On the very day when Charles I. was
crowned with due rejoicings Candlemasday,
in the year of our Lord 1626 a loyalty,
quite as deep and perhaps even more lasting, was having
its beer at Ley Manor in the north of Devon.
A loyalty not to the king, for the old West-country
folk knew little and cared less about the house that
came over the Border; but to a lord who had won their
hearts by dwelling among them, and dealing kindly,
and paying his way every Saturday night. When
this has been done for three generations general and
genial respect may almost be relied upon.
The present Baron de Wichehalse was
fourth in descent from that Hugh de Wichehalse, the
head of an old and wealthy race, who had sacrificed
his comfort to his resolve to have a will of his own
in matters of religion. That Hugh de Wichehalse,
having an eye to this, as well as the other world,
contrived to sell his large estates before they were
confiscated, and to escape with all the money, from
very sharp measures then enforced, by order of King
Philip II., in the unhappy Low Countries. Landing
in England, with all his effects and a score of trusty
followers, he bought a fine property, settled, and
died, and left a good name behind him. And that
good name had been well kept up, and the property
had increased and thriven, so that the present lord
was loved and admired by all the neighbourhood.
In one thing, however, he had been
unlucky, at least in his own opinion. Ten years
of married life had not found issue in parental life.
All his beautiful rocks and hills, lovely streams
and glorious woods, green meadows and golden corn
lands, must pass to his nephew and not to his child,
because he had not gained one. Being a good man,
he did his best to see this thing in its proper light.
Children, after all, are a plague, a risk, and a deep
anxiety. His nephew was a very worthy boy, and
his rights should be respected. Nevertheless,
the baron often longed to supersede them. Of
this there was every prospect now. The lady of
the house had intrusted her case to a highly celebrated
simple-woman, who lived among rocks and scanty vegetation
at Heddon’s Mouth, gathering wisdom from the
earth and from the sea tranquillity. De Wichehalse
was naturally vexed a little when all this accumulated
wisdom culminated in nothing grander than a somewhat
undersized, and unhappily female child one,
moreover, whose presence cost him that of his faithful
and loving wife. So that the heiress of Ley Manor
was greeted, after all, with a very brief and sorry
welcome. “Jennyfried,” for so they
named her, soon began to grow into a fair esteem and
good liking. Her father, after a year or two,
plucked up his courage and played with her; and the
more he played the more pleased he was, both with her
and his own kind self. Unhappily, there were
at that time no shops in the neighbourhood; unhappily,
now there are too many. Nevertheless, upon the
whole, she had all the toys that were good for her;
and her teeth had a fair chance of fitting themselves
for life’s chief operation in the absence of
sugared allurements.
A brief and meagre account is this
of the birth, and growth, and condition of a maiden
whose beauty and goodness still linger in the winter
tales of many a simple homestead. For, sharing
her father’s genial nature, she went about among
the people in her soft and playful way; knowing all
their cares, and gifted with a kindly wonder at them,
which is very soothing. All the simple folk expected
condescension from her; and she would have let them
have it, if she had possessed it.
At last she was come to a time of
life when maidens really must begin to consider their
responsibilities a time when it does matter
how the dress sits and what it is made of, and whether
the hair is well arranged for dancing in the sunshine
and for fluttering in the moonlight; also that the
eyes convey not from that roguish nook the heart any
betrayal of “hide and seek”; neither must
the risk of blushing tremble on perpetual brinks;
neither must but, in a word, ’twas
the seventeenth year of a maiden’s life.
More and more such matters gained
on her motherless necessity. Strictly anxious
as she was to do the right thing always, she felt more
and more upon every occasion (unless it was something
particular) that her cousin need not so impress his
cousinly salutation.
Albert de Wichehalse (who received
that name before it became so inevitable) was that
same worthy boy grown up as to whom the baron had
felt compunctions, highly honourable to either party,
touching his defeasance; or rather, perhaps, as to
interception of his presumptive heirship by the said
Albert, or at least by his mother contemplated.
And Albert’s father had entrusted him to his
uncle’s special care and love, having comfortably
made up his mind, before he left this evil world,
that his son should have a good slice of it.
Now, therefore, the baron’s
chief desire was to heal all breaches and make things
pleasant, and to keep all the family property snug
by marrying his fair Jennyfried (or “Frida,”
as she was called at home) to her cousin Albert, now
a fine young fellow of five-and-twenty. De Wichehalse
was strongly attached to his nephew, and failed to
see any good reason why a certain large farm near
Martinhoe, quite a huge cantle from the Ley estates,
which by a prior devise must fall to Albert upon his
own demise, should be allowed to depart in that way
from his posthumous control.
However, like most of our fallible
race, he went the worst possible way to work in pursuit
of his favourite purpose. He threw the young people
together daily, and dinned into the ears of each perpetual
praise of the other. This seemed to answer well
enough in the case of the simple Albert. He could
never have too much of his lively cousin’s company,
neither could he weary of sounding her sweet excellence.
But with the young maid it was not so. She liked
the good Albert well enough, and never got out of
his way at all. Moreover, sometimes his curly
hair and bright moustache, when they came too near,
would raise not a positive flutter, perhaps, but a
sense of some fugitive movement in the unexplored
distances of the heart. Still, this might go on
for years, and nothing more to come of it. Frida
loved her father best of all the world, at present.