COLNE***


Transcribed from the 1864 Chapman and Hall “Tales of All Countries”
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org





                  THE PARSON’S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE.


THE prettiest scenery in all England—and if I am contradicted in that
assertion, I will say in all Europe—is in Devonshire, on the southern and
south-eastern skirts of Dartmoor, where the rivers Dart, and Avon, and
Teign form themselves, and where the broken moor is half cultivated, and
the wild-looking upland fields are half moor.  In making this assertion I
am often met with much doubt, but it is by persons who do not really know
the locality.  Men and women talk to me on the matter, who have travelled
down the line of railway from Exeter to Plymouth, who have spent a
fortnight at Torquay, and perhaps made an excursion from Tavistock to the
convict prison on Dartmoor.  But who knows the glories of Chagford?  Who
has walked through the parish of Manaton?  Who is conversant with
Lustleigh Cleeves and Withycombe in the moor?  Who has explored Holne
Chase?  Gentle reader, believe me that you will be rash in contradicting
me, unless you have done these things.

There or thereabouts—I will not say by the waters of which little river
it is washed—is the parish of Oxney Colne.  And for those who wish to see
all the beauties of this lovely country, a sojourn in Oxney Colne would
be most desirable, seeing that the sojourner would then be brought nearer
to all that he would wish to visit, than at any other spot in the
country.  But there in an objection to any such arrangement.  There are
only two decent houses in the whole parish, and these are—or were when I
knew the locality—small and fully occupied by their possessors.  The
larger and better is the parsonage, in which lived the parson and his
daughter; and the smaller is a freehold residence of a certain Miss Le
Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred acres, which was rented by one
Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed some thirty acres round her own
house, which she managed herself; regarding herself to be quite as great
in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether superior to him in the article of
cyder.  “But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,” Farmer Cloysey would say,
when Miss Le Smyrger expressed this opinion of her art in a manner too
defiant.  “Yeu pays no rent, or yeu couldn’t do it.”  Miss Le Smyrger was
an old maid, with a pedigree and blood of her own, a hundred and thirty
acres of fee-simple land on the borders of Dartmoor, fifty years of age,
a constitution of iron, and an opinion of her own on every subject under
the sun.

And now for the parson and his daughter.  The parson’s name was
Woolsworthy—or Woolathy, as it was pronounced by all those who lived
around him—the Rev. Saul Woolsworthy; and his daughter was Patience
Woolsworthy, or Miss Patty, as she was known to the Devonshire world of
those parts.  That name of Patience had not been well chosen for her, for
she was a hot-tempered damsel, warm in her convictions, and inclined to
express them freely.  She had but two closely intimate friends in the
world, and by both of them this freedom of expression had now been fully
permitted to her since she was a child.  Miss Le Smyrger and her father
were well accustomed to her ways, and on the whole well satisfied with
them.  The former was equally free and equally warm-tempered as herself,
and as Mr. Woolsworthy was allowed by his daughter to be quite paramount
on his own subject—for he had a subject—he did not object to his daughter
being paramount on all others.  A pretty girl was Patience Woolsworthy at
the time of which I am writing, and one who possessed much that was
worthy of remark and admiration, had she lived where beauty meets with
admiration, or where force of character is remarked.  But at Oxney Colne,
on the borders of Dartmoor, there were few to appreciate her, and it
seemed as though she herself had but little idea of carrying her talent
further afield, so that it might not remain for ever wrapped in a
blanket.

She was a pretty girl, tall end slender, with dark eyes and black hair.
Her eyes were perhaps too round for regular beauty, and her hair was
perhaps too crisp; her mouth was large and expressive; her nose was
finely formed, though a critic in female form might have declared it to
be somewhat broad.  But her countenance altogether was wonderfully
attractive—if only it might be seen without that resolution for dominion
which occasionally marred it, though sometimes it even added to her
attractions.

It must be confessed on behalf of Patience Woolsworthy, that the
circumstances of her life had peremptorily called upon her to exercise
dominion.  She had lost her mother when she was sixteen, and had had
neither brother nor sister.  She had no neighbours near her fit either
from education or rank to interfere in the conduct of her life, excepting
always Miss La Smyrger.  Miss Le Smyrger would have done anything for
her, including the whole management of her morals and of the parsonage
household, had Patience been content with such an arrangement.  But much
as Patience had ever loved Miss Le Smyrger, she was not content with
this, and therefore she had been called on to put forth a strong hand of
her own.  She had put forth this strong hand early, and hence had come
the character which I am attempting to describe.  But I must say on
behalf of this girl, that it was not only over others that she thus
exercised dominion.  In acquiring that power she had also acquired the
much greater power of exercising rule over herself.

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, 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 bills did not pass their proper limits.  Our
Mr. Oldbuck, of Oxney Colne, was sadly deficient in these.  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 carpet-bag, 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 showed 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 equally well provided at
Oxney Combe, 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 Combe 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 now
lived there; but this the 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 of 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.

“And what do you mean to do with him?” Patience Woolsworthy asked of Miss
Le Smyrger when that lady walked over from the Combe to say that her
nephew John was to arrive on the following morning.

“Do with him?  Why I shall bring him over here to talk to your father.”

“He’ll be too fashionable for that; and papa won’t trouble his head about
him if he finds that he doesn’t care for Dartmoor.”

“Then he may fall in love with you, my dear.”

“Well, yes; there’s that resource at any rate, and for your sake I dare
say I should be more civil to him than papa.  But he’ll soon get tired of
making love, and what you’ll do then I cannot imagine.”

That Miss Woolsworthy felt no interest in the coming of the Captain I
will not pretend to say.  The advent of any stranger with whom she would
be called on to associate must be matter of interest to her in that
secluded place; and she was not so absolutely unlike other young ladies
that the arrival of an unmarried young man would be the same to her as
the advent of some patriarchal paterfamilias.  In taking that outlook
into life of which I have spoken, she had never said to herself that she
despised those things from which other girls received the excitement, the
joys, and the disappointment of their lives.  She had simply given
herself to understand that very little of such things would come her way,
and that it behoved her to live—to live happily if such might be
possible—without experiencing the need of them.  She had heard, when
there was no thought of any such visit to Oxney Colne, that John
Broughton was a handsome, clever man—one who thought much of himself, and
was thought much of by others—that there had been some talk of his
marrying a great heiress, which marriage, however, had not taken place
through unwillingness on his part, and that he was on the whole a man of
more mark in the world than the ordinary captain of ordinary regiments.

Captain Broughton came to Oxney Combe, stayed there a fortnight,—the
intended period for his projected visit having been fixed at three or
four days,—and then went his way.  He went his way back to his London
haunts, the time of the year then being the close of the Easter holidays;
but as he did so he told his aunt that he should assuredly return to her
in the autumn.

“And assuredly I shall be happy to see you, John—if you come with a
certain purpose.  If you have no such purpose, you had better remain
away.”

“I shall assuredly come,” the Captain had replied, and then he had gone
on his journey.

The summer passed rapidly by, and very little was said between Miss Le
Smyrger and Miss Woolsworthy about Captain Broughton.  In many
respects—nay, I may say, as to all ordinary matters, no two women could
well be more intimate with each other than they were,—and more than that,
they had the courage each to talk to the other with absolute truth as to
things concerning themselves—a courage in which dear friends often fail.
But nevertheless, very little was said between them about Captain John
Broughton.  All that was said may be here repeated.

“John says that he shall return here in August,” Miss Le Smyrger said, as
Patience was sitting with her in the parlour at Oxney Combe, on the
morning after that gentleman’s departure.

“He told me so himself,” said Patience; and as she spoke her round dark
eyes assumed a look of more than ordinary self-will.  If Miss Le Smyrger
had intended to carry the conversation any further, she changed her mind
as she looked at her companion.  Then, as I said, the summer ran by, and
towards the close of the warm days of July, Miss Le Smyrger, sitting in
the same chair in the same room, again took up the conversation.

“I got a letter from John this morning.  He says that he shall be here on
the third.”

“Does he?”

“He is very punctual to the time he named.”

“Yes; I fancy that he is a punctual man,” said Patience.

“I hope that you will be glad to see him,” said Miss Le Smyrger.

“Very glad to see him,” said Patience, with a bold clear voice; and then
the conversation was again dropped, and nothing further was said till
after Captain Broughton’s second arrival in the parish.

Four months had then passed since his departure, and during that time
Miss Woolsworthy had performed all her usual daily duties in their
accustomed course.  No one could discover that she had been less careful
in her household matters than had been her wont, less willing to go among
her poor neighbours, or less assiduous in her attentions to her father.
But not the less was there a feeling in the minds of those around her
that some great change had come upon her.  She would sit during the long
summer evenings on a certain spot outside the parsonage orchard, at the
top of a small sloping field in which their solitary cow was always
pastured, with a book on her knees before her, but rarely reading.  There
she would sit, with the beautiful view down to the winding river below
her, watching the setting sun, and thinking, thinking, thinking—thinking
of