Jack Warleigh: a tale of the turf and the law

Chapter I. An Old Grammar School

Saint Paul's Square, Fetchester, is full of easy-going prosperity : not of the bustling, restless kind one finds in a manufacturing town, but something that seems more solid, and suggests the three per cents : small profits and good security. There is a sense of rest about the place, and in the summer time, plenty of grateful shade. On one side of the Square is St. Paul's church, with its church-yard, where the past generations of Fetchester folk peacefully sleep, under the deep shadows cast by elm trees. The inscrip tions on the grave stones show the same names, with the same callings, occurring again and again. Sons have followed vol. i. B fathers as parsons, doctors, lawyers, butchers, mercers and so on : and cen turies seem to have left but few scars on that quiet little midland town. Every three hours the bells in St. Paul's steeple chime out a plaintive old hymn tune, and listening to their cadence, one notes a rare harmony of scene and sound.

Across the far end of the Square, runs the trim little High Street, and facing the church, there is a row of substantial red-brick houses, that have an air of home and easy quiet lives about them. The other side of the Square is formed by the buildings of the old Grammar School. There is little or no architectural beauty in the block, but its age lends a soothing sense of rest, and adds a charm to the surround ings. In front of the school stands a statue, " In ever grateful memory " of Sir William Wardour, its pious founder. The Grammar School boys were perhaps not " ever " duly grateful ; sometimes when smarting from the effects of going up to the Reverend Arthur Paradine, with Arnold's Prose Exercises, they gazed at the pious Knight's presentment and wished that he had never lived, or at least found something better to do with his mone}^.

On quiet summer days when the school windows were open, a visitor standing in the Square might often have heard Mr. Paradine storming at his class. " Ha ! Simpkins junior, so you don't know what the nominative is to the verb. In another fortnight, a young gentleman from Oxford will come down to examine you, and you won't be able to answer his questions, and he will say to me ' Mr. Paradine, I think it would be better to be more careful about the parsing, about the parsing?" and the voice would repeat the words, again and again, as though it were some savage war-cry. Then would arise the sound of wailing and the cane. A lady dressed in black would sometimes stand in the Square, within the shadow cast by the church, and nervously listen for that rich voice. She knew that Mr. Paradine was, in the main, a kindly gentleman, and that th e boys, — with honest instinct, which makes them bear so little resentment for corporal punishment — liked him better than the other milder masters.

For all that, her face would flush with anger, and she would long to make her way into the school, and give that ripe old scholar a bit of her mind. And she would have done so, too, only she dreaded the indignation which such a breach of school etiquette, on her B part, would have been received by her Sometimes another figure, then very familiar in the Fetchester Street, would cross the Square with an accustomed half swagger, half limp. It was the figure of an elderly man, with a large curled and dyed moustache, a white hat worn jauntily on one side, who leaned somewhat heavily on his stick, and he would smile when he heard the sound, which held the widow spell-bound : and as he put out a gouty old hand, he would ask her if she were not trembling lest her boy were catching it from old Paradine.

" Well, if he is his father's son, he will know how to take his punishment, Jack could," he would say, and then he would have much to tell her of his old comrade Jack Warleigh. She never cared for these reminiscences of her dead husband. It was pleasant enough to her to hear him praised, and old Major Chaffinch evidently thought that his stories of wild nights at mess, and of losses at play, and on the race course redounded much to his credit. But the Jack Warleigh whose memory the widow worshipped, and whom she had only known a few months before they were married, and then for a few weeks after he was ordered off to the Crimea, to have his brave life squandered away at Balaklava, was a very different man from old Chaffinch's hero. When the Major had finished his stories of the old days, he would usually ask after his friend Sir George Warleigh.

" A fine type of the good old school that, as hard as iron, by gad ! " the Major would say. Mrs Warleigh used not to find her father-in-law a pleasant subject of con versation. Before they were married, old Sir George had quarrelled bitterly with her husband, and he had made that quarrel an excuse for doing very little for her or her boy, when they were left rather badly off, after her husband's death. She was the daughter of a Fetchester clergyman ; she had gone back to live at her native town, and in due time had sent her boy Jack to be educated at the Grammar School. Old Major Chaffinch would wind up his conversation by growling out a hope that his boys were getting their fair share of Mr. Paradine's attention — after which paternal wish, he would hobble off to the billiard-room at the " Swan," where he would sit and watch the game and give the youth of Fetchester the benefit of his matured views of men and women.

Behind the Grammar School there was a red-brick house, with a pleasant shaded garden, that reached down to the river, which flows sluggishly through the old town. Sometimes there would cross the Square, to that house, on her way home from school, a girl of sixteen, a little girl, with features rather long for her face, a mass of golden brown hair hanging over her shoulders, and a pair of big eyes. A girl of whom one might foretell that she would grow into a very beautiful woman. She was Nelly Paradine, the daughter of the grim old second master at the Grammar School. Perhaps, next to her boy, there was no one whom the widow loved more, and her soft face would light up as she talked with Nelly Paradine about her school and home life. Then they would hear a noise in the school buildings, of many boys rushing downstairs, and soon a jostling crowd of eager lads would surge out through the iron gates up the play-ground into the Square, and Jack Warleigh would run up to them, and half blushing, would shake hands with Nelly Paradine, and walk home with his mother, talking to her about his school.

As a rule, boys are somewhat shame faced about being seen with their mothers and sisters in the streets, but no one thought of laughing at Jack Warleigh. He was the most popular boy in the school, though he was not by any means the most brilliant. At games he did fairly well. At his lessons he showed some talent, though not much application, but he took such punishment as came in his way, with a philosophic calm which in a way gained him the respect of the boys, and perhaps '■ — of the master. On Sunday afternoons there used to be a school service in the chancel at St. Paul's, which in those days was shut off from the rest of the church, in a manner which must have given rise to great scandal to such of the parishioners as were abreast of the age in questions of church restoration and ritual.

There was a pew reserved for masters' families, and Nelly used to sit in this pew. Jack Warleigh, looking back to those days has a distinct memory of Nelly's face, as she sat there, under a painted glass window. He can hardly remember when it was that he first thought himself in love with her. Mrs. Warleigh used to watch the two together, when Nelly came to her house, as she often did, and, mother-like, she would indulge in a dream of the future. Jack's life, unlike his father's, was to be a peaceful one. Old Sir George, on one of the few occasions on which he had shown any interest in his grandson, had promised to give him a family living. There was no one else in the family to take it, for his eldest son had died, leaving only one boy, George, while his youngest son, Cecil — the baronet had married a second time, late in life — who was his favourite, was not to be made a parson.

Jack was too easy-going to trouble himself about the future. He certainly had no particular wish to be a clergyman, but he looked forward to Cambridge, as most schoolboys would, and the time that was to follow the delightful years to be spent at college seemed so far off that it was of no use troubling himself about it. Then he would be a different being altogether, so he thought. Looked backed to, those days at Fetchester seemed to be altogether happy. Probably at the time, he had troubles enough as boys will: but from a distance he remembers best the easy flowing river, and the long half-holidays spent upon it, the boy companions who had not yet learnt the bad lessons the world teaches, and Nelly Paradine's honest brown eyes and golden hair, lit up by the sunlight that streamed through the painted glass window of St. Paul's church.

Unlike boys who have gone away from home to school, there was no break in his early life. It was all Fetchester, and the story of his life meanders back until it is drowned in the sweet chimes from the old church tower. The quiet of St. Paul's Square was seldom broken. Twice a year there were Assizes in the old Court House. They seldom lasted more than a day or two, and there seemed to be very httle excuse for all the pomp and paraphernalia of judges, sheriff and javelin men ; while the gentlemen of the bar grumbled bitterly at the pitiful lack of enterprise which could only produce a few wretched prisoners, most of whom artlessly pleaded guilty, and perhaps some one poor civil action. Once the place was startled by a cavalry regiment, on the line of march, coming into the town and taking up its quarters there for the night.

Such an event had never happened — so it was said — since Prince Rupert's troopers filled the place, on the eve of a disastrous fight during the Great Rebellion. That was a day which Jack Warleigh will always remember, for after the parade had been dismissed, and the men had gone to their different billets, a young officer with a pleasant handsome face, and singularly winning manner, came up to a group of school-boys, of which he was one, and asked them if they belonged to the school, and if a boy of the name of Warleigh was there. " How are you, young man ? " he said, when Jack came forward. " I am your uncle, your half uncle — Cecil Warleigh, I remembered you were here, and thought I would give you a look up. I remember the governor talk ing about you, saying they were going to make a parson of you ; and you were to have Warleigh Rectory some day.

I thought I'd take you to the pastry cook — that was the sort of thing I used to like, when I was in the lower school at Eton, but you're past that." Jack Warleigh was seventeen, and stood over six feet high. " Tell you what, you had better dine with us at mess, at the Swan. It will be a scratch affair I daresay, but we'll do what we can for you." Jack looked delighted at the notion of dining with the gallant Loyal Lancers, and was also very much taken with his kinsman. " Shall I go and see the head-master and ask leave for you ? Ah ! I forgot, you are a day-boy and live here with your mother. Well, you must tell her you are going to dine with me." Jack pointed to a group of ladies, who were walking from the Square, and said his mother was there. She had come to see the Lancers. " Ah, to be sure — why of course she would come to see us, your father was in the regiment — killed at Balaclava.

I've often heard the Colonel talk of him," said Cecil. " I must go and speak with her." The young officer made a good impres sion on Mrs. Warleigh, who felt the charm of his pleasant and good-natured manner. It had been rather a trying morning for her. The scene she had witnessed could not but remind her of the morning she had last seen the regiment, and taken her farewell of her husband ere he embarked for the Crimea. " The Colonel and several of the older men in the regiment, will like to meet him," Cecil said, as he talked of Jack's dining with them : and the widow felt that it was right her son should go, though she was conscious of something like dread, at the thought of. Jack having almost grown up and having so soon to face the temptations and dangers of manhood. Jack never forgot that evening.

He had never met any society so brilliant. The stories, the military chaff, the sparkle and dash of the whole thing, made a last ing impression upon him. There seemed to be no one at the mess who was so bright and popular as Cecil Warleigh. After that dinner, Jack for some time thought of following in his father's footsteps, by becoming a soldier. But the thought of Cambridge, and a wish to please his mother, reconciled him to the notion of the Church. Nelly's influence also came in. When he was only nineteen there was a boy and girl engagement between them, and when he thought of his future life as a clergyman it always seemed that it would be shared with her. For years Jack saw little of the relations whose name he bore. His grand father had died, and his cousin, Sir George, who succeeded, had married soon after he left Cambridge, and had settled at Warleigh, and seemed to have forgotten his very existence.

Chapter II. Nelly Paradine

When Jack went up to Cambridge, though he did not show any very great devotion to his studies he became rather a distinguished undergraduate. He rowed stroke of his college boat, and would— so it was said — get into the University eight,, if he only stuck to it and was not drawn away by other dis tractions. Besides rowing, he played cricket, occasionally rode, usually found his way to Newmarket when there was any racing on. He became very popular with almost every set in college, except the reading set. When he went back to Fetchester in the vacation, the boys at the school regarded him with awe and admiration, though some people shook their heads at sundry stories of wild supper parties and rowdy escapades which he was said to have taken part in. Among those who were not altogether pleased with what they heard was Nelly Paradine.

Joe Paradine, her younger brother, was a fellow of a small college at Cambridge, and he brought home with him a plentiful supply of stories which were not to Jack Warleigh's credit. " He never read, he lived in the fastest set in the college, he was up to his eyes in debt, and was certain to ruin his mother and go to the dogs. If he ever took his degree and went into the Church it would be a scandal and a disgrace to the Establishment." It was surprising that the fellow of " Cats," should have known so much about the doings of the undergraduates of St. George. But Joe Paradine the plodder had always cherished a grudge against Jack Warleigh, for years before when he was a big boy at the school, and Jack but a little chap, Jack had kicked Joe's shins and set his authority at defiance. Joe had very little of interest to relate to any one.

A strict devotion to mathematics, which had helped him to gain his college successes, does not as a rule, make a man shine in society. So he found Jack's misdoings a serviceable topic of conver sation. " The youngster is quite right to have his fling before they make a parson of him. He is a chip of the old block, there is plenty of the wild Warleigh blood in him, by George ! " old Chaffinch would often declare with glee. Whenever he heard any wild tale of Jack's goings on, he would trumpet it abroad, thinking it told much to the credit of his old comrade's son. Nelly looked very grave when she heard of these stories. She had only too good reason to know how a University Rake's progress ended. Sam Paradine, her eldest brother, had been the brilliant boy of his family. He acquired all his father's scholarship, and he had far more genius.

Old Paradine took care not to favour him, but when Sam was quite young, and at the top of his class, boys had noticed the grim face of the schoolmaster relax, and a smile come over it as he listened to his son do his work. He was always first at school, and he took the School Exhibition and another good scholarship at Oxford, then he went up to the University with a career before him which every one prophesied would be splendid ; and it was splendid — in a way. After his second term, it is doubtful whether Sam ever found time to open a book. He was in what is called the very best set at Christ Church, and was the most popular man of his day. Young men of rank, and rich young men who wished to be in fashion, and all sorts and conditions of undergraduates, tried to know Sam Paradine, and repeated his sayings — which to speak truth were commonplace enough — and made much of him.

And Sam accepted the situation. It was necessary that such a popular man as he was, should spend money. He spent such money as he could get hold of, and did wonders in the way of running into debt. His income with his Exhibition scholarship and the small allowance which his father could afford him, amounted to about two hundred and fifty pounds a year. At one time he kept two horses : his dinners were the best in the college, his orders to the new cigar and wine merchant, who started at Oxford in his time, were the most princely which that enterprising tradesman ever received. Almost all the Oxford tradesmen had his name in theirbooks, and at the same time he dealt with those of the metropolis. Even the London hotel-keepers were induced to let him have a running account, and he ran up heavy bills at two famous hostelries, where he would stay in the vacations, and entertain with the splendour of an American millionaire.

In his second year the crash came. It was splendid and complete. He was sent away from college, and though he was made a bankrupt, there were some debts, which, for reasons best known to Mr. Paradine, Sam, and the money lender to whom they were owed, had to be paid. That date marked an era in the family history, after which there had to be much pinching, screwing, and discomfort. The furniture got shabbier, and was not renewed. There was less money forthcoming for household expenses. Mr. Paradine's stock of old port wine came to an end, and the cellar was not re plenished : but gin and water, and plenty of it too, took its place. A drawn, hag gard look, for the first time came into the old man's rubicund countenance. Nelly saw very little of Sam, after that date. He went up to London, and for a year or so some of his old splendour hung round him.

After a while he began to show a greasy and shabby appearance, his face became bloated, and he was believed to be getting a living, somehow or the other, on the fringe of literature. Little was known of him at Fetchester, his name never being mentioned in his old home. Some girls might see something romantic in a wild reckless college career, but Nelly was not one of them. She thought of her brother Sam, and dreaded lest Jack Warleigh should be following in his vol. i. c footsteps. So she shook her head and took a serious view of Jack's delin quencies. About this time there had been a change in Fetchester, which had a great deal of influence upon Nelly, as also upon other of the townspeople. The good old vicar of St. Paul's had died, and been succeeded by a priest who for some time kept the little town in a ferment, and made his name and his church very familiar in the ecclesiastical courts.

The Reverend Henry Latimer, or " Father Latimer" as he preferred to be styled, made things lively at Fetchester, and woke up a spirit of militant pro testantism. Mr. Bloggs, the butcher in the High Street, found himself impelled to protest in church, against the merry andrewing and antics, as he called it of the parson ; and afterwards had to go to prison instead of paying the fine, which the magistrates were obliged to impose upon him for brawling. Major Chaffinch, whose attendance at church, had been — to put it mildly — irregular, came to the front as a protestant champion. Going to church became quite interesting, for there was no telling what the parson would be up to next, and his doings on the Sunday would be the subject for much talk during the week. The Vicar, of course, had his party.

It consisted of a large proportion ' of the women-folk, some womanly men of the better classes, and a good many poor people, to whom, to do him justice, he was extremely chari table. Nelly was of the vicar's party. Perhaps if Fetchester had not been so dull, she would not have been so devoted an adherent. As it was, she worked vestments, joined a guild of young ladies, who swept out the church, and did the work which in more benighted times en abled an old and deserving woman to earn a livelihood. She also attended countless services, and even went so far as to attend confessional, when the vicar introduced the rite. People wondered that her father did not. put a stop to it ; but he only said " she was too sensible a girl not to get wiser in time." Mr. Paradine himself took things easily, and in church slept through the vicar's addresses, which were directed against the principles of the Reformation, as he had slept through the late vicar's prosy orthodoxy.

Jack Warleigh, when he came home from Cambridge, chaffed Nelly about her church sweeping and ritualism, and did not guess how much his chaff displeased her. Some of Jack's remarks came to the ears of the vicar, who had a feminine c propensity for listening to petty gossip and interfering in the private affairs of his parishioners. He heard some talk of an engagement between Jack and Nelly, and being one of those who " rush in where angels fear to tread," thought that to talk, to a young girl of her lover was a duty for which he was quite suited. So he found an opportunity of saying a word to Nelly about Jack. First he warned her against Mrs. Warleigh. The widow like a good woman had accepted all her religion from her father, an excellent divine, whose views were moderately low church, and she expressed her horror at the new doings.

The priest showed Nelly how Mrs. Warleigh's disobedience to the Church bore fruit in her son. That abandoned young man, who was not only hopelessly vicious, but scoffed at the Church and her priests, was on the side of her ignorant and contemptible oppressors, and intended for the sake of earthly profit to take Holy Orders. He had heard that Nelly hesitated to repudiate an engagement she had entered into with this repro bate. For his sake, even if he were not utterly lost, she ought to overcome any sin ful love she might have for him. Nelly's womanly instinct told her that no man had a right to talk to her about Jack in this way, but her church feeling con quered, and she listened to him, and then doubted if she ought not to obey him. Their conversation had begun in the vestry of St. Paul's, and was continued in the churchyard.

And it happened that the subject of it — Jack Warleigh — was waiting for Nelly, lounging by the railing of the Grammar School, talking to old Chaffinch. " Jack, my boy," said the latter, as he stared at the vicar with a malignant eye, " they tell me that you're sweet in that quarter, if you are, look after that fox of a vicar. I know the breed — dash 'em. He has as big a bag of tricks as any monkey. Hang me ! if he hasn't set up confessing. Dashed if I wouldn't — " but the rest of the major's speech was utterly unsuited for reproduction : so rich was it in illustration and invective. When Nelly met Jack she felt half ashamed of herself, something told her that it would be better for her not to let the parson come between them. But the latter's bad luck prompted him to speak upon just the wrong subject.

" Well, Nellie, have you been confessing your sins, or has it been a meeting of the holy dusters ? " " You know you ought not to talk in that way about sacred subjects," Nelly said, more angry than she would have been if she had not felt doubtful as to whether or no she ought to have let the vicar speak to her as he had done. " What nonsense, Nelly ! What can there be sacred in a lot of you girls taking it into your heads to do old Mrs. Grimes' work, and sweep out the church?" answered Jack, still in blissful ignorance of the coming storm. " It is not nonsense, Mr. Warleigh. We think differently, so differently that it is impossible for us to be friends, and for me to respect or care for you. No, I am in earnest, I intended to say this as soon as I saw you. What we spoke of once, must be all over.

We have both altered. If you had cared for me, your life would have been different and you would have been steadier, and not have learned to sneer at everything that is good. You, who think of becoming a clergyman." " I don't say that I am as good as I should be," pleaded Jack, " I have been wild and idle perhaps, but when I become a parson, I intend to do my duty. You know what made me determine to take the living. Nelly ! you and I are not going to quarrel about this ritualistic rot." " We must each go our own way. If you choose to commit the sin of taking orders for an unworthy motive, I'll have nothing to do with it," answered Nelly, looking very white and determined. In the distance, turning the corner of the Square, Jack saw the long shambling figure of the vicar. He remembered old Chaffinch's words, and he lost his temper.

" You have allowed that man-milliner to talk to you about me, and permitted him to interfere between us. You seem to think because he calls himself a priest he may say what he likes to you," angrily blurted out Jack. " Stop. You need not say any more. I will never speak to you again. You have insulted me," said Nelly, and she turned round and walked away. Jack stood staring at her, hardly realizing at first how serious the breach between them was. So it ended ; for from that day they were no longer even friends. Mrs. Warleigh thought Nelly had proved her self to be heartless. What mother is just to the girl whom she thinks has made her son unhappy? She thought it Nelly's fault that Jack was wild and reckless ; and the friendship between Nelly and the widow, which had been very sweet to both of them, seemed to be broken and at an end.

Chapter III

A MORNING'S REFLECTIONS. Jack Warleigh's sufferings were perhaps a good deal less acute than his mother believed them to be. He was hurt and angry, and considered that Nelly had treated him badly. He felt that if he had chosen to give way to dissipation he would have an excuse for it, and on going up for the next term, he went his own way and got into " rows " with the Dons — ran up numerous ticks with the tradesmen of Cambridge, and generally behaved himself as if the morrow with its reckonings would never come. One morning, however, it dawned upon him that it had come. His first sensation had been a bad headache. Then he experienced a dull sense of im pending trouble. He knew that some thing was wrong, though his drowsy senses did not, at first, tell him what it was, and gradually, one after another, what seemed a morning's reflections. 25 to be either the incidents of the evening before, or the conclusion of some horrible dream, came out uncertainly to his misty senses.