The second of the brothers came seldom. He was a grave lad: he neither laughed nor made merry, nor rode a-hunting like his two brothers. In figure he was the tallest of the three; but stooped in walking, so that he seemed the shortest. He was possessed of a strange melancholy, of which he was never quite free, although sometime he would seem to shake it off and talk bravely for a while. He was like his uncle, Colonel Thomas Radcliffe, in his temperament, being as moody and as full of strange fancies.
‘It is a disease,’ said Mr. Hilyard, speaking of Francis Radcliffe’s melancholia, ‘for which there is no known remedy, while the causes are subtle and manifold. The patients are subject to strange fancies and illusions; some have thought themselves made of glass and others of feathers; some are held down with fear, and others inflated like bladders with wild hopes; some suffer the curse of Apuleius, in that dead men’s bones are always held before them: a strange disease indeed. Yet melancholy men, as Aristotle insisteth, are often witty.’
Mr. Hilyard, therefore, regarded this young gentleman with a peculiar curiosity, and loved nothing so much as to talk with him and learn his thoughts. First of all he discovered that this boy was strangely given to the study of all books which he could find upon the unseen world, such as book on oracles, conjuring, of spirits, predictions, astrology, and so forth. On meeting encouragement he opened his mind to Mr. Hilyard and took counsel with him. There was no subject in the world, I believe, in which our most ingenious Oxford scholar was not versed. Therefore Frank learned from him how to conjure spirits, raise the dead, cast nativities, and so forth, and that is to say, all that books can teach.
‘Which is,’ Mr. Hilyard said, ‘everything except the essential. I mean, Mr. Radcliffe, that you may question the stars, but you must read their answer yourself, because they are silent; and you may question the dead —— these books tell you how —— but I doubt if they will reply.’
Nevertheless they began to amuse themselves with casting horoscopes and nativities, erecting celestial figures and the houses of heaven; Mr. Hilyard all the time protesting that the thing was a foolish invention, and useful only in that it taught something of the planetary courses. Yet he, like his pupil, watched anxiously for the event; and when, not in one case only, that of Frank himself, but also of the Earl and my brother Tom, the future which they hoped to find lovely and fortunate came out gloomy and threatening, all the signs menacing, Mr. Hilyard became terrified and would have no more of it, saying that though it was a vain thing, yet to continue in it might be the sin of tempting Providence, such as that committed by Saul; and that as for him, he would ask of the stars no more. Now if the future they had seen in this mirror of coming time had been bright and happy, would they have ceased to inquire? I think not; and strange it is that this thing which so many learned men and philosophers teach us to despise, is yet on occasion believed in even by themselves.
We had many conversations upon these subjects, which, like the tales of ghosts, are always curious to people of every age and rank. Mr. Hilyard, after speaking of the practice among the ancients, one day discoursed upon the common and vulgar methods practised by people in all countries and in times ancient and modern.
‘Some, for instance,’ he said, ‘look in a magic ball of glass, when they see not only the future but also the present, and what is being done in far countries. Others fill a basin with water, and behold the same as in a mirror. Others read the future by dreams, and others by cards; while by the flight and number of birds, the crowing of cocks, the first words heard in the morning, the luck of the day is determined. Some have placed barley on the letters of the alphabet, and noted the order in which a fowl will pick up the ears.’
‘My maid Jenny,’ I said, ‘reads fortunes by the hand.’
‘It is palmistry,’ said Mr. Hilyard, ‘and a most curious art, though, like the rest, it is vain and useless; while, it hath been held by some, the Lord hath stamped the future of man upon every feature, so that, if we could learn it, we might read in the curve of an eyebrow, the lines of the lips, the turn of the chin, a sure and certain prognostic of what will happen to us before we die. With your permission, Miss Dorothy, we will examine the girl in this matter.’
Jenny was called, and I asked her first to read my hand. She replied, looking ashamed, that she had read it many times; but when I commanded her to tell me what she saw there, she hesitated and changed colour, and then replied, like a gipsy at a fair when you cross her hand with a groat, that there was a fair young gentleman of a great estate, and that she saw a wedding-ring and happiness as long as a summer day, with beautiful children. But it was manifest that she said what she thought would please me. Then Mr. Hilyard bade her look at Mr. Frank’s hand, into which she peered long and with a strange curiosity. After a while she dropped his hand, and turned to Mr. Hilyard, saying:
‘Now yours, sir,’ and read it glibly as if from a book, saying, ‘The line of life is long, but the course of love is crossed. There is wealth for you, and honour; but no wife and no children. No one hath everything.’
‘But mine,’ cried Frank — —‘what is mine?’
But she replied not, running away. When afterwards I rebuked her, she acknowledged that she could not tell him what she read, so bad and unlucky it was. She also told me that her grandmother, the old gipsy woman of whom I have spoken, had also told the fortune of Mr. Frank by cards, and that it came the same as her own telling, which made me marvel.
‘Ask no more,’ said Mr. Hilyard; ‘and you, girl, keep these things to yourself, else the people will get strange notions into their heads.’
The people had already got into their heads strange notions. First this girl of mine had filled the place with the terror of the ghosts she saw. Next it was said that she was a witch, and ought to be thrown into a pond. Perhaps that would have been done, but for fear of us. Then it was said that she had bewitched a certain young fellow of the place named Job Oliver, a hind. They told Mr. Hilyard that Job would do whatever foolish things Jenny told him to do; that he would sometimes rise when she was not in the company, and say that Jenny called him, and so go to her; that he looked not as he was wont to look, but went about with eyes distracted and trembling hands.
‘She is a witch,’ said Mr. Hilyard, ‘just as all women are witches; and she hath bewitched this foolish lad. But the only arts, I think, are those which she practises in common with all her sex, namely, her eyes and her face. In a word, the fellow is in love.’
I spoke to her on the subject, and she confessed, though she looked confused, that it was as Mr. Hilyard said, and that if the man chose to be in love with her she could not help it; perhaps he did and said foolish things, but she could not help that either; and he must do what he pleased. The girl was saucy about it, but yet one could not reprove her, because it makes every woman saucy and self-conceited, when a man is in love with her. When she crossed the quadrangle or entered any of their houses, the people looked askance and put thumb in fingers, but yet were monstrous civil, because they feared her. Witch or not, she did none of them any harm (I do not believe that a pig which died at this time was overlooked by her, though this was charged upon her). As for Job, after we went away he presently recovered, looked about him, became once more a cheerful wight, forgot his enchantress, and married another woman, who made him happy in such sort as rustics understand happiness; that is to say, every year a thumping boy or girl, and every Sunday a great dish of fat bacon. And as for Jenny herself, she paid no heed to what was thought, but went about with an impudent answer for all except her mistress, and a saucy laugh, and singing as she went, as if there was no such thing in th............