Events shaped themselves much after the manner customary since that
earliest recorded compromise between soul and sense which mortals
throughout all ages have agreed to call Love. Ofttimes such pursuits
and contests have been protracted. After the first skirmish of
temperaments, war has been declared by Fate, and through wearisome
campaigns the rival armies have ravaged cities, so to speak, and
assaulted neutral powers before the beleaguered citadel surrendered.
At other times, the maiden fortress has been taken by a _coup de
main_, the assailant's resistless ardour carrying all before it.
More frequently, perhaps, has the too venturous knight been repulsed
with scorn, and, as in earlier days, been fain to betake himself to
Palestine or other distant region blessed with continuous warfare, and
exceptional facilities for acquiring fame or getting knocked on the
head, as the case might be.
For the patient and scientific conduct of a siege, according to the
rules of the Court of Love--and such there be, if the poets and
minstrels of all ages deserve credence--Roland Massinger was unfitted
by constitution and opinion. His fixed idea was, that every woman
knew her mind perfectly well with regard to a declared admirer. If
favourable, it was waste of time and emotion to await events. If
otherwise, the sooner a man was made aware of his dismissal the
better. He could then shape his course in life without distraction or
hindrance. In any case he was freed from the hourly torments under
which the victim writhes, uncertain of his fate. It was the _coup de
grâce_ which frees the wretch upon the rack; the knife-thrust which
liberates the Indian at the stake. And he trusted to his manhood to be
equal to the occasion.
When he did "put his fortune to the touch, to win or lose it all"--as
have done so many gallant lovers before this veracious history--he was
too deeply grieved and shocked at the unexpected issue to place before
the fateful maid any of the pleadings or protests deemed in such cases
to be appropriate. He did not falter out statements inclusive of a
"wrecked life," an "early grave," a career "for ever closed." Nor did
he make the slightest reference to her having, so to speak, allured him
to continue pursuit--"led him on," in more familiar terms.
Such commonplaces he disdained, although not without a passing thought
that in the familiar play of converse, and her occasional touch upon
the keynotes which evoke the deeper sympathies, an impartial judge
might have discovered that perilous liking akin to love.
No! beyond one earnest appeal to her heart, into which he implored her
to look, lest haply she had mistaken its promptings--a plea for time,
for cooler consideration--he had no words with which to plead his
cause, as he stood with sad reproachful gaze, assuring her that never
would she know truer love, more loyal devotion.
What had she told him? Merely this: "That if she were to marry--a step
which she had resolved not to take for some years, if at all--she
confessed that there was no man whom she had yet known, with whom she
felt more in sympathy, with whom, taking the ordinary phrase, she would
have a greater prospect of happiness. But she held strong opinions
upon the duties which the individual owed to the appealing hordes of
fellow-creatures perishing for lack of care, of food, of instruction,
by whom the overindulged so-called upper classes were surrounded. Such
manifest duties were sacred in her eyes, though possibly incompatible
with what was called 'happiness.' For years--for ever, it might
be--such considerations would be paramount with her. They could be
neglected only at the awful price of self-condemnation in this world
and perdition in the next. She was grieved to the soul to be compelled
to refuse his love. She blamed herself that she should have permitted
an intimacy which had resulted so unhappily for him--even for herself.
But her resolve was fixed; nothing could alter it."
This, or the substance of it, fell upon the unwilling ears of Roland
Massinger in unconnected sentences, in answer to his last despairing
appeal. Meanwhile his idol stood and gazed at him, as might be imagined
some Christian maiden of the days of Diocletian, when called upon to
deny her faith or seal it with martyrdom. Her eyes were occasionally
lifted upward, as if she felt the need of inspiration from above.
For one moment the heart of her lover stood still.
He placed his hand on his brow as if to quell the tumult of his
thoughts. She moved towards him, deprecating the intensity of his
emotion. An intolerable sense of her divine purity, her ethereal
loveliness, seemed to pervade his whole being. He felt an almost
irresistible desire to clasp her in his arms in one desperate caress,
ere they parted for ever. Had he done this, the current of both lives
might have been altered. The coldest maids are merely mortal.
But he refrained; in his present state of mind it would have been
sacrilege to his ideal goddess, to the saintly idol of his worship.
Raising her hand reverently to his lips, he bowed low and departed.
When he thus passed out of her sight--out of her life--Hypatia herself
was far from unmoved. Regrets, questionings, impulses to which she had
so far been a stranger, arose and contended with strange and unfamiliar
power.
Never before had she met with any one in all respects so attractive
to her physically, so sympathetic mentally; above all things manly,
cultured, devoted, with the instincts of the best age of chivalry.
She liked--yes, nearly, perhaps quite--loved him. Family, position,
personal character, all the attributes indispensably necessary, he
possessed.
Not rich, indeed; but for riches she cared little--despised them,
indeed. Why, then, had she cast away the admittedly best things of
life? For an abstraction! For toilsome, weary, perhaps ungrateful
tasks among the poor, the disinherited of the earth.
Had not others of whom she had heard, died, after wasting, so to speak,
their lives and opportunities, with scarcely veiled regrets for the
sacrifice? How many secretly bewailed the deprivation of the fair
earth's light, colour, beauty, consented to in youth's overstrained
sense of obedience to a divine injunction! Was this wealth of joyous
gladness--the free, untrammelled spirit in life's springtime, which
bade the bird to carol, the lamb to frisk, the wildfowl to sport
o'er the translucent lake--but a snare to lead the undoubting soul
to perdition? As these questioning fancies crossed her mind, in
the lowered tone resulting in reaction from the previous mood of
exaltation, she found her tears flowing fast, and with an effort,
raising her head as if in scorn of her weakness, hurried to her room.
* * * * *
A sudden stroke of sorrow, loss, disappointment, or disaster affects
men differently, but the general consensus is that the blow, like
wounds that prove mortal, is less painful than stunning. Roland
Massinger never doubted but that his wound _was_ mortal. For days he
wondered, in the solitude of his retreat to which he had, like other
stricken deer, betaken himself, whether or no he was alive. He returned
to the Court. He moved from room to room--he absorbed food. He even
opened books in the library and essayed to read, finding himself
wholly unable to extract the meaning of the lettered lines. He rode
and drove at appointed hours, but always with a strange preoccupied
expression. This change of habit and occupation was so evident to his
old housekeeper and the other domestics, that the subject of their
master's obvious state of mind began to be freely discussed. The groom
was of opinion that he did not know the bay horse that carried him so
well to hounds, from the black mare that was so fast and free a goer in
the dog-cart.
He retired late, sitting in the old-fashioned study which served as a
smoking-room, "till all hours," as the maids said.
He rose early, unconscionably so, as the gardener considered who had
met him roaming through the shrubberies before sunrise. A most unusual
proceeding, indefensible "in a young gentleman as could lie in bed till
breakfast-bell rang."
The maids were instinctively of the opinion that "there was a lady
in the case;" but, upon broaching their ingenuous theory, were so
sternly silenced by Mrs. Lavender, the old housekeeper who had ruled
in Massinger long before Sir Roland's parents had died, and remembered
the last Lady Massinger as "a saint on earth if ever there was one,"
that they hastily deserted it, hoping "as he wouldn't have to be took
to the county hospital." This theory proving no more acceptable than
the other, they were fain to retire abashed, but clinging with feminine
obstinacy to their first opinion.
Suddenly a change came over the moody squire who had thus exercised the
intelligences of the household.
On a certain morning he ordered the dog-cart, in which he drove himself
to the railway station, noticing the roadside incidents and mentioning
the stud generally, in a manner so like old times, that the groom felt
convinced that the desired change had taken place; so that hunting,
shooting, and all business proper to the season would go on again with
perhaps renewed energy.
"When the master jumped down and ordered the porter to label his trunk
'London,' he was a different man," said the groom on his return. "He's
runnin' up to town to have a lark, and forgit his woes. That's what I
should do, leastways. He ain't agoin' to make a break of it along o'
Miss Tollemache, or any other miss just yet."
Though this information was acceptable to the inmates of a liberally
considered household, who one and all expressed their satisfaction,
the situation was not destined to be lasting. Within a week it was
widely known that Massinger Court was for sale, "just as it stood,"
with furniture, farm-stock, library, stud, everything to be taken at a
valuation--owner about to leave England.
What surprise, disapproval--indeed, almost consternation--such an
announcement is calculated to create in a quiet county in rural
England, those only who have lived and grown up in such "homes of
ancient peace" can comprehend. A perfect chorus of wonder, pity,
indignation, and disapproval arose.
The squirearchy lamented the removal of a landmark. The heir of an
historic family, "a steady, well-conducted young fellow, good shot,
straight-goer in the field--knew something about farming, too. Not too
deep in debt either? That is, as far as anybody knew. What the deuce
could he mean by cutting the county; severing himself from all his old
friends--his father's friends, too?"
This was the lament of Sir Giles Weatherly, one of the oldest baronets
in the county. "D--n it," he went on to say, "it ought to be prevented
by law. Why, the place was entailed!"
"Entail broken years ago; but that wouldn't mend matters," his
companion, Squire Topthorne, replied--a hard-riding, apple-faced old
gentleman, credited with a shrewd appreciation of the value of money.
"You can't force a man to live on a place, though he mustn't sell it.
It wouldn't help the county much to have the Court shut up, with only
the old housekeeper, a gardener, and a maid, like Haythorpe. Besides,
some decent fellow might buy it--none of us could afford to do so just
now. _I_ couldn't, I know."
"Nor I either," returned Sir Giles, "with wheat at thirty shillings
a quarter, and farms thrown back on your hands, like half a dozen of
mine. But why couldn't Roland have stopped in England; married and
settled down, if it comes to that? There are plenty of nice girls in
Herefordshire; a good all-round youngster like him, with land at his
back, might marry any one he pleased."
"That's the trouble, from what I hear," said Mr. Topthorne, with a
quiet smile. "Young men have a way of asking the very girl that won't
have them, while there are dozens that would. Same, the world over. And
the girls are just as bad--won't take advice, and end up as old maids,
or take to 'slumming' and Zenana work. I hear it's Hypatia Tollemache
who's responsible."
"Whew-w!" whistled Sir Giles. "She's a fine girl, and knows her
value, I suppose, but she's bitten by this 'New Woman' craze--wants
to regenerate society, and the rest of it. In our time girls did what
they were told--learned house-keeping, and thought it a fair thing to
be the mistress of some good fellow's household; to rear wholesome boys
and girls to keep up the honour of old England. I have no patience with
these fads."
"Well! it can't be helped. Have you any idea who is likely to make a
bid for the place?"
"Not the slightest. We're safe to have a manufacturer, or some infernal
colonist--made his money by gold-digging or sheep-farming, drops his
aitches, and won't subscribe to the hounds."
"Suppose we do? You're too hard on colonists, who, after all, are our
own countrymen, with the pluck to go abroad, instead of loafing at
home. Often younger sons, too--men of as good family as you or I. We're
too conservative here, I often think. They always spend their money
liberally, give employment, and entertain royally if they do the thing
at all."
"I suppose there's something in what you say; but all the same, I don't
like to see a Massinger go out of the county where his family have
lived since the time of Hugh Lupus. Viscount the Sire de Massinger came
out of Normandy along with Duke William. He was a marshal commanding a
division of archers at Hastings. 'For which service both the Conqueror
and Hugh Lupus rewarded him' (says an old chronicle) 'with vast
possessions, among which was Benham Massinger in Cheshire; and the
said Hamon de Massinger was the first Baron de Massinger.' There's a
pedigree for you! Pity they hadn't kept their lands; but they're not
the only ones, as we know too well."
These and the like colloquies took place during the period which
intervened between the direful announcement of the sale of the Court
and its actual disposal by an auction sale, at which the late owner was
not present.
It was then made public that the stranger who bought that "historic
mansion, Massinger Court, with lands and messuages, household
furniture, and farm stock, horses and carriages," was acting as
agent only for Mr. Lexington, the great Australian squatter, who had
made a colossal fortune in New South Wales and Queensland, numbering
his sheep by the half-million and his cattle by the twenties of
thousands. He had, moreover, agreed to take the furniture, books,
pictures--everything--at a valuation, together with the live stock,
farm implements, and--in fact, the whole place, exactly as it stood;
Sir Roland, the auctioneer said, having removed his personal belongings
previously to London immediately after offering the Court for sale. He
only returned to bid farewell to the friends of his youth and the home
of his race.
Yes! it _was_ hard--very hard, he thought, at the last. There was the
garden--old-fashioned, but rich in fruit and flower, with box-borders,
clipped yew hedges, alleys of formal shape and pattern; the south wall
where the fruit ripened so early, and to which his childish eyes had so
often been attracted; the field wherein he had, with the old keeper in
strict attendance, been permitted to blaze at a covey of partridges--he
remembered now the wild delight with which he marked his first slain
bird; the stream in which he had caught his first trout, and whence
many a basket had been filled in later days; the village church, under
the floor of which so many de Massingers lay buried--the family pew,
too large for the church, but against the size and shape of which no
innovating incumbent had thought fit to protest.
How well he remembered his mother's loving hand as he walked with her
to church--_every_ Sunday, unless illness or unusual weather forbade!
That mother, too, so gentle, so saintly sweet, so charitable, so
beloved, why should she have died when he was so young? And his father,
the pattern squire, who shot and hunted, lived much at home, and was
respected throughout the county as a model landlord, who did his duty
to the land which had done so much for the men of his race? Why should
these things be?
He recalled his mother's dear face, which grew pale, and yet more pale,
during her long illness--her last words bidding him, to be a good man,
to remember what she taught him, and to comfort his poor father when
she was gone. And how he kneeled by her bedside, with her wasted hand
in his, praying with her that he might live to carry out her last
wishes, and do his duty fearlessly in the face of all men. Then the
funeral--the long train of carriages, the burial service, where so many
people wept, and he wished--how he wished!--that he could be buried
with her. His father's set face, almost stern, yet more sorrowful
than any tears. And how he went back to school in his black clothes,
miserable and lonely beyond all words to describe.
In the holidays, too--how surprised he had been to find that the
squire no longer shot, fished, hunted. He, that was so keen as long as
he could remember, but now sat all day reading in the library, where
they often used to find him asleep. And how, before the Christmas
holidays came round again, he was sent for, to see his father once more
before he died.
The squire spoke not--he had for days lost the power of speech--but he
placed his hands upon his head and murmured an inarticulate blessing.
He did not look pale or wasted like his poor mother, he remembered.
The doctors said there was no particular ailment; he had simply lost
all interest in life. The old housekeeper summed up the case, which
coincided closely with the public feeling.
"It's my opinion," she affirmed, "that if ever a man in this world
died of a broken heart, the squire did. He was never the same after
the mistress died, God bless her! She's in heaven, if any one is. She
was a saint on earth. And the squire, seeing they'd never been parted
before--and I never saw two people more bound up in each other--well,
he couldn't stay behind."
The new lord of the manor--for Massinger held manorial rights and
privileges, which had been tolerably extensive in the days of "merrie
England"--lost no time in taking possession.
A week had not elapsed before the Australian gentleman and his family
arrived by train at the little railway station, much like any one else,
to the manifest disappointment of the residents of the vicinity, who
had expected all sorts of foreign appearances and belongings. Certain
large trunks--_not_ Saratogas--and portmanteaux were handed out of the
brake-van and transferred to the waggonette, which they filled, while
three ladies with their maid were escorted to the mail phaeton which
had made so many previous journeys to the station with the visitors
and friends of the Massinger family. A middle-aged, middle-sized,
alert personage, fair-haired, clean-shaved, save for a moustache
tinged with grey, mounted the dog-cart, followed by a tall young man
who looked with an air of scrutiny at the horses and appointments.
He took the reins from the groom, who got up behind, and with one of
those imperceptible motions with which a practised whip communicates
to well-conditioned horses that they are at liberty to go, started the
eager animal along the well-kept road which led to the Court.
"Good goer," he remarked, after steadying the black mare to a medium
pace. "If she's sound, she's a bargain at the money; horses seem
tremendously dear in England."
"Yes, I should say so," replied his father. "And the phaeton pair are
good-looking enough for anything: fair steppers also. I thought the
price put on the horses and cattle high, but the agent told me they
were above the average in quality. I see he was correct so far."
"Well, it's a comfort to deal with people who are straight and
above-board," said the younger man. "It saves no end of trouble.
I shouldn't wonder if the home-station--I mean the house and
estate--followed suit in being true to description. If so, we've made a
hit."
"Sir Roland wouldn't have a thing wrong described for the world, sir,"
here put in the groom, touching his hat. "No auctioneer would take
that liberty with him; not in this county, anyhow."
"Glad to hear it. I thought as much, from seeing him once," said the
elder man.
A short hour saw the black mare tearing up the neatly raked gravel in
front of the façade of the Court, and by the time the dog-cart had
departed for the stables, the phaeton came up to the door, with one of
the young ladies in the driving seat.
"Well, this _is_ a nice pair of horses!" said the damsel, who evidently
was not unaccustomed to driving a pair, if not a more imposing team.
"Fast, so well matched and well mannered; it's a pleasure to drive
them. And oh! what a lovely old hall--and such darling trees! How
fortunate we were to pick up such a place! It's not too large: there's
not much land, but it's a perfect gem in its way. I suppose we are to
have the pictures of the ancestors, too?"
"We shall have that reflected glory," said the matron with a smile.
"Sir Roland would not sell them, but hoped we would give them
house-room till he wanted them--which might not be for years and years."
"So they will still look down upon us--or frown, as the case may be,"
said the younger girl. "How savage I should be if I were an ancestor,
and new people came to turn out my descendant!"
"We haven't turned him out. We only buy him out," said her mother,
"which is quite a different thing. It is the modern way of taking the
baron's castle--without bloodshed and unpleasantness."
"It is a great shame, all the same, that he should have to turn out,"
exclaimed the younger girl, indignantly. "I am sure he is a nice
fellow, which makes it all the worse, because--because----"
"Because every one says so," continued her elder sister; "as if that
was a reason!"
"No! because he has _such good horses_. When a man keeps them, in such
buckle too, there can't be much wrong with him."
"What _is_ the reason that he can't live in a place like this, I
wonder?" queried Miss Lexington in a musing tone. "A bachelor, too! Men
don't seem to know when they are well off. He ought to try a dry year
on one of our Paroo runs, if he wants a change. That would take the
nonsense out of him. Our vile sex at the bottom of it, I suppose!"
"I _did_ catch a whisper in London, before we left," said Miss Violet,
cautiously.
"You always do," interrupted her sister. "I hope you don't talk to
Pinson confidentially. What was it?"
"Only that a girl that every one seemed to know about wouldn't have
him, and that he nearly went out of his mind about it: wouldn't hear of
living in England afterwards."
"Poor fellow! he'll know better some day--won't he, mother? He must be
a romantic person to go mooning about, wanting to die or emigrate, for
a trifle like that."
"I sometimes wonder if you girls of the present day have hearts, from
the way you talk," mused the matron. "However, I suppose they're deeper
down than ours used to be. But I don't like my girls to sneer at true
love. It's a sacred and holy thing, without which we women would have
a sad time in this world. But, in our own country, men have done
rash things in the agony of disappointment. You have heard of young
Anstruther?"
"Oh yes, long ago. He went home and shot himself because of a silly
girl. I suppose he's sorry for it now."
"Hearts are much the same, in all countries and ages, depend upon it,
my dears; they make people do strange things. But let us hope that
there will be no unruly promptings in this family."
"Quite so, mother--same here; but I suppose, as Longfellow tells us,
'as long as the heart has woes,' all sorts of droll things will happen.
And now suppose we go and look at the stables before afternoon tea; I
want to see the hunters and polo ponies. The garden we can see tomorrow
morning."
* * * * *
When Sir Roland, having made final arrangements, concluded to run
down to Massinger for farewell purposes, he declined courteously Mr.
Lexington's invitation to stay with him, and took up his abode at the
Massinger Arms, in the village, where he considered he would be quiet
and more independent. He felt himself obliged to say farewell to the
people he had known all his life, small and great. But he never had
less inclination for conversation and the ordinary society business.
A week at the outside would suffice for such leave-taking as he
considered obligatory.
As to the emigration matter which had so disturbed his _monde_,
another factor of controlling power entered into the calculation. A
re-valuation of his property made it apparent that when every liability
came to be paid off, the available residue would be much less than
he or his men of business reckoned on. Not more, indeed, than the
ridiculously small sum of thirty or forty thousand pounds. He was not
going to live on the Continent, or any cheap foreign place, on this.
Nor to angle for an heiress. So, having been informed that he could
live like a millionaire in the colonies, and probably make a fortune
out of a grazing estate which half the money would purchase, there was
nothing to keep him in England. Such considerations, reinforced by the
haunting memories of a "lost Lenore" in the guise of Hypatia, drove
him forward on his course _outre mer_ with such feverish force that he
could scarcely bear to await the day of embarkation.