Shot! or the Ghost's Seat at Deymont

Front matter

Sec NEW NOVELS IN THE PRESS. I. In Three Vols. Price 31s. 6d. UNCLE ARMSTRONG By Lord B##*#*#u, By the Author of " Masters and Workmen," " The Fate of Folly," "Naples," Ac. II. In Three Vols. Price 31s. 6d. A TROUBLED STREAM By the Author of " The Cliffords of Oakley," "Constance Dale," &c. III. In Three Vols. Price 31s. 6d. OUR BLUE JACKETS AFLOAT AND ASHORE. By F. C. ARMSTRONG, Author of " The Two Midshipmen," "The Naval Lieutenant," Extract from the Morning Post, Feb. 16th, 1866. A very ingenious invention has lately been patented by Messes. Jay, of Regent Street, — " THE EUTHEIMA." It is nothing less than a self-fit ting and adjustable bodice, possessing the power of expanding to accommodate any variation of the figure, to obviate all undue pressure and necessity for alteration, and therefore expressly suited to the requirements of ladies in a delicate state of health.

" The Eutheima" is made in black silk, elegantly trimmed ; it is tight to the bust, with bands and epaulettes of crepe or of silk gimp and jet beads, but it can be made in any material. The elasticity is contrived by the insertion of welts of elastic webbing under the braces, from the .shoulder to the waist, beneath the arms and down the shoulders under the brace ornaments. The set and style are excellent. The ladies appear to be quite ready to appreciate the peculiar merits and conveniences of the new patent, for, though but very recently introduced to the public, the Queen {the Lady's Newspaper) and Court Journal state that considerable numbers have already been sold. T > SHOT! OR THE GHOST'S SEAT AT DEYMONT. IN TWO VOLUMES. BY FREDERICK SHERIDAN, Author of "Cecil Forrester-" " Be sure your sin will find you out." Numb, xxxii. 23 VOL. I. fmiton : CAUTLEY NEWBY, PUBLISHED 30, WELBECK STREET, CAVENDISH SQUARE, 1866. [the right of translation is reserved] SHOT!

Chapter I

It is a few months ago now since, casually passing a night at the little village of Dey mont, in shire, I overheai'd a conversation, which aroused ray curiosity, having reference to a murder committed many years before. A murder enveloped, as it seemed to me, with more than usual mystery, and accompanied with more than usual sorrow. Tts perpetrator moreover had, till within the last few weeks, remained undiscovered. I made enquiries, slight at first, — more closely as I progressed. I VOL. I. B SHOT ! visited the places, the locality of which it was necessary that I should be acquainted with ; I obtained an introduction to those persons mentioned in the following pages, who were still alive. From portraits I trust that I am able to give a not inaccurate description of those who have passed away.

In a word, I have spared no pains,— spent no little time, — in endeavouring to reproduce exactly as they occurred the facts which I am about to nar rate. I have only to add that, from reasons which will be obvious to everyone, I have in most cases altered the names of both persons and places, and that I have omitted altogether tbe name of the county in whicii these events occurred. About thirteen years ago a gentleman was busily engaged in his lodgings in South Street, packing up his things, apparently for a visit to the country. SHOT ! 3 It was a cold winter morning in January, and the snow fell thick and fast ; in the streets horses were slipping and falling, and poor frozen-out workmen sheltering them selves under any chance portico from the ceaseless drifting snow. The wind was sighing plaintively as it whistled round the corners of the street, driving the fleecy snow before it.

Here and there, where some obtrusive wall had with stood it to its face, it had hurled the snow, flake after flake, on a heap, and the cold drift had accumulated till it had become a little mountain of snow. Thither came the boys, — what do London boys prefer to snow? There they made their most slippery slides, and watched the poor old gentlemen's alarm, when they stepped un warily upon them. There they dared their most daring deeds — deeds of daring too ; for here was ammunition enough to last a siege, and hence, in the event of a fierce onslaught B shot! 4 of bobbies, they had a safe retreat down a neighbouring mews. They were generals, in a way, those boys ; they knew the value of supplies, — they knew the value of keeping their communications open, — they knew the value of arresting the enemy's progress by obstacles, such as slides.

What was the art of Vauban or Napoleon but an adaptation of this rude knowledge ? You could have seen all this from that little room in South Street: aye, and more too, for you might have watched that poor shivering woman, drawing her tattered apo logy for a shawl more tightly round her, and begging of each careless passer-by the copper without which she must go supperless to bed, — nay, nay, not to bed, but to walk through those cold, bitter streets, — walk all night in an agony of cold. Oh, where is poverty to be found in so gaunt, so hideous a form as in this great, rich, shot! 5 prosperous city? — where can cold be so bitter, as in view of the warm blazing fire? — where can wet be so dreary as when it is sur rounded by unavailing shelter? — where can hunger be so galling as in sight of the baker's window, the butcher's counter, or where the smell of the rich repast rises to mock the poor famished wretch, who begs, — aye vainly begs, — the crumbs which fall from the rich man's table ?

Were the sufferings of Tantalus greater than these? But that room in South Street, — it was pleasant and comfortable enough, for there was a cheerful fire burning in the grate, and not a breath of the cold air could find its way in through the closed window. It was a small, comfortably furnished room on the first floor : a rather worn carpet, and rather old heavy curtains. In the centre there was a table, close to it a comfortable arm-chair, opposite that again a sofa. Sofa, shot! chair, and table, they all told a tale of what was going on ; they were all covered with clothes, guns, flasks, and whips, waiting to be packed up, The room was hung with some half-dozen pictures, — two of these were hunting scraps, a third the famous finish between Voltigeur and Flying Dutchman ; Laura Bell's portrait was the fourth, face to face with the great duke ; a pretty view of Eton from the river, and a sketch of an old castellated house, with the word "Sturdith" written underneath it, were the two last.

There were not many more books in the room than there were pictures ; such as there were, were placed in rude order on a slide on a writing table. A Don Quixote and a Bible, a Field Exercise book, three green novels, a few volumes of Scott, ' In Memoriam,' a Johnson's Dictionary, and some dozen others, • — apparently neither much used nor much cared for. shot! 7 The room opened into an inner room, a bed room. It is not worth while going into this, except to introduce you to the persons who happened at that moment to have gone into it. There were two persons in the room, master and man, — little need of saying which was the master, and which was the man. He, the tallest and broadest of the two, standing some six feet two in his stockings, with a chest and arm that would have shamed Guy Livingstone', a fresh — I had almost written florid — complexion, a thick moustache on the upper lip, the lower closely shaven, a coarse bull neck, and a firm lip, was the master, Herbert Lawless, Captain and Lieutenant- Colonel in Her Majesty's Regiment of Guards.

My hero ? nay, no hero of mine, though one whom he, who reads this history, will hear much of, and therefore, if he is worth knowing at all, worth a little more than a mere passing introduction at the first outset. shot! 8 You could make a shrewd guess of the man's character by merely looking at his face. He was a man whose word there was no disputing. " Move off that gate," said he one day to three hulking fellows whom he suspected of wrong. "Who says so?" was the impertinent rejoinder of the biggest of the three. "I do," was Lawless' answer, and they slunk away. His face had been bronzed with constant outdoor exercise, for to field sports he had been heartily attached for twenty years, — ever since, in fact, as a boy of six, he had made his debut with the H. H. on Castanet? — what a rare galloper that little pony was, and had managed to see the end of a twelve miles' run over a fair hunting country.

It was ten years after that maiden gallop on Castanet that, one dark winter's night, there was a report of a gun in the home woods at Sturdith, and though a mere lad of sixteen, he turned out, and joining his keepers shot! 9 at the mill on the lower end of the wood, led them himself to search for the poachers. I have heard the keeper, who was with him that night, say that they had not gone far before they fell in with three of the gang, and had a sharp tussle, and succeeded in taking two of them. The third, the strongest and most active of the gang, after braining one of the helpers with the butt end of his gun, turned round and bolted right across some heavy ploughed land towards Hicklebury. Young Lawless only waited, two moments to bid the keepers secure the other two and was after the fellow.

It was a long chase, for the poacher knew the Ground best, but Lawless had won the steeple chase at Eton, and was not to be beaten by a poacher. For three miles the chase lasted, and then the poacher turned to bay. Lawless remembered little more after that than rushing at the fellow, and feeling the b shot! warm blood trickling down his face from a fearful blow which the poacher received him with. But the keeper says that when he came up, five minutes afterwards, the young master was sticking to the fellow like a bull terrier, though he was so exhausted from the loss of blood that he fainted immediately afterwards. You can still see the mark of the poacher's handiwork on Lawless' forehead. But I think that I can tell Lawless' character from another anecdote. One wet day he was i*eadiug the " Lord of the Isles " — ■ Scott's poetry he was always partial to — " Vain was then the Douglas band, Vain the Campbell's vaunted hand, Vain Kirkpatrick's bloody dirk, Making sure of murder's work."

Something tempted him to turn to the notes, and he repeated aloud, with a sneer, Bruce's speech, " Bad tidings, I doubt I have slain Comyn." "Ah," said his tutor, who happened to overhear him, " that was, indeed, shot! 11 a foul spot on Bruce's fair fame." " He was a fool," was Lawless' answer, " I should have been ashamed to have come away and left the deed half-done." Verily, I believe that, had Lawless struck the first blow, Kirkpatrick would never have had an opportunity of earning his motto. For he came from a hard hitting stock, did this Lawless. His father, who ran away with Miss Deymont, and so obtained old Sturdith Castle, — much to the horror of my Lord Deymont. — But I shall explain this afterwards. His father lost an arm in the retreat on Torres Vedras, but right well did he repay the blow.

I am told that, rising in his stirrups, he swung his sword over his head, and with one blow cut through helmet and head of the French cuirassier. " Give as much as you receive," was his constant maxim, and he acted up to it when he repaid with such good interest the stroke of the French cuirassier. shot ! Methinks I can see him now — his left sleeve hanging at his side — mounted on a plain Irish nag, the straightest and hardest goer in all the hunt. A mad, hot-headed fellow to the very end of his days. His maddest act was his last. To ride at a pike-gate, which the collector closed, after a three miles burst. He was on Crazy Jane that morning — poor old mare ! Many a fall she and her master had bad together, hut never such a one as this on that hard turnpike road. Poor old mare ! they had to shoot her, for her back was broken.

Shoot her while her mister lay senseless in old Style's, at Brook Green, — for he never spoke again, though he lived, if insensibility can be called life, for six hours after his fall. His son, Herbert, was only ten years old when this happened. He was, indeed, an orphan, for his birth had cost his mother her life. But Lord Deymont, possibly for his mother's sake, for he never forgave the father shot! 13 for his marriage, was kind to the lad ; had him often staying with him at Deymont ; ran down to see him at Eton ; in fact, acted as a father to him. Perhaps, after reading the next chapter, you will think that his lordship had some motive in patronising his young kinsfolk. If so, you will be wrong. What Lord Deymont did, he did from sheer good nature, and, if there was any other reason, from a remem brance of the lad's mother.

Reader, I have now introduced you to Herbert Lawless. I must again repeat, not to my hero. For, indeed, in this tale of mine, there is no hero and no heroine. 'Tis a history of many people,— not of any one. But as you will see, perhaps, more of Lawless than of anyone else, I thought it right to set out by stating most emphatically that he is not my hero. His servant was a man of some inches less both in height and in girth— of an unpleasant shot! countenance, and uninviting manner. He was a soldier-servant, and' had all the type, all the low-breeding, of a soldier-servant about him ; yet he was useful to Lawless. Not too proud, as some servants are, to per form the most menial occupation ; and yet Avithal a man who was capable, on an emergency, of being trusted with business of a somewhat delicate nature.

A quick loader, and passionately addicted to shooting; a good rough-rider, and knowing about a horse. Some share of Lawless' success in steeple chasing was due to his servant's skill. They were packing — the master and the servant, — packing, as I said before, in pre paration for a journey into the country. What a mystery packing is. In what con fusion shirts, collars, and trousers were jumbled together, under Lawless' hasty exertions ; and with what regularity and smoothness they were arranged by his ready and careful servant. shot! 15 Lawless had just written a direction, and had given it to his servant. It ran thus : — ■ Captain Lawless, Marquis of Deymont's, Deymont, Spin well. shot!

Chapter II

Those who have travelled — and in this railway age who has not ? — by the South Western Line to Southampton, probably remember the station at Hicklebury, where the branch to the large town of Spinwell turns off - and if they have waited, as the trains generally do, for a quarter of an hour at the Junction, they probably have made some enquiries about the old house at Deymont, Lord Deymont's country seat, which all the world knows is only about six miles from Hicklebury. For a queer, rambling old building is that shot! 17 house at Deymont. It must have been once, in the old feudal days, but a small castle, and much of that little has been pulled down to make room for improvements and additions. The greater part of the present building was erected towards the end of the sixteenth century, and the best rooms in the whole house are those which were added then.

But the first Lord Deymont — he was created by Charles the Second — had been up to London, and became enamoured of a certain banquet chamber at Whitehall, which had not been erected many years then ; and nothing could satisfy him but to tack a chapel on to his own house at Deymont, built, as it seems to me, in rather poor imitation of Inigo Jones' great work, but 'twas thought mighty fine at the time, and the simple country folk did not object to the strange union of Norman, Elizabethan, and Italian styles of architecture, thus com bined in Deymont House. shot! But if the house is very doubtfully admirable, the park is well worthy of the head of even so old a family as the Deymonts. I know no finer trees than I can show you in this park. There is an oak avenue — flanking for half a mile the road that leads from Hicklebury Lodge to the house — in which there are a dozen trees, for each of which, in the heat of the old war, Mr. Turntool ■ — he was made Sir John afterwards, a nd was elected M.P. for Southampton — offered my lord of that day a thousand pounds.

But my lord was too fond of his old oaks to part with them, even for a thousand pounds, and so, honoured be his memory for it ! the glorious old trees are still standing. There is many a pretty drive, and many a pretty spot, in the deer park at Deymont, besides the oak avenue, but I took you at once to the old trees, for they will give you a good idea of Deymont Park. For eight centuries has Deymont been the shot! 19 property of the Deymonts. The land was granted originally by the first William' to one Robert, a hard-headed Norman, who had fought under him at Hastings, but it is not until one hundred years later that I find any further mention of any of the house. Not until the time of that Geoffrey the Ready, who rode in beside the Earl of Gloucester into Arundel Castle, when Adelaide of Louvain opened the gates to Matilda.

" Madam," so the tradition runs, said the Earl, " The Prince shall soon be our King." " Madame" ex claimed Geoffrey, speaking in French, uilest dt'ja men roi." It is thought, I cannot say how truly, that the name Deymont is a corruption of this speech. It is, at any rate, certain that it was assumed by Geoffrey's son, a hard-hitting, give and take fellow, who fought in the great battle near Alnwick. No wonder then that so strenuous a supporter of the throne should have gloried in his father's loyal speech. shot! 20 It is in memory, it is believed, of this staunch old Plantagenet that the Deymonts assumed the single word " Ready " for their motto. From what I have said, it will be seen that the Deymonts, even before they bore that name, were no powerless chieftains. All the broad acres, that surround Deymont now, belonged to them then, and part of the old house had been erected before those days.

It was the lineal representative of these Deymonts, who was a favourite companion of the Black Prince, a doughty knight, ready for any daring deed. In acknowledgment of his prowess, he was made, about the time of the peace of Bretigny, Lord Sturdith, and was presented by his prince with a yet more substantial thank-offering — no less a present than Sturdith Castle and its vast domains. Sturdith is only ten miles from Deymont. It is almost equal to the latter in extent ; but, notwithstanding the source from which the gift had come, Lord Sturdith had preferred shot! 21 his old inheritance of Deymont ; and had left Deymont to his eldest, and Sturdith to his second son. Time had not severed the two families which had thus been formed from each other. Till within the last few years neither had wanted a male inheritor of the property.

Judicious intermarriages, constantly recur ring, had united the kindred properties so closely to each other, that Lord Sturdith of Deymont had hardly ever been removed by more than a second cousinship from the owner of Sturdith. But time had effected other alterations. Charles II. had made Lord Sturdith Earl of Deymont. George III. had exalted the earldom into a marquisate. Three times a Lord Deymont had been taken into the coun cils of his sovereign. Three times the coveted garter had been bound on the knee of the chief of the house. The first Marquis of Deymont — he was a SHOT ! friend of Lord Bute's, and owed his ad vancement to his staunch allegiance to that minister — married Rose Deymont, sister to Mr. Deymont, of Sturdith. You will see that the marriage was important when I tell you that her brother — there were only two children — died from a fall while out hunting, soon after his marriage, and only left one child, a daughter.

Lady Deymont, the first marchioness, had only this little girl between her and all the Sturdith estates, so that there was some consolation, especially as the girl was wcikly, notwithstanding that the event which for five centuries, generation after generation of Deymonts had been dreading, had at last taken place, — that a girl was the heiress of Sturdith. But when the girl grew out of her early sicknesses, she showed no symptoms of an intention of dying, as she ought to have done. My Lord Deymont, the second marquis — for by this time Lord Bute's friend was dead — shot! 23 grew uneasy. For, the deuce take it! the girl might marry. Marry, why not? — into some other family. Some peer without an estate, some duke without a dukedom, and sever Deymont and Sturdith for ever. Perhaps it was filial obedience that made his son — who at the time my story opens, nearly thirty years afterwards, was third marquis — perhaps, I say, it was filial obedi ence, or perhaps it was family tradition, that made his son propose to the heiress of Stur dith; but, indeed, it did not require very much obedience ; it could have cost no one much effort to love the light, graceful beauty, richer even in the charms that nature had so unsparingly lavished on her, than in the vast possessions that were so soon to be her own.

Surely there could have been no better union than this. There was one insuperable objection to it, though — one which the old peer had never dreamed of. Miss Deymont was foolish enough, nay, wicked enough, to shot! 24 forget that she was a Deymont, to forget the traditions of the Deymonts, and to refuse her cousin's hand. The old peer never held his head up after that ; but he died — died of a broken heart, when the last news came that his niece had fallen in love with and married a penniless Captain of Dragoons — a casual acquaintance at a ball, a man of no family, no property, no expectations, an Irishman to boot — Captain Lawless. The old peer, as I have said, died. His son, the third marquis, having fretted over his disappointment for a year, and mourned his father another year, married, and married well, a few months after his cousin Mrs. Lawless' death in her confinement.

Poor thing! She just lived to see, to kiss, and to bless her only child. Six and twenty years had passed since that day. Out of four children which Lord Dey mont had had, two had survived. The eldest, bhot! 25 Lord Sturdith, was but little more than of age. He had passed through Eton creditably. At college he had earned well-merited honours, and in the last few months he had been called to more serious duties, by being returned to Parliament as member for the county. The other child, a daughter, Lady Cle mentina Deymont, was but just eighteen. The year before she had made her debut in London, and old superannuated beaux had longed for youth again, and penniless young men had sighed for means — means large enough to allow them to aspire to win Lady Clementina's hand. And it was a prize that was worth winning — that bright, cheerful girl.

What though there were others whose features were more regular, whose hair was more auburn, whose ancle was even better shaped, where was there so bright a smile, such happy, twinkling blue eyes, such, matchless irregularity of VOL. i. c shot! feature ? What if her teeth were not so white as those of others ? you would have never dreamed of thinking that they spoilt her beauty. What though there were others who could play better, sing better — others more accomplished ? It was a part of her happy nature to warble rather than sing, to have a smatteringand not a knowledge of art. It was a nature to love for its own bright, happy self, and not for the added accom plishments of this restless world. The child whose birth had cost Mrs. Law less her life had grown, as the reader has pro bably anticipated, into the Captain Lawless who has already been introduced.

Much in deed depended on his life. You had to carry your finger up three generations of his genealogy before you could find on whom his strictly entailed estate would, on his death, devolve. You had to carry your finger up to that Miss Deymont of Sturdith, who, upwards of sixty years before, had married the first marquis. shot! 27 So that, in the event of Captain Lawless' death, the two properties would have been united under her heir — Lord Deymont. And, anxious as Lord Deymont was to prevent the separation of these two properties, he might almost have been excused if at times he had had a lingering hope that his gallant cousin would be carried off at a pre mature age — carried off perhaps by a gallant death, a death worthy of an Englishman, of a soldier, and of a descendant of the Dey monts.

I have said might, for in reality his lordship had never wished any such thing. He had for years cherished a scheme — cherished it so fondly that, notwithstanding his own early experiences, he had never regarded the difficulties of its accomplishment — of a very different nature. Lawless should marry Lady Clementina — perhaps even take the name of Deymont — but he should marry Lady Clementina. Nothing was more proc shot! babie. Lawless was liked by everyone ; Clementina was universally admired. In town, Lord Deymont took care that no one should be asked to his house more than Lawless. In the country Lawless was his nearest neighbour. Could there be anything more probable, anything more desirable, than a marriage between Captain Lawless and Lady Clementina Deymont ? Yet a little more, before I finish this long introductory chapter.

Lord Deymont had had one brother, a brother who had died long ago. but had left two orphan children and a few thousand pounds, on which these two children had struggled on. They were a boy and a girl — Guy and Marion Deymont. Guy Deymont was a few months younger than Lord Sturdith. He was of middle height, handsome, with a small, piercing blue eye, a commanding forehead, Roman nose, and a firm, masterly mouth. He shot! 29 had left Eton, where he had been his rival, at the same time as Lord Sturdith, but, instead of accompanying the latter to Oxford, he had gone to Cambridge, where he had taken a respectable, though not very distin guished, degree. But he had shown more promise than his place in the class list suggested. He had won more than one prize for declamations and essays, which proved that the young man had already dived deep into the hidden intricacies of English His tory, and had eagerly sought, amidst a dung hill of rubbish, for the rare gems of English literature.

Leaving Cambridge, he had gone to the bar, and though he had but just been called, and was still a briefless barrister, his untiring energy had gained him no little knowledge of jurisprudence, and had paved the way to his attaining the position, no in considerable one for so young a man, which he has acquired at the bar in the twelve years which have elapsed since then. shot! 30 His sister, Marion Deymont, was of the same age as her cousin — Lady Clementina. Like the latter, she had come out the year before. And the penniless girl had made almost a greater sensation than her rich cousin. I have two photographs of Miss Deymont before me, but I wish that I had the photographer's art to reproduce on this page the most engaging beauty that my eye ever gazed on. A tall commanding figure, just in every proportion, and graceful in every motion, ancles exquisitely turned, hands delicately small.

Oh! if you had not even seen her face, you would have loved that figure. Those photographs I have before me — the one I like the best, is that in which she is sitting at a table, having just raised her eyes from a book which she has been read ing. Light auburn hair, drawn enough from off her face to allow her ear to peep from those tresses ; light auburn hair nestles in a rippling line on a front as matchlessly formed shot! 31 as every other portion of her head. Eye brows, and long silken eyelashes of the same hue, shade two light blue eyes. Her lips are just parted, and you can just catch a glimpse of the white teeth they guard so jealously ; and confess that every feature is a model of regularity — a model worthy of a sculptor's study. But be with her a little longer, and see her bright complexion ; watch her winning smile; hear the music of her voice, and own that, though my poor description is at fault, I have a gem for my heroine. shot! 32