Kingslough

“ For well-nigh half a century he had cured or killed the gentry of Kingslough and its neighbourhood, and there was comfort in that reflection. To be sure he knew nothing, and professed to know nothing, of new-fangled ways; but then the fashion of living and dying is one which knows little alteration. Being born, being buried, are matters susceptible of so little change that Grace might well be excused if in her extremity she fastened her gaze more confidently on the old light than on the new. Mr. Hanlon might be very clever, but after all he could not have Dr. Girvan’s experience. ”

“ A face without a line; eyes without even a passing cloud; an expression perfectly free from shadow; and yet Grace Moffat described her favourite companion accurately, when in vague language she likened her to some fair tempting fruit, inside whereof there lurked a hardness, which friend, relative, and acquaintance, tried in vain to overcome. It had been the custom at Kingslough to regard Nettie as a limpid brook, through the clean waters of which every pebble, every grain of sand was to be plainly discerned. ”

“ In comparison to that what could Kingslough offer?—Kingslough, which has, I am credibly informed, gone on with the times, and now prints its own newspaper, and has its books from Mudie.
There was no Mudie when the Misses Healey converted the parlour of their “dear papa’s” house into a room free to the public.
A second door was put up, to enable the hall door to stand hospitably open, and soon their friends began to consider the Library a pleasant sort of place in which to meet and while away half an hour. They visited the Misses Healey, in fact, and borrowed a 87book or so from them. ”

“ They gave what they could, and the beggars curtseyed to them, and even the young reprobates of the town—there were reprobates, alas! in Kingslough, dull as it was—sometimes lifted their hats, and always refrained from jeering remarks when the deaf sister and the blind paced along the Parade arm-in-arm together.
Further to the credit of the town, be it stated, certain hours were by the non-élite set apart for their own visits to the Library. These hours were either very early or very late. ”

“ The man is right. Here, Lord Abbot and Sir Prior, is a chain of gold, won in the wars. It is worth fifty times the sixteen pence which I stole, and which I repaid double. Let St. Peter take it, for the sins of me and my two comrades, and forgive. And now, Sir Prior, I do to thee what I never did for mortal man. I kneel, and ask thy forgiveness. Kneel, Winter! Kneel, Gwenoch!” And Hereward knelt.
Herluin was of double mind. He longed to keep Hereward out of St. Peter’s grace. He longed to see Hereward dead at his feet ”

“ Kingsworth was a moderate-sized old-fashioned house, standing amid bare undulating downs above a low line of chalky cliffs and looking over the sea. It was enclosed in a piece of barren down, which young half-grown trees were struggling to turn into a park—trees that the wind blew all in one direction, and forced into strange shapes and attitudes. Almost on the edge of the cliff was a bit of ruined tower, and down below the slope or the park and sheltered by the hill from the wind was a little village, untidy rather than picturesque. ”

“ Kingsley's sense of right, no less than the ingenuousness and unselfishness of his nature, would have caused him to lay at his father's feet the honor and glory which he would assuredly have won had he been allowed to follow the career which, in his young manhood, had been mapped out for him. The rich man's heart was tortured as the image of Kingsley rose before him: the frank, laughing mouth, the bright eyes, the eager manner, smote him now with more than the force of actual blows. ”

“ I saw him in a dream four years last Whitsuntide, as plain as I see you now, gentles, a-lying upon a rock, calling for a drop of water to cool his tongue, like Dives to the torment! Oh! dear me!” and the old dame wept bitterly.
“There is a rose noble for you!” said Mrs. Leigh.
“And there another!” said Sir Richard. And in a few minutes four or five gold coins were in her hand. But the old dame did but look wonderingly at the gold a moment, and then—
“Ah! dear gentles, God's blessing on you, and Mr. Cary's mighty good to me already; but gold won't buy back childer! O! young gentleman! ”

“ I have to deal with a simpler age, and a sterner generation; and with the old house, which had stood there, in part at least, from gray and mythic ages, when the first Sir Richard, son of Hamon Dentatus, Lord of Carboyle, the grandson of Duke Robert, son of Rou, settled at Bideford, after slaying the Prince of South-Galis, and the Lord of Glamorgan, and gave to the Cistercian monks of Neath all his conquests in South Wales. ”

“ The question is, Earl,” said he aloud, “simply this: How many men can you raise off this shire?”
“I have raised—not so many as I could wish. Harold and Edith’s men have joined me fairly well; but your nephew, Morcar’s—”
“I can command them. I have half of them here already.”
“Then,—then we may raise the rest?”
“That depends, my Lord Earl, for whom we fight!”
“For whom?—I do not understand.”
“Whether we fight for that lad, Child Edgar, or for Sweyn of Denmark, the rightful king of England.”
“Sweyn of Denmark! Who should be the rightful king but the heir of the blessed St. Edward?” ”

“ I asked, scarcely able to utter the words.
“It is the young lady—Mistress Radford,” answered one of the servants.
“Oh! my daughter! where have they borne her to?” cried Captain Radford.
“We know not; we cannot tell,” answered the servant.
“Villains! knaves!” exclaimed Master Clough, his Welsh temper rising. “How came you to allow any one to enter the house in my absence? This is an Englishman’s house; you should have kept it against all comers.”
“Oh! my lord, oh! master, we were deceived!” cried the porter. “The men came pretending to seek you on important business. ”

“ Well, I robbed a priest of a few pence, and was outlawed; he plunders and burns a whole minster, and is made a great earl for it. One law for the weak and one for the strong, young lads, as you will know when you are as old as I. And now I suppose he will plunder and burn more minsters, and then patch up a peace with Harold again; which I advise him strongly to do; for I warn you, young lads, and you may carry that message from me to Dublin to my good brother your uncle, that Harold’s little finger is thicker than his whole body ”

“ Densil first, on a grey cob, looking very old and feeble, straining his eyes up the glen whither Charles, and James, the old keeper, had gone with the greyhounds. At his rein stood William, whom we knew at Oxford. Beside the old man sat Mary on her pony, looking so radiant and happy, that, even if there had been no glorious autumn sun overhead, one glance at her face would have made the dullest landscape in Lancashire look bright. Last, not least, the good Father Tiernay, who sat on his horse, hatless, radiant, scratching his tonsure. ”

“ I little thought that I should have lost in five years so much of those small wits which I confessed to, that I should come after all to take England, and find two kings in it already, both more to the English mind than me. While William the Frenchman is king by the sword, and Edgar the Englishman king by proclamation of Danish Earls and Thanes, there seems no room here for Sweyn Ulfsson.”
“We will make room for you! We will make a rid road from here to Winchester!” shouted the holders and knights.
“It is too late. What say you, Hereward Leofricsson, who go for a wise man among men?” ”

“ The fishermen on the beach had heard the young man call the other father. He was a very still man, much as a mass-priest might be. More they did not know, or did not choose to know.
Whereon, Old Cary and Sir Richard sent Will on a second trip with the parish constable of Hartland (in which huge parish, for its sins, is situate the Isle of Lundy, ten miles out at sea) ; who returned with the body of the hapless John Braund, farmer, fisherman, smuggler, etc. ”

“ Waltheof shook his head. “It is contrary to the canons of Holy Church.”
“So are many things that are done in England just now. Need has no master. Now, Sir Earl and Sir Atheling, what are you going to do?”
Neither of them, it seemed, very well knew. They would go to York if they could get there, and join Gospatrick and Marlesweyn. And certainly it was the most reasonable thing to be done.
“But if you mean to get to York, you must march after another fashion than this,” said Hereward. “See, Sir Earl, why you were broken by Gilbert; and why you will be broken again, if this order holds. ”

“ And he swam northward again, day after day, till at last he met the King of the Herrings, with a curry-comb growing out of his nose, and a sprat in his mouth for a cigar, and asked him the way to Shiny Wall; so he bolted his sprat head foremost, and said:
“If I were you, young Gentleman, I should go to the Allalonestone, and ask the last of the Gairfowl. She is of a very ancient clan, very nearly as ancient as my own; and knows a good deal which these modern upstarts don’t, as ladies of old houses are likely to do.” ”

“ The product of the union of such characters could hardly be otherwise than unique; and we see in Charles Kingsley a man of powerful nature,—strong, aggressive, administrative,—but at the same time deeply poetical, and tender almost to weakness. We find in him a union of the intensest sympathy with the weak and helpless, and a comprehension of the flaws and defects which make up their character, which seems at times merciless and almost heartless. ”

“ Few men have impressed me more agreeably than Mr. Kingsley. He is original and earnest, and full of a genial and almost tender kindliness which is delightful to me. Wild and theoretical in many ways he is of course, but I believe he could not be otherwise than good and noble, let him say or dream what he will. You are not to confound this visit of ours to Farnham with the 'sanitary reform' picnic (!) ”

“ A great talk and excitement was raised in the neighbourhood, people went to visit the cove, and the old story of the Kingsworth succession was in every mouth. Canon Kingsworth took the whole party back to Fanchester, and then wrote to Mr Clare an authorised version of Mrs Taylor’s confession, and also of the arrangement for the sale of Kingsworth. The truth was thus on record, and the wild stories must subside as they had arisen. Mrs Kingsworth cared little for them. ”

“ I am a simple body, and you a great philosopher: but I hold there is no star for the seaman like the Star of Bethlehem; and that goes with 'peace on earth and good will to men,' and not with such arms as that, Mr. Adrian. I can't abide to look upon them."
And she pointed up to one of the bosses of the ribbed oak-roof, on which was emblazoned the fatal crest which Clarencieux Hervey had granted years before to her husband, the "Demi-Moor proper, bound."
"Ah, Mr. Gilbert! since first he went to Guinea after those poor negroes, little lightness has my heart known ”

“ O God! Hereward, not that! Let us return good for evil. Let us take up our crosses. Let us humble ourselves under God’s hand, and flee into some convent, and there die praying for our country and our kin.”
“Men must work, while women pray. I will take you to a minster,—to Peterborough.”
“No, not to Peterborough!”
“But my Uncle Brand is abbot there, they tell me, now this four years; and that rogue Herluin, prior in his place.”
“He is dying,—dying of a broken heart, like me. And the Frenchman has given his abbey to one Thorold, the tyrant of Malmesbury,—a Frenchman like himself. ”

“ On a sudden, the cloak was thrown round the boys. No cry was heard, and the masker glided rapidly towards the door of the hall, still left open. So quick were his movements, that he would have escaped unobserved had not Lady Anne’s voice been heard, exclaiming, “Stop him! Stop him! He has carried off the children!” Richard Clough started from his seat, and drawing his dagger, rushed after the abductor. The man, turning his head at the cry, saw that he was pursued, and letting go one of the children—it was the little Richard—fled more rapidly. ”

“ Every guest turned red, and pale, and red again, and looked at the other as much as to say, “What right has any one but I to drink her? Lift your glass, and I will dash it out of your hand;” but Frank, with sweet effrontery, drank “The health of the Rose of Torridge, and a double health to that worthy gentleman, whosoever he may be, whom she is fated to honor with her love!”
“Well done, cunning Frank Leigh!” cried blunt Will Cary; “none of us dare quarrel with you now, however much we may sulk at each other. For there's none of us, I'll warrant, but thinks that she likes him the best of all ”

“ To the left it trended down towards a lower range of moors, which form, the watershed of the heads of Torridge; and thither the two young men peered down over the expanse of bog and furze, which glittered for miles beneath the moon, one sheet of frosted silver, in the heavy autumn dew.
"If any of Eustace's party are trying to get home from Freshwater, they might save a couple of miles by coming across Welsford, instead of going by the main track, as we have done." ”

“ Peg Morrison, digging a patch of garden in the rear of the house, his battered straw hat drawn low over his eyes, his teeth firmly closed on a twig of apple-tree wood, became presently aware of a small dejected figure lurking in the shadow of the blossoming tree.
“Hello, Cap’n!” he called out cheerfully, relinquishing the twig in favor of a spent dandelion stalk. “Did ye find Barb’ry—heh? An’ did ye give her the letter?”
“I gave it to her; but she—can’t read it. An’—’n’ I’m ’fraid it was ’portant. She’s mad wiv me, Barb’ra is; ’n’ I haven’t had any dinner, either.” ”