WhiteladiesCreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 1875 - 328 páginas IT was an old manor-house, not a deserted convent, as you might suppose by the name. The conventual buildings from which no doubt the place had taken its name, had dropped away, bit by bit, leaving nothing but one wall of the chapel, now closely veiled and mantled with ivy, behind the orchard, about a quarter of a mile from the house. The lands were Church lands, but the house was a lay house, of an older date than the family who had inhabited it from Henry VIII.'s time, when the priory was destroyed, and its possessions transferred to the manor. No one could tell very clearly how this transfer was made, or how the family of Austins came into being. Before that period no trace of them was to be found. They sprang up all at once, not rising gradually into power, but appearing full-blown as proprietors of the manor, and possessors of all the confiscated lands. There was a tradition in the family of some wild, tragical union of an emancipated nun with a secularized friar-a kind of repetition of Luther and his Catherine, but with results less comfortable than those which followed the marriage of those German souls. With the English convertites the issue was not happy, as the story goes. Their broken vows haunted them; their possessions, which were not theirs, but the Church's, lay heavy on their consciences; and they died early, leaving descendants with whose history a thread of perpetual misfortune was woven. The family history ran in a succession of long minorities, the line of inheritance gliding from one branch to the other, the direct thread breaking constantly. To die young, and leave orphan children behind; or to die younger still, letting the line drop and fall back upon cadets of the house, was the usual fate of the Austins of Whiteladies-unfortunate people who bore the traces of their original sin in their very name. |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Términos y frases comunes
almshouses amusement Aunt Gertrude Aunt Susan baby beau-père Bertie better breath Bruges casuistry chair chantry child comfort cousin curious dear doctor door Dropmore English Everard everything excitement eyes face Farrel Farrel-Austin feeling Flemish French Giovanna girl glad grey half hand happy head heard heart Herbert Austin hope John Simmons Kanderthal Kate kind knew ladies laugh live looked Madame Austin Madame de Mirfleur mamma marriage marry Martha mean mind Miss Augustine Miss Susan sat Monsieur mother natural never night old Sarah once pain perhaps pleasure poor Herbert poor Reine pray prayers pretty Reine's Richard seemed sense sister smile Sophy soul Stevens stood stranger strong suppose sure table d'hôte talk TAUCHNITZ tell thing thought tion Tolladay took turned Whiteladies wife window wish woman wonder words young