Passion's puppets. A novel

Chapter I Chapter I

Austin Knowles stood at his hotel window gazing some what curiously out upon the broad road and the Park beyond. It was a gay scene enough — for London in September. Yesterday's storm of wind and rain had swept away dust and dirt. In the bright sunshine the big trees stood out red and gold under the blue sky. Carts, waggons, and the few carriages about, kept up the monotonous roll peculiar to city thoroughfares: the pedestrians strolled briskly along in the first sharp morning air of early autumn. But Austin Knowles told himself that he felt — bored. He turned away with a slight shudder, "I shall go down to the place at once," he said. "I won't stay in this dull hole another hour." He had come to England from the Italian lakes to see a newly-acquired property, an estate in Suffolk that he had authorised his lawyers to purchase for him, should the price not exceed a certain sum.

At the auction it was knocked down to Messrs. Rees, his lawyers, for some hundreds less than he had stated: so, some weeks before, he had, from a cosmopolitan dweller in foreign climes, become an English landed proprietor — in fact, the squire of Beauvoir Manor, Suffolk. Travelling via Paris, he had half determined to stay at I least a few days in London, to look up old chums, and "see what was going on." But his men friends of those bachelor seasons when he was in dutiful attendance upon his late aunt (whose declared heir he was) in the grim, staid old establishment in Manchester Square, were one and all away — shooting, yachting, deerstalking, or Norway-exploring. The leading theatres were closed, operas and concerts finished and done with weeks ago, and picture-exhibitions almost forgotten as matters of the long past.

" I ought to be able to catch the three o'clock express," he thought — and ordering a chop for shortly after one, he went out, hailed a Hansom, and was driven to No. 100, Lincoln's Inn Fields, in which black, gloomy old mansion, a house which had always seemed to him to frown forbiddingly as if in disgust at the loss of its former glories, were the offices of Messrs. Rees and Rees, solicitors to a good percentage of the wealthiest men and women in England. They had been the legal advisers of the late Miss Knowles, a maiden lady of advanced years, whose cautious yet fortunate speculations had left her favourite nephew, some five years ago, possessor of a neat little fortune of a trifle under two hundred thousand pounds. Neither Sir Algernon Knowles, this lady's elder brother and Austin's father, nor his eldest son and heir, Algernon, nor, indeed, any other friend or relative, had dreamed for a moment that the parsimonious old maid, whose one fad and weakness was her brilliant nephew, Sir Algernon's second son, Austin, would "cut up so well."

The news of Austin's splendid legacy came upon family and friends as suddenly as a thunderbolt. Had not the Knowles temperament been of a languorous, nonchalant cast, both father and brother might have been envious— for the Knowles estates produced but a varying income, and a few thousands would have been welcome to Sir Algernon. But the baronet was too indifferent to care very much what happened to anyone, after the first few minutes' interest that he accorded to any passing incident was over, and his heir, Mr. Knowles— (Algernon)— was as fond of his younger brother as he could be of anybody except himself, therefore was contented that he should be well off for life. " He has earned it," was his half-con temptuous remark. Austin certainly had earned it, in one way. For years, he had been his aunt's constant companion and attendant.

As a boy, he had spent his holidays drearily at Brighton, or in the Manchester Square house, sharing the prim spinster's mild pleasures. Although Miss Knowles was hoarding, and nursing her hoards, for this beloved boy of her adoption, she was as stingy to him the while as to the rest of her fellowcreatures. His infrequent tips never exceeded a shilling, and her idea of recreation for youth was the instructive or mental which can be enjoyed with out entrance fees, such as free lectures, or museums. When Austin grew to manhood, and she could no longer drive him off in her ponderous chariot to inspect the treasures within the glass cases of great British collections, she gave solemn dinner-parties in his honour: dinners which occupied her for days in nice calculations of the exact quantities required offish, flesh, fowl, and condiments, that each person should have sufficient refreshment without the waste of a single grain — waste being as hateful to her as enmii was to her nephew in after years.

The guests at these feasts of reason were men more or less learned, and dowagers of more or less importance. No youthful face, except her nephew's, brightened her board. The narrowness of this home life made his college days delightful by contrast to Austin the young man, even as they had made his schooldays joyousness itself by comparison to Austin the boy. He threw himself with as much ardour and passion as his phlegmatic nature would allow, into his studies. Naturally imaginative, he fell in love with poetry and history — in fact with beauty wherever his starved senses could perceive it. He became the delight of his tutors, the applauded of his examiners, the pride of his college. Then, just at the dangerous moment when, excited by success upon success, he might have felt his leadingstrings too irksome to be borne, Miss Knowles' constitution broke up, she was sent abroad, and in the natural and artistic delights of southern Europe his awakened aspirations found abundant satisfaction.

Later on, he met his fate. He was introduced, in Rome, to a beautiful English girl, Amy Rivington: a quiet, thoughtful, clinging being — more enthusiastic and idealistic than himself, but with similar tastes. This young lady found favour with Miss Knowles, who considered her economical and the reverse of frivolous. " Amy Rivington is an honest young woman," Miss Knowles surprised her nephew by saying one day, when she had a severer heart-attack than usual, and believed herself dying. " If you will send for her, I will ask her to marry you." But in this matter Austin was unwilling to yield. He was quite ready to marry Miss Rivington — he began to feel that he would be considerably less bored if he shared life with a second self — but he would not admit of a deputy in the matter of a proposal of marriage.

Shortly after, when walking in one of the romantic gardens attached to a well-known Roman villa, he offered himself to her. " I cannot love you after the manner of the imaginary heroes in those dreadful, unreal novels the women write," he candidly, if somewhat foolishly, said. " But if you will take me as I am, and make the best of me, I will try and be a good husband to you." It was not a romantic declaration, but Amy — although she had had one or two fancies in the clerical direction, and an experience bordering upon passion in which an Italian Count was concerned — liked Austin better than any man she had met until now. Besides, she was observant, and reasoned, and had detected slumbering qualities in him as yet unawakened. And — last but not least— she was "getting on," as people called it.

She would be eight-and-twenty next birthday. She accepted him. Three months later, they were married : and six months after their tranquil wedding, Miss Knowles died, and the Rivington family found to their agreeable surprise that their Amy, who had threatened to be hopelessly " on the shelf," had made a rich marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Austin Knowles spent the first years of their peaceful married life wandering about the world. Two children were born to them — a boy first saw the light in Japan, and a tiny girl drew her first breath in a settlement in the Rocky Mountains. Then, a mother's longing for a British nursery and schoolroom training for her darlings led Mrs. Knowles gently to urge her husband to return home. But the idea of the renewed boredom of London and Brighton was so terrifying to Austin, that for the first time his wife saw him really perturbed.

" Paris — for a few months at a time, I might be able to endure," he said. "But London? Never! Do you want me to become a madman, a hopeless hypochondriac — or to kill myself, perhaps?" Mrs. Knowles hastened to disclaim the faintest suggestion of London as an abiding place. But with some subtlety, she reminded her husband of certain acknowledged predi lections of his which England could supply — sport, and rural scenery. He could not deny that the few days' shooting and fishing he had enjoyed at intervals, few and far between, at Sir Algernon's country seat, Barton Hall, Shropshire, had suggested a lingering desire for more — nor did he negative his admiration for the green lanes, fair hills and vales, and meandering streams of his native land. There fore, after judicious persistence on Amy's part, it came about that a correspondence was opened on the subject with Messrs. Rees and Rees, with the result above stated.

When Austin alighted from his cab, mounted the marble stairs of the eighteenth-century staircase, and sent in his card to the senior partner, Mr. Rees was expecting other clients by appointment, but "show Mr. Knowles in, by all means, Mr. Bridge," he said to his head clerk, who brought him Austin's card—" and let me know when General Kingdon arrives," and Austin was welcomed by the grey haired little gentleman— who was wont to pat his head and tell him to be a good boy when he used to come hither with his aunt years ago — with a warm shake of the hand and the most beaming of smiles. "Sit ye down, my dear Sir," and he found himself installed in a library chair by the side of Mr. Rees' writing-table and opposite his deus ex machind in the matter of his future home. " Here to see after your new purchase, of course.

You shall see maps and plans." (He touched the knob of an electric bell.) "You are looking— well— a trifle thin, Mr. Knowles. De-cidedly thinner than when I saw you on the melancholy occasion five years ago— ("The map, plan, and documents of the Beauvoir estate at once, Robert, and look sharp" — to the clerk who appeared in answer to the summons.) Yes — most certainly thinner," he added, glancing more attentively at Austin's pale, clear-cut face, which, though Roman in contour, was Northern in its delicate fairness, in the golden waves of thick hair carelessly tossed aside from a high, white brow — and in the large, somewhat supercilious blue eyes that were rendered almost womanish by their fringe of curled black lashes. " But you will get robust enough by-and-bye, no fear — tramping over those loamy lands of yours with a gun.

" Ah ! Here are the plans. (When General Kingdon comes, I am to know at once, Robert.) It is unfortunate that you did not advise me of your arrival, Mr. Knowles — for I have an appointment presently with General King don — and army men — you know — and punctuality. How ever, to business at once." (He unrolled a canvas map, and spread it out upon the table.) "Here is the Beauvoir estate — which you have certainly acquired considerably under value. I went down to see the place myself. Bona fide — aye, and more than that. Under stated in the auctioneer's prospectus. I expect that gentleman had an eye to it for some friend of his own, but we were a match for him — he didn't dare to refuse us fair play at the sale. You see these farms — ■" (pointing to brown islands in lakes of green on the map).

" Let, every one of them — pound an acre, no reduction— all paying — and old tenants, under advantageous leases for owner. And the whole shooting is yours — with the place running alive with game. Partridges— hares— pheasants ! Well, you see, old Sir Oliver Martin was an invalid for many years — and as his only relative, a sister very little younger than him self, was obliged to winter abroad (that was the reason of the estate coming into the market at his death— he realized capital for her, knowing she could not live in Suffolk and look after the place) there has been little shooting. He seemed to have had an objection to letting it — and the game has positively battened on the crops. The farmers grumbled to me, and they will welcome you with open arms, Mr. Knowles — as I assured them you would see that they were justly treated."

"Certainly," said Austin, refreshed by visions of unlimited shooting for his former club-friends and himself — not the butchery of battues, but good, steady, honest sport. " And that" — bending over the map and scrutinising some wavy lines that bounded the green — "must be the sea?" "The German ocean beats upon your sands, sir," said Mr. Rees, leaning back and gazing almost enviously at Austin. "And such sands! Fine pure, gold-coloured. Such nooks under the sand cliffs for a quiet dip ! And such meadows to pass through on your way down ! Bees swarmed over the clover, and I never saw so many butter flies in my life as in the field by the sea — where some of Sir Oliver's Guernsey heifers were grazing. I was agreeably disappointed in everything, I can assure you, from first to last — What do you say ?

Is that yellow patch a lake ? No, I regret to say, it is not. It is the one drawback to your estate." "Indeed?" said Austin, wondering what the drawback could be which could occasion the sudden acridity in Mr. Rees' tone, and gazing enquiringly at the yellow patch, which was an oblong extending from the wavy lines which represented the German ocean to the black line which represented the wall of the Manor Gardens. " What can it be ?" "A morsel of land which an obstinate man refuses to sell, as his father refused before him," said Mr. Rees, almost irritably. " I tried him myself — in spite of the advice of the solicitors to the estate. All I got was the door slammed in my face. But my conscience was satis fied. You see, Mr. Knowles, when the Beauvoir estate accrued to the late Sir Oliver's father, it was much smaller.

His idea was to buy in the surrounding farms as he found the opportunity, and he generally succeeded. Only this one foiled him. Meanwhile, the bit of land will be no eyesore to you — it is beautifully kept. I am afraid you will have to put up with it." "Oh! I will put up with it. I really don't care," said Austin, good-humouredly. "I am afraid you are the sort of man who is inclined to put up with too much, Mr. Knowles," said the lawyer, shaking his head. "I must give you the benefit of my experience, by and by, and urge you to be firm, in the interest of others as well as in your own. I can assure you, that unlimited good nature does more harm in the world than every vice in combination. But when are you going down to Beauvoir ? Next week ? What ? At once ? Do they — the old people in charge — expect you ?

No ? Ah well, it won't matter, I dare say. They are a careful couple. Butler and cook for many years to the old gentleman — he left them provided for. I let them know they might expect you any time this month." Here the clerk announced the expected client ; and a couple of hours later an Eastern counties' express was carrying Austin through the Essex flats. He leant back in a corner of the railway carriage, interested, and a trifle elated to find that this part of his native land was fresh and new to his eyes. Oscillating between school or college and town, and between London and Brighton, with an occasional flight into Shropshire — then becoming familiarised with the alternate gorgeousness and barrenness of far-away countries — these placid fields, these quiet lanes with high hedgerows, these snug, old fashioned homesteads with their fruit-laden orchards and bright flower-gardens, — seemed really, actually, "fresh woods and pastures new."

He felt, too, that there was a certain originality in this somewhat slighted eastern plain. The red-brick towns grouped picturesquely among the low-lying fields had a quaint beauty peculiarly their own as they reflected a glowing sunset : and he noticed a certain character in the trees : a grace in the spreading or drooping branches that suggested plumes — fern fronds — all that was rounded and pendant in nature's garniture — which distinguished them from the trees of "auld acquaintance." He watched somewhat anxiously as the train first left Colchester, then Ipswich, for a variation in the landscape ; and was gratified when he noted but trifling differences between Essex and the county he had adopted as the place where his posterity would reign as successive squires. A greater breadth and irregularity in the fields — a comparative sparseness in the woods — but a larger sense of width, distance, freedom.

He alighted at Ecclesham — the small town whose station was the nearest railway-depot to Beauvoir — well satisfied with his future surroundings in the matter of scenery. Ecclesham was evidently a centre for the working population. The narrow platform was crowded with factory hands and labourers — there was shouting and crowding. He passed out with his bag, unnoticed. Then he stood outside, in the now deserted station-yard, wondering where the conveyances were. There was only a mailcart, and in the distance an empty van — no sign of any carriage for the convenience of travellers. "Fly? I dare say you'll find a fly at the 'Arms,'" he was informed by a porter. " Over there — where you see a pony trap a-standin' at the door" — and he bustled off. The "quality" were evidently of little account in Ecclesham, which manufactured in a small way, as well as being an agricultural townlet.

The gaudily-attired landlady of the Ecclesham Arms was by no means propitious. She glanced casually at Austin as she carelessly told him she "really didn't know if any of the flies could go out — they were always ordered beforehand if people wanted them, but she would see, if he would wait a few minutes," and she continued a conversation with the barmaid on the subject of some missing bill before she condescended to "go and see." When the fly was forthcoming, neither she nor the deaf, sullen old driver, evinced the faintest curiosity or interest when he desired to be driven to Beauvoir Manor : a shouted discussion ensued between landlady and aged Jehu as to 'whether he could be back again to meet the eight train' — — for which arrival they evidently had an order. It was certainly not the typical arrival of the new owner of a large estate into his property.

But Austin Knowles was eminently good-humoured. His absolute insignificance in this, really his own peculiar township — for part of the northern and eastern outskirts of Ecclesham were included in the Beauvoir estate — merely amused him. He lay back in the musty old fly, and laughed as they jogged along the high road — then emerged into an ill-kept route, with deep ruts which spoke ill for the parochial administration— along which they went for weary mile after weary mile. " Evidently, Austin Knowles, you will be no prophet in your own country," he told himself, as the crazy vehicle lumbered on. " Which, I daresay, is a good thing. I loathe sycophants : and for one's importance to be exaggerated by one's surroundings means that in time one must either become a cynic or a deluded self worshipper.

There is no middle term." Twilight was steadily creeping over the quiet country, veiling the distance in tender blue-white veils as if shrouding the earth for its night's slumber. Yet the western sky was still bathed in a burning radiance, against which the tall trees stood out clear and black, every twig defined against the golden red. Austin glanced at his watch. It was an hour and-a-half since they started. The old grey horse had taken longer to cover the distance than he would have done, himself. Just as he was calculating the amount of time he would have gained had he walked— bang, crash ! He was roughly shaken, almost tossed from one side of the vehicle to the other — there was a sound of smashing glass, shouting, oaths, altercation, plunging of horses He sprang to his feet, opened the door, and at once saw that an accident had happened.

A dogcart, turning the corner of a cross lane too sharply, had run into the fly. The old grey horse was down — the cob in the dogcart was being held by a man in livery, and a tall figure in a long grey surtout was leaning over the motionless beast, out of whose side huge jets of blood were spurting, while the fly-driver stood, whip and reins still in hand, leaning over the splashboard and gasping out inarticulate reproaches and lamentations. " Hold your row, do ! " growled the tall man. " Here — Mr. Passenger" — He looked up and Knowles' eyes met his. (Was this keen-eyed, dark old man with the grizzled moustache and eyebrows forbidding, repellant — or only singularly eccentric-looking ?) " The poor beast is done for, I fancy," he went on, standing up as he wiped the poor animal's blood from his hands with a white handkerchief.

"What did he cost, eh, Sam?" he called out, loudly, stepping close to the box on which the lamenting old man had helplessly subsided. " Sixteen pounds, eh ? Bah ! Rubbish ! All nonsense, you know — as if that old harpy, your mistress, ever " " If it was the last wurrds as ever was to pass my lips, and Judgment Day afore me, Sir, it worr sixteen pound, every farden' of it," quavered the old man, wiping the tears from his weak eyes with his rough sleeve. "I'd rather have been run into myself, that I would. Wotever I'm to do with the poor brute, /don't know." " Oh ! Don't go snivelling over the poor brute, as you call him, he's a lot better off than you are, make your miserable mind happy about that," said the owner of the cart, roughly. " Here — you, fine gentleman, whoever you are — where are you going to ?

Beauvoir Manor ? " (as Austin, too slow to anger to take offence at the contemptuous epithet applied to him, replied, shortly, but politely) — "What? To an empty house ? The Squire is dead, you know. Well, you can manage to walk that distance. Come now, Sam, you get up by Adams, here — and he'll drive you to Ecclesham and get help. I'll stop by the horse— and look after him. Come along!" Austin stood aside while this peremptory being assisted the old driver from his seat, and helped him to clamber weakly upon the box of the smart dogcart, which dashed off at once at the somewhat reckless rate which had caused the collision. " Know anything of horses — any sort of beasts — eh ? " asked the owner of the cart, turning abruptly to Austin as the dogcart disappeared round a corner, with a slightly scornful, half-amused glance.

Then he stooped down and examined the poor brute's filming eyes. "No? I thought as much. All over with him : got his passport, poor devil!" he muttered. Then he paced to and fro for half a minute in an aimless manner, and suddenly coming to a standstill by the fly, astonished Mr. Knowles by coolly lifting up his impedimenta, which were piled on the box, and examining them, one by one — after which he as suddenly turned round, divested himself of a long grey overcoat with capes, and stood, arms a kimbo, glancing alternately from the prostrate horse to Austin. "Do you know a horse's mouth, do you think, when you see it ? " he exclaimed. " Oh, you do think you know that much. Well, look here " He stooped down and lifting the animal's flaccid lip, exposed a jagged row of broken, blackened teeth.

" I don't know whether you have the feelings of a man in regard to poor brutes of this sort," he said, doggedly. " And I don't much care. But if you won't lend me that gun of yours yonder, I shall cut the arteries of the neck with this " He drew out a huge pocket knife of many blades. But Austin assuring him that his gun was at his service, he restored it, and during the next few moments, while Mr. Knowles loaded his gun, he was a little less abrupt in manner and speech. But after a report and a curl of smoke announced that the suffering creature was senseless clay, the stranger was evidently himself again, surly and uncompromising. "Know your way to the Manor?" he peremptorily enquired, knitting his hoary brows, and gazing unpleasantly at Austin with his keen, birdlike black eyes. He had a long, pale face, and the aquiline nose which stood out sharply from his sunken cheeks gave him a likeness to some bird of prey.

"What? Don't know? Then I suppose I shall have to show you — but first you must help me get that Noah's Ark away from the carcase." He began to unharness the dead horse, and together they dragged back the fly and lugged the horse nearer to the hedge. Then Austin took his guncase and valise, and the unknown struggled back into his long coat, and strode off along the darkening lane at a tremendous pace. " I must get back, or worse will happen — that lane is confoundedly narrow," he said. "You're going to the Manor, which belonged to the most close-fisted, beggarly old hound that ever drew breath. The whole place has gone to rack and ruin. No roads, no gates, no fences — no anything. Hound, do I say ? It's an insult to fine beasts of that sort to give their name to such garbage. A relative, perhaps ?

" he added, sneeringly. " No ? Thought not, when you did as I told you. Couldn't be one of that pigheaded, ignorant breed." He stopped short and stared hard at Mr. Knowles, who was beginning to doubt the complete sanity of his chance acquaintance. "One of the lawyers — eh?" " No," said Austin, meekly, repressing a smile. " Come down to look at the place ? Report said, it was sold at the auction. Report tells a good many lies. No one in his senses would buy this property." "No?" asked Mr. Knowles, ambiguously. " You wont — if you've any nous at all. Not if you take the evidence of your own senses. If you look round, you'll soon see that a fortune will have to be spent before the house is habitable, or the ground'll yield a fair return. Then you're sure and safe to be hated, if you dislike being hated.

Most people do." " Indeed ? " asked Austin, faintly uneasy for the first time. " Hated ? " " Yes — in word and in deed you'll be hated, if you harbour the insane notion of succeeding that old harpy," said his companion, gruffly. " For years he ground down wages and turned a deaf ear to the poor. He has bruta lised the people as far as his miser's clutch could fasten on them — and the parson was his minion — a timeserving, blatant old toady. He is loathed by his parishioners. The lot are ready to dance a jig at his funeral. If you will be such a fool as to settle here and live on the land, take my advice — steer clear of Parson Jones. If you don't, your tenants and labourers'!! have it out of you." "Dear me— it seems rather a sad state of affairs," hazarded Mr. Knowles, ruefully. "Ah— that isn't all — so I'm told — I only know what I am told," went on the stranger, with a grim chuckle.

"If you buy this place, you buy it with a cantankerous enemy tacked on to it. Do you know that — eh?" Austin disclaimed any such knowledge. " There's a man living right in the heart of the Beauvoir estate on land of his own — three hundred acres or so, which have been a thorn in the flesh of the Martins ever since they came into the property. That man has opposed old Sir Oliver at every step until the old fool died of obstinate ill-temper. He is not a nice man — so they say. He's a species of misanthrope. But he fights for the people, and will fight for them to the end. They say that the Beauvoir folk are the most independent in the county. That comes of this misanthrope fellow being their backbone, and standing by them whenever they want their cottages seen to. He has forced Sir Oliver into decent conduct now and then.