CHAPTER XI.
“The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness,
And time to speak it in; you rub the sore
When you should find the plaster.”
Shakspeare.
Wandering in various directions, and engaged in divers pursuits, the visitors at Brigland Abbey were dispersed, to fill up the dreary morning hours. To follow them all is impossible; and to follow most of them would be uninteresting and uninstructive. Leaving, therefore, unobserved, all but Lady Woodstock and her eldest daughter, who reluctantly suffered themselves to be accompanied in their walk by Sir Andrew Featherstone, we will attend these three in their morning’s ramble.
With the scenery of the Abbey itself, and its park, our readers are partly acquainted. They know that the house stood on an open and gracefully sloping lawn; and that behind it rose a dense plantation, or rather wood. This wood was in one direction very extensive; but its breadth rendered it little more than a belt, which divided a tract of uncultivated land from one which was most highly embellished by art as well as by nature. In front of the Abbey, as far as the eye could reach, the land was highly cultivated, and thickly studded with trees and human dwellings. At the back of the wood the land was open and unenclosed; for the soil, if soil it might be called, was but a very thin stratum of light earth; through which, at short intervals, appeared the bare or moss-covered rock, which was the basis of the whole district. One part of this open space bore the name of the Common; and it was partly surrounded by a few miserable cottages: beyond that it bore the name of Brigland Heath. There was one advantage, however, in this barren scene; that the ground, being very high, afforded extensive prospects, keen air, and dry footing. There had been formerly a passage through the wood from the park to the common; but since the erection of the Abbey, that path was no longer used: there remained, however, a serpentine-road towards the heath; and at the end of this road stood one of the park-lodges, on the borders of the heath; and as the lodge was built to correspond with the style of the Abbey, it formed a very beautiful object in that otherwise dreary situation.
To this open and extensive heath the three above-named betook themselves for the sake of enjoying the fine air and wide scenery. Sir Andrew Featherstone, who was very ready with his quaint remarks when any thing was said or done at all susceptible of ridiculous construction or comment, was mute as fish, and awkward as a fish out of water, when his company was decidedly serious. Though the facetious baronet very promptly offered, or rather urged his services to accompany Lady Woodstock to the heath, yet before the party had made much progress, Sir Andrew felt himself almost weary of his charge. He had made several attempts at talk, and had failed; and to the few remarks uttered by the ladies, as he was not prepared with a lively or witty reply, he returned none at all, or such a one as did not by any means promise to be productive of further colloquy or discussion. Happy to avail himself of any thing which afforded a prospect of a subject for discourse, as soon as they had passed the lodge, the worthy baronet most fortunately descried at a little distance a great concourse of people issuing from that part of the wood which bordered on the common, and apparently surrounding a funeral procession. The multitude took the direction towards the town; and the curiosity of Sir Andrew and his party being excited by the unusual number of people who surrounded the procession, took the same direction, and arrived at the church-yard almost as soon as the funeral. Curiosity is contagious; few can resist the impulse to gaze upon a spectacle surrounded by many spectators. The party from the Abbey were curious to know who and what it was which excited so very general an interest. They approached as near as they could, without forming part of the crowd. They waited till the coffin was deposited in the earth; and as many of the crowd stayed to gaze into the grave where the body was laid, the mourners in returning from the church-yard were less encumbered by the curious multitude, so that they were distinctly visible. The procession of the mourners was but short, yet several of them were real mourners. There is something very touching in the struggle which real sorrow makes to calm its agitation, and to suppress its tears; and there sometimes is a strong and deep feeling which tears or loud laments might relieve, but which, from a sense of its own intensity, dares not indulge in those expressions over which it might have no controul, or in yielding to which it might be betrayed into extravagance. This was a feeling which manifestly had possession of more than one of the mourners, who had attracted the curiosity of Sir Andrew Featherstone and the ladies that were with him. The keenness of their sorrow prevented Lady Woodstock and her daughter from gazing upon them with an eye of too curious inquiry. To gaze upon the afflicted without a look of sympathy is very cruel; and to look with compassion upon the eye that is full of tears, which it would fain suppress, does but still more unnerve the sorrowing heart. Lady Woodstock observed that the principal mourners were two females, who appeared, by their resemblance to each other, to be mother and daughter; and the scene brought to her recollection the time when she herself, accompanied by the daughter who was then leaning on her arm, did, in violation of the practice of the world, follow to the grave the remains of her beloved husband: nor were the recollections of her sorrows painful when thus brought back to her mind, but the rather was there a pure and holy pleasure in the tear which rose to her eye at the thought of the past, so that she felt more than satisfied at having in that instance dared to be singular. Fashion forms pleasant leading-strings for those minds which are too weak to walk alone. The mind of Lady Woodstock was not of that description.