Mary Anerley - R. D. Blackmore
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MARY ANERLEY
by R. D. Blackmore
1880
CHAPTER I
HEADSTRONG AND HEADLONG
Far from any house or hut, in the depth of dreary moor-land, a road,
unfenced and almost unformed, descends to a rapid river. The crossing is
called the "Seven Corpse Ford," because a large party of farmers, riding
homeward from Middleton, banded together and perhaps well primed through
fear of a famous highwayman, came down to this place on a foggy evening,
after heavy rain-fall. One of the company set before them what the power
of the water was, but they laughed at him and spurred into it, and one
alone spurred out of it. Whether taken with fright, or with too much
courage, they laid hold of one another, and seven out of eight of them,
all large farmers, and thoroughly understanding land, came never upon it
alive again; and their bodies, being found upon the ridge that cast them
up, gave a dismal name to a place that never was merry in the best of
weather.
However, worse things than this had happened; and the country is not
chary of its living, though apt to be scared of its dead; and so the
ford came into use again, with a little attempt at improvement. For
those farmers being beyond recall, and their families hard to
provide for, Richard Yordas, of Scargate Hall, the chief owner of the
neighborhood, set a long heavy stone up on either brink, and stretched
a strong chain between them, not only to mark out the course of the
shallow, whose shelf is askew to the channel, but also that any one
being washed away might fetch up, and feel how to save himself. For the
Tees is a violent water sometimes, and the safest way to cross it is to
go on till you come to a good stone bridge.
Now forty years after that sad destruction of brave but not well-guided
men, and thirty years after the chain was fixed, that their sons might
not go after them, another thing happened at "Seven Corpse Ford," worse
than the drowning of the farmers. Or, at any rate, it made more stir
(which is of wider spread than sorrow), because of the eminence of the
man, and the length and width of his property. Neither could any one at
first believe in so quiet an end to so turbulent a course. Nevertheless
it came to pass, as lightly as if he were a reed or a bubble of the
river that belonged to him.
It was upon a gentle evening, a few days after Michaelmas of 1777. No
flood was in the river then, and no fog on the moor-land, only the usual
course of time, keeping the silent company of stars. The young moon was
down, and the hover of the sky (in doubt of various lights) was gone,
and the equal spread of obscurity soothed the eyes of any reasonable
man.
But the man who rode down to the river that night had little love of
reason. Headstrong chief of a headlong race, no will must depart a
hair's-breadth from his; and fifty years of arrogant port had stiffened
a neck too stiff at birth. Even now in the dim light his large square
form stood out against the sky like a cromlech, and his heavy arms swung
like gnarled boughs of oak, for a storm of wrath was moving him. In
his youth he had rebelled against his father; and now his own son was a
rebel to him.
"Good, my boy, good!" he said, within his grizzled beard, while his eyes
shone with fire, like the flints beneath his horse; "you have had your
own way, have you, then? But never shall you step upon an acre of
your own, and your timber shall be the gallows. Done, my boy, once and
forever."
Philip, the squire, the son of Richard, and father of Duncan Yordas,
with fierce satisfaction struck the bosom of his heavy Bradford
riding-coat, and the crackle of parchment replied to the blow, while
with the other hand he drew rein on the brink of the Tees sliding
rapidly.
The water was dark with the twinkle of the stars, and wide with the
vapor of the valley, but Philip Yordas in the rage of triumph laughed
and spurred his reflecting horse.
"Fool!" he cried, without an oath--no Yordas ever used an oath except in
playful moments--"fool! what fear you? There hangs my respected father's
chain. Ah, he was something like a man! Had I ever dared to flout him
so, he would have hanged me with it."
Wild with his wrong, he struck the rowel deep into the flank of his
wading horse, and in scorn of the depth drove him up the river. The
shoulders of the swimming horse broke the swirling water, as he panted
and snorted against it; and if Philip Yordas had drawn back at once, he
might even now have crossed safely. But the fury of his blood was up,
the stronger the torrent the fiercer his will, and the fight between
passion and power went on. The poor horse was fain to swerve back at
last; but he struck him on the head with a carbine, and shouted to the
torrent:
"Drown me, if you can. My father used to say that I was never born
to drown. My own water drown me! That would be a little too much
insolence."
"Too much insolence" were his last words. The strength of the horse was
exhausted. The beat of his legs grew short and faint, the white of his
eyes rolled piteously, and the gurgle of his breath subsided. His
heavy head dropped under water, and his sodden crest rolled over, like
sea-weed where a wave breaks. The stream had him all at its mercy, and
showed no more than his savage master had, but swept him a wallowing
lump away, and over the reef of the crossing. With both feet locked in
the twisted stirrups, and right arm broken at the elbow, the rider
was swung (like the mast of a wreck) and flung with his head upon his
father's chain. There he was held by his great square chin--for the
jar of his backbone stunned him--and the weight of the swept-away horse
broke the neck which never had been known to bend. In the morning a
peasant found him there, not drowned but hanged, with eyes wide open, a
swaying corpse upon a creaking chain. So his father (though long in the
grave) was his death, as he often had promised to be to him; while he
(with the habit of his race) clutched fast with dead hand on dead bosom
the instrument securing the starvation of his son.
Of the Yordas family truly was it said that the will of God was nothing
to their will--as long as the latter lasted--and that every man of them
scorned all Testament, old or new, except his own.
CHAPTER II
SCARGATE HALL
Nearly twenty-four years had passed since Philip Yordas was carried to
his last (as well as his first) repose, and Scargate Hall had enjoyed
some rest from the turbulence of owners. For as soon as Duncan (Philip's
son, whose marriage had maddened his father) was clearly apprised by the
late squire's lawyer of his disinheritance, he collected his own little
money and his wife's, and set sail for India. His mother, a Scotchwoman
of good birth but evil fortunes, had left him something; and his
bride (the daughter of his father's greatest foe) was not altogether
empty-handed. His sisters were forbidden by the will to help him with
a single penny; and Philippa, the elder, declaring and believing that
Duncan had killed her father, strictly obeyed the injunction. But Eliza,
being of a softer kind, and herself then in love with Captain Carnaby,
would gladly have aided her only brother, but for his stern refusal. In
such a case, a more gentle nature than ever endowed a Yordas might
have grown hardened and bitter; and Duncan, being of true Yordas fibre
(thickened and toughened with slower Scotch sap), was not of the sort to
be ousted lightly and grow at the feet of his supplanters.
Therefore he cast himself on the winds, in search of fairer soil, and
was not heard of in his native land; and Scargate Hall and estates were
held by the sisters in joint tenancy, with remainder to the first son
born of whichever it might be of them. And this was so worded through
the hurry of their father to get some one established in the place of
his own son.
But from paltry passions, turn away a little while to the things which
excite, but are not excited by them.
Scargate Hall stands, high and old, in the wildest and most rugged part
of the wild and rough North Riding. Many are the tales about it, in the
few and humble cots, scattered in the modest distance, mainly to look up
at it. In spring and summer, of the years that have any, the height and
the air are not only fine, but even fair and pleasant. So do the shadows
and the sunshine wander, elbowing into one another on the moor, and
so does the glance of smiling foliage soothe the austerity of crag and
scaur. At such time, also, the restless torrent (whose fury has driven
content away through many a short day and long night) is not in such
desperate hurry to bury its troubles in the breast of Tees, but spreads
them in language that sparkles to the sun, or even makes leisure to
turn into corners of deep brown-study about the people on its
banks--especially, perhaps, the miller.
But never had this impetuous water more reason to stop and reflect upon
people of greater importance, who called it their own, than now when it
was at the lowest of itself, in August of the year 1801.
From time beyond date the race of Yordas had owned and inhabited this
old place. From them the river, and the river's valley, and the mountain
of its birth, took name, or else, perhaps, gave name to them; for
the history of the giant Yordas still remains to be written, and the
materials are scanty. His present descendants did not care an old song
for his memory, even if he ever had existence to produce it. Piety
(whether in the Latin sense or English) never had marked them for her
own; their days were long in the land, through a long inactivity of the
Decalogue.
And yet in some manner this lawless race had been as a law to itself
throughout. From age to age came certain gifts and certain ways of
management, which saved the family life from falling out of rank
and land and lot. From deadly feuds, exhausting suits, and ruinous
profusion, when all appeared lost, there had always arisen a man of
direct lineal stock to retrieve the estates and reprieve the name. And
what is still more conducive to the longevity of families, no member
had appeared as yet of a power too large and an aim too lofty, whose
eminence must be cut short with axe, outlawry, and attainder. Therefore
there ever had been a Yordas, good or bad (and by his own showing more
often of the latter kind), to stand before heaven, and hold the land,
and harass them that dwelt thereon. But now at last the world seemed to
be threatened with the extinction of a fine old name.
When Squire Philip died in the river, as above recorded, his death, from
one point of view, was dry, since nobody shed a tear for him, unless it
was his child Eliza. Still, he was missed and lamented in speech, and
even in eloquent speeches, having been a very strong Justice of the
Peace, as well as the foremost of riotous gentlemen keeping the order of
the county. He stood above them in his firm resolve to have his own way
always, and his way was so crooked that the difficulty was to get out of
it and let him have it. And when he was dead, it was either too good
or too bad to believe in; and even after he was buried it was held that
this might be only another of his tricks.
But after his ghost had been seen repeatedly, sitting on the chain and
swearing, it began to be known that he was gone indeed, and the relief
afforded by his absence endeared him to sad memory. Moreover, his
good successors enhanced the relish of scandal about him by seeming
themselves to be always so dry, distant, and unimpeachable. Especially
so did "My Lady Philippa," as the elder daughter was called by all the
tenants and dependents, though the family now held no title of honor.
Mistress Yordas, as she was more correctly styled by usage of the
period, was a maiden lady of fine presence, uncumbered as yet by
weight of years, and only dignified thereby. Stately, and straight, and
substantial of figure, firm but not coarse of feature, she had reached
her forty-fifth year without an ailment or a wrinkle. Her eyes were
steadfast, clear, and bright, well able to second her distinct calm
voice, and handsome still, though their deep blue had waned into a
quiet, impenetrable gray; while her broad clear forehead, straight nose,
and red lips might well be considered as comely as ever, at least by
those who loved her. Of these, however, there were not many; and she was
content to have it so.
Mrs. Carnaby, the younger sister, would not have been content to have
it so. Though not of the weak lot which is enfeoffed to popularity, she
liked to be regarded kindly, and would rather win a smile than exact a
courtesy. Continually it was said of her that she was no genuine Yordas,
though really she had all the pride and all the stubbornness of that
race, enlarged, perhaps, but little weakened, by severe afflictions.
This lady had lost a beloved husband, Colonel Carnaby, killed in battle;
and after that four children of the five she had been so proud of. And
the waters of affliction had not turned to bitterness in her soul.
Concerning the outward part--which matters more than the inward at first
hand--Mrs. Carnaby had no reason to complain of fortune. She had started
well as a very fine baby, and grown up well into a lovely maiden,
passing through wedlock into a sightly matron, gentle, fair, and showing
reason. For generations it had come to pass that those of the Yordas
race who deserved to be cut off for their doings out-of-doors were
followed by ladies of decorum, self-restraint, and regard for their
neighbor's landmark. And so it was now with these two ladies, the
handsome Philippa and the fair Eliza leading a peaceful and reputable
life, and carefully studying their rent-roll.
It was not, however, in the fitness of things that quiet should reign
at Scargate Hall for a quarter of a century; and one strong element of
disturbance grew already manifest. Under the will of Squire Philip the
heir-apparent was the one surviving child of Mrs. Carnaby.
If ever a mortal life was saved by dint of sleepless care, warm
coddling, and perpetual doctoring, it was the precious life of Master
Lancelot Yordas Carnaby. In him all the mischief of his race revived,
without the strong substance to carry it off. Though his parents were
healthy and vigorous, he was of weakly constitution, which would not
have been half so dangerous to him if his mind also had been weakly.
But his mind (or at any rate that rudiment thereof which appears in the
shape of self-will even before the teeth appear) was a piece of muscular
contortion, tough as oak and hard as iron. "Pet" was his name with his
mother and his aunt; and his enemies (being the rest of mankind) said
that pet was his name and his nature.
For this dear child could brook no denial, no slow submission to his
wishes; whatever he wanted must come in a moment, punctual as an
echo. In him re-appeared not the stubbornness only, but also the keen
ingenuity of Yordas in finding out the very thing that never should be
done, and then the unerring perception of the way in which it could be
done most noxiously. Yet any one looking at his eyes would think how
tender and bright must his nature be! "He favoreth his forebears; how
can he help it?" kind people exclaimed, when they knew him. And the
servants of the house excused themselves when condemned for putting up
with him, "Yo know not what 'a is, yo that talk so. He maun get 's own
gait, lestwise yo wud chok' un."
Being too valuable to be choked, he got his own way always.
CHAPTER III
A DISAPPOINTING APPOINTMENT
For the sake of Pet Carnaby and of themselves, the ladies of the house
were disquieted now, in the first summer weather of a wet cold year, the
year of our Lord 1801. And their trouble arose as follows:
There had long been a question between the sisters and Sir Walter
Carnaby, brother of the late colonel, about an exchange of outlying
land, which would have to be ratified by "Pet" hereafter. Terms
being settled and agreement signed, the lawyers fell to at the linked
sweetness of deducing title. The abstract of the Yordas title was nearly
as big as the parish Bible, so in and out had their dealings been, and
so intricate their pugnacity.
Among the many other of the Yordas freaks was a fatuous and generally
fatal one. For the slightest miscarriage they discharged their lawyer,
and leaped into the office of a new one. Has any man moved in the
affairs of men, with a grain of common-sense or half a pennyweight of
experience, without being taught that an old tenter-hook sits easier to
him than a new one? And not only that, but in shifting his quarters he
may leave some truly fundamental thing behind.
Old Mr. Jellicorse, of Middleton in Teesdale, had won golden opinions
every where. He was an uncommonly honest lawyer, highly incapable of
almost any trick, and lofty in his view of things, when his side of them
was the legal one. He had a large collection of those interesting boxes
which are to a lawyer and his family better than caskets of silver
and gold; and especially were his shelves furnished with what might be
called the library of the Scargate title-deeds. He had been proud to
take charge of these nearly thirty years ago, and had married on the
strength of them, though warned by the rival from whom they were wrested
that he must not hope to keep them long. However, through the peaceful
incumbency of ladies, they remained in his office all those years.
This was the gentleman who had drawn and legally sped to its purport the
will of the lamented Squire Philip, who refused very clearly to leave
it, and took horse to flourish it at his rebellious son. Mr. Jellicorse
had done the utmost, as behooved him, against that rancorous testament;
but meeting with silence more savage than words, and a bow to depart,
he had yielded; and the squire stamped about the room until his job was
finished.
A fact accomplished, whether good or bad, improves in character with
every revolution of this little world around the sun, that heavenly
example of subservience. And now Mr. Jellicorse was well convinced, as
nothing had occurred to disturb that will, and the life of the testator
had been sacrificed to it, and the devisees under it were his own good
clients, and some of his finest turns of words were in it, and the
preparation, execution, and attestation, in an hour and ten minutes
of the office clock, had never been equalled in Yorkshire before, and
perhaps never honestly in London--taking all these things into conscious
or unconscious balance, Mr. Jellicorse grew into the clear conviction
that "righteous and wise" were the words to be used whenever this will
was spoken of.
With pleasant remembrance of the starveling fees wherewith he used to
charge the public, ere ever his golden spurs were won, the prosperous
lawyer now began to run his eye through a duplicate of an abstract
furnished upon some little sale about forty years before. This would
form the basis of the abstract now to be furnished to Sir Walter
Carnaby, with little to be added but the will of Philip Yordas, and
statement of facts to be verified. Mr. Jellicorse was fat, but very
active still; he liked good living, but he liked to earn it, and could
not sit down to his dinner without feeling that he had helped the Lord
to provide these mercies. He carried a pencil on his chain, and liked to
use it ere ever he began with knife and fork. For the young men in the
office, as he always said, knew nothing.
The day was very bright and clear, and the sun shone through soft
lilac leaves on more important folios, while Mr. Jellicorse, with happy
sniffs--for his dinner was roasting in the distance--drew a single line
here, or a double line there, or a gable on the margin of the paper, to
show his head clerk what to cite, and in what letters, and what to omit,
in the abstract to be rendered. For the good solicitor had spent some
time in the chambers of a famous conveyancer in London, and prided
himself upon deducing title, directly, exhaustively, and yet tersely, in
one word, scientifically, and not as the mere quill-driver. The title
to the hereditaments, now to be given in exchange, went back for many
generations; but as the deeds were not to pass, Mr. Jellicorse, like an
honest man, drew a line across, and made a star at one quite old enough
to begin with, in which the little moorland farm in treaty now was
specified. With hum and ha of satisfaction he came down the records,
as far as the settlement made upon the marriage of Richard Yordas, of
Scargate Hall, Esquire, and Eleanor, the daughter of Sir Fursan de Roos.
This document created no entail, for strict settlements had never been
the manner of the race; but the property assured in trust, to satisfy
the jointure, was then declared subject to joint and surviving powers of
appointment limited to the issue of the marriage, with remainder to the
uses of the will of the aforesaid Richard Yordas, or, failing such will,
to his right heirs forever.
All this was usual enough, and Mr. Jellicorse heeded it little,
having never heard of any appointment, and knowing that Richard, the
grandfather of his clients, had died, as became a true Yordas, in a
fit of fury with a poor tenant, intestate, as well as unrepentant.
The lawyer, being a slightly pious man, afforded a little sigh to this
remembrance, and lifted his finger to turn the leaf, but the leaf stuck
a moment, and the paper being raised at the very best angle to the
sun, he saw, or seemed to see, a faint red line, just over against that
appointment clause. And then the yellow margin showed some faint red
marks.
"Well, I never," Mr. Jellicorse exclaimed--"certainly never saw these
marks before. Diana, where are my glasses?"
Mrs. Jellicorse had been to see the potatoes on (for the new cook simply
made "kettlefuls of fish" of every thing put upon the fire), and now at
her husband's call she went to her work-box for his spectacles, which
he was not allowed to wear except on Sundays, for fear of injuring his
eyesight. Equipped with these, and drawing nearer to the window, the
lawyer gradually made out this: first a broad faint line of red, as if
some attorney, now a ghost, had cut his finger, and over against that in
small round hand the letters "v. b. c." Mr. Jellicorse could swear that
they were "v. b. c."
"Don't ask me to eat any dinner to-day," he exclaimed, when his wife
came to fetch him. "Diana, I am occupied; go and eat it up without me."
"Nonsense, James," she answered, calmly; "you never get any clever
thoughts by starving."
Moved by this reasoning, he submitted, fed his wife and children and
own good self, and then brought up a bottle of old Spanish wine to
strengthen the founts of discovery. Whose writing was that upon the
broad marge of verbosity? Why had it never been observed before? Above
all, what was meant by "v. b. c."?
Unaided, he might have gone on forever, to the bottom of a butt of Xeres
wine; but finding the second glass better than the first, he called to
Mrs. Jellicorse, who was in the garden gathering striped roses, to come
and have a sip with him, and taste the yellow cherries. And when she
came promptly, with the flowers in her hand, and their youngest little
daughter making sly eyes at the fruit, bothered as he was, he could not
help smiling and saying, "Oh, Diana, what is 'v. b. c.'?"
"Very black currants, papa!" cried Emily, dancing a long bunch in the
air.
"Hush, dear child, you are getting too forward," said her mother, though
proud of her quickness. "James, how should I know what 'v. b. c.' is?
But I wish most heartily that you would rid me of my old enemy, box C.
I want to put a hanging press in that corner, instead of which you turn
the very passages into office."
"Box C? I remember no box C."
"You may not have noticed the letter C upon it, but the box you must
know as well as I do. It belongs to those proud Yordas people, who hold
their heads so high, forsooth, as if nobody but themselves belonged to a
good old county family! That makes me hate the box the more."
"I will take it out of your way at once. I may want it. It should
be with the others. I know it as well as I know my snuff-box. It was
Aberthaw who put it in that corner; but I had forgotten that it was
lettered. The others are all numbered."
Of course Mr. Jellicorse was not weak enough to make the partner of his
bosom the partner of his business; and much as she longed to know why
he had put an unusual question to her, she trusted to the future for
discovery of that point. She left him, and he with no undue haste--for
the business, after all, was not his own--began to follow out his train
of thought, in manner much as follows:
"This is that old Duncombe's writing--'Dunder-headed Duncombe,' as he
used to be called in his lifetime, but 'Long-headed Duncombe' afterward.
None but his wife knew whether he was a wise man, or a wiseacre. Perhaps
either, according to the treatment he received. Richard Yordas treated
him badly; that may have made him wiser. V. b. c. means 'vide box C,'
unless I am greatly mistaken. He wrote those letters as plainly and
clearly as he could against this power of appointment as recited here.
But afterward, with knife and pounce, he scraped them out, as now
becomes plain with this magnifying-glass; probably he did so when all
these archives, as he used to call them, were rudely ordered over to my
predecessor. A nice bit of revenge, if my suspicions are correct; and a
pretty confusion will follow it."