Clare Avery.

by Emily Sarah Holt.

CHAPTER ONE.

LITTLE CLARE'S FIRST HOME.

"The mossy marbles rest On the lips he hath pressed In their bloom, And the names he loved to hear Have been carved for many a year On the tomb."

_Oliver Wendell Holmes_.

"Cold!" said the carrier, blowing on his fingers to keep them warm.

"Cold, bully Penmore!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hal Dockett,--farrier, horse-leech, and cow-doctor in ordinary to the town of Bodmin and its neighbourhood... "Lack-a-daisy! thou that hast been carrier these thirty years, and thy father afore thee, and his father afore him, ever sith 'old d.i.c.k Boar' days, shouldst be as hard as a milestone by this time. 'Tis the end of March, fellow!"

Be it known that "old d.i.c.k Boar" was Mr Dockett's extremely irreverent style of allusion to His Majesty King Richard the Third.

"'Tis the end of as bitter a March as hath been in Cornwall these hundred years," said the carrier. "Whither away now, lad?"

"Truly, unto Bradmond, whither I am bidden to see unto the black cow."

"Is it sooth, lad, that the master is failing yonder?"

"Folk saith so," replied Hal, his jocund face clouding over. "It shall be an evil day for Bodmin, _that_!"

"Ay so!" echoed the carrier. "Well! we must all be laid in earth one day. G.o.d be wi' thee, lad!"

And with a crack of his whip, the waggon lumbered slowly forward upon the Truro road, while Dockett went on his way towards a house standing a little distance on the left, in a few acres of garden, with a paddock behind.

About the cold there was no question. The ground, which had been white with snow for many days, was now a mixture of black and white, under the influence of a thaw; while a bitterly cold wind, which made everybody shiver, rose now and then to a wild whirl, slammed the doors, and groaned through the wood-work. A fragment of cloud, rather less dim and gloomy than the rest of the heavy grey sky, was as much as could be seen of the sun.

Nor was the political atmosphere much more cheerful than the physical.

All over England,--and it might be said, all over Europe,--men's hearts were failing them for fear,--by no means for the first time in that century. In Holland the Spaniards, vanquished not by men, but by winds and waves from G.o.d, had abandoned the siege of Leyden; and the sovereignty of the Netherlands had been offered to Elizabeth of England, but after some consideration was refused. In France, the Ma.s.sacre of Saint Bartholomew, nearly three years before, had been followed by the siege of La Roch.e.l.le, the death of the miserable Charles the Ninth, and the alliance in favour of Popery, which styled itself the Holy League.

At home, gardeners were busy introducing the wallflower, the hollyhock, basil, and sweet marjoram; the first licence for public plays was granted to Burbage and his company, among whom was a young man from Warwickshire, a butcher's son, with a turn for making verses, whose name was William Shakspere; the Queen had issued a decree forbidding costly apparel (not including her own); and the last trace of feudal serfdom had just disappeared, by the abolition of "villenage" upon the Crown manors. As concerned other countries, except when active hostilities were going on, Englishmen were not generally much interested, unless it were in that far-off New World which Columbus had discovered not a hundred years before,--or in that unknown land, far away also, beyond the white North Cape, whither adventurers every now and then set out with the hope of discovering a north-west pa.s.sage to China,--the north-west pa.s.sage which, though sought now with a different object, no one has discovered yet.

It may be as well to recall the state of knowledge in English society at this period. The time had gone by when the burning of coal was prohibited, as prejudicial to health; but the limits of London, beyond which building might not extend, were soon after this fixed at three miles from the city gates; the introduction of private carriages was long opposed, lest it should lead to luxury; [Note 1] and sumptuary laws, regulating, according to rank, the materials for dress and the details of tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, were issued every few years. Needles were treasures beyond reach of the poor; yeast, starch, gla.s.s bottles, woven stockings, fans, m.u.f.fs, tulips, marigolds,--had all been invented or introduced within thirty years: the peach and the potato were alike luxuries known to few: forks, sedan or Bath chairs, coffee, tea, gas, telescopes, newspapers, shawls, muslin,--not to include railways and telegraphs,--were ideas that had not yet occurred to any one. n.o.body had ever heard of the circulation of the blood. A doctor was a _rara avis_: medical advice was mainly given in the towns by apothecaries, and in the country by herbalists and "wise women." There were no Dissenters--except the few who remained Romanists; and perhaps there were not likely to be many, when the fine for non-attendance at the parish church was twenty pounds per month. Parochial relief was unknown, and any old woman obnoxious to her neighbours was likely to be drowned as a witch. Lastly, by the Bull of excommunication of Pope Pius the Fifth, issued in April, 1569, Queen Elizabeth had been solemnly "cut off from the unity of Christ's Body," and "deprived of her pretended right to the Crown of England," while all who obeyed or upheld her were placed under a terrible curse. [Note 2.]

Nineteen years had pa.s.sed since that triumphant 17th of November which had seen all England in a frenzy of joy on the accession of Elizabeth Tudor. They were at most very young men and women who could not remember the terrible days of Mary, and the glad welcome given to her sister. Still warm at the heart of England lay the memory of the Marian martyrs; still deep and strong in her was hatred of every shadow of Popery. The pet.i.tion had not yet been erased from the Litany--why should it ever have been?--"From the Bishop of Rome and all his enormities, good Lord, deliver us!"

On the particular afternoon whereon the story opens, one of the dreariest points of the landscape was the house towards which Hal Dockett's steps were bent. It was of moderate size, and might have been very comfortable if somebody had taken pains to make it so. But it looked as if the pains had not been taken. Half the windows were covered by shutters; the wainscot was sadly in want of a fresh coat of paint; the woodbine, which should have been trained up beside the porch, hung wearily down, as if it were tired of trying to climb when n.o.body helped it; the very ivy was ragged and dusty. The doors shut with that hollow sound peculiar to empty uncurtained rooms, and groaned, as they opened, over the scarcity of oil. And if the spectator had pa.s.sed inside, he would have seen that out of the whole house, only four rooms were inhabited beside the kitchen and its dependencies. In all the rest, the dusty furniture was falling to pieces from long neglect, and the spiders carried on their factories at their own pleasure.

One of these four rooms, a long, narrow chamber, on the upper floor, gave signs of having been inhabited very recently. On the square table lay a quant.i.ty of coa.r.s.e needlework, which somebody seemed to have bundled together and left hastily; and on one of the hard, straight-backed chairs was a sorely-disabled wooden doll, of the earliest Dutch order, with mere rudiments, of arms and legs, and deprived by accidents of a great portion of these. The needlework said plainly that there must be a woman in the dreary house, and the doll, staring at the ceiling with black expressionless eyes, spoke as distinctly for the existence of a child.

Suddenly the door of this room opened with a plaintive creak, and a little woman, on the elderly side of middle life, put in her head.

A bright, energetic, active little woman she seemed,--not the sort of person who might be expected to put up meekly with dim windows and dusty floors.

"Marry La'kin!" [a corruption of "Mary, little Lady!"] she said aloud.

"Of a truth, what a charge be these childre!"

The cause of this remark was hardly apparent, since no child was to be seen; but the little woman came further into the room, her gestures soon showing that she was looking for a child who ought to have been visible.

"Well! I've searched every chamber in this house save the Master's closet. Where can yon little popinjay [parrot] have hid her? Marry La'kin!"

This expletive was certainly not appreciated by her who used it.

Nothing could much more have astonished or shocked Barbara Polwhele [a fict.i.tious person]--than whom no more uncompromising Protestant breathed between John o' Groat's and the Land's End--than to discover that since she came into the room, she had twice invoked the a.s.sistance of Saint Mary the Virgin.

Barbara's search soon brought her to the conclusion that the child she sought was not in that quarter. She shut the door, and came out into a narrow gallery, from one side of which a wooden staircase ran down into the hall. It was a wide hall of vaulted stone, hung with faded tapestry, old and wanting repair, like everything else in its vicinity.

Across the hall Barbara trotted with short, quick steps, and opening a door at the further end, went into the one pleasant room in all the house. This was a very small turret-chamber, hexagonal in shape, three of its six sides being filled with a large bay-window, in the middle compartment of which were several coats of arms in stained gla.s.s. A table, which groaned under a ma.s.s of books and papers, nearly filled the room; and writing at it sat a venerable-looking, white-haired man, who, seeing Barbara, laid down his pen, wiped his spectacles, and placidly inquired what she wanted. He will be an old friend to some readers: for he was John Avery of Bradmond.

"Master, an't like you, have you seen Mrs Clare of late?"

"How late, Barbara?"

"Marry, not the fourth part of an hour gone, I left the child in the nursery a-playing with her puppet, when I went down to let in Hal Dockett, and carry him to see what ailed the black cow; and now I be back, no sign of the child is any whither. I have been in every chamber, and looked in the nursery thrice."

"Where should she be?" quietly demanded Mr Avery.

"Marry, where but in the nursery, without you had fetched her away."

"And where should she not be?"

"Why, any other whither but here and there,--more specially in the garden."

"Nay, then, reach me my staff, Barbara, and we will go look in the garden. If that be whither our little maid should specially not be, 'tis there we be bound to find her."

"Marry, but that is sooth!" said Barbara heartily, bringing the walking-stick. "Never in all my life saw I child that gat into more mischievousness, nor gave more trouble to them that had her in charge."

"Thy memory is something short, Barbara," returned her master with a dry smile, "'Tis but little over a score of years sithence thou wert used to say the very same of her father."

"Eh, Master!--nay, not Master Walter!" said Barbara, deprecatingly.

"Well, trouble and sorrow be ever biggest in the present tense,"

answered he. "And I wot well thou hast a great charge on thine hands."

"I reckon you should think so, an' you had the doing of it," said Barbara complacently. "Up ere the lark, and abed after the nightingale!

What with scouring, and washing, and dressing meat, and making the beds, and baking, and brewing, and sewing, and mending, and Mrs Clare and you atop of it all--"

"Nay, prithee, let me drop off the top, so thou lame me not, for the rest is enough for one woman's shoulders."

"In good sooth, Master, but you lack as much looking after, in your way, as Mrs Clare doth; for verily your head is so lapped in your books and your learning, that I do think, an' I tended you not, you should break your fast toward eventide, and bethink you but to-morrow at noon that you had not supped overnight."

"Very like, Barbara,--very like!" answered the old man with a meek smile. "Thou hast been a right true maid unto me and mine,--as saith Solomon of the wise woman, thou hast done us good and not evil, all the days of thy life. The Lord apay thee for it!--Now go thou forward, and search for our little maid, and I will abide hither until thou bring her. If I mistake not much, thou shalt find her within a stone's throw of the fishpond."

"The fishpond?--eh, Master!"

And Barbara quickened her steps to a run, while John Avery sat down slowly upon a stone seat on the terrace, leaning both hands on his staff, as if he could go no farther. Was he very tired? No. He was only very, very near Home.