Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn | Page 6

snow lay piled
against the door, and the wind howled in the chimney; or worse, when
the wind was still, and the rain was pattering from the eaves, he would
sit lonely and miserable by his desolate hearth, and think with a sigh of
what might have been had his patron lived. And five-and-twenty years
rolled on until James Brown, who was born during the first year of his
curateship, came home a broken man, with one arm gone, from the
battle of St. Vincent. And the great world roared on, and empires rose
and fell, and dull echoes of the great throes without were heard in the
peaceful English village, like distant thunder on a summer's afternoon,
but still no change for him.
But poor Jane bides her time in the old farm-house, sitting constant and
patient behind the long low latticed window, among the geraniums and
roses, watching the old willows by the river. Five-and-twenty times she
sees those willows grow green, and the meadow brighten up with
flowers, and as often she sees their yellow leaves driven before the
strong south wind, and the meadow grow dark and hoar before the
breath of autumn. Her father was long since dead, and she was bringing
up her brother's children. Her raven hair was streaked with grey, and
her step was not so light, nor her laugh so loud, yet still she waited and
hoped, long after all hope seemed dead.
But at length a brighter day seemed to dawn for them; for the bishop,
who had watched for years John Thornton's patient industry and
blameless conversation, gave him, to his great joy and astonishment,
the living of Drumston, worth 350L. a-year. And now, at last, he might
marry if he would. True, the morning of his life was gone long since,
and its hot noon spent in thankless labour; but the evening, the sober,
quiet evening, yet remained, and he and Jane might still render pleasant
for one another the downward road toward the churchyard, and
hand-in-hand walk more tranquilly forward to meet that dark tyrant

Death, who seemed so terrible to the solitary watcher.
A month or less after John was installed, one soft grey day in March,
this patient couple walked slowly arm-in-arm up the hill, under the
lychgate, past the dark yew that shadowed the peaceful graves, and so
through the damp church porch, up to the old stone altar, and there
were quietly married, and then walked home again. No feasting or
rejoicing was there at that wedding; the very realization of their long
deferred hopes was a disappointment. In March they were married, and
before the lanes grew bright with the primroses of another spring, poor
Jane was lying in a new-made grave, in the shadow of the old grey
tower.
But, though dead, she yet lived to him in the person of a bright-eyed
baby, a little girl, born but three months before her mother's death. Who
can tell how John watched and prayed over that infant, or how he felt
that there was something left for him in this world yet, and thought that
if his child would live, he should not go down to the grave a lonely
desolate man. Poor John!--who can say whether it would not have been
better if the mother's coffin had been made a little larger, and the baby
had been carried up the hill, to sleep quietly with its mother, safe from
all the evil of this world.
But the child lived and grew, and, at seventeen, I remember her well, a
beautiful girl, merry, impetuous, and thoughtless, with black waving
hair and dark blue eyes, and all the village loved her and took pride in
her. For they said--"She is the handsomest and the best in the parish."

Chapter III

THE HISTORY OF (A CERTAIN FAMILY LIVING IN) EUROPE,
FROM THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR TO THE PEACE OF 1818,
CONTAINING FACTS HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED.
Among all the great old commoner families of the south of England,
who have held the lands of their fore-fathers through every change of

dynasty and religion, the Buckleys of Clere stand deservedly high
among the brightest and the oldest. All down the stormy page of this
great island's history one sees, once in a about a hundred years, that
name in some place of second-rate honour at least, whether as admiral,
general, or statesman; and yet, at the beginning of this present century,
the representative of the good old family was living at Clere House, a
palace built in the golden times of Elizabeth, on 900L. a-year, while all
the county knew that it took 300L. to keep Clere in proper repair.
The two Stuart revolutions had brought them down from county princes
to simple wealthy squires, and the