Far above Rubies. A novel ... Second edition

Chapter I. Quite In The Country

The way to Berrie Down Hollow lay along a lane, winding and narrow : not a prosaic lane, bounded to right and left by low-cropped, unromantic hedges, and scanty banks covered with coarse wiry grass, where never a wild flower would dream of blooming, but a delicious lane, bordered by old elms and beech trees ; where were smooth bits of turf, pleasantly suggestive of a gallop over the sward ; a lane by the sides whereof trailed brambles and the dark leaved ivy ; a lane where the hawthorn in the sweet May-time, when it opened its earliest buds, stretched its white arms out across the grass, striving to touch VOL. I. B ■; FAR ABOVE RUBIES. the passer-by who idly paused to inhale its fragrance ; a lane where twined in picturesque disorder wild bryony and traveller's joy, dog-roses and honey suckles, the woo y nightshade and the greater bindweed (old man's nightcap as the children irreverently call it) ; where the eye was refreshed by looking on soft cushions of moss and ferns, graceful, and drooping, and cool ; where blossomed in their due season primroses and violets, the wild hyacinth, the blue speedwell, delicious clumps of birds-foot trefoil, the pink cranesbill, the wood strawberry and anemone, ground ivy, the " hinder ing" knot grass, "everywhere humble and every w ere green ;" St. John's Wort, that balm of the warrior wound ; tufted vetch, the creeping cinque foil, with many another wild flower, which in the early days little hands love to gather ; which boy hood, and manhood, and middle age pass by un noticed, but which come back fresh and bright as ever to the memory of the old man too feeble to totte/ away to the shady lane, to the warm sunny bank where the buds are springing, and the flowers blooming, and the lights and shadows flitting backwards and forwards, coming and going, coming and going just as they did half a century previously, when he was young and strong, and active like the best.

We all know such a lane : it may be in one county or it may be in another ; in the far-away shire where the happiest years of our lives were spent, or within a walk of the great Babylon. To the north of London there is still a perfect tangle of narrow country lanes, in some of which Lamb assured Barton he " made most of his tragi comedy." There are several not far from the churchyard where he sleeps so well. Close to his old home they wander away from Chace Side, up hill and down dale ; they strike out of the Southgate Road ; they wind in and out from Angel Lane to Bury Street, and thence by devious routes to Winchmore Hill and Enfield. Some of the loveliest lanes on earth, perhaps, are those on the opposite side of the Lea, leading from Higham Hill to Chingford and Woodford. Utterly still ! utterly quiet !

There the bee hums and the wild roses bloom, and there is heard no din or sound of that great city which lies so near at hand. b But Berrie Down Lane, as the road leading to Berrie Down Hollow was styled, wound on its plea sant way many and many a mile distant from Lon don ; so completely in the country, so entirely out of the way of strangers, or even ordinary traffic, that very few persons, excepting the family resident at the Hollow, and their visitors (who, save of their own kin), were far and few between, knew anything of the beauty of that quiet walk, of that lonely approach, to a still more lonely house. Do you mind sauntering along it with me — sauntering slowly and lingeringly ? It is in the bright summer noon-tide we follow its windings for the first time ; but you can fancy how it looks in the spring and the autumn likewise ; and the beauty of the lane grows upon you like the face of a woman who is more lovely than handsome, till you come to under stand that even in mid-winter it will not look deso late ; that even when the buds of spring, and the flowers of summer, and the last leaves of autumn have departed, there will still be something left for the snows and frosts of winter to deck and crown right royally with diadems and jew Is that sparkle and glitter in the cold gleams of the December sun.

There are the banks where the earliest primrose is to be found ; over which the full luxuriance of the summer greenery spreads and twines in lavish profu sion of tendril, and branch, and drooping bough, and slender spray ; against which the brown leaves pile themselves when the storm king rides abroad, and the October winds begin to strip the foliage off the trees. You can imagine now how the place looks in every season ; when the holly berries shine red and warm and glossy in the hedgerow ; when their branches, clad with polished green leaves, are torn down to welcome Christmas in hall, and church, and cottage ; when the birds begin to build ; when children part the boughs of the privet and the hawthorn in order to look for the thrush and the linnet's nest ; when the hyacinths come with the sweet mid spring ; when the dog-roses, perishable as beautiful, open to the sun ; when the May bursts into flower, and the honeysuckle perfumes the air; when you can pass over the brook dry-shod ; when the August sun is pouring his beams on fields where the reapers are at work ; when the leaves first change their colour, and then commence to fall ; when autumn's blasts whistle amongst the topmost branches of the elms, and winter's hail and snow descend upon the earth.

You can fancy how Berrie Down Lane must look under all these aspects ; you know here after you could sketch the place from memory, when you come to recall its sweet tranquillity amidst the din and bustle of that great Babylon where your lot is cast. The nearest railway-station, Palinsbridge, is eight miles distant ; the nearest town, South Kemms, four ; the nearest village, Fifield, more than two ; so that, although, as the crow flies, Berrie Down Hollow is not actually above thirty miles from London, it might be a hundred or two in point of acces sibility. " Quite in the country, Mr. Dudley," enchanted towns-people were wont to remark ; whereupon, if the speaker chanced to be a man or one of his own kin, Mr. Dudley would answer, " Confoundedly in the country ;" from which speech it will rightly be inferred that the owner of Berrie Down Hollow did not appreciate the advantages of his rural residence quite so highly as strangers had a way of doing.

And it was a pity, for a more picturesque spot could not have been found had you searched the home counties through. It was a place which took every one's fancy. The great men, who came down from London to stay with Lord Kemms when the season was over and the Row deserted, were wont to draw rein and turn a little round in their saddles as they passed The Hollow ; after which they would ride slowly on, looking back often at the dear old house planted on the side of a sloping hill. But you shall not jump to the house in a minute after this fashion.

You shall walk with me under the el -trees ; you shall go gently down the declivity whence you catch the first view of Arthur Dudley's home ; you shall look over the fields lying on the south side of Berrie Down Lane, where the corn, his corn, is ripening for the harvest ; you shall pause and see in the distance, meadows where the haymakers, his haymakers, are at work ; you shall watch the men, and the women, and the children mowing and tossing that which in due time will be converted into money, to buy bread for him and his ; you shall descend the hill and cross the ford by means of a narrow foot-bridge, and, as you do so, you shall see his cows lying in the pasture lands chewing the cud, reflectively ; you shall ascend more leisurely, if possible, the steeper hill beyond the brook ; and, still pursuing your way onward, become conscious of hedges less picturesque, only because kept trim and closely cropped ; of banks where the grass is smooth and even, by reason of constant cutting ; where no brambles are allowed to trail their length along the ground ; where even the honeysuckle has to submit to pruning and clipping ; where the road is free from ruts ; and now you know that to right as well as left lies Squire Dudley's land, and that you are drawing close to his house, which is to be reached through those gates not more than half-a-dozen paces distant from where we stand.

One moment, however, ere entering. Do you notice how the grey pillars on which the gates are hinged scarcely show through the branches of the two trees of pyracantha that have grown around them ? Those shrubs are considered one of the great beauties of Berrie Down House. They are all white in the early spring. They are covered with green berries during the summer, which change into great masses of bright scarlet during the pleasant autumn weather, retaining their rich colour when the frost pinches the leaves of the evergreens, and the ice is thick on the mill-pond, and the snow lying on the ground. They have taken years and years to grow, and the Dudleys are as proud of them as they are of their quaint home, of their broad acres, of their rich pasture lands, of the Hollow (whence their place takes its name), w ere the blackberries still grow, as they once grew over all the fields around ; where there is quite a tangled thicket of underwood and broom and brambles, in which the children hide themselves, and tear their frocks, and pass the long summer days ; whence they emerge, when the black berrying season comes, with faces and hands dyed purpje with the rich, luscious juice.

As the great men from London are wont to admire Berrie Down Hollow, so with all the strength of their souls the younger Dudleys love its every tree, and shrub, and stick, and stone. The domestic chronicles contain no record as to whether Arthur Dudley, owner of the Hollow, had ever similarly cherished any such attachment. Of one thing, however, the reader may be certain, which is, that in his manhood he did not entertain the slightest affection for the place. What was the old house, with its many gables— what were the fields, the trees, the tangle of brambles, the bloom of the broom, the scent of the hawthorn, the ripple of the brook to him? Let us pass through the gates, and approach by means of a drive, hedged almost with laurestina and laurel, Arthur Dudley's home. The house is built of brick with curious dark stone facings, and over the doorway, carved in the same material, is the Dudley coat of arms ; for before Lord Kemms, or Kemms' Park, was so much as thought of, the Dudleys were great people in the county.

Their day had gone by, however, and their fortunes, when we make their acquaintance, are like their coat of arms — a good deal the worse for wear ; for which reason, although the Hollow is a pretty place, it is not a grand one. It is a sweet home, but not a great mansion ; and the front, which shows towards the road, is unpretentious in the extreme. But there is another side — that which catches the last rays of the setting sun — that which reveals itself to Lord Kemms' visitors when they have passed the gates flanked by pyracantha, and taken the turn leading away towards Kemms' Park. The north front of the house is nothing : it is red brick and grey stone, with two windows on each side the hall door, and five on the first floor, and three dormant windows looking out from the roof like heads thrust forth from among the slates to survey the world.

It is masked a good deal from the road by evergreens and great trees of arbor-vitæ ; and the dwelling-rooms in that part of the house are dark, and somewhat dull in consequence. To the west all is different ; there the ground sweeps down from the house to the Hollow, and the drawing-room windows look out on the rich cham paign country lying beyond, which is steeped and bathed every evening in the golden beams of the setting sun. Over this west front climb roses, and clematis, and honeysuckle. Here is a westeria, which puts forth its purple blossoms long before the laburnums think of blooming. Pleasanter bed chambers there are none in England than those on the first floor, into the windows of which the earliest roses peep blushingly. The lawn is shaded by many a grand old tree ; beyond the Hollow trickles a stream, which runs through Mr. Dudley's property, after supplying a mill on the road leading to South Kemms.

There are sheep browsing in the fields beyond. There is a great peace in the quiet landscape ; there is a stillness which strikes Londoners as almost oppres sive. No hermitage could be more retired, no spot more perfect in its utterly homelike repose. In such a place as this Time glides by, leaving few marks upon the road to show that his chariot has passed over it. Here the philosopher thinks he could meditate in peace, and eliminate truths which the world would not willingly let die. Here the clergyman deludes himself with the belief that he could compose sermons which might stir the hearts of thousands. Here, where the pace of life is slow, and the mental pulse languid, the author fancies that alone with himself and nature he could dis course eloquently about man. Here the musician imagines he might discover that roc's egg — a melody resembling no other melody ; but no ! here indeed might the statesman rest, and the weary physician recruit his own exhausted energies ; here the great engineer might forget his thousand schemes, and the speculator almost withdraw his mind from the price of shares and the rise and fall of debentures ;— here is Nature's temple, if you will, where men may come and hold communion with her ; here is her in firmary likewise, where she visits with sleep the heavy eyelids, and recruits with wine and oil the body which has been worsted in the world's fight ; here she lays her cool hand on burning foreheads, and compels the overtaxed mind to lie fallow ; here is the place for rest, if you will ; but it is not the place for work.

Out in the battle-field, where the city streets are full of eager soldiers ; out where the fray is fiercest, the fire strongest ; out where life is not a tranquil dream, but a mad struggle ; where men go to their long rest not rusted, but worn ; where the night's slumber is short, and the day's labour long ; out where as iron sharpeneth iron, so doth the face of a man his friend ; — there is the only place for energies to be aroused and genius developed, for profitable work to be accomplished, for life's best lessons to be learned. Thus, at least a dozen times a day, Arthur Dudley, owner of " The Hollow," is in the habit of expressing himself; and yet you know, as you look in his face, that he is a man whose energy is not to be de pended on, whose genius even to a stranger seems problematical ; who has never practically conjugated the word " work ;" who could not be an apt pupil in any of life's many schools, no matter who were his teachers, no matter what his opportunities.

A handsome man if you will, with his thick brown hair, with his soft, silky moustache, with his kindly blue eyes, with his regular delicately-cut features, and yet many a plainer face might better, I should imagine, win and retain a woman's love. His body, like his mind, lacks thews and sinews. He is not one of whom you dare prophecy that God, giving him health and ordinary success, he would climb high. Bather he is one of those of whom you might safely predict, that if he attempted to climb at all, he would fall back grievously worsted. There are some people who seem to be mentally surefooted ; and there are others who find every step to fortune so slippery, that giving them time enough, they are certain ultimately to get their necks broken in attempting the ascent. But, under the shelter of his own trees, what can Squire Dudley need with strength beyond that wherewith nature has provided him ?

It is for men to have their way to make that bone and muscle, an iron will, a ready wit are needful ; and all the fields you have surveyed, all the broad meadows, all the rich pastures came to him, not because of the strength of his own right hand, or because of the capacity of his own brain, but simply because his father had owned Berrie Down Hollow before him, and left it to his eldest son. , "What could any human bei"g desire more?" friend and stranger, looking over the property, were wont mentally to ask themselves ; for the world knew that Squire Dudley was a dissatisfied and discon tented man. He had youth, strength, health, a happy home, a devoted wife — what more could any rational being ask of Heaven ? What could the skeleton be which walked with Arthur Dudley under the elms, and across the meadows, or beside the brook ?

This was the question every person, who met the Squire even for the first time, put to those who knew him best. His manifest discontent inspired a certain curiosity in the mind of each individual who looked in his handsome, effeminate face. He had a certain grace of manner and lazy elegance of movement which attracted attention to him, and caused many eye glasses to be directed towards the good-looking stranger in various assemblies in London to which he had the entree. He was not a bad man in any relation of life. He was a gentleman by birth, education, and taste ; and yet in his own neighbour hood Squire Dudley was not popular. His skeleton was too apparent, and people rather disliked one who had not mental strength enough to shake off the depressing influence of such a companion. " Have your closets full of bones and bodies at home, if you will," says society; "but for Heaven's sake do not carry them about in the sunlight on your back.

Weep your tears an' you like to do so ; but get through the ceremony in private. We have, every one of us, our troubles, yet we do not pro claim them aloud from the house-tops. We demand that if, either from choice or necessity, a man fast, he shall not appear in public with a sad countenance, but that he shall 'anoint his head and wash his face,' and bear his trouble bravely and with good courage." Virtually those were the words his neighbours addressed to Squire Dudley. Not for his skeleton did the world forsake him, but only because he had not courage to turn and grapple with it, and either lay the ghost, or shut it up in one chamber at home. And, after all, it was such a commonplace ghost ! If your curiosity be at all excited about the matter, in the next chapter you shall see its face. VOL. I.

Chapter II. Squire Dudley

Arthur Dudley, Esquire, of Berrie Down Hollow, in the parish of Fifield, Hertfordshire, was in the hab't of informing all those whom the intelligence might, and a great number whom it might not con cern, that he had, to borrow his own expression, " missed his life." And, as is usual with men who employ such a phrase, he imagined the miss had been in fortune, not in himself. He had lost, he felt satisfied, not for want of skill in playing his game, but because the game of life was an unfair one, in which the cards were packed, and all the trumps dealt to one man, while all the low, poor, insignificant, valueless bits of pasteboard were left for another, in which from birth all the odds were against one player, while the stakes were thrust, nolens volens, into his opponent's hand. It is a nice, contented, comforting, reassuring creed this for any human being to hold.

It makes a man utterly dissatisfied with his lot, while it leaves him only too well satisfied with himself. He is, so he thinks, as competent to take his leaps as the best in the land ; and when in succession he misses every one, he still believes it was only the fault of the steed he rode, of the groom who did not girth his horse tight enough, of the saddler who sent him in reins which broke in his fingers, of the nature of the ground, of the labourer who staked the hedge, of the proprietor who wire-fenced the field. Other men go flying over every obstacle, and gallop past him to the goal all are striving to reach, while he labours wearily after, or lies maimed and shattered beside the first gate. Yet, mark you, this is never his fault ; it is his " cursed luck," to quote Arthur Dudley over again.

Providence, in his inmost heart the Squire con sidered, had a spite against him from his mother's womb, and consequently, and by reason only of this injustice on the part of Providence, he failed where others succeeded. In the world's great workshop he was a very bad C workman, and, accordingly, he was eternally com plaining of his tools. His fellows moved up in the social scale, but he never rose a step higher. With a rusty nail one picked the lock of Fortune's treasure casket ; but then, as Arthur Dudley truly ob served, that rusty nail never came into his hands. With sledjre and hammer, and file and chisel, common drudges, as they seemed to him, bought their estates and took rank in the country. His schoolfellows — mere idiots he had thought some of them then — mere idiots, indeed, he thought them still, had climbed great parts of the steep hill of worldly " success, and were talked of as rising men in the pulpit, at the bar, in the hospitals, in literature, science, and art.

There was Holland, for instance, who went with him to Oxford. Well, Holland had no brains, any more than most of the people Squire Dudley knew, and yet he had somehow obtained a capital post under Government, lived at the West End, aud had married a beautiful young widow with, rumour said, many thousands a year. There was Morris, also, a man without a sixpence, without appearance, connection, manner, friends, or father or mother to speak of, and yet he, even he But it is useless to continue the catalogue. Fate had helped every one, except Squire Dudley, on in the world, and Squire Dudley did not in the least believe that every man's Nemesis is himself. Berrie Down Hollow, however, bore no traces of belonging to a person who held this peculiar doctrine regarding his own life. There was no disorder, no neglect.

When once the gates swung back, friend and stranger alike beheld a place which was kept as well as Kemms' Park : — where no weeds grew on the walks ; where the grass was like a bowl ing-green ; where crocuses and snowdrops filled the flower-beds in the early part of the year ; where there was a blaze of scarlet geraniums, and a brilliant decking of white, and red, and purple verbena, of petunias and gladioli, lobelias, and all other plants that make our beautiful English summer more beautiful still. Never a litter of dead leaves was there about those walks ; never a gate hung loose for want of hinge or screw ; never a thing was left undone that willing hands could speedily put to rights ; and yet there was an indescribable look of shortness of money, both within and without the dwelling, which those who were in the secrets of the family knew was attributable to absolute pecuniary poverty ; for, although Arthur Dudley owned house and lands, stock and well-filled barns, he was poor as a gentle man with such possessions could be.

And that was where the shoe pinched Squire Dudley. He had money's worth, but not money. He paid no rent ; he killed his fatted calves and his prime Southdowns ; he brewed his own ale ; his fowls were duly trussed for his table ; he ate of the produce of his own lands, and drank of the only vintages English fields will yield ; he had his goodly orchard, and his fair flower-gardens ; he had his horses in the stable, and his colts running loose in the paddock ; he had his broad meadows, and his rich pastures; he had still a young wife, and two children ; he had sinned no grievous sin ; he had no secret he feared being brought to light, yet he had "missed his life." So he said, so his friends said, and the reason for this unusual unani mity of opinion chanced to be that he had no money. " Arthur was born to be a rich man," said the elders amo g his kith and kin ; but, if Nature had intended any such beneficial arrangement in his behalf, she frustrated her own design by permitting him to be born in the wrong house, and amongst the wrong people, and with the wrong temperament for much good fortune to befall him.

After all, Nature does make these little mistakes occasionally, and each man and woman amongst the unsuccessful thinks he or she could have managed matters infinitely better for himself or herself, if only the disposition of affairs had been left in the hands of the person interested. Squire Dudley thought so, at any rate. He bore a grudge against Nature for having spoiled his worldly chances, which grudge he paid with interest to Na ture's representatives on earth — his fellow-creatures. Had he been born at Kemms' Park, with the typical silver spoon in his mouth, he would, doubtless, have proved a very charming member of society. As it was, he had fallen into the habit of quarrelling with the bread and butter fate had provided for him, to such a degree that there was not a labourer on his farm, a servant in his house, a friend he possessed in the world, who would have borne with Arthur Dudley's dissatisfied temper, his discontent, and his ■1 \ FAR ABOVE RUBIES. complainings, had it not been for the sake of his wife, who was the only person on earth who thoroughly and devotedly, and believingly and disinterestedly, loved the young Squire.

Matrimonially, luck had not been against him. If the chances of marriage be but as one eel to a bagfull of snakes, many a man, who thrust his hands into that lottery after Arthur Dudley, must have had cause to lament his evil fortune. Matrimonially the Squire, who had otherwise "missed his life," had done well, so the world thought at least ; but then this was one of the many questions of which Arthur Dudley secretly joined issue with the world. In the experiences of his earlier manhood there had been certain love passages between himself and a handsome young heiress, whom it wa she wish of his aunt, Miss Alethea Hope, that he should marry. Then visions of a life worth living, of a position worth having, beatified the dreariness of the Squire's prosaic existence. Like all men who are utterly dissatisfied with their position, he permitted hope to tell him many a flattering tale, which had not the slightest shadow of a foundation in truth.

Indeed, in the management of his farm, Arthur Dudley was but as a reed shaken by the wind of whatever fancy whispered to him over night; and it was natural enough that, when wandering about the grounds of Copt Hall, with his first real love — worth five thousand a-year, and expectations — he should dream of a social position unenjoyed by the Dudleys for many a year ; of a town house ; of Berrie Down Hollow filled with grand company ; of taking rank in the county ; of, perhaps, tacking M.P. to the end of his name. The future, then, seemed as full of promise to him as the old gardens at Copt Hall of roses. Can you wonder ? Youth was at the helm and Pleasure at the prow, and an heiress about to become a pas senger for the voyage of life ; a handsome heiress too — graceful and accomplished, and much sought after, by reason not merely of her wealth, but of her beauty.

Among the roses at Copt Hall she promised to marry Squire Dudley, and yet before the roses were in bloom again she had consented to make another " happy." That was the first serious accident which befell the young man's life-boat ; and he retired to Berrie Down Hollow, feeling he had been jilted, not merely by his lady-love, but by the jade Fortune. It is true, I suppose, that, if the cause of the mental death or paralysis of any man's life be closely inquired into, a woman will prove to have been at the bottom of the apparent mystery. Directly or indirectly, white soft hands fill the cup, either with strengthening wine, or pure water, or the drugged liquor, that steals the strength away, and impairs the finest genius. Those from whom we expected the greatest results go to their long sleep, and leave no mark behind by which their fellows shall remember them ; and why ? because, although they had the power to achieve much, some woman prevented their doing anything.