Herne Lodge

Front matter

Some Opinions of the Press on "Herne Lodge." " The Earl of Desart is seen at his best in Herne Lodge. , . Skilfully constructed." — Academy. " Powerful, but terribly uncanny." — Morning Post. " A romance to be read at a sitting. The incidents are graphically described, and the flesh creeps." — Glasgow Herald. "All who enjoy a thoroughly mysterious and sensational romance will revel in the Earl's novel."— Court Journal. " A clever story told in the pointed, rather cynical, but often pathetic style which Lord Desart has made his own. A clever plot capitally worked out." — Vanity Fair. "Nothing can be more skilful than the development of the mystery.".— Guardian. " An ably and cleverly written story of the sensational type, and marked throughout by graphic description of persons and places, free but judicious handling of social subjects, and that airy and harmless vein of persiflage with which readers of the author's previous works are familiar. ...

A thrilling and pathetic story. . . . No one who desires an evening's relaxation over a well-written tale will make a mistake in ordering ' Herne Lodge.' " — Pall Mall Gazette. " Powerfully written." — Standard. "Delightfully enthralling, delightfully witty." — Daily Telegraph. A&3Xll§&, BY THE EARL OF DESART AUTHOR OF "LORD AND LADY PICCADILLY," "LOVE AND PRIDE ON AN ICEBERG," "KELVERDALE," ETC, ETC. LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., PATERNOSTER SQUARE. NOVELS BY THE EARL OF DESART. LORD AND LADY PICCADILLY. Crown Zvo. Illustrated boards t zs. "An extremely interesting and very powerful picture of London society." — Whitehall Review. '* Full of brilliant writing, and careful studies of London society." — Evening News. " Eminently readable." — Athenæum. "The smartest novel of the season." — Vanity Fair.

LOVE AND PRIDE ON AN ICEBERG, AND OTHER STORIES. Illustrated wrapper^ is. "... Capitally told, the style being that good-humouredly cynical quality which characterises Lord Desart's writings, but which he is quite capable of diversifying. . . . The author has a brilliant literary future." London : SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co., Paternoster Square. CONTENTS. CHAP. tACE I. THE HOUSE'S HISTORY .... I i II. A NIGHT SURPRISE 1 3 III. PETER 32 IV. A VIGIL AND A HOLIDAY . . . .48 V. WHAT RALPH SAW IN THE OLD CELLAR . . 69 VI. TWO LIVES SAVED, AND THE RESULT . . J"/ VII. A DISCOVERY 89 VIII. RALPH AND ENID 99 IX. THE STORY OF THE MANUSCRIPT . . . 1 17 X. THE WELTERS LOSE THEIR GUEST . . . 1 3 1 XI. WAITING *39 XII. MAD JOE XS4 XIII. THE BUNDLE IS OPENED . . . . CONTENTS. VI THE MANUSCRIPT. CHAP. PAGE I. THE MANUSCRIPT . . . . . .174 ii. the manuscript (continued) . . . 192 III. „ „ „ . . . . 203 IV. „ „ „ . . . . 220 V. „ „ ...... 226 vi. „ ,, , 236 vii. „ „ „ 244 „ . . . .256 VIII. „ „ „ , . . .269 ix. „ „ 276 x* » I) » xi. ,, ,, ,,.... 203 I.

Chapter I. The House's History

Any one who has ever amused himself by roaming about those lanes and commons which touch our great city on the south-western side, and whence you can nearly hear its noise, while you can and do suffer from the shrill screams of the iron horses going to and from it, must have now and again come upon one of several veritable bits of real country — oases in the desert of gorgeous villadom. Finding such, you involuntarily stay your step and gaze tenderly — if you be of a feeling and imagina tive nature — at the survival : at the little bit of Toryism, so soon to be swept away by the march of progress, enlightenment, and, alas ! hideousness. Once, many summers ago, when weary of my work, and more weary of the endless tread of hurrying humanity, I sauntered a mile or so from Clapham Station, and peered at every trim and red-brick box of a house, or pinnacled stucco villa, as I passed, with that abstracted gaze which sees but little.

All at once, straying off the main road into a by-lane that seemed likely to lead to nothing but a gate, and probably a " Trespassers will be Prosecuted" board, I came upon, without warning, a perfect little paradise of sylvan beauty and comfort. The house, small and plain enough, was old, as one might see by its quaint gables and by the colour of its storm-stained bricks : it was covered with roses, clematis, and other creepers, the roses thrusting their heads saucily into the old-fashioned, diamond-paned windows; and all about it, from the solid oak front door to the neatly swept path that led thence to the rustic gate, — the latter flanked by a sweet little bedded out garden, — bespoke well-bred competence and love of the beautiful. " Well," said I to myself as I gazed, " if ever I am able to afford such luxuries as a wife and a suburban residence, this is what the latter should be."

And then I went back to my murky lodgings, more dissatisfied with them and my bachelor life than ever, and soon forgot all about the pretty little house so solitary yet so close to where the toilers dwell and pollute the air with their struggles for gold. In time things changed with me. I did get a wife, and sufficient means to think of a dwelling, whence I could go to my office each morning, leaving the dear — yet saving — one amid her flowers, and coming back at night to breathe the scent-laden air of " home." Those who have searched for a house of this kind will sympathize with our troubles, and can imagine the fruitless journeys, and the constant disappointments we underwent. When almost despairing, the clerk in a house-agent's office one day observed to me, — " There's Herne Lodge ; but I daresay you wouldn't care about that."

Something in his tone nettled me. Why should we not care for Herne Lodge ? Did he think it too grand for us ? " Where is Herne Lodge ? " I asked, as he was turning over the leaves of his book. " Tootham Common. Three reception rooms ; ten bedrooms ; seven acres of land ; garden : twenty minutes' walk from station. Lease of nine years to be sold." He entered into other particulars. " Why, it's dirt cheap," I exclaimed, " if it is at all up to its description. Perhaps the state of repairs " " Oh, it's in very good repair for an old house," said the young man, languidly, scratching his nose with the feather end of a pen. " But I don't fancy it would suit you — or the lady." The look of slightly haughty pity he gave my wife roused that person's combative spirit at once. " I think it sounds the very thing.

Please give us an order to view." Before making out the order, the young man disappeared through a glass door into another apartment, and we heard a muffled conver sation. Soon an older man, evidently the master house-agent himself, appeared. He rubbed his hands deprecatingly, and appealed to me. "You wish, sir, to view Herne Lodge ?" " Certainly." "Well, I should be very glad to get it off my books. But the fact is Well, sir, we've sent many parties to view it, and it has been no use ; that is, except on two occasions, and then the parties that took it threw their lease up, and we had a lot of trouble. I'm sure I wish the place were burnt down " " Ah," said my wife, who is strong-minded enough (except with mice and moths), "it is haunted, I suppose ? " " Oh dear, no, madam. Of course it can't be haunted, but that is what people do say.

No one in the neighbourhood will pass it at night ; and, as I said, the last two tenants left it almost immediately after taking possession, and nothing would induce them — even losing a tidy sum of money (for the law courts as you know, sir, don't believe in ghosts) — to hold to their agreements." " Oh, do tell us all about the ghost," said my wife, clapping her hands. " No, my dear," I had to observe, as I saw the agent getting a little restive ; " we cannot take up this gentleman's time. If he will give us an order to view, I daresay we shall be able to glean all the facts of the case — or the fancies rather — on the spot." " Oh yes," said he, as he filled in the order. " The caretaker, an old soldier, who I fancy rather likes the berth, and doesn't want to be disturbed, will make the most of them.

I feel I am scarcely doing my duty to the owners — it is part of a trust — in telling you what I have, but I haven't the heart to let such a sweet looking lady run the risk of being frightened." And with this compliment — which the object of it looked upon as more like an insult — he bowed himself back into the inner office, and we left the place. The very next day saw us walking from Tootham Station in the direction pointed out to us for reaching Herne Lane, down which we were to proceed to find our house. It was not until we had almost reached it, how ever, that I recollected where I was — in the same lane to which I had wandered eight years before, and at the end of which I had discovered my ideal rus in sub-urbe. I quickly told the partner of my joys, and we almost ran on to behold the realization of my early dream.

Alas ! there was the house certainly, but the creepers were torn off the wall in great patches, and hung helplessly down, swinging to the slight breeze as if writhing in pain. The trellis work that had been placed there to support them was broken in many places, and showed discoloured patches of wall within ; the windows looked as if they had not known paint for years, and in many of them the glass was shattered. The trim garden I recollected was now rank grass ; and it was difficult even to make out where the beds had been, while the gravel walk to the front door was now but a brown track worn through the herbage. All bespoke ruin and neglect ; and even as we looked, the darkening of the autumn sky, by reason of a passing cloud, chilled us, and an unreasoning sense of gloom crept into both our minds.

My wife only confessed to this long after; but I saw it in her sweet face as I glanced at her in dismay. She never reproached me, to her credit be it said. All she did was to shiver and to remark, — " It does seem a little out of repair, doesn't it ? " But on entering we found that internally the house was in very decent order; and to make a long story short, we almost then and there made up our minds to take it, unless the ghost story was of such an awful nature as to frighten even us The caretaker, one of those old soldiers who can exactly calculate the amount of liquor they may consume and yet retain sufficient sense to do their duty, was nothing loth to hold forth, and told us the following tale, his eloquence being brightened up every time his somewhat fishy eye rested on my pocket, and his mind reverted to the silver soon to leap therefrom.

As he was rather diffuse, I give the facts in my own words. About ten years before the date of which I write, the house had been taken by a gentle man, — a writing gentleman, the soldier called him, — whose passion for solitude was extreme. He seems to have been a kind, melancholy man ; and there were stories that he would often perform little acts of charity in the neighbourhood, which betokened that he took more interest in the doings of others than appeared on the surface. One winter night, so the story went, a lady came to the house late at night, as it appeared, with no luggage. Next morning the gentle man announced that she was his wife ; and soon afterwards her luggage arrived, full, the servants said, of very handsome clothes and things. Whatever doubt there may have been, and indeed seemed to be, as to the wife story, the lady — who was very beautiful, of course, the story required that — remained on, acting as if she were the gentleman's wife ; but going a great deal to London, and coming back on several occasions, the servants declared, decidedly the worse for stimulants.

On these occasions she would sing — beautifully, they said, which seems contradictory — and then high words would be heard. One night, when she had been there about three months, — it was in February, — the gentle man (the narrator gave no names throughout) sent all the servants — man, cook, lady's maid, and housemaid, for the establishment had been increased since the lady came, — to a theatre in town, and especially told them that they need not return till they pleased, as he wished them to enjoy themselves thoroughly. He was so kind and gentle that this did not much astonish them ; although it was the first time they had been allowed this especial form of relaxation. On their return towards the small hours, they crept in as quietly as might be, and next morning were surprised to find that their master and mistress had evidently changed their plans, and gone up to town after the cold dinner, which had been set for them before the servants left.

Neither of them — master or mistress — ever returned. An envelope was received by the cook on the third day after their departure, enclosing bank notes to the amount requisite to pay the housebooks and servants' wages with a month in lieu of warning ; and also enclosing such housekeys as the gentleman had kept in his possession. The handwriting on the envelope was their master's. When this arrived they for the first time grew alarmed, and communicated with the police : but no thing more was ever heard of them ; and there was no reason to suspect anything wrong, until two circumstances came to light. A respectable artisan and his son, aged fourteen, had, on their way home from the station, been making a short cut near Herne Lodge, and, when about a hundred yards from it they had heard the most heartrending shrieks, and, they thought, cries of murder.

It would seem that the man was not of a courageous nature, for he waited some time before he dared approach the house ; and when he did so all was quiet. Here, however, it appeared that he was contradicted by his son, who declared that there was a curious knocking sound inside, as of some one hammering on a hard surface. On this a search of the premises was in stituted ; but nothing was found, except the fact — which the servants of course knew before — that the departure, if departure it were, must have been unpremeditated, as nothing of the lady's had left her room ; and, with the doubtful exception of a coat and hat about which no one was certain, nothing of the man's either. The second circumstance brought to light by the police inquiry was that, about a week before the disappearance, the lady had been to two chemists' shops in the vicinity, and had asked for — at one ineffectually, with success at the other — tartar emetic, giving some plausible reason for wanting it, which the narrator had forgotten.

The name signed in the book of the compliant chemist was not the name she passed by at Herne Lodge, and the address given was a number that did not exist in a small street of Tootham. Such was the tale of the military caretaker : as commonplace a story as any that appear from time to time in our newspapers. And the ghostly explanation was equally of the ordinary kind. Noises at night, hammering, shrieks, all the usual little annoyances that cause nervous persons to believe in haunted houses ; and that cause those houses to be sold or let for half their value, as this was. My wife laughed at the whole thing, much to my comfort, for I liked the place, and soon the agreement was signed and sealed. There being no hurry on our side, and as I wished our first semi-rural housekeeping to be as successful as possible, we did not take bodily possession until the spring following, the winter being devoted to re-furnishing and altogether renovating the house and place.

In April we journeyed down with our be longings, and found Herne Lodge — ours now — smiling on us as it smiled on me when in my careless bachelorhood I had chanced upon its miniature charms. As I always told my wife, the sight of it, so manifestly the home of love, had first turned my thoughts to matrimony in the abstract, just as the sight of her had turned them to matri mony in the concrete. It was the thought of what love might be in such a cottage, fed on something better than " water and the crust," that had spurred me on to work, and had made it possible for her worthy parents to give us eventually their blessing. And Emily said that she would at once see about placing a blue plate over the front door, with " Here first John thought the thought that led him towards Emily " graven thereon ; upon which plate future pilgrims from remote parts of the earth would flock to gaze, and the fame of which should elevate Tootham into a rival of Avignon and Stratford-on-Avon.

Thus with jokes and laughter we took possession of our new abode ; and so fond of the place did we become that when, some months after, names were wanted for a new visitor to the green earth, the name of Herne was very nearly sandwiched between those of the two godfathers. But I remembered just in time that we only had a lease of nine years certain, and that my eldest son going about as Herne Welter, long after Herne Lodge had passed into the hands of the maker of a new soap, would be about as absurd as some of the grand Scotch gentlemen, who describe them selves as "of" places that have not known them for many long, and, to them, penurious years.

Chapter II

A NIGHT SURPRISE. Ralph Goring was, without exception, the brightest, sunniest natured man I had ever had the luck to come across. Was, indeed, for, alas ! that can no longer be said of him ; though it may be hoped that time may yet efface much of the bitterness of his great sorrow. He was a journalist and a bit of a dramatist ; not, perhaps, very eminent in either capacity, but easily earning his living, and something more, by virtue of his popularity. Editors and managers are human, after all ; and second-rate copy, or a somewhat inferior comedy, was pleasanter to accept from him than better articles from self-opiniated or pride-inflated workers. " I wheedle them or bore them into taking my stuff," he would say. "We all know it is not worth much ; but when I tell them that a second-rate public likes a second-rate article best, they pretend to believe it just to please me, and be rid of me."

But, although it amused him to depreciate himself, he had good work in him, nevertheless ; and his employers for one thing could always depend on his doing his best, and not scamping that work. He was thoroughly conscientious, and as credulous as a baby, although he laughed at everything and everybody in a pleasant airy fashion ; and was wont to protest that he was a double-dyed cynic and contemner of mankind. He would have gone through fire and water for a friend ; have lent an acquaintance his last shilling ; have murdered an enemy cheerfully and effectually ; and he had never been in love. Women he professed to dislike ; but he treated the sex with high-flown courtesy, and owned that every woman he happened to know happened also to be an exception to prove the general rule of the worthlessness of the daughters of Eve.

" The first woman who determines to capture you," said Emily to him, "pop ! down will go your arms at the first assault ! " Beneath all his flippancy he had some strong convictions scarcely to be shaken, some pre judices, and not a few superstitions. Add to this that he was young, with a noble face and manly figure, and that he was utterly devoid of self-consciousness, as of gaucherie, and you have a very fair picture of my friend. Of course he was our first visitor to Herne Lodge, for he had given us much sage advice as to restoring and furnishing ; advice evolved out of some mysterious source, his own lodgings being of the most rough and ready order, and he having in his heart a great contempt for what he called the married affairs of life. " A club where you pay nothing," was his first idea ; and when my wife expostulated, he rejoined, — " My dear Mrs. Welter, you can't object, for the very obvious reason that you don't know what the inside of a club is like."

"Very like the inside of a waiting-room at a railway station, judging from what I have seen through the windows, when the gas is lit and the blinds not drawn. Bare walls coloured with some faint distemper — not even texts or time-tables to ornament them, and a round table or two in the middle of the room littered with newspapers." Mrs. Welter was very fond of Ralph Goring, and the more she brought her practical sense to play upon his exuberant fancy, the more pleased he was. "You sometimes make me feel," he said to her one day, when with an ounce of fact she had crushed pounds of his flippant fiction, " like a little boy who is making a noise in the drawing-room when his nurse taps at the door — a memento go-to-bed-i.' ' " That is not complimentary, Ralph ; for the nurse is abhorrent to that boy at the moment," I said.

"If he is a vicious boy, with no sound knowledge of right and wrong, and his Catechism. / am one of the other kind of boys ; and I always know that the nastier the physic the more it is for my own good." One of his most ineradicable fads concerned the possibility of, by breeding gradually, getting rid of all wickedness. " I don't say it is possible in the sense you mean ; but I say that if the world would agree with me and set about it, it might be done. As long as wicked people are allowed to marry wicked people, then more wicked people will be born. The child of a couple of thieves will be a thief, whatever vou do with him. You may take him away from his parents at any age, and you may turn him out the best educated, most piously brought up young man in Clapham. He will steal something. It may be ideas from his fellow-novelists or journalists, if that's his line ; or it may be another man's sweetheart, or his wife.

If he gets into Parliament he will help a lot of grand stealing in the way of taxes, wars, and such like. The thief is in his nature. Sad, but true. Now, as you know, if you go on putting a little good game or Dorking blood into your common fowl, in a few generations (of fowl) you have very respectable half-bred birds. In the same way, if you keep on diluting your criminal population with virtuous blood you will gradually reach the same effect." " Rather hard on the virtuous people," said Emily, laughing. " Yes ; but it would be their duty as citizens. Then with regard to brain. My father and my mother were both clever; he invented all kinds of things which didn't succeed but ought to have, and she wrote poetry which certainly had a claim to immortality. What is the con sequence ? Like fire and water, which as they kiss consume, they put each the other out, and I am the result.

Now, if either of them had married a fool, I haven't the smallest doubt but that I should at this present moment be editing the Times, or calling noble lords to order from the woolsack." " But if two thieves produce a thief, then two geniuses should produce " " Oh, bother logic ! " cried Ralph, gaily. " There should be," he said, on another occasion, " four grand institutions in every country, all of course strictly affiliated. Two for the very virtuous men and women, and two for the very criminal dittos. The International Marriage Bureau, which might transact its business in Volapiik, would of course only give its license when the proper junction was suggested. As an instance of a good junction, I would mention a forger, implying cleverness and skill with the fingers, and a silly woman who has murdered her unnecessary child in such a way that even an English policeman must find her out."

"But surely," said Emily, "there are no absolutely good or absolutely bad people." " There are absolutely bad ; and the absolutely good die in childhood. That is why we can never get a perfect breed." " It is very nice, your programme ; but how about the gentlefolk, who don't show the black ness of their hearts by picking or stealing?" "Well, of course the Marriage Bureau of all the world would have an army of spies (who must by my plan marry blind people, I think) ; and, to take an instance, if they saw a gay young man inclined to flirtation at a ball, and evidently of a butterfly nature, the Bureau would refuse him a license to marry any girl that did not wear spectacles and splay boots, hate society, and love some ology or other." " And to marry without a license from your International Bureau " " Would be death, with the alternative of spending every Sunday in succession for five years in Boulter's Lock, trying to get through."

" And to do without the necessity for the license ? " I asked ; and Ralph replied, — " My dear Mrs. Welter, your worthy husband wishes to be improper. Let us change the conversation.' Behind all this persiflage there was an honest belief in hereditary instincts and taints ; and I never knew Ralph Goring ungenerous except when it was a question of putting in a place of trust the son or daughter of parents who had not gone the honest road. On one occasion I befriended a lad from the gutter — his father and mother being both in gaol — and when that lad at the age of eighteen helped himself to a cheque to pay his Derby losings, Ralph not only shouted, " Serve you right, I told you so ! " over me, but was, I verily believe, unfeignedly delighted at my misfortune. T"F tF * «F * Although we were not annoyed by any silly panics among our servants as to the ghost (of which, of course, they all were duly in formed soon after their arrival) for some months, there was, as Emily discovered, a kind of suppressed excitement of expectation amongst them as to the possible bogey ; and especially did they go warily down the dark and narrow lane that led from the high road to Herne Lodge, as if suspecting that the " awful shape " spoken of by the poet did close behind them tread.

Drunken shouts from belated revellers who had missed their way, mysterious noises caused by a gale of wind, nay, even the shriek of the railway engine, at first put their hearts in a flutter ; but, up to a certain time, the even tenour of our calm existence was not broken in upon. I went up to my office with a regularity on which I prided myself, because it was no longer so absolutely necessary ; and Emily sometimes accompanied me ; but oftener stayed at home, looked after her incubator and its produce (about 20 per cent, of the eggs put in), and drove about the lanes in a basket carriage, when not occupied in the all-important duty that went by the name of Baby. Our friends came from town to see us, generally from Saturday to Monday ; and Ralph Goring dropped in whenever he pleased, his room being always kept in readiness.

One memorable evening I remember that he had a brisk passage of arms with Mrs. Welter on the question, started by himself, as to whether the advocates of woman's rights, and those who mocked at domestic duty being their principal mission, had not missed a very instructive bit of natural history, which afforded a valuable guide to the solution of this difficult question. "The lady oyster," he said, "if I do not shock you by mentioning a fact, — ' The Truth is alway sweet,' some important person wrote, — lays its eggs, and then becomes a gentleman oyster, and, I presume, then cultivates its beard. Now, if Doctor Anastatia Jones, M.D., would, before turning her attention to patients outside her home, begin by " " My dear Mr. Goring," said Emily, with the dignity she knows so well how to assume when it is, or she thinks it is, required, " I don't like even my shrieking sisters to be com pared to those flabby things ; and, besides, I do not like the line of argument.