Produced by Clare Graham, using scans from the Internet Archive
JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY.
BY [M.E. Braddon] THE AUTHOR OF
"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,"
ETC. ETC. ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL.I.
Published by Tinsley Brothers of London in 1863 (third edition).
THIS STORY
Is Dedicated
TO
MY MOTHER
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. THE MAN WITH THE BANNER.
CHAPTER II. LITTLE MARY.
CHAPTER III. ABOUT THE LINCOLNSHIRE PROPERTY.
CHAPTER IV. GOING AWAY.
CHAPTER V. MARCHMONT TOWERS.
CHAPTER VI. THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN.
CHAPTER VII. OLIVIA.
CHAPTER VIII. "MY LIFE IS COLD, AND DARK, AND DREARY."
CHAPTER IX. "WHEN SHALL I CEASE TO BE ALL ALONE?"
CHAPTER X. MARY'S STEPMOTHER.
CHAPTER XI. THE DAY OF DESOLATION.
CHAPTER XII. PAUL.
CHAPTER XIII. OLIVIA'S DESPAIR.
CHAPTER XIV. DRIVEN AWAY.
JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY.
VOLUME I.
CHAPTER I.
THE MAN WITH THE BANNER.
The history of Edward Arundel, second son of Christopher Arundel
Dangerfield Arundel, of Dangerfield Park, Devonshire, began on a
certain dark winter's night upon which the lad, still a schoolboy, went
with his cousin, Martin Mostyn, to witness a blank-verse tragedy at one
of the London theatres.
There are few men who, looking back at the long story of their lives,
cannot point to one page in the record of the past at which the actual
history of life began. The page may come in the very middle of the
book, perhaps; perhaps almost at the end. But let it come where it
will, it is, after all, only the actual commencement. At an appointed
hour in man's existence, the overture which has been going on ever
since he was born is brought to a sudden close by the sharp vibration
of the prompter's signal-bell; the curtain rises, and the drama of life
begins. Very insignificant sometimes are the first scenes of the
play,--common-place, trite, wearisome; but watch them closely, and
interwoven with every word, dimly recognisable in every action, may be
seen the awful hand of Destiny. The story has begun: already we, the
spectators, can make vague guesses at the plot, and predicate the
solemn climax; it is only the actors who are ignorant of the meaning of
their several parts, and who are stupidly reckless of the obvious
catastrophe.
The story of young Arundel's life began when he was a light-hearted,
heedless lad of seventeen, newly escaped for a brief interval from the
care of his pastors and masters.
The lad had come to London on a Christmas visit to his father's sister,
a worldly-minded widow, with a great many sons and daughters, and an
income only large enough to enable her to keep up the appearances of
wealth essential to the family pride of one of the Arundels of
Dangerfield.
Laura Arundel had married a Colonel Mostyn, of the East India Company's
service, and had returned from India after a wandering life of some
years, leaving her dead husband behind her, and bringing away with her
five daughters and three sons, most of whom had been born under canvas.
Mrs. Mostyn bore her troubles bravely, and contrived to do more with
her pension, and an additional income of four hundred a year from a
small fortune of her own, than the most consummate womanly management
can often achieve. Her house in Montague Square was elegantly
furnished, her daughters were exquisitely dressed, her sons sensibly
educated, her dinners well cooked. She was not an agreeable woman; she
was perhaps, if any thing, too sensible,--so very sensible as to be
obviously intolerant of anything like folly in others. She was a good
mother; but by no means an indulgent one. She expected her sons to
succeed in life, and her daughters to marry rich men; and would have
had little patience with any disappointment in either of these
reasonable expectations. She was attached to her brother Christopher
Arundel, and she was very well pleased to spend the autumn months at
Dangerfield, where the hunting-breakfasts gave her daughters an
excellent platform for the exhibition of charming demi-toilettes and
social and domestic graces, perhaps more dangerous to the susceptible
hearts of rich young squires than the fascinations of a _valse a deux
temps_ or an Italian scena.
But the same Mrs. Mostyn, who never forgot to keep up her
correspondence with the owner of Dangerfield Park, utterly ignored the
existence of another brother, a certain Hubert Arundel, who had,
perhaps, much more need of her sisterly friendship than the wealthy
Devonshire squire. Heaven knows, the world seemed a lonely place to
this younger son, who had been educated for the Church, and was fain to
content himself with a scanty living in one of the dullest and dampest
towns in fenny Lincolnshire. His sister might have very easily made
life much more pleasant to the Rector of Swampington and his only
daughter; but Hubert Arundel was a great deal too proud to remind her
of this. If Mrs. Mostyn chose to forget him,--the brother and sister
had been loving friends and dear companions long ago, under the beeches
at Dangerfield,--she was welcome to do so. She was better off than he
was; and it is to be remarked, that if A's income is three hundred a
year, and B's a thousand, the chances are as seven to three that B will
forget any old intimacy that may have existed between himself and A.
Hubert Arundel had been wild at college, and had put his autograph
across so many oblong slips of blue paper, acknowledging value received
that had been only half received, that by the time the claims of all
the holders of these portentous morsels of stamped paper had been
satisfied, the younger son's fortune had melted away, leaving its
sometime possessor the happy owner of a pair of pointers, a couple of
guns by crack makers, a good many foils, single-sticks, boxing-gloves,
wire masks, basket helmets, leathern leg-guards, and other
paraphernalia, a complete set of the old _Sporting Magazine_, from 1792
to the current year, bound in scarlet morocco, several boxes of very
bad cigars, a Scotch terrier, and a pipe of undrinkable port.
Of all these possessions, only the undrinkable port now remained to
show that Hubert Arundel had once had a decent younger son's fortune,
and had succeeded most admirably in making ducks and drakes of it. The
poor about Swampington believed in the sweet red wine, which had been
specially concocted for Israelitish dealers in jewelry, cigars,
pictures, wines, and specie. The Rector's pensioners smacked their lips
over the mysterious liquid and confidently affirmed that it did them
more good than all the doctor's stuff the parish apothecary could send
them. Poor Hubert Arundel was well content to find that at least this
scanty crop of corn had grown up from the wild oats he had sown at
Cambridge. The wine pleased the poor creatures who drank it, and was
scarcely likely to do them any harm; and there was a reasonable
prospect that the last bottle would by-and-by pass out of the rectory
cellars, and with it the last token of that bitterly regretted past.
I have no doubt that Hubert Arundel felt the sting of his only sister's
neglect, as only a poor and proud man can feel such an insult; but he
never let any confession of this sentiment escape his lips; and when
Mrs. Mostyn, being seized with a fancy for doing this forgotten brother
a service, wrote him a letter of insolent advice, winding up with an
offer to procure his only child a situation as nursery governess, the
Rector of Swampington only crushed the missive in his strong hand, and
flung it into his study-fire, with a muttered exclamation that sounded
terribly like an oath.
"A _nursery_ governess!" he repeated, savagely; "yes; an underpaid
drudge, to teach children their A B C, and mend their frocks and make
their pinafores. I should like Mrs. Mostyn to talk to my little Livy
for half an hour. I think my girl would have put the lady down so
completely by the end of that time, that we should never hear any more
about nursery governesses."
He laughed bitterly as he repeated the obnoxious phrase; but his laugh
changed to a sigh.
Was it strange that the father should sigh as he remembered how he had
seen the awful hand of Death fall suddenly upon younger and stronger
men than himself? What if he were to die, and leave his only child
unmarried? What would become of her, with her dangerous gifts, with her
fatal dowry of beauty and intellect and pride?
"But she would never do any thing wrong," the father thought. "Her
religious principles are strong enough to keep her right under any
circumstances, in spite of any temptation. Her sense of duty is more
powerful than any other sentiment. She would never be false to that;
she would never be false to that."
In return for the hospitality of Dangerfield Park, Mrs. Mostyn was in
the habit of opening her doors to either Christopher Arundel or his
sons, whenever any one of the three came to London. Of course she
infinitely preferred seeing Arthur Arundel, the eldest son and heir,
seated at her well-spread table, and flirting with one of his pretty
cousins, than to be bored with his rackety younger brother, a noisy lad
of seventeen, with no better prospects than a commission in her
Majesty's service, and a hundred and fifty pounds a year to eke out his
pay; but she was, notwithstanding, graciously pleased to invite Edward
to spend his Christmas holidays in her comfortable household; and it
was thus it came to pass that on the 29th of December, in the year
1838, the story of Edward Arundel's life began in a stage-box at Drury
Lane Theatre.
The box had been sent to Mrs. Mostyn by the fashionable editor of a
fashionable newspaper; but that lady and her daughters being previously
engaged, had permitted the two boys to avail themselves of the
editorial privilege.
The tragedy was the dull production of a distinguished literary
amateur, and even the great actor who played the principal character
could not make the performance particularly enlivening. He certainly
failed in impressing Mr. Edward Arundel, who flung himself back in his
chair and yawned dolefully during the earlier part of the
entertainment.
"It ain't particularly jolly, is it, Martin?" he said naively, "Let's
go out and have some oysters, and come in again just before the
pantomime begins."
"Mamma made me promise that we wouldn't leave the theatre till we left
for good, Ned," his cousin answered; "and then we're to go straight
home in a cab."
Edward Arundel sighed.
"I wish we hadn't come till half-price, old fellow," he said drearily.
"If I'd known it was to be a tragedy, I wouldn't have come away from
the Square in such a hurry. I wonder why people write tragedies, when
nobody likes them."
He turned his back to the stage, and folded his arms upon the velvet
cushion of the box preparatory to indulging himself in a deliberate
inspection of the audience. Perhaps no brighter face looked upward that
night towards the glare and glitter of the great chandelier than that
of the fair-haired lad in the stage-box. His candid blue eyes beamed
with a more radiant sparkle than any of the myriad lights in the
theatre; a nimbus of golden hair shone about his broad white forehead;
glowing health, careless happiness, truth, good-nature, honesty, boyish
vivacity, and the courage of a young lion,--all were expressed in the
fearless smile, the frank yet half-defiant gaze. Above all, this lad of
seventeen looked especially what he was,--a thorough gentleman. Martin
Mostyn was prim and effeminate, precociously tired of life,
precociously indifferent to everything but his own advantage; but the
Devonshire boy's talk was still fragrant with the fresh perfume of
youth and innocence, still gay with the joyous recklessness of early
boyhood. He was as impatient for the noisy pantomime overture, and the
bright troops of fairies in petticoats of spangled muslin, as the most
inveterate cockney cooling his snub-nose against the iron railing of
the gallery. He was as ready to fall in love with the painted beauty of
the ill-paid ballet-girls, as the veriest child in the wide circle of
humanity about him. Fresh, untainted, unsuspicious, he looked out at
the world, ready to believe in everything and everybody.
"How you do fidget, Edward!" whispered Martin Mostyn peevishly; "why
don't you look at the stage? It's capital fun."
"Fun!"
"Yes; I don't mean the tragedy you know, but the supernumeraries. Did
you ever see such an awkward set of fellows in all your life? There's a
man there with weak legs and a heavy banner, that I've been watching
all the evening. He's more fun than all the rest of it put together."
Mr. Mostyn, being of course much too polite to point out the man in
question, indicated him with a twitch of his light eyebrows; and Edward
Arundel, following that indication, singled out the banner-holder from
a group of soldiers in medieval dress, who had been standing wearily
enough upon one side of the stage during a long, strictly private and
confidential dialogue between the princely hero of the tragedy and one
of his accommodating satellites. The lad uttered a cry of surprise as
he looked at the weak-legged banner-holder.
Mr. Mostyn turned upon his cousin with some vexation.
"I can't help it, Martin," exclaimed young Arundel; "I can't be
mistaken--yes--poor fellow, to think that he should come to this!--you
haven't forgotten him, Martin, surely?"
"Forgotten what--forgotten whom? My dear Edward, what _do_ you mean?"
"John Marchmont, the poor fellow who used to teach us mathematics at
Vernon's; the fellow the governor sacked because----"
"Well, what of him?"
"The poor chap with the banner!" exclaimed the boy, in a breathless
whisper; "don't you see, Martin? didn't you recognise him? It's
Marchmont, poor old Marchmont, that we used to chaff, and that the
governor sacked because he had a constitutional cough, and wasn't
strong enough for his work."
"Oh, yes, I remember him well enough," Mr. Mostyn answered,
indifferently. "Nobody could stand his cough, you know; and he was a
vulgar fellow, into the bargain."
"He wasn't a vulgar fellow," said Edward indignantly;--"there, there's
the curtain down again;--he belonged to a good family in Lincolnshire,
and was heir-presumptive to a stunning fortune. I've heard him say so
twenty times."
Martin Mostyn did not attempt to repress an involuntary sneer, which
curled his lips as his cousin spoke.
"Oh, I dare say you've heard _him_ say so, my dear boy," he murmured
superciliously.
"Ah, and it was true," cried Edward; "he wasn't a fellow to tell lies;
perhaps he'd have suited Mr. Vernon better if he had been. He had bad
health, and was weak, and all that sort of thing; but he wasn't a snob.
He showed me a signet-ring once that he used to wear on his
watch-chain----"
"A _silver_ watch-chain," simpered Mr. Mostyn, "just like a
carpenter's."
"Don't be such a supercilious cad, Martin. He was very kind to me, poor
Marchmont; and I know I was always a nuisance to him, poor old fellow;
for you know I never could get on with Euclid. I'm sorry to see him
here. Think, Martin, what an occupation for him! I don't suppose he
gets more than nine or ten shillings a week for it."
"A shilling a night is, I believe, the ordinary remuneration of a
stage-soldier. They pay as much for the real thing as for the sham, you
see; the defenders of our country risk their lives for about the same
consideration. Where are you going, Ned?"
Edward Arundel had left his place, and was trying to undo the door of
the box.
"To see if I can get at this poor fellow."
"You persist in declaring, then, that the man with the weak legs is our
old mathematical drudge? Well, I shouldn't wonder. The fellow was
coughing all through the five acts, and that's uncommonly like
Marchmont. You're surely not going to renew your acquaintance with
him?"
But young Arundel had just succeeded in opening the door, and he left
the box without waiting to answer his cousin's question. He made his
way very rapidly out of the theatre, and fought manfully through the
crowds who were waiting about the pit and gallery doors, until he found
himself at the stage-entrance. He had often looked with reverent wonder
at the dark portal; but he had never before essayed to cross the sacred
threshold. But the guardian of the gate to this theatrical paradise,
inhabited by fairies at a guinea a week, and baronial retainers at a
shilling a night, is ordinarily a very inflexible individual, not to be
corrupted by any mortal persuasion, and scarcely corruptible by the
more potent influence of gold or silver. Poor Edward's half-a-crown had
no effect whatever upon the stern door-keeper, who thanked him for his
donation, but told him that it was against his orders to let anybody go
up-stairs.
"But I want to see some one so particularly," the boy said eagerly.
"Don't you think you could manage it for me, you know? He's an old
friend of mine,--one of the supernu--what's-its-names?" added Edward,
stumbling over the word. "He carried a banner in the tragedy, you know;
and he's got such an awful cough, poor chap."
"Ze man who garried ze panner vith a gough," said the door-keeper
reflectively. He was an elderly German, and had kept guard at that
classic doorway for half-a-century or so; "Parking Cheremiah."
"Barking Jeremiah!"
"Yes, sir. They gall him Parking pecause he's berbetually goughin' his
poor veag head off; and they gall him Cheremiah pecause he's alvays
belangholy."
"Oh, do let me see him," cried Mr. Edward Arundel. "I know you can
manage it; so do, that's a good fellow. I tell you he's a friend of
mine, and quite a gentleman too. Bless you, there isn't a move in
mathematics he isn't up to; and he'll come into a fortune some of these
days--"
"Yaase," interrupted the door-keeper, sarcastically, "Zey bake von of
him pegause off dad."
"And can I see him?"
"I phill dry and vind him vor you. Here, you Chim," said the
door-keeper, addressing a dirty youth, who had just nailed an official
announcement of the next morning's rehearsal upon the back of a
stony-hearted swing-door, which was apt to jam the fingers of the
uninitiated,--"vot is ze name off yat zuber vith ze pad gough, ze man
zay gall Parking."
"Oh, that's Morti-more."
"To you know if he's on in ze virsd zene?"
"Yes. He's one of the demons; but the scene's just over. Do you want
him?"
"You gan dake ub zis young chendleman's gard do him, and dell him to
slib town here if he has kod a vaid," said the door-keeper.
Mr. Arundel handed his card to the dirty boy.
"He'll come to me fast enough, poor fellow," he muttered. "I usen't to
chaff him as the others did, and I'm glad I didn't, now."
Edward Arundel could not easily forget that one brief scrutiny in which
he had recognised the wasted face of the schoolmaster's hack, who had
taught him mathematics only two years before. Could there be anything
more piteous than that degrading spectacle? The feeble frame, scarcely
able to sustain that paltry one-sided banner of calico and tinsel; the
two rude daubs of coarse vermilion upon the hollow cheeks; the black
smudges that were meant for eyebrows; the wretched scrap of horsehair
glued upon the pinched chin in dismal mockery of a beard; and through
all this the pathetic pleading of large hazel eyes, bright with the
unnatural lustre of disease, and saying perpetually, more plainly than
words can speak, "Do not look at me; do not despise me; do not even
pity me. It won't last long."
That fresh-hearted schoolboy was still thinking of this, when a wasted
hand was laid lightly and tremulously on his arm, and looking up he saw
a man in a hideous mask and a tight-fitting suit of scarlet and gold
standing by his side.
"I'll take off my mask in a minute, Arundel," said a faint voice, that
sounded hollow and muffled within a cavern of pasteboard and
wickerwork. "It was very good of you to come round; very, very good!"
"I was so sorry to see you here, Marchmont; I knew you in a moment, in
spite of the disguise."
The supernumerary had struggled out of his huge head-gear by this time,
and laid the fabric of papier-mache and tinsel carefully aside upon a
shelf. He had washed his face before putting on the mask, for he was
not called upon to appear before a British public in martial semblance
any more upon that evening. The pale wasted face was interesting and
gentlemanly, not by any means handsome, but almost womanly in its
softness of expression. It was the face of a man who had not yet seen
his thirtieth birthday; who might never live to see it, Edward Arundel
thought mournfully.
"Why do you do this, Marchmont?" the boy asked bluntly.
"Because there was nothing else left for me to do," the stage-demon
answered with a sad smile. "I can't get a situation in a school, for my
health won't suffer me to take one; or it won't suffer any employer to
take me, for fear of my falling ill upon his hands, which comes to the
same thing; so I do a little copying for the law-stationers, and this
helps out that, and I get on as well as I can. I wouldn't so much mind
if it wasn't for--"
He stopped suddenly, interrupted by a paroxysm of coughing.
"If it wasn't for whom, old fellow?"
"My poor little girl; my poor little motherless Mary."
Edward Arundel looked grave, and perhaps a little ashamed of himself.
He had forgotten until this moment that his old tutor had been left a
widower at four-and-twenty, with a little daughter to support out of
his scanty stipend.
"Don't be down-hearted, old fellow," the lad whispered, tenderly;
"perhaps I shall be able to help you, you know. And the little girl can
go down to Dangerfield; I know my mother would take care of her, and
will keep her there till you get strong and well. And then you might
start a fencing-room, or a shooting-gallery, or something of that sort,
at the West End; and I'd come to you, and bring lots of fellows to you,
and you'd get on capitally, you know."
Poor John Marchmont, the asthmatic supernumerary, looked perhaps the
very last person in the world whom it could be possible to associate
with a pair of foils, or a pistol and a target; but he smiled faintly
at his old pupil's enthusiastic talk.
"You were always a good fellow, Arundel," he said, gravely. "I don't
suppose I shall ever ask you to do me a service; but if, by-and-by,
this cough makes me knock under, and my little Polly should be
left--I--I think you'd get your mother to be kind to her,--wouldn't
you, Arundel?"
A picture rose before the supernumerary's weary eyes as he said this;
the picture of a pleasant lady whose description he had often heard
from the lips of a loving son, a rambling old mansion, wide-spreading
lawns, and long arcades of oak and beeches leading away to the blue
distance. If this Mrs. Arundel, who was so tender and compassionate and
gentle to every red-cheeked cottage-girl who crossed her
pathway,--Edward had told him this very often,--would take compassion
also upon this little one! If she would only condescend to see the
child, the poor pale neglected flower, the fragile lily, the frail
exotic blossom, that was so cruelly out of place upon the bleak
pathways of life!
"If that's all that troubles you," young Arundel cried eagerly, "you
may make your mind easy, and come and have some oysters. We'll take
care of the child. I'll adopt her, and my mother shall educate her, and
she shall marry a duke. Run away, now, old fellow, and change your
clothes, and come and have oysters, and stout out of the pewter."
Mr. Marchmont shook his head.
"My time's just up," he said; "I'm on in the next scene. It was very
kind of you to come round, Arundel; but this isn't exactly the best
place for you. Go back to your friends, my dear boy, and don't think
any more of me. I'll write to you some day about little Mary."
"You'll do nothing of the kind," exclaimed the boy. "You'll give me
your address instanter, and I'll come to see you the first thing
to-morrow morning, and you'll introduce me to little Mary; and if she
and I are not the best friends in the world, I shall never again boast
of my successes with lovely woman. What's the number, old fellow?"
Mr. Arundel had pulled out a smart morocco pocket-book and a gold
pencil-case.
"Twenty-seven, Oakley Street, Lambeth. But I'd rather you wouldn't
come, Arundel; your friends wouldn't like it."
"My friends may go hang themselves. I shall do as I like, and I'll be
with you to breakfast, sharp ten."
The supernumerary had no time to remonstrate. The progress of the
music, faintly audible from the lobby in which this conversation had
taken place, told him that his scene was nearly on.
"I can't stop another moment. Go back to your friends, Arundel. Good
night. God bless you!"
"Stay; one word. The Lincolnshire property--"
"Will never come to me, my boy," the demon answered sadly, through his
mask; for he had been busy re-investing himself in that demoniac guise.
"I tried to sell my reversion, but the Jews almost laughed in my face
when they heard me cough. Good night."
He was gone, and the swing-door slammed in Edward Arundel's face. The
boy hurried back to his cousin, who was cross and dissatisfied at his
absence. Martin Mostyn had discovered that the ballet-girls were all
either old or ugly, the music badly chosen, the pantomime stupid, the
scenery a failure. He asked a few supercilious questions about his old
tutor, but scarcely listened to Edward's answers; and was intensely
aggravated with his companion's pertinacity in sitting out the comic
business--in which poor John Marchmont appeared and re-appeared; now as
a well-dressed passenger carrying a parcel, which he deliberately
sacrificed to the felonious propensities of the clown; now as a
policeman, now as a barber, now as a chemist, now as a ghost; but
always buffeted, or cajoled, or bonneted, or imposed upon; always
piteous, miserable, and long-suffering; with arms that ached from
carrying a banner through five acts of blank-verse weariness, with a
head that had throbbed under the weight of a ponderous edifice of
pasteboard and wicker, with eyes that were sore with the evil influence
of blue-fire and gunpowder smoke, with a throat that had been poisoned
by sulphurous vapours, with bones that were stiff with the playful
pummelling of clown and pantaloon; and all for--a shilling a night!