Mr. and Mrs. Herries. A novel, etc

Front matter

MR. AND MRS. HERRIES 1WTR. AND MRS. HERRIES A NOVEL IN ONE VOLUME MAY CROMMELIN AUTHOR OF "MIDGE" "VIOLET VYVIAN " "M.F.H." "QUEENIE" "GOBLIN GOLD" ETC. ETC. HonDon 1892 HUTCHINSON AND CO. 25 PATERNOSTER SQUARE To a most kind and old friend, The Dowager Marchioness of Downshire, who has taken so warm an interest in the fortunes of " Mr. and Mrs. Herries," and whose late Sussex home forms a background to the picture of their marriage — and courtship — This Story is Affectionately Dedicated. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I I II i7 III, ... 29 IV 40 v. Si VI 56 VII 65 VIII 77 IX. ...* 90 X. ... ... ... ... ... ... 102 XI in XII 120 XIII 131 XIV 146 XV 156 XVI. ... 163 XVII 17° XVIII ■•• 177 XIX ••■ 185 XX x97 XXI. 2o6 XXII 2l6 XXIII 223 XXIV. ... ■■• 23«

Chapter I. The

dust lay thick on the road. For a mile and a half back, the straight, dull highway was patched with long stretches of broken stones. On either side the fields were pleasant enough, but no paths just there crossed the wide stubble. Stephen Herries looked wistfully across the strag gling hedges, white also with dust. Duchess, his dog, looked too, poked her nose into the dusty grass, then came back to his side, wagged her tail, and looked up in his face. Herries stooped down and patted the setter. " We must not disturb the partridges, old girl. You hear somebody shooting — never mind ; you will see somebody else soon who will pet you and make much of you. Are you tired ? Nonsense ! I might be, after trudging six miles, only to see her ; but you have not had malarial fever." Stephen Herries was so bronzed in complexion that one hardly noticed that he was really pale.

Evidently B he had been living in a hot climate lately, and still wore " the burnished livery of the sun," as evidently his service had been a trying one. He was a spare, slightly made man, which gave him an air of greater height than he really possessed ; but he was active, well knit, though hardly strong. His face was thin — too long and narrow — and his eyes were those of a dreamer — they were introspective. As they strayed now across the wide fields, which had lately been waving with golden grain, he saw but little of the prospect, for in inward vision he was looking at a woman's face — small, eager, delicate, with brilliant eyes, and a fashionable mass of frizzled hair ; dreamily he beheld, too, the vague vision of a slender frail figure. Not a strong man, but a thinker. His brown hair was thinning on his temples ; he wore a slight drooping moustache, and his air and manner in describably proclaimed him a man of the world.

He was in reality a diplomat by profession, a country gentleman in heart, a dilettante as to tastes, and a traveller as much by choice as from circumstances. Herries was tired, dusty, almost ashamed of himself; for when a man has entered his thirties he seems somewhat old for the freaks of love which may seem fitting enough for a boy of one-and-twenty ; and yet here he was walking six miles from Wykhurst Place only to see Adelaide Ferrars, only to have her society "to himself" as he mentally expressed it, though in all probability he should meet her this evening again. The sound of wheels approaching along the road struck his ear ; then a smart dog-cart came in sight, drawn by a high-stepping horse. Stephen Herries in voluntarily frowned as he recognised it, though his face smoothed itself again to bland imperturbability before the driver could have noticed his expression.

The latter was a young, fair-haired man, with what Herries mentally thought a pudding face, whitish eyelashes, and a fat person, somewhat over-dressed in very new and fashionable clothes. " Halloa ! Herries," cried the new comer, pulling up so suddenly that the jerk almost unseated his smart groom, perched behind with correct stolidity. " Fancy seeing you on foot here so far from Wykhurst ! Let me give you a lift, do ? Why, you will be footsore before to-night," and the speaker laughed in a slightly patronising way. " Thank you, but I am very fond of walking. A constitutional does me all the good in the world when I am at home," replied Herries, patting Duchess, who instantly responded, which was a little trick to conceal his secret annoyance. " Besides, I want to visit a farm close by here, and I am going to take that short cut you see across the stile."

" Not one of your own farms, eh ? " said the other man, looking in the direction indicated with an odd smile of sudden interest. " No, not mine," replied Herries, a shadow in voluntarily crossing his features, " but the good people there are old friends of my mother's." " Ah ! indeed ? I hope Lady Elizabeth is very well ; shall we see her to-night ? " B "Quite well, thank you. No, she does not care very much about sitting up late." " Well, good-bye, Herries." "Good afternoon— Mr. Stuckey." Herries had uttered the name of his interlocutor rather low, as if it annoyed him to be addressed thus familiarly, and that it was a secret relief to use the more formal appellation of Mr., even though unnoticed by his late companion. Some lines from Lord Lytton's trans lation of Horace flashed through his mind — " Strut as thou wilt in arrogance and purse-pride, Fortune can change not the man's native breed ! ' and he smiled to himself.

Presently crossing over a stile, as he had said, he went through the fields, keeping Duchess well to heel ; for the time was September, and the temptation to a black and tan Gordon setter to range through the fields was strong, petted as she was by her ladyship at home, and too forgetful of the keeper's training. He said a few words of greeting at the farmhouse, although this visit, indeed, had been an excuse invented on the spur of the moment to free himself from a companionship that was extremely distasteful. However, he had his reward in a hearty answer of, " Welcome back from foreign parts, sir ! " for Herries was a favourite, not only with his own tenants, but in many other farms and cottages of the country round. The Herries family had been established at Wykhurst Place since the sixteenth century, and from father to son the old estate had been transmitted until now without a break in the direct line.

It was one of those families of which the country people are proud, repeating to each other how one Herries had refused a title because he preferred to remain Herries of Wykhurst, and how all the others had ever been well known for their generosity, their uprightness, and all those qualities which go to make a thorough English country gentleman. Leaving the farmhouse, Herries now went on with quickened steps and a brighter air for about half-a mile. Here, near the high road, lay a small cottage which, without disrespect to its inmates, might have been termed genteel. The wily Dane, Radnar Lodbrog's son, as the Saga says, was granted so much English land as an ox hide would span, whereupon, by stretching the latter and cutting it into the thinnest of strips, he founded for himself an impregnable burg in King Ella's dominions.

In the same way Yew-tree Cottage, its garden, paddock, and outhouses, might easily have been en closed by a handkerchief similarly treated. An approach of a few yards wound in bewildering curves through a tiny shrubbery. When carriages tried to approach the modest dwelling it needed the ex tremest caution not to crash into a holly bush at one corner, and to steer round an already damaged Italian yew at the next. The cottage itself had been fitted for its present inmates by throwing the kitchen and parlour of a bailiff, its late occupant, into one room. This was newly wainscoted with old oak ; some of the windows were "treated " with that coloured paper which imitates stained glass, and the result gave a quasi-mediæval air to the little hall. Stephen, who knew his way here well, came out of the last meadow by jumping a hedge into the tiny paddock.

He then pushed open a gate where a cow stood waiting to be milked, and coming into a square yard, which was really little more than a yard square, he unlatched with familiar hand a green wooden door in a wall. Entering here he found himself between two small cucumber frames, and almost fell over a lady who was sitting on a large inverted flower-pot. She started up with a low cry that was almost one of dismay, although a shy, surprised welcome seemed to flit across her faded face. " Mrs. Ferrars ! I beg your pardon," exclaimed Herries, with the practised presence of mind of one of his calling ; " you must forgive me for assuming the privilege of an old friend, and coming in by your back entrance in this almost impertinent fashion. I took the short cut across the fields." " Of course, you often used to do so.

Please don't apologise. We are — I mean we shall be — very glad to see you," jerked out Mrs. Ferrars, in a nervous way. She was a little thin woman — one might say a bag of bones. Her eyes, which had once been brilliant were now dulled, and had a haunted expression ; and although not an old woman, her face was puckered with numerous fine wrinkles. " We heard you had come home, but we hardly expected you so soon," she went on hastily. " I was just sitting here a few minutes, thinking." The last words were almost muttered under her breath. Stephen smiled to himself at this apology for the strange position in which he had found his hostess. " What an odd woman she is ! " he thought to himself, as he followed her along a tiny path, edged with box ; and now his heart beat quicker, for from the other side of a few feet of yew-tree hedge came a subdued sound of laughter and of voices in friendly chat.

On the garden side of the cottage a pretty scene presented itself. A hammock was swung between the branches of a copper beech and a tulip tree, and in it reclined the very she whom Stephen Herries had seen in mental vision for the last two hours. This was Adelaide Ferrars, who was universally admitted to be one of the prettiest girls in the county. Somewhat languid, though lovely, her frail tall figure seemed almost too slight to credit her with even ordinary health, yet the fire that gleamed in her large, brilliant eyes, and the delicate bloom on her cheek indicated to her lover that she was one of those highly sensitive women who may live to be old by reason of their pluck, with whom the sword always seems too keen for the scabbard, yet who manage to live and look beautiful under trials and in circumstances where their coarser fashioned sisters would succumb.

In this way Adelaide Ferrars was universally admired for the splendid manner in which she had borne, lately, fortune's reverses. On the late Mr. Ferrars' death his property and estate had all passed to his son, with the exception of a very slender income left to his wife and daughter. As everyone agreed, most girls would " feel it dread fully " to leave a pleasant country house for a small cottage, where entertaining guests was an impossi bility, and even keeping up appearances a matter of difficulty. But at all the picnics, balls, and country race meetings to which she was invited as frequently as before, Adelaide Ferrars still looked radiant. No one ever saw a frown on her fair brow, and when pitied, as she often was by her old friends, she would only answer with a little laugh, " It is not worth while making oneself unhappy about what can't be helped."

How well Stephen Herries knew the tiny lawn with its two flower beds and its four trees. How often he had come here, as to-day, with eager steps and glad heart, certain of seeing a light of welcome spring up in Adelaide's eyes that he flattered himself was never lit there for any other man. But to-day a disagreeable shock awaited him on turning the corner of the yew hedge. Adelaide was not alone. Close beside her hammock lounged a short, stout young man in an easy chair, holding up a lady's red parasol with an affecta tion of effeminacy to shield himself from the warm blaze of the low-lying afternoon sun, while he smoked a large cigar. It was Mr. Nicholas Stuckey. " That parvenu here, of all houses in the county for him to be admitted to ! And Mrs. Ferrars used to be so particular ! The brute is so disgustingly familiar too in his behaviour ; and apparently quite at home, though it is hardly likely he can have visited them often," were Herries's reflections.

Adelaide started upright on seeing the visitor. A still deeper carmine tinged the exquisite colouring of her cheek, which nature had tinted to match the petals of a wild rose. He saw a sudden gleam of genuine gladness flash in her darkly-bright eyes. And was that next an alarmed surprise which succeeded the first flattering expression ? But at the time he did not dwell on this, though it afterwards came back to his mind. Stuckey nodded familiarly. " Ah, how d'ye do again ? You see I got here first." Meanwhile Adelaide had been showering question ing welcomes upon her visitor, which were answered in Stephen's suavest tones, with just a shade more interest in his eyes, and an imperceptibly warmer pressure of the hand than his invariably courtier-like manner to all women. Miss Ferrars turned her head quickly towards her earlier guest. • " What !

You knew Mr. Herries was coming here ? Why did you not tell us sooner ? " " Couldn't. He didn't tell me. Kept it dark. Ha ! ha ! " grinned Stuckey, lazily taking his cigar out of his mouth and not stirring from the position of vantage he had taken up close to the reclining beauty's hammock. Mrs. Ferrars looked with an irresolute, even troubled, glance towards Stephen, then at a garden bench near. " It is not a comfortable seat," she remarked, apparently to the surrounding air. Then, as no one answered — for Mrs. Ferrars' peculiar manner seemed to call upon no one in par ticular to do so — Stephen felt it necessary to put her out of perplexity. " May I sit here beside you ? There is room for us both," he said, overlooking the fact that no other chairs were near. It soon became evident that Mr. Stuckey was determined to allow no interference with his monopoly of Miss Ferrars' society.

Adelaide tried her best to keep the conversation general, but he interrupted everyone in turn, holding the key of the situation, bending close to Adelaide's hammock, and almost whispering questions in her ear, to which she was forced to reply. Occasionally Mrs. Ferrars spoke rather sharply to the young man, as if calling him to order ; for, with all her oddities of manner, she was a most punctilious woman on the score of good breeding. But the young brewer was almost rude in the brevity of his replies. " Not going to be inveigled by the old girl into missing my enjoyment," was in his mind. " Beast ! " was the equally polite comment in that of Stephen. The latter, accordingly, found himself holding a dialogue apart with his delicate, nervous hostess, with whom he had always been on kindly, though distant, terms ; for she was one of the most difficult women alive to know intimately, Suddenly the presiding goddess herself put an end to the strained situation.

" Let us go into the hall for tea, mother," she pro posed, rising with a suddenness that took Stuckey by surprise, as with one swift movement, being almost snake-like in her lithe gracefulness, she stood upon the lawn. " Now, Mr. Herries, you must come and talk to me, please, for a little while, if my mother will spare you. You and she are always such good friends that it is almost an impossibility to separate you two." The command was given with a partly imperious, partly playful manner, impossible to withstand. Mrs. Ferrars, something more at her ease, preceded them into the cottage. Nicholas Stuckey, feeling that for the present he had got his conge, however grace fully given, followed her with rounded shoulders, sullenly, yet doggedly, feeling that so far during the visit he had had the best of it.

Adelaide paused a few minutes outside, gathering herself some sprays of jessamine from the cottage wall. Silently and slowly she raised her languorous large eyes to Stephen's face. As silently, with an intently rapt attention, he returned the gaze. Neither spoke for a minute ; speech did not seem necessary between them. Then Stephen began hurriedly, for the precious moments alone with his divinity would be short. " I shall see you this evening at this dance, Adelaide, when you can spend the supper dances with me, will you not ? I walked over here this even ing only on purpose to ask you." He smiled, feeling a happy certainty that this old arrangement between them would stand good now as ever. At how many dances had Adelaide and he not met in the old county since they were boy and girl to gether, and how always at each — after whirling in the crowd, " to show themselves," as Adelaide used laugh ingly to say — had they not disappeared for a happy half-hour into some dimly-lit nook or cool conservatory to have, as Stephen put it, " a happy time together."

" I am so sorry, dear Stephen," and Adelaide, lightly placing her hands upon her bosom, looked deprecatingly up in his face. " If only that man, Mr. Stuckey, had said you were coming to-day, I might have guessed, and kept you the dances. But we never even knew you were in the country. Lady Elizabeth said you were in London, but how could I guess that you would run down for such a small event as this?" " I did not come for that ; I came to see you and my mother. The dance was a good excuse for meeting and having a talk to ourselves. You might have guessed that I was sure to come." Then suddenly recalling that her words seemed to imply refusal, he added, " What do you mean ? Are you engaged already, then ? " " To Mr. Stuckey," she sighed, " of all men in the world ! " And Adelaide raised her eyes skywards with an expression of light and comic horror.

" Pity me, dear Stephen ; but, as he had driven over first, what was I to say ? " A frown, that might almost be called a scowl, had settled on Stephen's face. " To Stuckey ! A man whom a year ago you used to laugh at, and say you would not touch with a long pole ! Why, your mother used to tell stories of his father keeping an old rag shop, and of his mother driving round the country in an apple cart. I never was more amazed in my life than to find him seated here this afternoon. What is the reason that you have " " O, it is mother," answered Adelaide, empha sising her reply with a wave of her hand ; " you cannot think how she changes her mind, nor how decided she is to have her own way, for such a quiet person. Now she considers him a really upright young man, and that it is wrong to visit the sins — I mean the want of birth — of his forefathers upon him.

In fact, she considers it the duty of people who have the advantages of family, like ourselves, to hold out a helping hand, you know, to teach these nouveaux riches their proper place and the rules of good society at the same time." " But surely you do not mean to keep this engage ment ? If you pleased, you always used to be able to get out of any such. And I suppose you will please." ■4 There was an angry light in Stephen's eyes ; a tone of decision vibrated through the gently modulated accents of his voice. " Tea is ready, Miss Ferrars," called out Nicholas Stuckey, putting his head past a little lattice porch, painted dark oak colour instead of bright green as usual ; " Mrs. Ferrars is waiting for you to pour it out." This was not strictly true, for when the two belated ones unwillingly entered the sitting-room Mrs. Ferrars, with a slight flush on her thin face, was busying her self among the teacups.

Adelaide had just time to whisper to her lover so soothingly that her breath was like a caress upon his cheek : " Do not mind — it will be all right. I will tell you to-night. Don't be angry with me — you know you could not be, even if you tried. And you know, you know — what I wish." So Stephen came in with a more satisfied look — almost a latent smile. " How charming your sitting-room always is," he observed, looking around him. The room was, in fact, only the kitchen and par lour of an ordinary cottage thrown into one, the staircase necessarily rising out of one side. The walls were newly dark-wainscoted, and the cottage staircase was painted to imitate black oak. The whole effect, however, was that of a really old, perhaps Elizabethan, little dwelling. What with small tables scattered about, a lounging chair here and there, and all the pretty knick-knacks that women of refined taste gather around themselves, it had, indeed, been made a charming little snuggery in the eyes of persons not too critical as to genuine antiquarianism.

But Adelaide's white brow puckered into a slight frown. " It is a sham after all, and I do so hate shams," she petulantly replied, just above her breath, as if not wishing to vex her mother's ears. But Mrs. Ferrars heard her, all the same, and gave one of her quick, uneasy glances around, which made one think of some quiet monomaniac, whose brain was painfully keen, while haunted by a constant trouble. Stuckey heard it, too, and placidly grinned. " I will drive you home, Herries," he offered, drain ing his tea-cup with an air of good fellowship. " O, come, no excuses. You cannot like to walk twice along the dusty high-road. Ha ! ha ! ha ! and though you did not tell me this afternoon where you were going, I suppose I can guess pretty well, now, that you are bound for Wykhurst?" Without being rude, Stephen felt that he could not well say no. Nevertheless as he got into the dog-cart with his pompous young neighbour, and as Stuckey, lighting a big cigar and flourishing his whip, drove off, almost dashing into the box tree and the yew, which guarded the sinuous curves of the little approach, Herries felt something approaching hatred towards his companion.

It was certainly an unjustifiable emotion. For Stuckey had not an idea beyond self-satisfied good nature, and a vulgar pleasure in showing Herries that lucre, after all, has its advantages. How often had he not felt that Stephen Herries, of Wykhurst, looked down upon him — the self-made brewer's son ? He bore no malice — not he. His only revenge was in showing off to Stephen, now, how well his horse could step up to its collar, and how smartly his new dog-cart was built ; with stories of the other horses, both hunters and harness animals, polo ponies and hacks that stood in his stable ; whereas Herries, as all the world knew, was as poor as he was proud. To do him justice, Nicholas had not an inkling of the fine agony to which he was putting his companion. Not that Stephen cared about these things, but that as they drove along past farms and woods belonging to the Wykhurst estate, his neighbour's pompous bragging woke a dark demon of fear for the future, which he generally tried to keep chained in his inner most mind. " Let sleeping dogs lie," is a good motto, but Stuckey was waking the dog — was tantalising and plaguing the beast to impotent fury. 1/

Chapter II. Wykhurst Place

was a rare old manor house, being a perfect specimen of early Elizabethan architecture. Stephen got down at its tall entrance gates from his neighbour's dog-cart, and went slowly along the straight avenue, beyond which lay the home of his ancestors, behind a courtyard also guarded by narrow old gates, of beautiful iron scroll work. As he looked around, his heart swelled with sadness within him. On either side an undulating park spread to the boundary woods. Here, noble clumps of trees were outlined against the evening sky, and further on, where broken ground rose and fell in gentle rises and hollows, the bracken was turning golden brown. Stephen, as he looked round, felt that he loved every acre of its grassy surface, of which the turf had not been broken for centuries. But the cattle grazing here — " Forty seeding like one,' where fallow deer used to range — belonged to a neighbouring farmer.

The land was let up to the very door, and all the estate around was mortgaged to — Nicholas Stuckey! C Heaven only knew how long Stephen might still be able to call his home his own. Wykhurst was an absolutely unique old house. Lovers of the picturesque used to declare that its weather hues were wonderful. Hardly one of its venerable cut stones was of the same subdued tint as its fellow. Time had touched its grey walls so lovingly that golden lichen and rusty coloured stains, winter damps, or summer's growth of tiny flowering weeds, here and there, on string-course or parapet, each added a separate beauty to the general effect. Stray American visitors in the neighbourhood had gone crazy over the beauties of the old house ; " And that fireplace is three hundred years old ! " they repeated to each other, looking, with almost reverent worship, at the tall carved stone one in the library, with the Herries coat of arms in its centre, and fluted scroll work on either side.

Then, departing, these visitors had told other fel low-countrymen of the old-world house, who made pilgrimages to Wykhurst in their turn ; and one rich man even asked leave to have its exact measurements taken by an architect. In the new world a new Wykhurst Place should be reared, he said, with Lady Elizabeth's permission, faithfully copied in every detail, from its low, wide-seated porch, with carved grotesque heads, to its crocheted gables, mullioned windows, and pinnacles on the roof. " It will not be the same ; no, not even in three hundred years," said a wise old fellow-traveller. " It may be exact to an inch, but you will never get the colouring. Our climate will not give that mediæval tone which carries one's mind back through such long years of history." Even from a distance Stephen descried a solitary figure sitting in the porch.

He knew it was his mother, and, although somewhat tired, hastened his steps, while Duchess ran forward, barking in greeting. Whenever he left home for long absences, his last sight of her was standing there looking after him ; whenever he returned again, there she would be to welcome him. " Waiting for me, mother — as usual," he said, as he came up. That was how her lonely life was passed, as he sometimes told himself with inward regret, waiting — for him. Lady Elizabeth looked up with a serene smile. " I have been knitting, dear ; you know I don't mind being alone." She was a middle-aged woman, looking almost elderly, for her hair was snow-white and her features showed traces of illness. Never a beautiful woman, for her face was broad, placid, and plain. But there was a high-bred air in her tone and movements that was very pleasing, and somehow there was a charm of patience in her look.

She suffered much from her heart, but living alone, as she did for long periods, she was able to conceal the worst of her illness from her beloved son, so as not to cause him useless pangs. And people who lead solitary lives can bear pain better than others, so her doctor had once told her. C She was glad to think so, her solitary life had that advantage at least. The ball this evening was after a wedding at a neighbour's house. A large tent had been put up on the lawn with a temporary floor for dancing, and by the time Stephen arrived the evening's festivities were already in full swing. "You are late, Mr. Herries," exclaimed various girls in smiling reproach, as he greeted his old acquaintances. " Am I late ? I have been so buried alive in Eastern deserts that you must forgive me for having perhaps a little forgotten the ways of society at home.