Catherine Crowe

“ Nothing could exceed the good lady’s horror and indignation at such an instance of irreverence on my part; and, besides taking away the ball, she asked me what I supposed God Almighty could think of me. I could not tell, of course; but I know what I thought of him; I thought he was another Bogie, only less disagreeable than my grandmother because I did not see him. How could I think otherwise, when she informed me every Sunday that, if I did not learn my Catechism and obey the Ten Commandments, he would burn me in everlasting fire? ”

“ The servants, some of them, might possibly have shown me favour; but they were forbidden to speak to me except for necessary purposes; besides, I was so completely cowed that they could never have relied on my fidelity. I should have betrayed them the moment my grandmother clutched me.
I felt, in short, as if all mankind was in a conspiracy, and I was the wretched victim of their tyranny; whilst behind them loomed the terrible figure of God, whom fancy pictured as a frightful, gigantic man, with hands like my grandmother's, wherewith he was waiting to seize and cast me into the fires of hell. ”

“ Then I wondered whether the rumour of my intended marriage had reached him, and whether he had come to Paris in the hope of preventing it; and smiled contemptuously at the idea. Nevertheless, I wished he had not come, but had died quietly at Pau, if he was going to die, instead of undertaking this fruitless journey to disturb my tranquillity.
These were not dutiful, nor indeed humane, reflections; but, I repeat, this is a confession; and as parents sow they must expect to reap. ”

“ Arrived at Elfdale, Mrs. Herbert senior at once assumed the command; Mrs. Herbert junior was nobody; and as the ill will of the old lady to her daughter-in-law was no secret, it may be easily inferred that poor Rose had more foes than friends amongst the servants and dependants. The love passages betwixt her and young Sir Ralph had not escaped their observation, and were now made the most of; even Miss Wellwood, envious of her beauty and, perhaps, unconsciously jealous of the very advancement to which she herself had contributed, was her covert enemy, though her avowed friend. ”

“ To say the truth, nobody can be more ignorant than I am of our neighbours at Elfdale. As far as my childish recollections go, we seemed to live as in a monastery, seeing and knowing nothing of the world outside the Park walls. I hated the place, and everybody in it, especially my grandmother, who was the principal figure there; and even now it is the last place on God’s earth I should choose to reside in. ”

“ Carter appeared to me an angel of light, and even her husband, though a schoolmaster, had a less disagreeable air and manner than my father. The boys were in the playground, engaged in various sports, and their loud voices and merry laughs, their balls, their tops, their kites, things I had always longed for but never had, would have given me a lively idea of the joys of heaven, had I ever heard of them, which I had not, my grandmother being too eager to impress on my infant mind the pains and penalties I was incurring by my naughtiness, to remember to mention them. ”

“ Ralph naturally flew to her in his distress as the only person to whom he could speak of Rose; she saw the opportunity, and made use of it to soften his heart towards her by tenderness and sympathy. What followed arose out of the circumstance of Sir Lawrence’s physicians having pronounced, prematurely, as it proved, that he had but a few days to live. The old man dead, Emily knew that she must leave the house immediately; and feeling that her hold on Ralph’s affections was by no means a thing to be reckoned upon, she sought to make his honour an additional security. ”

“ My father said he was going to Elfdale, and we took leave of him in London the evening before we were to start for the continent. After touching upon pecuniary matters, a darker cloud than usual deepened the gloom of his features, and he said, with evident pain and restraint,—“There is one thing I wish to guard you against—some people that you must avoid; they are always moving about on the continent, and you might fall in with them anywhere—the Wellwoods, I mean. There is an inextinguishable feud between our family and theirs. ”

“ Never shall I forget my fright when he grasped me with one iron hand and held up the broken instrument with the other, for the spade had struck it and snapt it in two. In vain I cried; in vain I prayed that he would not tell my father; he was not to be moved. I had often vexed him, no doubt; for having nothing to divert me, I was apt to indulge myself in a little mischief in the garden occasionally ”

“ A second door which opens into the interior of the house is also ajar, and a man’s head, with smiling face, which I should never have recognised to be that of my father, is looking in; the beautiful, blooming, fair-haired creature being, however, too much occupied with the lovely vision she was contemplating in the mirror to be aware of the presence of the intruder. ”

“ I see it as a tableau—how we got to the place, I cannot tell; but my mother is leaning against a tree—I even know which tree it was—it is an elm; and I have lately had it surrounded by rails, on which I have placed an inscription, requesting my successors at Elfdale, whoever they may be, not to cut down that tree; although why I do this I scarcely know myself. Against this tree she is leaning; in tears, and holding her handkerchief to her eyes. A little distance from her stands a tall, handsome man, whom I recognise as Sir Ralph Wellwood ”

“ According to her own statement of the case, the one which my mother of course accepted, she, Emily, had long secretly loved her cousin Ralph; but perceiving no corresponding attachment on his part, she had carefully concealed her sentiments; but when, after Rose’s marriage, the young man had fallen into low spirits, she being his only confidante and consoler, he had gradually grown to look on her with affection; the unhappy consequence of which was, that an intimacy ensued between them which now threatened Emily with exposure and ruin. ”

“ On my father’s arrival in England, after an absence of some years with his regiment, he had hastened to see her, and had expressed a wish that she would return to Elfdale and live with him. As the attachment between them was very strong, she had consented, and she was deliberately making preparations for her removal, when the unwelcome news of the marriage reached her; for willing to escape an opposition to which he was determined not to yield, he had kept his secret till opposition was impossible. ”

“ Nine months after the marriage, I made my appearance in the world to the great joy of my mother, who, pleasingly engrossed with her baby, became henceforth more independent of other society. Indeed, she had none but Miss Wellwood, for Elfdale had no near neighbours but the Staughton family and the vicarage; and the vicar having obtained preferment, was replaced by a stranger. However, Emily Wellwood, who accommodated herself to both, was a welcome visitor to my grandmother as well as to my mother. ”

“ Killing a man in fair fight was looked on as a very venial crime, and would have excited no unfavourable feeling; but the source of the quarrel and the story of the pike were not forgotten, and the man’s character and deportment were well calculated to keep alive the recollection. ”

“ There was a small village near us, through which I sometimes passed when driving in the carriage with my parents, and well I can recall the envy with which I looked at the dirty children playing in the mud! I thought how happy they must be! They had no Bogie at home, sitting on her funereal throne in dreadful majesty! ”

“ We were almost like one family, and I could not but see that my unremitting attentions to Clara were most welcome to all. Indeed I might be considered as an unexceptionable parti, while the close vicinity of our estates rendered the union particularly eligible.
It is unnecessary to dilate on our courtship; suffice it to say that the day appointed for our marriage was fixed, and everything satisfactorily arranged; Lady Wellwood and her son, knowing me to be the heir of Elfdale I supposed, raising no difficulties on the score of the settlement. ”

“ I answered that it was; whereupon he handed me the journal, saying, “Something has happened to one of the servants there—the dairy-maid; and there seems some suspicion of foul play.”
Poor Matty’s beneficent interference at that critical moment of my life—for heaven knows from what tortures moral and physical she had redeemed me by the concessions she had made to her brutal lover—instantly recurred to my mind, and I read with painful interest an account of the discovery of her body in the fish-pond after she had been some days missing. How she had come there remained uncertain. ”

“ There was a large arm-chair appropriated I to the especial use of this lady, which being of black leather, studded with brass nails, I associated with certain funereal notions connected with a hearse and a coffin—notions vague and undefined, but not the less chilling and depressing. When the servants told me that if I was naughty Old Bogie would have me, I immediately thought of my grandmother ”

“ I was always hovering about the spot, and removing the earth that covered it, to make sure it was still there; till at last one of the gardeners, called Phibbs, who was an ill-natured fellow and my enemy, taking it in his head that I was sowing seeds, and trying to raise some flowers for myself, stuck his spade into the ground, and turned up the unfortunate flageolet. ”

“ The unhappiness of my father and mother, the interview I had witnessed in the park betwixt the latter and Sir Ralph Wellwood, her subsequent disappearance, the universal silence regarding her, the abandonment of the neighbourhood which had necessarily become odious to both families, Clara’s utter ignorance with respect to her parentage, my father’s solemn injunction, and that last look of horror, all were explained! ”

“ How little people who make light of the troubles of children know what they are! It is true they are generally transitory; but, on the other hand, they are dreadfully intense. What anguish I suffered during our progress on that occasion! No criminal going to execution could suffer more! It happened fortunately, however, for me that on our way we had to pass the dairy, where Matty, the dairy-maid, a bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked lass, who was busy with her milk-pans, hearing my screams, came to the door to inquire what the matter was ”

“ If this refusal had only dated from the period of poor Matty’s body being found in the pond, he would only have been doing what all the rest did—the fish, since that painful discovery, being left to eat each other if they liked—but the remarkable feature in the case was, that this squeamishness on the part of Phibbs had been nearly simultaneous with the poor girl’s disappearance. It appears to have been Goring who first remarked this coincidence; and, when the body was found, he called the attention of the other servants to the circumstance. ”

“ I was just as eager to make her my wife, or rather, I should say, I was just as unable to bear the thought of losing her, and I think I should have been capable of shooting any man who had attempted to rob me of her. ”

“ Sir Ralph was absent, but I was received by a middle-aged lady, and a very pretty young one, both in deep mourning, whom I immediately concluded to be Lady Wellwood and my old friend Clara. As Elfdale was on my card, I had no occasion to explain who I was. The elder lady was very polite. She inquired how my father was, and whether he was in Paris, and then turned the conversation on my travels, and the accident that had brought us acquainted, without making the slightest allusion to the family feud. ”

“ I associated with them on more equal terms, feeling that I should have fair play, and not be made to suffer more than my natural inferiority—for inferior I knew I was in acquirements as well as in courage and manliness. They were two fine boys, but I cannot help thinking that the difference between us would not have been so great had I had such a mother as they had to train and form my infant mind, and awaken its affections. ”

“ Of my mother’s person I have a very indistinct recollection; but when, many years afterwards, a garret was opened at Elfdale, which had always been used as a lumber-room, and kept locked, a picture of her, which in my early recollections hung over the mantel-piece in the dining-room, was found sown up in a packing-cloth. It was a beautiful thing, independent of its being, as I feel certain it was, an admirable likeness. She is represented standing before a mirror, trying the effect of some wild flowers in her hair ”

“ On reaching the hotel, I learnt that two physicians had already arrived, and that my father had recovered from the fit, and had spoken—desiring that I might be sent for; which they told him they had done already. He had also expressed a wish to see a notary; but they had waited till I came, being uncertain who to send for; whereupon I desired them to fetch Monsieur Duval, both because he was near at hand; and, because he was known to me from being employed by the Wellwoods, and having had some little business to do, in connection with my approaching marriage. ”