Read Ebook: The House of Egremont by Seawell Molly Elliot Relyea C M Charles M Illustrator

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Ebook has 2259 lines and 155847 words, and 46 pages

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

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

"This devil of a Henry the Fourth, Has the three gifts that make a man. He can drink, he can fight, And he can be gallant to the ladies."

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

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

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

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

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

"Do, little Dicky," cried Roger, beginning to laugh again, and throwing his arm around Dicky's neck. "You'll have to give over punch--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Roger, disdaining his hand, replied,--

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

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

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

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

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

"Gentlemen, may I be allowed to be of your company?"

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

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

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