Part 3

"Maybe so, Sir," responded Harry, very civilly. "Yet a sermon sold by the thousand, one would think, should be worth reading."

"Hold your tongue, lad! men don't buy what is worth reading by the cart-load!" growled the Squire. "'Tis only trash that is disposed of in that way."

"Very likely, Sir," responded Harry as before. "Yet give me leave to ask how many prayer-books have been printed in England since the reign of Queen Elizabeth?"

The Squire only grunted, being deep in the _Gazette_, and Harry turned his attention elsewhere.

"I should like to have heard Dr. Sacheverell," said Celia, timidly.

"Nonsense, Celia!" answered Isabella from her embroidery-frame. "You don't want to hear a man preach treason!"

"I was not thinking of the treason," sighed Celia.

"Celia, why do you want to hear Dr. Sacheverell?" asked Charley, as he sat on the step of the dais which elevated the window above the rest of the chamber.

Celia hesitated, colored, and went on with her work without answering. She and Charley were alone in the room.

"If you wanted to hear what he had to say about what they call treason, you don't need to be afraid of telling _me_," said Charley. "I don't know whether I shall not take up with treason myself."

"O Charley!" exclaimed Celia. "Don't talk in that way. Think how angry Father would be if he heard you!"

"O Celestina!" exclaimed Charley in his turn. This was his pet name for his favorite sister. Had she possessed a long name, he would probably have abbreviated it; as she had a short one, he extended it. "O Celestina! I am so tired of being good! I am tired of Sundays, and grammar, and the catechism, and sermons, and keeping things tidy, and going to church, and being scolded, and--I'm tired of everything!" said Charley, suddenly lumping together the remainder of his heterogeneous catalogue.

"Charley!" said Celia, slowly and wonderingly.

"I am! And I am half determined to go off, and have no more of it! Father may say what he likes about treason, and hang the Pretender as often as he pleases; but I say 'tis a grand thing to think of the King's son, whom we have kicked out, living on charity in a foreign land, and trying with such wonderful patience to recover the throne of his fathers! I should like to be with him, and bivouac--isn't that what Harry calls it?--bivouac in forests, and march on day after day, always seeing something new, and then at last have a battle! Wouldn't it be glorious?"

"For you to fight with Harry, and one of you kill the other? No, I don't think it would."

"I didn't say anything about fighting with Harry," resumed Charley, a little sulkily. "No, I should not like that. But as to anything else, I just tell you, Celia, that if some day I am not to be found, you will know I am gone to St. Germains to fight for the King--the King!" And Charley drew himself up at least two inches as he said the last words.

"Hush, Charley, do!"

"I won't hush! And I really mean it!"

"Charley, I shall have to tell Father, if you talk any more nonsense like that!" said Celia, really alarmed.

"Celia, do you know what it is to feel downright wicked?" asked Charley, in a different tone.

"Yes--no--not as you mean, I fancy."

"No, I don't think you do. I wish you did."

"Charley!"

"Well, I mean, I wish I didn't! Father talks of hanging things; I feel sometimes as if I could hang everything."

"Me?" demanded Celia, smiling.

"No, I wouldn't hang you; and I wouldn't hang Mother," pursued Charley, meditatively. "Nor Bay Fairy, nor Lucy, nor the black cat; nor Harry--I think not; nor Cicely, except first thing in a morning when she rouses me up out of a nice sleep, or last thing at night when she packs me off to bed whether I will or not. I am not sure about Father. As to the rest, they would have to look out for themselves."

"Now, Charley!" said Celia, laughing.

"Celia, you don't know what it is to feel wicked, I wish I could get something to make me--not keep good, because I have to do--but make me want to be good."

Celia was silent for a moment. Then she said, very slowly and hesitatingly, "Charley, I suppose we shall only want to be good, when we want to please God, and to be like Jesus Christ."

"I don't know anything about that," said Charley, turning round to look at her.

"I know very little about it," said Celia, blushing. "But I have begun to think, Charley--only just lately--that we ought to care more about pleasing God than anything else."

"Is that what makes you such a darling of a sister?" said Charley. "I'll think about it if it be. You are always trying to please everybody, it seems to me. But I don't think I could keep it up, Celia. I don't care much about pleasing anybody but myself."

"Charley," said his sister, with a great effort, "there is a verse in the Bible which I was reading this morning--'Even Christ pleased not Himself.'" She spoke very shyly; but she loved this younger brother dearly, and longed to see him grow up a really great and good man. And she found it easier to talk to Charley, Lucy, and Cicely than to others. She would not have dared to quote a text to Henrietta.

"Well, but you know we can't be like Him," said Charley, reverently.

"We must, before we can go to heaven."

"Well, then, I might as well give up at once!" answered Charley, beginning to whistle.

"Oh no, Charley dear!" said Celia, so earnestly, that Charley stopped whistling, and looked up in her face. "He will help us to do right if we try. I do want you to grow up a good man, loving God and doing good to men. Won't you ask Him, Charley?"

"Well, perhaps--I'll see about it," said Charley, as his sister stroked the light hair affectionately away from his brow. "At any rate, I don't think I'll go to St. Germains just yet. You are a dear old Celestina!"

[1] Tennyson, "Idylls of the King"--Enid.

[2] The alphabet, which in the hornbooks was surmounted with a cross and the lines:

"Christ's cross be my speed In these letters to my need."

[3] Heb. x. 25.

[4] Matt. vii. 11.

[5] Luke xi. 13.

[6] Patches, scraps of black court-plaster, or gummed velvet cut in shapes--stars, crescents, circles, lozenges, and even more elaborate and absurd forms--became fashionable about 1650, and remained so for many years. In the reign of Queen Anne, ladies showed their political proclivities by their patches--those who patched on one side of the face only being Tories, and on the other, Whigs. Neutrals patched on both sides.

[7] Thomas Aquinas bore this flattering epithet.

[8] 2 Cor. v. 21.

[9] John ii. 25.

[10] John xvii. 3.

[11] Isaiah lxiv. 6.

[12] Henry Sacheverell, born at Marlborough in 1672, began life as a Whig, but finding that unprofitable, became a fervid Tory and High Churchman. He was presented to St. Saviour's, Southwark, in 1705. His celebrated trial, which followed the sermon noticed above, began February 27, and ended March 20, 1710. The Queen presented him to St. Andrew's, Holborn, in 1713; and after some years spent in comparative obscurity, he died on the 5th of June 1724.

[13] Sidney Godolphin, Earl of Godolphin.

II.

A BAT BEHIND THE WAINSCOT.

"He gazed on the river that gurgled by, But he thought not of the reeds; He clasped his gilded rosary, But he did not tell the beads: If he looked to the heaven, 'twas not to invoke The Spirit that dwelleth there; If he opened his lips, the words they spoke Had never the tone of prayer. A pious priest might the Abbot seem,-- He had swayed the crosier well; But what was the theme of the Abbot's dream, The Abbot were loath to tell." W. M. PRAED.

"Harry!" said Celia, coming down with her cloak and hood on, one fine day in the following spring, "one of the pegs in the closet in our room is loose; will you make it secure for us while we are walking?"

The whole family were going for an excursion in the woods, as it was Lucy's birthday, and Harry's sprained ankle kept him at home. He could stand without pain for a short time, but could not walk far; and a horse would not have been able to carry him through the thick underwood. Delay was suggested; but, as Lucy very truly, if somewhat selfishly, asserted, another day would not have been her birthday. All things considered, the Squire had decided that the excursion should not be put off, and the party set out accordingly. After they were gone, Harry went up to Celia's room, to see what would be required. The setting to rights of the offending peg was soon effected. He was retiring from the closet, when he set his foot upon a little round substance, which he guessed to be the head of a nail sticking up from the floor of the closet close to one of the back panels.

"Ah!" observed Harry, apostrophizing the nail, "you must come out. You will be tearing Miss Lucy's gown, and she won't like having to mend it."

Harry accordingly proceeded to attempt the removal of the nail. But he found to his surprise that neither his hand nor his tools seemed strong enough to pull it out. Its position, close to the back of the closet, made it all the more difficult. Was it really a nail? He looked at it more closely. It had a brass head, and Harry came to the conclusion that it was a knob placed there on purpose. But for what purpose? It would go neither backwards nor forwards; but when Harry tried to pull it to one side, to his astonishment a little door flew open, so neatly fitted into the closet floor as to defy detection, the nail or knob being fixed in the midst. Below the little door appeared a tiny box, with a second brass knob fixed in it. At the bottom was a brass plate, from a small round hole in which the knob protruded.

"Now then," remarked Harry, "let me look at you. What are _you_ for?"

He very soon discovered that upon touching it. The moment that the little knob was pushed inwards, the whole panel in the back of the closet suddenly sprang back, showing that it was in reality a concealed door, the catch closing it having been liberated by pressing the little knob in the tiny box. What was behind the door it was impossible to see without a candle, for the closet was a deep one, and the opening of its door cut off the light from the bedroom window. Harry quietly came out of the closet, locked the bedroom door, and went to his own chamber to fetch a taper and his sword. He was determined to follow up his discovery.

The light of the candle revealed no array of skeletons, but a narrow passage, which he saw, on stepping into it, to be the head of a very narrow spiral staircase. With the candle in one hand, and the sword in the other, Harry, in whose mental vocabulary fear had no place, calmly walked down the staircase. The excitement of the adventure overpowered any pain which he felt from his ankle. A faint smell of dried roses met him at the foot of the stairs. On the right hand stood a heavy door. Harry gave it a strong push, and being unlatched, it slowly opened and admitted him. He stood in a very small square chamber. There was no window. A table was in the middle, two chairs stood against the wall, and in one corner was a handsome chest on which two books were lying. All the furniture was of carved oak. Harry opened the books, and then the chest. The former were a Latin missal and breviary; the latter was occupied by a set of church vestments, a crucifix, a thurible, and sundry other articles, whose use was no mystery to the travelled discoverer.

"So you are a priest's hiding-place," said Harry, dryly, to the concealed chamber. "So much is plain. They say mass at this table. Well, I did not know we had one of these at Ashcliffe. I wonder how many years it is since this was inhabited? I protest!--upon my word, I do believe it is inhabited now!"

He had suddenly perceived that while on the stairs the dust lay thick, there was none resting on the furniture within the chamber. Books, chest, chairs, table--all bore evidence of having been used so recently, that no considerable accumulation of dust had time to gather on them. Harry looked coolly around, and descried another door, opposite to the one by which he had entered. Opening this, he found himself at the summit of a second spiral staircase, down which he went--down, down, until he fancied that he must be descending below the foundations of the house. At length the spiral form of the staircase ended, and a further flight of steps ran straight down. Harry wondered whether he was going into the bowels of the earth, but he kept onwards, until once more stopped by a door. This door opened readily, being unlatched like the others, and he looked out into darkness. Casting his eyes upwards, he saw, in the direction wherein he supposed the sky should be, a small round patch of blue.

"Well, you were a cunning fox who planned this hole!" thought he. "One end opens into the closet in Celia's room, and the other into the old well in the garden. There must be some means of climbing up out of the well, I presume, and the worthy gentleman who makes this his abode is probably well acquainted with them. I wonder if my father and mother know of this? If not, I had better make up the entrance, and not tell them. My mother would be too frightened to sleep in any peace if she knew that such a place was hidden in the house, and my father would rouse all Devonshire about it. I wonder, too, who they are that use it? Are they still priests, or Jacobite fugitives? or are they highwaymen? Whatever they be, I must make up this door, as soon as I am a little better able to exert myself."

Thus thinking, Harry withdrew from the secret chamber, and regained Celia's room. Pulling to the door, he found that the panel and the hidden box closed each with a spring. He left the bedroom, and went down-stairs meditating upon his discovery.[1]

A fortnight later, when his ankle had regained strength, he took the opportunity, when both the sisters were out, to make a second visit to the secret chamber. He found its arrangements slightly altered--a proof that its mysterious occupant had been there within a few days. The books were gone, and one of the chairs was now standing by the table. Harry dragged some ponderous logs of wood to the outer door which led into the well, and by means of these barricaded the door effectually against any return of the refugee.

During the interval he had taken the opportunity of asking a few questions of different persons, which might give him some idea whether they were aware of the existence of this concealed chamber.

"Mother," he asked, one evening, when Madam Passmore had been lamenting the sad fact that things wore out much sooner than when she was a girl, "had you ever any of that fine carved furniture like Madam Harvey's?"

"No, my dear, not a bit," said his mother.

"Bell," he asked, on another occasion, "do you ever hear rats or mice in your wainscot?"

"Oh, they tease me infinitely!" answered Isabella. "They make noises behind the wainscot till I cannot sleep, and for the last week I have put cotton wool in my ears to keep out the sound."

"Cicely," he inquired, lastly, "did you ever see a ghost?"

"No, Master Harry, I never have," replied Cicely, mysteriously, thus hinting that there might be some people who had done so. "I never see one, nor never want. But they do haunt old houses, that's a truth."

"How do you know that if you never saw one?" laughed Harry.

"Well, my dear!" exclaimed Cicely, "if you'd a been down with me in the scullery one night last week--I couldn't sleep, and I went down for to get a bit of victuals, and washed my hands in the scullery--I say, if you'd a-heard the din they made over my head, you might have thought somewhat."

"Who made it, Cicely?"

"Them!" said Cicely, in a mysterious whisper. "Nay, I never saw none, but my grandmother's aunt's mother-in-law, she did."

"Ah! she is a good way off us," said Harry, satirically. "But you know, this house is rather too new for ghosts. A fine old castle, now, with all manner of winding stairs and secret passages--that would be the place to see a ghost."

"Eh! my dear, don't you give me the horrors!" cried Cicely. "Why, I could never sleep in my bed if I lived in a place where them secret places and such was--no, never lie quiet, I couldn't! Nay, Master Harry, nobody never seed no ghosteses in this house. I've lived here eight-and-twenty year come Martlemas, and I ought to know."

"And pray, Cicely, who was your great-grandmother's first cousin's niece, or whatever she were? and what did she see?"

"My grandmother's aunt's mother-in-law, Master," corrected Cicely. "She see a little child in a white coat."

"How very extraordinary!" commented Harry gravely.

"Master Harry, I'm certain sure you don't believe a word of it, for all you look so grave," said old Cicely, shaking her head sorrowfully.

"I can't say that I do at present. But you see I have not heard the particulars yet."

"Then you shall, Master," said old Cicely, rather excitedly. "'Twas at Dagworth in Suffolk, in the house of one Master Osborne, where she served as chambermaid. He had been a while in the house, had the ghost, and nobody couldn't get to see him--no, not the parson, though he used to reason with him on doctrine and godliness. They oft heard him a-calling for meat and drink, with the voice of a child of one year, which meat being put in a certain place was no more seen. He said his name was Malke. And after a while, one day she spoke to him and begged him for a sight of him, promising not to touch him. Whereupon he appeared to her as a young child in a white coat, and told her that he was a mortal child, stole by the good-folk,[2] and that he was born at Lanaham, and wore a hat that made him invisible, and so, quoth he, doth many another. He spoke English after the manner of the country, and had many roguish and laughter-stirring sayings, that at last they grew not to fear him."[3]

"How long did he stay there?"

"Now you are asking me more than I know, Master. But don't you never go to say again that there's no such things as ghosteses, when my grandmother's aunt's mother-in-law seen him with her own two eyes!"

"And Mr. Osborne kept no dogs, or cats, I suppose?"

"Master Harry, you don't believe it! Well, to be sure, I never did! You'll be saying next thing that there's no such things as the good-folk, when I've seen their dancing-rings on the grass many a hundred times! I'm sore afeared, Master Harry, that it haven't done you no good a-going for a soldier--I am."

And Harry found that all his arguments produced no further effect than the conviction of old Cicely that he had been in bad company. From the information thus gained, however, he formed these conclusions:--First, His mother knew nothing about the secret chamber. Secondly, Cicely was equally ignorant. Thirdly, It was situated, as he had surmised--above the scullery or behind it--probably both--and below his sister Isabella's bedroom. Fourthly, It had been inhabited as recently as the preceding week. All the more reason, he thought, for stopping up the means of ingress; and all the more for not revealing to old Cicely that her ghost was in all probability a Popish priest.

On the evening of the spring day upon which Harry thus barred the refugee out of his hiding-place, Celia was strolling through the park alone. She fed the fawns and the swans on the ornamental water, and wandered on with no definite object, until she reached the boundary of her father's grounds. She sat down on the grass near a large laurel, and became lost in thought. There happened at this place to be a small gap in the hedge near her, through which her position was plainly observable from the road. She started as she heard a sudden appeal made to her:

"Young Madam, pray you a penny, for the love of God!"

Celia turned and looked at the speaker. He was a dark, good-looking man, dressed in clothes which had once been handsome, but were now ragged and thread-bare. His eyes, dark, sunken, and very bright, were fixed earnestly upon her. She held out to him the penny for which he asked, when he said, abruptly:

"Your pardon, Madam! but are you Squire Passmore's daughter?"

"Yes, I am Celia Passmore," she replied, thinking nothing of the query.

"Be not too certain of it," answered the stranger, softly. "God and our Lady bless you!"

And gently taking the offered coin from Celia's hand, he withdrew before she could recover from her horror at the discovery that she had been conversing with a Papist. When she recovered herself, his words came back to her with strange meaning. The blessing she took to be merely his way of thanking her for the alms which she had bestowed. But had he not told her not to be too sure of something? Of what? Had she said anything to him beyond telling her name? Celia concluded that the poor fellow must have been wrong in his head, and began to feel very compassionate towards him. She sauntered back to the house, and into old Cicely's room, where she found its occupant mending stockings, with her old brown Bible lying open on the table before her.

"Cicely, I have had such an odd adventure."

"Have you so, Mrs. Celia? What was it, my dear?"

"Why, a poor man begged of me over the hedge, and said such strange things!--asked me my name, and told me not to be too sure of it! Was it not droll?"

Instead of a laugh rising to her lips, as Celia expected, a strange light sprang to old Cicely's eyes as she lifted her head and gazed at her. Not a glad light--far from it; a wild, startled, sad expression, which Celia could not understand.

"Ay, sweetheart!" said the old woman, in a voice not like her usual tones. "Did he so? And what manner of man?"

"Oh, not bad-looking," answered Celia. "A comely man, with black hair and eyes. His clothes had been good, but they were very bad now, and he was a Papist, for he said, 'Our Lady bless you.'"

"A Papist!" cried old Cicely, in a voice of horror.

"Yes," said Celia, smiling at her tone. "Why, Cicely, are you afraid of being murdered because there is a Papist in the county?"

"Eh no, my dear," answered old Cicely, slowly; "that's not it. Poor soul! God comfort you when you come to know!"

"Come to know what, Cicely?"

"What you've never been told yet, my dear--and yet he told you, if you did but know."

"I don't understand you, Cicely."

"I am glad you don't, my dear."

"But tell me what you mean."

"No, Mrs. Celia. Ask Madam, if you must. Tell her what you have told me. But if you'll take my counsel, you'll never ask her as long as you live."

"Cicely, what riddles are you talking?" replied Celia. "I will ask Mother."

The opportunity for doing so came the next day, about an hour after dinner. Madam Passmore sat knitting peacefully in her especial chair in the parlor. Henrietta was absent, superintending household affairs; and Isabella, with the velvet ornaments tied round her neck and arms, was occupied as usual with her endless embroidery-frame.

"We shall have an assembly on Monday," observed Madam Passmore, speaking to nobody in particular.

"That is right!" said Isabella, rather less languidly than usual. "I am so glad! Who are coming, Mother?"

"Dr. Braithwaite and his wife, Squire and Madam Harvey, and Squire and Madam Rowe."

"Nobody else?" asked Isabella, in a disappointed tone.

"Well, that I don't know, child," answered her mother. "Maybe some of the young folks may come from over the hill."

"Are they coming to dinner?"

"No, for the afternoon. Put on your blue satin petticoats, girls, and your best gowns; and Bell, bid Harry to have ready the basset-table in the corner. We will draw it out when 'tis wanted."

"But you will have dancing, Mother?" said Isabella, in a tone which indicated that her enjoyment would be spoilt without it.