The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1885-12-26 00:00:00

JENNY LEWIS:
A TALE OF ST. MARK'S EVE.
[All rights reserved.]

CHAPTER I.

"Sunnis!" said Jenny Lewis, opming her large
brown eyes to tlreir fullest extent, while her delicate
cheeks grew a shade paler even than usual.
"True as gospel, my dear," asserted the old woman,
who sat on the opposite seat of the honey-suckle
porch.
"And has any one ever done it?" asked the girl.
"Many and many," said the dame, shaking her
toothless head. "There was Ellen Griffiths, when I
was a girl. Let me see, I was fifteen then. It was
fifty year ap come to-morrow night. Fifty year !
That's what they call half a sentry, and I mind it as
well as if it were yesterday. Half a sentry !"
"Well, well!" said Jenny, impatiently. "What did
Ellen Griffiths do ?"

" It was on St. Mark's Eve, just as it might be to-
morrow, you know," continued the old woman. "And
Ellen she was always a curious one, and must needs
be always at anything secret, like as a moth at a
candle. Well, she heard tell of all I have been sayinc,
to you, that any one who passes the night in the
church porch on the Eve of St. Mark will see all the
people of the parish who are to die in the year pass
by."
"And suppose no one is going to die next year?"
"Then you would not see anything at all. Well,
Ellen was not content to believe this quietly, liko other
folks, but she must go prying for herself. So she tells
to one—or she would not. have been let to go—but
she steals down quietly at night, while her father
and mother were asleep, and she opens the door, and
makes straight for the church porch, where the sexton,
who had a grave to dig, found her lying senseless in
the morning."
"Then she had seen something," said Jenny, whiter
than ever.
"She had seen Rerelf."
_

"Seen herself! flow could that be r

" I don't know. It was a sperrit like herself, I
suppose. But She died on the day before the next St.
Mark's Eve, to-day, as
.it might be, just within the
year."
"Shure
"Au, it is awful and wicked to be unbelieving and
prying, and never comes to any good.'
"I wonder," said Jenny after a pause, "whether
any one will die next year ?"
_ _ _

;‘ Lor, child, don't tak and look like that," cried the
old woman. "You are enough to frighten one. What
have you got to do with death ? It's marriage rather
you should be thinking of."
"Nonsense, Bridget! I never want to, marry."

_
"It doesn't matter what we want when a thing is
to be," said the gossip, shaking her head. "It was not
for nothing that three tens came together the last
time we consulted the cards, or that— Well, my
goodness, look there! If there aint three magpies."
"But the chesnut popped out of the fire, and—l
had sooner keep my liberty."
"Ali, so they all say ! But it is not fit that a young
girl like you should live alone with an old woman like
me. The prettiest girl in the county, too, with her
own land just like a lady, and nobody but old Williams
to look after it, and a deal of use he is! Why, the
Spring Cose is all thistles, and you would say that
the bit of wheat was sowed with poppies, and a few
grains of corn had got in by nistuke. No, what you
want is an active, handsome, well to-do young hus-
band."
"Get out, Bridget!"
_

"Not like dark Morgan, who used to be always
pestering you, till you said him No, plain, and who
half frightened me to death, whenever he came near,
with his strange ways and wild looks, but a nice,
respectable man like Mister Thomas."
"I shan't listen to your nonsense any longer r cried
out Jenny, getting up from her seat. "I shall step
down to the wood to listen to the nightingale. How
beautiful he do sing this evening-to be sure !"
And without troubling to put on hood, hat, or
bonnet, Miss Jenny tripped lightly away in the direc-
tion named.

"Well, I never heard tell of a nightingale that
whistled a tune before," murmured old Bridget, with
a chuckle, as she went into the house.
The old girl was not prolific in words of wisdom;
but when she said that a good husband would bo a
companion more likely to ensure Jenny's happiness
than herself, she stumbled by luck upon a sensible
remark. Jenny Lewis was an orphan, placed in an
exceptional position. Ido not know vhy I should
not claim for her the title of aristocrat, as she
certainly belbriged to an old county family, her
father, grandfather, etc. etc. et. (for a number of
generations which might put many Norfolk turkey-
cocks to the blush), haVing held and transmitted the
same landed property which had now fallen into her
hands, and must pass, either on her marriage or death,
into another male line.

However plucky a race a family may make of it, it
can never win a match against time; the old sleuth-
hound is sure to run it to earth at last.

The only thing, indeed, against the probability of
her blood being of that particular blue tint which we
all know runs in the veins of those whose progenitors
have been chronicled for a certain number of genera-
tions was that the hereditary possessions were very
small, and the fortunes of the Lewis family had never
either ebbed or flowed, but had remained at a dead
level, and that a very humble one, since the days
when the original ancestor had his five acres of South
Wales allotted to him by Noah, only making a slight
spurt up now that the name was threatened with ex-
tinction, like a burning house when the roof falls in.
For Jenny, though not particularly wealthy, was the
only one of her race who had inherited cash as well
as land. Her father, money-loving and industrious,
had not found the cultivation of his own little plot
sufficient occupation, and had worked at times on the
estate of the lord of the manor, degrading his lineage,
but putting a few very welcome pounds in his pocket;
and in these practical times, when noblemen sell their
salmon to the fishmonger, their game to the poulterer,
their pineapples to the fruiterer, their names and
titles to stock jobbing companies (limited) who will
throw the first stone at him?

Jenny, then, who had lost her mother while quite
an infant, and had in early childhood and maidenhood
held a position midway between the daughter of a
farmer and that of a labourer, found herself, on her
father's death, sole possessor of three acres of pasture,
two of arable, twelve sheep, two cows, four pigs, and
a nice, white, thatched cottage in excellent repair,
situated on the side of a gentle hill, with a wood some
few hundred yards above and behind it, the simple
village church a gunshot below it, and the straggling
village a mile to the left along the valley.
But in addition to house and farm, which every-
body knew would be hers, Jenny also inherited £l5O,
which was lodged to her father's credit in the savings
bank of the nearest town. Jenny Lewis was not only
the prettiest girl in all the country round, she was
quite an heiress. But she could not read very fluently,
and her writing was not much to boast of, though
she could milk a cow, cook, make bread, and manage
a household capitally. She could not do farm-work,
however, and had to hire old Williams for the in-
efficient performance of that; while Bridget, the
woman who had taken care of her when she lost her
mother, and until she was old enough to keep house
for her father, had now fixed her permanent abode
with the orphan girl, who could not exactly live quite
gone, even in that secluded Welsh valley.
Bridget had a thousandwirtues and one great weak-
ness, which was superstition; and this was particu-
larly unfortunate, since Jenny as an imaginative
and nervous girl, for whom the marvellous had a
terribly strong attraction; and the faithful old nurse
had from the first fed her charge plentifully with
gollstly stories, which only sufficed to make her own
nerves thrill pleasantly, while they had an effect
almost maddening upon the more delicate organisa-
tion of her listener.

For the girl's temperament was analogous to that
of those inconsistent persons whose intense horror of
heights takes the form of an impulse to jump from
the edge of any precipice which they may find them-
selves skirting, and she had formed the resolution to
pass the following night in the church, and test the
truth of this legend, and her own powers as a seer.
Nor was this a sudden fancy, but one which had
grown gradually upon her, and had been often com-
bated by fear before it gained its present hold upon
her mind. For this superstition connected with St.
Mark's Eve, with the corroborative history of the ill-
fated Ellen Griffiths, had very, very often been treated
of by old Bridget, though Jenny, who knew every
word which was coming, listened to the hundred-
times-old tale with unflagging interest and attention—
s model listener.

But I do not think that. the little head of Jenny
Lewis was entirely filled with ghosts, as she sauntered
through the meadow titl she reached tha rude stone
wall which separated it from the wood, and mounting
lightly by the slabs which were left protruding for
that purpose, seated herself on the top. At least,
persons absorbed in spiritual meditation do not gener-
ally hunk lively tunes, which she was at present doing,
doubtless to excite the emulation of the nightingale.
It proved attractive to another biped, not a feathered
one, but one in broadcloth; a broad-faced, honest-
looking young man, red, freckled, and with high
cheek-bones, I own, but a:sturdy fellow, got up in his
Sunday.best, with a flower in his button-hole, who
came up on the other, or wood side of the wall, which
lie mounted, and quietly seated himself beside the
songstress.
" Lor, Mr. Thomas !" she cried, "110 w you made me
jump! Who would ever have thought of seeing you
here?"

"Not you, for one," replied the young man, "or
you would not 'Mr. Thomas' me, I suppose. Why,
Jenny, how nice you do look this evening."

"Nonsense !"

"It's the setting sun on your cheeks, I think; I
never did see anything look so soft, and tempting.
Just one,"

"Get out, George !" -
"One more?
"Have done! You will pull me off the wall.'
"Don't be afraid; I have got a firm seat enough, and
I will hold you safe."
_ - .

It would make a good picture, if one were but an
artist. The two lovers sitting on the wall, the man
with his arm round the girl's waist, the setting sun
bathing them, even as hope flooded their future, in a
roseate glow; before them the pretty white cottage,
the picturesque church, the long, undulating, grassy