CHAPTER III.

HOLMCASTLE MANOR.

SPITE of the natural desire of the reader to plump at once into the _crême de la crême_ of good society, and to accompany Miss Strong and her _protégée_ into the company of a live Duchess (Dowager), I feel it necessary, for the purposes of this narrative, to make him or her aware, first and foremost, whence Miss Manwaring came, who she was, what was her family, what her belongings and previous history, and to explain why it was that she was the recipient of royal favour, and tenant for life, if so she willed it, of one of the very best sets of apartments in the noble old Royal Palace of Hampton Court.

Evelyn Manwaring, then, was the only daughter of one Cuthbert Piercey Manwaring, a gentleman of very ancient family, and of competent, although not very large estate. Holmcastle Manor, the family place, was situated amidst beautiful, if somewhat wild and dreary scenery on the Northern border of the County of Lancaster. Of old time the Manwarings had been great Seigneurs in those parts, and had owned vast tracts of fell and fen and moorland, besides more fertile acres; but the loyalty of some members of the family, who were cavaliers to a man, and the extravagance of others, had sadly wasted the ancestral patrimony, so that when Cuthbert Piercey Manwaring succeeded his uncle, Algernon, the family estate was reduced to the narrower bounds of the parish of Holmcastle, to a tract of moorland and fell above it which went by the name of Stanwick Chase, and to a couple of outlying rich farms in the distant flat country in the neighbourhood of Ormskirk. The Manor-house of Holmcastle, which had succeeded an ancient castle, whereof the earthworks and a few shapeless masses of weather-beaten stone were all that remained, crowned a wooded knoll which rose from nearly the centre of Arrow Dale; and round nearly three sides of the eminence, which in places descended precipitously to the river, rippled and raced and roared and rushed the swift Arrow--now plunging into deep rock-pools, now flowing over stony shallows, now overhung by huge wych-elms, the queen of all North-country trees, and now dominated by scarps of grey or reddish rock. Trout abounded in the deep pools, or lay poising, head up-stream, in the pebbly shallows, and now and then a noble salmon might be seen from the old grey bridge below the village of Holmcastle, which had made its way up past the filth of Preston, and other manufacturing towns, from the lordly Ribble, whereof the Arrow was one of the principal tributaries. On either side the valley, and at varying distances from the river, the arable and pasture land ran up to meet the broad swathes of brown or purple heather of the stately, swelling moors; and towards the end of the valley--or “dale,” as the folks called it--was seen the almost precipitous hill, or rather mountain, called “Stanwick Edge,” with its bare crest of shivered crags. Here and there small beck-formed, lateral valleys led up from the Arrow amongst the hills, and the sides of these were clothed with mountain-ashes, birches, hollies, and stunted oaks. Far up one of these, on a sort of platform in the midst of an amphitheatre of solemn hills, which had its entrance towards the South-West, stood a monument of remote and unknown antiquity, a monolith of grey, weather-stained stone, known far and wide to the country folks and dalesmen as the “Long Man,” or more correctly the “Long _Maen_,” of Stanwick.

The “Manor,” as the Manwaring family house was called, had been substantially rebuilt in the early part of the last century, and had no particular pretensions in itself to beauty or picturesqueness; but its position was perfect, the views from it were delightful, and attached to it was an ill-kept, but charming old-fashioned garden, with stone terraces, flights of steps, a sun-dial, and some quaint mutilated statues--

“Bold Neptune, Plutarch, and Nicodemus, All standing naked in the open air.”[1]

There was no park, properly so called, but the neighbouring fields, with their magnificent timber trees, had quite a park-like appearance. The village of Holmcastle, with its Rectory and small ancient Church, slept in the valley hard by, at an elevation but a little above the river, though at a considerable depth below the mansion, and this circumstance gave the latter a completely feudal appearance. Inside, the Manor did not differ much from other country houses of the better class of the same date, save that it contained more family portraits than usual, and that it had a fine entrance hall, and a remarkably curious and interesting Library! Upon entering the room, which opened out of a long corridor upstairs, not a book was visible, but the walls were panelled in dark Spanish chestnut wood, each panel being divided from the next by a handsome pilaster. The visitor would then be shown that, by applying a curiously shaped key which lay on a central table to a groove in each pilaster, the latter could be turned back, and then the neighbouring panel flew open, discovering shelves filled with ancient books, not one of which was of less ancient date than the year 1720, while many of them were of far greater antiquity. One of these compartments was reserved for books of poetry, another for divinity and theology, another for the classics, and so on, all the books being in admirable preservation, and well chosen by the Sir Miles Manwaring who, on the destruction of the older mansion by fire, had rebuilt the house in its present form. Underneath the book-shelves were drawers filled with ancient charters, title-deeds, and other archives of the past.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Father Prout.]