Aspen Court: a story of our own time

Front matter

ASPEN COURT : A STORY OF OUK OWN TIME. BY SHIRLEY BROOKS. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. " In liiebus illis non erat Rex in Israel : sed unusquisque quod sibi rectum videoatur lioc faciebat."— Judges xxi. 25. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1855. Losnoy I. CLAY PRINTER. BREAD STREET HJLL THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED T< I CHARLES DICKENS, IN EARNEST ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE CONSTANT, ENERGETIC, AND INVALUABLE SERVICE RENDERED BY HIM IN PROMOTING THE RECOGNITION AND ELEVATION OF THE PROFESSION ADORNED BY HIS GENIUS. CONTENTS TO VOL. I. CHAP. PAGE I. — LIVING IN ONE'S FRIENDS' RECOLLECTIONS . . 1 II. — ASPEN COURT 13 III. — A LAWYER'S OFFICE, AND SOME OF THE CLERKS 22 IV. — PREPARATIONS; AND MR. CHEQUERBENT's ILL LUCK 35 V. — WILMSLOW OF ASPEN, AND JANE HIS WIFE . . 44 VI. — AN EXPERIENCED PLATER FACES A CARD ... 68 VII. — WHAT TENANT WAITED IN ASPEN COURT ... 85 VIII. — MR. BERNARD CARLTON GOES A FISHING . . .103 IX. — MR. BERNARD CARLTON AND HIS FISHING-ROD . 119 X. — WHT MR. CHEQUERBENT DID NOT KEEP HIS AP- POINTMENT 137 XI. — A SKILLED WORKMAN LOOKS OUT A TOOL . . 165 XII. — LILIAN TREVELYAN'S INVALUABLE GUARDIAN . 179 XIII. — THE OWL AND THE KITTENS 195 XIV. — MR. CHEQUERBENT AT THE BAR OF JUSTICE . . 210 XV. — THE DEMONS OF THE CAPE 237 XVI. — " WITH A KISS AND WITH A PRAYER " . . . . 266 XVII. — A NIGHT WITH THE SPEAKER 285 XVIII. — THE PERILS OF THE DEEP 303 XIX. — Lilian's white uncle A STORY OF OUR OWN TIME.

Chapter I. Living In One's Friends' Recollections

The clock at St. James' palace has struck eigbt, and many gentlemen who design to dine at the Lycurgus Club, are studying the carte, performing, meanwhile, that curious series of grimaces and frowns with which an Englishman helps himself to invent his dinner. The cabs and broughams have been arriving rather thickly during the last quarter of an hour, from which it is gathered that the dinner-bell is on its honourable legs in the House of Commons. "Who's up, Ambergate?" inquires an exceedingly handsome young gentleman in black, with an inconceivably faultless white cravat, of another young gentleman of similarly irreproachable ap pearance, who has just come in, and looks round with an expression of hopeless, yet manly despair, at finding all his favourite seats occupied. VOL. I. B "Philip Bobus is speaking, Freddy Belt," re pbes Lord Ambergate, " and likely to speak.

And have you ordered your dinner, Freddy Belt ? I '11 dine with you. What have you ordered ? But I don't care. Waiter, I wib have whatever Sir Fre deric has ordered. Here comes Acton Calveley. Bobus, of course, Acton?" " Good for an hour and a half, at least. He has several hundred-weight of papers with him. You two fellows can't have dined ; I saw Ambergate in the House half an hour ago." " No, you come here. Belt has ordered my dinner, let him order yours.'' " I don't care. Very well. I meant to dress. But I don't care. Palestine soup, Belt? That's the only thing on my mind." " Be relieved, then, for here it is." " Divide to-night ?" asked Sir Frederic Belt. "Well, Whiphani was mysterious, and didn't want me to go away. He mumbled something about somebody being unwell," said Lord Amber gate.

" This is not the wine old Boomerang was hooraying, and letting off fireworks about, the other morning ?" " Yes it is, though," said Frederic Belt. " Now, upon my word," said Calveley, very ear nestly, " something must be said to Boomy. One don't expect a middle-aged heavy to know much, but he has no right to stand on that rug, and tell gross untruths. To hear him exult about that wine, you'd bave thought tbe committee had broken into the Prophet's cellar, and seized the stuff with the musk seals, which the houris are keeping for me and tbe other blessed." " Since Acton went to Jericho, or wherever it was," drawled Sir Frederic, "there has been an east-wind constantly blowing through his brains. I hoped his book had exhausted ab his stock of Orientalisms." " The book is a charming book," said Acton Calveley.

" O, mind, I 'm not dispraising it," said Freddy Belt • " on the contrary, a reviewing man told me there were several things in it that surprised him. I forgot to ask him why ? Here's Tom Crowsfoot — how well that febow wears ! Bobus, Crowsfoot ? " The Bobus ! You may be interested in hearing that he has reached bis fifth orange. William Lyndon has bet me that Bobus makes up the dozen." " A quarter to nine," said Ambergate, thought fully. " No, he won't. I '11 go halves with you, Tom, if you like." " There's a good lot of colonies, here and there," said Freddy Belt, " and it's the colonies he's on, isn't it?" "Well, yes," replied Lord Ambergate; "at least sugar, and refining in bond, whatever that is, b2 and differential duties—I know I heard something about them— and tonnage, which I suppose is some other colonial production."

"Bought a yacht, and knows no better than that," said Tom Crowsfoot, laughing. " Eh? Ah !" said Lord Ambergate, after a pause. "Do you know, I didn't look at it in that light ? Yes, ships, of course. By Jove, I 've a great mind to go down and speak on the question." " I've something to say to you, Ambergate," said Tom Crowsfoot, " I'm old enough to be your father, you know, and so I don't mind catechising you." " The Earl himself never did," observed his lordship ; " I suppose he was afraid I should tell him my belief as to a parent's duty to his children, especially the eldest, a subject upon which he is in a painful state of obfuscation." " But see here, Ambergate," said Tom ; " I want to ask you something, all for your good. What do you let yourself be seen speaking to a lawyer for, in a pubbc thoroughfare ?"

" Lawyer, lawyer ! " repbed Ambergate, mus ingly; " I don't know what you refer to. Let's see. I met Kingsilver the other day, and congratulated him on being made a judge — do you mean that ?" " No," said Tom, " I never heard anybody cab him a lawyer. This was to-day, in Bond-street; I saw you myself." " O, by Jove ! " said Lord Ambergate, sitting upright, and speaking so loud, that several men looked up from their dinners ; " I 'm devilish glad you mentioned that. I want to tell you some thing, and it deeply concerns your interest, Acton Calveley." " How good of you to think of it at last, then ! " said Calveley. " Ah ! don't talk in that way," replied Amber gate ; " you know what, a beast of a memory mine is. But, I say, this is a fact, mind. Henry Wilmslow's all right again." " Henry Wilmslow !

" " Henry Wilmslow ! " So exclaimed together, Calveley and Sir Fre deric. Tom Crowsfoot, being an older man, made no further demonstration than that of opening his bright black eyes a little wider than usual, and slightly compressing his thin bps. I have some notion that Tom did not bebeve in the possibility of anybody ever being quite all right. He knew that he had never been so during thirty-five years upon town, though one fortune to start with, one by marriage, and one by legacy, had not been bad material to work with. "All right," persisted Lord Ambergate ; "and the lawyer Tom speaks of was Penkridge, partner to a great rich attorney, cabed Molesworth, of whom you may have heard." " I have," said Tom Crowsfoot, quietly. Perhaps he had, Molesworth having had occasion to outlaw Tom, at the suit of a leash of jewebers, in days when Tom was younger, and liked to see his presents glitter behind the footlights ; he had got over that weakness, however, long ago, and some beliefs akin to it.

" Well, you all remember Wilmslow, I fancy, though he is years older than any of us. He used to come here, sometimes, .about the time when I was elected, but I believe it was a little risky, and that if a card was brought up to him, he fidgetted, and seldom stayed long — you know tbe symptoms — came on Sundays, too, which is sometimes a greater proof of a man's invisibility than your never seeing him. Finally, he vanished, and his name has got out of our list, pour cause." " He married Jane Tracy," said Tom, "but that was when he was in the Guards. Deuced hand some fellow then — a little too row-de-dow for my taste — but showy, and plenty to say, such as it was. In fact, I don't know that Wilmslow wasn't about as pleasant a fellow as a noisy officer in debt can be." " Not a bad match, that Tracy girl, at least for him," said Frederic Belt; "for he was up to his ears then, and she had fifteen hundred a-year.

And I think there was something about a claim to a large estate in Gloucestershire, or somewhere, which, I suppose, however, was all moonshine." " Just what it wasn't, Freddy Belt, and what I'm coming to. Jane Tracy was heiress to this very estate, supposing her claim was valid. It slept a long time, but at last Molesworth, this lawyer, took it up in earnest. It seems he bas a way of succeeding in things." " Rather a useful faculty, I should say, in a lawyer," said Calveley, " and not bad for anybody to have." "Authors on the East, particularly," said Am bergate. " Well, Molesworth has been prosecuting this claim of Jane Tracy's and with his usual luck. Tbe estate, which is that of Aspen Court, in the best part of Gloucestershire, is worth five thousand a-year, and the law has given it to our friend, Mr. Henry Wilmslow."

" He'll soon run through it," said Tom, com posedly ; " I see how it will melt away in his hands." And he thought how easily three for tunes had melted in his own. " Why," said Sir Frederic, " you know Wilm slow's had a lesson. I suppose he's a sort of ass, but he must be over fifty, and has been awfully hard up, which, at that time of life, is the deuce. Then he bas a wife and some children, not that they would make much difference in his going on, perhaps, unless he were personally worried. But I should say the chances are, that be will clear off a bit, and save and be selfish in the country. He will, if he isn't a blockhead." " He let me in about some infernal insurances," said Acton Calveley. " I was just of age, and he talked me over, and so I became one of his securities." " It doesn't say much for the electors of Wob hlebridge that they have chosen a man who, at any period of bfe, could be talked into anything by Henry Wilmslow," said Tom Crowsfoot ; " but that won't do.

Master Orientabst. Wilmslow talked to somebody else besides you." Acton Calveley coloured a little, and drank a glass of claret. " I was a great fool," he said frankly, " but I have paid for my folly. I wonder whether I shab get anything out of him now." " See an attorney, and he quick," said Freddy Belt. " If you come down upon him at the moment of his good fortune, you may snatch something. I say, isn't it odd no fellow has come in from the House lately? Waiter, bring the paper." The invaluable document which allows our legislators to dine in peace, or to hear Alboni's second act, was brought him, — the written return, which is supplied to the clubs and the opera houses, of the state of the House of Commons at certain periods of the evening. But it contained than they knew. no more House of Commons. 8 Colonial Restrictions Bill.

Mr. Bobus. House emptying. ip.8 Ditto. Souse rather empty. 9 Ditto. House very empty. "We should hear," said Ambergate. "Whip ham would send, of course, if necessary. Have some more claret." "Perhaps, now Wilmslow's up again, he'll stand for somewhere in Gloucestershire," said Sir Frederic; "it would be just like him. I knew Jane Tracy a bttle, and rather pitied her than not, when I heard she was to have him." " We know a bad husband or two, I take it," said Tom Crowsfoot, smiling. " There are such persons, I am told," said Frederic Belt, who had been divorced himself, and the cause of divorce in others; "but you will find that it is invariably the wife's fault." This was unanimously assented to ; Tom Crows foot, who, as a gentleman, really wished to do justice, appending to his verdict, — " That is to say, you know, that it is her fault somehow or other."

" As regards poor Mrs. Tracy," said Acton Calveley, " though of course we should find it was b3 her fault if we went to the bottom ofthe business, — for, as the sultan remarked in the Eastern tale — " "Please, Calveley," said Lord Ambergate, de precatingly. "There will be a new edition of * Puffs from the Narghile,' in which you can use all those stories without annoying friends who do not read your works." " I was going to say," continued Acton, unper turbed, " that, though Mrs. Tracy's faults doubt less were the cause of Wilmslow's being a donkey, and extravagant, and faithless, and so forth, the woman has managed to keep them very secret, for she appeared to me the most patient, affectionate, allowance-making creature I ever saw ; and I be lieve her to be so." " One never knows what to believe in this world," said Tom Crowsfoot ; " she may have added to her other offences by hypocrisy.

Some women are bad enough for that, I am told, be sides having read so in books." " Jane Wilmslow has had a hard time of it with the precious Henry," said Acton. " And though I should perhaps lose by it, I should not mind hearing that the estate comes to her for ber separate use, and that he can't touch a shilling of the rents. How's that, Ambergate?" "I don't think it's quite that, but Penkridge said something about Molesworth having made Henry Wilmslow sign some deeds or settlements, and so managing that he cannot proceed to instant duckery and drakery. I say, here's Jimmy Vul ture witb an opera-glass ; see how he is glaring round the room. We 're wanted, I believe. Here, waiter, ask Mr. Vulture if he is looking for us. What is it, Vulture James?" he said, as a remarkably ugly bttle man, with a bald-head, fringed ab round with yellow hair, hurried up to the table.

" Come down at once," he said in a fierce whis per. " There's tbe deuce and all to pay ; Whip ham's tearing his hair !" " Well, he has not got much, so that amusement won't last him long," said Calveley. " But what's on? Is Bobus down ? " " An hour ago and more ; but come on," said Mr. Vulture, nervously, "I've undertaken to bring you." " But did you happen to count how many oranges Bobus had sucked?" said Tom Crowsfoot, making ready, however, to be off. A practicable man that Tom Crowsfoot. " Oranges ! Come, Lord Ambergate, there's a good fellow," pleaded Vulture ; " Sir Frederic, pray make haste ! " " My dear Vulture," said Freddy Belt, " we are not promised places If we help Whipham well through this session." " But if you think I am to have one, it would be good-natured to help me," said Mr. Vulture, obliged to bring out his private hopes as an argu ment with the loungers.

"Nay, if you make it a personal thing, Vulture James, we '11 save the colonies and the country to oblige you. But you won't say what has hap pened ? " "Bobus was taken ill, and obliged to stop. Lord Malachite got up to answer him, but broke down ; but those fellows are whipping, and though M'Dangle has promised to do his best, I don't suppose they'll hear him, he's such a bore. You see everybody's away, as no one is expected to care about those cursed colonies enough to sit out a debate." " No, that's true enough," said Lord Amber gate. " Colonies are a great mistake, to my mind. However, we must go. Calveley, I 11 take you down, if you bke, binding yourself, tbat is, not to tell one Eastern story between this and the House." It is satisfactory to know that they arrived in time for the division, and that the claims of her Majesty's colonies were, once more, indefinitely postponed. Bobus was beaten, thanks to the law givers of the Lycurgus.

Chapter II. Aspen Court

I HOPE that in time you will like the old house in Gloucestershb'e, but I am obliged to say that it has no particular beauty to recommend it to you at first sight. It stands half way up a gentle elevation, is surrounded by woods as old as itself, — for the Dryads of Aspen have as yet never shuddered at the sound of dice, — and it is of no exclusive style of architecture, though the Eliza bethan is predominant. The fact is that the owners of Aspen Court, for the time being, have made such alterations as they deemed desirable for safety or comfort, with the boldest disregard for keeping and coup-d'œil. And therefore, though a very good idea of the general character of the house may be imparted in a few words, nothing save tinted plans and figured references (which might be a bttle in the way if introduced here), could guide a stranger through the laby rinth of rooms which one owner has thrust out, and another bas piled up, and a third has hung on, wherever it has seemed convenient, during a couple of hundred years and upwards, to make such supposed improvements.

But if you will be good enough to imagine an exceedingly long red brick front, with a monstrous door in the centre, protected by a portico, and will draw along tbis front two lines of windows, originally uniform, hut now varying from the modern French double window, to the simple old diamond lattice with its hazy glass, and including in their motley ranks those huge ugly square staring sashes, with twenty-four square panes, which you see in the cuts to story-books of Queen Anne's time — the dapper windows of ordinary suburban architecture — and, quite at the east end, two openings with only a couple of very large panes in each, the latest improvement of all, — you will bave a tolerably accurate notion of the front of Aspen Court. There are but two regular stories, but, above the front, there rises a mountainous mass of tiles, beneath which are innumerable attics, and though in that red waste you scarcely notice the loopholes which light these chambers, yet, when sunlight falls athwart the house, the tiny glasses sparkle out, and the roof becomes the feature of the edifice.

Tall chimneys and short ones, with variations of sturdy stacks, and even of pert pipes, garnish tbis mountain, and, in short, an eye which by instinct loves regularity, or has been trained to look for style, is teased as mercdessly at Aspen Court as at any place I have ever seen. Behind this front, and running from it at right angles, are two rows of buildings, even more irregular in point of architecture, but keeping their lines tolerably straight. That on the west side is chiefly composed of stables and other offices, over which are apartments for servants, store-houses, and lumber-rooms. The line to the east side is of a better character ; there is a series of good, but prim-looking rooms on the ground-floor, and on that above it are some more pleasant and more modern apartments, with Venetian blinds, and balconies for flowers outside the windows.

Part of this range of building is quite modern, and has been whitened, and some rustic work and a ve randah have been introduced, and there is a chintzy, cottagy look about this portion, in spite of its being set in the midst of red brick and stiff style. The ground thus enclosed on three sides is really a great grass plot, but is so thick with trees, and is so studded with flower mounds, and rustic workcases full of scarlet geraniums, that we see but bttle of the green, except just round a clear quiet pool in the centre, with water-lilies and gold fishes. Three or four classical statues, erected in the age when men stuck up Latin inscriptions in their arbours, and talked about their Muse when they made rhymes, are still standing among the trees, but have been somewhat damaged, from having been used as targets by schoolboy marksmen, whose pistol fingers have long been straight ened for ever.

This grass-garden is sheltered from observation by the inhabitants on the domestic side, by a very lofty trebice, covered with rich creepers of various kinds, which indeed have formed so massive a screen that additional bul warks have been necessary to prop it up, and it sometimes waves in the wind like a gigantic Indian fan. A tall thick hedge completes the quad rangle, but a gap seems to have been sliced through it, and, passing on, we find the garden continued up the gentle slope, and terminated by a cluster of old trees which crown the height. But there is one feature more, which we must not forget to notice, though the foliage encloses it so completely tbat it might almost escape a careless observer. Turn round, now that we have reached the limit of the garden, and at the east end of the house, and now of course to your left hand, you will make out a low, white spire.

That is the church of Aspen ; it is attached to the house, through which its owners have a private entrance to the little aisle. The church has been unim proved amid all the improvements of the mansion, none of whose owners have reproached themselves, bke the Hebrew king, that while they had a house of cedar, the ark dwelt in tents. It is a quiet, bttle, rude old edifice, round which the moss has clung with an affection time has but increased, and the almost shapeless interio _, disfigured by undertakers' hatchments, and by sprawling texts from the Proverbs, is not without a solemnity, to which the obscurity, caused by the over-topping woods around, contributes much. Few rays of sunshine fall upon the rough pavement of Aspen Church, or aid the eye to decipher the last me morials of the Tracys of Aspen Court.

Many of these are buried here, and there is one tomb, of old date, which seems strangely costly, with its kneeling rows of figures, and its gilded legend, for its place in this remote nook. Later monuments are also here, but chiefly mural, one of them bear ing a long Latin inscription to the memory of the man who erected the undressed statues, and is full of sibilant superlatives, which seem to hiss at the adulation they record. We have also an urn, and a plump but desponding Virtue hugging it, the particular Tracy whose ashes, after his body had been burnt (as usual in England), are supposed to have been placed within, having been one of the patriots whom Walpole did not findunpurchasable, and the profits of whose sinecure added many acres to the Aspen Court territory. The last in date is a neat tablet from Regent Street, and came down in a box by the Bristol mail.

Every respectable old family house is haunted. I suppose it would be common-place to present this fact in a different form, and say that few old families are so happy as to escape, for a long series of years, that guilt, or the imputation of that guilt, which generates superstitious terror among their dependents. Assuredly the Aspen Court family is not one of the exceptions. For, in addition to an apparition, of which I am not disposed, just now, to speak, though, before a reader reaches the end of this story, something will bave to be said about it, there is a little ghost in the family, and one in which I do not know whether to believe or not. The rustics at Aspen, tbe small village which lies about half a mile from the bouse, have a very painful story about this spectre. They allege that a poor little child, who was wilfully and systematically terrified into idiotcy, and who died in one of the paroxysms of agony produced by a hideous figure which its guardian brought to the foot of its bed in the dead of night, may be seen, at the same hour, leaping about the church in which that wicked woman's last bed is made, and mopping and mowing beside the grave in the hope of repaying its own torments in life.

And for the first portion of this frightful story I fear there is too much foundation. And so much for the general aspect of Aspen Court. With the interior, so far as it is possible to understand it, we shall become acquainted as we go on. But the great hall of the Aspen man sion is entitled to be mentioned at once. We saw the portico, through which we reach the great door of the house. Throw that door open, and you are at one side of an enormous chamber, extending right and left of you. At the extreme end are a few stone steps leading up to the doors of other apartments. Opposite you is a huge chimney-mouth, with its ancient fire-dogs, and with massive carving above and at its sides. The hall is very lofty, and on the side opposite the windows are numerous family portraits, of several generations.

There are also portraits at the ends of the chamber, on each side of the smaller doors. Above, and all round, hang armour and weapons, as pikes, carabines, and swords, which have done their work in their time. They were nailed up here soon after Naseby. A young lord of Aspen was there, and they brought him home to die of a pistol-shot fired by a dying Ironside whom he had cut down in the fight. His mother caused all her tenantry to fix up their arms here on the day of his funeral, saying, with a calm sorrow, that "Aspen had done enough." The large red curtain, at the opposite corner, and on your right, covers an arched opening, which leads to the other parts of the house. Near that curtain is an old clock, of singular elaboration. It is French, and very old, and having once ceased to perform its work, there was no hope for it, for not in Gloucestershire, and perhaps not in London itself, was there a mechanic who could deal with these mystic arrangements.

The mere hour of the day the machine told, but haughtily, and at a corner, as if such a trumpery piece of information were beneath its learned dignity. But it told much deeper things. Tbe age of Luna, and her aspect to Sol, and that same Sol's own aspect on snow-fields, or wheat-fields, as the case might be. And the day of the week, and of the month, and of the year, and the Dominical letter, and some of those dates which theology so queerly borrows from astronomy. And the zodiac is there, with its procession of starry beasts and babies, and a Virgo, with whose prim prettiness several generations of boys have fallen in love in that hall. And a curiously wreathed barometer once curled itself, like a great red vein, round the face of the clock, but the red liquor has long been dry. The old clock tells nothing now but the hour at which it died ; and even this is doubtful, for the other revelations in no reasonable way coincide— the month is December, and the sun is scorching down upon a golden harvest — and it is the second Sunday after Easter.

And now come back to the door of the great hall and look out. Rich acres lie before you, and all belong to the domain of Aspen Court. Beyond this smooth lawn, and beyond those grey oaks, and beyond all that green pasture where the cattle are feeding, and far away to where you see broad water, " The Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death." Aspen Court means half a parish and a score of farms, and such a bst of freeholds, leaseholds, and copyholds, as nobody, without the aid of the steward's rent-rolls, can pretend to give you. Allow that the gentlemen at the Lycurgus were justified in thinking that Henry Wilmslow had been lucky.

Chapter III

A LAW YEIt' S OFFICE, AND SOME OF THE CLERKS. The offices of Messrs. Molesworth and Penkridge, the solicitors, of whom mention has been made, were " situate, lying, and being " (as new young gentlemen who studied the law therein thought it rather witty to say) in one of tbe streets near Red Lion Square. Messrs. Molesworth and Penkridge were most respectable practitioners, who chiefly attended to " conveyancing," but bad a few pro fitable old Chancery suits in their keeping, in respect of the costs of which they by no means forgot to attend for the Accountant-General's cheques, just before his door in Chancery Lane closed for the long vacation. They did not refuse to attend to common law, but it was put out to nurse, and a common-law clerk was kept, in order that those interested in the fate of their causes might receive tolerably plausible answers.