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Elizabeth Gaskell >> The Poor Clare
*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
from the 1896 "Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales" Macmillan and Co. edition.
Proofing was by Audrey Emmitt and Eugenia Corbo.
THE POOR CLARE
by Elizabeth Gaskell
CHAPTER I.
December 12th, 1747.--My life has been strangely bound up with
extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any
connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I
even knew of their existence. I suppose, most old men are, like me,
more given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond
interest and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events--
though these may have far more interest for the multitude--
immediately passing before their eyes. If this should be the case
with the generality of old people, how much more so with me! . . . If
I am to enter upon that strange story connected with poor Lucy, I
must begin a long way back. I myself only came to the knowledge of
her family history after I knew her; but, to make the tale clear to
any one else, I must arrange events in the order in which they
occurred--not that in which I became acquainted with them.
There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part
they called the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district
named Craven. Starkey Manor-house is rather like a number of rooms
clustered round a gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built
hall. Indeed, I suppose that the house only consisted of a great
tower in the centre, in the days when the Scots made their raids
terrible as far south as this; and that after the Stuarts came in,
and there was a little more security of property in those parts, the
Starkeys of that time added the lower building, which runs, two
stories high, all round the base of the keep. There has been a grand
garden laid out in my days, on the southern slope near the house; but
when I first knew the place, the kitchen-garden at the farm was the
only piece of cultivated ground belonging to it. The deer used to
come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and might have browsed
quite close up to the house if they had not been too wild and shy.
Starkey Manor-house itself stood on a projection or peninsula of high
land, jutting out from the abrupt hills that form the sides of the
Trough of Bolland. These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards
their summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled copsewood and
green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of an ancient forest-
tree would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly white
branches, as if in imprecation, to the sky. These trees, they told
me, were the remnants of that forest which existed in the days of the
Heptarchy, and were even then noted as landmarks. No wonder that
their upper and more exposed branches were leafless, and that the
dead bark had peeled away, from sapless old age.
Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently, of the
same date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the
family, who sought shelter--they and their families and their small
flocks and herds--at the hands of their feudal lord. Some of them
had pretty much fallen to decay. They were built in a strange
fashion. Strong beams had been sunk firm in the ground at the
requisite distance, and their other ends had been fastened together,
two and two, so as to form the shape of one of those rounded waggon-
headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger. The spaces between were
filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish, mortar--anything to keep
out the weather. The fires were made in the centre of these rude
dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only chimney. No Highland
hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher construction.
The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century,
was a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey. His family had kept to the old
faith, and were stanch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to
marry any one of Protestant descent, however willing he or she might
have been to embrace the Romish religion. Mr. Patrick Starkey's
father had been a follower of James the Second; and, during the
disastrous Irish campaign of that monarch he had fallen in love with
an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as zealous for her religion and for
the Stuarts as himself. He had returned to Ireland after his escape
to France, and married her, bearing her back to the court at St.
Germains. But some licence on the part of the disorderly gentlemen
who surrounded King James in his exile, had insulted his beautiful
wife, and disgusted him; so he removed from St. Germains to Antwerp,
whence, in a few years' time, he quietly returned to Starkey Manor-
house--some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent their good
offices to reconcile him to the powers that were. He was as firm a
Catholic as ever, and as stanch an advocate for the Stuarts and the
divine rights of kings; but his religion almost amounted to
asceticism, and the conduct of these with whom he had been brought in
such close contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection
of a stern moralist. So he gave his allegiance where he could not
give his esteem, and learned to respect sincerely the upright and
moral character of one whom he yet regarded as an usurper. King
William's government had little need to fear such a one. So he
returned, as I have said, with a sobered heart and impoverished
fortunes, to his ancestral house, which had fallen sadly to ruin
while the owner had been a courtier, a soldier, and an exile. The
roads into the Trough of Bolland were little more than cart-ruts;
indeed, the way up to the house lay along a ploughed field before you
came to the deer-park. Madam, as the country-folk used to call Mrs.
Starkey, rode on a pillion behind her husband, holding on to him with
a light hand by his leather riding-belt. Little master (he that was
afterwards Squire Patrick Byrne Starkey) was held on to his pony by a
serving-man. A woman past middle age walked, with a firm and strong
step, by the cart that held much of the baggage; and high up on the
mails and boxes, sat a girl of dazzling beauty, perched lightly on
the topmost trunk, and swaying herself fearlessly to and fro, as the
cart rocked and shook in the heavy roads of late autumn. The girl
wore the Antwerp faille, or black Spanish mantle over her head, and
altogether her appearance was such that the old cottager, who
described the possession to me many years after, said that all the
country-folk took her for a foreigner. Some dogs, and the boy who
held them in charge, made up the company. They rode silently along,
looking with grave, serious eyes at the people, who came out of the
scattered cottages to bow or curtsy to the real Squire, "come back at
last," and gazed after the little procession with gaping wonder, not
deadened by the sound of the foreign language in which the few
necessary words that passed among them were spoken. One lad, called
from his staring by the Squire to come and help about the cart,
accompanied them to the Manor-house. He said that when the lady had
descended from her pillion, the middle-aged woman whom I have
described as walking while the others rode, stepped quickly forward,
and taking Madam Starkey (who was of a slight and delicate figure) in
her arms, she lifted her over the threshold, and set her down in her
husband's house, at the same time uttering a passionate and
outlandish blessing. The Squire stood by, smiling gravely at first;
but when the words of blessing were pronounced, he took off his fine
feathered hat, and bent his head. The girl with the black mantle
stepped onward into the shadow of the dark hall, and kissed the
lady's hand; and that was all the lad could tell to the group that
gathered round him on his return, eager to hear everything, and to
know how much the Squire had given him for his services.
From all I could gather, the Manor-house, at the time of the Squire's
return, was in the most dilapidated state. The stout gray walls
remained firm and entire; but the inner chambers had been used for
all kinds of purposes. The great withdrawing-room had been a barn;
the state tapestry-chamber had held wool, and so on. But, by-and-by,
they were cleared out; and if the Squire had no money to spend on new
furniture, he and his wife had the knack of making the best of the
old. He was no despicable joiner; she had a kind of grace in
whatever she did, and imparted an air of elegant picturesqueness to
whatever she touched. Besides, they had brought many rare things
from the Continent; perhaps I should rather say, things that were
rare in that part of England--carvings, and crosses, and beautiful
pictures. And then, again, wood was plentiful in the Trough of
Bolland, and great log-fires danced and glittered in all the dark,
old rooms, and gave a look of home and comfort to everything.
Why do I tell you all this? I have little to do with the Squire and
Madame Starkey; and yet I dwell upon them, as if I were unwilling to
come to the real people with whom my life was so strangely mixed up.
Madam had been nursed in Ireland by the very woman who lifted her in
her arms, and welcomed her to her husband's home in Lancashire.
Excepting for the short period of her own married life, Bridget
Fitzgerald had never left her nursling. Her marriage--to one above
her in rank--had been unhappy. Her husband had died, and left her in
even greater poverty than that in which she was when he had first met
with her. She had one child, the beautiful daughter who came riding
on the waggon-load of furniture that was brought to the Manor-house.
Madame Starkey had taken her again into her service when she became a
widow. She and her daughter had followed "the mistress" in all her
fortunes; they had lived at St. Germains and at Antwerp, and were now
come to her home in Lancashire. As soon as Bridget had arrived
there, the Squire gave her a cottage of her own, and took more pains
in furnishing it for her than he did in anything else out of his own
house. It was only nominally her residence. She was constantly up
at the great house; indeed, it was but a short cut across the woods
from her own home to the home of her nursling. Her daughter Mary, in
like manner, moved from one house to the other at her own will.
Madam loved both mother and child dearly. They had great influence
over her, and, through her, over her husband. Whatever Bridget or
Mary willed was sure to come to pass. They were not disliked; for,
though wild and passionate, they were also generous by nature. But
the other servants were afraid of them, as being in secret the ruling
spirits of the household. The Squire had lost his interest in all
secular things; Madam was gentle, affectionate, and yielding. Both
husband and wife were tenderly attached to each other and to their
boy; but they grew more and more to shun the trouble of decision on
any point; and hence it was that Bridget could exert such despotic
power. But if everyone else yielded to her "magic of a superior
mind," her daughter not unfrequently rebelled. She and her mother
were too much alike to agree. There were wild quarrels between them,
and wilder reconciliations. There were times when, in the heat of
passion, they could have stabbed each other. At all other times they
both--Bridget especially--would have willingly laid down their lives
for one another. Bridget's love for her child lay very deep--deeper
than that daughter ever knew; or I should think she would never have
wearied of home as she did, and prayed her mistress to obtain for her
some situation--as waiting maid--beyond the seas, in that more
cheerful continental life, among the scenes of which so many of her
happiest years had been spent. She thought, as youth thinks, that
life would last for ever, and that two or three years were but a
small portion of it to pass away from her mother, whose only child
she was. Bridget thought differently, but was too proud ever to show
what she felt. If her child wished to leave her, why--she should go.
But people said Bridget became ten years older in the course of two
months at this time. She took it that Mary wanted to leave her. The
truth was, that Mary wanted for a time to leave the place, and to
seek some change, and would thankfully have taken her mother with
her. Indeed when Madam Starkey had gotten her a situation with some
grand lady abroad, and the time drew near for her to go, it was Mary
who clung to her mother with passionate embrace, and, with floods of
tears, declared that she would never leave her; and it was Bridget,
who at last loosened her arms, and, grave and tearless herself, bade
her keep her word, and go forth into the wide world. Sobbing aloud,
and looking back continually, Mary went away. Bridget was still as
death, scarcely drawing her breath, or closing her stony eyes; till
at last she turned back into her cottage, and heaved a ponderous old
settle against the door. There she sat, motionless, over the gray
ashes of her extinguished fire, deaf to Madam's sweet voice, as she
begged leave to enter and comfort her nurse. Deaf, stony, and
motionless, she sat for more than twenty hours; till, for the third
time, Madam came across the snowy path from the great house, carrying
with her a young spaniel, which had been Mary's pet up at the hall;
and which had not ceased all night long to seek for its absent
mistress, and to whine and moan after her. With tears Madam told
this story, through the closed door--tears excited by the terrible
look of anguish, so steady, so immovable--so the same to-day as it
was yesterday--on her nurse's face. The little creature in her arms
began to utter its piteous cry, as it shivered with the cold.
Bridget stirred; she moved--she listened. Again that long whine; she
thought it was for her daughter; and what she had denied to her
nursling and mistress she granted to the dumb creature that Mary had
cherished. She opened the door, and took the dog from Madam's arms.
Then Madam came in, and kissed and comforted the old woman, who took
but little notice of her or anything. And sending up Master Patrick
to the hall for fire and food, the sweet young lady never left her
nurse all that night. Next day, the Squire himself came down,
carrying a beautiful foreign picture--Our Lady of the Holy Heart, the
Papists call it. It is a picture of the Virgin, her heart pierced
with arrows, each arrow representing one of her great woes. That
picture hung in Bridget's cottage when I first saw her; I have that
picture now.
Years went on. Mary was still abroad. Bridget was still and stern,
instead of active and passionate. The little dog, Mignon, was indeed
her darling. I have heard that she talked to it continually;
although, to most people, she was so silent. The Squire and Madam
treated her with the greatest consideration, and well they might; for
to them she was as devoted and faithful as ever. Mary wrote pretty
often, and seemed satisfied with her life. But at length the letters
ceased--I hardly know whether before or after a great and terrible
sorrow came upon the house of the Starkeys. The Squire sickened of a
putrid fever; and Madam caught it in nursing him, and died. You may
be sure, Bridget let no other woman tend her but herself; and in the
very arms that had received her at her birth, that sweet young woman
laid her head down, and gave up her breath. The Squire recovered, in
a fashion. He was never strong--he had never the heart to smile
again. He fasted and prayed more than ever; and people did say that
he tried to cut off the entail, and leave all the property away to
found a monastery abroad, of which he prayed that some day little
Squire Patrick might be the reverend father. But he could not do
this, for the strictness of the entail and the laws against the
Papists. So he could only appoint gentlemen of his own faith as
guardians to his son, with many charges about the lad's soul, and a
few about the land, and the way it was to be held while he was a
minor. Of course, Bridget was not forgotten. He sent for her as he
lay on his death-bed, and asked her if she would rather have a sum
down, or have a small annuity settled upon her. She said at once she
would have a sum down; for she thought of her daughter, and how she
could bequeath the money to her, whereas an annuity would have died
with her. So the Squire left her her cottage for life, and a fair
sum of money. And then he died, with as ready and willing a heart
as, I suppose, ever any gentleman took out of this world with him.
The young Squire was carried off by his guardians, and Bridget was
left alone.
I have said that she had not heard from Mary for some time. In her
last letter, she had told of travelling about with her mistress, who
was the English wife of some great foreign officer, and had spoken of
her chances of making a good marriage, without naming the gentleman's
name, keeping it rather back as a pleasant surprise to her mother;
his station and fortune being, as I had afterwards reason to know,
far superior to anything she had a right to expect. Then came a long
silence; and Madam was dead, and the Squire was dead; and Bridget's
heart was gnawed by anxiety, and she knew not whom to ask for news of
her child. She could not write, and the Squire had managed her
communication with her daughter. She walked off to Hurst; and got a
good priest there--one whom she had known at Antwerp--to write for
her. But no answer came. It was like crying into the' awful
stillness of night.
One day, Bridget was missed by those neighbours who had been
accustomed to mark her goings-out and comings-in. She had never been
sociable with any of them; but the sight of her had become a part of
their daily lives, and slow wonder arose in their minds, as morning
after morning came, and her house-door remained closed, her window
dead from any glitter, or light of fire within. At length, some one
tried the door; it was locked. Two or three laid their heads
together, before daring to look in through the blank unshuttered
window. But, at last, they summoned up courage; and then saw that
Bridget's absence from their little world was not the result of
accident or death, but of premeditation. Such small articles of
furniture as could be secured from the effects of time and damp by
being packed up, were stowed away in boxes. The picture of the
Madonna was taken down, and gone. In a word, Bridget had stolen away
from her home, and left no trace whither she was departed. I knew
afterwards, that she and her little dog had wandered off on the long
search for her lost daughter. She was too illiterate to have faith
in letters, even had she had the means of writing and sending many.
But she had faith in her own strong love, and believed that her
passionate instinct would guide her to her child. Besides, foreign
travel was no new thing to her, and she could speak enough of French
to explain the object of her journey, and had, moreover, the
advantage of being, from her faith, a welcome object of charitable
hospitality at many a distant convent. But the country people round
Starkey Manor-house knew nothing of all this. They wondered what had
become of her, in a torpid, lazy fashion, and then left off thinking
of her altogether. Several years passed. Both Manor-house and
cottage were deserted. The young Squire lived far away under the
direction of his guardians. There were inroads of wool and corn into
the sitting-rooms of the Hall; and there was some low talk, from time
to time, among the hinds and country people whether it would not be
as well to break into old Bridget's cottage, and save such of her
goods as were left from the moth and rust which must be making sad
havoc. But this idea was always quenched by the recollection of her
strong character and passionate anger; and tales of her masterful
spirit, and vehement force of will, were whispered about, till the
very thought of offending her, by touching any article of hers,
became invested with a kind of horror: it was believed that, dead or
alive, she would not fail to avenge it.
Suddenly she came home; with as little noise or note of preparation
as she had departed. One day some one noticed a thin, blue curl of
smoke ascending from her chimney. Her door stood open to the noonday
sun; and, ere many hours had elapsed, some one had seen an old
travel-and-sorrow-stained woman dipping her pitcher in the well; and
said, that the dark, solemn eyes that looked up at him were more like
Bridget Fitzgerald's than any one else's in this world; and yet, if
it were she, she looked as if she had been scorched in the flames of
hell, so brown, and scared, and fierce a creature did she seem. By-
and-by many saw her; and those who met her eye once cared not to be
caught looking at her again. She had got into the habit of
perpetually talking to herself; nay, more, answering herself, and
varying her tones according to the side she took at the moment. It
was no wonder that those who dared to listen outside her door at
night believed that she held converse with some spirit; in short, she
was unconsciously earning for herself the dreadful reputation of a
witch.
Her little dog, which had wandered half over the Continent with her,
was her only companion; a dumb remembrancer of happier days. Once he
was ill; and she carried him more than three miles, to ask about his
management from one who had been groom to the last Squire, and had
then been noted for his skill in all diseases of animals. Whatever
this man did, the dog recovered; and they who heard her thanks,
intermingled with blessings (that were rather promises of good
fortune than prayers), looked grave at his good luck when, next year,
his ewes twinned, and his meadow-grass was heavy and thick.
Now it so happened that, about the year seventeen hundred and eleven,
one of the guardians of the young squire, a certain Sir Philip
Tempest, bethought him of the good shooting there must be on his
ward's property; and in consequence he brought down four or five
gentlemen, of his friends, to stay for a week or two at the Hall.
From all accounts, they roystered and spent pretty freely. I never
heard any of their names but one, and that was Squire Gisborne's. He
was hardly a middle-aged man then; he had been much abroad, and
there, I believe, he had known Sir Philip Tempest, and done him some
service. He was a daring and dissolute fellow in those days:
careless and fearless, and one who would rather be in a quarrel than
out of it. He had his fits of ill-temper besides, when he would
spare neither man nor beast. Otherwise, those who knew him well,
used to say he had a good heart, when he was neither drunk, nor
angry, nor in any way vexed. He had altered much when I came to know
him.
One day, the gentlemen had all been out shooting, and with but little
success, I believe; anyhow, Mr. Gisborne had none, and was in a black
humour accordingly. He was coming home, having his gun loaded,
sportsman-like, when little Mignon crossed his path, just as he
turned out of the wood by Bridget's cottage. Partly for wantonness,
partly to vent his spleen upon some living creature. Mr. Gisborne
took his gun, and fired--he had better have never fired gun again,
than aimed that unlucky shot, he hit Mignon, and at the creature's
sudden cry, Bridget came out, and saw at a glance what had been done.
She took Mignon up in her arms, and looked hard at the wound; the
poor dog looked at her with his glazing eyes, and tried to wag his
tail and lick her hand, all covered with blood. Mr. Gisborne spoke
in a kind of sullen penitence:
"You should have kept the dog out of my way--a little poaching
varmint."
At this very moment, Mignon stretched out his legs, and stiffened in
her arms--her lost Mary's dog, who had wandered and sorrowed with her
for years. She walked right into Mr. Gisborne's path, and fixed his
unwilling, sullen look, with her dark and terrible eye.
"Those never throve that did me harm," said she. "I'm alone in the
world, and helpless; the more do the saints in heaven hear my
prayers. Hear me, ye blessed ones! hear me while I ask for sorrow on
this bad, cruel man. He has killed the only creature that loved me--
the dumb beast that I loved. Bring down heavy sorrow on his head for
it, O ye saints! He thought that I was helpless, because he saw me
lonely and poor; but are not the armies of heaven for the like of
me?"
"Come, come," said he, half remorseful, but not one whit afraid.
"Here's a crown to buy thee another dog. Take it, and leave off
cursing! I care none for thy threats."
"Don't you?" said she, coming a step closer, and changing her
imprecatory cry for a whisper which made the gamekeeper's lad,
following Mr. Gisborne, creep all over. "You shall live to see the
creature you love best, and who alone loves you--ay, a human
creature, but as innocent and fond as my poor, dead darling--you
shall see this creature, for whom death would be too happy, become a
terror and a loathing to all, for this blood's sake. Hear me, O holy
saints, who never fail them that have no other help!"