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CHAPTER VI.

THE DÉNOUEMENT.

THE next morning I could not help giving my kind host an account of the extraordinary occurrences of the night. He smiled significantly. "I am not surprised at it," he said. "You have, then, an inkling of the truth and of the circumstances I hope, ere long, to be in a position to communicate to you. I may tell you that I believe you have been in the company of your ancestors all the night, for undoubtedly you are descended from the heir who was carried off by the faithful piper, Andrew Ramsay. The original owners of this mansion, and the estates attached, were Haggerstones, and it is therefore very clear to my mind that you, or rather your father, is the rightful owner of the property."

I was silent for some time, lost in astonishment at the extraordinary information I had received.

"It is very generous in you to say so, seeing that, if such is the case, you might be deprived of the property," I observed at length. "Not at all, my young friend," he answered, laughing. "Legally, you have not a shadow of a claim. Without my aid you could not even prove that you are descended from the Haggerstones of Nestleby, and the time has long elapsed which would enable you to claim a right to the estate. Law and right don't always go together. However, I possess a letter, discovered while groping about the old house, addressed by Andrew Ramsay to his master from Cornwall, detailing all the circumstances you have heard, and which, by-the-by, I told you about last night, but you were too sleepy, I suspect, to comprehend what I said. That letter was, there can be no doubt, never delivered, or the baron would have acted on it. Indeed, I feel sure that he died without being aware that his eldest son was still alive."

"Yes, I see the justice of your remarks, and fully understand all you say," I replied, my spirits somewhat falling from the height to which they had just before risen. I was again silent. Suddenly I looked up, and said, "But that beautiful young lady with whom I danced, who told me all these things-I feel as if I should never fall in love with anybody else, so completely did she come up to my idea of perfection-who was she ?"

"Why, from your description, Ralph, I suspect that she must have been your ancestress-your great-great-great-never mind how many greats-grandmother, and as a man mustn't marry his grandmother, I suppose that he mustn't marry his great-great-grandmother, or any other ancestral relative; so you will have to live a bachelor like me. However, for your consolation, I can inform you that her sister married an Arbuthnot, an ancestor of the present Sir David; so that I have no doubt the Miss Arbuthnot you spoke of inherits her beauty and virtues, and if you can win her, I suspect that you will find her a more satisfactory wife than the lovely dame with whom you appear to have danced in the new year last night. Ha! ha! ha!" old gentleman leant back in his chair and laughed heartily.

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NEW-YORK

I can only further say that I spent a very pleasant and amusing week with him, and should have remained longer had not Jack Hasleden driven over to carry me away. They had some fresh people come to stay with them, for whom they wanted me, he said, to help make sport. I was rather late in entering the drawing-room after dinner had been announced, and was told by Mrs. Hasleden to give my arm to a young lady, at whom I had scarcely time to look before I had to follow the married ladies out of the room. What was my astonishment to behold the very features of the phantom lady I had so admired at Nestleby! I could scarcely speak, and I think my arm must have trembled. I looked again. No. They were still more attractive, with the advantage of a rich colour in the cheeks. She was no other than Miss Arbuthnot herself, whose life I had the credit of having assisted to save. We of course had a great deal to say to each other, and to ascertain how it was that we did not receive a note she had written to us.

Sir David was expected in a few days, I heard. Of course I made hay while the sun shone, and to good effect, I flattered myself.

I had actually made up my mind to propose, feeling sure that the young lady would accept me in spite of my slender fortune, when I got a note from Mr. Ullathorne requesting me to go over to see him. I found a lawyer and two other gentlemen with him. He was rather ill and feverish, I thought.

"I have made up my mind, my dear Ralph, to make over this property to you, or rather to your father, at once. He is, as I have said, the rightful heir; of that I am convinced, though all the courts of law in the kingdom would not make him so. The necessary documents have been drawn out, which in the presence of these witnesses I hereby sign, seal, and deliver to you, my young friend. All I ask for is a quiet room in the old house, which I may look upon as my own to the end of my days."

I hope that I felt and said everything which I ought to have felt and said in return for the generous gift. I need scarcely say that Sir David threw no impediments in the way of my marriage with his daughter, and that whatever my readers may think about the phantom ball I took a part in on that New Year's Eve, we have had, I can assure them, the salons lighted up on many subsequent ones, and filled with merry, joyous collection of substantial young ladies and gentlemen, while not the shadow even of a ghost or goblin has been seen in the house since we came into possession.

ABOUT LADY NEEDLE AND CAPTAIN PEN.

A PIECE OF PURPLE-PATCHWORK.

BY FRANCIS JACOX.

SOME one has somewhere said, that to Captain Sword and Captain Pen we must add the Lady Needle, to complete the number of the ruling powers.

The present paper has to deal simply with what Captain Pen has been in the habit of saying about the Lady Needle-in her most lady-like occupation, for the most part, of what is par excellence recognised as ladies' work.

Captain Pen has often expressed himself with something of envy of the solace that needlework supplies to its familiars, in hours of solitude, and anxiety, and depression. Sometimes he has, like Cowper, gone the length of winding thread for the workers, and found himself the better for it. Thus we find the bard of Olney more than once or twice informing his clerical correspondents-Unwin and Newton-in a description of the way he fills up his time, "In the morning I walk with one or other of the ladies, and in the afternoon wind thread. Thus did Hercules and Samson, and thus do I; and were both those heroes living I should not fear to challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or doubt to beat them both." A paragraph of small-talk in another letter begins: "We were sitting yesterday after dinner, the two ladies and myself, . . . one lady knitting, the other netting, and the gentleman winding worsted, when," &c. &c. How important a part in Cowper's domestic economy and happiness the needles of Mrs. Unwin played, his tender tearful stanzas To Mary have left on record for all time:

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Society, observes our best of essayists on social subjects, does not assume for women that background of hard work which gives to men's social idleness the pretence of relaxation; and "thus listlessness, inactivity, and folding of the hands in women is a painful anomaly to their idlest male friends, and acts upon them like a cold hearth or lukewarm coffee." Compare or contrast with this a passage in one of Jeffrey's letters to his sister: "I often think the occupations of a lady-high as

* Cowper to Rev. William Unwin, Jan. 19, 1783.

† Cowper to Rev. John Newton, March 29, 1784.

Essays on Social Subjects, First Series: On Busy People.

that title places the honoured bearer-are of a more servile nature than that of a man, and retain some traces of the genius of those days, when all the drudgery of the household was the amusement of its mistress. The employments of all men who are not mechanics are chiefly exertions of the mind. Those of the ladies, are, in general, displays of mechanical ingenuity; and the wife of a lawyer, of a divine, and a poet, resemble, in their occupation, the industry of a weaver or a tailor more than that of her husband." For his part, Jeffrey confesses his astonishment at womankind being able to continue so long in what he calls a state of inaction.* His clerical comrade and collaborateur, Sydney Smith, was apt to take another view of the subject: "I wish I could sew," he once exclaimed, looking round on a group of ladies at work: "I believe one reason why women are so much more cheerful, generally, than men, is because they can work, and vary more their employments. Lady used to teach her sons carpet-work. All men ought to learn to sew." So the poet Gray, discussing the practical problem of a man's knowing how to employ himself-to find one's self business being, he is persuaded, the great art of life-makes this remark: "I say a man; for women, commonly speaking, never feel this distemper; they have always something to do; time hangs not on their hands (unless they be fine ladies); a variety of small inventions and occupations fills up the void, and their eyes are never open in vain." Cowper, as we have seen, essayed to take a share, such as it was, in the business of the ladies' work-table; and many a masculine idler is fain to imitate, in some sort, the custom of Mackenzie's Count de Montauban, of whom Julia de Roubigné writes, that "he will sit for an hour at the table where I am working, with no other amusement than that of twisting shreds of my catgut into whimsical figures."§ Rousseau systematically took to a more serious kind of business: " Quand j'étais à Moitiers, j'allais faire des lacets chez mes voisines; si je retournais dans le monde, j'aurais toujours dans ma poche un bilboquet, et j'en jouerais toute la journée pour me dispenser de parler quand je n'aurais rien à dire. Si chacun en faisait autant, les hommes deviendraient moins méchants, leur commerce deviendrait plus sûr, et, je pense, plus agréable."|| Later in the turbid course of his Confessions, Rousseau recurs to the subject. He found the bavardage inactif of social life insupportable. Talking, arms crossed, about the weather, or, worse still, the interchange of empty compliments, was to him a punishment beyond endurance. So, "je m'avisais," he repeats, "pour ne pas vivre en sauvage, d'apprendre à faire des lacets. Je portais mon coussin dans mes visites; ou j'allais, comme les femmes, travailler à ma porte et causer avec les passants." This, and this alone, it seems, enabled Jean-Jacques to put up with l'inanité du babillage, and to pass his time without ennui among his confessedly amiable and witty

* Life and Letters of Lord Jeffrey, vol. ii. p. 6.

Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith, vol. i. p. 359.

Gray to Dr. Wharton, June 22, 1760.

Julia de Roubigné, by Henry Mackenzie, letter vi.

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Enfin," adds Jean-Jacques, "que les plaisants rient s'ils veulent, mais je soutiens, que la seule morale à la portée du présent siècle est la morale du bilboquet."-Les Confessions, livre v.

Deuxième partie, livre xii.

voisines. Not all their amiability and wit conjoined would otherwise have availed to save him from being bored. Seated among them with a lace-pillow of his own, to keep his fingers nimble, he was himself again, and could hold his own against the fairest of the fair.

A striking enough Head-Centre-piece would Rousseau thus make, in Armenian attire, in a picture such as Joanna Baillie paints, where -Blooming maids from silken work-bags pour

(Like tangled seaweed on the vexèd shore)

Of patchwork, netting, fringe, a strange and motley store:
While all, attempting many a different mode,

Would from their shoulders hitch time's heavy load.*

As apt a scholar we may suppose him as Shenstone's Elvira, when, sometimes, as Fancy spoke the pleasing task,

She taught her artful needle to display

The various pride of spring; then swift upsprungt
Thickets of myrtle, eglantine, and rose:

There might you see, on gentle toils intent,

A train of busy Loves; some pluck the flower,
Some twine the garland, some with grave grimace
Around a vacant warrior cast the wreath.

'Twas paint, 'twas life!

just as in the approved pattern of Miss Linwood's handiwork, in Leicester-square, to name a distinguished modern; else one might date back to Homer's Helen, whom at her loom in the palace Iris found,

The golden web her own sad story crown'd:
The Trojan wars she weaved (herself the prize)
And the dire triumphs of her fatal eyes.§

"You

The lady Valeria, in Shakspeare's "Coriolanus," after rallying Volumnia and Virgilia (who upon their entry, according to the stage direction, "sit down on two low stools, and sew") on being manifest housekeepers-which she, their sprightly visitor, is not-and after curtly criticising their work womanship, "What, are you sewing here! A fine spot, in good faith;"-endeavours with all sorts of arguments and wiles to draw the younger lady out of doors, and fling aside with becoming disdain the needlework that makes too good a housewife of her. would be another Penelope: yet, they say, all the yarn she spun, in Ulysses' absence, did but fill Ithaca full of moths. Come; I would your cambric were sensible as your finger, that you might leave pricking it for pity. Come," &c.-Recounting piteously the gifts and graces of Desdemona, now doomed to death, Othello forgets not this distinction: "So delicate with her needle."-And to take one other illustration from Shakspeare, we have a scene and an act opening with Queen Katharine "and some of her women at work," in the Palace at Bridewell, when the two cardinals enter, upon business with her, a poor weak woman, fallen

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* Joanna Baillie's Poems, p. 19; edit. 1842. † Shenstone cannot have intended a play upon words here; in any case, however, the contiguity of spring and sprung both looks and sounds awkward.

Shenstone's Poems: Love and Honour.

Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. 3.

§ Iliad, book iii. Othello, Act IV. Sc. 1.

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