Victorian Short Stories | Page 4

Dartmoor, where the rivers Dart and Avon and
Teign form themselves, and where the broken moor is half cultivated,
and the wild-looking uplands fields are half moor. In making this
assertion I am often met with much doubt, but it is by persons who do
not really know the locality. Men and women talk to me on the matter

who have travelled down the line of railway from Exeter to Plymouth,
who have spent a fortnight at Torquay, and perhaps made an excursion
from Tavistock to the convict prison on Dartmoor. But who knows the
glories of Chagford? Who has walked through the parish of Manaton?
Who is conversant with Lustleigh Cleeves and Withycombe in the
moor? Who has explored Holne Chase? Gentle reader, believe me that
you will be rash in contradicting me unless you have done these things.
There or thereabouts--I will not say by the waters of which little river it
is washed--is the parish of Oxney Colne. And for those who would
wish to see all the beauties of this lovely country a sojourn in Oxney
Colne would be most desirable, seeing that the sojourner would then be
brought nearer to all that he would delight to visit, than at any other
spot in the country. But there is an objection to any such arrangement.
There are only two decent houses in the whole parish, and these are--or
were when I knew the locality--small and fully occupied by their
possessors. The larger and better is the parsonage in which lived the
parson and his daughter; and the smaller is the freehold residence of a
certain Miss Le Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred acres which
was rented by one Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed some thirty
acres round her own house which she managed herself, regarding
herself to be quite as great in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether
superior to him in the article of cider. 'But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,'
Farmer Cloysey would say, when Miss Le Smyrger expressed this
opinion of her art in a manner too defiant. 'Yeu pays no rent, or yeu
couldn't do it.' Miss Le Smyrger was an old maid, with a pedigree and
blood of her own, a hundred and thirty acres of fee-simple land on the
borders of Dartmoor, fifty years of age, a constitution of iron, and an
opinion of her own on every subject under the sun.
And now for the parson and his daughter. The parson's name was
Woolsworthy--or Woolathy as it was pronounced by all those who
lived around him--the Rev. Saul Woolsworthy; and his daughter was
Patience Woolsworthy, or Miss Patty, as she was known to the
Devonshire world of those parts. That name of Patience had not been
well chosen for her for she was a hot-tempered damsel, warm in her
convictions, and inclined to express them freely. She had but two
closely intimate friends in the world, and by both of them this freedom
of expression had been fully permitted to her since she was a child.

Miss Le Smyrger and her father were well accustomed to her ways, and
on the whole well satisfied with them. The former was equally free and
equally warm-tempered as herself, and as Mr. Woolsworthy was
allowed by his daughter to be quite paramount on his own subject--for
he had a subject--he did not object to his daughter being paramount on
all others. A pretty girl was Patience Woolsworthy at the time of which
I am writing, and one who possessed much that was worthy of remark
and admiration had she lived where beauty meets with admiration, or
where force of character is remarked. But at Oxney Colne, on the
borders of Dartmoor, there were few to appreciate her, and it seemed as
though she herself had but little idea of carrying her talent further afield,
so that it might not remain for ever wrapped in a blanket.
She was a pretty girl, tall and slender, with dark eyes and black hair.
Her eyes were perhaps too round for regular beauty, and her hair was
perhaps too crisp; her mouth was large and expressive; her nose was
finely formed, though a critic in female form might have declared it to
be somewhat broad. But her countenance altogether was very
attractive--if only it might be seen without that resolution for dominion
which occasionally marred it, though sometimes it even added to her
attractions.
It must be confessed on behalf of Patience Woolsworthy that the
circumstances of her life had peremptorily called upon her to exercise
dominion. She had lost her mother when she was sixteen, and had had
neither brother nor sister. She had no neighbours near her fit either
from education or rank to interfere in the conduct of her