Under the Mendips: A Tale

With her accustomed sympathy with all the young who were just setting forth on life's journey, Mrs. More determined to see something of Mr. Falconer's little daughter, and her aunt's letter had decided her to lose no time in paying a visit to Fair Acres.

As Joyce came up to the steps of the carriage Mrs. More held out her hand – a white, delicately-formed hand, half covered by a lace mitten.

Joyce had heard Mrs. More spoken of as an old lady of near eighty, and her surprise was written on her lovely face, as she said, simply:

"Are you Mrs. More?"

For the beautiful dark eyes were still lustrous, and the lips, parted with a smile, displayed a row of even teeth which many a young woman in these days might envy. A quantity of white hair was turned back from a round, full forehead, which was shadowed by a drawn-silk riding-hood, with a deep curtain and a wide bow under the chin. Intellect and benevolence shone on the face, which was marked by few lines, and the still young spirit lighted up the whole countenance as Mrs. More said:

"Yes, I am Mrs. More; and I have come to pay my respects to your good father and mother, and to make your acquaintance."

"A great hay-making party is in the home meadow," Joyce said. "My mother bids me present her apology; but my father will be here, I think, shortly. Will you not alight from the carriage?"

"No, thank you kindly, my dear;" and turning to Miss Frowde: "my friend thinks me over-bold to drive so great a distance as this; but a desire to convey to you an invitation in person has brought me hither, in the delightful cool of the summer afternoon."

"We must be getting home before the dew falls," Miss Frowde said, addressing Joyce for the first time; "I have to take great care of precious Mrs. More."

"Miss Frowde is kindly solicitous," the old lady said; "I should be ungrateful to disobey her orders so if I may ask for a drink of water for the horses, and a cup of cider for the post-boy, we will not delay our departure beyond a few minutes."

"I am so sorry," Joyce began, "that all the people are in the hay-field; but I will send a message for a man who will attend to the horses, if you will excuse me for a moment." She tripped away into the house, and very soon the maid, who had been left in charge, was despatched to the hay-field, while Joyce returned to the carriage with a jug of milk and two glasses on a tray, with some sweet cakes of her own making, and said:

"May I ask you, madam, to take a glass of milk, as a little refreshment?"

Hannah More beamed down upon the sweet young face with her brightest smile. She sipped the milk and told her companion to taste the lightest little cakes she ever ate; then she said:

"After all, I have not come to the real object of my call. I want your parents to spare you to me for a visit; and that you may not lack company, Miss Frowde will invite your cousin from the Close at Wells to meet you."

"Thank you, madam," Joyce said; "but I fear I cannot be spared during my little brothers' holidays. But here comes father."

The squire made the ladies in the carriage a low bow, and said the water was ordered for the horses, and he much wished Mrs. More would alight from the carriage, and take some refreshment.

"The refreshment has been brought to me by the hands of your young Hebe," Mrs. More said, smiling. "As to alighting, my limbs are stiff with age, and when once ensconced in my easy old chariot I am unwilling to leave it. But, Mr. Falconer, I came with a petition, for what is, I am sure, a precious possession: let me have your daughter at Barley Wood for a month. I hope, God willing, to return your treasure, with interest on the loan. Do not refuse me."

"Thank you kindly, madam," said the squire; "but her mother must be consulted. Her little brothers demand much of her attention in the holidays, and Joyce has to share her mother's labours in many ways. I fear she cannot be spared. What say you, my Sunshine?"

"I could not be spared yet, father; but later – " adding, with glistening eyes – "I should like to go to Barley Wood."

The squire put his arm round his daughter, and said:

"And I should like you to have the pleasure; but your mother – "

"Well, well," Mrs. More said, "then we will leave it, subject to certain conditions. The Bible meeting at Wrington comes on early in July. I shall have many excellent friends as my guests then, and the little Sunshine – I like that name vastly – might dispense a little brightness amongst us, and receive some solid good from intercourse with my friend. May I hope to see you early in July?"

"We will see about it, madam," the squire said; "and both Sunshine and I feel gratified by your kind proposal."

"Well, then, we leave it so, and I trust to you to drop me a line, my child, when your visit can be made. We shall find a corner for you and your cousin – if only a pigeonhole. You will not grumble, I dare say, but nestle in comfortably."

"The sun is getting low, dearest Mrs. More," Miss Frowde said; "we should be starting homewards."

"Yes, you are right." Then drawing from a large basket some books, Mrs. More singled out one, and, bending down towards Joyce, said:

"This is the best of books; in it is to be found treasures of riches and knowledge. Accept the Bible from me, as a token of desire that now, in the days of your youth, you may find the Pearl of great price. No one can object to this gift, though objection to other books may be urged."

Joyce took the Bible with a low-spoken "Thank you!" and her father glancing at it, said:

"You are very good to my little daughter, and I, at least, am grateful."

The squire had been secretly hoping that his wife would change her mind and appear, but his hopes were not realised. The carriage rolled off at a leisurely even pace; the good-byes were said, but Mrs. Falconer did not appear.

"It is a pity mother did not come," Joyce said. "What a lovely old lady Mrs. More is."

"Yes," and the squire sighed. "You have got a Bible, Joyce."

"An old one, not like this," Joyce said, "with gilt edges and such a nice purple binding; and I like to have it from Mrs. More. See, father, there are pencil marks in it."

The squire looked over Joyce's shoulder at the page on which she had opened. It was the last chapter of Proverbs, and the words were underlined: "Her price is above rubies."

"Carry the book upstairs, Joyce; you had better not display it at present. Then come back to the hay-field as fast as you can. Mother will be expecting you."

Joyce did as she was told, and hastened away with her precious book. As she turned over the pages she saw the pencil marks were frequent. It was evidently Mrs. More's way of silent instruction; and for the first time in her young life, Joyce seemed to find in the Bible, words which applied to herself.

"Be not overcome of evil," was underlined; "but overcome evil with good."

"That means I am not to let Melville's ways get the better of me, and make me cross to him and contemptuous. I must try and overcome by being kind; and then – "

She was startled by her mother's voice:

"Joyce, what are you about? come down at once. The men want some more cakes, and you may as well trudge down to the field, as I – "

Joyce ran down immediately, first hiding her Bible in the small drawer of the high chest in her room.

"I wish you had come sooner, mother, and seen Mrs. More."

"Do you? I waited till I heard the wheels in the road before I came; but now I am here, I mean to stay. I want to make some custards for supper, and whip the cream for a syllabub. Mr. Arundel shan't grumble at his fare."

"Mrs. More is a beautiful old lady," Joyce said.

"She did not give you any tracts, I hope," Mrs. Falconer said. "I won't have any cant, and rank Methodism here. You know my mind, Joyce."

"Yes, mother," Joyce said, gently. "But I should like to pay a visit to Barley Wood. Do you think, when the boys return to school, I may go."

"Well, we will see about it. If you want to gad about you must go, I suppose. You all seem alike now; no rest and no peace unless you are scouring the country like so many wild things. It was very different in my young days. I don't know that I ever slept a night from under my father's roof till I married. I don't mind your going to Barley Wood at the proper time, but I'll have no tracts and no nonsense here, or setting up servant-girls to be wiser than their betters; for all this talk, and preaching, and reading, and writing, the Mendip folk are as bad, as bad can be. Mrs. More has not done much there, anyhow. That was plain enough the other day, when the man was brought before the justices, and they were a pack of chicken-hearts, and dare not commit him for fear of getting their heads broken as they rode home; your father was the only brave man amongst them, and held out that the rascal should be committed for trial."

All this was said in Mrs. Falconer's voluble fashion, while she was engaged in piling up a basket full of harvest cakes, which Joyce soon bore off to the field, where her brothers, and Nip and Pip were still tossing about the sweet hay, and burying themselves and everyone else under it. Piers threw a wisp with the end of his crutch at Joyce as she came, and Bunny rushed to possess himself of the basket and scatter the cakes about, which the younger part of the haymakers scrambled for, head foremost, burrowing in the tussocks of hay, like so many young ferrets, while Nip and Pip barked and danced about in the extremity of their excitement.

The fair weather lasted all through the week, and Sunday dawned in cloudless beauty. Fair Acres did not have the services of one clergyman, but shared the ministrations of the vicar, with another small parish.

The cracked bell began to ring in a querulous, uncertain fashion on Sunday morning, and punctually at half-past ten Mrs. Falconer marshalled her flock down the road to the church.

The church, though small, was architecturally a fine specimen of Early English, and raised a noble tower to the sky; but the interior was dilapidated, and the pillars were covered with many coats of yellow wash, and the pews were hung with moth-eaten cloth. The squire's pew was like a square room, with a fire-place and cushioned seats, and a high desk for the books ran round it.

Mrs. Falconer and her husband sat facing each other on either side of the door of the pew, and the boys were ranged round, while at the further end Joyce sat with Mr. Arundel, a place being left for Melville.

Just as the clergyman had hurried on his very crumpled surplice, and the band in the gallery struck up the familiar air to which the morning hymn was sung, Melville, dressed in his best, came up the uneven pavement of the aisle with the proud consciousness of superiority to the rest of the world. His father threw back the door, and he passed up to the further end of the seat, nodding carelessly to Mr. Arundel, who made no sign in return. Chatting and making engagements for the week was at this time very common in church. There was scant reverence shown for the house of God. He was a God afar off, and the formal recognition of some sort of allegiance to Him being respectable and necessary for the maintenance of social position, brought people like Mrs. Falconer to church Sunday after Sunday.

Mrs. Falconer and the squire, with their family, were never absent from their places, and Mr. Watson, the squire's agent, acting as sidesman, was also regular in his attendance.

But it was a lifeless mechanical service on the part of both minister and people; and the loud Amens of the old clerk were the only responses to be heard. The Psalms at the end of the book of Common Prayer were used, accompanied by a strangely-assorted band in the worm-eaten gallery, and two or three men and boys supplemented the scraping of the fiddle and bassoon with singing, which might well be called bawling.

Nor was Fair Acres an isolated instance of country parish churches; and city churches, too, at this date. The great tide of the evangelical movement had, it is true, set steadily in, and was soon to cover the kingdom with its healing and reviving waters; but its streams did not penetrate into the heart of the hills, and small outlying villages went on, with no schools and no resident clergymen, and were contented because they were asleep.

Of course the sound of "the waters of Siloah" were heard in Somersetshire as, one by one, Hannah More's schools grew and flourished, and, one by one, her enemies became her friends. But the apathy at Fair Acres on the part of the clergyman, and the determination of Mrs. Falconer to set her face like a flint against all innovations, was thought to be praiseworthy, and to show a laudable desire to resist methodism in whatever form it took.

Gilbert Arundel's home-training had been very different from that of his friend. His mother had early in life been brought in contact with several of the fathers of the evangelical school, and the spirit had quickened her faith into living heart service.

"How my mother would admire her!" Gilbert thought, as he carried away with him from the church the picture, in his mind, of the squire's young daughter, as she followed the Psalms in the big prayer-book on the desk, and with her arm round Piers to steady him, pointed with her finger to the words, reading the alternate verse with old Simkins, the clerk, in a voice which Gilbert could barely catch, though he strained his ears to do so.

There was an entire absence of self-consciousness in Joyce; and if the undulations of the small mirror over her high chest of drawers, permitted her to discern anything like the real reflection of her lovely face, she did not give it much thought.

Brothers are not wont to admire their sisters or to tell them they are fair to look upon, and Joyce would have been very much surprised if she had heard that her brother Melville said, she only wanted the accessories of fashionable dress to be accounted a belle at Bath or Clifton, nay, even likely to make a sensation in the great world of London life.

She was a hopeless rustic now, but he saw in her capabilities which few girls possessed.

He had said nothing about Joyce's beauty to Mr. Arundel, because he was, in his folly, ashamed to confess how devoid Joyce was of the ornaments which went so far to form his own estimate of a woman, and Mr. Arundel's silence about Joyce, since that first day at the cathedral, seemed to him to show that he only praised her at first, because she was his sister out of courtesy, and that he was, as every man of taste must be, disappointed with her on nearer acquaintance. Superficial and foolish himself, he was almost unable to appreciate the earnest sincerity of his friend, and on this particular Sunday his temper had been tried by the arrival of a letter from the Palace at Wells, brought over on the previous evening by a special messenger, in which the Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells requested the pleasure of Mr. Arundel's company at dinner on the following Monday, but made no mention of him. He inwardly voted the bishop "a stupid old bat," as every one must be who was blind to his perfections!

CHAPTER V.

SUNDAY AT FAIR ACRES

The boys, perhaps excepting Ralph and Piers, were invariably more turbulent on Sunday than any other day of the week. There was an attempt made by their mother to enforce discipline on Sunday, from the same reason which made her scrupulous in attending church regularly. Besides, the boys' best Sunday jackets and long tight trousers were in peril, if their usual habits of tree-climbing and birds' egg hunting were not laid aside with their week-day garments.

The large Sunday dinner at one o'clock was always lengthened out to its utmost limit, but when that was over, the time hung heavy on hand.

A smart box on Bunny's ear, administered by Melville, with a hand on which a huge ring glistened, and which left a pretty deep triangular cut on the boy's ear, roused Piers' indignation.

"You coward," he said; "just because he trod on your smart shoe. I would not wear such a shoe for a hundred pounds."

"You are not very likely to be tried," was Melville's rejoinder. "Your feet are not made for shoes with buckles."

"Oh! Melville," Joyce exclaimed, "how can you be so unkind?" while his father said, in a stern voice, "If you have no brains, sir, I always thought you had a heart."

Mrs. Falconer was rising to follow Bunny, whose loud crying was heard in the hall; but Joyce said:

"Mother, let me go. I had better take all the boys away, mother, and amuse them, if I can. I don't think Bunny need cry like that, though it was too bad to hit him."

"It was indeed," Gilbert Arundel could not help exclaiming fervently, though like all guests in a house, when family disputes are going on, he felt it difficult to know whether to speak or be silent.

"I hate Melville," Piers said fiercely, as he swung himself out of the room after his sister.

Joyce soon persuaded Bunny that he was not much hurt, and said if they would all come up to the seat under the fir-tree she would read to them. The boys willingly consented, and Joyce ran upstairs and fetched the pretty Bible, bound in purple, with its gilt leaves, which she displayed to her admiring brothers.

"But you are not going to read that, Joyce," Piers said. "Isn't it dull? Can't you find the Pilgrim's Progress?"

"Yes," exclaimed Harry; "I like the Giant Despair part, and the history of all the bones and skulls lying about."

"I will read about a giant," Joyce said, "a very pretty story from the Bible."

"Oh! I know," said Ralph; "very well, I don't mind hearing it again."

Joyce seated herself with her brothers round her, and read the familiar Bible story, with a somewhat slow utterance, but with so much dramatic power in the tones of her voice that her listeners were profoundly attentive. Then she talked to them about David, and said she had read that the story was a type of the great battle we had all to fight against the giant of self. She did not know that she had another listener till her brothers had dispersed, and she was left on the seat with the Bible in her hand. Then Mr. Arundel came through the little gate leading from the copse, and looking up at Joyce, said:

"May I come nearer?"

Joyce started to her feet.

"Take care," she said; "the grass is very dry and slippery;" and as Gilbert Arundel made a rather scrambling ascent, Joyce advanced and held out her hand to him to help him up the last few yards.

"I have been in hiding behind that tree by the gate," he said; "I did not like to disturb the boys by my presence, after the pains you had taken to keep them quiet."

Joyce's colour rose, and she said:

"I would rather you had let me know you were listening, especially when I was talking to the boys."

"Do not be vexed with me," Mr. Arundel said. "I am so glad to have found you here alone."

"I wanted to speak to you, too," she said, quickly, "about my brother; he is" – she stopped, and then went on; "I think I may say it to you – he is the one cloud over our happy life here at Fair Acres. It used not to be so; he was very different once."

"Yes," Mr. Arundel said, "I can quite imagine it was so. Your brother is very weak of purpose, and he got into a bad set at the university where I found him."

"What made you care for him?" Joyce said, simply; "you are so different from him."

"Well, the story is rather a long one, and I do not know that all of it is fit for your ears, or that I ought to inflict it upon you. Still I think you should know something about it. I feel an interest in poor Melville much the same interest which a man takes in anything that has cost him some trouble."

"What made you take any trouble about him?" Joyce asked.

"I scarcely know; pity, I think, began it; and who could help pitying him? He got into the hands of an unprincipled man, much older than himself, who is, in fact, a relative of mine, and I did what I could to get him out of his clutches. He got all his money out of him, and then persuaded him to gamble to get more; of course ending in losing it."

"How dreadful!" Joyce exclaimed. "Does father know?"

"He knows about the money part, of course; about the debts and difficulties."

"Yes," Joyce exclaimed, with a sigh, "and it has troubled him greatly."

"What I wanted to say to you was, that I think if Melville went abroad, as he wishes, it might be a good thing, provided a safe companion could be found for him."

"Will you go?" Joyce said, eagerly.

"No, it is impossible; I could not leave my mother: I am all she has in the world. We are going to live in Bristol, where I am to be articled to a good firm of lawyers, and perhaps I may study afterwards for the bar."

"I thought you were of high family," Joyce said innocently.

"Would that prevent my taking to law?" Gilbert asked, with a smile.

"No; I don't know exactly why it should do so," she said. "Melville talks so much about things which are right for a gentleman to do, and things which a gentleman cannot do; and then he dresses so fashionably, and people remark upon it."

"I don't wonder," Gilbert said, laughing; "but that part of his proceedings is only laughable. Many men are fops in their youth who tone down wonderfully when they get old. Let us hope it will be so with him."

"You know," Joyce said, "that Melville ought to spare father expenses instead of adding to them. There have been two bad harvests and hard winters, and Mr. Watson, the steward, is getting rather past his work. Melville ought to take that place now, and save father, for there is Ralph to be educated, and he ought to have the best, for he is so studious; and then there are the three other boys, and poor Piers is lame, and they all want something."

"You don't seem to want anything yourself," Mr. Arundel said.

"No: I have a happy home and everything is beautiful about me. What can I want?"

"Not to go to London, or Bath, or to see the world?" he asked.

"I think," said Joyce, simply, "if it came in my way – I mean if there was plenty of money – I should like to travel a little. Can you believe that I have only been to Bath once and to Bristol twice in my life? and I am nearly eighteen. My Cousin Charlotte, who lives at Wells with my aunt, has been to school in Bath, but father never wished me to go to school, so I have no accomplishments. But I need not talk any more about myself, it cannot be interesting."

Gilbert Arundel was beginning a speech to the effect that what she said was most interesting to him, but somehow it died away on his lips. The sweet earnestness of the face which he had been watching while she spoke, the entire absence of self-consciousness, seemed to lift her above the level of compliments or flattery, which the gentlemen of the time considered the rightful inheritance of the young ladies, with whom they trifled for an hour's amusement.

As she sat with her face towards the beautiful landscape over which the westering sun was casting its level rays, she seemed so far above him and bearing the "lily in her hand" of which a poet of later days than those in which Joyce lived has said that —

"Gates of brass cannot withstand

One touch of that enchanted wand."

The silence which fell over Gilbert was unbroken for a few minutes by any word on either side. At last Joyce said:

"Is there anything I can do for Melville? He has rather a way of looking down on me, and I think I speak crossly to him sometimes. I wish you would tell me if you think I could help father about him."

"If he does not listen to you I should think it hopeless that he would listen to anyone," Gilbert said; "he has a way of looking down on most people."

"Not on you?" Joyce said, with a little innocent laugh. "He made us think you were very grand and that we must alter all our ways to suit you; poor mother was to change the hours for meals, and – "

"I never heard such nonsense," Gilbert said; "but I know where he got those notions from, and I may tell you this much, that the kindest thing you can do is to ask your father, to consent to his going abroad for a year as soon as may be; he will be out of harm's way. I have had some fears that the person who had such an evil influence over him might follow him here, and I was determined to circumvent him."