A Fair Saxon. A novel

Front matter

i Crown 8vo. , carefully printed on creamy paper, and tastefully bound in cloth, for the Library, price 6s. each. THE PICCADILLY NOVELS. POPULAR STORIES BY THE BEST AUTHORS, With Illustrations by Sir John Gilbert George Du Maurier, W. Small, A. Hopkins, S. L. Fildes, Henry Woods, ;, Sydney Hall, Moyr Smith, J. Mahoney, and others. Ready-Money Mortiboy. By Walter Eesant and James Rice. The Dark Colleen. By Harriett Jay Patricia Kemball. By E. Lynn Linton. The Atonement of leam Dundas. By The Golden Butterfly. By Walter Besant and James Rice. E. Lynn Linton. With Harp and Crown. By Walter Besant and James Rice. The Evil Eye. By K. S. Macquoid. Number Seventeen. By Henry Kingsley. OAKSHOTT Castle. By Henry Kingsley. Dear Lady Disdain. Byjustin McCarthy. My Enemy's Daughter. By Justin This Son of Vulcan.

By Walter Besant and James Rice. My Little Girl. By Walter Besant and James Rice. The Case of Mr. Lucraft. By Watter Besant and James Rice. McCarthy. The WaterdaleNeighbours. Byjustin McCarthy. Anton in A. By Wilkie Collins. BASIL. By Wilkie Collins. Hide and Seek. By Wilkie Collins. The Dead Secret. By Wilkie Collins. Queen of Hearts. By Wilkie Collins. My Miscellanies. By Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White. By Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone. By Wilkie Collins. Man and Wife. By Wilkie Collins. Poor Miss Finch. By Wilkie Collins. Miss OR MRS.? By Wilkie Collins. The New Magdalen. By Wilkie Collins. The Frozen Deep. By Wilkie Collins. Linley Rochford. By Justin McCarthy. A FAIR SAXON. By Justin McCarthy. OPEN • SESAME I By Florence Marryat. Whiteladies. By Mrs. Oliphant. The Best of Husbands.

By James Payn. Fallen Fortunes. By James Payn. Walter's Word. By James Payn. Halves. By James Payn. What He Cost Her. By James Payn. Her Mother-s Darling. By Mrs. J. H. RiddeU. The Way We Live Now. By Anthony Trollope. The Law and the Lady. By Wilkie Collins. Diamond cut Diamond. By T. A. Trollope. The Two Destinies. By Wilkie Collins. Felicia. By M. Betham-Edwards. BOUND TO THE WHEEL. By John Saundei _. GUY WATERMAN. By John Saunders. One Against the World. By John Olympia. By R. E. Francillon. Under the Greenwood Tree. By Thomas Hardy. Fated to be Free. By Jean Ingelow. The Queen of Connaught. By Harriett Jay. Saunders. The Lion in the Path. By John founders. fPlNDUS, CHATTO AND i, PICCADILLY, W. \% Ko&el. BY JUSTIN MCC AR THY, author oi* " MISS MISANTHROPE, " DEAR LADY DISDAIN," ETC, ETC. A SEW EDITION. gtonbon : CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY. 1878. LONDON: PRINTED BY JAS. WADE, TAVTSTOCK STEEET, COVENT GARDEN.

Chapter I

A pine tree, according to the poet's pretty conceit, stands lonely in the North, wrapped in a mantle of ice and snow ; it sleeps and dreams of a slender palm which far away in the East mourns lonely on the burning sand. Let us paraphrase the notion. On a single and solitary height rising out of a broad and melancholy waste through which flows a river, often rain-swollen and almost always misty, stands the ruin of what was once a castle, but which now is given over wholly to the keeping of the bats and owls. On a serene, bright, lonely common stands a suburban cottage, luxuriously fitted up, only a little too large to be a veritable cottage ornee. A sea divides these two dissimilar structures ; and they might be described as far more rigorously divided by a very ocean of traditional, national, and social differences.

Yet, if one might idealize brick and stone as Heine has idealized living timber, he could imagine the ruin on the hill yearning by anticipation towards the cottage on the bright common, or this latter haunted in dreams by the sombre form of the companion it has never seen. Perhaps the whole mystery and meaning of this story may be prematurely revealed and exhausted for the reader by this little opening allegory. But there is hardly enough of mystery in the story anyhow to make the reader complain of losing it by premature revelation. Eor the present we have to do only with the story of the cottage and those who inhabit it ; and we leave the ruin to its desolate height, its misty river, the birds who make their home in the ivy of the castle, and that heron who, perched on a little rock projecting over the river's brink, watches there patiently for his chance of a prey.

J> On the utter verge of London, in the county of Surrey, ia the broad, beautiful gorse-covered common, wild enough to be in the heart of the country, and yet reached by a railway in half an hour from the heart of the town. In fine weather an encampment of squatting gipsies may still be seen now and then on this common ; and sometimes on a hot summer day a pedestrian has almost stumbled over a brown-legged gipsy girl or boy lying fast asleep on the daisies and among the gorse. On clear days, as one looks towards the region where London Hes, the Victoria Tower and the Clock Tower may be seen rising up as if they sprang sheer and straight from the further edge of the common ; and more rarely there appears dimly behind and oddly mixed up with them the dome of St. Paul's. The scene then is very curious and picturesque.

The flat and solitary common, with these towers and this dome and nothing else upon its horizon, seems as if it were in tended to show how London might look if it were to become a Baalbec. One part of the common, that near the railway station, and which luckily for the picturesque loneliness of other parts, lies at the bottom of a slope, and is now almost hidden from our sight, has been encroached upon a good deal by modern villas. But where we are now supposed to stand we only see one house, and that is surrounded by high walls and trees. The walls are so high and the gate is so pretentious, that a visitor unaccustomed to the place might expect to find a stately mansion within. He finds nothing of the kind, how ever ; only a sort of overgrown cottage, to one side of which a new wing or succursale has been added, giving it a lopsided appearance.

The porch and one side are of the orthodox cottage form. The porch is ivy-covered, and the windows are lattices. But on the other side there is a modern room, with windows opening down to the level of the little lawn : and above this room auother storey is raised ; and this part of the building at least would be entirely commonplace, genteel, and handsome, if it were not for the oddity of appearance given to it by its inseparable connexion with the lattices, the ivy covered porch, and the low, thatched roof of the other part. In this house lived Mr. Joseph Aspar, of London, when he was at home. But he stayed in town a good deal, and did not sleep in Surrey on an average more than four nights out of the week. Sundays he never failed. People said he was a rich man, and certainly his house on the Surrey common -was richly and even luxuriously furnished.

Some persons said slightingly that he was a pawnbroker in the city, and that the gold and silver and parian and glass which loaded the walls and tables and chiffoniers of his Surrey cottage were the deposits of his clients. Mr. Joseph Aspar was not ■exactly a pawnbroker, and his business did not lie in the city ; but the calumnious imputation was not wholly without some hint of excuse. Mr. Aspar certainly had an office or rather chambers in one of the principal London thorough fares west of Temple Bar, and his chambers were over a huge shop, full of costly paintings, marble statues, rare old china, precious bronzes, fantastic Eastern images and Eastern jewels and gems, superb pieces of plate, gorgeous missals, antique swords, shields, and breastplates. It was in fact a great curiosity shop, with a pawnbroker's licence hidden away behind its avowed attractions.

Mr. Aspar went up to his chambers just as often through the shop as through the private stair in the side street adjoining; and there was a general impression that he owned the whole concern, and that the nominal proprietor of the art treasures was merely his clerk. Mr. Aspar was ostensibly an accountant and agent ; almost avowedly a negociator of bills and lender of ■money. In the Surrey cottage Mr. Aspar kept his two daughters, who were never allowed to visit his town establishment, and in fact knew little or nothing about it. Many years ago when Joe Aspar was a young and rather handsome man, he had made it the object of his ambition to marry "a lady." He succeeded somehow in marrying a portionless girl of good family, who loved him, and whom he loved. Succeeding to his father's money and business, he bought and enlarged tho Surrey cottage, and made it a luxurious cage for his bird.

Her own family, of course, cut her dead. She had two daughters, and died soon after the birth of the younger. The one bright, sweet, sad, triumphant memory of poor Aspar was, that he had married a lady : his one fondest ambition was that her daughters should likewise be ladies. In the room with the windows opening to the lawn, a pretty little scene was going on, for the sole enjoyment of the performer, one day in early June, three or four years ago. A girl was gravely and gracefully dancing part of a minuet to the music of her own voice, subdued to a low humming sound. She had bright brown hair and deep grey eyes, which combination of colours, not often brought together in hair and eyes, made her look peculiar as well as pretty. Shft had a slender and graceful figure, to which she endeavoured to impart as much stateliness and dignity of movement as possible, enacting her part of the minuet as she had seen it on the stage in Bon Giovanni.

As she danced, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and the glimpse was not enough. She was seized with a desire to see how her feet and her pretty slippers looked. She stopped and glanced around the room. The mirror could not possibly be taken down. So she quietly mounted the dining-table, and then, with skirts daintily picked up, she began again her slow and sentimental measure. Suddenly the door opened, and the girl dropped her skirts and stood still, but did not seem much discomposed. " Oh, Carpenter, it's only you." " Yes, Miss Jennie." Carpenter was a tall lean man, with a high forehead and peaked chin, looking in face like an austere saint in a mediæval picture. He was dressed in solemn black, and bore a huge basket in his hands. "Then we're going to have a dinner party to-day, Car penter?" the young lady assumed.

" Not exactly a party, Miss Jennie ; only one gentleman." " Anyhow, you want this table ?" " If you please, Miss Jennie." She leaped from the table to the ground as quickly and lightly as a school-boy might have done. " Who's the gentleman, Carpenter — and are we to be there ?" " You are to be there, Miss Jennie." " Did papa say so ?" " He did, Miss Jennie." " I'm very glad. Now who's the gentleman ?" " An M.P., Miss Jennie." " Oh, indeed ! Such swells ! Mr. Gladstone, Carpenter, or Mr. Disraeli ?" Carpenter almost smiled. "No, Miss Jennie, only an Irish member, I'm told: Mr. Tyrone." The girl had been arranging some of her curls at the mirror. She paused and turned round, her grey eyes opening wide. " Mr. Tyrone ? Maurice Tyrone — the man whose speeches -we read in the papers — the man that the papers are always abusing?"

" I dare say it's him, miss." " How on earth can papa have come to know him, and what can he ha.ve to do with him ? Why, I thought he was a most tremendous swell, and great for horse races, and pigeon shooting, and all that sort of thing." Carpenter coughed slightly. He had not much difficulty in understanding why a tremendous swell might possibly condescend to dine with Mr. Joseph Aspar. But he said nothing : only went on with his preparations for the dinner. Carpenter was a person whose general position in Mr. Aspar's business Mr. Aspar's daughters knew nothing about. He always came out to the Surrey cottage to arrange for a dinner party, and to wait at table. The cottage had only two maid servants, and a gardener, who acted as coachman on occa sion. Whenever Carpenter made his appearance, the young ladies knew that his coming heralded a little dinner party.

Sometimes they dined with their father's guests, sometimes they did not. " Good morning, Carpenter. How do you do, and when's papa coming ?" asked another young lady, who now bustled into the room. This was the elder sister, Alicia. She was taller, darker, and more fully formed than Jennie, and she had a nose a little more aquiline, complexion less bright in the day, a firm step, white hands, and a voice in which there was just the least possible sound of a lisp. Decidedly a handsome girl, only not girlish. " Alicia," broke in her sister, " do you know who is coming to dine here to-day ?" "No, dear. Who is it?" " Mr. Tyrone — Maurice Tyrone, you know." " Indeed. ! I shall be curious to see him." " Yes, but isn't he a man of very high family, and with ridiculous notions, and very violent and extravagant ? and isn't he a terrible scapegrace, and all that ?"

" They say he's very wild. But we can't help that, dear." " No, only," she glanced around, Carpenter had just left the room, "only I don't like the idea of papa's bringing people here who are not like him or like us, and despise him in their hearts, and will despise us too. Papa is only something in business, and these people scorn him — I know they do." " What do you know of Mr. Tyrone ?" " Oh, yes, I heard him talked of at Aunt Lucy's, and they spoke of him as a person who believes himself descended from some absurd old Irish kings, and is as proud as a Spaniard, and as bad as — oh, well, I don't know. Such a man would only despise us." The elder sister involuntarily glanced at her own face and form in the mirror. The younger laughed, and said — " Just so, Alicia, all very fine ! If beauty were like death, my dear, and levelled all distinctions, I should say a duchess would be no peer of yours.

But do you think this man's wife and daughters would look at us, or meet papa ? I don't : and I do so wish that we stood firmly in our own place, and never tried to go out of it, or to drag people into our place who don't belong to it. I never go even to Aunt Lucy's without feeling ashamed and angry with myself — the idea of our dining with people who wouldn't receive papa !" " Papa doesn't care, dear ; and I don't think Aunt Lucy . means it to be supposed that there is a compliment conferred on us by an invitation to dinner." " Well, I don't Uke the whole thing. I wish papa would put me into his business somehow, and give me something to do. I wouldn't try to be above my calling, whatever it were. The summer would look bright, and the birds would sing, and great men and women would write books for me all the same, I suppose ?

Oh, thank God for that summer-light and the books ! I think I should like to be Madame Roland, and to go to the scaffold, on just such a lovely day as this ! To wear a white dress, and look brave and fearless, and to smile and make other people weep, and then take a last look at the beautiful, beautiful sky, and die hke a queen !" "What a self-conceited little thing you are," the elder sister said, with a kindly smile. " Am I ? Well, one would need some self-conceit now and then in a life like this. No matter ! I'm going to lie on the grass, and look up at the sky and dream dreams." So she opened one of the windows and went out on the little lawn, and lay on the soft grass under a tree. When she was a younger girl she used to climb into the branches of this very tree, and coil herself up there and look through the boughs up to the sky and be rocked by the wind, and be so tantalized with longings, so filled with joy, and so, oh so happy !

It must be owned that in those childish days she liked to fill the measure of her delight by taking a piece of bread and marmalade with her. All the witchery of intellect and sensuousness and longing and hope can give nothing after wards to surpass the exquisite pleasure and pain of rocking in the boughs of a tree on a summer day, and looking through the leaves up to the blue sky and eating bread and marmalade. But of late years the marmalade had lost its savour, and Jennie took a book instead, and climbed into the tree no more, but lay down at its foot. Oh, the unspeakable joy of some new delightful book distracting her from the branches and the blue sky ; and then the leaves and sky compelling her for a moment to lay down the book. There was evidently a dash of the sensuous always in this half poetic little creature, of which her calmer sister had none.

When they were both children the elder would always eat her bread and read her book seated properly in a chair in the nursery, and was quite content when the marmalade was done and she had eaten enough ; and never thought of enhancing the fleeting joy by scrambling into the branches of a tree. Jennie lay under the tree. She did not seat herself under it, or recline under it, but simply threw herself on the ground, and saw nothing but the green leaves and the sky — nothing, that is to say, which she cared to have pointed out to any one else. But through these leaves, throbbing in the gentle breeze, and in the measureless distance of that sky, she saw and felt wonders. She saw the East, and Persia — the Persia of romance and fables — and the Islands of the Blest: she heard the lapping of distant waters ; she felt the influence of youth and of quickening blood ; she knew longing and poetry and pain, and in the murmur of the branches received, unconscious, the breath of coming passion.

Meanwhile the elder sister went to the shelves of the library and took down "Dod's Parliamentary Companion," and turned to the name of Mr. Maurice Tyrone. She found by the date of his birth that he was only twenty-six years old, that his address was Clarges Street and Reform Club, and some castle, county something or other, Ireland ; and that there was no mention of his having a wife. Whereupon she looked at herself again, and more than once, in a glass ; and then went to her own room and pulled out all the dresses she — they were not a few — all the laces, chemisettes, cuffs, collars, petticoats, and satin boots, and began to consider how she had best dress for dinner. She heard the sound of wheels, and looking out saw that her father had come. She saw too that he stopped and talked with Jennie for a moment or two, but no more, and that he entered the house with the air of one discouraged or depressed.

"Jennie is in one of her odd fits," she said to herself. The elder sister was never out of humour or disturbed. She could step into her shower-bath humming a piece of classic music on a cold, raw morning, and pull the string and keep on the classic music just the same, undisturbed, and without marring a note, if she thought it right to do so. A tap was heard at her door : she opened it and Mr. Aspar came in. Mr. Aspar was a man of fifty-five. He was short and rather stout. He had thin, fair hair, and a broad, bald forehead, bulbous and shining, and pale grey eyes. His hands were white and fat, and he often rubbed them together in a gentle and deprecatory sort of way. He was handsomely dressed, but always without reference to current fashion. He wore a black velvet waistcoat as part of his walking costume, and had a velvet collar to his coat.

His only ornament, except for a heavy gold chain, was a remarkably fine emerald in his shirt' front. There was a certain expression in his face, as he kissed his eldest daughter, which told her that something had disturbed him. " Jennie is a little out of temper to-day, my love ?" he asked, mildly. " I suppose so, papa. I don't know why ; she was not so when I spoke to her last. But you don't let that put you out ?" " Oh, no, my love, no. But then it does put one out a little, you know. I want everything to go on very well to day. Carpenter has told you who is coming to dinner?" " Yes, papa — Mr. Tyrone. Isn't he rather — don't people say " " I suppose they do ; but I fancy it's all exaggeration. He seems to me a very gentlemanlike sort of young man. Fact is, my dear, he has been brought to me by a gentleman of the greatest importance, — the very greatest importance, and he is going to tell me all his affairs ; and I have it on very good authority that his position is likely to be a remarkably good one, much better than people think.

And I wish that we should all — all, my dear — show the greatest attention and deference to him, and that sort of thing. I want you to dress very nicely, love ; not showy, you know, but as if you were used to this every day. And look here ; here's a volume, a work, a history, of some kind, all about his famfly. I hunted for it everywhere, and got it at last, and I want you to read it up, you know, and be able to say something nice about it that would please him." Alicia took the book with a look of alarm, for she dreaded pedigrees and genealogies, and yet felt determined to do something to get the contents of this into her mind. "Now, my love, what about your dress — what do you mean to wear ?" Mr. Aspar was very fond of both his daughters. To the elder he confided as much as he ever could confide in any body ; of the younger he was now and then a little afraid, because he could not always understand her.

Since their mother's death they had had no other companion and guide ; and he had done his best to supply the place of a mother to them. He knew everything about their dressing ; he bought most of their clothes for them ; he was as good as a lady's maid or a milliner. Therefore he sat down gravely now, and entered into elaborate consultation with Miss Alicia herself as to the dress she was to wear, and the best combination of colours in ribbons, ornaments, and so forth. Both his children were very fond of him, but the elder never displeased him. He suited her admirably under the circumstances, and she would not have had him other than he was. The younger sometimes broke into petulance when she found him volun teering to go into counsel on the pattern of a dress or a slipper, or when he brought guests to dine with him, who, as she was pleased to think, despised him.

Having arranged his elder daughter's dinner-dress, Mr. Aspar left her room, and was rushed against and almost overturned by the impetuous advance of the younger girl. " Dear papa, must I dine with you to-day ? Must I meet this Mr. Tyrone ?" " I should like you to do so, my love. That would be my wish, certainly." " Does he talk with a brogue ? Does he say och, sure, and bedad ? Does he sing comic songs ? I hate comic songs." " Mr. Tyrone, my love, is a perfect gentleman, and was brought up, I am told, in France." " But isn't he a tremendous swell, and won't he despise us? When's his wife coming to call on Alicia and me, I should like to know ?" " He hasn't any wife, darling, and I hope he's too much the gentleman to despise two handsome young ladies because their father isn't 1 mean, is in business.

Besides, I hope to be of great service to him, very great service indeed." Mr. Aspar rubbed his hands gently, and looked at his daughter timidly, with his head a little on one side. He was undoubtedly rather afraid of the girl whom he had himself spoiled, and she knew it quite well, and tantalized him just for a moment, enjoying her power, like a genuine woman, and then relented. She noticed, too, that his cheek looked a little pale, and that his lips seemed colourless. She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. " Oh, you darling, good, kind, kind papa ! I know how you make a slave of yourself for us, two good-for-nothing, lazy girls ! Yes, you do, and try to conciliate people, and get their business — I suppose their patronage — for us. And I have the heart to be angry for this ! You look paler, too ; what have you been doing with yourself ?

I wish you would set us to work at something. I am ever so much stronger than you, and I could understand all about figures. Can't I do anything?" " You can dress yourself nicely, my dear, and look your best at dinner." " Then so I will ; and behave my best, my very best, too." " And I want you to glance over the book I gave to Alicia, dear. It's all about Mr. Tyrone's family. I should like you to know something that you could say to him or allude to " "What dreadful hypocrisy! How I clo wish you were a judge, or a bishop, or something of the kind, so that you never need think about conciliating this person or that. No matter. 'I'll try to read all about Brian Boru and Malachi, and the rest of it. Does our distinguished guest wear a collar of gold, papa ; and I wonder would he give it to me if I were to be very flattering, and put in a quiet hint ?"

Mr. Aspar laughed easily. He thought he was now tolerablv certain of his younger daughter's good humour. She, for* her part, got the book which told of the fortunes of the Tyrone family, and she was, in spite of herself, soon absorbed in it. The book was a shabby little volume bound in faded blue calico, and printed, apparently with dust, upon tea paper. It was a reproduction of some collection of family records, with a few chapters added to bring it down to modern times and it bore date twenty years back. Beginning, as might be expected, at the end, Jennie learned that a Tyrone, whom she presumed to be the father of the expected guest, was killed in a duel in France ; that his father, a general in the Grand Army, was killed at Leipzig ; that an earlier Tyrone charged at Fontenoy ; an earlier still fought under Sarsfield ; and so they went back to the days of rebellions against Elizabeth and struggles against the Henries.

She read with wonder and a kind of fascination the story of a race as strange to all her ideas as that of the Ottoman Turks, or the Red Indians, yet always blending with English chronicles and the fortunes of Englishmen. It was the story of a race bold, brilliant, intractable, and now ruined ; a story of perpetual resistance, a battle and a march, a fierce romance, a blood stained epic of futile bravery and unbroken pride. She read so long that at last the evening found her reading still ; and she heard the quick rattle of a hansom below, and her sister came in and begged her to be quick with her dressing, for the guest had actually arrived, and was already in the drawing-room.

Chapter II

Me. Maurice Fitzhtjgh Tyeone, M.P., was rather a disappointing person to look at — disappointing at least to a somewhat romantic young woman who had been reading a wild family history. He was in some sense, too, a disappointment to the elder sister as well as to the younger, for the former had read scathing denunciations of him in the London papers, which represented him as a sort of parliamentary firebrand, Mr. Aspar always wished his daughters to read the papers, or at least to glance at them, and observe what they discussed, so that the girls might be able to hold in conversation the proper part of English ladies. Therefore the young women seldom failed to glance at their Times, Baily News, Standard, or Telegraph every morning ; their Saturday Review and Spectator every week. They knew of Maurice Tyrone as they knew of the Pope and Count von Bismarck ; a being whom it was then the right sort of thing for all respectable London papers to condemn or to ridicule.