The Second Mrs. Tillotson. A story ... Reprinted from 'All the Year Round.' Second edition

Front matter

LONDON : BOBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W. % Storg. BY PERCY FITZGERALD, M.A. F.S.A. author of ■*' bella donna," " never forgotten," " jenny bell," etc. etc. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. REPRDJTED FROM " ALL THE YEAR ROUND." SECOND EDITION. LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18 CATHERINE ST. STRAND. 1 866. [Tne rigTit 0} trandat ton and reproduction is reserved.'} gnsaihefr TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE VISCOUNTESS STRANGFORD. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. §aok th Jfirsi. CHAP. PAGE i. The Two Passengers * II. The White Hart 14 in. The Brown Room 24 iv. A Stormy Consultation 33 v. Ada Milwood 42 vi. Among the Tilneys 48 vii. The Cathedral 59 vni. After the Dean's Sermon .... 7° ix. In the Dining-room 78 x. In the Drawing-room 89 xi. The Cricket 105 xn. St. Cecilia at the Organ . . . .120 xiii.

An Ill-conditioned Man . . . .131 xiv. An Angry "Walk Home 143 xv. The Assizes '53 xvi. Ross v. Davis 164 xvn. The Verdict 186 xviii. The Dean's Party *98 xix. Darkness again 207 §aak % Scctftvcr. 1. " The Captain's" Nieces . . . .219 11. Me. Tillotson " Goes Home" . . . .232 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. VLLL nup. PA0E in. More about " the Captain" . • .241 iv. " The Captain's" New Menage . . .252 v. A New Interest 259 vi. The End of a Love 274 vii. Illness z88 viii. An Expedition 3°7 §aoh % gmt.

Chapter I. The Two Passengers

This story, whose course shall lie along the open, every-day thoroughfares of life, with the houses of yesterday on each side, and the every-day men and women hurrying along, begins at a very every day scene : at a railway station, with the train setting off, and cabs arriving with marvellous punctuality at precisely the last minute. In one of these cabs, the gentleman who is to be the hero, comes driving up very late — it was not his fault, but that of a hopeless "block" in the City — who, indeed, seems wholly indifferent as to whether he " had run it a little fine" (the en couragement of the porter who had secured him \rOL. I. B and " brought him through"), or whether he should have to wait two hours and more for another train. It seemed all one to him, though the porter at the door of the carriage, with assumed heat and prostration, congratulated him on the success of their exertions; and saying once more that "it was putting it a little too fine," was handsomely requited for his exertions.

This evening train left Waterloo station at " three thirty;" and it was now three thirty-one. Not being one of the " expresses" which were always breaking away up and down the line, but a sober, provincial old-fashioned train, which am bled on from station to station, it was treated by the officials with the sort of unceremonious re spect they kept for old ladies with baskets, who delayed them with questions. It was not kept up to time very closely, nor very full. As it " toddled" out of the station, there was indeed seen, in one carriage or two, a row of hats and heads bent down over a row of evening papers, like a class at school ; but other compartments glided by — some containing a prisoner or two, some merely empty cells, and one with a lonely gentleman all to himself, who had bought half-a dozen papers, which lay unfolded beside him on the seat.

This gentleman had a white ticket for St. Alans in a leather-bag beside him. He was about five and-thirty — but looked more — was spare without being thin, pale without being colourless, thought ful without looking a hermit or recluse, with a half-dreamy air that was agreeable and not ab surd. The morocco-bag had initials on it, " fi. %. ;" and inside the morocco-bag were note-books and pocket-books, a volume of Boswell's Johnson, with a name on the title-page, which was in a bold firm hand, and read " Henry Graves Tillotson." Henry Graves Tillotson looked quickly from one window to the other as the " dowdy" train moved on, and jerked, and shook, over intersecting rails, and glided by the huge rambling boarding-houses where engines " bait" or board, like great chouses, and the surgeries and hospitals where they are taken in and have their wounds dressed.

He looked up at the men in the round tops, half-way up great masts of trees, who, with strange instruments and levers, exercised some mysterious influence on his own motion. He turned listlessly from side to side, and saw the " backs" of factories, the storehouses and yards of timber, which were " fining" off into rows of houses, then again into rows of villas, and then later into detached houses, until the trees and green fields began to spread out and encroach altogether. By which time the old lady who was carrying him was "getting her stride," and hur rying along at a respectable pace. Then Mr. Tillotson gave a sort of sigh, overcome perhaps by this utter solitude. Yet he had selected this lonely cell purposely. He looked over at bis evening papers absently, but did not take up a single one to read.

He cared very little for the meeting of the emperors at Kirchwasser — or for the actual text of the last " Note ;" or even for the accident in Piccadilly " This Day ;" which were the leading items of telegraphic news. And thus for some hours the stations came and went one after the other, and their names were shouted, and brought with them a dropping fire of doors. Once, indeed, a young girl in " a hat," with her mamma, were put in at a station. The mamma had many packages and parcels — sets of novels tied up with string — and seemed, indeed, to have newly come from a fair, laden with merchandise. She hardly spoke a word, but was anxiously count ing her treasures, and never getting her calcula tion right. The young girl sat opposite to Mr. Tillotson, and studied him with furtive eyes for the twenty minutes between the two stations.

After all, there is a little romance in this sort of travelling — when of a night in the blue chamber, under the dull lamps, two or three companions come in and sit for half-an-hour, and we see their faces, and per haps talk with them and feel a sort of interest in them, catching even a hint or glimpse of the far off drawing-room or fireside, to which the carriage waiting in the dark at the foot of the steps, with lamps flasliing, will carry them. Then they are gone, saying " Good night," and before morning we are a hundred miles away, and know it is all but certain we shall never see them again. This young girl talked over their tea-table of the sad-looking gentleman who was with them in the carriage. " Such a soft, interesting face, papa," she said; "just as if he had suffered a great deal.

I am sure he had just lost his wife." " I never noticed him at all, dear," said her mamma. No more she had. " And sometimes I heard him sigh," the girl went on. " And his eyes were so soft. I am sure it was his wife, papa." " Something wrong in trade," interjected papa, from his newspaper. " No, no," said she. " I am sure not that. He had no bushy whiskers, or any thing of that sort. 0, it was the most curiously interesting face." The young girl, who never met that face again, was right. For in him there ivas this strange expression of interest which attracted every one, more or less. Mr. Tillotson, who by some accident contrived to keep his privacy, was " visite" in due course, and required to show his papers. This process repeated itself until the darkness was weU set in, and the journey nearly done, and lamps flashed into the carriage at a station about ten miles from St. Alans.

There the door was opened, and some one with a cilt-headed cane cot in. This was a short narrow gentleman, in a coat that seemed well made, some thirty years ago, and a tall hat that was fixed stiffly on his head ; and under the brim of the hat Mr. Tillotson saw a very pink and rugged Roman nose. Mr. Tillotson saw these features, dismissed them from his mind, and re turned to Mr. Boswell, with whom he had begun to converse absently when company came in. The new gentleman seemed a little uneasy at this behaviour, for he looked from one dark window-pane to the other, and danced liis gilt-headed stick up and down between his knees. He took in Mr. Boswell resentfully, and at last spoke, leaning over on his elbow on the cushion, as if reposing on an ottoman : " You have come down from town, I suppose ?

Any news up there when you left?" Mr. Tillotson looked away absently from his book, and said, " he had not heard." He then eagerly handed over his unopened bundle of papers. " Ah, yes," said the gentleman, feeling about his waistcoat for something. " Evening papers, I see. Did not bring my glasses. I find this sort of light, you know, ruins the eyes. I never read by it — never. When I was once quartered at Walmer, lots of years ago now, I was left for a week by myself without a soul, sir, to play piquet with; and so I was driven in upon reading, and that sort of thing, and read so hard, sir, that I impaired my sight, sir — im-paired my sight. That's always the way with young fellows. God Almighty gives us these blessings without our asking for 'em, and we go and abuse 'em. Going on to St. Alans?"

" Yes," said Mr. Tillotson. "We shall be there soon, I suppose ?" " Why, yes. Do you know, I'm going there too. I live there — have lived there for many, many years, and I suppose shall die there. Per haps they'll carry me out to a corner of the ca thedral, feet foremost. What we must all, all come to, you know ! Dust upon dust. Clay, sir, that a common fellow will turn up in the fields. How fine all that is in the Service ! Yes, I suppose they'll give me a bed there. I know the dean very well — Lord Rooksby's brother." "0, you know St. Alans well?" said Mr. Tillotson, anxiously closing his book. " Yes ; I may say I am a St. Alans man. I was a Soy here," he added, with a touch of feeling, " what-d'yc-call-'em'd it on the green, saw the old cathedral every morning, and used to go reg' larly to the anthem.

Ah ! we were all innocent then, sir." • " And now," asked Mr. Tillotson, " is it a— a stirring place — I mean as regards business ?" The gentleman smiled. " Well, I suppose it is. Let us say it is. I always stand up for old St. Alans. It's a deadly lively place ; but after the hums and storms of life, of which I have seen many, Dick Tilney, sir, loves it still. By the way, my name is Tilney, sir. If you are a stranger in old St. Alans, and coming to stay amongst us, I know the constitution of the place — have its pulse, I may say, between my fingers." " Thank you — thank you very much. I should, indeed, like to know something about the place. I have reasons— perhaps important ones." " Quite right — 0, quite proper," said the other. " Long, long ago, when I started in life, and was fresher and perhaps more innocent than I am now — though, God Almighty be thanked, I have never lost the early implanted sort o' thing — at my mother's knee, you know — I started as equerry to H.R.H. the Dook of Clarence.

You recollect, the Sailor King and all that fine time, you know ! One of the best of England's line. He always said, ' I like a man with reasons, and that can give his reasons.' " " I shall be here, I suppose, for a week," said Mr. Tillotson, " and then—" "Quite right — 0, quite proper," said the other, making his cane dance. "You will go to the White Hart, of course — an old gentlemanly house, and, let me' tell you, that is something in these days of bagmen and snobs. As I have often told Chimiery — my second cousin, the Right Honourable Baron Chinnery of Chinnery, and aU that — God help us, we don't set up to be swells ; for be a man an innkeeper, or be he an ostler, or be he a counter-fellow, or be he a — a — " And hesitating here, having exhausted his illustrations, he happily added, " a any thing you like ; if he behaves like a gentleman before his fellows, he becomes one, and the noblest work of our common Creator.

That's the religion I was brought up in ! I have been in St. Alans for ten years now, come weal, come woe," he went on. " I was a boy there, and came back like the hare. I suppose I shall die there. They'll stow me away in the cathedral somewhere. They're always glad to get a gentle man. I keep my family there too, sir — wife and daughters — pleasant house, good air. No state — none in the world. You know where the White Hart is ? Not very far from the bank." "Yes," cried Mr. Tillotson, a little eagerly, "I have heard of that. Not doing much, I be lieve ? They are old-fashioned and behind the time. They want working up to the new principles." " No doubt — no doubt," said the other. " New or old, my dear sir, it's all one to me. I am ashamed to say I am genteel enough never to have had a balance any where.

Can't do it— and can't fro about it." Mr. Tillotson was presently asking many questions about the men of the place and local matters, and whether it was going back or " coming on," and got curious parti-coloured answers, contain ing a little of the information he wanted, but all mottled over with references to old days and fine society, and to the late William the Fourth when Dook of Clarence. " Tickets here," he said, in terrupting himself. " This is St. Alans. You take a machine here, put the traps on the top, and bowl away to the town. Here, George, see to this gentleman's things." And in a moment he was on the platform, stepping here and there with a slight "stiffness," — and Mr. Tillotson saw this from the narrow back and long limbs — and switching the air with his gold-headed cane. " I'll ask you for a seat," said he, " down to the town.

These limbs of mine are a little tired, as all limbs are and should be at my stage of life. White Hart, driver !" It was the ancient old-fashioned English country and county town, in which someway the gaudy host of grocers' shops seem to thrive most and be most conspicuous, and books to have only a feeble, languid, unhealthy existence. " You find us," said Mr. Tilney, as they came down a by-street, " rather in undress. The roughs here must have their politics. The Law — the Law, sir" — and Mr. Tilney raised his hat as if he were mentioning a sacred name — " the Law has its hold upon us now. The majesty of our constitution — which, if you compare it with that of France, Italy, or any other tropical country — under the blessings of which ive live, is about to be vindicated. Rich and poor, poor and rich, are all one there.

The assizes, sir, will be on in a week or so. The grand inquest will be sworn to-morrow." " 0, indeed !" said Mr. Tillotson, absently. "I know it," said Mr. Tilney, as if this ab straction implied doubt. " I had it from Wagstaff, the clerk. And a heavy calendar; some heavy cases; and one of extraordinary interest, most singular, in which young Filby, quartered here, and, I am told, a second cousin to Lady Frog more, is mixed up. It will be taken second or third. Then there is another — " "And what was this affair?" asked Mr. Til lotson, bound to show some curiosity. " 0, foolish, foolish ! Coming home from the races on a mail phaeton, these young fellows, who, I happen to know, are connected with really some of the best houses in the county, began to throw orange-peel about — some say oranges.

A grocer, in a small way, and called Duckett, is at his door, and is hit or splashed. Well, now, instead of doing as you or I would, going quietly back to our shops, to our scales and beams, and tea, and that sort of line, Duckett must go and blus ter, and naturally young Filby, who is a high spirited boy (his father, between you and me, went off with a maid of honour, aU the papers full of it, but with stars, you know), and the others, of course, give it to him : and the result is, he gets it." ,, iiu % " And he brings an action ?" " And he brings an action. Quite right," said Mr. Tilney. " Our wild relation, Ross, harum-scarum fellow, mixed up in it too, who, by the way, has his hands full enough. Here we are. I'll tell you all about that further on. All about it! Remind me, though." " You must take us as you find us," continued Mr. Tilney, apologising for the town.

" We shall do better by and by. I am not ashamed to identify myself with a rising place of this sort. Ah, town is really my place ! Town air suits my lungs ; but I believe in poor old St. Alans ; with all its faults I love it still ! Here we are. White Hart. A very good house. Where's Hiscoke ?"

Chapter II. The White Hart

The White Hart was a great old inn, with good connections on all sides. It had a healthy old age, and, until the fatal day when a modern Grand Railway Hotel was to burst into life, would stride on healthily ; just as there are old men the ad miration of their friends for their spirit, and who are always described as "hale old men." Bnt one day the hale old man falls in suddenly, and shrinks up like a rotten apple. This inn had some architec tural ambition, had great rooms, where the grand father of the present Lord Rooksby had danced with his contemporaries, and where the same nobleman had dined riotously and held his election committees ; where, too, as the Honourable Mr. Ridley, he " fought the battle of the Tories for seven days !" Now, the present Lord Rooksby always went up to London to dine, " put in" his son, the young Hon. Ridley, in a morning, without ex pense, bad no generous feeling arising out of the past for the White Hart, and fought no battles for Tories, or any one, indeed, but for himself only and for bis family.

When Hiscoke had been found and solemnly charged to take all care of the stranger, Mr. Tillotson asked, hesitatingly, if he would stay and take share of the dinner. Mr. Tilney consented heartily, and was even good enough to order it, taking care that it should be a sort of special dinner in a special room, and with special wine, which he looked after, — with special charges, perhaps, which he did not look after. The special wine, which came up all powdered with sawdust, and was carried tenderly, like a fire-arm that might " go off" at any second, mounted softly into Mr. Tilney's cheeks and Roman features, and coloured them finely. Under the light, now that the stiff hat was off, Mr. Tillotson saw that he was a " youngish" sexagenarian, with very thin hair, and a blue tie speckled over with " pigeon's eggs," and that his manner, though in company with some oddities, was that of a gentleman.

He was pleasant company, and kept up an animated, if not conversation, at least commentary, on life generally — for really that only bounded the range of his subjects. " After all, one's own fireside," continued Mr. Tilney, " what is there comes near that ? You try the one thing and you try t' other thing — the courts and the camps and the what-d'ye call-'ems — and you come back to it. I am no saint, and, thank God, have never set up to bo one; but Home, and the smiling affairs, eh? — that is the true charm. You put yourself into that evening train at the call of business, and I daresay were looking back at every station — I don't wonder — a cold night in a railway carriage — after the cheerful hearth and the bright faces ? Come now?" Something like a twitch passed over Mr. Til lotson's face.

" I am sorry," he said sadly, " that such a pleasant picture has no existence for me. I have left a fireside* indeed behind me, but it is a solitary, miserable one, and to that I must return. I have never been married, and see nothing to tempt me ever to marry." " I beg your pardon. 0, I do, indeed, from mj* soul," said the other, making a glass of the brown sherry return back to the table w*hen half way on its journey. " I did not mean to touch on any thing sore. I did not, indeed. No, no, God forbid." " No, no ; of course not," said Mr. Tillotson, sadly. " Naturally, how could you know ?" " There it is !" said Mr. Tilnej-. " Naturally, how should I know? But I ought to have known. Bless me, twenty years ago, when I was with Macgregor and Foley and Billy the Middy, as we called him — that is, his late Majesty King William — they would have taught me better than that.

Foley, who was major under Paget Daw son, said often and often, ' Dammy, sir, assume that every man has done something to be ashamed of. Assume that in every boot there's a corn, sir.' " But from the date of this discovery of his com panion's celibacy Mr. Tilney began to look at his neighbour as if quite another Mr. Tillotson had come to sit down there and was entertaining him with the brown sherry. His manner became softer and more deferential, and he checked his own ten dencies to soliloquy to a surprising degree. " But if you talk of rubs and trials," he went on, " we all catch them. Not a doubt of it. Man never can, but always must be, blest — fine lino that ! God knows I have had my share — struggle, struggle, struggle, toil and trouble, from that high," and he put his hand on the seat of a chair beside him.

" The very year his Majesty, formerly the Sailor Dook, died, they got me a little place about the palace, a trifling thing ; and what d'ye think, before he was a year gone, they took it from me — abolished it, sir ! — was that, I ask you, dishonouring his remains ! And the dean up there will tell you in his pulpit this is all good for us ! VOL. I. c Pooh ! Sir, at this moment I might have my hand on the banisters of the palace stairs — I might be sitting in my purple and linen, with the rest of them, instead of," he added bitterly, " fighting the battle of life, sir, in a damned hole-and-corner place like this !" Mr. Tillotson answered him gently and impas sionately. " We have all to bear these things — all. If it is any comfort to you, you may know* that there are many whose miseries are greater, and who would — 0 how joyfully ! — welcome the disappoint ments of money, and place, and prosperity, in the room of mere agonies of mind and conscience.

Compared w-ith such," he went on, earnestly, " believe me, you are supremely happy. You have your family, your children. You have not your fireside crowded with black shadows — the haunting spectres of the piast — that drive you to seek in business and occupation some sort of distraction, but w*hich will pursue you wherever you go. Ah, think what is a little place abolished beside this !" Mr. Tilney filled his glass again. " You put it excellently, my clear sir, and really with great feeling. As you say, what is a place ? — ah ! it is the shock, the wound, the wound, sir. After years of devotion to be cut adrift. It was the unkindness — sometimes of nights it comes on me — just as you describe — at the foot of the bed. Ah, had I courted my Maker, Tillotson, with one three-quarters of the devotion with which I courted my king, he — he" (he paused to recover the quotation) — "he wouldn't have — treated me in this sort of way.

No, no, not he." After a pause, " You spoke of business, I think ?" Then Mr. Tilney, wrell back in his chair, with his armpits over the knobs, said, frankly, " Now, what can we do for you ? I should be glad to tell you any thing and every thing." Mr. Tillotson then disclosed the object of his coming down to that decaying country town. " I daresay you have seen in the Times the Fon cier Capital Company. They are doing wonderfully, and spreading their business. They want to work up the country districts. I myself am a director, and very deep in it, as they caU it. In short, we are going to have a branch here. There is no need to make a mystery or secret about it, and so I tell you. We are determined to make the experiment, at all events. What do you think of the prospect ?" " Well," said Mr. Tilney, filling out some sherry, " I knownothing about rate of interest, exchange, and that class of thing — I say it above board — and as to banks, I know the brass shovels by sight, perhaps, and ah ! * How will you have it ?' — eh ?

It's a happy moment, always, getting a spadeful of guineas. Money is one of God Almighty's blessings, let 'em preach against it who like. I have beard Ridley, the dean, harangue against it like a fury, and it's notorious, sir, the man's as great a miser as there's in the clergylist. I don't call that religion. Ask me about men and women — ask me about the mere rude details — human nature — life from the palace to the cottage — I'm at home there. And let me add, Mr. Tillotson, that a man, a gentleman — who says his prayers every morning, and who has walked over the kingdom with his eyes open, or without doing any — well — any confounded sneaking dirty action, is a scholar in his way, and as learned as any of their D.D.'s up at the Close there. Uncommon good this : Hiscoke is note orious for his brown particular."

Mr. Tillotson felt all through that there was a sound truth in this philosophy, and picked up short sketches, points, and features about the more pro minent persons of the place, which w*ere useful for his purpose. It w*as now about nine o'clock. Mr. Tilney was growing very communicative, and seemed to punctuate his sentences with sips of brown sherry. He always spoke of this drink so unctuously, and with such flavour as combining strength and cordial and restoring power, that a rich mahogany seemed to glow before his hearers' eyes, and they moved their tongues uneasily. People were known to go and order brown sherry after an interview with him. " I am very glad you are come," continued he, his arm still on the round knobs — "very glad. I hope you will stay. We should all like to know you.

Between ourselves, this is a stifling place for a man who has clattered through life as I have, and sat and drank with the best. It is a great change, you know, after all, and comes hard, devilish hard, upon a man, sir, who is accustomed to his bow-window and his newspaper, and his cut of club-mutton, and his two fingers from a royal dook, with a ' How d'ye do, Tilney?' as regular as a mutton-chop at breakfast. One of these days I'll show you a letter from that quarter ; a letter, by Jupiter, that I might have written to you, or you to me. But what was I goin' to say ? Isa man has been used in a gentlemanly way through life, and has been met in a gentlemanly way by a mer ciful Creator, it don't become us, sir, to cut up and grumble, and be ungrateful at the end. I tell you what," said Mr. Tilney, prying curiously into the now empty decanter, and feeling that he must forego more of that cordial — " I tell you what : will you come up to my shop and take your tea with my girls, up at the Close ?