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NEVERMORE
BY ROLF BOLDREWOOD
AUTHOR OF 'ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,' 'THE SQUATTER'S DREAM,' 'THE MINER'S
RIGHT,' ETC.
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1892
_All rights reserved_
_First Edition 1892
Second Edition July and December 1892_
CHAPTER I
'Then, by Heaven! I'll leave the country. I won't stop here to be
bullied for doing what scores of other fellows have done and nothing
thought about it. It's unjust, it's intolerable--'
Thus spoke impetuous Youth.
'I should say something would depend upon the family tradition of the
"other fellows" to whom you refer. In ours gambling debts and shady
transactions with turf-robbers happen to be forbidden luxuries.'
Thus spoke philosophic Age, calm, cynical, unsparing.
No power of divination was needed to decide that the speakers were
father and son; no prophet to discover, on one side, sullen defiance
following a course of reckless folly; on the other, wounded family pride
and long-nursed consuming wrath.
As the rebellious son stood up and faced his sire, it was curious to
mark the similarity of the inherited lineaments brought out more clearly
in his moments of rage and defiance.
Both men were strong and sinewy, dark in complexion, and bearing the
ineffaceable impress of gentle nurture, leisure, and assured position.
The younger man was the taller, and of a frame which, when fully
developed, promised unusual strength and activity. More often than the
converse, does it obtain that the son, in outward appearance or mental
constitution, reproduces his mother's attributes or those of her male
relatives; the daughter, in complemental ratio, inheriting the paternal
traits. But in this case Nature had strongly adhered to the
old-established formula 'like father like son,' for whoso looked on
Mervyn Trevanion, of Wychwood--the head of one of the oldest families in
Cornwall--could not doubt for one moment that Launcelot Trevanion was
his son.
If all other features had been amissing or impaired, the eyes alone,
which contributed the most striking and peculiar features in both faces,
would have been sufficient to establish the relationship, not only
because they were, in both faces, identical in colour and form, but
because of the strange, almost unnatural lustre which glowed in them in
that moment of excitement; neither large nor especially bright, they
were scarcely remarkable under ordinary circumstances--of the darkest
gray in colour and deeply-set under thick and overhanging eyebrows. A
stranger might well overlook them, but, when turned suddenly in anger or
surprise, a steady searching light commenced to glow in them which was
discomposing, if not alarming. Even in a quick glance such as mere
badinage might provoke, they were strange and weird of regard. Lighted
up by the deeper passions, those who had been in the position to witness
their effect spoke of it as unearthly and, in a sense, appalling.
In the family portraits, which for centuries had adorned the walls of
the long gallery in Wychwood, the same feature could be distinctly
traced. There was a legend, indeed, of the 'wicked' squire--one of the
hard-drinking, duelling, dicing, dare-devils of the second Charles'
day--who had so terrified his young wife--a gentle girl whose wealth had
been the fatal attraction in the alliance--that she had fallen down
before him in a fit, and never afterwards recovered health or reason.
All through Cornwall and the neighbouring counties they were known as
the 'Trevanion eyes.' There was a hint of demoniacal possession in the
first ancestor, who had brought them into the family from abroad, and a
legendary compact with the Enemy of mankind, from whom the fiendish
glare had been derived. Since the birth of the first Mervyn, 'the wicked
squire,' the eldest son had inherited the same peculiar regard as
regularly as to him had come the estate and most enviable rent-roll.
A saying had long been current among the county people that when the
lands went to a younger son, this remarkable and, as they held, unlucky
feature would be removed from the family of Trevanion as suddenly as it
had entered it. But up to this time, no break in the succession, _de
male en male_, had ever occurred.
Launcelot Trevanion (mostly called Lance) was the eldest son
of this ancient house. There were two younger boys--Arthur and
Penrhyn--respectively fourteen and twelve years old; but a cousin,
early orphaned, was the only girl in that silent and gloomy hall. Her
beauty--she was the fairest flower of a race of which the women were
proverbially lovely--irradiated Wychwood Hall, while her enforced gaiety
charmed the saturnine Sir Mervyn out of many a fit of his habitual
gloom. With the neighbours, the villagers, the friends of the house, she
enjoyed a popularity as universal as unaffected, and not unfrequently
had the remark been made by individuals of all these sections of
provincial society, that Estelle Chaloner had, in a measure, thrown
herself away, as the phrase runs, by betrothing herself to her wild
cousin Lance; that she was too bright and bonnie a creature to become
the mate of any Trevanion of Wychwood--hard, unyielding, and, in some
sense, ill-fated as they had all been since the days of the first Sir
Launcelot, no one knew how many centuries ago.
Certainly they had not been a fortunate or a prosperous family.
Possessed originally of immense estates, and boasting an ancestry and
military suzerainté--long anterior to the Conquest--undeniably brave,
chivalrous, and daring to the point of desperation, they had uniformly
espoused the wrong side in every important conflict. They had suffered
from attainder, they had regained their lands only to lose them again.
Bit by bit they had lost one fair manor after another, until, at last,
Wychwood Hall and manor, a fine but heavily-mortgaged estate, were all
that remained out of the vast dominion which stretched, according to
time-worn charters still in the muniment room of the Hall, from Tintagel
to the Devonshire border.
Estelle Chaloner, in whose veins ran several strains of Trevanion blood,
had a character curiously compounded of the qualities of both families;
outwardly resembling the Chaloners, who were a fair, blue-eyed race,
more conspicuous for the grace and charm of social life than for the
sterner traits, she possessed, unsuspectedly, a large infusion of the
ancestral Trevanion nature.
In early youth those strongest tendencies and proclivities which come by
inheritance are chiefly latent. Like the seedlings of a tropical forest
they remain for years almost hidden by undergrowth. But when successive
summers have stirred sap and rind, the deeply-rooted scions commence to
assert themselves, towering over, and eventually, it may be, dwarfing
the plants of earlier maturity.
Estelle and her cousin Lance had been playmates and friends since
earliest infancy. There were but three years between them; like twins
they had grown up with a curious similarity of thought and feeling,
though of strongly contrasted temperaments. Then the divergent stage was
reached when the girl begins to tread the path which leads to the goal
of womanhood, when the boy essays the freedom of speech and act which
mould the future man.
She was so gentle, he so haughty, yet were they alike in fearlessness,
in love of dogs and horses, in passionate attachment to field-sports and
the teachings of animated nature. Wanderers in the summer woods, fishing
in the brook, climbing the old tower of the ruined church, what an
Eden-like season of unstinted freedom was that of their early youth! It
was a sorrowful day for both when Lance was sent to a public school and
Estelle was relegated to a prim, high-salaried governess who stigmatised
nearly all out-door exercise as unladylike, and forbade field-sports as
being destructive to the hope of mental progress.
But though separated for the greater part of the year, there were still
the precious vacation intervals when the cousins met and wandered in
untrammelled freedom. Thus they rode and rambled, drove the young horses
in the mail-phaeton to Truro--the market town--fished and hunted, shot
and ferreted, she walking with the guns, none caring to make them
afraid.
It had chanced in the year preceding Lance's unlucky quarrel with his
father that they told each other of the love which had grown up with
their lives, and which was to make a portion of them for evermore.
And now this rupture between the stern father and the stubborn son
threatened the wreck of her young life's happiness. She had repeatedly
warned Lance of the imprudence of his conduct, and laid before him the
danger which he was too headstrong and reckless to forecast for himself;
had long since reminded him that of all youthful follies and outbreaks,
for some unexplained reason, his father was especially intolerant of
those connected with the turf. The very mention of a racecourse seemed
sufficient to arouse a paroxysm of rage. Why he was thus affected by the
concomitants of a popular sport which country gentlemen, as a rule,
regard in the light of a pardonable relaxation, was not known to any of
his household. Sir Mervyn was not so strait-laced in other matters as to
make it incumbent upon him to frown down horse-racing for the sake of
consistency. Still the fact remained. Any hint of race-meetings by
Lance was viewed with the utmost disfavour. No animal suspected of a
turn of speed was ever permitted lodgings in the Wychwood stables,
spacious as they were. And now the sudden bringing to light of Lance's
serious loss of money by bets at a recent county meeting, with moreover
a proved part-ownership of the unsuccessful quadruped, had raised to
white heat his sire's slow gathering, yet slower subsiding anger. Thus
it came to pass that after one other stormy interview in which the elder
man had heaped reproaches without stint upon the younger, the son had
declared his resolution of 'quitting England, and taking his chance of a
livelihood in some country where he would at least be free from the
galling interference of an unreasonably severe father, who had never
loved him, and who refused him the ordinary indulgence of his youth and
station.'
'In the extremely improbable event of your quitting a comfortable home
for a life of labour and privation,' the elder man said slowly and
deliberately, 'I beg you distinctly to understand that I shall make you
no allowance, nor even suffer your cousin to do so, should she be weak
enough to wish it, and you sufficiently mean to accept it. Sink or swim
by your own efforts. _I_ shall never hold out a hand to save you.'
Then the son gazed at the sire, looking him full and steadfastly in the
face for some seconds before he answered. Had there been a painter to
witness the strange and unnatural scene, he might have noted that the
light which blazed in the old man's eyes shot forth at times an almost
lurid gleam, as from a hidden fire, while the youth's regard was
scarcely less fell in its intensity.
'It is possible, even probable,' he said, 'that we may never meet again
on earth. You have been hard and cruel to me, but I am not wholly
unmindful of our relationship. Careless and extravagant I may have
been--neither worse nor better than hundreds of men of my age and
breeding, and may well have angered you. I had resolved, partly
persuaded by Estelle, to humble myself and ask your pardon. That state
of mind has passed--passed for ever. I shall leave Wychwood to-morrow,
and if anything happens to me in Australia, where I am going, remember
this--if evil comes to me, on your head be it--with my last words, in my
dying hour, I shall curse and renounce you, as I do now.'
As the boy spoke the last dreadful words, the older man, transported
almost beyond himself, made as though he could have advanced and struck
him. But with a strong effort he restrained himself.
The younger never relaxed the intensity of his gaze, but with a slow and
measured movement approached the door, then halting for a moment
said--'Enjoy your triumph to the uttermost--think of me homeless and a
wanderer--if it pleases you. But as repentant or forgiving,
never--neither in this world nor the next.'
Before the last words were concluded, Sir Mervyn turned his face with
studied indifference to the window, and gazed upon the park, over which
the last rays of the autumnal sun cast a crimson radiance. For a few
moments only the solar beams glowed above the horizon; the landscape
with strange suddenness assumed a pale, even sombre tone. A faint chill
wind rustled the leaves of the great lime-tree, which stood on the edge
of the lawn, and caused a few of the leaves to fall. When the squire
looked around, Launcelot Trevanion was gone. He turned again to the
window; mechanically his eye ranged over the lovely landscape, the
far-stretching champaign of the park--one of the largest in the county,
the winding river, the blue hills, the distant sea.
'What a madman the boy is,' he groaned out, to leave all this for a few
hot words--and I too! Who is the wiser? I wonder. Will he be mad enough
to keep his word? He is a stubborn colt--a true descendant of old
Launcelot the wizard. If he fails to gather gold, as these fools expect,
a voyage and a year's experience of what poverty and a rough life mean
will be no bad teaching.'
'For what is anger but a wild beast?' quotes the humorist How many a man
has, to his cost, been assured of this fact by personal experience. A
wild beast truly, which tears and rends those whom nature itself
fashions to be cherished.
With most men, reason resumes her sway, after a temporary dethronement,
when regret, even remorse, appears on the scene. The consequences of the
violence of act or speech into which the choleric man may have been
hurried, stalk solemnly across the mental stage. Were but recantation,
atonement, possible, forgiveness would be gladly sued for. But in how
many instances is it too late? The sin is sinned. The penalty must be
paid. Pride, dumb and unbending, refuses to acknowledge wrong-doing,
and thus hearts are rent, friends divided, life-long misery and ruin
ensured, oftentimes by the act of those who, in a different position,
would have yielded up life itself in defence of the victim of an angry
mood.
It was not long before the inhabitants of Truro, and, indeed, the
country generally, were fully aware that there had been a violent
quarrel between Sir Mervyn and his eldest son.
'The family temper again,' said the village wiseacres, as they smoked
their pipes at night at the 'King Arthur,' 'the squire and the young
master are a dashed sight too near alike to get on peaceably together.
But they'll make it up again, the quality makes up everything nowadays.'
'Blamed if I know,' answered Mark Hardred, the gamekeeper of Wychwood,
who, though not a regular attendant at the 'King Arthur,' thought it
good policy to put in an appearance there now and then, 'there's a many
of 'em like our people, just as dogged and worse, I'm feared Mr. Lance
won't come back in a hurry, more's the pity.'
'He's a free-handed young chap as ever I see,' quoth the village
rough-rider, 'it's a pity the old squire don't take a bit slacker on the
curb rein, as to the matter of a bet now and then, all youngsters as has
any spirit in 'em tries their luck on the turf. But he'll come back
surely, surely.'
'He said straight out to the squire as he'd be off to Australia, where
the goldfields has broke out so 'nation rich, along o' the papers, and
it's my opinion to Australia he'll go,' replied the keeper. 'I never
knew him go back of his word. He's main obstinate.'
'I can't abear folks as is obstinate,' here interpolated the village
wheelwright, a red-faced solemn personage of unmistakable Saxon solidity
of face and figure. 'I feel most as if I could kill 'em. I'd a larruped
it out of him if I'd been the vather of un, same as I do my Mat and
Mark.'
This produced a general laugh, as the speaker was well known to be the
most obstinate man in the parish, and his twin boys, Matthew and Mark,
inheriting the paternal characteristic in perfection, in spite of their
father's corrections, which were unremitting, were a true pair of wolf
cubs, taking their unmerciful punishment mutely and showing scant signs
of improvement.
'I must be agoing,' said the keeper, putting on his fur cap. 'I feel
that sorry for Mr. Lance that I'd make bold to speak to the squire
myself if he was like other people. But it'd be as much as my place was
worth. It'll be poor Miss 'Stelle that the grief will fall on.
Good-night all.' And the sturdy, resolute keeper, whose office had
succeeded from father to son for generations at Wychwood, tramped out
into the night.