Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art No. 753 June 1 1878 by Various Chambers Robert Editor Chambers William Editor

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'Your health, skipper,' he said; 'and success to the wedding.' And so, with an impudent leer, he picked up his tall shining hat and departed.

Thus far Captain Denzil; but now Sir Sykes interrupted his son with an irritation unusual to him: 'Miss Willis is a great deal too good for you, I am afraid. Indeed I trust to her sound sense to keep some order in your affairs, and prevent you from driving at too headlong a pace along the road to ruin. Of course her pretensions to pedigree are very slight compared with our own, if that be the obstacle in your way.'

'Nobody cares much about ancient blood, in a woman at least, now-a-days,' languidly replied Jasper. 'She is lady enough to take the head of a dinner-table, or figure creditably in a London drawing-room, after a few weeks of training, and that's as much as need be looked for. And I admit that Miss Willis is--very clever.'

Except in the case of an authoress, no one ever applies the epithet 'Very clever' to a lady save as a species of covert blame. Sir Sykes felt and looked uneasy as the words reached him.

'Not the least in the world,' unceremoniously interrupted Jasper. 'I'll even stretch a point, and say I rather like the girl than otherwise. She'd go straight, I daresay, once the course was smooth and clear before her. But I do not think, father, you are treating me quite well. Carbery ought, you know it ought, to go in the direct line, as such properties do.'

'I apprehend your meaning,' returned Sir Sykes in his coldest tone, 'to be that you resent as a grievance the fact that the estate is not entailed upon yourself. You should be more reasonable, and remember the singular circumstances under which I became master here.'

'It was a grand coup!' exclaimed the captain, with an envious little sigh. 'Such a stroke of luck does not come twice to the same family.'

'I got this great gift,' pursued Sir Sykes, 'from the hand of one who thought less of what he gave to me than of what, by making such a will, he took away from others. The old lord's self-tormenting mind led him to exult, in the hopes that his testament extinguished, in the injury done to kith and kin.'

'It was a sell for the De Veres,' muttered Jasper; 'they didn't on the whole take it badly.' He looked up as he spoke at the glimmering blazonry of the great stained-glass window, and realised, for the first time perhaps, the vexation which the caprice of the late lord of Carbery had inflicted on those of his own race and name.

'The property,' said Sir Sykes, 'having become my own a score of years ago, is mine to give or to withhold at my death, as in my lifetime I may judge fitting.'

'You have told me that, sir, pretty often,' retorted Jasper testily; 'of course it's yours, and you can leave it to the Foundling Hospital if you like.'

'Common policy then would dictate,' said Sir Sykes with deliberate emphasis, 'the study of my wishes. And I wish very much indeed that Miss Willis should become your wife.'

'I can't, as I said, do it at the price; really I can't,' rejoined Jasper sullenly, as he thrust his hand into a side-pocket and fingered the cigar-case that lay there. He did not dare to light a cigar in the library, much as he longed to seek solace in smoke; but he grew impatient for the interview to come to an end, and to recover his freedom.

'I offered a handsome income,' said Sir Sykes with an offended look. 'Had not the sum proposed proved sufficient, that was a difficulty not insuperable. You had the option of beginning married life with the revenue of an average baronet.'

'Yes; but you see, sir, you are a trifle above the mark of an average baronet' responded the captain; 'and I naturally should like when my turn comes--I hope it will be a long time first--to fill the same position. A bare allowance, or a lump of settled money, won't make me the equal of an ordinary eldest son; and I don't see why, since by accident I'm not on a par with other fellows of my nominal rank and prospects, and I am required to marry without being allowed to choose for myself, I should not be put on a level with men of my own standing.'

Sir Sykes fidgeted restlessly in his chair, and the lines of pain about his mouth, which grew more sharply defined every day, deepened almost perceptibly.

'Consider what you are asking of me,' he said with an injured air; 'to make myself a mere tenant for life where I have been for twenty years owner in fee-simple! Sons do not ask their fathers to entail an estate for their benefit.'

'I don't see why I should be in a worse position than other fellows,' sullenly responded Jasper. 'I may have been extravagant and that sort of thing; but there's no reason why my extravagances should be totted up against me to a heavier sum-total than those of twenty I could name. Hookham, now, who let his father in for a hundred and eleven thousand the year that the French horse Plon-Plon won the Derby, is as safe of the Snivey estates as he is of the Snivey peerage.'

'The Earl of Snivey and his prodigal heir Lord Hookham,' answered Sir Sykes with cold urbanity, 'do not present a case, to my mind, precisely in point. You cannot in reason expect me, after the sacrifices I have already made on your behalf, to place you in the position, as you call it, of heir of entail. I am speaking to you less as a father than as a man of the world.'

'And as a man of the world, sir,' said the incorrigible Jasper, 'I trust you will excuse my saying that I scarcely care to be huddled and hustled into marrying I don't know whom, unless at a very heavy figure, as my stock-broker, when I was fool enough to go on the Exchange, and burned my fingers over time-bargains, used to say. I can't think why you should mind my coming next, as concerns Carbery Chase here.'

This was a home question which, if arraigned before the stern tribunal of Minos and Rhadamanthus, Sir Sykes would not have found it easy to answer. He was in the habit of telling himself that Jasper was not a successor to whom the honour and welfare of a great family could with prudence be intrusted. Were he master, the old oaks in the Chase might soon be gambled down from their prescriptive loftiness, and mortgages might spring up like mushrooms. Here was a noble estate unencumbered, like some big diamond without a flaw to mar its lustre, and he was asked to let his spendthrift son inherit as of right. There were Lucy and Blanche to be provided for. They would marry, doubtless, and their husbands would probably expect that the brides' hands should be heavy with much gold. The bulk of the property would devolve on Captain Denzil; but then it might be tied up with an ingenious testamentary rigour that should keep the future baronet in legal leading-strings through life. Sir Sykes cherished too lively a recollection of the shifts and straits of his own outlawed progenitor Sir Harbottle, to wish the reins of government to pass unreservedly into Jasper's unsteady hands.

But Sir Sykes had an unavowed motive for rejecting his son's proposition. He was by no means sure how Enoch Wilkins of St Nicholas Poultney would receive such a suggestion. Mr Wilkins, that over-zealous pilot, who had insisted on assuming the guidance of affairs, might be furious at hearing that Jasper was to be promoted from heir-presumptive to heir-apparent. There was no alliance between the captain and the shrewd turf lawyer, from whom so much of his lightly expended cash had been extracted. Jasper by no means relished the elevation of Mr Wilkins to be his father's Mentor and right-hand man. Mr Wilkins might guess that Sir Jasper would send his japanned deed-boxes elsewhere than to St Nicholas Poultney. And yet Sir Sykes could not venture to offend Mr Wilkins.

The conversation was protracted for some half-hour or more, since Sir Sykes was sincerely desirous to carry his point; but it languished by degrees, and involved, as conversations on important topics are in real life apt to do, frequent repetitions of some stock phrase or threadbare argument. Sir Sykes essayed threats, veiled ones of course, and not very comprehensible even to himself. Jasper, however, was very little moved by such threats. There are things that a gentleman cannot do, and assuredly one of them is to turn his only son out of doors because he declines a wife of the parent's choosing. And to no other menace was the captain amenable. He should probably, as a result of his father's displeasure, get no cheques for the next few months; but this stoppage of pocket-money could not much affect the happiness of a graceless prodigal who, had he once got a sufficient sum in his possession, would have turned his back at once on Carbery and all that belonged thereto.

Jasper, then, was singularly stubborn. He was in general as morally pliable as a jelly-fish, after the fashion of most so-called men of pleasure, but now he seemed for the nonce to have developed a backbone, and to be hard to bend. There was really some lurking sense of injury at his heart, and he felt on better terms with his own conscience than was often the case, as he resisted his father's instances that he should marry Miss Willis, commence housekeeping on five thousand a year, and be a reformed character as well as a Benedict. He felt that all was not right, and was assured that a bride worth the taking would not be urged on his acceptance with such pertinacity.

'I do not see,' repeated Jasper again and again, 'why I should be in a worse position than other fellows.'

Sir Sykes was not willing to pay the price, at the cost, it might be, of a second contest with Mr Enoch Wilkins, and the negotiation with his son came to no satisfactory conclusion. What was to be done? Hold had named a fortnight as the period of grace that he was disposed to grant; but the baronet was of opinion that it would not be politic to allow the time to expire without communicating with this man--who was in some sense his master. He would inform Hold of Captain Denzil's unexpected obstinacy, and plead for a further delay, and--yes--he would send money. Money has often a wonderfully lenitive effect upon the temper, and its softening effects should be tried upon this buccaneering fellow.

Sir Sykes penned his letter, touching as lightly as he could on Jasper's recalcitrancy, and expressing sanguine hopes for the future. He said nothing about the entail, which had been the subject of the haggling debate between himself and the captain. It would hardly be prudent to tell Hold of that, lest Jasper should find an unexpected ally to back his demand.

'We had better, under the circumstances, give him, as I believe whale-fishers say, a little more line,' wrote Sir Sykes in his confidential communication to Richard Hold, and he was weak enough to pride himself on his neat use of a nautical metaphor sure to tell with a seafaring man. And he signed a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds, payable to Mr Richard Hold, or order, and inserted it in the letter, which he despatched by that night's post. He could scarcely have done a more foolish thing.

OUR VOLUNTEERS.

Some persons are old enough to remember the Volunteer system which prevailed in the early years of the present century. It was an enthusiastically patriotic movement, for the country was threatened with invasion by Bonaparte, who, however, as is well known, never got beyond preparations at Boulogne, and by the victory of Nelson at Trafalgar received an effectual check. Volunteering at that time, though very hearty, was at best never anything else than playing at soldiering. The members of the various corps were only civilians in uniforms. Discipline was imperfect. At any fancied affront, a man sent in his gun and walked off.

We can mention a case in point, which occurred about 1807. The colonel in command of the Westminster Volunteers, one day lost his temper on parade, and struck a member of the corps with the flat of his sword. Such was the general indignation at the outrage, that the greater number of both officers and men at once sent in their resignation, and the regiment was broken up. This anecdote was related to us by one of the sergeants, who resigned and sent in his sword and musket. Evidently, there could have been no solid reliance on a body of Volunteers so ill governed and held together so feebly. The whole fabric was at length dissolved, and was succeeded by militia regiments strictly under the articles of war.

The volunteering system of our own day has step by step attained the character of a Landwehr, or reserve force, liable, if the occasion arises, to support the army of the line and the militia. It embraces infantry, cavalry, and artillery, and is constructed on a proper military basis. As in former times, each town or district has its own regiment of Volunteers, which may be concentrated at a short notice by telegraph. In the infancy of the present movement, the peer and the artisan, the gentleman and the shopkeeper, all 'shouldered arms' together and marched gaily side by side. Dukes, earls, marquises, and cabinet ministers joined the ranks--Lord Palmerston himself donning the uniform and learning his drill as a private in the London Irish Rifle Corps; while in the London Scottish, the Marquis of Abercorn did the same thing. This was all well and good; but it could not last long, nor did it. Liberty is the precious possession of all classes in this country, but perfect 'equality' and 'fraternity' such as the above incidents indicated are virtues which have not yet attained to any very great degree of perfection amongst us. And so it came to pass that these noble recruits, whose support at that time to the Volunteer cause cannot of course be over-estimated, were among the first who 'fell out,' to make way for those who really meant 'soldiering.'

The new movement was national in all its phases. The different corps adopted titles and mottoes which had some distinct connection or other with their country's history, or with the local traditions of the counties in which they were raised. In the former category are the two national corps we have already named; and in the latter may be reckoned the 'Robin Hoods,' with their uniform of Lincoln green, which is the only thing about them, however, that reminds one of the days of Robin Hood and his jovial band.

These royal acts at once put the seal of popularity upon the Volunteer cause, and prizes of all kinds were offered for competition. Things were at first somewhat chaotic at Wimbledon; but as time wore on, the common changed its fair-like aspect, in which refreshment booths occupied the most prominent place, to the spectacle which it now always presents on these occasions--namely that of a neat and well-ordered encampment where, while the meeting lasts, the strictest military discipline is understood to prevail. Competitors from all parts of the world meet there annually, for many of the prizes are of a cosmopolitan nature. The Dominion of Canada and Australia send teams of marksmen, for whom special 'challenge cups' are prepared; while the Army and Navy, the two Houses of Parliament, and our great Public Schools also exhibit their skill in the use of the rifle.

Our Volunteers had a good deal to put up with in the first few years of the movement from the street arabs and other idlers, who could find no better employment than to fling all kinds of rough sarcasm and what may appropriately be termed 'gutter criticism' at the members of the different corps. An unfortunate Volunteer, for instance, was fined for shooting a dog on Blackheath Common as he was going to drill, and almost immediately every Volunteer was hailed in the London streets with the cry of 'Who shot the dog?' Again, when the Volunteers met in the public parks for drill they were closely surrounded by a critically tantalising crowd, which obstructed their movements and laughed heartily at their mistakes. The comic papers were also filled with amusing caricatures of our citizen soldiers; and a great deal was done even in high places to throw cold-water upon this patriotic and popular movement. It has now, we are glad to record, outlived all this, and has become enthroned in the hearts of Englishmen as one of our greatest institutions. It numbered at first some two hundred thousand men, but this included persons of all ages, sizes, and classes; and after the first flush of enthusiasm passed off, the motives which actuated many of them were not so much military zeal or any of the more solid military virtues, as a love of novelty and a taste for good-fellowship.

Thus at a small cost to the state the different corps are made self-supporting, the Volunteer himself being put to no expense beyond the time which he gives up to the necessary drills and parades. The Volunteers have now learned what military discipline is, and have, by their attending the exercises and manoeuvres of the regular army, shewn themselves willing to submit to it. Most Volunteer officers also take a pride in knowing their duty, and are no longer helplessly dependent on the adjutant and the drill-instructor. Instead of being regarded in the light of a novelty, volunteering is now looked upon as a serious business by all engaged in it, and as a task which in its perfect fulfilment will render them worthy citizens of a great and widely extended empire.

The service which the Volunteer movement has rendered to Britain is of incalculable value, for besides giving us a defending army of nearly two hundred thousand 'efficient' men, trained to the use of every weapon known in warfare, it has been a school in which, during the twenty years of its existence, thousands have learned those elementary principles of military life which, in the case of an invasion, would enable them again to come forward in defence of their Queen and country. The very fact of Great Britain possessing such an army would deter, and for aught we know to the contrary, may have deterred hostile nations from invading her shores.

The two largest Volunteer corps are Scotch--namely the 1st Lanarkshire Artillery with seventeen batteries, and the 1st Edinburgh Rifle Brigade with twenty-five companies; these being the only two corps whose strength entitles them to two adjutants each. The militia and yeomanry trainings of 1876 were attended by seventy-six thousand, and nine thousand five hundred officers and men respectively; while the annual inspections of the Volunteers for last year resulted in an attendance of 159,378 men of all ranks.

We find by reference to the Annual Returns of the Volunteer corps, that no fewer than 16,306 officers and sergeants obtained Certificates of Proficiency in 1877. These are facts which it is consoling for the public to know, for they ought to dispel in the future any fear of the consequences of foreign invasion.

The Civil War in America shewed us what a Volunteer army could do; and it behoves this country now to see that this magnificent force which it has at its disposal should be placed on such a footing in relation to the other forces as will for ever secure its services. Our Volunteers constitute a force to which no other country can present a parallel; and as such, irrespective of its being the means of doing away with the evils of conscription, is worthy of all the support which the state can give it, for certain events within the past few years have shewn us to what straits a country is driven, and how great is the misery of its people when it has been successfully invaded. As a sign of the times too, we may note with satisfaction the patriotic feeling which has, in the present crisis of our national history, induced many Volunteer corps to offer their services to the government for garrison duty at home, in the event of our army proceeding abroad, one regiment--the London Irish--even going so far, we learn, as to place itself at the absolute disposal of the government for service either in or out of the United Kingdom.

MONSIEUR DE BOCHER.

Times had much altered since the days of the Grand Monarque, and the hard and fast lines of society, then so rigidly observed, were now well-nigh obliterated. A precursor of the great Revolution which was hereafter to overthrow the state, was to be found in the invasion of the saloons of the nobility by financiers and capitalists, who were received with open arms by those who wished either to borrow money from them, or to recruit their shattered fortunes by alliances with the money-bags of the period. Nor was this all; for the poets and writers of the day, anxious to secure the support of well-known and wealthy patrons, flocked to these reunions, which they enlivened with their geniality and wit.

Monsieur de Bocher could lay but little real claim to the patrician prefix which he had for some years adhibited to his otherwise plebeian name. But he held a quasi-official appointment, which, although outside the Cabinet, gave him almost the dignity of a minister; while his well-known wealth and splendid entertainments attracted the best society in Paris. He was, moreover, a man of wit and learning, and as he possessed the somewhat rare faculty of playing the host to perfection, had an excellent cook and a cellar of first-class wine, his mansion in the Faubourg St Germain was one of the most popular in Paris. Dukes and peers, ambassadors and foreigners of distinction, the simple gentleman, the poet, the literary man, the barrister, and the capitalist, all found here a common ground for the display of their various talents. Fools were rare, for they soon found that the climate was not congenial; and the conversation was not only remarkable for its piquancy, but its intellectual character. Each guest, after paying his respects to Madame de Bocher, mixed at once in the throng, and was soon busied in discussing the last news of the day, or deep in the question which agitated Paris. Marmontel and Diderot, La Harpe and Helvetius, seldom missed a reception; but here, as indeed throughout Paris, Voltaire was the presiding genius. It was a hopeless struggle for any young author to attempt to hold his own against so powerful a clique. Voltaire denounced him before his face; Diderot caricatured him at the Caf? Procope; he was jeered and laughed at everywhere, and ended by submitting to his tormentors. The result of such a censorship was not difficult to foresee; and in a short time no literary effort which did not contain at least a covert attack upon religion, in accordance with the principles of the fashionable philosophy, had a chance of success. Let us now tell the story of M. de Bocher's acquisition of wealth.

His origin indeed was of the lowliest, for his father was but a working mason in the days of the Grand Monarque. One evening, as the father was returning home with his work-basket on his shoulder and trowel in hand, a man wrapped in a long brown cloak, and closely followed by a carriage without any armorial bearings or ciphers, tapped him on the shoulder and asked him whether he would like to earn five-and-twenty louis. The mason eagerly acquiesced; and having entered the carriage, his eyes were bandaged, and the horses started off at a great rate. For several hours the carriage was driven rapidly about the streets of Paris, with the obvious intention of making the occupant lose all trace of the route he had traversed; and when the object had been accomplished, the carriage stopped suddenly in the court-yard of a large mansion. Bocher was then desired to alight; and was at once conducted, his eyes still bandaged, into a kind of cellar, where his eyesight was restored to him. Here he found two men, both armed, and with their faces concealed by masks. The poor man was in an agony of terror, believing that his last hour had come, but was somewhat reassured by the gestures of his companions, who, fearful of trusting their voices, made signs to him to make some mortar of the lime which was lying on the floor. A hole in the wall disclosed a recess; and the two men raising with difficulty a weighty strong box, placed it in the interior, and made signs to the mason to build up the wall afresh. Bocher, seeing that nothing was required of him but the legitimate exercise of his craft, quickly recovered his self-possession; and guessing that the proprietors of the treasure were obliged to quit the country, and had hit upon this device for concealing it until better times should dawn upon them, the notion of appropriating it to his own use flashed like lightning across his brain.

When he concluded his work, as if intending to give a last polish to its completion, he placed his hand, thickly covered with wet mortar, on the new wall, and thus left the distinct impression of his five fingers on the hiding-place of the treasure-deposit. The promised five-and-twenty louis were then faithfully counted out into his hand; his eyes were again bandaged, and he was re-conducted to the carriage, which after following the same course of deception for three long hours, at last deposited him in the same street as that in which the man in the brown cloak had found him.

From that day forth Bocher abandoned the use of the hammer and trowel, and passed his time in wandering about Paris inspecting the houses advertised to be sold, directing his attention especially to the cellars and lower regions of the buildings; seeking everywhere, but without success, that imprint of his hand which would point the way to unlimited wealth. In the pursuit of this phantom, not only the twenty-five louis but all the little savings of his hard work rapidly melted away, and misery and hunger began to knock loudly at the mason's door. One after another he sold the petty articles of furniture which had embellished his humble home, to procure the bread which was necessary to sustain life; and pale and in rags he wandered about Paris, reading every new announcement of vacant houses, and became a nuisance to the porters intrusted with the care of shewing them.

Two years thus passed away--two long years, occupied day by day in seeking a fortune, and night by night in dreaming that it was found. He was returning home one evening, sad and dispirited, with the proceeds of the sale of the bed upon which his mother had died, and which had been one of the very last articles of furniture he possessed, when his eye was caught by a large posting-bill announcing the sale of a magnificent mansion belonging to the Duc de Cairoux, in the immediate vicinity of his own dwelling. He recollected the story of the sudden disappearance of the Duke, and on reading the bill, found that the property was sold under a legal decree, which constituted the heirs proprietors with a power of sale. A last hope crossed poor Bocher's mind, and he at once proceeded to the house, and knocked hastily at the door. It was almost dark, and no one paid any attention to his eager summons. After a sleepless night he again made his appearance at the portal of the Duke's mansion; but although it was now opened, another difficulty presented itself, for the porter hesitated to admit a man so ragged and dirty as the poor mason had become. At length, however, he agreed to do so upon the understanding that a servant accompanied the strange visitor during his survey of the premises. The powdered lackey was scarcely more courteous than the porter, and scornfully exhibited the rich furniture, pictures, and priceless china which adorned the apartments, to his humble companion. But these were not what Bocher had come to see, and at last he induced the man to shew him the cellars. Whilst the footman was descanting upon the quantity and quality of the wines around them, Bocher was anxiously scrutinising all the walls, in hopes of finding that print on the mortar which was to open to him the door to untold wealth. It was all in vain; and deaf to the man's insolence, Bocher was on the point of leaving, convinced that his last hope had vanished like its predecessors, and that this could not have been the house he had visited on that eventful evening, when he suddenly perceived a small cellar situated in an angle of the wall, which had hitherto escaped observation. He turned back and examined it closely, his technical knowledge as a mason at once shewing him that the mortar in one part of the wall was much fresher than elsewhere. He approached the spot, and there--yes, there was no doubt about it--there were the marks of the five fingers, plain and distinct!

'At last, at last!' he murmured to himself; and to make assurance doubly sure, he traced out each of the impressions with a trembling hand. There could be no doubt whatever about it. At last his long search was ended.

Eight days afterwards the property was to be sold by auction, and numbers of the aristocracy of Paris sent their stewards to bid for it. It was put up at fifty thousand louis d'or, and two thousand louis were at once added by the steward of the Duc de Berri.

'Sixty thousand louis,' said a voice from a corner; and the audience turning round to look at the man who had the audacity to outbid the richest man in Paris, discovered a poor man whom they had supposed to be a beggar.

'Sixty thousand louis,' said the auctioneer; 'sixty thousand louis are bid, and this fine property is going for only sixty thousand louis!'

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