CHAPTER IV.
LETTY’S WEDDING.
The wild, tempestuous weather, which attended the death of Sir Emanuel Clavering, renewed itself at his funeral. In the interval betwixt these events there had been calm, clear days. The snow lay white and dazzling over the whole landscape; the nights were brilliant with stars, which seemed to derive double lustre from the frost. The funeral of Sir Emanuel took place in the little church just by, and was conducted by a neighbouring clergyman, a friend of the rector’s. None were invited but the immediate relatives, and the tenants, who received a notice that their presence at the church would be regarded as a mark of respect. But in the middle of the night preceding the day of the funeral, the wind again rose, snow began to fall, and the two elements seemed as if they had concerted to make the scene as miserable as possible. The winds raged, the snow fell, and drove as in a riotous madness. A stupendous ash-tree on the lawn, under which Sir Emanuel had been fond of sitting and reading, was blown down; the windows of his observatory on the hill, on the north side were driven in, and a small turret on the house, in which he kept piles of papers, fell inwards, and buried them. It was necessary to cut a way from the hall door to the church door, through the deep snows, amidst which six stout yeomen bore the coffin, staggering in the howling, tossing winds. Such was the war of the storm in the trees about the church and the rector’s house, that the voice of the clergyman could scarcely be heard as he read the burial service. The tenants, who came from some distance, gained their homes with much difficulty. For three or four days the weather continued its riotous character, and a winter of unremittent severity followed. The snows covered the hedges of the fields so completely that, when hard frozen, people walked over them as on a highway. Great numbers of sheep were lost in the mountain districts, and many people in different parts of the kingdom perished on heaths and moors amid the snows. Farmers were at their wits’-end for food for their cattle, which had all to be kept up. Alternate thaws and frosts hung from the eaves of buildings icicles a yard or more long, and a sudden frost following on driving rain, froze the wings of birds to their bodies, and in that condition incalculable numbers were seized and destroyed. The spring was late in coming, and was attended by floods, doing immense damage in their headlong course.
Such an outburst of weather at the death and funeral of Sir Emanuel Clavering was certain to excite in the imagination of the country people round the most awful ideas of the mortal exit of a man who had acquired so mysterious a reputation. It is a favourite idea that tempests of a fearful character often attend the departure of men remarkable for their daring deeds in life—deeds not very scrupulous regarding the rights or lives of men. Such was the case at the deaths of Cromwell and many other great innovators or troublers of the earth. The people believe that the great enemy of mankind thus comes to signalise the departure of those who have been his devoted servants on a large scale. The country people about Cotmanhaye, and far around, did Sir Emanuel the honour of classing him with this satanically distinguished tribe, though they could point to no actions but such as were kindly and benevolent.
But the black art was ample enough, in their opinions, for any disturbances of nature, and this they firmly believed that he had practised. The driving in of his observatory windows, the fall of the little turret where he kept his mysterious papers, were facts of a significance not to be withstood. They did not take into their consideration that this tempestuous and severe winter extended far beyond any influence or knowledge of Sir Emanuel—that it extended, indeed, not only over the whole kingdom, but over the whole of Europe. Their knowledge and experience lay only within a very minute circle; but then Sir Emanuel died, and those furious elements battled over his dying head. That was enough. Many were the stories, by the cottage and the village inn firesides, of the horrors of that night at Cotmanhaye Manor. Of the strange sights, strange sounds, burning blue of the fire-flames, the howling of dogs, and the strange neighing of horses in the turmoil of the winds.
It was said that all the clergy had been collected for miles round to endeavour to lay the devil, and prevent him seizing on his victim—the only clergyman present being poor, dear Thomas Clavering, who was too much overwhelmed with grief to be able to articulate more than a few words of affection, and of confidence in the love and merits of the Saviour. It was said that Mrs. Heritage had been sent for when all the efforts of the clergy failed, and that in the midst of her prayers the turret fell, the observatory windows flew shivered to atoms, and then all was still. The devil had thus gone off in a fury of disappointment. All remembered the calm, clear weather that attended this good woman back, and which lasted till the funeral, when it broke out again, and raged on for days and weeks. Not all the reasonings of a Bacon, or the eloquence of a Chatham, could have driven from the minds of the rural population the fixed idea that Sir Emanuel had been accustomed to practices of an awful character, or that the pre-eminent piety of Mrs. Heritage had most signally triumphed over the Prince of Darkness. For twenty years after, the grand epoch of all relative dates was the hard winter when Sir Emanuel Clavering died.
In the little circle of Woodburn his departure left another gap. Of late years Sir Emanuel had lived more and come out more amongst his neighbours; and, where he had been known intimately, he was greatly beloved. In the families of Woodburn, Heritage, and Degge, he left a deep and lasting regret.
During the winter Henry Clavering, now Sir Henry, was for the most part in London, attending to family affairs. He had not ventured to call at Woodburn Grange before leaving, being much affected by the death of his father, the Claverings having strong family attachments; but he wrote a very kind farewell through a letter to Ann, and to her expressed a hope of a more cheerful prospect as regarded their relationship to each other. Ann herself could not help cherishing an idea that the change of sentiment in his father at last would operate a change in his own mind. Several times in the course of the winter he wrote more and more happily, and promised himself much of her society in spring.
As for other matters at Woodburn Grange, they were by no means dull. The wedding of Letty with Thorsby was to take place in May, and Thorsby was there every few days overflowing with fun and animal spirits. Since Betty Trapps knew that this marriage was inevitable, though she continued privately to shake her head over it, she endeavoured to be more respectful to Thorsby, out of respect to Letty; but Thorsby’s ebullient temperament sometimes tried her very hard, especially when he indulged himself with making merry over the Methodists, which he was very apt to do when Betty was waiting at table. Betty said “some people were hetter and some were heeler (that is, irritable or calm in disposition). For her part, she did not pretend to be ower heeler—tread on a worm, and it would turn—and if people would pinch her, she was pretty sure, she said, to cry out.” One day Thorsby was very merry over a master manufacturer in Castleborough, who was a great leader amongst the Methodists, and kept a horse for the use of the preachers who went into the country round, and rather irreverently called it God’s horse. Betty defended the title, and thought the profanity was in laughing at the manufacturer who kept it. The next time that Thorsby was obliged by the weather to stay all night at the Grange, he found that Betty had made him an “apple-pie bed;” that is, she had turned up the upper sheet to the pillow, so that, on getting into bed, he found himself stopped half-way. This, however, was nothing to the expression of her indignation conveyed to him by a frog, a bit of furze, or even a wasp, being put into his bed.
Thorsby, on another occasion, excited Betty’s wrath by asserting that he thought he could preach better than a favourite preacher of Betty’s. “Preach, i’ faith!” said Betty, as she shifted Thorsby plate—“Ay, may be, as well as old Parson Markham, of Rockville, who buzzes like a dumbledore[1] in a pitcher.” The conversation turning on somebody who had been unfortunate, Thorsby remarked that people ought not to expect to get on who did not exert themselves. “Oh, beleddy”—a great word of Betty’s, meaning, by-lady, from the old phrase, “By our lady”—Betty remarked, “I always see folks run to help a lazy duck that lies on its back and quackles, while stirring ducks may take care of themselves as they can.”