A Resolute Purpose

Chapter I

tlbc JTowcrs on tbc Cliff. "This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself L'nto our gentle senses." Macbeth, Act I., Sc. 6. %~W"# HE ancient Towerscourts, who first reared J A T those four grim gre) towers on the rugged t/MVj cliff overhanging the Swirl, deserved all «"^^u* honour from their descendants for having seized upen one of the loveliest sites in all England. The position chosen for the stronghold was in every respect admirable, reminding many who saw it of those glorious and defiant "castled crags" on the Rhine, so rich in picturesque beauty and legend ary interest. Three of the towers crowned the jagged steeps of the triangular cliff upon which they were built ; their oriels commanded glorious stretches of Cragshire woods and river windings ; while the fourth — the clock tower, wider and higher than its fellows — served as an entrance to the diamond-shaped court, and its flanking walls faced two grand old lime avenues, leading away to High Bold down, and to Pontycrag and Pensey, the nearest sea-board villages of the rocky world below.

The east and west terraces, overhanging the windings of the Swirl, had a majestic beauty of their own. A view of the bold headland of Pontycrag with its lighthouse, and the sea, to the east ; while to the west, openings in the pine woods showed sunny sweeps of the downs and the oak forest of Buckhurst Abbey on the opposite side of the river. Tangles of birch and hawthorn and mountain ash fringed the rocky steeps leading down from the terraces to the river. Wild as these tangled masses appeared to be from above, their beauty was as carefully tended as any other part of the garden. No noxious weeds, no dead branches were allowed to cumber their sweet chequered shade. Ferns, mosses, the profusion of wild flowers famous in Cragshire, nestled in every cranny under the higher growth, and the "dean" coppices made a perfect paradise for song birds.

" From grave to gay, from lively to severe," the Swirl was pre-eminently beautiful : clear as crystal, or sleeping in dark pools among the rocks, or tossing its showers of diamond bright spray over the frag ments of cliff checking its eager course, the Swirl was ever beautiful. It was ever singing a melody of its own, as it ran its joyous way through the mossy depths of the dean ; but as it gathered its waters together below The Towers, and rushes with impetuosity to join the breakers booming through the caves in Ponty crag Bay, its voices became a very Marseillaise of freedom and daring. Rich sweeps of down land and noble farms and forest wilds also belonged to The Towers on the Cliff. The Towerscourts had held their own, and added thereunto for many generations. In spite of civil wars, and royal robberies, and many a hard blow from Providence and improvidence, the Towerscourts held their own, and brought down with them from the troubled past many a hereditary possession be sides those visible to the superficial view and narrow understandings of thoughtless neighbours.

Many unwise marriages and wild careers had left strange grafts upon the genealogical tree. Adherents to the White and Red Roses, Cavaliers and Round heads, Puritans and Papists, had been strangely brought to roost together among its branches. Man had industriously striven to sunder those whom God had joined together. The records of this confused ancestry gave abundant evidence of the antagonistic characters and qualities that must have waged civil war in the hearts and brains of the race. Was it to be wondered at that the Towerscourts were declared to be peculiar people by their less richly endowed neighbours ? If Professor Maudsley's opinion is right — and who shall dare gainsay it ? — " there is a destiny made for a man by his ancestors ; and no man can elude, were he able to attempt it, the tyranny of his organisation."

If this be true of individuals of an ordinary type, how shall it be with the members of an extraordi narily mixed race, having had for many generations an almost absolute power of perpetuating their ruling passions and their besetting sins ? How soon may a noble courage evolve from hindering indecision? How soon may reckless profusion be purged by 2 * common sense ? or fierce self-will be Christianised to the love of general good ? The sounds and scenes around the old Towers on the Cliff were full of touching beauty and subtle power. With such surroundings, it seemed that it should not be hard to look " through Nature up to Nature's God " ; or to walk in all humility, not to be " overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good." With some such yearning, prayerful determina tion to protect them from the noxious torpor begotten by great wealth and the depressing thought caused by suddenly-discovered family wrong doings, Squire Fairfax Towerscourt and Lady Mary Fairfax, his bride — connected by some distant cousinship, — began their reign of possession : and even as their storm-stained towers stood out from the surrounding woods — a landmark almost as well known as Pontycrag Lighthouse itself, — so does the story of their lives and of their children's lives stand out from the dull level of human happiness and human capacity. Would that their story had found an abler narrator than myself !

Chapter II

Œbc loung ibcfr. " Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right." — Proverbs ss. n. YY|HEY say best men arc moulded out of J (Mi T faults." And Squire Towerscourt's little t/M\3 Fairfax was a nobly naughty boy needing «"^^~ much moulding. His strong rebellious self-will might in time develop into firm principles — his vehement im pulses might in time prove high courage and energy ; time, too, might teach him patience ; but his excesses as a child were those of daring, of lavish generosity, and of passionate indignation against every species of injustice. Lady Mary laughingly called him her " Baby Quixote." Little Fairfax's besetting sin was obstinacy ; but his obstinacy was so mingled with coaxing contrition, so full of sorrow that others could not share his view of any disputed point, that it was found as hard to punish him as to convince him.

There was no sulkiness or after-wrath in his fixedness of pur pose. It was unlike all other nursery experiences ; and the Squire and Lady Mary had the good sense to study the trait of character that so perplexed them, in hopes of future enlightenment. " The Towerscourts had no idea of managing that handsome boy of theirs," people said, and very truly ; for the Towerscourts sought rather to guide than to manage the boy, and to encourage his con fidence in themselves and his absolute faith in right being might. When, some few years later, the handsome boy had reached his thirteenth year, and distant neighbours heard there had been a stand-up fight in Pontycrag between Squire Towerscourt's heir and a butcher's boy, they were able to shake their heads in a condemnatory manner, and to mingle much self praise of far-seeing sagacity with their sorrow for Fairfax's misguided, over-indulgent parents.

" It was only what might have been expected of that very peculiar child." " The child " was never more truly "father of the man" than in his first great public effort to prove that right was might. And that strange mingling of obstinacy with contrition, which had so often puzzled his parents, was never more clearly shown than in his justification of his conduct afterwards. It would have been impossible, perhaps, to per suade outsiders how many beautiful traits of character had been displayed to touch Lady Mary's tender heart in that street-fight and its following incidents. Her boy had returned to The Towers sadly mauled and muddy, but triumphant, with a half drowned puppy in his arms, just as a zealous young groom met the Squire with open-mouthed news of an " owdacious attack upon the young master !

" It is easy to fancy the haste with which Mr. Towerscourt made his way across the court and up the stairs, three steps at a time, to Lady Mary's tower, from whence came an agitated hum of many voices. " Why ! Fairfax ! my boy, what is this I hear ?" the father asked, in breathless astonishment at the boy's condition. "Why not have tried peaceable measures, or sent home for help ? You know my detestation of fighting. How did it all come about ? That young ruffian, Bill Jones, is no companion for my son." " Oh, Father ! " said young Fairfax, pushing aside the sympathising bevy of maid-servants surrounding him with raw meat, arnica, brown-paper and vinegar — all the known remedies for bruises and black-eyes — " Oh, father ! there was no time ! I did offer him my brand-new sovereign — the one you gave me — and he just struck my hand up, and sent the sovereign flying, I don't know where !

And then he fell to again, stoning that poor little doggie in the pond. Every time the little beast rose, or tried to climb out, Bill shied at it again and it went under : I couldn't stand that, you know ! You would have done just the same if you had been there, father ! I only cuffed him to make him give over. Bill is lots bigger than me. So when he swore I should not have the pup unless I 'd stand up and take a licking, why I couldn't refuse, could I ? "Look at the pup, father!" he continued in a voice of sweetest entreaty. " He's trembling still ! His poor little eyes are swelled if you like, Benson ! "Oh, the poor little man !" with infinite tenderness to the wretched puppy. " Mother darling ! do take him on your lap, and comfort him with your soft hands. Make him feel he has a home! He's not so very dirty, now he is half dry . . .

" I should like to thrash that cruel brute again, father! though I am sorry you are angry. You're not so very angry, are you, father ? It is not a base, bad thing like a lie, a fight isn't. You would have done just the same— wrfeerf, father ! " The father's heart was not proof against such confiding trust, such pluck, or the bruises borne so un complainingly for the trembling puppy's sake. The boy was tenderly patted on his shoulder, and enjoined to "keep quiet, and let the women's remedies have a fair chance." There was full forgiveness in the patting of the shoulder, and in his father's acknowledgment : " I dare say I should, my boy, at your age, under such cruel provocation." The kindly touch and gentle words did what Bill Jones's blows had not done, — they brought tears to the eyes of the contrite Fairfax — tears hastily smeared away on the doggie's head, and never guessed at by the maids.

"Oh, mother!" he said, between a laugh and a sob, "don't I just love my dad !" "And what became of Bill Jones ?" the smiling Squire asked, in response to his son's comical appreciation. " I think I gave him more than he expected, father; and then his master came after him with a cart-whip. Not for the cruelty, mind you, father, only for fighting me ! I heard Bill howling when I went into the pond to fish out the pup — he was halfdrowned, he was, little man ! " You are not really angry with me, are you, dearest mother ? You would have . . . Well, perhaps not you. . . . I think I'll keep quiet. ... I feel so strange, mother — the room . . . goes round ..." It was many weary days before Lady Mary's dear boy was presentable again. The plunge into the pond, after such excitement and the beating he had suffered from a weighty opponent, brought on a feverish attack, and young Fairfax was in the hands of a clever young Dr. Burrell, newly come to High Bold, time enough to form a most friendly alliance with his cheery physician.

Mr. Towerscourt forbade all further allusion to the "mill" in Pontycrag. The invalid was allowed the companionship of his doggie, and a "stunning" new book of Mayne Reid's ; and his mother brought fruit and flowers, and her sweet companionship, to brighten his captivity. The pup throve. Even his young master agreed that his impudence knew no bounds when " Ponty" tried to keep Lady Mary out of her son's room by frantic fits of barking, and afterwards tormented her to make up and romp. "Ponty" was but an ugly cur, without a single good point but his grateful heart. Still, he was positively dear to the fastidious Lady Mary — for was he not the living token of her boy's courage and determination to defend the weak against the strong ?

Chapter III

"Hou two JBogs." " Surely I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man." — Proverbs xxx. 2. O T many days after Fairfax's recovery, jl^/M Bill Jones and his father appeared at 'mVm^ the Towers and craved, " speech o' the <•*-*& Squire." " Sarvent, sir," Jones senior growled, in the gruffest and hoarsest of human voices, as he entered Mr. Towerscourt's business room. " Bad as this boy Bill o' mine be, he baint a thief! Arter the larruping his master gin him, and I gin him arter, he went and sieved the dust and dirt he did, well he did, all round through his hands he did, till he found the young master's golden guinea. An' here it is, Squire." " Come in, Bill ! " he whispered huskily through the crack of the door to his boy, "and tell the Squire you got your deserts and are a-going to sea, and ax his pardon for it !

" Bill appeared, a hulking mass of shame and dumb distress, to which Squire Towerscourt was the last man to add a feather-weight. " Going to sea are you, Bill ? " the Squire said in his kind voice. " You did well to find the sovereign — my son shall thank you for that. Sit down, Mr. Jones, and you too, Bill. Where are you going to ? " Bill's thick lips moved, but no word came from them, and the husky father spoke for him again : " His uncle have got him a berth aboard the Vulcan, Squire, a-carrying coals round the world, anywheres like, from Cardiff. They 're rough chaps aboard, they tell us. He '11 have to look sharp, and keep a civil tongue, or he may chance to have his head broke ! 'Twill be good for him too, Squire — and he knows it! " Bill's prospects, growled out by his discouraging father, " kind o' touched the Squire," the old salt told his wife later.

Mr. Towerscourt looked be nignly at the unhappy lout before him, now in such a state of abject terror. He rang the bell, and sent for his own boy, who presently ran in, smiling and unsuspecting, upon his ugly foe — " Hyperion to a satyr." " Bill Jones has taken much trouble to find your sovereign for you, Fairfax. He is going to sea ; and I thought you two boys might like to part with a kind word." " I 'm main sorry, Master Fairfax, I be," Bill's good angel here prompted him to say. " I never were nothing but a great big brute. ..." "All right, Bill," the bright Fairfax hastened to assure him, for he saw that his adversary was a prey to an untold burden of fear and trouble. "I, too, am sorry now that we fought ; I hit you first. Father ! don't you think, as I offered Bill the sovereign for his dog, and I have got his dog, the money is more his than mine ?

As he is going to sea, I should like to give him my big clasp-knife, — may I ? " The boy ran to fetch his knife — a combination of surprising blades, tools, and screws — very dear to his boyish heart, and, therefore, a fitting peace-offer ing to the embryo sailor, who had inflicted on him such a "jolly good whacking." Meanwhile, Mr. Towerscourt impressed upon the bully the beauty of " doing unto others as he would they should do unto him ; " not merely as regarded fellow-men, but unto the smallest of God's dumb and helpless creatures. And he ended his short lecture with words of encouragement, cheerily : " Let us have good news of you, Bill. Come and see us when you return. You will take a glass of ale before you go, Mr. Jones?" Here the breathless Fairfax reappeared. " Don't ring, father !

I '11 show them the way, and ask for the ale." Neither of the Jones's ever forgot that visit to the Towers, or Maxwell's liberal interpretation of a glass of ale. "Aye, that there ale was summat like ! If I 'd a dared fill a pipe to it, I should ha' been in Heaven, I should ! " the old sailor growled as he went his way home, down the rocks to his smoke-dried hut. "'You two boys' — not a hard word for Bill and a soft 'un for his own little chap : Mr. Jones to me, respecting like, and 'you two boys ' it were ! Both alike ! The Squire 's the man for my money. God bless him ! " Bill trudged along, keeping his hand close clasped upon the treasures in his trouser-pocket — that wonderful golden guinea, that knife of miracu lous surprises! In the dim recesses of what might have been Bill's mind, some feeling was stirring that had never stirred before — a sort of love for a fellow creature — a wish to be like that other chap — or, at at any rate, to be other than himself.

If the words of Agur, the son of Jakeh, did not come from his untutored heart, a wish to be better — less brutish — was there, a desire to atone ; and they found their way to the boy's forlornly ignorant lips in coarse but emphatic guise : " Danged if I wun't then, father ! See if I wun't ! " Without being unfairly prolix, it would be diffi cult to do justice to the phases of young Fairfax's character, as the faults of his childhood were being moulded into noble qualities as he approached years of discretion. Those who knew him, found in his calm and manly bearing a reflection of the inner man ; and a passage in Lewes's great Life of Gcethe may be gratefully quoted as a perfect description of the younger Fairfax Towerscourt at his coming of age : " His features were large and liberally cut, as in the sweeping lines of Greek art.

The brow was lofty and massive, and from beneath it shone large lustrous eyes of marvellous beauty, their pupils being of almost unexampled size. The slightly aquiline nose was large and well-cut. The mouth was full, with a short upper-lip, very sensitive and expres sive." This might have been written of Squire Towers court's heir, at a time when his own failing health and a conviction that no human aid could avail him decided him to recall his son from Oxford, and forthwith prepare the young man for the duties so soon to devolve upon him. Mr. Towerscourt's object in sending his son early to college had been rather to prevent the young fellow from sinking to the dull level and " homely wit of home-keeping youth," and to prepare his son's mind for thought and study, than to expect reading for any special degree, or cramming for any special career.

Young Fairfax had from early years lovingly and steadfastly set himself to learn such of his father's ways as did not come to him by heredity; and father and son were staunch and confidential friends, with great wealth of mutual trust stored up between them, when, at the coming of age of the young heir, Squire Towerscourt had bidden his friends and neighbours, farmers and labourers, " come to rejoice with him in the possession of the best son parents had ever had to thank God for." During the two years following Fairfax's recall from Oxford — the two last years of his father's life — he by no means lived " dully sluggardised at home." His father spent every moment of the days free from pain in zealously inducting the young heir to the future cares of the family and the estate. None of the wide and apparently conflicting duties of a country gentleman with large landed interests were forgotten by the Squire in this loving viva voce abdication of precious and dearly cherished pos sessions.

Among Squire Towerscourt's many peculiarities had ever been that of intense sympathy with his poor and tempted neighbours. No magistrate had ever striven more earnestly to reduce the average of crime, by lessening its incentives, than the strict yet generous-minded master of Towerscourt. The Squire was large-hearted in all his ways. His faults had been those of an impulsive and almost improvident man. But the improvidence had been held in check by his devoted and sensible wife, and the need she faithfully kept in his mind of making fair provision for the younger children so luxuriously lapped during their early years. It was beautiful to find how just and observant of his tenants' and labourers' rights the Squire proved himself to have been. No effort to do well, no struggle to do better, seemed to have escaped his keen eyes ; and many were the poor fellows whose lots were to be made easier to them, in token of his kindly and understanding approval.

Chapter IV

" %c IRot est /Ifcort ! Vive le IRoi !" " In brief, sorrow Would be a rarity most beloved, if all Could so become it." King Lear, Act IV., Scene 3. *^^"T was, therefore, more to a friend and equal J^ than to a young and inexperienced youth — *m though Fairfax had but just completed his «"^^ twenty-third year — that Squire Towerscourt confided his wife and the sorrowing young family round him in the last weeks of his painful illness. " You will be everything to them, my son. I have left you perfectly untrammelled. ... I feel as sure of your integrity as of my own. . . . You will be to them all they need. . . . Give your brothers reasonable licence and help in choosing their professions. I wish them to work, not to hang about till my brother Reuben's legacies fall due. Don't oppose any strong bent, if honourable and reasonable. . . .

Keep all your authority to put down idleness and debt : . . . they go together, and are worse than disease, or are the results of it in many a case, I do believe. . . . Your mother and I have hidden nothing from you as to our belief in the family tendencies. . . . On both sides, you know, there is — or has been, rather — danger and disgrace. Check the first symptoms of moral deterioration with a hand of iron, and get the best advice. Dr. Moresby knows more than any other man of our family troubles, and has all that I may forget at his fingers' ends. And our dear friend, Dr. Burrell, too, I think most highly of as an adviser ; and he is close at hand." Most tenderly was each and every member of the family bequeathed to his heir's care in the long watches of the night, kept with Lady Mary alone, beside the failing but peaceful Squire.

Most tenderly of all did the dying man make over to Fairfax the guardianship of the joyous little Honoria — a fairy daughter following his four splendid boys, — who had brought special gifts of her own — sunshine and sweet hope — to brighten those last years of the struggle between Love and Death. There was magic in Honoria's childish loveliness and prattle, and the father's last smiles had rested with trusting hope on her little golden head, seeing that it nestled as contentedly to the " Old Brother's" breast as to his own or her mother's. It was Squire Towerscourt's earnest wish that his wife and children should accept his death as the fiat of Almighty wisdom — not as a blow, not as a grievous calamity, and, above all, not as a fearful visitation. It was his wish that even the little Honoria should be taught to look on death without terror.

His wife promised to do her best to control her own grief, and to forbid all the ghastly gloom of outward mourning in the household, that might always well be spared ; for it certainly can comfort no member of a bereaved family. Mr. Towerscourt's children were all gathered round him for some weeks before his death, and had learned from himself to look forward with resigna tion to the inevitable separation. Many were the precious and loving words of advice given to each, to treasure as their last remembrance of their beloved father ; nor was there one who shrunk in affright later from the shrouded form lying so still in his still cheerful room. The house was hushed, and sacred to the Angel of Death. But neither love nor courage had been driven forth by the heavenly messenger of release. There, still kneeling by her hushand's side, and almost stunned by the blow of her loss, Lady Mary was reminded by infinitely tender words and kisses that her treasure in this world was still beyond all price.

And her promises to her husband were eagerly claimed by the son to whose consoling affection he had so confidently trusted her. The Towerscourts were indeed peculiar people, and their peculiarity had never, perhaps, been more clearly shown than in thus humbly submitting them selves to the will of God. Their mourning in no way depended upon the rules and customs of those tyrannical lawgivers, the undertakers. Mr. Towerscourt had expressed his wishes regarding his own funeral most clearly, and those wishes were reverently obeyed. He was borne to the smallest and nearest parish church — of Ponty crag — by the chief labouring men of his own farms, followed on foot by his sorrowing household and family. The wonder of the county and the grievous disappointment of " the trade " were alike unheeded.

They were of no moment to Lady Mary and her son at a time of such solemn dole. But there was no danger of the silent sleeper in the simple grave above the resounding caverns in Pontycrag Bay ever being forgotten. A " Lady Mary " lifeboat was to be built and endowed, as the Squire's token of love for the rough men and scenes he had been so fond of all his life. A year's rent was remitted to each of the cotters he had named to help bear him to his last rest. Even in death he seemed to draw those most in want of help and sympathy nearer to his family, in the bonds of that Christian brotherhood he had so strengthened when in life. And the young Fairfax began to wield the family sceptre with as little change as it is possible to con ceive. It was as if his father was absent only, rather than if he was gone for ever, and that the young heir reigned instead, so faithfully was every old custom preserved and every duty fulfilled.

But all the love in this world cannot mend a broken heart, and Lady Mary never recovered the loss of her husband. To Fairfax, always with her and carrying out actively her every wish, the change in her was scarcely perceptible. Her boys from Eton were the first to notice that she was paler than of old, that her rings were now easily stolen off her once-dimpled hands, and that she was not able to join in their long walks, or to preside at their impromptu feasts out under the pines. " I think the mater needs care quite as much as Will," Hal confided to his eldest brother ; and Dr. Burrell was called in for consultation, and got the beloved "mater" to confess — not that she suffered, but that life seemed impossible to her ! 3 " For her children's sake she did all that love and medical skill could suggest.

For her children's sake she knew her life to be of inestimable value. For her patient, suffering William — whose mysterious languor and tardy development were now unmasking themselves as unmistakable epilepsy — she would have earnestly prayed to live ; for her wayward, wilful, but utterly captivating Wilfred, and for her tender fairy, little Honoria. No mother surely had more to bind her to life. Love and duty were ever present to her, and equally potent in their claims ; but as one tiny worm will destroy a rose so that it snaps off in its fullest perfection, so grief had destroyed Lady Mary's lovely but fragile vitality, and she was taken from her children almost before they had realised her danger.