Durnton Abbey. A novel

Front matter

DURNTON ABBEY. 3. fliotitl BY THOMAS ADOLPHUS TEOLLOPE, ATTTHOE OP "LA BEATA," "THE GAKSIANGS," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1871. \All 'Rights reserved.'] CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER PAGE I. SPARINGHAM STATION . . . . 1 U. OLO J. V. AND YOUNG J. V. . . . 13 IU. SILAS BORLACE'S PARLOUR WINDOW . . 28 IV. THE TIP-TOE OF EXPECTATION ... 44 V. AT THE FELL-SIDE FARM . . . .66 VI. MRS. BORLACE'S TEA-TABLE ... 86 VII. THREE SECRETS 100 VIII. FACILIS DESCENSUS 129 IX. UNDER THE MOONLIGHT .... 141 X. LILLIAN LAGARDE 158 XI. AFTER DINNER AT THE ABBEY . . .175 XII. " 0, FORMOSE PUER, NIMIUM NE CREDE COLORI" 180 XIII. NOBLESSE OBLIGE 212 XIV. THE INDIAN DAGGER 226 XV. THE FROLIC AT THE FARM . . . 243 XVI. THE DANCE IN THE BARN . . . 260 XVII. A NIGHT WALK ACROSS THE FELLS . . 284 XVIII. ON THE BANKS OF THE DURREN . .297

Chapter I. Sparingham Station

SPAR...M! Spar...m! Spar...m ! Spar...m for Dur...n ! Spar...m for Dur...n !" shouted the radway porters, as the London express, with much grinding, grating, and groaning, stopped at a small north-country station early in the morning of a lovely day in spring. The information intended to be conveyed by the above half-articulated shouts was that the train had reached the station of Sparing ham, at which passengers for Durnton must leave the rad. Sparingham is merely a httle roadside station, and the express woidd not stop there were it not that it is the nearest point of the hne to the ancient market town of Durnton, more fully and properly styled in the county histo- VOL. I. ries of Fellshire, and in the Gazetteer, Durren ton Canonicorum. But of course a generation which travels by rad has not time enough in its hurried life to expend eight syllables on the name of a small town.

And the radway porters shorten the modern Durnton stdl further into a spasmodic bark bearing some resemblance to Dur-n ! A lady put her head out of the window of a first-class carriage as the train stopped, and the head guard hurried up to that window with his hand to his hat. And one or two other guards, and all the four or five travellers who were bound for Durnton gathered them selves into a knot at a respectful distance from the same carriage window, waiting to see the lady who had looked therefrom descend. The head guard hurried up to the carriage, touching his hat as he did so, because he knew perfectly well that the lady who was about to leave the train was Miss Lillian La garde, of Durnton Abbey. And all the other male creatures on the platform bent then eyes towards the same spot, because the face that appeared at the window was more beautiful than any they had often the happiness to look on.

It was in truth a countenance of the sort that SPARINGHAM STATION. 3 not only attracts, but rivets attention ; — not at all one of those faces, that occur so often in England, the land par excellence of female beauty, on which the roving eye habituated to such survey rests with admiration for a minute, and then wanders off while the gazer utters the stereotyped " devihsh pretty girl, that !" Lillian Lagarde's face was one of those rarer countenances which not only extort admiration, but excite interest and curiosity. Perhaps a shrewd and intelligent observer of the male sex would have said, despite his inevitable admiration for its strange beauty and the undeniable perfection of it, that there was something in the face that did not please the moral sense as wholly as it did the physical eye.

And it would have been nearly certain that a woman would have said the same, not altogether because of that undeniable beauty. Ldhan Lagarde must have been some years under thirty at that time ; — but she was travelling alone. And whatever else there may have been to be seen in her face, there was no smallest touch of timidity or embarrassment to be detected in the delicate pale cheeks or the goddess-like dark brow. But her manner in saying the few words that 1—2 the occasion required was perfect ; and few as the words were the utterance of them would have left no doubt in the mind of any competent judge that the speaker was a thoroughly well bred lady. And her movements in descending from the carriage were queen-like. She had a black silk dress, with an ermine-bound scarlet wrapper over it.

And as she put one slender and admirably booted foot on the carriage step, an involuntary and birth strangled " By Jove !" died on the hps of the commercial gentlemen, who were profiting by the opportunity of getting a peep at the most exquisite foot imaginable. " Yes, Miss ! the carriage from the Abbey is here !" said the guard as he offered his elbow to help her to step on to the platform ; and then stepped beside her to the httle wicket which opened from the station into the road ; — an amount of attention that was due not wholly to the circumstance that the traveller was Miss Lillian Lagarde, of Durnton Abbey, but in part to the fact that she was a very lovely woman. Nobody save a coachman and footman had come to meet her at the station ; and it was very evident that she had not expected any one.

She got into the carriage ; the porters SPARINGHAM STATION. 5 and the footman put her luggage in and on the outside ; the commercial gentlemen divided themselves between the red 'bus of the Old Abbey Inn, and the yellow 'bus of the Vic toria Hotel, both situated in the High Street of Durnton ; the three carriages drove off on their five mde journey to the little town, the plebeian busses yielding the pas to the patrician carriage from the Abbey ; the express train went shrieking on its way northward ; and the little station of Sparingham was left to the utter stillness of its ordinary existence. Durrenton Canonicorum, — or Durnton, as we wdl henceforth submit to write it in compliance with modern ways, and slip-shod convenience, — had seen better days. But it was still a very respectable and extremely pleasant-featured country town, possessing a remarkably handsome church, which was dignified with the title of the Minster ; — a curious and ancient market cross ; — and a High Street with several good and thriving shops in it.

It had also some quiet back streets made up of garden walls with the ivy and Virginian creeper hanging over them, and neat houses with bright green doors, and bright brass door-plates with the names of the professional gentlemen, who constituted the aristocracy of the place ; a pretty bridge over the Durren at the bottom of the High Street, with a mill beyond it, which together with the bridge and the Minster on the higher ground formed a most charming little land scape. It boasted further two principal inns, both situated in the High Street, as the reader already knows ; several handsome shops, also in the High Street, andan Athenæum and reading rooms. And lastly, Durnton possessed a bank. It is about nine o'clock on a bright Aprd morning ; and there is a very charming looking young lady in a muslin dress and broad-leafed straw hat with flowing blue ribbons, engaged in sketching the landscape from below the bridge.

All the Durnton young ladies sketch the landscape from below the bridge ; and Mr. Spicer, the " spirited" bookseller and stationer in the High Street, has caused a vignette engraving to be executed of the same, and sells letter paper, the first half of the first page of which is occupied by an impression of the view in question. Then the old Minster is full of "bits" and objects of interest. It is open ; and two sweet toned beds are chiming their somewhat too unheeded invitation. For the Rev. Welby Wykeham, the rector, though no " advanced" SPARINGHAM STATION. 7 ritualist, has daily service in the Minster. And the opportunity might well tempt one to indulge in a lounge hi the old church, and in a little nhld ecclesiological antiquarianism. Both the rival omnibuses are clatterinc into the town : the crimson-panelled vehicle of the Old Abbey Inn, which scorns to yield to new-fangled ways so far as to cad itself an hotel, with its pair of large powerful bays easily beating the weedy greys and yellow "bus of the newly-facaded Victoria Hotel, as they come up the hill of the High Street At Durnton every department and circum stance of life is matter of party, and gives rise to sharply marked, though not necessarily hostde party feeling.

The society of the httle place is bisected in matters political, in matters theological, in matters medical ; and even the two principal inns are supported and patronized by rival parties of adherents. The friends of the Abbey Inn insist much on the fact that the house was kept by Nat Luscomb's father before him, and that Nat himself might retire from business to-morrow, if it wasn't for the pride he took in it, and his determination not to leave the course free to that fellow Fisher at the Victoria, who, if all stories were true, had been in the Gazette, before ever he came to Durnton. There were others, however, who thought that competition was a good thing ; and who declared that the Victoria port at five shillings was quite as good as that of the Abbey Inn at eight; — useful men in then way, though probably not including among their number many of those inhabitants of Durnton, who were competent judges of the qualities of port wine !

Now, as the omnibuses from the rival houses, like nets hauled in by rival fishermen, brought back their catch from the radway, a httle knot of idlers, comprising a few of the notables of the town, was gathered around the entrance of either house of enter tainment. And there might be many less effective methods of making oneself acquainted with the persons, the politics, and the humours of the little place than by making one of either of these groups. Jolly Nat Luscomb was standing on the steps of the Old Abbey Inn, ready to welcome any guests bis 'bus might bring him ; and the knot of people gathered around his door was evidently composed more of the notabdities of the town than was the corresponding knot at the door of Fisher's Victoria Hotel ; and aU the fattest and most middle-aged commercial SPARINGHAM STA TION. 9 gentlemen who represented the oldest estab lished houses, went to the Abbey Inn.

We wdl, therefore, do the same. " Saw the Abbey carriage coming over the bridge just now ! Suppose it was Miss Lillian coming home ! " said Dr. Waring, the leading medical practitioner of the town. " Yes ! the carriage went up the hill to wards the Abbey, not five minutes ago," said Mr. Luscomb, " How do, Nat ? Miss Lillian Lagarde, was it ? — Saw her get into her carriage at the station, and by Jove, she's a stepper I rarely saw the equal of," said Mr. Petteram, who travelled in the hardware line, and who had just alighted from the Abbey Inn 'bus. " Was Sir Arthur with her ? " asked Waring. " No ! She was all by herself ! . . . more's the pity, to my thinking," replied Mr. Luscomb. " You may say that, Mr. Luscomb," said another of the bystanders, a tradesman of the town. " It would be a deal better for Miss Ldlian, I'm thinking, as well as for Sir Arthur himself, if he would stay at home and look after his property a little, instead of always gadding over the country the way he does."

" I don't know that he could do much good to the property, poor boy, if he was to sit and brood over it over so much," said old Waring, who had been present at the baronet's birth. " I am afraid, the truth is, that ho is at the bottom of the hill, or not far from it, because his predecessors have been coining down it for a long time past." "Ah! They may say what they will of the Lagardes, but I shall call it a black day in Durnton that sees any other name at the Old Abbey," said Nat Luscomb, shaking his head. " What ! — is it likely to come to that, then?" said Mr. Pettonun, the traveller in hardware. "By all accounts, the day Mr. Luscomb speaks of is not very far off," said tho trades man who had before spoken. The truth was indeed as Dr. Waring had stated it. 'sho Lagardes had been going down in tho world for some generations past.

Tho first of the four huge folio volumes, which contains the History of Kellshiro, gives a charming view of " Durnton or Durrenfon " Abbey; and sets forth at length how the lands and building had been granted at, tho dissolution of the monastery to one Walter Lagarde, Arm., of Diirrcnton, and how they SPARINGHAM STATION. 11 had remained from father to son in the possession of his descendants to the " present day," — how, in the person of Arthur Lagarde, a lineal descendant of the original grantee, the commoner had been made into a baronet, in the reign of Charles the First ; and how the said baronet had largely increased the famdy property by his marriage with Lidian, sole heiress of the Manatines, who had held land in the county ever since the Conquest. So far the fate, which is said to dog the heels of those who profited by the spoliation of the Church, had not overtaken the La gardes.

But upon the same principle, on which the Greeks declined to admit that any man could be called happy tid he was dead, no family history can be appealed to as throwing any light on the value of the pro phetic threat, untd that famdy has become a confirmation of the dictum. And the time when the Lagardes were to be added to the catalogue of those, whose mis fortunes have served as a warning beacon on the sin of sacrdege, was at hand. The Sir Arthur, who has been mentioned as having increased the family property, was the last Lagarde the tendency of whose operations was in that direction. After him the fortunes of the famdy began to go down. The second baronet raised a troop of horse, to support the king against the Parliament. The fourth received "the merry monarch " at Durnton Abbey. The seventh and eighth baronets had both stood contested elections for the county.

The ninth had owned race-horses ; and the tenth, who was the grandfather of the Sir Arthur Lagarde, " the present baronet" at the period referred to in this narrative, had been a personal friend and companion of the " First Gentleman in Europe," and so had naturally " gone to the dogs," and disposed of the greater part of the remnant of his estates in a similarly unsatisfactory manner. Sir Arthur — the Sir Arthur who finally found himself compelled to sell Durnton Abbey— (for the gossip at the door of the Old Abbey Inn was but too well founded) — was a bachelor, and still a young man, beino about thirty years old, when he decided on taking that step. And he then resided at the Abbey with his only sister Lillian, — an old famdy name among the Lagardes, — who was his junior by four years.

Chapter II. Old

J. V. AND YOUNG J. V. AMONG the advantages and possessions of Durnton, it has been stated that the little town had a bank of its own. The " Durnton and North Fellshire Bank " was situated (of course) in the High Street. On the right hand side of it, as you go down the hill towards the bridge, there is, close by the ancient market cross, a turning which leads towards the Minster. It is the oldest part of the town, and eight or ten consecutive houses stdl remain on that side and in that part of the High Street, budt with their first floors overhanging the pathway, and supported by wooden pillars, in such sort as to form a colonnade. It is through an archway, under a portion of one of these houses, that the narrow lane leading to the Minster turns off from the High Street, and the house thus pierced is the bank.

The situation is a somewhat con fined one. The entrance to the Bank is under D URN TON A BBE Y. the archway that has been mentioned, and the windows of the principal office are some what darkened by opening under a colonnade. But the business has been carried on there prosperously by several generations of partners; the situation is in the very centre of the business part of the town ; all the customers, as well as the members of the firm themselves, have become accustomed to the place, and it assuredly would not enter into the head of either of the partners to think of deserting the old shop. " Varley, Lightfoot, and Varley," are the names which may be read, in deeply cut black letters, on thelargebrass door-plate on the outer door, when that is shut on Sundays and at all hours of other days, save those between nine a.m. and four p.m. ; and the same words may be seen on a simdar plate beneath the glass half of the inner door during those hours.

Varley, Lightfoot, and Varley, were words which went together on the tongues and in the ears of Durnton people as naturally and readily as " bread and butter," or " hook-and eye." And it would have been very bad com mercial policy to make any change in the style and title of the firm. And this was probably the reason why it stdl remained as it had stood for so many years. For the fact was that Lightfoot, as a member of the firm, was a myth. There was an old Mrs. Lightfoot, who hved in a small neat cottage in the Minster yard, and who drew an annual payment from the bank ; but no male Lightfoot had been seen in the flesh on the flagstones of Durnton for many years. The present senior member of the firm was John Varley, and the only other active part ner in it was John Varley — his son ; John Varley, senior, and John Varley, junior ; or old J. V. and young J. V., as the townsfolks were often wont to call them.

Young J. V. was sitting alone in the com fortably furnished parlour behind the large front office of the bank. He was sedulously reading and making memoranda on letters, as he sat at his large table placed close to a window which looked into the front office ; but he was not so much absorbed in his occu pation as to be prevented from looking, every five minutes or so, into the larger room on the other side of the partition ; and, every time he did so, he turned his eyes on the face of a clock on the opposite wall, before he again bent them on his work. John Varley, junior, was a wed-grown personable man, of some six-and-twenty years of age, with regular features, and a large, well opened, but cold grey eye. But, from some undefinable specialties of his manner, or his dress, or his way of demeaning himself, or more probably from the subtle means, which the soul within a man has of expressing itself externally, whether with or without his own consent, he was one of those men who cer tainly do not look, and seem as if they never could have looked really and truly young.

It wanted only a few minutes to ten when old J. V. entered the parlour from a door which communicated wish the other parts of the house, without making it necessary to pass through the front office. There was a genial, kindly, epicurean easy going look about the senior partner, which contrasted remarkably with the rigid exterior and bearing of his son. The younger man was dressed in very neat — but plainly cut — waistcoat and trousers of Oxford grey, with a frock coat of fine black cloth, and a white neck-handkerchief. The senior had on an easy shooting-jacket, a loosely sitting white waistcoat, light drab trousers, and a loosely tied blue and white silk neckcloth. He was a stout old gentleman, of some sixty years of age, bald at the top of his large broad head, and with plenty of long sdver hair around the base of it.

He had a florid face, a double chin, a clear bright blue eye, and a large mouth filled with a brdhant range of white and perfect teeth. " Anything new, John ? " said the senior. He had at length after much trouble taught himself to address his son thus, instead of calling him Jack, as he had done for upw7ards of twenty years, upon a very serious and grave remonstrance on the part of the younger man, who, on being admitted as a member of the firm, had besought his parent to discon tinue a mode of address, which he had con sidered objectionable for the last half-dozen years, but which was absolutely intolerable under the circumstances of newT dignity and responsibility to which he had been promoted. " Nothing new, sir ! I wish it were new ! " answered the young man, pointing with a turn of his thumb towards a vacant seat and desk in the outer room, which his own chair was placed so as to command a complete view of, through the window in the partition be tween the parlour and the front office ; " nothing by any means at all new !

Nothing has been seen of Reginald this morning ; vol. I. and it now wants only seven minutes to ten 1 It is impossible that things can go on in this way ! It is not only that he defrauds us of the service which he is paid to render — Heaven knows that the value of which we are so robbed is small enough ! — but his mode of going on is injurious to the reputation of the firm. The example to the other young gentlemen is most pernicious, and such as we are bound to guard them from ; and the indulgence, which tolerates such conduct, is to himself simply fatal ! " Old J. V. threw himself into his large Windsor chair, and wiped his ample brow with an enormously extra-sized silk handkerchief. The morning was warm, and perhaps his son's eloquence conduced to the oppres siveness resulting from the heat.

" I'll tell you what, Jack ! " he said, looking at the younger man with a mixture of awe and admiration, " if the time comes for the Bishoprics to be thrown open to competition before you are too old for the place, you will come to be Archbishop of Canterbury one of these days ! " " My impression is, sir, that no man was ever yet raised to that dignity who was such an one as to be called Jack when he had reached my age ! " replied the son with a cold smile. " I beg your pardon, John, I forgot ! Old fellows are apt to fall back into old ways ! And all that you w7ere saying about Reg was as good as a sermon — better than most of 'em ! But this time — the fact is, I sent Reg away on a bit of business, that had to be done. I gave him his orders last night, when you were gone down to see all right in the office for the night.

He is gone over to the Fell Side farm." " Just the last place where he should go ! I wish, sir, that this business had been spoken of whde I was there ! " said J. V., junior, with an air of concentrated, yet not disrespectful vexation. " Why so it would have been, only you stayed downstairs so long ! We thought you were never coming back again, and your mother was waiting to go to bed ! So I gave Reg his orders and sent him off!" rephed the father — evidently anxious to exculpate him self. " The reason why I did not return upstairs immediately was because I found that a long letter, which ought to have been written to Dobbs and Willis, had not been written. I 2—2 D URN TON A BBE Y. suppose Partridge thought that it would do to write it this morning ; but I wished it to go by the early post, so I did the work, and that detained me."

" There never was a better man of business than you, John ! " said the father in a tone of conciliation. " I try to do my duty, sir ! and should never complain of hard work, if other people would do theirs ! " " That's true, John ! But as to Reg going over to Borlace's farm — the job had to be done ! And why should he not go there ? He likes going there ! I know that ! and of course I know why ! / know all about it ! But is that any reason why he should not go — when there reaUy is a call of business too? Why, of course the lads like to go where the pretty girls are ! 'Odsfish ! didn't I in my time ? Ask your mother else ! And I don't see any change in the world yet in that respect ; though I suppose, that be fore long no man will be allowed to kiss a pretty girl till after a competitive examina tion !

Come now, John Varley," added the old man coaxingly, as he saw signs of dis pleasure gathering on his son's brow, " do you dislike a visit to the Fell Side farm yourself? And, if all the truth was told — quite every bit of it, — does not that go for some part, — just the least taste in the world, of your displeasure at poor Reg's errand this morning, eh ?" " If you mean, sir, that I have any, even the least possible shade of a notion of being jealous of my Cousin Reginald, or of anything he can say or do at the Fell Side farm, you never were more mistaken in your hfe. I have spoken, as I have done, having regard in the first place, as is fitting, to our own in terests and those of the Bank ; — in the second place to the interest and welfare of my Cousin ; — and in the third place to those of the famdy at the farm.

I consider aU these to be imperdled by Reg's visit to Mr. Borlace's house. As for any attraction which the farm may have for me, I do not make, and have never made, any secret about the matter. I am free to admit that Di Borlace does seem, so far as I have been able hitherto to judge, both to my eyes, and to my judgment, as attractive and as admirable a young woman as any man could wish for his wife ; nor do I at all wish to conceal from you that I have serious thoughts in that direction." " So I have supposed, John ; so I have sup posed ! I certainly never should suspect your thoughts of being other than serious, let 'em take what direction they may !" said the old gentleman, with a half-furtive expression in his eye, which seemed to reveal his feeling that the compliment professed to be implied in the words was at least in great part a left-handed one.

"But — um — a — um — I say, John, this busi ness between us and worthy Farmer Borlace — does it look quite — um — a — as if — eh ? — quite as if Miss Borlace would be likely, eh ? — to turn out — in a prudential point of view, I mean — all one might wish ?" " A very necessary consideration, my dear sir," returned his son, with two or three nods of grave approbation, mixed, one would have said, with a certain degree of surprise at the unexpected amount of intelligence his father was developing ; " I am grateful to you for call ing, though unnecessarily, my attention to the point. But this is the state of the case. I think it extremely probable, sir, that Farmer Borlace — well as he stands at present — may die not worth a shilling. But I am disposed to believe that his brother, Mr. Sdas Borlace, in the High Street, wdl leave a very consider able fortune behind him.

And I have every reason to think, further, that Di will inherit her uncle's money." " Ah !" said the old man, looking up at his son with an expression in which a feeling of inferiority to the man he addressed was curi ously mingled with a consciousness of some superiority to him, in some point — " Ah ! I need not trouble myself to suggest pruden tial considerations to you, John. But if, as you say, there is no feeling of jealousy in the matter, why do you so much dislike that Reg should visit at the farm ?" "Has not Mr. Borlace two daughters, sir? Is my cousin Reginald in a position to be look ing out for a wife ? Would Miss Maud Bor lace be a desirable match for him, even if he were so ? Maud, you may take my word for it, wid never inherit anything from her uncle. Nor — quite between ourselves, father — would a prudent man seek her for his wife, if she were the heiress to twice as much as Sdas Borlace wdl leave behind him.