The Iron Cousin; or, Mutual influence

Front matter

NOVELS AND TALES OF SIR E. BULWEE LYTTON, BART., M.P. STANDARD EDITION. Uniformly printed in Crown Octavo, Corrected and Revised throughout, with nerv Prefaces by the Author, and Frontispieces. LUCRETIA. Cloth, 4s. HAROLD ; The Last of the Saxon Kings. Cloth, 4s, LEILA ; or, The Siege of Granada. Cloth, 2s. ZANONI. Cloth, 3s. 6c.. DEVEREUX. Cloth, 3s. 6_. THE DISOWNED. Cloth, 3s. 6_. ERNEST MALTRAVERS. Cloth, 3s. 6<_. ALICE. Cloth, 3s. 6c.. NIGHT AND MORNING. Cloth, 4s, GODOLPHIN. Cloth, 3s. PILGRIMS OF THE EHINE. Cloth, 2s. 6_ THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. Cloth, 3s. 6_ THE LAST OF THE BARONS. Cloth, 5s. EUGENE ARAM. Cloth, 3s. 6_. PELHAM; or, The Adventures of a Gentleman. Cloth, 3s. fid. PAUL CLIFFORD. Cloth, 3s. 6_ RIENZI ; The Last of the Tribunes. Cloth, 3s. 6. THE CAXTONS will be ready shortly.

MY NOVEL will complete the Series. WORKS OF MR. W. HARRISON AINSWORTE LIBRARY EDITION. Uniformly printed in Demy Octavo, Corrected by the Author, with Illustrations by George Cruihslianh, Qc. THE TOWER OF LONDON. Forty Plates, Cloth, 6s. WINDSOR CASTLE. Cloth, 5s. CRICHTON. Cloth, 5s. LANCASHIRE WITCHES. Cloth. JACK SHEPPARD. Cloth. OLD SAINT PAUL'S. Cloth. THE MISER'S DAUGHTER. Cloth. GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & CO., FAERINGDON STREET. G, THE IRON COUSIN; OR, MUTUAL INFLUENCE. BY MARY COWDEN CLARKE, AUTHOR OF THE GIRLHOOD OF SHAKESPEARE'S HEROINES." "THE COMPLETE CONCORDANCE," ETC. ETC. " For, note thou, Cyuthio, How Iron hath pow'r to rivet, and to ./eld Into itself its kin : while, at the flint's Appeal, its nature,— cold and ..tern— kindled To brilliancy and heat: its stubborn being, too, Subdu'd,— obedient to tbe magnet's law.

So, from opposed strengths, by mutual force, Best sev'ral properties are bora. — By Love's Own might of sublety, what's good and true, Is brought to highest truth, and ..rawn'd perfection." ___. Play. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: ItOUTLEDGE & CO., FARRINGDON STREET 1854. J. BID ING, PK1NTEB AND STKKSOTYPEK WOKlMGj SCABBY, TO MRS. VINCENT NOVELLO, THE MOTHER WHOSE JUSTLY POTENT " INFLUENCE" HAS NEVER BEEN EXERTED BUT FOR THE TRUEST ADVANTAGE OF HER HAPPY CHILDREN, CJlts 3>nnk is Driinttrfr, IN DEEP GRATITUDE, AND FERVENT AFFECTION, BY HER DAUGHTER, THE AUTHOR. THE IEON COUSIN; on. MUTTAL INFLUENCE. (.HATTER I. •' A baby that has got no mother, ma'am, God help it!" The woman who held the child, and uttered these words, was a homely, middle-aged person, decently dressed, so far as an extreme cleanness could render tidy clothes that were in the last stage of darned decay.

Chapter II

Old 'Squire Heathcote, of Heathcote Hall, was a man re markable for two things — excessive obstinacy and exces sive precision. A dictum of his, once pronounced, was irrevocable, and to be abided by, at all events. If he had by any unfortunate chance happened to have said, " I'll be shot if it isn't !" relative to a certain matter that turned out contrary to what he had asserted, he might have been capable of ordering himself out into the court-yard,. with his gamekeepers drawn up in array, to shoot him on the spot. His wife was, happily, the most uncontradictious and submissive of women. She had meekly married him, and after meekly bearing him two children, had meekly lived some few years, and then — meekly died. As is common with people of his character, 'Squire Heathcote was a man of small mind.

His obstinacy and preciseness were conjoined with a limited range of thoughts and sentiments. He was stubbornly bigoted, and stiff neckedly opinionated. He had certain fixed ideas — if ideas they may be called — which were rather notions, vague in their scope, but immutable in their decision. His faculties were not powerful, but headstrong; his understanding not forcible, but pertinacious. He had a sort of tautology of mind; his narrow sphere of intelligence producing veriest repetition of the same images. He had his son christened Henry, which was his own name ; and when he had a daughter born to him, he had called her Henrietta, from sheer lack of intellectual energy, and disin clination towards any fresh exercise of the imagination. His favourite oath was, " By the Lord Harry !" and his usual denunciation, " Go to old Harry !"

He converted pleasures into penalties, by the monotonous style of their appointed recurrence. He would always have a certain kind of party on a certain date ; a ball on such a day, a dinner-party on such another, with exactly the same several sets of guests invited to each. He would have considered it almost an act of moral de linquency to omit having roast leg of mutton at his table on a particular day in each week ; though it sometimes involved a servant's galloping over to the next town in a pelting rain — the distress of a horse — the distraction of the butcher, whose usual supply of meat had failed — and the agitation and anxiety of his meek wife, lest his lordly will should be inevitably thwarted. He would have deemed it a breach of rehgious duty to have anything but roast beef and plum-pudding on Christmas-day ; he made it a scruple of conscience that pancakes should be served on Shrove-Tucsday ; and would have considered it little less than a crime not to eat salt fish on Ash-Wednesday.

He kept all the clocks in the house regular to a second, with his own hand ; although he made no use of his time, or frittered it away as if it were the least valuable of his possessions — as perhaps it was. He was highly incensed if the post did not come in, and the letter-bag were not placed on the breakfast-table punctually to a moment ; though he had no correspondence he cared about, and invariably put off reading his news papers till evening. This he contrived to make another periodical pest ; for — like many despotic readers of news papers — he always read them aloud. Not satisfied with the amusement he derived from their perusal, he insisted on making hearers of whatever luckless persons chanced to be by, however otherwise their attention might be en gaged. He liked to have an audience.

He chose to have an interest taken in his " extraordinary growth of turnips" and " strawberries of prodigious size." If his wife were anxious to slip away and give some forgotten order to the housekeeper, upon which she knew depended the important question of dinner (and consequent peace) for the next day, she must sit still and listen to a long political debate of which she understood not one word ; or if his young daughter were deep in the calculation of knotting stitches, she must "lose count" to mark the particulars of a " melancholy accident," or attend to the details of a "grand boxing-match," for neither of which she cared one jot. He turned luxuries into inflictions by his method of dispensing, withholding, or controlling them. He invested them with so many petty restrictions, so many stiff observ ances, so many troublesome punctilios, which were by no means to be infringed, that people gave up availing them selves of the indulgences in sheer despair at the concomi tant annoyances.

Although no reader, he prided himself on a fine library, a choice collection of books, that he possessed. It had been the cherished acquisition of an an cestor of his, who had taste and judgment sufficient for its selection as well as its enjoyment. Not only as a family heir-loom was it a source of gratification to our 'Squire, but as affording him exercise for his love of precision. He regularly ordered new publications from town, adding them carefully and chronologically to the rest He was very nice in their binding ; and would send a book back to London to be re-bound, if its style were not accurately to his fancy. He would spend whole mornings in his library arranging the volumes — not reading them. He was very particular about their matching and ranging ex actly and evenly on the shelves.

He hated to see gaps, worried while one existed, would search for the missing tome, and if he discovered that it had been fetched away for perusal, would be restless during its absence, and fidget about the person who happened to be reading it. If it were his meek wife, she soon discovered the object of his uneasiness, and dutifully put a period to it by silently and immediately restoring it to its place. If it were his light-hearted daughter, she played with his fidgetiness, pretended not to see its aim, taking neither hint nor in uendo; and when she could no longer feign ignorance of his meaning, she would affect to be weary of the book herself, and, half yawning, half laughing, carry it back to the study and pop it up on the shelf carelessly as might be. As for his son, having originally no bent for literature, he came to hate the sight of books as perpetually associated with some objection, or admonition, or teasing inter posing of authority on the part of his father ; and accord ingly gave them up as a hopeless pursuit, and gave himself up to the more congenial prosecution of his favourite field-sports.

In his personal conformation he was strong and athletic ; in his mental constitution he was somewhat supine. In him were modified the characteristics he in herited from both parents. His mother's meek spirit, in him became mere passive acquiescence with his father's will ; while the latter's precision and obstinacy took the shape of habitual compliance and dogged obedience. He had a rooted dislike to opposition ; and was, both by temperament and circumstance, mild and yielding. Young 'Squire Heathcote, or " Mr. Harry," as he was most frequently styled, was a general favourite with household, tenantry, and neighbourhood. Towards his son and heir the formal old 'Squire entertained a mixed feeling. He took a certain sort of pride in him as the future representative of himself, — the in heritor of his estate, his family greatness, his country honours and consequence, his entire possessions ; but he had at the same time a kind of bttle jealousy of him, — a paltry eagerness to display his present authority over him, a ceaseless desire to maintain a continuance of his power, and a fretful, besetting mistrust of the period when the young man would be emancipated from both.

Of all bving beings, 'Squire Heathcote best loved his daughter Henrietta, or Hetty, as she was familiarly called. After his wife died, his affection for the young girl took a more demonstrative shape than any he had ever exhibited. He would almost brook something less than implicit sub mission from her. He tolerated her sprightly insubor dination, and connived at her lively freedoms. She would gaily disregard all indirect suggestions of his ; and if an absolute command threatened, she would laugh it off. Her father humoured her more than any one in the world ; and, to prevent this indulgence from interfering with his law of irreversible decree, he evaded, as much as possible, pronouncing any in her case, and rarely issued a mandate that regarded her, till he was pretty sure it stood no chance of being disobeyed.

She, like most spoilt people, was not slow to perceive her power over him ; and she was both fond and proud of its exercise ; but her mode was ever so pleasant and sportive, that, far from resenting the ascendancy, he but doted the more on his subduer. Be sides, there was a kind of will in submitting to hers ; he willed to be swayed by his pretty daughter, his favourite child. There was only one occasion when he had a suspicion that she had succeeded in pursuing her own way rather than his, to an extent that he would never have permitted, had he known the exact circumstances in time. There was a Mr. Morton Worthington, son and heir to a neigh bouring country gentleman, of good birth and ancient descent, who possessed the finest estate in the county.

There existed a distant relationship between the two families of Worthington and Heathcote, which the 'Squire hoped to see brought into still nearer alliance by a marriage between Morton and his own daughter Henrietta ; but Mr. Morton Worthington was a young man of reserved manners, grave, stately, self-concentrated ; and though he betrayed unmistakeable e\ .dence of his being irresistibly captivated by the sparkling Hetty, yet he never gave sufficiently declared token of bis attachment, to warrant his being looked upon as her suitor. 'Squire Heathcote, hoping all must eventually take place as he had pre ordained in his own mind, left things to time ; but sud denly, and without his being able to account for the abrupt secession, Mr. Morton Worthington left home, and returned again in a few weeks, accompanied by a bride, as opposed in every particular of feature, person, and dis position to the lively, blooming Hetty, as could possibly be conceived. 'Squire Heathcote could never verify his surmise ; but he had his own misgivings that this match had been ac tually within the power of his daughter, and that she, in her gay heedlessness or wilfulness, had chosen to let it escape her.

He fancied that Mr. Morton Worthington had been surprised into an accidental avowal of his feelings, and that Hetty had, on the spot, rejected him ; but it was then too late to inquire into the facts, and his pride would not allow him to own, even to himself, that he was disappointed. Nevertheless, it rankled long within him ; and it was doubtless this secret vexation at the defeat of his ori .inal views for her disposal, which added a sting to the viru lence of his anger, when he discovered that at a county ball given by some officers who were quartered in the neighbourhood, one of them had dared to fall in love with his daughter, and intended to make proposals for her. His ire knew no bounds ; he raged, he stormed, he vowed the rascally, beggarly scoundrel should never come near his house ; that no pitiful half-pay captain should have his child ; that he would lock her up, and starve her on bread and water, if she so much as thought of encouraging the vagabond, &c. &c. &c. Hetty at first smiled and coaxed, and tried to win her father into better humour ; then she pouted, and in youthful pettishness, declared she could not, and she would not, live without the lover of her choice, threatening to die and leave her old father, purely to vex and shame him for having been so hard with her.

But soon she found it was no jesting matter. The 'Squire was seized with one of his obstinate fits, and swore by the Lord Harry she should never have Captain Ireton by his consent. Hetty, presuming on her influence with her father, and trusting that when once she was a wife he would not refuse his forgiveness, in an evil hour resolved to forego this consent, and to marry Captain Ireton without it. She had no difficulty in persuading her attached nurse to accompany her in her elopement; Matty could deny her beloved Miss Hetty vol. i. c nothing ; and accordingly, one fine June night they made their escape from an open window, hurried across the old park, found Captain Ireton waiting for them, with a post chaise and four, which soon conveyed the runaway daughter away from Heathcote Hall for ever.

The 'Squire's wrath, on the discovery, was fearful. He took a solemn oath that he would never pardon, never see, his daughter more. He called his Maker to witness that he would never forgive any one of his family who should hold intercourse with her. He menaced, not only with disinheritance, but with an eternal curse, his only son, should he ever communicate with her who had made herself an outcast from among them. Harry Heathcote, partlv from habitual submission, partly from believing that his sister would ultimately succeed in winning her way back to her old place in her father's heart, and knowing that her own unaided influence had always had more effect than when seconded by the interference of others, which seemed rather to provoke and confirm resistance, yielded to the fiat. But months crept on, and still her brother heard nothing of Hetty.

Her name was interdicted at Heathcote Hall, therefore he dared not ask his father for tidings, lest he should but exasperate him more against her. He knew that letters occasionally reached his father, addressed in her handwriting ; but he learned nothing of their con tents, until one fatal day, in a burst of passion at some neglect or omission of his steward's, the old 'Squire had an apoplectic fit, which, bringing him to his death-bed, he had called his son to him, and, in an agony of tardily awakened remorse, had shown him Hetty's letters, and desired him, with as articulate an injunction as his para lyzed utterance would permit, to hasten in search of his sister, and bear her father's dying forgiveness. This was an expiring effort of natural feeling, to assert its supremacy over inveterate obstinacy, — a struggle the old man did not long survive ; for he had scarcely given the charge to his son, before he breathed his last.

The young 'Squire lost no time in fulfilling the behest. His first step was to endeavour to trace out from her letters the latest retreat of poor Hetty; for they bore evidence of her having been compelled, from increasing distress and penury, frequently to change it. He found that the last received letter bore the post-mark of Newcastle-upon- Tyne ; and that inside, it contained mention of her lodging being situated in its vicinity ; but this was vaguely stated, as if the writer's thoughts were far more intently fixed upon the old, well-loved home, of which she raved in fond, imploring terms, and to which she distractedly besought leave to return. He had set forth on horseback, with this slender clue, to seek his sister. On reaching the neighbourhood of the great Coal City, he had been induced, by its name, to try first the Ouse Burn, knowing his sister's predilection for rural quiet, and fancying the title of this suburb indicated the kind of spot she would probably choose for her lodging.

But he had hardly entered its precincts, before he felt that the promise of its name was utterly misleading. This was the only remnant of whatever former beauty the place might have possessed. The sole trace now ex isting of the burn or brook which had originally streamed through it, was a dirty mud ditch, foul and noisome, trickling its sluggish ooze between rows of straggling, low houses, or huts. The way was strewn with refuse of all sorts ; iron hoops, tub-staves, broken palings, cinders, old shoes with gaping sides, the upper leathers wrenched c2 apart, and the soles curled up ; a bit of a thin and ragged petticoat ; a rusty pot-bd, bent nearly double ; a few yards farther on, the saucepan itself, full of holes, and a piece of a cracked yellow dels plate, with a crinkly edge. Quitting this region of squalor, he had proceeded as far, in the same direction, as the pretty, secluded, green dell of Jesmond Dean.

Here he had succeeded in gaining some thing bke an indication of the object of his pursuit. He found that a young lady calling herself Sirs. Ireton, dressed in widows' weeds, and accompanied by a middle-aged woman, had tenanted a couple of apartments in one of the neat cottages skbting the embowered cleft. But, unable to pay even the moderate weekly sum demanded for the rent, she had left, very reluctantly, it seemed, both on the part of housekeeper and tenant, for other lodgings more within the compass of her scanty means. The good woman of the house spoke kindly and regretfully of the poor young widow lady and her faithful companion, Martha, saying they were quiet, uncomplaining bodies, and that the latter, especially, was a helpful, sonsy, weel-behaved, canny sort of a person, who thought nothing too good or too choice for her young mistress, whilst she herself was content with anything she could get.

After this, the 'Squire wandered on, day after day, now on the Great North Road, now on the Western Road, now on the old London Road, inquiring at all cottages, and asking at all the poorest houses, that seemed in any way bkely to have accommodated lodgers. Frequently he heard the bell of the fine old church of St. Nicholas chime a late evening hour, as he returned, toil-worn of body, and far more weary of spirit, to his sleeping quarters at the inn in the town. His horse seemed to wonder why his master preferred the *teep streets of Newcastle, varied only by a monotonous, slow, perambulation, about the outlets leading from the town, to the former free gallops along the dewy sward of the park, or the animated course after the hounds. But the 'Squire was too spiritless and sad, even to address his wonted word of sympathy and kindness to his horse.

In silence, and in growing hopelessness, the brother pursued his search ; until one forenoon, by some caprice of intention, for which he could scarce have accounted had it been questioned, he turned his horse's head from the direction of the London Road, whither he had first been proceed ing, and came straight back, through Gateshead, across the Tyne bridge into the town ; where the first object he encountered, was Martha, standing on the kerb-stone, with Hetty's new-born child in her arms.

Chapter III

When the nurse returned to her recollection after the deep swoon into which exhaustion of body and mind had combined to throw her, she would have scarcely been persuaded to remain and recover herself fully ere she sought her young master, had she not remembered that his grief would probably prefer solitude and unwitnessed vent in its first burst of natural emotion. But when a considerable space elapsed and she heard no token of his leaving the chamber, she crept up to the door and tapping gently, went in. She found him sitting by the bedside, his head buried in one arm, which was resting upon the pillow that sup ported the marble face of his young sister — that face which he had never beheld otherwise than blooming in health, and smiles, and careless heart-ease. It was now still and serene ; but it was worn and sunken, and deeply lined with the traces of premature age — that age forced upon youth by a harsh acquaintance with want, anxiety, and bitter experiences.

It was the countenance of a young creature under twenty, made to wear the indent of cares, and faded illusions, and extinct hopes, which should only furrow the cheeks of fourscore, when it has learned a higher and more peaceful hope to supply the fond bright visions, which are the rightful portion of youth. It was a face stricken suddenly old by rigour and relentless will ; a girbsh face sent to the grave with the marks of years upon it, dug there by the inflexibility of a parent's resentment. The impress of the cruel truth he had read in that sweet, sad face, sank deeply and ineffaceably into the heart of the brother ; and as the faithful nurse laid her hand upon his shoulder, with few simple words bidding him take comfort from the thought that he had the child of her they looked upon to protect and live for ; he vowed within himself, sacredly and solemnly, that his sister's infant girl should never know a harsh word, or an unkind deed from him, her adopted father.

He resolved that severity should never inflict upon her the tortures it had wrought her mother; and determined, that from whatever source unhappiness might hereafter be destined to reach her, it shoidd not, at all events, owe its origin to austere treatment. He took the babe gently in his arms, while, with his eyes fixed upon the mournful dead face, he raised the rosy living one to his own, and touched it witb his lips, as he registered the vow within his own soul. The 'Squire was a quiet-mannered, un-demonstrative man ; and to judge from his demeanour, on his return home, few would have guessed the deep sorrow that had been his during that interval of absence. He fell into his old habits; pursued his hunting and sporting with the same apparent zest and relish as before ; was the same even-tempered, cheerful-spirited, simply-behaved, and simply-spoken being as ever.

He took delight in renewing his companionship witb his old associates, and in welcom ing them heartily to a house of which he was now sole, un disputed, and uncontrolled master. His hospitality was genial, frank, and easy. He was never better pleased than, after a hard day's run, to see assembled round his board the sharers of his toils and his glories in the field. Like most of his race, he was a staunch devotee to the pleasures of the table. He ate with the proverbial appetite of a hunter, and drank with proportionate vigour. "A cup of ale," " a cool tankard," " a draught of good old October," " a bumper of claret," or " a tumbler of rich, warm, fruity wine, richly mulled and spiced, just the last thing to send us all snug and comfortable to bed," were among the tempting titles by which the 'Squire was never at a loss to press upon his guests and himself a seasonable glass.

The complacency with which they would quaff large goblets of foaming March beer, as accompaniments to vast slices of cold beef for breakfast, on a sharp, frosty morning, at chilled and earbest day-dawn, was something wonderfully invigorating. The boisterous alacrity with which they sat down to table and fell to at the fish, flesh, and fowl, pie and pasty, joints of roast and boiled, with high-heaped piles of smoking vegetables, proclaimed their giant capacities for the enjoyment of the good cheer with a force that would have inspired sympa thetic relish in one who had just dined. The only period in the twenty-four hours during which the 'Squire's even temper was ever known to discover something of an abated patience, was the expectant half-hour that precedes the servmg of dinner. He would walk about his large draw ing-room half restless, half listless, with the air of a man who could settle to nothing, and knew not what to do with himself.

He would lounge in the deep window-seat, drumming his fingers against the panes and looking vacantly out across the park ; come back to the hearth-rug, stand with his legs wide-stretched, and his back towards the fire, with balancing toes and heels, and upturned coat tails ; bite his nails, play with the bell-pull, stir the fire, or twirl the old-fashioned India screen round and round between his fingers and thumb ; then fling himself into an arm-chair with a yawn like one of his own hounds gaping. Once, in his ruffled abstraction, he chanced to ring the bell with some scarce-formed intention of desiring them to see if dinner could not be hurried, or if the clocks were not slow, or if the cook had not fallen asleep, when, — instead of the expected servant who usually an swered the summons, in walked Matty, with her bttle charge in her arms.

The 'Squire, with a bachelor's instinctive diffidence of his powers as a nurse, had hitherto seen but little of his baby niece. He shared the feelings of most unmarried men with regard to children of that age. He fancied its neck looked insecure, and as if its head would roll off, were he to attempt to dandle it. He had a momentary dread of its slipping out of his arms, and entertained a secret, perpetual fear that, at any unexpected instant, it might begin to scream. He had, therefore, appomted a set of airy apartments, rather remote from his own than otherwise, as its nursery ; installing Martha as head-nurse, and investing her with full powers to order any and every tiling needful, for the accommodation of baby Kate ; but, contenting hbnself with these provisions for her welfare, he had quietly made up his mind to put off, tiU a more seasonable opportunity, any personal communication with herself.

But nurse Matty did not entirely approve of such an arrangement. Although it left all things to her judgment and experience, and although it involved no neglect of baby's essential advantage, yet it betokened a default of interest in the little one's growth, and appearance, and increase of intelligence, that could not be reconciled with what a doting nurse conceived to be its due. She wanted its uncle to see how well it throve, to see its pretty ways, to be charmed by its winning innocence, to learn to love it, and prize it, and fondle it, as so perfect a darbng de served. And, to say truth, it was a lovely bttle creature, very beautiful in shape, in face, and in movement. Its well-rounded, flexible bmbs, its regular features, and dimpled cheeks, and waxen complexion, its bright, curly hair, with a sprightly alert grace in its every look and gesture, denoted that a few months had insensibly changed it from new-born helplessness and passiveness into the individuality and attractiveness of an interesting child.

Its appearance, borne by Matty, was the signal for a general view-holla from the assembled sportsmen, loud, sharp, and ringing, enough to have startled an ordinary child into a roar of dismay ; but baby Kate crowed, and danced, and leaped in the nurse's arms, as though she enjoyed the noise, and debghted in the brilliant red coats that surrounded her. The shout of welcome was repeated again and again, while the gentlemen gathered about the pretty child, asking laughing questions about her of their host, and each making advances to take her from the nurse. " Gently, gently, gentlemen," said the latter ; " you'll frighten her, mayhap, if you crowd around her so, and take her suddenly away from me she's used to." But the little one seemed nowise alarmed, only hugging rather closer to Matty, while she continued to eye the scarlet-coated huntsmen with smiles of evident approval.