EVELYN MANWARING
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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JULIAN CLOUGHTON; or, Lad-Life in Norfolk.
BY GREVILLE J. CHESTER, B.A.
CROWN OCTAVO, CLOTH, 3S. 6D.
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AURELIA; or, THE CLOSE AT MIXETER.
BY GREVILLE J. CHESTER, B.A.
CROWN OCTAVO, CLOTH, 3S. 6D.
“The author has graphically drawn the chief ecclesiastical dignitaries
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it.”--_Sunday Times._
“A vigorous and well-written story, which abounds with capital
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_JUST PUBLISHED._
ELLA CUTHULLIN, and other Poems.
BY GREVILLE J. CHESTER, B.A.
SMALL OCTAVO, CLOTH, 5S.
MARCUS WARD & CO.,
67, CHANDOS STREET, LONDON, W.C.
EVELYN MANWARING
A Tale of Hampton Court Palace
BY
GREVILLE J. CHESTER, B.A.
AUTHOR OF “TRANS-ATLANTIC SKETCHES,” “JULIAN CLOUGHTON; OR,
LAD-LIFE IN NORFOLK,” “AURELIA; OR, THE CLOSE AT MIXETER,”
“ELLA CUTHULLIN AND OTHER POEMS, OLD AND NEW,” &c.
London:
MARCUS WARD & CO., 67, 68, CHANDOS STREET
AND AT BELFAST AND NEW YORK
1883
TO MY FRIENDS
I Inscribe this Tale,
IN THE HOPE THAT THEY WILL LOOK MORE
LENIENTLY UPON ITS MANY FAULTS
THAN I DO MYSELF.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--EVELYN MANWARING ARRIVES AT THE PALACE, 9
II.--A GOOD SAMARITAN, 19
III.--HOLMCASTLE MANOR, 28
IV.--THE SQUIRE OF HOLMCASTLE, 33
V.--THE MANWARING “FAMILY TREE,” 42
VI.--“EHRENBREITSTEIN,” 51
VII.--THE FALL OF WILFRED, 60
VIII.--A BLASTED LIFE, 70
IX.--A BRANCH IS LOPPED FROM THE FAMILY TREE, 78
X.--WILFRED MANWARING GOES INTO EXILE, 84
XI.--THE SQUIRE LEARNS THE TRUTH, 91
XII.--THE DUKE OF RIBBLESDALE’S LETTER, 101
XIII.--“IN EXTREMIS,” 112
XIV.--MR. TRESHAM POTTS, 116
XV.--THE TREE IS RE-GRAFTED, 125
XVI.--LAST DAYS AT HOLMCASTLE, 133
XVII.--EVELYN VISITS THE DUCHESS, 140
XVIII.--HER GRACE OF RIBBLESDALE, 151
XIX.--“THE AUNTS,” 161
XX.--THE VEHME-GERICHT OF HAMPTON COURT, 169
XXI.--SERGEANT SMITH, V.C., 181
XXII.--THE LOST FOUND, 194
XXIII.--WILFRED SMITH GOES TO THE JEWS, 202
XXIV.--WILFRED SMITH’S VOYAGE OUT, 210
XXV.--THE MARCH TO CANDAHAR, 220
XXVI.--A PACKET OF LETTERS, 226
XXVII.--THE DUCHESS’S GRAND TABLEAU VIVANT, 233
XXVIII.--COMING OF AGE, 241
XXIX.--“ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL,” 252
EVELYN MANWARING.
CHAPTER I.
EVELYN MANWARING ARRIVES AT THE PALACE.
ALL the morning of that particular 8th of November upon which some of
the events of the ensuing story began, a dense fog had been brooding
over the Essex marshes. The silence of those gloomy expanses of faded
yellow grass and brown slime, deposited by earlier autumnal floods,
was deep and oppressive, and was only broken at times by the cough of
a footsore sheep as it gnawed at a half-rotten turnip brought wearily
down in creaking wains from the sodden uplands, by the distrustful low
of a bullock surprised by the sudden apparition of a fellow-animal of
the same species with himself, or by the shrill alarm-whistle of a
steamer upon the neighbouring, but well-nigh invisible river. By noon
the last-named sounds had ceased, for steamboat traffic had become
impossible from the density of the mist, and then, little by little, a
raw, chilly wind began to blow from the east. This wind gradually drove
the fog up-stream, until it met and mingled with that pall of black
smoke which legislative and municipal incompetence, and that often
fatal English respect for “vested interests,” as confirmed nuisances
are called by their originators, allow to pollute and render deadly the
atmosphere of the first city in the world--wonderful and incomparable
London.
This intermingling of white fog and black smoke speedily produced that
infernal compound which makes the lives of five millions of people
almost intolerable. Stagnation of trade, interruption of business,
stoppage of traffic, depression of spirits, and serious injury to
health ensued. Every Londoner was reduced to a state of utter gloom
and wretchedness, and some two millions of the poorer sort of citizens
“bitterly thought of the morrow,” and feared that the time-honoured
Show of the following day--which, with all its absurdities and all
its anachronisms, still breaks the monotony of countless lives, and
rejoices the hearts of multitudes of toilers who have little else to
rejoice them--would be a failure and a disappointment. The ex-Lord
Mayor felt glad that he was going out of office, and could enjoy the
society of worthy Mrs. Buggins at the domestic hearth at Wimbledon,
instead of at the dusky Mansion House; and the incoming Lord Mayor
sighed involuntarily when he reflected that, on the day ensuing,
as he passed them at noontide by gas-light, he would appear to his
fellow-citizens, and subjects of one year, as a man suffering from a
severe attack of the jaundice. The incoming Lady Mayoress, who was
afflicted, poor thing, with neuralgia in the face, dreaded exposure
next day in the raw fog on the embankment in her state coach; and her
Ladyship’s “Maids of Honour”--buxom, strapping wenches from Finsbury
Square, who laid in a stock of health and jolly red cheeks when
they went every year for six weeks’ sea-bathing to Margate--devised
(by gas-light) all sorts of pretty things in swansdown to protect
their fat shoulders from the cold during next day’s procession. My
Lord Scamperdown at the “Carlton”--and he, to be sure, was a pretty
tough old customer--avowed publicly that “that fog was more than
any fellah alive could stand,” and swore he’d be off to Cadiz, or
Cairo, or Castellamare; and all the men within earshot wished they
were Lord Scamperdown, and could follow his Lordship’s noble example.
Foodles, too, of the “Reform,” who had failed the previous week for
something over the respectable sum of £200,000, committed suicide.
The “intelligent British Jury,” who ought to have known all about
it, found as their verdict that Foodles had committed “the rash act
in aberration of mind, occasioned by miasmatic vapours acting upon
an excitable temperament,” and would have separated, quite happy
at having thus secured Christian burial for Foodles (who, between
ourselves, was the most stony-hearted old heathen imaginable), had
not the Coroner--whose wife had just presented him (for the second
time) with twins, both of whom were doing well, and who lived near
the Lambeth Potteries--remarked, in a hollow voice, that “he hoped he
might not himself be the _next_ victim to a combination of fog and
coal-smoke.” That was a very unpleasant observation to make, and so the
Jury felt it.
Gradually the chilly, searching wind increased in force, and as it did
so, it drove the fog--which, white on the Essex marshes, had become
black as ink in London--up the river, involving town after town, and
village after village, in its sooty folds, so that, as evening fell
over Hampton, the fog was almost as thick there as it had been in
London at midday.
A train was due at the Molesey Station at five o’clock; but there were
several detentions upon the line, and a long one (of course) at Clapham
Junction, and the Palace clock had chimed out a quarter to seven
upon the darkness, when a fly, heavily loaded with luggage, drove up
through the mean barrack court, to the stately principal entrance of
the magnificent dwelling erected by Cardinal Wolsey in the plenitude of
his wealth and power. A single gas-light flickered above the gateway as
the vehicle stopped, and illumined the cloaked figure of Jack Watchet,
a smart young soldier of the 29th Lancers, who stood sentry at the
entrance.
“Some old cat out late!” This was the first irreverent thought which
occurred to Jack’s mind as he stood in the conventional attitude
of military respect, when, to his surprise and delight, a young
lady--without waiting for the slow old coachman to disencumber himself
of his numerous wraps--opened the fly door herself before he had time
to offer his assistance, and springing out, followed by a beautiful
spaniel, confronted him on the pavement.
“Can you be so kind as to direct me to Miss Manwaring’s set of
apartments in the Palace?” asked the young lady in a clear, musical
voice.
“It minded me of a mavish,” said Jack--who was a Norfolk man, and
had loved to hear the throstles singing in the leafy lanes of his
native county--when describing the incident in bed that night to his
particular chum and comrade, Tom Wakefield. On the present occasion
he answered--“Don’t know the name, Miss; but I will soon see;” and so
saying, the young soldier, who felt as if a ray of sunshine had burst
through the fog and darkness, turned from the side into the central
arch of the grand old Tudor gateway, where, by the uncertain light of
a still dimmer lamp than that which flickered outside, he looked down
the list of the names of those ladies and gentlemen who, by the grace
and favour of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, enjoyed the privilege of
occupying apartments in her Royal Palace of Hampton Court. No name of
Manwaring, however, appeared upon the list.
“The rooms I am in search of,” said the young lady, “were those lately
occupied by Lady Glengriskin;” and then Jack pointed out the following
inscription:--
FOUNTAIN COURT.
_Staircase. Number Ten._
GROUND FLOOR.
Lady Lavinia Gathercole.
Admiral Grogrum, C.B.
SECOND FLOOR.
Miss Strong.
Lady Glengriskin.
THIRD FLOOR.
Hon. and Rev. Orlando fforester.
Gen. Sir T. Blazer Brown, K.C.B.
“Thank you very much,” said the young lady; “I am afraid I am giving
you a great deal of trouble; but now, can you tell me where I can find
any one to help the driver to carry my boxes upstairs?”
“Very sorry I can’t go myself, Miss,” answered Jack, hastily, and
looking as if he _was_ sorry; “but I’m going off sentry in a
minute or two, and there’s an odd man about the canteen who does jobs
for the quality in the Palace, and I’ll send him to you in a jiffy.”
In fact, while he was speaking, the clank of arms was heard, and the
relief appeared through the fog, who, leaving another man in his place,
bore back with them Jack Watchet to the barracks, while the young
lady, whose name the reader, from the heading of this chapter, and
from the inquiries she made, will have rightly conjectured to have
been Miss Evelyn Manwaring, remained standing in the cold under the
gateway. So true, however, was Jack to his word, that in the specified
“jiffy,” which in this case was a period of less than five minutes,
the “odd man” arrived, and, showing himself thoroughly acquainted with
the somewhat labyrinthine topography of the Palace, conducted the lady
through the silent and deserted quadrangles and echoing cloisters to
the apartments of the late Lady Glengriskin, where she found a single
candle guttering upon the drawing-room table, and a wretched apology
for a fire glimmering upon the hearth; but her maid, who had preceded
her the previous evening, was nowhere to be found.
Nearly half-an-hour elapsed before the driver and the “odd man”--who
seemed to regard one another with mutual distrust and abhorrence,
and who had several unpleasant differences of opinion upon the
staircase--had brought up the last of Miss Manwaring’s trunks; but
at last these worthies, having been abundantly satisfied for their
trouble, consented to depart, and the young lady found herself alone.
She had, in fact, feared that her two assistants would have broken out
into open warfare. Thus the coachman had remarked that “he’d seed
a lot o’ soft-headed fools in his time, but he’d never seen sich a
soft-headed ’un” as the odd man; and the odd man had replied that “he’d
be ’tarnally shivered if he didn’t knock the coachman’s conk up agen
the doorpost, and see vich vos the ’ardest block o’ the two.”
However, at last Miss Manwaring was happily rid of them. She looked
around, and there in unwonted positions were the articles of furniture,
and the little nicknacks and household goods which she had known
from childhood, and which had been removed from her old home in
the North--that home which was hers no longer--that home which had
been rudely broken up by death, and which was now the property of a
stranger. The girl, for such she was, was dressed in deep mourning, and
as she threw off her hat, long masses of lovely, pale gold hair fell
around and about a beautifully cut face of ashy paleness; out of which,
however, gleamed, like stars, eyes which might have been grey, or
hazel, or violet. Great yearning eyes they were, of marvellous beauty,
like those of Beatrice Cenci, as they look out from the long-dead past
from the canvas at Rome; eyes which it was a joy to have seen once, a
delight even to dream of hereafter. The girl was alone in a strange
place, without friends, without acquaintances, and in a new and unknown
sphere of existence. She was cold, and travel-worn, and tired, and she
felt very desolate, and the sight of the objects around her, connected
as they were with those she had loved and lost, affected her deeply;
and throwing herself upon her knees at a table, she buried her pale,
fair face in her white hands, and burst into an agony of tears.