Eyre of Blendon. A novel

Front matter

EYRE OF BLENDON EYRE OF BLEND OK & £Lobd. BY ANJNIE THOMAS '(MRS. PENDER CITDLIP), AUTHOR OP " DENIS BONNE," " WALTER GOBING," " PLATE r OUT, <(A LONDON SEASON," " COUNTY PEOPLE," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. 'g.onbon : TINSLEY BBOTHEES, 8, CATHEEINE STEEET, STEAM) 1881. CHABLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CBYSTAL PALACE PBESS. CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. PAGE "PUT OUT THE LIGHT" 1 CHAPTEE II. JEEFBEY'S INHERITANCE ■ . . 27 CHAPTEE III. FllANK COMES HOME CONTENTS. VI CHAPTEE IV. PAGE KISS ME 82 CHAPTEE V. A LAST APPEAL 113 CHAPTEE VI. LADY SOPHIA SHOWS CHARACTER 131 CHAPTEE VII. COLD WATER 154 CHAPTEE VIII. HOME ! SWEET HOME ! 174 CHAPTEE IX. LOVE AND PRUDENCE CONTENTS. VII CHAPTEE X. „ PAGE DEAR LADY DI ! " 21 _• CHAPTEE XI. GLEAMS OF PROSPERITY ....

Chapter I

"PUT OUT THE LIGHT." The house is one of the finest old black-andwhite structures in that county of Cheshire which is so famous for them. The furniture is all of carved cedar-wood and oak, time-honoured, worm-eaten, authentically dated, and exquisitely uncomfortable. The whole aspect of the place is grand and gloomy. Broad river-intersected meadow-lands and richly-wooded slopes stretch for miles in every direction across the Cheshire plains, and are all within the ring-fence of VOL. I. B the Blendon Hall estate, the property of Eyre of Blendon. There has been an Eyre of Blendon from the time of Henry the Seventh, and that monarch's mighty grand-daughter took Blendon in one of her progresses, and was well enter tained there for three days. The massive, cumbersome, carved oak bedstead in which she slept is still in existence, and so is the wrought-steel framed mirror into which she gazed.

The then Eyre of Blendon impoverished himself and his heirs for ever cruelly in his endeavours to do the royal white elephant fitting honours. Each succeeding Eyre has followed the example of this splendid ancestor in all that is gallant, extravagant, unwise, and selfishly indulgent. Therefore, though royalty has never again graced the vernal shades of Blendon, the present head of the house knows that all he can leave to his son is the barren honour, and the doubtful blessing of beingthe head of a poverty-stricken family, and the lord of lands that are encumbered beyond all reasonable prospect of redemption. The air is sweet and the sun is bright on the day on which Mr. Eyre reflects on these facts for the first time with the agony of help lessness and hopelessness. Warm and soft as is the atmosphere, it can no longer cheer his rapidlychilling limbs.

Bright and piercing as are the sun's rays, they can no longer gladden or dazzle his fast dimming eyes. For Eyre of Blendon lies dying this day, and he knows that there are those near him who will seize his body in the coffin before it can be placed safely in the sanctuary of the mausoleum of his fathers, unless his children are wiser in their generation, and less selfish than he and his forefathers have been. He is lying labouring for the breath that does not even permit him to give utterance to half-a-dozen connected words, on one of the b large, awkward, aristocratically well-authenti cated oak four-post bedsteads, waiting, with an impatience that is one of the worst agonies of death, for the arrival of his eldest son. Round the room, in attitudes respectively of watch fulness, anguish, grievous prostration, and in tensified concentration of devotion, are his wife and three daughters.

They have done what they can to soothe the last hours, and assuage these last pangs. Prayer and tenderness are freely offered by them now in spirit, but he is past hearing their prayers, past feeling their tenderness, past — no, not past knowing that his passionately-wished-for son has arrived at last ! is coming into the room, in time to hear his last words — if he can only utter them ! The illness which is ending fatally has been brief and severe, and the young man who comes up to his dying father's side has as much surprise and perplexity as grief written in his face. He cannot realise that the end is here while he knows nothing of the beginning. He cannot admit that the hearty resonant voice that he heard only a week or two ago, ringing out in cordial extravagant welcome to a great many more guests than ought to have been assembled together at Blendon, is silenced for ever now !

But the great unanswerable truth of these things comes home to him with stun ning force, as he sees the pallid lips working noiselessly, and the film creeping rapidly over the already sightless eyes. His mother, to whom it has come for many years to know that it is of no avad to make any show of sorrow, however deeply sorrow may be felt, moves to his side, and puts her quiet hand on his arm, and stands thus steadying him by the touch of the unfaltering hand, and the sight of the patient face, to bear unflinchingly the solemn spectacle of the putting out the light. His three sisters press nearer to him, with a vague hope of giving and receiving comfort. But for the time Jeffrey Eyre has none to give, and is as powerless to receive any as the old man, the cheery, gallant gentleman, the father whom he has loved and almost wor shipped for twenty-seven years, draws his last flickering, sobbing breath, and all is silence.

They kneel together in prayer for a time, and when they rise up again, he is the grief bewildered, perplexed, anguished son no longer. He has realised it, and all the solemnity and awfulness of it now, and he has prayed that he may fittingly bear all the burdens and perform all the duties which it has entaded upon him as the head of this wailing house. His mother, whose strength and patience, resolution and quiet have all given way suddenly in the way in which such things will give way when the one for whom they have been chiefly shown is gone, feels in the midst of her strong emotion, that it is wed for her and for her girls that this son and brother of theirs is what he is. "My glory has departed, but oh, Jeffrey, you will bring back more than its former bright ness to Blendon," she wails hysterically.

" Oh, my dear, my dear, how he longed, and how we all prayed, that he might live to tell you himself that he trusted to you to carry out the dearest wish of his heart soon." She breaks off into long, desolate, un restrained weeping which may not be stayed. "While her husband lived Mrs. Eyre always bore herself bravely, if gravely ; but now that the motive power of all her self-denial and self-restraint is gone, all her strength is weakness as she glances forward into the future here below in which he wdl have no part. Glances forward with terror, for she has an idea — glimmering and faint, but stdl harassing and heartrending — that some dark things of which these sorrowing children of hers have no suspicion, will be brought to light, to their dismay, and, if they are not wise, to their downfall.

" If they are not wise ; if Jeffrey, especially, will not attend to the dictates of pru dence, we shall soon have no home," the bereft woman says to herself, as under the pretence of getting the sleep she so sorely needs, she banishes them all from her room, and casts herself on the bed to hug her sorrow closer to her heart, and nurse her fears with more thrilling secret tenderness. They are dear children, dearly loved by and dutifully loving to this mother of theirs. But they are in such utter ignorance of the great dread that is darkening her soul now. All her grief is not for the lover of her youth, the husband of her heart, the father of her children. A greater grief, if possible, than that caused by his death is hers, for the something that she daily discerns, the something that made him struggle and fight and pray to live on, to speak once more to his son and heir !

His heir ! As his mother thinks of Jeffrey thus, the bitter unavailing tears rush out with fresher and more cruel force, and the widow turns with a groan from the sight of the oaken walls, and the painted windows, that are all carved and blazoned with the arms and quarter ings of the Eyres — turns with a groan and buries her face in the pillow, and moans at the possibility of the fair place and all that it contains passing to others than her children's children. Meanwhile the four fatherless young people who have no other thought in their minds, or grief in their hearts than for the kind, loving, friendly father who has just gone from them, have gone down together to the library, where their father's papers and magazines, and dog-whip, and some unread letters that reached Blendon since he left this room only yesterday, are still lying about in the disarray that speaks plainly of the chaos and confusion that is reigning in all their minds.

Here for the first time Jeffrey hears the whole of the story the end of which he had just seen. Here the three shivering and sobbing sisters try to make, what is stiU a puzzle to them, plain to him. He seats himself in a capacious chair, and takes his youngest sister on his knee, while the others sit on the arms of the chair and support themselves against his shoulders. It is a habit with them to cling about and caress their brothers ; but they have never before had the sense of support which they ex perience now as they rest upon Jeffrey. In the short hour which has passed since their father's death, Jeffrey has grown to be more than their brother and friend. He has become the head of the house which they regard as so mighty a one — he is Eyre of Blendon. The young man has not taken his father's chair now.

That stands emptily staring at them from the opposite side of the wide hearth ; and the late squire's dog, a grizzly-looking deer hound, lies sadly guarding it. As he sits there with his sisters grouped about him, it may be seen that Jeffrey Eyre is a well-grown and rather a good-looking young man. His brown hair is closely cropped, and his gray eyes have a collected,- determined, resolute, perceptive look in them which is reassuring to such people as like to be understood rapidly when they are compelled to hold converse with Jeffrey Eyre. His mouth is covered with a short, straight, thick moustache. If it were visible it would be seen that the lines of it were as resolute and as steady as is the expression of his eyes. His hands and feet are well formed and of fair size. The hands especially are characteristic of the man — characteristic of his race.

They are hands that are more ready to give than to take ; they are generous and full of strength — full of power ; incapable of aiding in any degrading work — the hands of a gentleman ; but, above all, the hands of an honourable man. He is Eyre of Blendon now, owner of a grand old house and a grand old property ; and as it has been well known in the world of fashion in which he has lived that he must be possessor of these things in due course of time, he has been well sought and met half way, or at any distance that he has cared to indicate, by mothers for their daughters, and by daughters for themselves. A good-looking young fellow in the Household troops, possessed of so good a name, and prospective possessor of so grand a property, it would have been a slur on the sagacity of the matrons and maidens of the period if they had not sought him.

But he comes into his inheritance absolutely free in every way. There are no fetters on his wrists or chains of any kind, honourable or dishonourable, about his feet. "He is free ! " his mother tells herself, with piteous hope. " Free," his sisters feel with sympathetic pleasure, to marry the girl who has so long been in love with him, almost without her own knowledge ; free to restore the fortunes of his great house, however feeble those fortunes may have grown, by a marriage with the nicest girl and greatest heiress in the county — Ellen Brydon, the daughter of the clever, estimable, enormously rich lawyer, " who had poor papa's interest so much at heart, and managed his affairs so admirably." " You say Brydon was with him when he had the seizure, Kitty ? " Jeffrey says, speaking to his eldest sister; "can he account for it in any way ?

Was there any business shock ; any kind of annoyance given him ? " " Oh no ! Mr. Brydon hasn't hinted at there having been anything unpleasant or unusual for a moment ; it has been papa's habit every day for years to have Mr. Brydon here ; you must remember that, Jeffrey ; but latterly he has taken to going over to Broom hill instead. I suppose Mr. Brydon had all business papers there, you see, and so it was easier for poor papa. Sometimes he used to stay to lunch, so we thought nothing of it yesterday when he didn't come home. But about four o'clock mamma got fidgety ; she wanted him to go into Chester with her, and the carriage had been round since three. Just as she was going off alone the Broomhill carriage drove up, and there w*as poor papa sitting propped up between the doctor and Ellen."

"Ellen! did Ellen bring my father home?" he interrupts quickly ; "I am glad it was she, and not her father, who was with him. I shall hear all the truth from her." " Yes, she was with him ; she did love him so, you know, and so did poor papa love her ; but Mr. Brydon seemed more cut up and shattered than any of us when he came up presently on papa's old cob ; he seemed almost out of his mind, poor man, and kept on crying to mamma, who didn't hear him, that he would repay her for all she might lose, repay us all for what we were losing. It was like old Brydon to think of how he might do good to his old friend and patron's children at once, wasn't it, Jeff?" "Very like old Brydon." "And, Jeff dear, you won't forget that it was Nelly who went to papa like a daughter when he was first struck down in that awful way ?

" another partisan of Ellen Brydon's cries with sisterly zeal. " No, I'll not forget that," the young man says quietly. " I should have been glad if the death-blow had fallen upon my father in any other house than Brydon's ; but, as it did fall upon him there, I am glad Nelly was good — was herself in fact." " Good ! Nelly's an angel," they say en thusiastically, for they all fee] that as it is in the order of things that their brother will soon set up a wife to rule at Blendon, that no rule can be half so sweet, and pleasant, and con genial to them as the one that will be exercised by Nelly Brydon. So they go on recording instances of her devotion to their dead father, and of his attachment to her, until Jeffrey looks so unfeignedly weary of the subject that policy brings peace, and they retire under cover of another aspect of the catastrophe.

" Poor, dear, old Frank ! how he'll feel not having been here at the time, won't he, Jeff ? " (Frank is the second and youngest son, and has been known at Oxford as "lucky Eyre," on account of his success in various directions.) " Poor old chap, yes," the elder brother says dubiously, for he is thinking that after all the sight of his father's struggling, speechless, dying agony has not been fraught with such satisfaction to himself that he can honestly regret that Frank has not been there to wit ness it also. " Poor old chap ! yes. Do you know where he is ? we must send for him jy now. " He was in Paris the week before last, but then he said they thought either of Norway or the Holy Land ; Lorlington is a little capricious, and " "As Frank wants to please Lorlington for his sister's sake we must pay the penalty of the caprice, and leave our brother out of the saddest ceremony that we have any of us been called to witness yet," Jeffrey interrupts.

" Well, I could have wished it otherwise, but Frank is pleased to play the part of spoilt leader to a spoilt bear; but I shall let him know soon vol. i. c that he must settle down to something better than this." He stops abruptly, for he sees his sisters looking at him wonderingly, and he knows that his tone is more masterful than it has ever been before, more masterful than his father's ever was to them or anyone else in his whole life. "My dear girls, I have grown old in a few hours, I think," he says apologetically ; " I felt annoyed for a moment with Frank's frivolity about the projected educational tour for Lor lington ; I'm all right again now, and we'll telegraph to Lorlington's agents, they're sure to know where Frank is." " I believe the quicker plan would be to telegraph to Lady Sophia Bluff, she will be sure to know where they are," Kitty says signi ficantly, and Jeffrey's eyes look more resolute than ever as he says : " Till we know* how things are, dears, we must put a stop to all nonsensical hopes and plans.

I'll send over for Brydon, and write to Lorlington's agents." " And Clarkson and I had better make out the order for Jay's, hadn't we ? It's no use worrying mamma about the mourning, is it, Jeffrey ? " " Not the least," he says, wincing a little, and then he turns to the writing-table and writes a short note to Mr. Brydon, his late father's lawyer, and a shorter telegram to the Earl of Lorlington's agents. To the latter he says merely : " My father died to-day ; Eyre, Lord Lor lington's tutor, must return home immediately." As he rises from the table his eyes light on a letter torn in two pieces, and thrown carelessly down on the blotting-pad. Recognising Mr. Brydon's handwriting he lays the c two parts of the brief letter together, and reads as follows : Broomhill : "Wednesday, July 14th.

"Dear Eyre '> " You had better see me and bring matters to a climax this morning. Stapylton is becoming urgent, and patient as I am, I think I am justified in telling you that your procrastination is becoming annoying to me. You will find me in at twelve, w*hen I shall expect you. " Yours truly, "R. Brydon." " This from a lawyer to his client ! No, this from a master to his slave," Jeffrey says to himself as he pockets the letter, and stands for a few minutes pondering over its contents. Presently, with a heavy sigh that does not relieve his burdened mind at all, he says : " Poor old father ! you got your death-blow at your trusted friend's house yesterday, that's clear ; it remains now for me to find out whose hand dealt it. I'll take care to keep out of such bondage, and the way to do that will be to get my mother and the girls to be contented with a smaller establishment, and to alter the character Blendon has got for indis criminate hospitality.

Every rood of the land shall be free, or it shall go from us altogether." Then he sits himself down to glean as much information as to the existing state of affairs as a few note-books and loose memoranda, which he finds carelessly put away in the writing-table drawers, can give him, and thus employed awaits Mr. Brydon's arrival. At Broomhill there is the keenest anxiety and impatience prevailing this day for tidings from Blendon. Broomhill is quite a young mansion, but it has made a name for itself in Cheshire already for magnitude, and beauty of a modern order, and for having had sums that may not easily be computed,- spent upon its marble pillars and balustrades, its terraces, con servatories, painted ceilings, and sumptuous appointments. Three years ago cows fed in the pastures that are now* the gardens and parks, and a shed to protect the cattle from the summer sun occupied a small space on the fine piece of breezy level ground on which the house now stands.

Three years ago the land was still a portion of the great Blendon estate, and people thought, w*hen it passed into the possession of Richard Brydon, the wealthy lawyer, that he must have paid such a sum for the splendid site as would recoup the fortunes of the Eyres. To-day the sun's rays fall dazzlingly on countless plate glass windows, on a conservatory that looks like a young Crystal Palace, on a sun-dial (a copy of the one in the old terrace-garden at Blendon), on four or five gardeners at w*ork on a lawn that, in spite of all the gold and grassseed that is lavished upon it, will not look like a piece of green velvet yet, and on countless other things that testify to the magnificence and prosperity of Mr. Brydon. The house is full of art-treasures collected at a great cost and with great care by respon sible agents, who are employed by Mr. Brydon to get hold of anything that may tend to the adornment and glorification of this home, which he has made for his only child, his daughter Ellen Brydon.

It has been the am bition of his later life to have a son ; that ambition not having been gratified, he is con tented now with the nicest and prettiest daughter that ever gladdened a parent's heart, and is determined to so endow her that when she goes from him in marriage she shall continue the family he has founded, in the name of Brydon. Broomhill and all it contains is settled upon Ellen, but something else is settled upon Ellen too of which no man saving Mr. Brydon himself knows anything now that Eyre of Blendon is dead ; something so vast that old Brydon is almost justified in the impatient expectation he has that the new owner of Blendon will relinquish this name of Eyre, in order to obtain such a girl and such a property ! The news comes at last from Blendon in the shape of Jeffrey's note, and the old man, who has been waiting half in hope and half in dread for it, feels a pang that is more than grief, when he hears that his old patron, Eyre, who had made him (Brydon) of legal import ance at first in the county, is dead.

But he has other business on hand than that of indulging in retrospective feeling (which is always unremunerative) now. " Here's a note from Jeffrey, Nelly," he says, in a decorously-lowered tone, going into the room where his daughter is trying to do something that will keep her from looking out of the window towards the Blendon woods. " From Jeffrey ! " she says quickly, wheeling round and taking it from him. " Ah then ! I know ! " A gasping sob closes her utterance, and the tears rush into her eyes as she glances over the note. " Father, I'll go over to Kitty, and the rest of them, at once," she says hurriedly ; but her father says firmly : "No, Nell, not to-day. It may be that when I have seen Jeffrey Eyre, neither he nor I may ever care to see anything more of each other, or of each other's people again.

It's hard to have to tell a man that of his father, on the day of his father's death, which will make him wish he had never been born." Mr. Brydon speaks in deep impressive tones, but then he uses these tones about most things. And Nelly, whose heart is full of grief for the dead and love for the living Eyre, scarcely notices them.

Chapter II

Jeffrey's inheritance. Whatever the communication may be which Mr. Brydon sees fit to make to Jeffrey Eyre on the day of the death of the latter's father, no one is the wiser for it but Jeffrey Eyre himself. The interview between the two men is a long one, but it is held in the library, and the library doors are double and its walls are thick. Old servants scattering themselves about the halls and passages in the interests and service of " the family," and straining their ears to the utmost in the same cause, do not catch a sound of either voice raised in anger, expostulation, indignation, or entreaty, and for some indefinable reason they are half expecting to catch some such tone. But the interview is a peaceful, if not a pleasant one ; and when Mr. Brydon takes his leave, by-and-by Jeffrey comes out into the hall, and sends a message, only a few words, to Nelly, that thrills the girl's whole being when she receives it.

" Remember me to Miss Brydon, and tell her that before I go I sfrall call to thank her for her sweet bravery in taking that last awful drive wuth my poor father," Jeffrey says ; and the butler glances at Mr. Eyre's own man (who "happens" to be by) meaningly. "My daughter will appreciate the compli ment, and be glad to see you ; she has, I assure you. a deep regard, almost a veneration, for the name of Eyre," the old lawyer replies with so much courteous solemnity that the Blendon servants almost feel obliged to him for "considering young master so much," and the idea that this courteous and considerate old gentleman has been just before offering his daughter's hand to Mr. Eyre, who has rejected it, never enters their pure minds. But such is the case, nevertheless. It has all been made miserably plain and clear to Eyre of Blendon.

He does not need to wait to hear his father's will read to know that all he * comes into possession of by that fathers death is his responsibilities as the head of the house. For Blendon and all appertaining unto it the late Mr. Eyre has received at divers times, during the last twenty years, such sums of money as must make Blendon a tolerably expensive bargain to the man who has ad vanced them. That man is Mr. Brydon, and he stands confessed to-day, before the sorrowing heir, as the real owner of the estate. He has not triumphed arrogantly, or been unduly powerful, but he has very clearly pointed out to Jeffrey Eyre that without his (Mr. Brydon's) aid, Jeffrey Eyre can no longer have a place in Cheshire. He has proved by line and rule that it has been Eyre extra vagance, and not Brydon rapacity, which has brought this thing to pass.

" If I had not helped him he would have gone to the Jews oftener than he did as it was, Mr. Eyre, and it would have been worse for you to see the old place broken up into building lots, than to have it offered back to you, your very own — freer than Blendon has been for an Eyre for many generations. I have paid off every claim against the estate; you would have come into it in a way that would enable you to do it honour; it was the dear wish of your father's heart that this thino* should be," Mr. Brydon says, pressing his mighty, delicate point. "But this thing cannot be, and you wrong one of the noblest and sweetest young ladies in the world by suggesting it," Jeffrey says decidedly. "You have always liked my daughter. There was a time, only last summer, when your liking for her was so apparent that I heard it commented upon.

Had it not been for that, your father and I would never have thought of such a way of ending the difficulty and restoring you to the position and fortune which is your birthright ; and Jeffrey, my boy, I have known you all your life, and loved you like a son." Jeffrey takes the hand which Mr. Brydon extends at this juncture, and shakes it com posedly. "I more than liked your daughter, sir; but I would not marry her now to save my life, much less to save Blendon." " I thought the Eyres loved Blendon better than their lives ! " " And thinking that, you lured an Eyre on to gamble it away. We show our love for women and our regard for men in different ways, Mr. Brydon. I will not aid you in trafficking with your daughter, nor will I get the Blendon estates into my hands by trading on an old man's weakness."