Part 10

"The 'Quarterly' article on 'Vanity Fair' dealt also with 'Jane Eyre,' and with the 'Report of the Governesses' Benevolent Institution for 1847,' and it is without doubt the article referred to by Sara Coleridge.

"On this matter Sara Coleridge was not likely to be under any mistake. Miss Rigby was her intimate friend, and not likely to conceal from her so important a literary event as the production of a 'Quarterly' review.

"I am also informed that Mr. George Smith, the publisher of 'Jane Eyre,' declares without hesitation or doubt that he had always known that Lady Eastlake was the author of the 'Quarterly' article, and that he had declined to meet her at dinner on account of it.

"The fact that the brilliant Miss Rigby was the writer of the review greatly strengthens my interpolation theory. To me it seems beyond the range of things probable, that the pharisaic part of the article could have come from the same source as 'Livonian Tales' and the 'Letters from the Shores of the Baltic.'

"The article is therefore of a composite character. It was written by Miss Rigby the year before her marriage with Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and heavily edited during the reign of Lockhart. I know it will be said that the genial Lockhart would not have added the objectionable fustian to the superior material supplied by Miss Rigby; but I must repeat that it was his duty, as a mere matter of business, and a purely editorial affair, to maintain the traditional tone of the 'Review.'"

[2] The Reverend David McKee of Ballynaskeagh, a very successful school teacher, who prepared hundreds of boys for college. Among them was Captain Mayne Reid, who afterwards dedicated his book, "The White Chief," to Mr. McKee. Ballynaskeagh, was the centre of mental activity for the country round about. Its master was the friend and neighbor of the Irish Brontes. He himself wrote several books, one of which led to the beginning of a temperance movement in Ireland. The writer of this article was his pupil at the time of the publication of "Jane Eyre," and tells whereof he knows personally, as well as some things of which he was informed by Mr. McKee.

[3] The December number of the "Quarterly Review" of 1848 is perhaps the most famous of the entire series. Its fame rests on a mystery which has baffled literary curiosity for close on half a century. "Who wrote the review of 'Jane Eyre'?" is a question that has been asked by every contributor to English literature since the critique appeared. But thus far the question has been asked in vain.

The descendant and namesake of the eminent projector and proprietor of "The Quarterly" does not feel at liberty to solve the mystery by revealing the writer. I admire the loyalty of John Murray to a servant whose work has attained an evil pre-eminence. It is interesting to know, in these prying and babbling times, that in the house of Murray the secret of even a supposed ruffian is safe to the third generation.

ANNOUNCEMENT.

ROMANTIC STORIES FROM THE FAMILY HISTORY OF THE BRONTES.

The August and succeeding issues of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE will contain a series of papers giving the dramatic and hitherto unknown history of the Brontes in Ireland. They will throw a vivid light upon the origin of the Bronte novels, and upon the ancestors of the Brontes. As Doctor Wright says:

"Hugh Bronte, the father of Patrick, and grandfather of the famous novelists, first makes his appearance as if he had stepped out of a Bronte novel. His early experiences qualified him to take a permanent place beside the child 'Jane Eyre' at Mrs. Reed's. The treatment that embittered his childhood is never referred to by the grand-daughters in their correspondence, but it is quite evident that the knowledge of his hardships dominated their minds, and gave a bent to their imaginations, when depicting the misery of young lives dependent on charity."

All the existing biographies of the Bronte sisters are confined to the Brontes in England. There were but two people competent to give the story of the Bronte ancestors: one, Captain Mayne Reid; and the other, Doctor William Wright, who has spent many years preparing this history.

Doctor Wright had exceptional advantages for his labor of love. In his childhood his nurse told him the traditions of the Brontes; his tutor was full of recollections of the father, uncles, and grandfather of the novelists. As a student he wrote screeds of the Bronte novels in place of essays, having first been told the incidents and events by his tutor. His recollections, extending back to the early part of this century, have been strengthened by years of patient investigation. During different years Doctor Wright has spent several months at a time in Ireland, following up obscure traces of the family, hunting down traditions connected with the Brontes, or carefully verifying minute points derived from his own recollections or the reports of others. The result of these painstaking researches, which have extended over a lifetime, is an authentic narrative of great human interest.

The unadorned history of the family reads like a Bronte novel. The adventures, the hairbreadth escapes, the struggles, the kidnapping, the abuse, which figure in these chapters are stranger than fiction. The courtship, elopement, and marriage of Hugh Bronte with Alice McGlory form one of the most extraordinary narratives of love and adventure that has ever been penned.

The half-humorous, half-pathetic, but always intensely interesting, descriptions of the ancestors of the Bronte sisters, their peculiarities, the superstition with which some of them were regarded as masters of the black art, the respect that they commanded as fighters and singers and workmen, the side-lights thrown upon the early and bitter contest over tenant rights, the exposition of strange religious beliefs--all of this, and more that cannot here even be hinted at, serve to present a curious and vivid picture of everyday life in a corner of Ireland one hundred years ago.

These articles bring out the hereditary and surrounding influences which helped to shape the genius of Charlotte Bronte. Aside from the value which they have because they furnish a remarkable commentary on the work of the great novelist, they are pages of real life of fascination and remarkable interest.

The first article will give a glimpse of the early Brontes and the singular weird story of that dark foundling who brought ruin to his benefactors, and whose machinations resulted in the absolute separation of Hugh Bronte, the grandfather of the novelists, from his parents--a separation so complete that he was never able to learn in what part of Ireland his father's family lived. Hugh Bronte was kidnapped when he was six years old. The strange narrative of his abduction will be given in the August number of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE.

A STRANGE STORY: THE LOST YEARS

LIZZIE HYER NEFF.

I.

Whether or not to relate the history that I now commence has been to me a seriously debated question.

But after due reflection I decide that, being the only witness to the events that have lately been so startling to at least one community, it is my duty to state as clearly and exactly as possible, while yet fresh in my memory, the occurrences that came under my observation. I am satisfied in so doing that the contingencies which might arise from my silence would be much more serious in their effect upon my friends than their aversion to the publicity to which they may be subjected; but, of course, when completed, my statement will be subject to their wish in its disposal.

Regarding myself, it is only necessary to state that last winter--I think it was the last week of January--my health became so alarming as to induce me to accept my son's urgent invitation to visit him in a far Western territory, hoping that the brighter sky and milder air would more than compensate for the long and lonely journey to one who is neither young nor adventurous.

And the effect of the change was almost magical. My son is a civil and mining engineer, and, being unmarried, boards at the largest of the three hotels in the busy mining town upon the Southern Pacific road, which I shall call Brownville.

I reached the place on the afternoon of a bright, balmy day--a May day it seemed to me--but being an unaccustomed traveller, the motion of the cars and the strangeness of the transition gave everything such a dreamlike unreality that I cannot recall the impressions of the first few days with as much distinctness as later ones. I was continually expecting my son to vanish, and myself to wake up in my room at home. This soon wore off, however. I think it was on the second day after my arrival, as we were starting down stairs to dinner, my son suddenly drew me back into my room as if to avoid some one who was passing.

"I was afraid you might be startled," he exclaimed. "I was at first, and I am neither sick nor a lady. Mother, there is a young man here who will seem like one risen from the dead to you at first sight. He looks enough like Chester Mansfield to be his twin brother. I think I never saw so striking a resemblance before, but after you are acquainted with him the impression will wear away, because he is so different in every other way." Then we went down stairs, and meeting the young man at the dining-room door, my son introduced him as "Mr. Reynolds;" and thus began my acquaintance with him. Of course, after my son's cautionary remark, I noticed him closely, but I should have done so anyhow, I am sure, for the resemblance to the dead was so strong as to give me a very strange feeling, for Chester Mansfield had been only less dear to me than my own son. But as Howard had said, the resemblance seemed to wear away somewhat as I talked with him, and I began to wonder that I had felt it so much. This young man was older, stouter--and many shades darker in complexion than my friend. His manner, speech, and style of dress were wholly unlike those of the dead Chester, although his voice, while deeper, was very similar. He was attached to the hotel in some capacity, and went out with us to dinner after a moment's talk, and I found him to be a pleasant talker, with a ready fund of the slang which seems to be the evolving language of the Far West, and a very witty use of it; but he did not seem to be well informed on any subject that I could mention, a strong contrast to the scholarship of the dead man whose face he bore.

Yet he had an unmistakable air of good breeding, and even of intelligence, although it was impossible to draw him into a connected conversation. He seemed to be very popular in the house.

Howard was closely engaged in his work, which sometimes kept him away for a week at a time, and I had neither the strength nor courage to go very far from the house alone, through that odd, rushing, foreign-looking town, so I had much time to myself. I was the only woman at the house except the proprietor's wife and one Irish chambermaid. This, perhaps, would account for my interest in the young man, for I must confess that he occupied my thoughts a good deal during those first weeks. One Sabbath afternoon I saw him going away with a party of friends--stylishly dressed, hard-looking men, and I turned and spoke to Howard of the idea that I had formed of him.

"I have thought of the same thing myself, mother," he replied. "That fellow is of Eastern origin, and he is well brought up, in spite of his efforts to conceal it. And you can't get a word out of him about his past. I've tried a dozen times. I'm positive that he puts on ignorance a good many times, just as a blind. There's a good deal of that here--men who have forgotten all about the East, you understand, and who have new names, and who don't write home by every mail. Now, weren't there other Mansfield boys besides Chester? His mother was a second wife, wasn't she, and there was another family who lived with their grandmother?"

"Why, certainly there was!" I exclaimed, catching at the idea. "Three boys, and two of them went out to Denver, or somewhere in that region. Now I have it--that's just who he is. I wonder what crime he has committed--robbery, or perhaps murder--who knows?"

"Oh, no! Take care, not quite so fast, mother. But I have a little clue that nobody else has had the interest to notice. It is more than mere coincidence. Of course Doctor Mansfield's sons would be brought up in the deepest piety, and when this fellow gets drunk--you'll hear him some night--he's terribly pious; prays and sings half the night to himself--old church hymns that were never heard in this place. And the thing that I notice is this: he prays like one who was brought up to it; not like some reprobate who has been scared into piety. I've heard them a few times, too, and I know the difference.

"Now, that means a little, and when you put it with the company he keeps, especially Crouch, his chum, that black-looking fellow who was shooting at the target out there this morning, don't you see it grows quite interesting?"

"I should think it does. Why, it is perfectly certain that he is a desperate sort of person. I wonder what he has done? It couldn't be the Cleveland fur robbery, I suppose," I said.

Howard got up and shook himself and then laughed uproariously.

"No, but he might be the Rahway murderer. You'd better lock the door fast and tight at night." (This was a stab at my well-known cowardice.)

"And, little mother, if you think you have got hold of a delightful, bloody mystery, for the love of heaven keep still about it. A little talk will set a cyclone going if you're not particular."

I resented this caution as quite unnecessary, but Howard laughed and shook his finger at me. I think he is at the age when a young man feels his physical and political superiority over his mother very fully. After he had gone out I sat thinking over his new idea. I had a faint suspicion that Howard was amusing himself at my interest in the matter, and was starting me in pursuit of something that he knew perfectly well beforehand; yet every word that he had said was fastened in my memory, and many little unnoticed things now came up to strengthen my suspicions.

In Crouch, the evil-looking fellow, I had no interest, for he was not mysterious. He was a rascal at the first glance, and could not be anything else. And he was the sort of rascal that one is content not to investigate, but observe at the greatest possible distance.

What, then, was young Reynolds' interest in him? I intended to write home the next day to ask about the Mansfield brothers, but Howard carried me off to the mines to camp for a few days, and my thoughts were turned in a new direction.

The day after my return I went out for a walk through the town. I crossed the plaza and started down one of the diverging streets, when I suddenly found myself in a most unsavory neighborhood, and suspected that I must have crossed the "dead line," beyond which I had been told no white woman ever ventured. I turned to beat a hasty retreat, when I heard my name, and looking up saw Charlie Reynolds, apparently very drunk, issuing from the door of a dance saloon. One or two of his friends were smoking in the doorway. "Good evening, Mish Spencer," he said, with an aggravated bow. "Thish bad place for lady. See you home, Mish Spencer?"

"No," I said, "you can't see me home, but I will see you home. You walk on before me, and I will follow."

To my surprise he obeyed, and across the plaza and down the street of _adobe_ houses I steered my drunken companion, until I saw him safe within the doors of the Eldorado House, where I was assured that he would be put to bed.

That night my son was detained at the mines, and I sat at my window alone in the marvellous moonlight so clear, so brilliant in that rarefied atmosphere, that I could see the round blue lines of the mountains in Mexico, sixty miles away. Sounds from different parts of the town came up with startling distinctness. I could distinguish every word of sentences spoken two squares away, and the barking of coyotes out in the mesquit brush that surrounded the town seemed to come from under my window. I seemed to be far from the rest of the earth, on some desolate peak that stood in vast solitude, for the stars were so large and bright, and the great glowing moon seemed to hang just overhead.

There were no trees on the great blue mountains, no grass in the stony valleys, and I realized in their absence how much we owe to the mission of the green and growing. There was no sense of companionship in the babel of sounds and languages that came up from the wicked little town. I am afraid that a few homesick tears came to my eyes.

Suddenly one of the grand old hymns of my church struck the intense air. A clear, strong, manly voice. How familiar it sounded, ringing out alone! I sat spellbound, for it was, as my son had said, not the effort of a tyro, but the cultivated voice of a cultivated man. Coming just at this moment in the grandly solemn night, its effect upon me was indescribable, and a new thought flashed into my mind, which I am ashamed to confess was not there before. Why cannot this young man, whatever he may have done, be saved through this early training? I could not sleep for this thought, and waited impatiently for the morning, resolved to undertake some missionary work in behalf of Charlie Reynolds.

II.

The Chester Mansfield to whom I have referred was the young minister of my church, and also the son of my dearest friend. Mrs. Mansfield had been my playmate and schoolmate in childhood, my confidante in girlhood, and when we were matrons and neighbors our early affection had settled into the deep, enduring friendship of later life. She had married our minister and was an exemplary wife and mother. Our children were schoolmates also, and her only son Chester was a boy of unusual promise. He distinguished himself in school and college, and, finishing his course just before his father's death, was unanimously called to fill the vacant pulpit. Here his eloquence and spirituality fully justified the promise of his youth, and he became almost the idol of his congregation. He married a lovely girl, and life seemed to hold for him the highest blessings that man can dream of.

The sorrow, then, of his sudden and peculiarly sad death cannot be described. Not only his family and church, but the whole town, mourned as if for a brother, and the church could not hold the concourse that followed his body to the grave.

The mothers and sisters and the frail young wife were almost crushed by the blow, and even after the lapse of nearly five years it was fresh enough in my heart to make Charlie Reynolds' face bring back those days of mourning with sad reality. I formed then the hope, foolish, perhaps, that if this young man should be found to be a relative of the dead man and reclaimed, he might in some measure atone to those bereaved ones for their loss. With this idea, I improved every opportunity to cultivate Charlie Reynolds' acquaintance and win his good opinion, although I was much embarrassed by the laughing eyes that Howard never failed to turn upon me in my efforts at conversation.

They were efforts, indeed; for if I had come from a foreign land, and spoken an unknown language, I could hardly have had more difficulty in finding a topic of common interest or in making myself intelligible, for old-fashioned English seemed to be less understood than any others of the numerous tongues I heard.

I could hear from my window, Mexicans, Chinamen, Indians, Frenchmen, and Spaniards chatting in the plaza, until I could almost guess what they said, but the vernacular of the American miner and rancher is beyond comprehension.

There are about four topics discussed at the Eldorado tables, chief of all, the mines, and to this day I cannot talk coherently about drifts and leads and dumps, and the like.

Then there were the games, the most absorbing of all, who had lost and won, and as I don't know one card nor one game from another, I am not interested in that subject. There was, it seemed to me, a fresh murder or robbery or Indian fight to discuss every morning at breakfast; and the ranch talk, in which my most intelligent questions always provoked a shout of laughter. When I quoted Talmage one morning, a young man looked at me pityingly, and said, "Oh, he's dead a year ago! He had one of the finest saloons in Las Vegas; he was a smart man, poor fellow!" My attempts to interest my table companions in a description of the Chautauqua and its purpose, and the mission of the W. C. T. U., and their painful efforts to be politely interested, almost sent my son into convulsions in consequence of laughing into his coffee-cup; and the intense earnestness with which the man they called Bunco Brown asked, "And didn't they sell no booze there?" and then, "Well, then, how in thunder do they get it if they're too pious to steal?" might have seemed amusing to one who was not struck by the horror of the fact that the man could not conceive of life for any person without drink.

So, owing to the missionary's usual difficulty in making himself understood, I had to wait to learn a means of communication with my subject. I even ventured to the door of the billiard room and tried to manifest an interest in the science of the game, but here, also, I was too hopelessly old-fashioned to be able to comprehend the beauty of the angles, and beat an ignominious retreat. I heard Charlie remark as I went up-stairs: "Game, for such a pious old lady, isn't she?" I took it as a compliment.

But my opportunity finally came through the humble instrumentality of an onion. It was about the size of a dinner-plate, and lay on the newel-post as I came down stairs one morning. Charlie was standing in the front door, with his back to me, peeling an orange. He turned around at my exclamation of surprise and asked, "Why, don't they grow like that where you live?"

"In New England? Oh dear, no!" I cried; and then he asked me a number of questions, and seemed very much interested in my account of vegetables and fruit and trees and flowers in the East. I was delighted to tell him, although I had a lurking suspicion that such a remarkable ignorance of that country was feigned. And yet his eyes, so wonderfully like Chester Mansfield's, except in expression, had a certain vacant honesty--for which, I presume, an accustomed story-teller could find a better expression--that I was obliged to believe genuine. As soon as he found that I was curious about the flora and fauna of the locality, he took great pains in bringing me specimens, and on two occasions took me out for a walk to see something that could not be brought. In this closer acquaintance I found so much that was kind and pleasant, and so many peculiar little resemblances to my dead friend--a backward toss of the head when he laughed, a frown when listening, an odd little gesture with the left hand in explaining anything--that he puzzled me more and more. Among the few books that I could find to read in the town was the "Woman in White," which I read with compunction, not having been addicted to works of fiction, and the curious resemblance between the two women made a deep impression upon me, and seemed to have a strange significance just at this time. Although I had as yet not succeeded in drawing any confidence from Charlie--who, indeed, seldom spoke of himself, and never related any past experience--a very suspicious trait I thought, I felt sure that time would unravel the dark mystery that enveloped him.