The Old House at Sandwich ... New edition

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BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Uniform with this volume, 6s., The Three Recruits and the Girls they Left Behind Them. SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, & CO., Limited, §t. 'Stmetan's 'JSotree Fetteb Lane, Fleet Sibeet, E.C. THE STORY OF A RUINED HOME AS DEVELOPED IN THE STRANGE REVELATIONS OF HICKORY MAYNARD BT JOSEPH HATTON NEH- EDITION. LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON Limited Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C. 1888 [AH rights reserved] LONDON : printed by gilbert and rivington, ____., st. John's house, clerkenwell road, e.c. CONTElNTS. 33art h

Chapter I

"THIS HOUSE TO LET." I am making a summer holiday excursion about a corner of the pastoral county of .Kent and come upon the quaint, old-fashioned port of Sandwich. I am impressed with the remarkable way in which it has retired from the sea, gone inland, as it were, like a migrated city ; gone inland, nursing its strange history and traditions, its memories of Elizabeth and the Armada, its memories of battle, murder, and sudden death ; nursing, as it were, its commercial and social disappointments, and retiring altogether from a seafaring life. I wander about the old place and note the curious waterways, that wind through the town, forming natural moats to streets and houses ; and in one instance excavating a passage beneath the dining-room of an ingenious resident who, by the contrivance of a trap-door, converts the conduit into a wine-cooler for summer dinner parties.

It is an autumn day. I have noticed the extra ordinary luxuriance of the wheat that grows upon the adjacent battle-field, nurtured, it is said, by the bones of the ancient combatants. I have explored B the cavern close by, and seen the autumn leaves drifting hither and thither on the wind ; and at last, coming back to the old town, have found myself contemplating a somewhat dilapidated but rather imposing old house, I might almost call it a mansion. The painted sign upon the exterior, " This House to Let," is as yellow and faded as the ancient blinds that partially cover the windows that blink in the setting sun. I am tempted to look over the railings into the old-fashioned garden, rank with weeds and flowers, but still suggestive of cultivated flower-beds and trailing roses. I obserye in a shaded corner of the garden a middle-aged man trimming a small grass-plot, the only cultivated spot in the grounds, a little oasis in the general desert.

He looks up at me with a pleasant rubicund face, lays down his garden tools, and nods. I bid him " Good day," and say I hope 1 am not intruding. " Not at all," he says. I tell him that the notice, " This House to Let," and the dilapidated look of the place, have attracted my attention. I am idling away the day in Sand wich, and it has occurred to me to wonder why " this very desirable mansion " should remain unoccupied. He does not reply, but, crossing the garden, comes towards me, opens a wicket, and, with no more invi tation than a smile and a bow, I enter. He tells me that he is not a gardener, except in an amateurish sort of way ; that he is not the owner of the house, nor is he the agent in whose hands it has been left to let ; but that, in spite of his old jacket and the occupation at which I have surprised him, he is the vicar of the adjacent parish, and at my service.

It is not necessary that he should give me this evidence that he is a man of education and a gentleman, for " This House to Let!' 3 neither his occupation, nor his old grey coat, can disguise his quality and position. " The very house, I should say, for Queen Elizabeth to have lodged in when she visited Sandwich/' I said, looking around me. " And you would say rightly," replied the vicar, in a pleasant, mellow voice. " "Would you like to see the place ? " Receiving a reply in the affirmative, the clergy man laid down his hoe, put on his coat, and pro duced a bundle of keys. He was the very picture of an old-fashioned rural dean. Squarely built, of medium height, he had a large head, from which fell a thick crop of silky white hair. A rubicund face, short white beard, and genial brown eyes, he had a sensitive mouth ; and he stood firmly in his square-toed shoes.

He wore a white neckcloth, and his coat was of a clerical cut, though a trifle threadbare, and there were traces of snuff on the collar of his waistcoat. A couple of old seals on a black ribbon hung from his watch fob, and his rusty black trowsers were a trifle baggy at the knees. A queer old house, with dusty windows that blinked at you through half-opened shutters, and with creepers that tapped mysteriously and ghost like at both. " It was almost ancient three hundred years ago," said the vicar, " when good Queen Bess came here ; but my memories of it are of recent date." I climbed up into the glories of the timbered roof, the original woodwork of which had stood the honours of a siege in the olden days. A bat dashed by me, raising a cloud of dust, through which the sun worked a luminous beam that fell upon some fresh sprigs of ivy.

These pioneer shoots of a hardy b plant had consumed hundreds of years in forcing their way among the old timbers. It was a unique pic ture, this dusty corner of the old roof, with its long column of light playing fantastically upon the obtruding ivy. " And this," I exclaimed, as we stood once more in the old-fashioned garden that had an outlook upon the sluggish river, — " this is the house in which Queen Elizabeth was entertained ! " " Yes," said the parson, " she became the patroness of this town some three hundred years ago. The port had already decayed even at that early period in con sequence of the gradual silting up of the harbour. Under her letters patent in 1561 (you will find in the local and other histories), Flemish settlers, workers in serge, baize, flannel, and other materials, settled here.

They were privileged to hold markets ; and to encourage and give countenance to the town, Elizabeth came here in 1573. The Corporation turned out and gave her a fine reception. The town records are worth looking up. They contain some curious information upon the subject. Among other things, the Corporation gave orders that the brewers should brew good beer against her Majesty's coming. She came, it seems, one Monday evening in August, and lodged in this house until the Thursday following. The town was strewn with fresh gravel, rushes, and herbs, and decorated with flags and green boughs. The Queen, almost as soon as she rode into the town (she was on horseback), was presented with a Greek Testament and a gold cup worth £ 1 00. Henry VIII. had previously visited Sandwich, and he stayed in this house; so, naturally, Queen Elizabeth came here.

On the Tuesday she was entertained with a combat on the water between two men on stages in boats, each protected against the other's spear or ' This House to Let!' 5 staff by a wooden shield. The Queen professed herself greatly pleased at the sport. Wednesday brought a more important exhibition — an attack upon a fort which was erected for the occasion. After a furious sham combat the fort gave in, and the assailants planted the Queen's flag upon the citadel, amid loud cheers from combatants and spec tators. The next day it is recorded that the mayoress and the Jurats' wives gave the Queen a banquet of 109 dishes, on a table twenty-eight feet in length, in the local school-house. The dinner was cooked by the ladies of Sandwich, and her Majesty was so delighted with their culinary skill that, in addition to partaking of several of the dishes, she directed that others should be carried to her lodgings, and she tasted these possibly at supper-time in the dining room you have just inspected.

There was something very practical in the educational display made for the Queen's edification on the fourth day. Upon a plat form in front of the old school-house 120 English and Dutch children were paraded with their spinning wheels at work, an exhibition of industry that was highly commended by the Queen." "And I don't know," I said, "that under the reign of Victoria, who in some respects is not unlike her illustrious predecessor, Elizabeth, that our new school authorities can show a more useful example of practical education than the historical one you have so well described." " You touch a broad question, and a deep," said the vicar, as he plucked some sprigs of sweetbriar, and sticking one piece in his coat, handed me another for mine, " and a question which has many sides. In these days we are apt to look back and plume ourselves on our wisdom ; but the fine lady of to-day who can neither brew nor bake is to my mind a poor creature.

If Mrs. Newbolde had thought as much of her pies as of her earrings, as much of the brightness of her kitchen pans as of the cost of her gown, as much of what her husband thought of his dinner as what the gossips of Sandwich thought of her beauty and her bonnets, my dear dead neighbour would probably never have got drunk, but would have lived to die in his bed, famous and respected, with his children around him, and with the conscious ness that his son, George, would have succeeded to his good name, and his daughter have been a comfort to her mother, and the sunshine of the dear old home he would have bequeathed them." "Ah!" I said, "you that are old in years and experience, can look back and count the stumbling places ; but we that are young have to go blindly on, ignorant of the pitfalls in our path, not even dreaming that what seems to us a copse of flowers at the end of it is a yawning gulf, a poisonous morass, or the lurking-place of an assassin."

"It is pleasant to talk to a stranger," said the vicar, taking my arm and leading me to a break in the garden wall, over which we could see the river and the low-lying meadows beyond ; " but I hope you and I may become friends ; I have taken a fancy to you." " Thank you very much," I replied. " When I say it is pleasant to talk to a stranger," the vicar continued, "I mean that my neighbours are only with me and generally stick to old topics, and one understands their views and ideas as a rule so well that it is easy to know what they will think about even a new subject ; while you have not only ideas, but they belong to youthful experience, and young people interest me. They are like that boat you see going out with the tide ; it was only built " This House to Let!' 7 the other day ; it is small — a little coaster — but it is going to sea ; it will put in at strange ports, and will encounter storm and tempest ; it may return with torn sails and battered bows, and one day will be laid up hereabouts a shattered hulk, or it may go down in the deep waters and be heard of no more — who knows ?

It should be well built and well found, its timbers tried, its compass sure, its captain wise, its watchman wakeful, its crew sober, the barque that lives on the sea and trades to and fro to foreign climes. And youth — how much more should youth be wary of itself ? But there, I must not preach ; that were too great a liberty to take with you ; though ' a word spoken in due season how good is it/ saith a great preacher ; and somehow the calm night, the solemn river, the evening song of the thrush^ seem to invite solemn thoughts." The force of his words is impressed upon me as I watch the flowing river, slipping away to that sea which once covered the entire country, but has now only left an inland reminiscence of itself among meadows and homesteads. This old house of Elizabeth and the Newboldes is situated upon a narrow arm of the sea which has been left, as it were, upon the shore by Neptune as a token or relic of the days when great fleets anchored there, and warlike vessels assembled to go forth to meet the enemies of England at sea, or to conquer new possessions for the queen in previously unknown regions.

When I am about to leave, thanking the vicar for his courtesy, he makes some interesting and philo sophical remarks touching the different influences upon the mind of a story that is past and a story that is current ; a story that is full of tradition and the colour of a previous age ; a story that we look back to, and one that is mounted with the familiar accessories of the period in which we live. He tells me that, to his thinking, there is a greater human interest in the modern than in the ancient history of this old house, and in connection with which we might possibly discover the reason for that notice, "This House to Let," remaining so long without response on the part of persons seeking a " desirable mansion." He thus piques my curiosity, and then, like the genial philosopher he is, invites me to go home with him to dinner ; and since I feel so much interest in an old house, and can so well tolerate the conversation of an old man, he will tell me that modern story which is one of the most romantic and touching episodes of his clerical career.

Chapter II. The Kttined Home

I go home with him to dinner, and find his house just the quiet, snug place that should naturally belong to a clerical philosopher who is content to spend his days with his books, his garden, and his handful of parishioners, outside the great world of life with its struggles and its conflicts. After dinner the vicar tells me the story of the love-making and marriage of an artist named Newbolde, a young eccentric painter, who had re corded on canvas many of the picturesque scenes of this corner of Kent, and who had wooed and married one of the prettiest young ladies in Sandwich, an orphan with a small patrimony. Newbolde had had a rival for the girl's hand, in a somewhat aristocratic The Ruined Home. 9 young fellow named Lucas, who occasionally visited the neighbourhood from London. An educated young man, always well dressed, always calm and gentleman-like, Mr. Lucas had attractions likely to impress a thoughtless girl ; but he was unpopular in Sandwich, if one could say that a man is unpopular in a place which he only visited from time to time, and with which he had no social or business associations.

Mr. Lucas was said to belong to a good family, and had, among men, the reputation of being what is called successful with women. Newbolde, on the other hand, was born in the district. His family, a middleclass one, was well known. He had, as a boy, developed a remarkable faculty for drawing, and under tuition as a young man had become a successful artist. Mr. Lucas had been introduced to the girl through some family connection, and it was a matter for jocularity among her friends that he was " tremen dously smitten." She was, however, already more or less engaged to Newbolde, and between the period of Lucas's last visit (he had gone abroad, and nobody had heard anything of him for several years), New bolde and his sweetheart were married. " I married them," said the vicar, " and a very pleasant affair it was.

By my advice, instead of making a fuss about spending the honeymoon abroad, and going to some unfamiliar place to make amuse ment for waiters and others in a foreign hotel, I advised them on leaving the church to go home for good. They were a handsome couple. She was fair-haired and had blue eyes. A petite figure, she was quite the belle of this old place, a trifle vain, however, and not of that constant, loving nature that Newbolde was ; but, as I said before, a pretty, attractive woman. I am an old bachelor, and it was always pleasant to see Newbolde work, and to talk to him of his prospects ; and I took a fatherly interest in the young couple, though I was but forty when they married, forty and a fogey." The vicar tapped his snuff-box reflectively, and pushed a decanter of old Madeira towards me as he continued.

" They had been furnishing the old house for many months before the marriage, and you can imagine nothing more refreshing than the enthu siasm of Newbolde in the work. I recall the time as one of the pleasantest periods of my own life, the little part I took in looking on at those two people decorating their new home : adapting that old house of Elizabeth to the Victorian era ; planting on the grand old base of British wainscoting the decorative touches of to-day; placing on the grand old carved mantelpieces modern jugs and jars full of flowers that date back their perfume and beauty even before the Flood. You can hardly believe that twenty years ago that house was a picture of wholesome life and beauty, the garden a paradise ; though you may not be surprised to know that all this was eclipsed by a domestic catastrophe, over which hangs the shadow of a cruel murder ; the law had not evidence enough to proclaim it murder, but I do so without hesitation."

The vicar took a heavy pinch of snuff as he made this announcement, and handed me his box, as he went on to describe the marriage-feast and the settling down of the newly-married couple to their new duties and relations. Time goes on ; two chil dren are born, George and Margaret; and in the meantime, the result of the painter's success and the outcome of the sympathetic social qualities of his nature, Newbolde gradually develops a fatal disease —a passion for drink. The vicar describes in detail The Ruined Home. 11 how Newbolde, from glass to glass, slowly but surely comes under the dominion of the demon, Drink; how he fails to fulfil artistic commissions ; how his work degenerates ; and how, in the midst of it all, Mr. Lucas turns up at Sandwich. It seems that Mr. Lucas has met Newbolde in London, on one of Newbolde's necessary visits in connection with his art ; that Lucas is at the time, or professes to be, a man of means.

He meets New bolde in an assumed frank manner ; tells him that his dream, of course, has long since passed away ; that they are, of course, no longer rivals, but friends. He has travelled all over the world since then, and looks now at life with a man's practical experience, instead of viewing it from the standpoint of a boy's romance. He tells Newbolde that his friends are very few, his life a lonely one, and that he hopes Newbolde will look upon him, "for auld lang syne," rather as a brother than as the old enemy he pos sibly was years ago, under the influence of a foolish passion. He tells Newbolde that it is the duty oi the victor to be kindly to the vanquished, and he can only say that, if Newbolde or his children should ever want a friend, he may count upon him, Lucas, to the last penny he has in the world, the last drop of blood he has in his veins.

Newbolde is a gentle, tender-hearted, unsophisti cated fellow, and accepts these overtures in a friendly spirit. Whenever he goes to London, Lucas in variably meets him. They are members of the same club, and Lucas is always hospitably inclined, New bolde never loth to join him in the wine which he is continually ordering. As time goes on, Newbolde talks to his wife of Lucas, and sees no reason why they should not all be friends, since Lucas is very anxious to pay a. visit to Sandwich and does not care to renew his acquaintance with the place without being on good terms with the only people he cares about in the world, who live there. In due time Lucas comes as a visitor to Newbolde's ; and it is evident to everybody, except Newbolde himself, that his designs are not in the interest of Newbolde's peace.

" I think I detected from the first," said the vicar, "the wolf in sheep's clothing ; and it seemed to me that, whenever an opportunity offered itself for the degradation of Newbolde in his wife's eyes, Lucas always availed himself of it. Whenever Lucas came to Sandwich, Newbolde was more or less under the influence of wine, so much so, that on more than one occasion I ran the risk of losing his friendship through lecturing him upon his weakness." The vicar gave me many illustrative incidents of Newbolde's ineffectual struggles with the demon, Drink, together with instances of the remarkable affection that existed between himself and his eldest child, the boy ; an affection that was really a mutual adoration so strong as almost to excite the jealousy of the mother. Said the vicar, " The instinct of Newbolde's son — his name was George — though a mere boy, was active enough to make him resent every overture at friendship or familiarity on the part of Lucas.

The boy would neither play with him nor accept his 'tips;' very remarkable illustrations of a youthful antipathy, upon which the vicar dwelt with an almost fascinating in terest. He described the boy's frolics with his father, his almost unnatural cuteness in cloaking the father's passion for drink, and gave pretty wayside instances of the boy's devotion to his sister, Maggie. One could see the domestic pictures which the vicar drew of The Ruined Home. 13 himself playing with the children in that old-fashioned garden ; Lucas, the Mephistopheles of the scenes, looking on ; Mrs. Newbolde, ashamed of her husband, and making mental comparisons between the slovenly inebriate and the clever, cool, well-dressed gentleman from town, whom she had in those past days of her youth thrown over for this dissolute painter.

And thus the time wears on, the husband gradually falling under the dominion of the fiend Drink, the wife under the influence of the fiend Lucas. I might dwell upon the details of this phase of the story, as the vicar did ; but I prefer to sketch the domestic history broadly and in few words. Eight years have passed. Newbolde has gradually fallen from his position. The household is almost dependent upon the small income of the wife. With her respect for her husband love has gone also ; with love and respect has departed pride in the house and its management. What was once an artistic paradise has become a slovenly, ill-kept, ill-regulated abode. But, in the midst of all this, the wife has still retained her singular beauty, partly arising, no doubt, from a constitutional weakness of character in which vanity was predominant.

The vicar solilo quizes somewhat upon this trait of feminine character — before coming to the denouement of his story — which is, first, the elopement of Mrs. Newbolde with Lucas, and the scandal it creates throughout Sandwich ; and secondly, the strange realization of the situation by the inordinate sensibility of young Newbolde, the son, aged eight, who is left under painful circumstances with his infant sister, aged six. The vicar describes the interest he and his friends felt in these children, and presently mentions the sudden disappearance of the girl, who is carried away under somewhat mysterious circumstances, though in due course comes ample explanation that she is with her mother, who could not live without her. The boy's grief and manliness are touchingly described by the vicar, in contrast with the almost calm, unspeakable sadness of Newbolde himself, who sinks into the wretched state of a dipsomaniac, with lucid intervals, that illustrate in a grim sort of way his originally sympathetic and affectionate nature.

One day, near the bridge which crosses that attenuated arm of the sea previously referred to, he is found drowned, and there are attendant circumstances which point to foul play, and other attendant circumstances which cast, whether justly or not, a certain suspicion upon Lucas, strengthened by the fact that the little property of Mrs. Newbolde went to her husband on her marriage, to return to her should she ever become a widow. " The influence of the father's death upon the boy," said the vicar, "was something terrible. The sister did not seem to realize the sad business. How could she at six? One might say, How could the boy, for that matter, seeing that he was only two years older ? He saw the poor body carried into the desolate house, saw it all wet and weird — a dreadful spectacle. He leaned over it and kissed the poor dead lips ; and he seemed to have grown old, the poor child, as he looked up at me, and cried, ' He's murdered ! murdered !

That man Lucas has murdered my father ! And I will kill him ! ' The little fellow raised his fist and shook it, and clenched his teeth as a man might. ' God help you, my poor George ! ' I said. ' You must not say such dreadful things.' 'Oh, I must, vicar! 'the boy exclaimed, ' and you should forgive me ; I loved him so ! That man has killed my father, and you say in the pulpit a life for a life, and I will have his.' Misery had made the child prematurely old. I stooped down to comfort him, and flinging himself into my arms, he sobbed out, ' Oh, mother ! mother ! Maggie ! Maggie ! My heart is broken ! " The vicar turned his head away to hide his tears, and handed his snuff-box to me, that I might, I suppose, have an excuse to sneeze, which I did. As I parted with his reverence late at night, to wander along the dark streets to my own lodging, it never once, in all my romantic reflections, occurred to me that it would be my fate to have my affections and fortunes bound up in the history of that "house to let" and its latest and most unhappy occupants.

Chapter III

A MISSION OF VENGEANCE. The old house and the vicar's story kept me in Sandwich longer than I had intended to stay there, and excited in me an interest in the place, with which I hope the reader will sympathize sufficiently to accept this brief sketch of it. I particularly hope so, because I want both of us, reader and writer, to have in our minds the colour and atmosphere of the old times. Not that this story has to do with what is called history ; but as the vicar's narrative is the modern story of an old house, so does this general narrative run to a great extent into historic streets, though in due course it will carry us " over the sea and far away." The completest contrast to the port of London, in all these English realms, is the old-world port of Sandwich. An odd little town, it has crept within the shadow of Progress and retired from business.

Its quiet streets are haunted by a thousand ghosts of strange, busy days. Dickens's chronometer-maker was not more outside the noisy track of customers than is the town and port of Sandwich, on the historic coast of Kent, great and famous in the glorious days of Shakespeare, Raleigh, and Drake. Of its antiquity, you may read in the British Museum the following unique charter granting part of its revenues to the monks of Christ Church : — " Wherefore I, Cnut, by the grace of God, King of the English, and of the adjoining islands, take the crown from my head, and place it, with my own hands, upon the altar of Christ Church, in Canter bury, for the support of the said church ; and I grant, thereto, for the sustenance of the monks, the port of Sandwich, and all the revenues of the haven on both sides, whomsoever the ground belongs to, from Pepernesse, on the east, to Mearsfleote, on the north, so far as a taper-axe can be thrown from a vessel at high water.

The officers of Christ Church may receive all the profits, and no person to have any custom in the said port except the monks of Christ Church. Theirs to be the small boat and ferry of the haven, and the toll of all vessels what ever coming into the haven, to whomsoever they belong, and whencesoever they come. If there be anything in the sea, without the haven, which a man at the lowest ebb can reach with a sprit, it belongs to the monks ; and whatever is found in this part of the mid-sea, and is brought to Sandwich, whether clothes, net, armour, iron, gold, or silver, a moiety shall be the monks', and the other part shall belong to the finders. If any writings shall hereafter appear, which, under a show of antiquity, shall seem in any way contrary to this our grant, let it be left to be eaten by mice, or rather let it be thrown into the fire and destroyed ; and let him who shall exhibit it, whoever he be, do penance in ashes, or be made a laughing-stock to all his neighbours.