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Page 4
But why should her father have been ignored in these family
arrangements? Perhaps it may almost suffice to say, that of all living
men her father was the man best conversant with the antiquities of the
county in which he lived. He was the Jonathan Oldbuck of Devonshire, and
especially of Dartmoor,--but without that decision of character which
enabled Oldbuck to keep his womenkind in some kind of subjection, and
probably enabled him also to see that his weekly bill did not pass their
proper limits. Our Mr. Oldbuck, of Oxney Colne, was sadly deficient in
these respects. As a parish pastor with but a small cure he did his duty
with sufficient energy to keep him, at any rate, from reproach. He was
kind and charitable to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing
with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and
indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of
him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But
all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr.
Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That
was his line of life. It was in that capacity that he was known to the
Devonshire world; it was as such that he journeyed about with his humble
carpetbag, staying away from his parsonage a night or two at a time; it
was in that character that he received now and again stray visitors in
the single spare bedroom--not friends asked to see him and his girl
because of their friendship--but men who knew something as to this
buried stone, or that old land-mark. In all these things his daughter
let him have his own way, assisting and encouraging him. That was his
line of life, and therefore she respected it. But in all other matters
she chose to be paramount at the parsonage.
Mr. Woolsworthy was a little man, who always wore, except on Sundays,
grey clothes--clothes of so light a grey that they would hardly have
been regarded as clerical in a district less remote. He had now reached
a goodly age, being full seventy years old; but still he was wiry and
active, and shewed but few symptoms of decay. His head was bald, and the
few remaining locks that surrounded it were nearly white. But there was
a look of energy about his mouth, and a humour in his light grey eye,
which forbade those who knew him to regard him altogether as an old man.
As it was, he could walk from Oxney Colne to Priestown, fifteen long
Devonshire miles across the moor; and he who could do that could hardly
be regarded as too old for work.
But our present story will have more to do with his daughter than with
him. A pretty girl, I have said, was Patience Woolsworthy; and one, too,
in many ways remarkable. She had taken her outlook into life, weighing
the things which she had and those which she had not, in a manner very
unusual, and, as a rule, not always desirable for a young lady. The
things which she had not were very many. She had not society; she had
not a fortune; she had not any assurance of future means of livelihood;
she had not high hope of procuring for herself a position in life by
marriage; she had not that excitement and pleasure in life which she
read of in such books as found their way down to Oxney Colne Parsonage.
It would be easy to add to the list of the things which she had not; and
this list against herself she made out with the utmost vigour. The
things which she had, or those rather which she assured herself of
having, were much more easily counted. She had the birth and education
of a lady, the strength of a healthy woman, and a will of her own. Such
was the list as she made it out for herself, and I protest that I assert
no more than the truth in saying that she never added to it either
beauty, wit, or talent.
I began these descriptions by saying that Oxney Colne would, of all
places, be the best spot from which a tourist could visit those parts
of Devonshire, but for the fact that he could obtain there none of the
accommodation which tourists require. A brother antiquarian might,
perhaps, in those days have done so, seeing that there was, as I have
said, a spare bedroom at the parsonage. Any intimate friend of Miss Le
Smyrger's might be as fortunate, for she was also so provided at Oxney
Colne, by which name her house was known. But Miss Le Smyrger was not
given to extensive hospitality, and it was only to those who were bound
to her, either by ties of blood or of very old friendship, that she
delighted to open her doors. As her old friends were very few in number,
as those few lived at a distance, and as her nearest relations were
higher in the world than she was, and were said by herself to look down
upon her, the visits made to Oxney Colne were few and far between.
But now, at the period of which I am writing, such a visit was about to
be made. Miss Le Smyrger had a younger sister who had inherited a
property in the parish of Oxney Colne equal to that of the lady who
lived there; but this younger sister had inherited beauty also, and she
therefore, in early life, had found sundry lovers, one of whom became
her husband. She had married a man even then well to do in the world,
but now rich and almost mighty; a Member of Parliament, a Lord of this
and that board, a man who had a house in Eaton Square, and a park in the
north of England; and in this way her course of life had been very much
divided from that of our Miss Le Smyrger. But the Lord of the Government
board had been blessed with various children, and perhaps it was now
thought expedient to look after Aunt Penelope's Devonshire acres. Aunt
Penelope was empowered to leave them to whom she pleased; and though it
was thought in Eaton Square that she must, as a matter of course, leave
them to one of the family, nevertheless a little cousinly intercourse
might make the thing more certain. I will not say that this was the sole
cause for such a visit, but in these days a visit was to be made by
Captain Broughton to his aunt. Now Captain John Broughton was the second
son of Alfonso Broughton, of Clapham Park and Eaton Square, Member of
Parliament, and Lord of the aforesaid Government Board.
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