Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 732
Various
Various
Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 732 / January 5, 1878
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE
By JOHN B. HARWOOD, Author of �Lady Flavia.’
CHAPTER I. – THREATENED
�No, my lord; I do not know him; nor, I think, does any one in the village. But during the few weeks that I have been at High Tor Churchtown, I have seen him very often indeed.’
The speaker was a young girl, of some twenty years at most. Her bearing was grave and modest, and her attire scrupulously plain; but there are cases in which sovereign beauty will assert herself, and Ethel Gray, the newly appointed school-mistress, was more than pretty. That slender form and faultless face, the dazzling purity of the complexion, and the lustre of the violet eyes, that contrasted so well with the wealth of dark hair simply braided back from the temples and twisted into a massive coil – these conferred beauty, if ever woman, since Eve's time, deserved to be called beautiful.
It was a bright balmy day in June, and through the large window of the school-room, now open, floated the scent of flowers and the hum of bees. Within the room, standing beside the teacher, were two gentlemen; while on each side of the table stood the children, their wondering eyes fixed upon the visitors. They well knew the kindly face of the gray-haired Earl of Wolverhampton, the elder of the two, whose park-gates were almost within sight of the school of which he was patron. But they had never before seen the shrewd rugged features of the middle-aged member of parliament, the Right Hon. Stephen Hammond, Under-secretary of State, by whom he was accompanied.
Ethel Gray's words had been uttered in reply to an inquiry from the Earl as to a swarthy man of sinister aspect and powerful build who was lounging near the low gate of the school-house garden.
�That is not a face,’ said the Earl, thinking of quarter-sessions, tramps, gipsies, and poachers – �which I am pleased to see here among my good people. – What is your opinion, Hammond, of the owner of it?’
�I think that I had rather not meet him on a dark night,’ answered the Under-secretary with a smile. �But perhaps, after all, the man is only some sailor newly paid off; though he has a reckless unpleasant look in any case.’
Perceiving himself to be an object of attention to the occupants of the school-room window, the rough fellow who had been lingering at the gate now turned on his heel, and with an air half-defiant, half-abashed, slunk away.
Nor was it long before the old Earl and his guest, with an urbane word or two of leave-taking to the pretty teacher, quitted the school, and re-entered the carriage, which had been awaiting them in the leafy lane beyond. Lord Wolverhampton, as the horses' heads were turned towards High Tor, looked and felt pleased. He took an interest in the schools, as he did in every detail of his property; and he had been anxious for the Under-secretary's approbation concerning them. The Right Hon. Stephen Hammond had, in the course of the tour which he was hurriedly making through the country, visited many such places of education, probably with a view to Hansard and Blue-books; but he was frankly willing to give its meed of praise to that of which his noble host was the patron. And praise from Mr Hammond was worth the having.
The carriage rolled on between high banks crested with hazels and gay with wild-flowers, until at last it passed between the sturdy gateposts of blue Cornish granite, topped by the grim heraldic monsters which the De Veres had borne on their shields in battle for many a year before they had become possessed of the ancient barony of Harrogate or the modern earldom of Wolverhampton. It was a pretty park enough that of High Tor, with its huge sycamores and avenue of wych-elms, the fallow-deer feeding peacefully among the ancient hawthorn trees, the tinkling trout-stream, and the lofty crag that stood forth like a giant sentinel, as though to protect the mansion