Miss Balmaine's Past

Front matter

MRS. CROKER'S NOVELS. PRETTY MISS NEVILLE. Crown Svo, cloth extra, 3*. 6* , post 8vo, illustrated boards, zs. ; cloth limp, 2s. 6d. "We cannot confidently say whether B. M. Croker may be a lady or gentle man, and in intimating as much we pay him — we shall assume the male sex foi convenience — a very high compliment. That the author is a lady we are never theless inclined to believe, for the novel is thoroughly feminine in the delicate touches that lighten the flirtations, and ia the details of costumes with their colours, which are apparently by an expert. At the same time, when 6eld sports have to be dealt with, the author appears to be equally at home. And although he relates the autobiography of a fashionable young lady, the story embraces a considerable range of incident ; and we are almost constrained to address him with the stock sentence of flattering criticism, and pronounce that there is not a dull page in his volume from the beginning to the end." — Saturday Review.

PROPER PRIDE. Crown Svo, cloth extra, 3*. 6d. ; post 8vo, illustrated boards, zs. ; cloth limp, 2s. 6d. " Mr. Gladstone was observed the other night, during a heated debate, to be reading a novel I Some curiosity was manifested to ascertain the name of the particular romance with which he was endeavouring to beguile the weary hours ; and it is satisfactory to state that it was ■ Proper Pride.' This is the novel which the leading journal reviewed twice within a month."— Gwr/ Journal. A BIRD OF PASSAGE. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3*. 6d. ; post 8vo, illustrated boards, zs. ; cloth limp, zs. 6d. " It is a long day since we read anything much prettier or more amusing than the doings and sayings of Miss Dennis and her friends at Port Blair. Every character in this very pleasant and wholesome book is as lifelike as a portrait can be.

Thackeray himself never drew such Irish of the peasant class as Biddy McGravy and Larry Flood." — Standard. DIANA BARRINGTON. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, $s. 6d. ; post Svo, illustrated boards, zs. ; cloth limp, Zs. 6d. u Mrs. Croker has done good work before, but her present effort is a distinct advance on all her previous ventures. There is an infectious gaiety about it that is immensely refreshing, and the heroine is as bright and frank a creature as we have met for a long time. The narrative is exceedingly picturesque and full of vivid touches, while the dialogue bristles with good things. Mrs. Croker is as much at home in depicting the sights and sounds of the jungle as she is in chronicling all the social events ofa gay military station. In Peggy Magee, whose brogue has lost none of its freshness during twenty years' exile in what she calls a dissolute wilderness, and who never murdered any language but her own, Mrs. Croker has given a pleasant picture of an unconventional Irishwoman.

Chapter I

Down in a desolate part of the south of England, bordering on the celebrated " Romney Marsh," and between that and the sea, there is what we should call a village, but its inhabitants dignify by the name of a "town," and boast that they have a charter dating from the time of Edward the Confessor ; that the famous Earl Godwin was once lord of the manor; and proudly declare themselves to be dwellers in one of the most ancient townships between the four seas. Be that as it may, two long straggling streets, a few outlying red houses, with steep roofs, and the Norman church, are all that remain of its former importance. The houses are old — very old — remarkable curiosities in their way, with odd little windows, and queer doors in unexpected situations ; the village is unchanged in outward appearance since George the First was king, and the people themselves are staid and old-fashioned — the descendants, in many cases (low be it spoken), of smugglers.

The hamlet of Horton stands in a kind of oasis between Romney Marsh — which cuts it off from civili zation, as it were, for miles on one side — and thousands B of acres of waste land, stolen from the sea, on the other. Horton is out ofthe world— a locality in some respects as lonely as if it were in the backwoods of America. Even in the old days, it was beyond the track of stage-coaches. No spanking, smoking teams ever rattled up to the Merry Sailor inn. It was too far from the shingly shore, and too exposed for a fishing station, and too isolated by marsh lands, to have any railway in its neighbourhood. How or why people live there it is difficult to under stand, unless it is from pure force of habit, and being mostly in thriving circumstances — owning their own solid houses, and cultivating their own bleak bit of land, which has descended to them from their ill-doing, but well-to-do forefathers.

One or two families of the upper ten still cling to this out-of-the-world spot. There is Horton Manor : just at the end of the village, with six great elm trees on guard beside its gates ; the ivy-covered walls enclosing it run alongside of a shady lane (for there are plenty of hardy evergreen oaks all round Horton), and inside these walls there is a quaint old red-brick house, standing on a gravel sweep, with regular rows of small windows, peaked gables, and a high-tiled roof. At the back, it opens upon a large enclosure, half garden, half pleasure ground, with splendid trees dotted here and there, long straight walks, a noted mulberry tree, and a thatched summer-house. There were strange stories current about the Manor in former times ; people said that the amount of cellarage was out of all proportion to the size of the house, and lhat the Balmaines, from father to son, had been the hereditary chiefs of the smugglers in Horton.

The present inhabitant of the Manor was a frail old lady (reputed to be a miser), who never stirred across the threshold from one year's end to another. She lived almost entirely in two rooms on the second floor, and dressed in the fashion of a dead-and-gone generation, wearing a short-waisted black gown, a white net handkerchief fastened at her throat by a little garnet brooch, and disposed in folds across her chest, and a monstrous black cap. She stooped a good deal now, and walked with a gold-headed stick, and was not quite as clear in her memory, or her sight, as she had been ten years previously. This was old Mrs. Balmaine of Horton, the owner of the Manor, and of a great deal besides, in the shape of land, tenements, shares, scrip, old lace, old china, old jewels, and a most ungovernable temper.

She was the possessor of something else as well, something that she prized in a drowsy, undemonstrative fashion : a grand-daughter, her dead son's only child, Rosamond Balmaine ; and Rosamond did not belie her name, for she was as beautiful in her own style as the fairest and sweetest flower that ever bloomed alone and unnoticed among a wilderness of brambles. The old madam had been a Balmaine by birth, and, retaining her maiden name, had married a good-looking young squire, whom, as long as he lived, she had adored, and ruled with a rod of iron. But one grey winter afternoon, her husband was brought home to her dead ; he had broken his neck out hunting, and she was left a widow — a hand some, rich, well-born widow — with one son, a little boy of four years old. Mrs. Kitty Balmaine never took another spouse.

Why it was that she resisted every offer, whether she was too much attached to the memory of her late husband, or whether men were too much afraid of her well-known "Balmaine temper," ever remained an un solved problem. She resided at Balmaine Court (a place about sixty miles from Horton), duly put her heir into jackets, whipped him soundly and frequently, and finally sent him to school. Undismayed by her husband's fate, she hunted for years, with a courage and persistence that called forth immense admiration from the male sex, who were often compelled to follow the bold widow's lead ; but their stay-at-home wives and daughters cast up their hands and eyes when they heard of Madam Balmaine's feats in a scarlet riding habit, on a thoroughbred piebald hunter. But Madam Balmaine did not care a straw for the squiresses, nor for what they said of her behind her back ; in her presence it would be a truly bold woman who dared to look askance at Kitty Balmaine.

In due time her son Tom grew up, went into the army (in spite of his mother), spent his money like a man, and married — married a nobody without a penny, with nothing to recommend her but a small waist and a pretty face — a mere attorney's daughter, who had danced and flirted herself into the good graces of Lieutenant Balmaine. His mother was beside herself; she had never heard of the match until it was all arranged. And she had had a fair-haired, well-born bride, with a somewhat large nose, put aside in her own mind for Tom — and he had anticipated her, and pleased himself! Madam Balmaine was fond of her son, and between grief and rage, she was nearly crazy ; her domestics had anything but a happy time for some weeks subsequent to the wedding. Tom — who was an intrepid young man —boldly brought his bride to the Court, and his mother for the occasion put a strong restraint upon herself.

There were no triumphal arehes, no feastings, no bon fires ; but she sent her own carriage-and-four to meet the happy pair, and received her new daughter on the hall-door steps and kissed her. But the bride (whose head was completely turned by her success in marrying the owner of this splendid mansion, and widespreading, well-timbered park) accorded the old lady a frosted salute, with an air of great condescension, and then haughtily requested " to be shown to h-er room." She was not aware that Madam Balmaine was monarch of all she surveyed, and that Tom had not an acre or a penny of his own, or she would not have patronized her mother-in-law, and asked for this, and ordered that, and conducted herself as if she was the mistress, and the other a mere deposed and powerless potentate. The old lady had a serious, not to say stormy, interview with her son a week later, and ordered him to explain matters fully to Theresa.

He might remain at the Court, but she would depart at once, and remove bag and baggage to Horton Manor, where she had been born. This intelligence the bride hailed with delight, and actually danced and skipped about the room in a childish and ridiculous manner. The old woman had "cleared out." She was mistress of the position ; the victory was hers, and, she audaciously added, "that she had made herself obnoxious purposely, with this delightful end in view." But she did not clap her hands and dance when she saw all the old pictures and plate removed, the family lace and diamonds packed up, and the carriages and horses, and the fine staff of liveried servants, dis persed as by an enchanter's wand. "Balmaine Court and five hundred a year!" she screamed. " Was that the allowance the old witch offered them ?

Why, it was beggary. Tom must remain in the Service, and the Court must be let." For they were both young people who had extravagant tastes. A lady's maid and valet, a carriage and pair, dinners and opera-boxes, jewels and dress, soon swallowed up their cash, and they found themselves heavily ia debt. There was nothing for it but to go to India ; and young Mrs. Balmaine was the more determined upon this step, knowing that it would be highly distasteful to her mother-in-law, whose objections and protestations were made to deaf ears, but her large bribe was secretly pocketed by Mrs. Tom, who with her husband sailed for the East in a P. and O. steamer, after a brief and merry career in England. A year later, Tom died of fever in Barrackpore, and his widow despatched her only child (a little girl of six months old) to the care of her grandmother, in charge of an ayah, and accompanied by a black-edged letter, with a border so deep that there was barely space for an address upon the envelope.

" The sweet child was far too precious to be kept in that dreadful country, which had deprived her of her darling Tom. She herself was in such poor health that the doctors had forbidden her to venture the voyage, and therefore she was going to the hills with some kind and sympathetic friends, and would return to England before the next hot weather." But Mrs. Thomas Bal maine never returned. She liked India ; she had far more congenial society out there than would be likely to fall to her lot at home, cooped up with a malignant old woman, who would expect her to sit in sackcloth and ashes, and to mourn as a widow all the days of her life. She married — married after less than twelve months — a handsome young officer of Engineers, who died — in fact, he committed suicide — within five years, leaving her a widow for the second time.

Still she did not return home. Still she clung to the Indian hills, an nouncing her punctual departure each hot weather, and invariably finding some plausible reason for remaining where she was. Finally, she had taken for her third husband an elderly and somewhat impecunious colonel, who was at last enjoying an excellent staff appointment at Simla ; and the prospect of Rosamond meeting her mother, Mrs. Brice, was now, if anything, more remote than ever. Rosamond had spent all her childhood at Horton ; then she had been sent to a select establishment at Brighton — kept by a lady who "offered every advantage, religious and educational," for the sum of two hundred guineas per annum. As she was now seventeen, she was not to return to school after the holidays, and it became a much-debated question between the old lady and Maggs, her confidential maid, " What was to be done with her ?

" She ought to go into society and be seen, and make a good match ; but who was to take her? They had no acquaintances, and no friends beyond Dr. Black and his wife, and the old rector, Mr. Cameron. "However, Rosamond is young, and she has plenty of time yet," was her grandmother's way of winding-up the subject, as Maggs put her to bed, left a bowl of posset beside her, the lozenges within easy reach, settled the night light in the most approved manner, and put up the fire-guard. Madam Balmaine did not take her meals downstairs. Rosamond invariably breakfasted alone ; afterwards she paid a visit to her grandmother, read her the morn ing psalm and the daily paper, was lectured a little about holding herself badly, poking her chin, or crossing her feet, and was free for the day — the great, long, empty day!

After she had wandered round the garden, snipped off some flowers, practised for an hour, what was there to do with the huge gaping hours of a summer's after noon ? — especially in a place like Horton, where there were no neighbours, no shopping, no tennis, no lending library — not even a clothing club ! It was worse than a convent, for there was companionship and ample occupation ! Here was a pretty, a startlingly pretty girl, her own mistress, so to speak, with absolutely no employment! What an opportunity for him who finds some mischief still for idle hands to do ! So old Madam Balmaine dozed and woke up again, and dozed once more in an armchair at her open window, or read venerable novels — her own contemporaries — and talked a little to herself, and munched liquorice ball, whilst her sole heiress, her beautiful grand-daughter, the Rose of I lorton, ran with hasty, elastic steps over the green turf across "the Marshes." To meet, of course, a young man.

Chapter II

And how came Rosamond Balmaine to know a young man, much less to be running to meet him, this lovely July afternoon, just as the shadows of the trees were beginning to stretch themselves upon the short turf? Ah ! thereby hangs a tale. About six weeks previously, Rosamond and her little puppy Dash had rambled a long way from home. The young lady was an excellent walker, and knew every inch of " the Marshes," as they were called, and with good reason. Had she not been brought up on them ever since she could toddle? This particular evening she rambled aimlessly along inland, and from the scrubby, somewhat bleak pasture, she approached alders fringing grassy roads, and a part of the world intersected in all directions by sluggish dykes. Not a soul had she seen. There was a dead, an almost oppressive, silence around her, and the rapid noiseless flight of roostward winging birds caused her to recollect, with a start, that it was time she, too, was going homewards ; but she had no desire to retrace her steps in the same track.

She cut across the next flat, and over a stile into what she believed to be the little-used high road that led back to Horton. No, Miss Balmaine was in no hurry to return ; she had experienced what it was to sit indoors these lovely summer evenings bolt upright in grandmamma's dressing-room, relating all she had seen — not much, beyond the cows and crows — knitting a good piece of the old lady's stocking, taking up dropped stitches, and reading aloud Rasselas, or the " Old English Baron," which she almost knew by heart, and finally, brewing her grandmother her nightly jorum of port-wine negus, with more wine than hot water, and plenty of sugar and nutmeg. Ugh ! how she hated the smell of it ! And why would grandmamma always keep her windows hermetically scaled ? Thinking of these things, the young lady loitered along, and coming to a stile in the hedge, turning into a lane, rested her elbows on the top bar, and her chin on her hands, and gave herself up to maiden meditation entirely — fancy free.

It was no wonder she was called the " Wild Rose of Horton," said the kw strangers who had seen her. In figure she was tall and very slight — too slight, but then she was only seventeen. Her hair was brown and abundant, and gathered up at the nape of her neck in one thick coil ; her face was oval, her complexion like the wild roses in the hedges around her, and her dark eyes looked out between the longest, blackest lashes that ever swept a pretty cheek. She wore a white dress, with a massive silver belt, a silver necklet and bangles, all Indian work — gifts from her far-away stranger mother ; a crimson rose was stuck in her breast, her straw hat hung over her arm, and her dog lay at her feet. A man must have been hard to please, if he declared that he had ever seen a prettier picture than that presented by Rosamond and Dash as they rested by the stile and watched th» red sun sink lower and lower beneath the flat horizon.

"We must be going home, Dash," she said, rousing herself at last. "It is getting near supper-time, and we have three good miles before us " — springing lightly over the stile, and landing in the lane as agile as a deer ; but as she did so she uttered a smothered ex clamation of astonishment and dismay, for standing beside her (having just slipped out from the shelter of the hedge) was a burly, ferocious-looking tramp. " Jail Bird " was written all over him in legible characters ; his hair was closely shorn to his evil looking, sloping skull (he was probably out two days), little sharp ferret eyes gleamed from under a regular pent-house of a forehead — little eyes that looked at Miss Balmaine's silver ornaments with the critical glance of a connoisseur. He wore shabby fustian clothes, of the " dog-fancier cut," a fur cap, and a dirty red woollen comforter, and he was certainly not the sort of person in whom you felt an invincible reliance at first sight, nor yet exactly the character you would care to meet — were you a solitary young lady — in a lonely lane, about three miles from home, at eight o'clock in the evening.

Rosamond choked down her feelings, and taking her hat from her arm, was about to resume it, and pass on with all the sangfroid that she could muster. " I beg your pardon, miss," said the tramp, in an oily voice, " but might I ask what o'clock it is ? That dog o' yourn don't bite, do he ? " " I cannot tell you the hour ; I have not my watch — about eight o'clock," she returned nervously. " No, he never bit any one in his life. Come away, Dash." " I beg pardon, miss, for making so bold, but maybe you are going to Horton, and could point me out the way, or let me walk alongside of you " — with a leer. "In these lonely roads I am a bit nervous, and would be glad of your company." " The road to Horton lies straight before you. Please to pass me. I hate any one walking beside me." " Do you, now " — glancing about cautiously — " except your young man !

Well, I'm not one o' your nasty particulars. I like walking alongside o* a pretty girl as well as any one. I suppose, now, yer wouldn't give me a kiss,"would yer ? " — and he rubbed his unshorn chin, and grinned hideously. To this Rosamond made no reply, but her heart began to beat very fast, and she became red and white by turns. " If yer don't, you know, I'll be obliged to take those pretty little silver things from you — and that would be a pity, now, wouldn't it?" "Wretch, robber!" said Rosamond, pausing and con fronting him, "you would not dare!" — regarding him with pallid cheeks and blazing eyes. "Dare indeed!" — with a hoarse, mocking laugh, seizing one of her hands. At this his victim gave a shrill scream, and he added ferociously — " Scream away I You may scream yourself hoarse, and none will hear you.

No one comes this 'ere road — for I know it well — more often than once a week. If you give any bother I'll cut your caterwauling throat ! Hand over that belt o' yourn— do you hear ?— or I shall take it Come ! " Rosamond, with wild and agonized looks, glanced up and down the lane— no help of any sort, no one in sight, no one coming— and with trembling fingers unclasped the heavy Indian circlet, and handed it over. "Golly, it's a tidy weight!" he said, weighing it approvingly. "Now, my sweet young woman, I'll trouble you for the necklet." Her necklet was very, very slowly detached : any thing to gain time. "Yes, my dear, it's a very nice necklet, and I see that the bracelets match it. We won't part them." Having secured the bangles, he surveyed his trembling victim critically, and said — " Hold up your hands.

No rings ! That's bad. No watch — worse still. However, I am a very easy-going fellow ; a little contents me, and I don't mind letting you run off home to your supper, if you give me a real good hearty kiss." " Never ! " she cried passionately. " You may kill me first ! " — springing past him with such speed, and so unexpectedly, that she had run about ten yards before the ruffian realized that she was gone. But he was not called " Supple Jack " for nothing ; and in a second he was after her. Fast as she ran — fear adding wings to her feet — he ran faster, howling out oaths and threats of a description calculated to turn the blood of an ordinary young woman into ice in her veins ; stupid, foolish Dash, galloping by his agonized mistress with cheery barks, and evidently thinking the whole affair capital fun, and just what he was longing for — a race.

The tramp was gaining at every step, and Rosamond was convinced that he would murder her now. Her hair was undone, her breath failing, her eyes nearly glazed with terror ; still she ran on and on, and at the corner of the lane came into violent collision with another man — a gentleman this time. She was saved ! This gentleman, who happened so fortunately to be on the spot, was a Mr. Ronald Gordon, a civil engineer, who had been sent down to prospect and report on a part of the Marsh, on behalf of a railway company. He had his head-quarters at a little hamlet within a mile of this particular locality, and had been hard at work for the last week. As to his antecedents, Ronald Gordon was one of the younger branches of a very old and well-connected Scotch family, and an only child. His father had been wealthy ; and in his younger days Ronald had seldom a wish ungratified.

He had pos sessed a pony, a watch, and a gun at an age when other boys merely dream in a hazy way of such splendid possibilities. He had received a first-class education — no expense spared — and had been that rara avis, a rich boy, with fine prospects, who had brains, and had used them ; and it was well that he had done so, for in a disastrous bank failure his father lost every penny, and had, in his old age, to begin the world afresh. Ronald now found his talents of some use. He became a civil engineer, and was beginning to make his way slowly, but surely. He and his father lived together — his mother had been dead for years — and "scraped along," as he called it, comfortably enough. Of course, there was no Lafitte Claret (1864), no brougham, no Havanna cigars, for the old gentleman, but there was a good plain dinner, a comfortable arm chair, and a meerschaum pipe, and he still (by his son's commands) kept up his subscription to the old " Sur vivors " club— there he saw the papers and played a rubber of whist — and on the whole he felt that, with such a good son, and his commercial reputation per fectly spotless, life was worth living, after all.

His son was known to be a rising man, and he had ruined himself to pay his bank creditors. (There were no solid sums put slyly away in other people's names ; every spoon, table-cloth, and chair was sacrificed to a high sense of honour.) Therefore, not more than three quarters of his old friends dropped him gently and gradually, and forgot the days when they had sat at his table, and shot over his moors. Ronald Gordon was seven-and-twenty, tall, dark, and good-looking, without being strikingly handsome. He had more the air of a smart cavalry officer than a plodding, hard-working civil engineer ; and, indeed, just before the family crash he had been gazetted to a crack regiment. He did not go in for ladies' society. He had no leisure for " butterflying," as he called it, in London drawing-rooms ; his time meant money, and he could not afford to squander it.

Of course, he had his ovjn ideas about things, and what the one perfect and ideal woman would be like ; but he never dreamt that he would come across her in such a forsaken, forgotten corner of the world as Horton Marshes ! He had been measuring distances all day and walking miles. His last feat had been to climb a crumbling old tower (which had neither name, fame, or history), and view the landscape o'er for the last time. It had a broken stone stair, leading to an upper floor, where a yawning aperture at either side gave four different views of the country. When he looked out of one he beheld Horton Marsh and the sea ; out of another Horton village and the tall church spire ; out of another — what? A girl in white, in a lane close by, a man threatening her, and a barking useless fool of a dog !

The man was a tramp; the girl There was no time to speculate. In another moment he was headlong down the stairs and across the field, and into a road which debouched upon the scene in question. Here she came, running like the wind, and the ruffian after her. " Save me ! save me ! " she panted breathlessly ; and in a second he had interposed between her and her pursuer, who, unable to stop his headlong career, was brought up by a strong hand — a hand stronger than his own, and that was saying a good deal — on the collar of his coat. " What the devil are you doing to this young lady ? " — shaking him like a rat as he spoke. " Has he robbed you ? " — turning]to Rosamond, who stood by gasping for breath, and trembling all over, like an aspen leaf. "Yes, he has taken my belt and necklet and bangles."