A Stern Chase. A novel

Front matter

LONDON : printed by gilbert and rivington, limited, st. John's house, clerkenwell road. A NOVEL BY MRS. CASHEL HOEY AUTHOR OF " THE LOVER'S CREED," " THE QUESTION OF CAIN," " A GOLDEN SORROW," ETC. " A stern chase is a long chase " LONDON SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIV1NGTON (Limited) §t. gunstan's gousc Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C. 1888 [All rights reserved] THIS STORY IS DEDICATED TO ROBERT MURRAY SMITH, Esq., C.M.G, agent-general for victoria. Ie I have had any success in giving local colour and life-like ness to that portion of my story whose scene is laid in the West Indies, I am entirely indebted for it to my friend Mr. Walter Goodman's admirable work, " The Pearl of the An tilles." I wish also gratefully to acknowledge the kind pains which he has taken in reading the chapters which refer to Cuba. FRANCES CASHEL HOEY. CONTENTS. Wi>e dFtrst lart.

Chapter I. Dr

ROSSLYN'S HOUSEHOLD. Historically regarded, Harley Street is interesting ; its actual aspect is, however, that of highly respectable dulness. Twenty years ago, when the external ornamentation of town houses was a novel art, still regarded with shy suspiciousness, which has happily yielded to emulative zeal and a liberal display of flowerboxes, Harley Street was even duller than it is now : more respectable, more professional, it could not be. A complete example of the representative features of Harley Street was to be found, early in the sixties, in the desirable residence of Dr. Rosslyn, a physician in extensive practice among the class of whom the doctor himself was wont to speak as " persons of importance." This was a happy phrase, not so much out of date as " persons of quality," and less of a concession to modern inelegance of speech than " swells."

It was, however, more polite than accurate ; for a large proportion of Dr. Rosslyn's clients were of no importance whatever, except in their own mind's eye; being merely, as Mr. Toots felicitously expresses it, "regularly rich." Regular riches, although they sometimes make to themselves wings and fly away from their owners, are apt to supply feathers for numerous nests among at least two of the learned professions. Dr. Rosslyn had gathered, in the shape of golden guineas, so many substantial substitutes for the rosebuds that are the poet's type of evanescence — while his patients' time was still a-flying — that he was quite on a par with his wealthy neighbours when he settled in the solid, spacious, responsible house in Harley Street, sharing its dulness with his stepdaughter, Lilias Merivale.

Dr. Rosslyn had the appearance of a prosperous gentleman, and the professional manner of a period which had not B yet taken kindly to unconventional bearing on the part of persons charged with the care of the precious health of good society. The dulness and ugliness of his house recommended him to the many whose notions of the proper pro fessional aspect were on those lines, but these were not of his devising ; he had found the house dull and ugly, and so he would leave it to his successor. That it was but a dreary abode for a boy and a girl — especially for the girl — had never occurred to Dr. Rosslyn, who, although he was not one to " hang up his good humour and good manners with his hat in the hall," was a remarkably self-centred man. His was a nature that neither attracted nor gave out sympathy, and things that did not touch him did not exist for him.

The house and the rrian counted for a good deal in the sum of influences which had formed the character of Dr. Rosslyn's stepdaughter, Lilias Merivale. Her abode had tended to produce in her a subdued tone of spirits and a whitey-brown order of taste, and her stepfather had unconsciously taught her to foster self-reliance, the valuable habit of thinking before speaking, and the equally valuable, but always painfully acquired power of suppressing the evidences of feelings that would fail to be understood. At the window of the gloomy dining-room of Dr. Rosslyn's house stood Lilias Merivale, one morning in early spring, when the east wind was out in Harley Street, and everywhere else, and the atmosphere was agreeably flavoured with gritty dust and straws from the neighbouring mews. She was peering over a chocolate-coloured wire-blind set in a substantial mahogany frame, which obscured the lower panes of the window, and went as ill as possible with the harsh and staring green of the heavy curtains.

She was watching the letter-carrier, who was distributing the morning's mail in Harley Street, and her countenance bore witness to a more than common interest in that functionary's special mission to herself. Her expression was at all times serious for a girl of eighteen ; but its thought fulness was very sweet, and lent a beauty to her face which in mere feature it did not possess. Lilias Merivale was fair of complexion ; her eyes were dark brown, with a somewhat timid glance ; her abundant hair, worn in plaits arranged like a coronet over the forehead and in a coil at the back of the head, was of the richest chestnut-brown. The sudden irradia tion of her rare smile would tinge the thoughtful face, which hasty observers thought cold, with a lovely brightness, and when to that lustrous smile was added the music of a silver laugh, wonderfully heartfelt and joyous, the transformation was complete.

But now as she stood at the window, her smooth forehead was knitted into a look of care, and her cheeks were pale. The letter-carrier crossed the street, the rat-tat sounded, the morning's budget tumbled into the capacious letter-box, and Lilias darted to the hall-door. In a moment she held in her hand the object of her watch, a foreign letter; the next she ran upstairs, and, turning into a gloomy little room at the back of the big, ugly drawing-room, she opened the envelope with an odd mixture of eagerness and reluctance. She had, however, directed a preliminary glance at the prim and solid timepiece on the mantelshelf, ticking away the moments that divided her from the inexorably punctual breakfast-hour. The letter was a long one ; closely written on a large sheet of thin, blue-lined letter-paper.

In a man's handwriting, too ; evidently a love-letter. How, if it were otherwise, should it bring that deep colour to the cheek of Lilias Merivale, cause her to pass her disengaged hand across and across her fore head, and, when she came to the end of it, make her draw a long breath like a wearied swimmer ? Slow and deliberate steps crossed the stone hall below ; steps lighter but equally deliberate passed the door of the little sitting-room. Lilias knew what those sounds meant ; the solemn butler was about to announce to the household and the neighbours, by a performance upon a thunderous gong, that Dr. Rosslyn's breakfast was served, and Mrs. Norton had gone down, and was waiting for her in the dining-room. She recovered herself with a successful effort bespeaking practice, and descended the stairs with her usual composure.

But she repeated in her thoughts many times before she met the unsuspecting looks turned upon her by her stepfather and Mrs. Norton : " I cannot tell him. No, I cannot. It is impossible." Dr. Rosslyn was a good-looking man of a little over sixty, admirably well preserved — plainly not a physician who ignored his own advice and avoided his own prescriptions ; slightly bald, silver-haired, and of an agreeable though not an un reservedly benignant countenance. A smooth, taciturn, obstinate person, who was punctually obeyed by his household B — with one exception, presently to be disclosed — rather from fear than from affection. When Lilias entered the room, he was already seated in a ponderous chair with a slippery red leather cushion, at the far end of a very long and wide table, which displayed the materials of a substantial breakfast.

He lowered his Times, and held his gold-rimmed eye-glasses at the length of the watered ribbon by which they hung, as his stepdaughter bade him good morning, and took her place. "Good-morning, Lilias. You are late." " I am a little, papa." "Are you not well ? " " I am quite well, thank you." The glasses were readjusted, the newspaper was propped against a handy toast-rack ; the master of the house made an excellent breakfast, drank his tea, and informed himself in current history, in unbroken silence — an order of things evidently familiar to both Lilias and the third person present. It was not enjoined upon the doctor's womankind that they were not to speak at breakfast, but they very rarely did speak, and they never talked. A few disjointed questions and answers they permitted themselves, in subdued tones, and they were invariably glad when breakfast was over, and Dr. Rosslyn had retired to his consulting-room.

Then would Mrs. Norton seek the vast and gloomy underground region, where she was recognized as " somebody," and give her orders for the day with much pomposity and a great deal of superfluous detail ; while Lilias would resort to the pianoforte in the big, ugly drawing-room, for the daily practice that formed her chief pleasure. When the head of a household causes a sensible relief, if not a thrill of satisfaction, by informing his womankind either that he does not intend to dine at home, or that he wants to have some men to dine with him, and, therefore, shall not require the presence of the ladies, it may be presumed that their mutual relations are not of the freest, easiest, and most frankly affectionate kind. Lilias Merivale and Mrs. Norton would not on any account have compared notes on the subject, but, if they had so far departed from propriety as to do this, they must have agreed that the "off" days were pleasant and welcome.

It was with a positively guilty sense of satisfaction that Lilias heard the doctor make the usual curt communication to Mrs. Norton before he withdrew to his consulting-room, — " I do not dine at home to-day. Have you anything to say to me ? " Mrs. Norton had not anything to say to the doctor, and the usual routine of the day was observed. But Lilias Merivale's practice was a make-believe. She sat before the pianoforte, absorbed in thoughts of too distracting a nature, judging from her looks, to be fitting for her age, and the quiet security of her position in life. Once during the time reserved to her by prescriptive custom free from the incursions of Mrs. Norton, Lilias rose, and with the flush of a desperate resolution on her cheeks, flitted noiselessly down the stairs, and approached her stepfather's consulting-room, which was shut off from the hall by double doors of red baize.

She paused with a beating heart to listen for voices within, but no sound reached her ear. In a moment more she would have found herself in Dr. Rosslyn's presence, and irrevocably committed to a certain line of action, had not the outer doors swung open, and given admittance to a patient who was evidently one of the doctor's "persons of importance." The unspeakably correct man servant who ushered in the lady looked disconcerted at the irregularity of Miss Merivale's being visible in that part of the house during consultation-hours, and Lilias retreated with all her courage routed, and a guilty consciousness of relief. Having regained the drawing-room and the piano-stool, she again drew out the letter that had come like a bombshell into her quiet life, scattering all things in fragments around it, and this time she found a brief postscript, which she had previously overlooked.

It was written across one of the pages, and contained only these words : — " On second thoughts, I would rather that you said nothing. Let it come from myself. I am ready to take all the risks — ' equal to either fortune,' as Eugene Aram said. Keep everything that I have told you to yourself. I shall be with you before long." " And 1 had so nearly overlooked this ! " thought Lilias. " But does it show true knowledge of papa ? Has he forgotten the difficulty with which a far smaller victory over that fixed will was won ? " In similar questionings was the mind of Lilias Merivale exercised all through the uneventful day, and when it wore on towards evening, with the result that frequently ensued upon Dr. Rosslyn's giving his womankind a holiday, namely, Mrs. Norton's going out to tea, and Lilias being left to welcome solitude — she was no nearer to a peaceful solution of them.

She resolved to seek the relief of writing, and although Hugh's letter made it doubtful whether her reply could reach him at Santiago, she put on paper as many of the feelings, misgivings, and apprehensions with which she was assailed as her skill in expressing herself permitted. Lilias had good reason to recall, in after days, the employment of that evening, the care which she bestowed upon her letter, the accuracy with which she dated and addressed it. Dr. Rosslyn returned home late, and Lilias was still awake when he passed the door of her room in going to his own. Dr. Rosslyn was a widower for the second time. His first wife, who had shared the early days of struggle and anxiety which are the common lot of young professional men, had died just as those days were drawing to a close, and the brighter prospect of a secure position and a good income was opening upon the still young doctor, who had made several "good hits," and was also beginning to reap the reward of steady application and good character.

She left him a son, now twenty-three years old. Three years after his wife's death, Dr. Rosslyn married again. His second choice was a young widow, and Lilias Merivale was her only child. His second marriage was the halcyon period of Dr. Rosslyn's life, and in the sunshine of its happiness his nature seemed to change, and the reserve and self-concentration of his character to give way. His wife proved a true mother to his little boy, and the two children regarded each other as brother and sister. Upon this happy home, when it was of only five years' duration. there fell a thunderbolt. Mrs. Rosslyn died, after an illness so brief that her husband had not time to school himself to the prospect of separation, and with her all that had sweetened and brightened his life departed also. He was not a man to find a resource in the children who remained ; his professional work afforded him the only solace of which he was susceptible.

How much he suffered was known to himself alone ; his former habit of reserve was resumed ; from thenceforth it was in his professional capacity only that Dr. Rosslyn was an agreeable man. Shortly after her mother's death, the little Lilias,'whose step father was her sole guardian, became an heiress on a modest scale, in consequence of a series of deaths in her late father's family. Dr. Rosslyn fulfilled his duties conscientiously, managing his ward's property admirably, giving her a good education under the superintendence of a resident governess, and providing for her comfort and welfare in every way but one. Even the exception was less real than it appeared. The child of his dead wife was dearer to the cold, worldly-minded, and yet world-despising man — paradoxical though it be, that combination is not a rare one — than she or others could have supposed, and of more account in his life.

He did not know that her decorous existence in the gloomy Harley Street house was tiresome and uninteresting ; he was not capable of looking at it with her eyes, and Lilias never complained. When the time came at which she was emancipated from schoolroom hours and the routine of lessons, she entertained no such visions of " coming out " as those which now fill the brain of middle-class young ladies. She did not expect a whirl of gaiety, or a chorus of admiration. She was glad, because Mrs. Norton had taught her all that it was in her to teach, and her new-born freedom would now enable her to study unchecked by routine, and she cherished one hope connected with the event. It was that she might see more of her stepfather henceforth, and be permitted to be a companion to him. She was as free from personal vanity as any young girl who is not stupid and indifferent can be, and of the con ventional meaning of her emancipation she had formed no idea.

The only indication her stepfather had given that he regarded her position as radically changed, was his con sulting her, greatly to her astonishment, as to whether Mrs. Norton should or should not be retained as chaperon after her services as governess had ceased to be required. The doctor was not ill-pleased by the unhesitating decision of Lilias that her old friend should be asked to remain with her. Here, at least, was no heartless love of change and novelty. The girl possessed some of the steadfast constancy that had been a beautiful element in the character of her mother. The matter was soon settled, and, when this had been done, and the allowance made to Lilias out of her care fully-managed property had been doubled, Dr. Rosslyn took little more notice of the fact that the days of the girl's pupilage were over.

Even in those days she had come to know what trouble meant, and it was on this wise. A STERN CHASE. The one person in the world whom Lilias Merivale loved with all the warmth of a nature richly endowed with feeling, was he whom she called her "brother." The attachment between the boy, and the little girl brought to share his nursery and playroom by that lovely lady whom he could still remember well, although to her own child she was but a dim vision, had grown with their growth, and had probably gained by the loss they had jointly sustained in the 'death of Dr. Rosslyn's second wife. The dull house in Harley Street was turned into the brightest of abodes for Lilias when Hugh Rosslyn came home for the holidays, and the presence of his "sister" atoned for much which the boy disliked and resented in his home ; for Hugh was a high-spirited, sensitive fellow, and had never "got on " very well with his father.

It was Dr. Rosslyn's misfortune, in common with a great many men in whom reserve is chiefly the result of unconquerable shyness, to convey the notion of indifference where the feeling did not exist. " Ah ! yes, Lily, it's all very fine ; papa is very fond of you, but he doesn't care what becomes of me," Hugh would say over and over again, when she was a tall, lanky, remarkably " good " child, whom the doctor never saw out of a clean frock, or off her best behaviour, and Hugh was a big, handsome, troublesome schoolboy, hard to be governed, except by a method which his father did not know how to adopt. As time went on, the impression on Hugh's mind deepened, and so did the conviction of Lilias that he was wrong ; but she could not explain or justify that conviction, and the differences of character and temperament between the father and son manifested themselves more and more plainly.

Most men who have had their own way to make in life, and have made it — for whom no steps have been cut in the steep slope of the mountain of difficulty, or convenient handrail provided — find it hard to realize the temperament to which security and ease do not present themselves as unmixed and satisfying good. That there should be beings so perverse as to decline the good things provided for them by others who have had to earn them hardly, is alike inexplicable and offensive to such men — a frowardness to be regarded with scorn and rebuked with anger. Dr. Rosslyn was prepared to make things very comfortable for his only son ; but he wanted to do this according to his own ideas, and when he found that those of Hugh were not at all in accordance with them he was keenly disappointed. In a word, the young man developed artistic tastes with which his father had no sympathy, and he declined the decorous uni versity and professional career proposed to him.

It is difficult for persons who have no artistic tastes or per ceptions to take artists seriously. That life should be passed in the representation in various kinds of material of things beautiful or non-beautiful, has a preposterous effect upon such persons, and even when they give in to a conventional admiration of the work of the artist, they cherish contempt for his aims and his notions which is not always concealed. Dr. Rosslyn was one of those persons, and it was peculiarly annoying to him that his son should " take to an idle, vagabond life." This was his invariable definition of the pursuit of art as a profession. There was a sharp struggle of will between the father and son ; and although the young man carried his point in the end, he gained his victory at the cost of a further straining of relations that had never been so frank and cordial as they ought to have been.

He carried his point also at the cost of much pain to Lilias. Hugh Rosslyn took to painting, studied in foreign studios, made such progress in his art that, if it had not been a for bidden subject, his father might have got over his prejudice by the natural aid of paternal pride. He combined a taste for travel with the love of painting, and at the time when we pass the doors of the house in Harley Street he had been absent from England for several months, and was now visiting the West Indian Islands. The house was doubly dull to Lilias Merivale when the slow procession of the days could not bring Hugh to join the trio at dinner, to take her out of afternoons to see pictures, or to walk in the Park, and contemplate the noble spectacle presented by society in the Ride and the Row. Lilias had little opportunity of seeing the world more closely than this ; a few dull dinners of the scrupulously-paid-debt order, and a few evening parties, where she did not shine, formed the whole of her experience of the "giddy maze."

She was, however, happy if only Hugh were content, for she belonged to that order of women who estimate their own claims to consideration at a humble rate, and who live in and for their affections. In the case of Lilias Merivale that sphere was not extensive. The " brother," whom she loved with all her heart; A STERN CHASE. the stepfather, for whom she entertained a timid and grateful affection ; and Mrs. Norton — an excellent person, but hardly more interesting than the pug in whom her soul was centred — formed all the population of Lilias' actual world. She had many dream-friends, however, and an imagination sufficiently active to turn the dull house in Harley Street into a palace of the fancy, and to people it with the forms of the heroes and heroines of poetry, history, and romance. Lilias might fairly pride herself on being to a certain extent in the confidence of her stepfather.

She knew what his feelings about Hugh were, and that he hoped the influence of foreign travel, and the "rubbing shoulders with men who took life seriously," as he put it, would divert his son from the frivolities of art, and turn him into a man of the world. She knew that although he rarely mentioned Hugh, and never asked her questions respecting his letters, believing, or affecting to believe, that they were " full of nothing but trumpery about pictures and statues," he had certain notions and hopes connected with Hugh's return, and her own truer instinct and readier sympathy made her feel sure that his notions would prove illusory, and his hopes be frustrated. She knew, from what Hugh had said to her when he was at home, and now wrote to her when he was away, that the artist-life he had chosen had an ever increasing fascination for him, and that the knowledge he was gaining of the wide, wide world, was but confirming his dislike to the narrow and conventional sphere to which his father hoped he might yet be induced to restrict himself.

There was still another point on which Lilias had gained some knowledge of Dr. Rosslyn's mind respecting his son. She was aware that he wished him to marry early, and she imagined that there was some one whom her stepfather would welcome as Hugh's wife. But if this were so, Lilias feared that a fresh disappointment was in store for Dr. Rosslyn. In her capacity of confidant to her " brother," she had been put in possession of Hugh's notions of the sort of woman he meant to marry, and she felt certain that among their limited common acquaintance there was not any girl who resembled in the slightest degree the ideal being whom he portrayed. The daughters of the grave professional gentlemen, and merchants in the higher walks of commerce, those of the superior clerks and the well-to-do parsons, were very nice girls, no doubt.

Some of them were pretty, and a few were sensible ; but where among their number was to be found the being of infinite love liness, marvellous grace, and radiant intelligence, to whom alone, as Hugh Rosslyn had informed Lilias, he could devote himself for life. At the solemn debt-paying dinners to which she was formally admitted when her schoolroom days came to an end, and at the mild middle-class evening parties, where Mrs. Norton enjoyed herself much more than Lilias did, the girl would observe the young ladies who had so much to say for themselves, and make up her mind that Hugh's ideal bride must belong to a different sphere — one into which she, Lilias, could never hope to get a peep. That Hugh would change his mind about a great many things, when he had seen more of the world, she had been assured by his father.

Perhaps one of those things would be the impossibility that he could ever love and marry any woman who fell short of the radiant vision he had sketched for Lilias in their confidential talks. Perhaps he might come back from distant travel, prepared to look with less lofty scorn upon the artificiality and the commonplace of those favoured daughters of fashion whom he and Lilias were wont to contemplate in the Park and at the theatres, and whom he contemned with all the energy of his preference for untutored graces and beauty unadorned, while Lilias regarded them with frank admiration and wonder. She could only hope this might be the case, and that Hugh would defer to his father's wishes on the subject, but she did not feel sanguine about it. " Lilias," said Dr. Rosslyn, on the following morning, as he was about to withdraw to his consulting-room, " what is the latest address you have for writing to Hugh ?

" A simple enough question, as Lilias is Hugh's chief corre spondent; but it embarrasses Lilias strangely, and she turns very red, and makes answer that she has had no fresh in structions, with so much confusion that Dr. Rosslyn looks sharply at her. He says nothing, however, but merely nods and leaves the room. As he places himself in his capacious chair, and applies himself to the papers on the huge, heavy table before him, he smiles slightly, and says to himself:— " She has realized that they are not brother and sister, I imagine. That is well."

Chapter II. The Pearl Of The Antilles

The sun, as yet only benignant, not merciless as at midday, when man and beast will have to hide from its unbearable splendour, is shining upon the beautiful Cuban Bay, upon the Grand Sierra, which, uprearing itself from the coast, stretches along the face of the island, upon the rich country lying beyond the towns, upon the Plaza de Armas, and the square-towered Cathedral of Santiago de Cuba. There is a constant air of repose upon the vast church, and a constant coolness, which makes itself felt from the moment its great doors have been passed, reigns within it. This coolness is very fresh and pleasant at six o'clock on a glorious morning — that is the only word for morning in the Pearl of the Antilles, and not a bit hyperbolical — at the end of May, twenty years ago. Even in the formal Plaza, with its spare trees planted in rows, in the very realistic market-place, and in the long line of wide-balconied houses of La Calle del Cate dral, the effects of light and shade are sufficiently various and beautiful to delight the unaccustomed eyes of a certain Englishman newly come to Cuba, who had recently been ex horted by a fellow-countryman of older experience to make a study of the scene at that early hour.

Henry Rodney had likewise explained to Hugh Rosslyn that, by attending an early Mass at the Cathedral he would procure a favourable opportunity for making artistic studies of another kind, likely to interest him even more vividly than the archi tectural details of the building, and the shadow and shine about its majestic bulk. " The seiioras and the sefioritas go to Mass at six or there abouts," said Rodney, "and the church is a pretty sight then. When they have done their devotions they do their shopping and ' calls ' — literal morning visiting it is here — and then they go into eclipse until it is Alameda or Plaza time. But whether they drive on the Alameda or walk in the Plaza, I do not think they are so picturesque as when one sees them at their devotions. I advise you to get your first impression of the Creole ladies at church."