The American Cousins: a story of Shakespeare's country

Chapter I Sightseers At The Tomb Of Sir Beville Shel- Drake And

CORDEL SHENSTONE, HIS WIFE There is one little town in England which is more classic than any other, because there England's greatest poet was born and there he died, leaving his bones jealously guarded, to rest in the place of honour in the old church. If anything else were wanted to add to the attractions of the little town, it is supplied by the fact that it is situated in the midst of the most thoroughly English and lovable of England's rural scenery. It has undergone few changes during the last three hundred years, and on it many an appreciative line and phrase of its great son makes fitting commentary. Every year, and all through the year, but par ticularly when the green and beautiful Warwick shire landscape is touched with the glory of summer and autumn, crowds of pilgrims from all lands flock to pay homage to the genius of the dramatist whose fame is world-wide.

The strangers A stand with uncovered heads in the wool-stapler's house, in the quaintly uncouth little room in which the child first saw the light. They tread the street he trod, and visit the ancient grammar school in which he conned his horn book. They wander longingly in the Memorial Garden, occupying the site of his fair mansion of New Place, which his pen and his playing won for him. They stray through the pleasant pastures or by the shady roads to the most picturesque of old cottages in which he wooed his bride. If the pilgrims are blest with leisure, they go yet farther afield to the house which was his mother's maiden home, or to the wooded park and old English manor house, which represented at once to the young poet's glowing fancy the Forest of Ardennes and the hall of Justice Shallow.

They linger last in the storied church by the softly flowing Avon, where the bust which is his best likeness is to be found, and where his undisturbed dust is a sacred trust to his country and to the whole civilised world. On a long, cloudless June day in the eighties, there came a pair of sightseers, young men, equally ardent, except that the younger of the two poured forth his enthusiasm and delight with a generous frankness and confidence liable to be mistaken by the carping critic for "gush," while the elder af fected a nil admirari tone, and assumed an air of mingled stolidity and swagger such as became a countryman of Mark Twain's. Both were good looking, gentleman-like fellows, bearing a sufficient likeness to each other to mark them as brothers. The elder, rather more than a lad in years, had certain traits which, to an initiated native of the Republic flourishing under the " Stars and Stripes," would have signified emphatically an origin " down south " — to begin with, at least.

The younger, with closely-cropped chestnut hair matching his bright hazel eyes, was dressed with a scrupulous atten tion to English precedent. The elder, with darker hair, worn a little longer than the present convict fashion, and with grey instead of hazel eyes, was a citizen of the world in his loose coat and broad brimmed straw hat. The younger displayed an immature version of the moustache and beard of the golden youth of the period. The elder had the close-shaven brown face of an older generation of Americans. The couple were George and Beville Sheldrake, " planters " in Virginia, descendants from one of the oldest families in their state. Of course, their father, uncles, cousins and neighbours had taken the side of the South in the Civil War, and, of course, many a rice field had been swamped and cotton planta tion gone to wreck and ruin as the result.

But the very fact that the Sheldrake brothers were on a pleasure tour for a couple of years in Europe was a proof that the family, like the mass of the community, had long ago recovered largely from the severity of the contest, the defeat of the Southerns, and the abolition of the slave trade. The young men had gone the usual round of sight-seeing at Stratford-on-Avon, what was peculiar in their case was that even before they had exhausted the Shakespearean relics, the brothers were as eager — the younger without concealment, the elder under a veil of goodhumoured chaffing of his junior's excitement — to inspect certain monumental figures in a family pew, over a family vault in the church. The visitors took it upon them to tell the verger — considerably to his surprise and discomfiture — instead of waiting till he told them, what they had come for.

" It is the Sheldrake monument we wish to see," explained Beville Sheldrake, with unnecessary emphasis and precision, " the monument which is in the centre of the family pew, and bears the recumbent figures of Sir Beville Sheldrake and his wife, Cordel Shenstone. They were contem poraries of your immortal Will, having lived in the same reign of Elizabeth ; you cannot mistake what we are in search of." " Of course not, sir," replied the aggrieved official, feeling his prerogative invaded ; " most folks wishes to see the Sheldrake monument after they have done with Shakespeare. It is a most extraordinary con temporaneous monument, which I should not, on no account, have forgotten in showing the church," he ended in scarcely suppressed indignation. ' There ! you've put your foot into it as usual, Bev, with your unseemly haste," muttered the elder brother in an undertone, while the two traversed the aisles, at the heels of the verger, " you've no right to take the word out of a man's mouth, the word which it is his privilege to speak, which he is paid for speaking, so that to say his say is a matter of conscience with him.

You've done worse than hurt his feelings, the old rascal is troubled in his mind as well as mortally of fended." But even George Sheldrake ceased to indulge in slang and badinage as the two strangers from a far country stood motionless at the foot of the fine monument, in the centre of the square pew, whose occupants gazed Sunday after Sunday, year upon year, century in and century out, on the effigies of their predecessors. These were in dim and discoloured alabaster — a knight, not in warlike armour, but in the ruff, doublet and trunk hose of peace, with the furred mantle of his rank, and the jewelled collar and order of his offices as a courtier and statesman ; while by his side lay the companion figure of a lady in coif, stomacher and farthingale, having her taper fingers joined in prayer, though on her high features, worn by time, there lingered to this day still more of the pride of the aristocrat than the piety of the devotee.

Was there a shadow of resemblance be tween the alabaster mask and the finely-cut face in warm flesh and blood of the younger man bending eagerly over the effigy ? Could a strain ofblood survive all foreign admixture for fully three hundred years ? If so, the likeness might exist, for Beville Sheldrake, the namesake of Eliza beth's courtier, with his brother, whose face had missed the delicate chiselling preserved in the alabaster, was the lineal descendant, through an intervening line of planters and settlers in Virginia, of the elder son of the English knight and lady, whose dust rested beneath the sumptuous monument erected in their honour. " Sir Beville Sheldrake of Oakspur and Dame Cordel, his wife," ran on the voice of the verger, who had so far recovered his equanimity as to have fallen back into his professional sing-song.

"Sir Beville was one of Queen Elizabeth's council the year of the defeat of the Armada. He is thought to have impoverished the estate by the subsidies he furnished, and the caravels he manned in the service of his country. He had his reward in being appointed to more than one government office in his day. The last he held was under Essex in Ireland. The family still own the manor of Oakspur, and are represented at present by William Sheldrake, Esquire, who succeeded his father, the late squire, in 1880. The estate has de scended in the male line since Henry the Eighth's reign. The succession has never been broken." " Ah ! " exclaimed George Sheldrake, abruptly. The exclamation might have been an assent or a protest, as the listener was supposed to take it. " Oakspur is not far from this," remarked Beville Sheldrake, more as an assertion than as an inter rogation.

" About five miles off," corroborated the verger, "but," he added with the manner of a man making a stiffreservation, " though it is held by connoisseurs to be a very good example of the old English manor house, it has never been made a show place. It is not exhibited to the public even when the family ain't at home, which don't occur often, for the late squire's widow stays there with her four daughters most all the year round, keeping house for the young squire till he gets a wife, which won't be long, I take it, since he came of age nigh six years agone.' The Sheldrakes from the other side of the Atlantic said no more, not even Beville, with his reputed impulsiveness and effusiveness, felt inclined to disclose the identity of their family name, far less to indulge in such an explanation, as that the recumbent Sir Beville's elder son Humphrey, having been implicated in one of the many plots of James First's reign, had fled across the seas and never re turned.

Not only he, his entire race, for he had married and settled in the State of Virginia, leaving behind him a large family with its numerous rami fications, had failed, from various reasons, to revisit the Mother Country. Hard to understand, as it sounded, George and Beville Sheldrake were the first American Sheldrakes who had come to England in the course of three centuries. No intercourse had been kept up with the English branch of the house since Humphrey Sheldrake awoke the wrath of his kindred and covered them with disgrace by his political misadventure. The American Sheldrakes were not even aware if the English Sheldrakes were acquainted with the fact of their existence. The expatriated descendants of Sir Beville and Dame Cordel had the advantage here, for they were in possession of Humphrey Sheldrake's " papers," carefully stowed away in a French cabinet in the oldest quarter of what still remained of his original log-house, swallowed up by its innumerable additions.

Among the family relics was a tattered old print of the manor house of Oakspur, and a battered silver drinking-cup which had once belonged to Humphrey, the plotter and exile. Having accomplished the first part of their pro gramme, the pair of sightseers did according to the usual practice of visitors, they strolled round the church to admire the fine trees dipping into the Avon. The present couple ended by sitting down in the shade to rest, smoke the pipe of peace, compare notes, and consult like the trusty comrades they were. Their very unlikeness served to form a bond of union, which the cement of kindred blood made closer and firmer. The look, half of satisfaction, half of faint disappointment, which waits on the realisation of most long-cherished earthly projects — a languid sense of mingled success and failure — lingered on the handsome, sensitive face of the younger man.

It calmed his excitement, but it helped to provoke an attack from his companion. " Well, Bev, are we to have no more bunkum ? Have we enthused and excursed enough for one bout ? Was it worth crossing the ' herring-pond ' for? My opinion is, that venerable wool-stapler must have had uncommonly poor notions where light and space were concerned to coop up his family in such odd holes and corners — not to speak of the break-neck stairs to reach the upper storey. He, mayor of the town too, shabby old beggar. Depend upon it, he was a miserly hunks and kept the family on short commons, and so his son Will was reduced to deer-stealing." " Stop that, George," said Beville, knitting his brown brows imperatively, while he was too lazy to move the arms stretched above his head, so that it might rest against his clasped hands.

" The place is as perfect as a place can be in this blessed world, where nothing exactly answers our expecta tions, no doubt ' for our goods,' as the old Bruns wickers said. I could have come twice the distance for a sight of these alabaster figures which were set up in old Humphrey Sheldrake's day, at his charges, as he has put down in his diary." " The more fool you," said George, remorselessly. " A brace of yellow scarecrows in stage trappings. You may be glad there is a little sense left in one of us. I am thankful to say I never was far gone in eclecticism." The reader is informed here that George Sheldrake was as wTell acquainted with the Queen's English, and spoke it as correctly when he chose as it was spoken and " understanded " by any other young American of his social standing. But it somehow pleased him to tickle the fastidious ears of his younger brother and to astonish strangers by any amount of native colloquialisms — with regard to which he was not at all particular whether they were up to date or whether they came from the North or the South.

His slang might be old or it might be new, it might be drawn from New York or from New Orleans. Either way it answered his purpose quite well. Withal, there was no radical irreverence in the man's character. What his brother said of him was emphatically true. " Old George is not half a bad fellow, if he did not go in for being a philosopher, and patronise a lingo which is no more modern Yankee of one brew than it is modern, unadulterated Greek." There was a pause, broken by no sound save the chirping of birds, the swaying of reeds, the stirring of leaves, and the murmur of that river which once upon a time sang never-to-be-forgotten songs to an ear long closed to its varied melody. " Hark ! hark ! the lark at Heaven's gate sings." " Willow, willow." " Where daisies pied and violets blue." " Blow, blotv, thou winter wind."

"Well, what is to be the next move, young Obadiah ? " asked George, as he bit at a spike of grass. " We had better be thinking of something, were it only of going back to inspect our ' munifi cent countryman's ' fountain, or of turning in at the inn, since we don't mean to camp out by this ditch — shade of the Potomac ! to call it a river ! " "I should like nothing better," said Beville, fervently, while his bright hazel eyes looked around, and began to acquire the far-away ex pression of an inveterate dreamer — dreaming while wide awake. " Not if I can help it," said George, springing up with decision, " after the fever you had in the fall. Besides, we're not at home even if we had a tent and all the fixings handy. We're in the land of fine effects from damp and shivers. The ditch ain't dry, unfortunately ; a single night of it would leave you a gone coon.

No, rather knock under, hire a buggy or its substitute, drive out and beard our aristocratic cousins at Oakspur. We'll have the door shut in our faces, I guess. They'll think us a rare pair of impostors. But never mind, you'll see the outside of the hoary abode of our narrow minded, truculent forefathers which you're eter nally hankering after. I bet, if you're honest, you'll admit it is far inferior to the old house in Virginia." Beville did not take up the bet. "Why should our cousins not receive us civilly, at least ? " he inquired, still lying on the ground. " We've buried the hatchet ages ago ; we don't come here to assert our prior claims." " Our prior claim, indeed," echoed George, with a laugh. " Sakes ! it has slept too long even if it rested on a stronger foundation than a few mouldering old papers, which only an expert could be clear were not clever forgeries.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the younger branch has been in possession for nearly three centuries ! It would be a new joke in law to turn them out at this date, even if the game were worth the candle." " It would be well worth the candle to me," said Beville, with a warmth of regret, " though I know the thing is impossible, and it would have been a cruel hardship to the holders of the property if it had remained an open question. But if they are satisfied that we see the matter like rational beings and have no need to— to — " " To sorn on them." George supplied the word composedly. " Well, then, their timid minds might be quieted down on that score. But ten to one they won't believe we haven't a design of grinding our own axe, or, I say, old man, they may be ashamed of us as provincials, Brother Sams, and so forth.

Never mind, we'll turn the tables, and show them their ' tight little island ' is a thunder ing petty affair compared to the almighty States." " Where would the almighty States have been without the ' tight little island ' to set them ago ing ? '' demanded Beville. " Oh ! I guess some other island or continent would have given them the shove," replied George, carelessly, and then he went on as Beville rose reluctantly, and the brothers strolled back to their inn. " I say, youngster, did you lay to heart what the man with the tongue at Warwick let out when you sounded him about the Sheldrakes of Oakspur, that they would have been as poor as church mice if the late squire had not married a fortune in the shape of the daughter of a London merchant — tradesman, I take it. Oh, our quarterings on this side of the water are not so impeccable as might have been expected.

I don't know that our southern 'Lallas,' with Spanish blood in their veins, and our northern ' Prisses,' imported before the war, though they were simply planters' and farmers' daughters, were not a match for this mercantile lady, apart from her fortune." "We shall see," said Beville, briefly. "I don't want to disparage our mothers and grandmothers by any means. I am an American as well as you, and I'm proud enough of the distinction and the rest of it. But there is no need to deny that there is a special charm to me in a Sheldrake of Oak spur, a member of the old race still in its old setting, let the member be man or woman, matron or maid."

Chapter II

A FAMILY COUNCIL IN THE MORNING-ROOM AT OAKSPUR Oakspur, the seat of the English Sheldrakes, was not, and had never been, a feudal castle. The discovery might have inflicted a severe shock on Beville Sheldrake when the American brothers made their descent on Warwickshire had it not been for the old print of the manor house which Humphrey Sheldrake had happened to carry with him in his flight. The print represented the gables, wide porch and single turret, when they were com paratively modern, in their homely dignity as the simple dwelling-place of simple country gentlemen. For it was only now and again that one of its squires won his spurs and obtained the rich mantle and jewelled collar of a courtier and statesman in the days when courtiers and statesmen witched the world in velvet and brocade, plumed beavers or glittering helmets, with costly keys of office dangling from the massive gold chains on the wearers' padded breasts.

Various additions had been made to the old manor house, all in tolerable keeping with its original character, and now, when age had set its seal on its clock tower and broad terrace over looking its pleasant park, when even the dark green leaves and white stars of the jessamine covering one gable, and the soft gray -green trails of the vine mantling over the porch, were vener able specimens of their different kinds, it was, as the verger of the Stratford church had said, a good example of an old English country house. It was calculated in itself to delight the susceptible soul of an Anglo-maniac like Beville Sheldrake ; it was doubly delightful to him as the home of his fathers. The interior of Oakspur was as modestly and daintily picturesque as its exterior. It was pre served with the jealous care wThich knows how to prize at its proper value each delicately worn sign of real antiquity.

It was in the morning-room, with its black, oak-panelled walls, its high mantel piece, its equally high windows, having window seats and small bookcases lodged beneath them, its queer cupboards and unaccountable recesses, that the family were gathered together on just such a June day as that which had seen the American cousins hovering about the classic town and statued church in the neighbourhood. The family was represented by Mrs Sheldrake, the widow of the late and the mother of the present squire, with her two elder daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, girls of twenty-two and twenty. The two younger girls, Dorothy and Eleanor, in the beginning of their teens, had been decreed by their mother, much to their indignant surprise, as not sufficiently mature in years and judgment to be included in a family council, which was to deal with a matter of serious and painful import.

Dorothy and Eleanor indemnified themselves by hanging about the scene in which they were not permitted to play a part, walking and talking in the corridor outside the room, and repeatedly crossing, with interlaced arms — the attitude sig nificant of an alliance offensive and defensive against a common insult — across a corner of the lawn, in full view of one or other of the windows of the morning-room. The young squire was also absent. Indeed, seeing that his crying delinquency was the grave subject on which the council was held, his absence was well nigh inevitable. Mrs Sheldrake resembled her eldest daughter Mary, and was a woman of few and fixed ideas. She was rather a fine-looking woman in a large style — a monumental style when taken in con junction with the widow's weeds, which she had worn, with certain modifications, since the date of her husband's death.

She was fortunate, so far, in having to wear black instead of colour, and in being warranted in adopting draperies rather ponderous and severely straight than light and flowing. The arrangement was infinitely more becoming than any other would have been to her complexion and what her admirers called the grandiose and massive, and her detractors the heavy and clumsy; mould of her nose and chin. She had been born and bred a city heiress, not immensely, but very respectably rich, just as she was very respectably connected in mercantile circles. She had been saved by the skin of her teeth from strong purse-pride by the pride having been gratified on a higher variety of the same article — that is to say, the pride of birth, which had been a distinguishing feature in the otherwise easy-going character of the late Mr Sheldrake.

Mrs Sheldrake was always spoken of as having been a model wife. She was not only a woman of good principles in the deep ruts of a somewhat stiff and stupid mind, she had grown to echo her husband's sentiments in nearly every particular, a process in which the sentiments, instead of growing and developing, had become set and petrified. Mr Sheldrake had not been without gratitude for his wife's deference and homage, for her never ceasing to remember that by making her and her fortune his choice, he had promoted her from the ranks of commerce to those of the country gentry belonging to a county which was eminently con servative (in spite of the fact that Coventry was within its bounds and Birmingham lay on its borders). He had left his widow with entire power over her ample property in the funds.

This was a degree of freedom which her marriage settlement had not secured for her. It might have some show of justice, but it contained many elements of risk for the independence and liberty of action of the heir of Oakspur as well as of his sisters. This was particularly so when it was taken into consideration that the jointure of the widow and the portions of the daughters were to be paid out of the Oakspur estate. Willie Sheldrake was thus to a great extent dependent upon his mother, since, without her and the allowance she chose to make to him, his impoverishment would reach a height which would render the breaking of the entail and the selling of the property the best thing he could do, in a common-sense and business light. Oakspur had been long in the possession of the Sheldrakes, yet for the son of the family to seek to retain it without money to keep it up would be a losing game and a mere mockery.

But Mrs Sheldrake had no intention of being anything else than a model widow and mother, as she had been a model wife. She took it for granted that her son would act in accordance with the creed of the Sheldrakes — maintain his proper position in the county, improve and enlarge the family acres with the fine old house attached to them, and would decline to barter his birthright and such other advantages as he might possess for anything short of a solid equivalent. Mrs Sheldrake had even a more than ordinary sense of obligation resting upon her shoulders with regard to doing her part in insuring her son's discharge of his duty in this respect. She was not a Sheldrake by birth, but she had never ceased to value the privilege conferred on her when she was made a Sheldrake by marriage. She continued to cherish an exaggerated, almost an extravagant — the only extravagant thing about the solemnly decorous matron — conception of the dignity and importance of the family.

No effort would be wantinoon her part to vindicate her husband's trust in her, and to keep up the credit of the bouse. That it should at any time fail by her fault, or through a strain of deterioration introduced by her means into the veins of the distinguished Shel drake race, would be a heavy blow to her. It was on this very question of what Willie B Sheldrake ought to do with himself, and of what he ought not to do, if he would not bring about his ruin, that the mother and daughters were trying to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion on this June morning. A letter from Willie to his mother lay spread open on the little table at her elbow — a very unsatisfactory letter, of so startling and discomposing a nature, that the substantial, mature arm in the black sleeve actually quivered with indignation at the contact.

" It is too bad," said the poor lady, excitedly, pushing back her cap, and pressing her handker chief over her flushed face. " It is intolerable that his father's son should propose to disgrace himself in this manner. I cannot consent to it ; I will not allow it on any consideration. What does the wretched boy mean by giving me this piece of information ? What do you say, girls ? " Mrs Sheldrake was in the habit of appealing to her daughters — not because she had not a mind of her own, but because in addition to her natural affection for them she had a strong sense of their claim to be heard. Were they not born Sheldrakes as she was not? Had they not been reared in the dignified shades of Oakspur, while she had been educated in the comparatively vulgar publicity of an ordinary expensive upper-class boarding school.

Mrs Sheldrake was modest notwithstanding her latent love of power : she was also wise in a dull, limited way. She recognised in the persons of her children the gain of belonging to the end of the century, and she was inclined to magnify the gain, and to view it as counterbalancing her superiority in years and experience. " It is horrid behaviour of Will's," Mary Shel drake, the elder sister, answered readily to her mother's appeal. " Of course, we can never have anything to do with a Coringham girl, a bicycle maker's daughter." Mary was a big, blooming girl, not without good looks of a robust type. She was robust in her broad-shouldered size, and robust in her high colour and abundance of light brown hair. She must have been very like what her mother had been at the same age. But neither her heavy good looks — such a3 they were — nor her resemblance to her mother afforded either mother or daughter much satisfaction.

For all was in favour of Mary's being a " true Benson," a pronounced representative of her mother's family, while Mrs Sheldrake and her daughter would have greatly preferred Mary to be a Sheldrake out and out. Mary's secret desire was that of Falstaff, — " Oh ! that this too solid flesh would melt," and reduce her to the proper standard of tall, slender maidenhood. She would fain have had the ruddy colour in the round cheeks, which would " hang " a little as she grew older, pale into a more delicate complexion. It was hopeless to dream of its ever being washed out till it attained " the creamy whiteness " of some novelists' heroines. Mary answered exactly as her younger sister Elizabeth would have expected her to answer, in an echo of her mother's sentiments. For ponderous as Mary was in the material part of her, she was apt to be a mere reflection of her mother's opinions.