Killed in the Open. A novel

Front matter

VOL. I. % Hobel JiY Mrs. EDWARD KENNARD AUTHOR OF THK RIGHT SORT," "STRAIGHT AS A DIE," "TWILIGHT TALKS, etc. " It's worth the risk of life, and limb, and neck, boys, To see them glance and stoop, Till they finish with who-wlmop, Forty minutes o'er the grass without a check, boys. IX THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL Limited 1886 {All rights reserved.] jfonbon anb Sungail : UICHAED CLAY AND SONS, PRINTEKS. Co mn Jf'ttbcr, WHO FIRST IMBUED ME WITH A LOVE OF SPORT, AND TO WHOSE SYMPATHY, ENCOURAGEMENT, AND EXAMPLE I AM INFINITELY INDEBTED, THIS BOOK IS LOVINGLY AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

Preface

. This work is, as its title denotes, to a great extent what is commonly called a " sporting novel" — that is, an attempt to give a graphic description of glorious runs, oxers safely negotiated, brooks gallantly charged, rides home along frosty roads, and the other stirring adven tures which are met with by those who pursue the " king of sports " — fox-hunting in the " shire of shires." Along with this the author has attempted to give some sketch of the various touches of human nature and traits of character which are nowhere more vividly displayed than in the diversified drama of the hunting-field, the dealer's yard, and other accessories of the noble sport. As regards this portion of the work, she can only say that the descriptions and incidents, be

PREFACE.

. X they good or bad, have at least the merit of being drawn from actual experience, and not evolved from inner consciousness, for she too has " Drunk delight of battle with her peers,' and felt the fierce excitement which tingles through the veins of those who find themselves anywhere near the front in a "Fast thirty minutes from Ranksborougli Gorse," mounted on a gallant steed, who enjoys the ardour of the chase and the music of the hounds fully as much as his mistress. And if the noble animal is described with loving minuteness, it is by one to whom her favourite hunter has been as the apple of her eye, and whose affection has been freely lavished on the faithful friend who has so often carried her gallantly, whinnied with pleasure when she approached his stall, and rubbed his velvet muzzle against her hand when she brought him his daily carrot or lump of sugar.

But if she may be allowed to whisper a secret in the ear of the sympathetic reader it is this — that on this canvas she has attempted to give expression to an idea which has long haunted her, from the many sad stories which she has

PREFACE.

. XI seen and read of wrecked lives, of what may be called the "tragedy of woman's life." How so many young women, at an age before their char acters are formed and they have had experience of the world, have the Sphynx's riddle proposed to them, on which the future fate of their lives depends, in the form of having to decide whether to say " Yes " or " No " to a proposal for marriage. Most influences point to saying "Yes." The suitor has presented himself in his pleasantest aspects ; friends and family, if the match seems a good one, are inclined to favour it ; the girl herself feels a certain pardonable vanity at having been selected for preference, and a natural reluctance to disappoint expecta tions and risk missing the true vocation of a woman by becoming a happy wife and mother. The chances are therefore that she says " Yes," and on this little word the whole destiny of her future life is staked.

A few, who meet with husbands really worthy of their love, draw great prizes ; the great majority, who meet with average men, draw neither blanks nor prizes, and although they may not quite realize their early ideals, on the whole lead useful, respectable, and fairly happy lives. But the few who draw blanks, and find when too late that the hero of

PREFACE.

. their imagination is an image of clay, coarse, selfish, ill-tempered, narrow-minded, and essen tially vulgar, under a veneer of polished manner — " By birth a king, at heart a clown. what fate is theirs ? The higher the nature the greater is the pain of the gradual disenchantment ; the sensitive shrinkings from violence and vulgarity, the ex quisite torture of unkind and cruel words, the deadening sense of want of sympathy, and the hopeless conviction that the choice lies between perpetual conflict or sinking your nature to a lower level, and crushing out of sight all your higher thoughts and nobler aspirations. Thinking of these things, a sort of philosophy of woman's life has shaped itself in the author's mind. First — The paramount obligations of duty — that " right is right," and the laws of honour and self-respect have to be obeyed at all hazards, and in spite of all temptations.

Secondly — That a certain amount of " stoicism " is the surest sheet anchor of noble minds amidst the trials of suffering humanity. Thirdly — That this " stoicism " ought not to be hard and cynical, but tempered by sympathy

PREFACE.

. XIII for others, and translating itself into efforts to assist them. Fourthly — The " sacredness of sorrow " — that suffering, however agonizing, has its good in opening up depths in the soul that would other wise have remained sealed, and teaching us infinite love and pity for others who suffer. These ideas and this philosophy are what the author has attempted, to the best of her ability, to portray in the history of the engagement of Valentine to Lord Blaston. She had not the heart to pursue the theme to the bitter end, and make the story close tragically ; but she has tried to develope it sufficiently to enable the judicious reader to understand it. Whether she has succeeded in this it is for that reader to determine ; but whatever may be his verdict, it will be a lenient one if he can discern in the book an attempt, however imperfect, to teach men who have in them chords responsive to noble and generous feelings, to understand woman better both in her strength and her weakness, in her little vanities and inconsistencies, her occa sional perversities and unreasonablenesses, her clinging sympathies and cravings for support from a stronger nature, her keen suffering under cruelty, her softness and pliancy under

PREFACE.

. kindness ; but at the same time, her heroism and high spirit, her generous impulses, her devotion to duty, her instinctive shrinking from the base and ignoble, and the high capacities that often lie unfolded in her silent soul. Success may or may not attend this book, but it will not have been written in vain if it induces even a single reader to " Gently scan your brother man, And gentlier, sister woman."

Chapter I. Office Life

Fashionable London, that world of festivity, gossip, dress, flirtation, and frivolity, begins to look terribly deserted as July draws towards a close. Its votaries, worn out by a perpetual round of excitement, depart one by one, only to renew their dissipations at Cowes, Homburg, or some similarly fashionable resort, where match-making mothers, all undaunted by their season's defeats, gallantly continue their maternal labours, where the young ladies wear out smart frocks, and where gnileless youths, possessing a larger share of money than brains, are anxiously expected to prove more susceptible to feminine charms than they had clone in the gay metro polis. There, competition is too great, and VOL. I. B the fascinations of nimble-footed burlesque divinities too much in the ascendant, to render the state of the matrimonial market otherwise than extremely flat and unsatisfactory to youth ful husband-seekers.

Consequently they are forced to spread their pretty wings and fly away in search of the provokingly coy male. Meanwhile streets are thinning visibly. Botten Bow — that centre of dress and female folly, as represented by high heels, unnatural protuberances, paint and violet-powder — is for saken save by a few remaining individuals, who sit disconsolately under the drooping lime trees, watching a cloud of light yellow dust as it rises up in the rear of a solitary horseman, who, half asleep, paces sedately up and down the ride, from a conscientious respect for that great avenger, liver. Enervated nurse-maids, in spite of the walk being comparatively empty, still continue to take a fiendish pleasure in pushing heavy perambulators containing flabby, somno lent babies against the luckless legs of the few occasional pedestrians.

And each day the atmosphere seems to grow more hot, heavy, and intolerable to the unfortunate people who see before them no immediate prospect of effecting an escape from the metropolis. Lucky indeed are those who at this oppress ive season of the year possess sufficient means to authorize them in seeking fresh air and exercise elsewhere. On the green lawn at Goodwood, where the free breeze sweeps over the rolling downs, or in pleasant country retreats, where all day long lowing cattle stamp their feet and switch their thin tails amongst the rich green pastures, and where the ripening corn, like a true disciple of Zoroaster, bends low in homage of that brilliant orb, whose warmth and splendour shed a golden glory over all the sun-kissed land. After some such fashion mused Allan Mac donald as, leaning his two elbows dispiritedly on the mahogany desk in front of him, at which he had been studiously engaged the greater part of the forenoon, he desisted for a minute in his labours, and disconsolately reviewed the situation.

His duty consisted in copying and re vising sundry lengthy invoices belonging to the great mercantile house of Messrs. Morley, Shipton, and Co. Everybody — everybody, that is to say, who lives in the world — has heard of these famous merchant princes, whose name alone acts as a passport throughout our Eastern possessions, B and whose singular honesty, energy, and enter prise have succeeded during the course of half a century in accumulating a fortune estimated not far short of three millions. Mr. Allan Macdonald was employed by the firm in the capacity of confidential clerk, with a salary of four hundred a year • to which post he had attained, thanks to his own honourable exertions, aided by a remarkably shrewd business head. Perhaps to many young men of his age such an income might merely appear sufficient to pay for cigars, gardenias, light kid gloves, gold-headed canes, fancy handkerchiefs, and similar luxuries ; but in Allan's case it was forced to supply all the necessaries of life.

Needless to say, therefore, that he was unable to indulge in many expensive pleasures ; which self-denial, however, had hitherto in nowise affected either his spirits or power of enjoyment. Nevertheless, for once he felt inclined to quarrel with his immediate avocation, being in one of those peculiar moods to which most of us are subject, when a certain internal, though oftentimes quite unreasonable, irritation demands an outlet on some unoffending person or object. Probably there never was a clerk yet who under these conditions did not fall back upon abuse of his office. The hot sun without and the suffocating stuffiness within had certainly a good deal to do with this state of things as far as Mr. Mac donald was concerned ; for generally he possessed a placable and easy-going disposition.

But to-day, instead of devoting his individual attention to the business in hand, his thoughts somehow insisted on wandering off to those cool Sussex hills where the great annual competition for the Goodwood Cup was at that very moment being contested before a select and fashionable assembly ; whilst he, poor devil ! sat holding a goose-quill between his moist fingers, and counted up endless rows of intermin able figures that had a truly horrible knack of never coming twice running to the same amount. A saint under such circumstances might have lost his temper, and the contrast certainly pro duced a strong sense of dissatisfaction in our friend Mr. Macdonald's mind. As a rule, he was a steady, plodding, con scientious fellow, gifted with a large share of the dogged perseverance and pluck which in all corners of the inhabited world have invari ably succeeded in bringing his countrymen to the foremost ranks.

Nevertheless the mere fact of any meeting taking place connected with that noble animal, the horse, sufficed to stir the Norse blood running in his veins, and to excite an amount of enthusiasm quite disproportionate to the occasion. Love of sport was indeed inbred in him, having been still further developed by spending several years of his boyhood at a school in Yorkshire, where, bitten by the prevailing taste, even the smallest boys used to speculate in pennies on the result of every great event. In fact Allan could no more help taking a keen interest in all racing and horsey matters than he could avoid an occasional pang at being forced by the hard law of necessity, instead of following his natural inclinations, to pass the major portion of each day in a dingy counting-house, buried in the heart of the city.

From his birth he had always been a cheerful and contented creature, inclined to take life as it came, and disposed to look on the sunny rather than on the gloomy side of things ; but even such happily-constituted individuals have occasional dull moments, when they are prone to ask themselves what good existence really confers, and fall back on the time-worn biblical saying, " Vanity, vanity, all is vanity." Besides which, when one possesses sporting tendencies that, despite antagonistic surroundings, refuse to be stifled, it is undeniably hard not now and again to obtain the opportunity of affording them gratification. At least these were Allan Macdonald's feelings on this particular afternoon. Our hero — for such he is — was the only son of a small Scotch laird, who, owing to the failure of a large bank at Glasgow, the liability on the shares of which was unlimited, found himself through no fault of his own irretrievably ruined, and forced when quite an old man to sell his property, in order to meet the various engagements that came showering in upon him.

These disastrous losses broke Mr. Macdonald senior's heart. His home, in the far North, had not been either a very grand or a very extensive one, just a solid grey granite house looking out upon rolling un dulations of red heather, where the wild winds swept at will; but he had loved it with an intensity which he had never realized until he saw it given over to the hands of strangers. He said good-bye with a heavy heart to his shaggy Highland cattle, to his rough mountain ponies, to his white-fleeced black-faced sheep, and to the brawling river, where many a time of a summer evening he had stood and watched the silvery salmon leaping up the falls that forced a passage over the great black boulders ; and then he Avent out into the world, to lay him down and die. With his last breath he enjoined Allan, at that time only a lad of eighteen, never to forsake his widowed mother, and to provide for her future maintenance.

Kneeling by the sick man's bedside, with the scalding tears streaming from his eyes, the boy had sworn a solemn oath, promising that come what might he would devote his life to her support, and up till the period when our story commences, in spite of many trials and privations which they had had to bear in common, he had nobly kept his word. The knowledge that his mother was entirely dependent upon him, proved a constant incen tive to work, and kept him out of many a youthful scrape. That good kind mother who always had his interest at heart, and laboured continually in her own quiet way for his welfare, with her snow white hair, pleasant fresh-coloured face, and homely Scotch accent, was very dear to Allan ; so dear that as yet no other woman had ever touched his heart, or occupied the smallest place in his affections.

Of late years he had rented a little cottage at Richmond, and there, when his daily work was over, he spent most of his evenings, enjoying the beauties of nature with a fulness which only people country born and bred can realize. He rowed, read, gardened, and in summer, when the days were long, took solitary strolls in the park, his head filled with all sorts of grand plans for the future. He would grow rich and buy back that pleasant northern home, where his childhood had been spent, and to do which he knew was the dream of his mother's life. His was .essentially a simple, honest, straightforward nature, neither caring for nor yet seeking much luxury. Small things sufficed to please him, and to render him quite contented. It had been a lucky day for Allan when, owing to a chance meeting during which he had succeeded in favourably impressing Mr. Morley with a sense of his probity and capacity, that gentleman had offered him a situation in the firm ; so that now, at the age of eight and twenty, he found himself, if not in affluent circumstances, at all events above want, and in receipt of an income likely annually to increase if he continued to give satisfaction.

Neverthe less there were times, as to-day, when the monotonous drudgery of office work became terribly repugnant to the strong, healthy young Scotchman, who pined after a life of greater physical activity and adventure. Every now and again a longing would steal over him to feel the spring of a good horse, to hear the cock grouse crowing on his native hills, to watch the salmon rise, aud breathe the light and bracing air of dear Caledonia. He was given to remembering with a strange yearning, how as a little boy he had trudged over the beautiful purple heather, scratching his little bare red legs against its scrubby stalks, and climbed great barren mountains where the active long-horned sheep looked like far-off specks of snow, dotting the rugged slopes high up to their topmost summit. He bethought him of how he had fished for speckled trout with a worm and a crooked pin in the tiny, rushing burn, watching meanwhile the ever changing cloud-shadows as they raced over the sunny shoulders of the distant hills.

And recalling all these things, an occasional feeling of restlessness would weigh heavy upon his spirit, accompanied by a sudden desire to be up and doing, far from the great, gloomy, smoking city where he dwelt. Once a year Allan's visions of enjoyment met with as nearly perfect realization as falls to the lot of any human being to experience. These happy days occurred when he spent his annual holiday at the country seat of a first cousin residing in a picturesque part of Perthshire. This cousin belonged to a senior branch of the clan Macdonald — which owing to various causes had become sadly diminished of late years — and he was the fortunate possessor of a remarkably fine sporting estate, that, together with certain coal-mines in the north of England, produced an income close upon twelve thousand a year.

Now Allan, failing other issue, was heir pre sumptive to the whole of this property, but that he would ever succeed to it was extremely unlikely, for Donald Macdonald was quite a young man, with every apparent prospect of living to a goodly old age ; added to which, any small hopes that Allan might possibly have otherwise entertained had lately been completely dispelled by the announcement of his cousin's engagement to Miss Flora Mac pherson, the youngest and beautiful daughter of a neighbouring laird. But, to tell the truth, Allan was too good a fellow to speculate much on a remote contin gency, only likely to come to pass through his cousin's death. To his mind there was some thinomean and cold-blooded about such self interested calculations, more especially betwixt relations ; and that Donald should marry, not only appeared to him the most natural thing in the world, but also a duty he owed to the ancient name and family of Macdonald.

He, Allan, was poor, and in city language nothing but a struggling " stool-polisher," whilst Donald occupied an altogether different position ; still a kindly feeling had always subsisted on either side, which Allan's short yearly visits served steadily to heighten. These visits were also in great measure responsible for the fostering and encouragement of that love of sport which appears inherent in the British nation. No wonder then if we find poor Allan on this hot July clay staring moodily out of the window, gazing with growing dissatisfaction at the grimy houses over the way, at the dusty pavement and strings of hurrying foot people, whilst in his innermost heart he fervently wishes that it were possible to transport that tall, muscular person of his to the cool Goodwood paddock. He pictured to himself the delight, instead of translating crabbed correspondence in illegible German about the rate of exchange between Hamburg and Shanghai, which w7as his present occupation, of dawdling about and feasting his eyes on the symmetrical proportions of thorough bred after thorough-bred, critically watching the noble animals' every movement, as they paced leisurely round in a circle with that light and springy tread so peculiarly their own.

He thought what a brilliant sheen their coats would carry, how their swelling muscles would stand out like cords in the sunshine, and how hard it was for him to have to sit there working away at that stupid desk, when so many hundreds of his fellow-creatures were enjoying themselves most thoroughly. He was too brave to repine for long at the inequalities of life, but there were occasions when he could not refrain from feeling them acutely, and thinking somewhat enviously what a fine thing it was to be born with a golden spoon in one's mouth — for all the good gifts of this earth to lie at a person's feet, without his ever having taken the smallest trouble to obtain them. He reflected on the strange hazard of birth, which in making you the son of wealthy parents, instead of destitute ones, gives in a single moment what the majority spend their lifetime in seeking to secure.

In appearance Allan Macdonald was an honest looking, upstanding young fellow, with short curly brown hair, a well-trimmed auburn beard, a fresh complexion, and a pair of frank grey eyes that were full of life and good-humour. His features were irregular, and far removed from the accepted type of masculine beauty, the nose being wide, and the cheek-bones high, as is common with many of his race. Neverthe less, the whole expression of the face was so manly, so candid and open, that it amply atoned for any deficiency in form. Most people meeting Allan for the first time came away impressed with a belief in his steadiness and sound common sense. There was nothing smart or showy about the young man, either mentally or physically, but he was essentially reliable, as his employers had long since discovered.

What he did he did thoroughly, and with a conscientiousness worthy of all praise, and it was a rare event his beinoin so unsettled a mood as the one in which we find him to-day. But excessive heat coupled with a long spell of hard work is enough to try the very best of tempers, as has often been proved ere now.

Chapter II. Castles In The Air

"Jim," said Allan presently, turning towards his half-slumbering companion, and speaking in a tone of anxious speculation, " that's four o'clock just striking. I wonder what has won the Cup ; it's all over by now." " Can't say, I'm sure," responded the gentle man thus addressed, giving himself a shake, and yawning till his mouth looked as if it never would close again. " Carlyon I hope, for the beggar's carrying a whole fiver of my hardly earned money. But, alack ! there's invariably a fatality about good things ; they never come off." " Very seldom. But I say, Jim, a fiver ? That's rather a plunge, ain't it, for a poor clerk ? " remonstrated Allan, who, whatever his own secret tendencies, considered it his bounden duty, if only in virtue of Mr. Corbet's tenderer years, to check that gentleman's gambling propensities.

" 'Tis a good bit, old fellow, I'll admit," con ceded the other apologetically. " But then I really thought it was a certainty this time, and the temptation to back Carlyon was unusually great. Besides, after all, Goodwood only comes once a year." "Yes, but it may come once too often for all that. However, I trust Carlyon has won, though, you mark my words, a certain chestnut named the Mandarin won't have been very far off at the finish. Do you remember what a great horse he ran at Ascot, and how he squandered his field in a style that reminded one of his sire's performances some seven or eight years ago ? It's curious " (meditatively) " how history repeats itself. The same strains of blood invariably come to the front in the long run." "But you forget that the Mandarin has got to carry a precious lot of weight," objected Mr. Corbet.

" He's giving lumps of it away, and there's nearly a stone difference between him and Carlyon. That ought to tell in favour of the young 'un surely." " All the same," persisted Allan, who, w7hen he vol. i. c had once stated his conviction, was not easily to be argued out of it, " I fully expect that Carlyon found my slashing favourite a toughish customer. The Mandarin has got such a splendid stride. No doubt," he went on, with a common human weakness, magnifying the pleasures of a festivity in which personally he had been debarred from taking a part, " no doubt the race, proved a grand one, and I would willingly have paid a fiver to have witnessed it, if only for the relief of getting away from this beastly old hole." His irritation was beginning to find vent at last, and was working itself off in mild abuse of 7 O his surroundings.

" Well ! why didn't you get leave from old Morley," returned Mr. Corbet. "Ten to one but what he would have granted your request ; for since you got the firm in on the ground floor of that big Rice Supply Company, you're first favourite, and are pretty sure to get promoted before long. Lucky dog." And Mr. Corbet heaved a sigh, not altogether free from some slight touch of envy. " I don't know so much about that," rejoined Allan sceptically. "But anyhow I scarcely liked to ask for a holiday, on what the old boy was certain to think so trivial and frivolous a pretext. Morley has a holy horror of horse racing, considering it the root of all evil. Besides which, my cousin is going to be turned off in two or three weeks from now, and as he has always behaved like a regular brick to me, and shown me such kindness as I never can repay, the least I could do was to accept his pressing invitation to attend the wedding in the capacity of best man.

I hate weddings as a rule. They are such intolerably melancholy things to my mind ; one can't help feeling sorry for the rash young couple who bind themselves to each other for life, by all sorts of solemn oaths, the very meaning of which, nine times out of ten, they fad to realize." " Don't moralize so horribly," interposed Mr. Corbet, melodramatically. " Upon my word, it's enough to give one the shivers. What need to _> o take such a serious view of an everyday affair like matrimony % " " I can't see that the state confers any advantage," continued Allan perversely. " Even the great Montaigne admits it to be an open question ; since he says ' that, from the beginning of the world, such as are in the institution wish to get out of it.'" c _ "Yes, but you wilfully suppress the sequel, ' And such as are out wish to get in.' Nothing would surprise me less, than some of these days to see you tumble over head and ears in love.

There will be no holding you then. The sceptics always are the worst when their turn comes. Sonnets, sighs, and all the rest of it." Allan smiled benevolently. He was amused but not shaken in his opinion by Mr. Corbet's predictions. " What nonsense you talk, Jim," he said. " I've managed to escape from female fascinations so far, and have not the smallest intention of putting my head into the fatal noose. Men now-a-days find bachelor life much too com fortable to run the great, the horrible, the SUICIDAL risk of committing matrimony. Just fancy ! being shut up from morning till night with a scolding woman, who never leaves off nagging for a second. That small unruly member, the female tongue, has it in its power to play the very mischief with a man's happiness. It stabs, and wounds, and cuts like the sharpest blade ever manufactured."

Allan delivered himself of the above senti ments with remarkable assurance, and yet he was a hypocrite; for all the time, whilst uttering these sweeping denunciations against the fair sex, he could in his innermost mind conceive of a woman who neither scolded nor nagged. A low-voiced, sympathetic, feminine creature, yet withal lively enough and intelligent enough to avoid sinking into a mere household drudge, and whose wits should on occasions rise almost, though not quite, on a level with her lord and master's. Such an one — ought she not rather to be termed a divinity ? — he could imagine, but unfortunately had never yet had the good luck to encounter. Still, he believed firmly that she existed somewhere. " And when do you start on your Scotch trip, old chap ? " inquired Mr. Corbet. "On the tenth of next month.