We anticipated Twelfth Day because our guests meant to go to visit
some other friends before the New Year, and we knew Anne would have
no chance there of fulfilling her great ambition of drawing for king
and queen. These home-made characters were really charming. Mrs.
Fordyce had done several of them, and she drew beautifully. A
little manipulation contrived that the exquisite Oberon and Titania
should fall to Martyn and Anne, for whom crowns and robes had been
prepared, worn by her majesty with complacent dignity, but barely
tolerated by him! The others took their chance. Parson Frank was
Tom Thumb, and convulsed us all the evening by acting as if no
bigger than that worthy, keeping us so merry that even Clarence
laughed as I had never seen him laugh before.

Cock Robin and Jenny Wren - the best drawn of all - fell to Griff and
Miss Fordyce. There was a suspicion of a tint of real carnation on
her cheek, as, on his low, highly-delighted bow, she held up her
impromptu fan of folded paper; and drollery about currant wine and
hopping upon twigs went on more or less all the time, while somehow
or other the beauteous glow on her cheeks went on deepening, so that
I never saw her look so pretty as when thus playing at Jenny Wren's
coyness, though neither she nor Griff had passed the bounds of her
gracious precise discretion.

The joyous evening ended at last. With the stroke of nine, Jenny
Wren bore away Queen Titania to put her to bed, for the servants
were having an entertainment of their own downstairs for all the
out-door retainers, etc. Oberon departed, after an interval
sufficient to prove his own dignity and advanced age. Emily went
down to report the success of the evening to the elders in the
drawing-room, but we lingered while Frank Fordyce was telling good
stories of Oxford life, and Griff capping them with more recent
ones.

We too broke up - I don't remember how; but Clarence was to help me
down the stairs, and Mr. Fordyce, frowning with anxiety at the
process, was offering assistance, while we had much rather he had
gone out of the way; when suddenly, in the gallery round the hall
giving access to the bedrooms, there dawned upon us the startled but
scarcely displeased figure of Jenny Wren in her white dress, not
turning aside that blushing face, while Cock Robin was clasping her
hand and pressing it to his lips. The tap of my crutches warned
them. She flew back within her door and shut it; Griff strode
rapidly on, caught hold of her father's hand, exclaiming, 'Sir, sir,
I must speak to you!' and dragged him back into the mullion room
leaving Clarence and me to convey ourselves downstairs as best we
might.

'Our sister, our sweet sister!'

We were immensely excited. All the three of us were so far in love
with Ellen Fordyce that her presence was an enchantment to us, and
at any rate none of us ever saw the woman we could compare to her;
and as we both felt ourselves disqualified in different ways from
any nearer approach, we were content to bask in the reflected rays
of our brother's happiness.

Not that he had gone that length as yet, as we knew before the night
was over, when he came down to us. Even with the dear maiden
herself, he had only made sure that she was not averse, and that
merely by her eyes and lips; and he had extracted nothing from her
father but that they were both very young, a great deal too young,
and had no business to think of such things yet. It must be talked
over, etc. etc.

But just then, Griff told us, Frank Fordyce jumped up and turned
round with the sudden exclamation, 'Ellen!' looking towards the door
behind him with blank astonishment, as he found it had neither been
opened nor shut. He thought his daughter had recollected something
left behind, and coming in search of it, had retreated
precipitately. He had seen her, he said, in the mirror opposite.
Griff told him there was no mirror, and had to carry a candle across
to convince him that he had only been looking at the door into the
inner room, which though of shining dark oak, could hardly have made
a reflection as vivid as he declared that his had been. Indeed, he
ascertained that Ellen had never left her own room at all. 'It must
have been thinking about the dear child,' he said. 'And after all,
it was not quite like her - somehow - she was paler, and had something
over her head.' We had no doubt who it was. Griff had not seen
her, but he was certain that there had been none of the moaning nor
crying, 'In fact, she has come to give her consent,' he said with
earnest in his mocking tone.

'Yes,' said Clarence gravely, and with glistening eyes. 'You are
happy Griff. It is given to you to right the wrong, and quiet that
poor spirit.'

'Happy! The happiest fellow in the world,' said Griff, 'even
without that latter clause - if only Madam and the old man will have
as much sense as she has!'

The next day was a thoroughly uncomfortable one. Griff was not half
so near his goal as he had hoped last night when with kindly Parson
Frank.

The commotion was as if a thunderbolt had descended among the
elders. What they had been thinking of, I cannot tell, not to have
perceived how matters were tending; but their minds were full of the
Reform Bill and the state of the country, and, besides, we were all
looked on still as mere children. Indeed, Griff was scarcely one-
and-twenty, and Ellen wanted a month of seventeen; and the crisis
had really been a sudden impulse, as he said, 'She looked so sweet
and lovely, he could not help it.'

The first effect was a serious lecture upon maidenliness and
propriety to poor Ellen from her mother, who was sure that she must
have transgressed the bounds of discretion, or such ill-bred
presumption would have been spared her, and bitterly regretted the
having trusted her to take care of herself. There were sufficient
grains of truth in this to make the poor girl cry herself out of all
condition for appearing at breakfast or luncheon, and Emily's report
of her despair made us much more angry with Mrs. Fordyce than was
perhaps quite due to that good lady.

My parents were at first inclined to take the same line, and be
vexed with Griff for an act of impertinence towards a guest. He had
a great deal of difficulty in inducing the elders to believe him in
earnest, or treat him as a man capable of knowing his own mind; and
even thus they felt as if his addresses to Miss Fordyce were, under
present circumstances, taking almost an unfair advantage of the
other family - at which our youthful spirits felt indignant.

Yet, after all, such a match was as obvious and suitable as if it
had been a family compact, and the only objection was the youth of
the parties. Mrs. Fordyce would fain have believed her daughter's
heart to be not yet awake, and was grieved to find childhood over,
and the hero of romance become the lover; and she was anxious that
full time should be given to perceive whether her daughter's
feelings were only the result of the dazzling aureole which
gratitude and excited fancy had cast around the fine, handsome,
winning youth. Her husband, however, who had himself married very
young, and was greatly taken with Griff, besides being always
tender-hearted, did not enter into her scruples; but, as we had
already found out, the grand-looking and clever man of thirty-eight
was, chiefly from his impulsiveness and good-nature, treated as the
boy of the family. His old father, too, was greatly pleased with
Griff's spirit, affection, and purpose, as well as with my father's
conduct in the matter; and so, after a succession of private
interviews, very tantalising to us poor outsiders, it was conceded
that though an engagement for the present was preposterous, it might
possibly be permitted when Ellen was eighteen if Griff had completed
his university life with full credit. He was fervently grateful to
have such an object set before him, and my father was warmly
thankful for the stimulus.

That last evening was very odd and constrained. We could not help
looking on the lovers as new specimens over which some strange
transformation had passed, though for the present it had stiffened
them in public into the strictest good behaviour. They would have
been awkward if it had been possible to either of them, and, save
for a certain look in their eyes, comported themselves as perfect
strangers.

The three elder gentlemen held discussions in the dining-room, but
we were not trusted in our playground adjoining. Mrs. Fordyce
nailed Griff down to an interminable game at chess, and my mother
kept the two girls playing duets, while Clarence turned over the
leaves; and I read over The Lady of the Lake, a study which I always
felt, and still feel, as an act of homage to Ellen Fordyce, though
there was not much in common between her and the maid of Douglas.
Indeed, it was a joke of her father's to tease her by criticising
the famous passage about the tears that old Douglas shed over his
duteous daughter's head - 'What in the world should the man go
whining and crying for? He had much better have laughed with her.'

Little did the elders know what was going on in the next room, where
there was a grand courtship among the dolls; the hero being a small
jointed Dutch one in Swiss costume, about an eighth part of the size
of the resuscitated Celestina Mary, but the only available male
character in doll-land! Anne was supposed to be completely ignorant
of what passed above her head; and her mother would have been aghast
had she heard the remarkable discoveries and speculations that she
and Martyn communicated to one another.


CHAPTER XXI - THE OUTSIDE OF THE COURTSHIP


'Or framing, as a fair excuse,
The book, the pencil, or the muse;
Something to give, to sing, to say,
Some modern tale, some ancient lay.'

SCOTT.

It seems to me on looking back that I have hardly done justice to
Mrs. Fordyce, and certainly we - as Griffith's eager partisans - often
regarded her in the light of an enemy and opponent; but after this
lapse of time, I can see that she was no more than a prudent mother,
unwilling to see her fair young daughter suddenly launched into
womanhood, and involved in an attachment to a young and untried man.

The part of a drag is an invidious one; and this must have been her
part through most of her life. The Fordyces, father and son, were
of good family, gentlemen to their very backbones, and thoroughly
good, religious men; but she came of a more aristocratic strain, had
been in London society, and brought with her a high-bred air which,
implanted on the Fordyce good looks, made her daughter especially
fascinating. But that air did not recommend Mrs. Fordyce to all her
neighbours, any more than did those stronger, stricter, more
thorough-going notions of religious obligation which had led her
husband to make the very real and painful sacrifice of his sporting
tastes, and attend to the parish in a manner only too rare in those
days. She was a very well-informed and highly accomplished woman,
and had made her daughter the same, keeping her children up in a
somewhat exclusive style, away from all gossip or undesirable
intimacies, as recommended by Miss Edgeworth and other more
religious authorities, and which gave great offence in houses where
there were girls of the same age. No one, however, could look at
Ellen, and doubt of the success of the system, or of the young
girl's entire content and perfect affection for her mother, though
her father was her beloved playfellow - yet always with respect. She
never took liberties with him, nor called him Pap or any other
ridiculous name inconsistent with the fifth Commandment, though she
certainly was more entirely at ease with him than ever we had been
with our elderly father. When once Mrs. Fordyce found on what terms
we were to be, she accepted them frankly and fully. Already Emily
had been the first girl, not a relation, whose friendship she had
fostered with Ellen; and she had also become thoroughly affectionate
and at home with my mother, who suited her perfectly on the
conscientious, and likewise on the prudent and sensible, side of her
nature.

To me she was always kindness itself, so kind that I never felt, as
I did on so many occasions, that she was very pitiful and attentive
to the deformed youth; but that she really enjoyed my companionship,
and I could help her in her pursuits. I have a whole packet of
charming notes of hers about books, botany, drawings, little bits of
antiquarianism, written with an arch grace and finish of expression
peculiarly her own, and in a very pointed hand, yet too definite to
be illegible. I owe her more than I can say for the windows of
wholesome hope and ambition she opened to me, giving a fresh motive
and zest even to such a life as mine. I can hardly tell which was
the most delightful companion, she or her husband. In spite of ill
health, she knew every plant, and every bit of fair scenery in the
neighbourhood, and had fresh, amusing criticisms to utter on each
new book; while he, not neglecting the books, was equally well
acquainted with all beasts and birds, and shed his kindly light over
everything he approached. He was never melancholy about anything
but politics, and even there it was an immense consolation to him to
have the owner of Chantry House staunch on the same side, instead of
in chronic opposition.

The family party moved to a tall house at Bath, but there still was
close intercourse, for the younger clergyman rode over every week
for the Sunday duty, and almost always dined and slept at Chantry
House. He acted as bearer of long letters, which, in spite of a
reticulation of crossings, were too expensive by post for young
ladies' pocket-money, often exceeding the regular quarto sheet. It
was a favourite joke to ask Emily what Ellen reported about Bath
fashions, and to see her look of scorn. For they were a curious
mixture, those girlish letters, of village interests, discussion of
books, and thoughts beyond their age; Tommy Toogood and Prometheus;
or Du Guesclin in the closest juxtaposition with reports of progress
in Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers. It was the desire of
Ellen to prove herself not unsettled but improved by love, and to
become worthy of her ideal Griffith, never guessing that he would
have been equally content with her if she had been as frivolous as
the idlest girl who lingered amid the waning glories of Bath.

We all made them a visit there when Martyn was taken to a
preparatory school in the place. Mrs. Fordyce took me out for
drives on the beautiful hills; and Emily and I had a very delightful
time, undisturbed by the engrossing claims of love-making. Very
good, too, were our friends, after our departure, in letting Martyn
spend Sundays and holidays with them, play with Anne as before, say
his Catechism with her to Mrs. Fordyce, and share her little Sunday
lessons, which had, he has since told, a force and attractiveness he
had never known before, and really did much, young as he was, in
preparing the way towards the fulfilment of my father's design for
him.

When the Rectory was ready, and the family returned, it was high
summer, and there were constant meetings between the households. No
doubt there were the usual amount of trivial disappointments and
annoyances, but the whole season seems to me to have been bathed in
sunlight. The Reform Bill agitations and the London mobs of which
Clarence wrote to us were like waves surging beyond an isle of
peace. Clarence had some unpleasant walks from the office. Once or
twice the shutters had to be put up at Frith and Castleford's to
prevent the windows from being broken; and once Clarence actually
saw our nation's hero, 'the Duke,' riding quietly and slowly through
a yelling, furious mob, who seemed withheld from falling on him by
the perfect impassiveness of the eagle face and spare figure.
Moreover a pretty little boy, on his pony, suddenly pushed forward
and rode by the Duke's side, as if proud and resolute to share his
peril.

'If Griffith had been there!' said Ellen and Emily, though they did
not exactly know what they expected him to have done.

The chief storms that drifted across our sky were caused by Mrs.
Fordyce's resolution that Griffith should enjoy none of the
privileges of an accepted suitor before the engagement was an actual
fact. Ellen was obedient and conscientious; and would neither
transgress nor endure to have her mother railed at by Griff's hasty
tongue, and this affronted him, and led to little breezes.

When people overstay their usual time, tempers are apt to get rather
difficult. Griffith had kept all his terms at Oxford, and was not
to return thither after the long vacation, but was to read with a
tutor before taking his degree. Moreover bills began to come from
Oxford, not very serious, but vexing my father and raising
annoyances and frets, for Griff resented their being complained of,
and thought himself ill-used, going off to see his own friends
whenever he was put out.

One morning at breakfast, late in October, he announced that Lady
Peacock was in lodgings at Clifton, and asked my mother to call on
her. But mamma said it was too far for the horse - she visited no
one at that distance, and had never thought much of Selina Clarkson
before or after her marriage.

'But now that she is a widow, it would be such a kindness,' pleaded
Griff.

'Depend upon it, a gay young widow needs no kindness from me, and
had better not have it from you,' said my mother, getting up from
behind her urn and walking off, followed by my father.

Griff drummed on the table. 'I wonder what good ladies of a certain
age do with their charity,' he said.

And while we were still crying out at him, Ellen Fordyce and her
father appeared, like mirth bidding good-morrow, at the window. All
was well for the time, but Griff wanted Ellen to set out alone with
him, and take their leisurely way through the wood-path, and she
insisted on waiting for her father, who had got into an endless
discussion with mine on the Reform Bill, thrown out in the last
Session. Griff tried to wile her on with him, but, though she
consented to wander about the lawn before the windows with him, she
always resolutely turned at the great beech tree. Emily and I
watched them from the window, at first amused, then vexed, as we
could see, by his gestures, that he was getting out of temper, and
her straw bonnet drooped at one moment, and was raised the next in
eager remonstrance or defence. At last he flung angrily away from
her, and went off to the stables, leaving her leaning against the
gate in tears. Emily, in an access of indignant sympathy, rushed
out to her, and they vanished together into the summer-house, until
her father called her, and they went home together.

Emily told me that Ellen had struggled hard to keep herself from
crying enough to show traces of tears which her father could
observe, and that she had excused Griff with all her might on the
plea of her own 'tiresomeness.'

We were all the more angry with him for his selfishness and want of
consideration, for Ellen, in her torrent of grief, had even
disclosed that he had said she did not care for him - no one really
in love ever scrupled about a mother's nonsense, etc., etc.

We were resolved, like two sages, to give him a piece of our minds,
and convince him that such dutifulness was the pledge of future
happiness, and that it was absolute cruelty to the rare creature he
had won, to try to draw her in a direction contrary to her
conscience.

However, we saw him no more that day; and only learnt that he had
left a message at the stables that dinner was not to be kept waiting
for him. Such a message from Clarence would have caused a great
commotion; but it was quite natural and a matter of course from him
in the eyes of the elders, who knew nothing of his parting with
Ellen. However, there was annoyance enough, when bedtime came,
family prayers were over, and still there was no sign of him. My
father sat up till one o'clock, to let him in, then gave it up, and
I heard his step heavily mounting the stairs.


CHAPTER XXII - BRISTOL DIAMONDS


'Stafford. And you that are the King's friends, follow me.

Cade. And you that love the Commons, follow me;
We will not leave one lord, one gentleman,
Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon.'

Act I. Henry VI.

The next day was Sunday, and no Griff appeared in the morning.
Vexation, perhaps, prevented us from attending as much as we
otherwise might have done to Mr. Henderson when he told us that
there were rumours of a serious disturbance at Bristol; until Emily
recollected that Griff had been talking for some days past of riding
over to see his friend in the cavalry regiment there stationed, and
we all agreed that it was most likely that he was there; and our
wrath began to soften in the belief that he might have been detained
to give his aid in the cause of order, though his single arm could
not be expected to effect as much as at Hillside.

Long after dark we heard a horse's feet, and in another minute
Griff, singed, splashed, and battered, had hurried into the room -
'It has begun!' he said. 'The revolution! I have brought her - Lady
Peacock. She was at Clifton, dreadfully alarmed. She is almost at
the door now, in her carriage. I'll just take the pony, and ride
over to tell Eastwood in case he will call out the Yeomanry.'

The wheels were to be heard, and everybody hastened out to receive
Lady Peacock, who was there with her maid, full of gratitude. I
heard her broken sentences as she came across the hall, about
dreadful scenes - frightful mob - she knew not what would have become
of her but for Griffith - the place was in flames when they left it -
the military would not act - Griffith had assured her that Mr. and
Mrs. Winslow would be so kind - as long as any place was a refuge

We really did believe we were at the outbreak of a revolution or
civil war, and, all little frets forgotten, listened appalled to the
tidings; how the appearance of Sir Charles Wetherall, the Recorder
of Bristol, a strong opponent to the Reform Bill, seemed to have
inspired the mob with fury. Griff and his friend the dragoon, while
walking in Broad Street, were astonished by a violent rush of
riotous men and boys, hooting and throwing stones as the Recorder's
carriage tried to make its way to the Guildhall. In the midst a
piteous voice exclaimed -

'Oh, Griffith! Mr. Griffith Winslow! Is it you?' and Lady Peacock
was seen retreating upon the stone steps of a house either empty, or
where the inhabitants were too much alarmed to open the doors. She
was terribly frightened, and the two gentlemen stood in front of her
till the tumultuary procession had passed by. She was staying in
lodgings at Clifton, and had driven in to Bristol to shop, when she
thus found herself entangled in the mob. They then escorted her to
the place where she was to meet her carriage, and found it for her
with some difficulty. Then, while the officer returned to his
quarters, Griff accompanied her far enough on the way to Clifton to
see that everything was quiet before her, and then returned to seek
out his friend. The court at the Guildhall had had to be adjourned,
but the rioters were hunting Sir Charles to the Mansion-House.
Griff was met by one of the Town Council, a tradesman with whom we
dealt, who, having perhaps heard of his prowess at Hillside,
entreated him to remain, offering him a bed, and saying that all
friends of order were needed in such a crisis as this. Griff wrote
a note to let us know what had become of him, but everything was
disorganised, and we did not get it till two days afterwards.

In the evening the mob became more violent, and in the midst of
dinner a summons came for Griff's host to attend the Mayor in
endeavouring to disperse it. Getting into the Mansion-House by
private back ways, they were able to join the Mayor when he came
out, amid a shower of brickbats, sticks, and stones, and read the
Riot Act three times over, after warning them of the consequences of
persisting in their defiance.

'But they were far past caring for that,' said Griff. 'An iron rail
from the square was thrown in the midst of it, and if I had not
caught it there would have been an end of his Worship.'

The constables, with such help as Griff and a few others could give
them, defended the front of the Mansion-House, while the Recorder,
for whom they savagely roared, made his escape by the roof to
another house. A barricade was made with beds, tables, and chairs,