My visits to the Hall are commonly made, as you know, in the absence of both my brothers. My sister, Lady Jory, is a very good sort of woman, in whose company I can pass a fortnight, or even a month, with a placid sort of satisfaction that is well enough. But Joscelyn I had rather avoid. Although you never, of course, had the charge of one so much older than myself, it will be within your recollection that his interests were seldom enlivening. They might be described, indeed, as precisely the opposite, although I am sadly out for the right antonym, if there be one. (However, it is something to remember the word antonym itself, is it not? Doubtless I once writ it out for you.) I may fairly say that my first recollection of Joscelyn is of his burying a dead puppy; and my second of his exhuming it a few weeks later. For some years now he has ridden his hobby at the gallop and on the loosest rein; there is this great mausoleum a-building; and vastly ridiculous, to my mind, it makes the family seem.
So my visits to my old home are commonly made while its master is on his travels. Indeed, if I have not totally forgotten the Use of the Globes, it has been from the frequent occasions I have taken to consult the terrestrial one in order to assure myself that Joscelyn was yet at a comfortable remove upon the surface of the planet. And for different reasons I have not much, of recent years, cultivated the society of Edward – who, while in England, seems to be as frequently at the Hall (and this despite his ill terms with Joscelyn) as in his own house and amid his own family. It is, perhaps, the fact of Edward’s having a family that displeases me. A sailor, they say, may have a wife in every port. But ought a husband and a soldier, wearing (now and then) the uniform of a young and virtuous Queen, to have a mistress on every island between the Peloponnese and Asia Minor? Edward’s is undoubtedly an extravagant course of life, repugnant to the principles of religion and (what is more) laughable in one of his more than mature years. But all this you know. I come to the Hall when both these tiresome men are about their wanderings. On this occasion, however, my calculations have been upset. My brothers are in the house as I write. And that’s not all. There are strange matters, it seems, between them – for they have been brewing up some folly that might pass among lads lately breeched, but which it is excessively mortifying to have to chronicle of fathers of families.
Near a year ago, it seems, Sir James Dangerfield (did I tell you he was like to be made a peer, a thing extravagantly absurd?) persuaded my brothers to a wager – and this upon an occasion so public that the whole country was presently in possession of it. Joscelyn was to overgo all his previous wormy triumphs and acquire a trophy transcendently of the dead; Edward was to achieve a like predatory triumph among the living; the contestants were to confront each other with their spoils in the presence of Sir James and a few others of like character; and the monstrous wager was to be solemnly adjudged. Patience, dear Miss Bird, almost deserts my pen as I recount such a bêtise. A freak of this sort is not only immoral; it is also – what makes it much more humiliating to contemplate – no longer the ton. But let me press forward with what has become, I see, a narrative.
Each of my brothers appears to have judged it in his interest to conceal his true movements from the other – and so necessarily from our family and its connexions at large. From concealment, moreover, they proceeded to deception; and it is as a consequence of this that I find myself under one roof with them now. Joscelyn I had supposed to be yet at Ordzhonikidze (which I cannot doubt you unhesitatingly recall as standing midway between the Black Sea and the Caspian) and Edward to be staying with old friends (pirates by profession)on the island of Skyros. But – lo and behold! – each appeared at the Hall within twenty-four hours of the other. Joscelyn was first. Let me tell you something of the occasion, and of my own part in it.
Thursday last, the autumn weather continuing mild, I had taken the privilege of my more than forty years to walk solitary by our navigation canal. You will recall that it skirts for a space the eastern verge of the park; and that a short arm, indeed, extends to a small wharf belonging to the Hall. It is thus that we have for long got our sea coal and other bulky commodities – as we shall no doubt continue to do, despite talk of the Messrs Stephenson bringing their steam locomotives into the region. By the canal, then, was I walking on Thursday afternoon – not wholly idly, indeed, since it was my intention to visit several families of the good poor in Bardley – the parish in which is situated, as you will remember, our family’s dower house, New Hall.
Do you, my dear Miss Bird, visit the good poor? It is a course recommended by Dr Arnold of Rugby School as instructive and useful. I am bound to add that I myself find the frequentation of this virtuous minority a little dull, and have a suspicion that there might be more entertainment in that almost infinitely larger body known to be wholly undeserving. This is not entirely by the way, for while I lack courage positively to enter the portals of the latter class, I like to keep an eye open for them as I move abroad. Perhaps I am enough of Edward’s sister to conjecture that ruffians and desperadoes may be highly amusing. Well, upon such a one I presently came.
He was seated – I had rather say sprawled – upon the hatch of a barge which a wretched nag, urged by a tatterdemalion boy, was painfully hauling in a westerly direction. The cargo involved appeared to be coals: a man, boy, and nag together attested this by the black dust and grime, which smothered them. Perhaps the dust had got, too, painfully into the man’s throat; in this there might be some excuse for the large and continual potations (could it have been of porter, dear Miss Bird?) in which he was indulging. A firkin was set up on the deck beside him, and if he paused in drawing from it into a cannikin as grimy as himself, it was only in order to bawl the most horrid curses and objurgations alike at his human and his equine assistant. I stopped to watch him with some interest, and was surprised to discover that his shouts were directed at bringing the barge to a standstill by our wharf. It was presently plain that he intended to tie up there for the night. This is something which I knew not to be permitted to the bargemen unless they have business at the Hall. The matter was not, strictly, any concern of mine. But the lower classes, even when amusing, must not be insubordinate. I approached with the idea of asking the man if he had any proper occasion there.
The fellow appeared to resent my interest. With some notion, I supposed, of exploiting my modesty in order to drive me away, he now rose uncertainly to his feet, staggered the length of the barge while waving his cannikin above his head, and broke into most profane and dreadful song. I was not, however, to be thus put off! Advancing to the edge of the towing-path, I regarded the grimy monster fixedly. Scarcely had I done so when a strange suspicion assailed me; a moment more, and it had become conviction. Joscelyn, I said sternly, what folly is this?
For it was indeed my brother – a person, dear Miss Bird, occupying a respectable eminence in the Baronetage of this Kingdom! You will not, I conjecture, judge my question to have been intemperately phrased, and I waited in some indignation for an answer. But no intelligible answer came. Joscelyn gave me a swift look, let his glance travel first to the boy and then to a couple of idle labourers who had strolled up to stare at us, and finally expressed himself merely by spitting rudely into the canal. I turned and walked away. Whatever impropriety was afoot would not be mended by being brought to public notice. Several times of late years have I been advised of a growing bizarrerie in my elder brother. Now it had come directly within the scope of my own observation! I said nothing of the incident upon my return to the Hall. On the following day – yesterday, that is – Joscelyn appeared, without explanation, at the dinner-table. He was scrubbed very clean; his manner showed its customary melancholy reserve, although he spoke affectionately to his family and affably to the servants. Once or twice as he looked at me I caught a gleam in his eye. I suppose it to have been of triumph, and sincerely trust it was not of lurking madness! At least he appeared disposed to pay a proper attention to the duties of his station – and I must not omit to mention, dear Miss Bird, that he inquired of you wi
th respect, and instantly arranged for the dispatch of the small present which I have taken earlier occasion to mention. Let me add that after dinner, and before we assembled again in the drawing-room, I slipped through the park and to the canal. The barge had gone. But there were the marks of a wain in the lane hard by. I had no doubt of there having been some nocturnal operation, the object of which was the covert conveyance into the Hall of something which could not openly be brought there without indiscretion. Without doubt it was the foolish wager that was in question.
I had not long returned to the house when this persuasion was confirmed. Joscelyn was restless as we drank tea, and it occurred to me that he was in some apprehension lest I should divulge the circumstances of our encounter of the day before. Several times he addressed me, his topic being the slow progress made during his absence towards completing his mausoleum in the park. He has, as you know, large collections ready to move into it. I spoke soothingly about this, the more particularly as I have reason to believe that a growing financial stringency in part is accountable for the delay. Eventually he beckoned me from the room. We proceeded to the old coach-house, where Joscelyn’s treasures have their temporary home.
Man’s mortality, dear Miss Bird, is surely a respectable as well as a solemn topic, and may properly take its place among the subjects to which a gentleman should give regular attention. Joscelyn’s activities have done much – as his museum, if it is completed, will do more – to bring it back into polite notice; and I am far from wishing to be a severe critic of my brother’s interests. Yet a coach-house approximated to a catacomb, in which storied urn and animated bust jostle with the uncouth memorials of Hottentots and South Sea Islanders, and in which the refined mortuary conceptions of the late lamented Mr Nollekens the younger stand at gaze with the monstrous mummies of Egypt and funerary urns of Etruria, is surely very little to the taste of a Christian gentlewoman. I own that I averted my mind from my poor brother’s laboriously accumulated morbidities until the moment at which his latest – and certainly most startling – acquisition was obtruded with some urgency upon my notice. I was in the receipt of a confidence. It was incumbent upon me to be reasonably attentive.
Several packing-cases stood in the very centre of the coach-house. Their exterior was besmirched with coal-dust; and I could not doubt that it was these that had been smuggled into Old Hall with the grotesque precautions of the day before. The lid of one had been prised hastily open, and straw and sawdust had been scattered about the floor. My brother bade me advance. I did so, although with some hesitation. The packing-case I found to be divided into two compartments. In the first was what I would fain spare your feelings by describing as a skeleton – but in fact it was a desiccated female body, from which the flesh appeared to have dried away, leaving the skin as a sort of shrunken integument, clinging to and defining the bony structure beneath. The colour was that of mud. And this made the more startling the contents of the adjoining compartment. What there greeted my startled eyes was a blaze of gold and gems!
I believe that I fell back with a cry. On the one hand putrefaction and corruption long ago arrested in dust; on the other the incorruptible splendour of fine metals and precious stones – themselves, in a sad sense, the most corrupting substances known to man! Dimly I became aware that my brother was explaining to me the source and nature of his latest prize. The loathsome cadaver was a Caucasian queen – and along with the body he had acquired the queen’s ransom which had been buried with her.
Two perceptions presently came to me; and each with very tolerable clarity. The first was obvious. Here was a treasure of enormous value; and if it could be supposed to have had an owner, there was no possibility that Joscelyn could have made him any just recompense for its removal. I have only an uncertain notion of the value of our family estates, and an unhappy suspicion that their present owner’s earlier vagaries have placed heavy burdens upon them. But it is very certain that the Jorys, lock, stock and barrel (to use a vulgar phrase), are by no means worth what this single smuggled packing-case of my brother’s contains.
My second perception was of another order. Joscelyn had triumphed – for it seemed impossible that Edward could overgo this astounding coup. Nevertheless, even as we gazed at his prize, there was that in his manner which suggested discontent or ennui. He has always been moody, and much of his life has been conducted by fits and starts. Yet his mortuary studies and the forming of his collection have constituted hitherto an unintermitted vein of almost passionate interest, and have brought him a measure of distinction which may yet lay some claim upon posterity. Could it be possible, I asked myself, that his old obsession was failing my brother at the portals of old age, and that he was not experiencing from his latest and most splendid possession the large satisfaction which he might have anticipated?
But I saw that there was another explanation. This time, Joscelyn might have gone too far – and been aware of it. The grotesque course which he had adopted for bringing the Caucasian treasure covertly home suggested, to say the least, an uneasy conscience. An English gentleman cannot, of course, steal. But it seemed to me only too likely that Joscelyn’s acquiring of these costly objects had been not unattended by some measure of legal irregularity. This was a thought of some weight. Joscelyn’s mausoleum has already put him under an imputation of singularity in the country; and the respectability which the family of Jory of Old Hall has long enjoyed would be sadly impaired if to this there were now a super-addition of positive scandal. The alarming prospect is still with me as I write. But it at least is no longer my sole anxiety. Did not I inform you at the outset of this letter that my brother Edward, too, is returned? And no more than Joscelyn has he returned in a manner befitting a person of property and consideration in the neighbourhood. The rest of this letter, dear Miss Bird, must be painful and short!
I lingered not long with Joscelyn in the coach-house, for it was soon clear to me that he was disinclined to be truly communicative. A display of his treasure to some member of the family he had been unable to resist, and he did indeed talk freely of the foolish wager and the confidence he now had of winning it. But on the provenance (as collectors call it) of his crowning acquisition he would not speak, and questioning rendered him uneasy. I wonder, is Joscelyn a courageous man? I almost had the sense of his being a little frightened!
I went back, then, to the Hall, intending to make my way to the drawing-room, where my sister (her tranquility quite undisturbed by the abrupt return of her husband from unknown wildernesses) would be attending our nightly encounter at bezique. But on the very threshold I was encountered by Mrs Jennings, the housekeeper. The good woman had plainly been waiting for me, eager to impart a further piece of news. Mr Edward too was arrived, she said. He was not alone. And he had gone to the Temple of Diana.
You know enough of Old Hall to realize that this had an ominous sound! Edward has retained for him here a small set of apartments high in the oldest part of the house. That he should have made his way not to these but to a retired building in a corner of the park, was a circumstance the least propitious that one could conceive. The Temple was never a place of good repute. The interests of Sir Arthur Jory, who built it, were vain and amatorious; and it was for long understood that much transacted itself in the structure (so jocosely dedicated to the goddess of chastity) that it would have been injudicious to obtrude upon the notice of society. It had from the first the character of a dwelling – although upon somewhat sketchy and uncomfortable lines – and various Jorys have from time to time, upon one occasion or another, taken up a temporary residence there. The last was my dear Aunt Elizabeth, during those periods in which she believed herself to be a barouche-landau. The place is secluded. It was only too obvious why Edward had repaired to it.
At that moment the subject of my anxious thoughts came into the house behind me, and Mrs Jennings withdrew. Edward greeted me affectionately, as is his habit. He had arrived early in the afternoon, he said, together with his friend Kent. They h
ad taken up their quarters in the Temple.
I forget whether Mr Kent is known to you. He is a familiar of Edward’s, his companion (I imagine) in many unedifying escapades, and, although a gentleman, not one whose acquaintance a lady would wish to cultivate. I asked Edward drily whether he and his friend were to be alone in the quarters they had taken up. Aha! he said. So you have heard the gossip? We have smuggled in a monstrous fine wench in a covered wagon. Jim Dangerfield is to judge of her, over against anything that Joscelyn can summon. There’s a fortune in her, my dear – mark my word.
I confess that I was in some uncertainty as to how to reply. Had Edward been thirty years younger, I believe I should have laughed – although no doubt it would have been a culpable thing to do. But conduct thus sadly disordered has no charm in the elderly. I said at once that I could view his behaviour only with severe disapprobation. Why, he said, a spinster should surely commend a fellow for bringing Aphrodite to do homage at the shrine of Diana. To this I thought it reasonable to reply that he had at least done well to take his wench to the Temple, and not venture to march with her into his sister’s house. Wench, says he, is no name for my charmer. I rejoined that he had presumably found her among the lower orders of society. Lower orders? Edward said. All that begins to change, my dear Sophia, as soon as you step off the packet at Calais. And it’s devilish different by the time you get to Kythera or Naxos.
And at this I suddenly saw Edward’s conduct not as scandalous and immoral (as it undoubtedly is) but simply as heartless. The mention of those far places brought vividly before me, I suppose, the unkindness of dragging some girl – God knows with what delusive promises – across the whole extent of Europe in order to fulfil a nonsensical undertaking entered upon in some moment of recklessness and inebriety. I said firmly that the Ministry was to blame – that the Governments of the several countries necessarily traversed were to blame – for permitting a traffic so disreputable. Such matters should be inquired into, I said, upon the quays and in the customs-houses. It seemed to me that for a moment Edward looked startled at this, as if I had succeeded in introducing him to a new view of the matter. And although he was quickly at his jesting once more, there was now revealed to me something uneasy in his demeanour. Precisely as in Joscelyn’s case, I wondered whether he did not suspect himself to have gone too far. And of the second brother as of the first I was suddenly asking myself: Is this a courageous man?
Old Hall, New Hall Page 12
