Chapter 1

_September_ 29, 1772.

This is my first night in what, henceforward, is going to be my home.
The thought should be a happy and a solemn one; but it merely goes on
and on in my head like the words of a song in some unknown language.
Eustace has gone below to his uncles; and I am alone in this great room,
and also, I imagine, in the whole wing of this great house. The wax
lights on the dressing-table, and the unsnuffed dip with which the old
housekeeper lit us through endless passages, leave all the corners dark.
But the moonlight pours in through the vast, cage-like window. The moon
is shining on a strip of sea above the tree-tops, and the noise of the
sea is quite close; a noise quite unlike that of any running water, and
methinks very melancholy and hopeless in expression. I tried to enjoy it
like a play, or a romance which one reads; and indeed, the whole
impression of this castle is marvellously romantic.

When Eustace had unstrapped my packages, and in his tender manner placed
all my little properties in order, he took me in his arms, meaning
thereby to welcome me to my new home and the house of his fathers. We
were standing by the window, and I tried, foolishly it seems, to hide my
weakness of spirit (for I confess to having felt a great longing to cry)
by pointing to that piece of moonlit sea, and repeating a line of
Ossian, at the beginning of the description of the pirates crossing the
sea to the house of Erved. Foolishly, for although that passage is a
favourite with Eustace, indeed one we often read during our courtship,
he was annoyed at my thinking of such matters, I suppose, at such a
moment; and answered with that kind of irritated deprecation that is so
new to me; embracing me indeed once more, but leaving me immediately to
go to his uncles.

Foolish Penelope! It is this no doubt which makes me feel lonely just
now; and I can hear you, dearest mother, chiding me laughingly, for
giving so much weight to such an incident. Eustace will return
presently, as gentle and sympathising as ever, and all will be right
with me. Meanwhile, I will note down the events of this day, so
memorable in my life.

We seemed to ride for innumerable hours, I in the hired chaise, and my
husband on the horse he had bought at Bristol. The road wound endlessly
up and down, through a green country, with barely a pale patch of reaped
field, and all veiled in mist and driving rain. There seemed no villages
anywhere, only at distances of miles, a scant cottage or two of grey
stone and thatch; and once or twice during all those hours, a desolate
square tower among distant trees; and all along rough hedges and grey
walls with stones projecting like battlements. Inland mountain lines
like cliffs, dim in the rain; and at last, over the pale green fields,
the sea--quite pale, almost white. We had to ask our way more than once,
losing it again in this vague country without landmarks, where
everything appeared and disappeared in mist. I had begun to feel as if
St. Salvat's had no real existence, when Eustace rode up to the chaise
window and pointed out the top of a tower, and a piece of battlemented
wall, emerging from the misty woods, and a minute after we were at a
tall gate tower, with a broken escutcheon and a drawbridge, which
clanked up behind us so soon as we were over. We stopped in a great
castle yard, with paved paths across a kind of bowling green, and at the
steps of the house, built unevenly all round, battlemented and turreted,
with huge projecting windows made of little panes.

There were a lot of men upon the steps, who surrounded the postchaise;
they were roughly and variously dressed, some like fishermen and
keepers, but none as I had hitherto seen the gentlemen of this country.
But as we stopped, another came down the steps with a masterful air,
pushed them aside, opened the chaise, lifted me out, and made me a very
fine bow as I stood quite astonished at the suddenness of his ways. He
was dressed entirely in black broadcloth, with a frizzled wig and bands,
as clergymen are dressed here, and black cloth gaiters.

"May it please the fair Lady Brandling," he said, with a fine gesture,
"to accept the hearty welcome of her old Uncle Hubert, and of her other
kinsmen." The others came trooping round awkwardly, with little show of
manners. But the one called Hubert, the clergyman, gave me his arm,
waived them away, said something about my being tired from the long
ride, and swept, nay, almost carried me up the great staircase and
through the passages to the room where dinner was spread. Of this he
excused himself from partaking, alleging the lateness of the hour and
his feeble digestion; but he sat over against my husband and me while we
were eating, drank wine with me, and kept up a ceaseless flow of
conversation, rather fulsomely affable methought and packed with
needless witticisms; but which freed me from the embarrassment produced
by the novelty of the situation, by my husband's almost utter silence,
and also, I must add, by the man's own scrutinising examination of me. I
was heartily glad when, the glasses being removed, he summoned the
housekeeper, and with another very fine bow, committed me to her
charge. Eustace begged to be excused for accompanying me to my chamber,
and promised to return and drink his wine presently with his kinsmen.

And now, dear mother, I have told you of our arrival at St. Salvat's;
and I have confessed to you my childish fear of I know not what. "Mere
bodily fatigue!" I hear you briskly exclaiming, and chiding me for such
childish feelings. But if you were here, dearest mother, you would take
me also in your arms, and I should know that you knew it was not all
foolishness and cowardice, that you would know what it is, for the first
time in my little life, to be without you.

_October_ 5, 1772.

It has stopped raining at last, and Eustace, who is again the kindest
and most considerate of men, has taken me all over the castle and the
grounds, or at least a great part. St. Salvat's is even more
romantically situated than I had thought; and with its towers and
battlements hidden in deep woods, it makes one think of castles, like
that of Otranto, which one reads of in novels; nay, I was the more
reminded of the latter work of fiction (which Eustace believes to be
from the pen of the accomplished Mr. Walpole, whom we knew in Paris),
that there are, let into the stonework on either side of the porch, huge
heads of warriors, filleted and crowned with laurel, which though
purporting to be those of the Emperors Augustus and Trajan, yet look as
if they might fit into some gigantic helmet such as we read of in that
admirable tale.

From the house, which has been built at various times (Eustace is of
opinion mainly in the time of the famous Cardinal Wolsey, as the
architecture, it appears, is similar to that of His Majesty's palace at
Hampton Court), into the old castle; from the house, as I say, the
gardens descend in great terraces and steps into the woods and to the
sea. The gardens are indeed very much neglected, and will require no
doubt, a considerable expenditure of labour; but I am secretly charmed
by their wild luxuriance: a great vine and a pear tree hang about the
mullioned windows almost unpruned, and the box and bay trees have grown
into thickets in the extraordinary kindliness of this warm, moist
climate. There is in the middle of the terraces, a pond all overgrown
with lilies, and with a broken leaden statue of a nymph. Here, when he
was a child, Eustace was wont to watch for the transformation into a
fairy of a great water snake which was said to have lived in that pond
for centuries; but I well remember his awakening my compassion by
telling me how, one day, his brother Thomas, wishing to displease him,
trapped the poor harmless creature and cruelly skinned it alive. "That
is the place of my poor water snake," Eustace said to-day; and it was
the first time since our coming, that he has alluded to his own or his
family's past. Poor Eustace! I am deeply touched by the evident painful
memories awakened by return to St. Salvat's, which have over-clouded his
reserved and sensitive nature, in a manner I had not noticed (thank
Heaven) since our marriage. But to return to the castle, or rather its
grounds. What chiefly delights my romantic temper are the woods in which
it is hidden, and its singular position, on an utterly isolated little
bay of this wild and dangerous coast. You go down the terraces into a
narrow ravine, lined with every manner of fern, and full of venerable
trees; past the little church of which our Uncle Hubert is the
incumbent, alongside some ruined buildings, once the quarters of the
Brandlings' troopers, across a field full of yellow bog flowers, and on
to a high wall. And on the other side of that wall, quite unexpected, is
the white, misty sea, dashing against a bit of sand and low pale rocks,
where our uncles' fishing boats are drawn up, and chafing, further off
against the sunken reefs of this murderous coast. And to the right and
the left, great clumps of wind-bent trees and sharp cliffs appear and
disappear in the faint, misty sunshine.

As we stood on the sea wall, listening to the rustle of the waves, a
ship, with three masts and full sail, passed slowly at a great
distance, to my very great pleasure.

"Where is she going, do you know?" I asked rather childishly.

"To Bristol," answered Eustace curtly. "It is perhaps, some West
Indiaman, laden with sugar, and spirits, and coffee and cotton. All the
vessels bound for Bristol sail in front of St. Salvat's."

"And is not the coast very dangerous?" I asked, for the sight of that
gallant ship had fascinated me. "Are there not wrecks sometimes along
those reefs we see there?"

"Sometimes!" exclaimed Eustace sadly. "Why at seasons, almost daily. All
that wood which makes the blue flame you like so much, is the timber of
wrecked vessels, picked up along this coast."

My eye rested on the boats drawn up on the sand of the little cove:
stout black boats, such as Eustace had pointed out to me at Bristol as
pilchard boats.

"And when there is a wreck?" I asked, "do your uncles go out to save the
poor people with those boats?"

"Alas, dear Lady Brandling," answered an unexpected voice at my elbow,
"it is not given to poor weak mortals like us to contend with the
decrees of a just, though wrathful Providence."

I turned round and there stood, leaning on the sea wall, with his big
liquorice-coloured eyes fixed on me, and a smile (methought) of polite
acquiescence in shipwrecks, our uncle, the Reverend Hubert, in his fine
black coat and frizzled white wig.

_October_ 12, 1772.

We have been here over a fortnight now, and although it feels as if I
never could grow accustomed to all this strangeness, it seems months;
and those years at Grandfey, all my life before my marriage, and before
our journey, a vivid dream.

Where shall I begin? During the first week Eustace and I had our meals,
as seemed but natural, in the great hall with his uncles and his one
cousin. For two days things went decently enough. The uncles--Simon,
Edward, Gwyn, David, and the cousin, Evan, son of David, were evidently
under considerable restraint, and fear (methought) of the Reverend
Hubert, who seems somehow a creature from another planet. The latter sat
by Eustace and me, at the high end of the table; the others, and with
them the Bailiff Lloyd, at the lower. The service was rough but clean,
and the behaviour, although gloomily constrained, decent and
gentlemanly. But little by little a spirit of rebellion seemed to arise.
It began by young Evan, a sandy-haired lad of seventeen, coming to
dinner with hands unwashed and red from skinning, as he told us, an
otter; and on the Reverend Hubert bidding him go wash before appearing
in my presence, his father, David, taking his part, forcing the lad
into his chair, and saying something in the unintelligible Welsh
language, which contained some rudeness towards me, for he plainly
nodded in my direction and struck the table with his fist. At this the
Reverend Hubert got up, took the boy Evan by the shoulders and led him
to the door, without one of the party demurring. "The lovely Lady
Brandling," he said, turning to me as he resumed his place, "must
forgive this young Caliban, unaccustomed like the one of the play, to
beautiful princesses." I notice he loves to lard his speech with
literary reminiscences, and is indeed a better read person than one
would expect to meet in such a place. This was, however, only the
beginning. Uncle David appeared next night undoubtedly in liquor, and
was with difficulty constrained to decent behaviour. Simon, a heavy,
lubberly creature, arrived all covered with mud, in shirtsleeves, and
smelling vilely of stale fish. Then it was the turn of Edward, a great
black man, with a scar on his cheek, to light his pipe at table, and
pinch the Welsh serving wench as she passed, and whisper to her in Welsh
some jest which made the others roar. Eustace and Hubert, between whom I
sat at the far end, pretended not to notice, though Eustace reddened
visibly, and Hubert took an odd green colour, which seems to be the
complexion of his anger. And then while our clergyman uncle and Eustace
busily fell to discussing literature, and even (in a manner which,
under other circumstances, would have made me laugh) quoting the
classics, the conversation at the lower end became loud and violent in
Welsh.

"They are discussing the likelihood of a shoal of pilchards," said
Hubert to me with a faint uneasy smile. "My brothers, I grieve to say,
dear Lady Brandling, are but country bred, and very rough diamonds; and
the Saxon, as they call our Christian language, is a difficulty to their
heathenishness."

"So great a difficulty, apparently," I answered, suddenly rising from
the table, for I felt indignant with the want of spirit of my two
gentlemen, "that methinks I shall in future leave them to their
familiar Welsh, and order my meals in my parlour, where you two
gentlemen may, if you choose, have them with me." Eustace turned
crimson, bit his lip; Uncle Hubert went very green; and I own I myself
was astonished at my decision of tone and attitude: it was like an
unknown _me_ speaking with my voice.

Contrary to my expectation, neither Eustace nor Hubert manifested any
vexation with me. We went upstairs and sat down to cards as if nothing
had happened. But the next day Hubert brought me a long message of
apology, which I confess sounded very much of his making up, from Uncle
David. But added that he quite agreed that it was better that Eustace
and I should have our meals above, "and leave the hogs to their wash."
"Only," he said, with that politeness which I like so little (though
Heaven knows politeness ought to be a welcome drug in this place), "I
trust my dear young niece will not cast me out of the paradise I have,
after so many years, tasted of; and allow her old rough Uncle Hubert
occasionally to breathe the air of refinement she has brought to this
castle."

Yet I notice he has but rarely eaten with Eustace and me; coming up,
however, to drink wine (or pretend, for he never empties his glass and
complains he has but a weak head), or play cards, or hear me sing to the
harpsichord, a performance of which he seems inordinately fond.

I cannot help wondering what Eustace and he discuss, besides literature,
over their wine. For Eustace must surely intend, sooner or later, to
resume his position of master of St. Salvat's, and dispose, some way, of
the crew of Caliban uncles.

_October_ 18, 1772.

I ought to say something to my dear mother (though I am getting doubtful
of distressing her with my small and temporary troubles) about the
domestic economy of St. Salvat's. This is odd enough, to my thinking.
The greater part of the castle is unoccupied, and from what I have seen,
quite out of repair; nor should I have deemed it possible that so many
fine dwelling-rooms could ever have been filled and choked up, as is
here the case, with lumber, and, indeed, litter, of all kinds. The
uncles, all except Hubert, are lodged in the great south wing, and I
should guess in a manner more suitable to their looks than to their
birth, while Eustace and I occupy his mother's apartments, done up in
the late reign, in the north wing looking on the sea. The centre of the
castle is taken up by the great hall, going from ground to ceiling, so
that the two halves are virtually isolated; certainly isolated so far as
I am concerned, since the fear of eavesdropping on my uncles' brawling
has already stopped my using the gallery which runs under the ceiling of
the hall, and connects my apartments with the main staircase. The dairy,
still-room, pantry, and even the kitchen are in outhouses, from which
the serving men bring in the food often in pouring rain in an incredibly
reckless manner. I say "serving men," because one of the peculiarities
of St. Salvat's (for I can scarce believe it to be an universal practice
in England or even in Wales) is the predominance of the male sex. But
let not your fancy construe this as a sign of grandeur, or conjure up
bevies of lacqueys in long coats and silver badges! Like master, like
man; the men at St. Salvat's have the same unkempt, sea-wolfish look as
the masters, are equally foul in their habits and possess even less
English. By some strange freak the cook only is not of these parts,
indeed, a mulatto, knowing only Spanish. "All good sea-faring folk,
able to man the boats on a stormy night," explained Uncle Gwyn, as if it
were quite natural that the castle of St. Salvat's should be a
headquarters of pilchard fishing! I have only seen the mulatto at a
distance, and at first believed him to be an invention of Uncle Simon's,
the wag of the family, who informed me he had him off a notorious pirate
ship, where he had learnt to grill d----d French frogs during the late
war and serve them up with capers.

The small number of women servants is scarce to be regretted, judging by
the few there are. Though whether, indeed, these sluts should be judged
at all as serving women I feel inclined to doubt; for no secret is made
of the dairymaid and the laundress being the sultanas of Uncles Simon
and Gwyn, with whom they often sit to meals; while the little waiting
wench at first allotted to me was too obviously courted by the oaf Evan
to be kept in my service. Uncle Hubert had indeed thought it needful to
explain to me that the gentry of these parts all live worse than
heathens, and has attempted (but the subject gave me little
satisfaction) to confirm this by the _chronique galante_ of the
neighbourhood; 'tis wonderful how quick the man is at taking a hint, and
adapting his views to his listeners', at least to mine. To come back to
the maids, if such a name can be applied here, I find the only reputable
woman in the castle (her age, and something in her manner give her a
claim to such an adjective) is Mrs. Davies, the supposed housekeeper,
who now attends on my (luckily very simple) wants. She was the
foster-mother and nurse of my brother-in-law, the late Baronet; and 'tis
plain there was no love lost betwixt Eustace and her. Indeed, I seem to
guess she may have helped to make his infancy the sad and solitary one
it was. Yet, for all this suspicion, and a confused impression (which I
can't account for) that the woman is set over us to spy, I am bound to
say that of all people here, not excepting Uncle Hubert here, Mrs.
Davies is the one most to my taste. She has been notably beautiful, and
despite considerable age, has an uncommon active and erect bearing; and
there is about her harsh, dark face, and silent, abrupt manners,
something which puts me at ease by its strength and straightforwardness.
This seems curious after saying she has been _set to spy_; but 'tis my
impression that in this heathenish country spying, aye, and I can fancy
robbing and murdering, might be done with a clean conscience as a duty
towards one's masters; and Hubert, and the memory of Sir Thomas, are the
real masters, and not Eustace and I.... Will it always be so? Things
look like it; and yet, at the bottom of my soul, I find a hope, almost
an expectation, that with God's grace I shall clean out this Augean
stable, and burn out these wasp's nests....

_October_ 29.

On my asking about prayers, a practice I had noticed in every family
since my arrival in England, Uncle Hubert excused himself by explaining
that most of the common folk about here had followed Mr. Wesley's sect,
and for the rest few of the household understood English. The same
reason methought prevented his fulfilling his clergyman's office in
public; and when three Sundays had passed, I got to think that the
church in the glen was never opened at all. To my surprise last night,
being Saturday, the Reverend Hubert invited us very solemnly to Divine
Service the following morning; invited, for his manner was very much
that of a man requesting one's company at a concert or theatrical
entertainment. I am just returned, and I confess my astonishment. Uncle
Hubert, though in a style by no means to my taste, and with no kind of
real religious spirit, is undoubtedly a preacher of uncommon genius, nor
was there any possibility, methought, that his extempore sermon was
learned by heart. The flowing rhetorical style, more like that of Romish
divines, was of a piece also with his conversation, and he had the look
of enjoyment of one conscious of his own powers. I own the interest of
the performance (for such I felt it) was so great that it was only on
reflection I perceived the utter and almost indecent inappropriateness
thereof. Despite the lack of English, the entire household, save the
mulatto, were present, mostly asleep in constrained attitudes; and the
other uncles, all except David and Gwyn, lay snoring in their pews.

My own impression was oddly disagreeable; but on the service ending, I
brought myself to compliment our uncle. "You should have been a bishop,"
I said, "at your age, Uncle Hubert."

He sighed deeply, "A bishop? I ought to have--I might have
been--everything, anything--save for this cursed place and my own
weakness. But doubtless," he added, hypocritically, "it is a just decree
of Providence that has decided thus. But it is hard sometimes. There are
two natures in us, occasionally, and the one vanquishes and overwhelms
the other. In me," and here he began to laugh, "the fisherman for
pilchards has got the better of the fisherman for souls."

"Fishing appears to have wondrous attractions," I answered negligently.

He turned and looked at me scrutinisingly. "We have all had the passion,
we Brandlings," he said, "except that superfine gentleman yonder,"
nodding at Eustace. And added, in a loud, emphatic voice, "And none of
us has been a more devoted fisherman, you will admit, dear Eustace, than
your lamented father."

Eustace, I thought, turned pale, but it might have been the greenish
light through the bottle-glass windows of the little church, on whose
damp floor we three were standing before the tombs of the Brandlings of
former times, quaint pyramids of kneeling figures, sons and daughters
tapering downwards from the kneeling father and mother; and recumbent
knights, obliterated by centuries in the ruined roofless chapel, so that
the dog at their feet, the sword by their side, let alone their poor
washed features, were scarce distinguishable....

"They look like drowned people," I said, and indeed the green light
through the trees and the bottle glass, and the greenish damp stains all
round, made the church seem like a sea cave, with the sea moaning round
it.

"Where have you seen drowned people, Penelope?" asked Eustace, and I
felt a little reproved for the horridness of my imaginings.

"Nowhere," I hastily answered; "just a fancy that passed through my
head. And you said there are so many wrecks on this coast, you know."

"We are all wrecks on the ocean of Time," remarked the Reverend Hubert,
"overwhelmed by its flood."

"You are the bishop now," I laughed, "not the pilchard fisher," and we
went through the damp churchyard of huddled grassy mounds and crooked
gravestones under the big trees of the glen.

"Eustace," I said that evening, "I wish I might not be buried down
there," and then, considering that all his ancestors were, I felt sorry.

But he clasped my arm very tenderly, and exclaimed with a look of deep
pain, "For God's sake do not speak of such things, my love. Even in jest
the words make me feel faint and sick."

Poor Eustace! I fear he is not well; and that what he has found at St.
Salvat's is eating into his spirits.

_November_ 15, 1772.

I have been feeling doubtful, for some days past, whether to send my
diary regularly to my mother, lest she should be distressed (at that
great distance) by my account of this place and our life here. Yet I
felt as if something had suddenly happened, a window suddenly closed or
a door slammed in my face, when Eustace begged me to-day to be very
reserved in anything I wrote in my letters.

"These country postmasters," he said, not without hesitation, "are not
to be trusted with any secrets; they are known to amuse their leisure
and entertain their gossips with the letters which pass through their
hands." He laughed, but not very naturally. "Some day," he said, "I will
be sending a special messenger to Cardiff, and then your diary--for I
know that you are keeping one--shall go to your mother. But for the
present I would not say more than needful about ... about our
surroundings, my dear Penelope."

I felt childishly vexed.

"'Tis that hateful Uncle Hubert;" I cried, "that reads our letters,
Eustace! I feel sure of it!"

"Nonsense," answered Eustace. "I tell you that it is a well-known habit
among postmasters and postmistresses in this country," and he went away
a little displeased, as I thought.

My poor journal! And yet I shall continue writing it, and perhaps even
more frankly now it will be read only by me; for while I write I seem to
be talking to my dearest mother, and to be a little less solitary....