The Unwritten Law

Preface

. The leading incidents of this story were published many years ago in a magazine which has long since ceased to exist. At the request of many friends and acquaintances it has been remodelled and rewritten, and is now offered to the public for what of interest or amusement may lie in a simple statement of events which came to the Author's knowledge as having actually taken place in a far Western County. The work does not pretend to anything beyond whiling away an idle hour. A. Bennett-Edwards. it Zhe "Unwritten Xaw.

Chapter I

; W«kTHO is she ? " li But as no one could answer, no one called yffli upon her — that was of course. T She was a stranger and a pilgrim in the land. But not a poor soul, begging in craven humility for the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table. Had Mrs. Owen so humbled herself, it is possible that High-Rockton, being a Christian community, had opened some back-door, and allowed her to enter some clean and respectable outhouse set apart for the reception of repentant sinners. Unfortunately, this Mrs. Owen, if she were a sinner, was certainly neither a humble sinner nor repent ant. She had the additional vices of riches and inde pendence covering her like a garment — a meretricious garment, of which the form and making were strange to High-Rockton county society. It was not of the fashion they wore, nor of their sober colouring ; there fore it was wrong — wrong without mitigation — and sentenced to eternal ostracism by this august court, of which the motto was not, and never would be, Quot homines, tot sententiæ.

There was but one Senate and one Code of Law for the regulating of the universe, and the place and the people which issued this mighty charter were — High-Rockton ! It was not even known to this almighty senate whether the prisoner at bar were married or single, or neither. The tradespeople of the village spoke of her as "Mrs. Owen"; and she had a child, but husband there was none to be seen or heard of. Of course, she might be a widow — a dangerous young widow set down as a snare for the innocent sons of the county. They were generous enough to grant the possibility — only — well, you see, it was, to say the least of it, " strange" that not even her own servants had ever re ported having heard mention of a husband, living or dead. But still, they were above vulgar suspicions, these High-Rockton wives and spinsters, so they granted to her the title of widow, knowing no other by which to designate her.

It was not even decided amongst them whether this soi-disant Mrs. Owen were an Englishwoman. There was certainly nothing English about her appearance or dress or bearing, as " English " was interpreted in High-Rockton. She had been heard by her servants to talk in many foreign tongues to various visitors (all of them men) at the house, and her general mode of life was — as represented — " quite un-English." At any rate, she had committed one unpardonable sin in a nobody. She had bought High-Rockton Abbey, and planted herself in the very midst of High-Rockton society, and she had not asked the consent or the approval of " the county," or, indeed, made any apology for her existence. And High-Rockton Abbey was such a lovely place to be wasted ! For centuries it had been the pride of the county.

Why, it was here (history told) that Henry VIII. had brought poor Anne Boleyn to enjoy her society undisturbed, whilst she was yet maid-of honour to the Queen ! And it was true that the initials "A.B." were to be found carved on many of the trees in the old deer-park. Now, as trees cannot contradict even an imputation on a lady's honour, High-Rockton was justified in accepting as a fact Anne Boleyn's sojourn at the Abbey. But if justification were required, was it not to be found in the more startling evidence which the oak library at the Abbey was able to produce ? For here, on one of the panels, was a drawing, said to be a house, which poor Anne, in some access of repentant abstrac tion, had scratched with a hairpin, or the points of her scissors, on the polished wood. It was a work of art, or had been, when you could see it apart from the dust of ages.

As it remained to our corrupt generation, its exact intention was so far obscure that some instructor of modern scepticism had caused to be written under it : " This exquisite work of art represents the house in which Anne Boleyn was born. It was engraved by her own hand when she was living at High-Rockton Abbey under the protection of the King, in the year 1530." Now, report again, said that this woman, this soi disant Mrs. Owen, in her parvenu ignorance of both art and history, had hung or nailed — nailed probably — a curtain over the interesting and instructive relic ; that she, in her vulgar scepticism, did not look upon it as authentic — either that Anne Boleyn had been born in a farmhouse at all, or that she had ever visited High- Rockton. And then, the child, who was always to be seen by its mother's side, rattling along the public highroads in the " showy " dogcart with the " circussy-looking " cob.

"Poor little thing!" they said of her, with a sigh of Christian commiseration. " Poor little thing ! " They were pitying her for her innocence, you see — or ignor ance. " It was so sad," they said, " so sad ! " But what was " so sad," or wherein this bright-eyed, golden-curled child, with a laugh like the cry of a wild bird on the wing, was so "poor," we are not required to question. Its father — if there were such a person — might have sold dry goods in the neighbourhood of St. Paul's, or there might be the stains of factory wheels across its mother's fingers. Anyhow, High-Rockton pitied them — the child and the mother both. It could afford to pity, since by its ostracism it stood afar off from any possible personal contact with contamination. For the rest, God help them should they ever come to stand up for judgment before High-Rockton's virtuous women !

Thc Unwritten Law. 10 But all things change. After Mrs. Owen had in habited High-Rockton Abbey for more than a year without a single member of High-Rockton county society having acknowledged her existence amongst them, there came about one of those unexpected and unaccountable changes which are so common to our humanity. We have all known them, and speculated as to their causes or reasons, and we have none of us been able to answer to our satisfaction. All we know is, that from some certain day or hour, from some common event of our common life, something has arisen — something imperceptible, impalpable, im measurable — which has changed for ever the course of our existence. And not only ours, but the existences of all those who have been walking hand-in-hand with us through "the Valley of the Shadow of Death."

Chapter II

fHERE were opposing factions in High-Rockton ; there were the Challices of Craig, and there were the Clifford-Cliffords, members for the county. *§& I say members advisedly, since without Mrs. Clifford-Clifford, Clifford- Clifford, Esq., M.P., were a nonentity. Happily for Clifford- Clifford, he was never without his better-half so things went well. Mrs. Clifford-Clifford arrogated to herself the first position in the county, on the ground of her husband's membership, his riches, arrived at by marriage with herself, and the prospects he had of receiving a Queen's Bench Judgeship — if he failed in reaching to the estate of Prime Minister. And Lady Challice of Craig, wife of Sir Hugh Challice, Baronet, and the oldest family in the county, looked on herself as leader of High-Rockton society by rights ancestral and territorial.

Lady Challice did not assert her rights loudly and offensively, as did Mrs. Clifford- Clifford; there was no need, Lady Challice thought, for a Challice of Craig to cry out her position from the house-tops. No one had ever questioned it. For generations the Challices of Craig had been born and lived and died on their own soil ; whereas, ten years ago the name of Clifford-Clifford was an unknown quantity in the county reckoning. It was only by right of her money, which had purchased all the rest, that Mrs. Clifford-Clifford could assume any position in the county. As it was, he being their county member, certain deferences were undoubtedly due to him and his, and the Challrces of Craig were the first to acknowledge this claim and to pay it graciously. For the rest, Mrs. Clifford- Clifford and Lady Challice were the opposite one of the other in everything, and leaders of opposing parties, and there was always warfare between them.

Only Lady Challice had the better part, for she did not fret and worry and torture herself with doubts as to her own social status, or with imaginary insults to this same. She passively assumed what Mrs. Clifford- Clifford actively asserted, and in asserting sometimes lost. And there were opposing religious factions. There were the modern High Church party, with the Clifford- Cliffords at their head ; and there were the primitive Protestants, as Protestantism had been known to and practised in High-Rockton from the days of Martin Luther. Of these, the Challices of Craig were looked upon as the supporters, as also the supporters of all that was primitive and protestant (against modern innovation) in High-Rockton. The Challices of Craig always held this or that belief, or acted in this or that manner, or spoke this or that doctrine.

What they thought or felt was quite beyond the question, so long as they acted as their forefathers had done from gener ation to generation. And it was well there lived still such profound faith in them ; for the Challices of to-day were, alas ! far removed from this ideal of unprogressive virtue. The present Lady Challice — she was Sir Hugh's second ■wife — was a highly enlightened woman, of decidedly modern tendency, who read much, and thought much, and had acknowledged to herself years ago that there were more things in Heaven and on earth than our philosophy wots of. Had the extent of her free thinking been known to others as it was known to her self, she had become a byword in High-Rockton as a seceder from the faith of her forefathers. But Sir Hugh was theirs, a very type and model of their perfection, an English gentleman of the good old kind which knows not change or progress.

A Challice of Craig, he lived on the soil and for the soil — and beyond the soil there was nothing. It was a consolation to Lady Challice, knowing her own shortcomings, to feel that Sir Hugh at least was a worthy bearer of the old name, a staunch supporter of the old faith, and that Sir Hugh's eldest son, the heir of Craig, was like unto him. For the others — they followed in the steps of their mother rather, except Dorothy, who being a child of the first marriage, stood hand-in-hand with her father and with her brother the heir, and apart from the new " Broad Church" element. Dorothy had a " mission," and was Heaven-called, and not of the earth earthly, as were her half-brothers and sisters. Of these, there were Captain Challice, a soldier at home on "sick leave," and Helen, the reigning beauty of High-Rockton, and Ella and Dick, children still, of a decidedly advanced school.

At the head of them all, honoured, respected, loved by all, was Lady Challice, the gentle guide, philosopher, and friend, the upright English gentlewoman, the loving Christian teacher, whose teaching was the teaching of charity and good-will to men, of kindness and long suffering, and of that mercy which seasons justice, falling like the dew from Heaven upon the wounds of human shortcoming and healing them. Such was Lady Challice, as I am able to sketch her roughly, the woman who played so large a part in the life-history I am telling you. Later you will know her better, even as I know her, who write. Let me go on with my story. It was evening at Craig, a hot summer evening after a hot summer day. Everyone was tired, even the dogs and the children, everyone was more or less disposed to lie about under the tress to get cool, if coolness were possible this sultry weather.

Lady Challice was tired beyond the rest, and longing for a quiet hour in which she might escape from the crowd, and betake herself to her own tree in the park for rest. This tree was called " Mother's Tree " by general agreement. It was a wide-spreading, low boughed beech, on the borders of the rabbit coppice. Around the tree there was a grass-bank, and ferns and flowers and creeping ivies in profusion. Here Lady Challice had had built for herself a rustic seat, and here she delighted to betake herself, book in hand, to read and to think in peace. The volume she had with her to-day was a work she had read three or four times already, and of which she never tired. Its title was In High Places, and it opened before her mental vision worlds of men and things, of actualities and possibilities unknown to High- Rockton exclusiveness.

The book had been widely read, and discussed and criticised in all the great cities of Europe more than a year ago, but its fame had only lately permeated to High-Rockton. It was written by one "Florio;" but who "Florio" might be, whether man or woman, whether of English or foreign nationality, had not yet become public knowledge, for all the fame the work itself had reached. That it was a wonderful work everyone allowed ; a great cosmopolitan critical and speculative analysis on Art, ancient and modern, and its relation to social moralities. It held a fascination for Lady Challice, in which there was something altogether personal, something which brought her into direct sympathy with the author, apart from his, or her, work. "It must be a he," she argued ; " a woman could not write with so little prej udice, so little bias," and this "he" had become the idol of Lady Challice's dreaming.

If only it should ever be granted her to come face to face with him, to take him by the hand and hear him speak some of the words he had written ! But how unlikely ; she, shut up for her life's reckoning in High-Rockton, and he But here her dreaming was broken into by reality. The boughs of the hazel coppice behind her were torn violently aside, and a man, a stranger, stood there, close to her, but not seeing her. He was looking around him in angry impatience, as one who had lost his way and was pressed for time. Lady Challice seeing him there, and anxious always to be of use to her fellow-man, rose from her seat with a stately — yet how winning! — grace, and addressed him: "Are you in any difficulty ? Can I be of service to you ? " " Your pardon ! " starting slightly as she appeared before him so suddenly, as out of the ground.

" I have missed my way. I am trespassing? " " This is private property, yes. Allow me to put you on the public footpath. You are not much out of your way." She raised her eyes to his face addressing him, and they were riveted there. She had always a way of looking arrow-straight at people, so that the dishonest quailed before her. But on this occasion it was she who hesitated ; looked away, then looked back again more fixedly than before. Her hand was pulling nervously at the lace lappet of her cap, and some strong feeling moved her usually placid features. She was never slow to speak her thoughts, even with strangers, having no fear of misconstruction. " Surely I know you ? " she said, looking into his eyes. "At least, you recall someone I did know very, very intimately. It was long ago, but — you must surely be a relation, a near relation, you are so like !

" Then calming from her momentary excitement: " Pardon my remarks, they must seem somewhat extraordinary ; but may I ask your name ? " " Certainly. Aram— George Aram." " I was sure of it ; then your father is " " Pardon me, was — my father was Doctor Wallace Aram of Lancashire celebrity," sarcastically. "And he is " "Dead." A look of infinite pain passed over the gentle face of Lady Challice, perhaps even a controlled tear dimmed her eyes. She was not, however, one who encouraged sentiment, — " Sentiment is for the young," she always said, — and continued, mastering her emotion : " Then you are really his, my old friend's son ? " " Nominally. Actually, I am an outcast from his family, as I was from himself." George Aram spoke impatiently, almost rudely, showing an evident objection to being questioned.

He had a stern face, eyes deepset, and lips compressed with obstinate firmness. He was not old like the woman before him, but her fifty years had left her more of youth than his thirty ; for whilst her brow was smooth and calm, his was contracted and lined as with much suffering. " Wallace Aram ! " Lady Challice repeated, and a smile, bright as a girl's, broke over her face. But the man's lips only pressed themselves more firmly together, and the hard expression of his features grew harder still. She held out her hand to him : " I recognised you at once. You are so like your father. But you don't know me, of course. I will tell you in a word. Wallace Aram and I were great friends once — more than friends." Just a perceptible hesitation. " You cannot think how much I am interested in every thing concerning him."

"Then you will scarcely be interested in me, for I never did concern him." "What ! his son?" " Consequently a sceptic as to the theory of natural affection. It has to be learned, like the alphabet. We Thc Unwritten Law. begin early, and it becomes second nature. But, like the alphabet again, it is easily forgotten. My father found small difficulty in forgetting that I was his son." " Is it possible that you forgot him first ? " a little severely. " Quite possible," he answered, releasing his hand which she had unconsciously retained longer than is usual with a stranger. " Now do sit down here and talk to me. I have so much to ask you, so many hows and whens and wheres to satisfy. Or stop, we will walk up to the house together; supper will be just ready when we get in. We can chat on the road up, and then you must be intro duced to my boys and girls.

They all know my old, old love story, and they will be as pleased as I to meet hi — Wallace Aram's son." "Thank you, no," impatiently, tearing a twig off a drooping bough and crushing it in his hand as if it were some noxious thing, out of which he would take the life. "You might be civil to an old friend, and come" — laughing; — "and besides, sir, I can put in a claim to your obedience, if only you will trust me until I shall have found time to explain." " Much obliged ; but I cannot accept your invita tion." " The old story, I suppose. Young men in these days are always so busy ; they have never a moment at their own disposal. Is that it ? " "Nothing so fashionable, I assure you, madam. Dinner is waiting for me at High-Rockton Abbey." "At the Abbey ! Are you staying at the Abbey ? " with a surprise of which the stately Lady Challice was rarely indeed guilty.

The sudden introduction of the High-Rockton bete-noir into their conversation had the effect of upsetting even her composure. She was no lover of scandals, or mysteries. She had taken no part in the loud-voiced ostracism of Mrs. Owen. She had simply not called on the woman, because she knew nothing whatever about her, socially or morally, and as the mother of girls, it behoved her to be careful with whom she brought them into association. George Aram only bent his head in answer to her repetition of his statement that he was a guest at High- Rockton Abbey. She was not satisfied, and continued in her old direct fashion : "Ah ! now the inducement to detain you is doubled. You must tell me something about this new neighbour of ours ? " Then, seeing a look of greater annoyance still come over his features, she hastened to add : " I am not asking out of idle curiosity, believe me.

This Mrs. Owen is an absolute stranger to the county. She is rather — well — peculiar in her dress and appearance, and so — well — we have none of us found independence enough to be the first to call upon her. We are very conventional here in High-Rockton. But, you see, when one has girls, one is bound to be careful." An ironical sneer crossed his lips, but he made no reply to her pause, so she continued : " But if now I could hear, on reliable authority, that this Mrs. Owen is — is — is not objectionable — you know what I mean — if she is a fit companion for my girls, and a person of whom I need not be afraid to let them make a friend, I would, even now, take the bull of our county prejudice by the horns and lead it by myself calling on Mrs. Owen." "You speak of making a friend. Is one bound to make a friend of every acquaintance ?

" " There is no moral coercion, certainly ; but at Craig we all have a rooted objection to pasteboard acquaintance. When we know people at all, we know them intimately ; they become part of our lives, so to speak ; they soon learn our histories from beginning to end, and we theirs. If such an intimacy be not possible, I never pretend to an acquaintance. They call me unsociable here in High-Rockton ; and, indeed, they are justified." Again her face grew young with its smile of heart gladness. George Aram, looking at her, found it in his heart to wish that the circumstances of his life would permit of his making a friend of this woman, who was holding out her hand to him. It was not possible, but he softened to her, answering her now without any trace of his former bitterness : " It is not in my power to satisfy you as fully as you would wish, perhaps, about — about the woman of whom you make inquiry.

Possibly you would not care for an incomplete recommendation ? " " It were better to know a little about her than nothing." " What do you specially wish certified respecting her ? " " Simply this : Is she a woman that you, as the son of Wallace Aram, would say to me, as the mother of young girls and as the head of the family, call upon her ? To put it more plainly, speaking as between friends — old friends — is there nothing in the personal history of this Mrs. Owen which, if discovered, would do a social or moral injury to my family ? For, I repeat, where we Challices know, we love ; and where we love, we are true. I am trusting Wallace Aram's son to speak on his honour. Now, answer me, George (see, I assume the rights of our old acquaintance) : What is she socially, morally, this Mrs. Owen ?

" "An honest woman and a gentlewoman. Are you content ? " "And her husband is ' " I can tell you nothing about him." George Aram spoke angrily, and ground the heel of his boot into the earth. Then, for the first time, Lady Challice remarked that the boot in question was a very shabby one, and that the whole dress of the man was not what she-would have expected in the son of her old friend. Her companion divined at once the manner of her thought. He laughed aloud. There was no mirth in his laugh ; it was rather a wordless satire. " You are astonished," he sneered, casting his eyes down over himself. " But — your father was so rich ! " she hesitated. "And I am so poor. Extremes meet, and the balance of congruity is nicely adjusted. Pardon me, but I must go now. Time was made for slaves, and I am a slave in the uttermost sense of the word.

Good-bye ! " "But you will come in to supper? It is on the table now. I have heard nothing about you yet, nor you about me. Do come in, if only for half-an hour ? " " Thank you — no." " For a few minutes, just to have a glass of wine ? " " It is impossible." "But about my old friend — your father? I am so anxious to hear some particulars of — of the end." " I was not present." " Will you come over and call upon us, then, to morrow, or at any time that may suit you ? The Abbey is not miles away from Craig remember." " Let me explain myself, Lady Challice ; for I know now to whom I am speaking." His voice was almost tender, which a moment ago had been so cold and cynical. " I am an outcast from your society. The doors of every respectable house would be closed, with an apology for a bang, against me, only that I have the wisdom never to invite the compliment.

I shall always take care not to do so, and yours least of all — for your daughters' sake, as you most justly remarked a moment since." " You are sarcastic, but you forget. You are even now visiting Mrs. Owen, and you have given me your word that she is a person I need not hesitate to receive into my family. Is it not so ? " " Even Lady Challice need not hesitate to receive, as she puts it, Mrs. Ow — the mistress of High- Rockton Abbey into her house on any grounds — moral or social." " Good. Then if she knows you, why may not I, who, from old association, feel almost as a mother towards you ? " "Surely I am not accountable for my friendships?" Then in a moment, repenting of his harshness : " For give me ; I forget that I am speaking to you. But, 2 * indeed, I cannot know you or yours— you were kinder not to press it.

You can believe, surely, that it gives me no pleasure to refuse the very first offer of hospitality which my later life has known ? But you are ignorant of that life. Good-bye ! " " Let me know it ? Tell me your history ; perhaps sympathy — affection " But he was gone, hidden from her sight already by the thick hazel-bushes of the coppice. Only the birds were singing " Good-night " around her ; only the squirrels were peeping inquiringly at her from their hiding-places behind the beech trunks ; only her own heart was beating response to her empty pleading. Something had come, and something had gone, without leaving anything substantial in its place. She was alone. "And that is his son," she told herself with infinite sadness, travelling backwards over an almost forgotten past ; " his son, and in trouble ; and he will not let me help him !

Does he know, I wonder ? " Yes, George Aram knew. He had heard the story years ago : the story of Mary Lee, who had loved his father, and been for years his promised wife. He knew how his father had been faithless to this great love, taking another woman in her place. "Are these things inherited ? " he often asked himself bitterly, looking into his own life. And Mary Lee had not reproached his father for his faithlessness ; she had said to him, " If you love this other woman, wed her." A year later Wallace Aram brought the child of his young wife, and laid it proudly in the arms of his old love, expecting of her sympathy in his joy. She took the boy George in her arms, and blessed it for its father's sake. But she could not remain amongst them with her broken heart to kill their joy. She went away from her home, where she and he had been born and had grown up side by side, to live with relations far removed from him and his family.

Another year, and her cousin, Sir Hugh Challice, looking for a second wife — a mother for his motherless children — asked Mary Lee to take the vacant place. There was no sentiment in Sir Hugh. It grieved him not at all when Mary told him of her broken love, and how that she could never love again. He did not require love, he said ; love was not necessary to happi ness. He wanted an upright woman as his wife, as the instructor of his heir, as the mistress of Craig. Of all the women he had known, Mary Lee was the one he could most respect and honour, and in whose hands he could best trust the honour of his name and family. And so, in the end, he persuaded her to become his wife. And she had never regretted, never for a moment. But she had never forgotten. To-day, the sudden bringing back into her life of Wallace Aram, in the person of his son, threw the first shadow over the content of her present.