.  She knew the subject of our conversation, and must have
been at least aware of the state of agitation her friend was in; she
herself usually so gentle and quiet.  I half rose to go to the window,
and satisfy my instinctive curiosity as to what had provoked this burst
of, ill-timed laughter; but Mrs. Clarke threw her whole weight and power
upon the hand with which she pressed and kept me down.

“For God’s sake!” she said, white and trembling all over, “sit still; be
quiet.  Oh! be patient.  To-morrow you will know all.  Leave us, for we
are all sorely afflicted.  Do not seek to know more about us.”

Again that laugh—so musical in sound, yet so discordant to my heart.  She
held me tight—tighter; without positive violence I could not have risen.
I was sitting with my back to the window, but I felt a shadow pass
between the sun’s warmth and me, and a strange shudder ran through my
frame.  In a minute or two she released me.

“Go,” repeated she.  “Be warned, I ask you once more.  I do not think you
can stand this knowledge that you seek.  If I had had my own way, Lucy
should never have yielded, and promised to tell you all.  Who knows what
may come of it?”

“I am firm in my wish to know all.  I return at ten to-morrow morning,
and then expect to see Mistress Lucy herself.”

I turned away; having my own suspicions, I confess, as to Mistress
Clarke’s sanity.

Conjectures as to the meaning of her hints, and uncomfortable thoughts
connected with that strange laughter, filled my mind.  I could hardly
sleep.  I rose early; and long before the hour I had appointed, I was on
the path over the common that led to the old farm-house where they
lodged.  I suppose that Lucy had passed no better a night than I; for
there she was also, slowly pacing with her even step, her eyes bent down,
her whole look most saintly and pure.  She started when I came close to
her, and grew paler as I reminded her of my appointment, and spoke with
something of the impatience of obstacles that, seeing her once more, had
called up afresh in my mind.  All strange and terrible hints, and giddy
merriment were forgotten.  My heart gave forth words of fire, and my
tongue uttered them.  Her colour went and came, as she listened; but,
when I had ended my passionate speeches, she lifted her soft eyes to me,
and said—

“But you know that you have something to learn about me yet.  I only want
to say this: I shall not think less of you—less well of you, I mean—if
you, too, fall away from me when you know all.  Stop!” said she, as if
fearing another burst of mad words.  “Listen to me.  My father is a man
of great wealth.  I never knew my mother; she must have died when I was
very young.  When first I remember anything, I was living in a great,
lonely house, with my dear and faithful Mistress Clarke.  My father,
even, was not there; he was—he is—a soldier, and his duties lie aboard.
But he came from time to time, and every time I think he loved me more
and more.  He brought me rarities from foreign lands, which prove to me
now how much he must have thought of me during his absences.  I can sit
down and measure the depth of his lost love now, by such standards as
these.  I never thought whether he loved me or not, then; it was so
natural, that it was like the air I breathed.  Yet he was an angry man at
times, even then; but never with me.  He was very reckless, too; and,
once or twice, I heard a whisper among the servants that a doom was over
him, and that he knew it, and tried to drown his knowledge in wild
activity, and even sometimes, sir, in wine.  So I grew up in this grand
mansion, in that lonely place.  Everything around me seemed at my
disposal, and I think every one loved me; I am sure I loved them.  Till
about two years ago—I remember it well—my father had come to England, to
us; and he seemed so proud and so pleased with me and all I had done.
And one day his tongue seemed loosened with wine, and he told me much
that I had not known till then,—how dearly he had loved my mother, yet
how his wilful usage had caused her death; and then he went on to say how
he loved me better than any creature on earth, and how, some day, he
hoped to take me to foreign places, for that he could hardly bear these
long absences from his only child.  Then he seemed to change suddenly,
and said, in a strange, wild way, that I was not to believe what he said;
that there was many a thing he loved better—his horse—his dog—I know not
what.

“And ’twas only the next morning that, when I came into his room to ask
his blessing as was my wont, he received me with fierce and angry words.
‘Why had I,’ so he asked, ‘been delighting myself in such wanton
mischief—dancing over the tender plants in the flower-beds, all set with
the famous Dutch bulbs he had brought from Holland?’ I had never been out
of doors that morning, sir, and I could not conceive what he meant, and
so I said; and then he swore at me for a liar, and said I was of no true
blood, for he had seen me doing all that mischief himself—with his own
eyes.  What could I say?  He would not listen to me, and even my tears
seemed only to irritate him.  That day was the beginning of my great
sorrows.  Not long after, he reproached me for my undue familiarity—all
unbecoming a gentlewoman—with his grooms.  I had been in the stable-yard,
laughing and talking, he said.  Now, sir, I am something of a coward by
nature, and I had always dreaded horses; be-sides that, my father’s
servants—those whom he brought with him from foreign parts—were wild
fellows, whom I had always avoided, and to whom I had never spoken,
except as a lady must needs from time to time speak to her father’s
people.  Yet my father called me by names of which I hardly know the
meaning, but my heart told me they were such as shame any modest woman;
and from that day he turned quite against me;—nay, sir, not many weeks
after that, he came in with a riding-whip in his hand; and, accusing me
harshly of evil doings, of which I knew no more than you, sir, he was
about to strike me, and I, all in bewildering tears, was ready to take
his stripes as great kindness compared to his harder words, when suddenly
he stopped his arm mid-way, gasped and staggered, crying out, ‘The
curse—the curse!’  I looked up in terror.  In the great mirror opposite I
saw myself, and right behind, another wicked, fearful self, so like me
that my soul seemed to quiver within me, as though not knowing to which
similitude of body it belonged.  My father saw my double at the same
moment, either in its dreadful reality, whatever that might be, or in the
scarcely less terrible reflection in the mirror; but what came of it at
that moment I cannot say, for I suddenly swooned away; and when I came to
myself I was lying in my bed, and my faithful Clarke sitting by me.  I
was in my bed for days; and even while I lay there my double was seen by
all, flitting about the house and gardens, always about some mischievous
or detestable work.  What wonder that every one shrank from me in
dread—that my father drove me forth at length, when the disgrace of which
I was the cause was past his patience to bear.  Mistress Clarke came with
me; and here we try to live such a life of piety and prayer as may in
time set me free from the curse.”

All the time she had been speaking, I had been weighing her story in my
mind.  I had hitherto put cases of witchcraft on one side, as mere
superstitions; and my uncle and I had had many an argument, he supporting
himself by the opinion of his good friend Sir Matthew Hale.  Yet this
sounded like the tale of one bewitched; or was it merely the effect of a
life of extreme seclusion telling on the nerves of a sensitive girl?  My
scepticism inclined me to the latter belief, and when she paused I said:

“I fancy that some physician could have disabused your father of his
belief in visions—”

Just at that instant, standing as I was opposite to her in the full and
perfect morning light, I saw behind her another figure—a ghastly
resemblance, complete in likeness, so far as form and feature and
minutest touch of dress could go, but with a loathsome demon soul looking
out of the gray eyes, that were in turns mocking and voluptuous.  My
heart stood still within me; every hair rose up erect; my flesh crept
with horror.  I could not see the grave and tender Lucy—my eyes were
fascinated by the creature beyond.  I know not why, but I put out my hand
to clutch it; I grasped nothing but empty air, and my whole blood curdled
to ice.  For a moment I could not see; then my sight came back, and I saw
Lucy standing before me, alone, deathly pale, and, I could have fancied,
almost, shrunk in size.

“IT has been near me?” she said, as if asking a question.

The sound seemed taken out of her voice; it was husky as the notes on an
old harpsichord when the strings have ceased to vibrate.  She read her
answer in my face, I suppose, for I could not speak.  Her look was one of
intense fear, but that died away into an aspect of most humble patience.
At length she seemed to force herself to face behind and around her: she
saw the purple moors, the blue distant hills, quivering in the sunlight,
but nothing else.

“Will you take me home?” she said, meekly.

I took her by the hand, and led her silently through the budding
heather—we dared not speak; for we could not tell but that the dread
creature was listening, although unseen,—but that IT might appear and
push us asunder.  I never loved her more fondly than now when—and that
was the unspeakable misery—the idea of her was becoming so inextricably
blended with the shuddering thought of IT.  She seemed to understand what
I must be feeling.  She let go my hand, which she had kept clasped until
then, when we reached the garden gate, and went forwards to meet her
anxious friend, who was standing by the window looking for her.  I could
not enter the house: I needed silence, society, leisure, change—I knew
not what—to shake off the sensation of that creature’s presence.  Yet I
lingered about the garden—I hardly know why; I partly suppose, because I
feared to encounter the resemblance again on the solitary common, where
it had vanished, and partly from a feeling of inexpressible compassion
for Lucy.  In a few minutes Mistress Clarke came forth and joined me.  We
walked some paces in silence.

“You know all now,” said she, solemnly.

“I saw IT,” said I, below my breath.

“And you shrink from us, now,” she said, with a hopelessness which
stirred up all that was brave or good in me.

“Not a whit,” said I.  “Human flesh shrinks from encounter with the
powers of darkness: and, for some reason unknown to me, the pure and holy
Lucy is their victim.”

“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,” she said.

“Who is her father?” asked I.  “Knowing as much as I do, I may surely
know more—know all.  Tell me, I entreat you, madam, all that you can
conjecture respecting this demoniac persecution of one so good.”

“I will; but not now.  I must go to Lucy now.  Come this afternoon, I
will see you alone; and oh, sir!  I will trust that you may yet find some
way to help us in our sore trouble!”

I was miserably exhausted by the swooning affright which had taken
possession of me.  When I reached the inn, I staggered in like one
overcome by wine.  I went to my own private room.  It was some time
before I saw that the weekly post had come in, and brought me my letters.
There was one from my uncle, one from my home in Devonshire, and one,
re-directed over the first address, sealed with a great coat of arms, It
was from Sir Philip Tempest: my letter of inquiry respecting Mary
Fitzgerald had reached him at Liége, where it so happened that the Count
de la Tour d’Auvergne was quartered at the very time.  He remembered his
wife’s beautiful attendant; she had had high words with the deceased
countess, respecting her intercourse with an English gentleman of good
standing, who was also in the foreign service.  The countess augured evil
of his intentions; while Mary, proud and vehement, asserted that he would
soon marry her, and resented her mistress’s warnings as an insult.  The
consequence was, that she had left Madame de la Tour d’Auvergne’s
service, and, as the Count believed, had gone to live with the
Englishman; whether he had married her, or not, he could not say.  “But,”
added Sir Philip Tempest, “you may easily hear what particulars you wish
to know respecting Mary Fitzgerald from the Englishman himself, if, as I
suspect, he is no other than my neighbour and former acquaintance, Mr.
Gisborne, of Skipford Hall, in the West Riding.  I am led to the belief
that he is no other, by several small particulars, none of which are in
themselves conclusive, but which, taken together, furnish a mass of
presumptive evidence.  As far as I could make out from the Count’s
foreign pronunciation, Gisborne was the name of the Englishman: I know
that Gisborne of Skipford was abroad and in the foreign service at that
time—he was a likely fellow enough for such an exploit, and, above all,
certain expressions recur to my mind which he used in reference to old
Bridget Fitzgerald, of Coldholme, whom he once encountered while staying
with me at Starkey Manor-house.  I remember that the meeting seemed to
have produced some extraordinary effect upon his mind, as though he had
suddenly discovered some connection which she might have had with his
previous life.  I beg you to let me know if I can be of any further
service to you.  Your uncle once rendered me a good turn, and I will
gladly repay it, so far as in me lies, to his nephew.”

I was now apparently close on the discovery which I had striven so many
months to attain.  But success had lost its zest.  I put my letters down,
and seemed to forget them all in thinking of the morning I had passed
that very day.  Nothing was real but the unreal presence, which had come
like an evil blast across my bodily eyes, and burnt itself down upon my
brain.  Dinner came, and went away untouched.  Early in the afternoon I
walked to the farm-house.  I found Mistress Clarke alone, and I was glad
and relieved.  She was evidently prepared to tell me all I might wish to
hear.

“You asked me for Mistress Lucy’s true name; it is Gisborne,” she began.

“Not Gisborne of Skipford?” I exclaimed, breathless with anticipation.

“The same,” said she, quietly, not regarding my manner.  “Her father is a
man of note; although, being a Roman Catholic, he cannot take that rank
in this country to which his station entitles him.  The consequence is
that he lives much abroad—has been a soldier, I am told.”

“And Lucy’s mother?” I asked.

She shook her head.  “I never knew her,” said she.  “Lucy was about three
years old when I was engaged to take charge of her.  Her mother was
dead.”

“But you know her name?—you can tell if it was Mary Fitzgerald?”

She looked astonished.  “That was her name.  But, sir, how came you to be
so well acquainted with it?  It was a mystery to the whole household at
Skipford Court.  She was some beautiful young woman whom he lured away
from her protectors while he was abroad.  I have heard said he practised
some terrible deceit upon her, and when she came to know it, she was
neither to have nor to hold, but rushed off from his very arms, and threw
herself into a rapid stream and was drowned.  It stung him deep with
remorse, but I used to think the remembrance of the mother’s cruel death
made him love the child yet dearer.”

I told her, as briefly as might be, of my researches after the descendant
and heir of the Fitzgeralds of Kildoon, and added—something of my old
lawyer spirit returning into me for the moment—that I had no doubt but
that we should prove Lucy to be by right possessed of large estates in
Ireland.

No flush came over her gray face; no light into her eyes.  “And what is
all the wealth in the whole world to that poor girl?” she said.  “It will
not free her from the ghastly bewitchment which persecutes her.  As for
money, what a pitiful thing it is! it cannot touch her.”

“No more can the Evil Creature harm her,” I said.  “Her holy nature
dwells apart, and cannot be defiled or stained by all the devilish arts
in the whole world.”

“True! but it is a cruel fate to know that all shrink from her, sooner or
later, as from one possessed—accursed.”

“How came it to pass?” I asked.

“Nay, I know not.  Old rumours there are, that were bruited through the
household at Skipford.”

“Tell me,” I demanded.

“They came from servants, who would fain account for every thing.  They
say that, many years ago, Mr. Gisborne killed a dog belonging to an old
witch at Coldholme; that she cursed, with a dreadful and mysterious
curse, the creature, whatever it might be, that he should love best; and
that it struck so deeply into his heart that for years he kept himself
aloof from any temptation to love aught.  But who could help loving
Lucy?”

“You never heard the witch’s name?” I gasped.

“Yes—they called her Bridget: they said he would never go near the spot
again for terror of her.  Yet he was a brave man!”

“Listen,” said I, taking hold of her arm, the better to arrest her full
attention: “if what I suspect holds true, that man stole Bridget’s only
child—the very Mary Fitzgerald who was Lucy’s mother; if so, Bridget
cursed him in ignorance of the deeper wrong he had done her.  To this
hour she yearns after her lost child, and questions the saints whether
she be living or not.  The roots of that curse lie deeper than she knows:
she unwittingly banned him for a deeper guilt than that of killing a dumb
beast.  The sins of the fathers are indeed visited upon the children.”

“But,” said Mistress Clarke, eagerly, “she would never let evil rest on
her own grandchild?  Surely, sir, if what you say be true, there are
hopes for Lucy.  Let us go—go at once, and tell this fearful woman all
that you suspect, and beseech her to take off the spell she has put upon
her innocent grandchild.”

It seemed to me, indeed, that something like this was the best course we
could pursue.  But first it was necessary to ascertain more than what
mere rumour or careless hearsay could tell.  My thoughts turned to my
uncle—he could advise me wisely—he ought to know all.  I resolved to go
to him without delay; but I did not choose to tell Mistress Clarke of all
the visionary plans that flitted through my mind.  I simply declared my
intention of proceeding straight to London on Lucy’s affairs.  I bade her
believe that my interest on the young lady’s behalf was greater than
ever, and that my whole time should be given up to her cause.  I saw that
Mistress Clarke distrusted me, because my mind was too full of thoughts
for my words to flow freely.  She sighed and shook her head, and said,
“Well, it is all right!” in such a tone that it was an implied reproach.
But I was firm and constant in my heart, and I took confidence from that.

I rode to London.  I rode long days drawn out into the lovely summer
nights: I could not rest.  I reached London.  I told my uncle all, though
in the stir of the great city the horror had faded away, and I could
hardly imagine that he would believe the account I gave him of the
fearful double of Lucy which I had seen on the lonely moor-side.  But my
uncle had lived many years, and learnt many things; and, in the deep
secrets of family history that had been confided to him, he had heard of
cases of innocent people bewitched and taken possession of by evil
spirits yet more fearful than Lucy’s.  For, as he said, to judge from all
I told him, that resemblance had no power over her—she was too pure and
good to be tainted by its evil, haunting presence.  It had, in all
probability, so my uncle conceived, tried to suggest wicked thoughts and
to tempt to wicked actions but she, in her saintly maidenhood, had passed
on undefiled by evil thought or deed.  It could not touch her soul: but
true, it set her apart from all sweet love or common human intercourse.
My uncle threw himself with an energy more like six-and-twenty than sixty
into the consideration of the whole case.  He undertook the proving
Lucy’s descent, and volunteered to go and find out Mr. Gisborne, and
obtain, firstly, the legal proofs of her descent from the Fitzgeralds of
Kildoon, and, secondly, to try and hear all that he could respecting the
working of the curse, and whether any and what means had been taken to
exorcise that terrible appearance.  For he told me of instances where, by
prayers and long fasting, the evil possessor had been driven forth with
howling and many cries from the body which it had come to inhabit; he
spoke of those strange New England cases which had happened not so long
before; of Mr. Defoe, who had written a book, wherein he had named many
modes of subduing apparitions, and sending them back whence they came;
and, lastly, he spoke low of dreadful ways of compelling witches to undo
their witchcraft.  But I could not endure to hear of those tortures and
burnings.  I said that Bridget was rather a wild and savage woman than a
malignant witch; and, above all, that Lucy was of her kith and kin; and
that, in putting her to the trial, by water or by fire, we should be
torturing—it might be to the death—the ancestress of her we sought to
redeem.

My uncle thought awhile, and then said, that in this last matter I was
right—at any rate, it should not be tried, with his consent, till all
other modes of remedy had failed; and he assented to my proposal that I
should go myself and see Bridget, and tell her all.

In accordance with this, I went down once more to the wayside inn near
Coldholme.  It was late at night when I arrived there; and, while I
supped, I inquired of the landlord more particulars as to Bridget’s ways.
Solitary and savage had been her life for many years.  Wild and despotic
were her words and manner to those few people who came across her path.
The country-folk did her imperious bidding, because they feared to
disobey.  If they pleased her, they prospered; if, on the contrary, they
neglected or traversed her behests, misfortune, small or great, fell on
them and theirs.  It was not detestation so much as an indefinable terror
that she excited.

In the morning I went to see her.  She was standing on the green outside
her cottage, and received me with the sullen grandeur of a throneless
queen.  I read in her face that she recognized me, and that I was not
unwelcome; but she stood silent till I had opened my errand.

“I have news of your daughter,” said I, resolved to speak straight to all
that I knew she felt of love, and not to spare her.  “She is dead!”

The stern figure scarcely trembled, but her hand sought the support of
the door-post.

“I knew that she was dead,” said she, deep and low, and then was silent
for an instant.  “My tears that should have flowed for her were burnt up
long years ago.  Young man, tell me about her.”

“Not yet,” said I, having a strange power given me of confronting one,
whom, nevertheless, in my secret soul I dreaded.

“You had once a little dog,” I continued.  The words called out in her
more show of emotion than the intelligence of her daughter’s death.  She
broke in upon my speech:—

“I had!  It was hers—the last thing I had of hers—and it was shot for
wantonness!  It died in my arms.  The man who killed that dog rues it to
this day.  For that dumb beast’s blood, his best-beloved stands
accursed.”

Her eyes distended, as if she were in a trance and saw the working of her
curse.  Again I spoke:—

“O, woman!” I said, “that best-beloved, standing accursed before men, is
your dead daughter’s child.”

The life, the energy, the passion, came back to the eyes with which she
pierced through me, to see if I spoke truth; then, without another
question or word, she threw herself on the ground with fearful vehemence,
and clutched at the innocent daisies with convulsed hands.

“Bone of my bone! flesh of my flesh! have I cursed thee—and art thou
accursed?”

So she moaned, as she lay prostrate in her great agony.  I stood aghast
at my own work.  She did not hear my broken sentences; she asked no more,
but the dumb confirmation which my sad looks had given that one fact,
that her curse rested on her own daughter’s child.  The fear grew on me
lest she should die in her strife of body and soul; and then might not
Lucy remain under the spell as long as she lived?

Even at this moment, I saw Lucy coming through the woodland path that led
to Bridget’s cottage; Mistress Clarke was with her: I felt at my heart
that it was she, by the balmy peace which the look of her sent over me,
as she slowly advanced, a glad surprise shining out of her soft quiet
eyes.  That was as her gaze met mine.  As her looks fell on the woman
lying stiff, convulsed on the earth, they became full of tender pity; and
she came forward to try and lift her up.  Seating herself on the turf,
she took Bridget’s head into her lap; and, with gentle touches, she
arranged the dishevelled gray hair streaming thick and wild from beneath
her mutch.

“God help her!” murmured Lucy.  “How she suffers!”

At her desire we sought for water; but when we returned, Bridget had
recovered her wandering senses, and was kneeling with clasped hands
before Lucy, gazing at that sweet sad face as though her troubled nature
drank in health and peace from every moment’s contemplation.  A faint
tinge on Lucy’s pale cheeks showed me that she was aware of our return;
otherwise it appeared as if she was conscious of her influence for good
over the passionate and troubled woman kneeling before her, and would not
willingly avert her grave and loving eyes from that wrinkled and careworn
countenance.

Suddenly—in the twinkling of an eye—the creature appeared, there, behind
Lucy; fearfully the same as to outward semblance, but kneeling exactly as
Bridget knelt, and clasping her hands in jesting mimicry as Bridget
clasped hers in her ecstasy that was deepening into a prayer.  Mistress
Clarke cried out—Bridget arose slowly, her gaze fixed on the creature
beyond: drawing her breath with a hissing sound, never moving her
terrible eyes, that were steady as stone, she made a dart at the phantom,
and caught, as I had done, a mere handful of empty air.  We saw no more
of the creature—it vanished as suddenly as it came, but Bridget looked
slowly on, as if watching some receding form.  Lucy sat still, white,
trembling, drooping—I think she would have swooned if I had not been
there to uphold her.  While I was attending to her, Bridget passed us,
without a word to any one, and, entering her cottage, she barred herself
in, and left us without.

All our endeavours were now directed to get Lucy back to the house where
she had tarried the night before.  Mistress Clarke told me that, not
hearing from me (some letter must have miscarried), she had grown
impatient and despairing, and had urged Lucy to the enterprise of coming
to seek her grandmother; not telling her, indeed, of the dread reputation
she possessed, or how we suspected her of having so fearfully blighted
that innocent girl; but, at the same time, hoping much from the
mysterious stirring of blood, which Mistress Clarke trusted in for the
removal of the curse.  They had come, by a different route from that
which I had taken, to a village inn not far from Coldholme, only the
night before.  This was the first interview between ancestress and
descendant.

All through the sultry noon I wandered along the tangled brush-wood of
the old neglected forest, thinking where to turn for remedy in a matter
so complicated and mysterious.  Meeting a countryman, I asked my way to
the nearest clergyman, and went, hoping to obtain some counsel from him.
But he proved to be a coarse and common-minded man, giving no time or
attention to the intricacies of a case, but dashing out a strong opinion
involving immediate action.  For instance, as soon as I named Bridget
Fitzgerald, he exclaimed:—

“The Coldholme witch! the Irish papist!  I’d have had her ducked long
since but for that other papist, Sir Philip Tempest.  He has had to
threaten honest folk about here over and over again, or they’d have had
her up before the justices for her black doings.  And it’s the law of the
land that witches should be burnt!  Ay, and of Scripture, too, sir!  Yet
you see a papist, if he’s a rich squire, can overrule both law and
Scripture.  I’d carry a faggot myself to rid the country of her!”

Such a one could give me no help.  I rather drew back what I had already
said; and tried to make the parson forget it, by treating him to several
pots of beer, in the village inn, to which we had adjourned for our
conference at his suggestion.  I left him as soon as I could, and
returned to Coldholme, shaping my way past deserted Starkey Manor-house,
and coming upon it by the back.  At that side were the oblong remains of
the old moat, the waters of which lay placid and motionless under the
crimson rays of the setting sun; with the forest-trees lying straight
along each side, and their deep-green foliage mirrored to blackness in
the burnished surface of the moat below—and the broken sun-dial at the
end nearest the hall—and the heron, standing on one leg at the water’s
edge, lazily looking down for fish—the lonely and desolate house scarce
needed the broken windows, the weeds on the door-sill, the broken shutter
softly flapping to and fro in the twilight breeze, to fill up the picture
of desertion and decay.  I lingered about the place until the growing
darkness warned me on.  And then I passed along the path, cut by the
orders of the last lady of Starkey Manor-House, that led me to Bridget’s
cottage.  I resolved at once to see her; and, in spite of closed doors—it
might be of resolved will—she should see me.  So I knocked at her door,
gently, loudly, fiercely.  I shook it so vehemently that a length the old
hinges gave way, and with a crash it fell inwards, leaving me suddenly
face to face with Bridget—I, red, heated, agitated with my so long
baffled efforts—she, stiff as any stone, standing right facing me, her
eyes dilated with terror, her ashen lips trembling, but her body
motionless.  In her hands she held her crucifix, as if by that holy
symbol she sought to oppose my entrance.  At sight of me, her whole frame
relaxed, and she sank back upon a chair.  Some mighty tension had given
way.  Still her eyes looked fearfully into the gloom of the outer air,
made more opaque by the glimmer of the lamp inside, which she had placed
before the picture of the Virgin.

“Is she there?” asked Bridget, hoarsely.

“No!  Who?  I am alone.  You remember me.”

“Yes,” replied she, still terror stricken.  “But she—that creature—has
been looking in upon me through that window all day long.  I closed it up
with my shawl; and then I saw her feet below the door, as long as it was
light, and I knew she heard my very breathing—nay, worse, my very
prayers; and I could not pray, for her listening choked the words ere
they rose to my lips.  Tell me, who is she?—what means that double girl I
saw this morning?  One had a look of my dead Mary; but the other curdled
my blood, and yet it was the same!”

She had taken hold of my arm, as if to secure herself some human
companionship.  She shook all over with the slight, never-ceasing tremor
of intense terror.  I told her my tale as I have told it you, sparing
none of the details.

How Mistress Clarke had informed me that the resemblance had driven Lucy
forth from her father’s house—how I had disbelieved, until, with mine own
eyes, I had seen another Lucy standing behind my Lucy, the same in form
and feature, but with the demon-soul looking out of the eyes.  I told her
all, I say, believing that she—whose curse was working so upon the life
of her innocent grandchild—was the only person who could find the remedy
and the redemption.  When I had done, she sat silent for many minutes.

“You love Mary’s child?” she asked.

“I do, in spite of the fearful working of the curse—I love her.  Yet I
shrink from her ever since that day on the moor-side.  And men must
shrink from one so accompanied; friends and lovers must stand afar off.
Oh, Bridget Fitzgerald! loosen the curse!  Set her free!”

“Where is she?”

I eagerly caught at the idea that her presence was needed, in order that,
by some strange prayer or exorcism, the spell might be reversed.

“I will go and bring her to you,” I exclaimed.  Bridget tightened her
hold upon my arm.

“Not so,” said she, in a low, hoarse voice.  “It would kill me to see her
again as I saw her this morning.  And I must live till I have worked my
work.  Leave me!” said she, suddenly, and again taking up the cross.  “I
defy the demon I have called up.  Leave me to wrestle with it!”

She stood up, as if in an ecstasy of inspiration, from which all fear was
banished.  I lingered—why I can hardly tell—until once more she bade me
begone.  As I went along the forest way, I looked back, and saw her
planting the cross in the empty threshold, where the door had been.

The next morning Lucy and I went to seek her, to bid her join her prayers
with ours.  The cottage stood open and wide to our gaze.  No human being
was there: the cross remained on the threshold, but Bridget was gone.



CHAPTER III.


WHAT was to be done next? was the question that I asked myself.  As for
Lucy, she would fain have submitted to the doom that lay upon her.  Her
gentleness and piety, under the pressure of so horrible a life, seemed
over-passive to me.  She never complained.  Mrs. Clarke complained more
than ever.  As for me, I was more in love with the real Lucy than ever;
but I shrunk from the false similitude with an intensity proportioned to
my love.  I found out by instinct that Mrs. Clarke had occasional
temptations to leave Lucy.  The good lady’s nerves were shaken, and, from
what she said, I could almost have concluded that the object of the
Double was to drive away from Lucy this last, and almost earliest friend.
At times, I could scarcely bear to own it, but I myself felt inclined to
turn recreant; and I would accuse Lucy of being too patient—too resigned.
One after another, she won the little children of Coldholme.  (Mrs.
Clarke and she had resolved to stay there, for was it not as good a place
as any other, to such as they? and did not all our faint hopes rest on
Bridget—never seen or heard of now, but still we trusted to come back, or
give some token?)  So, as I say, one after another, the little children
came about my Lucy, won by her soft tones, and her gentle smiles, and
kind actions.  Alas! one after another they fell away, and shrunk from
her path with blanching terror; and we too surely guessed the reason why.
It was the last drop.  I could bear it no longer.  I resolved no more to
linger around the spot, but to go back to my uncle, and among the learned
divines of the city of London, seek for some power whereby to annul the
curse.

My uncle, meanwhile, had obtained all the requisite testimonials relating
to Lucy’s descent and birth, from the Irish lawyers, and from Mr.
Gisborne.  The latter gentleman had written from abroad (he was again
serving in the Austrian army), a letter alternately passionately
self-reproachful and stoically repellant.  It was evident that when he
thought of Mary—her short life—how he had wronged her, and of her violent
death, he could hardly find words severe enough for his own conduct; and
from this point of view, the curse that Bridget had laid upon him and
his, was regarded by him as a prophetic doom, to the utterance of which
she was moved by a Higher Power, working for the fulfilment of a deeper
vengeance than for the death of the poor dog.  But then, again, when he
came to speak of his daughter, the repugnance which the conduct of the
demoniac creature had produced in his mind, was but ill-disguised under a
show of profound indifference as to Lucy’s fate.  One almost felt as if
he would have been as content to put her out of existence, as he would
have been to destroy some disgusting reptile that had invaded his chamber
or his couch.

The great Fitzgerald property was Lucy’s; and that was all—was nothing.

My uncle and I sat in the gloom of a London November evening, in our
house in Ormond Street.  I was out of health, and felt as if I were in an
inextricable coil of misery.  Lucy and I wrote to each other, but that
was little; and we dared not see each other for dread of the fearful
Third, who had more than once taken her place at our meetings.  My uncle
had, on the day I speak of, bidden prayers to be put up on the ensuing
Sabbath in many a church and meeting-house in London, for one grievously
tormented by an evil spirit.  He had faith in prayers—I had none; I was
fast losing faith in all things.  So we sat, he trying to interest me in
the old talk of other days, I oppressed by one thought—when our old
servant, Anthony, opened the door, and, without speaking, showed in a
very gentlemanly and prepossessing man, who had something remarkable
about his dress, betraying his profession to be that of the Roman
Catholic priesthood.  He glanced at my uncle first, then at me.  It was
to me he bowed.

“I did not give my name,” said he, “because you would hardly have
recognised it; unless, sir, when, in the north, you heard of Father
Bernard, the chaplain at Stoney Hurst?”

I remembered afterwards that I had heard of him, but at the time I had
utterly forgotten it; so I professed myself a complete stranger to him;
while my ever-hospitable uncle, although hating a papist as much as it
was in his nature to hate anything, placed a chair for the visitor, and
bade Anthony bring glasses, and a fresh jug of claret.

Father Bernard received this courtesy with the graceful ease and pleasant
acknowledgement which belongs to a man of the world.  Then he turned to
scan me with his keen glance.  After some alight conversation, entered
into on his part, I am certain, with an intention of discovering on what
terms of confidence I stood with my uncle, he paused, and said gravely—

“I am sent here with a message to you, sir, from a woman to whom you have
shown kindness, and who is one of my penitents, in Antwerp—one Bridget
Fitzgerald.”

“Bridget Fitzgerald!” exclaimed I.  “In Antwerp?  Tell me, sir, all that
you can about her.”

“There is much to be said,” he replied.  “But may I inquire if this
gentleman—if your uncle is acquainted with the particulars of which you
and I stand informed?”

“All that I know, he knows,” said I, eagerly laying my hand on my uncle’s
arm, as he made a motion as if to quit the room.

“Then I have to speak before two gentlemen who, however they may differ
from me in faith, are yet fully impressed with the fact that there are
evil powers going about continually to take cognizance of our evil
thoughts: and, if their Master gives them power, to bring them into overt
action.  Such is my theory of the nature of that sin, which I dare not
disbelieve—as some sceptics would have us do—the sin of witchcraft.  Of
this deadly sin, you and I are aware, Bridget Fitzgerald has been guilty.
Since you saw her last, many prayers have been offered in our churches,
many masses sung, many penances undergone, in order that, if God and the
holy saints so willed it, her sin might be blotted out.  But it has not
been so willed.”

“Explain to me,” said I, “who you are, and how you come connected with
Bridget.  Why is she at Antwerp?  I pray you, sir, tell me more.  If I am
impatient, excuse me; I am ill and feverish, and in consequence
bewildered.”

There was something to me inexpressibly soothing in the tone of voice
with which he began to narrate, as it were from the beginning, his
acquaintance with Bridget.

“I had known Mr. and Mrs. Starkey during their residence abroad, and so
it fell out naturally that, when I came as chaplain to the Sherburnes at
Stoney Hurst, our acquaintance was renewed; and thus I became the
confessor of the whole family, isolated as they were from the offices of
the Church, Sherburne being their nearest neighbour who professed the
true faith.  Of course, you are aware that facts revealed in confession
are sealed as in the grave; but I learnt enough of Bridget’s character to
be convinced that I had to do with no common woman; one powerful for good
as for evil.  I believe that I was able to give her spiritual assistance
from time to time, and that she looked upon me as a servant of that Holy
Church, which has such wonderful power of moving men’s hearts, and
relieving them of the burden of their sins.  I have known her cross the
moors on the wildest nights of storm, to confess and be absolved; and
then she would return, calmed and subdued, to her daily work about her
mistress, no one witting where she had been during the hours that most
passed in sleep upon their beds.  After her daughter’s departure—after
Mary’s mysterious disappearance—I had to impose many a long penance, in
order to wash away the sin of impatient repining that was fast leading
her into the deeper guilt of blasphemy.  She set out on that long journey
of which you have possibly heard—that fruitless journey in search of
Mary—and during her absence, my superiors ordered my return to my former
duties at Antwerp, and for many years I heard no more of Bridget.

“Not many months ago, as I was passing homewards in the evening, along
one of the streets near St. Jacques, leading into the Meer Straet, I saw
a woman sitting crouched up under the shrine of the Holy Mother of
Sorrows.  Her hood was drawn over her head, so that the shadow caused by
the light of the lamp above fell deep over her face; her hands were
clasped round her knees.  It was evident that she was some one in
hopeless trouble, and as such it was my duty to stop and speak.  I
naturally addressed her first in Flemish, believing her to be one of the
lower class of inhabitants.  She shook her head, but did not look up.
Then I tried French, and she replied in that language, but speaking it so
indifferently, that I was sure she was either English or Irish, and
consequently spoke to her in my own native tongue.  She recognized my
voice; and, starting up, caught at my robes, dragging me before the
blessed shrine, and throwing herself down, and forcing me, as much by her
evident desire as by her action, to kneel beside her, she exclaimed:

“‘O Holy Virgin! you will never hearken to me again, but hear him; for
you know him of old, that he does your bidding, and strives to heal
broken hearts.  Hear him!’

“She turned to me.

“‘She will hear you, if you will only pray.  She never hears _me_: she
and all the saints in heaven cannot hear my prayers, for the Evil One
carries them off, as he carried that first away.  O, Father Bernard, pray
for me!’

“I prayed for one in sore distress, of what nature I could not say; but
the Holy Virgin would know.  Bridget held me fast, gasping with eagerness
at the sound of my words.  When I had ended, I rose, and, making the sign
of the Cross over her, I was going to bless her in the name of the Holy
Church, when she shrank away like some terrified creature, and said—

“‘I am guilty of deadly sin, and am not shriven.’

“‘Arise, my daughter,’ said I, ‘and come with me.’  And I led the way
into one of the confessionals of St. Jaques.

“She knelt; I listened.  No words came.  The evil powers had stricken her
dumb, as I heard afterwards they had many a time before, when she
approached confession.

“She was too poor to pay for the necessary forms of exorcism; and
hitherto those priests to whom she had addressed herself were either so
ignorant of the meaning of her broken French, or her Irish-English, or
else esteemed her to be one crazed—as, indeed, her wild and excited
manner might easily have led any one to think—that they had neglected the
sole means of loosening her tongue, so that she might confess her deadly
sin, and, after due penance, obtain absolution.  But I knew Bridget of
old, and felt that she was a penitent sent to me.  I went through those
holy offices appointed by our Church for the relief of such a case.  I
was the more bound to do this, as I found that she had come to Antwerp
for the sole purpose of discovering me, and making confession to me.  Of
the nature of that fearful confession I am forbidden to speak.  Much of
it you know; possibly all.

“It now remains for her to free herself from mortal guilt, and to set
others free from the consequences thereof.  No prayers, no masses, will
ever do it, although they may strengthen her with that strength by which
alone acts of deepest love and purest self-devotion may be performed.
Her words of passion, and cries for revenge—her unholy prayers could
never reach the ears of the holy saints!  Other powers intercepted them,
and wrought so that the curses thrown up to heaven have fallen on her own
flesh and blood; and so, through her very strength of love, have brused
and crushed her heart.  Henceforward her former self must be buried,—yea,
buried quick, if need be,—but never more to make sign, or utter cry on
earth!  She has become a Poor Clare, in order that, by perpetual penance
and constant service of others, she may at length so act as to obtain
final absolution and rest for her soul.  Until then, the innocent must
suffer.  It is to plead for the innocent that I come to you; not in the
name of the witch, Bridget Fitzgerald, but of the penitent and servant of
all men, the Poor Clare, Sister Magdalen.”

“Sir,” said I, “I listen to your request with respect; only I may tell
you it is not needed to urge me to do all that I can on behalf of one,
love for whom is part of my very life.  If for a time I have absented
myself from her, it is to think and work for her redemption.  I, a member
of the English Church—my uncle, a Puritan—pray morning and night for her
by name: the congregations of London, on the next Sabbath, will pray for
one unknown, that she may be set free from the Powers of Darkness.
Moreover, I must tell you, sir, that those evil ones touch not the great
calm of her soul.  She lives her own pure and loving life, unharmed and
untainted, though all men fall off from her.  I would I could have her
faith!”

My uncle now spoke.

“Nephew,” said he, “it seems to me that this gentleman, although
professing what I consider an erroneous creed, has touched upon the right
point in exhorting Bridget to acts of love and mercy, whereby to wipe out
her sin of hate and vengeance.  Let us strive after our fashion, by
almsgiving and visiting of the needy and fatherless, to make our prayers
acceptable.  Meanwhile, I myself will go down into the north, and take
charge of the maiden.  I am too old to be daunted by man or demon.  I
will bring her to this house as to a home; and let the Double come if it
will!  A company of godly divines shall give it the meeting, and we will
try issue.”

The kindly, brave old man!  But Father Bernard sat on musing.

“All hate,” said he, “cannot be quenched in her heart; all Christian
forgiveness cannot have entered into her soul, or the demon would have
lost its power.  You said, I think, that her grandchild was still
tormented?”

“Still tormented!”  I replied, sadly, thinking of Mistress Clarke’s last
letter—He rose to go.  We afterwards heard that the occasion of his
coming to London was a secret political mission on behalf of the
Jacobites.  Nevertheless, he was a good and a wise man.

Months and months passed away without any change.  Lucy entreated my
uncle to leave her where she was,—dreading, as I learnt, lest if she
came, with her fearful companion, to dwell in the same house with me,
that my love could not stand the repeated shocks to which I should be
doomed.  And this she thought from no distrust of the strength of my
affection, but from a kind of pitying sympathy for the terror to the
nerves which she clearly observed that the demoniac visitation caused in
all.

I was restless and miserable.  I devoted myself to good works; but I
performed them from no spirit of love, but solely from the hope of reward
and payment, and so the reward was never granted.  At length, I asked my
uncle’s leave to travel; and I went forth, a wanderer, with no distincter
end than that of many another wanderer—to get away from myself.  A
strange impulse led me to Antwerp, in spite of the wars and commotions
then raging in the Low Countries—or rather, perhaps, the very craving to
become interested in something external, led me into the thick of the
struggle then going on with the Austrians.  The cities of Flanders were
all full at that time of civil disturbances and rebellions, only kept
down by force, and the presence of an Austrian garrison in every place.

I arrived in Antwerp, and made inquiry for Father Bernard.  He was away
in the country for a day or two.  Then I asked my way to the Convent of
Poor Clares; but, being healthy and prosperous, I could only see the dim,
pent-up, gray walls, shut closely in by narrow streets, in the lowest
part of the town.  My landlord told me, that had I been stricken by some
loathsome disease, or in desperate case of any kind, the Poor Clares
would have taken me, and tended me.  He spoke of them as an order of
mercy of the strictest kind, dressing scantily in the coarsest materials,
going barefoot, living on what the inhabitants of Antwerp chose to
bestow, and sharing even those fragments and crumbs with the poor and
helpless that swarmed all around; receiving no letters or communication
with the outer world; utterly dead to everything but the alleviation of
suffering.  He smiled at my inquiring whether I could get speech of one
of them; and told me that they were even forbidden to speak for the
purposes of begging their daily food; while yet they lived, and fed
others upon what was given in charity.

“But,” exclaimed I, “supposing all men forgot them!  Would they quietly
lie down and die, without making sign of their extremity?”

“If such were the rule the Poor Clares would willingly do it; but their
founder appointed a remedy for such extreme cases as you suggest.  They
have a bell—’tis but a small one, as I have heard, and has yet never been
rung in the memory man: when the Poor Clares have been without food for
twenty-four hours, they may ring this bell, and then trust to our good
people of Antwerp for rushing to the rescue of the Poor Clares, who have
taken such blessed care of us in all our straits.”

It seemed to me that such rescue would be late in the day; but I did not
say what I thought.  I rather turned the conversation, by asking my
landlord if he knew, or had ever heard, anything of a certain Sister
Magdalen.

“Yes,” said he, rather under his breath, “news will creep out, even from
a convent of Poor Clares.  Sister Magdalen is either a great sinner or a
great saint.  She does more, as I have heard, than all the other nuns put
together; yet, when last month they would fain have made her
mother-superior, she begged rather that they would place her below all
the rest, and make her the meanest servant of all.”

“You never saw her?” asked I.

“Never,” he replied.

I was weary of waiting for Father Bernard, and yet I lingered in Antwerp.
The political state of things became worse than ever, increased to its
height by the scarcity of food consequent on many deficient harvests.  I
saw groups of fierce, squalid men, at every corner of the street, glaring
out with wolfish eyes at my sleek skin and handsome clothes.

At last Father Bernard returned.  We had a long conversation, in which he
told me that, curiously enough, Mr. Gisborne, Lucy’s father, was serving
in one of the Austrian regiments, then in garrison at Antwerp.  I asked
Father Bernard if he would make us acquainted; which he consented to do.
But, a day or two afterwards, he told me that, on hearing my name, Mr.
Gisborne had declined responding to any advances on my part, saying he
had adjured his country, and hated his countrymen.

Probably he recollected my name in connection with that of his daughter
Lucy.  Anyhow, it was clear enough that I had no chance of making his
acquaintance.  Father Bernard confirmed me in my suspicions of the hidden
fermentation, for some coming evil, working among the “blouses” of
Antwerp, and he would fain have had me depart from out the city; but I
rather craved the excitement of danger, and stubbornly refused to leave.

One day, when I was walking with him in the Place Verte, he bowed to an
Austrian officer, who was crossing towards the cathedral.

“That is Mr. Gisborne,” said he, as soon as the gentleman was past.

I turned to look at the tall, slight figure of the officer.  He carried
himself in a stately manner, although he was past middle age, and from
his years might have had some excuse for a slight stoop.  As I looked at
the man, he turned round, his eyes met mine, and I saw his face.  Deeply
lined, sallow, and scathed was that countenance; scarred by passion as
well as by the fortunes of war.  ’Twas but a moment our eyes met.  We
each turned round, and went on our separate way.

But his whole appearance was not one to be easily forgotten; the thorough
appointment of the dress, and evident thought bestowed on it, made but an
incongruous whole with the dark, gloomy expression of his countenance.
Because he was Lucy’s father, I sought instinctively to meet him
everywhere.  At last he must have become aware of my pertinacity, for he
gave me a haughty scowl whenever I passed him.  In one of these
encounters, however, I chanced to be of some service to him.  He was
turning the corner of a street, and came suddenly on one of the groups of
discontented Flemings of whom I have spoken.  Some words were exchanged,
when my gentleman out with his sword, and with a slight but skilful cut
drew blood from one of those who had insulted him, as he fancied, though
I was too far off to hear the words.  They would all have fallen upon him
had I not rushed forwards and raised the cry, then well known in Antwerp,
of rally, to the Austrian soldiers who were perpetually patrolling the
streets, and who came in numbers to the rescue.  I think that neither Mr.
Gisborne nor the mutinous group of plebeians owed me much gratitude for
my interference.  He had planted himself against a wall, in a skilful
attitude of fence, ready with his bright glancing rapier to do battle
with all the heavy, fierce, unarmed men, some six or seven in number.
But when his own soldiers came up, he sheathed his sword; and, giving
some careless word of command, sent them away again, and continued his
saunter all alone down the street, the workmen snarling in his rear, and
more than half-inclined to fall on me for my cry for rescue.  I cared not
if they did, my life seemed so dreary a burden just then; and, perhaps,
it was this daring loitering among them that prevented their attacking
me.  Instead, they suffered me to fall into conversation with them; and I
heard some of their grievances.  Sore and heavy to be borne were they,
and no wonder the sufferers were savage and desperate.

The man whom Gisborne had wounded across his face would fain have got out
of me the name of his aggressor, but I refused to tell it.  Another of
the group heard his inquiry, and made answer—“I know the man.  He is one
Gisborne, aide-de-camp to the General-Commandant.  I know him well.”

He began to tell some story in connection with Gisborne in a low and
muttering voice; and while he was relating a tale, which I saw excited
their evil blood, and which they evidently wished me not to hear, I
sauntered away and back to my lodgings.

That night Antwerp was in open revolt.  The inhabitants rose in rebellion
against their Austrian masters.  The Austrians, holding the gates of the
city, remained at first pretty quiet in the citadel; only, from time to
time, the boom of the great cannon swept sullenly over the town.  But if
they expected the disturbance to die away, and spend itself in a few
hours’ fury, they were mistaken.  In a day or two, the rioters held
possession of the principal municipal buildings.  Then the Austrians
poured forth in bright flaming array, calm and smiling, as they marched
to the posts assigned, as if the fierce mob were no more to them then the
swarms of buzzing summer flies.  Their practised manœuvres, their
well-aimed shot, told with terrible effect; but in the place of one slain
rioter, three sprang up of his blood to avenge his loss.  But a deadly
foe, a ghastly ally of the Austrians, was at work.  Food, scarce and dear
for months, was now hardly to be obtained at any price.  Desperate
efforts were being made to bring provisions into the city, for the
rioters had friends without.  Close to the city port, nearest to the
Scheldt, a great struggle took place.  I was there, helping the rioters,
whose cause I had adopted.  We had a savage encounter with the Austrians.
Numbers fell on both sides: I saw them lie bleeding for a moment: then a
volley of smoke obscured them; and when it cleared away, they were
dead—trampled upon or smothered, pressed down and hidden by the
freshly-wounded whom those last guns had brought low.  And then a
gray-robed and grey-veiled figure came right across the flashing guns and
stooped over some one, whose life-blood was ebbing away; sometimes it was
to give him drink from cans which they carried slung at their sides;
sometimes I saw the cross held above a dying man, and rapid prayers were
being uttered, unheard by men in that hellish din and clangour, but
listened to by One above.  I saw all this as in a dream: the reality of
that stern time was battle and carnage.  But I knew that these gray
figures, their bare feet all wet with blood, and their faces hidden by
their veils, were the Poor Clares—sent forth now because dire agony was
abroad and imminent danger at hand.  Therefore, they left their
cloistered shelter, and came into that thick and evil mêlée.

Close to me—driven past me by the struggle of many fighters—came the
Antwerp burgess with the scarce-healed scar upon his face; and in an
instant more, he was thrown by the press upon the Austrian officer
Gisborne, and ere either had recovered the shock, the burgess had
recognized his opponent.

“Ha! the Englishman Gisborne!” he cried, and threw himself upon him with
redoubled fury.  He had struck him hard—the Englishman was down; when out
of the smoke came a dark-gray figure, and threw herself right under the
uplifted flashing sword.  The burgess’s arm stood arrested.  Neither
Austrians nor Anversois willingly harmed the Poor Clares.

“Leave him to me!” said a low stern voice.  “He is mine enemy—mine for
many years.”

Those words were the last I heard.  I myself was struck down by a bullet.
I remember nothing more for days.  When I came to myself, I was at the
extremity of weakness, and was craving for food to recruit my strength.
My landlord sat watching me.  He, too, looked pinched and shrunken; he
had heard of my wounded state, and sought me out.  Yes! the struggle
still continued, but the famine was sore: and some, he had heard, had
died for lack of food.  The tears stood in his eyes as he spoke.  But
soon he shook off his weakness, and his natural cheerfulness returned.
Father Bernard had been to see me—no one else.  (Who should, indeed?)
Father Bernard would come back that afternoon—he had promised.  But
Father Bernard never came, although I was up and dressed, and looking
eagerly for him.

My landlord brought me a meal which he had cooked himself: of what it was
composed he would not say, but it was most excellent, and with every
mouthful I seemed to gain strength.  The good man sat looking at my
evident enjoyment with a happy smile of sympathy; but, as my appetite
became satisfied, I began to detect a certain wistfulness in his eyes, as
if craving for the food I had so nearly devoured—for, indeed, at that
time I was hardly aware of the extent of the famine.  Suddenly, there was
a sound of many rushing feet past our window.  My landlord opened one of
the sides of it, the better to learn what was going on.  Then we heard a
faint, cracked, tinkling bell, coming shrill upon the air, clear and
distinct from all other sounds.  “Holy Mother!” exclaimed my landlord,
“the Poor Clares!”

He snatched up the fragments of my meal, and crammed them into my hands,
bidding me follow.  Down stairs he ran, clutching at more food, as the
women of his house eagerly held it out to him; and in a moment we were in
the street, moving along with the great current, all tending towards the
Convent of the Poor Clares.  And still, as if piercing our ears with its
inarticulate cry, came the shrill tinkle of the bell.  In that strange
crowd were old men trembling and sobbing, as they carried their little
pittance of food; women with tears running down their cheeks, who had
snatched up what provisions they had in the vessels in which they stood,
so that the burden of these was in many cases much greater than that
which they contained; children, with flushed faces, grasping tight the
morsel of bitten cake or bread, in their eagerness to carry it safe to
the help of the Poor Clares; strong men—yea, both Anversois and
Austrians—pressing onward with set teeth, and no word spoken; and over
all, and through all, came that sharp tinkle—that cry for help in
extremity.

We met the first torrent of people returning with blanched and piteous
faces: they were issuing out of the convent to make way for the offerings
of others.  “Haste, haste!” said they.  “A Poor Clare is dying!  A Poor
Clare is dead for hunger!  God forgive us and our city!”

We pressed on.  The stream bore us along where it would.  We were carried
through refectories, bare and crumbless; into cells over whose doors the
conventual name of the occupant was written.  Thus it was that I, with
others, was forced into Sister Magdalen’s cell.  On her couch lay
Gisborne, pale unto death, but not dead.  By his side was a cup of water,
and a small morsel of mouldy bread, which he had pushed out of his reach,
and could not move to obtain.  Over against his bed were these words,
copied in the English version “Therefore, if thine enemy hunger, feed
him; if he thirst, give him drink.”

Some of us gave him of our food, and left him eating greedily, like some
famished wild animal.  For now it was no longer the sharp tinkle, but
that one solemn toll, which in all Christian countries tells of the
passing of the spirit out of earthly life into eternity; and again a
murmur gathered and grew, as of many people speaking with awed breath, “A
Poor Clare is dying! a Poor Clare is dead!”

Borne along once more by the motion of the crowd, we were carried into
the chapel belonging to the Poor Clares.  On a bier before the high
altar, lay a woman—lay Sister Magdalen—lay Bridget Fitzgerald.  By her
side stood Father Bernard, in his robes of office, and holding the
crucifix on high while he pronounced the solemn absolution of the Church,
as to one who had newly confessed herself of deadly sin.  I pushed on
with passionate force, till I stood close to the dying woman, as she
received extreme unction amid the breathless and awed hush of the
multitude around.  Her eyes were glazing, her limbs were stiffening; but
when the rite was over and finished, she raised her gaunt figure slowly
up, and her eyes brightened to a strange intensity of joy, as, with the
gesture of her finger and the trance-like gleam of her eye, she seemed
like one who watched the disappearance of some loathed and fearful
creature.

“She is freed from the curse!” said she, as she fell back dead.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Poor Clare" ***

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