Black Heart, Ivory Bones

Susanna Clarke lives in the medieval city of Cambridge, England, and writes short stories about magic, set in seventeenth- and early nineteenth-century England. Her first published story appeared in Starlight 1 and was picked for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Tenth Annual Collection. Subsequent stories are in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman: Book of Dreams; Black Swan, White Raven; and Starlight 2.

She is working on her first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

From the Journals of Alessandro Simonelli

I am beginning to think that I must marry. I have no money, no prospects of advancement, and no friends to help me. This queer face of mine is my only capital now and must, I fear, be made to pay; John Windle has told me privately that the bookseller’s widow in Jesus-lane is quite desperately in love with me, and it is common knowledge that her husband left her nearly £15 thousand. As for the lady herself, I never heard anything but praise of her. Her youth, virtue, beauty, and charity make her universally loved. But still I cannot quite make up my mind to it. I have been too long accustomed to the rigours of scholarly debate to feel much enthusiasm for female conversation — no more to refresh my soul in the company of Aquinas, Aristophanes, Euclid, and Avicenna, but instead to pass my hours attending to a discourse upon merits of a bonnet trimmed with coquelicot ribbons.

Dr. Prothero came smiling to my rooms this morning. “You are surprised to see me, Mr. Simonelli,” he said. “We have not been such good friends lately as to wait upon each other in our rooms.”

True, but whose fault is that? Prothero is the very worst sort of Cambridge scholar: loves horses and hunting more than books and scholarship; has never once given a lecture since he was made Professor, though obliged to do so by the deed of foundation every other week in term; once ate five roast mackerel at a sitting (which very nearly killed him); is drunk most mornings and every evening; dribbles upon his waistcoat as he nods in his chair. I believe I have made my opinion of him pretty widely known and, though I have done myself no good by my honesty, I am pleased to say that I have done him some harm.

He continued, “I bring you good news, Mr. Simonelli! You should offer me a glass of wine — indeed you should! When you hear what excellent news I have got for you, I am sure you will wish to offer me a glass of wine!” And he swung his head around like an ugly old tortoise, to see if he could catch sight of a bottle. But I have no wine, and so he went on, “I have been asked by a family in Derbyshire — friends of mine, you understand — to find them some learned gentleman to be Rector of their village. Immediately I thought of you, Mr. Simonelli! The duties of a country parson in that part of the world are not onerous. And you may judge for yourself of the health of the place, what fine air it is blessed with, when I tell you that Mr. Whitmore, the last clergyman, was ninety-three when he died. A good, kind soul, much loved by his parish, but not a scholar. Come, Mr. Simonelli! If it is agreeable to you to have a house of your own — with garden, orchard, and farm all complete — then I shall write tonight to the Gathercoles and relieve them of all their anxiety by telling them of your acceptance!”

But, though he pressed me very hard, I would not give him my answer immediately. I believe I know what he is about. He has a nephew whom he hopes to steer into my place if I leave Corpus Christi. Yet it would be wrong, I think, to refuse such an opportunity merely for the sake of spiting him.

I believe it must be either the parish or matrimony.

I was this day ordained as a priest of the Church of England. I have no doubts that my modest behaviour, studiousness, and extraordinary mildness of temper make me peculiarly fitted for the life.

I travelled by stagecoach as far as Derby. I sat outside — which cost me ten shillings and sixpence — but since it rained steadily I was at some trouble to keep my books and papers dry. My room at the George is better aired than rooms in inns generally are. I dined upon some roast woodcocks, a fricassee of turnips and apple dumplings. All excellent but not cheap and so I complained.

My first impressions were not encouraging. It continued to rain, and the country surrounding Allhope appeared very wild and almost uninhabited. There were steep, wooded valleys, rivers of white spurting water, outcrops of barren rock surmounted by withered oaks, bleak windswept moorland. It was, I dare say, remarkably picturesque, and might have provided an excellent model for a descriptive passage in a novel, but to me who must now live here, it spoke very eloquently of extreme seclusion and scarce society characterised by ignorant minds and uncouth manners. In two hours’ walking I saw only one human habitation — a grim farmhouse with rain-darkened walls set among dark, dripping trees.

I had begun to think I must be very near to the village when I turned a corner and saw, a little way ahead of me in the rain, two figures on horseback. They had stopped by a poor cottage to speak to someone who stood just within bounds of the garden. Now I am no judge of horses, but these were quite remarkable; tall, well-formed, and shining. They tossed their heads and stamped their hooves upon the ground as if they scorned to be stood upon so base an element. One was black and one was chestnut. The chestnut, in particular, appeared to be the only bright thing in the whole of Derbyshire; it glowed like a bonfire in the grey, rainy air.

The person whom the riders addressed was an old bent man. As I drew near I heard shouts and a curse, and I saw one of the riders reach up and make a sign with his hand above the old man’s head. This gesture was entirely new to me and must, I suppose, be peculiar to the natives of Derbyshire. I do not think that I ever before saw anything so expressive of contempt, and as it may be of some interest to study the customs and quaint beliefs of the people here, I append a sort of diagram or drawing to shew precisely the gesture the man made.

I concluded that the riders were going away dissatisfied from their interview with the old cottager. It further occurred to me that, since I was now so close to the village, this ancient person was certainly one of my parishioners. I determined to lose no time in bringing peace where there was strife, harmony where there was discord. I quickened my steps, hailed the old man, informed him that I was the new Rector and asked him his name, which was Jemmy.

“Well, Jemmy,” said I, assuming a cordial manner and accommodating my language to his uneducated condition, “what has happened here? What have you done to make the gentlemen so angry?”

He told me that the rider of the chestnut horse had a wife who had that morning been brought to bed. He and his servant had come to inquire for Jemmy’s wife, Joan, who for many years had attended all the women in the neighbourhood.

“Indeed?” said I in accents of mild reproof. “Then why do you keep the gentleman waiting? Where is your wife?”

He pointed to where the lane wound up the opposite hillside, to where I could just discern through the rain an ancient church and a graveyard.

“Who takes care of the women in their childbeds now?” I asked.

There were, it seemed, two executors of that office: Mr. Stubb, the apothecary in Bakewell, or Mr. Horrocks, the physician in Buxton. But both these places were two, three hours hard ride away on bad roads, and the lady was already, in Jemmy’s words, “proper poorly.”

To own the truth, I was a little annoyed with the gentleman on the chestnut horse who had not troubled until today to provide an attendant for his wife: an obligation which, presumably, he might have discharged at any time within the last nine months. Nevertheless I hurried after the two men and, addressing the rider of the chestnut horse, said, “Sir, my name is Simonelli. I have studied a great variety of subjects — law, divinity, medicine — at the university at Cambridge, and I have for many years maintained a correspondence with one of the most eminent physicians of the age, Mr. Matthew Baillie of Great Windmill-street in London. If it is not disagreeable to you, I shall be happy to attend your wife.”

He bent upon me a countenance thin, dark, eager. His eyes were exceptionally fine and bright and their expression unusually intelligent. His black hair was his own, quite long, and tied with a black ribbon in a pigtail, rather in the manner of an old-fashioned queue wig. His age, I thought, might be between forty and fifty.

“And are you an adherent of Galenus or Paracelsus?” he said.

“Sir?” I said (for I thought he must intend the question as a joke). But then, since he continued to look at me, I said, “The ancient medical authorities whom you mention, sir, are quite outdated. All that Galen knew of anatomy he got from observing the dissections of pigs, goats and apes. Paracelsus believed in the efficacy of magic spells and all sorts of nonsense. Indeed, sir,” I said with a burst of laughter, “you might as well inquire whose cause I espoused in the Trojan War as ask me to choose between those illustrious, but thoroughly discredited, gentlemen!”

Perhaps it was wrong to laugh at him. I felt it was wrong immediately. I remembered how many enemies my superior abilities had won me at Cambridge, and I recalled my resolution to do things differently in Allhope and to bear patiently with ignorance and misinformation wherever I found it. But the gentleman only said, “Well, Dando, we have had better fortune than we looked for. A scholar, an eminent physician to attend my lady.” He smiled a long thin smile which went up just one side of his dark face. “She will be full of gratitude, I have no doubt.”

While he spoke I made some discoveries: to wit, that both he and his servant were amazingly dirty — I had not observed it at first because the rain had washed their faces clean. His coat, which I had taken to be of brown drugget or some such material, was revealed upon closer inspection to be of red velvet, much discoloured, worn and matted with dirt and grease.

“I had intended to hoist the old woman up behind Dando,” he said, “but that will scarcely do for you.” He was silent a moment and then suddenly cried, “Well, what do you wait for, you sour-faced rogue …?” (This startled me, but a moment later I understood that he addressed Dando.) “… Dismount! Help the learned doctor to the horse.”

I was about to protest that I knew nothing of horses or riding but Dando had already jumped down and had somehow tipped me onto the horse’s back; my feet were in the stirrups and the reins were in my hands before I knew where I was.

Now a great deal is talked in Cambridge of horses and the riding of horses and the managing of horses. A great number of the more ignorant undergraduates pride themselves upon their understanding of the subject. But I find there is nothing to it. One has merely to hold on as tight as one can: the horse, I find, does all.

Immense speed! Godlike speed! We turned from the highway immediately and raced through ancient woods of oak and ash and holly; dead leaves flew up, rain flew down, and the gentleman and I — like spirits of the sad, grey air — flew between! Then up, up we climbed to where the ragged grey clouds tore themselves apart like great doors opening in heaven to let us through! By moorland pools of slate-grey water, by lonely wind-shaped hawthorn trees, by broken walls of grey stones — a ruined chapel — a stream — over the hills, to a house that stood quite alone in a rain-misted valley.

It was a very ancient-looking place, the different parts of which had been built at many different times and of a great variety of materials. There were flints and stones, old silvery-grey timbers, and rose-red brick that glowed very cheerfully in the gloom. But as we drew nearer I saw that it was in a state of the utmost neglect. Doors had lost their hinges and were propped into place with stones and stuffed round with faded brown rags; windows were cracked and broken and pasted over with old paper; the roof, which was of stone tiles, shewed many gaping black holes; dry, dead grasses poked up between the paving stones. It gave the house a melancholy air, particularly since it was surrounded by a moat of dark, still water that reproduced all this desolation as faithfully as any mirror.

We jumped off our horses, entered the house and passed rapidly through a great number of rooms. I observed that the gentleman’s servants (of which he appeared to have a most extraordinary number) did not come forward to welcome their master or give him news of his wife but lurked about in the shadows in the most stupid fashion imaginable.

The gentleman conducted me to the chamber where his wife lay, her only attendant a tiny old woman. This person was remarkable for several things, but chiefly for a great number of long, coarse hairs that grew upon her cheeks and resembled nothing so much in the world as porcupine quills.

The room had been darkened and the fire stoked up in accordance with the old-fashioned belief that women in childbirth require to be heated. It was abominably hot. My first action upon entering the room was to pull back the curtains and throw open the windows, but when I looked around I rather regretted having done any such thing, for the squalor of that room is not to be described.

The sheets, upon which the gentleman’s wife lay, were crawling with vermin of all sorts. Pewter plates lay scattered about with rotting food upon them. And yet it was not the wretchedness of poverty. There was a most extraordinary muddle everywhere one looked. Over here a greasy apron embraced a volume of Diderot’s Enyclopédie; over there a jewelled red-velvet slipper was trapped by the lid of a warming-pan; under the bed a silver diadem was caught on the prongs of a garden-fork; on the window-ledge the dried-out corpse of some animal (I think a cat) rested its powdery head against a china-jug. A bronze-coloured velvet garment (which rather resembled the robe of a Coptic pope) had been cast down on the floor in lieu of a carpet. It was embroidered all over with gold and pearls, but the threads had broken and the pearls lay scattered in the dirt. It was altogether such an extraordinary blending of magnificence and filth as I could never have conceived of, and left me entirely astonished that any one should tolerate such slothfulness and neglect on the part of their servants.

As for the lady, poor thing, she was very young — perhaps no more than fifteen — and very thin. Her bones shewed through an almost translucent skin which was stretched, tight as a drum, over her swollen belly. Although I have read a great deal upon the subject, I found it more difficult than I had imagined to make the lady attend to what I was saying. My instructions were exceptionally clear and precise, but she was weak and in pain and I could not persuade her to listen to me.

I soon discovered that the baby was lodged in a most unfortunate position. Having no forceps, I tried several times to turn it with my hand, and at the fourth attempt I succeeded. Between the hours of four and five a male child was born. I did not at first like his colour. Mr. Baillie told me that newborn children are generally the colour of claret; sometimes, he said, they may be as dark as port-wine, but this child was, to all intents and purposes, black. He was, however, quite remarkably strong. He gave me a great kick as I passed him to the old woman. A bruise upon my arm marks the place.

But I could not save the mother. At the end she was like a house through which a great wind rushes, making all the doors bang at their frames: death was rushing through her, and her wits came loose and banged about inside her head. She appeared to believe that she had been taken by force to a place where she was watched night and day by a hideous jailoress.

“Hush,” said I. “These are very wild imaginings. Look about you. Here is good, kind …” I indicated the old woman with the porcupine face. “… who takes such excellent care of you. You are surrounded by friends. Be comforted.” But she would not listen to me and called out wildly for her mother to come and take her home.

I would have given a great deal to save her. For what in the end was the result of all my exertions? One person came into this world and another left it — it seemed no very great achievement.

I began a prayer of commendation, but had not said above a dozen words when I heard a sort of squeal. Opening one eye, I saw the old woman snatch up the baby and run from the room as fast as her legs could carry her.

I finished my prayer and, with a sigh, went to find the lady’s husband. I discovered him in his library where, with an admirable shew of masculine unconcern, he was reading a book. It was then about seven or eight o’clock.

I thought that it became me as a clergyman to offer some comfort and to say something of the wife he had lost, but I was prevented by my complete ignorance of everything that concerned her. Of her virtue I could say nothing at all. Of her beauty I knew little enough; I had only ever seen her with features contorted in the agonies of childbirth and of death. So I told him in plain words what had happened and finished with a short speech that sounded, even to my own ears, uncommonly like an apology for having killed his wife.

“Oh!” he said. “I dare say you did what you could.”

I admired his philosophy though I confess it surprized me a little. Then I recalled that, in speaking to me, she had made several errors of grammar and had employed some dialect words and expressions. I concluded that perhaps, like many gentlemen before him, he had been enticed into an unequal marriage by blue eyes and fair hair, and that he had later come to regret it.

“A son, you say?” he said in perfect good humour. “Excellent!” And he stuck his head out of the door and called for the baby to be brought to him. A moment later Dando and the porcupine-faced nurse appeared with the child. The gentleman examined his son very minutely and declared himself delighted. Then he held the baby up and said the following words to it: “On to the shovel you must go, sir!” He gave the child a hearty shake. “And into the fire you must go, sir!” Another shake. “And under the burning coals you must go, sir!” And another shake.

I found his humour a little odd.

Then the nurse brought out a cloth and seemed to be about to wrap the baby in it.

“Oh, but I must protest, sir!” I cried. “Indeed I must!” Have you nothing cleaner to wrap the child in?”

They all looked at me in some amazement. Then the gentleman smiled and said, “What excellent eyesight you must have, Mr. Simonelli! Does not this cloth appear to you to be made of the finest, whitest linen imaginable?”

“No,” said I in some irritation. “It appears to me to be a dirty rag that I would scarcely use to clean my boots!”

“Indeed?” said the gentleman in some surprize. “And Dando? Tell me, how does he strike you? Do you see the ruby buckles on his shoes? No? What of his yellow velvet coat and shining sword?”

I shook my head. (Dando, I may say, was dressed in the same quaint, old-fashioned style as his master, and looked every inch what he no doubt was — a tattered, swaggering scoundrel. He wore jackboots up to his thighs, a bunch of ragged dirty lace at his throat, and an ancient tricorne hat on his head.)

The gentleman gazed thoughtfully at me for a minute or two. “Mr. Simonelli,” he said at last, “I am quite struck by your face! Those lustrous eyes! Those fine dark eyelashes! Those noble eye-brows! Every feature proclaims your close connexion with my own family! Do me the kindness, if you will, of stepping before this mirror and standing at my side.”

I did as he asked and, leaving aside some difference in our complexions (his as brown as beechmast, mine as white as hot-pressed paper) the resemblance was, I confess, remarkable. Everything which is odd or unsettling in my own face, I saw repeated in his: the same long eye-brows like black pen-strokes terminating in an upward flourish; the same curious slant to the eye-lid which bestows upon the face an expression of sleepy arrogance; the same little black mole just below the right eye.

“Oh!” he cried. “There can be no doubt about it! What was your father’s name?”

“Simonelli,” I said with a smile, “evidently.”

“And his place of birth?”

I hesitated. “Genoa,” I said.

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Frances Simon.”

“And her place of birth?”

“York.”

He took a scrap of paper from the table and wrote it all down. “Simon and Simonelli,” he said, “that is odd.” He seemed to wait for some further illumination upon the matter of my parentage. He was disappointed. “Well, no matter,” he said. “Whatever the connexion between us, Mr. Simonelli, I shall discover it. You have done me a great service and I had intended to pay you liberally for it, but I have no notion of relations paying for services that ought to be given freely as part of the duty that family members owe one another.” He smiled his long, knowing smile. “And so I must examine the question further,” he said.

So all his much-vaunted interest in my face and family came to this: he would not pay me! It made me very angry to think I could have been so taken in by him! I informed him briefly that I was the new Rector of Allhope and said that I hoped to see him in church on Sunday.

But he only smiled and said, “We are not in your parish here. This house is Allhope House, and according to ancient agreement I am the Lord of Allhope Manor, but over the years the house and village have become separated and now stand, as you see, at some distance from each other.”

I had not the least idea what he was talking about. I turned to go with Dando, who was to accompany me back to the village, but at the library door I looked back and said, “It is a curious thing, sir, but you never told me your name.”

“I am John Hollyshoes,” said he with a smile.

Just as the door closed I could have sworn I heard the sound of a shovel being pushed into the fire and the sound of coals being raked over.

The ride back to the village was considerably less pleasant than the ride to Allhope House had been. The moonlight was all shut out by the clouds and it continued to rain, yet Dando rode as swiftly as his master, and at every moment I expected our headlong rush to end in broken necks.

A few lights appeared — the lights of a village. I got down from the black horse and turned to say something to Dando, whereupon I discovered that in that same instant of my dismounting he had caught up the reins of the black horse and was gone. I took one step and immediately fell over my trunk and parcels of books — which I presume had been left for me by Dando and which I had entirely forgot until that moment.

There seemed to be nothing close at hand but a few miserable cottages. Some distance off to the right half a dozen windows blazed with light, and their large size and regular appearance impressed me with ideas of warm rooms, supper tables, and comfortable sofas. In short they suggested the abode of a gentleman.

My knock was answered by a neat maidservant. I inquired whether this was Mr. Gathercole’s house. She replied that Admiral Gathercole had drowned six years ago. Was I the new Rector?

The neat maidservant left me in the hall to go and announce me to someone or other, and I had time to look about me. The floor was of ancient stone flags, very well swept, and the bright gleam upon every oak cabinet, every walnut chest of drawers, every little table, plainly spoke of the plentiful application of beeswax and of pleasant female industry. All was cleanliness, delicacy, elegance — which was more, I discovered, than could be said for me. I was well provided with all the various stains, smears, and general dishevelments that may be acquired by walking for hours through heavy rain, galloping through thickly wooded countryside, and then toiling long and hard at a childbed and a deathbed; and in addition I had acquired a sort of veneer of black grease — the inevitable result, I fancy, of a sojourn in John Hollyshoes’s house. The neat maidservant led me to a drawing-room where two ladies waited to see what sort of clergyman they had got. One rose with ponderous majesty and announced herself to be Mrs. Gathercole, the Admiral’s relict. The other lady was Mrs. Edmond, the Admiral’s sister.

An old-fashioned Pembroke-table had been spread with a white linen cloth for supper. And the supper was a good one. There was a dish of fricasseed chicken and another of scalloped oysters, there was apple tart, Wensleydale cheese, and a decanter of wine and glasses.

Mrs. Gathercole had my own letter, and another upon which I discerned the unappetising scrawl of Dr. Prothero. “Simonelli is an Italian name, is it not?” asked Mrs. Gathercole.

“It is, madam, but the bearer of the name whom you see before you is an Englishman.” She pressed me no further upon this point, and I was glad not to be obliged to repeat the one or two falsehoods I had already uttered that day.

She took up Dr. Prothero’s letter, read aloud one or two compliments upon my learning in a somewhat doubting tone, and began to speak of the house where I was to live. She said that when a house was for many years in the care of an ancient gentleman — as was the case here — it was liable to fall into a state of some dilapidation — she feared I would have a good many repairs to make and the expense would be very great, but as I was a gentleman of independent property, she supposed I would not mind it. She ran on in this manner and I stared into the fire. I was tired to death. But as I sat there I became conscious of something having been said which was not quite right, which it was my duty to correct as soon as possible. I stirred myself to speak. “Madam,” I said, “you labour under a misapprehension. I have no property.”

“Money, then,” she said. “Government bonds.”

“No, madam. Nothing.”

There was a short silence.

“Mr. Simonelli,” said Mrs. Gathercole, “this is a small parish and, for the most part, poor. The living yields no more than £50 a year. It is very far from providing an income to support a gentleman. You will not have enough money to live on.”

Too late I saw the perfidious Prothero’s design to immure me in poverty and obscurity. But what could I do? I had no money and no illusions that my numerous enemies at Cambridge, having once got rid of me, would ever allow me to return. I sighed and said something of my modest needs.

Mrs. Gathercole gave a short, uncheerful laugh. “You may think so, Mr. Simonelli, but your wife will think very differently when she understands how little she is to have for her housekeeping expences.”

“My wife, madam?” said I in some astonishment.

“You are a married man, are not you, Mr. Simonelli?”

“I, madam? No, madam!”

A silence of much longer duration.

“Well!” she said at last, “I do not know what to say. My instructions were clear enough, I think! A respectable, married man of private fortune. I cannot imagine what Prothero is thinking of. I have already refused the living of Allhope to one young man on the grounds of his unmarried state, but he at least has six hundred pounds a year.”

The other lady, Mrs. Edmond, now spoke for the first time. “What troubles me rather more,” she said, “is that Dr. Prothero appears to have sent us a scholar. Upperstone House is the only gentleman’s house in the parish. With the exception of Mrs. Gathercole’s own family, your parishioners will all be hill-farmers, shepherds, and tradesmen of the meanest sort. Your learning, Mr. Simonelli, will all be wasted here.”

I had nothing to say, and some of the despair I felt must have shewed in my face for both ladies became a little kinder. They told me that a room had been got ready for me at the Rectory, and Mrs. Edmond asked how long it had been since I had eaten. I confessed that I had had nothing since the night before. They invited me to share their supper and then watched as everything I touched — dainty china, white linen napkins — became covered with dark, greasy marks.

As the door closed behind me I heard Mrs. Edmond say, “Well, well. So that is Italian beauty! Quite remarkable. I do not think I ever saw an example of it before.”

Last night complete despair! This morning perfect hope and cheerfulness! New plans constantly bubbling up in my brain! What could be more calculated to raise the spirits than a bright autumn morning with a heavy dew? Everything is rich colour, intoxicating freshness, and sparkle!

I am excessively pleased with the Rectory — and hope that I may be allowed to keep it. It is an old stone house. The ceilings are low, the floor of every room is either higher or lower than the floors of neighbouring rooms, and there are more gables than chimneys. It has fourteen rooms! What in the world will I do with fourteen rooms?

I discovered Mr. Whitmore’s clothes in a cupboard. I had not, I confess, spared many thoughts for this old gentleman, but his clothes brought him vividly before me. Every bump and bulge of his ancient shoes betray their firm conviction that they still enclose his feet. His half-unravelled wig has not yet noticed that his poor old head is gone. The cloth of his long, pale coat is stretched and bagged, here to accommodate his sharp elbows, there to take account of the stoop of his shoulders. It was almost as if I had opened the cupboard and discovered Mr. Whitmore.

Someone calls me from the garden. …

Jemmy — the old man I spoke to yesterday — is dead. He was found this morning outside his cottage, struck clean in two from the crown of his head to his groin. Is it possible to conceive of anything more horrible? Curiously, in all the rain we had yesterday, no one remembers seeing any lightning. The funeral will be tomorrow. He was the first person I spoke to in Allhope, and my first duty will be to bury him.

The second, and to my mind lesser, misfortune to have befallen the parish is that a young woman has disappeared. Dido Puddifer has not been seen since early this morning when her mother, Mrs. Glossop, went to a neighbour’s house to borrow a nutmeg grater. Mrs. Glossop left Dido walking up and down in the orchard with her baby at her breast, but when she returned the baby was lying in the wet grass and Dido was gone.

I accompanied Mrs. Edmond to the cottage to pay a visit of sympathy to the family, and as we were coming back Mrs. Edmond said, “The worst of it is that she is a very pretty girl, all golden curls and soft blue eyes. I cannot help but suppose some passing scoundrel has taken a fancy to her and made her go along with him.”

“But does it not seem more likely,” said I, “that she went with him of her own accord? She is uneducated, illiterate, and probably never thought seriously upon ethical questions in her life.”

“I do not think you quite understand,” said Mrs. Edmond, “No girl ever loved home and husband more than Dido. No girl was more delighted to have a baby of her own. Dido Puddifer is a silly, giddy sort of girl, but she is also as good as gold.”

“Oh!” said I, with a smile, “I daresay she was very good until today, but then, you know, temptation might never have come her way before.”

But Mrs. Edmond proved quite immoveable in her prejudice in favour of Dido Puddifer and so I said no more. Besides, she soon began to speak of a much more interesting subject — my own future.

“My sister-in-law’s wealth, Mr. Simonelli, causes her to overrate the needs of other people. She imagines that no one can exist upon less than seven hundred pounds a year, but you will do well enough. The living is fifty pounds a year, but the farm could be made to yield twice, thrice that amount. The first four or five years you must be frugal. I will see to it that you are supplied with milk and butter from Upperstone-farm, but by midsummer, Mr. Simonelli, you must buy a milch-cow of your own.” She thought a moment. “I daresay Marjory Hollinsclough will let me have a hen or two for you.”

This morning Rectory-lane was knee-deep in yellow and brown leaves. A silver rain like smoke blew across the churchyard. A dozen crows in their clerical dress of decent black were idling among the graves. They rose up to flap about me as I came down the lane like a host of winged curates all ready to do my bidding.

There was a whisper of sounds at my back, stifled laughter, a genteel cough, and then: “Oh! Mr. Simonelli!” spoken very sweetly and rather low.

I turned.

Five young ladies; on each face I saw the same laughing eyes, the same knowing smiles, the same rain-speckled brown curls, like a strain of music taken up and repeated many different ways. There were even to my befuddled senses the same bonnets, umbrellas, muslins, ribbons, repeated in a bewildering variety of colours but all sweetly blending together, all harmonious. All that I could have asserted with any assurance at that moment was that they were all as beautiful as angels. They were grouped most fetchingly, sheltering each other from the rain with their umbrellas, and the composure and dignity of the two eldest were in no way compromised by the giggles of the two youngest.

The tallest — she who had called my name — begged my pardon. To call out to someone in the lane was very shocking, she hoped I would forgive her but, “… Mama has entirely neglected to introduce us and Aunt Edmond is so taken up with the business about poor Dido that … well, in short, Mr. Simonelli, we thought it best to lay ceremony aside and introduce ourselves. We are made bold to do it by the thought that you are to be our clergyman. The lambs ought not to fear the shepherd, ought they, Mr. Simonelli? Oh, but I have no patience with that stupid Dr. Prothero! Why did he not send you to us earlier? I hope, Mr. Simonelli, that you will not judge Allhope by this dull season!” And she dismissed with a wave of her hand the sweetest, most tranquil prospect imaginable; woods, hills, moors, and streams were all deemed entirely unworthy of my attention. “If only you had come in July or August then we might have shewn you all the beauties of Derbyshire, but now I fear you will find it very dull.” But her smile defied me to find any place dull where she was to be found. “Yet,” she said, brightening, “perhaps I shall persuade Mama to give a ball. Do you like dancing, Mr. Simonelli?”

“But Aunt Edmond says that Mr. Simonelli is a scholar,” said one of her sisters with the same sly smile. “Perhaps he only cares for books.”

“Which books do you like best, Mr. Simonelli?” demanded a Miss Gathercole of the middle size.

“Do you sing, Mr. Simonelli?” asked the tallest Miss Gathercole.

“Do you shoot, Mr. Simonelli?” asked the smallest Miss Gathercole, only to be silenced by an older sister. “Be quiet, Kitty, or he may shoot you.”

Then the two eldest Miss Gathercoles each took one of my arms and walked with me and introduced me to my parish. And every remark they uttered upon the village and its inhabitants betrayed their happy conviction that it contained nothing half so interesting or delightful as themselves.

I dined this evening at Upperstone House. Two courses. Eighteen dishes in each. Brown Soup. Mackerel. Haricot of mutton. Boiled Chicken particularly good. Some excellent apple tarts. I was the only gentleman present.

Mrs. Edmond was advising me upon my farm. “… and when you go to buy your sheep, Mr. Simonelli, I shall accompany you. I am generally allowed to be an excellent judge of livestock.”

“Indeed, madam,” said I, “that is most kind, but in the meantime I have been thinking that there is no doctor nearer than Buxton, and it seems to me that I could not do better than advertise my services as a physician. I dare say you have heard reports that I attended Mrs. Hollyshoes.”

“Who is Mrs. Hollyshoes?” asked Mrs. Edmond.

“The wife of the gentleman who owns Allhope House.”

“I do not understand you, Mr. Simonelli. There is no Allhope House here.”

“Whom do you mean, Mr. Simonelli?” asked the eldest Miss Gathercole.

I was vexed at their extraordinary ignorance but, with great patience, I gave them an account of my meeting with John Hollyshoes and my visit to Allhope House. But the more particulars I gave, the more obstinately they declared that no such person and no such house existed.

“Perhaps I have mistaken the name,” I said — though I knew that I had not.

“Oh! You have certainly done that, Mr. Simonelli!” said Mrs. Gathercole.

“Perhaps it is Mr. Shaw he means,” said the eldest Miss Gathercole, doubtfully.

“Or John Wheston,” said Miss Marianne.

They began to discuss whom I might mean, but one by one every candidate was rejected. This one was too old, that one too young. Every gentleman for miles around was pronounced entirely incapable of fathering a child, and each suggestion only provided further dismal proofs of the general decay of the male sex in this particular part of Derbyshire.

I have discovered why Mrs. Gathercole was so anxious to have a rich, married clergyman. She fears that a poor, unmarried one would soon discovery that the quickest way to improve his fortune is to marry one of the Miss Gathercoles. Robert Yorke (the clergyman whom Mrs. Gathercole mentioned on my first evening in Allhope as having £600 a year) was refused the living because he had already shown signs of being in love with the eldest Miss Gathercole. It must therefore be particularly galling to Mrs. Gathercole that I am such a favourite with all her daughters. Each has something she is dying to learn, and naturally I am to tutor all of them: French conversation for the eldest Miss Gathercole, advanced Italian grammar for Miss Marianne, the romantic parts of British History for Henrietta, the bloodthirsty parts for Kitty, Mathematics and Poetry for Jane.

On my return from Upperstone House this morning I found Dando at the Rectory door with the two horses. He told me that his master had something of great importance and urgency to communicate to me.

John Hollyshoes was in his library as before, reading a book. Upon a dirty little table at his side there was wine in a dirty glass. “Ah! Mr. Simonelli!” he cried, jumping up. “I am very glad to see you! It seems, sir, that you have the family failing as well as the family face!”

“And what would that be?” said I.

“Why! Lying, of course! Oh, come, Mr. Simonelli! Do not look so shocked. You are found out, sir. Your father’s name was not Simonelli — and, to my certain knowledge, he was never at Genoa!”

A silence of some moments’ duration.

“Did you know my father, sir?” said I, in some confusion.

“Oh, yes! He was my cousin.”

“That is entirely impossible,” said I.

“Upon the contrary,” said he. “If you will take a moment to peruse this letter you will see that it is exactly as I say.” And he handed me some yellowing sheets of paper.

“What your aim may be in insulting me,” I cried, “I cannot pretend to guess, but I hope, sir, that you will take back those words or we shall be obliged to settle the matter some other way.” With the utmost impatience I thrust his letter back at him, when my eye was caught by the words “the third daughter of a York linen-draper.” “Wait!” I cried and snatched it back again. “My mother was the third daughter of a York linen-draper!”

“Indeed, Mr. Simonelli,” said John Hollyshoes, with his long sideways smile.

The letter was addressed to John Hollyshoes and had been written at the Old Starre Inn in Stonegate, York. The writer of the letter mentioned that he was in the middle of a hasty breakfast and there were some stains as of preserves and butter. It seemed that the writer had been on his way to Allhope House to pay John Hollyshoes a visit when he had been delayed in York by a sudden passion for the third daughter of a York linen-draper. His charmer was most minutely described. I read of “a slight plumpness,” “light silvery-gold curls,” “eyes of a forget-me-not blue.”

By all that I have ever been told by my friends, by all that I have ever seen in sketches and watercolour portraits, this was my mother! But if nothing else proved the truth of John Hollyshoes’s assertion, there was the date — January 19th, 1778—nine months to the day before my own birth. The writer signed himself, “Your loving cousin, Thomas Fairwood.”

“So much love,” I said, reading the letter, “and yet he deserted her the very next day!”

“Oh! You must not blame him,” said John Hollyshoes. “A person cannot help his disposition, you know.”

“And yet,” said I, “one thing puzzles me still. My mother was extremely vague upon all points concerning her seducer — she did not even know his name — yet one thing she was quite clear about. He was a foreign gentleman.”

“Oh! That is easily explained,” he said. “For though we have lived in this island a very long time — many thousands of years longer than its other inhabitants — yet still we hold ourselves apart and pride ourselves on being of quite other blood.”

“You are Jews perhaps, sir?” said I.

“Jews?” said he. “No, indeed!”

I thought a moment. “You say my father is dead?”

“Alas, yes. After he parted from your mother, he did not in fact come to Allhope House, but was drawn away by horse races at this place and cock-fighting at that place. But some years later he wrote to me again telling me to expect him at midsummer and promising to stay with me for a good long while. This time he got no further than a village near Carlisle where he fell in love with two young women. …”

“Two young women!” I cried in astonishment.

“Well,” said John Hollyshoes. “Each was as beautiful as the other. He did not know how to choose between them. One was the daughter of a miller and the other was the daughter of a baker. He hoped to persuade them to go with him to his house in the Eildon Hills where he intended that both should live forever and have all their hearts’ desire. But, alas, it did not suit these ungrateful young women to go, and the next news I had of him was that he was dead. I discovered later that the miller’s daughter had sent him a message which led him to believe that she at least was on the point of relenting, and so he went to her father’s mill, where the fast-running water was shaded by a rowan tree — and I pause here merely to observe that of all the trees in the greenwood the rowan is the most detestable. Both young women were waiting for him. The miller’s daughter jangled a bunch of horrid rowan-berries in his face. The baker’s daughter was then able to rumble him into the stream, whereupon both women rolled the millstone on top of him, pinning him to the floor of the stream. He was exceedingly strong. All my family—our family I should say — are exceedingly strong, exceedingly hard to kill, but the millstone lay on his chest. He was unable to rise and so, in time, he drowned.”

“Good God!” I cried. “But this is dreadful! As a clergyman I cannot approve his habit of seducing young women, but as a son I must observe that in this particular instance the revenge extracted by the young women seems out of all proportion to his offense. And were these bloodthirsty young women never brought to justice?”

“Alas, no,” said John Hollyshoes. “And now I must beg that we cease to speak of a subject so very unpleasant to my family feelings. Tell me instead why you fixed upon this odd notion of being Italian.”

I told him how it had been my grandfather’s idea. From my own dark looks and what his daughter had told him, he thought I might be Italian or Spanish. A fondness for Italian music caused him to prefer that country. Then he had taken his own name, George Alexander Simon, and fashioned out of it a name for me, Giorgio Alessandro Simonelli. I told how that excellent old gentleman had not cast off his daughter when she fell but had taken good care of her, provided money for attendants and a place for her to live, and how, when she died of sorrow and shame shortly after my birth, he had brought me up and had me educated.

“But what is most remarkable,” said John Hollyshoes, “is that you fixed upon that city which — had Thomas Fairwood ever gone to Italy — was precisely the place to have pleased him most. Not gaudy Venice, not trumpeting Rome, not haughty Florence, but Genoa, all dark shadows and sinister echoes tumbling down to the shining sea!”

“Oh! But I chose it quite at random, I assure you.”

“That,” said John Hollyshoes, “has nothing to do with it. In choosing Genoa you exhibited the extraordinary penetration which has always distinguished our family. But it was your eyesight that betrayed you. Really, I was never so astonished in my life as I was when you remarked upon the one or two specks of dust which clung to the baby’s wrapper.”

I asked after the health of his son.

“Oh! He is well. Thank you. We have got an excellent wet-nurse — from your own parish — whose milk agrees wonderfully well with the child.”

In the stable-yard at Upperstone House this morning the Miss Gathercoles were preparing for their ride. Naturally I was invited to accompany them.

“But, my dear,” said Mrs. Edmond to the eldest Miss Gathercole, “you must consider that Mr. Simonelli may not ride. Not everyone rides.” And she gave me a questioning look as if she would help me out of a difficulty.

“Oh!” said I, “I can ride a horse. It is of all kinds of exercise the most pleasing to me.” I approached a conceited-looking grey mare, but instead of standing submissively for me to mount, this ill-mannered beast shuffled off a pace or two. I followed it — it moved away. This continued for some three or four minutes, while all the ladies of Upperstone silently observed us. Then the horse stopped suddenly and I tried to mount it, but its sides were of the most curious construction and instead of finding myself upon its back in a twinkling — as invariably happens with John Hollyshoes’s horses — I got stuck halfway up.

Of course the Upperstone ladies chose to find fault with me instead of their own malformed beast, and I do not know what was more mortifying, the surprized looks of Miss Gathercole and Miss Marianne, or the undisguised merriment of Kitty.

I have considered the matter carefully and am forced to conclude that it will be a great advantage to me in such a retired spot to be able to ride whatever horses come to hand. Perhaps I can prevail upon Joseph, Mrs. Gathercole’s groom, to teach me.

Today I went for a long walk in company with the five Miss Gathercoles. Sky as blue as paint, russet woods, fat white clouds like cushions — and that is the sum of all that I discovered of the landscape, for my attention was constantly being called away to the ladies themselves. “Oh! Mr. Simonelli! Would you be so kind as to do this?” or “Mr. Simonelli, might I trouble you do do that?” or “Mr. Simonelli! What is your opinion of such and such?” I was required to carry picnic-baskets, discipline unruly sketching easels, advise upon perspective, give an opinion on Mr. Coleridge’s poetry, eat sweet-cake and dispense wine.

I have been reading over what I have written since my arrival here, and one thing I find quite astonishing — that I ever could have supposed that there was a strong likeness between the Miss Gathercoles. There never were five sisters so different in tastes, characters, persons, and countenances. Isabella, the eldest, is also the prettiest, the tallest, and the most elegant. Henrietta is the most romantic, Kitty the most light-hearted, and Jane is the quietest; she will sit hour after hour, dreaming over a book. Sisters come and go, battles are fought, she that is victorious sweeps from the room with a smile, she that is defeated sighs and takes up her embroidery. But Jane knows nothing of any of this — and then, quite suddenly, she will look up at me with a slow mysterious smile and I will smile back at her until I quite believe that I have joined with her in unfathomable secrets.

Marianne, the second eldest, has copper-coloured hair, the exact shade of dry beech leaves, and is certainly the most exasperating of the sisters. She and I can never be in the same room for more than a quarter of an hour without beginning to quarrel about something or other.

John Windle has written me a letter to say that at High Table at Corpus Christi College on Thursday last Dr. Prothero told Dr. Considine that he pictured me in ten years’ time with a worn-out slip of a wife and a long train of broken-shoed, dribble-nosed children, and that Dr. Considine had laughed so much at this that he had swallowed a great mouthful of scalding-hot giblet soup, and returned it through his nose.

No paths or roads go down to John Hollyshoes’s house. His servants do not go out to farm his lands; there is no farm that I know of. How they all live I do not know. Today I saw a small creature — I think it was a rat — roasting over the fire in one of the rooms. Several of the servants bent over it eagerly, with pewter plates and ancient knives in their hands. Their faces were all in shadow. (It is an odd thing but, apart from Dando and the porcupine-faced nurse, I have yet to observe any of John Hollyshoes’s servants at close quarters: they all scuttle away whenever I approach.)

John Hollyshoes is excellent company, his conversation instructive, his learning quite remarkable. He told me today that Judas Iscariot was a most skilful beekeeper and his honey superior to any that had been produced in all the last two thousand years. I was much interested by this information, having never read or heard of it before, and I questioned him closely about it. He said that he believed he had a jar of Judas Iscariot’s honey somewhere and if he could lay his hand upon it he would give it to me.

Then he began to speak of how my father’s affairs had been left in great confusion at his death and how, since that time, the various rival claimants to his estate had been constantly fighting and quarrelling among themselves.

“Two duels have been fought to my certain knowledge,” he said, “and as a natural consequence of this, two claimants are dead. Another — whose passion to possess your father’s estate was exceeded only by his passion for string quartets — was found three years ago hanging from a tree by his long silver hair, his body pierced through and through with the bows of violins, violoncellos, and violas like a musical Saint Sebastian. And only last winter an entire houseful of people was poisoned. The claimant had already run out of the house into the blizzard in her nightgown, and it was only her servants that died. Since I have made no claim upon the estate, I have escaped most of their malice — though, to own the truth, I have a better right to the property than any of them. But naturally the person with the best claim of all would be Thomas Fairwood’s son. All dissension would be at an end, should a son arise to claim the estate.” And he looked at me.

“Oh!” said I, much surprized. “But might not the fact of my illegitimacy …?”

“We pay no attention to such things. Indeed with us it is more common than not. Your father’s lands, both in England and elsewhere, are scarcely less extensive than my own, and it would cost you very little trouble to procure them. Once it was known that you had my support, then I dare say we would have you settled at Rattle-heart House by next Quarter-day.”

Such a stroke of good fortune, as I never dreamt of! Yet I dare not depend upon it. But I cannot help thinking of it constantly! No one would enjoy vast wealth more than I; and my feelings are not entirely selfish, for I honestly believe that I am exactly the sort of person who ought to have the direction of large estates. If I inherit, then I shall improve my land scientifically and increase its yields three or fourfold (as I have read of other gentlemen doing). I shall observe closely the lives of my tenants and servants and teach them to be happy. Or perhaps I shall sell my father’s estates and purchase land in Derbyshire and marry Marianne or Isabella so that I may ride over every week to Allhope for the purpose of inquiring most minutely into Mrs. Gathercole’s affairs, and advising her and Mrs. Edmond upon every point.

We have had no news of Dido Puddifer. I begin to think that Mrs. Edmond and I were mistaken in fancying that she had run off with a tinker or Gypsy. We have closely questioned farm-labourers, shepherds, and innkeepers, but no Gypsies have been seen in the neighborhood since midsummer. I intend this morning to pay a visit to Mrs. Glossop, Dido’s mother.

What a revolution in all my hopes! From perfect happiness to perfect misery in scarcely twelve hours. What a fool I was to dream of inheriting my father’s estate! — I might as well have contemplated taking a leasehold of a property in Hell! And I wish that I might go to Hell now, for it would be no more than I deserve. I have failed in my duty! I have imperilled the lives and souls of my parishioners. My parishioners! — the very people whose preservation from all harm ought to have been my first concern.

I paid my visit to Mrs. Glossop. I found her, poor woman, with her head in her apron, weeping for Dido. I told her of the plan Mrs. Edmond and I had devised to advertise in the Derby and Sheffield papers to see if we could discover any one who had seen or spoken to Dido.

“Oh!” said she, with a sigh, “‘twill do no good, sir, for I know very well where she is.”

“Indeed?” said I in some confusion. “Then why do you not fetch her home?”

“And so I would this instant,” cried the woman, “did I not know that John Hollyshoes has got her!”

“John Hollyshoes?” I cried in amazement.

“Yes, sir,” said she. “I daresay you will not have heard of John Hollyshoes for Mrs. Edmond does not like such things to be spoken of and scolds us for our ignorant, superstitious ways. But we country people know John Hollyshoes very well. He is a very powerful fairy that has lived hereabouts — oh! since the world began, for all I know — and claims all sorts of rights over us. It is my belief that he has got some little fairy baby at End-Of-All-Hope House — which is where he lives — and that he needs a strong lass with plenty of good human milk to suckle it.”

I cannot say that I believed her. Nor can I say that I did not. I do know that I sat in a state of the utmost shock for some time without speaking, until the poor woman forgot her own distress and grew concerned about me, shaking me by the shoulder and hurrying out to fetch brandy from Mrs. Edmond. When she came back with the brandy, I drank it down at one gulp and then went straight to Mrs. Gathercole’s stable and asked Joseph to saddle Quaker for me. Just as I was leaving, Mrs. Edmond came out of the house to see what was the matter with me.

“No time, Mrs. Edmond! No time!” I cried, and rode away.

At John Hollyshoes’s house Dando answered my knock and told me that his master was away from home.

“No matter,” said I, with a confident smile, “for it is not John Hollyshoes that I have come to see, but my little cousin, the dear little sprite”—I used the word “sprite” and Dando did not contradict me—“whom I delivered seven weeks ago.” Dando told me that I would find the child in a room at the end of a long hallway.

It was a great bare room that smelt of rotting wood and plaster. The walls were stained with damp and full of holes that the rats had made. In the middle of the floor was a queer-shaped wooden chair where sat a young woman. A bar of iron was fixed before her so that she could not rise, and her legs and feet were confined by manacles and rusty chains. She was holding John Hollyshoes’s infant son to her breast.

“Dido?” I said.

How my heart fell when she answered me with a broad smile. “Yes, sir?”

“I am the new Rector of Allhope, Dido.”

“Oh, sir! I am very glad to see you. I wish that I could rise and make you a curtsy, but you will excuse me, I am sure. The little gentleman has such an appetite this morning!”

She kissed the horrid creature and called it her angel, her doodle, and her dearie-darling-pet.

“How did you come here, Dido?” I asked.

“Oh! Mr. Hollyshoes’s servants came and fetched me away one morning. And weren’t they set upon my coming?” She laughed merrily. “All that a-pulling of me uphill and a-putting of me in carts! And I told them plainly that there was no need for any such nonsense. As soon as I heard of the poor little gentleman’s plight,” here she shook the baby and kissed it again—“I was more than willing to give him suck. No, my only misfortune, sir, in this heavenly place, is that Mr. Hollyshoes declares I must keep apart from my own sweet babe while I nurse his, and if all the angels in heaven went down upon their shining knees and begged him, he would not think any differently. Which is a pity, sir, for you know I might very easily feed two.”

In proof of this point she, without the slightest embarrassment, uncovered her breasts, which to my inexperienced eye did indeed appear astonishingly replete.

She was anxious to learn who suckled her own baby. Anne Hargreaves, I told her. She was pleased at this and remarked approvingly that Nan had always had a good appetite. “Indeed, sir, I never knew a lass who loved a pudding better. Her milk is sure to be sweet and strong, do not you think so, sir?”

“Well, certainly Mrs. Edmond says that little Horatio Arthur thrives upon it. Dido, how do they treat you here?”

“Oh! sir. How can you ask such a question? Do you not see this golden chair set with diamonds and pearls? And this room with pillars of crystal and rose-coloured velvet curtains? At night — you will not believe it, sir, for I did not believe it myself — I sleep on a bed with six feather mattress one atop the other and six silken pillows to my head.”

I said it sounded most pleasant. And was she given enough to eat and drink?

Roast pork, plum pudding, toasted cheese, bread and dripping: there was, according to Dido Puddifer, no end to the good things to be had at End-Of-All-Hope House — and I dare say each and every one of them was in truth nothing more than the mouldy crusts of bread that I saw set upon a cracked dish at her feet.

She also believed that they had given her a gown of sky-blue velvet with diamond buttons to wear, and she asked me, with a conscious smile, how I liked it.

“You look very pretty, Dido,” I said, and she looked pleased. But what I really saw was the same russet-coloured gown she had been wearing when they took her. It was all torn and dirty. Her hair was matted with the fairy-child’s puke and her left eye was crusted with blood from a gash in her forehead. She was altogether such a sorry sight that my heart was filled with pity for her, and without thinking what I did, I licked my fingertips and cleaned her eye with my spittle.

I opened my mouth to ask if she were ever allowed out of the golden chair encrusted with diamonds and pearls, but I was prevented by the sound of a door opening behind me. I turned and saw John Hollyshoes walk in. I quite expected him to ask me what I did there, but he seemed to suspect no mischief and instead bent down to test the chains and the shackles. These were, like everything else in the house, somewhat decayed and he was right to doubt their strength. When he had finished he rose and smiled at me.

“Will you stay and take a glass of wine with me?” he said. “I have something of a rather particular nature to ask you.”

We went to the library, where he poured two glasses of wine. He said, “Cousin, I have been meaning to ask you about that family of women who live upon my English estates and make themselves so important at my expense. I have forgot their name.”

“Gathercole?” said I.

“Gathercole. Exactly,” said he, and fell silent for a moment with a kind of thoughtful, half-smile upon his dark face. “I have been a widower seven weeks now,” he said, “and I do not believe I was ever so long without a wife before — not since there were women in England to be made wives of. To speak plainly, the sweets of courtship grew stale with me a long time ago and I wondered if you would be so kind as to spare me the trouble and advise me which of these women would suit me best.”

“Oh!” said I. “I am quite certain that you would heartily dislike all of them!”

He laughed and put his arm around my shoulders. “Cousin,” he said, “I am not so hard to please as you suppose.”

“But really,” said I, “I cannot advise you in the way you suggest. You must excuse me — indeed I cannot!”

“Oh? And why is that?”

“Because … because I intend to marry one of them myself!” I cried.

“I congratulate you, cousin. Which?”

I stared at him. “What?” I said.

“Tell me which you intend to marry and I will take another.”

“Marianne!” I said. “No, wait! Isabella! That is …” It struck me very forcibly at that moment that I could not chuse one without endangering all the others.

He laughed at that and affectionately patted my arm. “Your enthusiasm to possess Englishwomen is no more than I should have expected of Thomas Fairwood’s son. But my own appetites are more moderate. One will suffice for me. I shall ride over to Allhope in a day or two and chuse one young lady, which will leave four for you.”

The thought of Isabella or Marianne or any of them doomed to live forever in the degradation of End-Of-All-Hope House! Oh! it is too horrible to be borne.

I have been staring in the mirror for an hour or more. I was always amazed at Cambridge how quickly people appeared to take offence at everything I said, but now I see plainly that it was not my words they hated — it was this fairy face. The dark alchemy of this face turns all my gentle human emotions into fierce fairy vices. Inside I am all despair, but this face shews only fairy scorn. My remorse becomes fairy fury and my pensiveness is turned to fairy cunning.

This morning at half past ten I made my proposals to Isabella Gathercole. She — sweet, compliant creature! — assured me that I had made her the happiest of women. But she could not at first be made to agree to a secret engagement.

“Oh!” she said. “Certainly Mama and Aunt Edmond will make all sorts of difficulties, but what will secrecy achieve? You do not know them as I do. Alas, they cannot be reasoned into an understanding of your excellent qualities. But they can be worn down. An unending stream of arguments and pleas must be employed, and the sooner it is begun, the sooner it will bring forth the happy resolution we wish for. I must be tearful; you must be heartbroken. I must get up a little illness — which will take time as I am just now in the most excellent good looks and health.”

What could the mean-spirited scholars of Cambridge not learn from such a charming instructress? She argued so sweetly that I almost forgot what I was about and agreed to all her most reasonable demands. In the end I was obliged to tell her a little truth. I said that I had recently discovered that I was related to someone very rich who lived nearby and who had taken a great liking to me. I said that I hoped to inherit a great property very soon; surely it was not unreasonable to suppose that Mrs. Gathercole would look with more favour upon my suit when I was as wealthy as she?

Isabella saw the sense of this immediately and would, I think, have begun to speak again of love and so forth, only I was obliged to hurry away as I had just observed Marianne going into the breakfast-room.

Marianne was inclined to be quarrelsome at first. It was not, she said, that she did not wish to marry me. After all, she said, she must marry someone and she believed that she and I might do very well together. But why must our engagement be a secret? That, she said, seemed almost dishonourable.

“As you wish,” said I. “I had thought that your affection for me might make you glad to indulge me in this one point. And besides, you know, a secret engagement will oblige us to speak Italian to each other constantly.”

Marianne is passionately fond of Italian, particularly since none of her sisters understand a word. “Oh! Very well,” she said.

In the garden at half past eleven Jane accepted my proposals by leaning up to whisper in my ear: “His face is fair as heav’n when springing buds unfold.” She looked up at me with her soft secret smile and took both my hands in hers.

In the morning-room a little before midday I encountered a problem of a different sort. Henrietta assured me that a secret engagement was the very thing to please her most, but begged to be allowed to write of it to her cousin in Aberdeen. It seems that this cousin, Miss Mary Macdonald, is Henrietta’s dearest friend and most regular correspondent, their ages — fifteen and a half — being exactly the same.

It was the most curious thing, she said, but the very week she had first beheld me (and instantly fallen in love with me) she had had a letter from Mary Macdonald full of her love for a sandy-haired Minister of the Kirk, the Reverend John McKenzie, who appeared from Mary Macdonald’s many detailed descriptions of him to be almost as handsome as myself! Did I not agree with her that it was the strangest thing in the world, this curious resemblance in their situations? Her eagerness to inform Mary Macdonald immediately on all points concerning our engagement was not, I fear, unmixed with a certain rivalry, for I suspected that she was not quite sincere in hoping that Mary Macdonald’s love for Mr. McKenzie might enjoy the same happy resolution as her own for me. But since I could not prevent her writing, I was obliged to agree.

In the drawing-room at three o’clock I finally came upon Kitty, who would not at first listen to anything that I had to say, but whirled around the room full of a plan to astound all the village by putting on a play in the barn at Christmas.

“You are not attending to me,” said I. “Did not you hear me ask you to marry me?”

“Yes,” said she, “and I have already said that I would. It is you who are not attending to me. You must advise us upon a play. Isabella wishes to be someone very beautiful who is vindicated in the last act, Marianne will not act unless she can say something in Italian, Jane cannot be made to understand anything about it so it will be best if she does not have to speak at all, Henrietta will do whatever I tell her, and, Oh! I long to be a bear! The dearest, wisest old talking bear! Who must dance — like this! And you may be either a sailor or a coachmen — it does not matter which, as we have the hat for one and the boots for the other. Now tell me, Mr. Simonelli, what plays would suit us?”

In the woods between End-Of-All-Hope House and the village of Allhope

I take out my pen, my inkpot, and this book.

“What are you doing?” whimpers Dido, all afraid.

“Writing my journal,” I say.

“Now?” says she in amazement. Poor Dido! As I write she keeps up a continual lament that it will soon be dark and that the snow falls more heavily — which is I admit a great nuisance for the flakes fall upon the page and spoil the letters.

This morning my vigilant watch upon the village was rewarded. As I stood in the church-porch, hidden from all eyes by the thick growth of ivy, I saw Isabella coming down Upperstone-lane. A bitter wind passed over the village, loosening the last leaves from the trees and bringing with it a few light flakes of snow. Suddenly a spinning storm of leaves and snowflakes seemed to take possession of Upperstone-lane and John Hollyshoes was there, bowing low and smiling.

It is a measure of my firm resolution that I was able to leave her then, to leave all of them. Everything about John Hollyshoes struck fear into my heart, from the insinuating tilt of his head to the enigmatic gesture of his hands, but I had urgent business to attend to elsewhere and must trust that the Miss Gathercoles’ regard for me will be strong enough to protect them.

I went straight to End-Of-All-Hope House, and the moment I appeared in the bare room at the end of the corridor, Dido cried out, “Oh, sir! Have you come to release me from this horrid place?”

“Why, Dido!” said I, much surprized. “What has happened? I thought you were quite contented.”

“And so I was, sir, until you licked your finger and touched my eye. When you did that, the sight of my eye was changed. Now if I look through this eye”—she closed her left eye and looked through her right—“I am wearing a golden dress in a wonderful palace and cradling the sweetest babe that ever I beheld. But if I look through this eye”—she closed the right and opened her left—“I seem to be chained up in a dirty, nasty room with an ugly goblin child to nurse. But,” she said hurriedly (for I was about to speak), “whichever it is, I no longer care, for I am very unhappy here and should very much like to go home.”

“I am pleased to hear you say so, Dido,” said I. Then, warning her not to express any surprize at anything I said or did, I put my head out of the door and called for Dando.

He was with me in an instant, bowing low.

“I have a message from your master,” I said, “whom I met just now in the woods with his new bride. But, like most Englishwomen, the lady is of a somewhat nervous disposition and she has taken it into her head that End-Of-All-Hope House is a dreadful place full of horrors. So your master and I have put our heads together and concluded that the quickest way to soothe her fears is to fetch this woman”—I indicated Dido—“whom she knows well, to meet her. A familiar face is sure to put her at her ease.”

I stopped and gazed, as though in expectation of something, at Dando’s dark, twisted face. And he gazed back at me, perplexed.

“Well?” I cried. “What are you waiting for, blockhead? Do as I bid you! Loose the nurse’s bonds so that I may quickly convey her to your master!” And then, in a fine counterfeit of one of John Hollyshoes’s own fits of temper, I threatened him with everything I could think of: beatings, incarcerations, and enchantments! I swore to tell his master of his surliness. I promised that he should be put to work to untangle all the twigs in the woods and comb smooth all the grass in the meadows for insulting me and setting my authority at naught.

Dando is a clever sprite, but I am a cleverer. My story was so convincing that he soon went and fetched the key to unlock Dido’s fetters, but not before he had quite worn me out with apologies and explanations and pleas for forgiveness.

When the other servants heard the news that their master’s English cousin was taking the English nurse away, it seemed to stir something in their strange clouded minds and they all came out of their hiding places to crowd around us. For the first time I saw them more clearly. This was most unpleasant for me, but for Dido it was far worse. She told me afterwards that through her right eye she had seen a company of ladies and gentlemen who bent upon her looks of such kindness that it made her wretched to think she was deceiving them, while through the other eye she had seen the goblin forms and faces of John Hollyshoes’s servants.

There were horned heads, antlered heads, heads carapaced like insects’ heads, heads as puckered and soft as a mouldy orange; there were mouths pulled wide by tusks, mouths stretched out into trumpets, mouths that grinned, mouths that gaped, mouths that dribbled; there were bats’ ears, cats’ ears, rats’ whiskers; there were ancient eyes in young faces, large, dewy eyes in old worn faces, there were eyes that winked and blinked in parts of anatomy where I had never before expected to see any eyes at all. The goblins were lodged in every part of the house: there was scarcely a crack in the wainscotting which did not harbour a staring eye, scarcely a gap in the banisters without a nose or snout poking through it. They prodded us with their horny fingers, they pulled our hair and they pinched us black and blue. Dido and I ran out of End-Of-All-Hope House, jumped up upon Quaker’s back and rode away into the winter woods.

Snow fell thick and fast from a sea-green sky. The only sounds were Quaker’s hooves and the jingle of Quaker’s harness as he shook himself.

At first we made good progress, but then a thin mist came up and the path through the woods no longer led where it was supposed to. We rode so long and so far that — unless the woods had grown to be the size of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire together — we must have come to the end of them, but we never did. And whichever path I chose, we were forever riding past a white gate with a smooth, dry lane beyond it — a remarkably dry lane considering the amount of snow which had fallen — and Dido asked me several times why we did not go down it. But I did not care for it. It was the most commonplace lane in the world, but a wind blew along it — a hot wind like the breath of an oven, and there was a smell as of burning flesh mixed with sulphur.

When it became clear that riding did no more than wear out ourselves and our horse, I told Dido that we must tie Quaker to a tree — which we did. Then we climbed up into the branches to await the arrival of John Hollyshoes.

Dido told me how she had always heard from her mother that red berries, such as rowan-berries, are excellent protection against fairy magic.

“There are some over there in that thicket,” she said.

But she must have been looking with her enchanted eye for I saw, not red berries at all but the chestnut-coloured flanks of Pandemonium, John Hollyshoes’s horse.

Then the two fairies on their fairy-horses were standing before us with the white snow tumbling across them.

“Ah, cousin!” cried John Hollyshoes. “How do you do? I would shake hands with you, but you are a little out of reach up there.” He looked highly delighted and as full of malice as a pudding is of plums. “I have had a very exasperating morning. It seems that the young gentlewomen have all contracted themselves to someone else — yet none will say to whom. Is that not a most extraordinary thing?”

“Most,” said I.

“And now the nurse has run away.” He eyed Dido sourly. “I never was so thwarted, and were I to discover the author of all my misfortunes — well, cousin, what do you suppose that I would do?”

“I have not the least idea,” said I.

“I would kill him,” said he. “No matter how dearly I loved him.”

The ivy that grew about our tree began to shake itself and to ripple like water. At first I thought that something was trying to escape from beneath it, but then I saw that the ivy itself was moving. Strands of ivy like questing snakes rose up and wrapped themselves around my ancles and legs.

“Oh!” cried Dido in a fright, and tried to pull them off me.

The ivy did not only move; it grew. Soon my legs were lashed to the tree by fresh, young strands; they coiled around my chest and wound around the upper part of my right arm. They threatened to engulf my journal but I was careful to keep that out of harm’s way. They did not stop until they caressed my neck, leaving me uncertain as to whether John Hollyshoes intended to strangle me or merely to pin me to the tree until I froze to death.

John Hollyshoes turned to Dando. “Are you deaf, iron-brains? Did you never hear me say that he is as accomplished a liar as you and I?” He paused to box Dando’s ear. “Are you blind? Look at him! Can you not perceive the fierce fairy heart that might commit murder with indifference? Come here, unseelie elf! Let me poke some new holes in your face! Perhaps you will see better out of those!”

I waited patiently until my cousin had stopped jabbing at his servant’s face with the blunt end of his whip and until Dando had ceased howling. “I am not sure,” I said, “whether I could commit murder with indifference, but I am perfectly willing to try.” With my free arm I turned to the page in my journal where I have described my arrival in Allhope. I leant out of the tree as far as I could (this was very easily accomplished as the ivy held me snug against the trunk) and above John Hollyshoes’s head I made the curious gesture that I had seen him make over the old man’s head.

We were all as still as the frozen trees, as silent as the birds in the thickets and the beasts in their holes. Suddenly John Hollyshoes burst out, “Cousin …!”

It was the last word he ever spoke. Pandemonium, who appeared to know very well what was about to happen, reared up and shook his master from his back, as though terrified that he too might be caught up in my spell. There was a horrible rending sound; trees shook; birds sprang, cawing, into the air. Anyone would have supposed that it was the whole world, and not merely some worthless fairy, that was being torn apart. I looked down and John Hollyshoes lay in two neat halves upon the snow.

“Ha!” said I.

“Oh!” cried Dido.

Dando gave a scream which if I were to try to reproduce it by means of the English alphabet would possess more syllables than any word hitherto seen. Then he caught up Pandemonium’s reins and rode off with that extraordinary speed of which I know him to be capable.

The death of John Hollyshoes had weakened the spell he had cast on the ivy, and Dido and I were able quite easily to tear it away. We rode back to Allhope, where I restored her to joyful parent, loving husband, and hungry child. My parishioners came to the cottage to load me with praises, grateful thanks, promises of future aid, etc., etc. I however was tired to death and, after making a short speech advising them to benefit from the example I had given them of courage and selflessness, I pleaded the excuse of a headache to come home.

One thing, however, has vexed me very much, and that is there was no time to conduct a proper examination of John Hollyshoes’s body. For it occurs to me that just as Reason is seated in the brain of Man, so we Fairies may contain within ourselves some organ of Magic. Certainly the fairy’s bisected corpse had some curious features. I append here a rough sketch and a few notes describing the ways in which Fairy anatomy appears to depart from Human anatomy. I intend to be in the woods at first light to examine the corpse more closely.

The body is gone. Dando, I suppose, has spirited it away. This is most vexatious as I had hoped to have it sent to Mr. Baillie’s anatomy school in Great Windmill-street in London. I suppose that the baby in the bare room at the end of the corridor will inherit End-Of-All-Hope House and all John Hollyshoes’s estates, but perhaps the loss of Dido’s milk at this significant period in its life will prevent its growing up as strong in wickedness as its parent.

I have not abandoned my own hopes of inheriting my father’s estate and may very well pursue my claim when I have the time. I have never heard that the possession of an extensive property in Faerie was incompatible with the duties of a priest of the Church of England — indeed I do not believe that I ever heard the subject mentioned.

I have been most villainously betrayed by the Reverend John McKenzie! I take it particularly hard since he is the person from whom — as a fellow clergyman — I might most reasonably have expected support. It appears that he is to marry the heiress to a castle and several hundred miles of bleak Scottish wilderness in Caithness. I hope there may be bogs and that John McKenzie may drown in them. Disappointed love has, I regret to say, screwed Miss Mary Macdonald up to such a pitch of anger that she has turned upon Henrietta and me. She writes to Henrietta that she is certain I am not be trusted and she threatens to write to Mrs. Gathercole and Mrs. Edmond. Henrietta is not afraid; rather, she exults in the coming storm.

“You will protect me!” she cried, her eyes flashing with strange brilliance and her face flushed with excitement.

“My dear girl,” said I, “I will be dead.”

George Hollinsclough was here a moment ago with a message that I am to wait upon Mrs. Gathercole and Mrs. Edmond immediately. I take one last fond look around this room. …

“Mr. Simonelli or the Fairy Widower” is a rendering of “Midwife to the Fairies,” found in English, Irish, Scots, and Breton variations. Clarke’s story also makes deft use of many other classic folklore themes: the girl who was stolen away to suckle a fairy baby, the seeing eye, the faery house in the woods, etc. Celtic fairy lore of this sort can be found in the collections of Katherine Briggs.