The Girl He Married. A novel

Chapter I. By The Night Express

THUS ran the brief but startling telegram which was delivered late in the evening : — " Dr. Feverley, Blairavon, to Lennard Blair, Liverpool. " Come home by the first train. A crisis is at hand. Your father cannot survive much longer." From Liverpool to Blairavon, in Scotland, is more than one hundred and sixty miles by rail, the only mode of conveyance now, and poor Lennard Blair thought nervously of his chances of being at home in time to see — before the fatal moment — that parent to whom he was so tenderly attached ; and in a rapid and bewildered manner, acting as one might do in a dream, he thrust a few necessary articles into a carpet bag, preparatory to starting by the night express train for Carlisle and the North. i. B He glanced at his watch ; he had already lost two hours, during which the telegram had been waiting for him, while he had kept several business engage ments between the counting-house and the Hus kisson Dock.

In those two hours what might be not have lost ! and from amid the bustle of Liver pool, and the roar of its busy streets, his memory flashed home to his father's secluded mansion in Lothian. To Mr. Abel Envoyse, the managing clerk or cashier of Messrs. Vere, Cheatwood, & Co. — a meek looking little gentleman with a bald head, who had been in the house for years upon years, who bad never set up for himself, and never hoped to do so, whose ambition was probably satisfied by the salary now given him, and who thought Vere & Cheatwood the greatest firm in the world, even as Liverpool was the centre of the universe — to Mr. Envoyse, we say, Lennard Blair intimated the pressing nature of the telegram he had received, and that he must start at once for Scotland, Though a clerk in the establishment, and one who bad to work hard at his desk, Blair had a few thousands invested with the firm, and ranked as a junior-partner therein, but his name did not appear as such, so Mr. Envoyse felt himself com pelled to consent, in absence of Mr. Vere, for Cheatwood and the Co. bad long been myths.

" You will complete those bills of lading for Leonardo & Co., of Vera Cruz," said Blair, with nervous haste, " and I shall see Mr. Vere about other matters, when I reach Scotland ; he is there before me. Meantime, I require, please, a hundred pounds in gold." " Gold ? " echoed Envoyse, rubbing bis bald head. "Of course; Englisb notes are useless in Scot land." "Past bank hours. Do you want the money now?" " This instant." The sum was large for one in Blair's position. " We never keep much in the house when Mr. Vere is away," said the old cashier, reluctantly unlocking one of Milner's great patent safes ; " but here you are, Mr. Blair." " Thanks," and even in bis haste, so strong was tbe force of business habit, Lennard counted over tbe money, and gave a receipt, while muttering in a broken voice, " I am telegraphed for, because my poor father is — is dying."

" Good bye, Blair," said some of the clerks, witb all of whom he was an especial favourite. " "Wish I was going with you," added one, who was an idler, and usually wished himself anywhere but at bis desk. " But not on such an errand, surely," said Blair, as he thrust several dockets of papers into his drawer, and locked it. " Oh, no, my dear fellow, I didn't mean that," replied the young man, colouring, as he bent over his ledger, on which the gas-jet cast a glare from under its conical green shade. The counting-house of Vere, Cheatwood, & Co., was then in an alley off Canning Place, and in the b immediate vicinity of the Revenue Buildings, the Custom House, and Post Office, admirably situated for business, and in the most bustling part of the quays. Lennard Blair sprang into a passing cab, and " tipped " the driver.

" To where, sir ? " asked the man. " Terminus — Great Howard Street — go like lightning, my good fellow ! " and the short distance between Canning Place and the station of the Lancashire line was soon traversed, yet scarcely quick enough for the impatience of Lennard Blair. The first bell had already been rung ; the carriage doors were being slammed to ; the last of the luggage was being tossed into the guard's van, or hoisted on the roofs, and pointsmen and porters were running hither and thither, as Lennard hurried along the crowded platform, looking for a seat. He had not been without hope of getting a carriage, or rather a compartment thereof to himself, that he might indulge in his own melancholy reflections, undisturbed by the presence of strangers, the thoughtless, perhaps, and the noisy ; but the first glance he gave along the train dissipated the expectation; the carriages seemed crowded — every seat apparently was engaged.

Though far from being a sordid character, Lennard Blair had been more used latterly to travel by second and even third class, than first ; and now, when paying for the latter, he had certainly no desire to endure the useless discomforts of either of the former. The guard saw that he was carrying his own bag, and so left him to shift for himself. In the centre compartment of a first-class carriage sat a young man, with long, fair moustaches. He was alone, and dressed in a fashionable travelling suit, with an eye-glass screwed into the rim of his white half-bullet hat, and through this optical medium he was leisurely surveying the bustle on the platform, and about the departing train. Thrice had Lennard attempted to open the door, but found it locked, for the person in possession of tbe entire compartment had doubtless a private key.

" Engaged here," said he briefly, yet Lennard saw that he was alone, the five other seats being vacant. "Are you sure, sir?" asked Lennard anxiously. " Quite — all engaged here." " Awkward, excessively. I have looked every where else for a seat." " Ah ! then you may do yourself the pleasure of looking again ; there is just time," was the chaffing response, as the other drew up the window-glass to cut the matter short. He then unfolded Punch and the Times — placed his hat-box on one cushion, his carpet-bag on another, some rugs on a third, his umbrella on a fourth, his feet on a fifth, and himself personally on a sixth, proceeding thus, like a free born Briton, to occupy as much of the premises as he could, to the exclusion of others. Not a vacancy was to be seen elsewhere. The up train from the north was panting and puffing outside, its red lights glaring in crimson along the line ; the guard was swinging his lantern, and shouting " Tickets ! have your tickets ready," near the last carriages of the train.

"Guard," said Leunard, slipping a couple of florins deftly into that official's back-turned hand ; " get me a seat, please, anywhere ! " " "Which class, sir? " " First." " Plenty of room, sir, in the centre compartment of the third carriage ; five seats unoccupied ; look alive, sir, please." He of the eyeglass and long moustaches, who bad been watching Lennard's anxiety with some amuse ment to himself, had again lowered tbe window, as the gas-lighted station was close and dense in at mosphere, and the night — one of the last in April — being warm and without a breath of wind. More over, the supervisor of the tickets had thrown open the door now. " Sir," said Lennard, emphatically, when he saw that in addition to other lumber, books and papers now strewed all the cushions, " are those seats really engaged ?

" "Don't you see that they are?" drawled the other. " Now, this one, for instance ? " urged Blair. "By whom ?" added the guard. " Can't tell — by Punch, and my hat-box, I suppose." Lennard seized the articles indicated, and tossin° them far out on the platform took possession of the seat, and throwing some of the rugs, &c, from the opposite one underfoot, proceeded to make himself at home. With an angry oath, he of the eyeglass, who little anticipated so summary a proceeding, sprung out to recover his property, and had barely regained his seat, being roughly shoved in by the guard, when the bell rang, the shrill whistle cleft the air under the lofty iron roof of the station, out of which the train glided away between Great Howard Street and the Leeds Canal, while Lennard Blair and his fellow traveller, by the light of the carriage lamp, eyed each other with glances the reverse of friendly.

" If we are to travel together, considering your insolent disposition, you will be none tbe worse for being snubbed, my fine fellow," thought Lennard. " Curse him ; some post quill-driver, or bumptious snob, out on the loose, I suppose," muttered the other, almost audibly, while stroking his moustaches with an angry and supercilious air. "Did you think, sir, to occupy the whole carriage ? " asked Lennard, whose cheek glowed with an emotion of indignation, which certainly served to repress his sorrow and anxiety. " The whole carriage — well, perhaps so ! " " And may I ask why ? " " Because in this world every man has a right to get as much as he can for his money, and I always take deuced good care to look after Number One,' he replied, coolly. He then began to whistle a low but popular street melody, while Blair busied himself with his "Brad shaw," that volume obscure apparently as the shastres of Brahma, inextricable as the hiero glyphics of Memphis ; and through all the mazes of Parliamentary and express trains, of first, second, and third classes, the charges for cattle and luggage, &c, he sought to reckon over the anxious hours that must inevitably intervene before he reached Blair avon in Western Lothian.

This young man in his four and twentieth year, wearing the grey Tweed suit and smart wide-awake bat, pray observe him well, friend reader, for he is the hero of our story. His hair is a rich curly brown; his eyes are neither brown nor grey, yet there are times and lights in which they seem both ; with clean-cut features, he is closely shaven, all save a thick moustache ; he has a straight nose and handsome mouth. His figure is strong aud lithe, every muscle being developed, as with bat and oar and rifle be has kept his place among the best in England, and is moreover the champion shot of the Liverpool Volunteers. Blair's voice is very pleasant, and musical too ; there is a singular chord in it, that wins every ear, and seems to speak of a gentle and tender nature, though there are times when he can be bold and stern, but always a manly young man.

Swiftly sped the night express train. Liverpool, with its mighty world of wealth and work, its wilderness of docks and forests of masts, the broad waters of the Mersey, on whose bosom uncounted lights were shining from ship and shore, from wharf and sea-wall, — all were left behind. The dark masses of the Industrial School and Kirk dale Jail on one hand, the scattered village of Bootle on the other, were soon glided past ; houses became more scarce and far between, and after emerging from the long and rumbling tunnel, the train was careering through the open country under the clear and lovely light of an April moon, while Ormskirk with its market-place and coalpits, Farrington and its moss, soon vanished in the distance. Once or twice Lennard Blair, who had much to think of and to reflect on, turned his eyes from the swiftly passing scenery without to the face of his fellow-traveller, who evidently was neither inclined to converse or make himself agreeable ; for barely had the train emerged from the tunnel beyond Bootle Lane when he produced an embossed silver case of great size, and selecting therefrom a cigar (a rat's-tail with a straw through it), he lit it with a flaming vesta and proceeded to smoke without the ceremony of an apology offered or permission given, and without the usual courtesy of offering one to his companion.

This man's features were striking, but unpleasing; his complexion was fair, almost to unhealthy paleness ; he wore that species of beard denominated a goatee, and seemed some ten years or so older than Lennard, to whom his whole bearing was eminently offensive, displaying a cool insolence which, if he dared, might verge on open ruffianism ; yet his travelling suit, his Albert chain, rings, scarf, and gloves, &c, were all in the most unexceptionable taste. It is seldom that people take much interest in their fellow-travellers, even though they are to journey all night with them; but now Lennard Blair felt — how or why he knew it not — an intense and intuitive antipathy for this persou. There was a strange expression in his pale green eyes which (rather than their form or colour) made Blair recoil instinctively from him; and they had a stealthy and peculiar mode of looking away when those of another met them; yet Lennard felt cer tain that whenever he affected to sleep or look from the window the gaze of his companion was fixed keenly upon him.

With this emotion of repulsion there floated through Blair's mind some of the many stories he had heard or read of attacks, outrages, snares laid, and even murders committed in railway carriages; but he almost smiled as he felt his own biceps, for he knew himself equal to tossing the stranger out of the window if the occasion required him to do so. Little could Lennard Blair foresee how much, in a future time, his fate was to be influenced by this cool and impudent fellow who sat smoking in front of him, and superciliously pulling the windows up or down, as suited his own fancy or convenience. Lennard's intuitive dislike at last became so strong. that while surmising whether this personage was one of the swell-mob, he asked : " Are you going far this way, sir— along the line I mean?" " Rather too far, perhaps," was the dry response.

"How?" "Into Scotland," he replied, with a thick and unpleasant voice, as if bis tongue was too large for his mouth. "Too far, you think?" " To West Lothian, if you know such a place ; I never heard of it before. But here is Preston already. By Jove ! we have come at a ripping pace ! " he added, as the train swept with a hollow roar into that bustling and bewildering station, where so many lines meet and intersect; and then ensued the usual banging of doors, the clinking of the hammers on the wheels to test their soundness, the shouting of newsboys, the swaying of lanterns, and hurrying to and fro of porters, platform-officials, and sharp-eyed pointsmen. " Do we change here ? " asked Blair anxiously, snatching up his bag to be ready for the answer. " Of course we do — change for the Black Sea, Calcutta, and the Baltic," drawled the other, perpe trating an old joke, which was meant as impertinence, while he lay back in his seat aud watched the smoke of his cigar rising in concentric curls up through the ventilator in the carriage-roof.

" Tickets ! " shouted the guard, while a weather beaten and well-whiskered face appeared at the window, thus arresting a threatening gesture made by Lennard's hand towards his companion's nose. The smoker now made studiously a delay, to worry and annoy the official, by slowly searching every pocket in succession, as well as his pocket book, cigarand card-cases. " Smokin' is agin the company's rules — a fineable offence ; and you should have your ticket ready, sir," said the official. " Should I really ? " drawled the other ; " do you want it ? " " No." " Then why do you bother about it ? " " Because it must be shown and checked," replied the guard, becoming furious, but restraining his passion, as he flashed his bull's-eye full into the traveller's face. " Look sharp, please, or- ■" " Or what ?

" " I shall call a policeman." " Don't trouble yourself, my dear fellow ; if the pasteboard is worth seeing, it is worth waiting for," replied the other, who, after trying the man's patience to its utmost limits, showed his ticket at last, expressing a hope that the sight thereof " would calm his ruffled feelings and soothe his troubled bosom." With an imprecation, the official checked the ticket, slammed to the door, and the laugh of the impudent traveller was lost amid the clatter of the train, as it steamed out of the station towards Lancaster. Full of disgust for such a companion, yet wonder ing who he might be that was going exactly to the same part of Scotland as himself (T. C. appeared in large white letters on his portmanteau), Lennard Blair lay back in a corner of the carriage, and with half-closed eyes communed with his own heart, thinking of the sorrows that awaited him, of the past that had gone for ever, and the anxieties that might cloud his future.

Chapter II. Homeward On The North Western Line

ON sped the swift night express by the great North-Western line, its monotonous hum and motion being conducive either to drowsiness or reflection ; thus Blair, though he closed his eyes as if to sleep, permitted bis mind to become a prey to anxious and exciting reverie. "In the morning of our days," says the eloquent Burke, " when the senses are unworn and tender, when the whole man is awake in every part, and the gloss of novelty fresh upon the objects around us, how lively at that time are our sensations, yet bow erroneous are the notions which we form of things!" Lennard Blair was still in the morning of his days, yet in some respects he had lived long enough to see many errors and had won much experience. He was going back on a sorrowful errand to the narrow world — the little rural circle from which he had emerged some five or six years before ; and as the homeward train sped on, faster than the engine, yea, faster even than the electric telegraph, the posts of which seemed to be flying past in pursuit of each other, did his thoughts flash back to earlier years — the past returned to memory, and the present fled.

The only surviving son of Richard Blair of Blair avon, he had come into the world with the fairest prospects of succeeding, if life was spared him, to an ample, even noble inheritance, which his father con trived, with the utmost assiduity, to squander on the turf and elsewhere, till the whole of his property, save the remnant named Oakwoodlee on which he resided, had, by mortgage, purchase, and otherwise, passed into the hands of Mr. Vere, the wealthy Liverpool merchant. " Home-keeping youths have ever homely wits," to quote the " Two Gentlemen of Verona." Lennard soon learned the truth of this, and resolved to seek his fortune — or, as his father phrased it, in a moment of bitterness, "to earn his bread" — elsewhere, having become early aware that nothing was to be won by a life of dependance on his father's shrivelled purse; and it was not probable the blind goddess would seek him out on the pastoral braes of Blairavon.

He had accepted Mr. Vere's apparently kind offer of a desk in his counting-house, and invested in the firm a moderate sum that had accrued to him from his mother, the heiress of a few hundred acres; and thus he had gone south to Liverpool, among its busy thousands, to labour aud to learn, to work, to wait, to make a way in the world, and to regain, if pos sible, the position aud wealth of which his father's extravagance and imprudence had deprived him ; for Lennard treasured in secret all that pride of name and family which is inherent in the Scottish character, and he shrunk nervously from the con viction that, unless he thus strove, with resolution and thrift, the old Blairs of Blairavon would go down into the common herd (from whence they had sprung centuries ago), and be heard of no more.

Romances which Lennard had read in boyhood, and the prophetic wishes or hopeful prophecies of his old nurse, Elsie Graham, and of his father's attendant, Stephen Hislop, once butler at Blairavon, now valet, groom, and general factotum in the little household at Oakwoodlee, had all conduced to strengthen these honourable fantasies — this earnest, but perhaps desperate ambition, in the young man's heart. On the Blairavon lands is a grey old Druidical monolith named the Charter Stone. It was a firm belief in the family and county, and had been so for ages, that so long as a Blair retained a right of proprietary in this unsightly block, the race would prosper. Thus a thousand times had the im poverished old gentleman reminded Lennard, with glee, that though "the wealthy parvenu, Mr. John Vere," had won the lands of Blairavon " by his sordid and drudging industry," the Charter Stone was on the remnant they still retained near Oak woodlee.

His father, though he heartily despised all manner of business, and was totally ignorant of it, save in the items that related to bills, kites, and I O U's, had, after gulping down his old family pride, fostered the wish of his son to the utmost. Hence, to buy back the old patrimony, or to create another ; to toil, and spin, and work; to emigrate and dig, but only to return and regain the old place that had gone out of the original line, was the object of Lennard Blair, as it has been tbe Golden Dream, the romantic hope (in no instance, perhaps, ever realized), of many a Scottish wanderer in the woods of America, in the Australian bush, the mines of California, and the diggings of Ballarat : but this was the secret im pulse which animated Lennard as he drudged at his desk amid the roar of busy Liverpool.

During the first few years he had been in business he had learned much, but had not clambered far up the social ladder. He was literally only a clerk in the great mercantile firm of Vere and Cheatwood, with a small share in the profits derived from the money be bad invested in the stock, by the advice of Mr. Vere, whose acquaintance and patronage he had acquired when that gentleman purchased his father's estate. With all these sanguine hopes and delusive desires, the combined result perhaps of early education and secret vanity, there existed in the mind of Lennard no emotion of upbraiding or reproach against his father. The poor old man was dying now ; his weaknesses and bis errors were things of the past to be forgotten ; his virtues alone were to be remembered ; and the last time Lennard had seen his wistful, kind, and saddened face, when he left home to push again on his worldly way, came vividly to memory now. i. c To add to Lennard's troubles, he was in love — in love with Hesbia Vere, his employer's only daughter; a young lady ere long to be introduced to the reader.

As a neighbour when at Oakwoodlee, and as one of the best round dancers aud most pleasant friends whom she met at home, Hesbia Vere had always preferred, or seemed to prefer, Lennard Blair to many other young men whose wealth or worldly position were infinitely greater than his. On whose arm could she droop or lean more pleasantly and freely when breathless, flushed, aud palpitating after a long waltz or a furious galop; and who so readily found her fan, or bouquet, and so gracefully and deftly cloaked or shawled her for the carriage ? He had brought her beautiful flowers and the rarest exotics; ferns, the most remarkable; a wonderful parrot from a West India ship in the Albert Dock — a parrot that swore most fluently, but luckily in Spanish. He lost bets of gloves to her so adroitly; selected her books and pointed out passages which, when underlined by pencil, told so much more than he would have dared to say ; they had exchanged innumerable cartes-de-visite, and he had sketched and written in her album more than perhaps Papa Vere would have quite approved ; but that was a species of book he never by any chance opened.

They frequently met by the most singular chances in quiet and shady corners of the Botanical Gardens or when she was riding in the Prince's Park and other promenades. Lennard Blair, in virtue of the sum invested in the funds of Vere and Cheatwood, rather than in consequence of his gentlemanly bearing and good birth, was every way Hesbia's privileged dangler, greatly to the envy of his fellow clerks, and to the annoyance of several admirers of more pretensions. He had made love to her in every way that man could do, short of actually declaring it, and in such a way the flirt — for notoriously was Hesbia Vere a flirt — received it. All this alluring intercourse with the bright and beautiful girl bad made more impression on his heart than it left on hers; for Hesbia became his sun, his centre, his pole-star; yet he was merely one among many priviliged admirers who hovered about her, especially when he was elsewhere ; and it was only a realization of what the old rhyme tells us of the moon that looked on many brooks.

So, as Lennard thought of her in his reverie, he whispered to himself, — " Oh what can ever come of such a passion as mine ? In love — in love with one of the greatest flirts in Liverpool ? A girl who is vain as she is beautiful, and fickle as she is vain. What folly or magic is it that lures me to become ber shadow, when I know that she has jilted and trifled with wealthier, wiser, and better-looking fellows than I? Even her cousin Cheatwood has failed with her, if I have heard aright; and I am to see her again, for she is at Blairavon with her father. She, at Blairavon !" So pondered Leonard amid his waking dreams c in the night as the train glided on, now through deep cuttings, and then along grassy embankments, where the telegraph wires sung in the wind like Æolian harps; past darkened or half-lighted stations, where the offices were closed, the book-stalls shut, and the platforms deserted ; the flaming posters and huge placards on the walls alone remaining to indicate that on the morrow's dawn the stream of life would flow again.

On past red-gleaming furnaces and dark pit mouths, the clanking engines and whirling wheels, the smoking chimneys and murky atmosphere of the Black Country, where night and day, underground and above it, the brawny gangs of grimy men are for ever, ever toiling; on through the gloom and uncertainties of the scenery, as the moon waned, aud white lights and green, or the crimson danger signal, flashed out of the obscurity ; past green pad docks, shining pools, and thick hedgerows; past villages buried iu sleep ; past tall ghostly poplars, and those pollard willows and oaks, the eccentric trimming of which is peculiar to England ; past huge manufactories and coal and iron mines, with cones of flame that reddened earth and sky. And so on flew the train by stately Lancaster, where the stars shone brightly in the depths of the Lune, and on by the picturesque vale of Kendal embosomed among beautiful hills ; on by the grassy fells of Westmoreland and the old castle of Penrith whilom built by Richard of England as a barrier against the Scots — an open and gaping ruin now and thence onward by Carlisle; aud the breakiii" dawn saw the express train careering through the green and pastoral glens of the Southern Highlands, while the early mists were rising in light grey masses from the grassy summits of the Hartfell, the highest of the Scottish mountains south of Forth and Clyde.

With the aid of his private key Lennard's com panion had got out for refreshments — " nips and pick me-ups," as he styled them — at every station where the train stopped. Blair had no desire to accompany him, but sat wakeful and apparently listless in a corner, full of his own thoughts, which increased in keenness and intensity as he found himself among the mountains and nearing home. But he deemed it a singular coincidence that, though he changed carriages twice, and twice even to different trains and lines, his unpleasant fellow-traveller was constantly his vis-a-vis, and made exactly the same changes at the same times and places. Influenced probably by tbe numerous brandies and-water he had imbibed, this personage now con descended to make some inquiries about the localities they passed through ; but as the replies were always followed by sneers, in which he seemed prone to indulge, or by pitiful jests and disparaging reflections on the country, the people and the features, or names of the scenery, Lennard Blair became irri tated by his rudeness, and relapsed into studied silence.