Under the Mendips: A Tale

"Has father —has– " she murmured, "he cannot, cannot be – dead!"

After this Joyce said no more. They went at a fair pace along the lonely lanes; they passed through villages where the men were smoking pipes at the cottage doors, the women standing by with babies in their arms, while dusty, dirty little urchins played at "cross sticks" under the very nose of the old horse. Once they passed a small farm where a mother, neatly dressed, was standing at the gate, and a girl of fourteen ran out to meet a man with her baby brother in her arms, who stretched out his hands as the girl said:

"Yes, there's daddy! Go to daddy; welcome, daddy!"

Ah! how often had Joyce watched for her father at the gate! How her heart had thrilled with joy as she ran to meet him; and now!

A low cry escaped her, which made Thomas turn his head, which he had hitherto kept steadily to the front, as if everything depended on his staring straight between the ears of the horse, and never looking to the right hand, or the left.

Thomas was a hard featured man, who had served the old squire, and to whom Mr. Falconer was still "Master Arthur." "Doan't ee fret, my dear Miss Joyce. It's the hand of the Almighty."

Ah, was it the hand of Almighty Love, the God that had so lately revealed Himself to her in Christ, the All-loving as well as the All-mighty – was it possible He could take away 'the master from her head that day'?

The old servant's voice quavering with sympathy made Joyce feel that she was also trembling on the brink of tears.

"Thomas, I want to be brave, for I shall have to comfort him and mother."

Then there was silence again. The even jog trot of the horse's heavy hoofs kept up a continuous rhythm:

"Home, home again; home, home again – this seemed the burden of the strain – home, home again, but the same home never, never again."

The evening shadows were lying across the turf where the daisies had closed their golden eyes for the night, when the gig turned into the familiar road and drew up at the door.

The door was open, but there was no one there. Joyce sprang down and passed in, throwing off her large bonnet, and unfastening the clasp of her cloak, which seemed like to choke her.

In the supreme moments of life the most trivial things always seem to fasten upon the outward senses, as if to show, by force of contrast, the enormous proportions of the great trouble – or the great joy, it may be – which is at the time overshadowing us.

So Joyce, as she stood in the hall, noticed that one of the stag's glass eyes had dropped out and lay upon the bench upon which Gilbert Arundel had sat on the night of their adventure on the moor. She saw, too, lying there, a large pair of scissors, and a roll of lint lay on the window-seat, with a basin in which the water was coloured a pale crimson. "They bandaged his head here," she thought, – and she was going upstairs, when slow, heavy, jerky footsteps were heard, and Duke came down, and, putting his nose into her hand, whined a low, piteous whine.

"Oh! Duke, Duke, where is he?"

As if he understood her human speech – as, indeed, he did, Duke turned to precede her upstairs.

On a bench in the long corridor two maid servants were seated, crying bitterly. But Joyce did not speak to them, she dared not; even the question she had asked Duke died on her lips.

The door of her father's room was ajar; and as Duke pushed it open with his nose, Joyce could see the great four-post bed, her mother sitting by it, and curled up in the window-seat was Piers.

The friends who had been there in the early part of the day were gone; they could do no more at Fair Acres. And Mr. Paget's aim was to set the constables to work to find the man who must have hurled a sharp stone at Mr. Falconer's head. The Wells doctor, too, was gone. He had a pressing case near Wells upon his hands, but he was to return at eight o'clock, when, it was hoped the doctor greater than himself, who had been summoned from Bristol, would have arrived.

In those days help in emergency was slow to obtain. Telegrams were not dreamed of, and horsepower performed the part which steam was soon to take up; to be followed by the marvellous electric force, which now sends on the wings of the wind messages all over the world, multiplied, on the very day on which I write, to an enormous extent, by the introduction of sixpenny telegrams, which will send a call for help, or strike a note of joy, and win an immediate response from thousands.

But there were no electric messages possible to get medical help for the squire, nor, indeed, would any help avail.

With a great sigh, Duke resumed his watch at the foot of the high bed; and Joyce, crossing over, kissed her mother and Piers, and then gazed down upon her father.

"Dear dad!" she said, inadvertently using the familiar name.

"He has not spoken nor opened his eyes since we laid him here," Mrs. Falconer said. "He knows no one – no one – "

"Did he tell how it happened?"

"No."

"It might have been that he was thrown from – from – Mavis."

"No," Mrs. Falconer said again, "that could not be, they think; besides, they found a heavy stick and a tinder box close by."

Presently Piers came down from his place, and Joyce put her arms round him. The boy was very calm, but great tears fell upon Joyce's hand as she pressed him close.

The silent watch went on. Duke lay motionless, but his eyes were on the alert. The servants looked in sometimes, and brought Joyce and her mother some tea and cake. Joyce swallowed a cup of tea, but ate nothing.

Could this be the evening of the day which dawned so brightly? – the Wrington bells chiming, the village children singing hymns, joyousness and gladness everywhere. The guests gathered round Mrs. More; the bright, intelligent conversation to which she was listening; then her own narrative of the Mendip adventure; – and this brought her to the present from the past!

If her father had been assailed by a malicious miner on Mendip, that assailant was Bob Priday; of this she felt no doubt.

The Bristol doctor came, and the Wells doctor and they held a consultation. But there was nothing to be done; the injury Mr. Falconer had received was mortal.

"Will he give no sign, no word that he knows us?" Mrs. Falconer asked. "Oh, for one word!"

"We do not think there will be any return of consciousness," the doctors said, "but we cannot tell."

No; no one could tell. And so the sad hours of the night passed, and the dawn broke over the familiar fields, and Fair Acres smiled in the first bright rays of the morning.

Piers had slept curled up in his window-seat, worn out with grief. Mrs. Falconer, too, had slept in an upright position, her head resting against the back of the chair, sleeping for sorrow.

But Joyce did not sleep; she kept watch, hoping, praying for one word of farewell.

As the first sunbeam slanted through the casement, her father opened his eyes, and fastened them on Joyce. "Sunshine," he said, with a faint smile. "Dear child."

"Dearest father, dear father!"

"I hope my little girl will be named after my mother, Joyce. Yes, it is an old-world name, but I fancy it; name her Joyce."

The sound of his master's voice roused Duke, who pricked his ears and came to the bedside. Mrs. Falconer also started and awoke.

"There is a word I cannot catch, about the Life. Try to think of it. I can't."

Joyce glanced at her mother.

"What does he mean?" she said, helplessly. "Oh! what does he want?"

"The Life; I am the Life." The words came with difficulty now.

Then Piers, starting up, said:

"I know. I think I know. 'Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the Life.'"

A smile of infinite content came over the father's face.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, the Life."

Presently he murmured Melville's name, and those of the children who had gone before.

"The little girls all died but one," he said. "One is left – Sunshine."

They knelt down as in the presence of something unseen but near; for the shadows gathered on the fine face of the husband and father; and Piers repeated for the second time:

"Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the Life!"

As if with a great effort to repeat the words, the squire said, faintly, "Jesus said," – then silence fell; and the next thing Joyce knew was that she was lying in her own little bed, and that she was fatherless.

The news of the squire's death spread quickly through the whole district. As is often the case, no one knew how much he had been respected till he was gone. Then there were terrible circumstances connected with his death, which, apart from his loss, troubled the magistrates who had sat with him on the bench, and had probably made enemies, as he had done, in the performance of their duty.

The roads across the Mendip were avoided more than ever, and as time went on and nothing was heard of or discovered about the man who had thrown the missile which had caused Mr. Falconer's death; if the wonder faded out, the fear remained; the county constabulary were, truth to tell, afraid of their own lives, and there was no machinery of detectives at work then, as now. However, whatever search was made it was fruitless, and the offender had escaped beyond the reach of punishment.

As with a sudden transition into a new state of existence, Joyce found herself the central figure to whom everyone looked for help and advice. Her mother collapsed utterly. She would sit for hours in that inaction, which it is so painful to notice in those who have been once so full of life and movement. The boys who had been sent for from school did not return to it. Ralph surprised everyone by saying that he should give up study, and come and live at home and help his mother – at any rate, till Melville came back, if ever he did come back, to take his place at Fair Acres. By interest exerted by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, Harry and Bunny both got into the navy, and went forth, poor little boys, full of hope and delight, to encounter the hardships which then were the universal fate of little middys, in their first acquaintance with the salt sea waves they loved so well.

It was touching to see the young brother and sister, who were left at the head of affairs, resolutely doing their utmost to spare their mother, and to keep things, as Mr. Watson called it, "square."

If he were old he was intensely useful and honourable; and Ralph's power to adapt himself to his new manner of life was really wonderful. He set himself to study the few and scanty agricultural books which were on his father's shelves, and mastered the accounts in a way which Mr. Gell, the lawyer, and Mr. Paget, the executor under the will, found to be surprising.

Miss Falconer had sent many kind little notes on very deep black-edged paper, and sealed with a large black seal, to "her dear afflicted sister;" and Charlotte, who had returned from Barley Wood on the day after Joyce left it, composed verses of doubtful rhythm, and still more doubtful sense, which she sent, done up in brown paper parcels by the carrier, as they were too voluminous to be conveyed in any other way. Verses in which "bleeding hearts" and "rivers of tears," sought vainly for appropriate rhymes; where "fears" refused to follow "bears," and "eyes" was made to do duty again and again with "prize" and "sighs." Mrs. More wrote a tender letter of sympathy to Joyce, and would have driven over to see her, had not the shortening days and threatened cold kept her a close prisoner. Indeed, she was laid low with one of her most dangerous illnesses before September was over; and Miss Frowde and her doctor thought it more than doubtful if, at her advanced age, she would recover.

It was on a still October afternoon, when autumnal stillness reigned in the woods and fields, that Joyce went to the seat under the fir trees to be alone with her sorrow. The grassy slope was slippery now with recent rain, and though the clouds had rolled off eastward, the sunshine was pale and watery, coming in fitful gleams through the veil of thin misty vapour which hung over the sky.

Joyce often came to this seat; it was associated with her father, and she loved to be there and give full vent to the sorrow which, for the sake of others, she had learned to hide. Miss Falconer and Charlotte had paid one visit of condolence after the funeral. They were surprised, and I may even say disappointed, to see Joyce so calm, and Miss Falconer thought how different it would be with Charlotte when she was taken from her; she would be entirely prostrate and unfit for exertion.

It is well for the world that some people are fit for exertion, even in the midst of crushing sorrow. It would be a melancholy thing if all grief-stricken ones fed on their grief in solitude, and shut themselves up from doing their best, to lighten the burden of others.

Miss Falconer would not have had cause to lament Joyce's unnatural calm, if she had seen her as she sat upon the old bench, in the dim, pale light of the October day, when, amidst the hush of all around, her sobs and low cry of "Oh! father – father," throbbed in the quiet air.

They had been so much to each other; they had understood each other so perfectly. The beautiful tie between father and daughter, which when it exists is one of the most beautiful in the world, seemed severed, cruelly severed, and Joyce was desolate. She was scarcely eighteen, and the freshness and gladness of her life hitherto had been remarkable. Now, all unawares, the storm had swept over her sky, and, when it passed, left her lonely indeed.

Mrs. Falconer was one of those people who bury their dead out of sight, and cannot bear the mention of their names. Ralph, setting his face bravely to meet his duty, did not speak of his father as Joyce would have loved to speak of him, and it was only to Piers, that Joyce could sometimes ease her burdened heart, by talking of her father. Just as on the summer morning, now looking so far off, left in the golden haze of joy and glad young life, Joyce had seen her lame brother at the gate of the plantation, so she saw him now.

She made a great effort to control her weeping, and said:

"It is very slippery on the turf to-day; wait, dear, and I will come down to help you." But Piers said:

"I want you to come down; I don't want to come up."

"Is anything the matter?"

Piers did not answer, and in another minute Joyce was at his side.

"Joyce, there is a woman hiding under the maples and brambles."

"A woman? Perhaps she is one of the women employed on the farm."

"I don't know," said Piers, "I wish you would come and see who it is."

"Very well, dear," Joyce said; "you are sure it is a woman?"

"Yes, and she is crying and sobbing."

Joyce followed Piers along the shrubbery path, now covered with a new layer of fallen leaves, and, at the turn of a still narrower side path, she saw, half hidden by the brambles and undergrowth, a woman; her head, bowed upon her hands, and her attitude one of despair.

Joyce went near and said: "What is the matter? Are you in pain? Can I help you?"

The woman raised her head, and Joyce recognised at once that she was Susan Priday.

Thoughts of the night on Mendip; of the fierce onslaught made on Gilbert Arundel by the big giant, and the almost certainty she felt, that the cruel blow aimed at her father was by the same hand, made Joyce start back and say, coldly:

"You had better not stay here, these are private grounds."

Piers, who was leaning against the bole of a beech tree, said:

"Yes; get up and go away. I will show you the gate into the road."

"Lady," said the girl, passionately, "I came to see you. I saw you sobbing and crying on the bench yonder, for I got into the plantation that way. I heard you sob, and call 'Father,' and then my heart nearly broke, and I came round at the back and got over the hedge. I felt as if I dare not speak to you. Do you know me, lady?"

"Yes," Joyce said; "of course I see who you are, but I – I cannot do anything for you, and we are all in great grief, very, very great grief," Joyce said, with a sudden spasm of agony in her voice.

"I know it, I know it, that's why I came; and I'm in grief, too. Father is gone away, no one knows where; the boys have run off, and, oh! the baby is dead. I did think I'd keep him, for mother's sake; but, in a drunken fit, father threw a pot of boiling water at me. It missed me, and the baby caught it on his neck and face, and it scalded him dreadful. The school mistress was kind, and so was Mrs. Amos, she that owns the farm; but he died – he died – and I am all alone. Oh! Miss, oh! dear young lady, pity me."

"I do pity you," Joyce said. "But where is your father? For you must be aware that suspicion points to him as the cause of my – of my dear father's death."

"Yes, I do know it. Oh! miss, forgive me, and let me come and serve you. I want no wage; but I'd die for you, if that would do you good. I have never forgot your face that night, nor how you spoke soft then instead of angry. Oh, miss, let me come and live with you. I will sleep on the ground. I'll do the work of two in the dairy, or in the house, and I want no wage. Poor mother always said God would take care of me, but He has taken away the baby, He has, that is the cruellest part. And father; oh! miss, you can't tell what it is to be filled with shame about a father."

"No, indeed," Joyce said. "No; I know what it is to be proud of one, and to – " Her voice broke down, and Piers said:

"She ought to go away, Joyce; she can't be left here."

But Joyce seemed to be thinking for a few minutes. Here was a girl whose father had, as everyone thought, been the cause of her father's death; here was the daughter of this man, coming to her and begging to be taken into the house, to be her servant? Was it possible?

With a discretion far beyond her years, Joyce said, "I will make inquiries about you from the school mistress, and if I find you really bear a good character, I will get you a place, and – "

"I want no place apart from you" the girl said, passionately. "If I could die to undo my father's wicked deed, I would die, and," she added, sadly, "it ain't much I have to live for now the baby's gone. But if you won't take me, well, I'll tramp to Bristol; and if I can't get bread in an honest way, I must get it somehow else."

"No, no; don't say that. I must consider and think, and if I can take you I will. Mrs. More is so ill, so ill that it is feared she will not live, so I can't write to her. But I will think, and," she added, in a low voice, "I will pray about it. I am in great trouble myself; we are all in great trouble."

"I know it, I know it. Oh! dear lady, ever since night and day, night and day, I have prayed for you, and that God would keep you."

There was something in the girl's despairing voice which touched Joyce to the heart.

"Come round to the kitchen door with me," she said, "and I will see that you have rest and food. I am sure you want both."

"I don't want rest; there is no rest in me, and food chokes me."

But Joyce took no notice of this, and saying, decidedly, "follow me," she put her hand on Piers' shoulder, and they went through the plantation to the house, skirting it to the left instead of crossing it, and so round to the stable-yard and the back premises.

Mrs. Falconer never had old maid servants; she trained girls to fill the places in her household, and of these, there was an endless stream passing through. The two in the kitchen now were both kindly, good-tempered girls, utterly ignorant, but simple-hearted and honest.

"I want this poor young woman," Joyce said, "to rest by the fire; and give her her supper before she leaves. Sarah, do you hear me?" Joyce said.

"Yes, miss, I hear," Sarah said, surveying the poor, forlorn girl with scorn. "Yes, miss. I don't know whether missis would hold with taking in a tramp like her."

"I am going to ask mother now," Joyce said; "and I know you are kind-hearted, Sarah, and that you will attend to this poor girl, because I wish it."

Sarah gave a low sound, which was taken for consent; and Joyce, judging rightly that Susan Priday would be better left to the servants, went to find her mother.

As she crossed the hall she met Ralph.

"There are letters from Italy," he said. "Melville had not heard when he wrote."

"Where are the letters?" Joyce asked.

"Mother has them. There is one for you – not from Italy though; it has the Bristol post-mark, and is franked. There was an immense deal to pay for Melville's."

Joyce waited to hear no more, but went to her mother. She was sitting with her son's letter open before her. It began, "Dear father and mother," and these words went like a knife through Joyce's heart.

Mrs. Falconer sat day after day in the same chair by the fire-place. Her large widow's cap – in those days an immense erection of many thick frillings, and with long "weepers" falling over her shoulders – altered her so entirely, scarcely any one would have recognised her.

Joyce glanced through the letter. It was as self-sufficient and trifling as ever. Melville found foreign travel less delightful than he had expected.

The diligence was then the universal mode of transit through France, and the two travellers had taken a whole month to reach Hyères, a journey which can now be got through in three days at the longest calculation. Melville complained of the food and the cramped diligence, and how the smell of garlic made him sick; and how old Crawford was as "stiff as starch," and that he did not think he should stay away long.

Of Genoa la Superba not a word, except to say that he had seen a fine copy of one of Raphael's pictures for sale, which, if his father would send the money, he would buy, for the dining hall at Fair Acres.

Joyce had hardly patience to finish the letter; but her mother said:

"Give the letter to me, Joyce." And then she smoothed the thin sheet of foreign paper tenderly, and, refolding it, placed it in her large work-box, which stood unused by her side.

Joyce, meantime, opened the other letter, and a bright flush came over her face. She could not read it there; she put it into her deep pocket, and said:

"Dear mother, a poor girl is in the kitchen; she is utterly friendless and forlorn. May I let her sleep in the empty attic to-night, till I make inquiries about her of the mistress of one of Mrs. More's schools to-morrow?"

"You can do as you like, Joyce," was the reply, as poor Mrs. Falconer relapsed into her usual condition of dreary silence, after kindling into some interest about Melville's letter.

"You can do as you like – my day is over."

"Mother, dearest mother, do not say so; you will feel better soon. It is – it is the suddenness of the blow that has come upon you – and upon us all – that has stunned you. Do try to take comfort."

"Comfort, Joyce! You don't know what you are saying. I lived for your father – and I have lost him. It was cruel, cruel to take him in his prime, to leave me desolate!"

"You have got us children to love you, mother," Joyce ventured to say; "and think how good Ralph is, giving up everything he cared for most, to take up the business of the farm."

"As if he could do that," was the reply. "Ralph is not fit for it."

"Mr. Watson says it is wonderful how he has fallen into the ways of people on the estate. He has such a firm will and purpose in everything he does."

Mrs. Falconer sighed.

"Well," she said, "I don't want to talk any more about it. I think if you will get me the yarn I will go on knitting Harry's stockings."

"Oh, yes," Joyce said; "and Piers will be so pleased to hold the skeins for you, mother."

Then she kissed her mother again and again, and whispered:

"You will come to church on Sunday, mother, won't you? It is so dull for you, sitting here day after day."

"I can do nothing else," was the reply – "nothing else. What else should I do? You are a dear, good child, Joyce. He always said so; he was always right."

There is nothing harder to meet than a grief like poor Mrs. Falconer's; or rather, I should say, there is nothing harder to meet than a grief which refuses to recognise love in the midst of anguish which hardens and, as it were, paralyzes the whole being; changes the fountain of sweetness into bitterness; making the accustomed routine of duty impossible and falling on the sufferer like a heavy pall.