The House of Egremont E-Book

Molly Elliot Seawell

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

THE fortunes of The House of Egremont had their first great bloom through the agency of a platter of beans; and through a platter of beans more than a hundred years later the elder branch was ousted from one of the greatest estates in England, became wanderers and gentlemen adventurers throughout Europe, fought in quarrels not their own, served sovereigns of foreign countries, knew the dazzling heights of glory, and fell into the mire of penury and disrepute. An Egremont had the ear of kings, and another Egremont mounted the gallows. They mated sometimes with princes and dukes, and sometimes they were thought fit to mate with the daughters of their gaolers. Some of them were great at play, and met and vanquished the best players of Europe on the field of the cloth of green; other Egremonts were ascetics and wore hair shirts next their skins, and fasted and prayed extremely. They seemed the favorite playthings of destiny, which had a showman’s way of exhibiting them in all the ups and downs, the glories and shames, of human vicissitudes.

Leseprobe

TheHouse of Egremont

A Novel

ByMolly Elliot Seawell

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743123

CHAPTER I IN WHICH ROGER EGREMONT MAKES HIS BOW TO THE WORLD

CHAPTER II ROGER EGREMONT MAKES INTIMATE ACQUAINTANCE WITH TWO PERSONS, WHO EXERCISE GREAT BUT WIDELY DIFFERING INFLUENCES UPON HIS LIFE,—TO WIT, THE DEVIL AND MISS BESS LUKENS.

CHAPTER III ONCE MORE AT EGREMONT

CHAPTER IV SHOWING HOW ROGER EGREMONT FALLS INTO GOOD COMPANY

CHAPTER V THE EASTER TUESDAY MASQUERADE ON THE TERRACE, AND WHAT CAME OF IT

CHAPTER VI “YOUR LOVER IS EVER IN A BAD WAY WHEN THE OTHER WOMAN APPEARS.”

CHAPTER VII IN WHICH ROGER EGREMONT MEETS WITH BOTH GOOD AND ILL FORTUNE

CHAPTER VIII WHEREIN THE PRINCESS MICHELLE IS PUT IN THE WAY OF SECURING THE DESTINY OF WHICH SHE HAS LONG DREAMED

CHAPTER IX “I WISH YOU TO COME WITH ME”

CHAPTER X HO! FOR ORLAMUNDE

CHAPTER XI THE JOURNEY, AND SOME CONFIDENCES MADE BY ROGER EGREMONT TO THE PRINCESS MICHELLE.

CHAPTER XII “YOU HAVE BROUGHT ME TO THE GATE OF PARADISE AND HAVE SHOWN ME THE GLORY OF THE BEAUTY WITHIN—AND THEN HAVE THRUST ME AWAY!”

CHAPTER XIII THE PALACE OF MONPLAISIR—THE ABODE OF THE MOST HIGH, MOST MIGHTY, AND MOST PUISSANT PRINCE OF ORLAMUNDE.

CHAPTER XIV ROGER EGREMONT HAS A LITTLE ADVENTURE IN A GARDEN AT NEERWINDEN AND BECOMES A MAJOR IN THE FINEST BRIGADE IN THE WORLD.

CHAPTER XV IN WHICH AN EGREMONT HAS THE HAPPINESS OF RETURNING TO HIS NATIVE LAND—AND WHAT BEFELL HIM THERE

CHAPTER XVI ONCE MORE IN THE SALOON OF THE SWANS

CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH CAPTAIN ROGER EGREMONT ACTS AS COACHMAN, AND LIEUTENANT-GENERAL THE DUKE OF BERWICK AS FOOTMAN

CHAPTER XVIII ROGER EGREMONT HAS HIS LAST FIGHT WITH THE DEVIL

CHAPTER XIX IF A MAN GIVETH HIS LIFE FOR HIS FRIENDS, HE CAN DO NO MORE

CHAPTER XX “HUGO STEIN IS MY ENEMY, AND I AM HIS, AS LONG AS WE BOTH SHALL LIVE”

CHAPTER XXI WHEREIN IS SET FORTH THE CONCLUSION OF A MAN WHO ALWAYS FEARED GOD AND ALWAYS TOOK HIS OWN PART

THE HOUSE OF EGREMONT

CHAPTER IIN WHICH ROGER EGREMONT MAKES HIS BOW TO THE WORLD

T

HE fortunes of the House of Egremont had their first great bloom through the agency of a platter of beans; and through a platter of beans more than a hundred years later the elder branch was ousted from one of the greatest estates in England, became wanderers and gentlemen adventurers throughout Europe, fought in quarrels not their own, served sovereigns of foreign countries, knew the dazzling heights of glory, and fell into the mire of penury and disrepute. An Egremont had the ear of kings, and another Egremont mounted the gallows. They mated sometimes with princes and dukes, and sometimes they were thought fit to mate with the daughters of their gaolers. Some of them were great at play, and met and vanquished the best players of Europe on the field of the cloth of green; other Egremonts were ascetics and wore hair shirts next their skins, and fasted and prayed extremely. They seemed the favorite playthings of destiny, which had a showman’s way of exhibiting them in all the ups and downs, the glories and shames, of human vicissitudes.

The first trick she played them was to their advantage. John Egremont, a handsome, red-blooded country squire, of infinite assurance, happened to catch the eye of Queen Elizabeth when she was befooling the world with the notion that she, at the age of forty, would marry the boy Duke of Anjou, twenty years younger than herself. Part of this play was that the Queen should pine and lose her appetite, and swear wildly one day that she would never marry a man who might “flout the old woman,” and then proceed to write the Duke a love-letter which would shame a dairymaid. The Duke, having tired of the whole business, took ship for France, while the Queen took to her bed at her palace of Westminster and moaned and wept incessantly. Nothing would she eat. John Egremont, being in the Queen’s anteroom when one of her maids came out lamenting that the Queen could eat nothing, ran down into the kitchen, snatched up a platter of beans, the first thing on which he could lay hands, and was about to run away with it. The cooks, however, were valiant men though humble, and they fell upon him with basting ladles and rolling-pins and turnspits, so that John Egremont had to draw his sword. This he did, slashing out right and left, and pinking more than one of them; but nevertheless, carrying his beans high above his head, he escaped from the mêlée, and flew back to the Queen’s apartments. Pushing his way into her presence,—a thing easily forgiven by her when the man was young and comely,—he presented the beans on his knees to her. The Queen, lying wrapped in a great mantle, with her face in her hands, was persuaded to turn and look at the kneeling Egremont. Something flashed from her cold bright eyes into his cold bright eyes, and the daughter of Henry the Eighth suddenly burst into that loud, ringing Tudor laugh, which was like the shout of a clarion. Whether it was the homeliness of the dish, or the expression of knowingness in Egremont’s handsome eyes, or that she was tired of the play, is all one. She ate the beans,—Egremont meanwhile telling her in moving language of his fight with the cooks, and showing her his mantle, which bore the marks of the greasy encounter. At this, Elizabeth Tudor laughed louder than ever; and when Egremont kissed her beautiful white hands, after she had washed them in a silver basin, she fingered fondly the short curls upon his neck, as she was wont to do with handsome young fellows. From that day to the time, six months before her death, when she fingered weakly the curls on the neck of Egremont’s son—a handsome young man—as she had fingered his father’s, and laughed feebly the old Tudor laugh, she was the sturdy friend of the Egremonts. It mattered little that they were staunch believers in the old religion, and that the Egremont dames had mass daily in a secret chapel, and at their chief estate of Egremont was a “priest’s hole,” where the priest was hidden when persecution raged. Elizabeth Tudor was the only one of her race who was not consumed with a rage for religion; but she, being a perfectly good-natured sceptic, merely laughed in her sleeve at those who risked their persons and estates for conscience’ sake. True, the queer Elizabethan religion afforded a very good club wherewith to pound those subjects, otherwise distasteful or insubordinate to her Majesty, but men as comely, well born, and debonair as John Egremont were at liberty to believe what they liked, as long as they came to court, flattered the Queen, and made her great presents. So she continued to give profitable places to the Egremonts, swearing flatly to her lords in council her great, mouth-filling oath, “By God’s Son!” that Egremont, to her certain knowledge, had conformed to the last new statutes, and to the very last days of her life remained a good friend and protector to that family.

The Egremonts seemed to be gifted with the art of pleasing kings. They were as much in favor with James the First as they had been with the mighty princess whose mantle fitted Scotch James as well as royal robes fit a sign-post. He played the fool with them as he did with all his favorites, but put money in their purses for it, and their estates grew. Poor stubborn Charles the First found the Egremonts loyal to him in his endeavors to rule the English people as they did not wish to be ruled; and, although they suffered somewhat at the hands of Cromwell, the second Charles found them to his heart’s liking, and repaid them twice over.

There were many Egremonts then, younger sons of younger sons, and they held together strongly in certain things, and differed angrily and loudly upon others. They were not a race of milksops, but sinewy men and women, red-blooded like their Elizabethan ancestor. Their motto was, “Fear God, and take your own part.” Some of them feared God, but all of them took their own part with firmness and determination. Although they held firmly to their religion, they frequently took liberties with the Decalogue; but having received great benefits from their sovereigns, repaid it with a handsome loyalty.

The head of the house in the merry days of Charles the Second was a certain John Egremont, comely and debonair, like his forbears, but cold of heart and a calculator. Like most men of that type, his loves were few and strange. He footed it at court with the best of them, was good at playing and at fighting, and thought with King Charles that God would not forever damn a man for taking a little pleasure out of the way. He was rather proud of his reputation as a sad dog, and it was in no way impaired during a brief married life. The yoke was light, and was soon lifted by death; so, within a year or two John Egremont was back at court, leaving a little motherless boy at Egremont. Then he took a notion to make the grand tour,—a quarrel with Lady Castlemaine rendering it very necessary that he should absent himself from England for a time. It was three years before he returned, but my Lady Castlemaine had not cooled off, nor did she during the remainder of John Egremont’s life.

The next seven years were spent by him in back-stairs negotiations to get back to court, and in long absences on the Continent; and meanwhile his son and heir, the little Roger, led at Egremont the most neglected life possible, so far as his father was concerned. He had, it is true, a tutor, a guzzling, tipsy creature, whom the boy despised and hated, and from whom he would learn nothing. The tutor, however, secure in the indifference of the lad’s father, troubled himself not at all about Roger’s learning, or want of learning; and so the boy grew up as ignorant as a clod concerning books, but not so ignorant about some other important things. John Egremont’s absences from England, and his stony nature, left him but few friends, even among his own kindred, thus breaking the traditions of his family. The little Roger, therefore, was reared in loneliness, except for the companionship of one other lad, a far-off cousin, Dicky Egremont. Dicky was almost as ill off for friends as Roger, his nearest relative being a paralytic old grandfather, who had served under Prince Rupert, and eked out an existence in what was little more than a cottage on the Egremont estate. The two boys were perpetually together, and had no other company but servants. Roger could not be called a handsome lad, although he had ever a straight, slender figure, fine white teeth in his wide mouth, and a profusion of beautifully curling light-brown hair. But Dicky was rather a homely little boy, in spite of his apple cheeks and his dimples and a very roguish smile; and although only two years younger than Roger, he always seemed very much more so, and Roger early acquired the habit of speaking to him and of him as if Dicky were an infant, and he, Roger, were an hundred years old. This was so marked that Roger, at eleven years of age, thought the nine-year-old Dicky too young to share many of his thoughts and dreams,—for he thought and dreamed, although he did not read and could scarcely write his name.

But, though a very ignorant boy, he was so far from uncouth and witless that his ignorance was anything but obvious. He had by nature a strong and acute understanding, and showed even as a little lad great art in concealing the defects of his education. He had, moreover, a natural grace, a careless sweetness in his air that made him the pet of the ladies in the drawing-room on the rare occasions when he saw them, as well as the favorite of Hoggins the cook, and Molly the housemaid. And though most of his days were passed with game-keepers and stablemen, and his evenings generally in the housekeeper’s room, Roger never forgot, or allowed these people to forget, that he knew the difference between the condition of gentle and simple. Indeed, the servants, out of pity for his forlorn childhood, had tried to console him by telling him that all the broad lands of Egremont and the stately Elizabethan house would one day be his. It sank deep in the boy’s mind, and he early acquired an idea of the beauty and value of his home and a passionate affection for it, that strongly colored all his later life. And Egremont was worthy to be loved. The manor-house lay upon a breezy upland, with the faint blue line of the hill country between it and the salt sea on the one side; and on the other, afar off, was the salt sea again, each but little more than a day’s ride away. The land was rich and well wooded and watered. A little brawling river ran through the estate, and fed the artificial lake and fish pond near the house, on which swans and ducks floated and made their reedy habitations. The woods of Egremont were celebrated, and particularly a great avenue of oaks, three miles long, standing in ranks like soldiers at parade, was the envy of all the timber merchants in the south of England. John Egremont, in the year of the Restoration, planted two thousand young oaks; the timber, already immensely valuable, was likely to become more so.

The park held a thousand acres, through which the dun deer ran, and where other wild creatures and many birds found undisturbed cover. It was in this park that Roger Egremont spent his boyhood and early manhood. The house, a vast parallelogram, had been built by that John Egremont of the bean-platter. It was full of tall windows; the Elizabethan architects, being new to glass, used it so lavishly that many Elizabethan mansions were little more than glass houses. There was a fine hall in the Egremont house, and a library with a respectable number of books in it, and much quaint carved woodwork, but the lad, Roger Egremont, was almost a stranger in the house, so little did he live in it, except to sleep in a little bedroom he had on the first floor, and to take his meals in a grimy den habited by the tutor. For at the break of day, every morning, fair or foul, Roger was out-of-doors, looking after his rabbit hutches and all his various contrivances for trapping wild creatures, and running about the stables backing the colts, cultivating the acquaintance of the great, mild-eyed cows, as they stood in line to be milked, listening to the call of birds and domestic fowls, and learning to imitate them, watching the budding or the falling of the leaf, feeding the ducks in the river, and gravely studying by the hour the antics of the fish in the fish pond. In short, the great book of nature lay open before him, and he read it diligently, and learned to understand it well, but of other books and of men he knew pitifully little.

In these hours of incessant bodily and actually mental activity, little Dicky was generally his companion, and it pleased the older boy’s vanity to tell him the magnificent things to be done for him when Roger should reign at Egremont. Yet, when the servants talked before him, as they often did, of “when master be dead,”—an event which they rather anticipated,—Roger would fly into a rage and cry,—

“Say no more to me of that. Do you think I want my father to die?”

To this, Molly the housemaid pertly replied,—

“La, Master Roger, he be dead enough a’ready to all of us.”

Roger’s feelings toward his father were strangely contradictory. The boy had a tender and loving heart, and it warmed at the name of father. He admired his father’s portrait, taken in a splendid court dress, with long, dark locks flowing on his shoulders. And on the few and short visits of John Egremont at his home, the lad always ran to meet him with delight. But he was always received coldly and carelessly, and he always had, in consequence, a revulsion of feeling, very much like hatred. For his mother’s memory the boy had a fond affection, and loved to hear the story of her short life under the roof of Egremont.

So life went on until Roger was twelve years old, when one day he got a letter from his father,—the first in his life. He could not read it alone, and he would not take it to his tutor, so he went after little Dicky, who was an expert at reading and writing. And the news which Dicky read to him, sitting on the bench by the fish pond, was that John Egremont was coming home to live, and would bring with him a younger son, Hugo, the child of a second marriage made in Germany; and the father hoped the two brothers would be good friends.

The two lads gazed into each other’s eyes with consternation,—staggered and alarmed at the notion of the new boy. Roger, however, had a good courage, and spoke up sturdily.

“At least, I am the oldest and the biggest; and if he will not behave, I can trounce him, that I will.”

Some time after, one morning as Roger was returning to the house for breakfast after a gallop on his pony since daybreak, he was seized at the buttery door by Molly the housemaid, who burst out,—

“Your dad’s come, Master Roger, and another boy with him, as master told the housekeeper was two year younger nor you. It’s your new brother—ha! ha!”

Molly’s laughter was anything but merry, and her news made Roger an unresisting victim in her hands, while she scrubbed his face and hands violently, curled his long light hair, and whisked him into his best suit, she clacking angrily meanwhile about “lads as was said to be ten, and any fool could see warn’t a day under fourteen.”

And then Roger, very white and very straight, walked to the hall where his father and his newly arrived brother awaited him.

Some premonition of evil flashed into the boy’s young soul as he stood for five minutes outside the door, before he could screw his courage up to opening it, and he was not a boy of faint heart either. At the end of the hall, by the fireplace, sat his father and a strange boy. Roger advanced, still pale, but graceful and outwardly at ease. As he approached, his father rose, and said in the kindest tone that Roger had ever heard from his lips,—

“Roger, this is your younger brother, Hugo; I hope you will be good friends.”

To have an unknown brother sprung on one would have disconcerted an older and wiser person than poor little Roger Egremont. He became still whiter as his dark eyes grew larger and darker, and he glanced uneasily from his father to the new brother, without making any advance at all. Hugo, a tall, well-grown boy, was the image of his father, and Roger made the alarming discovery that Hugo was much bigger than he, and instead of his licking Hugo, Hugo would be quite able to lick him. The two lads looked at each other for a moment, and then Hugo, slipping off his chair, ran forward and kissed his half-brother on both cheeks, French fashion.

To be kissed at all was disconcerting to Roger, and to be kissed by another boy was an insult and a humiliation. Roger’s reception, therefore, of these endearments was a vigorous push.

“I’ll shake hands if you like,” he said sulkily, “but I’ll have no kissing.”

John Egremont, secretly enraged, could not but remember that any English boy would resent such an advance. He said, therefore, without any exhibition of wrath: “Your brother has been brought up abroad, and does not know English manners, although he speaks English. But you two should have fine times together. Hugo will live here after this.”

The two boys eyed each other distrustfully. It vexed their father to see how much taller and bigger was Hugo, the alleged younger, than Roger. Hugo was a handsomer boy, but Roger had more the air of a gentleman.

They shook hands, nevertheless, and Hugo, making a pirouette, said something in French and something in German to his father, quite as if they were equals: and John Egremont laughed, while Hugo burst into the fragment of a song about Ce monstre là which seemed to tickle his father mightily.

All this time a thousand maddening questions were chasing each other through Roger’s disturbed mind. Had he a step-mother, and any more brothers and sisters? He had an immediate opportunity of finding this out, for their father at once dismissed them, thinking they would the more speedily become friends alone.

Once outside, upon the terrace that led down to the fish pond, Roger turned to Hugo, and asked,—

“Where is your mother?”

“In Germany,” replied Hugo, with much readiness; and then, stopping still with a frightened look, he caught Roger by the arm and cried,—

“Oh, no, no!—they told me to say she was dead, and I forgot. Don’t tell my father, please.”

“I am no tell-tale,” replied Roger, with ready contempt; “somebody told you to tell a lie and you told the truth.”

Hugo was not pleased at the frankness of this speech, but he had been warned by his father concerning the code of morals and manners he was likely to meet with among English boys, and privately concluded they were all a pack of brutes.

Nevertheless, the boys made some efforts at a good understanding, in which they were mutually helped by little Dicky, who presently turned up. Dicky loved Roger better than anything in the world, and was secretly cut to the heart by Roger’s inferiority in certain things to Hugo, which soon became apparent. For Hugo was a miracle of boyish accomplishments. He could chatter both French and German, could sing in three languages and dance in four, could play the viol da gamba, and draw, and knew the sword exercise perfectly on foot. He could not, however, do it on horseback, and was quite unlearned about horses, dogs, and fowling-pieces. Here, Roger excelled; and Dicky suggested timidly to him that he should learn some things of Hugo, and in return teach Hugo to ride. This sensible advice both boys took, and got on the better for it. Yet never were two creatures more dissimilar. Roger fought when he was angry, Hugo quarrelled; in that lay enormous differences.

Soon, however, they were thrown so completely upon each other for companionship that perforce they were compelled to become playmates, or have no playmates at all. For to John Egremont’s infinite rage and disgust, Hugo was coldly looked upon by all the Egremont kindred, and by the gentry round about Egremont. A tale was industriously circulated that this lad’s mother, a certain Madame Stein, had neither married John Egremont nor died, but was still flourishing in Germany. As for Hugo’s being younger than Roger, his appearance flatly contradicted his father’s assertions, and the story which John Egremont had concocted with infinite pains found no believers. The Egremonts were angered by the giving of their name to the boy. The gentry would not let their sons associate with Hugo; and, as Hugo was the one object dear to John Egremont’s hard heart, he bitterly resented the attitude of his world toward his favorite child. And as it refused to accept this favorite child, John Egremont decided that it should not accept his other son; so Roger was forbidden to go where Hugo was not invited. As Hugo was never invited anywhere, the two boys stayed very closely at home. John Egremont was kinder to Roger than he had ever been before, because, looking into the future, he saw that Hugo might profit some day by his brother’s good-will. But there was no disguising the blind partiality of the father for the boy who was like him. Hugo was upon terms of familiarity with his father that were simply amazing in that age of extreme filial respect and obedience. Roger never dared the smallest liberty. It made his boyish heart swell with anguish when he heard his father gravely discussing with Hugo, as if Hugo were the heir and a man grown, certain alterations he wished to make in the house and various improvements on the estate. By way of revenge, when the two boys were alone, Roger would not fail to remind Hugo which one was the heir, and, instead of begging him not to tell their father, menaced him; and as Roger was a fighter, Hugo very prudently held his tongue.

The ill-will of my Lady Castlemaine was not over in a day, and year after year, as John Egremont showed his face at Whitehall Palace, he was civilly invited to take himself off. This lasted until Roger was sixteen years old and Hugo was alleged to be fourteen, when a very unexpected summons into the other world came to John Egremont, and he was forced to mount and go behind the gentleman on a pale horse. He had not even time to sign a will he had made, in which he gave all he could of the estate, and much that was not his to give, to Hugo. This darling of his father’s heart was left penniless. Sir Thomas Buckstone, a money-getting, puritanical person, was named as guardian of the two lads in this unsigned will, and nobody objecting, he qualified, and immediately took charge of them.

Now, as none of John Egremont’s friends and neighbors had believed his story concerning Hugo, when the boy was by this mischance left a beggar a great outcry was raised against him. This was intensified by letters received from the lad’s mother, who came to life most unopportunely, and followed her letters to England. She was a painted, shrill-voiced, handsome harpy of a woman, whose wild protestations and vehement assertions and multitude and variety of asseverations that she was John Egremont’s widow, did away with the small chance Hugo had of getting a younger brother’s portion; and she retired defeated and discredited from the beginning.

Sir Thomas Buckstone, a dull-witted man, saw only in Roger Egremont a graceful, shy, uneducated stripling, who knew nothing but horses and dogs, and conceived it would be for their mutual advantage that there should be but one mind between them, and that mind Sir Thomas’s. And there were, besides, eight Buckstone maidens, any one of whom was eligible to become Madam Egremont. Therefore Sir Thomas solemnly assured Roger of the intention to protect him from being robbed in favor of Hugo.

“A very small allowance, my dear lad—enough to keep him from beggary; that is all which I can in conscience allow him out of your estate.”

Roger heard this in silence for a moment and then said,—

“But he is my father’s son. He should have enough to live upon as becomes a gentleman.”

“One hundred pounds a year,” replied Sir Thomas, virtuously.

“Make it what you like, sir; but although I am not great friends with my half-brother, I would not stint him in his living. If I cannot give him enough out of my own allowance, I can promise him to give him a sum down when I am of age, and I shall do it.”

Which he did, and of which Hugo was perfectly sure as soon as Roger told him, and straightway borrowed money on the strength of it. But he borrowed prudently,—Hugo being ever prudent. The two brothers continued to live at Egremont, and were more nearly friends than they had ever been before. Hugo read and studied diligently, and Roger never looked into a book. Sir Thomas Buckstone, thinking money on education wasted, made no move toward supplying his ward with book-learning, and Roger’s religion debarred him from the universities; so he lived on, the same lazy, happy, idle, and apparently unprofitable life he had always led. He was not the soberest young man in the parish, and did not follow Hugo’s example of always watering his wine; by which as others grew drunk, Hugo remained sober and smiling. Nor was Roger immaculate in other respects, but where Hugo had one friend, Roger had a dozen.

It is not to be supposed that Roger gave no thought to the future mistress of Egremont, but beyond plainly indicating it was not to be one of the eight Buckstone maidens, he made no sign. He was a favorite in the hunting-field, where he was a bold and dashing rider, and at balls, where he danced well, and he could sing a good song, accompanying himself upon the viol,—an accomplishment he had picked up from Hugo. Nor was he at all shy with the ladies, and knew quite well how to turn a compliment with perfect grace. But he was so sensible of his deficiencies in education, and knew so little to talk about, that he did not very much cultivate the society of women. Nevertheless, Roger Egremont was fully able to reach the standard of a man as defined by Henry the Great of France, in his song descriptive of himself,—

“This devil of a Henry the Fourth,

Has the three gifts that make a man.

He can drink, he can fight,

And he can be gallant to the ladies.”

Hugo, on the contrary, cultivated assiduously all who would notice him. What mattered it that the sheriff of the county invited Roger, before Hugo’s face, to dine at his house, and pointedly omitted Hugo? Hugo smiling met him next day, and asked cordially after her ladyship and her ladyship’s daughters, and rode by his lordship’s side for the space of a mile or more. What if there were talk about whether he should be permitted to attend the county ball? Hugo worked for an invitation hard, and went upon a very slim one, and bore amiably the cold looks of the people generally who were assembled. He was far more regularly handsome than Roger, infinitely accomplished, and made considerable headway with the other sex. Roger despised his half-brother for this way of getting on in the world, but he was at a loss how to explain his feelings in the matter.

By that time, Dicky Egremont was growing manward. He was as eager about learning as Roger was indifferent, and was likewise a great toast among the ladies, a tireless dancer, an expert fiddler, and had a voice in singing like the sweetest thrush that ever sang. His old grandfather being dead, and having no estate, Dicky, like his cousins, had liberty to follow his natural bent, and it led him wherever there was youth, gayety, and music. Roger, who could well afford it, made him a handsome allowance, of which Dicky made ducks and drakes. Much of it went on horses and dogs, but stray fiddlers, professional beggars, and occasionally the deserving poor got the best part of it. Unlike Roger, Dicky sorrowfully lamented that he was shut out, by the religion of his family, from a liberal education, and sometimes talked wildly of running away to St. Omer’s or Douai, or Clermont, where he could learn what was out of his reach at Oxford and Cambridge. But as these aspirations were usually followed by a screeching run after the hounds, or a roaring night at cards and dice, nobody took little Dicky very seriously. One March morning, however, after a convivial night of it, beginning with the county ball and ending in countless jorums of punch, Roger, on rising and going out, found Dicky with a solemn face, round and rosy though it might be, walking up and down the terrace.

“Halloa!” cried Roger, gayly, “I did not think to find thee sober this morning. The last I remember was the chorus we were having—”

“Roger,” said Dicky, going up to his cousin, and holding him by the lappel as he had done as a little lad. “This life is idle and sinful. I am going to France to be educated—to St. Omer’s; I am going, I tell you.”

Roger’s ringing laugh startled the lazy fish in the fish pond.

“You going to St Omer’s—such a promising little rake as you are?”

Dicky blushed scarlet, and then fell to smiling so that the dimples came out all over his round, rosy face. “I know,” he said presently, becoming preposterously grave, and blinking his eyes solemnly, “I have been a very wild, bad fellow, but I mean to reform—that I do, Cousin Roger.”

“Do, little Dicky,” cried Roger, beginning to laugh again, and throwing his arm around Dicky’s neck. “You’ll have to give over punch—”

“I had too much last night, God forgive me,” piously said Dicky, and then, Hugo suddenly appearing, Dicky stopped short, and the three young men went in to breakfast. Roger did not take Dicky any too seriously. He remembered that Dicky, as a boy, frequently announced his intention to be a priest, chiefly for the pleasure of hiding himself in the “priest’s hole” that mysterious place behind the mantel in the little yellow parlor, out of which Roger, as executioner, would haul him and proceed to decapitate him on the stone horse-block outside. And Dicky was very young, and extravagantly fond of fiddling and dancing; so Roger thought no more about the scheme until one day, about a week after that, when a letter was put in his hand. It was in Dicky’s handwriting, and ran thus:—

Dear Roger,—Do not be angry; I am on my way as fast as a good horse will carry me, to Torbay, where I shall take ship for France. Pray, Cousin Roger, do not be very angry. I have some money, and I have no one in the world to love or think of except you; and I want to have some college learning, and that is why I have gone. Dear Roger, you have been the best and truest friend I ever had, except my grandfather. You need not look for my fiddle. I could not take it with me, so I hid it in a place where some day I shall come after it. God bless you, Roger.

Your aff. cousin,Richd. Egremont.

Roger was, indeed, very angry with Dicky. He went to the yellow parlor, and drawing back a panel of the wainscoting, revealed the well-known place in the wall,—pierced with auger-holes for air and light,—and there lay Dicky’s beloved fiddle; and in the midst of Roger’s wrath the sight made him smile.

Egremont was lonely to Roger for a long while after Dicky’s departure, for although he and Hugo were upon perfectly friendly terms, there was little sympathy between them. And troublous times were ahead for all Englishmen, for it was then the summer of 1688. England seethed like a pot over the repeal of the Test Act, and the substitution of the Act of Toleration. Naturally, Roger Egremont was strongly predisposed toward the abolition of the Test Act, which, as long as it lasted, excluded him not only from the universities and the learned professions, for which he cared nothing, but from the profession of arms, for which he cared a great deal. Few, even of the strongest advocates of King James, went as far as Roger Egremont in his views. Reasoning naturally, his ideas were lofty, but often impractical. He dared assert that it was inherently wrong to molest any man, in his person or estate, for his religious belief. This was but a step removed from treason, according to the lights of his time, when, everywhere, a difference in religion was considered a crime against the State. This and many other ideas, which Robert Egremont was accused of getting from game-keepers and poachers, he really drew from the thoughts that flooded his mind when he saw the pale glory of the stars gleaming in the serene sky of evening, or felt the vagrant wind blowing, or watched the awakening of the spring, or the solemn farewell that nature takes in the dying time of year.

These notions mattered little as long as Roger was a minor, living idly and pleasantly at Egremont. But when he came of age, and openly advocated the cause of dissenters and papists, it was altogether different. The Egremont estates gave him great political interest, and he made no secret of the way he meant to use it,—in treasonable practices, so his world thought, but really in the advancement of human liberty.

Meanwhile things were going badly for another advocate of the Act of Toleration—to wit, his Majesty, James the Second. It grew toward the autumn of the year 1688, and England was filled with rumors of revolution, while the gaols were filled with dissenters, and the Catholics shivered at the prospect of soon joining them. At Exeter, not far from Egremont, a number of dissenting ministers had been imprisoned, and typhus fever broke out among them. One of them had preached in the parish of Egremont, and great complaint had been made of Roger Egremont’s indifference to the maintenance of the law concerning dissenters. Some of the followers of these poor men had visited these unfortunates in gaol and brought away the infection of fever, which raged thereafter in the country round about. When the trial came off, a few weeks later, one of the judges and several of the jury and of the spectators caught the fever from the prisoners, and many deaths resulted.

Roger Egremont and his half-brother were speaking of this one November afternoon in 1688, as they sat at dinner in the great dining-hall at Egremont. The main entrance opened directly into this vast hall, hung with portraits, with ancient armor, and with hunting trophies. A fine musicians’ gallery faced a huge fireplace in which a coach and four could have turned around. Innumerable tall slits of windows let in the light, and faintly illuminated the carved ceiling almost lost in the gloom of the dull autumn afternoon.

The pretence, so carefully cultivated by their father, that Roger was the elder had become more obvious as the young men grew older. Hugo, tall, dark, and well made, was at least twenty-three years old, and everybody but himself laughed when he gravely spoke of himself as barely twenty. Hugo always uttered it with the utmost seriousness. Roger had never been so regularly handsome as Hugo, but he retained the charming, arch expression of his boyish days in his dark eyes, and his was one of those faces on which both women and men look with favor.

The two brothers were seated at a small square table, close by the fireplace. They talked together of the parliamentary struggles, and of the chances of the King’s party. The conflict between James the Second and William of Orange was on, and every day news was expected of the landing of the Dutch Prince.

“For my part,” said Roger, very earnestly, “I look in amazement at this England of ours. The people prate of liberty, and yet are panic-stricken at the mere notion that a man should have liberty of conscience to worship God as he likes. I am for the repeal of the Test Act, and the penal laws, and in favor of the Act of Toleration, not simply because it will make me a free man, but because it will mean the breaking of the dawn to many who have stumbled along in the darkness, thinking the figures of their fellow-men huge, misshapen devils menacing them. And if all Englishmen were equally free, we would see each other as we are and have no fear.”

“What book did you get that fine speech out of, brother?” asked Hugo, smiling indulgently, as he always did, at the views of the unlettered Roger. A dull flush came into Roger’s face.

“Surely, I did not get it out of any book; it is a thought out of my own head. Books are well enough, but I can learn nothing from them—true, I have not much tried,” he added hastily. “But I know that to keep me, a freeborn Briton, subject to imprisonment and infamy, and to take my lands away from me, if I openly practise the religion of our fathers, is wrong. And to forbid me, an English gentleman, to walk in St. James’s Park, whither every Dutch spy can have access, is a gross affront to me,—nay more, an invasion of my liberty. And I also know that to keep those unfortunate poor creatures languishing in gaol at Exeter, because they go to hear a weaver preach in a barn of Sundays, is inhuman. And I would like to see my country be the first, and not the last, to see this great truth of toleration.”

Hugo, who was not fond of these discussions, remarked: “In my ride to-day, I heard that two of the nonconformist ministers in gaol at Exeter are dead of the gaol fever, and that fourteen persons, including the judge that sentenced them, are ill, and several likely to die. There should be precautions taken in bringing prisoners with the infection on them into court.”

“If the judge that sentenced them and the jury that convicted them all died of the fever, it would be the just reward of iniquity,” cried Roger, excitedly. “I need no book-learning for that!”

As he raised his eyes he saw, through the window opposite, a number of armed men who seemed to have sprung from the ground, and who fairly surrounded the house as far as he could see. And at the same moment the great door of the hall was opened, and a long-nosed gentleman, in military dress and a black peruke, entered, followed by three other persons, evidently of the suite of the long-nosed gentleman. They advanced without bowing; one of the party ran ahead, pulled out a chair, and the long-nosed gentleman seated himself at the table without removing his hat.

Roger Egremont watched this silently and without rising. Nor did he move when the long-nosed gentleman, coolly helping himself to a piece of a fowl on the table, said in English with a Dutch accent: “Sir, I am under no disguise. I am the Prince of Orange. My horse lost a shoe at your park gates, and knowing it to be near dinner-time, I claim your hospitality until the blacksmith is through with the horse.”

As soon as he uttered the words “I am the Prince of Orange,” Hugo rose and made obeisance. Roger, quietly picking up his hat, which lay on a chair nearby, put it on his head; he and the Prince of Orange were the only persons covered.

The Prince, without noticing the action, continued to gnaw and tug at his chicken, while Roger continued to observe in silence his four uninvited guests. Two of the Dutchmen helped themselves to mutton from the dish, while the third gulped down wine, and making a wry face after it, spat upon the floor.

Roger Egremont’s black eyes began to blaze. The Prince of Orange, with the drumstick of the chicken sticking out of his mouth, spoke in a tone of explanation rather than apology.

“The wine drunk in England does not suit Dutch palates. Have you no other liquor?”

“I have a variety of liquor,” responded Roger, with the greatest politeness, “but none of it will suit Dutch palates. It was bought by English gentlemen for English gentlemen, of whom I am one, by God!”

The Prince of Orange glanced up at Roger, who wore a cool, insulting smile. The Prince’s saturnine features contorted into a smile too, as, drawing his sword, he leaned over the table, and catching Roger’s hat on the sword’s point, flicked it off. A platter of the same kind of white beans with which Roger Egremont’s ancestor won the favor of Elizabeth Tudor was at hand. Roger took it up gently, poised it carefully, and then threw it full in the face of the Prince of Orange.

That day, six months, Roger Egremont appeared in the prisoner’s dock at Westminster Hall, before the Court of the King’s Bench, to be tried for his life upon the charge of sedition and treason. He sat, because the fetters upon his legs prevented him from standing.

CHAPTER IIROGER EGREMONT MAKES INTIMATE ACQUAINTANCE WITH TWO PERSONS, WHO EXERCISE GREAT BUT WIDELY DIFFERING INFLUENCES UPON HIS LIFE,—TO WIT, THE DEVIL AND MISS BESS LUKENS.

T

HE trial of Roger Egremont took place before a full bench, Chief Justice Holt presiding, and was among the first trials for sedition and treason resulting from the Revolution. It was memorable in another way; for from that day ceased the dreadful practice of trying prisoners in their chains. The Chief Justice, hearing a clanking when the prisoner rose to plead, said,—

“I should like to know why the prisoner is brought in ironed. If fetters were necessary for his safe custody before, there is no danger of escape or rescue here. Let them be instantly knocked off. When prisoners are tried, they should stand at their ease.”

“I thank your lordship,” replied Roger, rising with difficulty, and bowing.

When he was free from his chains and stood up, he was seen to be a young man of presence most fair, and of a cool courage.

The trial attracted a great concourse of people, and much violence of feeling was shown both for and against the prisoner. The Whigs, resenting far more than William of Orange the personal insult offered him, clamored for Roger Egremont’s blood; and truly, if any man in England deserved to be hanged for the share he took against the Dutch Prince, Roger Egremont was the man. He had endeavored to raise the county against the new-comer, and had actually succeeded in getting together a band, chiefly of his own kindred and tenantry, which pursued the Prince of Orange secretly almost to London, and were only prevented from waylaying him by the rapidity and secrecy with which he travelled. The whole Egremont connection stood firmly by King James; several of their number had followed him to St. Germains, and were openly in communication with their kinsmen in England; and Roger Egremont had publicly and frequently denounced William of Orange in a manner impossible for any government to overlook which expected to stand. On the other hand, there were a vast number of Englishmen who thought as Roger Egremont did, and expressed themselves privately as he had done publicly. Sympathy for his youth, for the gross invasion of his house, for the spirit he showed as an English gentleman impatient of the rule of foreigners, made him many friends. It was felt that the new government had a hard nut to crack in handling him so that justice would not appear cruelty, and mercy weakness.

The Chief Justice and his associates dealt with him kindly, nor was the Attorney General unduly severe. But the evidence against him was enough to hang ten men. Among the first witnesses put in the box was his half-brother, Hugo Egremont, as he was still called, in spite of the fact that no soul in England, not excepting Hugo himself, believed his mother to have been at any time the wife of John Egremont.

Hugo had not wasted the first six months in which William of Orange was on the English throne. Having concluded that King James was gone, never to return, Hugo acted accordingly. He frequented the court, and was one among the English gentlemen who stood against the wall while William and his Dutch companions sat at their ease, and ate and drank and smoked, and talked in the Dutch language concerning the English people, their conduct and affairs, and laughed loudly at things which these attendant English gentlemen heard but could not understand. Hugo Egremont, however, being a very crafty young man, learned the Dutch language, to the mingled delight and chagrin of the Dutchmen, and conversed with them affably in their own tongue. He conformed so absolutely, and went to church so often, that even William of Orange grinned a sardonic grin when he heard of it, and my Lord Halifax, the prince of trimmers, laughed outright, and made it an after-dinner joke.

At the trial, Hugo’s appearance—handsome, well dressed, sly, composed, and polished—gave rise to a groan from the spectators in the great hall. He went up to Roger and offered his hand, saying smoothly,—

“I am sorry, brother, to see you in this case.”

Roger, disdaining his hand, replied,—

“Call me not brother. Had you been loyal to your King, as all true Egremonts are, I would have forgotten that you are the child of my father’s leman. But you chose the other part, so go your way from me, Hugo Stein.” This imprudent speech was heard by many persons. Hugo winced under it, but when he came to be examined, he showed no animus against Roger, and seemed to testify unwillingly. Yet, on his evidence alone, Roger could have been hanged twice over. When he was questioned in regard to Roger Egremont’s designs in his pursuit of the Prince of Orange, he hesitated and seemed distressed. Roger, however, replied for him, addressing the judges in the following cool and daring words,—

“My lords, of your goodness permit me to say, ’tis useless to probe this man, Hugo Stein, sometime known as Hugo Egremont. My motive in pursuing His Highness was to capture him and send him out of the kingdom; and though I did not expressly seek His Highness’s life, yet had he been killed I should have felt no more regret than if I had killed a robber, coming by night to seize my goods.”

The Chief Justice at that moment was taken with a sharp coughing spell, as if he had not heard the prisoner’s rash words, and leaning forward flashed Roger a look of distinct warning. But it was of no avail—the mischief had been done. It was commonly thought that Roger had given away his life in those words, and something like a sob went around in the great assemblage. Nevertheless, when sentence came to be pronounced, he was only sentenced to the forfeiture of his estate, and imprisonment in Newgate during his Majesty’s pleasure.

It was night—a soft May night, following the day of his conviction—when Roger entered Newgate prison. Hitherto he had borne up manfully, and jested and laughed with his gaolers. But at the moment of passing under the dark and dreadful archway a panic seized his soul. Fear was new to him, and he was more frightened at being afraid than at anything else whatever. As he, with Lukens, the turnkey, to whom he had been handed over, passed along one of the great corridors, they heard a great shout of laughter and crying out, and clatter of drinking, and presently they came to an open door, and within were more than fifty persons, carousing, drinking, and playing with greasy cards and rude dice.

Now, Roger Egremont was no Puritan, nor was he given to low company, but, scared by the spectre of Fear which stalked through his mind, he would have welcomed a company of gallows-birds at that moment. Therefore, with a wink to Lukens, and slipping a couple of shillings in his hand,—for Roger still had some money,—he walked into the dim, foul, and noisy room, and making a low bow said,—

“Gentlemen, may I be allowed to be of your company?”

Huzzas arose, and a great black fellow, with a patch over his eye, replied,—

“Certainly, sir, if you will make your footing good.” Which meant paying for liquor wherewith all could get fuddled.

Roger threw some money to the turnkey, and the liquor being brought, sat and boozed and sang and gambled and cursed with the motley crew until the day looked pallidly in at the barred windows.

A prisoner with money, in Newgate, could have all he wanted and do as he listed, except he could not escape. And the reason of this was plain. Every prisoner became a source of revenue to his gaolers, and to let him go was to part with the goose that laid the golden egg; and consequently never was there such liberty within the walls of a prison, and never was prison better watched.

The assemblage in which Roger Egremont found himself was made up of all sorts and conditions of men. His friend with the patch over his eye was a highwayman.

There were thieves and counterfeiters, Jacobite gentlemen and recusant curates; nearly all trades and professions were represented. No one present, not even the highwayman, drank and swore and talked so recklessly as Roger Egremont. For to fear had succeeded despair. He shouted and sang and drank, because had he stopped for one moment to think he would have dashed his brains out against the stone wall. His head was steady and his nerves strong, so that it took much liquor and extreme brawling to bring him to the point where physical fatigue overcame mental anguish. But soon after daylight he was carried like a log to his cell, by Lukens and his assistant, Diggory Hutchinson, a brawny fellow, and new to the gaoler’s business.

“They be often like this, at first,” said Lukens, with a grin, as they threw Roger, limp and maudlin, on his rude bed. “’Tis apt to take gentlemen and clergymen this a-way. Sometimes they gits over it—sometimes they don’t.”

Roger fell into a deep sleep, which lasted until the afternoon. He waked, his vigorous frame recovered entirely from his debauch, but in an instant the horror of his situation returned upon him so that he rose, dressed himself quickly, and finding some money that he had concealed upon his person, coolly took out what seemed enough for him to get drunk on, and put the other away, and then sallied forth from his miserable room in search of the hell he had found the night before. He was not familiar with his surroundings, and, following a blind corridor, he heard the sound of a woman’s voice, singing very sweetly. Presently he came upon an open door, leading to the quarters of Lukens, the turnkey, and there, in a room clean and bright, sat, spinning, Bess Lukens, the turnkey’s niece, otherwise known as Red Bess from the warm color of her auburn hair.

She was tall, well formed, and vigorous beyond the common for a woman. Her complexion had retained its original fairness from the usual darkness of the abode in which she dwelt, but it had not robbed her cheek of its ruddy bloom, nor her lips of their scarlet tint. Her large, liquid eyes were of a reddish-brown, with black lashes and eyebrows, and when she opened her wide handsome mouth she showed teeth as white and regular as Roger’s own.

She was about twenty years of age, and dressed in a plain brown stuff gown and a spotless linen cap, and she was spinning industriously and singing in a loud, sweet, rich voice as she spun. Had Roger Egremont been his natural and normal self, the sight of her sumptuous beauty would have warmed and interested him; but to all intent, he was not Roger Egremont at that moment, but a devil of despair and wickedness who had cast out Roger’s identity and was masquerading in his body.

The girl caught sight of him, however, and stopped her spinning and singing. As she rose and advanced toward him, the light of a May afternoon falling on her supple figure, he could not but note, dull as his senses were, the natural grace of her movements, and her rich voice in speaking as in singing. She showed not a particle of bashfulness or coquetry in speaking to the haggard young gentleman before her, but said pleasantly,—

“You’ve missed your way, sir. This is where my uncle, Mr. Lukens lives, and the prisoners go not beyond the turn in the corridor, where the lantern hangs against the wall.”

“I know it, mistress; I have missed my way. Will you please to conduct me to the common room of the prisoners?”

“Now, look here, young gentleman,” said Bess, suddenly adopting an authoritative tone, “you’d best keep away from that gang. You’re new to it,—that I see with half an eye,—and if it’s going with those people in the common room you are, you’ll soon be in a bad way.”

“Mistress,” replied Roger, with great respect, “May I ask if you are head nurse in this little nursery? And what will you do with me in case I do not obey you? Give me a switching, perhaps.”

The ever-ready blood poured into Bess’s smooth cheek, and sparks flew from her red-brown eyes. She seemed about to speak impetuously, but checked herself, and then said, pointing with a contemptuous finger,—

“Go back to where the lantern hangs, then turn to the right, and straight ahead.”

She scudded back to her wheel, began to turn it violently, and burst into a song by way of showing her indifference. But, singing, she turned her head stealthily, and saw Roger’s graceful figure, with his light-brown curls floating over his shapely shoulders, disappearing rapidly into the gloom of the corridor, where not even the May sunshine could penetrate.

As soon as he was out of sight and sound she stopped spinning and singing, and resting her chin on her hand thought,—

“Poor young gentleman. That is the very gentleman they brought in yesterday, and who got so drunk last night.”

Bess Lukens was reckoned hard-hearted toward the other sex, although willing enough to do them a kindness provided she could hector over them in the act of doing it; but a strange softness came into her heart as she thought about Roger Egremont. He looked a man, every inch; and the saucy reply he gave Bess she secretly liked. But Bess had no time to waste in sentimental reflections. She was by nature one of the most energetic of mortals, with a passion for clean linen, order, and industry. Soon her wheel began to buzz again; but she could still see Roger Egremont’s figure standing in the doorway, against the blackness of the corridor behind him, with the light shining full on his debonair face. As for Roger, he sped toward the scene of his degradation of the night before as if a thousand devils were after him, and gave not one thought to Red Bess, the turnkey’s niece.

The second night was spent as was the first; and so, for one whole week, did Roger Egremont give himself up to liquor and cards and dice and the lowest company accessible in Newgate prison. At the end of that time even his strong, country-bred frame began to show the effects of his long debauch, and his mind, too, experienced the benefit of being turned from the consideration of its misery into the channel of cards and drink.

One night—the eighth after he entered the prison—Roger’s strength gave out temporarily. Bess, passing along the corridor beyond her uncle’s quarters, saw a figure lying prone, and going up to it found it to be Roger Egremont, not only drunk, but ill,—the Roger Egremont who had said so haughtily to William of Orange at their first meeting, “I am an English gentleman, by God!”