Milton Davenant, a tale of the times we live in

Chapter I. The Last Of The Davenants

" He sadeth, he departeth, Beyond all human ken ; Bearing the sins and agonies, Hopes, fears, and joys of men ; Loathed, dreaded, loved, lamented ; — Never to come again ! " Barry Cornwall. The crimson splendour of a summer sunset was richly poured over both earth and sky, as a young Oxonian reached the turn of the road which com manded the first view of his native valley — the valley of Milton Davenant. Opposite to him arose the long line of soft green hills, here and there relieved by patches of dark low copse or bright VOL. I. B furze; beneath him stretched rich meadows and luxuriant hedgerows, fresh with the verdure of June, which gave a peculiar beauty to the clumps of trees that indicated the various homesteads embowered in their bright foliage. Along the centre of the valley ran, rushed, and sparkled one of those exquisite streams so frequent in the west of England ; on this side of the brook, at about a meadow's distance, passed the inland road, which, after proceeding for some way in a northerly direction, turned sharp off to the west at the churchyard gate, and, after passing the parson age and crossing the stream, turned once more inland, and proceeded in a north-westerly direction to the large market, or rather county-town of Axcester.

This road formed the main street of the village of Milton, and was intersected by that along which our young acquaintance was proceed ing at a spot somewhat lower down the valley, called from that circumstance Milton Cross. To the right stretched a line of hills, which, after making a circuit so as to screen the valley from the north, gradually sloped upwards till they were lost in the vast expanse of down and moor which spread for miles and miles into the interior. To the left arose the bold but deeply-wooded emi nence on whose summit stood the ancient strong hold of the Davenants of Davenant Hall — the gloomy mass of building standing out in dark relief against the glowing sky. Yes : only twelve months had passed since he had left that valley with a beating heart to try for a scholarship — a scholarship which he had gained triumphantly.

With what pride and gratitude had the farmer's son returned home to his kind preceptor, that kind old melancholy man ! With what bound ing delight had he entered on residence in the following winter ! and now the last six months — for he had not returned at Easter — seemed a per fect age. How much he should have to tell of, and to ask of too ! Even his journey homeward had been full of adventure. What a beautiful creature that was to whom he had been able to render a service — how tenderly careful of her old companion how gracefully grateful to himself ! When a young man of ardent feelings and lively B imagination begins musing or soliloquizing about the last pretty girl whom he has seen, there is likely to be an end to all common sense ; and it is therefore most fortunate, especially for my readers, that just at this moment the deep sound of a bell tolling for the dead fell heavily on his ear.

He started from his reverie, and paused to listen. Yes, it was no mistake, the bell sounded again, and his practised ear at once detected that it was not the child's bell, or the youth's bell, or the man's bell that was tolling, no, nor even the great bell number seven — but that it was the Lord's Bell, as it was called, that was sounding, a vessel of such calibre that the vestry had strictly forbidden it to be tolled except on the most solemn occasions : once had it tolled in the memory of man, once, and once only, when intelligence had reached Davenant Hall of the murder of Louis the Sixteenth. Robert was about to hasten onward, when his attention was again aroused in another direction ; for as the last rays of the dying sun deserted the northern windows of Davenant Hall, the great bell of St. Michael, which hung in that which had once been a donjon keep, gave forth its mournful answer to its younger brother, and struck with angry pause, that only waited to take up the dying note, as the new year treads on the heels of the old.

As the Oxonian now hastily descended the lane which wound into the valley beneath, he counted the strokes, and, as he reached Milton Cross, they ceased on attaining the number seven hundred and forty-nine. "What is the matter?" said he, accosting the boy who sprung forward to take his horse. "Matter!" cried his brother John, emerging from the porch of a neat public-house — " matter ! why the squire's dead." " And," added Mr. Tomkins, the clerk, " as he is the last of the Davenants, they have tolled the Big Bess, and St. Michael's bell has sounded seven hundred and two score and nine times, — one stroke for every year that the Davenants have held this land." " And much good have they done in all that time, I dare say," said a decidedly shrewd and somewhat suspicious looking character, who was b drinking his pint of porter with the air of a decided patriot.

"They have done good," exclaimed Robert, " great good ; they have dwelt on their land among their people, as the gentlemen of England ought to do ; they have kept up a hospitable house for rich and poor ; they have fought for their king against factious rebels, and for their country against open enemies." "Lack-a-day, Master Robert," cried an old woman, "that be very fine talking; but they ha'en't a been o' much service to nobody since I can remember." " Fie, fie, Margery," interrupted Robert's father, shaking his hand heartily, " it's true the squire has been harsh and crusty, and no ways kind since he quarrelled with Master Arthur, God bless him ; but he was a right noble gentleman afore that, though he was so proud and high." " By-the-bye," interposed John Studeley, the honest landlord of the Rose and Crown, " how do we know that he be the last of the Davenants ? may be Master Arthur be yet alive."

" No, neighbour, no chance of that," replied Ton-kins, with an air of official dignity; "I've a seed the certificate of his death ; and I hear," he added, assuming a yet more mysterious tone, " that it was the sight of that there bit of paper that put the last end to him." " And well it might, and serve him right too," cried Studeley's pretty daughter, " a wicked, cruel, proud, hard-hearted old wTetch, for turning off such a fine young gentleman to starve and die, just because he chose to marry after his own fancy." Studeley pretended not to hear this sally ; but a stern old yeoman, who had lately forced his son to emigrate for the same fault, and who had not melted even on hearing that the emigrant ship was lost with all on board, chimed in — " He did right, quite right, and I honour him for it.

Why should Arthur Davenant choose to take up with the daughter of a foreign beggar, and a papist into the bargain ? " " He was no beggar," said old Da'enant, for such was the name of Robert's father, " though he was poor ; a poor man and a beggar is two different b things ; there's no shame in being poor, and shame on those as thinks so." There was a buzz of applause among the crowd collected around the speakers; and many a suppressed blessing was uttered for " The Poor Man's Friend" — the honourable name by which the noble old yeoman was known throughout the parish, — known and loved by the poor, — known and dreaded by their oppressors, styled, by a bitter irony, " Guardians ;" the name, however, was perhaps taken from " The Children in the Wood." " And," continued the speaker, " she was no papist neither, and as beautiful a creature, and as perfect a lady, as ever you would wish to see.

And it has often struck me as exceedingly strange, how any one, as was a woman, could have the heart to behave as Mrs. Fitzherbert did to her and Master Arthur." " Well, neighbour," said Jonathan Oliver, an artisan, who divided his time between making and mending the shoes, and administering to the spiritual wants, of his friends, " I see nothing extraordinary in the matter at all. Did not Balaam the son of Beor covet the wages of unrighteousness ? and why shouldn't this woman do the same, who was little better than a Jezebel ?" " What!'<{ said another stranger, who had been in close conference with the patriot before men tioned; " Money, indeed ! Ay, money's the root of all evil, and property is the curse of the land ; as long as you have property, you will have envy and jealousy, and slavery and oppression."

" You might just as well say," interposed the Oxonian, " that because some persons are given to picking and stealing, we ought to cut off our hands." The crowd laughed, and the socialist retreated ; for he seemed, as well as his neighbours, to feel something personally unpleasant in the observa tion. " And who will the land go to, I wonder ? " said Farmer Da'enant. " Why," said the clerk, looking round very con sequentially, " it is to be put up to auction, and then the money as it fetches is to be put into four b parts : one's to be divided equal between all the late squire's relations; and another is to go between the parson, and the doctor, and the lawyer, and the butler, and housekeeper — share and share alike ; and a third part k to go to build a great moniment to the squire's memory ; and the rest is to go to the young princes and princesses, to buy them sugar-plums, pretty dears."

" Come, come, Tomkins," cried Studeley, "you're coming it rather strong — a regular nor' wester ; but you can't come over me." Tomkins however reiterated his story with so many asseverations, and proofs collateral and direct, that the majority became inclined to credit it ; and the villagers began to speculate on the probable character of the next possessor. " Ah ! it's a sad thing for the old place to be sold like that," cried one of the labourers : " who knows but it may get into the hands of one o' them rich upstarts as is always the hardest on the poor?" " And they be a most all on 'em Free Traders," exclaimed a respectable-looking yeoman ; " and they, we all knows, never lowers their rent." " Good evening, father ; good evening, neighbours," said Robert, as he left the animated circle, and took his way homewards.

He had scarcely turned the corner, when he met his old preceptor. " How are you, Mr. Ascham ? " How are you, Robert ?" And a hearty and long shake of the hand suc ceeded. " I will walk with you as far as Revelshaye," said the elder of the two ; " 1 am in no great hurry to join the discussions of yonder assembly, especially as they cannot by any possibility know more than I know already ; namely, that Mr. Davenant is dead." " Yes," replied Robert ; " the last of the Da venants !" " No, no, boy ! not the last of the Davenants, as long as you are living." " That is a fancy of yours, I am afraid," replied the other ; " I wish it were true." b " And true it is ; as true as that your name is Robert." " But you recollect, sir, that the jury gave it against my ancestor." " And a more shameless verdict never was given.

Why, the judge himself declared that the farmer had as much right to the name and arms of Da venant, as he had to his own watch. Why else do you retain the old spelling, except as a protest for your claim?" Robert mused a minute or two in silence, and his friend resumed the conversation with a tissue of questions, for which he scarcely awaited the answers, for the memory of other years came strongly on him ; and as they parted at the door of Revelshaye, Ascham took a path which led to the village by a circuitous route, instead of the direct path, and thought over those early scenes which Robert's answers had summoned up. " Yes," he said, " forty years ago, I should have little thought of being the teacher of an obscure village school. Ah ! had not Morton gained that fellowship, I should have been now * * * * And yet, perhaps, it is better as it is : it must be so ; for all things are for the best — whatever is, is right.

Robert, my dear Robert, will succeed ; 1 am sure of that : why, he has already ensured success — already achieved the earnest of indepen dence by gaining that scholarship. Yes — he has no patron to depend upon. God bless and prosper him ! He is a noble fellow. He will, he must succeed; and when he has thus proved his right to them, he must resume the name and arms of Davenant !"

Chapter II. Conjectures

" An old king fell sick ; and when he found his end drawing near, he said, ' Let Faithful John come to me.' " Grimm. The interest and anxiety occasioned by the death of Mortimer Davenant was shared with even greater intensity, as we may well believe, by the household of Davenant Hall; and what gave a peculiar piquancy to their curiosity was, that there was one person, and one only, who knew the contents of his will ; and that person had immediately assumed despotic authority over the house hold. With an exact preciseness, and a quiet decision, the individual in question gave his orders ; and even those who had hitherto never received a command, or listened to a wish, except from the lips of their old master, paid an implicit and un hesitating obedience to the orders of the quiet, stiff, determined solicitor, Mr. Dixon.

The butler, who as the eldest son of the squire's nurse felt himself in a sort of way allied to the throne — the robust, consequential, authoritative, independent old butler — made no attempt to dispute the legitimacy of the new dominion. The housekeeper, who, alone of living mortals, had once actually reproved the squire himself, was as tractable as a lamb. And the rest of the domestics, nay, all who in any way depended upon the late sovereign, acquiesced, without a murmur, in the rule of the dictator. He seemed, without any intervention of a coup d'etat, to have achieved as marvellous a work as "le petit neveu du grand oncle," with this difference, that in the case of President Dixon there was a universal persuasion that he acted under the as yet unknown provisions of that will which he was known to have framed within the last eight and-forty hours : in fact, the dying man had been heard to say, " You will not leave the house, then, Mr. Dixon, till the will has been read out ?

" And the lawyer's firm, quiet voice had said, " I will not." So that it was a very different thing acquiescing in the government of a John Dixon, from what it is acquiescing in the government of a Louis Napo leon. And then, too, the servants of the hall had the satisfaction of knowing that the present was merely an interregnum, and must come to an end as soon as the heir was declared — a satisfaction which is probably shared by their fellow-sufferers on the other side of the channel, though they are in quite as great ignorance as the vassals of the house of Davenant, who may become their ruler at the winding up of the whole concern. And what were the contents of the mysterious will ? Nothing was on this point known, though much was guessed ; and the very multitude and variety of the guesses proved that the greater number of them must be wrong.

One thing alone was known — or rather two: first, that not a single relation or friend of the deceased was to attend the funeral — he was to be followed simply by his tenantry, labourers, and household servants; secondly, that on the day after his funeral, all his relations within the third degree of cousinship were to attend in the large hall, there to hear his will read out by the soli citor. Notes to this effect were dispatched on the even ing in which my tale opens : let us follow one or two of them to their destination. In a drawing-room, the fittings and furniture of which showed considerable wealth, some attention to the ways of the hour, but little elegance and less taste, — a man, evidently well to do in the world, was seated in a luxurious arm-chair, at a table which groaned beneath the treasures of a very substantial breakfast.

In the arrangements of the table, the same character held good which was observable in those of the room : expensive modern French china of dazzling colours, richly ornamented plate of ungraceful shape, served a repast, which the gentleman already mentioned was eyeing with impatient glances that ever and anon wandered in the direction of the door. The windows opened to the ground upon a velvet lawn, chequered with various beds of the most brilliant hues, and stretched down to the bank of a soft and silvery river, which was just per ceptible through the weeping willows with which it was fringed, and the flowering shrubs that were dotted here and there about the soft green sward. At length from the garden entered a young man of about twenty-three years of age, rather above the middle height.

One could see at a glance that the elder and the younger were related ; and yet the full high brow and clear grey eye — nay, the whole tone and manner — of the new comer seemed to indicate an intrinsic superiority of nature. " Algernon," cried Sir John Thurtle, " here's news — old Davenant dead." "Indeed!" " Yes. Here is the announcement. How are you, my dears?" turning to his daughters, who entered the room at this moment with their mother. " Come, I will read it out for the general ad vantage. " ' Sir, " ' In compliance with the commands of my lamented client the late Mortimer Davenant, Esquire, of Davenant Hall, I write to request that you will accede to his last wishes, and attend here on Saturday the — instant, when it will he my mournful duty to read out his will. " ' I am, Sir, " ' Your ohedient and humble servant, " ' John Dixon.' " " Of course you are the heir, my dear," said Lady Thurtle ; " Mr. Davenant would never in sult you by asking you to attend at the reading out of his will unless that will declared you his heir."

" Why, you know, my dear," said the baronet, " Algernon is nearer than I am. My mother and his grandmother were sisters, 'tis true; but Sey mour married the eldest." " I am quite aware of that," said the lady, com placently ; " but then you observe that Algernon has received no summons, though I am sure that nothing would delight me more than to hear that Mr. Davenant's choice had fallen upon him." "WeU! how are you, Sir John?" exclaimed Mr. Barnwell, squire of the adjoining parish. " Got over that fit of the gout ? By-the-bye, Seymour, here is a letter for you which the post man must have dropped." All eyes in an instant were turned anxiously towards this second epistle, as it was easily seen to be enveloped by a deep black border. " What is it, Algernon ?" said the lady, turning pale and red as she spoke.

" Merely a sac-simile of that which Sir John has just read out," replied he, quietly, handing her the letter at the same time. " And what is it all about?" cried the bewildered squire. " Mortimer Davenant is dead !" " Oh ! that is all, is it ? WeU, he is no great loss, as far as I am concerned : he was always so precious high and mighty, as if he thought that to be Davenant of Davenant Hall was as good as being a duke." " He had a pretty good notion of himself, certainly," replied the baronet, musing. " I recollect, when I was a young man, hearing that he had fallen in love with a girl at a ball, over head and ears in love ; but that when he found she was the daughter of a man who had just been made a peer on account of his wealth, he stopped short, saying, that he would never seek an alliance which would really dishonour while it would appear to adorn his family — '/could raise the daughter of a poor gen tleman,' said he ; ' but the daughter of a rich parvenu would lower me.' He was a strange fellow."

" I do not like those strange people at all, Sir John," interposed the lady ; " and I do not see why those Davenants should have given them selves such airs." " You forget, Lady Thurtle," exclaimed Al gernon Seymour, with a marked courtesy, and a smile that might have more than one interpretation, " that both Sir John and I have some interest in the matter; and when you are established at Davenant Hall, perhaps you will find the air has something contagious in it, and not wonder so much at the effect which has been produced by constantly inhaling it for more than five centuries." " I am sure / should never like to leave West bourne for that dismal-looking old place," said Cecilia, the eldest of the young ladies. " Nor I either," exclaimed Caroline, the second. " Well, now, I should like above all things to live in that fine old place," said Judith, the youngest.

" Now do not you think, Mr. Barnwell, that there can be no doubt that Sir John is to be the heir ? He would surely not insult him by inviting him merely to hear the will read out." " Certainly not, certainly not. — By the way, Seymour, my nephew Edward Ellerton desired me to say, that he should like much to see that book which you spoke of — something controversial, I think." " I was just going to take it to him," said the young man, rising from table, and making his retreat, not very sorry to leave these congenial spirits to their own devices. " Poor Ellerton !" he soliloquized, as he walked along ; " I wish that he were not quite so fond of controversy. Controversy is like calomel— taken in proper quantities, it clears the head, cures the liver, and puts the digestion in order; but too much of the one or the other debilitates both body and mind, and gives a distaste for wholesome and nourishing food.

Poor fellow ! I hope he will be all right ; but I am sometimes rather afraid for him." And his mind then turned to another subject, which, being of a strictly private nature, we will leave him to con over by himself, and return to the party assembled in the breakfast-room of West bourne Lodge. Sir John Thurtle was just one of those people who are thought a good deal of in their own immediate circles — those systems, of which they are the social suns ; but whom nobody thinks any thing of any where else, except it may be some hungry fashionable who wants a dinner, some tottering statesman who wants a vote, or some youthful aspirant to his daughter's hand. For old fellows of his calibre do sometimes make a sort of amende to society for their own deficiencies, by becoming the fathers of decided belles.

And the Misses Thurtle were all of them belles : any where they would have been thought very good-looking ; but, in their own especial and peculiar neighbourhood, they were admired with exceeding admiration. The Thurtles were not an old family : the grandfather of the present baronet was indeed the founder of his race, having made a fortune as a corn-factor in times of scarcity, and succeeded, at a vast sacrifice, to please what he called a whim of his old woman's, in obtaining a baronetcy. Sir John Thurtle, of Westbourne Lodge, in the parish of Westbourne, and George Barnwell, Esquire, of Eastbourne Grange, in the neighbouring parish of Eastbourne, had married two sisters, the daughters of a retired candle-merchant. Barnwell himself, Squire Barnwell, as he was called by his poorer neighbours, — and it was a good name for him, as expressing the only accident which distinguished him from his familiars, — was not a man of exalted sbul, or refined taste, or cul tivated intellect, or choice conversation ; he neither admired what was lovely, nor reverenced what was holy, nor pitied what was weak.

He had, however, his good points : he was brave as a bulldog, and, if he were as obstinate, too, he was equally firm in his attachments, such as they were ; nor was he ever known to give up others for the sake of screening himself. Self-willed and pertinacious, he was frequently, and not unnaturally, praised for his fixity of principle and staunchness of purpose : he never, indeed, was known to abandon a friend whom he had once taken by the hand, or to desert a cause, however desperate it might become. His principles on social and political questions were those which he deemed essential to the general well-being of the country, as well as the especial interest of his own order. He hated and despised foreigners much with the feeling evinced by the Romans of old to the bar barians of their day, — with a slight relaxation of his tariff in favour of Danes and Dutchmen, Swedes and Swiss, — and looked upon the Scotch and Irish as a sort of half-caste breed.

When I add, that he never spoke of Protestant dissenters except as "psalm-singing vagabonds," or thought of them but in the light of hypoc VOL. I. critical revolutionists, whilst he entertained a most thoroughly genuine abhorrence for " Papists and Jesuits," I shall have left little more to say. I should not, however, omit to mention, that he entertained a feeling approaching to awe for those socially or politically his superiors, and an admiration for rank which influenced him to a considerable extent, except when his line had been taken, or his blood was up. Of his brother-in-law, the baronet, he had a very high opinion. His wife had died shortly after the birth of her first child John, who was now growing up to man's estate, and appeared likely to exaggerate all his father's defects, and add thereto positive vices of his own.

Yes : in John Barnwell the faults of his parent were, to use an appropriate phrase, developed. If George did not pity the weak, John actually oppressed them; if George had no reverence for that which is holy, John proceeded to scorn it altogether ; if George said many a thing which no modest woman or decent man could sit still to hear, John added deeds to words ; and already, ere his beard was fully grown, had acquired the tone of mind and feeling of a practised roue. It is fair, however, to the father to say, that he was not fully aware of his son's depravity : he looked on him, in fact, with a blind partiality ; and, as is frequently the case even with those whose keener perceptions leave them no excuse, saw nothing but the proofs of manliness, and the presages of virtue, in the unseemly irregularities of his only son. c

Chapter III. The

will. " In life's gay lottery spite of countless sighs, A thousand draw the blanks, and one the prize." Phillips. The day was come ! — the eagerly expected day — the day which had made the previous week appear an age — the day that was to decide whom, among all his wide circle of relations, the last of the Davenants had singled out as the heir of those goodly possessions which were the envy of many, and the admiration of all. There was not indeed an eye in Davenant Hall but saw the sun rise that day ; and brightly he rose, as though he wished to bless the heir, and the inheritance. In the village, too, and parish, and in the ad joining valleys, there was an intense interest; and our friend Robert was early on the field, surveying that scene which was so soon to be allotted to the fortunate one, whoever that might be.

The shadow of the hill on which the hall stood, fell wide and far across his native valley, skirting the village-green : at its utmost limit rose, in a robe of sunshine, the village church, built of the yellow stone of the country ; its ancient tower quite seemed to glitter in the ray, and the dew bespangled ivy clustered like a wreath of emeraid adorned with pearls. Half of the park was in sun shine — half in gloom ; but, as the sun rose higher, the darkness rapidly yielded before the waves of light, till the hall appeared upon its lofty eminence an isle of power in an ocean of glory. Winding along the northern side of the mount, which was but partially severed from the hills behind it, he gained a point from which he could see the rich meadows of the further valley, — the fertile corn land even now showing promise of a golden har vest, — the woods that rose on the opposite range of hills, and the bold downlands that, rising behind them, stretched north and south, sheltering the fair c scene from the inclement east,— all, save the hall itself, which, placed on a proud pre-eminence, braved every storm that blew from whatever quarter of the heaven.