University of Virginia Library

THE ATTIC:
UNDER THE ROOF.

I CANNOT but think it very odd—the distinctness
with which I remember the little speech which the
head-master of our school made to `us boys,' on a November
morning—just after prayer-time—twenty-odd years
ago! He gave an authoritative rap with the end of his
ruler upon the desk—glared about the room a moment,
through his spectacles,—as if to awe us into a due attitude
of attention, and then spoke in this wise;—“Those
boys who sleep in the attic—(a long pause here,) should
understand that they are expected to conduct themselves
like gentlemen, and set a proper example to the rest of
the school. (I think he singled out Judkins and Barton
here, with a sharp look over the rim of his glasses.)
Last night I am very sorry to say there was great disorder.
Several large field-pumpkins (a very perceptible

titter here along the benches, which the head-master
represses by a `rat-tat-tat' from the ruler)—several
large field-pumpkins were rolled through the corridor at
a late hour of the night, and finally were tumbled down
the attic stairs—disturbing the sleep of the quiet boys,
and alarming the household. I hope the conduct will
not be repeated.”

As I had not at that day been promoted to the attic,
but classed myself with the quiet ones whose sleep had
been disturbed, I listened with a good deal of modest
coolness to this speech: indeed the master, as he stepped
down from the platform, patted me approvingly on
the head (I being conveniently posted to receive that
mark of regard), and I could not but reproach myself
thereupon, for the glee with which I, in company with a
few others who were in the secret, had listened for the
bowling pumpkins as they came bounding down the
stairs the night before.

The real culprits of the attic, however, were Judkins,
Barton and Russel; and I looked upon these ring-leaders,
I remember, with a good deal of awe—wondering
if their misdeeds and great daring would not some
day bring them to the penitentiary.

I am happy to say, however, that they have thus far
escaped: One of them, Russel, is indeed an active politician;
but the others are quite safe. Judkins, who
leered in such a way that morning at his chum,—as I

thought the very height of youthful address and villainy,
is now the stout rector of a flourishing church somewhere
in one of the Middle States; and wears, I am
told the most dignified figure—in his gown—of any
clergyman of his Diocese.

Barton I had neither seen nor heard of in many
years. He was of British parentage, and there was a
rumor that at his father's death, which occurred shortly
after those school-days to which I have referred, he had
gone back with his mother, to the old country. Whether
the rumor was well founded or not, I probably never
should have been informed, had it not been for certain
incidents hinted at under mention of “my old school-mate
of the Attic,” in the little fat English note-book
spoken of in the opening chapters, and which is just
now lying under my hand. I will try to group those
incidents together carefully enough to make a half-story
—if nothing more.

I was bowling down through Devonshire upon a
coach top—it was before the time of the South Devon
rail-way — somewhere between Exeter and Totness,
when my attention was arrested by a rubicund-faced
man sitting behind me, and who wore a communicativeness
of look, which anywhere in England, it is quite
refreshing and startling to behold. I fell speedily into
conversation with him, and at almost every word detected
traced of a voice I had some day listened to before;

they were traces of the old boy of the attic. An allusion
or two to other-side matters—most of all the naming
of the little village where the great school crowned
the hill—opened his memory like a book. It was Barton
himself. Having been one of the junior boys, my
own face was not so familiar to him; for a pretty long
period in life we study only the faces before us; but
when members of the younger ranks begin to crowd us,
we look back with some scrutiny to find what manner
of men they are.

Howbeit we fell now into most easy and familiar
chat; we went back to the days of `taw' and roundabouts
as easily as a cloud drifts. I think our companions of
the coach top must have been immensely mystified by
our talk about the “Principal” and his daughters and
his sons—one of whom was the pattern of all mischief.
How we roared that day as we compared recollections
about the plethoric, thick-set, irascible farmer whose
orchard lay unfortunately contiguous to the play-ground!
How we probed the mysteries of the smoky, reeking
kitchen and brought up to light the old chef de cuisine
(poor woman, she is dead this many a day) with her
top-knot curls and her flying cap-strings! And I am
persuaded that those “field-pumpkins” rumbling down
the attic stairs, did not give more innocent merriment to
any listener on the eventful night, than to us old boys—
that day in Devon. Of course we had our little observations

to make about our old friend Judkins and his
rectorship; and if they were not altogether such as his
lady admirers of the parish (of whom I am told he has
a warm galaxy) might commend,—they were at least
honest and cheery, and respectful to the man, and still
more respectful, I trust, to the great cause in which he
is a worker.

Afterward, as our hilarity subsided somewhat, we
fell into talk about our own personal history—a subject
which, so far as I have observed, is apt to command,
whenever approached, a certain degree of seriousness.
It is all very well to be merry at the recollection of
some old school-mate, who has recklessly married and
gone astray,—or of one who is putting all his thews and
muscle to the strain of a contest with some great giant
of worldly trouble (it mattering very little whether the
giant is imaginary or real)—or of another, floating
about in weary idleness and bachelorhood, seeming
very chirruppy on the surface—a surface which is apt to
gloss over a great many tormenting fires. This sort of
observation, as I said, we can conduct with a certain
degree of cheery warmth and abandon;—it concerns
our neighbors' gold fields, not ours;—but when we
come to compare notes about the value of our own
working veins, and to confess the small weight and
richness of ore we have brought up after all our digging,
—it breeds a seriousness. We smile at thought of the

rector in connection with his boyish wildness; but have
we any rectorship—any parish that looks to us for guidance?
We crack our little jokes at mention of poor
Tom Steady fighting wearily his long battle with the
world with wife and children tugging at his skirts;—
have we any such battle to fight? or if we had, should
we fight it as patiently as he?

There was not very much to interest in my part of
the discourse, into which the current of our chat fell,
there upon the Devon coach—since up to that date, I
had been living only a drifting life of invalid vagabondage.
The rubicund face of Barton told a different story.
He was, if I remember rightly, concerned in some
manufacturing interest near to the old town of Modbury;
he had a pleasant cottage thereabout among the hills, to
which he gave me a very cordial invitation.

I rejoiced in his pleasant establishment: he must be
married—of course?

“Yes —,” he says, with some coyness—“married;”
and he continues in a lowered tone, and with
an embarrassment, I thought, in his manner—“there
are some inconvenient circumstances however:—to tell
you the truth, my wife is not living with me at present;
so if you drive over, I can give you only a bachelor
welcome.”

“Ah!” (what could I say more?)

There is a pause for a while in our talk. At length
Barton breaks in:—

“Looks awkwardly, I de'say?”

“Well — it does.”

“It is awkward,” said he, with some feeling; “it
worries me excessively.”

“I'm not surprised,” I ventured to say; but farther
than this I made no observation. If there is one bit of
counsel which is absolutely sound, both for friends and
strangers, it is—never to meddle with quarrels between
husband and wife; domestic troubles are a great deal
more apt to cure themselves than they are to be cured
by outsiders. I was not sorry to find that, by the time
the conversation had reached this critical stage, the
coach had drawn up by the inn-door, near to the market-cross
of the old town of Totness, to which place I
had booked myself. I shook hands with my newly-found
acquaintance, promising to pay him an early visit.

It was quite certain that he was not growing thin
under the `worry;' I think I never met with a better
candidate for acceptance by the Life Insurance people.
Presentable withal; not over six and thirty at the
outside; amiable in his expression—though this to be
sure is a very doubtful indication of character. Possibly
the wife was a victim to the entertainment of jealous
fancies; for I could not but admit, that there was a
good deal of the air of a `gallant, gay Lothario,' about
my friend Barton.

I think I must have passed a fortnight or three

weeks at a little village in the neighborhood—strolling
up and down the hillsides that are kept constantly begreened
by a thousand irrigating streamlets,—indulging
in an occasional idle canter along the country roads;
and once, at least, whipping a lazy meadow-stretch of
the Erme river with tackle I had borrowed at the inn;
and long ago as the visit was made, I think I could find
my way now to a certain pool, not far below the Ermebridge
on the Modbury road, and within sight of Fleetwood
House, where upon a good day, and with a good
wind at one's back, I think an adroit fly-fisher might be
very sure of a pound `strike.'

But even such pleasant employment did not drive
wholly out of mind Barton, his solitary home at Clumber
cottage, and my promised visit. So I named a day
to him by post, and received a warm reply—setting
forth however his request that I would make “no allusion
to the unpleasant circumstance mentioned in the
coach-drive—more particularly as he was rated by all the
members of his present establishment, and by the neighborhood,
only as a gay bachelor. Bating this little awkwardness,”
he continued, in this note, “I shall hope to
give you a fricassée that will equal that of the old chef de
cuisine under whose presiding curls and cap we broke
bread together last.”

I drove down in a jaunty dog-cart with which they
equipped me at the inn. Clumber Cottage was neither

a large nor a pretentious establishment; there was a
tidy array of gravel walks; great piles of luxuriant rhododendron
and Spanish laurel; a gray stone cottage
with its flanking stable, half hidden in a copse of evergreens;
cosy rooms with a large flow of sunshine into
their southern windows; a perfect snuggery in short,
where I found as hospitable welcome as it was possible
for a single man to give.

I shall not dwell upon the strolls and upon the talk
we indulged in on that mild February day. The course
of neither threw any new light upon the matter which
had so piqued my curiosity. A snug and quiet dinner
with its salmon, its haunch of exquisite Dartmoor mutton,
its ruby glow of sherry in the master's cups, and its
fragrant bouquet of Latour chased away the early hours
of evening. A tidy waiting maid attended us, whose
face, I am free to confess—after a good deal of not incurious
observation,—was of a degree of plainness which
must have proved satisfactory to the most capricious and
despotic of wives.

I bade, as I supposed, a final adieu to my host next
morning, and set off on my return to Totness, and
thence to Exeter. Barton had undoubtedly made a terribly
false step—not of a character to be talked of; and
though I pitied him sincerely, I could not help thinking
that he wore his disappointment with extraordinary resolution
and appetite.

The cold fogs of Exeter, a cough, and the advice of
a friendly physician, drove me back again to one of those
little bights along the Channel shore where the sun
makes an almost Mediterranean mildness even in winter.
Ten days after my dinner with Barton, I found
myself established in two delightful rooms just under
the roof of a lodging house in Torquay. Vines clambered
over the windows, and shook their tresses of rich
ivy leaves on either side, as I looked out upon the bay,
which lay below—fair, and clear and smooth, with a score
or more of fishing boats lying drawn up on the lip of the
sands by Paignton, and beyond. This cosy wintering
place for delicate people, is in fact so nestled into the
flank of a protecting circuit of hills, that on all the little
terraces where cottages find lodgement, you may see
lemon trees and the oleander blooming out of doors in
winter. A harsh storm may indeed compel special and
temporary protection; but a sunny day and a south-east
wind bring such budding spring again as can be found
nowhere else in England.

In such a place, of course, every lodging house has
its little company—not necessarily known to each other,
but meeting day after day in the entrance hall, or in the
pretty green yard, set off with flowers and shrubbery,
which lies before the entrance door.

Upon the same floor with myself was another single
lodger who was thoroughly English, I think, in all that

regarded his moral qualities; but physically, a very poor
type—inasmuch as he was a weazen, dyspeptic, dried
man, who wore yellow gaiters, a spotted cravat, and a
huge eye glass dangling at the top button hole of his
waistcoat. His calls upon the waiting maid, Mary,
were most inordinate and irrepressible—sometimes for
hot water, sometimes for cold—the hot water being always
too hot, and the cold not cold enough; I think he
would have driven the poor girl mad with his fretfulness,
if he had not anointed her palm from week to
week with a crown or two of service money. I sometimes
took my coffee at an adjoining table in the little breakfast
room upon the ground floor; but after a series of
resolute approaches I never came nearer to acquaintanceship
than passing a `Good morning' to him; and even
this he met invariably with so captious and churlish a
rejoinder, that for very sport's sake, I kept up the show
of civility to the last morning of my stay. I have no
doubt that he entertained a certain respect for the Church
of England and the prayer book; but I am sure that he
would have thought very contemptuously of Death or of
any prospective Heaven or Hell, which were not occasionally
spoken encouragingly of by the Times Newspaper.

Upon the second floor was an elderly invalid lady,
whom I frequently saw seated, in sunny weather, at her
open window, or in her easy chair upon the grass plat

below. She was attended by her maid and by her
daughter; this last a fair young girl, of most lithe and
graceful figure, and with one of those winning faces
which a man never grows tired of looking on. I think I
see her now hovering about her mother's chair, offering
a hundred little attentions—now beating the pillows, that
the position may be made the easier,—now pleading with
her to taste some new delicacy,—now seated beside her,
with one of those drooping willowy flats half hiding her
face, as she reads for the ear of the invalid some fragment
from a favorite book or journal. Both mother
and daughter wore the deepest black, and the widow's
cap told only too plainly the cause of their mourning.

Upon the same floor with these last, and making up
the tale of our lodgers, was a young mother, the wife of
an officer of the Indian civil service, who had brought
down to this balmy atmosphere a sick child; every day
the poor little fellow, with a languid expression that
promised I thought small hope, was rolled down in a
Bath-chair to a sunny position on the shore of the bay;
every day the hopeful mother walked anxiously beside
him, looking for a returning strength—which never
came.

With explorations about the charming nooks of the
little town of Torquay, and with not a little furtive observation
of the personages I have enumerated, and to
all of whom my quality of lodger permitted me to give

passing salutations from day to day, I passed a fortnight.
In the course of that time I had learned incidentally
that the lady and daughter who had attracted a
large share of my observation, were the widow and
child of a Colonel Wroxley who had been killed or
reported missing, in the India service (I think it was
about the time of the Affghan war). The blow, wholly
unexpected, had almost crushed the wife, who was previously
in delicate health, and who had now come with
her only child to struggle under that balmy atmosphere
against her misfortune. Upon her first arrival, I was
told, she had frequently enjoyed the promenade along
the sands; but to the great grief of the daughter, she
had now given up these little excursions, and relapsed
into a state of despondency and listlessness which grew
every day more decided. The daughter at the instigation
of both mother and physician tore herself away for
an hour each evening for a stroll along the beach, sometimes
alone, and sometimes attended by a young acquaintance
from a neighboring cottage.

Now it happened one day, toward the end of my
first fortnight of stay,—as I was returning from my
usual afternoon tramp,—that I caught sight before me in
the dusk, of this fair young girl—who had so enlisted
my admiration and sympathy—accompanied by a gentleman
whose bearing toward her, and whose familiarity,
should have been that only of an accepted lover. I

quickened my pace as they drew near the gateway to
catch a fuller sight of this stranger. As I did so, they
suddenly turned to double upon their walk again; and
I cannot tell what horror and disgust came over me
when I saw that her attendant was none other than
Barton! He knew me at once, but met me with a surprised
and embarrassed manner; and I dare say that
my own was equally embarrassed, and I am quite sure,
not very cordial. He expressed his wonder at finding
me still in Devon, asked my address, and passed on.

I had however no call from him the next day, or on
any subsequent day. Miss Wroxley met my salutation
next morning with a deep blush; but I saw in her the
same loving, gentle, unwearied care for her invalid
mother. That so lovely a creature should become the
victim of a scoundrel was a thing too terrible to think of.

It was plain now—the cause of his domestic infelicity;
the man must be a roué of the worst description.
I could think only with disgust and abhorrence of my
intercourse with him, and of my day's visit at Clumber
Cottage. I found myself reckoning up, as nearly as I
could, his old habitudes and tendencies at school; and
it seemed to me plainly enough that they all had a leaning
toward the worst forms of baseness. I even thought
of making a confidant of the weazen-faced gentleman;
but when I saw him shuffling into the breakfast room
with his pinched hungry look, and heard his captious

“Good morning,” and saw him thrust his glass into the
socket of his eye for a new gloat over some prowess of
“my Lord Aberdeen” or of “my Lord Darby”—I relented.

Matters remained in this state—I seeing no more of
Barton—when one morning I became conscious of an
excitement pervading the whole household. The eyes
of the maid fairly twinkled; `boots' even was full of
glee; the poor mother, whose child was near death,
wore an expression of tranquil pleasure, in her anxiety;
but, most of all, the change showed itself in Miss Wroxley,
whose face as I caught sight of it from the window,
was fairly radiant.

It was explained to me when I went below: news
had come that Colonel Wroxley, the father, was not
killed, but had escaped just now from a long captivity,
and was safely on his way for England. The wife only,
did not share in the joy; her hopes had been too deeply
shattered; a hint alone of the possible truth had been
conveyed to her by her daughter; but even this had
been repulsed with a shudder of disbelief, and an entreaty
that she might hear no more of such rumors,
which had appalled the poor girl. The physician upon
his morning visit had declared that the communication
of such news, if urged upon her acceptance, in her present
state of health, might give a shock that would be
fatal.

Meantime the husband is approaching England; the
poor lady does not rally; a dozen different plans are
devised to prepare her for the strange revulsion of feeling;
but they all fail of accomplishment; at the least
approach to the forbidden topic, she refuses, in a tempest
of despair, all hearing.

Barton I have not met again; but on one or two
occasions, when Miss Wroxley has returned after dusk
I have observed her lingering at the wicket, and have
heard a male voice at the parting. Once or twice too,
my eye has fallen upon a letter in the post-man's budget
for “Miss Wroxley”—written in a hand I know
only too well. There can be no doubt that he is making
his way insidiously—indeed has made it already,
into the full affections of this sweet girl. It can be no
affair of cousinship; else, why this avoidance of the
mother and of the house? why the avoidance of me?

Upon a certain morning somewhat later, the house is
stirred again by the intelligence that the little fevered
boy is dead. The mother's grief is violent and explosive.
The poor wan creature who has lingered so long
doubtfully between night and day, is at length placidly
stretched in sleep. Yet the mother cannot abide the
change from fevered pain to eternal quietude. Her
noisy grief stirs the heart of her invalid neighbor. At
last—at last, there is a heart that mourns, as she has
mourned. The quick sympathy tells upon every fibre

of her being. She must join tears with this bereaved
one. She insists upon going to her; she finds a strength
she has not found this many a day. It is even so; we
are tied to life, and find capacity for endurance, more
in companionship of grief, than in any companionship
of joy.

The physician shrewdly perceives that advantage
should be taken of this exaltation of feeling for communicating
news of the speedy return of the husband. The
willing daughter receives the needed instructions. She
bounds toward her one day as the mother returns from
her errand of mercy—throws herself in her arms—“It
is true, mamma, it is true: He is alive and we shall see
him again!”

“My poor child—what do you tell me?”

“True—true, mother: he is alive, he is on his way:
there is a letter in his own hand that tells us.”

And the woman bows her head over her child—“My
God, I thank thee!”

“No faltering now, mother; your poor friend with
her dead boy by her, needs all your strength—all your
repose to cheer her. Don't desert her.”

A little rally—a deadly nervous tremor—one wild
gush of tears, and the conquest is made.

“And now the letter, my darling,—the letter—
quick, give me the letter; these old eyes must spell it
out.”

Can it be that a new and deadlier grief hangs threatening
over this family—that courage and strength come
so suddenly, for the strain?

I had the pleasure of witnessing the arrival of Col.
Wroxley before my leave of that delightful town of
Torquay. A tall swarthy man, bronzed by those fierce
suns of India, firmly knit in muscle and in temper—a
man whose will I thought would be an iron one, but
whose heart under it—though making little demonstration—might
sometimes melt like iron in a furnace; a
man to be trusted—not lightly provoked—above all, a
man to be obeyed.

It seemed to me that such a protector—perhaps
avenger—might some day be needed.

The little boy is buried; we had all followed him to
his last sleeping place upon a sunny spot of the hill-side;
the mother is taking on a calm courage; the widow's
caps are abandoned, and I see the figure of the colonel's
daughter flitting under the trees, of a mild evening, clad
all in white. A sober cheerfulness is growing upon
all the household—with one marked exception. The
daughter, at the first so radiant with joy at the father's
return, is wearing day by day a more disturbed look.
There is a fitfulness in her manner which has not belonged
to her. I see her less often with her young
companions. And I am somehow conscious of the
presence of some party hovering about the shades of

the hill-road at evening—eager to snatch a word—to
multiply promises—to fasten a deeper hold upon her
affections.

It is plain that the father sees this altered condition
of his daughter's feeling, and in his awkward, soldierly
way, endeavors to brighten her spirits. And he enters
upon the task with all the more eagerness; since he has
already in days past laid his iron rule against what he
had judged her caprices. But the story of his own wife's
immeasurable grief has opened his eyes to the depth and
breadth of that law of the affections which no mere exercise
of authoritative will, whether outside or within,
can bound or measure. No man's affections—much less
woman's—can be ordered `to the front.' The autocrat
of Russia, magnanimous as he is, in many of his
designs, is wearying and bloodying himself against this
rule of our nature, all over the Polish plains.

I have said that the colonel in other days had overruled
the daughter's caprice. A certain young acquaintance
of his and son of an old friend, who had been attracted—as
who had not—by the graces of his daughter,
the colonel had fixed upon with quite military resolve,
as his future son-in-law. He had studied his character
well; he was worthy; he was every inch a soldier; he
would make his daughter happy; and Annie must look
upon the matter as settled.

The mother had expostulated; but the soldier's fiery

will, and her exalted sense of duty brought her to capitulation.
The news of the colonel's death, instead of
giving freedom to the child, had inspired the mother
with an insensate wish to carry out to the last degree
the wishes of the father. God had made her the legatee
of the colonel's uncontrollable will.

But now this barrier to the parental confidence was
removed. The young aide-de-camp had been killed in
battle. What could mean then those tears—that fitfulness—that
overcasting shadow of trouble? I felt that
a catastrophe was approaching. And it came.

But the letter that announced it did not reach me
until I had left Torquay. I was at the Albemarle, London,
when this exultant note was handed me—post-marked
Modbury—from Barton:

I was not a little taken aback by this cheery letter.
I began to reflect again upon the old school-boy qualities
which I thought I had seen developed in him. They
were not so bad after all.

Barton was a good fellow.

How easy it is to count up a man's bad tendencies
and give him a character that shall blast him, and do
honor to our discernment! How much of this are we
doing every day! And yet it is quite as easy to
reckon a man's good drift, and honor him accordingly.
We are all bad enough to be sure; but I do not think
the cynics, or the crazy partisans, will make us any the
better by overcasting and by blackening what good is
in us.

I never hear a man rashly and wantonly abused
—in fact, scarce ever read my morning paper—but I
think with compunction of my sins in that direction, at
my quiet lodgings Under the Roof, in the town of Torquay.

FINIAL.

THUS far the memories suggested by my little note-books
have carried me, until I have reached the
last half-story, lying under the roof.

I put them back now upon their corner of the Library
shelf—hoping they will have opened the way to
the hearts of some new friends, and not rebuffed the
kindly spirit of such old ones as I claimed years ago.

The little books shall have a long rest now: and
whatever I venture upon in future, in an imaginative
humor, shall have its seat nearer home. It is not so
much in way of apology, or of promise, that I say this,
as it is for the adjustment of some neat finial for the
peak of the roof of my building of—Seven Stories.