CHAPTER IV.
CASTLE PERILOUS.
In one corner of the property of Hugh John's father stood an ancientcastle--somewhat doubtfully of it, however, for it was claimed aspublic property by the adjoining abbey town, now much decayed andfallen from its high estate, but desirous of a new lease of life as atourist and manufacturing centre. The castle and the abbey had forcenturies been jealous neighbours, treacherous friends, embattledenemies according to the fluctuating power of those who possessedthem. The lord of the castle harried the abbot and his brethren. Theabbot promptly retaliated by launching, in the name of the Church, thedread ban of excommunication against the freebooter. The castlerepresented feudal rights, the abbey popular and ecclesiasticalauthority.
And so it was still. Mr. Picton Smith had, indeed, only bought theproperty a few years before the birth of our hero; but, among otherencumbrances, he had taken over a lawsuit with the town concerning thecastle, which for years had been dragging its slow length along. EdamAbbey was a show-place of world-wide repute, and the shillings of thetourist constituted a very important item in the finances of theoverburdened municipality. If the Council and magistrates of the goodtown of Edam could add the Castle of Windy Standard to theirattractions, the resultant additional sixpence a head would go fartowards making up the ancient rental of the town parks, which now letfor exactly half of their former value.
But Mr. Picton Smith was not minded thus tamely to hand over anancient fortress, secured to him by deed and charter. He declared atonce that he would resist the claims of the town by every means in hispower. He would, however, refuse right-of-way to no respectablesightseer. The painter, all unchallenged, might set up his easelthere, the poet meditate, even the casual wanderer in search of thepicturesque and romantic, have free access to these gloomy anddesolate halls. The townspeople would be at liberty to conduct theirfriends and visitors thither. But Mr. Smith was resolved that theancient fortalice of the Windy Standard should not be made a vulgarshow. Sandwich papers and ginger-beer bottles would not be permittedto profane the green sward of the courtyard, across which had sooften ridden all the chivalry of the dead Lorraines.
"Those who want sixpenny shows will find plenty at Edam Fair," was Mr.Picton Smith's ultimatum. And when he had once committed himself, likemost of his stalwart name, Mr. Smith had the reputation of being veryset in his mind.
But in spite of this the town asserted its right-of-way through thecourtyard. A footpath was said to have passed that way by whichpersons might go to and fro to kirk and market.
"I have no doubt a footpath passed through my dining-room a fewcenturies ago," said Mr. Smith, "but that does not compel me to keepmy front and back doors open for all the rabble of Edam to come and goat their pleasure."
And forthwith he locked his lodge gates and bought the largest mastiffhe could obtain. The castle stood on an island rather more than a milelong, a little below the mansion house. A wooden bridge led over thedeeper, narrower, and more rapid branch of the Edam River from thedirection of the abbey and town. Across the broader and shallowerbranch there could be traced, from the house of Windy Standard, theremains of an ancient causeway. This, in the place where the streamwas to be crossed, had become a series of stepping-stones over whichHugh John and Priscilla could go at a run (without falling in andwetting themselves more than once in three or four times), but whichstill constituted an impregnable barrier to the short fat legs ofToady Lion--who usually stood on the shore and proclaimed his woes tothe world at large till somebody carried him over and deposited him onthe castle island.
Affairs were in this unsettled condition when, at twelve years of age,Hugh John ceased to be Hugh John, and became, without, however, losinghis usual surname of Smith, one of the august and imperial race of theBuonapartes.
It was a clear June evening, the kind of night when the wholelandscape seems to have been newly swept, washed down, and generallyspring-cleaned. All nature spoke peace to Janet Sheepshanks,housekeeper, nurse, and general responsible female head of the houseof Windy Standard, when a procession came towards her across thestepping-stones over the broad Edam water from the direction of thecastle island. Never had such a disreputable sight presented itself tothe eyes of Janet Sheepshanks. At once douce and severe, sharp-tonguedand covertly affectionate, she represented the authority of a fatherwho was frequently absent from them, and the memory of a dead motherwhich remained to the three children in widely different degrees. ToPriscilla her mother was a loving being, gracious alike by the tendersympathy of her voice and by the magic of a touch which healed allchildish troubles with the kiss of peace upon the place "to make itwell." To Hugh John she had been a confidant to whom he could rush,eager and dishevelled, with the tale of the glorious defeat of sometin enemy (for even in those prehistoric days Hugh John had been asoldier), and who, smoothing back his ruffled hair, was prepared tojoin as eagerly as himself in all his tiny triumphs. But to ToadyLion, though he hushed the shrill persistence of his treble to areverent murmur when he talked of "muvver," she was only animagination, fostered mostly by Priscilla--his notion of motherhoodbeing taken from his rough-handed loving Janet Sheepshanks; while thetomb in the village churchyard was a place to which he had no desireto accompany his mother, and from whose gloomy precincts he sought toescape as soon as possible.