Vernon Lee

“ I have spent the years of my widowhood at Grandfey, my dear dead mother's little property in Switzerland, where Eustace and I had been so happy before he succeeded to St. Salvat's. And it is at Grandfey, among the meadows again white with hemlock and the lime avenues again in blossom, that I await, amid the sound of cowbells and of mountain streams, Death, who had held me in his clutches fifty years ago in that castle hidden among the trees above the white wailing Northern sea. ”

“ I know you to be a woman of spirit and of honour, bound by an oath, and capable of making your husband respect it. You have nothing to gain by refusing. You are alone with me in this house. Your faithful Davies is as dead as a door-nail. Your virtuous spouse is quite safe downstairs, for I have taken the precaution to relieve him of all those dangerous swords and pistols of his, which a learned man might hurt himself with. I give you five minutes to make up your mind. If you accept my terms, you and Sir Eustace Brandling shall live honoured and happy at St. Salvat's among your obliged kinsmen. ”

“ I cannot make up my mind about Uncle Hubert. Is he our fellow-victim or the ringleader of this usurping gang of ruffians? The more I see, the more I hesitate upon the point. But, as time goes on, I hesitate less and less in my dislike of him, although I own it often seems unreasonable and ungrateful. The man not only tries to make himself agreeable to us, but I almost think he feels kindly. He has a real appreciation of Eustace's genius ”

“ Good God, is my husband a mere pensioner of all this hideousness, as his wretched brother seems to have been? And even for that miserable debauched creature the day came when he turned against his masters, and faced death, perhaps like a gentleman. Death.... How unjust I am grown to Eustace! I ought to try and put myself in his place, and see things as he would see them, not with the horrified eyes of a stranger. Like me, he may have believed at first that St. Salvat's was merely a nest of smugglers.... ”

“ The sluttish maids and the old rheumatic gardener are lodged in the outhouses, or are taking a holiday in the neighbouring villages; and the house has been, methinks, given over to ourselves and Mrs. Davies, who waits assiduously in her silent manner, and no doubt keeps the uncles informed of all our doings. It is three days that Eustace and I have been alone together. But the knowledge of what he will not confess, and of what I have not the courage to ask, sits between us at meals, makes us constrained during our walks, even like the presence of a living stranger. ”

“ All the vessels bound for Bristol sail in front of St. Salvat's."
"And is not the coast very dangerous?" I asked, for the sight of that gallant ship had fascinated me. "Are there not wrecks sometimes along those reefs we see there?"
"Sometimes!" exclaimed Eustace sadly. "Why at seasons, almost daily. All that wood which makes the blue flame you like so much, is the timber of wrecked vessels, picked up along this coast."
My eye rested on the boats drawn up on the sand of the little cove: stout black boats, such as Eustace had pointed out to me at Bristol as pilchard boats. ”

“ There are two natures in us, occasionally, and the one vanquishes and overwhelms the other. In me," and here he began to laugh, "the fisherman for pilchards has got the better of the fisherman for souls."
"Fishing appears to have wondrous attractions," I answered negligently.
He turned and looked at me scrutinisingly. "We have all had the passion, we Brandlings," he said, "except that superfine gentleman yonder," nodding at Eustace. And added, in a loud, emphatic voice, "And none of us has been a more devoted fisherman, you will admit, dear Eustace, than your lamented father." ”

“ Salvat's Castle is simply the headquarters of the smuggling business, presided over by my uncles and doubtless constituting the chief resource of this poor untilled corner of the world. Breaking His Majesty's laws and defrauding his Exchequer are certainly offences; but I confess that they seem to me pardonable ones, when one thinks of the deeds of violence by which our ancestors mostly made their fortunes, let alone the arts of intrigue by which so many of our polished equals increase theirs. ”

“ Davies hesitated; but only, I believe, because she found it difficult to make her situation clear.
"Lady Brandling must try and understand," she answered. "I was not spying for Mr. Hubert. I have not spied for Mr. Hubert for a long while. I kept the handkerchief to show Lady Brandling that I knew what had made her faint that day. Also to show her that others did not know. Lady Brandling is safe. She must know that they do not yet know. If they know what Lady Brandling perhaps shall have seen, Lady Brandling and her husband are dead people, like the people in the ship; dead like Sir Thomas." ”

“ I did not ask whether the body of Sir Thomas, which had been brought by sea from Bristol after his violent end there, had been destroyed in this extraordinary pyre; and I judge that it was from Eustace's silence and Hubert's evident avoidance of the point. Perhaps he is conscious that his efforts were directed to a different object, for it is well nigh miraculous how he should have saved those shelves full of documents and all that number of valuable books bound with the Brandling arms.
"You must have risked your life in the flames!" I exclaimed with admiration at the man's heroism. ”

“ A curious feeling has been tormenting me of late, of self-reproach for I scarce know what, of lack of helpfulness, almost of disloyalty towards my husband. Since we have been here, indeed I think ever since the first announcement of Sir Thomas's death, Eustace has altered in his manner towards me; a whole side of his life has, I feel, been hidden from me. Have I a right to it? This is what has been debating in my mind. A man may have concerns which it is no duty of his to share with a wife ”

“ Men, even men as noble as my husband, are marvellously swayed by all manner of notions of honour, false and barbarous, often causing them to commit crimes in order to screen those of their blood or of their class. Some words of Hubert's keep recurring in my memory, to the effect that all the Brandlings were given up to what the villain called pilchard fishing, and none more devotedly than Eustace's own father. ”

“ How long we stood, Eustace and I, silently watching, I cannot tell.
"There were lights alongside," I exclaimed, "the uncles' boats must have been there. There has been time to save the crew. O Eustace, let us run down and help!"
But Eustace held me very tight. "Do not be a fool, Penelope. You will catch your death of cold and endanger the child. The people of the ship are saved or drowned by this time."
June 12, 1773.
But a few months ago I wrote in this diary that no child of mine should ever be born into slavery and dishonour. Alas, poor foolish Penelope! ”

“ Rough weather, I suppose, is favourable to the smuggling operations, as it leaves this terrible coast in the hands of those who know every inch of its reefs and rocks and quicksands, and who possess the only safe landing-place for miles, the little cove beyond the churchyard in the glen.
Be this as it may, these expeditions have left the castle wonderfully peaceful; the sound of brawling no longer rises perpetually from the big hall and the courtyards. The uncles are away for days and nights at a time, taking with them every male creature about the place. ”

“ Salvat's Castle had been utterly destroyed; hiding in their ruins the fate alike of the faithful Davies and of the atrocious Hubert; and hiding, for anything, that was known to the contrary, two other presumable victims—my husband and myself. The gang of villains, deprived of its headquarters, and deprived of its master spirit, speedily fell to pieces. Richard and Gwyn appear to have come to a violent end in quarrelling over the booty of the last wicked expedition ”

“ My fault lies chiefly in not having been able to do without you, dearest, not having left you safe with your mother while I came over to this accursed place; and in putting the suspicions I had behind me in order to bring you here. Nothing can wipe out that, and I am paying the just price of my weakness, and seeing you pay it!... But once here, Penelope, and once certain of the worst, it was impossible for me to tell you the truth. ”

“ For the first time, I was aware of what love is; I seemed to understand what poetry is about and what music means; death, which hung over us, was shrunk to its true paltriness, and the eternity of life somehow revealed all in one moment. ”

“ By some strange freak the cook only is not of these parts, indeed, a mulatto, knowing only Spanish. "All good sea-faring folk, able to man the boats on a stormy night," explained Uncle Gwyn, as if it were quite natural that the castle of St. Salvat's should be a headquarters of pilchard fishing! I have only seen the mulatto at a distance, and at first believed him to be an invention of Uncle Simon's, the wag of the family, who informed me he had him off a notorious pirate ship, where he had learnt to grill d——d French frogs during the late war and serve them up with capers. ”

“ Presently Eustace came; he had a serviceable sword, a large knife, and a pair of pistols in his great coat; he handed me a smaller pistol, showed me that it was primed, and gave me at the same time a little folded white paper. "You are a brave woman, Penelope," he said, kissing me, "and I know there is no likelihood of your using either of these things rashly or in a moment of panic. But our enterprise is uncertain; we may possibly be parted, and I have no right to let you fall alive into the hands of those villains." ”

“ I have a prejudice against killing members of my own family, a prejudice not shared by my brothers, worse luck to the sots, or else you would not be Lady Brandling as yet, and that poor, silly coxcomb of a Thomas would still be enjoying his glass and his lass. ”

“ I think with longing (though I hope poor Eustace does not guess how near I sometimes am to crying for homesickness) of our sledging parties with the dear cheerful neighbours at Grandfey; of the skating on the ponds, and the long walks on the crisp frozen snow, when Eustace and I would snowball or make long slides, laughing like children. At St. Salvat's there are no neighbours; or if there are (but the nearest large house is ten miles off, and belongs to a noble lord who never leaves London) they do not show themselves. I do not even know what there is or is not in the country that lies inland ”

“ She has been notably beautiful, and despite considerable age, has an uncommon active and erect bearing; and there is about her harsh, dark face, and silent, abrupt manners, something which puts me at ease by its strength and straightforwardness. This seems curious after saying she has been set to spy; but 'tis my impression that in this heathenish country spying, aye, and I can fancy robbing and murdering, might be done with a clean conscience as a duty towards one's masters; and Hubert, and the memory of Sir Thomas, are the real masters, and not Eustace and I.... Will it always be so? ”

“ It was on the eve of my wedding. "Remember, dear little Penelope," she said, "that no degree of love, however pure, noble, and perfect, can really make two souls into one soul. All appearance to the contrary is a mere delusion and dangerous. Every human soul has its own nature, its necessary laws, and demands liberty and privacy to develop them ”

“ I remember and now understand the tone in which he added "all of us Brandlings except this superfine gentleman here." Those words meant that however great his horror of it all, Eustace could not break loose from that complicity of silence. For to expose the matter would be condemning all his kinsmen to a shameful death, to the public gallows; it would be uncovering the dishonour of his dead brother, of his father, and all his race.... What right have I to ask my husband to do what no other man would do in his place? ”

“ This much I know, that the certainty of the uncles being smugglers, even if smuggling involve, as it must, occasional acts of violence against the officers of the Excise, does not increase the loathing which I feel towards the uncles. Nor would this fact, taken in itself, suffice to explain Eustace's melancholy. What preys upon his mind must rather be the disgust and disgrace of finding his house and property put to such uses by such men. ”

“ And then while our clergyman uncle and Eustace busily fell to discussing literature, and even (in a manner which, under other circumstances, would have made me laugh) quoting the classics, the conversation at the lower end became loud and violent in Welsh.
"They are discussing the likelihood of a shoal of pilchards," said Hubert to me with a faint uneasy smile. "My brothers, I grieve to say, dear Lady Brandling, are but country bred, and very rough diamonds; and the Saxon, as they call our Christian language, is a difficulty to their heathenishness." ”

“ Or is some shred of nightmare returning ever and again out of the black depths of my sickness? It comes and goes, and every time new doubts—hope it may be a dream, fear it may be reality—come with it. ”

“ That much and a little more is real, and bears in my mind the indescribable quality of certainty. I had wandered down the glen and through the churchyard, and I remember pausing before the great stone cross, covered with curious basket work patterns, and wondering whether when it was made—a thousand years ago—women about to be mothers had felt as great perplexity and loneliness as I, and at the same time, as great joy. ”

“ She seemed enchanted, or rather she looked like some captive creature struggling desperately to get free. I was too much taken up by the strangeness of the sight to reflect that no sane crew would have anchored in such a spot, and no anchorage have held in the turmoil of such a sea. ”

“ I own the interest of the performance (for such I felt it) was so great that it was only on reflection I perceived the utter and almost indecent inappropriateness thereof. Despite the lack of English, the entire household, save the mulatto, were present, mostly asleep in constrained attitudes; and the other uncles, all except David and Gwyn, lay snoring in their pews.
My own impression was oddly disagreeable; but on the service ending, I brought myself to compliment our uncle. "You should have been a bishop," I said, "at your age, Uncle Hubert." ”