Devil's Apples

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PRINTED BY SP0TTISW06DE AXD CO., NEW-STILB-ET SQUARE LONDON BY MES LOVETT CAMEEON AUTHOR OF 'in a grass country ' 'a soul astray' 'a man's undoing' ' t 7/0 cousins and a castle ' etc. Not poppy nor mandragora Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep, Which thou ow'dst yesterday Shakespeare : Othello Mandragora or Devils' Apple The flowers of this plant are purple, while, and blue : the roots are poisonous. (Encyclopædia of Gardening) LONDON F. V. WHITE & CO. 14 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C. 1898 All rights reserved CONTENTS PART PJ 0E I. RENUNCIATION . . , 1 IX TEMPTATION ■ • 5 IU, DEGEADATION ..,',]. . IR) IV. EXPIATION. . . * J J . . . , Part I EBNUNCIATION Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground; Another race the following spring supplies, They fall successive, and successive rise. Pope's Iliad. B

Chapter I

The story I am going to tell is neither new nor original. It is old as the world and familiar as sin and sorrow. But it is just because it is so old, and so familiar, and because the pitiful pathos of it is ever in our midst, that the story has an undying interest for us all, so that the well-worn theme can never cease to touch a chord of sympathy deep hidden in every human heart, as long as there are hearts left to beat on earth. It is the old, old story of a woman's love and suffering. Therefore, my friends, to such of you as clamour for ' some new thing ' I say, lay down this book, for it will tell you nothing that you have not read a hundred times before. Nevertheless, just as the woods and the fields are clad each year afresh with the self-same tones of green, and yet the human eye is never wearied of the sight of it, but learns to see fresh beauty in each returning spring ; so too, perchance, may the story of this one woman — who loved, and sinned, and suffered, as so many others have done — put forth a new claim upon your sympathy, and wind its way with a fresh signifi cance into your heart.

The story began a very long time ago, in this wise. B The hawthorn bushes were white with flower, and the air was laden with the heavy scent of their blossom ; the newborn lambs gambolled with ungainly antics in the wake of their mothers, across the cowslip-spangled slope. A lark sang faint and far away, up in the tender blue, and a youth and a maiden, both in the early springtime of life, wandered hand in hand together by the margin of the road. The keen breath of life stirred in their pulses, and there was love in the kindling glances of their eyes. The new delight of a wondrous discovery, that great discovery which comes once at least into the life of every man and woman, had flamed their cheeks, and steeped their senses in delirium. They hardly spoke, only their eyes flashed knowledge with electric swiftness from one to the other. ' I love you ! ' said the burning eyes of the boy ; ' And I, too, love you,' replied more tenderly and bashfully, the answering eyes of the girl.

They were little more indeed than children ; he was twenty, and she seventeen, and a whole universe lay between them ; yet at this moment they were one — one in that sublime pulsation of being which man calls love, but which the gods, who know the future, may well term madness or despair. The beautiful frenzy — beautiful because it is so impossible, and so utterly untrue — possessed them both. The dream of the madman that love lasts for ever and rules the world — when it only passes away like all else, and rules nothing but our own poor tempest-torn hearts — that divinest of all delusions, seemed to them for the moment to be real, They lived and they were together — what Renunciation 5 more mattered ? That the sun should shine, and the birds sing, and the flowers shed their sweetness around them, only seemed to be the natural sequence of all else — the fitting accompaniment to this dawn of new found joy.

Yet it had barely lasted one hour, and already the golden moments were numbered. Below them in the hollow of the park lay a splendid and venerable red brick pile, whose pointed gables and twisted chimneys dated from the days of good Queen Bess. And at this distance it was not to be seen that three parts of the beautiful and historic old house were dismantled and shut up, that the gardens had fallen into neglect and disorder, and that the grass-grown drive swept up to the crumbling arch of the stone muliioned front door. These evidences of poverty were concealed by a kindly distance, but they were there all the same, and the boy, who was heir to the fallen glory of the old house, knew every significant detail of them by heart. Why, the very ground he walked on was let! the lambs that skipped in front of them, the cattle knee deep in the sluggish stream below, were not his father's property, but belonged to a stranger.

Reckless extravagance, gambling debts, heavy mortgages — the story is common enough — and three generations of it had shorn Saxby Court of its ancient glory and had reduced its owners to something very like beggary. Never is the old curse, that ' the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,' more literally apparent than in the case of these old English properties and families, once the pride and ornament of the country, now fast falling into annihilation and extinction. The old families decay and disappear, their very names become obliterated and forgotten, whilst new blood and new money, pushing their way upwards in the inevitable course of nature, step triumphantly and remorselessly over the heads of those who have perished, and fill all the old time-honoured sites with a new and more vigorous race.

But for those who cling on to the home of their ancestors, hoping against hope, striving to stave off the evil day, struggling manfully to battle against the rapidly encroaching waves of poverty, or, worse still, exhausting themselves in forlorn and despairing efforts in that soul-degrading process that is called ' raising money,' the spectacle is one of the saddest that life can present. And thus it had come to be with the present owner of Saxby Court. There had been Gaunts at Saxby Court ever since Saxby Court had existed, and the first Sir Charles had been created a baronet in his own banqueting hall on the great occasion of the three-days' visit of the Virgin Queen to her loyal subject and servant ; a visit of which many memorials and relics are preserved as priceless treasures unto this day.

Ever since that time there had reigned alternate Sir Charleses and Sir Reginalds in one long unbroken succession at Saxby, for it was according to the family traditions that they should be so named. The present Sir Charles was a bankrupt all but in name, and Reginald was his only child. Renunciation 7 Sir Charles had married late in life, although he and his wife had been engaged to each other for many years. But the owner of Saxby was a poor man, encompassed with debts, when he came wooing to Montressor Castle, and his lady-love was one of a large family of portionless daughters, so that her parents would not hear of the marriage, and the engagement was but a tacit understanding between themselves. Time, however, smoothes out many vexed problems, and after ten long weary years the lady's parents both died and their children were left to carve out their own lives for themselves ; and then Agnes Montressor thought she was old enough to please herself, and became Agnes Gaunt in the thirty-fifth year of her age.

Sir Charles was turned forty-four when his son was born — he was their only child — and now, when he is but twenty, they are growing old. That is the sad part of late marriages, the parents can hope to see so little of their children's lives, and Reginald's future was a terrible anxiety to them both. Sir Charles, by dint of shifts and efforts unknown and almost superhuman, had managed to do what he considered the ' right thing ' by his son : that is to say, Reginald had been sent to Eton, and was now com pleting his education at Oxford. It was too probable that the boy might never reign at Saxby Court, yet Sir Charles would have starved — it is, in fact, not at all certain that he and his wife did not nearly starve themselves — sooner than not give to his son the ad vantages which he had enjoyed himself, and which he considered indispensable to a gentleman.

And there was always hope ; something might yet be done, some compromise might be achieved, some stroke of good fortune might intervene to save the credit of the ruined house. In case that day sliould come, whatever the cost might be, Reginald must be able to hold up his head amongst his fellows. That was their creed — poor harrowed, soul-worn parents ! — to whom nothing mattered more on earth, save the future of their child when they themselves should be dead and gone. The ancient carriage came lumbering along the hawthorn bordered way; the grey horses were lean and bony — one of them was a little lame on the off fore leg — both of them were past their work ; the vehicle, a ponderous family coach of the olden days, that had once made its annual pilgrimages to Bath and London, with four horses and a postillion, with the family inside and the luggage tied on behind, was now in its very last decrepitude; springs, wheels, axles, harness, all were worn out ; the very cushions and the hammer-cloth of past glory, with the crest and lace in tarnished silver, were moth-eaten and ragged ; yet it was ' the Saxby Court carriage ' still ; and in it the old couple took their daily airing with that pitiful determination to ' keep up appearances ' to the last, that is so misunderstood by those who are prosperous and well to do ; but that constitutes all the same, one of the most pathetic, as well as one of the noblest, things in life.

For it is pluck, after all, that is at the bottom of it ; the pluck that once made England what she is ; the pluck which is the one ineradicable heritage of a race Renunciation 9 now fast passing away ; which made the men and women of the ' Greater England ' of the old days die rather than give in ! It was sheer pluck, for instance, which supported that old couple as they went out for their daily drive in the old family coach ; he in his threadbare coat and napless top hat, and she in the worn velvet mantle and faded ostrich plumed bonnet that had seen a dozen years of service ; pluck which enabled them to smile their greetings with dignified serenity at great and low alike, as tney drove through the village street, whilst all the time, care, haggard and hollow-eyed, was eating at their hearts, and anxiety and semi-starvation had blanched their faces and struck a deathlike chill into their innermost being.

They had been to-day to pay a visit of ceremony to some new-comers to the neighbourhood ; a visit which had caused them deep anxiety. The new people were ' new ' in every sense of the word ; they were rich, very rich, and they had made their money in trade. They had lately purchased a fine old Georgian mansion, seven miles distant from Saxby, and they had renovated and redecorated it without and within. They had put gas into it from attic to cellar — this was before the days of electric light — and there were bath-rooms and encaustic tiles, a ventilating apparatus, and speaking-tubes, new fangled dados and wall-papers, and imitation Renaissance and Louis XV. furniture which must have cost a fortune. A huge conservatory had arisen at one end of the venerable house ; bright red brick buildings containing stabling Devils' ArrLES 10 for twenty-four horses, and all the latest improvements in coach-house and harness-rooms, had sprung up at the other, whilst an army of scientific gardeners had trans formed the dear untidy gardens into modern parterres and miniature landscapes.

And yet, for all their wealth and all their luxury, Mr. and Mrs. Tomkins, who remembered beginning life in the back shop with one maid of all work to wait on them, were undisguisedly nervous and ill at ease when Sir Charles and Lady Gaunt, in their well-worn and old-fashioned clothes, were ushered into the splendidly furnished drawing room by the brand new butler, with two powdered haired giants in red plush breeches in attendance. Somehow it was the broken down, shabbily dressed baronet and his wife who looked at home amidst the palatial surroundings of the house, whilst the fat and prosperous couple who received them in shining brocade and broad cloth seemed as though they had been dropped down by accident from some other world, into a place where they were completely out of their element.

The visit had been expected, and had been looked forward to with fear and trembling. ' If the Gaunts of Saxby Court call upon you,' some one ' in the know ' had said to Mr. Tomkins, ' you will be all right ; for everybody else then will follow their lead and call on you too.' So it had been rather an anxious time for the Tomkins, until at last a sort of half royal message reached them in a roundabout way to the effect that Sir Charles and Lady Gaunt would do themselves the Renunciation 11 honour of calling upon Mr. and Mrs. Tomkins on a particular day and at a particular hour. They were punctual to the minute — as royalty in variably is, knowing its duties as well as its privileges. And loudly did Mrs. Tomkins's heart beat beneath the violet satin brocade which encased her ample bust, as she perceived the crazy old carriage advancing up the avenue.

But there was something simple and gra cious about the old couple, too, which soon set the worthy people at their ease. People who are well born, and have no doubts about their own social status, are seldom arrogant or self assertive ; that is left to those who have been pushed, or have pushed themselves into a position above that to which they were born. The gentle-mannered and courteous old people neither snubbed nor patronised the wealthy iron monger and his wife ; they were just as kind and pleasant to them as they would have been to their equals. Only when Mr. Tomkins asked Lady Gaunt if she would not like to walk round the grounds and see the improvements which he had been making, she declined the proposal very quietly but firmly. 'If you won't mind, I would rather sit still,' she answered, ' the drive has tired me a little.

I knew the old gardens very well when our poor friends the Leme surers lived here, and beautiful as I am sure your altera tions are, Mr. Tomkins, I think it would pain me a little to see them. We were very much attached to poor Mr. Lemesurer,' she added, and then, turning to Mrs. Tomkins, she said with animation, ' What I should really like to see is your daughter. I hear Devils' Apples 12 you have one child, and I am very fond of young people. Will you introduce her to me ? ' Mrs. Tomkins was very much gratified, and the bell was rung, and Blanche sent for at once. ' She is only a child, Lady Gaunt,' said Mrs. Tom kins, who had flushed with pleasure at the great lady's request. ' Quite a school-girl, only fifteen ! I hope you will excuse her, if she don't quite know what to say to you.' ' I am sure she is very nice and simple,' said Lady Gaunt kindly. 'I like young girls to be shy.

Ah, here she is ! How do you do, my dear ? ' Blanche Tomkins was a long-legged girl in short frocks, with a thick plait of pale yellow hair hanging down her back. Her figure was ungainly, and her movements awkward, and her large hands and red wrists hung down like weights for which she knew no useful purpose on either side of her, yet her face was honest and trustworthy, and Lady Gaunt, who observed her keenly, took a fancy to it. ' She will never be pretty,' she thought, ' but edu cation and training may make her into something quite presentable in the course of a few years.' And then she questioned her kindly about her lessons and her tastes. Then came tea — a gorgeous tea out of a silver ser vice handed on golden salvers — with a spread of cakes and fruit sufficient to feed a hungry family, and soon after tea the visit came to a conclusion, and Sir Charles and Lady Gaunt bade a gracious farewell and took their departure.

Renunciation 13 During the drive home they said very little to each other, yet no doubt their thoughts dwelt upon the same theme, for when Sir Charles remarked with a sigh : ' She is very common and awkward looking ! ' Lady Gaunt replied quickly : ' Yes, but she is so young, and we must not let them meet yet. In a few years she will probably im prove. You see they are giving her an excellent education. I purposely asked Mrs. Tomkins to bring her over next week, after the 14th, so that Reggie will be gone. I think it would be a pity for him to see her now.' 'Well!' with another deep sigh. 'It is a des perate expedient, but it is probably his only chance. If it could come about, the mortgages might be paid off and the property would yet be saved ! ' ' We must take good care that it does come about,' replied Lady Gaunt gently, but decidedly. ' But it cannot be thought of for at least four years.

They are both much too young, and we should only spoil every thing if we tried to precipitate matters.' And it was at that precise moment that the carriage turned in at the lodge gates down the hawthorn bordered drive. ' Stoop down, Jenny ! Quick ! Hide — hide ! ' cried Reginald, in a smothered whisper, dragging the girl down by the arm. Scarcely understanding what he meant, Jenny nevertheless obeyed him, and they both crouched down behind the shelter of a thick snow white hawthorn bush. The pungent scent of the May flowers came like a bouquet of Spring up into their flushed Devils' ArpLEs 14 faces, and the hoofs of the old horses seemed to beat a trembling echo to their hearts, as they trolled sham blingly past the hidden pair. When the carriage was quite out of sight, Reginald Gaunt stood up, and Janet Maxwell stood up too, and looked at him.

She was very pale, and there was something in the dark blue eyes that were as deep and soft as velvet, that had had no place there before the carriage went by, for the Serpent had entered into her Eden. ' It is wrong, then, Reginald ! ' she said under her breath, and she said it more as an assertion than as a question. The boy coloured. ' Oh ! wrong ! That's a big word, Jenny ! Where's the harm of our loving each other, darling ? But we need not tell anyone else, need we ? We can keep it to ourselves.' ' I may not tell father, then ? ' He looked down hesitatingly, playing with the slender fingers he held between his own ; he was older than she, and he understood better. But love is sweeter than wisdom, and when one is twenty the future seems a long way off. ' Better not, Jenny ! — better not !

Fathers and mothers have such a way of making things unpleasant, you know,' with a little nervous laugh. ' And why should we spoil our last few days together when we are so happy ? You see I am going back to Oxford on Wednesday — only four days more, Jenny. I can't bear to think of leaving you. so let us keep our secret all to ourselves, and be happy now, for you won't see me Renunciation- 15 again for ever so long — not till June ! There is no harm. It's all right, you know.' She looked away from him dully. Young as she was, the woman was awake in her, and she felt that he was crying ' peace ' when there would be no peace ; that the dream was over, and that real life had begun. ' I must go home now,' she said, and a little shiver seemed to pass over her, and the air grew chilly. ' Angus will be wanting his tea.' ' But you'll come for a walk to-morrow — up to the blue-bell wood, Jenny — by the stile ? — and give me one kiss before you go, darling.' She kissed him, of course, and they parted. Devils' Apples 16

Chapter II

James Maxwell was a man whose talents and education entitled him to hold a far higher position in life than that which he actually filled. He was a man of great learning, and of a keenly scientific turn of mind. He had once — and these were the days of his prosperity been Professor of Natural Science at a very important training college in Edinburgh. His salary had been ample, and he had associated with the most highly educated men of the northern capital. After awhile he married a charming but penniless girl, the daughter of a fellow professor, who bore him two children, and died herself in giving birth to the second. And from the sad day of her death his luck deserted James Maxwell. His infant son was crippled by an accident, and soon after wards his own health gave way, and he was forced to resign his professorship.

Circumstances and poverty compelled him eventually to accept a far more humble post in the town of Dumfries. But misfortune still pursued him. The school at which he taught became bankrupt, and again he found himself without means of subsistence. He drifted to England, first only as far as Carlisle, where for a time he picked up a precarious Renunciation 17 living by giving Latin lessons to the sons of small tradesmen ; then finally further south — to London. Here for two years he managed to maintain himself and his children, partly by teaching and partly by writing treatises on scientific chemistry — which had just begun to attract a good deal of attention amongst men of learning although they brought but little grist to the mill — when a long and painful illness threw him on his beam ends once more, and when he recovered he was thankful enough to accept the very lowly position of Board School master in a country village, which was offered him through the kindly exertions of some of his friends.

To Saxby, therefore, ten years before this story opens, came James Maxwell ; a tall, gaunt, silent man, who, if he made few friends, made at least no enemies ; and with him came his seven-year-old daughter, a dark haired, dark-eyed child, whose gravity was beyond her years, and the poor little boy, four years younger than herself, who lay for ever helpless on his sofa ; and here he set to work doggedly and with all his might and main, as it was in his nature to do, to enlighten the thick-headed sons of the soil whom it was his duty to teach out of his own boundless store of knowledge. But English yokels are not sharp-witted and keen like the northern boys he had been accustomed to ; his pupils were stupid aad unintelligent, and in very few of them could he awaken the fire by which he strove to inspire them.

Who can guess what tortures James Maxwell, scholar and scientist, underwent at the hands of these ignorant and dull witted boors ; what agonies c Devils' Apples of irritation ; what heart-broken reactions of a fruitless struggle ? Yet never did he lose patience or give way to despair, and never once did he repine or murmur against the fate that had set him down in so uncongenial a corner of the world. His brilliant intellect would have starved had he not kept it alive by constant writing. Not only did he continue to contribute largely to the scientific literature of the day, but he had now been engaged for some years upon a work of great importance, to which he devoted all his leisure moments, and which was now nearly completed. His house — it was little more than a cottage — adjoined the school buildings, and was given to him rent free.

Its red brick walls were smothered in jasmine and roses and honeysuckle ; and there was a little square of garden, gay with flowers, between the door and the road, and a smaller kitchen garden at the back. The sunny bow-window of the sitting-room overlooked the village street, and here it was that Angus the cripple boy lay all day long on his sofa. The room was a fair-sized one, and served the family for every purpose of a dwelling-room. A small den beyond the passage afforded a working retreat to James Maxwell, and there were three tiny bedrooms above, and a sort of cupboard on the stairs where their one servant slept. Humble as it was, the little home was by no means devoid of prettiness and comfort. Janet under stood how to make the best of it ; there were clean muslin curtains always in the bow-window, in summer time bowls of sweet-smelling flowers stood on every shelf and table, whilst in winter trails of evergreens Renunciation 19 and bunches of scarlet berries decorated the tiny room, in which a certain daintiness in the arrangement of the meagre furniture displayed the subtle evidences of a woman's taste and refinement.

And, moreover, there were books — the only possession in which the Maxwells were rich — books in every corner ; books close packed on the deal shelves around the walls, and books on every table and chair on which a book could lie. There were very few novels, and they only the standard works of Thackeray and Sir Walter Scott — but there were travels, biographies of great men, essays on literature, on history, on science, on chemistry and astrc nomy — on every subject of thought, in fact, under tie sun — and thus it was that Janet Maxwell was educated, or rather had educated herself, for there was no one to superintend her reading ; and she read everything, eagerly and omnivorously. Besides which she helped the little servant-maid in the daily work of the house. She could sweep, and sew, and cook, and turn her hand to any useful thing, and she was her brother's constant nurse and attendant.

In addition to which she corrected her father's proofs, sorted his papers, and docketed and often answered his correspondence. It was a full and busy life enough ; yet there is no woman's life so full, that there is no room for love to creep into it, and the girl drank ia the sweet nectar so insensibly and so gradually, that for years she did not know what it was that had stolen into her existence. When she was quite a child the young gentleman from Saxby Court began to come to the school-house c Devils' Apples 20 when he was at home, to be coached in his holiday tasks by her father. Childhood is no respecter of persons, and in Jenny's eyes Reginald Gaunt was just the same as any other village boy, only that he was gentler mannered and better company to her than any of them. He won her heart from the first by his kindness to little Angus ; he used to bring him toys and picture books, and would often sit by his sofa telling him wonderful stories of his experiences at school.

And he and Jenny had grown up in constant companionship without a thought of mischief in anyone's mind. During Reginald's holidays, the two were perpetually to be met together about the fields and lanes. Sometimes they were gathering blackberries in the hedgerows, sometimes bird's-nesting in the woods, or fishing for dace and perch in the stream in the park ; at other times there would be the wild excitement of a rat hunt in the farm buildings, with ferrets in a bag, and a pack of fox terriers at their heels — but always they were perfectly happy with one another and quite unconscious of harm or danger — until this day, when love had come and crowned all, even at the moment that it ruined all ! Jenny was very quiet and thoughtful when she got back home. Reginald had bidden her be silent, and she was loyal to him and would have died sooner than disobey him ; nevertheless, she was vaguely troubled, and would have liked to have gone to her father and have told him all, and asked for his loving sympathy.