THE SQUIRE OF HOLMCASTLE.
MR. CUTHBERT MANWARING had succeeded to the estate of Holmcastle under
the provisions of the will of an old bachelor uncle, Algernon by
name, who had seldom visited his estate, and who died, where he had
lived the best, or worst part of his life, in a small street off St.
James’s Square. This Algernon had been a friend of the Prince Regent,
and although a very fine gentleman, as fine gentlemen were in those
days, he was a very worthless person, and had much impoverished the
family estate by his extravagance. Probably there were but few of
the friends of the “First Gentleman in Europe,” so called, who, in
consequence of the intimacy which subsisted between them, escaped
serious injury “in mind, body, and estate,” and to this rule Algernon
Manwaring was certainly no exception. The estate was left in the first
instance to the elder brother, Cuthbert’s father, Captain Crackenrode
Manwaring, and to his heirs male after him; and then, failing these,
to the second brother, Edgar, a somewhat dissipated and dilapidated
Queen’s Counsel; and then, in case of his demise, to his son or sons
after him. It chanced, however, that both the younger brothers,
Crackenrode and Edgar, died in their eldest brother’s lifetime, and
so it fell out that, on the death of Algernon, the estate passed at
once to his nephew, Cuthbert Piercey, the son of Captain Crackenrode
Manwaring, who, brought up to no definite profession, had lately
married the beautiful, but almost penniless daughter of the last Earl
of Ingleborough. This lady bore to her husband three children--first,
a boy named Lionel; and then, after an interval of five years, a
daughter, Evelyn; and lastly, the following year, another boy, who
was christened Wilfred. In giving birth to this her youngest child,
the gentle Lady Honoria herself died. It would be too much to say
that the Squire was much affected or disturbed by the death of his
young wife. He was a cold, or rather a thin-blooded person, who had
married, not for love, but solely and simply to secure a male heir
for the Holmcastle property, and to transmit the name of Manwaring to
succeeding generations in his own line. He looked upon his wife mainly
as a means to that all-important end; and, that end being obtained, he
was not the man to care much about the means.
That Lady Honoria had received nothing but a mere pittance on her
father’s death had in no ways affected her husband’s equanimity. He
knew, before he married her, that Lord Ingleborough’s property would
go away under the law of entail to a distant cousin, as a matter
of course, and just as if there were no such things in the world
as daughters to be provided for; and he was perfectly content that
it should be so. He had felt, and he had felt rightly, that it was
dishonourable to marry a woman for her money, and therefore, since
family considerations compelled him to take a wife, he did not do that,
but he choose her for her blood, which even he, the heir of all the
Manwarings, allowed to be unexceptionable; and when the sweet, bright
little lady, who ought to have been the joy and crown of her husband,
fell asleep a few moments after she had kissed and blessed her new-born
boy, he felt consoled by the idea that henceforth the blood of the
direct line of the Weathercotes would blend with and go to enhance the
blueness of that of his own family.
The fact is that Cuthbert Manwaring was a man of one idea, and that
idea was the importance and honour of his Family. There was indeed
scarcely a family in all Lancashire, except perhaps the Elthornes of
Elthorne, the Formbys of Formby, the extinct Weathercotes, and the
Stanleys, which he would allow even to have any pretensions to vie with
his own. It will be seen, therefore, that the Squire was no vulgar
tuft-hunter. On the contrary, one of his most marked peculiarities was
the supreme contempt with which he regarded the titled aristocracy
of England, and he could scarcely be got to be decently civil to a
Baronet. “Dukes,” he was wont to say to a casual visitor, “are mere
mushrooms; Marquises a modern growth of Frenchified funguses, things
of yesterday; two or three Earls perhaps can claim to be considered
gentlemen; Viscounts I disallow altogether; and of the Barons of
England there are perhaps a score who date the patents of their
creation to a period earlier than that robber and plunderer, Henry
VIII. Baronets! What do I know or care about Baronets? Why, they
were only invented as a means of putting money in the pocket of that
detestable old Scotch snob, James I.! No, the real aristocracy of
England is only to be found amongst the ancient landed gentry, of whom
a few still survive the invasion of millionaire Jew money-lenders and
Brummagem button-makers, and of these there are few, if any, as I am
prepared to prove from muniments in my own possession, who can compete
in antiquity and respectability with the Knightly Family of Manwaring,
of which I have the honour to be the humble representative. Allow me to
show you the Family Tree.”
These views and pretensions, as may be supposed, did not render the
lord of Holmcastle very popular amongst the neighbouring aristocracy;
but for this he didn’t care a rush, and in fact he rather liked the
state of isolation in which his own pride and folly placed him. While,
however, Mr. Manwaring treated his richer and more aristocratic
neighbours with scant civility or ill-concealed contempt, he was
extremely courteous to his own tenantry, and to the class of yeoman
farmers, of whom there were many in the Dale of the Arrow. A porcupine
with quills erect towards those who, he feared, might be disposed to
assert an equality or superiority which he refused to admit, he was as
smooth as a Persian cat (and in some respects as treacherous) towards
those whom he regarded as so immeasurably beneath him as to have no
pretensions at all. The Squire, too, had in many matters the instincts
of a gentleman of the old school. He ceremoniously removed his hat when
he entered the cottage of the humblest labourer, and he always requited
the bobs and curtseys of the village children with a grand bow, worthy
of Sir Charles Grandison himself. Nor was he a bad landlord. His
ancestors, who were richer men than he was himself, had underlet their
farms, and so he conceived it to be a piece of Family Honour not to
raise his rents, although the value of his land had largely increased.
Finding, too, from ancient accounts, that his forebears had given
large doles to the poor, he too was liberal in his Christmas gifts;
and though he would have grudged a cup of cold water for Christ’s
sake, to save a brother as a brother from perishing of thirst, he gave
freely to those who asked, because he thought it accorded with the
ancient dignity of his House to do so. Thus, with the poorer sort of
his neighbours, who appreciated material benefits without too curiously
investigating motives, the Squire of Holmcastle was not otherwise than
popular. Mr. Manwaring’s manner of life, moreover, was eminently
respectable. No one could breathe a word against his moral character,
which indeed was beyond reproach. He was particular, too, in attending
to his “religious duties.” He went regularly to the Parish Church;
but as he sat in the Manwaring Chantry, in the southern isle of the
chancel, his eyes were fixed upon the noble altar-tombs and quaint
brasses of his Family, rather than on his Prayer Book or on the Priest
of the Church of Christ, and his thoughts turned to the rusty swords
and helmets and tattered banners which hung over the monuments of his
race, rather than to the Liturgy and the Word of God. Mr. Manwaring
was, in point of fact, as near a Pagan as a Church-going man of moral
life could be. The very building in which he attended Divine Service
he regarded rather as a Family Shrine, a Tomb-house of the Manwarings,
than as a Consecrated House of Prayer, where all men, rich and poor,
noble and simple, might meet together on equal terms to worship the
common Father of all. There was one thing, however, connected with the
Church and Rectory, which he could neither forget nor forgive. His
predecessor, worn out by the solicitations of parsons’ wives for the
presentation of the benefice of Holmcastle, then vacant, to their own
proper husbands, had, by solemn deed of gift, made over the advowson
of the living to the Bishop of the Diocese. The present Rector was the
first one appointed under the new _regime_, and had he been a man
of less tact than he was, and any other than an Elthorne of Elthorne,
he would, without doubt, have speedily been made to feel that his lines
had fallen in any but pleasant places. As it was, the Squire was on
good terms with his parish Priest, the Rev. Charles Elthorne, and liked
him as well as he was capable in his cold nature of liking anyone. Mr.
Elthorne, who had been fellow of his College at Oxford, was a quiet
man of considerable learning and holy life, and as the Squire held the
common conservative notion that the Church existed to minister to the
wants of the State, he was content to allow the Rector to have his own
way in the religious training of his children. It was “respectable,”
the Squire thought, to be (at all events outwardly) religious; there
had been one or two great churchmen in the Family, and so it was
right that his children should be brought up in the faith of their
forefathers.
In person, Mr. Manwaring was tall and thin, his features were finely
cut, his eyes dark, luminous, and expressive, and his dark eyebrows,
contrasting with his fine white hair, gave a rare distinction to his
otherwise handsome countenance. The poor folks and dalesmen were proud
of him as the most well-favoured Squire in all North Lancashire.