The Vicar: a novel

Front matter

THE VICAR FOURTH EDITION, NOW READY. In one vol., handsome cloth gilt, with frontispiece by W. H. Margetson, 6/-. THE DAGGER AND THE CROSS. A NOVEL By JOSEPH HATTON. Pall Mall Gazette. "Powerful, intensely interesting; with exciting incidents and a complex plot. It was a daring conception to transplant a group of Italians, full of art, beauty, and stormy passions, into the quiet village of the Peak, the country the author knows and loves so well. The whole story is full of dramatic force." Daily Telegraph. "Venice, where the story opens, is touched in with a few accurate and telling strokes ; the figure of the agile fencing master, the Dantesque painter, his beautiful wife, and the handsome devil of a seducer, are excellent. They live and breathe and move." The Scotsman. "It has the grace and finish that only the skilful hand and the mature judgment can give to a work of fiction.

It blends romance and reality, conveys numerous touches of human tenderness and weakness, and reproduces some thing of the life of the past century with the fine art that conceals art. The narrative is powerfully written, and the events are thoroughly realistic and dramatic. The dagger figures on several occasions in the story, but the element of priestly influence is made to play an exceedingly striking part in its development. For a story, timed in the seventeenth century, it is successful in a remarkable degree." The Vicar A NOVEL BV JOSEPH HATTON AUTHOR OF "WHFN GREEK MEETS GREEK", "'THE BANISHMENT OF JE5SOP BLYTHE*' " BY ORDER OF THE CZAR ", " THE DAGGER AND THE CROS5 ", ETC. LONDON HUTCHINSON & CO, PATERNOSTER ROW PRlMTEIi AT N1MEGUEN (HOLLAND) BY II. C. A. Til IK ME OF NIMEGUEN (flOLLAN(') AND 3G, fcSSKX STREET, STRANI , LONDON, W.C. Dedicated io the Memory of James Albery, a poet, to whose Collaboration, in a Play founded upon this Storv of mine, I am indebted for several dramatic passages and for the introduction of David Macfarlane. i THE VICAR.

Chapter I

"ARCADES AMBO." ■ Let us call it a council of war, on the eve of retreat," said Mr. Jim Renshaw, who in playful moments alluded to himself as a soldier of fortune, and when he was serious, or affected to be, as a man of the world. " I wish one could recall the first advance in our latest campaign," Tom replied, his manner suggest ing recklessness rather than despair. Indeed, Tom Hussingtree, the Vicar of Comber ton-cum-Besford's only son, was a picture of optimistic youth, with a hint, however, of " the pace that kills" in the tired expression of his eyes and the feverish shiver with which he handled a strong cigar that he was rather chewing than smoking. "Do you? I don't," was the defiant reply. "I neither regret the mistakes of the campaign, nor glory in its victories. Life's a game as well as a battle.

One must not be too elated with victory, Zbe Wear. 2 nor whimper over defeat. The great thing is to lose with a laugh and win without a smile." Mr. Renshaw rolled a cigarette as he spoke, with the grace and skill of a Spaniard. "If I had lived in the days of Claude Duval," he went on, "I should have been what they called a gentleman of the road, and if I had been a good sailor I would have been a pirate on the high seas." " Making your final exit at Tyburn, eh ? " " I should have taken the chances. I am taking them now. In those days, when you retreated, you had not to run as far as is necessary to-day. You just changed your road from Hounslow to the Midlands, and from the Midlands to the North, gradually working back again to Hampstead, taking Bath by way of a breather en route." " You seem to have studied what they call the good old days, Jim ?

" " Yes, know them backwards, sea-sharks and land-sharks, down to Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild, " replied Jim ; " and there was always a sneak ing Jew on the scene, as there is just now with me and you too, Tom." "You mean old Abrahams! Oh, as men go, he's a good sort, I think. Any fellow that lends another fellow money when he's hard up is entitled to be treated with respect." abe Wear. 3 "Abrahams has grown rich on usury." " He must be an abnormally clever Jew if he can make anything out of such clients as you and me." " Nonsense, it is such as us that fill his pockets. He has made an income out of me these five M years. " Really, I shouldn't have thought it, " said Tom. "No, you're not a fellow to look below the sur face; you are one of the easy-going sort, comeday, go-day; but you've got a good backer, you see."

" My dear old misguided father ? It might have been better for me if he had possessed a wider knowledge of the world and less confidence in his only son." " He is certainly rather verdant ; but you have always an open road of escape from your troubles." " Have I ? Will you be good enough to point it out on the map of my destiny ? " "The Vicar's ward, your chaste Susannah." " The most forlorn of forlorn hopes ! " said Tom. " Why ? " asked his companion, stretching his legs across the fire-place, where half a scuttle of coals was trying to burn its way through a pyramid of cinders. "I don't know that she cares a button for me, and she doesn't fetch me one bit. Mind you, she's Œbe Wear. 4 pretty and dresses well and has a pleasant manner; but I look upon her as a kind of relation; I was never in love with her, never was in love with girls, always with women."

"Lady Berwick is not a girl and would be a catch; but in your shoes I should first go for Susannah Woodcote." "It is a religion with my dreamy old governor that she shall marry any one but me, that is if the other fellow is a gentleman, loves her honestly and is worthy of her." "Poor, dear old Vicar." " Once Lady Berwick had the temerity to hint at me as a match for Susannah, and he flew at her; never saw him really angry before. No, my friend, Susannah is a trust, she and her fortune, and my father would think it a breach of honour to give me a chance at it." "H'm!" said Jim, lighting a fresh cigarette, "it's a pity the little girl at the Homestead is not rich." "What do you mean?" "What I say, pity she has not money." "Whom do you mean?" "Lizzie Melford." "And who told you about Lizzie Melford?" asked Tom, rising from his seat.

"The letters you left lying on your table the other day." Zbc Wear. 5 "You don't mean to say you read them?" "I thought you placed them in my way for no other purpose. She writes a good letter." " You ought not to have read them, " said Tom, with a passing frown. "The truth is, when I did so I said to myself ' Tom ought not to show me all his love letters.' " "You are certainly original in your views of social ethics," Tom replied, laughing in spite of himself, He was not altogether sorry to have an excuse for telling his companion in profligacy what a dark-eyed beauty Lizzie was— of all his conquests the most desirable; though he feared it would end badly. " Why, of course it will, " said the other ; " everything connected with women ends badly." "I sometimes think it was an unfortunate thing for me that my mother died before I could have the benefit of her good influence."

"Oh, oh!" laughed Jim, "he wants to tell the judge and jury that he was deprived in early youth of the tender care of a loving and religious mother. " "You are a fiend, Jim, a fiend!" " So was Mephistopheles, but he gave Faust a good time, didn't he? I am not as exacting as Mephistopheles. I would like you to marry well, live gloriously, and go to heaven at last — and I have helped you to understand and enjoy the delights of the town, eh, not to mention our trip to Paris; now, have I not?" "Yes," said Tom. "Open a bottle of fizz; the thought of it makes me thirsty." Jim opened a bottle of champagne that stood handy with others on a slatternly side-board, and emptied it into a couple of pewter mugs. Tom touched the other's cup as he drank, and Jim said "Success to roguery" — it was a common toast among the set they knew best — drunk by some for mere bravado, youngsters who thought it the thing to seem devils of fellows, and by others with a right down hearty relish.

" It seems to me, Tom, that you have educated your father badly. I wish I had had such a father." "You could not have made a more cruel use of his kind heart than I have. It cuts me to the quick when I think of it. Oh, yes, I have my remorseful moments. I sometimes wish I had never seen Lizzie Melford; then I am mad that I can't stand up and say ' This is the girl I'm going to marry !' " "Stuff! One doesn't marry that kind of girl; the daughter of your father's servant, and without a penny." n "No, of course not," said Tom. "Mind you, I never promised her I would." " You are not always so scrupulous. " " You seem to be rubbing it into me to-night, Jim; is it for my good, or what? It doesn't tend to raise my spirits. And I've been thinking a lot about my father to-day. I'm well on the way to bring his grey hairs to the grave, as they say in that old book you and I know too little about."

" Oh, is that your mood ? Very well, old chap ; you will be free from to-night to study it and reform, so far as I am concerned. I'm off in the morning." r> 'Off?" " Yes. We'll take our last chances at poker and crack our last bottle on this side of the Atlantic to-night. I sail to-morrow afternoon for New York, I and my wife." " Your wife ? " "I forgot you didn't know that I was married. You are such a taciturn chap. You never asked me if I was single or married." " Never asked you ! Poor creature, what a time she must have had ! " "Now you understand why I have quitted your fascinating society once a week or so." " Once a month, you mean. " * Oh, you have noticed my goings and comings then. The truth is, Tom, my bolt is shot; my game is up. I must change the scene of my operations. America offers a wider scope for such talents as I possess ; and besides, old Father Abra- Zbc Wear. 8 hams has got me in a cleft stick.

You are entitled to my confidence, and I know you won't betray me. Besides, I want your assistance. You have heard me speak of Haxell ? " " The man you hate ? " " No ; the man who hates me. My wife was Mrs. Haxell. At least, she said so. I cut Haxell out. Latterly he has made a heap of money in Afrikanders. He was always a knowing chap. As for me, I never could get on in the City." "Nor I; nor anywhere else, for that matter." " Oh, come ! You have done well at odd times on the Turf; and you are lucky at loo, not to mention poker; but America's the home of poker, and I flatter myself I know the game." "Yes?" said Tom, with a languid note of inter rogation, his mind just then at the vicarage of Comberton, — such a contrast to the den he occupied in the Temple, with pipes, sticks, guns, boxing-gloves, cards, overcoats, rugs, portmanteaus, pictures of ballet girls and flash French prints as decorations, and Jim Renshaw for his companion — Jim, a young man, with hair that was prematurely grey, heavy jaw, bright eyes, a sensual mouth, a strongly built frame and a not unpleasant manner, and with a powerful influence over Tom Hussingtree.

Tom was the only son of one of the dearest and kindest clergymen that ever lived, unsophisticated, genial, true to his mission, Zbc Wear. 9 of generous and liberal instincts, handsome, distinguished, a man of honour, and by birth and training a gentleman. " But this is what I want to say, Tom. We have had a good time, have seen life — you wanted to see it, you know, when we met two years ago at Oxford — and the race is run. This day fortnight, the first of my last series of bills becomes due ; and it is in the hands of Haxell." " But " " Yes, I know. I have had no dealings with any other than Abrahams. He has sold my paper to Haxell, who is going to give himself the treat of a vengeful action. Well, she is worth it, and I didn't behave too well; who does when there's a woman in the case ? " " No, who does ?

" said Tom, with a sigh. " Now you are thinking of Chloe, otherwise Lizzie M. I know you are. Well, marry her, or trans plant her. If all you say is true she might be worth the sacrifice; young, pretty, a shining light in Lady Berwick's Sunday school, and loves you madly ! " " I could never settle down and live with her, as a fellow lives with his wife. I don't know why I couldn't, but somehow nothing contents me for more than a day or two together ; I begin to think it's remorse."

Chapter II. Studying For The Bar And Matriculating For The Dock

" Remorse be hanged ! " exclaimed Renshaw, with an ironical laugh. " It's luxury, the restlessness of the spoiled child, the vanity of the buck, the love of conquest. All the women say you are devilish handsome ; and so you are, Tom. If I possessed your innocent smile, I'd have married a duchess and been a lord lieutenant of my county by now — wasn't Pitt Premier by the time he was my age ? " "Don't be a fool, Jim. If I had your abilities, I would not be dodging creditors, haunting gambling hells, and calling it studying for the Bar! By Jupiter, sometimes I think I am matriculating for the dock ! " " My abilities! And where have they brought me? To the feet of my bitterest enemy, with my bills in his pocket ! " "Well, he can't hang you. They don't even imprison fellows for debt any longer." xo tlbc Wear. 11 " If we had lived in the days we were talking of he could have hanged me, and to-day he could make it penal servitude."

"What!" exclaimed Tom, starting to his feet. " You don't mean to say " " That is exactly what I do mean to say. Two of them are forgeries, and you have backed them — ■ the one more particularly that comes due this day fortnight — accessory after the fact, or something of the kind they call it." " Do you claim that I am responsible with you ? " " No, Tom, not that ; you can easily prove your innocence; but " "What is the amount?" " Five hundred pounds. " "And the other one?" " Two hundred ; a mere bagatelle once, but latterly I've no luck, any fool can play me." " And Abrahams knows of the forgery ? " " He can square the drawer, who will swear the signature is his own — but it will take more than I can raise in a year and I'm sick of the infernal thing; it's been on my back this three months.

If I got out of it, Haxell would hunt me to death. He carries too many guns for me at present. I must retreat. Lend me a hand, and, as there's a heaven above us, I'll send you the first pile I make on the other side! And now, come out. Let's try Ube Wear. 12 our luck once more at Hallette's ; there's big company there. Who knows? Sometimes it is the last throw that redeems all; I've known it so at Monte Carlo more than once. — Come on, old fellow; and we'll finish up at the Soho, the one club left that the police don't raid and where a gentleman may breakfast in peace after an all-night sitting." u I think Lady Berwick will lend me the money," said Tom. "Why, of course she will; you paid her the two fifty?" " Yes ; and she seemed surprised, I am bound to say." "Didn't want it, eh?" " Pretended she had forgotten it.

Open another bottle, Jim ; you have upset me awfully. " "I knew I should," Jim replied, twisting the wire of a bottle of Mumm and dragging the cork out with a vicious tug. " I'm upset myself. It's devilish hard to have to go into exile. Where is your friend, the charming widow, now?" "Lady Berwick?" " Yes ; my Lady of Powyke, as you sometimes call her," Jim replied, filling up his own and Tom's beaker. " Oh, she's at home, I suppose." "Grosvenor Square?" " No, Powyke House ; she always goes there at Easter and stays until the middle of May, when she considers the London season is in full swing and she cuts in with her big receptions." " I've often thought if ever I married " " You said you were married," interrupted Tom. " I mean in downright earnest. Then I think I should marry a widow. In love, the Frenchman says, old wood burns better than green.

It would be a fine partnership, you and Lady Berwick. She would take care of you." " I should as soon think of proposing to — well, heaven knows who! — as to approach Lady Berwick. * " You have borrowed money from her ? " " She's an old friend, and before I asked her for that two-fifty she had encouraged me to do so; said she knew the Vicar didn't allow me enough, remarked that the Vicar didn't know the world, and so on." " And she must think you a good deal of a goose not to have at least done a youngster's homage to her beauty. Ah well, for some fellows the tide is always at the flood, and they let it run. She didn't like me. I must have been a good deal of a mug the night you took me to dinner. Has she ever mentioned me to you?" " Yes, several times." Warned you against me ? " " Yes." Obe Wear. 14 " Of course.

I might have known that. She is not the immaculate Madame you believe down at Comberton-cum-Besford. What a deliciously innocent old-world name for a place ! No, Tom, she is not all the Vicar's unsophisticated fancy paints her. You see, we know each other at sight, we men and women of the world, we intriguers, we who make life our pastime and not our misery. There is a freemasonry among clever people; and Lady Ber wick and I are clever people. Oh yes, we are. She has been more successful than I have. But she's a woman ; a woman has so many chances. And now she's a widow. Oh, the privileges of the widow! What's this new photographic machine, the Something rays? Well, the widow and I can see through each other without any such scientific interposition. " " I think I am beginning to see through a brick wall a little further than I used, Jim," said the younger of the two, with a forced laugh.

"Time and patience built the Pyramids, " said Jim. "I wish I had cultivated the art of patience! Come out, old chap; let's do something. What's the good of sitting here, discounting the impossible? " "All right, Jim; you've made me feel that I don't care a brass farthing for anything or anybody to-night.— Here's to Fortune!— a short life and a merry ene, as your model swell ofthe road has it." Tom emptied the remainder of the wine into the pewter mugs, and without waiting for his companion to join in the toast, tossed off his liquor and dragged an overcoat from a peg behind the door. Jim Ren shaw gathered his thick tweed cloak about his shoulders, and presently the two adventurers were running before the wind — for Newgate eventually, Tom said, with a hollow laugh — but for the moment to one of the few notable gambling clubs of the Metropolis where baccarat, loo and poker are still played without restriction.

Chapter III

"AND LEARNS TOO LATE THAT MEN BETRAY." It was the kind of cottage that Birket Foster loved to paint. Nature, and an unconscious feeling for art in the builder, had composed the picture. It was a dream, such as townsmen have, of rural beauty, gathered from illustrated magazines and pictorial annotations of Goldsmith and Miss Mitford. The surrounding hills and trees vignetted it against the sky, and it had an atmosphere of its own, perfumed with gillyflowers and a suggestion of fresh milk and butter. Constable would have found the subject lacking in boldness. It would have been too pretty for him, the backing of elms too soft in their Spring buds, the lilacs too bushy, the thatch too trim and the whole scene wanting in rugged ness; though to one heart, at the opening of this story, it was sombre enough; to one heart the sunshine of it had faded, the sweetness of it had suddenly become a bitter memory.

The Vicar was proud of the cottage. He loved old things ; had a Conservative feeling for thatch and timber, for old window-seats and raddled flower pots, for rosemary and thyme, for wall-flowers, single tulips, hollyhocks and herb-gardens. All these were in perfection at the Homestead; and he was continually offering the old-fashioned garden as an example to his man at the Vicarage, who prided himself upon a higher order of horticulture in com petition with his rival, the head gardener of their neighbour, the Lady of Powyke. One meets with what is called the timbered house right through the heart of the Midlands; and Mac farlane's cottage, otherwise known as The Homestead, was a picturesque example of the old English style. Under the management of David Macfarlane, the Reverend John Hussingtree, Vicar of Comberton-cum- Besford, farmed some hundred acres of arable land.

The Homestead boasted a dairy and a kitchen-garden that might have rivalled the Home Farm of Lord Cleeve's fine establishment, some dozen miles beyond the Bredon Hills. The Homestead spread its thatched porch and its two rustic wings over a spacious plot of land. It was a two-storey house, with a quaint old parlour and a spacious kitchen that gave evidence of house wifely management and a generous landlord. Though the Vicar was tenant, freeholder, owner and every- Obe Wear. thing to the Macfarlanes, their Providence in fact, he had come to be regarded as little more than landlord by his bailiff and manager, David, and his old servant's second wife. The Vicar was an indulgent master, but Macfarlane was scrupulously honest and made the little farm a profitable enterprise. What might be called the gem of this timbered cottage, the heart and soul of the rustic setting of thatch and cross-beams, of orchard and garden, was Lizzie Melford, Macfarlane's step-daughter, dark as a gypsy, vain, frivolous, self-denying, naturally clever, fond of finery, a daughter of Mother Eve, but gifted with too generous a disposition for her own welfare.

Beauty and generosity combined have proved sorrowful endowment to many loving women. " It's very hard on both of us," Lizzie was saying to Tom Hussingtree on a spring afternoon, sitting in the parlour of the Homestead, while Mrs. Mac farlane had gone to the Vicarage, and David, Lizzie's step-father, was making the best of his way to Powyke House, whither he had been summoned by his sister Keziah, who was the confidential maid of Lady Berwick. " I don't know what to do." She looked up into the young reprobate's face, the tears trembling in her eyes. " I sometimes think I'll kill myself; then I try to forget all about it, and fancy it is a dream." A pitiful, apologetic kind of smile crept into the corners of her handsome mouth, and Tom stooped to kiss her. " Oh, you do love me, Tom ! " she said.

" Couldn't we be secretly married? I would never tell, and it would be a great comfort to me." "It would be sure to get out," he replied; "and besides, I haven't a penny in the world. I'm a good deal of a scamp, Lizzie; my father may live twenty or thirty years yet, and I'm up to my head and ears in debt, both at Oxford and in London. I hate myself, Lizzie." He did nothing of the kind. He loved himself, even better than his dead mother had loved him, if that were possible. "I don't want to drag you down, of course, Tom, " said the generous girl ; " I quite understand what a mistake it has all been. I'm glad my father is not alive to know of my disgrace ; he was very proud and passionate, my father." " But it need never be known ; it can be managed, I'm sure," he said, sitting by her side and looking steadily at his boots.

" Oh, Tom ! " she exclaimed, laying her head upon his shoulder, " couldn't we go away to some far country and live together? I would work for you, slave for you, do anything you wished, never trouble you, and away beyond the seas you would ttbe Wear. 20 be free of your debts, and who knows, you might become rich, as others have done — look at Jonathan Corbet, who went away with Kitty Welsh, only six years back; they saved, and he has come home to Comberton and bought Perry House Farm." Lizzie Melford had never before been so loquacious. Her tongue ran along as if it would never stop. " Besides, dear, I do try to give you up, to feel that you must marry in your station, as you have said. I know from the first you never promised to marry me, Tom; I know, dear, though I had a hope you might. Don't be impatient with me.

It was enough that you loved me, and I was so ignorant of the world ; so very ignorant, never further from home than Wulstan, and it was so heavenly to sit and hear you tell of Oxford and London, and to meet you without any one knowing, and my mother is such a trial, and has been ever since she married again; why she married David Macfarlane, to go and despise him the next minute, is a mystery to me." Then she burst into tears, and sobbed, and almost immediately wiped her eyes and laughed and begged Tom not to mind her, she was not quite herself, hadn't seen him for more than a fortnight and in all that time he had only once left a little note for her in the alder tree, where Time had made a letter-box for them, and Tom had dropped notes therein for his " Dearest " and she had replied to them through the same medium.

It had all been so romantic and sweet to her — and so cunning and devilish on his part, though he was perhaps less vicious than thoughtless and selfish; it had seemed to him a feather in his cap to win this pretty creature, who was the rural belle of Comberton, sang in the choir, taught in her humble way at Lady Berwick's Sunday school, and was so dainty, piquant and unworldly. " Look here, Lizzie, my girl, it's no good going on like that. We've got to face the music, as an American friend of mine says; and I've explained the situation to you. You must go on a visit to Granny Dene, not for a day but for a week or two — by the way, what relation is she to you ? " " She's my father's grandmother ; I'm her great grandchild." " She must be very old. " "Not so very; but so good, I could never dare to confess my shame to her."

" But when you have met me at Wulstan you have said you had been there." "Yes, I know; and I have only been on a visit to the poor old dear about three times in my life." " I'll go and see her, and arrange it ; Macfarlane's my friend and I believe I can get him to help me." Lizzie hid her face in her hands and slipped into the corner of the settle near the fire-place, overcome with shame at this suggestion of making her step father acquainted with their secret. Tom did not allow the manifestation of her anguish to interrupt his proposals. " You could easily say you were not feeling well, and Macfarlane could be of opinion that a change of air would be good for you; and I could get Granny to send a letter inviting you there — and you could either go there or somewhere else, and " But Lizzie was not listening.