CHAPTER V.
“AND IN SUCH CHOICE SHALL STAND MY WEALTH AND WOE.”
Herrick went back to London that evening. Lavendale was in Bloomsbury Square, and would have had his familiar friend and companion to live with him there if Herrick would have consented; but Herrick was sternly resolved upon a life of hard work and almost Spartan plainness. He was filled with ambition, with that keen desire of success for the sake of a loved object, with that same generous unselfishness which made Steele so happy, when he had earned a handful of guineas, to cast them into the lap of his “dearest Prue.” So he refused to leave his two-pair lodging in the alley near Button’s; and he worked on with an honest purpose which made success a foregone conclusion. But in spite of the close occupation of his parliamentary duties and his work as a journalist, Mr. Durnford found time to travel by heavy coach to Winchester, whence a hired horse conveyed him to the mansion of Sir John Chumleigh, a county magnate, and chief representative of an ancient Tory and High Church family, a gentleman whose grandfather had bled and died for the King in the Civil War, and whose father had held himself sullenly aloof from the Dutch usurper, and had lived and died on his own estate. The present Sir John Chumleigh was a sportsman and an agriculturist; lived only for farming and fox-hunting, and despised all the other interests and ambitions of mankind. He had married the daughter of a needy nobleman, a fine lady who had been slowly fretting herself to death amidst the rude plenty of a rural establishment for the last twenty years, and was a wonder to all her neighbours inasmuch as she was still alive.
To this gentleman Mr. Durnford presented himself one sunny afternoon.
He found the Baronet in a panelled parlour, seated at a table covered with documents of a business character. Sir John was big and burly, wore leather breeches and top-boots in winter and summer, and had all his clothes cut in a style which suggested the hunting-field rather than the drawing-room. He was a man who would start in the winter starlight, before the first ray of dawn had begun to glimmer in the eastern sky, in order to ride fifteen miles to a meet. He had a couple of packs, a magnificent stud of hunters, hunted four times a week, and considered every guinea squandered which was not spent upon kennel or stable. He was prouder of being master of hounds than he would have been of being Prime Minister. Herrick glanced at the whip-racks, the rows of spurs, the vizards and brushes, which adorned the walls, and at once understood the kind of man with whom he had to deal, and he was prepared to encounter a frank off-hand incivility rather than hypocritical courtesy.
He stated his business briefly.
“I have a very particular reason, sir, for being interested in the history of a member of your family who fell upon evil fortunes, and died young, leaving a motherless infant behind him.”
“My good sir, my family tree has spread deuced wide since the Chumleighs — an old Norman race — first took root in the land; and if you expect me to give information about every beggarly twig that has withered upon it within the last half-century—”
“This gentleman I take to have been a somewhat near relation, Sir John, since it was to you he turned in the hour of his direst necessities.”
“Yes, sir, they all do that: they go to a well-to-do relative as naturally as an old dog-fox goes to ground.”
“Do you remember a cousin who came to you in the year nine—’twas in the autumn, shortly after Malplaquet — with a little girl, a mere baby—”
“I’m not likely to forget the fact, sir. What, a trumpery third or fourth cousin to come to my house, with a squaller of eighteen months old, expecting to be housed and fed for an indefinite period; since, having once found comfortable quarters, that kind of vagrant would not be inclined to resume his march in a hurry! It was as much as I could do to be barely civil to that idle vagabond; but I mastered my indignation so far as to offer him a substantial meal, which he refused, and a guinea, which he flung to the footman who showed him the way out—”
“Preferring to tramp back towards London with an empty stomach rather than to feed on your charity,” said Durnford; “a false pride, no doubt, sir, but there are men who would die rather than accept a reluctant favour. Your hospitable offer was the last chance of a meal your kinsman had, for he died of starvation on the road to London, and his orphan was adopted by one Squire Bosworth, a landed gentleman at Fairmile in Surrey.”
“How do you know that he died of want, sir?” asked Sir John, somewhat dashed in his spirits.
“O sir, the fact is notorious;” and then Durnford related those two chapters of Chumleigh’s story which he had heard from Mr. Ludderly and the nurse at Chelsea, and from Mrs. Bridget and others at Fairmile.
“Well, sir, ’tis a pitiful tale,” said the Baronet, “but there is hardly a man in England rich enough to provide for all his poor relations. The lean kine would eat up all the fat kine, sir, if mistaken benevolence were to attempt the task, and the kingdom would be reduced to a dead level of poverty. Gad’s curse, sir! everybody would be paupers. There would be no green spot in the desert. ’Tis sounder wisdom and truer benevolence in the rich to keep their estates together, to maintain a good household, feed their dependents, and uphold trade. However, I am sorry this misguided young man came to a scurvy end.”
“Dare I ask why you call him misguided, sir?”
“Because he made the vast mistake of trying to live by his wits, instead of by some steady and honest industry — because he thought to make his living by hanging about London, sitting idle in coffee-houses, and picking up stray notions from the town wits — Dryden, Congreve, Wycherley, Addison, Steele, and the rest of ’em — to retail secondhand in the newspapers at a penny a line. Better to have carried a musket or swept a crossing. And then when he was bear-leader and earning handsome wages, with the run of his teeth at the best inns on the Continent, and a coach-and-six to carry him all over Europe — an education which should have made him as good a writer as that Mr. Addison whom people thought so much of — he must needs spoil all his chances by running off with a girl out of an Italian convent, and causing a fine hubbub among the priests.”
“Was the lady a cloistered nun?” asked Durnford eagerly.
“Why no; ’twas said she was but a boarder or pupil in the convent, handsomely paid for by a wealthy father, who kept so much in the dark as to his daughter that she may be said to have been nameless, and ’twas shrewdly guessed she was the offspring of some low intrigue whom the father was glad to hide within convent-walls, in the hope she would take the veil and rid him of all trouble about her.”
“Since you heard so much, Sir John, you must have heard the father’s name?”
“There you are out in your reckoning, sir. My only information came by a sort of explanatory letter which my foolish cousin sent me — having a kind of deference for me as the head of the family — soon after his marriage.”
“Would you oblige me so far as to let me see that letter, sir, which I make no doubt you have preserved?” asked Durnford.
“Nay, young sir, you go somewhat fast. Will you do me the favour to explain by what right you would grope in the mystery of Chumleigh’s life and marriage? What interest can my dead kinsman have for you, a stranger, that I should let you pry into the scandals of his mistaken youth?”
“I will be plain with you, Sir John. My interest in Mr. Chumleigh arises indirectly. His orphan daughter, who died of a fever at the age of five, was the beloved playfellow of a young lady whom I hope to make my wife. It is for her sake I am curious about your kinsman’s history.”
“’Tis a roundabout sentimental kind of interest, sir, which, were you less of a gentleman, I should feel devilishly indisposed to gratify,” said Sir John. “Pray may I ask, sir, who and what you are? for your name, though it has a respectable sound, gives me no information on that point.”
“To begin with, then, Sir John, I belong to that fraternity of scribblers to which you object. Without being exactly a haunter of coffee-houses, I have a profound reverence for the shades of Dryden and Addison, whose
bodily presence was once familiar at Wills’s and at Button’s — indeed ’twas Mr. Addison who gave the vogue to the latter house, which is kept by an old servant of Lady Warwick’s; and as for wits in the flesh, I have ever hung with delight upon the discourse of Congreve and Swift, Pope and Gay. Yes, Sir John, I too am that low thing, a man who lives by his brains; but I have another profession besides that of scribbler.”
“May I know your secondary occupation, sir?”
“I have the honour to represent the borough of Bossiney in his Majesty’s Parliament.”
“Indeed, sir! You are in the House, are you? And I’ll warrant you are an arrant Whig.”
“I hope, Sir John, that will not prejudice you against me.”
“Nay, Mr. Durnford, I have ceased to be a partisan. There was a time when I was a red-hot Jacobite, and looked to Harley and St. John to open the Queen’s eyes to her duty as a daughter and a sister, and so, without violence or damage to the country, to bring in King James III. so soon as the throne should be vacant. But when I saw how easily Harley and St. John were beaten, and how quietly the country knuckled under to a middle-aged foreigner who could not speak a word of our language; and when that miserable flash in the pan of the year fifteen showed me how feeble a crew were the Jacobites of England and Scotland — faith, sir, the best man among them was Winifred Countess of Nithisdale — I began to think that I had better stay at home, and hunt my hounds and keep clear of politics. Neither party has ever benefited me; and I say with the gentleman in the play which the Winchester Mummers acted last Easter, ‘A plague on both your houses!’ So Whig or Tory is all as one to me, Mr. Durnford. And now will you crack a bottle of Burgundy, or will you drink a glass or two of Malaga, after your long ride?”
Sir John had talked himself into a good temper, and Herrick thought that he might drink himself into a still more gracious humour, so frankly accepted his offer of a bottle; whereupon the butler brought a massive silver tray with decanters of Burgundy and Malaga, and a dish of crisp biscuits, made after a particular recipe which had been in the family from the time of Queen Bess, who had lain at Chumleigh Manor in one of her innumerable peregrinations, whereby she had laid upon the family the burden of for ever preserving the antique furniture and cut velvet hangings of the room in which her royal person had reposed. Charles II. had been a more frequent visitor, putting up at Chumleigh on several occasions when his Court was quartered at Winchester for the hunting in the New Forest, and when he and his favourites had hunted with the Chumleigh foxhounds. Sir John prattled of those glorious days as he sipped his Malaga, which was a fine heady wine.
He sipped and prosed, describing those great days in which royalty had hunted with his father’s foxhounds and drunk of his father’s wines, and finally talked himself into such an expansive temper that he pressed Herrick to put up at Chumleigh Manor for the night, and leave Winchester by the coach which started at eight next morning. This offer Mr. Durnford thought it wise to accept, as it might afford the opportunity for getting better acquainted with the history of the Chumleigh family, and that Philip Chumleigh in whose fate he was so keenly interested.
It was dusk by this time. The Baronet had dined at three, and he was in for an evening’s good-fellowship.
“Her ladyship will take it ill if we do not go to the drawing-room for a dish of tea,” he said; “but we can come back to my study afterwards, and I’ll show you my kinsman’s letter, and as many memorials of the house of Chumleigh as you may care to look at. Our pedigree is more interesting than that of most county families, for the Chumleighs have married into several noble houses. We are an historical race, sir.”
The drawing-room was on the other side of a large hall, paved with black and white marble, and with a lantern roof, after Inigo Jones. It was a spacious and handsome apartment, hung with old Italian pictures of manifest worthlessness, interspersed with portraits of the house of Chumleigh by Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, and Kneller. The present owner and his wife had been painted by this last artist, and their half-length portraits occupied places of honour on either side of the high chimney-piece, which was an elaborate structure in white and coloured marble, with the armorial bearings of the Chumleighs carved in high relief on the central panel.
Beside the fireplace sat a faded, little woman, who rose with a languid air when her husband presented the stranger, and sank almost to the carpet in a kind of swooning curtsy.
“Indeed, sir, it is a privilege to see any one at Chumleigh who has seen the town within twelve months,” she said to Herrick, in acknowledgment of her husband’s half-apologetic introduction of the stranger. “We live here in the wilds, and our most intellectual company are huntsmen and feeders. There is scarcely an hour of the day when I am free from the intrusion of a great hulking fellow redolent of kennel or stable.”
“My dear, I must see my servants, and unless you and I are to live in separate houses I know not how you are to escape an occasional whiff of the stable,” grumbled Sir John.
“O, I must forgive you your servants,” replied his wife, “since your friends are but a shade better — men who have but two subjects of discourse: the last horse they have bought, or the last run in which they were thrown out, or in which they were first at the death. They seem almost as proud of one circumstance as of the other. But pray, sir,” turning to Herrick, and exposing a scornful and somewhat scraggy shoulder to her husband, “tell me the last news in town. Is Lady Mary Hervey as great a toast as ever? I for my part never thought her a beauty, though she has some good points. And is her husband still a valetudinarian?”
“Yes, madam, Lord Hervey is always complaining, but as he contrives to perform all his Court duties, which are onerous, I take it he is more robust than the world thinks him, or than he thinks himself.”
“And Mrs. Howard? Has she finished her new house at Twit’nam?”
“Marble Hill? Yes, madam, ’tis just finished, and is the prettiest thing for its size I ever saw.”
“And is she still the first favourite with his Majesty?”
“That, madam, she has never been, and never will be. The Queen is the reigning sultana at Kensington and at Richmond, whatever illicit loves may beguile his Majesty’s sojourn at Hanover, where one would think his heart was fixed, so eager is he ever to get there.”
“Indeed, sir! Then it is Vashti and not Esther who reigns. I am glad of that, for the sake of honour and honesty. Why does not the King send Mrs. Howard about her business?”
“O madam, such an idea is furthest from his thoughts. He must have somewhere to spend his evenings. The Queen is his mentor, his chief counsellor, and he knows it, though he affects to think otherwise: he must have an amiable stupid woman to talk to by way of relaxation. No one could endure the perpetual company of the goddess Minerva. Be assured, madam, Venus was as empty-headed as she was pretty, and that’s why she had so many adorers.”
“You give a very bad notion of your own sex, sir,” retorted the lady, busying herself with the tea-tray, which had been brought in during the discussion. “But as for beauty, I never thought Mrs. Howard could claim dominion upon that account. She has fine hair and a good complexion; but how many a milkmaid can boast as much!”
“Doubtless, madam; and a milkmaid would be just as pleasing to King George, if she were a little deaf and very complacent.”
“For shame, sir! Let us talk no more of this odious subject. Pray enlighten me about the theatres. Is Drury Lane or Lincoln’s Inn most fashionable? I have not seen a play for a century. Sir John has always an excuse for not taking me to London.”
“The best in the world, my love, an empty purse,” answered the Baronet cheerily.
“No wonder your purse is empty when you squander hundreds upon your kennels,” complained the lady, who was fond of airing her grievances before a third person.
“Squander, my lady? squander, did you say? To maintain a pack of foxhounds is to perform a public duty; it is to be the chief benefactor of one’s neighbourhood. When
I can no longer pay for my kennels and support my church may I lie in my grave under the shadow of the tower, where the music of my hounds can no longer gladden my ear. No, madam, the maintenance of an historic pack is no selfish extravagance. It is the highest form of philanthropy. It gives sport to the wealthy and employment to the poor; it affords pleasure to gentle and simple, old and young. If you could sit a horse, Maria, you would not talk such foolish cant as to call my kennel an extravagance.”
This question of horsemanship was always a sore point with Lady Chumleigh, and no less savage beast than a husband would have been brutal enough to touch upon it.
“Had I health and strength for such rough work as hunting, I make no doubt I could ride as well as my neighbours,” replied the lady, with a semi-hysterical sniffling sound which alarmed her spouse, as it was often the forerunner of shrill screams, and shriller laughter, tapping of red-heeled shoes on the carpet, cutting of laces, burning of feathers, and spilling of essences, with all the troublesome rites of the Goddess Hysteria.
“And so indeed you could, my dearest love,” he cried, eager to avert the storm; “you have the neatest figure for the saddle on this side Winchester, and would be the prettiest little hussy in the hunting-field if you had but the courage to ride my bay Kitty, than which no sheep was ever tamer.”
“It is not courage I want, Sir John, but stamina,” murmured the dame, appeased and smiling.
“I hope you like this bohea, Mr. Durnford,” she said blandly; “it is the same as the Duchess drinks at Canons.”
Herrick declared it was the best tea he had tasted for an age. Sir John informed his wife that the stranger would sup with them, and stay the night; and then the two gentlemen went back to the library, where Mr. Chumleigh’s letter was produced from an iron box containing family documents.
Herrick read it slowly and meditatively, trying to get the most he could out of a very brief statement.
“Montpellier, October 20, 1706.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 861
