Called to Account. A novel

Front matter

VOL. I. % lofol. BY MISS ANNIE THOMAS, AUTHOR OF "DENIS DONNE," " THEO LEIGH," "WALTER GORING," "PLATED OCT,' etc. etc. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1867. [The right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.'] LOSDOIs : BAVILL, EDWARDS AMD CO., P BISTERS, CHASTlOS SIBEET, COVBST GABDES", CONTENTS TO THE FIRST VOLUME. CKAPTIE PAGE I. KHTME Versus REASON 1 II. THE POLLOCKS' ESTABLISHMENT .... IS in. Godfrey's cousin 32 IV. THE HAMILTONS 49 V. UNDERMINING 64 VI. MISS GENESTE 72 VII. A PEACE OFFERING 86 VIIL A MISTAKE ! 99 IX. " MISERABLE SINNERS " 109 X. THE GOLDEN PAST 133 XI. BUBBLES CONTENTS. VI CHAPTEH PAGE XII. LEO'S LOGIC 172 XIII. "A SISTER'S QUIET LOVE GIVES MY HEART TO THEE" 188 XIV. RENDERED UP ! 208 XV. " A MADNESS OF FAREWELLS " 225 XVI. THE ANGEL LN THE HOUSE 230 XVII. MRS. BURGOYNE LOQUITUR 249 XVIII. A GLIMPSE OF THE GREVILLES AGAIN . . .271

Chapter I. Rhyme

versus REASON. " OK ! woman's heart was made For minstrel hands alone : By other fingers played, It loses half its tone. " Then drink to her who long Hath waked the poet's sigh — The girl who gave to song What gold can never buy." These words were sung out thrillingly by a hand some, fair-haired, violet-eyed boy of seventeen, as he lounged on the velvet turf of a well-kept lawn at a lady's feet. It was a luxurious scene, — that broad grassy space, studded with cedars and other trees, and artisticaUy fantastic seats; VOL. I. the spacious mansion close upon its border ; the lake glimmering through the foliage in mid distance ; the gorgeous beds of bloom at the sides, sheltered by banks of evergreens : — the perfect order and propriety of all these things made it luxurious, and the atmosphere through which they were seen rendered it dreamily sweet.

A hazy, languid atmosphere, in which all things seemed to be swooning away in soft de light. There was a blue bloom about the masses of foliage, and a rich warmth hanging over the flowers, and a tender light bathing all things on which the boy and the lady looked on that gor geous July night ! She was sucb a beauty ! We have had our interest claimed for so many charming creatures in print lately, who are " rather fascinating than pretty." But this one was " a daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair." There was little doubt about the source of the sped this lady flung over the majority who looked upon her. It was found in her loveliness, without much time being invested in the search. Found in the grand, perfect proportions of a form which was not wanting by the side of the Venus of Mdo — found in the great, dark-lashed, violet eyes, and in the thick sdken masses of waving chestnut hair, and in the opaque creaminess which overspread her delicately defined features, and in the exquisitely moulded hands and feet.

She was the sister of the boy lounging at her feet, and he was a glorious masculine edition of her. " Oh ! woman's heart was made For minstrel hands alone : By other fingers played, It loses half its tone." He sang this verse over a second time; sang it with passion and pathos, and a kind of glory flamed out, irradiating his face as he did so. Then his head fell back dreamdy upon his folded arms, he stretched himself out still more fully with a sort of drowsy satisfaction, and, looking up into the fair face bending above bim, he said — " Do you think I have it in me to get out all the 'tone/ Queenie?" 1—2 ■ ".All what tone, dear?" She was so like him and so far off from him, that she asked the question in the most perfect faith. He bit his thumb sulkdy, and raised the black velvet Glen garry he wore sentimentally, in order that the evening breeze might trifle becomingly with his hair before he replied — " All the tone that is in the only instruments worth playing upon — women's hearts."

" You naughty boy ! — to talk in that way at your age. Really, Percy " She paused, be cause the exceeding beauty of her brother, and the snare it and his impassioned nature might prove to him, struck her forcibly for the first time. " At ' my age ?' Come, Queenie, your idol, Poe, went a good way up Parnassus, and a good deal astray sociady, when he was very little older than I am; and so did Chatterton, and so did SheUey, and so did — no, Keats didn't go astray, but he ' wasted in despair' because a woman was fair, and ' not for him.' " The girl he addressed as Queenie continued looking down upon him, as he made his animated speech, with a strange mixture of queenly quiet and sisterly admiration in her gaze. " You are such a dear boy !" she said presently ; " I wish you wouldn't cultivate these nonsensical notions ; and Edgar Allan Poe isn't my idol at all — only I do like the way he's bound."

" Queenie ! if you were not my sister, some of my 'nonsensical notions' should concentrate themselves on you in a way that you would be proud to mention. It's disgusting," he con tinued, in a half pettish, half laughing tone, " that the greatest beauty I know should be wasted on my own sister." " I don't think it matters much," she answered, with a genuine air of putting it to him dispassionately. " It's lucky for me that I am good-looking " " Lucky ! " he interrupted, with a small groan. " Yes, lucky, Percy," she urged vehemently, " very lucky indeed for us all — if you will only be a great darling, and do as we all ask you." She clasped her pretty hands together as she spoke, and bent her pretty head a Httle nearer to him, and he rose to his feet and looked down at her lovely face affectionately.

" Queenie ! I'll do anything for you — you're so jolly pretty; but do care a little to see me something more than a mere merchant — do, there's a darling !" His pleading, loving manner — the sweet soft stress he laid upon the tender epithet — struck her as being "Hke Percy" — nothing more. They were set in such different keys, this beauti ful pair, and yet they loved each other so heartily. " A mere merchant ? — no ; but a merchant like Mr. Podock ! Do be sensible ; don't drop the bone of being taken as a clerk in Godfrey's house at once at a good salary, and being a partner soon, for the shadow of making yourself famous by your pen." " Don't fling yourself rashly into fables, and make quotations that you're not quite up in, there's a darling !" he exclaimed, laughingly ; " you're so much jollier when you're only beautiful and don't try to be wise ; PoUock and the dear mother have put you up to saying all this to me ; now have they not ?"

" WeU, Percy ?" " WeU, I wont have it from you," he inter rupted, with a loving imperiousness in his eyes and voice that she did not feel at all inclined to resent ; " I wont have it from you. Let me have the thought of you always as perfectly beautiful and perfectly pleasant ; let Pollock say it aU to me — with his lantern jaws." " Oh, Percy !" she protested, gently, for she was going to marry Mr. Pollock. "There, now, I don't mean anything against him, Prances — he is a good feUow ; but I don't care to spend my life in making bottles in the City." A Hght tinge of scarlet came over her face as she listened. " We have always been gentlemen," she said, gently, a spark of family pride flickering up and loosening her never very rigid phraseology; " and it has done so Httle for us — at least for our comfort — I'm sure we must both often have wished that our father had made bottles in the City."

"What a brute I am to say these things to you, my darling ! Queenie, I'd do anything you ask me — if I can. After all, perhaps, I should never deserve the bays, and should always dread the duns, if I did foUow my bent ; and the making of bottles leads to very poetical and artistic results, by the way : witness PoUock winning you for his wife, and living at such a glorious place as this." "That's right." She bent forward and put her hand kindly on his arm. " Don't you think it's damp ? Shall we go in ?" " Must you ?" " Yes, I promised to sing to Mr. PoUock." Percy offered his arm to his sister at once, thinking " What a good girl she is ! I wouldn't marry a female Pollock and sing to her for the good of my family." Then they went across the garden and into the house together. It was not an unpleasant change even from that lovely garden.

The drawing-room was long, and not too brilliantly lighted, and carpeted with green and curtained with white. The waUs were very perfect : they were painted in arabesques of duU gold and grey, and the latter colour had simply the effect of being the shade cast by the former in a very rare and wonderful manner. Pictures hung marvellously weU on these waUs ; and as Mr. PoUock, the master of the mansion, had a safe taste in aU works of art, the walls were very pleasant to look upon. This master of the mansion was seated in his favourite place, employed in a favourite pursuit, when the brother and sister entered the room. He was on a low chair, at a long sofa-table at the far-off end of the room, busily occupied in mounting some architectural photographic views of Athenian ruins. By the open window which commanded a view of that lawn where Percy and Frances had been sitting, two elderly ladies were stationed, with cups of tea in their hands, and much civility for each other on their lips.

They were the respective mothers of the bride and bridegroom elect, Mrs. PoUock and Mrs. Burgoyne. Wherever she was, Mrs. Burgoyne had the first place ; — no exception shall be made to that rule in these pages. In her youth she had been as grand a beauty as her daughter was now, but colder and harder than Miss Burgoyne; and now, though the beauty was gone, she was a grand, stately old gentlewoman stiU. She was dressed severely in sombre black silk — lustreless sdk, on the folds of which no light ever came ; but the silk and severity became imperial robes on her, she wore them with such perfectly easy dignity. For many years she had Hved with her late husband, General Burgoyne, in India, ruling the regiments he commanded royaUy, and making any one very much ashamed of himself who ever harboured the most secret thought of disputing her wUl.

It was a fixed plan of hers, against which there was no more appeal to be made than against the evolutions of the sun and the moon, that she would " Reign, and reign alone, And always give the law And have each subject to her will, And all to stand in awe." But as years rolled on she proved the truth of the saying, that every tyrant is a slave. Her husband died, and Mrs. Burgoyne devoted aU her energies to spoding and sacrificing to her son. From his babyhood she adored him for the bright beauty that was so perfect a reflection of her own ; and as he grew older she bent the knee before his winning wilfulness . Percy was selfish, she would admit that sometimes. But then he was selfish in such a superb way, and he had such a voice and eyes — both were so fraught with feeHng from the soul within.

As his beauty and imagination, and selfishness, and fascinations developed, she adored him stiU more. The boy could do no wrong. ApoUo that he was, she could but give her consent when he declared in favour of striking the unremune rative lyre in preference to entering the mer cantde house of the man whom she made it her daughter's duty to marry— for Miss Burgoyne was very little to her mamma, save a means of bettering Percy's position in life. The other lady contrasted strikingly with this one who has just been described. Mrs. PoUock was a stout, joyous old lady, who Hked bright colours in costume, and was always saying things she need not have said, deprecating wrath that did not exist, giving kindly advice that was not asked, and doing other unnecessary things. She liked the prospect of her son's marriage with Miss Burgoyne, not that it pro mised particularly weU for her happiness or his, or for anybody else's, but because it was to be.

She liked Mrs. Burgoyne and Percy principally because they were there to be liked ; in fact she possessed the enviable faculty of falling in with every proposed and existing arrangement, and finding them better than any other could have been. Mr. Pollock, her son, was a conscientious, plain, taU, weU-informed man. On a first in troduction there is Httle more to be said about him. At present he was very much attached to the beautiful girl who had promised to marry him, very weU inclined towards her imperious, stately mother and handsome debonnaire brother, and very anxious to get his marriage and wedding tour over, that he might return to business again. He looked up, smiling kindly at her as Miss Burgoyne crossed the room towards him. Other men rose at her approach, she remembered, and her mother remembered it for her.

The recollection did not make her hesitate in her move ment, or waver in the intention she had formed. She saded up to her occupied betrothed, put her hand on his shoulder, and whispered — " Percy has promised me to do what you want — isn't he good ?" " I'm glad he's so sensible," Mr. Pollock rephed, smiHng more resolutely than before ; "he shaU find he has not sacrificed his TeU me, do you like chimera for a trifle these?" enough," she repHed, come in to sing to " They are pretty carelessly. " I have you." He rose at once, and moved away towards the piano, saying — " Thank you. Do sing me the ' Skipper and his Boy.' I cannot hear it often enough." As she was foUowing to obey his request, Percy intercepted her, seized her hands, and whispered — " That presently ; but sing me the ' Message,' and ' Fly not yet,' first ; after that you may sing his humdrum baUad, but give me mine first."

So the " Message" was the one she began with, after the faintest little apology to Mr. PoUock for not obHging bim. Then, when she had finished it, Percy remembered several more that he must hear that night; and aU the strains he caUed for were either very passion stirring, or very soul-subduing. When his sister had sang aU that he asked her to sing, she suggested that it was " too late for the ' Skipper and his Boy ;' " and Mr. PoUock agreed with her. It was a very small triumph; but Percy went to bed that night congratulating himself on having " bowled the bottle-maker out about the ballad, at any rate." It was so hard for the boy to see his vague aspirations melting away under the heat of Mr. Pollock's regard for the worldly welfare of the famdy, that he grew both unjust and ungrateful. He loathed the prospect of the Hfe that was before him, if he kept the promise that he had given his sister.

There would be no beauty to him in an existence that would be passed in superintending the making and exporting, on a colossal scale, of aU sorts of glass wares. He longed fiercely for beauty, and change, and stirring inteUectual companionship. He sighed from his soul to meet with some one whose magic glance might fan the poetic spark into a flame. He panted to inspire and be inspired, in fact, as only bards can. If only " Queenie" would give him aU the sympathy a nature such as hers could give, since such loveHness clothed it, he would strive and study till the rhythm of his thoughts arranged themselves in fit form for publication. But Queenie always said everything was "very pretty" when he asked her about it, and never flushed a bit of the inner meaning that he was always finding out. Only his mother gave him sympathy ; but somehow her sympathy being more verbal than anything else, failed to string him up so finely as he desired.

" And woman's heart was made For minstrel hands alone"— and he who could love woman so weU was to be a bottle-maker in the City ! His teeming brain, his fervid imagination, the passionate Hving love he felt for aU that was lofty and beautiful, should not be brought to such a market. He would make his mother see things in a proper light, and go abroad with him, where their income would answer very weU untd his muse could command half-a-crown a line ; and residence in England might be resumed under glowing circumstances. Satire would be a good vein to open at first, he thought; so he composed a verse at once, but both the metre and meaning bore such an un fortunately strong resemblance to " Don Juan," that he felt self-convicted of plagiarism, and gave up the attempt for that night. In the morning things looked so much colder and paler, that he once more consented to re nounce his dreams of ambition, and go into the City. But he recanted again, and went to coUege instead, where he had been five years, when the story of his Hfe wdl be taken up again. VOL. I.

Chapter II. The Pollocks' Establishment

The five years which had intervened between his first going to codege and our meeting with him again had done a great deal for Mr. Burgoyne. He was a man of three-and-twenty now ; and he had gone through a good deal for love and beauty. He had smarted several times, and sung under the smarts in the sweetest and most successfid way. In the intervals of pain he had flown about society, and made him self known in the flesh to those who already knew him on toned paper in green binding. As he lived gorgeously, and rather preferred himself to the laureate, many people endorsed that preference ; and Percy Burgoyne got known. Frances had married Mr. Pollock — as was foreshadowed when the story opened. She married him, and was very happy, not so much with him, perhaps, as with her children, and in her house.

She was sweet, and serene, and stout, and surprisingly lovely stiU — so lovely, that Percy got disgusted with most of his loves in the course of a fortnight, because as com pared with his sister they were " out of drawing." Their house out at Sydenham was quite an ideal place ; and when you could avoid seeing the Crystal Palace, there was nothing left to be desired. Percy, though he despised the business which had made and sustained it, did not despise that home by any means ; on the con trary, he stayed there a good deal, because his sister was delighted to have him, and because his mother's house was smaUer, less weU appointed, and consequently rather cramping to his ideas. For the young poet, who had dreams about marking an epoch in the Victorian era of 2—2 literature, was a Sybarite in theory ; for his rhymes to run well, he believed it to be needful that aU around him should be silky, splendid, superb.

His old boyish dream of the beauty that was to wake his poetic fancies into fuUest Hfe had not been realized yet ; but his harp was very warm, quite ready to strike fire when ever the one magic touch that was wanting was applied to his genius. The fervour and evanescence of his boyish loves had become a bye -word, if not a scorn, among his friends. His heart was every woman's toy for a time — every woman's, that is, who was young, and pretty, and sympathetic enough to make him think of her at aU. He had a habit of going down so lowly and so gracefully, that the luckless objects of his adoration could but learn to like and love him just — as he was getting up again. One of the numerous ideals he had formed always appeared to lure him off the reality, whenever the reality deemed that adoration must speedily culminate in an offer.

Not that he was false; he was only too fanciful. He made no plans, he elaborated no deeply-laid designs about the winning of hearts, which, when won, he did not care to wear ; but in pursuance of that system of getting the truest tone out of them, he did create havoc in the hearts of many long before his own ceased to be anything but sound and healthy. He had a genuine artistic love for whatever was beautiful, and he made the mistake of thinking a fair and perfect form generally concealed a fair and perfect soul. Acting on this belief was his principal error. He developed a degree of interest that would have been justifiable and legitimate enough had his belief been well founded; but in the majority of cases it was not so, and he was misunderstood and charged very frequently with having an end in view of which he had never dreamt — in short, he was not a man to form matrimonial intentions in cool blood.

When he surrendered it would not be at discretion, but because he would be sur prised into it. His warmest feeHngs were stiU, as of old, for his sister Frances — the beautiful " Queenie," who accepted Hfe, and Mr. Pollock, and a career of comfortable nothingness so con tentedly apparently. It was a remarkably happy, calm, unexcep tionable household, that of the PoUocks down at Sydenham. Percy was the sole discordant element in it, apparently — the only thing that did not move on in stolid serenity, Hke clock work. When he was their guest, things were just a little shaken out of their course. Queenie was not permitted to enjoy her customary nap after dinner, for instance ; nor was the house closed, as was usual, at eleven, for Mr. Burgoyne liked to smoke a midnight cigarette out under the verandah, and he also found his sister's society particularly agreeable at that hour.

She gave him very Httle besides her quiet, sisterly, affectionate, uncomprehending sympathy, and her beautiful presence. Mrs. PoUock very rarely talked to her brother. She would Hsten when he spoke, smile charmingly when he grew enthusiastic over his own verses, look grave and declare "people to be very id-natured" when critics hinted that he would do better by-and bye. Her conversational powers were not great, in fact, but her disposition was perfectly sweet, and her beauty superb. " The name of the women who can talk well enough to interest a feUow is legion," Percy would say, " but the women who can look weU enough to do it are not numerous." So their fellowship was a very pleasant one, though she regarded him as a wdd dreamer, and he looked upon her as a nonentity inteUectuaUy. " Why Percy can't smoke his cigar and tell you what he's going to do before it gets midnight, I can't imagine," Mr. PoUock would remark to his wife.

" Oh ! I don't know ; it seems to do him good," she would reply; and in corroboration of her statement Mr. Percy's voice would frequently fall upon their ears at this juncture, raised in some spirit-stirring strain that eventuaUy reached the nursery and produced discord. But Mrs. PoUock never allowed herself to be disturbed by such trifles. "Baby wid get used to it, Godfrey," she would say, when her husband would entreat her to go and " calm her infant, and stop her brother's howHng." " I'd tell Percy about it to-morrow morning, and he wont do it again." Which was arguing on wrong premises, for her tone of mentioning this and other things to Percy was so indifferent that he forgot her request, and woke her baby, and kept her up at night, just as though Godfrey PoUock had never spoken. There was not any very warm fraternal feeling between the two men.

Percy beHeved Mr. PoUock to be a good, honourable, conscientious, uninteresting man, and as such Percy respected, but did not Hke him. Mr. PoUock, on the con trary, did not respect, and did Hke Percy. The elder beHeved the younger man to be weak because he had refused to go into business ; vacillating, because his interest fluctuated in people whom Mr. Pollock Hked persistently ; and wild, because of that habit of turning night into day which interfered with Mr. Pollock's repose and his youngest chdd's rest. " Percy wid never do any good in the world," Mr. PoUock had got into the habit of saying; "but with those eyes of his, no one can look at him and feel anything but kindly towards him." For Percy's eyes resembled his sister's, and Mr. PoUock worshipped beauty too, in his way — not that he had ever looked for it, or thought about it much, until Frances Burgoyne married him.

The Pollocks were like a good many other mated, but not matched, pairs that are about in this world. Few people, who are given to analysing such things, could have found out from their manner whether they were everything or nothing to each other. They were a pair for whom it was very hard to imagine a " past" un connected with that thoroughly well-appointed Sydenham household. There was not an atom of romance about their union ; not a suggestion of " another" being in the background of either husband or wife. To the best of the knowledge of their most intimate friends, Mr. and Mrs. Pollock had neither of them ever had a thought of love-making or marriage until he asked her mother to give him Frances, and Mrs. Burgoyne consented joyously for her chdd. She was a young, sober, calm beauty, who, without being in the least superficial or frivolous, was not addicted to much thought.

He was a plain, thoughtful, earnest, serious-minded man of thirty-five, who gave ungrudgingly almost the whole of his Hfe to the enlarging of a mind that was strong and wide, but not brdliant. There was not a grain of romance in them, or in their union. The great, quiet, grand, rather stupid beauty, young as she was, and wasted as her brother beHeved her to be, was not the woman to give her husband anxious hours. Mrs. Burgoyne Hved near them, not from any ardent desire for their society, but because Percy liked staying at their place, " The Court," and it pleased his mother always to be near Percy. Mrs. Burgoyne rented a pretty, per fectly appointed little house at Penge — a house that had a garden, which was under the supervision of " The Court" gardeners. But the house was too square to suit Percy's views, and the garden was too straight for him to sing from his heart " There's no place Hke home."

Moreover, he liked visiting his mother better than residing with her, for several reasons. The chief one was, that she looked so weU when advancing to welcome him. " By Jove ! she ought to have been an old Border noblewoman; she would have greeted her king so gloriously if he had put up for refreshments at her castle door," he was in the habit of remarking. His mother's dignity and pride, and selfish inconsideration for every other human being save himself, were aU so thoroughly " in keeping," that Percy was never out of tune with them. She was never incon siderate towards him, and Frances never seemed to notice any of her mother's shortcomings; therefore her brother argued that she did not suffer from them at aU. The order of things which has been described as existing in the PoUock and Burgoyne families had been unbroken for some time, when a change came — a light one in itsetf, but burdened with heavy consequences.

They had all — Mr. and Mrs. PoUock, Mrs. Burgoyne, and Percy — been abroad for a long trip. When they came home they found that old Mrs. PoUock, who had been installed at "The Court" during their absence, had received a letter, " which," to use her own words, " lay heavy on her mind." The letter was from a person of whom neither of the Burgoynes had ever heard — Mrs. PoUock's niece Clara Dennet. It was a quiet, clearly expressed letter, they all felt, when it was handed round for perusal. It stated some sad facts in a business-like manner, that was perhaps a Httle hard, considering what they were. " She's my only sister's chdd," Mrs. PoUock, senior, explained to Mrs. Burgoyne, whde the master of the house was reading the letter. " I was never friendly with her father or her poor dear mother after the marriage; stiU, now they're both dead, and Clara has need to remind me of it, I can't forget that she's my niece."