A Man of Honour

Chapter I

An old bookworm like me, upwards of threescore years and ten, who for over half a century has lived the life of an Oxford Don without ever doing anything of consequence, or even writing anything more stirring than notes for a college lecture or an occasional maga zine article, can hardly, it may be thought, have any story to tell. But it is not my own history that I propose to set down here — that would be a dull tale indeed — but what I remember, and what I have learnt from others, and from his own letters and papers, of the life of one who died while I was still a young man. He was the dearest friend I ever had, and loved me, it pleases me to think, almost as much as I loved him, but was wholly unlike me in nearly every respect, while his career was the strongest possible contrast to my own.

The thought of leaving some written memorial of my early friend has long been present with me, but has been put off from month to month and year to year, and now, if the thing is to be done at all, it must be postponed no longer. I should not like to feel, when my time comes, that I had left that small labour of love unaccomplished. If the story be dull, the fault will .be mine, not his, for he was the most interesting i A MAN OF HONOUR 2 man I ever knew, and though my own life has been spent uneventfully among books, yet I have met and known intimately not a few interesting men, both old and young, and to me, at least, there was never one like him. I still occupy, after all these years, the same rooms in the old college where he was so often with me when we were undergraduates together, and in which, after we were parted never to meet again, I used to get his letters, and wrote mine to him.

I am writing now, indeed, at the same old table at which we so often sat together. Now and then, when I hear the youngsters running up the staircase three steps at a time, it reminds me of the days when his foot was often there. And sometimes when one of them taps at my door with some Latin prose or what not to be looked over, (for though the younger members of our Common Room consider my scholarship out of date, I still do a little college work), I half fancy — but no, they have none of them a step like his, and never again shall I see an undergraduate like my dear friend Jim Purefoy. James Butler Purefoy, that was his full name, came up to Oxford from Rugby in October 1845. I had then been two years in residence, and was nearly three years his senior in age. He was scarcely eighteen, but had won a scholarship at Rochester the previous summer term, and so, I also being one of the scholars, it came to pass that we found ourselves sitting side by side at the same table in Hall on the first night of his first and my third Michaelmas term.

My eye was drawn to him at once as he walked up the Hall in his flowing scholar's gown, a lithe, shapely figure with a well-set graceful head. He must have then been about five feet ten — he grew another inch or more afterwards — and held himself as straight as a lance. Glancing round the table which one of the scouts pointed out to him as that reserved for the scholars, he took the vacant place next to me with a slight bow to my address, and before long we fell into conversation. He was not, as I soon found out, of a talkative turn, but seemed to have the gift of generally saying the right thing in few and appropriate words. His face was remarkably set and strong for a lad of his age, and wore an expression at once reserved and sympathetic, imperious and modest. He had dark brown hair, very thick and fine, with a little wave in it, and a ruddy tanned complexion.

His nose was slightly aquiline, his lips full and close-shutting, and his eyes were large, dark, and steady. I have always been a solitary sort of creature, and slow to make acquaintances, but there was something about this particular freshman which speedily overcame my usual awkward diffidence, and as we were leaving Hall after dinner I suggested that if he had nothing better to do he might as well come up to my rooms. He came, and we sat for an hour or two, talking of this and that, with a decanter between us, of which, though it was good port, I recollect, having been given me by an uncle of mine who was something of a connoisseur, he would drink no more than a single glassful. Of our conversation I can recall little or nothing, except his telling me that his home was in Ireland, and that I asked him for what profession he was destined, to which he answered, with a somewhat mirthless and enigmatic smile — ' There's only one that I should care for, and, as I'm never likely to enter it, the less said about it the better.' Nor would he explain himself any further at time, or for long afterwards.

As the term went on we came to see a good deal of each other, dissimilar though were our pursuits. I soon got into the habit of calling him Jim, and I believe it was to him that I was indebted for the nickname of ' Professor,' which stuck to me for many years. My tastes, even then, were chiefly bookish, and my only outdoor amusements were a quiet paddle on the river, and sometimes, on Sundays, a long country walk. Jim, on the other hand, had a natural aptitude for most games and exercises. He rowed seven in the Rochester boat one year, and also in 'the Trials,' and might, it was said, have had a chance of rowing in the University Eight had he been a few pounds heavier. He was a fair cricketer, too, but could seldom be persuaded to play in college matches, saying that they took up too much time.

The only pursuits to which he was genuinely devoted were fencing and riding. Every day regularly he spent at least an hour at the Salle d'Armes in St. Aldate's, kept by an old emigre' French officer. M. de Ruissac had had many troubles, poor old gentleman, and had not now many disciples in the noble art of escrime, but he took great delight and pride in Jim's proficiency and eagerness to excel. ' He is strong, oh, but very strong,' he remarked to me one day when I had gone with Jim into the fencing room ; ' he has genius, this dear Monsieur Purefoi. I teach him, look you, yet one year, and I shall render him of a skill quite exceptional, quite out of line. Monsieur also loves to fence? Ah, no, Monsieur is student. That, too, is good, to study.' For indulgence in his other favourite pursuit Jim had not, while at Oxford, much opportunity, for the commonplace but to him sufficient reason that he could not afford it.

He had, it must be confessed, an un romantic prejudice against incurring debts which he could not pay. None of us, indeed, knew that he rode at all, for he was always reticent as to his own accomplishments, until it chanced that at a breakfast party at which we were both present one of the few hunting men in college, Heywood by name, began to talk of a mare which he had lately bought and tried with the Berkshire hounds. He could make nothing of her, it seemed ; she had plunged and reared and rushed at her fences, and had finally run away with him, and he was going to sell her by auction for what she would fetch. ' It would be a pity to do that,' remarked Jim, ' for she's a good stamp of animal. I happened to see her the other day as you were coming out of Symond's yard, and it struck me that she wasn't properly bitted.

It was a chifney that you were riding her in, wasn't it ? ' ' Yes, it was,' said Heywood, a little nettled, (he was a boisterous, good-natured fellow, who became a M.F.H. afterwards, somewhere in the north, and is, I believe, still alive), ' perhaps you think you could ride her in a snaffle.' ' Possibly,' said Jim quietly ; ' one can never be quite sure without trying.' ' Well,' rejoined Heywood, ' you're welcome to ride that mare to hounds in a snaffle, and if she doesn't run away with you I'll make you a present of her. And I should uncommonly like to see you do it,' he added. ' Thank you,' said Jim, 'that's a very sporting offer. I shall be glad to try her ; ' and it was arranged that he A MAN OF HONOUR should take the mare to the next meet of the Heythrop hounds. I never knew anything of horses myself, and indeed my dread of them has always been in proportion to my ignorance ; and being a good deal afraid of the issue of this adventure, I tried when we were alone to persuade Jim to give it up.

But he only smiled in an inscrutable kind of way he had, and said, ' Never fear, old fellow, I can ride a bit.' This somewhat allayed my anxiety, for I knew that his was usually the eloquence of understatement, but still I was greatly relieved in my mind when he came back safe and sound on the evening of the day in question. He was in time for dinner in Hall, too, and knowing that I should be uneasy about him, ran up to my rooms a few minutes before six. But he was by no means full of his own performances, and in answer to my questions would only say that there was nothing to tell, that the mare had been a little fretful at first, but had soon settled down to her work and had carried him capitally. ' So now, she's yours, I suppose. And what are you going to do with her ? ' I asked. ' Oh, I never meant to keep her,' he said ; ' that would be a very one-sided business, seeing that I wasn't to forfeit anything if she got the better of me.' ' You ran a very fair risk of breaking your neck,' I remarked. ' Oh, that doesn't count.

I knew well enough I could ride her. Heywood's going to let me take her out two or three times more, just to continue her education. I couldn't afford to keep her here, you know, if I had her. Come along to dinner.' The mare's master, however, was more communicative about Jim's exploit. I had hardly more than a nodding acquaintance with Heywood myself, but happening to meet him in the quad next morning I asked him how Purefoy and the mare had agreed together. ' By George ! ' he said, ' that fellow can ride. Jezabel was in a vile temper yesterday, and when we got to the cross-roads in my trap, and found her standing up on end and lashing out like all possessed, I had a great mind not to let him try her. But he wouldn't hear of being let off, and up he got, with me hanging on to her head and the groom holding up her off-fore.

She began to plunge and buck the moment she got her feet on the grass, but he stuck to her like wax and handled her wonderfully. He certainly has the finest hands on a horse of any young fellow I ever saw. Luckily we weren't long in finding, and he got well away with her on a line of his own, and by the time she was over her second fence she was going as kindly with him as you could wish to see. We had a rattling forty minutes, and she never once put a foot wrong, and he rode her back into Oxford as mild as milk. And for all I could say, he wouldn't take the mare, though she was fairly his ; said he shouldn't know what to do with her. But he's promised to ride her again for me, and, by George ! he shall always be wel come to ride any horse of mine. He's a regular con sternation of talent, as the fellow says in Soapy Sponge, and a real good sort is Purefoy.' His victory over Jezabel naturally added to Jim's reputation in the college, and gained for him admirers not a few.

But he always seemed to maintain a kind of aloofness from every one except — I may say it now myself, and though he enjoyed his outdoor pursuits while actually engaged in them, yet they never, I think, occupied his thoughts much at other times. Nor did he do very much in the way of reading for the Schools. He was a fair scholar, could read Homer or Virgil or Sophocles pretty fluently, and turned an alcaic or hexa meter neatly enough. But his heart was clearly not in the classics, and of mathematics he had at that time but little knowledge. Among the English poets his favourites were Shakespeare and Shelley. He had a translation of Plutarch's Lives, which he was fond of poring over, and Napier's Peninsular War he had at his fingers' ends. But he was not a wide or voracious reader, by any means.

It was not till near the end of his second summer term that I gained a glimpse into the problem which had been more or less puzzling me ever since I first knew him. I felt sure that there was something, some mastering idea or pre-occupation, in the background of his mind, which distracted his thoughts from the ordinary pursuits and ambitions of the undergraduate world. Was he in love ? I wondered ; or could he be undergoing a premature attack of philosophico-religious doubt ? Neither of these conjectures seemed quite to meet the case, but I could think of no more explanatory ex planation, and never liked to put the question to him directly. But I was enlightened at last. One Sunday evening towards the end of May, a soft warm May evening such as used to be common enough half a century ago, when it was pleasanter to sit at an open window than over a blazing fire, Jim and two or three others were in my rooms after Hall.

One of the party, Lindsey by name, was the son of a Manchester manufacturer, who was pretty well known in those days as a radical orator and Member of Parliament. Young A APAN OF HONOUR 9 Lindsey had inherited his father's politics, and made fervid speeches at the Union, denouncing aristocracy, militarism, State Church, and so on. (I have no business to sneer at him, indeed, for I was, in a speculative way, radical enough myself, as radicalism was then understood, and considered Lindsey to be a very elo quent and right-minded person, though somewhat too vitriolic in his invective.) He had been holding forth on this occasion in his usual perfervid vein, and rounded a period with the words, ' But wait, sir, till the industrial spirit has had time to break the rusty shackles of an effete oligarchy and to shake off the burthens of bloated armaments and established churches.

Then we shall see a new world.' Thus, or somewhat to this effect, perorated Lindsey to his small but, with one exception, appreciative audience. Then Jim opened his lips and said — ' It would be a very poor sort of world, I think, in which there was no scope for disciplined courage, and unquestioning obedience to orders, and readiness to lead a forlorn hope, and all the rest of the military virtues.' Lindsey, of course, was prompt to point out that, pending the final victory of the industrial spirit, there would be abundant opportunities for leading forlorn hopes against the tottering walls of the fortress of feudalism ; and that if, after its complete triumph, there was no need of such heroism, why, so much the better ; and, in short, that Jim's ideas belonged to the ages of barbarism. But the latter, having liberated his soul, said no more, and soon afterwards took his departure.

Later in the evening, when the rest of the party had dispersed, I followed him to his rooms, and found him alone, reading Napier. I said I was afraid Lindsey's eloquence had rather bored him. ' Oh no,' he replied ; ' it takes all sorts to make a world. But his ideal world is certainly not mine.' ' Do you remember,' I asked, ' something that you said, the first evening of your first term, about there being only one profession that you cared for, but that you were never likely to adopt it ? ' He looked up quickly and nodded. ' Did you mean soldiering ? ' ' Yes.' A pause followed, during which I was struggling with the desire to ask the question, which I felt as if I had no right to put, why, if his heart was so set on being a soldier, he could not go into the army, undesir able and doubtfully moral profession though I then thought it.

But he anticipated me and went on — ' Yes ! if to hunger and thirst for a soldier's fame is barbarism, then I certainly am a barbarian of the deepest dye, for that's what I do covet with heart and soul. A soldier's life is the only one that I'm in the least fitted for, or that I can even imagine myself ever caring for, except perhaps colonising or exploring in some wild country. But to lead fighting men in battle !' and he sprang up as he spoke, and began to pace the room with glowing face and flashing eyes. ' To lead fighting men in battle ! Perhaps some day to com mand an army in the field, and to fall, like Wolfe, in the moment of victory ! What other life or death could equal the rapture of that ? But it's no use, worse than useless, to think of it,' and with an impatient sigh he threw himself again into his chair.

He went on, after a pause, speaking in a low voice and with his eyes fixed on the empty fireplace — 1 I'm an only son, I must tell you, and when my mother died, three years ago, her last words to me were to implore me to stay near my father and take care of him, and I promised I would. He'd be broken-hearted, the dear old man, if I were to leave him and go abroad, and I'm a selfish brute to long, as I sometimes do to go.' ' But couldn't you go into the army without going abroad ? ' ' How could I but go with my regiment if it was ordered on foreign service ? That would be worse than not being a soldier at all. Besides, I shouldn't care for garrison town work at home. It's to India that I should like to go. One would have a chance of real fighting there, and nowhere else that I can see. Look at Ferozshah and Sobraon only the other day !

And I don't believe we've done with the Sikhs yet. But I'm a fool to let myself think of it. Suppose we talk of something else.' And so, for the time, the subject was dropped between us.

Chapter II

' BY the way, Professor, have you ever been in Ireland ? ' It was towards the end of the summer term, and Jim and I were doing a Sunday grind to Chalgrove. He often accompanied me on these weekly tramps. My pedestrian powers were rather, perhaps, above the average, and I was inclined to be a little proud of them, there being no other kind of exercise in which I had any pretension to excel, but Jim could have walked me to a standstill. I never had been in Ireland, and replied to that effect. ' Suppose you came over and spent a month or so of the long with my father and me at Kilwellan ? We're not so very far from Dublin, ten hours or so on a coach, and a pretty drive. I don't think you'd mind its being a bit dull, and we should be delighted to have you.' My parents had long been dead, and my school holidays and college vacations had generally been spent with an uncle who lived in Surrey.

So there was really no reason why I should not accept the invitation, and I said I should like it very much. From stray remarks which Jim let fall from time to time, I had gathered that the Irish branch of the Purefoys had long been a considerable family with extensive estates in Wexford and Carlow. But for the last fifty years or more they had not been prosperous. They had lost money and lands from many causes — extravagance, bank failures, bad seasons, foreclosed mortgages — who knows what? — and at the time of which I am writing the only remaining representatives of the family were Major Purefoy, my friend's father, and Jim himself. The former, now upwards of sixty, after seeing much service and receiving several wounds in the Peninsular War, had gone into action with his regiment at Waterloo as senior captain, and brought out what was left of it as commanding officer.

Eight or nine years later he had retired from the army on the death of his unmarried elder brother, by which event he succeeded to the old family house and park of Kilwellan in the county of Wexford, and the few hundred acres which were all that now remained of the once extensive Purefoy estates. He had married, shortly after his retirement, a distant cousin, a Miss Dare, a lady who had blood and beauty, but little or no other fortune. Of this marriage Jim was the only child. Since his wife's death Major Purefoy had led an extremely retired life, seldom going outside his own gates, and rarely seeing any visitors except his nearest neighbours, the Beresfords of Drum Connell. Lady Beresford and Mrs. Purefoy had been first cousins and dear friends, and the two families had always been very intimate, Jim and the Beresford girls having grown up together like brother and sisters.

Thus much of the family history I had gathered during the two years or so that he and I had known each other, and it was with a pleasurable expectation of making the acquaintance of people and scenes with which I felt as if already familiar that I started about the middle of August on the journey to Kilwellan. This was a much more serious affair in those days than it would be now. The pleasantest part of it was the coach drive from Dublin, the weather being fine, the scenery for the greater part of the way lovely, and the horses fairly fast. The driver was a long, lean, taciturn man, very unlike the light-hearted frolicsome Irish stagecoachman of my imagination, and had indeed nothing distinctively Irish about him except his brogue, which, as he seldom opened his mouth, was rarely audible.

He heard unmoved and in silence, or with a mere ' Well, well ! ' the items of local news or incidents of the road which the ostlers or standers-by imparted to him when we changed horses, how the gray mare had 'up wid her heels and bid a whack' at Tim the stable-boy as he was putting the harness on her, or how the country was 'quarely uplifted' at the rumour that young O'Toole of Ennistown had run away with Miss Maher of Ballymoyle. So unapproachable a personage, indeed, did he seem, that it was not until some three-fourths of the road from Dublin to Wexford lay behind us that I ventured to ask him if he knew Kilwellan. He turned his head, the first time I had seen him do it, at the question, and with more interest in his tone than he had yet evinced in anything replied to it by another. ' Is it for Kilwellan you are ?

There's not many sthrangers does be going there these days. You'll be a friend of Masther Jim's now, maybe?' ' Well, yes,' I said, ' I am. You seem to know Master Jim too.' ' There's not many in Carlow or Wexford that doesn't know him. He's a fine bould lad ; never a betther from Dublin to himself. And his father was a grand man before him, though times is bad wid him now by what I hear. Them's the raal ould shtock — never a Purefoy but was a bould rider and a kind man to the poor. Your honour was never in these parts before, av I'm not mishtook ? ' ' No, never. I've never been in Ireland at all before.' ' 'Deed an so I was thinking. Well, well ! Times is bad wid the Purefoys — land gone and money spent. And since he lost his wife the poor ould gentleman's greatly failed.' Musing, probably, on the instability of fortune and the rise and decline of families, the coachman relapsed into his former mournful silence, which he only broke once or twice to observe that the land through which we were driving had once been the property of the Purefoys, or to point out some impossible-looking fence which had been cleared by a member of that ' ould shtock.' The coach had been passing for several miles along the beautiful valley of the Slaney, and the day was drawing towards its close, when he pointed with his whip towards some rising ground to the left of the road, thickly covered with trees, among which a gray gable could be discerned, and remarked that that was Kilwellan.

A little farther on the coach pulled up at a lodge gate by which Jim was waiting for me. ' How are you, old fellow ? ' he cried. ' I'm glad you had a fine day for your journey. I thought you'd have had driving enough, and would rather walk up to the house and stretch your legs, so I didn't bring anything on wheels except a cart for your luggage. Well, Peter, how's yourself?' ' Right well, thank you, Masther Jim,' responded Jehu, his sombre visage lit up by a beaming smile. ' I keep my health finely, glory be to God ! ' My luggage was by this time handed down and placed on a small mule cart which was in waiting ; the coachman with a ' Good-bye to ye, gentlemen both,' drove on ; and Jim and I started on our walk up to the house. The avenue wound through some fine timber dotted over undulating pasture-land where cattle were grazing, and crossed a pretty stream, in which Jim informed me there was very fair trout -fishing, by a small stone bridge.

A quarter of an hour's smart walking brought us to an ancient-looking gray house of considerable size, but of which one wing only appeared to be occupied. The door was standing open, and a gray-headed old man-servant, clad in rusty black, came forward. ' Have Mr. Inglewood's things taken up to his room, will you, Lanty,' said Jim, ' and meanwhile, Professor, come into the library and see my father.' Crossing a moderate-sized hall, the walls of which were decorated with antlers and some uncouth-looking weapons and armour, we entered an oak-panelled room, somewhat narrow for its length, with three windows on one side looking out on a close-shaven mossy lawn, and rather over-shadowed by the drooping boughs of an ancient cedar tree. At the far end of the room, by the side of a peat fire, an elderly gentleman sat reading in a large arm-chair.

He rose as we came in, and greeted me with formal but genuine courtesy. He had a slight stoop, which detracted something from his height, but had evidently been a tall, well-made man. His features were high and delicate, his hair white but abundant, and his face was clean shaven, except for a narrow strip of whisker cut after the fashion set, I believe, by the Duke of Wellington. He wore a dark blue swallow-tailed coat with a high collar, a black stock, and closely-fitting dark trousers, and altogether struck me as decidedly a person of quality. The room, too, had an air of faded distinction, which made it an appropriate setting for the antiquated figure of its occupant.

The old-fashioned furniture, the dark well worn carpet, the sombre bindings of the ancient volumes that filled the tall bookcase opposite the windows, the miniatures on the mantelpiece, and the portraits of dead and gone Purefoys, in the garb of past generations, which hung from the panelled walls, the faint scent of old leather and old wood, were all delicately suggestive of a tranquil and dignified decay. ' You are exceedingly welcome to Kilwellan, Mr. Inglewood,' said the old Major in his courteous measured tones. ' The place would perhaps have been better worth your seeing some thirty or forty years ago, but you couldn't well come before you were born, and, even as it is, I trust we may be able to make your visit tolerably pleasant.' I thanked him as well as I could, assuring him that books and scenery, and the society of himself and Jim, would make me perfectly contented ; and after a little more conversation conducted on these polite principles, Jim took me up an old oak staircase leading out of the hall .to my bedroom, which commanded a pleasant view of the park and a distant glimpse of the sea. ' My room's next door,' he explained as he left me. ' Give me a shout if you want anything, for I'm afraid your bell is rather out of order, and Lanty's somewhat deaf at the best of times.