Ashcliffe Hall: A tale of the last century

In a large bedroom, on an autumn afternoon, two girls were divesting themselves of their out-door attire after a walk. They were dressed alike, though their ages were eleven and nineteen. Their costume consisted of brown stuff petticoats, over which they wore cashmere gowns of a white ground, covered with brown-stemmed red flowers, and edged with quillings of green ribbon. These dresses were high in the back and on the shoulders, but were cut down square in the front. The sleeves reached to the elbows, and were there finished by white muslin frills. The girls wore high-heeled shoes, the heels being red, and brown worsted stockings, which the petticoat was short enough to show plainly. On the dressing-table before them lay two tall white muslin caps, called cornettes, abundant in frills and lace, but having no strings. The hair of both girls was dressed high over a frame, standing up some three inches above their heads; and when the elder put on her cap, it increased her apparent height by at least three inches more.

The chamber in which they were dressing was long and low, two large beams being visible in the ceiling; and the casement, not two feet in height, ran nearly across the width of the room. There was a faint, delicate scent of lavender. The furniture comprised a large four-post bedstead, an unwieldy wardrobe, a washstand, a dressing-table, and two chairs. The carpet was only round the bed and washstand, the rest of the floor being left uncovered, and shining with age and use. The walls were wainscoted about half-way to the ceiling, the higher portion being painted a dull light-green. The girls turned to leave the room.

"O Lucy! your cornette!"

Lucy--aged eleven--made a dash at the dressing-table, and seizing her cap by its frills, to the severe detriment of the lace, stuck it on her head in the first way that occurred to her, and was about to rush down-stairs without further ceremony.

"That will not do, Lucy," said the elder girl. "You know what Henrietta will say. Go to the mirror and put your cornette on properly."

Muttering something which sounded like a statement that she did not care what Henrietta said, Lucy retraced her steps to the glass, pulled off the cornette, and stuck it on again, in a style very little better than before. This done, she joined her sister, who was half-way down the stairs. It was a fine old wooden staircase which the girls descended, "worn by the feet that now were silent,"[1] and at its base a long, narrow passage stretched right and left. Our young friends turned to the right, and after passing on for a few feet, entered a door on the left hand, which led to the family parlor. This room had already three occupants, two young ladies and a boy of fourteen. The two former were dressed like Lucy and her sister, except that the younger of them, who sat at a tapestry-frame in the corner of the room, wore broad pieces of brown velvet round her neck and wrists. The boy, who was equipped in out-door costume, part of which consisted of a pair of thick and pre-eminently splashed boots, sat on a low chair, staring into the fire, whistling, and playing with a riding-whip.

"Lucy! your hair!" was the shocked exclamation with which the new-comers were received.

"Oh, my hair is all right! I brushed it--this morning," said Lucy, the last words in a much lower tone than the rest; and then she asked of her whistling brother, "Have you heard anything, Charley?"

Charley shook his head without ceasing to whistle.

"Harry is not come yet?"

"No," said Charley, in a very discontented tone; "and he has taken Bay Fairy, and I can't go out. 'Tis enough to provoke a saint."

"That ben't you, Master Charley!" said a new and cheery voice, as an elderly woman appeared, carrying a little tea-tray, from behind the heavy, japanned screen which stood near the door. She was dressed in a black woollen gown, low in the neck, with a white muslin kerchief above, and a cap of more modest pretensions than those of the young ladies.

"What does the impertinent old woman mean by calling me a sinner?" inquired Charley, addressing himself to his boots.

"You ben't?" said old Cicely, setting down the tea-tray. "Well! stand up and let us look at you, do! You are the first ever I see that wasn't no sinner!"

To which cutting observation Charley replied only by banging the door between himself and the unwelcome querist.

"Ay, it ben't for none of us to set ourselves up i' thatn's!" meditatively remarked old Cicely, in her turn to the teapot. "Mrs. Henrietta, there's a poor old man at the yard-door, my dear, and I can't tell where to look for Madam; maybe you'd see to him, poor soul?"

Henrietta, the eldest sister, answered by quitting the room. Cicely arranged the tea-cups--large shallow cups of delicate china--on a small round table in the window.

"The tea is ready, Mrs. Bell," she said; "will you please to pour it?"

The decorated young lady who sat at the tapestry-frame rose languidly, and began to pour out the tea, while Cicely set four chairs round the little table; having done which, the latter calmly took one of them herself, and producing a large colored handkerchief from her pocket, carefully spread it over her black woollen dress.

"Well, truly," said she, for she was in a talkative mood this evening, "there is no end to the good in a dish of tea. I am sorry I ever said what I have done against it, my dears, and I wish Madam would drink it. 'Tis so heartening like! It is a new-fangled sort of drink, there's no denying; but surely, I wonder how we ever got on without it!"

"Cicely," said Henrietta, coming in, "I have told Dolly to give the poor man some meat and dry straw in the shed for to-night."

"Very good, Mrs. Henrietta," answered Cicely; "I'll see as he gets it. Mrs. Bell, I'll be obliged to you of another dish of tea."

There were only four tea-drinkers in this family, and, until a few months previous, there had been only three. The gentlemen despised what they considered a washy and exclusively feminine beverage, and the mistress of the house could by no means be induced to taste it. It was a new-fangled drink, she said, and new-fangled things, of whatever description, she abhorred. People never drank tea when she was a child, and why should they want it now? This was Madam Passmore's logic, and under its influence she drank no tea. Still she did not forbid her daughters' indulging in it. Young people, she allowed, were given to new-fangled things; and could be expected to be wiser only as they grew older. She was a little annoyed when the logic of the young people, adverse to her own, made a tea-convert of Cicely Aggett, who was about twenty-five years her senior; but Madam Passmore was a quiet, passive sort of woman, who never kept anger long, and was in her heart a fatalist. "What must be must be," she used to say; and many a time had she consoled herself with this comforting adage under troubles of various kinds. She said so when her son Harry went into the army; she said so when her husband broke his leg in fox-hunting; and she said so, but with tears, when her little daughter Margaret died. She had no political opinions but those of her husband, who was a fervent Whig; but deep down in her heart she was a profound Tory in all domestic matters, for she disliked change and novelty beyond everything. She never put down a new carpet until the old carpet was quite beyond endurance; not from any parsimonious motive, but simply because she liked best those things to which she was most accustomed. She never would have slept with comfort if her bed had been turned with its side to the wall instead of its back; nor would she ever have conceded that a new lamp burnt half so brightly as the old one. Her surviving family consisted of two sons and four daughters, who were remarkably alike in person--all but one. The neighbors who were sufficiently high in position to visit with Squire Passmore of Ashcliffe, often wondered how it was that Celia Passmore was so unlike every other member of the family. They were tall and stately in figure, she was small and slight; they had abundant light hair, hers was thin and dark; their eyes were blue or gray, hers brown. Most of all was she unlike her twin-sister, Isabella, who was considered the beauty of the family, and was very well aware of it. There was nothing remarkable about any of the others; but Celia, some said, was sadly plain, poor girl! and it must be a great mortification to Madam Passmore, who had been a country belle in her young days.

Cicely Aggett, whom we have seen seated at the table with her young mistresses, was one of a class wholly extinct in our days. She was a dependent, but not a servant. She had, some fifty years before this, been Madam Passmore's nurse, and she now filled a nondescript position in the family of her nursling. She was always ready to help or advise, and considered nothing beneath her which could add to the comfort of any member of the family; but she took all her meals in the parlor, and was essentially one of themselves. She was the confidante of everybody, and all knew that she never abused a trust. Madam Passmore would as soon have thought of turning the dog out of the room before making a confidential communication, as of turning out Cicely, simply because Cicely's dog-like fidelity was completely above suspicion.

The tea was now finished. Lucy, who had not yet arrived at the dignity of a tea-drinker, was roaming about the room as Cicely departed with the tea-tray.

"There is Harry!" she exclaimed, looking out of the window. "He must have some news--he is waving something above his head. Henrietta, may I run and meet him?"

Henrietta gave consent, and away went Lucy at the top of her speed down the broad avenue which led from the house through the park. The young officer was trotting up on Bay Fairy, with his spaniel Pero panting after him; but he reined in his horse as Lucy came up to him.

"A victory!" he cried. "A victory at Malplaquet! a glorious victory! Run, Lucy!--a race! who will tell Father first?"

Lucy--if it were possible; there was very little doubt of that. She ran back as fast as she had come, turning her head once to see how Harry was getting on. He was not urging his horse beyond a walk; it was evident that he meant to give her a chance of winning. She ran towards the stable-yard, where she knew that the Squire was, and at last, arriving triumphantly first at the yard-gate, burst suddenly into the arms of her father, as he was just opening the gate to come out.

"Hallo!" said the Squire, when this unexpected apparition presented itself. "Hoity-toity! What is the matter, Lucibelle?"

"A--victory!" was all that Lucy could utter.

"Where? who told you?" he asked, excitedly.

"Harry," said the panting Lucy. "Somewhere in--France, I think--'tis a--queer name."

"In France, Sir, at Malplaquet," said Harry, who now rode up quickly, having good-naturedly allowed his little sister the pleasure of winning the race; "a great victory under the Duke of Marlborough." And he handed the Gazette to his father.