Nigel Bartram's Ideal. A novel

Preface

. |HIS story has appeared before in a somewhat smaller form. It is now republished with Illustrations, and with a few very slight additions which it is thought may serve to give dis tinctness to two of the characters. I might have altered as well as added, taking advantage of the friendly criticisms of Reviewers, to improve upon the story in some respects ; but I have thought it better not to attempt this, and therefore have changed no thing beyond a word here and there. Those who so kindly followed the " fortunes " of my " Nigel " with interest in the former edition will, I hope, not like him less in his new garb, and continue to pardon the faults which I plainly see. F. W. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Miss Hilliard

" She is not fair, yet pleases well The eye in which no others dwell." Coventry Patmore. MET my friend Bartram on the Downs, and have brought him home with me. You can give him some lunch, I suppose, Marion?" " Well, I 'm afraid it will be like the hidalgo's dinner, ' very little meat, and a great deal of tablecloth ; ' the children have nearly demolished the roast beef." These two speeches, made in the dining-room, were quite audible to "my friend Bartram," who was in the hall, divesting himself of a sportsman's usual trappings, and seeking a secure place to deposit his gun out of reach of the afore-mentioned children. " So Longfellow is known and quoted in these parts," he said to himself: "a mark of civilization which helps to console me for my melancholy prospects as regards the beef."

Then, lest he should be the involuntary auditor of any more domestic revelations, he went into the room. A long dining-table, covered with the debris of an early dinner, five children in pinafores sitting round it, a lady at the head who was neither very young nor very old, neither pretty nor ugly — that was what Mr. Bartram saw when he passed through the door. A good-looking brown-bearded man, with a well-born, well-bred air, and of a height which seemed rather alarming in that low roofed, old-fashioned parsonage — that was what the five children and the lady saw, when the entrance of the stranger made them all look up. Then came forward the parson, handsome, but care worn, and bade his children shake hands with his old friend Mr. Bartram, first, however, introducing him to the lady, whom he named as " my wife's sister, Miss Hilliard."

The small people rose en masse, with greetings more or less tumultuous ; Miss Hilliard bowed quietly, and looked a little anxious and thoughtful, like Dickens's heroine, when she had " the greens on her mind," only in this case it was the beef, or rather the want of beef, MISS HILLLARD. 3 ■which was creating the slight mental oppression of the gentle housekeeper. She was only housekeeper pro ton., during the illness of her sister, the clergyman's wife ; and with this sister, "whose acquaintance he had made some years before, Mr. Bartram was inwardly comparing her. Mrs. Hope was a rosy blonde, with laughing hazel eyes, which had found a reflection in four out of the five children ; Miss Hilliard was pale, with dark brown hair, very dark eyes, regular but rather insignificant features, and a grave, quiet expression, which made her look more than her actual age.

She was six and twenty, and in performing the duties of aunt and governess to her small nephews she had learnt to consider herself quite beyond the pale of young ladyhood, and to make other people so consider her also. She had given up studying the becoming, and wore a useful grey gown, in which, indeed, she looked a perfect lady, as she would have looked in anything, but which by no means set her off to advantage ; and she had the air of one who does not expect or desire to be noticed, but is accustomed to be left in the shade. Her manner was a little shy, but pleasing from its extreme gentleness, and there was no awkwardness about her ; her small, slight figure had even a certain grace of its own, but of this she was wholly unconscious. 1 — She gave a few low-toned orders to the servant who was in attendance, and then stepped across to one of the windows which opened on the lawn.

" There are a few peaches still on the west wall ; I am going to gather them," she said ; and as she spoke she looked an invitation for all who would to accompany her. Mr. Bartram and the three elder children answered the glance by following her, and she lingered on the way to do the honours of the little garden to the stranger. Credisham Church and Parsonage stood side by side on a high range of Kentish down, overlooking a tract of marsh land which separated it from the sea. From behind the parsonage sloped a good-sized lawn and kitchen garden, and from behind the church a meadow, the two being only divided from each other by a hedge of the graceful tamarisk, which grows so abundantly on the sea-coast of Kent. At the foot of both garden and meadow was another hedge of the same kind, and beyond this the ground ceased to slope, and fell abruptly down like a perpendicular wall, to the high road, which wound along at the edge of the marsh.

To watch the passers-by on this road was a favourite amusement of the little Hopes ; so they hurried to the extreme end of the garden, leaving their aunt still standing MISS HILLIARD. 5 on the lawn, pointing out to Mr. Bartram the silver line of the canal intersecting the marsh about midway across, the quaint martello towers upon the beach, and beyond the beach a palpitating pearly haze, almost melting on the horizon into the calmer grey of the sky, but still just distinct enough to make known the presence of the ocean. On the left, beyond the church, another piece of down jutted out and hid the view, but on the right the prospect was clear, and there could be seen the level land stretch ing away for miles, and then gradually rounding off, intrenching upon the sea's domain, and forming a sort of bay.

There were no clouds visible on this autumnal afternoon, but yet the sun was not shining in full bril_ liancy ; a pearly grey sky, deliciously soft and calm melted, as has been said, into a sea of the same hue ; a faint white mist floated over the marsh, and the trees on the canal bank wore a sober livery of fading green and brown. To the left the old Gothic church stood up, a mass of solid grey masonry, against the dreamlike sky, looking a very picturesque and salient fact amid a world of shadows. To the right the down sloped gently to the marsh, and a flock of sheep were pasturing on its grassy side. Mr. Bartram looked at all in silence as his companion pointed out the most striking features of this little panorama, and then his gaze rested finally upon the dreamlike sea. " I could find it in my heart to envy you this view,'" he said.

"I suppose you are very fond of this place ?" " I suppose so," she answered, absently. Then, as if she had become aware that this answer must have sounded odd, she continued with more animation, " Yes ; I have learnt to like it very much ; " adding, in the stereotyped tone of one feeling it her duty to make conversation, " Strangers often come here to see the church and the view. Are you fond of the sea-side ? " Of course he answered that he was, at the same time telling her that he had not come into the neighbourhood for the sake of sea breezes, but for that of the good shooting promised him by his friend Mr. Adderley, of Credisham Manor, with whom he was staying. " I did not know that Hope was settled here till I met him on the Downs this morning," he went on : "we were friends together at Oxford years ago, but I had lost sight of him since, much to my regret."

" I think he knew that you were likely to be in this neighbourhood, so his surprise must have been less : Mr. Adderley mentioned the other day that you had returned from India." " Yes, I got three years' leave of absence, and came MISS HILLIARD. 7 home in the spring, but I have not been able to get down to the Manor till now. I suppose you know the Adderleys well ? " " Pretty well." " You have not seen much of them yet, perhaps ? I was forgetting that you may be but a visitor to Credisham like myself." "No; I live here," she answered, gently. "Mr. Hope and my sister are kind enough to let me consider this my home." " I wonder if my friend Hope's progeny look upon aunts in the same light that I did when I was a youngster. I mean as created for the special delectation of nephews," said Mr. Bartram, glancing towards the children, of whom little could now be seen but boots and knickerbockers, so completely were their upper halves buried in the hedge.

" I think they consider themselves my special delecta tion," she answered with a smile ; and then, shyly, but with evident sincerity, she added, " And so they are." He had not known how sweet her face could be till she said this : it softened and glowed all at once with that tender Madonna look which may be seen in the faces of many women when they speak of children, even though they be not mothers. With her, however, it was swept out all at once by the return of the indifferent self-restrained expression which seemed habitual to her. " Did you have good sport this morning ? " she asked, with a sudden change of manner, as if it would have been high treason to her social code to spend a word more on herself and her belongings. He made some brief but sufficient answer, — shooting being rather an occasional recreation with him than a special hobby ; and then she inquired after Mrs. Adderley, who was delicate, and uttered a few commonplaces about the beauty of the Manor woods, and talking thus, led the way to the wall which bordered the garden on the right.

She had a sweet voice, and spoke very clearly and pleasantly, and with a refined accent. Somehow, Mr. Bartram, who was clever and rather critical, did not find her dull, though she did utter such little nothings ; and though she was not pretty, he somehow rather liked to watch her as she reached up for the highest cluster of fruit, her head upturned a little eagerly, her slender white fingers wandering among the blooming peaches with intent to select the ripest. Something there was about her, in her softly tinted hair, her shady eyes, the clear pallor of her complexion, and even the neutral colour of her dress, which harmonized with the subdued MISS HILLLARD. 9 light of the day, and attracted him indefinably. He stood there holding her little basket for her, content to wait while she leisurely picked out the choicest fruit, forgetting all about his hunger — he had had an exceedingly early breakfast — and the slender supply of beef indoors, and even about his friend Mr. Hope, who was just coming out to join him.

He was wondering lazily whether, if he had been a poet, which he was not, it would have been worth while for him to compose a pendant to "The Gardener's Daughter," and describe a pale grave maiden gathering peaches, instead of a lovely creature, all sunshine, tying up roses, — when the boys came rushing towards them, clamouring for a share of the spoils. " I should like that big one," shouted Master Clement, indicating a special beauty, which his aunt was about to place in the basket. " No, that is for mamma," she answered, gently putting aside the brown hand bent on plunder. " Mamma always has the nicest things," grumbled the urchin. "Well, that's best, isn't it? "she said, smiling down at him. " But see, Clem, if you will bring me a leaf, I will let you take it to her : she will like that, and you shall have one for yourself when you come back."

The child went off appeased, and his father summoned Mr. Bartram to the dining-room, where all traces of the children's dinner had disappeared, and a neatly-spread luncheon awaited him. Miss Hilliard followed slowly, gathering a spray of flowers here and there as she passed on, and murmuring to herself, " What an idiot I am ! I know no more how to talk to strangers than little Minnie does. Never mind. though — Blanche will amuse him by-and-bye."

Chapter II

"MARK'S DREAM " Here we are shadows, and our lives but dreams, And dreams perchance our inner waking life ; For all unreal is the thing that seems." Anon. LANCHE was the mistress of the mansion,. and mistress not in name only. She governed every one and everything within the parsonage, though in appearance she was merely a very pretty and very helpless invalid, almost too young, too childish, and too delicate to be fit for the cares and responsibilities of her position. She had married at an extravagantly early age, and though the mother of six children, the youngest of whom was six months old, she was only just five and twenty, a year younger than her unmarried sister. She seemed even less than that, for her manner was childlike, gay, and piquant, harmonizing well with the bright character of her beauty, with the sunny hair, and the sparkling eyes, and the bloom that was only too intense for health- She had had a serious illness lately, and was but just so n NLGEL BARTRAM'S IDEAL. 12 far recovered as to be able to pass a few hours in the drawing-room every day.

She was reclining on the sofa there in a very pic turesque attitude, and looking altogether her sweetest and prettiest, when her sister came to her, and asked if she would like to see Mr. Bartram when he had finished his lunch. " Of course I should," she replied, suspending for a moment her leisurely occupation of devouring the peach which her son had brought her. " Edward told me he was here, so I made Martha come and arrange my hair again. I don't look quite such a fright as I did in the morning, do I ? And, oh, you dear thing ! you have brought me a fresh bouquet : there, put it on this little table beside me, and give me that green volume from the chiffonier, ' Benedict's Life of Mendelssohn.' Do let us look a little literary if we can." " False appearances," said Miss Hilliard, with a tiny sigh and half a smile.

" What matter ? we 're all hypocrites more or less. No, not you, though. I do believe you 're absolutely true, though not always transparent : you never put your best side uppermost, nor study I'art de nous faire valoir, as I do." " I wonder what is hypocrisy exactly ? " said Miss Hilliard, thoughtfully : "you seem to recognize only one kind. Was Brutus not a hypocrite when he pretended to be an idiot, just as much as a simpleton would be who pretended to be clever?" " My dear Marion, you are the oddest girl ! I was talking about you, and you begin about Brutus. Just as if you thought, too, I had my Roman History at my fingers' ends, as you have who have been teaching Clem and Ned. Let me see. Brutus pretended to be silly, and that was how he got his name, wasn't it ? But what has that to do with you ?

You are as far removed from being an idiot as you are from being a genius. I con sider you a comfortably commonplace person, with very excellent sense ; and the best of it is you don't affect to be anything more." No, she affected nothing : she did not look the least bit put out at being called commonplace, though most people would hardly consider it a compliment ; a timid, musing smile just curved her lip, and her silence seemed to express acquiescence, without a touch of wonder or reproach. "And what did you talk to Mr. Bartram about ?" con tinued the young matron. " Oh, I know you asked him if he were fond of the sea-side. Yes, now didn't you ?" As the half-smile on her sister's lips dimpled into much fuller merriment, " What a good guess of mine ! And he is so clever, and detests conventional small talk so utterly.

Oh ! what fun ! " " Then if he is so clever, I think he might as well have been good-natured and done the talking for me," said Marion, joining readily in Blanche's laughter ; " whereas his remarks were few and far between, and almost as commonplace as my own. How do you know he is so very clever ? " " Oh, because Edward says so, and he took all sorts of honours at college, and has got ever so high up in the Indian Civil Service, and since he has been home he has turned author, and writes essays and reviews and things. Mrs. Adderley told me so. I must get him to send me some to read." " Yes, do, and make him talk, Blanche. I should like to hear a really clever man talk, and I dare say you can draw him out, though I couldn't. To be sure I didn't even try." " No, you asked him that fatal and inevitable question about the sea-side, and then you did walking guide book, and said, ' That is our church, those are the mar tello towers, that is the canal, and beyond is the sea;' and of course, as it was all so very obvious to anybody with eye-sight, he could only say yes, and so the con versation languished.

I can imagine it all." Marion laughed again. " Your powers of guessing are so good as to be quite uncanny," she said. " I think I hear the gentlemen coming up. Now show me how I ought to have talked." Certainly Mr. Bartram was more at ease with the younger sister than he had been with the elder. He dropped into a seat beside the sofa, and into a lively yet gentle conversation with the occupant thereof, almost simultaneously : his eyes brightened as he talked to her, and he talked very charmingly. Marion, at work in a distant corner of the room, listened, wondered, and admired. He was a great big manly man, but he had rather a way of talking to women as if they were little birds, softly and playfully, as though any roughness might be apt to scare them ; and this just suited the little lady on the sofa, wrho was accustomed to be made a pet of.

She talked to him about old times, meaning eight years ago when she was a bride, and about India — she knew almost nothing of it, except that it was a long way off and very hot, but she talked as if she did, and that did as well — and teased him very prettily about his authorship, making him tell her the titles of his essays, and what sort of books he had reviewed. " What fun it must be to be a critic ! " she said presently, " and to have the right and title to be ill-natured. Ill-nature is such a luxury ! Yes, it is, indeed," she added, glancing roguishly at her husband, who was shaking his head ; " and I never read novels without wishing to be a Saturday Reviewer — able to cut them up." " And what do you think of that strange new novel that every one is talking of — 'Mark's Dream'?" asked Mr. Bartram.

" ' Mark's Dream ' ? oh, I haven't read it ; I don't think we have even heard of it ; have we, Marion ? " " There is a review of it in this morning's ' Standard,' " replied Marion from her distant seat, without looking up. " Is there ? Oh ! I must look at it. Not your review, Mr. Bartram, is it ? " " No ; I have not reviewed this book yet : I have been asked to do so in the ," naming a quarterly periodical. " And are you going to cut it up, or to praise it ? " "I am going to try to show my appreciation of its talent, its very great originality ; but, at the same time, I am going to find fault with its morale, which I think decidedly bad and calculated to do mischief." Mrs. Hope looked amused, as if she thought his tone a little too solemn ; her elder sister raised a startled face from her work a moment, perhaps surprised to hear him speak so seriously.

"You think it a bad book, then, altogether?" she asked. " Bad in that way, yes ; and I should judge its author to be a man of most decided genius, but perhaps not of very high principle. You look doubtful : have you read the book ? " Before Marion could answer, her brother spoke for her. "No, that I am sure she has not. I dislike novels, and they seldom come into this house, except now and then, when Blanche is ill, and I borrow one to amuse her. We have not had ' Mark's Dream ; ' has it been long out ? " " A month or two," said Mr. Bartram ; but while he spoke to his friend he scanned critically the half-averted face at the far end of the room. It was drooping over the work again, but it was crimson even to the brow, and somehow or other Mr. Bartram came to the con clusion that she had read the book, and read it by stealth, without her brother's and sister's knowledge.

He was sorry, more sorry than he could account for : he knew nothing of Miss Hilliard, he had never seen her till that day ; but her face, her voice, the few words she had said to him, had left on him such an impression of sincerity that he was surprised and pained to discover in her any thing which seemed like lack of openness. She was NIGEL BARTRAM'S LDEAL. 18 not a child, of course, and not in the least bound to show her brother and sister every book she read, or to be guided entirely by their choice ; but if she had chosen to read this novel, of which Mr. Hope, with his strict ideas, would probably not much approve, why was she afraid or ashamed to avow that she had done so ? Why could she not look up frankly with her clear womanly eyes, and make the simple admission which candour seemed to require ?

Mr. Hope had his back almost turned to her, and did not notice her change of colour, neither did Blanche, who was playing with her own bracelets, and mechani cally watching them as she did so. Mr. Bartram would not betray what he had observed, and tried to fancy himself mistaken ; so for a minute no one spoke. Mrs. Hope was the first to break the silence. '"Mark's Dream ' ! I rather like the name. Do tell me what the story is about. Who was Mark ? and what was his dream ? " " Mark is a little child when the story begins, and the plot turns on a scene which he believed that he had actually witnessed one night, but which his mother and all about him tell him was only a dream. It is a painful, disagreeable story, but well wrought out — and I had better not tell you the outline, lest I should spoil your interest in it."

" Oh ! but do tell me — I rather like horrors ; and now that you have condemned the book, that dragon of a husband of mine will not let it enter his doors, so you may be sure I shall never see it. What did Mark see, or think he saw ? " She looked so pretty a picture of impatient eagerness, that, rather reluctantly, Mr. Bartram yielded, and went on : " Well, nothing less than the murder of his own father, whom he is afterwards assured had died a natural death. Soon after, at least in a year or so, Mark's mother marries the man whom in his dream he had thought to be the murderer, and the step-father, by his talents, forbearance, and kindness, wins at last a sort of reluctant admiration from his very unruly son. The character of the mother, much happier, it is hinted, in her second marriage than in her first, wins upon one more and more.

There is a charming little girl — a ward of her second husband's, called Amice — who often stays with them, and first plagues, then adores Mark ; and altogether this part of the story is the pleasantest and most wholesome, though even then there is a sense of thunder in the air." "And had the second husband really murdered the first ? " " Yes ; and when Mark comes to be a man, he finds 2—2 NIGEL BARTRAM'S LDEAL. 20 means to prove this through an unexpected source. He accuses his step-father, and desires his mother and Amice to choose between the murderer and him, for they never can form one family again. Both cleave to the guilty one — the mother through passionate love, which even guilt cannot lessen ; Amice, through mere girlish gene rosity and innocence of heart, unable to believe in crime.

In his rage and misery, Mark determines to bring the murderer to justice, and to avoid this the three escape to the Continent, and hide themselves in an obsure German town. This part of the story is very clever, but I should tire you if I were to describe it minutely. In the end the murderer dies, and Mark finds Amice, forgives her what he had thought her mistaken loyalty, and marries her." " ' All 's well that ends well,' " said Mr. Hope, with a sigh of relief; " but what a tissue of rubbish ! " "No, there I cannot agree with you. I dislike the story — no one can dislike it more ; but it is not rubbish ; it has a certain literary value. The style is capital, such pure simple English, and the characters are marvellously well imagined. Mark one likes all through, though he makes mistakes, and the mother is, I think, the most real character I have ever met with in fiction ; one can't help admiring her above all things, though she is in a measure guilty ; and it is just that which makes the book harmful."

" What becomes of her in the end ? " asked Blanche, who was never in the humour for moralizing. " Well, she lives a strange, hard, lonely life in the little German town, with no friends near her but some rather disreputable people, English, who had been her husband's associates during his months of hiding. She refuses any kindness from Mark and Amice, who have gone to England, and will not join them there ; however, they come to her on her death-bed, and the scene between the mother and son is very beautiful and touching. She makes rather a Pagan ending, though." "Which surely is more consistent than a pious one with what has gone before," said Marion from her corner. "Yes, you are right. There is a severe painful con sistency in the whole of that last scene. A lady writer could never have resisted the temptation of making a comfortable religious _/z;/.r/<?, but the author, whoever he is, has been too true to his art for that.

The heroine — for I consider Amice only secondary — is throughout a splendid Pagan, beautiful, noble, loveable, much more attractive than many better women, and she charms and moves us even on her death-bed, when she seems only IDEAL. 22 to desire for herself and her guilty husband the fate of Paolo and Francesca di Rimini—' together, still together, in endless woe.' " " Why do people write such books ? " said Mr. Hope, shrugging his shoulders with very natural disgust ; and then he went down to quiet a dispute among his boys, who were wrangling on the lawn. " I must say I should like to read it, though," said his wife, with a charming little mutinous air, when he was gone. " It must be a very strange story. What do you think of it, Marion ? " " I think that, as Mr. Bartram tells it, it sounds not only strange, but repulsive."

" You think I have not told it fairly, not done justice to its brighter side, its poetical colouring ? Perhaps I have not. My bald description can, of course, give no idea of the charm of the style, nor of the almost painful interest one is made to feel in the principal characters. I have only given the outline, and that is certainly re volting." Her colour came again, and once more she bent her head mutely over her sewing : she was ashamed evidently of having read and perhaps liked a book which he thus stigmatized. " I am sure you told it very nicely," said the lively Blanche, turning to him with a winning smile. " Marion didn't mean to criticise your version: how could she when she hadn't read the original ? She was only shocked, like my dear, good, proper husband, at the idea of a story about wicked people.