s HTON\ \ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES / )) J / TO^ COUET. A COUNTRY-HOUSE STOEY. HENRI' KIKGSLEY, AUTUOU OJJ" w BAVKxanoE," "the iiii-lyaks aj;d tue buetoxs," eto. NEW YORK : DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. Kt'A LEIGHTON COURT. PART I. 2045538 PART I. CHAPTER I. The river "Wysolith, though one of the sliortest in course of tlie beautiful rivers of Dartmoor, still claims a high place among them. None sooner quits the harren granite, and begins to wander sea- ward through the lower and richer country which lies between the Moor and the sea. None except Dart sends a larger body of water to the sea, and none forms a smaller or less dangerous estuary. Indc'id, its course is so exceedingly short, that the members of the Wyiidith Vale hunt, whose kennels were within a mile of the sea, were well acquainted, from frequent observation, with the vast melancholy bog in which it took its rise. More than once, more than twenty times, within the memory of okl Tom Squire, the lean, little old huntsman, had the fox been run into in the midst of that great waste of turbary, from whence the infant stream issues ; on ground which no man, leave alone a horse, dared to face. Laura Seckerton has a clever sketch in her port- folio of the wild, desolate, elevated swamp as it appeared on one of these occasions ; a sweep of yellow grass, interspersed with ling, and black bog pits ; in the centre, far away from human help, a confused heap of struggling hounds killing their fox ; round the edges, as near as they dared go, red-coated horsemen, most cleverly grouped in twos and threes ; beyond all, a low, ugly tor of weather-worn granite. Laura Seckerton could paint as well as she could ride, which is giving her very high praise inch'cd. On a hot summer's day, if you had crossed the waterslied from the northward, from the head-waters of the Ouse, for instance, and if you found yourself in this desolate, lonely swamp, with no signs of animal life except the cry of the melancholy peewit, or the quaint, dull note of the stonechat, you would find it hard to believe that anything so wild, herce, and loud as the river Wys- clith could be born of such solitary silence. Lut if vou hoLl on 1 ' A 2 LEIGHTON COURT. your way, round the bases of the low granite tors, between the tumblt'd rocks and the quakir.jj boir, for four or five miles, you will begin, afar off. to hear a tinkling of wafers, you will meet a broad amber-colored stream, and find tliat the many trickling rills from the great swamp have united, and are quietly preparing for their journey to the ce.i ; are making for that gap in the gran- ite, below which the land drops away into an unknown depth, and from wliich you can see a vista of a gleaming glen miles below, in which the river, so quiet and so small up here, spouts and raves and roars like a giant as he is. Right and left, far, far below you, are crags, tors, castles of granite. Twenty streams from fifty glens, from a liundi'ed sunny lonely hills, join our river far below; until tired of fretting and fuming among the granite crags in the glen of ten thousand voices, he finds his way out into the cham- paign country, and you see him wandering on in wide waving curves towards his estuary. AH this you can see even on a blighty easterly day ; with a clear south wind, Laura Seckerton used to say, that, standing within two miles of the river's source, you can make out the fisher boats on the sands at its mouth, and the setting sun blazing on the windows of Leighton Court, which stands on a knoll of new red sandstone at the head of the tideway. I cannot say that either there or elsewhere I have ever distin- guished drawing-room windows at a distance of eighteen miles as the crow files; but I confess to have seen the vast tower and dark long facade of Berry Morecombe, which lies on the other side of the river, blocking the westerly sun and casting a long shadow over the sands towards Leighton Court, when I have stood on a summer's evening at the tip of the lonely marsh in which the AVysclith takes his rise, fifteen hundred feet above the sea. Standing just where he begins to live, and whimper like a new- born babe over his granite rocks. CHAPTER II. TrTF.T^F, were only three families in this part of the country: the Ddwneses, the Seekertons, and the Povntzes. We shall meet them ail directly; but it is necessary even here to say tliat the Downeses (represented by sir Peckwieh Dowries) were eminently respectables and horribly rich. That the Seekertons (Sir Charles Seckerton) were eminently respectable, very rich, tliongh not so rich as the Downeses; but that they had entirely taken the wind LKIGIITON COURT. 3 out of their (Downcs's) sails, by Sir Cliarlos marryincr Lady Emily Lee, a twister of the Earl of Soiithinolton, and hy taking the hounds nearly at the same time. And la-lly, coming to the Poyntzes (represented by Sir Harry Po3'ntz, youngi'r by a gen- eration tlian either of the other baronets), we are obliged to say that the family had grown so utterly disreputable, that a respecta- ble Poyntz was considerably rarer than a white crow. The third family, these Poyntzes, were what the Americans call "burst up," and their seat, Brrry Morecombe Castle, was now let on a lease to Mr. Iluxtable, a Manchester cotton-spinner. Sir William Poyntz, that very disre|)Utable old gentleman, had been the last master of the hounds, and had handsomely finished his ruin by taking them. He was a sad old fellow, and kept a sad establishment tliere in the castle. The ordy signs of decency which the old i'ellow showed was that he would not allow any of his sons, legitimate or other, to come near the place. Harry Poyntz, now the baronet, used to come and stay at Leighton Court; Robert, the younger, was only dimly remembered by a few of the older servants as a petulant, wayward, handsome child. There was a third one yet, whom some remembered, a very beau- tiful, winning boy ; but he had no name, he was not acknowledged. When Sir Ciiarles Seckerton took the hounds, iMr. HuxtaUe took the castle, and very shortly after the wife of the latter died, leaving him with a little girl, heir to all his wealth. Sir William Poyntz left Sir Charles Seckerton a legacy also : he left him old Tom Squire, the huntsman. He was a silent, terrier-faced little fellow, who seemed to know more than he chose to tell, as indeed he did. He was a jewel, 'however; he had hunted that diificult country for many years, and if you had not taken hira with the hounds, you miglit as well have left the hounds alone. A very dillicult hunting country. Why, yes. L'ish horses strongly in recjuest. not to mention L'ish whips and second horse- men. A stone-wall country in part, and in part intersected by d';ep lanes and high hedges. Not a safe or promising country by any means. Bad accidents were not unknown ; one very severe one had but lecently happened, just before my tale begins. The first whip, a young L'isiiman, O'Ryan by name, had i-idden into one of those deep red lanes, which intersect tiie new red sandstone hereabouts, and had so injured his spine as to be a cripple proba- bly for life. Sir Charles had pensioned him with a pound a week ; and being determined to try an Englishman this time, wrote to a friend in Leicestershire for a first-rate man, fit to suc- ceed old Tom Squire, the wiry terrier-faced ex-Poyntz retainer aforesaid, as huntsman, when he should retire to the chimney-cor- ner, and twitter on the legends of the Poyntz family till he twit- tered no lon";er. 4 LEIGHTON COURT. A 1 answer had come by return of post. There had nevel been such a chance as now, wrote Sir George Herage. A young man, possessed of all the cardinal virtues, with several to spare; who was the most consummate rider ever seen, could tell the pedigree of a hound with one moment's glance, of gentle temper with man, horse, and dog. A young man who had hunted not only in Leicestershire and Berwickshire, but at Pau ; a young man entirely up to every conceivable sort of country. Such a young man was To Let. And Sir George Herage's advice wiis, " Snap him up on any price ; the more especially as he has ex- pressed to me strongly his intense anxiety to improve his already great experience by hunting in that very county of yours. In- deed, has given me warning the instant he heard of your want." On further examination of Sir Georgi''s letter, it appeared thj.t this young Crichton, Bayard, Pliilip Sidney, St. Hubert's price was extremely moderate, considering his amazing virtues and talents. His very name, too, sounded well, — Ilatnmersley. Sir George was also anxious to impress on his friend's mind the fact that he was no ordinary person. That he was a deuced present- able fellow, and a fellow who would not stand much talking to, but was perfect at his work. Sir Ciiarles thought himself in luck, and parsed the letter over the breakfa-t-table to Lady JCmiiy, his wife, to see what she thought of it, — by no means an unimpor- tant matter. Lady Emily was making a somewhat witcldike mess in a china basin, the basis of which was chocolate. Sir Charles haJ seen her put in sugar, brown bread, Baked yam, and cream, aiid began to wonder wlien she would begin to eat it. She delayed her pleasure, however, and he gi-ew impatient. " Emily," said Sir Charles at last, " I wish, when you have gone through your morning ceremonies with your olia-podrida, that you would look at tliat letter." " My love," slie said, " I will do so directly." And she went on with her ])reparat!ons qu'te regardless of the impatient, exas- perated way in which Sir Ciiarles tore the " Times " open, pitched the supi)lement on tin; ground, and rattled the other part open. At last she liad done. She read the letter steadily, put it down again, and gazed into space. "Well," said Sir Charles, te>tily, "will tliat man do or no?" "I do wonder," she said, with her great, cool, high-bred voice. " Now I really do wonder." "I wond(!r at our lui'k in getting such a man at such a lime," said Sir (,'liarles. " I don't mean that," said TiarLS.nt to our fancy the dark purple moor wliich hung aloit in the distance, furrowed by deep rifts, which in their darkest depths showed the gleams of the leaping torrent; and yet which, through ten miles of atmosphere, seemed little more than a perpendicular plane, without capt; or bay, prominence or depth. She was a little taller than her mother; her face, though like her mother's, was more refined with the refinement of youth ; her face might get a trifie coarser by age, (who knows?) or might be Bwe|)t by stity. I{ stood near the extreme end of a promontory of the red countiy, some four hundred acres in extent, and say one hundred feet io extreme height, densely wooded, down to the very shore which divided the little estuary of the Wysclith from the larger estuary of the Avon. An old Tudor house, say, standing on a promontory of red rock, feathered with deep green woods, whose base lost itself in an ocean of wide-spreading sea-sand. As you looked towards the sea from the hill landward of the house, you saw narrow sandy Wysclith on your right, broad sandy Avon on your left ; the house deep bosomed in fieathering woods, which ran down and fringed the sands in front, and beyond sands and sands bounded by the blue channel with toiling ships. Wysclith, ou your right, made but a small estuary, hardly could carry the tide a mile above the liouse, for he had to make the sea between the rib of sandstone on which Leighton Court stood, and another higher rib, three hundred yards to the westward, on the summit of which stood the great Norman keep of Morecombe Castle, wliich, at the equinoxes, threw its long shadow across the narrow tideway, and in March and September, at sunset, lay the shade of its tallest battlements on the smooth shorn turf of Leigh- ton Court pleasance. At those two periods of* the year when the sun was due west, and began to darken towards his setting, the tower of the keep of JMorecorabe seemed to hang minatory and darkly over its more peaceful neighbor, the hall ; but at all other times the castle was a thing of beauty for the inhabitants of the Conrt. At morn it rose a column of gra}', tinged with faint orange; at noon, pure pearl gray with puri)lish ,-hadows ; in tlie evening, dark leaden color, with the blaze of the sunset behind it, and its shadow barring the narrow river, and creeping towards the feet of those who sat on the terrace of the Court. The river just began to naiTow in opposite Leighton Court and Moi'ecombe Castie, and not a quarter of a mile up, left creep- ing among s;md-bars and took to chafing among vast shingle beds. Tliere is no town on the river, only the big red village of South Wyston round a turn in the river. So you looked up a reach in the river, feathered with wood and ribbed with reddish-purple rocks, up to the eorn-lields, wooded hedgerows, and woodlands of the I'cd country, and above and beyond at the blue-brown moor, with yoting Wysclith raving down in a hundred cascades through a rift in the giunite. LKIGHTON COURT. CHAPTER V. Profound as was Sir Cliarie.s's resjiect for hi.-* wife, and his reverence for liis mother-in-law, there was one point in Lani'a's cdueation on which, once tor all, he had so coolly and calmly op- posed them, that they, like sensible women, knew he was in ear- nest, and gave up the contest there and tlien. Laura was to learn to ride; nay, O Shade of Hannah More! to hunt. He was so very distinct about this, the fir-t point on which he had ever opposed them, that they — knowinj^ that although he was so easy-going to them, yet had among men the character of being a re-olute, valiant man — gave way at once, and did not even openly protest. ■' Laura was strong and healthy, and got very fimd indeed of the sport. One need hardly say that under Sir Charles's tuition she turned out a first-rate horsewoman. The country was a ditlicult, nay, dangerous country, but then, with its continually recurring copses, it was a very slow country, by no means a bad country for a lady who knew every gap, low stile, and gate, for ten miles round ; a better country, lor a lady, pei'haps, than faster counti'ies nearer London, certaiidy ea-ier than Leicester-h^re. So she got very fond of the sport, and if the pace got too great for her, there was nothing to prevent her riding home alone. Mr. Sponge, not to mention Mr. Jorrocks, don't make hunting tours in the West. There were no strangers tor her to meet, ex- cept perhaps an otTicer or so from Plytnouth. And very few oHicers were at Plymouth many weeks without making her fa- thei''s acquaintance, so that of real strangers there were none. She very much enjoyed the times wheu she got thrown out among the stone-walls, and had to ride home alone through the deep lanes, dreaming. Dreaming! What could she do but dream? When she sat on her horse alone, on the hill which lay halfway between the sea and the moor, she looked round on the widest horizon she had ever seen. She had heard of a great world which roared and whirled beyond that horizon ; but she had never seen it, or seen a glimpse of it, with her own eyes. She heard her grand- mother and her mother talking of this world; she had been ex- pressly trained, carefully trained, for moving in this world. Slie could have gone, with her training and her nerv<', into the best drawing-room in London, or more, in Paris, and have found her* 1* 10 LEIGHTON COURT. self perfectly at home. Latly SouthmoUon confessed lh;»t she Nvas perl'ecily formed ; but meanwhile tliey could not ide before, altered it, and prepared to mount. His horse was restive, and he gave it a good-natured little kick in the ribs, got on again, and came jangling slowly up to the tope where the eagle was posted. The eagle never liked that sort of thing. He was very angry ; he shook his feathers and o]iened on him. " Are you a Freu(;hman, sir, that you play these Tomfool's games under fire ? Do you know, sir, that your life is your country's, sir, and that death is a very solemn thing? Do you know that if it were not for an exti-aordinary instance of God's mercy, you would be lying howling and dying iu the grass yonder? What did you do it for; eh, sir?" The boy looked at him with his great melancholy eyes, and said, — " The 84th seemed getting unsteady, sir, and I thought I would ehow them that it was not so bad as it looked." " Hem ! that is another matter. That is a different affair, alto- gether. You have acted with great valor and discretion ; you iiave done a noble deed at the right time. Such actions as yours, 16 LEIGIITON COURT. fir, elewite the tone of the army, and deserve to live in the months of men forever. What is your name ? " " George Hilton." " He is Jack's boy," said a general, who stood near. " Why could n't you have said so before ? " snapped out the eagle. '" Because I did n't want to spoil the fun of hearing y£)u make a set complimentary speech to Jack's boy. Fancy such a torrent of fervid eloquence being poured out on his head. It's as good as a play." The great warrior was very much amused, and held out his hand to the lad. " You are at your father's tricks, are you, you monkey ? Go back to your regiment. I sliall write to your mother." And so he did, and kept his eye on the boy. Young George Hilton soon changed into an infantry regiment, partly because his mother had lost some money, and partly because his patron and his father's friend wished it. In time his patron died : but he fought his way steadily on through the weary nights of 1854, through the dark and terrible hour of 1855, leaving his mark on everything he undertook, and getting his name well known, not only at the Horse Guards, but to the most careless of the general public. Here we find him now on the terrace beside Laura. Colonel Hilton, C. 13., V. C, a tall man of remarkable personal beauty, with a dark-brown beard, and lai'ge melancholy eyes ; and with a low-pitched, but singularly distinct voice. A dangerous man for any girl to listen to, among the lengthening summer twilight shadows, particularly after having liad Lord Hatterleigh gobbling and spluttering out insane political twad- dle the whole eveniu'r. CHAPTER VIII. " And how do you like Cain, my love ? " said Lasurance has com[)letely quelled the old man ; he takes orders from his subordinate which he could never take fronT'me."' - " Now," said Lady Emily, " comes my tuni. Suppose I was to tell you that I had found out all about him and refused to tell you." " You know you could n't' keep it to youi-self. 1 should hear all about it if I waited. Better tell it at once." " I suppose I had. By tiie by, this young gentleman's name will be George." " It is >o. How did you guess ?" " My love, I know all about everything. My sister has found It all out. You know that Sir Wiiliaui Poyntz had two sons, ilarry and Bob ? " " Of course." " Did you ever hear of a third, an illegitimate one ? " " I know there was such a son. Tlie old man's favorite. Well ? " " This is the man." " No ! Is it, really ? That is very strange." " Sir Harry Poyntz has been in the neighborhood and has told my sister everything. This George has been a sadly dis- sipated fellow." "■ That is one of Harry's lies. The fellow's eye is as clear as tuine," iutercaUited Sir Charh's B 18 LEIGIITON COURT. " Well, that is Sir Harry's afcount of the matter, — very dis" sipated. He, it seemed, got hold of Robert Poyntz, now in India, and led him iiito all kinds of dissipation. All this brought on a serious misunderstanding between Sir Harry and his brother, and led tx) this George Hammersley being utterly ignored by Sir Harry, and sent to live on his wits. And that is your Adonis." " The best thing about our Adonis seems to be his good looks and good manners, and the fact that Harry Poyntz has taken away his cliaracter." '■ The last item is the most important," said Lady Emily. '' I never knew Hany Poyntz t(dl the truth yet; did yon ?" '• Not I. But Poyntz is coming here soon ; in six months. I believe. He refuses to renew Hu.vtable's lease. What will Adonis do then ? " " That is distinctly his business," said Lady Emily. " We shall see." " I wonder why he left Leicestershire, this paragon," said Sir Charles, just as they got to the drawing-room door. " He admired, or was admired too much by one of the Herage girls. Don't say a word about that, it is not fair. Laura will take uncommon good care that he don't make love to her." CHAPTER IX. " Akd who is going to make love to our Laura ? " said a litlle voice, vei-}' like a tiny cliime of silver bells, from the other end of the room as they entered. There sat. all alone, a little old lady with a white lace cap on lier head, and a white lace shawl over her shouldeis. She wore her own gray hair, and her com[)lHxion was nearly as dtlicate now as in her youth, but slightly paler, and covered with tiny wrinkles, only visildii when one wa> quite close to her. A mo-t wond(!r(iilly beautiful old lady (how beautiful old women can be), with a cheei-ful, peaceful light in her face, which maile one love her at once : and yet witii a look of complacent, self-pos- sessed, self-consci(nis goodness, too, which after a time became provoking, and which tempted outsiders and siimers to contra- dict her, and to broacli heretical ()[)iiiions lor the mere sake ol nggra\ation. " And who is going to make love to our Tiaura?" she repeated. Lady Emily would have done a great deal sooner than have LKIGIITON COURT. IS TPp^afed before her mother the audacious joke ^he had ja-l made with licr hu-band. The ohl iady would have been too jjaiufuUy shocked at it ; she turned it olK by a little hb. '• O, you can guess whom I mean, mamma. I hate mention- ing names." "• Poor Ursa Major is terribly smitten, I fancy," said the old lady, smiling. "I am fond of Ursa Major. He comes of a good stock. All the Hortons are good. He will make the woman he marries very ha])|)y if she will only L-t him." " Yes, he is a good match tor any woman," said Lady Emily, seizing her opportunity with admirable quickness, and speaking in a free, off-liand way, as thougli it was a mere abstract (}ues- tion. '* He has sixty thousand a year. He is very amiable and talented, and young. That is a great [)oint. He is not beyond forming, and Laura would form him." " Laura !" shouted Sir Charles. " My love, we are not deaf," said Lady Emily, with lofty quietness. These two good ladies never fold Sir Charles anything im- portant, they always broke it to him, administered it in gentle doses, as beef-tea is given to starving persons ; sometimes driv- ing him half wild in the process, Tliis seemed a fair occasion, though an accidental one, of " breaking" to Sir Charles the fact that Lord Hatterleigh was most undoubtedly smitten with Lau- ra. They were considerably anxious, and had reason to be. But they did not show it. " I beg pardon," said Sir Charles, " but you gave me such a start." " I merely said," remarked Lady Emily, shutting her eyes, pulling the string, and letting off the cannon, bang! "that in case Laura married him, the excellent training she has received from her grandmother would — " " Laura marry him, that Guy Fawkes booby ! AVhat mon- strous rubbish is this — " " Would polish him, remove any little uncouthness, and so on," continued Lady Emily, with steady severity. " She 's a clever girl," cried Sir Charles, " but she will never make him anything but what he is, — an awkward lopsided gaby, the butt of every club he belongs to. Besides, the man is not a marrying man. There is something wrong with him. He keeps a doctor ; and he has not had a proper education ; he can't ride or shoot. He could n't ride about with her. It would never do, — shall never be. How could you dare to think of such a mon- strous arrangement, Emily ? But Laura can take care of her- self, that is one comfort. There he comes hiuiseltj by all that '3 awkward." 20 LEIGHTON COURT. Somebody was heard lumbering down stairs and objurgating somebody else, in a voice compounded of a gobble and a growl. Some one slipped dowii the last two stairs. Tliat it was the owner of the gorilla voice was evident from that voice exclaim- ing aloud, " Bless ray sonl, I have broke my back." " Sweet youth," said Sir Charles, " I hope he won't cry." Before Lord Hatterleigh had finished a plaintive wrangle with his valet, as to whether his slipping down stairs was his own or the valet's fault, two other people entered the drawing- room together, — Laura and Colonel Hilton ; a most splendid pair of people indeed ; they had evidently been saying tome- thing kindly wicked about Lord Hatterleigh's accident, and were both smiling. He was slightly behind her, and being the tallest was bending towards her, she, saying the last word of their little joke, was turning her beaiitifid head back to him, and showing the soft cur\es of her splendid throat, as though Millais were lying in wait for her. They were a wonderfully beautiful pair of |)eople, and the three iblks in the drawing-room were obliged to confess it. Said Lady Southmolton to herself : " That would do, perhaps, under other circumstances. But he has n't got any fortune, and she don't care for him, and never will. He flatters her too j^ross- ly and too openly, and she hates being flattered ; with all his per- sonal beauty and his gallantry, she despises him. I could tell him how to win that girl, but I won't. He has neither birth nor money. That young man don't understand women of her stamp ; very few soldiers do." Said Lady Emily : " I wish that could come about ; he is so handsome and .-o good. But it can't. He has got no moni^y, and what 1 can't understand is, that she don't like him. I wish lie had Hattcrleigh's money, and that she would fall in love with him." Two things whicii happened to be impossible. Said Sir Charles : " Sometimes I wish the hounds were at the devil. If it was not for them I should be beforehand with tlie world, instead of getting behindhand year after year. I wifth this fellow had Hattcrleigh's money. But he hasn't. She is evidently in love with this fellow." (Was she. Sir Charles? The mother and grandmother did not think so, and ladies are generally considered judges of that sort of thing.) " I suppose it will end in her marrying that booby ; the women seem set on it." That wa-^ the way with Sir Cliarlcs and with a great many others ; a liirious relxdlion against tlie women, and then a dull, sulky acquiescence. vStroiigcr men than Sir Charles have been fairly beaten by feniah; persistency. He gave tip tht' battle, however, tiie momcjit he saw that the enemy were going to show LEIGUTON COURT. 21 figlit. IIi^ liated tlie very sound of Lord Ilatterlcigli's voice. lie had tliouuht, lialf an lioiir ago, that the sacrilice of 8uch a being as Laura to such a booby as Lord Hatterleigh was a monstrous thing; but — but Lord Hatterleigh was rich; and if Laura, noble, honest Laura, could say she loved hiui, what had he to say. It would be a great match, and so on, only there lurked in his heart a strong iialf-fbrmed desire, that Laura would box his Lordship's ears, the first moment he ventured to speak to her. " Aha, my young lady," he said to himself, " I have no doubt you would give the hair off your head to have him talk to you in the tone he does to Laura. But you run after him too open- ly, my poor Maria." Tills remark arose from tlie entrance of the Iluxtables, father and daughter. Mr. Huxtab!e was a fine-looking North-country- man, and his daugliter Maria a very fine specimen of a Lanca- shire lass, by no means unlike Laura, but coarser. Sir Charles, who was standing close to her, had noticed the shade of vexation wliicli passed over her handsome face, when slie saw Coloiiel Hiiton bending over Laura, and made tlie above remark, which he supplemented by another. " What fools soldiers are ! Tliere is Hilton dangling about after Laura, who don't care for him, and sixty thousand pounds ready to drop into his mouth." Tlie great migiity master of Tomfoolery, Levassor, blunder- ing on to the stage with his breeches up to his ears, just as llachel had drooped into one of her sublimest attitudes, could hardly have been a greater foil to her than was Lord Hatter- leigh to Colonel Hilton ; yet Laura left the Colonel directly, and going to the other began kindly to laugh at him about his tumbling down stairs. He was extremely flattered and pleased by her kindness, and held himself as gallantly as he could. He had made his valet take particular pains with his toilette, but as the valet had said to liimseU", it was n't the fault of the clothes, but of tlie man in- side them. He remained silent, only smiling radiantly until it became time to take Lady Emily in to dinner. He sat next Laura, but his silence continued until he had fin- ished his soup and his fish. He did nothing but smile. He had invented something pretty in the retirement of his chamber which he was to say to Laura, but he had forgotten it, and his soul was consumed in spasmodic efforts to remember it. Laura saw this to her intense amusement. At the end of the fish she thought he had got it, for he brightened up and gave a sigh of relief. She was wrong, he had only abandoned the effort. He slopped out a glass of wa'.er, looked sweetly al her, and said, — 22 LEIGIITON COURT. " I take it that the great duration of the Liverpool minijitry arose mainly from the absence of anything like decision or force of character in the chief. The whole, too, was a mere coalition a^ profligate as that between Fox and North. The very possi- bility of a coalition argues an entire absence of principle in the coalescing parties, and of policy in the coalition itself." CHAPTER X. Hunting was nearly the only irregular pursuit which Laura had, tlie only one the duration of which could not be calculated. With this single exception her life was as perfectly methodical as her grandmother's. The system on wiiich she had been brought up consisted mainly of perfect regularity of time and uniformity of thought. This hunting was an eccentric, incalcu- lable comet in the regular planetary system of her mother. It was the only exception ; tlie rest of her life was perfectly regu- lar, nearly as regular as a religious sister's. A morning walk from six to seven. Religious reading in her own room till half past ; breakfast at nine. Poor people from ten to twelve. Solid reading (but very few novels admitted into the house) till one. Lunch. Drive out with grandma in the afternoon. Dinner at seven. Prayers and bed at half past ten. So much for a non-hunting day. One of the days after her grandmother's own heart. Idleness, said her grandma, was the source of all temptation ; days spent like this could lead to no temptation (except that of suicide, perhaps ?), and therefore would help to preserve from sin. Jiut a hunting day was a very ditfcrent sort of thing. What must the poor old lady have suffered on one of them, with her well-regulated mind lacerated at ev<\vy i)oint ! She had learnt to suffer and smile in far more ter- ribli' affairs than this. On lUoest, I fear. I shall always have my horse, and be able to ride myself tired among the^ long-drawn valleys. I wish I was better, but he has spoilt rue ! '' 9^ LEIGHTON COURT. CHAPTER XI. Laura had a great curio'^ity to see that peri^onage who was .-^lled by her grandmother "the new young man." She had been detained at home by some accident on the day of his first appear- ance. Her father, however, had so consistently bored every one to death tliat evening by liis account of the run, which would have filled three columns of " Bell," and by the manifold excellences of his new St. Hubert, that Laura remembered that old Mrs. Squire, the huntsman's aged mother, had not been so well for two or three days, and tha.t she was very much to blame for not having been to see her ; and moreover, by the by, that there was a new litter of puppies at the kennels, and she migbt as well step on from old Mrs. Squire's and see them. It pleased her father that she should sympathize with his favorite pur.-uits. Since the expedition of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins, there never was a more innocent, more necessary expedition, than this of Laura that winter morning. It was i)lainly her duty. Of course, if the New Young Man happened to be at the kennels, she would be rewarded by seeing that remarkable character. That lie could n't, by the wildest possibility, be anywhere else at that time of day never sti'uck her — of course ! Still the Hannah-More half of her was in the ascendant to-day. It was a non-hunting day. She felt a craving to bol.-ter herself up with formulas and precedents, after the manner of that school. Old Elspie, her Scotch nurse, was a great crony of Mrs. Squire, both being advanced Calvinists. Laura would ju-^t step up and ask her what slu; thought of ]\Irs. Scpiire's state, and if it was not necessary for her to go, why of course she would stay at home. Slie was going to do one of the most simple, natural things po-siV)le, to gratify her curiosity by looking at a new servant. And yet — she would be glad of a false excuse for doing so; slie would have been almost disappointed if Mrs. S(juire had been better. Siie went up stairs into a room whose long-mullioned window looked upon the ed for walking, with an awful fanta-^tic bonnet, and a cruldirMl stick like Mother Bimch's. H(.'r father's joke struck her forcibly — Elspie did look very like; a witch indeed ! LKIGHTON COURT. 25 *' Elsjiie, dear,"' she said, " have you heard how Mrs. S'luire is?" "S!ie is just deeing," was the answer, "and I'm awa to see her. There '11 be manifestations when she is caught up, I 'ni thinking. Last night, while I sat with her, there came a sough of wind round the house, whicii would have swelled into music, if that ili-faured auld witch, Mother Garden, hadna been there. I ken of her tickling a paddock wi twa barley straes, Inild cross- wise, to change the wind. She should be burnt in bear strac her.-elf, the witcii! To depart from tlie gude honest auld practice of knouting auglit thrums of hempen cord, witli SMxteen knots apiece, and calling twal times on, — guide us Where's njy sneeshin, — which niony a time I've done myself, Gude forgie me, with the best success." Laura laughed loudly, kissed the old woman, and said she would go with her. They walked slowly together through the shadows of the park, which comprised all the promontory between the narrow estuary of the W}sclith on tiie lelt, and the broad, dangerous sands of t!ie Avon on the right. Betwixt the tree-stems on either side they could see gleams of yellow sand and sea-green water. Where the trees broke, Poyntz Castle loomed up giandly on the other side of the river close at hand. Thei-e was no regular avenue, but beyond the trees which bordered the carriage-way the Moor, the mother of waters, was visible, and seemed to glad- den ohl Elspie's Highland eyes. She tattled on incessantly. It was a beautiful country, she said, to the blinded eyes of those who had never seen solitary Kannoch and lonely, majestic Schehailion. God had left the people here to wax fat until they kicked, in proof of which he sent no snow ; and twaddling on uncontradicted with her argu- ment, no whiskey, and deil a screed of the pipes from ae year's end to the ither. The trout were but. poor tliiiig>;, and the blessed salmon themselves were naething to the Scottish salmon, though, with her wonderful honesty, she confessed that she had never seen but on(! at Kaiuioch in iier life. The Gospel in all its purity was jii-eached here, she allowed, but in holes and corners; and then she gave Laura a piece of her mind about the High Church rec- tor, and about what would happen to her (Laura) tor the prom- inent part she was taking in the Christmas decorations of the churcli. But Laura oidy half heard her, for she was away on horseback over a parlicuhir line of country, over which she had ahvays hoped the ibx would go, but over which he never did. Then Elspie went on to say that the people here were sunk in the grossest suf>erstition ; after which she rambled on into describ- ing a never-l'iiiliiig -pell of her own I'ur doing something or au- •> 26 LEIGHTON COURT. Other. "And then ye pit the thimmle half-way betwixt the twa bannocks, and ye turn to the four airts, and ye say four times to ilka airt, — ' Ilech, sirs, see to yon hoodie, she's waur I'm thinking.' " The last sentence was not El?pie's incantation, — it was only a natural exclamation. If she had said, " your twa dizzen hoodies," it would have been equally correct. They had arrived at Mrs. Squire's cottage, the last house in the village, close to the tide- Avav, and there were Iioy-~ton crows enough about in every diie<"tion. They went in, but there was no one on the ground-floor. A man's voice was audible up stairs, apparently talking to the sick woman. Elspie immediately prej)ared for going up stairs in ex- treme wrath. The voice, as far as they could hear it, was the voice of Mr. Parsons, the Ti-actarian rector. In Elspie's eyes, the sin of a Romanizing Episcopalian like the Hector, daring to trouble the death-bed of an elected Calvinist with his miserable soulless formalisms, was a sin too horrible to be tolerated for a moment. She charged the stairs, and Laura shoved her up right willingly, knowing that her Highland respect for rank would pre- vent her insulting a guest of her father's house in his daughter's presence. They came silently into the room of death, for it was so. She saw at once that it was not the Hector who was bending over the dving woman, but a stranger. She heard him say, " Mother, your a-surance of salvation is so great, that if I were a duke I would change witli you. Think of your future, and think of the hell wiiich is before me. Do you think I would not change with you?" That was all they heard, for the next instant tlie stranger turned and saw them. Before he had time to do so, Laura'a heart was melted with pity towards him ; and wlien he did so, slie looked on the most magnificent young man she had ever seen in her life. There was more mischief done in the next five minutes than was thoroughly undone in the next five years. It was very wrong, and Mrs. Hannah INIore would have been very angry; but it will happen, you know, and it does. Poor Laura tried hard to unilo that five miiuites' work, but she never entirely did, circumstances were so fearfully against her. A wonderinlly splendid young fellow, very young, so young as to be beardless, yet well-grown and graceful. In her memory he Jived as a perlectly beautiful young man, with large, steadfast eyes, and a look of deep sorrow in them and the whole of his face, which had not yet developed into despair. As Elspie moved towards the bed, he rose and came towards LEIGHTON COURT. 27 (hem. He was sinijularly well-dressed, and looked th( jreiuleman he was every inch of liitn ; tliere was no man in that part of tlie country who could compare with him. Ililion was <>rand en()U<^!i in his way, but he wanted the keen vitality which dwelt in every look, evei-y action of tliis one. Laura iiad never seen any one like him at all. She was very plainly dressed, as she frenerally was when about home. They could scarcely help speaking to one another. They both f*dt they were in the pre-ence of death, and thought but little of forms or introductions, p^acli was oidy conscious that the other was wondrously attractive, and they talked like two children. He began, — "Death in such a form as he takes here loses all his terrors. The most selfish sybarite would hold out his white hands and take him to his bosom, if he came in this form." The young lady was the very last young lady in England to yield to any one in a conversation of this kind. She loved it with lier whole soul. She plunged into it at once, looking frankly into the stranger's eyes, — "The death is beautiful. Yes! of course it is. But it is merely the corollary of the life. How could it be anything but beautiful, after such a life: brutal ingratitude met with patient love and forgiveness, — grinding poverty endured with saintlike patience, — a charity which hoped all things and believed all things, — helpful diligence towards those in affliction, and genial sympathy for tiiose in prosperity ? Of course her di'ath is beautiful." " So you think that the death will be peaceful according as the life has been good ? " " Of course I do." " Do you believe in the converse of your proposition ? Do you believe that no man, after a life of misused opportunities, of anger, of frivolity which he despi>ed, of aimless idleness which he loathed, would not take death in his arras as his dearest friend, just as this old woman is doing?" "No, I do not. Death to him would be the executioner with the mask and axe, not the angel with the crown of glory." " That is not a very comfortable creed for those who seek death as a rest from misfortune and life-long trouble, which troul)les evermore, and will not cease troubling." " No, it is not," replied Laura. " I did not mean it to be. If I ever met any one who was so supremely and sentimentally silly as to say in earnest what you have been advancing as a specula- tion, I should have much more to say on the subject." For she suddenly had to fall back on ]\[rs. Hannah INFore and the strait-laced regularities, double-quick; for tliis tall youth was dropping these sentimental platitudes out of his handsome mouth in such a careless, graceful, melodious mani;er, that sh« began to find that she must either get angry o' cry. 28 LI-IGIITON COURT. They passed out of the house together, and parted with a bow Laura was so trained to habit that she seldom departed from a plan she had laid down. She went on towards the kennels, more because she had started with that intention, than because she cared to see much of the puppies. Her deeply-hidden design of seeing the New Young Man was no more ; she had forgotten all about him. The old huntsman, a little, weasened, lean old man, about sixty, son of the woman who was dying, — a man with a keen gray eye, which, though half liidden under his eyebrows, was always on yours, received her. They were on the flag> together in amicable dispute about some one of the young hounds, which had been brought out tor inspection, when the stranger whom she had only just left, and of whom she had not yet ceased thinking, came up and said to the huntsman, — " I '11 go across to Clercombe then, and fetch that puppy home. I shall take Xicoteneat!, or he '11 be too fresh for you to-morrow. ]\Iind you look at that dog's foot again ; do not forget it. And so he went. Laura had voice to ask Squire who that might be. " Tiie new gentleman, Mi>s," said the voice, which came from under the keen, gray old eye. " Do you mean the new whip ?" she asked, in blank astonish- ment. " I calls him the new ma'^ter. Miss. I give way to liim at once, and so he 's took to ordei'ing Sir Charles about now, and he seems to like it." " You seem to like it too," said Laura ; " you take it very easily ? " " If g<'ntlemen takes the place of whips, such as I must obey their orders," said Squire. " You were n't out a Tuesday, Miss ? " '• You know I was not." " Did Sir Charles mention to you, or to h(!r ladyship, the fact that he would n't ride in a frock ? " '' No. You mean the new whip, I suppose ?'' " The new Dook I mean, of course, come out in a swallow- tailed pink like a gentleman. I point it out to him very gentle. ' I 'm not going to ride in a frock,' he sna{)s. ' The master him- self does,' I urged. 'The Devil he does!' says he; Mhen I suppose I must. But 1 am not going to wear that beastly thing tlie tailor sent home; for me. 1 will have one built at Plymouth. Is there a decent tailor th(;re ? ' And so he pieks his horse and goes over. And Ik; has been snapping my nose off bec^ause the tailor has not sent his coat in, and he is going to ride in his swallow-tail to-morrow, and says lie will apologize to Sir Cliarlca if lie thinks about il." LKIGlirON COURT. 29 *' Are all the Leicestershire men such danrlies ? " said Laura. " It 's to be h'op(!(l npU Miss," paid old Squire, looking keenly at her with liis gray old eye. " Fox-hunling would be expensive if they were." " Does he underst;ind his business ? " " Not h(^ But he tiiinks he do, which is much ; and he is a capital hand at giving orders, wliich is more. And he is cool." " Cool over his fences, you mean ?" said Laura. " Cool wiili tlie field / mean," said Squire. "A Tuesday he rode The Elk, and he went over a big thing in front of your father, and waits for him. And Sir Charles comes up and he funks it, tor it were a awful big tiling, for fegs it were ! And Mr. riammersley goes round and opens the gate tor liim ; and 1 hearn him say, 'We shouldn't have funked that ten years ago. Sir Charles, — hey ? ' And your father says, ' That is a regular Leicester-hii'e trick, to I'ide a man's best horse, that could carry his ten pounds cxira. and then chaff him for not taking his fences.' But lie huighed again, and he said, 'No, Sir Charles, it won't do. It 's the ten years, not the ten pounds. Old Time has handicapped us all.' And when we checked the first time, he offered his cigar-i-ase to Tom Duwnes, who asked to be introduced, and looked mad when he found out who lie was. That is what /call coolness. But he always were the best of the lot, say what you will." " Best of what lot ? " asked Laura. " Of the Leicestershire lot. Miss," replied the old fellow, quickly. " They are a troublesome lot for the most part. Miss as you will find when you get to know the world as well as I do. Too gentlemanly, for instance. But this young man, he is what I call a model." " Are they, all gentlemen ? " asked Laura. " Not all on 'em, JMiss. Tliis young man is perhaps rather exasperating genilemunlike. But they all have the same ways, in some degree." Laura went home again : knowing in the inmost recesses of her soul, in her conseiousness, that something had happened to her, which the intelligent and the emotional part of her equally refused to recognize, — a something, which those two thirds of her soul, which lay nearest to the surface, absolutely refused to name. Her intelligence would not, as yet, tell her-elf, nor would her emotions, as yet, aHovvf her to tell anybody else, that she had fallen in love with this young gentleman. If her intelligence had told this fact to herself, or if her emotions had got so far out of the guidance of Ilannah-Moreism as to allow her to tell it to any one else, she would have been covered with shame and indig- nation But she knew it perfectly well ; and was most heartily 30 LEIGHTON COURT. frightened, as was the German student, when he left his monster in his room, and feared to come back there for fear of meeting it in all its monstrous horror. There are three ways of knowing things ; she had only got to the first as yet. Familiar inter- course was to give her the second, grief the third. Meanwhile that most unaccountable old trot, Mother Nature, had been casting her kevels, and had arranged that ttiese two young people should fall in love with one another. What that means exactly we none of us know. But it happened here most unmistakably. CHAPTER XII. Laura passed the rest of that day in the most pniiseworthy activity. Her poor people done, she armed herself with a Bio« graphical Dictionary, and settled steadily down to Froude's first volume, which had just arrived, to work at it till lunch-time. What had passed that morning she chose to ignore utterly to her- self. She once went so far as to make the admission, " I was very nearly being silly this raorning. I was not at all my- self. It was that poor woman's approaching death upset me." Nothing more than this. She determined on an expan-ive course of stutly of the Tudor times, got out a new manuscript book, in the which to take notes, d»^termined to be utterly sceptical about iMr. Froude's conclusions, and diligently to spy out every deficiency. She got her pens, iid<, ^IS. book and blotting-paper all ready, settled herself at the wiiting-table with the volume be- fore her, and then >at down and began tliiaking al)out the incotn prehensible impudence of this wonderful Ilannnersley, until she found it woulil n't do, and went to work in serious, sober earnest. Her diligence met with its rewaixi ; for after reading steadily till lunch-time, practising until tlie carriage ctiine round, making her- self agreeable to Lord Ilatlerleigh and her grandmother during their drive, and writing letters for her father till the dressing-bell rang, she found that the little something which had exi^led in the morning had ceased to exist, and that she was in a mood of lofty scorn with herself, for having in the deepe>t, dimmest, .-evenfoid e ti-eated her very badly, and some say she gave him good cause. Sir Harry Poyntz was furious at having his name mixed up in it." " O. he vv'as in it, was he ?" " He says he was not." "All the more — Do you know Sir Harry Poyntz, my dear Lady Southmolton?" " I have known him and his from a boy." " What do you think of him ? " " I try to think the best of him." " I siionld not like to have his character," said Lord Hatter- leigh. "Tijey say he is proijigate beyond precedent, false beyond contempt, and avaricious beyond — beyond thingamy ! " "It is rather hard to accuse him of avarice, I think," said the kind old lady. " He has succeeded in clearing the estate which was (hpped so shamefully by his father." " No, really; 1 thouglit it would have taken years more to do it." " So did every one else But see, he has done it. He has re- fused to renew Mr. Huxtablc's lease of (he Castle, and is to be our next-door ne'ghhor after tlie end of this year." "Then will people cull on him?" "I should suppose, of course, tiiey will," said Lady Southmol- ton. " He has done nothing which would give them any excuse for such an extreme measure as not doing so," " Why, no. liut I could like a man n^oie, far more, who had ma'p did, no mau would be found to say, ' Poor Hurry Poyniz!'" LEIGIITON COUHT. 33 *' T want to make the best of liim," said Lady Soiithmolton. "You always want to make the best of cverylmdy ; you Hop tons always do, you know. You can't help it; jroodness is in your blood ; you have given yourselves to peacemaking for the.-^c two centuries. But all the Mortons since the CoiKpiest won't whitewash this fellow. He is too utterly ill-conditioned. He has a brother, has he not ? " "Yes ; just gone to India." " By the same mother?" " O, yes. Robert Poyntz ; I remember liim as a pretty, bi-iglit boy, — a very nice boy." " There is another brother, I heard of the other day only, — a Falconbridge, — a splendid fellow by all descriptions; have you ever heard of him?" "I have heard of sucli a person, but I never, never heard of his splendor. 1 have always understood him to be a sad mauvais sitjct. A very disreputable person, is he not ? " " No. I have heard no harm of him vvoi'se than that he was riding steeple-chases, or acting as huntsman or something in Lei- cestershire, last year. He seemed to be a somewhat I'emarkable fellow, — a youth who seemed to play Count Saxe to old Sir George Poyntz's August der Siurke. What do you know about Robert Poyntz, the brother?" " I am afraid but very little good," said Lady Southmolton. "I fear he is very disspated. Why?" ." Because he vviil soon be in possession. Sir Harry Poyntz is a doomed man ; he has ruined his constitution by profligacv, and has had one or more attacks of angina pectoris. You will have this Robert Poyntz at the Castle in a couple of years, mark my words ! " So Lord Hatterleigh and Lady Southmolton. Let us see what they were talking about at the other end of the taljle. Laura was sitting next to Lord Hatterleigh ; but he did not speak to her, for she had frightened him. He calmed himself by talking to that well-conducted old Lady Soutiunolton. As I said before, he did not feel equal to Laura for the rest of the evening. She was very much pleased at not having to amuse him, and most willingly left him to talk with her grandmotlier. But we shall have to Ibllow the conversation at what may properly bo called the noisy end of the table, as distinguished from the quiet end, where Lord Hatterleigh mumbled and spluttered as above to Lady Southmolton. Lady Emily tried not to yawn, and Sir Peckwich Downes, who, from ids figure, seinsed to have three stomachs, ruminated over his dinner, listening to Lord Hailer- leigh, and confined his observations to saying, iji a deep voice, " Sherry ! " whenever the butler ofle;ed him champagne, or any 2* C 34 LKIGIITON COURT, frivelons ■flrlHiks of that kind. AYe will take np the convei*8ation at the noi«y end. TaE Vjcae, " I deny your position. Colonel Hilton. Tlie great Bithynian Council was merely as.sembltd for tlie purpose of .condemning Arianism. That was its s/)^("?"c/Z//e. I deny that T am bound by it further than that. As resrards sumptuary laws for the priestlreod, it did absolutely nothing. It left them to be developed by tl>e Western Church — " vC.OLONEx Hilton. " The Papists." The Vicar. " The Western Church, sir. Thus onr chas- uble is developed from the blaidcet of the shepherd ot" the Cain- pagiia, our dalmatic from — " Sir George. " But where are you to stop in your develop- mejit ? We fox-lhunters, about the middle of the last century, developed our vestments into breeches and top-Ix)ot&, and there ■we have stuck i'or a hundred years. But lately a number of young fellows have shown signs of moving forward again, and iiay.e appeared in gray coids and butchers' boots. One of your lioys, Iluxtable, ixxle last week in knickerbockers, and went ■y^ry well forward indeed. I was very much offended ; I could not bear the sight of it. But if you allow that Pu — , I mean that Church vestment-, were devehjped out of something whicli "W.ent before, I cannot see at what [Kiint you are to stop tliat de- "velopment, any more than I can stop breeches ami top-boots from (developing into knickerbockers and gaiters." The Vicar. *'Tlie development should stop, sir, the inr Stant that the original idea of the vestment is lost." Laura. "I agree with the Vicar. Let us u-e these Church vestments as long as any idea worth preserving is preserved by iJjem. I believe in symbols. If you are to wear auy thing at all, let it mean something, A gown and surplice mean nothing at all. Now, Mr. Spurgeon, when lie goes into the pulpit with a l>lue necktie and a white hat, does mean something, — a some- thing / don't like ; but, at all event-, he means something, how- ever offensive it may be to me," CoLON'KL Hilton. '' I am converted. Miss S<'ckerton ha* jtut it so w(!ll, I .-ee that we must either have Bryan King, witlv 1jj8 alljs and his dalmatI(|U('s, or we must have Spurgeon, willt liis white bowler hat anil blue tie." Laura. " You aic very easily converted. Colonel Hilton," Colonel Hilton, " Very easily indecil — - l)y you," Laura, "Thank you. That means that you are never in eariHJst about anything." Colonel Hilton (in his softest voice). " Only yevy much in eani(!st about one thing." Laura (looking at him with strong disfavor). "And what may that be, for instance ? " LEIGHTON COURT. 3.) The Colonel, reduced to silence for a moment, and feeHn;^ (h^t lie had someliow done just what he did not want to (h), said, "Id it really true, Mr. Iluxtable, that we are to lo^e you, and that Sir Harry Poyntz is coniinir to the Castle?" Mr. Iluxtable, a jolly Yorkshire giant, said: "Indeed it is. He will neither sell nor give me another lease. And I have offered him a fancy i)i"ice, too. It is a sad pity for the Conserva- tive interest. If I had lived in that dear, inconvenient old Castle a few years more, I should have turned a Tory. Lord Me-s you ! No one could stand the atmosphere of the dear old place. Lock John Bright up a year or two in a Norman keep, with a deer-park, and you would find him walking arm in arm with Disraeli into the Carlton. The Vicar. "The atmosphere of — " Mr. Huxtarlk. "That is just what I mean. As the atmosphere of INLigdalen turned you Tractarian, so the atmos- phere of the dear old |)Iace would turn me Tory. I shall go back to Bradford, build a i-ed-brick house, and go in for a six-pound suffrage to begin with, — only begin with, understand. And I shall also turn dissenter. Ha ! ha ! The Vicar. "My good sir — " Mr. Hdxtable. "I know all al)out that. Vicar. It's all a matter of atmosphere, you know. Hey? ts (avrov a-roiiaxou — hey ? But seriously, it does make a man talk radically and wildly, to find himself turned out of such glorious quarters as these to make room for a profligate usurer." The Vicar. " I can quite conceive it. I wish to heaven that Sir Harry would sell to you. Since you have been here you have done nothing but gi)od. You have strenglhened my hands at every point, although you luive often disagreed with me. And now you are to make room for a profligate atheistic usurer." Sir Charles. " My dear Vicar ! " The Vicar only looked at Sir Charles, and Sir Charles held his tongue and carved the venison. CoLOXEL Hilton. " I am afraid that Mr. Iluxtable has been pauperizing the laborers hereabouts with his li!)erality. They have got to depend on him as a deus ex Machinu. Nothing can be more demoralizing than that. You are a capital political econ- omist. Miss Seckerton, you will agi'ee with me." Laura. "I don't see how Mr. Iluxtable, with all his inge- nuity, can have succeeded in pauperizing men with eleven shillings a week, three to five children, two shillings a week oft' for rent, a pound a year to the doctor, which lirings them down to little over eight shillings, out of which they have to find boots, clothes, and firing." 36 LEIGHTON COURT. Colonel Hilton (somewhat nettled at having put his foot ia it acrain). ''It 's a case of supply and demand, I su[>pose." Laura. " So I suppose. It is a positive fact that the agricultural population could not ^et on at all without artificial assistance from the gentry ; and I suppose we don't help them from Christian good-will, but only to prevent the ricks from catching fire. Is that wliat you mean ? " Laura was behaving very badly. Her father was pained and astonished. What she said might be true, but she had no business to speak in that way. What right had she to talk about rick- burning ? No lady ever did. Kind Mr. Iluxtable saw all this, and came to the rescue with the best intentions, — with one of those intentions with which a silly, lying old proverb says that "hell is paved." He made, on the whole, a rather worse mess of it ; but his meaning was good, and by no means the sort of thing with which to pave hell. He tried fo " cliange the conversation," a thing I have never yet seen done with the slightest success. If the conversation gets awkward, diligently try to lend it into a new channel, but don't change it, and leave the whole o\' the company in a nervous, dis- concerted frame of mind, curh wondering whether or not he or she has said the Dreadful Thing which made such a terrible remedy necessary. "That is a sj)lendid young fellow, — 'that new whip of yours, — Sir Charles, if I may take the liberty of calling him so." Sir Charles agreed tliat he was. "Thrown away here, though," continued Iluxtable. "Goes too straiglit for tliis country ; won't learn to fK)tter. Jle will go at something iialf a size too big for liim some day, and come to grief. I saw him go at some terrible things the day before yes- terday." " I wonder if I coidd enlist him," said Colonel Hilton. " He woidd make a capitjil dragoon." " He is a cut alx)ve that sort of thing, I fancy," said Laura, who seemed detern)incd to behave worse as the evening got later. Colonel Hilton was getting angry with her. She had given him the dor two or three times without the slightest offence on his part, and he, was not going to stand it. " Do you think, then, that a whip to hounds holds a higher position tlian that of the light cavalry who were at lialaelava ? " "I say nothing about them," said Lama. " lint you must ac- knowledge, as a giMieral ride, that the army is recruited from the lowest class in llie community, and that you never get a man to enlist if he can do anything else with liiinseU'.' "Tiial is hardly to the point. I deny it ; but that has nothing LEICIITOX COURT. 37 to do with tho. argnmoiit. What I asked was, Do not yon tliii)k that tlie position ot'a troop.er, wlio may have t!ie Victoria Cr<)ss, whicii I wear myself, i)iiin(>d on to his coat by tlie most aiigu.-t person in the worhl, is superior to a menial servant, dressed in a private livery, who feeds the hounds, and drowns tlie blind pnitpies?" " It depends veiy much on the way you take it," said Laura, who had nothing whatever to say, and so said that. " I don't think it does," said Colonel Hilton. '• To bring the matter to practice. I sit at mess with a man whose father, till last year, was working as a journeyman blacksmith on Fins- bury Pavement. He was sergeant-major in the 14th Hussars, and got his commission for service : and as it is best ibr a man Avho rises from the ranks to change his regiment, he came to us. We received him with open arms. That man is a trusted companion of mine, one of the best officers I have. I can make a friend of that man, but I don't think I could stand a menial servant, — a mere minister to luxury, a kennel boy. If there are to be any rules about tiiat soi't of thing, I am right. If not, I am wrong." These sentiments were far too near the creed of most present to be contradicted. A short silence ensued, which was more flattering than applause, during which Laura was thinking. " So you hare got a temjjer, and tvont always stand contradic- tion, eh. Colonel Hilton ? Well, I like you the better for it." It was broken by Sir Peckwich Downes from the end of the ta- ble, who, as he had finished his venison, and had as much sherry as he wanted, got tired of thinking Vvdiat a queer lop-sided young gaby Lord Ilatterleigii was, and felt conversational. He put a knife up his sleeve, and said, — " This winter venison of yours is too fat. Winter venison always is. But it is not bad-fiavored. Give me the old rule : a buck a week till September ; neck o' Tuesdsiy week, haimch o' Thursday week. There is the same dilFerence betv/een a Paris chicken and a nice young s;)rlng Dorking, in my estima- tion.* Your fawn, again, is new-fashioned and hasty." Sir Charles thought that the conversation was changed, and that there wei*e better times before him. He tried to catch Sir Peckwich's eye, and bring hitn into the talk. But his eve had a long way to travel, and before it got to Sir Peckwich, it was arrested by a stony stare from the Vicar. "I sui)po^e," said the Vicar to the uidiappy baronet, in a severe clerical voice, " that when Sir Harry Poyntz comes to the Ca-tle, you will find it necessary to dismiss your new master of the buckhound-." * The worthy b;u-onet is possibl}- obscure to some of our readers, but in these days we caunot eilit him. 38 LEIGHTON COURT. That finished him. When the ladies were gone, he sat down over his wine, saying to himself, — " Confound these moles of parsons ! How the dense did lie find that out ? And how, in the name of all confusion, did he know that I knew it ? " But he was not to he beat by fifty vicars, when he was in an obstinate mood. In spite of the Vicar's deprecation, he insisted on seeing him through the darkest part of the [);u'k, and as he left him said, — '' What did you mean, Vicar, by saying that I must discharge my man when Sir Harry Poyniz came?" " You know as well as I do," said the Vicar. " Do you think," asked Sir Charles, " that Harry Poyntz knows the relation in which this young man stands to him ? " " As well as you or I do," said the Vicar. "• Ht^nry is, as you know, my relation; I got the living from his father, and am in constant communication with him.-elf. He knows who this young man is as well as I do." " I am afraid it won't do to keep him here, then," said Sir Charles. '' It won't do for one instant," said the Vicar. " It is not to be thought of for a moment." " I suppose not," said Sir Charles, stroking his chin. " Well, I am very sorry, tor he is a charming gentleman, and I should have liked such a son." " You have n't seen much of him yet, have you ? " said the Vicar. " Why no," said Sir Ciiarles. " Ah ! " said the Vicar, " so I thought," "Is he a very bad fellow, then?" asked Sir Charles. "There is a natural dc^pravity in our human nature," began the Vicar, very slowly. " I did n't mean that sort of thing," replied Sir Charles, quickly. " I know you did n't," said the Vicar, looking steadily at him. " I know what you mean, and I answer that the hunian heart is naturally depraved. You are depraved, you know. As for rav, I am a most gracele.-s sinner." " Well, well ! " said Sir Charles, impatiently. " Is this young gentleman so extra depraved that I nuit send him about liis business ? " "You want an excuse," said the Vicar. " I don't want any excuse," said Sir Charles. " Is he any worse than you or I, then?" " Not much, but it won't do to have him here afier Ilai'rj Poyntz comes." "Does he know who he is?" LEIGHTON COURT. 39 « Perfectly." " Does he know that you know who he is ? " '' Not in the least," said the Vicar. " Pack him oiF about his business. Do you know the dew is very heavy ? Good night." CHAPTER XIII. Tt is one thing to go to bed with your brain active from con- versation and company, brimful of to-morrow's plans; and quite another to tind, after you are in bed, that this tiresome brain of yours will go on grinding, utterly refusing to stop, like Mrs. Crowe's mechanical churcli-organ, and declines to sink into sleep nay, sooner than do that, will go on playing foolish old psalm- tunes against your pillow, until you don't know whether the weary measure comes from your head or froui the pillow. Under these circumstances, as hour after hour of the weary night goes on, the plans of the morning become hateful ; every past sin, every past omission, every future contingency of evil becomes prominent and immediate. Life seems a weary mistake, and that darkest midnight thought of all, that death must and will come sooner or later, is apt to sit and brood upon your pillow. Laura did not feel all this. It was to come to her. But she had what her mother or her grandmother would have called "a wretched night." There was a little dumb, dull imp abroad this night, which was not to be named, whose existence was not to be allowed under penalties too horrible for contemplation, — a fiend unnamed, unrecognized, yet horribly real. For as she lay awake, with all the [jhantasmagoria of an excited brain passing before her so distinctly that some of the mt)st vivid images were actually reflected on her retina, this little imp contrived at every opportunity, at every pause in the procession of incongruous im- ages, to hold up the face of one man before her. and grin from behind it, — the face of the man whom she wished she had never seen, whom she hated, and wished dead. Why should she hate him and wish him dead ? Because she knew she was going to fall in love with him, and did not yet actually realize tiiat she had. And she had teased Colonel Hil- ton until, quUe unconsciously on his part and on hers, he had given her three or four deep stabs in the heart. He had spoken so dreadfully of this man. At last these brain phantasmagoria grew so exceeding in- congruous that she began to hope she was asleep, but only Ibund 40 LEIGHTON COURT. (hat slie was not by watching the dull silvered light of the raoon upon her window-hlinds. At last it came like a dim gray cloud. The last feeling of outward sensation was a happy weariness upon her eyelids, which drooped and drooped till they opened no more. Then the images were as incongruous as ever, but their incongruity was no longer felt. She had passed into the land whci'e incongruity b^cumes logical, nay, commonplace. There was the forui of a beautiful woman lying in a bed, with no out- ward signs of vitality except a gentle heaving at the breast ; b-iit where that woman was for the next two hours I don't know, and none of the autliors I have consulted seem able to tell rae. "■ Ea-ier to prove the existence of spirit than to prove the ex- istence of matter ? " I should rather think it was ! The a])pearance of a very commonplace maid, very sleepy, and in reality very cross, akhough making a praiseworthy effort to look good-humoi'ed, with a candle and a jug of warm water at seven o'clock on a cold November morning, acts as a foil for this sort of thing. I deny the charge of bathos, or of an ad captandum contrast. If life had not perpetually these common- place turns, we should wander sentimentally through this life with Shelley, Byron, and Ileit'.e, behowing the state of a world wiiich we have never raised a linger to mi-nd. Thank Heaven ! we have got out of that sort of tiling now. From the '• Satur- day Review " down to tiie " 'Tiser," every man has got his shoulder honestly to the wheel. Where they are going to shove us to is a question which has all the pleasures of profound un- certainty. If ever there wa- a young lady in an unsentimental — not to say cross — frame of mind, it was Laura on tliat November morning. If ever there was a young lady who wondered why on earth that idiot of a girl could n't have had the tact to over- sleep her.-elt', or to say that sh(3 (Laura) was ill, it was Laura. If ever there was a young lady who thought that fox-hunting could only yield to the national game of cricket, as a gigantic and intolerable humbug, it was Laura. It was only duty, or the habit of duty, which made her get up at all. Her fiitlier would miss her, — " And \r-X\\\ her sire the wine would chide, If it wa!* not filled by Rosabel." It is a good thing to get up early of a morning for the sake of otiier Iniks. The kindest and least cynical of men said thut getting up early made you conceited all the morniug. ami sleepy all tli«; aiternoon ; but that is scarcely fair. She fiiund her re- ward (piickly. The dark, nonsensical waking dreams of t!ie niglit were gone, and her temper had come back. While her maid wa-i doing her h-air, ^he was so iar herself as to a-k, " What .-ort of mornin;!; is it, Eliza ? " LEIGHTON COURT. 41 '■ A bittiful scenting morninfr, Mis^:. You Ve only got to put your no-e out of doors to see it," said Susan, wiio was the hunts- man's daughter. " They meets to Winkwortliy, don't 'em, Miss ? " " Yes ; and I suppose we shall go straight for the mooi's and get home about midnight. I don't feel up to a long run. I wish we met nearer home." Her father was helping himself to tongue at the sideboard ■when she got into the breakfast-room. "• My darling," he said, " I don't want to startle you, but I forgot to speak to you last night. I want you to ride ' The Klk ' to-day. Are you afraid ? " "■ Not I," laughed Laura ; " but why ? Has he ever carried a lady?" " He has carried a lady. Colonel Seymour warranted him to do so, and Hammersley has been riding liim willi a cloth, and jtronounced him j)erfect. The reason I want you to ride him is that, as Hammersley pointed out, Witclicraft is not up to your weight in those heavy upland clays. I tliiidi ht; is right." " Tiiat settles the matter," said Laura. " If our new lord and master lias issued liis orders that I am to ride ' The Elk,' I sub- mit, of cour.-e. Have you made any arrangements lor getting me on to the top of him ? " " Yes," said Sir Charles ; " Lord Hatterleigh is going to hoist you on from the top of a pair of steps." " And if I get thrown ? " " If you get thrown, you must drive him against an e'ght- foot stone wall, and get up on to iiim from that in the best way you caii." And so they lauglied away over tlieir breakfast, and were hap|)y, and Laura's long niglit was as thougli it had never been. Tliis hoise, "The Elk," was a character in his way, and in consequence of what !iap[)ened afterwards, is siiil remembered well in tlie family. His iieight was eighteen hands and a trifle, his color very light chestnut, his temper that of a Palmerston ; not a very handsome hor.-e, — no concentration of vast speed, beauiy, and mad vitality, like ''Lord Cliel'den"; a horse with the forehand of " Fisherman," with Barclay and Perkins's quarters, and tlie gaskins of *' Umpire " ; a great deal more like William Pocock than like Robert Coombes, — a great deal more like Thomas King than Tiiomas Savers ; a vast sweet- tempered horse, wliose speed and staging (jualities were like the military excellence of ihe Biitish and Anieriean armies, re- quiring time to show them, but when once showu, amaziiig ; an elepl'.antine, clumsy, Teutonic sort of beast, with his shoidders sloped back to his girth, and ins ribs back to his tlank ; nothing Isurman about him at all, except a beautifui, thin arclied neck, 42 LEIGHTON COURT. and a little nervous head, out of which, however, gleamed a large, speculative, kindly, and most thorouji;hly Teutonic eye. Sir Charles refused live hundred guineas for him. His early history is extremely obscure, merely, I think, legendary. If lie was ever in the service of Messrs. Chaplin and Home, ho'.v did he get to Dublin? — though it is equally certain that lie was never bred, and most certainly never biokcn, in Ireland. Even his temper would never have stood an Irish breaking. After what I have said, it will be evident that " Tiie Elk's " pedigree was still more obscure than " Tiie Elk's " education. He first made his appearance in civilized society at Plym(juth. Haskerton, of Bear Down, who stood six feet two in his stock- ings, and weighed nineteen stone, married a Scotch lady, who w;is six feet in her stockings, and weighed, say, twelve. Tliey had a big baby, height and weight unknown, purchased a six-foot groom out of a dragoon regiment, a pair of eighteen-liand hors<"S, of which '' The Elk " was one, and had the biggest phaeton built tliat old Long Acre had ever turned out ; and with this elephantine equipage used to charge up and down the roads in the neighborhood of Plymouth, to the terror of the peaceable inhabitants. " Talk to me about the decadence of P^nglishmen ! " said Sir Peckwich Downes to Lady Southmolton, on one occasion. " Why, if Haskerton, with tliose horses, that wife, that phaeton, that groom, and that l)!d)y, were to charge full-speed against the whole French army, they would Hy like sheep!" Lady Southmolton was obliged to allow that such a thing was very probable. She herself was possessed of the hereditary courage of an Englisiiwoman ; yet whenever she, in her pony- cai-riage, met this teri'ific engine of war, guided by Haskerton of Bear Down, in a narrow lane, she always (to use yachting slang) put her helm down, took a strong pull on the starbonid rein, got into the ditch, and remained there, bowing like a Li- moges cliina figure, until the terrible Squire, baljy and all, had raged on past ht-r like a cyclone. Sir Charles h;id looked •' The Elk " over; had offered Ila-ker- fon another horse of the same size, and ten pounds. Haskerton didn't see his way to the ten i)ound-, — rather thought the ten ])oun(ls should go the other way ; thought S:r Charles wrong about the hoi'se ; but still Sir Cliarles said he was never wrong about 51 horsf!, and so the horse was sent home. And now Laura found her elf mounted on his vast carcMSs, declai'ing she should roll off, and making the dull misty morning beautiful with her ringing huighler. It was a very dull morning, with a slow-sucking wind from the southward. There was no log on the lower country, but LEIGIITOX COUHT. 43 after they had risen about 100 feet the trees began to drop, and they were enveloped in the mist. Sometimes it would lift and brighten, and rise to Idgher elevations as the day went on; but it was a dull, melancholy day to all non-foxhunting mortals, but a bright one enough to Laura and her father. They had one anotiier; all the world was behind them, and a day's sweet enjoyment before. As they shogged on comfortably together, they came round the turn of a lane, and lo ! a gleam of white and a fore.-t of waving tails; in another moment the hounds had seen their master, had rushed forward to meet him, and were crowding joyously around. A pleasant sight always, as I remember it, was the meeting of hounds and master in the fresh morning. The aj)proach to Wiidcworthy was ihrougli ground which was not yet reclaimed from its original state, all hough rich and cul- tivable ; heavy yellow clay, with forest of oak and holly; and passing along through the dim ai.--les of it, they came at last on the breezy hill of Winkwoithy, and a few faithful ones who faced the dark moi'ning and the distant meet. Sir Charles was the talle>t man there ; his very lean, spare figure and his broad shoulders looked very wcdl on horseback, not to mention his leg, which he and others thought to be the finest leg in Devonshire, and which was certainly as well dressed a leg as any iti that county or any other ; — altogether a most gallant-looking gentleman, as straight as a dart. Dickson, the attorney from Totridge, who had ridden up and looked keenly at him, was speaking to him when the hounds were put in; but Laura called him away, and they took their places, with three or four other hard-goers, at the upper corner of the little patch of gorse. The rest of the field were not in order, — were talking, smoking, and so on ; but our friends knew what they were about. The hoinids were no sooner in than they were out again on the other side, with a long-legged moun- tain fox before them, and going fifteen miles an hour straight for the moor. As soon as Laura got used to tlie elepliantine stride of " The Elk," she found that she was away from the others, with only her father and the huntsman along~i