Chapter III: A Shot at the Owl

BRIGHTLY fell the sunshine upon meadow and hedge-row, enamelled with the blossoms of May, as Philomel lightly trod the path through the fields which led to Burnesbey Abbey. Her spirit was in tone with the season, and with the warbling of linnet and thrush. The young maiden was as one of Nature's wild-flowers opening its petals to the light, or as the free bird that has never beaten its wings against the wires of a cage. Philomel was bound on what she felt to be a noble mission; a grander opportunity of benefitting her kind appeared to be now before her than had ever before occurred during her quiet, secluded life.

Perhaps the young girl, as she tripped along in her straw hat and waving scarf, while the May breeze played with her golden tresses, did not scan very closely her own motives for undertaking her mission. Philomel had a natural pleasure in conquering difficulties, in the hope of exercising power over a hard and sordid nature, of doing what the self-reliant Lady Macaw would never be able to do. It is not to be denied that a spirit of emulation, if it did not act as a spur, gave at least a zest to Philomel's expectations. She pictured to herself the pleasure of being the benefactress of her native village, and the tenfold increased delight which she would take in the school if it owed its preservation to her efforts.

And other thoughts would steal in—sweet and pleasant as the breeze of spring—so sweet that Philomel unconsciously slackened her steps to prolong the delicious reverie in which they now entranced her. The winner of the gentlemen-archers' prize had, according to the custom of the place, the privilege of presenting the ladies' prize to the fair victor, who, on her part, as Queen of the day, presented his trophy to him. Philomel had a presentiment that Delia would not be the one on the morrow to receive the silver arrow, and her own heart throbbed, and her blue eye sparkled, as fancy conjured up a bright scene. Philomel heard in imagination words softly spoken, congratulations uttered by lips that never flattered, to her who had won something better than trophy of silver or gold—the power of being a blessing to many.

And so the maiden's thoughts flowed on and on—ever in a deepening channel, with brighter sunshine glittering upon them, till the stream became lost in a wide-spreading sea of blissful hope, all the more dazzling became Philomel scarcely dared to own to herself what caused that intensity of light. As she heard the linnet calling to his mate, and the lark on buoyant wing sprang up from the meadow which she was crossing, almost unconsciously Philomel warbled to herself verses from Lytton's May-song:—

"'Wherefore, light bird, art thou bearing
Twig and moss to yonder tree?
For the home that I am rearing,
High from earth, as Love's should be.

"'If thus rudely I begin it,
Love itself completes the nest,
And the downy softness in it
Comes, O lover, from the breast.

"'All the while the buds are springing,
May is round thee and above,
As the bird sings he is singing,
As the bird loves canst thou love?'"

Philomel hushed the song on her lips, but not the music in her heart as she approached the romantic old pile of Burnesbey Abbey, which from its antiquity and picturesque beauty had been the showplace of the county in the days of Sir John, who had even winked at pic-nics held under the shadow of its walls by tourists who did not despise creature-comforts when in search of the picturesque. There was no danger now, however, that Philomel would come suddenly upon a pleasure party, or find the long grass strewn with fragments of sandwiches, or the corks of ginger-beer bottles. Save for the sounds of Nature, the place had been profoundly quiet since the gray owl had come to take possession of his nest.

Originally, as its name denoted, Burnesbey Abbey had been built for religious worship. The family into whose hands it had fallen in the reign of King Harry the Eighth, had, in successive generations, added to the pile, with little regard to symmetry of design. The student of architecture saw, with surprise, massive stone gateway, Gothic arch, and dim cloister—relics of the feudal age—in juxtaposition with half-ruined Grecian colonnade, and the gilded and carved ceilings of the reign of Louis Quatorze, the latest date which could be assigned to any part of the building. But Nature had done her utmost to harmonize all that otherwise would have seemed incongruous—she had draperied the Gothic arch with ivy, thrown round Italian columns a mantle of wild clematis, and set alike on old brick and more ancient stone the gray-green lichen and the dull orange-stain; she had planted the wall-flower in the niche, and half hidden the mullioned windows with leaves. Sir John had never suffered painter or builder to touch his romantic old home; he had left stone to crumble and lichen to grow, the owl to form her nest in the ivy, and the jackdaw to wheel round the tower; a hundred generations of swallows had made their homes under the eaves of Burnesbey Abbey, no one had ever disturbed them.

To Philomel, the wildness and solitude of the place gave it a singular charm. Though she had often, in company with others, partaken of Sir John's hospitality, this was the first time that she had visited Burnesbey Abbey on foot and alone. Never had she admired it half so much as when, in the stillness which brooded over it, fancy could people the ancient building with forms of the past. As Philomel crossed the rough bridge over the dried-up moat, she paused to gaze up on the time-worn abbey, and the exclamation, "How picturesque—how exquisite it is!" escaped from the maiden's lips.

It was like the breaking of a fairy spell, when, as Philomel was gliding past the windows of what—ages before—had been the monks' refectory, she caught sight of her uncle, in brown coat, black velvet skull-cap, and goggle spectacles, seated within at a table, with a plate of biscuits and a decanter of old port before him. Caleb Coffin saw his niece, rose, came to the window, and threw open the lattice.

"Why, Curly-poll, is that you, looking as bright and rosy as a May morning, come to cheer up a sulky old uncle in this strange rambling tumbledown old prison, into which his good or bad fortune has thrown him? Talk of country delights indeed! There's something in London to tell one that the world is alive—a roll of wheels and a hum of voices—but here! I'd give something for a street cry; even a grinding organ would not come amiss to me now!"

"O uncle, you have the birds!" cried Philomel Lamb.

"Yes indeed; I've endless cawing of rooks, chattering, chirping, and twittering of swallows. I can't light a fire in my bed-room, but the chimney must smoke because the birds, forsooth, have chosen to fill it up with their nests. They build in the gutters, they stop up the pipes, they wake me every morning with the noise of their chirping. I'll tell John to get the long ladder and pull down every nest in the place, and tear off the ivy that only serves as a harbour for earwigs, and give a decent respectable look to the building."

"The birds and the ivy! Oh, without them half the charm of the abbey would be gone!" exclaimed Philomel.

"That may be your opinion—that's not mine," said Caleb Coffin drily. "Maybe you've a taste for cobwebs also, and would think it desecration to let a carver and gilder set to work upon the old-fashioned ceilings. But I mean to have workmen dawn from London—I've just been drawing up estimates of what I think that it would cost to put this old place into thorough repair. I don't want gimcracks, or kickshaws, or show, but being neither an old baron nor an old monk, I like to have things decent about me. 'Twill cost a good round sum, I've no doubt; but I've made up my mind to spend it."

Philomel might at another time have burst into earnest expostulation against this scheme for transforming a beautiful old abbey into a prosaic "eligible residence" for a merchant from London. But Philomel had come with a definite object, and on an important mission, and was only too glad to find the old owl not only in a gracious humour and inclined to welcome a visitor, but also disposed to loosen his purse-strings. She therefore cheerfully accepted Caleb's invitation to come into the house and have a chat with him.

"You'll find the little door which opens on the tumbledown colonnade on the latch," said Mr. Coffin; "don't bother yourself or John by ringing at the great front entrance; you can always get in without announcing yourself; and come at what hour you will, you will always be welcome."

Philomel passed along that graceful colonnade, which, though much less ancient than the Gothic portion of the building, bore traces quite as evident of the touch of the finger of Time. The latch-door opened into a passage dark, vaulted, and low, and through the nail-studded door at the end of it the young lady entered the low refectory, where she was kindly received by her uncle.

"Now, child, you must taste my old port—'tis prime, ninety-six a dozen, and cheap at the figure," said the owner of Burnesbey Abbey, laying his wrinkled hand upon the decanter before him, and nodding to his niece to occupy one of the large heavy chairs enriched with faded blue velvet, which had been bought in the reign of Queen Anne to supersede the old oaken benches.

"Thanks, uncle; but I have long ago taken my unfashionable early dinner, and I have the bad taste to prefer cowslip-wine to port a hundred years old," replied Philomel. "Let me sit on this footstool beside you, and tell you what brings me here to-day." Philomel drew out the footstool and seated herself at the feet of her uncle, so that she could rest her clasped hand upon his knee, and look up into his face. She felt that in this child-like attitude of confidence and ease she could better prefer her request, and that the stately old velvet cushioned chair would have imparted to her its own stiffness.

The merchant was looking down upon his niece through his tortoise-shell glasses with as much kindliness as it was in the nature of the old owl to show. If there was a being on earth who had a nook in his selfish heart, it was this only child of the sister whom he had lost.

"I've come to ask a favour—a great favour," said Philomel, as she raised her bright face towards her uncle's, and her straw hat fell back upon her ringlets of gold. She won from him an answering smile, which had nothing cynical in it, as Caleb playfully observed, "Ah, I guess that you did not visit the old man for nothing. I'll be bound that to-morrow's archery-meeting was in that little head of yours as you came tripping along."

"I confess that it crossed my mind," owned the conscious maiden.

"You think you'll win the archery prize?"

"I hope so," said Philomel, smiling.

"And you came to ask me to give something handsome for the ladies to shoot for—eh, Curly-poll? If I were sure that my little niece would be the one to get it—why, I shouldn't so much mind doing the handsome thing once in a way."

"No; my wishes fly higher than that, uncle; I am going to ask a much more important boon," said Philomel Lamb. "I am going to entreat my kind uncle to oblige not only me, but all who dwell near him, by continuing to do what Sir John did for our little school on the moor."

The manner of Caleb instantly changed; he uttered a low hiss, and roughly drew away the hand upon which Philomel had laid her own. "The child is crazy," he said. "Why, the rent of that cottage, the salary and all, can't come to less than seventy pounds per annum, the interest of two thousand pounds at three and a half per cent! You don't suppose that you have only to hold out your little hand and have two thousand sovereigns drop into it, like a ripe plum from a tree?"

"I know that I am asking a great favour," said Philomel timidly, for Caleb's roughness of manner discouraged her; "but you know that it is not for myself. Your own honour, your own satisfaction, and—"

"Fiddlety dee!" exclaimed Caleb Coffin, rising abruptly from his seat. "Don't attempt to humbug me with all those fine words, I'm not such a gudgeon as to snap at that bait. Though," he added more good-humouredly, "if I were, I should have plenty of idiots to keep me in company. What says the epigram?—

"'The world of fools has such a store,
That he who would not see an ass,
Must shut his shutters, bolt his door,
And—"break his looking-glass!"'

"Though 'that's' the last thing that a woman would ever think of doing—he! he! he!" And restored to complacence by his own joke, Caleb quietly resumed his seat, and stretched out his hand to the decanter.

"But, uncle," expostulated Philomel, "you would not really have Thwayte without a school, and we cannot support one unless you help us. The children have been so well taught."

"What have they been taught?" interrupted Caleb, with the bottle in his hand.

"Reading, writing—"

"Humbug!" cried Caleb Coffin. "What is their reading and writing to me? If a lad sweep away my dead leaves, I'll not ask him whether he has ever turned over the leaves of a book; if my housemaid rub up my furniture well, what care I how her brain may be furnished; let my cook mind her pans, not her pens—'tis food for the body and not for the mind that I expect from my kitchen." And Caleb, having given out his sentiments, filled his glass with the costly wine.

Philomel felt shocked by the selfishness of the master who regarded his servants simply as instruments to minister to his own comfort. As he sat holding up his glass to the light, as if to examine the colour of its contents, and then slowly sipping, he looked to her eyes the picture of selfish indulgence.

"There is some knowledge," Philomel observed, "that all should have—the knowledge that will make them better Christians as well as better servants. I am sure that if poor Sir John could speak now, he would tell us that there is no part of his fortune which he spent more wisely, more for his own happiness here and hereafter, than that with which he earned the blessings of the poor around him."

Caleb Coffin set down his glass, and through his goggle glasses peered searchingly into the face of his niece. "I should like you to sift your own argument, for I take it there's more chaff than grain in your sack," he observed. "Though all that sounds very pretty, and I daresay that your father gets you to help him to write his sermons, do you mean to say that my poor cousin, Sir John—who was no great saint, you'll allow—bought for himself a certain reversionary interest in the other world, by a certain expenditure in this?"

Philomel was embarrassed by the question, and the searching gaze oppressed her. Sir John had been notoriously careless of even the forms of religion, only going to church twice or thrice in the year, and then doing so merely as "a compliment to the parson." He had been suddenly cut off in the midst of a worldly career; and, liberal benefactor as he had been to the village, no one ever imagined that he had ever given a shilling from motives of piety. Sir John had kept up a school as he had kept a pack of hounds and a plentiful board, because to do so naturally belonged to his position as the wealthy lord of the manor.

"Do you suppose," continued Mr. Coffin, "that Sir John was able to keep a kind of debtor and creditor account with Heaven; that if a jovial careless sort of life, with an oath here and there, weighed down the balance against him, he had just to chuck a school and schoolmaster into the opposite scale, and have all even again? This abbey here was built, they say, by a robber baron of old, as a kind of compensation for cutting a score of throats. Neither consciences nor throats, I take it, can be mended with brick and mortar; yet some such idea seems to lie at the bottom of a good deal of what is called charity now—a notion of purchasing by almsgiving here a reversion after death. But that's not my idea of religion."

"Nor mine neither," exclaimed Philomel with warmth; "it would be impiety to entertain it for a moment."

"Then what return did Sir John really get for what he laid out on that school? I'll tell you," said Caleb Coffin, beginning to count on his fingers. "First, he got Lady Macaw and her set to own that, with all his faults, he understood his position. Then, when he died, he got ditto ditto to say over their whist, 'Dear, what a pity; Sir John is dead!—spades are trumps. I wish he'd remembered the school in his will, but he was always so thoughtless, poor man! I'm afraid that we'll find his successor a sad stingy fellow—will you let me see the last trick?'"

Philomel could not forbear smiling at the mimicking tone and manner of the cynic.

"Thirdly," continued the owl, "Sir John will probably get the words, 'Liberal to the poor,' in black letters upon his monument. And now I think that I've summed up the full amount of the return for the interest of two thousand pounds expended by my cousin on the school, and I can't say that the result tempts me to lay out my money on a like speculation."

"Oh, Uncle Caleb, do you not take into account the present pleasure of doing so much good?"

Perhaps that was a pleasure of which Mr. Coffin had no large experience, for he did not seem inclined to reckon it as an additional item in his calculation. "It's all very well for romantic young folk like yourself or Meredith," he observed, with a shrug of his shoulders, "to talk of such present pleasure, but I'll be bound that if you'd nothing else to set you going on works of charity, you'd precious soon come to a stop. Ay, Curly-poll, look indignant if you will, but I take it that it was not pure pleasure in doing good that brought you here begging to-day."

"I am sure that I neither asked nor wished for anything for myself," said Philomel Lamb, in the tone of one whose feelings are wounded.

"Nothing in the coin of the realm, I grant you; nothing in gold, silver, or copper; but maybe something that you like better in the crackling bank-notes of praise. Was there no pride in showing your power to squeeze money out of a millstone; no thought of what would be said of the pretty little maid who had coaxed her crabbed old uncle into being liberal and kind against his will and his nature?"

The fair young face of Philomel Lamb was suffused with crimson; it seemed as if those keen gray eyes, peering through their tortoise-shell spectacles, were reading the secret which had made her walk to the abbey a time for such delightful musings. Covering her confusion with an air of childish petulance, Philomel Lamb hastily rose from her seat, and drew over her curly head the straw hat which had fallen back on her neck.

"I see, Uncle Caleb," she said, "that whatever motive brought me here, at least I have come to no purpose. I only wish that our school had had a better and a more successful pleader than I am."

And so, with something of coldness, the young lady bade good-bye to her uncle, and, mortified and disappointed, retraced her steps. With emotions of indignation against a selfish, stingy old man, were mingled a feeling of discontent with herself. There "had" been self-seeking in her attempt to influence her uncle, the secret desire to please "one" had been at least as strong as the wish to benefit many. It was certainly not love for the little scholars of Thwayte that had lent the most vivid tints to the picture which fancy had been drawing in Philomel's mind, of woman, like some beneficent being, scattering blessings on the world at her feet.