Part 1

LOVERS' SAINT RUTH'S And Three Other Tales

BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

BOSTON COPELAND AND DAY M DCCC XCV

COPYRIGHT BY COPELAND AND DAY 1895

TO CLARENCE J. BLAKE AND FRANCES H. BLAKE, A BOOK FINISHED ON THEIR OWN WILD ACRES OF THE MAINE COAST.

October, 1894.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

THE contents of this book have, hitherto, never been printed nor published. One chapter among them, _The Provider_, is based very literally on a tragic thing which happened, some years ago, in Dublin, and which, figuring as a cable despatch of some ten lines in a Boston daily newspaper, fell under my eye, to be remembered, and afterwards cast into its present form. In the September (1895) number of _Harpers' Magazine_, little Father Time and his adopted brother, in _Hearts Insurgent_, end their innocent lives from Hughey's strange motive, though not in his manner. It is perhaps worth while to state that my story was finished and laid by, prior to the appearance of the novel in its serial form, lest I should seem fain to melt my waxen wings in the fire of the Wessex sun. It is possible that the actual incident had come to Mr. Hardy's notice also, and with a keen and pitiful interest for so expert a student of human nature. A curious circumstance in his relation of it is that the elder child, in order that there may be more room in a hard world for the persons he loves, disposes not only of himself, but presumably of the younger child as well; and in the original version of my story Hughey jumped into the river with his sister Nora in his arms. But a friend of mine, who read the manuscript in 1894, a writer of great insight whose opinion I value in the extreme, so wrought with me to change the cruel ending, that I did so then and there, after some argument, and sent the boy of "long, long thoughts" uncompanied to his fate. The point of all this is, of course, that I now perceive my small invention had dared, unconsciously, to keep yet closer pace than would appear with Mr. Hardy's; for the suicide of real life was the suicide of one child alone.

The other three sketches here are more imaginative; and the first of them, which bears the earliest date, was, from end to end, a dream, and is somewhat reluctantly included. They stand for apprentice-work in fiction, and are my only attempts of that kind.

L. I. G.

LONDON, September 6th, 1895.

Contents

Lovers' Saint Ruth's Page 1

Our Lady of the Union 29

An Event on the River 63

The Provider 93

LOVERS' SAINT RUTH'S.

THOUGH his curate was away, the incumbent of Orrinleigh, my kind Cyril Nasmith, had thrown aside his everlasting scrolls and folios, and spent the whole morning out-of-doors with me. We had been over the castle park and gallery, and even into the dairy, and thence up the path by a trout-stream to the site of a Saxon city; and Nasmith had been enthusiastically educating me all the way. I knew that there was little enough for him to do meanwhile. His village sheep were very tame and white; and his other sheep, at the manor, all wild and black: theology seemed to fall rather flat between them. So, by the dispensation of Providence, in his work-day leisure he had relapsed into the one intellectual passion of his life, archæology: a wise, worshipping sort of man, and the prince of Anglican antiquaries. As for me, he loved me better than ever when he found what genuine interest I took in his quiet hidden corner of ----shire, whither I came from London to pass a memorable night and day with him, after a sixteen years' separation; for his boyhood had been spent in my own Maryland, his mother's family being Americans. It was a little sober, pastoral place, this Orrinleigh, with its straw-browed cottages bosomed in roses, sitting all in a row upon the overshaded lane, and, from the height where we stood, looking like so many sepia-tinted mushrooms in the broad green world. Just beyond us, in the near neighborhood of Orrinleigh House, the gray sham-Grecian porch of his ritualistic Tudor church skulked in the faint May sun. "What do you call that?" I said. "It is the one ugly thing hereabouts." He smiled. "Of course it is ugly, structurally," he answered in an apologetic tone; "Saint Ruth's was built in King James the First's time; I do not pride myself on that. But you should see the ruin, Holden! a darling bit of Early Decorated. Walk over there now with me. We have the time to give; and it is only a couple of miles away." And off he started at his brisk bachelor pace, fixing his shovel-hat well on his forehead, for we were in the teeth of the inland breeze. "This enormity," I remarked, casting a sportive thumb over my shoulder, "has an odd name: Saint Ruth's." He corrected me in his most amiable fashion. "The title is not unique; and it has every precedent, pre-Christian as it is. Have you never heard, good sceptic, of Saint Joachim? nay, of Saint Michael, another person who might have proved an _alibi_ if he ever came up for Roman canonization? Besides, the name has ancient local sanction. This Saint Ruth's-on-the-Hill continues the dedication of the other to which we are going: Lovers' Saint Ruth's." "Lovers' Saint Ruth's?" I exclaimed, keen at the scent. "Come now, Nasmith, there's some legend back of that; you know there is. Let us have it." And that is how I heard the story.

He told it not without reluctance, as if it were a precious thing he could not easily part with, even to an old friend. All along the road, as we went between the pleasant farm-lands, stepping over golden pools of primroses between the wheel-tracks, little silences broke into his talk. Nasmith's heart is truly in the past; and humbly happy indeed it keeps him. We had been through the gallery before breakfast, and he reminded me of it, by way of prelude. "Do you remember how pleased you were with the great Vandyck on the east wall?" The grouped portrait of a blonde man, a blonde woman, and a child unlike either; how beautiful it was! the two unforgettable melancholy faces contrasting oddly with the ruddy dark-eyed boy in a yellow doublet, playing with his dog before them on the floor.

"Well, you saw there the Lord Richard, and his wife, the Lady Eleanor. He was the third Earl's only son, born in the year 1606. The house of Orrinleigh was founded by his grand-uncle, on murder and fraud. Richard, almost the only Langham with a conscience, had it in too great a degree, and grew up, one knows not why, with a diseased sense of impending retribution; and, therefore, when misfortune for a while overwhelmed him and his, it found him not unprepared. His mother was a Neville; he had great prospects and possessions. Lady Eleanor was a sweet lass of honorable blood, a good squire's daughter, and the youngest of a family of eight. She belonged over there in Frambleworth, where you see the twin spires. From boyhood and girlhood these two clung to each other. I wonder if one ever sees such fast love now-a-days: so simple, so deep, so long-suffering, all made of rapture and grief! They were betrothed early, with a kiss given under the shadow of the king yew in the old church-yard; they both cherished the place to the end, and there lies their dust. You see, the original Saint Ruth's was a monastic chapel; and it was stripped, and left to fall to pieces, by the greed of the rascally Reformers, (excuse me; that's what I must call them!" muttered my filial High Churchman), "and it was nearly as much of a ruin in Lord Richard's youth as it is to-day. For a whole generation, Orrinleigh had no Christian services at all, and dropped into less than paganism; for which nobody seemed to care, until the architectural hodge-podge on the hill was raised by the old Earl, and the people were gradually gathered in to learn all about a new code of moral beauty from the nakedest, dullest, and vulgarest object in the three kingdoms. As I was saying, the two young people made their tryst by the priory wall, secretly, as it had to be; for the Earl would not hear of penniless Eleanor Thurlocke for his heir's bride; and the squire, a staunch Elizabethan Protestant, favored young Kit Brimblecombe, or his cousin Austin, for her suitor, and held aloof from the Lord Richard, whom he suspected of having reclaimed his ancestors' faith and become a Papist, while at Oxford. That, as it happened, was true enough; and, moreover, the girl herself had followed her lover back into the old religion: so that there were disadvantage and danger of all kinds, in those days, behind them and before. The little church meant much to them both, the pathetic ghost of what had been so famous and fair. There they used to meet, when luck served, for what great comfort they could still reap out of their narrowing lives, shedding tears on each other's breasts over that outlook which seemed so cruelly hopeless. But a terrible tragedy broke up and changed their youth, and it was at Lovers' Saint Ruth's that it happened.

"Eleanor was barely past eighteen, and Richard not one-and-twenty. It was spring twilight, when he rode down alone to the valley, galloping, because, for once, he was a little late to meet his maid. She also had started on foot, across the dewy field-path from Frambleworth, having for company part of the way an old market-woman and her goodman, who would not have betrayed the object of her journey for worlds. They left her at the lonely cross-roads, whence she gayly took her way west, with Orrinleigh Church, as it was still called, almost in sight. The next morning their bodies were found, not fifty rods away; and it is clear to me, that, hearing Eleanor's first stifled call, they had turned back to her rescue, and so perished at the hands of the wicked. With whom the guilt lay, none ever knew; the blame was laid upon the gypsies, I think unjustly, and three of them were hanged on these very downs. It was a wild time; and desperate men, singly, or in bands, mad for food and plunder, and reeling drunk from cellar to cellar, were over this peaceful county. The squire's ewe lamb, whom, in his senses, a devil might have spared with a blessing on her sweet looks, was foully waylaid, and worse than murdered. In the face of agony and humiliation, her spirit fainted away. Hours later, when all was still, and the dazzling moon was up over the sycamores, Eleanor Thurlocke awoke, and, with her last spasmodical strength, dragged herself to the end of the lane, and on to the hollow stone step of the church, to die. It was past midnight. Who should be within those crumbling walls, even then, but her own Richard, kneeling in his satin dress, with a lighted hand-lamp by his side, his brow raised to Heaven? He had missed her; and he knew not what to think for disappointment and anxious love; and, sleep being far from him, there had he waited until now before the fallen altar-stone where they had so often prayed together. As dejectedly he swung back the outer door, he saw his dear, her thick gold locks unbound, her vesture in disorder, her hands chilled and bleeding from the stony travel and the briers. Without a question, for he was ever a ready courageous lad, he put out the lantern, and cast it under a bush; and, gathering Eleanor into his strong arms, first making the sign of the cross upon her brow, he climbed the hill slowly, steadily, and bore her straight into Orrinleigh House, and into his dead mother's chamber. He made no sound; but he left her long enough to get restoratives, and then hurried back, and laid her tenderly in the high-canopied bed there, radiant in the moonshine; and, keeping his own heart smothered, so that it could utter no least cry, placed the door ajar, and began to pace, soft as a tiger, to and fro, to and fro, to and fro, outside. When the white of dawn appeared, he crept in and crouched low beside the pillows. She opened her eyes, and, with his haggard cheek close to hers, stammered to him, piteously, as best she could, her knowledge of what had befallen. He did not speak nor move for a long while, partly because he feared so for her jarred mind. But he knew the house would be stirring with the day, and events lay in his hands. It was a strange, inconsistent thing, but entirely in harmony with the Lord Richard's fatalistic character, that neither then, nor ever after, would he proclaim the true fact. To save her from certain slander, to wall her in with reparation on every side, was his one passionate impulse. He knew that having carried her by night to Orrinleigh, he must bear the burden of his own deed. He made his resolve to explain nothing, for her sake, and to act as became the overmastering affection he had for her. He breathed quickly and firmly in her ear: 'Nell!' She smiled faintly at him. 'Nell, darling, this must be our bridal-morn.' A low groan, such as made him shiver like the air around a fire, was her only answer; such a heart-rending groan of pure unreasoning horror as his ears had never heard. But he could not flinch now; the morn was breaking, fresh and undelayed, over his altered world. With the still force which was in him, and which, from his boyhood, could compel every one he knew, the Lord Richard said: 'Yes.' 'Yes!' she echoed, after a while, as if in a weary dream, and fell unconscious again. Then he rose, and called old Stephen Bowles, the servant whom he could best trust, and despatched him, on his own horse, ere the sun was up, for a priest eleven miles away. And there, in his dead mother's chamber, with one only witness, and in such wretchedness, the two were hastily wed, Eleanor lying quietly, since they dared not raise her, and the hope of Orrinleigh kneeling with his curly bronze head buried in her white little hands. When the others had gone, for he had set himself much to do, he sought his father. Sealing his lips thenceforward against the mystery which had hurried his action, he spoke out, and told him he had married Eleanor Thurlocke, and that he hoped he might be forgiven if he had seemed undutiful; and before the old Earl, who was dressing, could show his rage, quietly walked away, and rode over to Frambleworth, and made almost the same speech, in Eleanor's behalf, to the squire. Such wrath, and curiosity, and excitement, and upbraiding were never in this neighborhood before; for the two young people lived in the eyes of many who wished them well, and who looked for a great wedding, with masques, and dancing, and holiday arches, and public largesses of drink and money, such as had not been in mid-England for a generation. Wonderful as it seemed, the turmoil soon passed; and the two, never stirring from the very heart of the disturbance and opposition, somehow lived on, and were not parted, and slowly established a peace with their angry kindred. Malice itself could not hold out long against the Lord Richard's winning ways; and ever, as he grew older, he became sadder and gentler, and more to be honored by all men. But the Lady Eleanor lost the merry laughter she once had, and shrank, in great mistrust, even from her own family, so that it was plain at times that her reason was shaken. None on earth, meanwhile, save the lovers themselves, held the clew to their blighted lives. He never left her; he never travelled, nor went to court, as became his station, but sat patiently awaiting, at home, the crowning distress which he now knew must come upon them. Gossip broke out again, ere long, as much as it dared, in the village taverns; and there was a lifting of willing eyebrows among the gentry dwelling near, when, in the autumn, the incarnate disaster, the child in the Vandyck picture, was born. They rang the joy-bells from the church-tower, and the tenantry came under the eaves and cheered until faithful old Stephen threatened them with his blunderbuss, and drove them away. The Earl was sitting at his cards, with his bad foot on a stool before him, when the Lord Richard came in, with a silken parcel in his arms, followed only by a couple of his sniffing hounds. 'Well, what hast thou there, Dick?' cried the big blustering man, not unkindly. 'Father,' said the young stricken Lord Richard, in his impassioned fidelity, holding the parcel forth, 'I have my son.' And thereupon such a mortal paleness came upon him, and his knees shook so under him, for the deceit, that he scarce could stand. Seeing him quake, the old Earl, a rough jolly creature in his better moods, laughed long and loud.

"And so it seemed to the only ones who sat tongue-tied amid the great rejoicing, as if the divine wrath had indeed spent itself upon their house; the doom of the iniquity of the forefathers, as the Lord Richard would say to himself. What fresh and mistaken thinking there was to do, the miserable lad, being sane, did for both, believing that a curse was upon them, and that they must endure it, and accept the torture of that alien child's presence for some purpose hidden from human eyes. Their pact and horrible habit of silence weighed upon their hearts; and had not one constrained the other, she was very fain at times to confess, and go, if needs be, into disgrace for the lie. They would wander sometimes on the terrace, hand-in-hand, without speech, looking like brother and sister under a common ban. It seems impossible to understand this deliberate choice of a wrong attitude towards life, except in the light of that mysticism,

'With shuddering, meek, submitted thought,'

which ruled the Lord Richard's nature. Meanwhile the infant changed to a noisy, bounding rogue with black eyes, whom his young mother hated. They called him Ralph, a name not borne before by any of the Langham race. From his cradle, the poor waif clung to the Lord Richard, as to his only friend; and that saintly soul, as one might take sweetly a bitter penance, reared him in right ways, and encouraged or chided him at need, and won from him an awe and gratitude affecting to see. But the Lady Eleanor would never have him so much as touch her gown, which the maids about the manor laid to her troubled wits, and felt sorry for, without more ado. The old Earl, who liked the boy's health and pluck, had the portrait painted for the gallery; and even there you will notice that Ralph is far away from her, and at her husband's feet. Years of dereliction, therefore, these were to the Lord Richard, having no child of his own, and watching his intruding heir gaining daily some virtue and seemly knowledge, and coming, either by nature or by his careful breeding, fully to deserve those things to which he had no right before God and the king. And the boy grew, and was worthy to be loved, so brave he was, and so truth-speaking, and so tractable, despite his fits of temper. When he had passed his tenth birthday, he was sent to Meldom School; and his first absence lifted, as it were, the black load from his mother's spirit; and the beginning of her recovery, after all that she had endured, was from that day. There came soon to her and the Lord Richard an unexpected happiness; for the year 1636 saw the birth of their own little Vivian. You may believe that his father, perplexed by the fresh aspect of the problem before him, tried to solve it by prayer and patience; the good heart, chastened ever with much sorrow, and melted away with thinking, thinking. His wife, free of his morbid scruples, cried out at last irresistibly for the vindication of her little one. But the Lord Richard was visited by a prophetic dream, and was wrung with misgivings, less like a man's than a woman's, in searching to divine his duty. For he foresaw, of a surety, in his sleep, what a poor vicious thing his son was to be. All the estates, being entailed, were to pass to the acknowledged eldest, passing, therefore, by unjust consent, in this case, to an interloper, to the detriment of the true inheritor; and to maintain Ralph's right would be a legal crime. On the other hand, the great power and responsibility of which he promised to make such fair use,--what if these should become, in the hands of that other to whom they would be intrusted, engines for havoc in the world, since then to disown Ralph were a moral crime? Lord Richard wrestled hard with his demon of doubt, to no avail. In good time, alas, as it was ordained, when Vivian was a bonny babe in his third summer, the unforeseen deliverance came. Ralph Langham was thrown from his pony at Long Meldom Cross, and brought home for dead. He never spoke a word, but passed to eternity with his fingers clasped tight on the Lord Richard's compassionate hand, and a great tear rolling down his round brown cheek. His short career had been like a cheerful cloud swimming in the sun, and itself casting damp and darkness on the hills below. The strangest thing of all was the ungoverned joy which came, at the news, upon the Lady Eleanor, a joy dreadful, at that time, to those about; but when it faded away, all the evil else linked with it seemed to fade too, and very shortly she was wholly restored, and became her own comely, gracious self again, even as she was when first the beardless Lord Richard had told her his love. So that the liberty of those hunted young spirits was established in the grave of him whom heraldry yet names as their first-born. They laid him yonder, in Lovers' Saint Ruth's. Where else but there? as if in unuttered thanksgiving that mercy had reached them at last upon its fatal threshold. There is the tower, Holden, and the broken top mullion (is it not graceful?) of the great west window."

We swung into the prettiest open space imaginable, close to a glassy lake, and found the fourteenth-century church, with its yews and leaning stones, before us. I went silently in at Nasmith's heels. The flooring was the perfect plush of English grass; the roof of the nave was living boughs. For a single huge ash-tree had rooted itself there generations ago, and grown much larger round than our four arms could span, and lifted its spread of leaves nearer heaven than the level of the walls. Ivy hung on the chancel arch, and many bright-colored wildflowers, whose seeds had lodged in the crevices and in the blank windows, filled the whole enclosure, bay after bay, with a riot of color and fragrance. Soft green daylight everywhere caressed the eye. The chancel roof, of exquisitely groined limestone, was still unfallen, though it had a rift or two; and on either side, where the monks' stalls must have stood a dozen deep, there were crumbling tombs, with effigies in alabaster. I went directly up one step to a plain small brass over against the piscina, and pushed the weeds aside. Nasmith knew I should not be able to decipher the inscription, on which the rain of three hundred summers had been sifted in. Leaning his head against one of the piers, a good distance down, he looked over at me, and began to recite, in an agreeable monotone: "'Here lieth Ralph, thirteen years old, heir while he lived to Orrinleigh and Gaynes; whom do thou, O Lord! receive among the innocent.

For Time still tries The truth from lies, And God makes open what the world doth blind.