The Fate: A Tale of Stirring Times

by G. P. R. James

The young man looked for a moment at Ralph Woodhall as a stranger, but then suddenly recollecting him, he held out his hand frankly, saying, "Ah, Ralph, how is it we never see you now? Why, your face had well-nigh passed from my recollection, it is so long since you were here."

"When last I was here, my lord," answered Ralph, "I had no great encouragement to come back again."

"Oh, you mean my mother's conduct," answered the young lord; "you should never mind her. She bullies every one. She always did; and if every one she maltreats were to fly from her, she would have no companions but the family portraits. Come along with me; I have a famous mew of hawks to show you, which I have had trained after the fashion of the olden time."

Ralph, however, pleaded want of time, and, after a few minutes more spent in kindly conversation, the two young men separated; it must be owned, with some regret upon Ralph's part at least. Lord Coldenham had been the only one of the family who had shown him any kindness in his younger days. He knew him to be like what his father had been, placable, good-humored, and generous, full of honorable impulses, though too easily governed, and he could well have made him a friend, perhaps to the advantage of the young lord himself.

At the great door he found his horse fastened to a ring, the servants, who always take their tone from the leading spirit of the house, having judged it not worth their while to take the beast into the stable, or to hold him till its master descended. Ralph tried to banish all angry feelings, but a deep and indignant sense of ill treatment remained which he could not master; and, mounting without delay, he rode off toward the village, which lay at the distance of about two miles. His beast was weary and wanted food, so that his first care was to seek out the little public house, which he remembered well. He there gave the horse into the charge of the hostler, and then set out for the house which had been indicated to him as the place where he would find a servant. As he strolled along through the village, he could not help remarking the increased appearance of decay which was manifest in all the houses, the buildings, and the little gardens. Though never very prosperous, Coldenham, when last he saw it, had appeared at least neat and comfortable; but now the broken thatches, covered, but not concealed, by houseleek; the windows patched, or very often without glass; the railings and fences dilapidated, and insufficient to keep out the pigs and cattle, and the gardens half cultivated and full of weeds, presented a sad change. The only building which had remained much as he had seen it was the old church, standing upon a piece of ground raised a good deal above the road, with its grave-yard surrounded with a low stone wall. Ralph paused for a moment, and gazed up at the tall, thin, graceful spire, which he remembered having contemplated often in former years, wondering how it had been built to such a height. All was as he had seen it then. The tooth of time had fed upon it largely in years long past, crumbling down the rich cut ornaments, corbels, and gargoyles; but, as if the destroying monster could sometimes weary of his diet, there was no appearance of his having touched the building since Ralph stood before it last. Nor had any thing been done to improve it; the same green, mossy look, which had been given to the stone by the damp air sweeping through the fens, was still there; and one of the coping stones of the little cemetery wall which had fallen off, and which he had often seen lying within the fence, was lying there still unreplaced.

The door was open, and, walking through the cemetery, the young man went in. The tombs of his ancestors were there, and he wished to take another look at them before he went afar. Walking up the aisle, he soon stood before the spot where stood the monument of Sir Robert Woodhall, who was considered the founder of the family. A gorgeous monument it was, richly carved and ornamented; and the gratitude of. the old knight's posterity had recorded, upon a tablet on one side, the numerous virtues, real or imaginary, of the dead: how he had fought for his sovereign in the field; how he had aided him with his wisdom in the council; and how he had left two sons, both of whom he had lived to see become peers of the realm. Then came the tombs of the two sons, Robert, Lord Coldenham, and Ralph, Lord Woodhall; and then the tombs of two more, another Robert, the grandfather of his own father and of the late Lord Coldenham, and another Ralph, the progenitor of the present Lord Woodhall. They were all Roberts and Ralphs, with the exception of here and there a Henry, like a graft upon an old stock. Every one has felt the eternally-speaking moral of old monuments; the comment they are ever reading upon the vanity of all the struggles, passions, and hopes of earth--upon the vanity of vanities, ambition. I will not, therefore, dwell upon it, except as it affected the young man who there stood and gazed. He might feel that he came there with overeager expectations, with strong desires and aspirations after worldly greatness--after things which, whether as a means or an end, are but as a part of that great strife which ends in emptiness. There lay around him, gathered into one small space not a dozen yards square, a multitude of his own kin, who had struggled, and toiled, and hoped, and desired like himself; who had even succeeded, and had yet inherited nothing, for all their pains, but six feet of earth and that piece of moldering marble; while the very deeds which had gained them luster and renown their hopes, fears, and exertions, occupied but a point far less in the vast waste of time than their grave upon the surface of the earth. Feeling sad and reproved, he was turning away, when a voice near him said, "Would not the best epitaph of all be, 'He lived and died?' It is all that can be said with certainty of any man."

On looking round, Ralph perceived standing near him and looking over his shoulder an elderly man in the dress of a peasant well to do. He had put off his shoes and laid down his hat somewhere about the church, and by these indications Ralph concluded rightly that he was the sexton. He asked him whether it was so, however, and the old man replied, "Yea, truly, I am the sexton."

"You were not here when I was last in Coldenham," said Ralph; "what has become of Harrison, who was sexton here before you?"

The old man pointed with his finger to the pavement, saying, "Down there--he is as good as a lord now, and occupies just as much room. When he died, I was sent for by the old lady; for I come from a distance out of Dorsetshire, her own county."

"Then of course you are a great friend of hers," replied Ralph.