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!"

She threw up her right hand, filled with poor Mignon's life-drops;

they spirted, one or two of them, on his shooting-dress,--an ominous

sight to the follower. But the master only laughed a little, forced,

scornful laugh, and went on to the Hall. Before he got there,

however, he took out a gold piece, and bade the boy carry it to the

old woman on his return to the village. The lad was "afeared," as he

told me in after years; he came to the cottage, and hovered about,

not daring to enter. He peeped through the window at last; and by

the flickering wood-flame, he saw Bridget kneeling before the picture

of Our Lady of the Holy Heart, with dead Mignon lying between her and

the Madonna. She was praying wildly, as her outstretched arms

betokened. The lad shrunk away in redoubled terror; and contented

himself with slipping the gold piece under the ill-fitting door. The

next day it was thrown out upon the midden; and there it lay, no one

daring to touch it.

Meanwhile Mr. Gisborne, half curious, half uneasy, thought to lessen

his uncomfortable feelings by asking Sir Philip who Bridget was? He

could only describe her--he did not know her name. Sir Philip was

equally at a loss. But an old servant of the Starkeys, who had

resumed his livery at the Hall on this occasion--a scoundrel whom

Bridget had saved from dismissal more than once during her palmy

days--said:-

"It will be the old witch, that his worship means. She needs a

ducking, if ever a woman did, does that Bridget Fitzgerald."

"Fitzgerald!" said both the gentlemen at once. But Sir Philip was

the first to continue:-

"I must have no talk of ducking her, Dickon. Why, she must be the

very woman poor Starkey bade me have a care of; but when I came here

last she was gone, no one knew where. I'll go and see her to-morrow.

But mind you, sirrah, if any harm comes to her, or any more talk of

her being a witch--I've a pack of hounds at home, who can follow the

scent of a lying knave as well as ever they followed a dog-fox; so

take care how you talk about ducking a faithful old servant of your

dead master's."

"Had she ever a daughter?" asked Mr. Gisborne, after a while.

"I don't know--yes! I've a notion she had; a kind of waiting woman

to Madam Starkey."

"Please your worship," said humbled Dickon, "Mistress Bridget had a

daughter--one Mistress Mary--who went abroad, and has never been

heard on since; and folk do say that has crazed her mother."

Mr. Gisborne shaded his eyes with his hand.

"I could wish she had not cursed me," he muttered. "She may have

power--no one else could." After a while, he said aloud, no one

understanding rightly what he meant, "Tush! it is impossible!"--and

called for claret; and he and the other gentlemen set-to to a

drinking-bout.

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