The Master of Riverswood. A novel

Chapter I

One wild, wet evening, at the end of Mav, 185 — , a closed carriage, with a pair of im patient, steaming greys, drew up at the lodge-gates of a great park, and the old lodge-keeper came out to open them with a horse-cloth over his shoulders, and a singu larly grave and anxious visage. This he directed, as well as the driving rain would let him, towards the two men in white waterproof coats who sat on the box seat. " Come all righb, eh ?" he inquired. " Yes ; all right," answered the coach man. " Just give me the whip-end out of this near 'orse's 'avness, will you ? It's so vol. i. I awful wet for William to get down. It's got into a confounded knot somehow." While the old man directed the attention of his not too nimble or expeditious fingers to the " confounded knot" in question, he asked again, " Seemed much upset, did he ?"

"Don't know, I'm sure," returned the coachman ; " didn't look or speak partickler lively, I noticed that. Thanks, old fellar, that'll do. Good night to you." And as he spoke, the horses started onward over the wide gravel drive, soft with two days' soak ing rain ; while the trees of the park on either side swung their dripping branches, and seemed almost articulate in their strange moaning. " Poor lad," said the lodge-keeper, going into his house, after he had closed the gates, and slowly disencumbering himself of his hat and horse-cloth. " I wonder now, whether he'll be most glad to come into the pro perty, or most sorry for th' old master's death— eh, Mary ?" " Mr. Rochefort I" exclaimed his wife, turning round from the fire, where she was busy with a saucepan, and showing a very red,, but rather youthful and comely face, " What do you mean by talking to me i' that way ?

If you can say nothing better than that, with his father's corpse lying on the very bed where I first laid him down, a blessed baby, by his mother's " Here Mrs. Rudge's feelings and manifold recollections became too much for her, and dropping the spoon with which she had been stirring, as if it burnt her, she sat down on the nearest chair and covered her face with her hands. " Come, come, old girl, don't fret," said her husband, kindly ; "it's no flesh and blood of ours that's gone, and Mr. Rochefort '11 get over it as all young fellars do, though I dare say he'll feel it a sort of thump at first. Don't think no more of any of 'em, but get on with my supper." " It's easy to say think no more of them," returned his wife, drying a few tears, and addressing herself again to her beef and onions ; " but you hav'n't nursed him at 1—2 oj Riverswood. 4 your breast, as I have, and done pretty nigh everything for him, till, he could run about."

" No, I ha'n't," replied old Stephen, de murely ; " that's certain." "Be quiet, will you?" was his wife's somewhat sharp rejoinder, as she looked up, and half lifted her wooden spoon. " Why, bless the girl, what have I said now ?" inquired her husband, affecting an astonished stare, by way of helping to revive her spirits. Possibly it did revive them ; at any rate Mary laughed ; and then, after lifting the saucepan from the fire, and again applying her apron to her eyes, she passed her hus band to get the white cloth, and as she laid it, hummed a tune. And so, in a different mood, they sat down to supper. The fire burned cheerily ; the fringed red curtains of the latticed windows, and the flowers in gay pots on the sills, screened them from too wide a view of the beating storm and leaden sky without ; the canary sang on its perch, and the buxom little wife helped the redolent brown onions, and appetizing beef and gravy of her stew, and poured out for her lord his pewter mug of Riverswood brewed beer.

So it is in life ; the living eat and drink, talk and laugh (though perhaps with a sigh, and a few tears between), while the dead — whom they have just seen die — lie in awful, chilly state, unseeking and unsought, every sense annihilated, every pulse for ever still. — Do they know how we forget them ? The carriage, in which sat the new master of Riverswood, continued its rapid course through more than a quarter of a mile of magnificent park-land, and stopped before a large, old-fashioned mansion, very much over-grown with ivy and other creepers. It had been much added to at various times, but always in admirable taste, so that it was difficult to tell at the first glance what had been the extent ofthe ancient habitation. It was of great size now, and looked a grand place enough. In front there lay broad, smooth lawns, now soaked with rain, and of a delicious emerald green, exquisitely laid out flowerbeds, stone vases containing creepers and moss, artistically disposed groups of thick evergreen, and dark branching, solemn fir, and past all this, the broad drive swept in a fine curve to the front entrance.

The occupant of the carriage observed none of these things. He remained seated, and leaning back against the cushions — pale and pre-occupied, till the moment when the horses drew up before the house. Then, without waiting for the carriage-door to be opened, he let himself out, and a moment after had crossed the threshold of his home — that threshold on which he had last stepped with such different feelings : then a boy, with his last term at Oxford before him, now a man, facing Death — and Life. The housekeeper and the butler both met the master in the hall. " Where is my mother ?" was his first question, brought out of white, dry lips, and a dry throat. He had scarcely made the words audible. " The doctor has ordered Mrs. Longley a composing draught, sir," answered the housekeeper, who looked very much over strained, and as if she had been crying ; " and she is sleeping just at present.

But I don't think she will sleep long, sir." " Don't let her be disturbed. But come in here for five minutes, Mortimer, I want to speak to you." The butler followed him into the dining room, where the lamps were lighted, and the dinner-table already set out. The silver Epergne of flowers and moss stood in its centre-place as usual ; the dessert-dishes of old, frail, richly-coloured china were grouped around it, and decorated with delicate leaves. Ready for the master's using lay the great buck-handled, silver-mounted carving-knife and fork, which had been taken for so many years, at the same hour, by the hands that now lay stiff and cold. Everything was the same, but with such a terrible difference. Rochefort sat down, feeling suddenly sick and faint. " I laid places for two, sir," said the Riversicood. butler, fidgeting nervously about some of the knives and forks, which were already laid with absolute exactitude, " though I'm afraid missis won't be downstairs.

But I thought it would look a little more home like to put covers for two." " Mortimer," said Rochefort at last, with an effort, " don't — put me to sit in his place, yet — not to-night." The echo of his own words went like a stab of sharp pain to his heart. Rising suddenly, he walked once or twice the length of the room, struggling to keep down the awful swelling in his heart and throat, and the sob that seemed to rise again and again, as if it would choke him. The butler, who had grown almost grey headed in the Riverswood service, with a suddenly-coloured face, proceeded to re move the master's knife, fork, glass, &c, and then, by dint of some invention, made work for himself in the room until Roche fort spoke again. When he did so — and he had to wait till he could trust his voice — it was to ask for full details of the accident.

Rochefort had not known till he reached Gowerford an hour and a half before, that his father was dead. By the thoughtfulness of the housekeeper a note had been written, and placed inside the carriage for him, that he might not receive his blow at the station, and in the presence of witnesses. The men had been instructed to tell him nothing. But the master had asked them nothing. He had believed ever since the morning that he should see his father no more ; and he read the few lines that assured him of that as he was driven towards home. " I will go upstairs now," he said, when he had heard all ; " you — can tell me where." He rose from his chair as he spoke. " To your own room, sir ?" asked the butler. " No — no ; not yet. I must see ' He could not finish. " I beg your pardon, sir. I wasn't sure if I rightly understood you.

In his own room, sir. Missis is in the red room." They went upstairs. Mortimer turned the lock of a door at the right hand of a long, wide, crimson-carpeted corridor, decorated with many pictures, and with marble statues and groups in niches ; opened it, let his master pass in, and then, after following him and lingering a few seconds by the side of the bed, went out, and left him alone. Rochefort had never yet in his life looked on death. At first he was awed and over come as he had never thought it possible for him to be, by that awful and solemn stillness, to describe which every language on earth still wants, and will for ever want, words. For is sleep ever like death ? Never, unless it be for the first few moments after the spirit has fled ; while the hand yet lies as the last weary movement threw it ; while the lips and brow are yet warm ; and while, possibly, the half smile of blessed relief from pain still lingers over the face.

After this, it is no longer sleep, but death; death — actual, hopeless, positive : majestic, elevat ing, divine ! — the strangest, the most awful, the most sorrowful thing, in God's great universe. Not slowly, but with one overwhelming, overpowering shock, the son realized, as he stood by his father's motionless form, that the eyes which had met his in kind ness for twenty-two years were shut to earth's light for ever ; that the voice which had scarcely ever uttered an undeserved word of reproof, and had uttered many words of unforgotten counsel and warning, would never utter counsel or warning again. The sense of his loss — of his orphanhood, of his sudden, complete, and unmeasurable ■distance from the father to whom he had been present ever since he was born — who had to a great degree guided his life, and who had now gone from him without there being the possibility of an adieu, or of one expressed wish, or hope, or faith, on either side — came over him with a force for which he was utterly unprepared.

Rochefort's nature was strong, and he was little given to displays of passionate feeling ; but now, not many moments after he had been left alone with that passionless presence, he flung himself on his knees by the side of the solemn bed, which was like a grave, and burst into an agony of weeping. When the paroxysm was over, and he rose from it, he felt as if he had passed through a valley of deep shadows, of which life hitherto had afforded him no momentary glimpse ; but he rose, also, into something like grey light, on the other side. And with the dim perception of this light, and the sense of a certain power within and above him, which even now, in the "halt" to which he had been brought, strung his nerves, his will, his heart, he went out of that chamber of death, and greeted his life with its first grim and sorrowful duties face to face.

He had lost much in his father ; but he had lost nothing that was irreparable. His life was whole, without the Hfe that wag gone. The words sound cold, and they are certainly sad ; but they could be uttered truly enough in many cases like his. Mr. Longley had been a reserved, a proud, but always an honourable man ; he had been rather a stern, but always a just father: he rarely used terms of affection to his son, but his hopes were strongly bound up in him. He left him the great gift of an un sullied name, and he had transmitted to him a nature free from those tendencies which sully any name — the greatest as the lowest. There were qualities, however, in the son which the father had been entirely with out — qualities which prevented their ever becoming close friends. The elder man had perhaps understood the younger better than either of them would have acknowledged to be the case : perhaps, also, he had liked, though he would not encourage, and could not sympathise with, Rochefort's tendency to what he called " idealism" and " enthusiasm."

Mr. Longley could always hold his place in society with unruffled dignity, suavity, and propriety, even if with a certain stiffness : Rochefort was too often, at this time, brusque, impetuous — a little irritable, and perhaps a little hypercritical. " You will enjoy life, possibly, more than I have ever done, Rochefort," his father had once said to him ; " but you will suffer in it far more." " I have no doubt I shall," had been his son's rejoinder, as he stooped to unfasten a collar from his dog's neck ; " but we'll breast the waves, when they come, won't we, Nigel, old boy ? — not fall before them." And then whistling, and with his dog leaping before him, he went off for his ride. He looked forward to life as he looked forward to a bathe in the breakers off Tenby or Douglas, or a plunge into the Channel from the stern of a pleasure yacht.

A slight tendency to moodiness or melan choly in a young man who has never known one real sorrow, does not make him less happy. Rochefort took life seriously for two-and-twenty ; but he had very keen enjoyments in it. Mr. Longley had not been in a good state of health for more than a year before he died ; but his death was owing to an acci dent. He had a horse to which he had taken an unaccountable fancy ; perhaps it was chiefly because he had chosen it in opposition to the advice of both his head groom and his son. She was a beautiful creature, with perfect paces, and thoroughly aristocratic action in every point ; but her faults were bad ones. "I wish you wouldn't ride Diana," Roche fort had said to him, just before he left home after the Christmas vacation. " I don't like her. She's not the horse for you."

" Nonsense," returned his father, as he poured out his second glass of sherry ; " you want to make me nervous. And there's your mother wants me to give up riding altogether. Riding does me good, and I'm going on with it. I don't believe it's any thing but my digestion that's wrong, and what's to set that right, if it isn't riding ?" " I don't want you to give up riding," returned his son, " but I wish you would change your horse." " Why, what's the matter with her ?" asked the father, with some irritation. " Do you all think I'm growing decrepid, and can't manage my reins V Mr. Longley was a very bold and ex perienced rider, and had never had it hinted to him in his life before that an animal was too much for him. " I don't think you ought to ride a horse which has to be jammed up against a wall by two men before she will let you mount," persisted Rochefort, as he cracked his nuts.

" Pooh ! that's only her way. She goes like an easy chair when you're once on her, and off." " Yes — when she doesn't try to throw you before you're out of the court-yard. Do you like my horse ?" inquired Rochefort, looking up, as an idea suggested itself to him. " Trafford ? Well, yes, I've no objection to him. But he's rather a hard mouth. Di's mouth is exactly what suits me." " But I don't like her eye, father ; and I'm certain she's a temper. Will you let me have her, and take Trafford instead ?" " No, I won't, Rochefort, and then let you sell her for anything you think she's worth. I shall keep her as long as I like her ; and now don't teaze me any more. Have any more sherry ? No ? — then, let us join your mother." This was in January ; and one day in May — the day on which our story begins — Diana threw her master, and dragged him in the stirrup till he was insensible.

It had been raining all the day before, and she had not been exercised. Mr. Longley had become fanciful and nervous about him self since his health broke, and believed that a single day in the house did him harm. In the early morning it was fair, and though there were heavy clouds in the sky, which slowly gathered in weight and width, he sent orders for his horse to be got ready, and for the groom to take her a run in the park first. The groom did so, and then the master mounted her in the court-yard, and set off on his ride. She took fright, after going two or three miles, at an old man with a black bundle sitting on a heap of vol. I. stones by the road-side, and set off gallop ing. It was supposed that she gallopped until her rider became giddy, and could no longer keep his seat. At any rate, she was finally stopped by a toll-bar man ; and Mr. Longley 's head was held up on his wife's knee, as he lay on the stone floor of her little kitchen (to which the two together had contrived to lift, or rather drag him), while the man ran for assistance.

A mes senger was despatched on the horse to Riverswood, and from Riverswood they sent a closed carriage, with the housekeeper and two men. The groom who rode to Gowerford for the doctors, was instructed to telegraph to Mr. Rochefort. Mrs. Longley was in strong hysterics in the drawing-room, and could give no orders, but the housekeeper wrote with a shaking hand the message that was to be forwarded. " From Ellen Robinson, housekeeper, Riverswood Hall, shire, to Mr. A. R. Longley, Magdalen College, Oxford. The master has had an accident, and been thrown from his horse, and dragged. Please come home at once." Rochefort received the telegram as he sat at a late breakfast, with two or three other men. The whole party were laugh ing and talking loud, and their host was amusing himself and one of his friends to perfection, by trying to make his terrier (who would do a great many things, but had hitherto refused to do certain others) hold the toasting fork, with a piece of bread at the end, in his mouth ; the toast in the rack being by this time all finished, and more being in request.

It was just as the dog dropped the fork for the third time that the telegram was brought in. Longley's changed colour and growing whiteness, as he took the ominous looking envelope, tore it open, and read the few terrible words within, brought dead silence into the room. He got up, and pushed the dog on one side. " It's from Riverswood," he said, throwing the paper down before Mr. Glanville ; 2—2 " where's my hat ? where's the time-table ? Deuce take it, where is the time-table V He had not a vestige of colour left in his face, and his voice was entirely altered. " I'll look for you," said Glanville ; " but I'm afraid you've just missed a train. — No — look here, you may catch it if you race." Rochefort snatched his hat. " I leave you host, Ernest," he said ; and in another moment was out of the room, and on his way to the station.

When he arrived there, the train had been gone just two minutes. He could not endure the idea of going back to his rooms, where that telegram still lay on the disordered breakfast-table. He felt as if it would be like going back to the sight of the knife that had stabbed him. He walked the platform for three awful hours, repeating to himself, till the words lost all significance : " Thrown from his horse and dragged." He knew what being dragged in the stirrup by a horse, probably wild from fright or excitement, meant. He did not believe there was a vestige of hope left to him of seeing his father conscious, if he even saw him alive. Not long after he had reached the station, Glanville came up in a cab, saying he could settle to nothing, and wanted to find out whether he had caught the train.

" Have you tried whether they will put on a ' special' ?" he asked; after they had taken one turn to the end of the platform, together. " Yes, I spoke to the station-master at once, but they cannot, on account of some thing that's going on at A — — . There are excursion trains constantly. There is nothing for it but to wait till the express comes in." Mr. Longley lingered in a state of total unconsciousness until about half an hour before the carriage was sent down to Gower ford-to meet the train. Once he uttered a few inarticulate sounds, and his wife bent her ear to his lips to try and catch the words — if words they were. But she could dis tinguish nothing, and he never spoke again. There was a grand funeral ; such as had been given to the dead masters of Rivers wood since the first fell on one of the great battle-fields of England.

But after it was all over, Rochefort said to somebody, "I hope that when I die they will let me be carried to my grave by a few men I have known ; and that a dozen or two of people who have loved me will take their hats off as the parson says ' dust to dust,' and that that will be all." For a few days the glad, warm daylight was shaded from every room as if it were a forbidden thing ; there was a strange inap propriateness in the wild sounding rush of the breeze, in the songs and twitter of birds, and in the glitter of sunlight upon rippling or splashing water : footsteps in the great house were hushed ; and poor Mrs. Longley sat, white and tear-stained and wretched looking, upon her upstairs sofa. Gradually, however, came the re-assumption of old ways and habits, the departure of guests who felt that they had come " to mourn," and who dare not be cheerful ; the feeling that life mus1, be beo-un afresh, that the blank left by the departed must be some how covered over, planted upon, made as little naked and visible to the world and to themselves, as was his grave. This was possible ; but to fill up a blank, however small, however narrow, made by death is never possible.

Chapter II

One morning, four or five weeks after the events just recorded — a lovely summer's morning, when the -whole land was full of swaying wind and changeless sunshine, and the smell of hay and fieldblossoms — Roche fort was in his " gun-room," when, just as he was flushing his face by the exertion of drawing on his boots, one of the footmen, coming in, said, " Mr. Forrest has called, sir, and wishes to know if he can see you." " Mr. Forrest 1" repeated Rochefort, looking up. " Yes, sir. He is in the library, sir." "Confound it," was the master's muttered exclamation. He had been busy with letters and papers all morning, and the night before had " assisted " at one of his mother's violent hysterical fits, which had kept him up late, and had worried him as well. He was longing for the fresh air and a gallop, as a school-boy of fourteen longs for twelve o'clock to strike.

" Tell Haversham to put up the horse till I want her, then," he said after he had stamped on his last boot, and risen ; and then he walked towards the library. The library at Riverswood was a grand, long-shaped room, with old Tudor windows, opening upon a wide expanse of lawn, shaded with oak and chestnut trees, and sloping gradually towards the lake. It was filled half with books, and half with old English and Italian cabinets ; on the slabs, or through the open doors of which, were seen endless specimens of old china, and bric-a-brac of every description, which had been collected in Italy, in France, and in England, by Rochefort's grandfather, who had been for the last thirty years of his life an antiquarian as well as a miser. It was impossible, however, for any succeeding generation of Longleys to blame him either for his niggardliness or his old-art mania, considering that he had very much enriched the family by his persistence in both tastes.

He had lived till many years after his son's marriage ; and had not allowed the re clothing of tbe library floor until his daugh ter-in-law fell down by tripping her foot in one of the holes of its antiquated Turkey carpet. After this he supplied it with a new one, and even went to the length of get ting new tapestry covers for the two carved oak tables ; and since this epoch the library had been a fine room. Rochefort used it more than either his grandfather or father had done. They had kept their papers and account books, and transacted most of their business, in a smaller adjoining room, which was furnished in more modern and fir less handsome fashion, but Rochefort had a dis like to the room, and wrote generally in the library at a table near the end window ; the light just shaded from his head by old crimson velvet curtains, through which it Riversivood. 27 filtered as if through painted glass — and with the ever changing hues of lawn and lake and stirring trees before his eyes.

" One feels as if one were master of Riverswood," he said to his mother one day, as he stooped and petted one of his dogs on the library hearth-rug, " if one works here. The other room might be in any London street, but for the view. It is like an office." " But you make such a litter here with your papers, Ptochefort," complained his mother, "and your poor father always liked the room to be fit to show any one into." " I only litter one table, mother ; and I can't breathe, or think, or feel, in a small room. Yes, I feel one thing — I feel impa tient and irritable." - " The office-room isn't small, Rochefort." " It's small to me, mother," he said, rising from his chair, and laughing as he touched her cheek gently with his finger; " and it oppresses me in some way. I can't tell you how exactly.

But I know that if I am to do any good work, it must be done in my own wav." Mr. Forrest, the estate-agent, was stand ing upon the rug when Rochefort entered. " I am afraid you were going out," he said, as he extended his hand. " Your man thought you were writing in here, or ■ I would not have sent my horse round." " I was going out, but it doesn't matter," answered Rochefort, seating himself on a low chair by the fire-place, resting one elbow on his knee, and his sunburnt, hand some, rather haughty young face on his hand. " Of course I am perfectly ready to hear whatever you have to say. My horse can wait." "Well then, Mr. Rochefort, not to make you wait longer than I can help, and to begin on my business at once, have you ever heard your father speak of a man named Grey, who rents — or rather lives on — the White House farm, near Leyton ?"

" I think I remember the name. I know the farm well enough." "Do you? Well, of course, I hav'n'ttheleast idea yet how much you know of your estates ; what with Oxford, and your long foreign tour, and what not — -and then this very — this very lamentable affair coming so suddenly you know — you must excuse me if I pre-suppose ignorance now and then." " How long has this man been there ?" " Ten or twelve years — I forget exactly — and has never paid his rent regularly for the last two. He was always behindhand, and I don't like that sort of tenant. I wanted your father to eject him, and he kept promising me it should be done. But it never was. Your father acted in an un accountable way sometimes." " And what's the matter now ? He hasn't paid his rent again, I suppose ?" " Scarcely a stiver of it, either last half year or this.