CHAPTER II.
MONK’S GATE.
It was a glorious afternoon in the beginning of August, on which Wellfield left Manchester for his two hours’ journey to Wellfield, to arrive at which spot he had to pass through some of the roughest, dirtiest, richest and most prosperous of the numerous manufacturing towns of Lancashire.
Burnham was the last of these towns—a place of great size, great riches, and of an absolutely stupendous ugliness—a great collection of ugly, grimy buildings, paved streets, and ghastly-looking tall chimneys, the whole planted at the bottom of a hollow which had once been as fair as valley could be, in the rough, stony moorland style of sparkling stream and rugged rock. Even now, when the veil of smoke permitted one to see them, high and beautiful hills might be perceived, blue, calm and eternal. The prospect of them gave one a longing to ascend them, and from their summits to breathe an air which should be free and pure.
After Burnham came one or two little wayside stations, and then Wellfield. The railway here ran over a high viaduct, much raised above the village. Jerome felt his heart throb as he looked out, and saw below him on the right, slumbering amid orchard trees and some fine old elms, some ancient brown walls, two vast and massive gateways—a broken line which showed where the cloisters had formerly run beside the river. That was the Abbey, which, with its grounds, took up pretty nearly as much space as all the rest of the village put together. He saw the calm river gliding by; then raised his eyes to where in sturdy pride old Penhull stretched his great carcase, shutting all in to the east. It was a fair land—it was a goodly heritage, and his heart was bitter within him.
The train stopped, and he got out and stood on the platform. He was a stranger there. No one took the least notice of him. He found himself at the farther end of the little platform, and before walking forward to leave the station, he paused and looked round him. From the place where he now stood, the Abbey was not visible. He was looking in another direction, towards the north-west. Behind him rose the great wall of Penhull, over which his ancestors in the good old days had helped King Jamie to hunt witches with vigour and malignity. Before him he saw a more level country, spreading towards an ancient town called Clyderhow, with its quaint old castle. Farther to the west came some other long-backed fells, on the other side of which was St. George’s Channel: and nearer, on the brow of one of the said fells, some three miles away, he saw faintly the grey tower of an ancient church, and just above that, where the ground began to rise towards the western fells, a long, large, imposing building of whitish stone, exquisitely situated, and from its commanding position, a landmark for miles around. This was the great Jesuit college of Brentwood, which had once belonged to a branch of the Wellfield family, in the days when they were great men and devout Catholics.
Jerome’s eyes fell upon it, and with the sight of it came the remembrance of his having, years ago, met a certain priest belonging to that establishment.
‘That was more than seven years ago,’ he reflected, ‘before the Abbey had been sold to this roturier. I must have been a mere lad then, but how well I remember him! What was his name? Somerville, surely. Yes. Pablo Somerville. I remember. He was half Spanish—there was some mystery about his father, I recollect. What a musician he was—and a gentleman, if ever there was one. Will it be my luck, I wonder, to renew the acquaintance? One might meet with a worse fate than some of those fellows at Brentwood have, after all, for——’