: The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico by Castle Agnes Castle Egerton - Love stories; Princesses Fiction; Mistaken identity Fiction; Husband and wife Fiction; Household employees Fiction

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PART I

Page

PART II

THE PRIDE OF JENNICO

PART I

MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO

AS the wind rattles the casements with impotent clutch, howls down the stair-turret with the voice of a despairing soul, creeps in long irregular waves between the tapestries and the granite walls of my chamber and wantons with the flames of logs and candles; knowing, as I do, that outside the snow is driven relentlessly by the gale, and that I can hope for no relief from the company of my wretched self,--for they who have learnt the temper of these wild mountain winds tell me the storm must last at least three days more in its fury,--I have bethought me, to keep from going melancholy crazed altogether, to set me some regular task to do.

And what can more fitly occupy my poor mind than the setting forth, as clearly as may be, the divers events that have brought me to this strange plight in this strange place? although, I fear me, it may not in the end be over-clear, for in sooth I cannot even yet see a way through the confusion of my thoughts. Nay, I could at times howl in unison with yonder dismal wind for mad regret; and at times again rage and hiss and break myself, like the fitful gale, against the walls of this desolate house for anger at my fate and my folly!

But since I can no more keep my thoughts from wandering to her and wondering upon her than I can keep my hot blood from running--running with such swiftness that here, alone in the wide vaulted room, with blasts from the four corners of the earth playing a very demon's dance around me, I am yet all of a fever heat--I will try whether, by laying bare to myself all I know of her and of myself, all I surmise and guess of the parts we acted towards each other in this business, I may not at least come to some understanding, some decision, concerning the manner in which, as a man, I should comport myself in my most singular position.

Having reached thus far in his writing, the scribe after shaking the golden dust of the pounce box over his page paused, musing for a moment, loosening with unconscious fingers the collar of his coat from his neck and gazing with wide grey eyes at the dancing flames of the logs, and the little clouds of ash that ever and anon burst from the hearth with a spirt when particles of driven snow found their way down the chimney. Presently the pen resumed its travels:

Everything began, of course, through my great-uncle Jennico's legacy. Do I regret it? I have sometimes cursed it. Nevertheless, although tossed between conflicting regrets and yearnings, I cannot in conscience wish it had not come to pass. Let me be frank. Bitter and troubling is my lot in the midst of my lonely splendour; but through the mist which seems in my memory to separate the old life from the new, those days of yesteryear seem now strangely dull. Yes, it is almost a year already that it came, this legacy, by which a young Englishman, serving in his Royal and Imperial Majesty's Chevau-Legers, was suddenly transformed, from an obscure Rittmeister with little more worldly goods than his pay, into one of the richest landowners in the broad Empire, the master of an historic castle on the Bohemian Marches.

It was indeed an odd turn of fortune's wheel. But doubtless there is a predestination in such things, unknown to man.

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