Crowley Castle

SIR Mark Crowley was the last baronet of his name, and it is now nearly a century since he died.Last year I visited the ruins of his great old Norman castle; and loitered in the village near, where I heard some of the particulars of the following tale from old inhabitants, who had heard them from their fathers; no further back.We drove from our little sea-bathing place, in Sussex, to see the massive ruins of Crowley Castle, which is the show-excursion of Merton.We had to alight at a field gate: the road further on being too bad for the slightly-built carriage, or the poor tired Merton horse: and we walked for about a quarter of a mile through uneven ground, which had once been an Italian garden; and then we came to a bridge over a dry moat, and went over the groove of a portcullis that had once closed the massive entrance, into an empty space surrounded by thick walls, draperied with ivy, unroofed, and open to the sky.We could judge of the beautiful tracery that had been in the windows, by the remains of the stonework here and there; and an old man -'ever so old,' he called himself when we inquired his exact age -who scrambled and stumbled out of some lair in the least devastated part of the ruins at our approach, and who established himself as our guide, showed us a scrap of glass yet lingering in what was the window of the great drawing-room not above seventy years ago.After he had done his duty, he hobbled with us to the neighbouring church, where the knightly Crowleys lie buried: some commemorated by ancient brasses, some by altartombs, some by fine Latin epitaphs, bestowing upon them every virtue under the sun.He had to take the church-key back to the adjoining parsonage at the entrance of the long straggling street which forms the village of Crowley.The castle and the church were on the summit of a hill, from which we could see the distant line of sea beyond the misty marshes.The village fell away from the church and parsonage, down the hill.The aspect of the place was little, if at all, changed, from its aspect in the year 1772.But I must begin a little earlier.From one of the Latin epitaphs I learnt that Amelia Lady Crowley died in 1756, deeply regretted by her loving husband, Sir Mark.He never married again, though his wife had left him no heir to his name or his estate -only a little tiny girl -Theresa Crowley.This child would inherit her mother's fortune, and all that Sir Mark was free to leave; but this little was not much; the castle and all the lands going to his sister's son, Marmaduke, or as he was usually called Duke, Brownlow.Duke's parents were dead, and his uncle was his guardian, and his guardian's house was his home.The lad was some seven or eight years older than his cousin; and probably Sir Mark thought it not unlikely that his daughter and his heir might make a match.Theresa's mother had bad some foreign blood in her, and had been brought up in France -not so far away but that its shores might be seen by any one who chose to take an easy day's ride from Crowley Castle for the purpose.Lady Crowley had been a delicate elegant creature, but no great beauty, judging from all accounts; Sir Mark's family were famous for their good looks; Theresa, an unusually lucky child, inherited the outward graces of both her parents.A portrait which I saw of her, degraded to a station over the parlour chimney-piece in the village inn, showed me black hair, soft yet arch grey eyes with brows and lashes of the same tint as her hair, a full pretty pouting passionate mouth, and a round slender throat.She was a wilful little creature, and her father's indulgence made her more wayward.She had a nurse, too, a French bonne, whose mother had been about my lady from her youth, who had followed my lady to England, and who had died there.Victorine had been in attendance on the young Theresa from her earliest infancy, and almost took the place of a parent in power and affection -in power, as to ordering and arranging almost what she liked, concerning the child's management -in love, because they speak to this day of the black year when virulent smallpox was rife in Crowley, and when, Sir Mark being far away on some diplomatic mission -in Vienna, I fancy -Victorine shut herself up with Miss Theresa when the child was taken ill with the disease, and nursed her night and day.She only succumbed to the dreadful illness when all danger to the child was over.Theresa came out of it with unblemished beauty; Victorine barely escaped with life, and was disfigured for life.This disfigurement put a stop to much unfounded scandal which had been afloat respecting the French servant's great influence over Sir Mark.He was, in fact, an easy and indolent man, rarely excited to any vehemence of emotion, and who felt it to be a point of honour to carry out his dead wife's wish that Victorine should never leave Theresa, and that the management of the child should be confided to her.Only once had there been a struggle for power between Sir Mark and the bonne, and then she had won the victory.And no wonder, if the old butler's account were true; for he had gone into the room unawares, and had found Sir Mark and Victorine at high words; and he said that Victorine was white with rage, that her eyes were blazing with passionate fire, that her voice was low, and her words were few, but that, although she spoke in French, and he the butler only knew his native English, he would rather have been sworn at by a drunken grenadier with a sword in his hand, than have had those words of Victorine's addressed to him.Even the choice of Theresa's masters was left to Victorine.A little reference was occasionally made to Madam Hawtrey, the parson's wife and a distant relation of Sir Mark's, but, seeing that, if Victorine chose so to order it, Madam Hawtrey's own little daughter Bessy would have been deprived of the advantages resulting from gratuitous companionship in all Theresa's lessons, she was careful how she opposed or made an enemy of Mademoiselle Victorine.Bessy was a gentle quiet child, and grew up to be a sensible sweet-tempered girl, with a very fair share of English beauty; freshcomplexion, brown-eyed round-faced, with a stiff though well-made figure, as different as possible from Theresa's slight lithe graceful form.Duke was a young man

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