II 1 1 II UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN The person charging this material is responsible for its renewal or return to the library on or before the due date. The minimum fee for a lost item is $1 25.00, $300.00 for bound journals. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. Please note: self-stick notes may result in torn pages and lift some inks. Renew via the Telephone Center at 217-333-8400, 846-262-1510 (toll-free) orcirclib@uiuc.edu. Renew online by choosing the My Account option at: http://www.library.uiuc.edu/catalog/ 13, Catherine Street, Strand, W.C. TINSLEY BROTHERS' LIST OF NEW WORKS. Now Ready, a Neio Edition, in One Volume, with an Engraved View of the "Lime Tree Walk," by Du Maurier, price 6s., LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET. By the Author of ''Aurora Floyd." CHEAP EDITION OF BARREN HONOUR. Now Ready, One Volume, a New and Cheaper Edition, price 6s. of BARKEN HONOUR. 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This day, at every Library, Second Edition, Three Volumes, THE HOUSE BY THE CHURCHYARD. By J. SHERIDAN LE FANU. Noio Ready, at every Library, Three Volumes, A TANGLED SKEIN. By ALBANY FONBLANQUE. MR. SALA'S NEW WORK. Now Ready, in One Volume, Post Svo, ACCEPTED ADDRESSES. By GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA, Author of the "Seven Sons of Mammon," "Dutch Pictures," &c. Now Ready at all Libraries, in Two Volumes t THE LITERATURE OE SOCIETY, By GRACE WHARTON, One of the Authors of " The Queens of Society," &c. Now Ready, UNIFORM WITH THE "LITTLE TOUR IN IRELAND. With Illustrations by Charles Eeene, j)Wce 6s., TH,E CAMBRIDGE GRISETTE. Br HERBERT VAUGHAN. MARTIN POLE. Digitized by the. Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://www.archive.org/details/martinpole01saun MARTIN POLE. JOHN SAUNDERS, AUTHOR OF "ABEL DRAKE'S "WIFE," ETC. m TWO VOLUMES. YOL. I. LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE ST., STRAND. 18G3. [The right of Translation U rem LONDON : BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, AVHITEFRIARS. 8£3 v.1 PREFACE. The parts of Martin Pole entitled "Old Matthew's Puzzle," the " Haunted Crust," and " Julian," are by my daughter ; the first having been written at the age of sixteen. Having in the last edition of Abel Drake's Wife, recently published, expressed my sense of the favour with which that book had been received, and my hope to show by its successor (which I expected to issue by the autumn), that I did not misunderstand my welcome, it may be as well now to add, that the work thus referred to was not Martin Pole, which belongs essen- tially to an earlier period. JOHN SAUNDERS. June, 1863. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. I'AGE UNDER THE LINDEN TREES 1 THE SENTENCE 17 THE MORNING OF THE DAY 31 THE PLAGUE-STONE OF ABERFOED . . . 53 VOL. I. MAETIN POLE UNDER THE LINDEN TREES. That's my name, sir, Matthew Mucklethrift, and two t's in the Matthew, if you would be so kind ; I shouldn't mention it, only I once had a sharp escape of losing a bit of money a master of mine left me, all through a rascally lawyer cut- ting me off with one t. "Well, sir, as to these stories we are talking about. I don't boast. God forbid I should, when I may be carried off any minute with one of these rheumatic fits ; but somehow, there seems no one in the parish that's been allowed to see so many stories right through as I have. It's like Abel Jenncr's three sons and 4 MARTIN POLE. the apple-tree with most of 'em. It was the biggest apple-tree in the country, and Jenner always said he'd give it to his eldest son. And so he did, for a christening present, when it was all covered with good, firm blossom, without a blight. But the little one and the blossom went off together. In a year and a half Jenner had another son to give it to. Well, the child lived to see it covered with little hard, green apples, but before one of them was ripe, he died. A few years on, the third was born, and Jenner gave his tree to him. The leaves were falling off it then, and before they came on again, he was laid along with his two little brothers in the new burial- ground. And so it is, I say, with stories. One man sees the beginning of a story, and dies; another the middle and dies; and another the end ; while, as for me, I seem to stand by, as if old death had forgotten me, and see the blossom, the fruit, and dead leaves, and all. And now, before I begin, I should take it very kindly if you would just state the reason of my being obliged to be beholden to you for writing UNDER THE LINDEN" TREES. this, instead of doing it myself. The truth is, sir, schools in my day were not what they are now. All the scholarship that ever I had was got at a wretched little place standing by itself on the moor, kept by one Johnny Cotterel, a lame young man, not quite right in his head, for he used to sit behind his high desk and scribble poetry from morning till night, and was always in love with one or other of the Squire's daughters. In winter the school-house, being quite ex- posed on the moor, was so cold that Johnny Cotterel was forced to flog us all round when first he came of a morning, to get a bit of warmth into his fingers ; and, though we didn't take to it particularly, I don't see how our cir- culations would have gone on without it. In summer it was that hot, and Johnny Cotterel used to get so touchy in his head that he couldn't keep that little whisking cane of his still two minutes together; and as for the bread and butter, sir, that we used to take for dinner, you could almost hear it frizzle on the shelf; and it MARTIN POLE. tasted as strong of geography as ever it could taste. He was a character was Johnny Cotterel ; and if it's true, sir, what you were kind enough to mention, about my observing people pretty deep without them knowing it, the foundation of the talent was laid at Johnny (Dotterel's school. For, 1 should tell you, that while he sat with his hands stuck through his hair, and his eyes rolling in his head as if he'd got a thought wedged in half- way that he couldn't move in nor out, Johnny •had a nasty knack of letting fly with his cane right into the middle of us, and laying about him as if he were mad. The fits came on him all of a sudden with a big thought, or when he was hard put to it for a rhyme, so that the boys never knew how to be even with him. But, as for me, bless you, I observed him in that way that I soon got to know the roll of his eye in good time, and to make for the slate-cupboard like a dart. Ah, poor Johnny Cotterel ! But I've run on too much about him already, only I wanted to show you that schools like his weren't exactly the UNDER THE LINDEN TREES. 7 places for promoting knowledge, however good they may have been for the circulation, that's all ; and now, if you're ready, sir, Fli take the liberty of beginning. When I came to Throgmorden Manor-house as head-gardener, my master, Squire Pole, was just sixty-five years old ; so you may think I was a little surprised to hear, a week after I had been there, that he rode over every evening on his white mare to court a lady at Chistledean. At first none of us at the Manor-house, as we saw him go off frilled and perfumed, could make out who the lady was ; for Chistledean was but a poking little place then, with only two respectable houses in it — the rectory, and King Combe, an estate belonging to a family named Hilman. As the parson had only his wife and mother living with him, the attraction couldn't have been there; but then how could it have been at King Combe, we used to say, and look grave ; for the lady of King Combe had only been a widow six months, and was supposed to have been a most devoted wife ; besides which, she had a young son to 8 MARTIN POLE. bring up ; and altogether it was more than any of us would have liked to say that Mrs. Hilman was the Squire's attraction. However, it was not a secret very long. The thing was made known in this way. When I had been at the Manor- house two months, it suddenly came out that Mrs. Hilman was not worth a penny : Hilman's affairs had just been settled in London, and every inch of King Combe Mas to be sold to pay his debts. Then the question was, what would the poor widowed lady do to keep herself and her little son : she who had never turned her hand to a bit of work since she was born? What did she do ? Why, just married Squire Pole ; and stepped out of King Combe into the Manor-house as comfortably as if her husband had been dead seven years, instead of seven months to a day. You may be sure that all this made no little talk in Throgmorden and Chistledean for long enough to come; and my Mistress Pole was spoken of in rather a light manner by those who had believed her to be so devoted to her first husband ; and some said she must have cared for UNDER THE LINDEN TREES. 9 the Squire before Mr. Hilman died. But then her maid Ranee told us one day something that seemed to make that not very likely. Ranee, in unpacking a box that had not been opened since her lady went into mourning, let fall a little framed portrait of Mr. Hilman just at her mis- tress's feet; and at the sight of it, coming so suddenly upon her, she fainted dead away. She was a fine woman was my Mistress Pole, with blue eyes and full clear cheeks, and a pile of flaxen curls over each brow ; and her figure and her sweeping walk might have belonged to a queen. She was proud too, and had a habit of staring straight at you without seeming to see you when she met you in the grounds or any- where. I don't know that she ever condescended to speak to me at all, till one day, about five years after she had been married to the Squire, and three months before her second son was born, a little thing happened — at least, I thought it a little thing then — that made her change her manner to me always afterwards. It was on a hot June evening, the girls had 10 MAJtTIN POLE. gone to the fair, the Squire was dining out, and my Mistress Pole "was pleased to take a walk by herself in the grounds. I was at work at a side bed just in sight of the gates, and she took her walk from the linden trees to the gates and back, and so on for a long time, taking no more notice of me than if Td been a worm. By-and-by I look up and I see a woman putting her hand through the gates and begging of my Mistress Pole. But she walks straight up to the gates as if to speak to the woman, then turns round and walks away, taking no sort of notice of her. Then the beggar, a gipsy woman in a dull scarlet cloak, pushes open the gate that was unfastened, and follows my mistress down the walk, still holding forth her hand and crying to her in a wailing, yet half- threatening voice for charity. But my Mistress Pole was not a charitable woman in those days; and all she did was to wave her hand in a quick, queenly way, without making a step slower or faster in her sedate, proud walk. UNDER. THE LINDEN TREES. 11 The gipsy took a look round as she followed ner, and seeing no one near, — for I suppose the lindens hid me, — made a clutch at her mantle. Then my mistress turned all white with passion, and stamped her foot and cried — " Begone ! » And she turned and walked on again ; but before I got up to them, the gipsy clutched her mantle again, and this time my mistress shrieked as if she were being murdered. I soon had hold of the baggage, and pinned her arms to her sides, and marched her off by the same way she had come, without anything worse than the mark of her teeth on my hand; and when she was safe outside the gates, my Mistress Pole called after me, so that she should hear, " Give her to understand that the next time she is found inside these gates I shall have her horsewhipped." The gipsy listened to these words with her back towards us in contempt, then she turned and caught hold of the ironwork of the gate with 12 MARTIN POLE. both hands, and clenched her teeth at my Mistress Pole, and said, curtseying low, " Ah, yes, my gentle lady, she understands. O, she understands, my queen ! she under- stands ! " My mistress then went on with her walk, not so much as giving me a " thank you ; " and when I had made the gate fast, I went back to my work. After I had finished, I went in doors, leaving my mistress still taking her walk from the linden trees to the gates, and back from the gates to the linden trees. By-and«by the servants came home from the fair, all except one, who was stopping at the field- gate to have her fortune told. This made me speak of what had happened, and warn them not to let any one of the gipsies in, or my Mistress Pole would surely have them horsewhipped. "When the girl who had stayed behind came in, she looked so confused with her fine fortune, I suppose, that I made no doubt she had forgotten to shut the field-gate after her; and on going to see, I found it, sure enough, standing wide open. UNDER THE LINDEN TREES. 13 I shut it, and looked across the field to see if the fortune-teller might be the same gipsy who had insulted my Mistress Pole; but she must have made good use of her legs any way, for she was gone clean out of sight. It could scarcely have been half an hour after this that the Squire came home, and, as usual with him for some weeks past, inquired particu- larly after my mistress, — how was she? The lady's maid, who really knew nothing about her, answered the Squire that she was very well this evening, for she had been taking quite a long walk in the grounds. " Where was she?" The lady's maid thought very likely in her own room, as she would be tired after her walk. It seemed, however, that my Mistress Pole was neither in her own room nor in any room of the house, and a fine uproar we were presently in. Every place was searched; and the old Squire came out to me with a lantern, and sent his voice down all the paths calling " Ursula ! Ursula ! " till he was hoarse. In the midst of our confusion, suddenly the 14 . MARTIN POLE. girl who had stayed behind to have her fortune told recollected to have seen her mistress from the field-gate sitting down to rest under the linden trees. We went up to the seat, and it was empty ; but down on the grass just before it, all of a heap, and with the fringe of her mantle torn, Mistress Ursula Pole lay in a deadly swoon. They carried her in and sent for a doctor ; and they say that when she came to herself her screams were something frightful. It was even many days before any dared question her concerning the cause of her swooning j and then, when the Squire did at last very gently ask her about it, they tell me my Mistress Pole was seized with fits, and could only be quieted by a promise that they would ask her no more. Of course I told the Squire all I knew about the gipsy, and he ordered that she should be found and punished j but the day on which my mistress had been insulted by her was the last day of the fair, and the whole tribe had gone off, and were on the tramp far enough away by that time. UNDER THE LINDEN TREES. 15 And so the cause of my Mistress Pole's swoon- ing under the linden trees, and the tearing of her mantle, was hushed up ; and, though I thought much and made many guesses concerning it, I never knew the truth till twenty years afterwards. Yes, it was hushed up; but from that time I noticed that whenever my Mistress Pole walked in the grounds she carried a little pouch of money in her hand, and if any asked charity of her, gave it readily ; and her word to every one about her was so civil and meek, you could find no reason strong enough to account for such a change. But not only had her pride been broken down, — for, mind you, she wasn't really a woman of strong intellect : her will, like, was all on the surface, — but from that day her clear pink cheek got paler and paler, her blue eyes hollow, and her flaxen curls mixed with threads of silver. She was given to fits too. The sound of a harsh voice, or even a sudden glare of colour, such as a huntsman's scarlet coat, made her shrink and laugh and sob in a manner fearful 16 MARTIN POLE. to hear; and we all thought she would surely pine and die before her child was born. Certainly my Mistress Pole had done little to make her people fond of her ; but I think I can answer for it that there was no one in the Manor-house, or in all Throgmorden, for that matter, who didn't feel glad when one fine morning, — it was the 28th of August, exactly three months after the last day of the fair, — the bells of Throgmorden and Chistledean rang out the joyful news that a son and heir was born to Squire Pole. And they named him Martin. THE SENTENCE, Now all that I know of Martin Pole till lie was twenty years old I can tell you in a very few words. He was a pale and sickly child, not near so engaging as his little half-brother, James Hilman, but I liked him better; and he used to follow me about, and talk and read to me for hours together. As for my Mistress Pole, she got round a little; but it seemed as if she would never be the same woman I saw that June evening walking backwards and forwards from the linden trees to the gates. It was curious to watch her and Martin. There would be him sitting in his little arm-chair in the garden reading, and his mother, perhaps, on the scut behind him with her 'broidery. Then suddenly IS MARTIN POLE. she would clench her two hands together, and fix her eyes on the boy, and her lips would turn as white that you could but think she saw something going to fall on him. And, wonder- ful to say, that child, though he'd have his back towards her, would seem to feel that look of hers, and turn slowly round and meet her eye, and shudder from head to foot. She still had those strange fits, too, when she seemed to be struggling with some one. "When little Martin knew her to be taken with one of them it was impossible to keep the child away, and afterwards he was almost as much upset as herself. One day the child said to me — " Matthew, your legs shake so, and your hair is so white, I should think you must be very old and wise. Do you think you could answer a very hard question ? " "And what might that be, my little sir?" said I. He got on the rail of my chair and held me by the collar, while he whispered — THE SENTENCE. 19 "What is it my mother thinks she hears in those fits that makes her put her fingers in her ears and scream so ? " I could not tell him j and he hoped I might be older and wiser by the time he came back from school, as he very much wanted to have that question answered. So he said. Well, time went on. The lads were sent to school together; and at sixteen Martin came home ill. Squire Pole died ; and after that Mistress Pole and Martin spent all their time together. Martin never spoke to me about his mother's fits again, though she had them as often as ever; but he used to ponder by himself and watch her, and I don't know which of the two was the most ailing and nervous, Martin or his mother. Then a time came when he was de- termined to try to rouse himself, and shake off the evil spell there seemed upon him. He went to college and studied hard for four years, and got on famously, I'm told; but came home at twenty, more broken down and ill than ever I c 2 20 MARTIN POLE. had seen him. His half-brother, James Hilman, was now his agent ; and was always so attentive to him that one wonld never suppose he had the least feeling of envy to be himself so poor while Martin was to inherit a large fortune. I told you that when Martin was twenty years old I came to hear what it was befell my Mistress Pole under the linden trees that night, and which wrought so wonderful a change in her. Well, I have now come to that. It was a hot afternoon, much the same kind of afternoon as it had been on the memorable day of Throgmorden fair, before our young master was born. The Manor-house was gloomy and dark, and nearly all the blinds were down; for Mis- tress Ursula Pole lay on her bed sick, nigh unto death. The doctor had been with her many hours, and had left her quiet at last, forbidding her sons to go near her ; for, if she slept, all might yet be well. But scarcely had he ridden out of the gates than the nurse came running to tell me that my Mistress Pole desired to speak with THE SENTENCE. 21 me. Much taken aback by such a message, I went up. At first I scarcely knew her, she had so wasted away. She was lying back on the pillows, with both her thin hands pressed tightly on her chest, as if every breath was a pain to her. Her cheeks and eyes, bright with fever, I remember looked so strange with her thin white hair and hollow temples. When I stood by the bedside she looked at the nurse and pointed to the door ; and then, when she had gone away and left us alone, my Mistress Pole laid her thin hand on my sleeve cuff and drew herself up, and sat looking in my face till her bright wild eyes made mine ache again. "Matthew," she said, "look at me. They tell me you called me a proud, hard woman once. Do I look that now? Or do I look as if I'd suffered for my hardness and my pride ? " "You look a very wretched woman, Mistress Pole/' I said, " and that is all ; and if any- thing can be done to put your mind at rest I am glad that you have chosen me, that have 22 MARTIN POLE. been here longer than any one in the house, to do it." " I know that," she said, quickly. " That is why I sent for you, because you were here so long ago ; because you were here that day. Do you remember that day, more than twenty years ago, when a woman came a-begging of me at the gates? " I remembered it well, and told Mistress Pole so ; also that she had desired me to horsewhip the woman if she ever came again ; also that Mistress Pole had had a bad faint under the linden trees that night ; and no sooner had I said the words than she began to tremble and put her hand to her ear, as she always did when that day was spoken of; and she had a hard matter to speak as she clutched the cuff of my sleeve in her hand, and said to me — "Matthew, she came back to me that night. I had been sitting in the dusk and looking at the moon, which was all red and fiery, over the house. I had sat there till I was almost afraid to move, for I was superstitious, and had lived among THE SENTENCE. 23 superstitious people all my life, and believed in signs and tokens. I had "been told that when the moon was as red as it was that night, it is a sign of death, and murder, and all kinds of horrible things. I was cold, but I could not stir. I heard some one, I think it was the girl Phoebe, going past, but I could not call to her ; so I sat still, faint and shivering, hoping some of you might come to look for me. But I was left alone; and the air seemed to grow heavier, and the moon redder. Matthew, Matthew, it was hideous ! Where it came from I cannot tell; but there it was — her face — her hideous, handsome gipsy face close to mine ; it was as if the red moon had changed into it, and approached me. I got up, but my feet seemed turned to lead, and she flung her wiry arms round me and muttered in my ear, 'Lady, did you ever hear a gipsy s curse V And her hold of me got tighter and tighter, till I thought I should be suffocated; and then she spoke her curse. O ! such a tide of hellish words, I thought it must be a fiend speaking them ; and her hot breath seemed to 24s MARTIN POLE. brand each one on my ear. And those words made up such a doom for one poor human crea- ture — a doom more horrible than the world has ever known ; and not for me, O, Matthew ! not for me, but for my babe — my little unborn babe ! i Not yet/ she said, ' not yet the curse shall fall ; but when the day of his birth shall have come round twenty times and one, then let him tremble, for it is his day of doom. And I shall come and see the working of my curse ; ay, I tell you I will be there. It may be not till the last day, bid I will be there. It may be not till the last hour, but look for me then. It may be not till the last second of the striking of the clock, but even then look for me; for on that day, though it be at the last second, I will be there. 3 " When Mistress Pole finished telling me the gipsy's words, which seemed as fresh in her mind as if she had heard them twenty hours ago instead of more than twenty years, she fell back on her pillow ; and lay looking at me, trembling so that the tarnished gold fringe of the bed-hangings shook. I thought she seemed surprised, poor THE SENTENCE. 25 soul, that I was not more horrified by what she had told me ; but, whatever I might have felt, I did my best to keep quiet. When she had been still a minute or so, I asked her had she told either of her two sons this ? " I told James," she said. And then I asked her — " And not Martin ? I am glad of that." But before she could answer me a hand was laid on my shoulder, and when I looked up I saw Martin Pole standing beside me. He had heard all. Mistress Pole stared at him wildly, and then cried out — • " O, what have I done ! what have I done ! " and buried her face in the pillow. Martin went round to his mother's bedside and took her hand ; and one look at his face, which was pale as a ghost, but firm, and with something like a smile on it, showed me I might leave him to comfort and talk to his poor foolish mother, so I came out of the room. I came away, but I couldn't rest two minutes 26 MAHTIN POLE. together for thinking of what rny Mistress Pole had had upon her this twenty years. Ah, we little know what one another have to bear. If she had told me this at first, do you think I wouldn't have beat the bushes from here to Can- terbury but what Fd have brought that cursing gipsy baggage to gainsay all her gibberish in half the time she had taken to say it ? I could understand how it was she told me now, because, for all the doctor had said, I had seen at a glance, when I went into her bedroom, my Mistress Pole was not long for this world ; and it must have been a hard thing for her, after she had lived for twenty years with a knowledge of this, to be called away at last within a year of the day on which Martin was doomed. And though, as she said, she had told James Hilman, it was natural enough she should want an older eye than his to take her place in watching over Martin; and I had been with her twenty years and more, poor body — twenty years and more ! While I was thinking over these things on the bench outside my lodge, I saw Martin's horse led THE SENTENCE. 27 up to the house door, and presently came Martin himself. My Mistress Pole is worse, I thought, and he is going for the doctor. I was right. When he passed me, as I stood holding the gate open, he coloured a little, and, stooping down, said — " I know I need not ask you, Matthew, not to mention anything of this. My mother is worse — too ill to be reasoned with; but, now we know her secret, I am sure we can soon rid her of this horrible superstition. What do you say, Matthew ? " I said nothing, but I suppose I looked as if I thought that Mistress Pole would soon be beyond all our reasoning, for something flashed in his quick, bright eyes, and he turned sharply through the gate and rode away. Ten days after this, young Martin sat listening to the ding-dong of his mother's funeral bell. His face was pale and thin, with something more than grief. It had been a fearful time for him ; and the night of her death was a night which not a soul who was in the Manor-house will ever 28 MARTIN POLE. forget ; no, not if they live to twice my age, will one of them forget that night. All down the long passage where we servants stood listening in the dark came their two voices : my Mistress Pole's weak, broken voice, crying out against death, beseeching Heaven that she might live a little longer, for Martin's sake, to be with him on the day of his doom, as she persisted in calling his twenty-first birthday ; and Martin's voice, strong and gentle, breaking in upon her shrill wail, with comforting words, and good, sound, scholarly, and manly reasoning. But that superstition which had grown into her very nature was not to be thrown off at death's door. For one moment, as he tried to show her how impossible it was for a mere woman, let her be gipsy or gentle, to set her will above that "Will that orders all things, perhaps for one moment she would seem to take comfort and grow quiet ; but in the next, another kind of fright seized on her. She had heard strange stories of gipsy vengeance; the woman might bring her pro- phecy to pass without any superhuman help ; and, THE SENTENCE. 29 supposing this so, careful guard and watching such as she might have kept over him on the appointed day, would have been the only means for saving him. A foolish fancy, of course, but real enough to her, poor soul ! I got into the room for a short time, and her moans and cries of agony were almost too much for me to bear, so what must poor Martin have suffered ! Instead of his reasoning doing away with her fear, it seemed now, by the deathly whiteness of his face, that her fear was over- coming him, and his head bent lower and lower as she cried out with her last strength — " Let me live, O, only till that day ! Martin, she will come, I know she will come, and you will take no care. You will not believe, but I tell you she will make her curse fall! There was power in her eye — I feel it yet ; there was power in her voice ! — hark ! " And Mistress Pole fell a listening, and a look of horror came on her face as if some one were speaking in her ear whom she couldn't push off. Then she touched Martin's arm as he knelt by 30 MARTIN POLE. the bed, and beckoned him that he should rise and bend his ear to her. He was so faint and overcome he could scarcely get up. When he did, she did not whisper, but said in a hard, rattling kind of voice, which I had never known the like of before — " It's all coming dark to me — pitch dark; a noise is in my ears ; but you hear me say this, I command you to take care that day ! She is near us now. I heard her say again — f Not yet/ she said — ' not till the last day, may he not till the last hour, the last second of the striking of the clock ; but even then, look for me, for on that day, though it be at the last second, I will be there ! ' and, Martin, she will — I know it." They were the last words Martin heard her speak, for she was carried off in a faint. They were her last words, but before she had stopped breathing, a smile came on her face that made it look quite young and fair ; so I thought perhaps in that darkness she tells of, she sees a light at last, poor soul ! THE MORNING OF THE DAY. It was the 2 8th of August. At five o'clock in the morning I was sitting on my lodge bench, looking at the house. " Twenty times and one " the linden trees had darkened since that June night when a woman came a-begging at the gates. "Twenty times and one" the gipsy fire had left a round black patch in Throgmorden Hollow. " Twenty times and one " the day of Martin Pole's birth had come round. Now, except in the matter of crows — one meaning bad luck, two good luck, and three a wedding — no one can say I am superstitious ; but I must own that, though all the crows came in twos that morning, I felt, as I sat on my bench under the Judas tree, that I would give my silver pot that I won at the rose show and my old clasp- 32 MARTIN POLE. knife, if this day— this 28th of August— were but safely over and gone. However, as yet it was only five by Throg- morden church; and, as I couldn't get at my breakfast ale till seven, I had two hours to sit and think of what sort of state we were in at the Manor-house to meet this day. We couldn't very well have been in a worse. Now, first, as to young Martin himself. Bad, very bad, indeed. He had been getting more and more ill, so that for the last six weeks he had hardly stirred from his bedchamber; and never saw any one but his half-brother, and his own man Fletcher, a regular walking post, who never knew how his master was if you asked him. Certainly this was a queer state of things for such a day to be met with ; and, as I say, it made me feel very anxious. "What could it be at the root of Martins incessant illness ? " I asked myself. Ever since his mother's death, Martin had been a mystery to me. He had no disease ; Dr. Oldways was certain of that — at least no bodily THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 33 disease; but had he a worse ? Had his mother's superstition come upon him in spite of himself? I could not tell, hut if it had, it was not the same kind of fear as hers. Martin, you remember, was a scholar, — such a scholar that they say there was no coming to the bottom of his learning, it was so deep. Well, then, if there was any such fear in him, I make it out in this way: not, you understand, that Martin believed the gipsy's curse could have any effect on him of itself, but that, through his mother and before his own will could prevent it, the very mainsprings of his life and energy had been affected; and then the strangeness and mystery of the thing was enough to keep his mind incessantly pondering over it ; till he got to be like one entangled in a bad dream, — always trying to wake and throw it off, but always falling back into it again directly. It would no doubt have been much better for him if he had been obliged to stir about and do something; but, you see, after the death of the old Squire, Mr, James got the management and cares of the estate so entirely into his own hands VOL. i. d 34 MARTIN POLE. that Martin was left with nothing whatever to do, when he wasn't studying at his books, but ponder over his mother's story, and count the hours till the appointed time. And, now that I have mentioned Mr. James, I may as well say that, odd as you may think it, I thought more of him that morning as I sat under the Judas tree than I did of Martin Pole. He was that kind of man you could neither like nor dislike : a mere business machine, coming in and going out at regular times. He was so engrossed in doing Martin's work that he seemed to have no affairs of his own. You couldn't like his looks, nor you couldn't find fault with them ; for he was just a middle-sized darkish man, with a close mouth; and eyes that, wherever they looked, seemed to see nothing but a row of figures to add up. His head always projected a little forward, as if to show the tenantry that it did all business by itself, and the heart was not a partner, and could have nothing to do with it. His step was a patient, plodding sort of step, as though he wished for no higher walk in life than THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 35 always to be his brother's servant, and have the accounts correct. There was nothing but what he would do for Martin; he seemed the one and only soul he cared for in the world ; and he often sat up with him, night after night, when he was ill, and tended him like a mother. Mr. James being this ordinary kind of man, you will wonder how he came to be in my thoughts so much that morning. Well, a very strange thing had happened him. He had dropped his pocket-book. I saw it lying at the side of the walk when I first opened my door in the morning. Now, I had known Mr. James ever since he was a little boy, and had never seen him drop a thing out of his pocket in his whole life before ; and when I saw that lying in the path, it seemed a stranger omen of disaster than Mistress Pole's red moon. It was so out of character with the man, that I kept turning the pocket- book over and over in my hands, hardly sure that I was quite awake. Why, I had seen him opening it the last thing the night before, when lie was asking me for the key of the field-gate, as lie i> 2 36 MARTIN POLE. should want to go out early. Surely, I thought, he can't have been past before I was up — before five o'clock ! That seemed hardly likely. As I couldn't get into the house yet, I was obliged to keep the pocket-book in my hand a while ; and keeping it in my hand made me mix up Mr. James with my thoughts about Martin. Now, after I had sat there for about half an hour, I felt stiff, and got up to take a walk. I passed under the linden trees and over the grass towards the fields, thinking to myself that if Mr. James had gone to the village I might chance to see him coming back by this time. The field-gate was a pretty sight any summer's morning about that time, when the fat cows all came crowding there, lowing to be milked ; and the tall trees meeting over it were shaking them- selves awake ; and you could see the heat of the day come rolling up in a white mist over the little copses and the long wet fields. Ay, it was a pretty sight ; and while I stood looking at it this morning, glad of the warm breath of the cows on my hands, though it was August, I saw THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 37 two figures standing at the edge of Dyer's Dingle that didn't seem at all out of place in the picture. At first I thought it was the dairy-woman Dorcas and our young Phil Hind; but by-and-by I made out clear as a pike-staff that he I took for Phil was no other than Mr. James, — ay, our plodding Mr. James, and talking to a woman too ! Just as I was wondering if the woman was really Dorcas, I heard the swing of a pail behind me, and there was Dorcas running along blithe as a bird, just come out of the house. When she opened the gate with a flounce, because I wasn't Phil Hind, I suppose, I took my way out of it and across the field towards the dingle, with Mr. James's pocket-book. Before I got half way, he parted from the woman, and came homewards across the grass, plodding along with his hands behind him and his head a little forwards, just as usual. What in the world possessed me, I don't know, but I actually let him pass me without turning off the footpath to meet him and give him the pocket- book; and so I found myself jogging along as 38 MARTIN POLE. fast as ever I could go to the edge of the dingle. When I got there and looked down, there was Mr. James's companion sitting on the ground, smoking a little black pipe, and counting some silver in her hand. She was a gipsy woman, about fifty or sixty years old I should say, hard and brown as a penny. I went back without her having seen me, and walked fast to overtake Mr. James before he should go into the house. This was all ominous enough to make my Mistress Pole turn in her grave. Before five, such an unheard-of thing as Mr. James dropping his pocket-book happens; and then, before six, I see a gipsy, a stone's throw from the house, talking to somebody living at the house, — living indeed almost in Martin's own room ! When I overtook Mr. James, he was in the hall unbuttoning his gaiters. " You've dropped your book, sir," I said. He gave a slight start, and looked at the book, and felt outside his pocket as if he couldn't THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 39 credit it, and then taking it from me, quietly said, " This is a very odd thing, Matthew ; it never happened me before; no, to my recollection, never. There is a shilling. You won't take it ? It is reward enough for you to have been so fortunate as to find it • I know it is ; thank you, Matthew, thank you ! " " How is the Squire, sir, this morning, if you've seen him ? " said I. Mr. James shook his head and gave a sigh. "If you please, I should like to see the Squire/' I said, taking a step further into the hall. " My good man," said Mr. James, " I wish the Squire would see you or any one, but he won't, he won't; and we mustn't cross him. Ah, Matthew, my man, I wish this day were over." Mr. James took his handkerchief out and turned away. I went and got my breakfast ; but my early walk to the dingle had not given me an appetite, whatever Mr. James's might have done for him. 40 MARTIN POLE. If I were to be hanged for it, I couldn't say what I did that morning from seven till eleven; I only know those four hours were the longest I ever lived through. I've some recollection of muddling about in the peach-wall walk, and car- rying my eye incessantly from Martin's window to the dingle, and from the dingle to Martin's window ; but that's all, till a servant came to say Mr. James wanted to see me. As I wanted to see him, I was glad of the message ; and made haste to change my coat and show myself at his private room, which was on the second story, had an iron-plated door, and was fitted up as an office. u Come in, Matthew," he said ; " seat yourself, seat yourself." And I went in, but didn't seat myself, but stood watching him as he turned over the papers in the letter-bag which had just been brought up to him. u Matthew," said he presently, turning to me and rubbing his hands round slowly, and speak- ing in a kind of troubled whisper, " Matthew, we THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 41 are going on sadly down stairs; ve-ry, ve-ry sadly ! This will be a trying day ; to me a par- ticularly trying day/' " Do you mean, sir," said I, "that the Squire is so bad ? 9i Mr. James sighed and shook his head, as much as to say, nobody but himself knew how bad. "The truth is, Matthew," he said, "we're in a wrong state of things; but he mustn't be crossed; no, he mustn't be crossed. This is wrong — particularly wrong, I consider it — this that he insists on doing now ; but I will not, to save myself pain, cross him in it ; no, I will not have him crossed. Matthew, my brother desires you, as his most confidential servant, to go over to his lawyer, Mr. Richard Ferrers, at Bodington, and say that, owing to the very precarious state of his health just now, he is feeling exceedingly anxious about his will ; and, as he is now of age, would be glad to see Mr. Ferrers as early in the day as he can possibly come." I looked at Mr. James, and he looked at me. It must have been a particularly trying state of 42- MARTIN POLE. things for him certainly; when I knew as well as he did, that making a will at all, meant settling everything on himself, instead of leaving the property to go back to those who would have had it if old Squire Pole had never married a second time. Yes, it was a very trying state of things for Mr. James ; and I think he read my thoughts, though he kept the same steady look as if my face were nothing but a row of figures, and pre- sently said — "Do you understand, Matthew? will you put it to Mr. Ferrers in this way ? " I stood about half a minute considering, then stepped up and laid my hand on his desk, and said — " I beg your pardon, sir ; but I should like to have a word with the Squire myself before I go. /V Mr. James was rather hard of hearing some- times; he put his hand to his ear now, and said — "Eh?" "I want to see the Squire, sir;" and I took care to speak pretty loud. THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 43 He considered a moment, but I think he felt I was not going to be put off this time, for he rose, taking up the letter-bag, and said to me — "Well, well, I don't know; I don't like to cross him, but he really ought to see you on this matter ; it would be better, wouldn't it, to take Mr. Ferrers a message from himself? Come, then, Matthew, come; and Fll try and prevail on him to speak to you." We went down stairs into the hall, and he opened the baize-covered door of the passage leading to Martin's rooms. To my astonishment the inner door was locked, and Mr. James took the key from his pocket. "What the Hem! pray, sir, what is the Squire locked in for? " said I. He gave me a wondering, sorrowful kind of look, and said — " Do you forget what this day is, Matthew ? How can we be too cautious? Remember his mother's dying injunctions. Hush, tread very quietly ; please, hush-sh ! " At the door of the bed-chamber he pulled out another key, and I really began to think Mr. 44 MAE-TIN POLE. James was more wrong in his head than Martin. He went in first, and then beckoned me, and put up his finger to warn me to be very quiet. At first I could scarcely see two inches before me. Not a single gleam of daylight came into the room. Martin's bed-chamber opened into another room, called the long-room, which had windows on the lawn, just in front of the fountain; but now the shutters were up and barred; and all there was to light the two great rooms was a single wax candle, standing on a cabinet beside the old time-piece. By-and-by my eyes got used to it, and I made my way to the great bed at the far end of the chamber; and there, propped up with pillows, feverish-eyed, white as a ghost, and slimmer and smaller than he was at sixteen, I saw Martin Pole. He put his hand out to me and smiled. "Sir, sir," I said, "this is a bad look-out." " So you've come to see me at last, Matthew? " "Yes, they wouldn't let me come before," I said; "but I would come and wish you many happy returns of the day, sir." THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 45 He shivered a little; and Mr. James screwed his face up, and gave me a severe shake of the head; then he came up on tiptoe to the bed and said to Martin — " Matthew will not stay ; he just came, be- cause he thought it better for him to tell Ferrers he brought the message direct from you." "Ah, yes," answered Martin, faintly; "tell him to come as soon as he can." "But what's this will-making all about, sir," said I, " if I might take the liberty to ask ? You don't look as you ought, to be sure, but it needn't come to will-making yet, that I can see." "That will do, Matthew; you can go," he said, in a much stronger voice. Mr. James rose from where he sat reading a letter, and went to open the door very politely ; but I stood still where I was, looking at Martin Pole. Things were taking a shape I couldn't exactly make out, and didn't at all like. I thought of my picture over the field-gate ; and, somehow, Mr. James's movements out of doors and his movements in doors didn't seem to me 46 MARTIN POLE. at all to agree together. I was just going to make some kind of mention of what I had seen before them both, when, just as if he had read my thoughts, Mr. James saved me the trouble. He shut the door he had been holding open for me, and, coming back on tiptoe to the foot of the bed, said in a whisper, but loud enough for me to hear — " I was unsuccessful this morning : it was not her. I found the woman I have had in my eye, but it was not her. I am very sorry my plan has failed, for I am sure it would have been the best thing possible if you could only have talked with her herself, and seen how little she really thought of it after the time being." Martin closed his eyes, and lay back with a tired look ; and again Mr. James opened the door for me, and again I kept him waiting. He had just cleared two dark suspicions off my mind about the will, and about the gipsy; and you would think I should have gone away in peace, glad that Martin had such a brother to watch over him; but the more I looked at THE MORNING OE THE DAY. 47 Martin the more certain I felt that all this watching and door-locking and darkness was just like pushing him to madness or death. Now did Mr. James know this, or was he nursing him to death out of pure brotherly kindness and innocence ? Here was the day on which some terrible death had been threatened for Martin before he was born, and which his whole nature had been filled with dread of. It had come, and there he lay in a hot room, with the daylight and the air shut out, and his eyes fixed incessantly on the clock, counting the seconds as a man who opened a vein might count the drops of blood that were taking his life away. Did Mr. James know what he was doing, or did he not ? There he was holding the door open for me; and there was Martin Pole with his eyes on the clock; ay, and at that instant I saw him (though he thought I didn't) dabbling with his fingers on his pulse. It was only twelve at noon yet ; what would he be if this went on till twelve 48 MARTIN POLE. at night, — till the last second of the appointed time? I looked from one to the other for some little while ; Martin might have counted thirty seconds in it perhaps, and then my mind was made up. "Don't trouble yourself, Mr. James," said I, "Fain not going just this minute, thank you !" And then I went close to Martin, and made bold to take up the noble, wasted, white hand in my own, and I said to him — " Mr. Martin Pole," I said, " you're a scholar, and Fm not ; now can you tell me this ? Because a man's a servant, and bound to obey his master, must he be kept from doing his duty by him as a fellow-man ? " " I don't understand you, Matthew," he said. " Well, sir, this is what I mean. I know what this day is as well as you. I know that, through things you couldn't help, it must, taken any way, be a heavy day for you to get through ; but then, sir, there are two ways of taking it, a right and a wrong. Now I want to know if I'm at liberty to say which it is I think you have taken ? " THE MORNING OF THE DAY. 49 (t Really, Matthew/' said lie, colouring a little,