Consequences. A novel

Part I. George Kerb

CHAPTER PAGE 1 6 - 20 - 26 - 30 - 44 I. HOW george kerr repented at leisure II. HOW HE MARRIED IN HASTE - III. FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF A WEDDING-DAY IV. THE DEMON WHISPERS V. THE LAST PIPE OF TOBACCO VI. THE SEAFOAM BIRTH OF DAVID FARGUS VII. THE REV. ROBERT HILLYARD GARNERS DOCUMENTS VIII. UNLOOKED-FOR LEGACY OF GEORGE KERR 53 61

Part II. David Fargus

I. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL - - - - 71 II. THE FIRST LINK — A GOLDEN ONE - - - - 78 III. MORE LINKS IN THE GOLDEN CHAIN • - - - 88 IV. THE DANCE OF DEATH ..... 101 V. STRANGE ABODE OF A SCHOLAR AND DRAGOON - - 117 VI. MIDNIGHT CONFIDENCES ... - 127 VII. 'QUI PART TROP TOT REVIENT TROP TARD ' - - - 147 VIII. 'A TAVERN ACQUAINTANCE' - - - - - 154 IX. THE 'COMMENT' OF HONOUR ----- 167 X. 'ALT HEIDELBERG, DU FEINE, DU STADT AN EHRE REICH!' - 178 XI. 'PASSES, FINCTURES, AND COUNTERTIME' - - - VI CONTENTS PAGE 197

CHAPTER XII. WANDERINGS

212 XIII. *A BOLT FROM THE BLUE 226 DEA EX MACHINA XIV, 239 XV. SUDDEN DEVELOPMENT OF BRAINS IN A DUMMY ' LITERA SCRIPTA MANET ' 256 xvi. 261 XVII. SCYLLA 279 XVIII. CHARLES HILLYARD EXPOUNDS HIS CASE XIX. CHARYBDIS 295 307 XX. THE LONE GRANGE HAS VISITORS XXI. THE 'SLIP,' OR 'HANGMAN'S,' KNOT XXII. THE CIRCLE NARROWS . . . . - 322 XXI. 333 XXIII TO A WEDDING-RING 345 XXIV. MAN PROPOSES 357 XXV. GOD DISPOSES 370 XXVI. DEADLOCK 379 XXVII. FATHER AND SON CONSEOUENCES

PART I. GEORGE KERB.

CHAPTEE I. HOW GEORGE KERR REPENTED AT LEISURE. Popular proverbs — those short statements of long experience — must, from their very essence, be various and even contradictory on almost every question. Few, if indeed any, of the irritating truisms which are held to embody the wisdom of nations are with out their ' cross.' Concerning marriage especially — that most solemn, uncertain, and fatal of human engagements — do they wax numerous and conflicting, even as are the consequences of a bid at the eternal lottery. ' Happy the wooing that's not long adoing,' is an acceptable maxim, and a wise, in the estimation at least of young and ardent love ; and there is in it, too, something vernal, dashing and joyous, which is pleasing to the benevolent or romantic. It fits admirably with other well-known emotional prognostications anent the risky undertaking : ' Happy is the bride the sun shines on,' and such like.

Alas that its natural cross, ' Marry in haste and repent at leisure,' should ever prove equally apposite ! People who plunge headlong into very early matrimony have, as a rule, ample opportunity to test the pithiness of both proverbs, CONSEQUENCES 2 although the path which ultimately leads them to an appreciation of the moroser dictum may be more or less devious. Rapturous always their first impressions, all the more intoxi cating for the greater freshness of mind and body, appertaining to youthful inexperience, but in a little while, the inevitable sobering process once fairly started — with the whole of a life stretching drearily before them a lengthy series of wasted capabilities — grim their reflections on the endless consequences of one imprudent step ! The various aspects of leisurely repentance formed in the year 1857 a main theme in the mental existence of Mr. George Kerr, who was then aged twenty-three.

About the small hours of a certain hot night in June, as he slowly walked home from his club, this unprofitable speculation sat on his once so buoyant spirits with a culminating weight of misery. Arrived at the green door of his little house in Mayfair, he paused for a moment in disheartened and bitter cogitation. No doubt she was lying in wait for him upstairs, preparing a scene in punishment for their last quarrel. . . . No peace for him, night or day ! Was it astonishing that he was sick — sick to death — of all this ? He turned the key in the door, and let himself in with a muttered curse on his unhappy home. Contrary to orders, when all had retired except himself, the lights were still blazing in the hall ; on the other hand, the lamp had burnt itself out in his smoking-room, and filled it with nauseating darkness.

George Kerr was in that frame of mind in which every trivial aggravation is as fuel to the flame, and his savage pull at the bell brought the sleepy footman tumbling upstairs before his eyes were well opened. ' Why are you not in bed— why is there a Ught in the hall ?' ' Mrs. Kerr has not yet come in,' said the man in injured tones. ' Not come in ... 1' There was a lengthy silence. ' You can go to bed,' said George at last, with forced calmness. ' First take that lamp away, and light the candles. I shall wait up for your mistress.' There is nothing very particular about the ' last straw ' which traditionally, breaks the camel's back, except its immediate relation to the disaster it helps to bring about. And there had been nothing very particular about the day just elapsed. It had only differed in details from that of almost every day since chill disillusion had first entered into George Kerr's mad paradise— a few weeks after the HOW GEORGE KERR REPENTED AT LEISURE 3 irrevocable deed had been sealed — but it was destined to have far reaching consequences.

From the very morning, as the youthful husband sat to a cold, ill-served, solitary breakfast — the mistress of the house as usual sleeping late in the day after the worldly exertions of the night — the sense of his injuries had been strong upon him. Only a year ago, at that very hour, he was standing beside his bride in the solemn Cathedral of Seville, and in galling contrast to the high hopes, the proud rapture, which then had filled him, the dead failure of the present rose, spectre-like, to mock him, and would not be laid again. He recalled how he had looked down with palpitating heart on the blushing, smiling face, lace-veiled, by his side ; how the touch of the slim fingers, as he held them within his, thrilled him through and through ; with what a tender earnestness, what faith and love — God knows I — he had vowed to cherish her till death ; — recalled the tumult of joy with which he had led her down the aisle, his wife I . . .

It would be curious to look back on, in truth, if it were not almost maddening. And the day begun in such bitter cogitations brought with every succeeding hour the fulfilment of its first evil promise. As usual, the ill-matched pair had met but to fall out, and this time more seriously than ever before. The quarrel was started, trivially enough, by his refusal to escort her to the ball that evening. They had been out nearly every night for the last month, and the young man, brought up to regard a healthy outdoor existence as the only one worth living, had come to look upon the social entertainments in which his wife found her only pleasure with more than common loathing. In no humour to put himself out for her this day, he had vowed himself determined to have a quiet evening for once, at any price.

She pouted, protested, wept and stormed in vain, finally brushed away her tears, and, with sudden calm defiance, announced her determination to go alone. ' If you do,' had retorted the husband, fairly roused, ' I shall never forgive you.' And thereupon he had flung himself out of the house, to seek in his club the peace and independence refused him in his home. He had not dreamt she would have dared to disobey him openly ; indeed, such an act of emancipation would have been considered so marked in those days of sterner social propriety that he had not 1—2 CONSEQUENCES 4 for an instant contemplated seriously the possibility of her carrying out her threat ; and his anger was deep indeed when he discovered the fact. Gone to that infernal ball ! Gone, in the very teeth of his command I ' Before Heaven, she actually browbeats me I' he cried, as, once more alone, he paced the little room from end to end, gradually collecting his thoughts after the first blank confusion of his rage.

The silver clock on the mantelpiece struck twice in its chirpy way. She was enjoying herself, without doubt, not thinking of returning home for another hour or so, bathing her soul in the adulation that was as the very breath of life to her. Oh ! he could see her, prodigal of smiles and those soft long looks which he had thought were for him alone, yielding herself, with all the voluptuous grace that had once enthralled him, to the delight of the dance. And her husband — dangling fool !— where was he ? He could hear the half-mocking inquiry some confidential swain would breathe into the dainty shell of her httle ear, and Carmen's careless answer : ' She did not know ; at his club, she supposed.' Perhaps, even — she had so little regard for his dignity, for her own — she might relate the history of her escapade, and be applauded for it.

Ay, he could fancy the look, the sneer, the merriment at his expense— curse them ! And the ' husband at home,' viciously chewing the stump of an extinct cigar, seething, not in thoughts of jealousy— for passion had burned itself out long ago, and love had been stifled by ever recurring disappointment — but in maddening anger at the despicable situation he had created for himself, swore a great oath that he would afford food for such laughter no longer. Yet what to do ? Ay, there was the rub I Could man be placed in a more odiously false, infuriatingly help less position? What match was his strength against the all powerfulness of her woman's weakness ? He could not beat her, he could not break her— and she defied him. The sense of his own impotence met him on every side— what could he do ?

And it was for this cat-and-dog existence, this humiliating and degrading state of things, which was gradually sapping his whole manhood, that he had given up all that made life worth living to him HOW GEORGE KERR REPENTED AT LEISURE 5 ' Yes, look at yourself !' he snarled, as he caught sight of his morose face in the glass, and paused in his caged tramp to glare at it. ' Look I think of your drivelling folly, and despise yourself for one moment of weakness ! You will now have to put up with the consequences, George Kerr, " till death do you part 1" . . . Think how young and strong you both are, and that this dangling, aimless life must be yours till either die. You are the guardian of a beautiful brainless fool, whom you cannot control, with whom you have nothing in common but the chain which binds you together—" till death do you part 1" Think of it, my fine fellow ; you worked hard enough to encompass your ruin 1' He almost laughed aloud as he recalled the mad impatience, the tenacity, the determination with which he carried his point in the face of so many difficulties —unto this end !

And the thought of his regiment — the dear old regiment he had sacrificed with so light a heart, and so little reck of the cost — came over him with almost a passion of regret. It was the most glorious, surely, that ever glittered under the sun or grimly broke down a foe. Even now it was starting for another spell of doughty work in India. They would hear the skirl of the pipes and see the colours flying, while he — here he was, white-faced, useless, with not even a show of happiness to set off against this waste of youth. Good God 1 what to do ? The weary minutes, feverishly ticked off by the little clock, had measured two leaden hours before the young man, storm-spent and heart-sick, could settle on a feasible plan of action. But at length, as the rays of dawning day were creeping, blue and delicate, through the curtain folds, a glimmer of light broke over the chaos of his mind.

There were other ways of breaking the marriage vow besides the conventional betrayal. She had promised to obey and honour him, as he to cherish her, but she was, even now, sinning against that vow. And if she refused to keep her part of the con tract, why need he hold himself to his ? Let her obey, as a wife is bound to obey her husband, or he would put her from him, and be surely justified before God and man in so doing, The day grew and grew. The shafts of light piercing into the little room waxed so bright that the candle flames became nought but flickering yellow tongues against the illumination ; the birds began to chirrup, and, just as all the world was waking up outside, George, under the relief of his new-found determination, flung him- CONSEQUENCES self on a deep arm-chair and gradually fell into a sort of drowsy, semi-conscious condition, from which a loud rattle of wheels and a sharp peal of the bell aroused him to a vivid sense of the moment's importance. Drawing his weary limbs together, he rose with a stern com posure to open the door to his wife.

Chapter II. How He Married In Haste

It is an idle exercise of the mind, and yet one which has its fascination in moments of dreamy meditation, that searching back into the far past of our own or our neighbour's life for the distant cause, the seemingly unimportant event, which may have been the starting-point in the present concatenation of things. In this uncertain, indeed rather nebulous, speculation there is, of course, more than one factor to be dealt with ; for the long series of apparently fortuitous occurrences which we can trace, or believe we trace, as springing from some quite external source, is yet so strangely mixed up with the capricious working of natural heredity that it is difficult to distinguish what has been the chief tool in the fashioning of our course. The subject, examined from the philosophic point of view, un fortunately leads to conclusions which bring us very near fatalism.

How strangely httle what is paradoxically called free-will has to do with the ultimate direction of men's lives 1 How much is the resultant of innumerable extraneous circumstances over which they have had no control ! How much more, again, includes the sudden impulses, yearnings, suggestions, conceptions or misconceptions, all the ideas, bright or otherwise, that our nature gives birth to and for which our forefathers are surely as much responsible as ourselves I And yet, after all, what is often most striking in such reflections is the sometimes inconceivable smallness, paltriness, even absurdity of the incident which leads to such far-reaching results. A thou<-ht a look, a word, is sufficient to start a new train of circumstaMes' Our existence has been rolling in its ordinary groove, we have been treading the road of everyday life, apparently without a prospect of ever diverging from it, when there cornes a something so trivial as well-nigh to escape notice — a pebble which did but turn the wheel of fortune ever so little from its course, the flight of a bird which draws us but a step from the path, and, behold, what a change !

What strange lands lie before us ! — maybe, what racking experiences in the narrow circle of our joy and pain ! That the present curious relations of the last two representatives of that ancient race, the Kerrs of Gilham, would never have come about save for certain side-events, seemingly irrelevant, in the life of their grandsire, is a fact which would doubtless much vex his sturdy old ghost were it brought horne to him. And yet, again, these events would never have occurred had not the course of Lord Wellington's operations in the Peninsula obliged him to attack Marmont's strong positions of Los Arapiles on the 22nd of July, 1812, on which day was achieved the bloody victory now heralded ' Salamanca ' on the colours and standards of thirty-five of our regiments. During the course of that fierce struggle it fell to the lot of Lieutenant Kerr, whose captain had already been shot, to dislodge with a company of Highlanders a party of troublesome Imperial Voltigeurs from a certain crenellated village called Santa Maria de la Peiia.

At a critical moment he was, through the fortune of war, opportunely reinforced by a party of the 3rd ' Ligeros,' gallantly led by a Spanish officer, one Don Atanasio de Ayala, anxious in his burning national pride to imitate, if possible to rival, the exploits of the Northerners. It was a hard-fought day. By the time the Imperials had sullenly but unequivocally yielded the ground, both the Spanish and the English officer were severely wounded. Discovered side by side, scarcely breathing, but still alive, they were carted off to experience together the horrors of a Peninsular ambulance. Both were young men, almost boys. They had seen each other at work, and in the close intimacy in which they were thus thrown cemented such a friendship as is made only amid hardships doughtily shared and dangers met in common.

Now, but for that breathless meeting on the torrid crags of Arapil el Grande, certain human existences would undoubtedly, in distant days to come, when Peninsular events had long passed into the domain of general history, have moved in widely different channels — one of them, indeed, never have issued out of the store of infinite life. CONSEQUENCES 8 In the natural course of things the friends parted, to look upon each other's faces no more. Peace returned ; each in his turn retired to his own home, matured, then married and settled down ; the Spaniard spinning out his life in the true lazy Andalusian way ; the Englishman, when the time came, assuming the reins of government on the ancestral estate of Gilham, where, towards the end of the year 1850, an awkward fall between a double rail terminated his well-filled life at the beginning of its twelfth lustre.

During the course of his allotted span this William Kerr of Gilham had reproduced his existence in three different directions. A first marriage with the daughter of an ancient house had given an heir to the proud name and wide lands of Gilham ; of a second, contracted in the autumn of his Use, were born two other children, who, by the way, through the irregular workings of hereditary chance, proved to be, both in look and temper, far more true Kerrs than the first-born. For the latter, although very consciously proud, as in duty bound, of the headship of his house when it devolved upon him, recalled in no particular, except perhaps an unimpeachable sense of duty, the traditional characteristics — the warm-hearted impulsiveness and easy-going spirit of his father's race. On his accession the new squire naturally became guardian to the offspring of what, in his heart, he had always held as his sire's senile folly.

Of these, the boy, George, was at that time half-way through his teens, and Susie on the threshold of womanhood — just an age when the unwelcome charge was likely to give their guardian most trouble. He was, however, soon reheved of half his burden, for the year of mourning was scarcely out before Susie left the Court to bestow herself, and her little independent fortune, on a certain handsome, intellectual, penniless curate, HUlyard by name, and joyfuUy set up house in a humble Kentish parsonage on three hundred a year and her darling brother George's blessing — a commodity which this young gentleman very graciously bestowed on the couple, thou-*h personaUy he could not be said to think much of curates. But George it was who all his Use had been a thorn in the present squire's side, and he was not so easUy got rid of — a perpetual dis turbing element in the matter of Gilham's otherwise satisfactory existence, even from distant Eton.

Things, bad enough in his unruly boyhood, were at their worst between them when Alma Mater opened her arms to the scapegrace. AU the Kerrs who were not soldiers had been Trinity men ; and George repairing thither as a matter of course, his career under the shadow of those time honoured walls became, in the estimation of a person of his step brother's temperament, nothing short of scandalous. In truth, it was a succession of ridiculous scrapes and escapades which gave the pompous guardian the most exquisite irritation. On his side, Master George, who considered himself unwarrant ably hectored and curbed, and kept on an ungentlemanly short aUowance, gradually fought shy of returning to his old home, despite his pretty sister-in-law's concUiating and welcoming presence. And so, there having grown no feeling but of mutual dislike between the strait-laced methodical squire and his head strong, ' good-for-nothing ' half-brother — who, indeed, according to the former's innermost ideas, had no business to exist at all — it was but natural that when the young man came of age, and into the unfettered possession of his own money, he should shake off his elder's control with the smallest delay possible.

This was the time when England, after forty years of peace, and at the lowest of mihtary disorganization, having settled in grim earnest to her contest with her ever-rampant Eastern rival, was sending the cream of her manhood to the Crimea. The first use George made of his delightful new Uberty was to drop academic pretensions, and to buy a commission in the Highland regiment that had known his father so well. And, curiously enough, this first independent act was the only one he ever took which met with the unmitigated approval of the head of his house, who, however strongly he might have objected to the profession in peace-time, as a snare and a pitfaU for idle youth, now sincerely wished hnn a martinet of a colonel, and even considered, without too much discomposure, the possible prospect of a soldier's grave in the neighbourhood of Sebastopol.

In any case, as the conscientious brother told himself with satisfaction, the stern ex perience of active service was bound to reheve the young man of some of that superfluous energy which, at home, was attended with such indecorous and inconvenient results. Hard and grim, however, as that experience proved, it was far from effecting the desired amendment. On leaving Krim Tartary, the proud regiment, prouder than ever, though much thinned and battered, after its two years of relentless CONSEQUENCES 10 campaigning, was quartered at Gibraltar, and proceeded to enjoy a period of weU-earned rest. George, who had escaped scot-free from the hazard of lead and steel, was changed in no way from the scatter-brain, dare-devil undergraduate, save perhaps by an increase of adventurous spirit, coupled with the foolhardiness of one who had seen Death at close quarters, only to laugh hi his face.

And it was near that stately Rock, where the Union Jack so proudly yet so strangely floats at the extreme confine of Europe, that a more serious pitfaU, an adventure more likely to prove exasperating to the representative Kerr of Gilham than any of the boyish escapades he had hitherto indulged in, lay hi wait for George. Andalusia in the spring of the year is, one may take it, a place where a young man of naturally warm, reckless fancy and athletic temperament easUy loses his Northern dehberation, to say the least of it. Now, the subaltern, not a whit depressed by his many months of trench life and the restraint of the following period of somewhat severe regimental discipline, delighted to have an opportunity of gratifying his love of adventure, resolved to spend his first leave in wandering about Southern Spain, then supposed to be the home of all that was romantic, beautiful and dangerous.

And, refusing all offers of companionship, scoffing at the warnings of his elder and the prophecies of his younger comrades, he flung himself headlong into the arms of that fascinating land — determined to enjoy to the uttermost aU that it was capable of yielding — to faU promptly, as do all who are blessed or cursed with poetic fancy, under its most indescribable charm. What is it gives Spain so extraordinary a spell ? it would be hard to say precisely ; but the sunny existence, the graceful dress, dignified old-world courtesy, old-world habits ; the magnificent, sonorous tongue, so sweet in love, so grave and rich in earnest discourse ; the passionate yet languorous national music, so stirring to young blood ; the everlasting contrast between its life and joys and the keen competition and hard-earned pleasures of Englishmen —all these things are components of the charm to which George abandoned himself with aU the thoroughness and irreflectiveness that characterized him.

He had reached Seville — SevUle, the jewel of the world, as the Spaniard holds it — towards the spring of the year, the passionate, ripe spring of Spain, which, hke to the maidens of that sun-loved land, flowers from pale immaturity into warm development of beauty with magic quickness ; and there, under the vault of burning blue, amid the contrasting light and shade, in the rambling streets of the old Moorish town, there came to George Kerr one of those episodes which are so slight, so trivial, as to pass, in many instances, all unnoted in a lifetime, but which nevertheless, as has been said, bring in their train consequences strange, unforeseen, and destined, perchance, to change a man's whole destiny. In the serene enjoyment of that soundness of body and freshness of mind which belong by right to the blessed age of two-and-twenty, the young warrior, immersed in complacent appreciation of his well-merited speU of freedom and laziness, was sauntering down a narrow, sUent, deserted street, towards those middle hours of the day when the Spaniard seeks his siesta, and when, according to his sententious saying, ' only dogs or Englishmen walk abroad.' One of the quaint wrought-iron gateways which mark the entrance to some private house, through the fantastically interlacing bars of which the passer-by can usually descry the fresh foliage of palm, pomegranate, and orange-trees filling the umbrageous inner court yard, arrested his pleasantly vague attention.

He stopped, rolling a cigarette, and gazed through the scroll-work at the mysterious nook, while a desire, curious in its suddenness, to see something of the inner life, something more than the threshold of such a dwelling, took possession of him. ' Now, here is a place,' thought he, ' with a charming capacity for romance. Dehcious experiences might await a man in just such a house as this — if he only had the key of the gate.' He lit his cigarette and pondered. And as he abstractedly listened to the monotonous ripple of a fountain, hidden behind the tantalizing screen of verdure, the capricious wish grew and grew in intensity, until it became almost a resolve. AU at once, with fantastic opportuneness, a delightful idea flashed across his mind. His father, from oft-quoted accounts, had had a certain Spanish comrade in the old fighting days.

This gallant foreign officer, Don Something or other de Ayala, whose miniature portrait, in sky-blue and silver, hung even now in the smoking room at Gilham, haUed, if memory was not at fault, from Seville. What if he hunted the old gentleman up? presuming him, of course, to be still in the land of the living— and why not? His father might even now be in the flesh and hearty, had it not been for the gray mare's stumble. At any rate, luck would be sorely CONSEQUENCES 12 against him if the old hidalgo had left no descendants. As a matter of duty, he must have seen to that, before going over to the majority, and they, perchance, abode in just such a paradise as this ! At all hazards, it was worth the trying. And so weU did his energy, and a fair amount of luck, serve his new purpose, that before sundown, not only had he found out that his father's old friend was alive, actuaUy in SeviUe, and ascertained his address, but had likewise gathered sundry particulars concerning his famUy, which consisted, it seemed, but of his wife and a daughter — hermosisima, report said of the latter, a detaU which kept up the interest to its original exalted height.

The following forenoon, of course, saw George at the gate of the house indicated, which he was pleased to find wrought in stiU more delicious vagaries, and affording gUrnpses of a patio even greener, shadier, and more tempting than that which had originaUy inspired him with such curiosity. He sent up his card by the old dark visaged servant, on which, to introduce himself, he had previously written, under the title of his regiment, the words ' ArapU el Grande ' — the name of that place where the Spaniard had proved so true an ally to his sire, amid the blood and smoke and fury of attack. In amused yet eager expectation, he paced up and down the cloisters amongst the orange-trees, starred with white blossoms, which filled the warm air almost to excess with odorous sweetness. A fountain rose and fell in slender, shining, irregular columns in each corner of the fresh gloom.