The Limb. An episode of adventure. By X. L [i.e. Julian Osgood Field], author of 'Aut Diabolus aut Nihil.'

Preface

. The experiences of Jock Erskine in Bussia, and the sad story of Michka, were so often the subject of discussion between Gounod and myself, that it was but natural I should dedicate the record of them to him ; and, in fact, almost before the narrative was begun, I wrote the Dedication, which I now leave unaltered, although tbe great Maestro and noble-hearted genius who had kindly promised to compose music for Michka's two songs is now no more. I have let my pen linger over certain social types and details of Russian life because this is the first time that the grand monde of Russia has ever been dealt with in English fiction ; and however unsuccessfully I may have performed the task, the subject possesses at least the merit, not very common in novels, of being new. But " The Limb " is not, strictly speaking, a work of fiction : many of the incidents, notably the denoument, are absolute facts ; and, as George Sand says somewhere about Consuelo — I quote from memory — " Je pourrais dire que ce qu'il y a de plus impossible dans mon livre, est precisement ce qui s'est passe dans la realite des cboses."

Chapter I

At a certain not very remote period in our rude island story — one assuredly within the memory of men still young — in the days when Evans's was the most popular house at Eton, Master John Ivor Serald David Erskine, commonly called " Jock " Erskine, was the most popular boy at Evans's, which means, in other words, that this enterprising youth, nicknamed " The Limb" (of Satan, of course, understood), bad, at the time referred to, attained the height of ordinary schoolboy ambition — the enjoyment of an undisputed and popular sovereignty over his schoolfellows in all matters pertaining to the business of pleasure and the doing of fun. By what exact means be had succeeded in reaching this dazzling eminence, and what plausible claims he could put forward to the very enviable and special supremacy alluded to, it would perhaps have puzzled even the not unimaginative Jock himself to bave explained ; for he excelled in no special fashion in any of the various forms of sport in vogue at school (being a very undistinguished wet-bob, and only really of any good at racquets), while, as for bis personal attractions — and they were many, good looks and a ready wit being perhaps among tbe most conspicuous — the like were not sufficiently uncommon in the community wbich he adorned with his presence to alone account for the supreme popularity which the Limb enjoyed.

It was, perhaps, in a great measure, to a certain brilliant verve and dash, a generous joyous impetuosity of temperament, and, beyond doubt, not a little to the reputation for harmless B mischief and reckless though innocent devilry, which was especially his, that he owed his election by the universal accla mation of his schoolfellows to leadership over them. There are, it must in all fairness be admitted, assuredly more unpleasant things in the world than the life of a boy at Eton or Harrow, which, indeed, may be said to possess nearly all the charms of London life while lacking most of its respon sibilities and cares. They have their clubs — and few in London are more exclusive than the " Pop " or the " Philathlet " — and their convivial meetings, but are not annoyed with the insipid weariness of balls; they can and do enjoy what Dr. Johnson calls "the endearing refinement " of ladies' society, for there is always — and especially during the London season — a plentiful supply of the pi'ettiest girls who are seized on half-holidays with a wild desire to see their brothers, without being expected to make nonsense serious ; and, finally, they have ready at hand all the appliances of luxury essentially necessary to the fine gentleman of the present day — their tailors, hosiers, and what not, being hardly, if at all, inferior to the best the neighbourhood of Bond Street can produce.

But there is, of course, a reverse side to the brightest shield ; and, although there are many pleasures in school-bfe, there are also certain social duties which must be observed, and which are not always perhaps fruitful of joy to all concerned. Snobbishness, undue pride of birth, rank and social position exist but little; toadyism has to await the private tutors to see the light ; but cads cannot be tolerated, and in schools like Eton and Harrow, where many parents send their sons to make gentlemen of them, there are many such. There are boys whom self-respect causes us to kick at Eton, as there are men whom a proper sense of our own dignity compels us to black ball in London. Both operations are painful to the victim, and neither without charm to the operator. The last state of the boys who are sent to school to become gentlemen is, of course, worse than the first, and it is well it should be so ; but the boy who goes there a gentlemen will enjoy himself greatly (if he be one calculated to enjoy himself anywhere), will learn a great deal of the world and not a little of books, and will come away — certainly a gentleman, and a very charming one— with such knowledge of good and evil as will keep him in the ways of honour and out of most difficulties, except, perhaps, those arising from extravagance and debt.

Under any circumstances, it is likely that a public school life would have commended itself to such a frank, healthy, joyous nature as that of the Limb ; but the fact of his having been left an orphan at a very early age, and without brother or sister, to be taken care of by a maiden aunt of most depressingly upright principles — a lady who might have assumed as a motto the famous words of Hugo, slightly altered, " Moi seul, et c'est acide ! " — made his school-life all the more delightful and precious to him by reason of its contrast with the general dreariness of his holiday surroundings. But a few words of explanation are here necessary. The Limb was (or rather is, for he still adorns society) the only child of a younger brother of a very undistinguished Scotch nobleman, the ninth Earl of Kildrummie, thus being, of course, the first cousin of a gentleman famous for his mis deeds — Viscount Melrose, the ninth earl's eldest son.

Of that highly improper old patrician, Lord Kildrummie, little need be said. His lordship was an antique, snuffy, broken-down thane, who looked as if he were chief of a clan that had renounced the luxury of washing since the battle of Pinkie, but who, notwithstanding his mediæval views as regards cleanliness, entertained alarmingly advanced socialistic theories concerning the propriety of a general equality of participation in ladies' smiles, being indeed an enthusiastic Free-trader in all matters pertaining to kisses, while remaining an obstinate Protectionist when his pocket was appealed to. An unpicturesque and unsafe ruin was Lord Kildrummie. Some parts of him — his hands, for instance, which were, though somewhat ivy mantled, shapely — being indeed still worthy of admiration ; but most of the structure, the more important parts, notably his head (which had long lost all trace of its original architectural design, and become merely the haunt and nest of strange and unclean night-birds of fancy) and his heart (the roof of which had been blown off by repeated tempests of passion in early youth, and the steps connecting which, with his now desolate, though never ornate, chapel of principles, had been destroyed by fire long ago), having fallen into such crumbling decay as to be wholly devoid of interest to even the most enthusiastic ethic-antiquarian, and merely, indeed, bringing to the mind ot the moralist charitable thoughts of a mercifully wielded pickaxe aud a reverently trundled wheelbarrow.

This dilapidated demirep, whose most expensive and disgraceful exploits dated from before the second premiership of Sir Robert Peel, was at the time we are now concerned with kept by his family in a desert place apart — a once fashionable and still gossipy watering-place in England — where he lived alone, happy in the society of the local sycophants, who, with the generosity common to their class, charitably consented to ignore the Pictish uncleanness of this descendant of the Mormaors, and wink at the senile improprieties of this lodging-house De Lauzun. Here, in this place of refuge, his long-suffering wife paid him occasional visits, but, as she had two ugly and dowerless daughters to find partners for, she did not come often nor stay long ; while as for his son and heir, the very exquisite Lord Melrose, that young nobleman never saw his father, nor even heard of him, from one year's end to the other.

If it be true,, as Disraeli was never tired of assuring bis friends, that the disappointed are always young, then Lord Melrose (known to his friends as " Tam ") might reasonably count on a prolonged springtime ; for his disappointments were perpetual, possibly owing in some measure to the fact that his expectations invariably only began on the farther side of the shadowy border-line which is supposed to separate the unlikely from the impossible. It seemed inexplicable to Tam Melrose — or had seemed so at first, and before the whole bitterness of life had been fully revealed to his palate — that, with his birth, rank, and extrava gant tastes, at least ten thousand a year should not be provided for him in some more certain fashion than by horse-racing and cards ; and on this primary disappointment were all his others based.

On leaving Eton he had honoured the Grenadier Guards with his society for two years ; but at the end of that period he had realized the fact that, if he intended succeeding in his profession of man of pleasure, he would have to renounce soldiering and devote bis days and nights to Newmarket, baccarat, and the like — the pursuit of enjoyment (in the way Tam understood the game) being a very laborious and exacting undertaking for a man who, if he remained quiescent, could not count on more than two thousand pounds coming to him yearly. So he retired from the Guards and started a racing-stable, under the belief — which, indeed, at first seemed to be well founded — that trainers may easily be induced to bear all the expenses incident to preparing steeds for the winning of races, while being perfectly willing to hand over to others all the profits of races won by horses so prepared.

For a time all went well, but one morning after the Sussex fortnight (which had treated him most handsomely), seeing breakers ahead, Lord Melrose suddenly left England, removing with him his turf gains, which were considerable, but leaving with his trainer, as a kindly recognition of services rendered, the unpaid training bills, which were likewise large, and send ing at the same time a note to his mother in which he explained that for some time to come he intended living abroad. The countess had wrung her hands and wept, and the trainer had used strong language and bought writs ; but neither the maternal lamentation nor the legal documents affected Tam in the least degree, busy as he was in Paris, when first his friends heard of him after his departure from England, seeing what picquet at five louis a point, played at the Jockey Club, could do towards making life more agreeable.

The experiment proved most successful, and then came a period of great splendour for Tam, and of great anguish and tribulation to his mother. He plunged most recklessly at cards, winning and losing — but at first almost always winning — immense sums, his high stakes and reckless play in almost every gambling nook in Europe, from the Petit Club in Paris to the Yacht Club in Petersburg, becoming famous, and, as Lady Kildrummie always asserted, wrecking the matrimonial chances of the titled but dowerless and unlovely virgins whom it behoved her, as their mother, to find mates for. " You know very well how heavily weighted the poor girls already were by their father's abominable reputation," her ladyship had written to her son ; " but now that you have added to the family disgrace by becoming a professional gambler, I quite despair of being able to find a decent husband for either of them.

Who but a clergyman or rich tradesman would care to marry the penniless daughter of a debauchee (even if he be an earl) and the sister of a blackleg ? " To which Melrose had replied, on paper bearing the en-tete of the Veloz Club, Madrid, " I am quite ready to give half what I have won here this week at bezique — namely, five thousand pounds — to any man you can find (except, as you say, a parson or draper, bien entendu) fool enough to marry either Grizel or Annabella. Give the dear girls my love, and tell them what I say." The tone of this letter reminds us to note down here a deplorable discovery which Tam made just about the time it was written (in other words, at the very height of his best luck at cards) — a discovery so surprising, so shocking, so terrible to him that its immediate effect seemed to be to whip up and, as it were, to intensify within him the dare-devil spirit of recklessness which had already done so much damage to his reputation.

And this shocking discovery and revelation came to him as the result of no careful self-examination, of no deliberate intro spection ; it intruded itself on his notice brutally, sprang up suddenly before him like some hideous fungus with insolent abruptness, and was to the effect that good luck was spoiling him, that it was turning his head, that — to borrow a phrase from the stable — he couldn't stand corn, or, in other words, that he was not thoroughbred ! The insolence, the cynicism, the flippancy, the domineering spirit that had come to be part of his nature ever since the memorable run of luck at picquet in the Rue Scribe, all pointed to the same horrible and only possible explanation of the mystery of their existence within him — he couldn't stand corn. A horse that is underbred cannot stand corn ; and he was even as a horse so tested, and who has failed to stand the test.

He was not thoroughbred. Exactly how far he was lacking in breeding he did not dare inquire. The plain and hideous fact that there existed such a lack of breeding in him sufficed, and more than sufficed, for his utter misery and anguish, which, indeed, for a time was so exquisite, so intense, so bitter, that his mother, or even bis aunt Miss Grizel Hepburn, would, we think, have accounted it sufficient punishment for bis misdeeds. But of this aunt it now behoves us to say something.

Chapter II

A dieect descendant of that wicked Jamie Hepburn— the " glorious, boastful, rash, and hazardous " Bothwell, as Throck morton writes of him to Queen Elizabeth ; " the enemy of all honest men," as somebody else foolishly described him ; the splendid devil whom Mary Stuart " loved not wisely but too well ; "—Miss Grizel Hepburn of Kilspindie, the maiden aunt of Lord Melrose and of Jock Erskine, was so hated by all her relatives, owing to her genius for discovering joints in armour and implanting therein envenomed shafts, that if her kinsmen could have had their way, they, beyond all doubt, would gladly have treated her as her ancestor treated Darnley, possibly, indeed, with even a greater lack of courtesy and consideration. That this grim virgin, who was Lord Kildrummie's aunt, and so great-aunt of Melrose and of the Limb, escaped such severe treatment ; that her impertinent interference and malicious mendacity were only verbally resented, — can only be accounted for by the fact of her having a thousand a year to leave to somebody, and that every member of Lord Kildrummie's family fondly hoped that he or she would be the recipient of Miss Grizel's testamentary bounty.

All speculation on this point was over and done with at the time this chronicle opens, for Miss Hepburn had at length, after eighty-six years of cowardly malevolence and aggressive self-righteousness, gone to enjoy her celestial reward; but an allusion to "Aunt Grizel's money " had been for two successive generations and more of the Kildrummie Erskines the charm to conjure with, the strongest card that could be played either as a threat of punishment for misconduct or as a promise of reward for well-doing — the old lady, through sheer malevolence and malice, having herself most solemnly and in the strictest confidence assured each one of her brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, and cousins, that he or she, as the case might be, was the lucky individual whom she had finally chosen to be her heir.

It had for very many years been an understood thing in his immediate family, that Lord Melrose was to inherit the old dragon's fortune ; she had, of course, told him and his parents so ; but she had done more than this, she had shown her interest in him by paying at one time some bills of his — kites flown in the early Grenadier days— and to all who knew how averse Aunt Grizel was to spending a penny on any one but herself, this seemed a sure and conclusive proof that Tam was to be the lucky man. That the Limb should live with ber, pass, that is to say, his vacations, or at least the greater part of them, with her, meant really nothing, or at all events was by no means to be interpreted as signifying that she intended leaving him a penny. True, Jock was an orphan, almost a pauper, and Aunt Grizel had been besought with exceeding earnestness and pathos by the child's dying mother to look after him; but all this counted for nothing with a woman who took so hard and cynical a view of love and affection as did the lady of Kilspindie, and who only harkened to one voice — that of her own caprice.

It was understood that Jock was to go into diplomacy, for it is believed that attaches can die cheaply in South American republics; and with a view to his adopting this career, his holidays during many years had been made specially unpleasant to him by the constant presence at Kilspindie of persons pro fessing to teach modern languages, precis writing, and the like ; the only result of these studies being that the Limb became in due course of time tolerably proficient in French, and, oddly enough, in Russian ; for tbat the lad should devote much of his holiday-time to the study of the language of Pouchkin was an idea that had at once recommended itself to the amiable spinster as offering a form of torture to an English schoolboy as novel as it would be efficacious. But beyond this holiday housing and worrying of him, Miss Hepburn of Kilspindie's interest in Jock did not extend.

She disliked boys and things boyish, and he was the most boyish of all boys ; she had no sense of the ludicrous, while he was saturated with it ; and, finally, she was very wise and proud of her wisdom and learning (a certain letter of hers in which she deplored what she was pleased to term " the painful loss of tJ0os in the atmosphere of Eton," having made her famous to all the Eton humourists of Jock's time, to whom that wicked boy would every now and then gravely read aloud this pathetic lament). Whereas he was most sublimely foolish, and by no means ill-pleased with the folly which kept smiles on his lips, laughter in his eyes, and joy in his heart. So that the care, such as it was, which Miss Hepburn of Kilspindie bestowed upon the Limb, did not in any way alarm Lord Melrose and his adherents, nor prompt those who believed his lordship to be the heir to alter their opinion.

There can, indeed, be no doubt that, but for the insane and suicidal conduct of Lord Melrose, the much-coveted thousand a year of Aunt Grizel would have become his. When we use such strong epithets as "suicidal " and "insane," we do not allude merely to the debts, gambling, extravagance, and debauchery, but to a darker, deeper offence — to an enormity far more un pardonable. The horse-racing on credit, and the gambling and riotous living abroad which had followed these strange exploits on the turf, were, of course, most grave offences ; but perhaps in the course of time Miss Hepburn of Kilspindie might have been induced to pardon these crimes, for they had furnished her with rare and precious opportunities for making herself even abnormally offensive to many persons — unique chances which, of course, as in duty bound, she had eagerly taken advantage of.

Moreover, like not a few rigid puritans of her sex, the old vixen had, locked away in some one of the more remote and secret dungeons of that gloomy fortress of a heart of hers, a captive sympathy for a roue, an involuntary admiration for some of the more brilliant and graceful evolutions of the Satanic principle. She had found out the names of the men with whom Melrose was gambling, and the names of the ladies to whom Melrose was paying court, and she bad written to them one and all, warning them against her nephew, pointing out the usual and necessary pit, and enclosing a few leaflets containing minim doses of spiritual exhortation. All this went far to reconciling Miss Hepburn of Kilspindie to the sad backslidings of her nephew Tam ; for it was as manna to her hungry soul to be thus enabled to wrestle with the power of evil — " girding her armour on," as she described her conduct to herself when she dipped her pen in the ink pot to write quires of abuse to persons whom she knew nothing about ; " fighting the good fight," as she called it in her heart when she savagely licked the postage stamps which were to convey these epistolary bombs charged with spiritual dynamite into the camp of the enemy — and it is possible that, if this prodigal nephew had contented himself with merely eating the husks of the Maison Doree in company with the swine of the Jockey Club, and gone no further, he might have met with testamentary forgiveness and been enriched with the fruits of hia aunt's post-mortem benevolence.

But of all this Melrose knew nothing ; to him it seemed as if the breach between himself and his aunt had become a yawning chasm which nothing could ever fill up or bridge over, and if any one had suggested a reconciliation as even a remote possibility he would have treated the suggestion as the purest folly. She had written to him and to his friends most infamous letters, many signed, but not a few anonymous; and in reference to these he had sent to her some of the most nervous and energetic prose at his command. It never occurred to him that this vicious-tempered vestal rather admired the independent spirit which he seemed to give proof of by abusing her, and, in fact, he no more busied himself in speculations as to what might or what might not be going on in that mythical structure, his aunt Grizel's heart, thau he did in conjecturing whether the wings of a wy vern would be good eating or unicorns look well in harness.

He had, of course, never really liked her no one born of woman could possibly have liked her — but, although probably ignorant of the remarks of Rivarol on the subject, he had instinctively felt it to be wise in this instance to let contempt be the most mysterious of his sentiments ; and had always, and for obvious reasons, treated Miss Hepburn of Kilspindie not only with kindness and courtesy, but even with apparent affection. When, however, war was declared, and when the making of peace at any future time seemed to him not to be within the range of human possibility, then he decided to ride rough-shod over all his aunt's most cherished prejudices ; to burn his ships, perhaps, but very surely to scorch the old lady in this naval conflagration ; to do that which would cause ber more anguish and shame and anger than whole centuries of the most criminal profligacy on his part could bring to her— in a word, to become a Roman Catholic.

The idea was a very great one, but how it ever occurred to Melrose has never been satisfactorily explained. To ascribe his trip to Rome to the existence of even the haziest doubt in his mind as to the sanitary condition of Canterbury, was, of course, to all who knew the man, obviously absurd. Doubts concerning matters of perhaps less general importance to the welfare of the human family-whether, for instance, under certain circumstances, it would or would not be advisable at baccarat to draw at five — probably had, from time to time, assailed and perplexed him ; but very certainly no question concerning the relative merits of the Roman and Anglican Churches had ever even presented itself to the mind of Melrose for solution. Indeed, so complete and absolute was his indifference to all religious matters, both before and after his so-called conversion, that it is in this very carelessness that we can alone hope to find any plausible explanation (save, of course, malice) of his conduct ; it being just within the bounds of possibility that, as regards religion, Tam may have said to himself, what old General Henry did of love, " Pour le peu que j 'en fais, ce n'est par la peine de m'en passer !

" He liked the rites and ceremonies of the Roman Church, of course, because music and mystery amused him ; but beyond such superficial sensuous sympathy his approval did not go, and had his lordship been required to exactly define his appreciation of the faith into which, to the " endless desolation" and "impotent disdain" of his family, he had been received, it is not unlikely that his verdict would have been couched some what in that tone of bland, general recommendation assumed by the inventive, enterprising, and cultured chemist or per fumer, when he assures the public, through the medium of the advertisement column of the daily press, that his latest con ception in pomade or tooth-powder is " an elegant preparation." But if the secession of Lord Melrose from the Church of his forefathers can hardly be claimed by the wicked Romanists to be tbeir proudest conquest, most assuredly, as an act of revenge and malice, it is worthy to take rank with the most sublime conception of the resourceful Borgias.

We allude entirely, of course, to its effect upon his enemy, his aunt — the person to annoy whom he had changed the label by which his religious indifference might be known ; for, to his father, whom, as we have already seen, prudent relatives had withdrawn from circulation, it was a matter of not the slightest concern what faith or unfaith his son might choose to adopt ; while by his mother and sisters the news of his apostasy would, but for the sacrifice of all hope in the Aunt Grizel quarter, which they knew, of course, it must entail, have been received almost with joy ; for there is a slight relative respectability implied in the fact of being converted from anything to anything else — even, say, from Judaism to Mormonism— which the previous conduct of their son and brother had not justified them in expecting him to display.

But on Miss Hepburn of Kilspindie— at whom, as we know, the blow had solely been aimed — the wound inflicted by what, when she recovered her breath enough to speak at all, she termed " the perversion to Popery " of her nephew, was terrible, and the calamity none the less over whelming because wholly unexpected. She had, of course, known that very wicked persons of both sexes surrounded her misguided nephew ; she had, indeed, as we know, written to many among them ; but never had it occurred to her that they might be "Jesuits," as she broadly termed all Roman Catholics ; that it was not merely the body and purse of Tam they were striving to ensnare, capture, and bring to ruin, but his soul and eternal welfare ; and it came to her as a terrible revelation of the wile and guile of the Scarlet Woman of the Seven Hills, that emissaries from the Vatican should all this time have secretly been making use of such apparently undoctrinal agents as baccarat and ecarte, to pollute and poison the psychic purity of a Protestant peer with their pestiferous Popery.

When she had had time to partly recover from the blow dealt to her by the news of the wilful and eternal ruin of Lord Melrose, she began at once mentally passing in review all the many members of her family — doing ber best to come to an accurate decision as to the exact person whom it would dis appoint and surprise most — people she should leave her money to. Miss Hepburn of Kilspindie was far too experienced a woman of the world not to be thoroughly well aware that it was essentially necessary, in order to create the bitter feelings of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, which it was her wish that her testamentary disposition should give rise to, that her money should be left in the family, willed to some member of the family ; for to will it quite away — to some out sider, some hospital, some charity, or what not — would hardly be productive of the required bitterness of feeling, since, every one being left out in the cold together, there would be no room or reason for any very special personal hatred and venom.