THE SQUIRE OF STANBROOK.
Before proceeding to narrate the sequel of the strange adventure of
the _soi-disant_ Mr. Frank Nevill, it may be as well that the reader
should be made acquainted with the circumstances to which was owing
his appearance on the King's highway in the character of an amateur
Claude Duval.
At the time with which our narrative has to do, Mr. Ambrose Cortelyon,
commonly known as Squire Cortelyon, of Stanbrook, an old family seat
in one of the most northern counties of England, was well over his
seventieth birthday. Thrown by his horse more than twenty years
before, he had not only broken his leg, but three or four of his ribs
into the bargain.
Surgical science in those days, especially in country places, was not
what it is now. His leg was badly set, with the result that from that
time he had been a partial cripple, who when he walked any distance
alone, had to do so with the help of a couple of stout sticks, but who
usually preferred the arm of his factotum, Andry Luce, and one stick.
Andry--of whom we shall hear more later--was a man of forty, with a
big, shaggy head and the torso of an athlete set on the short, bowed
legs of a dwarf. Further, he was dumb (the result of a fright when a
child), a deficiency which only caused his employer to value him the
more. He was clever with his pen and at figures, and kept the Squire's
accounts and wrote most of his letters, for Mr. Cortelyon hated pen
work, and besides suffered occasionally from gout in his fingers.
Finally, Andry filled up his spare time by dabbling in chemistry in an
amateurish fashion, being quite content to experiment on the
discoveries of others, and having no ambition to adventure on any of
his own.
A full-length oil painting of Squire Cortelyon, taken a short time
before his accident, and still in existence, represents him as a thin,
wiry-looking man of medium height, close shaven, with a long, narrow
face--a handsome face, with its regular, clear-cut features, most
people would call it; cold, unsympathetic light-blue eyes, and a dry,
caustic smile. His dark, unpowdered hair, cut short in front, is
doubtless gathered into a queue, only, as he stands facing the
spectator, the picture fails to show it. He is dressed in a
high-collared, swallow-tailed, chocolate-colored coat with gilt
buttons. His waistcoat is of white satin, elaborately embroidered with
sprays of flowers. His small-clothes, tight-fitting and of some dark
woven material, reach to the ankle, where they are tied with a knot of
ribbon and are supplemented by white silk stockings and buckled shoes.
Round his throat is wound a soft cravat of many folds; his shirt is
frilled, and he wears lace ruffles at his wrists. He stands in an easy
and not ungraceful posture, looking right into the spectator's eyes.
In one hand he clasps his snuff-box, deprived of which life for him
would have lost half its value.
Although Squire Cortelyon courted and loved a cheap popularity, at
heart he was a man of a hard and griping disposition, whose chief
object in life, more especially of late years, had been the
accumulation of wealth in the shape of landed property. Even in early
life he had never either hunted or shot, but, for all that, he
subscribed liberally to the nearest pack of hounds, as also--but less
liberally--to the usual local charities. Although he employed a couple
of keepers, he did not preserve too strictly, a fact which tended to
his popularity among his poorer neighbors, while having an opposite
effect among those of his own standing in the county. In point of
fact, three-fourths of the game on his estates was shot by his keepers
and sent, under his direction, for sale to the nearest large town.
When Ambrose Cortelyon, at the age of thirty-five, came into his
patrimony, it was not only grievously burdened with debt, but, as far
as mere acreage was concerned, owing to extravagant living on the part
of his two immediate progenitors, had dwindled to little more than a
third of what it had been sixty years before. From the first the new
Squire made up his mind that the follies of his father and grandfather
should not be repeated in his case. From the first he set two objects
definitely before him, and never allowed himself to lose sight of
them. Object number one was to wipe off the burden of debt he had
inherited from his father. This, by the practice of rigid economy, he
was enabled to do in the course of eight or ten years, after which he
began to save. Object number two was to become, in the course of time,
a large landowner, even as his great-grandfather and his more remote
ancestors right away back to the sixteenth century had been.
Thus, in the course of time it came to pass that Ambrose Cortelyon
had become the owner of sundry considerable properties (not all of
them situated in his own county, but none of them farther off than a
day's ride) which, owing to one cause or another, had come into the
market. Every season--and what was true then seems equally true
to-day--brought its own little crop of landed proprietors who, owing
to improvidence or misfortune or both, had fallen upon evil days, and
whenever there was a likely property in the neighborhood to be had a
bargain, the Squire, or his agent Mr. Piljoy, was always to the fore.
With the former it was an article of faith that, for one reason or
other, landed property would rise greatly in value in the course of
the next generation or two, and so constitute a stable inheritance for
those to come after him. In so believing the prescience with which he
credited himself was undoubtedly at fault. Many things were to happen
during the next half-century of which not even the most far-seeing of
the statesmen of those days had the slightest prevision.
Squire Cortelyon was turned forty before he married. He fixed his
mature affections on a banker's daughter, who brought him a dowry of
ten thousand pounds, with the prospect of thirty thousand to follow at
her father's demise. But three years later the bank in which Mr.
Lowthian was senior partner failed, and the prospective thirty
thousand went in the general smash. Such a loss to such a man was
undoubtedly a terrible blow. A couple of years later still his wife
died, leaving him with one child,--a son. He had felt no particular
affection for her while living, and he was not hypocrite enough to
pretend to mourn her very deeply now she was dead.
Ambrose Cortelyon was one of those men who never feel comfortable, or
at home, in the presence of children, and as soon as Master Dick was
old enough he was packed off to a public school, and for the next
dozen or more years, except at holiday times, it was but little he saw
either of his father or his home. From school he went to college, but
with his twenty-first birthday his career at Cambridge came to an end.
The life his father intended him for was that of a country gentleman,
with, perhaps, an M.P.-ship _in future_. Where, then, would have been
the use of wasting more time in competing for a degree which, even if
he should succeed in taking it, would be of no after-value to him? Far
better that he should spend a season or two in town, perfecting
himself in his French meanwhile--the country swarmed with _emigrés_
glad to give lessons for the merest pittance--and after that devote a
couple of years to the Grand Tour. Mr. Cortelyon would have his son a
man of the world, and neither a milksop nor a puritan. With his own
hands he put a copy of "Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son" into
Dick's valise. "A book to profit by," he said. "Let me adjure you to
read and re-read it."
Dick felt more respect--which till he was grown-up had not been
unmixed with awe--than affection for his father. All his life Mr.
Cortelyon had been a reserved and undemonstrative man, and averse from
any display of feeling or sentiment. Still, that his son was far
dearer to him than aught else in life, and that he looked with secret
pride and hope to moulding him in accordance with his own views and
wishes, can hardly be doubted. The mistake he made was in imagining
that Dick was fashioned on the same lines, mental and moral, as
himself; whereas the lad took after his mother in almost every
particular. Easy-going, affable to all, led far more by his heart than
his head, everybody's friend and nobody's enemy but his own--how was
such a young man, with his handsome person, well-lined purse, and a
certain element of rustic simplicity which still clung to him, to
escape shipwreck in the great maelstrom of London in one form or
another?
At any rate, Dick Cortelyon did not escape shipwreck in so far as the
utter ruin of his worldly prospects was concerned. He had not been a
year in town before he committed the unpardonable folly--unpardonable
in the only son of Squire Cortelyon--of marrying a fascinating little
actress of no particular ability, who at that time was playing
"chambermaid" parts at one of the patent theatres for a remuneration
of a guinea a week.
The marriage was kept by Dick a profound secret both from his father
and his friends. But it had to be told the former when, some months
later, he summoned Dick home on purpose to inform him that it was his
wish--really tantamount to a command on the part of such a man--that
he should "make up" to Miss Onoria Flood, the only daughter of a
neighbor, and do his best to secure her before any other suitor
appeared on the scene.
When the fatal news was broken to the Squire he bundled Master Dick
out of doors without a moment's hesitation. There and then he took an
oath that he would never forgive him, nor ever set eyes on him again,
and he was a man who prided himself on keeping his word. At once he
stopped Dick's allowance.
Some few years before these things came to pass, the Squire's
grand-niece--granddaughter of his sister Agatha--an orphan left
without means beyond a narrow pittance of eighty pounds a year, had
come to live at Stanbrook, no other home being open to her. Although
there was a difference of some six years in their ages, and although
they had only met at intervals, they had been to each other like elder
brother and younger sister. From the first Miss Baynard had conceived
an almost passionate liking and admiration for her handsome,
kind-hearted kinsman, and now that poor Dick was leaving home never to
return, she contrived to have a stolen interview with him before he
went. Although only just turned sixteen, she was in many things wise
beyond her years, and before parting from Dick she obtained from him
an address at which, he told her, a letter would at any time find him.
Not being sure what his future movements might be, he gave her the
address of his wife's uncle, who kept a tobacconist's shop in a street
off Holborn. That done, Dick kissed her and went, and with his going
half the sunshine seemed to vanish out of Nell's life.
At once Dick Cortelyon broke with his old life and all its
associations. The fashionable world knew him no more: he disappeared,
he went under. He took a couple of furnished rooms in an obscure
neighborhood, and for the next few months his wife's earnings and the
proceeds of the sale of his watch and trinkets kept the pair of them.
But there came a time when his wife could earn no more; and then a son
was born to him. In this contingency he deemed himself a fortunate man
in being able to get a lot of copying to do for a law firm in Chancery
Lane.
But poor Dick's trials and troubles--the fruit, as every reasonable
person must admit, of his own headstrong folly--were not destined to
be of long duration. When his child was about six months old he caught
a fever, and died after a very short illness. One of his last requests
was that when all was over his wife should write and inform Miss
Baynard of his death. This Mrs. Cortelyon did not fail to do. Her
letter conveyed the double news of Dick's death and the birth of his
son.
[Illustration: "He gave her the address of his wife's uncle."]
Miss Baynard at once took the letter to her uncle. His sallow face
became still sallower as he read the account of his son's death, but a
frown deeper than the girl had ever seen on them before darkened his
features by the time he had come to the end of the letter.
"Had Dick not been idiot enough to wed that play-acting huzzy," he
said, "the lad would have been alive to-day. I owe his loss to her.
Neither her nor her brat will I ever countenance or acknowledge. Tell
her so from me. Stay, though; you may send her this ten-pound note,
with the assurance that it is the last money she will ever receive at
my hands."
A few days later the note was returned to the Squire through the post,
accompanied by a few unsigned lines to the effect that the widow of
Richard Cortelyon would accept no help at the hands of the man who had
treated her husband with such inhuman cruelty.
Not long after this Miss Baynard wrote to the widow, to the
address furnished by her in her letter, mentioning how attached she
had been to Dick, and hinting delicately at the happiness it would
afford her to send Mrs. Cortelyon a little monetary help now and
again. But at the end of a fortnight her letter came back marked,
"Gone away--present address not known," and enclosed in an official
envelope. It had been opened and resealed by the post-office
authorities. As it happened, the letter fell into the Squire's hands,
who, noticing only the official envelope, opened it without perceiving
that it was addressed to his niece. As a consequence he at once sent
for her.
After explaining how it happened that he had opened the letter, he
continued: "I am astonished and annoyed, Nell--very seriously
annoyed--that, after what thou heard me say two or three weeks ago,
thou should have chosen of thy own accord to communicate with this
play-acting creature, and even to offer to help her out of thy own
scanty means. Fortunately, the woman has disappeared. No doubt she has
gone back to the life and the companions that are most congenial to
her--curses on her for a vile baggage! To her I owe it that my boy
lies mouldering in the grave. Never again, Nell, on pain of offending
me past forgiveness, do thou attempt to have aught to do with her.
'Tis beneath thee to notice such creatures in any way--and she above
all others."
It was an injunction which Nell--who had listened to his tirade with a
sort of proud disdain and without a word of reply--determined to obey
or disobey as circumstances might determine. For the present she was
helpless to do more than she had done. Unfortunately, she had mislaid
the address given her by Dick at parting, otherwise she might perhaps
have been able to obtain tidings of Mrs. Cortelyon through the
latter's uncle, the London tobacconist.