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VOL. I. LONDON: GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, ST. JOHN'S SQUARE. By AVEEIL BEAUMONT, AUTHOR OF "THORNICROFT'S MODEL." From their cradles up, With but a step between their several homes, Twins had they been in pleasure ; after strife And petty quarrels, had grown fond again; Each other's advocate, each other's stay ; And, in their happier moments not content, If more divided than a sportive pair Of sea-fowl, conscious both that they are hovering Within the eddy of a common blast, Or hidden only by the concave depth Of neighbouring billows frosi each other's sight. WOBDSWOBTH. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. Eonfcon : SAMPSON LOW, MAKSTON, LOW, & SEARLE, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1874. [All rights reserved."]

Chapter I

" Every rich man built his castle and defended it, and they filled the land full of castles. And they greatly oppressed the wretched people, by making them work at these castles ; and when the castles were finished, they filled them with devils and evil men." Saxon Chronicle. "In such houses," said Lord Monboddo to Dr. Johnson, when they were standing before his wild-looking tower in Scotland, " our ancestors lived, and they were better men than we." " No," said the Doctor, " we are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser." fTHE county of Northumberland is thickly set with castles, fortresses, and strongholds of all kinds. There are the royal castles where brave old fighting kings who, when VOL. I. B in the flesh, never rested from putting down their enemies, and when dead ordered their bones to be led to battle, took a night's lodge ment after their forced marches northwards ; there are the baronial castles, held on the tenure of defending the part of the country where they were built from wolves and the king's enemies ; and the humble peel-towers, the fastnesses of border-knights and robbers, who swooped down by night on their oppo nents' flocks and herds, burning and destroy ing everything they could not carry away with them.

What a holy feeling these men had of their mission as guardians of property and champions of civilization ! Witness that de lectable letter of the old border-steward to his lord, then on duty at Court, to tell him of the scandalous conduct of the clan they had a feud with ; how the false-hearted loons had come by night and burnt their fodder, and stolen their corn, and not content with this, the wicked, God-hating, thieving reprobates had driven away all their sheep and a hundred head of cattle. " But," added the writer with saintly zeal, " your lordship may take good comfort, for we went out ourselves last night, and, thanked be the Lord, we have outstolen them!" Now the cattle quietly browse at will around most of these strong places, the crum bling walls offering neither let nor hindrance to their wanderings over courtyard, chapel, or citadel; the ancient gateway, perhaps, serving only, by the aid of a rough fence, to give shelter to them by night.

The scene of my story is laid at Ravens burgh, a retired village on the Northumbrian coast, six or seven miles from any railway, the same from any town, with no resident lord or lady, squire or dame, yet boasting one of the finest castles in all the county. Ravens burgh was a very quiet-looking village, in deed there was nothing of it but one long street of cottages, built on both sides of the road which led to the grassy dune and steep rock on which stood the castle. With the exception of the Rectory, the Grange, and one or two others, there were no very good houses, and if there had been any the Castle would have dwarfed them all into insignificance; and even now, in these later days, it was im- B possible not to invest those who lived in it, at such a height above other people, in such a splendidly romantic abode, with some qua lities superior to those which belonged to the dwellers in the mere every-day houses which went to form the village below.

And if such was the feeling now, what must it have been when the Lords of Ravensburgh were at the height of their power? It is true that Ravensburgh itself was not then a mere hand ful of cottages, but an important market town, sending two members to Parliament. That was in Edward the First's time. Did the free and independent electors of those days choose a little for themselves ; or were they somewhat awed by the daily sight of the big building which dominated their town, and apt to remember all the strong and pleasant places of refuge there were be hind its walls, to which friends of the lord might fly for safety in times of war and peril ? The castle was built upon a singular mass of basaltic rock, which on the side next the village rose in a sheer columnar precipice, of which the walls seemed to be a part, and to which the towers fastened themselves at inter vals with fang-like roots.

Had it not been for these towers it would have been difficult to say where rock ended and masonry began. Over this long sweep of wall and tower, about the centre of the line, rose the Keep, a fortress of itself from its size and strength, which stood " four-square to all the winds that blow," with walls fifteen feet thick. This was the aspect from below. Above, when you had mounted the heights, where the gradual slope allowed an easy ascent, and were under the walls, there was first the outer gate with its flanking towers and portcullis, — then a narrow, stony, and stid ascending road, hemmed in between blank walls and scarped rock, — then a shattered tower at the end of this, and a sharp turn round this tower brought you face to face with the Keep, standing detached from all other buildings in a large open space — as perfect externally as the day it was built, save for a little moderniza tion of the windows.

Some huge stones lay about its base, and amongst these were one or two ponderous anchors and some spars, the waifs and strays of bygone disaster. Keep was now the only inhabited part of the Castle. A picturesque Norman door way gave admission into its lowest story, of which the greater part was taken up by a large, crypt-like, vaulted room, once used as a guard-room, now apparently as a storehouse for more relics of victory or defeat along that wfld iron-bound coast. To the left of the entrance doorway, a long straight staircase in the thickness of the wall, led directly into the court-room as it was called. This was the state-room of the Castle — solemn in colour — imposing from its size and height, with black oak furniture, chairs which could only be reluctantly moved, and sofas which assuredly could not be moved at all.

Portraits, maps, engravings, and tapestry covered the walls. The dining-hall and kitchen opened out of this room at one corner, and at the other, another wall-cut staircase led to the library and bed-rooms. The Keep of Ravensburgh was the president of a great assemblage of ruins ; crowding all around it were Cyclopean walls of nameless builders, broken-down fortifications, aerial galleries, ruined fragments of hall and chapel, a lovers' walk, sweet with scented thyme, windmill and granary, courtyard and tiny pleasure garden. The lines of the fortification followed everywhere as closely as might be the irregular outline of the rock platform on which it stood. Every coign of it was occupied by bastion, gallery, or lunette, and all that the builders had had to do was to strengthen the defences nature had supplied them with.

On the seaward side the precipice was con cealed by sand, the drift of countless ages, which sloped down to the level beach in round grassy dunes. Lord Ravensburgh, owner of all around, was a delicate, middle-aged man, who spent most of his life abroad, and during the memory of man had only once ventured so far north as Ravensburgh. That was about fifteen years ago, and it was not very likely that he would ever come again. Capri in summer, and Palermo in winter, had for years been his chosen places of residence, and Ravensburgh Castle would have been un occupied if he had not allowed his librarian to live in it. Dr. Etheredge was an old college friend, to whom he had entrusted task of arranging, cataloguing, and de scribing the books in his library, and all the treasures of his MS. closet.

In addition to this congenial employment, Dr. Etheredge had been for years preparing a work on the Ancient British Remains found in the northern counties. This was the fruit of his life's work, and had, even in manuscript, gained a reputation for its author. Lord Ravensburgh was a Roman Catholic, and Dr. Etheredge of the same religion. He had a wife and one daughter, but as the latter was at school in Prance he and his wife lived all alone in the Castle, doing their very best to make it feel inhabited, but looking like mere specks in such rooms as the library and court-room. In each of these there was as it were a room within a room, for a large bay window was hollowed out of the very thick ness of the walls, and in these snug retreats, which were about twelve feet square, this. solitary couple took refuge from the loneliness of the big rooms, where the sombre tapestries and dingy old family portraits, and massive old furniture, sometimes weighed down the spirits.

There was a fascination too about these windows, though from them you saw nothing but long stretches of sea, and sand, and open sky. Mrs. Vane was the widow of the former Rector of Ravensburgh. She lived in an old fashioned house called the Grange; it was not large, but quaint and pleasant, built of silvery grey stone, with mullioned windows, against which roses and honeysuckles trained themselves, and it had a garden which boasted a grand old yew-tree walk, and a " wilder ness," full of filbert-trees which would not bear ; but it all lay in a small compass, for though houses such as these are let at very low rents in the country, her means would not have allowed her to keep up a large domain. She had, however, quite enough to live on comfortably in such a quiet little village as Ravensburgh, and something to spare too, for a moderate amount of pleasure.

But Ravensburgh at the time my story begins was not a quiet little village, and every one living in it was caught up into such a whirl of excitement that there was no power of taking pleasure moderately. The reason of all this social disturbance was this; Philip Brereton, the young heir of Swinstead, was just about to come of age, and had come up to his Northumbrian estates to celebrate the occasion by a series of balls, dinners, picnics, and other festive gatherings, by way of ingra tiating himself with his tenants, and proving to them that he was the right person to represent them in Parliament as his father had done before him. In an ordinary way his entrance into Parliament would have been easy enough, and he would have succeeded his father in his seat in the House as certainly as he had succeeded to his lands, but his father had died when he was a mere boy, and it so happened that during his minority Philip Brereton had, much to his mother's annoy ance, in some respects fallen away from his father's political creed, and changed the ancient, steady-going Whig opinions he pro fessed for the modern, uneasy Liberalism held by his own clique at Oxford.

She was more than angry at the idea of a boy of twenty-one thinking he could by any chance have arrived at such just ideas on politics that they would last his life — irritated at his perversity and unreasonableness in not at any rate holding them in abeyance until the election was over, and above all, much inclined to think he wanted ballast, as her respected brother Lord Stogumber had so often said. It might well be that the worthy electors of Islandshire would think the same, and leave him on one side when they came to choose a representa tive, for these were difficult times, when mighty changes were in progress and steady men were wanted. That, she of course, did not wish, for whatever opinions Philip held he was still the man who had a right to represent Islandshire. But when she spoke to Philip of this chance she was mortified to find he placed principle first in the matter, and was willing to lose his election for the sake of being true to it — nay, more than true, for in the boyish flush of youth he rather gloried in the prospect of suffering for the cause he had taken a fancy to.

The state of mind of a man who could find any charm in martyrdom, either on a grand, or on a petty scale, was inconceivably inex plicable to Lady Letitia. She, with her hard head and strong will, was never easy unless achieving definite success. She liked to be always pushing forward — visibly doing some thing. She, born of a Conservative famfly, had somehow made a mistake in marrying Philip's father, but she had fancied herself in love with him; trusted, too, to her own energy to inspire him with her OAvn ideas on some subjects on which he seemed woefully destitute of ambition. His politics were a mistake, of course, in her estimation ; but people who hold even wrong views ought to contend for them. What little ambition Mr. Brereton had was of a kind which his wife could only pretend to sympathize with ; and then he was not successful enough, even in his own way.

" If a man of rank stoops to literature, sir," said Dr. Johnson, "his merit should be hand somely acknowledged." Lady Letitia be grudged any acknowledgment of merit at all to accomplishments which made her husband careless about pursuing the paths which were open to him, and which led naturally and easily, as she thought, to place and power, or at least to the dignified level of a peerage. Scholarly translations, brilliant articles, ele gant verses — verses with something of the charm of true genius about them, for so much the critics now and then conceded — were all very well in their way, but she would have liked to be the wife of a Cabinet Minis ter. Had it not been said of a late illustrious statesman, that he owed much of his success to his wife's address in the management of her salon ?

Other wives could manage salons, but such a life was not for her. She had never been able to rouse her husband enough to make him plunge heart and soul into a turmoil of ambitious struggles where poetry would have had no room for existence. He did his duty by his constituency, but he did no more; and he best liked his own quiet home by the sea, with God-given beauty to feast his eyes on, and a library full of books. He was a very happy man, so full of quiet content that it hardly entered into his mind to conceive the ambitious fretfulness which disturbed his wife's peace. She was con scious of her own beauty and talent, and eager for a struggle in which she, with these gifts, could have played a prominent part, and which seemed to want nothing but a leader to command success. Sad that her husband could be so blind, so dull, so inert, as not to see and use his opportunities !

When he died, which he did when Philip was eight years old, she began a new life, the main object of which was to lead Philip far away from all the rocks on which his father's fortunes had, in her opinion, suffered shipwreck, and land him safely on eminences to which his father had never even raised his eyes with longing. When the boy once showed her some verses he had written — not such bad verses either for a school-boy — her delicately-expressed scorn would almost have crushed a Shakspeare out of poetical exist ence. She did not quite put an end to verse writing, for a desire for such expression occasionally took hold of him, but she quite put an end to all confidences of this kind. Now and then she found a copy of some of his effusions, and thought them boyish — bad — and blotted ! Even if Lady Letitia derived some comfort from the fact that Philip's verses were not nearly so good as his father's, this was more than balanced by the fact that his politics were so infinitely worse and wilder !

If the insouciance of the father had been irritating, the headlong impetuosity of the son was maddening ; even passiveness was better than a reckless impulsiveness which defied all calculation. Philip said he would retire from the contest altogether if she chose ; but if he began it, he would conduct it in his own way. The very last thing she wished him to do was to retire ; on the contrary, she was prepared to help him. The next election was not to take place for twelve months to come, so there was abundant time for Lady Letitia Brereton and her son to prove to the worthy electors in their part of the county, that the only proper and right course for them to take was to return the latter as their parliamentary repre sentative, and as balls and dinners are reputed to be powerful political levers, they were manfully plied now.

Philip Brereton knew Swdnstead very well, for up to the age of thirteen he had never lived anywhere else. He had then left it, but had never liked any other place half so well, and had always looked forward to the time when he should return there. His mother did not, by any means, share his feelings on this point. She had disliked Swinstead even from the . very first moment she as a bride saw it. She had not a vestige of romance in her composition. Had it been otherwise she could hardly have failed to appreciate the handsome old house which had been the home of the Breretons for a couple of centuries, whose grey walls stood untouched by the biting sea-breezes, unscathed by the hand of time, giving promise of sheltering them and theirs for many a long year to come. Alas, and alas ! She made her husband modernize a great part of the interior, cart away the antique furniture, and replace it by a wholesale order on Messrs. Howard and Cavendish ; but still she never learnt to like Swinstead.

She shrank from the rude north east winds, the bitter frosts and storms, the rough ways of the poor, and the want of breeding of the rich. She, a daughter of the lofty house of Stogumber, would have liked to live in the South amongst her own people. When her husband died, if she could with propriety have arranged to leave the North, she would have done so, but Mr. Brereton had expressed a strong 'wish that she should live at Swinstead until Philip was thirteen, when he was to go to a public school. She there fore obeyed his desire. Meantime the little fellow was put under the care of the Rector of Ravensburgh, and trotted into that village every morning on his Shetland pony ; and at first, Dr. Vane let him do some lessons with his own boy Robert, and then play with his little girl until evening came, untd as years passed on, the play-hours became more and more short.

Dr. Vane had taken a double-first himself, was a sound scholar and rigid disciplinarian. He did his best with the three children, but he often despaired of getting even a second class man out of any of them, except the one who was disqualified by her sex for the struggle. His little daughter Stella did show some aptitude for learning, and had patience with her lessons, but the boys were either stupid or lazy, and the grammars were far more worn out by being thrown at their heads in disgust than by lawful use. Robert Vane was much older than the other two vol. i. c children ; so in due time he went away to a public school, and Stella and Philip were left to learn together. Then Philip was spurred on by emulation. When alone with Stella he could not let her win all the honours, or hear so calmly the doctor's contemptuous ejaculation, " Boy ! even that little girl shames you, and you are three years older than she is !

" Then, for the first time, he began to work in earnest. How happy the children were together and how easily Philip's superiority asserted itself everywhere but in the school-room ! What wonderful things he did with that knife of his, and how brave he was in protecting his little wife, as he called Stella, from every thing which seemed to menace her ! When lessons were over they were allowed to roam about as they liked ; so they sailed the boats Philip made, or rambled about the sands, and promised to love each other for ever and ever. Some might have thought it strange that Dr. Vane should so completely withdraw Stella from her mother's care and teach her boys' lessons, and when they were over allow her to amuse herself with boys' play ; but the truth was, the poor doctor had, after a certain number of years of married life, become aware that he had not exercised due thought in the choice of a wife, but had been led away by a pretty face and gratitude for kind ness shown when he needed it, and had linked himself, for a life which was to last when these attractions were worn out, with one inferior to himself in every way, and singularly unfit to bring up children.

Of all things he dreaded his wife's influence on Stella — high-spirited, quick-witted, prompt to sift truth from falsehood as she was. She detected Mrs. Vane's low springs of action, and little subterfuges at every turn, and resented being checked one moment for what she had been encouraged to do the instant before. That was the very worst feature of Mrs. Vane's misgovernment. She attempted a capricious despotism, and hardly had she succeeded in establishing it on foundations more or less secure than she swept away the whole thing, laughed when the children did something the exact opposite of what she had announced as a fixed law, and let them rule c themselves, until some ten days afterwards, the idea again seized her that those children ought to obey somebody, and she fabricated a new scheme of government destined to an equally brief duration.

He could not alter his wife's character, so he tried to withdraw Stella from her superintendence, to give her habits of self-culture, and to introduce her into regions of thought where vulgarity was unknown. Books studiously used, healthy play on the sands, with much watching of incoming tides and of splendid sunsets be hind the distant Cheviots, and above all, the ever-present romance of over-shadowing Ra vensburgh — there was enough to make a lady of her. Such was their life until the time came when Philip reached the appointed age which was to part them : no wicked fairy could have rushed in to fulfil the decree which was to blight their happiness with more punctual malignity than did Lady Letitia, who obeyed her husband's request to the very letter. On Philip's thirteenth birthday she told him he was going back to lessons at the Grange no more, but to Stogumber Park with her the very next day, and to Harrow as soon as the holidays were over, and that he might say good-bye to the Vanes, and to Ravensburgh, and Swinstead, for the chances were he would not see any of them again for years and years, certainly not till he had left Oxford.

Philip had thought it babyish to show her how much he cared, but he had at once saddled his pony and ridden over to Ravensburgh — had taken Stella a long walk over the dunes, and had not been ashamed to show her the pain he felt at leaving her. She was his sister, his little wife, had been his daily companion ever since he remembered anything. They vowed they would love each other for ever, that they would write to each other every week. Philip would tell Stella what lessons he was doing, and she was to get Dr. Vane to do the same with her. Stella shook her head : he would soon get far beyond her ; her father said he knew enough now to get into the " shell " at once, and he would, no doubt, soon be in the sixth form. It was Philip's turn now to shake his head. "Oh, but you must," said Stella, "you must be in the first, you can if you like.

If I were you I would work night and day till I did." " Would it please you, Stella, if I were always at the top of my class and got lots of prizes ?" " Of course it would," replied she. " Then I will try. I don't suppose I can do it, but I'll try." " Won't it be glorious, Philip, when you are done with all your education and come back to live here. You will do that of course ?" " Of course," said Philip proudly, " when I am of age I shall come and live on my own land." " Yes," continued little Stella, who from constant attention to her father's conversation was fluent on such matters, " and you will have got your fellowship by that time, and a double-first, and — " " For goodness' sake stop ! You need not expect half that," cried he. " Please to re member that I shall do very well if I get a third !

" " A third ! Philip. That would never do. Every one worth anything gets a first ! Papa got one. It would be dreadful if you did badly ! " "Badly!" said Phflip. "I can tell you far cleverer fellows than I am think it a fine thing to get a third, there's — " " Oh, Philip, you would not like to let any one beat you ? You know you can do any thing if you try." " I see you will never care for me unless I get this first class. I can't think what makes you go on this way, Stella, for it's no use ; but I promise you I will try, only mind you must keep on writing to me till I come back, and loving me all the time, and you are not to go and be such friends with any other boy as you have been with me." Philip had got into the " shell," had written tolerably regularly to Stella for some time, though his letters were never very long ones.

He had sent her his first prize, and told her he had worked for it to please her ; but after that either he got no more prizes or he did not send them to her, and as years passed on, their letters meantime having be come more and more dull from the want of common interests, they dropped writing altogether, and rarely heard even so much as each other's names. Stella, perhaps, occasionally recalled with affection her faithful companion and the good services of his four bladed penknife, and he combined remem brance of her with all that was bright and pleasant in his far-off youthful days, when there were no boundaries to keep, no canings to take, fewer lessons to learn, and glorious liberty to enjoy. Dr. Vane had died soon after Philip went to Harrow, so there was one friend the less to see when he went back to live at Swin stead — one motive the less to work now, for Dr. Vane had always predicted Philip would never do anything either at school or college, and Philip had always wished to astonish him some day.

He was idle when he first went to Oxford, and took more kindly to boating and to political utterances at the Union than to reading; so everybody was surprised when he went in for honours. Partly something in the tone of his tutor's voice when he said to him, "You, Brereton, will, I suppose, con tent yourself with an ordinary degree; I think you will be wise to do so," roused his spirit. Partly a sudden rush of memory which brought back his old promise to Stella — a promise she, poor little thing, had no doubt forgotten long ago — made him reply promptly, " No ; I wish, if you will allow me, to try for honours." All the men of his set shared his tutor's surprise ; but he went steadily to work, and as he had a good head of his own, and had been well trained before he came to college, they need not have been so much astonished when the class-list came out, and Philip, in right of his initial B., headed the list of first-class men !