THE HOUSE OF CLARISFORD.*
THE struggle of the human will against the power of some inherited doom has at all times been a favourite theme of tragedy -and romance. In darker ages, the belief in prophecy or curse, descending sometimes in strict entail with the estate, sometimes more liberally distributing itself over all the members of a family, may have contributed to the moulding of family character, and by appealing to superstitious fears and selfish hopes, done much towards its own fulfilment. How, in later days, such a tradition may still exercise an evil influence over those who think they have outgrown it, is shown with much ability in this record of the fortunes of the House of Clarisford, a story somewhat com- plex and lengthy, leaping freely from one generation to another, but preserving throughout a common centre of interest, and bound together by one continuous purpose. At first, the number of the dramatis persona and their intricate relationships puzzle the mind of the reader, who is also rather con- fused at the flights, both in time and space, which he is called upon to make ; but as the story proceeds, the chaos takes form and shapes itself into an interesting narrative, in which scarcely one character is really superfluous, and the plot moves on with accelerating speed to a crisis of more interest than could have been looked for in a novel where the love-story is a bygone thing, and the hero is brought upon the scene reading the news of the birth of his second son.
" Thereby," however, " hangs a tale," for the second son is the bete noire of the House of Clarisford,—which implied a state of feeling on the face of it unjust, since it was the murder of a second son by the hand of his elder brother that brought down the curse, " that as long as there was a second son, no eldest son should band down the Clarisford estate to his own eldest-born, till the heir of Clarisford should be thrice lost." But as the proverb truly says, " Curses, like chickens, come home to roost," and the ban of the eldest brother made the position of the second so intolerable, that at last two successive heirs presumptive fled from home, preferring to make their own way in the world to remaining an object of suspicious dislike while waiting for their brother's shoes at home. How the third heir is lost and found we will not unfold, partly out of con- sideration for the author, but more because the plot is far too cunningly interwoven to be intelligibly unrolled within our allotted space. We must content ourselves with saying that it is not • The Howe of Clarisford: a Prophecy. By Frederick Woodman. London : Samuel Tinsley. unworthy of the fertile brain of a Wilkie Collins, and the climax, when the smuggler, kidnapper, and villain par excellence of the story is buried alive within a secret chamber by the fall of his own chimney in a gale of wind, is ghastly enough for Mrs. Radcliffe's pen.
The whole of the wilder parts of the story, the tramps and sea- faring men, the smugglers and cottage-folk, are admirably drawn. They are genuine men and women, and Hampshire men and women, racy of the soil. Their speech and ways of living are drawn from the lite, by one who must have studied them with real sympathy under their modern and more softened aspect, for
the plot of the story is laid some fifty years or more ago, and such wild work as was then carried on in obscure villages, on heaths, and in small seaports, would happily be impossible now. Here is a peep into rustic innocence in the retired hamlet of Wilsted. It will give our readers a fair notion of Mr. Woodman's somewhat quaint, but cultivated style,—and careful writing is too scarce in the general run of novels not to deserve a word of notice on its own account :—
" Louisa looked out of her window before she undressed, but it was darker even than on the previous night ; tho wind had died away, the air was still, no sound was heard but the steady dropping of the piti- less rain. She went to bed, but could not sleep. The remembrance of the face which she had soon in the churchyard by the gate haunted her, and the previous scenes with which it had been connected raced rapidly but confusedly through her mind. At length she arose and walked to the window, thinking that change of posture might tend to a change of ideas also, and drew up the blind and looked out into the darkness. It was darkness no longer in the direction of the old church ; the corpse-lights of Wilsted were lighted, and the side of the buildings upon which she looked seemed illuminated as for some great gala-day ; lights in the windows, lights in the porch, lights creeping like glow-worms along the path and wall. It was scarcely half an hour since she had looked towards it last, and could not even trace its outline, and now it was all in a blaze. It was so strange, that she could not persuade herself, at first, that she was awake, it all looked so much like a dream. Sho was ashamed of doing what her first im- pulse would have led her to do ; run off into Mrs. Bryant's room, and bring in another witness to this weird spectacle ; at last, waking or sleeping, she found herself unmistakably alive to the sensation of cold, and could not distrust the evidence of this, any more than the rest of her senses. Accordingly, she opened the dressing-room door and stole softly to her friend's bedside."
Her friend was hard to be convinced that it was not all a dream, at length,— "'They are but lights,' she pleaded, after all, and lights would do no harm ; those would put them out who lighted them.' Was it scepti- cism or timidity that suggested tho answer, or something else ? I only know that it is exceedingly dangerous to try to balance the arguments for or against getting up and lying still when you are between the warm sheets. At last, however, Louisa's evident earnestness and anxiety triumphed over all adverse influences, and Mrs. Bryant pre- pared to rise. Stop !' cried Louisa, whose senses were sharpened by apprehension, stop. There must be Dr. Bryant or Harry Tidy come back. I hear the sound of a horse, and I think of wheels.' No longer slothful or doubting, the young wife sprang out of bed and hastened
to the window ' Listen, I bear it again.'—' Shall I run and call the maid ?'—' No, stop ; if it is Mr. Tidy, he would have to drive down to Mr. Pitt's to put up his horse.'—' Hush ! I wonder which it is. Both, I think. Dorcas, do let me run down ?'—' I must strike a light first, only I do not want to make a noise. Quiet, love, for one minute. Hush ! now I hear them quite plain ; there are certainly two.' Two yes, there certainly were,—two, three, four, five, any number you please to imagine, more than tho terrified women could count. With the trampling of heavy hoofs, and the rattle of wheels, and the clanking of chains, onward, onward past the window, but invisible amidst the shrubs and the darkness and the rain, speeding forward through the night at a quick, ringing gallop, swept the fairy-riders of Wilsted. But what effect had the sight of that memorable night upon Louisa and her friend, when seen again from the dressing-room window What did they think of the illuminated church now ? Nothing ; there was nothing to think about ; they looked into the darkness and falling rain, and that was all. The corpse-lights of Wilsted wore extinguished, and tho dream or the vision gone."
It is needless to explain that the neglected church was used as a depot for contraband spirits, and that the wild night-riders were smugglers upon the run. These smugglers have an important bearing upon the course of the tale, and two of the best-drawn of the characters are Bill Green, the smuggler, and his grand- mother, formerly dependants of the Clarisfords, and intimately mixed up with the fortunes of that family.
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