There were, however, a number of curious, and one or two remarkable characters amongst the kind visitors from Castleborough, whom we shall occasionally meet there. Not the least striking figures in these parties, however, were David and Dorothy Qualm, and Sylvanus Crook. These were part and parcel, as it were, of the Fair Manor circle. David Qualm, as I have said, was the brother-in-law of Joseph Heritage, Dorothy Qualm being Jasper’s sister. This worthy couple lived, as we have said, at Still Lodge, just outside the grounds of Fair Manor. Still Lodge!—a most appropriate name. The very element of David and Dorothy Qualm was silence. So far as could be observed, they managed to understand and communicate with each other at the least expense of words conceivable. Their movements were as quiet as their words. What they did, said, thought of, what was their specialty, no one had ever been able to discover. And yet their specialty was huge, prominent, unavoidable—it was quietude. No passion, except it were a passion for peaceful inertia, marked, much less disturbed, their days. Their house was small and modest, but always exquisitely neat. It seemed a sin to tread on those bright, nice, unfaded, unworn carpets. On the mat at the entrance-door you read the large-lettered admonition, “Please, wipe thy shoes.” The garden was always neatness itself—staid and tempered in the very colours of its flowers. Dorothy Qualm had once been seen ordering the gardener to dig up and throw out some gorgeously red peonies, as too un-Friendly and gaudy in hue. David Qualm never was seen to garden, to engage in anything active, or visible even, except in tranquilly smoking his pipe, and in riding out on a small, stout Welsh pony, called Taffy, by the side of his tall, portly brother-in-law, Jasper Heritage, who rode, as befitted him, a large black horse. The high and substantial apparition of Jasper Heritage, and the little figure of pony and rider inevitably at his side, were familiar objects around Woodburn. Their striking difference in bulk and stature had inspired some wag to name them David and Goliath. Once Sylvanus Crook was greatly scandalised by finding chalked on the wall of the entrance-lodge where he lived, as he went out early one summer morning,—

David was a little man,
Goliath he was tall,
And you may see them any day
At Fair Manor Hall.

Sylvanus hurried in for a sponge and bucket of water, and perhaps never showed more adroitness in his life than in wiping out the offensive rhyme before his wife could get a glimpse of it. But many an earlier riser than Sylvanus had already read it, and it had entered into the oral curiosities of Woodburn, and even travelled to Castleborough.

In company David Qualm preserved the same solid reticence, the same inexhaustible capacity for silence as in his own domicile. At home, his pipe was his constant companion even more inseparable than his equally quiescent wife. What was he? He was the companion of Jasper Heritage, and that was all, so far as the most inquisitive mortal ever knew. Did he and brother Jasper ever converse at home, or in their rides? No one lives to tell us. Probably, in their own phrase, they were brought into nearness with each other, as Oliver the Protector said to George Fox at Whitehall, “Come again, George, come often; for if thou and I were oftener together, we should be nearer to each other.” David Qualm, in his brown Quaker suit, with his brown wig and his cocked hat, with the ample brim suspended by silk cords in the most orthodox style of that day of Quakerism, was a figure to be carved in stone, for no stone could surpass him in the abundance and perpetuity of silence.

Sylvanus Crook, the lodge inhabiter—his wife was the gate-keeper—Sylvanus, the overlooker of the grounds and gardeners, the house-steward, the purveyor of all necessaries, and bearer of all important messages—in a word, the factotum of Fair Manor—was a middle-sized man of forty, of light build, and clad in light drab, with short knee-breeches and grey ribbed stockings. His hat, too, was three-cocked, but had a less precise and more weather-beaten air than that of David Qualm, but was generally believed to be David’s, which in due course had descended on Sylvanus. In mind, in manner, in all else, Sylvanus, however, was the antithesis of David. Sylvanus had talk enough and busy mind enough for anybody. He read—having the run of Mr. Heritage’s library, but foraged most amongst Friends’ books: the histories of their trials, persecutions, and the expositions of their opinions. Sylvanus was a sturdy champion of Quaker principles and customs, and skilful must the polemical acrobat be who ventured a wrestle with him on that familiar and sacred ground. Many a combat had Sylvanus and Betty Trapps on the comparative merits of Quakerism and Methodism, and on sundry topics besides. Betty often turned the laugh against Sylvanus, but he was like a true Englishman, as described by Napoleon—he never knew when he was beaten. Sylvanus was the indispensable man at Fair Manor, and was one of those who, though servants, are acknowledged as brothers, and was admitted frequently to the society which frequented that great resort of Castleborough Friends.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] An ape; used now by the country people for a simpleton.

CHAPTER VI.

THORSBY AMONGST THE WOODBURNS.

Amongst the Castleborough gentlemen who were on terms of intimacy with the family of Simon Degge, and who, therefore, frequently was to be met at Hillmartin, was a Mr. Henry Thorsby. This Mr. Thorsby was a young man of one of the oldest and most leading families of Castleborough. He was a manufacturing hosier; hosiery being one of the two great staples of the town—the other being lace. These hosiers employed a great number of frame-work-knitters in both town and country. These people, in fact, handloom-weavers, worked in the stocking-frame, receiving the cotton from the hosier, and bringing in to the town-warehouse their woven stockings at so much per dozen every Saturday. A first-rate house, therefore, employed some hundreds of men or women, as it might he, for both men and women are stocking-weavers, or, as they are termed, stockingers.