Cross Purposes. A novel

Front matter

CROSS PURPOSES. A NOVEL. EY CATHERINE SINCLAIR, AUTHOR OF "MODERN ACCOMPLISHMENTS," "BEATRICE," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : BICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BUBLINGTON STBEET. 1855. LONDON : K. 01 AY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. PBEFACE. " Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, Our own felicity we make or find." Goldsmith. In free and happy England there are four kinds of slavery, which of late, as the Author ventures to suggest, have increased, are in creasing, and ought to be diminished . — first, the slavery of over-done education ; secondly, the slavery of over-worked needlewomen ; thirdly, the slavery of intemperance ; and, fourthly, the slavery, worse than all united, of Romanism. The Author asked herself, one day, whether, before sitting down finally in the arm-chair of retirement, and before her pen has grown

Preface

. grey in the service of fiction, she might not attempt to weave a story in which the evil of all these heavy yokes might be warningly pourtrayed; and, after much anxious consi deration, the following, pages resulted from that experiment. It adds greatly, of course, to the difficulty of relating a narrative, when, instead of merely following every impidse of thought at the moment, a specific object is kept constantly in view ; but no pains have been spared to realize her plan of show ing up the evils to be deprecated ; and it is hoped that the intention, at least, Avill receive a favourable sanction from some frien dlv readers. As no one individual in her own fanidy, or elsewhere, ever sees the Author's works till they are in the press, she feels a very anxious diffidence when first beholding them " in fair print, rather than in ugly manuscript," prepared for trial before a private as well as a public tribunal ; though she has a most grateful sense of the generous partiality with which her now very numerous volumes have been received. The pleasing recreation of

PREFACE.

. V writing these pages must at length be resigned; and though few occupations are so agreeable as to wander through the pleasant fields of fancy, yet that indulgence becomes at last only too enticing. There is a time for all things ; and the Author would not have allowed herself this relaxation again did she not fully believe that the reading of harmless fiction, as an occasional amusement, is actually beneficial to young and old, besides being a cheerful occupation for her own leisure. A matter-of-fact, heavy, sensible education, without anything to enliven the imagination, will " make Jack a very dull boy." He learns in the wise little nursery-books to know for certain that " a sheep, when killed, becomes mutton, and the wool makes flan nel ;" or, in more mature years, that there are three angles to a triangle ; but his mind runs on from youth to age like a railway between embankments, rather than like a flowery path across the meadow. In the school-room now, memory is con sidered all in all ; while modern fanatics in education apparently consider that imagina- VI

PREFACE.

. tion should be extinguished as an enemy to man, rather than cherished as a friend ; yet are not its uses recognised in Holy Scripture itself by the introduction of allegories and parables ? In the glorious apprenticeship of human life, it becomes necessary to send the mind frequently onward, beyond all that ap pears tangible around, to an unseen world ; while the imagination only, when put to its highest use, can paint those scenes which we are told that " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Even the faculty of dreaming in our sleep is an attribute of our nature, in which Divine Providence, without giving parents or tutors a choice, appoints that fancy shall pre dominate over reason : but there are very few teachers in the present day who woidd not think it a better arrangement if their pupils could be made to dream sensible and instruc tive dreams.

One night they woidd devote to geographical dreaming, another for gram matical, and a third for the use of the globes. But, after all, the old way succeeded very well in bringing forth poets, philosophers, soldiers, and Christians, fit for every duty of

PREFACE.

. VII life, as well as ready for another and a better life; therefore still may memory and imagi nation be long allowed to grow up, like the Siamese twins, united and inseparable ! " Oh, should this book, my leisure's best resource, When through the world it steals its secret course, Bevive but once a generous wish supprest, Chase but a sigh, or charm a care to rest, In one good deed a fleeting hour employ, Or flush one faded cheek with honest joy, Blest were my lines, though limited their sphere, Though short their date as he who traced them here." Bogeks. CEOSS PUBPOSES.

Chapter I

" These struggling tides of life that seem, In wayward, aimless course to tend, Are eddies of the mighty stream That rolls to its appointed end." — Bkyant. A man of yesterday, a rich, ostentatious upstart, anxious to aggrandize his family by obtaining for himself a distinguished place in aristocratic society, cannot commit a more fatal blunder in his tactics than to purchase the ancient, time-honoured resi dence of some decayed old family, long respected in a very select and exclusive neighbourhood. All Middlesex was in a storm of indignation and astonishment when it first became announced throughout that very exclusive county, that the ancient seat of the Earls of Brentford had been purchased by an East -end millionaire from VOL. I. B Russell-square, and that Alderman Brownlow, the Crœsus of Cheapside, had actually presumed, with his vulgar, every-day money, to purchase Torchester Abbey !

" It is too shocking ! too ridiculous ! too dread ful!" exclaimed old General Plantagenet, thrust ing his thumbs into the arm-holes of his waistcoat, and walking hurriedly up and clown his library at Athelstane Tower. " What ! an alderman and an alderman-ess to be my nearest neighbours ! Shoppy sort of people like these to be the successors of a time-out-of-mind family like the Brentfords ! To see Torchester Abbey, with its broad terraces, its pointed arches, and its grand old windows, degraded under my very nose into a City villa, by a City Midas, turning all he touches into gold ! " " It is most aggravating, no doubt," replied Mr. Terence O'Grady, a demure, quiet-looking young man, who held a sort of undefined position in the house. No one could ever find out how he had stormed the fortress of Athelstane Tower, and effected a lodgement at the dinner-table; but lie had no very obvious business there, and evidently no intention ever to go away, so long as he could, by subservient flattery, keep his place.

" To you, General, whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, and whose honoured name appears in the roll of Battle Abbey, I can con ceive what it must be for one of the noble old regime, and of our ancient Roman Catholic faith, to see that old place disfigured by the good humoured rotundity of a fat, bon-vivant alderman, bursting with turtle and champagne I" " Look there, O'Grady," said the General, who was pacing up and down his room in a storm of indignation ; " look at the noble deer-park, the forests, the farms, the lakes, the islands, and the swarthy old trees, all visible from my window, and all vulgarized into mere gilt-gingerbread by my consciousness of who has hung out his figure head there I" " Yes, General ; and the Abbey itself degraded ! a perfect Vatican inside and out for taste and splendour !

I am told that the nowceau-riche pro prietor has actually bought all the plate, fixtures, and family portraits. The old cavaliers will start out of their frames, or spring out of their tombs, at such an indignity, and the old coronets will turn themselves upside down !" b2 Though the Earl of Brentford had long been considered throughout the fashionable world as in a state of graceful and refined bankruptcy, yet his friends were so accustomed to hear him jocularly sighing or laughing over his pauper state, and expressing himself in a style of gentlemanlike dissatisfaction with the times generally, that they could not bring themselves to apprehend any such catastrophe as a real matter-of-fact break-up. Even after Torchester Abbey had been advertised for many months to be sold, or let, or, in short, got rid of on any terms, it seemed scarcely credible that Alderman Brownlow had been presumptuous enough to buy it.

If the worthy old citizen had stolen the property, General Planta genet and his aristocratic cotemporaries could scarcely have been in a state of more virtuous indignation, or treated him more like a swindler. Even Lord Brentford — " a penniless peer wi' a lang pedigree" — when he pocketed the £90,000 which Torchester Abbey cost, though himself and his creditors must have been ruined without the money, expressed a vehement wish, enforced by an oath needless to record, that he could have burned down the old Abbey, and Caleb Balderstoned his ancient seat, before its venerable walls had such a Jack-in-the-box upstart for their master. At length the presumptuous Alderman and his family came to take possession of their noble residence, totally unconscious of the disgust their presence caused; and General Plantagenet actually with his own eyes saw them arrive in a large, most provokingly magnificent barouche, drawn by four grey horses, followed by a char a-banc filled with servants, and a chariot con taining a tutor in charge of three riotous youths from Oxford, all in an uproar of delight at beholding their new home, dark, sombre, and magnificent as it appeared.

Alderman Brownlow, accustomed to shovel gold in bushels across his counter, to number his crisp bank-notes in massy bundles, and to reckon his gigantic capital by tens of thousands, began immediately to live in a style of princely magnifi cence, which excited more ill-will than ever in all the half-bankrupt General Plantagenets of that neighbourhood. It became a favourite amusement throughout Middlesex to circulate the most absurd, incredible stories of the lavish waste at Torchester Abbey, and to lament loudly that it should be gilded by the touch of a " vulgar, low-born mil lionaire." O'Grady, being very clever as well as totally unscrupulous about truth, invented a fresh relay every morning of anecdotes respecting the fabulous magnificence in the establishment of their unconscious butt, " old Brownlow."

The cutlets served up in bank-notes would scarcely have been more than the laughter-loving neigh bours were ready to swallow. That claret was drunk at the second table— that Mrs. Brownlow came to breakfast in white satin shoes — that she wore her second-best set of diamonds at family dinners — and that her man-cook kept his brougham — were facts authenticated on the testimony of O'Grady, who deposed, almost upon oath, that he had seen the chef de cuisine bowling along in his own carriage, equipped in his white night-cap. Absurd speeches were invented with ceaseless ingenuity by O'Grady, which were supposed to have been spoken by poor unlucky Mrs. Brown low, the most single-hearted old dowager who ever wore a cap ; and that unfortunate culprit, the Alderman, was reported to have said that he never drank any champagne but of his own importing — that he would ride nothing but " a two hundred-guinea horse" — and that he had dismissed seven of his stable-boys in one day for keeping him ten minutes waiting.

Alderman Brownlow, one of those good-humoured men on excellent terms with himself and everybody else, used often laughingly to contrast his insignificance now, after he had been some time settled at Torchester, in the country, com pared with his importance in the City, saying, " I am cut in Middlesex, and eaten up in London." " I hate lonely grandeur !" exclaimed Richard Brownlow, his father's favourite, though only the second son. " We seem to have reached the top of a pyramid, where nothing but ice and clouds surround us ! This entrance -hall is a great, cold, marble vault, the walls as chilly and grand as the glaciers ! Give me a little human nature and human society !" " Hold your tongue, Dick," exclaimed Mrs. Brownlow, seeing her husband turn away with a mortified look. " We have risen above the society that suited us formerly, and are not yet quite amalgamated with the gentry of this neighbourhood.

I suppose some of them will call on us soon. I wonder whether I ought to leave my cards all round for them. General Plantagenet has only that pretty little heiress daughter, and we really ought to do something kind for the poor motherless girl. Her papa always glides hurriedly away when we approach ! I wonder to see an old military officer so painfully shy ! Poor man ! he looks as if he would put his head in his pocket whenever we pass ! I am sure, though our house and equipage are so superior to his, I have no wish to look down upon him, or give myself airs, even though I am told he has only a twelve-guinea cook.'' " Yes, and the General's old grey-haired butler, though a perfect model of plate-cleaning dignity, has only a boy in buttons under him,'' said Daniel Brownlow, the Alderman's third son, who always flattered all his mother's foibles, and found his account in doinir so.

" The General has a lono pedigree, and a very short purse. He actually dines off blue china, and is frightfully envious of your magnificent plzffie." " I thought," said Mrs. Brownlow delightedly, " I understood that he kept an excellent table." " Yes," answered Daniel drily, " but he puts very little on it ! " " Poor man ! he looks so respectable ! so per fectly respectable !" said Mrs. Brownlow, in a tone of motherly compassion that would have driven the proud old General frantic. "Daniel, we really must give him a dinner some day." The hospitable hostess smilingly sat down, with a floating vision before her mind's eye of a grand, heavy, hot dinner-party — a regular champagne and turtle affair — with pates and vol au vents, fricassees and fricandeaux, plovers' eggs, removes, andrisolles; but in reply to a card she ventured to leave for little Miss Plantagenet in her school room, with a politelyworded invitation for the General to dinner, she only received a retort not very courteous, but particularly pompous, which Alderman Brownlow never saw or heard of, stating that General Plantagenet was previously engaged at home.

" He was a cold, good, honourable man, Proud of his birth, and proud of everything." " Pride and shyness are always united !" observed Daniel soothingly, to compose the ruffled feathers of good old Mrs. Brownlow's dignity, b3 whom he petted, shawled, and footstooled most assiduously. " The General knows that he could not, if he dined with you, give as good as he gets ; it would be returning copper for gold ; therefore he would rather starve on a smoked chop and a singed pudding, than be obliged to any one for turtle and champagne." Torchester Abbey was indeed a noble edifice, like no other that had ever adorned the neighbourhood. It crowned a rising ground, as if standing on the summit of an inverted basin, and the grounds, descending precipitously on every side, had been cut into magnificent terraces of velvet grass, falling in successive slopes to the margin of a broad stream, which swept along the valley and reflected as in a resplendent mirror the majestic ecclesiastical-looking structure which hung in picturesque magnificence over the precipice.

The architecture of Torchester Abbey was in a very miscellaneous school, the main body being of almost Saxon antiquity, with prominent but tresses and pointed church-like windows, each surmounted by the arms and coronet of Brentford. Additions had been built in both ancient and modern times, all characteristic of their date, — a chapel by Earl Godfrey, on returning from the Crusades, and a tennis-court by Earl Cuthbert, after being Ambassador in France. The worthy Alderman commemorated his own taste by a hideous modern appendage, greatly resembling an extensive brewery, and Mrs. Brownlow out flanked it by an enormous conservatory, like a Crystal Palace. Notwithstanding all this eccentric blending of styles and dates, which would have driven a scientific architect delirious, Torchester Abbey was indisputably a very impressive residence, cal culated to be the scene of many romantic legends, many ballads of love, or many ghost stories, some of which were the delight and terror of the three merry young Brownlows, who fully persuaded their simple-minded mother that the rattling of chains might be heard along the haunted passages at midnight, and that mysterious blue lights were frequently visible in the windows of the chapel.

The romance of real life began very early in Alderman Brownlow's house ; for there is in some families a particular genius for matrimony, which appeared so early among the three young Brown lows, that Richard laughingly said, the mania had spread so suddenly, he thought some mad bride groom must have bitten them all. Frank, the eldest, without the consent of any Brownlow but himself, saw, admired, and married a poor curate's orphan daughter, the lovely Evelyn Montagu. She was thoroughly amiable, well principled, and accomplished ; but the enthusiastic young lover only knew that she was beautiful, and the indignant old Alderman that she added nothing to the aristocracy of his connexions — not a single coronet could she claim cousinhood to — and she was penniless. To every argument of his son in Evelyn's favour, the Alderman, rich, arbitrary, and obstinate, might have answered, like Molicre's miser, " Sans dot."

Still Frank resolved to believe that his father, so rich, and so very ostentatious, would relent, for the young heir was madly in love, and very mad he thought himself afterwards, when, at the early age of twenty-three, he had on his hands already a rather faded wife and two little girls. Never did any better-half make a more unwel come gift to her husband than these very lovely twins, for they were dreadfully in the way when he had to draw on the small allowance his angry father made him; and very small it was, as the Alderman grudged every shilling not spent in display, and in astonishing his Middlesex neighbours. " Ah !" said Richard condolingly, " Our gover nor likes a great deal of show to reward what he spends; but for private occasions like yours, Frank, he is not fond of going to the sign of the ■ Hand and Pocket ! ' " " True," replied Frank discontentedly.

" The exnen.se of children is like a wedge. At first these girls of mine needed nothing more than a rattle and a long frock, but scon follows educa tion at hundreds a-year, and afterwards what people call, in a general way, ' advantages ! ' ' "And trousseaux at last," added Bichard laughingly, observing the frown of calculating antici pation with which Frank spoke of the two loveliest girls that ever adorned a nursery, and feeling privately very indignant on behalf of his little favourites. " Theresa and Fanny did very wrong not to be boys, for our honoured father certainly has that feeling so common to men of property, that he perfectly identifies himself with his own succes sors, as if his very soul were to be transmigrated i into the body of any descendant who represents him here. Had your dear good Evelyn produced an heir, as she ought, and is much to blame for not having done, then she would have risen to the very summit of his good graces.

In Polynesia it is such a disgrace to have daughters, that they are buried alive in families of distinction. Is there no well in this neighbourhood where you could drown yours like kittens ? " Two more beautiful children never were seen than Theresa and Fanny Brownlow. At the age of three they looked like cherubs cut out of a painting by some eminent master. Theresa, "a quick brunette, well-moulded, falcon-eyed," was already a laughing, lively, pert little atom, " the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the hall," full of merry caprices, whose very faults were enchanting ; and Fanny, fair as a lily, being the perfection of all that is amiable, was very apt to be overlooked entirely by those who jested, coquetted, and quarrelled with her much naughtier sister, whom no one could manage, but whom every one idolized.

Already artists had asked Frank's permission to paint portraits of those fascinating children, as being so charming a contrast; but while Fanny sat as immovable as a lay figure, delighted to do her small duties well, Theresa fidgetted herself into a thousand pretty contortions, and yet, after all, her portrait was much the most effective. Fanny's dolls lasted for ever, while not a crease or a scar could be seen to disfigure their aspect in a month; but in three days, if Theresa's doll had sat for its likeness, it would have been minus an eye or two, besides arms, nose, and hair. Everybody scolded and loved Theresa, for with her genius for mischief and nonsense, she was the most diverting human plaything on earth, especially under Uncle Bichard's tuition. She rent the air with her cries if anything were refused to her, while Fanny's large blue eyes would fill with silent tears of sympathy and astonishment at this alarming outbreak of her sister's incomprehensible naughtiness, but still she was the favourite.

There was at the same time a courageous tender ness occasionally exhibited and not to have been expected in the character of little Fanny, who had even been known to fly like a small tiger at any one she thought guilty of ill-treating Theresa, whom she looked up to in general as a very superior being, entitled to have every whim in dulged, and every wish anticipated. Even in children character is power, and though Theresa thus carried the world before her at first with the vehemence of a little whirlwind, Fanny, in the long run, sometimes acquired a certain degree of supremacy above that of her sister by a sort of conscientious firmness. Fanny never said any thing odd enough to stare at, silly enough to laugh at, or clever enough to be worth retailing, and she never could be prevailed on to repeat, as Theresa did every day for the bribe of a sugar plum, with an arch elfish laugh, full of glee, what was popularly called " Uncle Dick's naughty speech :" " I would rather be pretty than good — I would rather be merry than wise — I would much rather be rich than happy !

" When Richard Brownlow heard that his younger brother Daniel was about to marry, he exclaimed in a tone of alarm, that the epidemic seemed to spare neither age nor sex, so he feared his turn would come at last, especially as he had already met with nine inconsolable disappointments. The Alderman's third son, Daniel, had betrayed in his earliest boyhood a degree of low cunning and heartless duplicity, which marked him out to his generous-hearted brother Richard for a dangerous enemy, and still more dangerous friend. The blame of any harm done by Daniel, never some how rested on himself, but on any one unfortunate enough to trust him, and especially on his high-spirited harum-scarum companion, Dick, who Avas very slow to believe in any treachery, and who suffered so often in his brother's place, that whenever he found himself bearing an undeserved penalty, he called it, in a tone of noble contempt, " a Daniel-ism."

Bichard thoroughly despised, when he at last saw through all the mean, low, petty-fogging ways of his very unbrotherly brother Daniel, — he despised even the punishments that from boyhood he had habitually suffered by Daniel's contrivance in Daniel's place, without having deserved them. He had a noble-minded indifference about trifles, and he often said, in a tone of heroic spirit, " I have no ambition to be great, but I have an ambition to do great actions, as well as to avoid all mean ones." Daniel having chosen the profession of an attorney, in which there is opportunity for the most high-minded honour, or for the lowest cunning, at once put his conscience in his pocket, resolved to put everything else in his pocket that he could conveniently lay his hands on. From his very earliest years the talent for intrigue, and the daring audacity of his really clever manœuvres, perplexed and confounded all who became the subject of his experiments in the difficult art of over -reaching a client, and time seemed greatly to improve his dexterity.

Bichard laughingly declared that Daniel had obtained the most admirable scope for his incor rigible cunning, when he married, in his twentieth year Miss Drummond Armitage, the heiress pre sumptive to four rich old-bachelor uncles. All these venerable gentlemen had their oddities and particularities, which must be studied and care fully propitiated, Avhile each required a perfectly different mode of treatment. The elder uncle had become a pe'rvert to Romanism; another was a Methodist ; No. 3 was a Plymouth Brother ; and No. 4, a Latter-day Saint ; yet, by his marvellous power of amalgamation, Daniel seemed cordially to agree with all. Had there been a fifth uncle, rich and old, professing Quakerism, Daniel would have called upon him in a broad-brimmed hat. Richard often said it was a sight to see his brother's sup plicating bow when approaching any one it was his interest to please, and the elaborate friendliness of his manner ; " but he is as hollow as the Thames Tunnel," added Richard, in a tone of melancholy contempt.

" How happy Daniel would be, if he might sit night and day cajoling the whole miserhood of London, and receiving a stream of pounds shillings and pence continually, without ever spending one fraction, or benefitting one single human being ! " Never certainly were two brothers more utterly different than Dick and Dan Brownlow, and they mutually looked down on each other with huge contempt. Bichard, gay, dashing, high-spirited, testifying the usual passion of such boys for the sea, had very soon served his time in many wild and stormy latitudes as a midshipman, and was now waiting at home for his appointment as a lieutenant. He delighted in hardships, gloried in danger, excelled in every manly exercise, and had a heart full of chivalrous enterprise. Never was a father more proud of a son than the worthy Alder man of Bichard Brownlow, R. N. ; not merely because he was pre-eminently handsome, though his mother secretly believed there was not his equal upon earth ; not because he was illustrious in the Naval College, for both his brothers excelled him in learning ; and not because he was particularly studious or obedient, for he was conspicuously the reverse ; yet the proud and admiring parents flattered themselves they saw in their second son a splendid variety in human nature, aud a rather brilliant specimen of the human species ; so that, truth to say, Alderman Brownlow would rather have lost both his other sons than " that un governable young rascal, Dick !

" Alderman Brownlow had long ago tired of being reminded that his eldest son took first-class honours at Oxford, for meanwhile Frank's brains had been so addled with continually poring over the classics, that he scarcely knew his own name or had a single thought of his own originating. Bichard often declared that a new idea would give Frank a headache, as his mind was mere clock-work. The Alderman wearied to death of Frank's level tameness in character and conversation ; for he so often delivered trite and obvious truths with the pomp and solemnity of important discoveries. He invited Frank as little as possible after his unacceptable marriage to Torchester Abbey, saying, — " I shall leave you my estate, Frank, but I cannot be troubled with your society." The worthy Alderman utterly abhorred also the constant good-boy-ism of his youngest son, Daniel, always a model young man, and a perfect Joseph Surface for making " proper-behaved " speeches, while it seemed as if the warm, living, breathing affections of Richard were chained to a mere dead carcase when he bestowed them on either of his brothers.

In boyhood Daniel, sly, sleek and cunning, always expressed the utmost consternation at, and disapproval of Bichard's riotous and rebellious doings, which it would have taken two or three tutors to curb ; but in manhood, the envy and ill will of Daniel testified itself in a much deeper and more cunning manner, by adopting the most elaborate friendliness of tone, and by pretending magnanimously to admire the very faults he pointed out to others, with a pretence of apolo getic partiality. An insinuation against any one is worse than any direct charge. The one speaks plainly and may be answered openly. It is like a foe who meets us in the light of day ; but in sinuation resembles the assassin who stabs in the dark, while the destroyer is shrouded from detection. No words can describe the daily and hourly irritation to a noble and impulsive nature, of living constantly under the eye of one who mis conceives and misrepresents the warm-hearted imprudences of a generous but inconsiderate dis position.

Daniel, while pretending to love " his very dear brother Bichard," and affecting to praise him, made every word that expressed his artificial attachment a blow, if possible, to the estimation in which his brother was held by many friends of the family, till at length Richard angrily exclaimed — " Not an intimacy I can form, Daniel, but ' the trail of the serpent ' is over them all. You are a perfect upas-tree to me ! People often wonder that I do not more warmly return the love of a brother who is continually praising me ; but such praise, Daniel ! If you would only promise not to speak of me at all : if you would but forget me, Daniel : leave something for my enemies to say against me : even my own family are almost deceived by your pretended kindness for me ; so that life goes on, and your sly, underhand, malicious panegyrics are alienating from me every friend I possess, as well as making home almost intolerable."