Thirlby Hall: a novel

Front matter

I ■ i ■ ■ I ■ ■ ■ ■ I I ■ ■ I ■ M I i ■ Jl #obd BY W. E. NORRIS AUTHOR OF 'MATRIMONY,' * MDLLE. DE M ERS AC,' ETC. LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON ST. publishers in ©rutnaro to pjer iKajtstg the ©urm 1886 All rights reserved TO fHrs. UBigbg Collins IN TOKEN OF A FRIENDSHIP WHICH ONLY INCREASES AS YEARS GO ON CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. TEMPUS ACTUM . . . . .1 II. Bunce is Indiscreet . . . . .16 III. The General counsels Firmness . . 31 IV. The Rector talks in his Sleep . . . -45 V. Mrs. Farquhar plays according to Rule . . 62 VI. Hot Water and Cold . . . . 76 VII. The Rector has Friends to Dinner . . -94 VIII. I am introduced to the Family Skeleton . .111 IX. My Uncle is disappointed in Me . . 125 X. George succours Beauty in Distress . . . 145 XL At Naples ....... 162 XII. George loses a Penny . . . . 177 XIII.

Taormina ....... 192 XIV. The General is Facetious .... 206 XV. Franzenshohe ...... 216 XVI. Mr. Sotheran is Prudent .... 226 XVII. I get into Doubtful Company .... 236 XVIII. Chapman lets me into a Secret . . . CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XIX. Le Roi S' Amuse . . . . . .258 XX. George fulfils his Mission .... 268 XXI. FranzenshShe is bereaved . ... . 277 XXII. Lady Constance in London . . . , . 286 XXIII. I resist the Devil ..... 296 XXIV. I am placed in a painful Position . . . 306 XXV. Lady Constance tests the Extent of my Folly . 319 XXVI. Harry has a little Surprise . . . 327 XXVII. Mr. Sotheran fights and runs away . . 339 XXVIII. I lose all Faith in Human Nature . . . 34S XXIX. I am taken to the Opera .... 358 XXX. I receive Advice from Harry and Mr. Sotheran 369 XXXI. Lady Constance makes a final Concession . 380 XXXII.

The General uses strong Language . . 390 XXXIII. Paulina enters Society .... 399 XXXIV. The Catastrophe comes . . . .411 XXXV. My Uncle wishes me Good Luck . . . 425 XXXVI. I make a Discovery ..... 432 XXXVII. Lady Constance speaks plainly . . . 43S XXXVIII. I go to Tea at the Rectory . . . 4c2 XXXIX. I change the Scene .... . ,.„ XL. Home Again . . _ . . .g, XLI. The Wind Up . • 47 j

Chapter I Tempus Actum

When I think of the early years of my life, I think of a wide green landscape, fertile, well-timbered, and swept always by fresh breezes from the German Ocean. I see great sheets of calm water reddened bythe glow of sunset, and flights of wild-fowl in a black line against the sky, and the wherries, with their enormous brown sails, moving slowly along the dykes, and having, from a short distance, the appearance of sailing on dry land. I see an old red-brick house, too, with gables and twisted chimneys, standing in the midst of a perfectly level park. Round about it are shrubberies and a few flower-beds and an old-fashioned walled fruit-garden ; while behind it there rises a slight — a very slight — eminence, which is called " the Hill," and from the summit whereof (forty or fifty feet above the level of the sea perhaps) many miles of land and water can be discovered stretching away to meet the horizon.

There is a sense of space and vigour and freedom connected with this country which goes far towards atoning for its flatness, and is in some sort a substitute for beauty. So, at least, polite strangers were wont to affirm ; but to my eyes it was always a beautiful country, and could stand very well upon its own merits, without need of any excuses or equivalents whatever. A certain number of years ago — sometimes it seems a great many, sometimes only a few — a little boy used to trot about that part of East Norfolk in a state of constant and serene satisfaction with himself and his surroundings. He was, I think, what most people would consider a rather nice-looking little boy ; and, as he was allowed to do almost exactly as he pleased and got very nearly everything that he wanted, it is not surprising that he should have been also a good-humoured and jolly little boy.

I can see him plainly now as he plods hither and thither on his sturdy little legs among the woods and fields. Sometimes he is alone ; but more often he is accompanied by an elderly gentleman, with a slight stoop and a kind, handsome face, who does not say a great deal himself, but who listens with much courtesy to his companion's un ceasing flow of conversation, and who only puts forward his own opinions from time to time with a proper degree of deference. These two are the best of friends, one of them being a great talker and the other an admirable listener ; and whether they go their daily rounds on foot, or whether the old gentleman is mounted on a big-boned bay horse and the boy on a diminutive Shetland pony, they are quite happy together, and want no third person to enliven their solitude.

Third persons come, however, from time to time. There is another boy, George Warren, from Hailsham, and there is the Rector with his fishing-rod, and old Sir Digby Welby, who rides over to talk politics and agriculture. These come and go; but for the greater part of the long days the old man and the boy have no society but their own, and are content therewith. A few years later the little boy has become a big boy, and is more satisfied with himself than ever. His round jacket has been replaced by a shooting-coat ; his legs are encased in leather gaiters and his feet in stout boots ; he is out on the broads after duck, happy in the possession of a brand-new gun all of his own. With legitimate pride he eyes this weapon of destruction, while the punt in which he balances himself somewhat unsteadily is advancing among the tall reeds and rushes of the shore.

All of a sudden the duck rise in a compact mass above the tops of the waving reeds. Bang ! right into the middle of them ! Now, then, Dido, old girl, pick up the slain 1 Off goes Dido ; off goes the impetuous youth after her, plunging deep into water and mud. How many killed ? What ! none ? Well, well — better luck next time. The sportsman returns a little less quickly than he went ; and there is old Jim Bunce, in his confounded old velveteens, sitting calmly in the punt, reloading with the aid of that forgotten implement called a ramrod ; and Jim Bunce widens his already wide mouth and says, " Lord ! Mr. Chawls, who'd ha' thought it now!" when he hears the confession that has to be made ; though perhaps he is not quite so sur prised as his words would seem to imply. No matter, Jim Bunce — a day will come.

The day does come — many days. Days in the stubble and among the turnips ; days in the coverts that lie about Thirlby Hall. The boy is now a young man, who can shoot as well as another; and if there are not a great many pheasants to be shot there are not a great many people to shoot them, while of partridges there are enough to satisfy anybody. Ah, dear old days, jolly old life, dear old country ! Is it memory or time which has played such strange pranks with you ? I revisited those once familiar scenes the other day, after a long, long interval of absence — " a vast o' years," as old Jim Bunce would have said. It is not a beautiful country. I won't allow that it is ugly ; but beautiful it certainly is not ; and as I stood under the lee of Thirlby Church, looking out upon it all with sorrowful eyes, a furious east wind came tearing round the angles of the old building, and chilled me to the very marrow of my bones.

I am sure the wind never blew like that when I was young. As for the landscape — well, I was prepared for a certain degree of disappointment ; for how could I expect that the reality should answer to my dim recollections when it is only by a vigorous effort that I can identify myself, the Charles Maxwell of a.d. 1883, with the slim young gentleman whose portrait in crayons hangs, or used to hang, in the library at Thirlby Hall ? I say I was prepared for change ; but what I was not prepared for was to find that the entire neighbourhood had shrunk to something less than a fourth of its original size. That Thirlby Broad ! And Hickling Broad, and Horsey Mere — can those comparatively insignificant sheets of water be the vast inland seas upon which I used to sail by the hour together, and which my callow imagination likened to Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Superior?

The villages, too, how they have huddled them selves together, and how sadly the woods have diminished in area ! Even the Hall itself — but this is too painful. I turn my back upon the view, and look up at the gray, weather beaten church tower above me, with its iron cage at the top which we used to call the lantern, and which served in ancient days as a lighthouse to ships out at sea. It is a tower of very respectable height ; but alas, it is no longer to be com pared, without palpable absurdity, to the Tower of Babel. And within the building things are not any better. Thirlby Church is a large church, as all the churches are in those parts, but it is not so large as York Minster — not nearly so large. I have difficulty in recognising it. The sea-green east window, against which I used to watch the flying shadows of the rooks during church time, is gone ; so is the old three decker; so are the high square pews.

Renovation and restoration have resulted in stained glass and Minton tiles, and a reredos, and a marble pulpit, and rows of carved oak benches. These are improvements, no doubt ; but I am sure I don't know what the old Rector would have thought of it all. The old Rector and his old-fashioned ways have been forgotten for a long time, I should imagine. I saw his grave outside, among the graves of many others whom I saw last as hale, hearty men. Under the chancel, in the family vault, sleeps the best friend I ever had. Perhaps it was rather a mistake to begin with the parish church when I stole away, without saying a word to anybody, to renew acquaintance with my old home. As I pass out through the graveyard I come upon the last resting-place of another old friend : — SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES BUNCE, Born 3d August 1780; Died 10th December 1S62.

For upwards of fifty years Keeper and Water- Bailiff lo BERNARD LE MARCHANT, OF THIRLBY HALL, ESQ. A worthy man within this grave doth lie, A faithful servant and a sportsman true ; Ne'er failed with fish his master to supply, Preserved his partridges and pheasants too. Now in the heav'nly quires above he sings, Removed from guns and rods and all such things. Likewise of Susannah, Wife of the Above, Likewise of his Sons James and Willum, Drowned at Sea. This Here Stone Was put up by his third son, Daniel Bunce, Carpenter and Shipwright of Great Yarmouth. There is some internal evidence of " this here stone " having been literally put up by the aforesaid Daniel — put up, that is, by his own hands ; and, indeed, if he inherits his father's qualities, he is not the man to call in professional aid over so small a matter as the cutting of a tombstone, or even the composing of a suitable epitaph to adorn the same.

Old Jim Bunce used to be fond of saying of himself that he was a Jack-of-all-trades. He would sometimes add modestly that he was master of none ; but this, I take it, he said only to secure the harmless satisfaction of being contradicted. If ever any one knew his own value, as a person of many shifts and large experience, Jim Bunce did ; and he was only a gamekeeper because his tastes inclined him towards field sports, not because he doubted his capacity to fill any other station in the world that he might sekct. I well remember how he would insist upon painting his own garden fence, mending his own roof and windows, and making his own nets. I remember also that he always received the full market value of such odd jobs from my uncle, who would justly remark that it would be most unfair to take advantage of Bunce's economy.

It would not surprise me to hear that Daniel Bunce, carpenter and shipwright of Great Yarmouth, had got the price of that gravestone out of the trustees. And so Jim Bunce has left his velveteens, his rod, and gun, and "all such things," and is singing in heavenly quires, is he ? It may be so ; but I must be allowed to reserve my opinion. I fancy that, if Bunce has kept his consciousness and his identity at all, he is not content with the employment so confidently ascribed to him by his son. Daniel, to be sure, may reply that he knows quite as much about the matter as I do. How, indeed, can we say what change may come over the spirit of a man after death, when we are daily wit nesses of the vicissitudes to which it is subject while still imprisoned in the flesh ? Of all the hard laws which govern us poor mortals, and mould us without the smallest respect for the sacredness of our free-will, the law of change is the saddest and most puzzling.

It is not that a man develops into a better edition of his former self, that his intelligence widens and his knowledge and experience increase ; but that he becomes another man altogether. One thinks of the ambitions, the passions, the struggles of twenty, thirty, forty years ago, asking one's self with a sort of stupid wonder : Was it really / who did and suffered all these things ? One can't look back faithfully and minutely into the past without humiliation, without a sense of infidelity and powerlessness. I speak, of course, of myself, and judge humanity at large by myself (which is, I imagine, the common method) ; but as it is the story of my own life that I am about to write, perhaps a little preliminary egotism may be forgiven me. I suppose that my childhood was as happy a one as could possibly be.

I don't think that the fact of my being an orphan afflicted me for a single moment. My parents died when I was far too young to understand my loss, and my Uncle Bernard was father, mother, and friend all in one to me. I have a portrait of him — a mere pencil-sketch of his profile, dashed off, one afternoon, by George Warren, who had a happy knack of catching likenesses — which I am glad to say that I have preserved ever since, and which recalls him to my mind far more vividly than the full-length oil-painting by Sir Francis Grant. My drawing represents a handsome, refined looking man, slightly bald, whose age might be anything between forty and sixty. The forehead is broad and rather high, the nose aquiline, the upper lip short, and the chin round and well-moulded. There is a suspicion of a smile about the mouth and the eye, which last is half-closed, and has a faint crow's-foot at the corner.

A very deep line runs from the nostril to the corner of the mouth. Knowing all that I do now, I can see that it is a sad face ; though it never struck me as sad in those days, there being, in my opinion, no reason at all why it should be so. I was aware, of course, that Uncle Bernard was a widower ; but it did not occur to me as possible that he could be still grieving for my aunt, a person whom I had never seen, and who was as dead as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Afterwards I heard that the subject of his wife's death was one which not even his most intimate friends ventured to mention to him, and that he had had other heavy sorrows besides this, which also — though for different reasons — could not be spoken of in his presence. For the rest, my dear old man was far too unselfish and too philosophical to obtrude his troubles upon those who could not enter into them — or, for that matter, upon those who could.

I call him " old " out of habit, and because, in the days of my puppyhood, he naturally appeared to me to be quite an old man ; but he was not in reality much beyond middle age at that time, and his mother was still alive, and even very much alive. Of that lady we saw nothing, and heard very little. She had contracted a second marriage before my birth, and lived far away in the north of Scotland with her husband, a certain Mr. Farquhar. Thither my uncle used to betake himself once in every year upon a filial visit, and, as he always looked tired and harassed on his return, I was led to form a poor opinion of my great-aunt, who never came to Thirlby. Thirlby, in truth, was a house where guests were few. Not that my uncle was inhospitable ; but it so happened that there were scarcely half a dozen people in the world whom he was expected to ask to stay with him.

We were singularly devoid of near relations, he and I. He was only my uncle by marriage, his wife having been my mother's sister, and my own people must have been as much astonished as delighted when he proposed to adopt me. I believe they made rather a favour of acceding to his wish ; but I am bound to say that, having brought themselves to do so, they allowed him entire liberty of action with regard to my education and destiny, and if he had thought fit to employ me in a coal-mine, or send me to sea as a cabin-boy, I very much doubt whether they would have felt themselves justified in interfering in the matter. But he did nothing of that kind. He treated me in all respects like his own son — only I think that our com panionship was somewhat closer than that which subsists between most fathers and sons ; and so we lived together in the old house, which to one of us, at all events, never seemed empty or lonely, and it was very seldom that a visitor inter rupted our prolonged tete-a-tete.

As for ladies, scarcely one did we see from January to December, and really it is wonderful how well we got on without them. Mr. Dennison, the Rector, was a widower; Lady Welby was an invalid ; Mrs. Warren of Hailsham was understood to have every moment of her time occupied in ministering to the wants of a boundless family, and in endeavouring to reconcile these with the capacities of a far from boundless income. Other ladies there were, living, some five, some seven, some ten miles away from us ; but our ntercourse with them was confined to a few formal calls in the course of the year. My uncle was too conscientious a man to say " Not at home " when he was at home, or even to slip quietly out of doors as soon as a carriage was seen approaching across the great level park. Therefore he re ceived these ladies as often as they came with gentleness and courtesy ; but he did not encourage any advances towards intimacy on their part.

I believe that, long before, some of them had caused him great annoyance by asserting that it was a duty that he owed to society to provide his house with a new mistress, and by throwing eligible persons in his way ; the result of which was that he took up an attitude of distrust and self-defence before them which the lapse of years had not availed to modify. As for me, no sooner did I detect a green or yellow chariot swinging slowly up the avenue than I bolted away as fast as my legs could carry me. I did not like female society in those days. Whether we were ultimately the better or the worse for being thus deprived of what neither of us missed, I will not pretend to say — a little of both, perhaps. From time to time my uncle's brother, the General, would run down to Thirlby for a few days ; and those were merry days for the whole establishment.

I am afraid the servants liked the General a little better than they did my uncle. He was not more open-handed, for no one could very well have been that; but he was certainly jollier. Tall, erect, good looking, and carrying his five-and-forty years with a certain youthful jauntiness, he was a man with whom the world had always gone well, and whom the world accordingly loved. No doubt it was to his own merits that he owed his C.B. and his attainment of the rank of Major-General at so early an age ; still it is not every meritorious officer who has a chance of distinguishing himself, and insomuch as General Le Marchant had had many such chances, he may be said to have been used well by the world. It was, therefore, as natural that everybody should like him as that he should be good humoured, jovial, and full of jokes, which, if not intrinsically excellent, were made so by the manner of their delivery.

Cooper, the butler, ordinarily a somewhat saturnine personage, would stand behind my uncle's chair, grinning from ear to ear, while that capital story was being narrated about the troop-sergeant-major's horse which was cast by mistake and purchased by the Bishop of Cirencester, who afterwards exhi bited it proudly to the colonel of the regiment. The narrator chuckled so prodigiously over it himself that his audience could not choose but be infected by his hilarity. As for Jim Bunce, he declared it did his heart good to go out for a day's shooting with a gentleman as took a real delight in his work. The truth is that my uncle, though a very fair shot, was no enthusiastic lover of sport, and would rather, any day, see his brother bring down a rocketer or the Rector land a twenty pound pike than be at the pains of performing either of these feats himself.

It was the General who gave me my first gun ; it was the General who carried me off to London while I was yet of tender years, "to open my mind," as he said ; and who took me to Madame Tussaud's and the Zoological Gardens, and — most glorious of all — to the play. Somehow, I can never quite bring myself to believe that the General is dead ; though it seems natural enough that so many others should be. The history of a man's life is like the history of a nation ; looking back into it, one finds it marked out into certain clearly-defined epochs. An event, great or small, takes place here and there and makes a full stop ; after which a fresh period has to be opened. One does not always recognise the full stop at the moment of its occurrence ; but when so much that preceded and followed it has been swept out of the ken of memory it stands forth with sufficient distinctness.

The first period of my life ended, where the first period of most boys' lives ends, on the day when I was sent to school. Full well do I remember that sad and solemn occasion. My uncle and I drove the whole distance, the establishment for which I was bound being only some thirty miles away from Thirlby, and I recollect that we were both extremely self-possessed and nonchalant in our manner; only towards the end of the journey conversation would flag a little, in spite of all our efforts. And then the schoolmaster came out, all geniality and affability, to shake hands with us, and soon afterwards my uncle went away. I feel an inward sinking even now when I think of that terrible moment. But the schoolmaster, still genial (for, indeed, it was the first day of term, and parents were arriving at every moment), patted me on the shoulder encouragingly, and said, " Now, my little fellow, you must not pull a long face.

And here is Warren, an old friend of yours, and a big boy, who will take care that nobody eats you up." Dear old George Warren ! I dare say he saved me a licking or two during those first few days, though I do not remember that I was in much danger of being eaten up, then or afterwards, by any one, unless it were by the schoolmaster himself, from whose fierce indignation no boy, however big, could have shielded me. George was four years older than I ; but, in spite of this great disparity of age, we had been friends at home, and in spite of it we remained friends, not only throughout our schooldays, but long after our schooldays were at an end. I attribute this partly to George's native modesty, and partly to the circumstance that during the greater part of our boyhood we met only in the holidays.

Had we been at Eton together we could hardly, I think, have continued to associate upon terms of equality; but Mr. Warren, "who was a poor man with many children, entered his son at a less expensive and famous public school than Eton, and my removal thither in due course of time gave me a certain prestige in my intercourse with George, of which I fear that I was only too ready to take advantage. But, great as was the change from that dreary little private school to Eton, and important as it seemed at the time, it does not now strike me as marking the commencement of a fresh period in my career. To reach a genuine full stop I have to advance several years, to the time when I was nearly eighteen, and the afternoon on which Maud Dennison returned to her father's house. Maud Dennison and I had been companions as children, and had climbed trees together, and together had caught many a perch and bream in the Broads.

She was at that time, as I often remarked to George Warren, " almost as good as a boy ;" and the Rector was more than once heard to say, with a sigh, that he wished it had pleased Providence to create her of the other sex. Much as he loved his little girl, it came to him, no doubt, as a relief when his sister, Mrs. Saville, a lady of some wealth and position in society, who had girls of her own, proposed to take Maud, and keep her with her cousins until her education should be completed. The offer was, at any rate, accepted. Maud and I parted — not without tears upon both sides — and forgot one another with the celerity natural to our age. I suppose it was found more convenient that the Rector should run up occasionally to London or to his sister's place in Surrey than that his daughter should spend her holidays at .Thirlby, for to Thirlby she came no more ; and the chances are that Norfolk would never have been gladdened by the sight of her again but for the sudden demise of the Rector's housekeeper.

This melancholy event deprived poor Mr. Dennison of his right hand, and almost of his head into the bargain. He had a right hand of his own equal to any man's for the tying of flies, and he had a head upon his shoulders which was tolerably well stocked with brains ; but, as regarded the details of everyday life, he was as helpless as an infant. To order his dinner was a task altogether beyond him ; nor could he find his sermons, his memoranda, his surplice, his boots, or his hat without assistance. Hence he spent some weeks of hopeless misery and bewilderment, and committed blunders in the discharge of his duties which were talked about all over the parish, before it occurred to him that he had a daughter who had attained, or nearly attained, years of discretion. Long afterwards Mrs. Saville described to me how she was sitting in her drawing-room in Portman Square one morning when the Rector rushed in, excited and dishevelled, to say that he was very sorry to upset existing arrangements, but that, unless he was allowed to take Maud home, he believed, upon his honour and conscience, that he should be driven into marrying the housemaid.