THE MUMMERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 307, 28 December 1929, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE MUMMERS.

It was a grey, misty afternoon at the beginning of November, and Brilliana, the cherished only daughter of Sir Harry Burney, was walking 011 the terrace shaded with yew trees in the garden of her father's beautiful old manor house of Braddon. Like the vicar who was always in Bray, to was Sir Harry Burney always in Braddon. Bluff, good-natured, he could hardly have declared which he loved best, his ancestral home or his only daughter, one among seven sons, and the most spirited of the family. Brilliana lived up to her name, inherited from an ancestress who was a great lady among the Puritans. Like a warm jewel, she shone in the wintry setting of terrace and lawn, with dark yews shaped in the form 6 of birds and beasts beside her. She was of an auburn beauty. She had eyes of a smoky topaz beneath straight, dark brows. Hair of a rich copper colour rioted round her black hood and face of wild rose tints. But the brown velvet mantle, lined with tawny squirrel skin 6, concealed the thin arms of a girl in her early teens, and the fine little hands thrust into the big muff of pheasant's plumage -were smirched with pitch. Brilliana had been about ho lawful occassion had been busying herself, in-"I deed, in secret with the great bonfire which her brothers had built for the morrow, the fifth. It was her intent to return home quietly, avoiding the eagle eye of Dame Ursula, the housekeeper, and seek the help of Dolly the dairymaid, in the hope that a pat of butter would remove the stains of tar from her hands and arms. It promised to be easy enough.. Candles had not yet been lit in Braddon; the place seemed strangely still and empty. Brilliana climbed the flight of shallow steps which led to a side door. She came down the long gallery, which was almost in darkness except where it opened out into a hall, where a log fire was burning 011 the wide, hooded hearth. As Brilliana passed on to the portraits on the wall beside her, suddenly, in the flickering light, it seemed to her that a portrait of an Elizabethan ancestor was looking at her with eyes that lived and rolled. The little'madam feared the wrath of neither man nor beast, but ghosts and goblins were a different matter. With trembling speed she snatched a half-burned stick from the fire and tried to light the candles. The stick was half charred; it broke in her grasp, the glowing fragment fell down on her panniered skirt, which caught fire. In a moment tragedy began. Brilliana's mouth opened in a dolorous cry for the help which was far away. She was about to begin the headlong flight through the draughty gallery to the open, which would have made her a column of fire, when the picture swung forward like a door from the wall. The bogy behind it leaped down on her, hurled her to the ground, rolled her over and over to put out the flames, crushed her clothes to tinder in its hands. "Cease, good Hobgoblin!" Brilliana gasped at last. "Your pinches are worse to bear than the burns. All the same, I am vastly obliged."

She sat up, much less hurt than might have been imagined, shaken, scorched, and smarting, but grasping her own cool little personality again. "Brilliana, child, do you not know me?" said a man's deep voice.* "Do you not -remember Denzil Leigh and the Christmas you came to see the mummers at his hall ?'" The voice was familiar, but the : memory it called up, of handsome young man, very elegant in a white peruke and a coat of vapour-blue, did not match at all the dark, dishevelled figure crouching beside her. All the same, she exclaimed, "Sir Denzil, why are you here? I thought you had got safely across the water with the Prince." "Child, I smuggled myself aboard a French ketch, and stole home to see my sick mother," said the exile. "My Whig cousin who has seized my estate observed me speaking to your father, and laid information about me to the Government. I was pursued, your father gave me refuge, and hid me in his priest's hole, the secret chamber behind the portrait. I heard your cry for help and came out." "You were seen speaking to my father?" repeated Brilliana. "That will be why the military and the magistrates are with him now. There are people who covet Braddon, and would fain embroil him, too. You were best to get back at once into the priest's hole."

The two turned and looked for the dark, .yawning cavity in the wall, but the shadowless face of the beruffed courtier met them instead. The secret door had swung to on its own weight, and shut unnoticed while the fight with the fire was going on. In vail they tried to find the spring and open it. "Denzil, you must fly!" said Brilliana suddenly. "I can hear * the troopers approaching. They will be searching the house." Hand in hand, she ran down the long gallery with him, her mind working to and fro like a weaving shuttle. If Denzil were caught ii> Braddon it would mean the ruin of her father. If Denzil were caught at all, anywhere, he might follow the other Jacobite lords to the scaffold. * %

They slipped out of the side door, down the steps to the terrace. Along the terrace they ran. The tramp of the troopers in the courtyard sounded nearer. Lights were being kindled in the long gallery. Lanterns were flickering on the terrace. "In here," she muttered, pushing him into a little gardener's shed built against the ivied wall. Nothing there to help concealment —tools, a wheelbarrow, a bundle of straw for earthing up the roses. "I shall be caught like a cornered rat," said Denzil. "Not so; you must feign to be Guy Fawkes," returned Brilliana, pushing liim down on the wheelbarrow. "Sit as if you were stuffed with straw, and leave the rest of the mumming to me. The bad light will help us." He sprawled back as lifelessly as he could. Brilliana draped her black hood rakishly over his brow; she stuffed his waistcoat with straw and left some showing; she thrust more up his sleeves and in his stockings. The door opened, the light of a lantern shone in; in its circle of light the gaping faces of the troopers were seen. "Go away, you monstrous rude men, and do not spoil my secret," she screamed, dancing and stamping. 'Why may I not make a Guy Fawkes to surprise the boys at the bonfire to-morrow ?

Go away, and for pity's sake do not let my father or Dame Ursula know!" "It is the little lady of the house," said her father's steward, coming forward and speaking in tones of horror. It is not seemly for a young gentlewoman ever to go aping her brothers." The shed door, was slammed; the troopers burst out laughing and turned their search elsewhere. Brilliana was led weeping to the house; for once her tears came easily. A"little later she lay in her big fourposter bed, waiting anxiously for Sir Harry. He came; the tale was told, the warning given. "When the soldiers have gone you must smuggle him back to the priest's bole," said Brilliana. "He saved my life; we must save his."