OPPI 
 
 Mwa 
 
 ERN CHACE 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 ONE— WHO NOT UNKNOWN TO FAME. 
 )^T DARES TO WRITE WITHOUT A NAME. 
 

 
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 ■Vf<l 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Shortly. At Every Library. 
 
 A PARISIAN SULTANA. 
 
 a gabtl 
 
 FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 
 ADOLPHE BELOT. 
 
 BY 
 
 H. MAINWARING DUNSTAN. 
 
 3 Vols. 3 IS. 6d. 
 
 This Novel is now in its Twelfth Edition in Paris. 
 
 REMINGTON & Co., 5, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE: 
 
 A CHRONICLE OF 
 
 ''§^H tljcit mt 10 "^oxtr 
 
 A NOVEL, 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 
 BY 
 
 One — who not unknown to fame, 
 Yet dares to write without a name. 
 
 Shadows ! Oh, ye Shadows that before me pass ; 
 
 We are all Shadows — Shadows on the grass. 
 
 I stand in the bright sunshine, upon this ancient lawn, 
 
 And muse in dreamy thought on the Shadows that are gone. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 REMINGTON AND CO., 
 
 5, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C. 
 
 1879. 
 [All Rights Reserved.'] 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/wolfernchacechro01onew 
 

 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ALEDICTIOX on all chiming clocks 
 and their inventor," said Sir 
 ^^^ Geoffrey Langdale to his lady-love, as they 
 k sat discussing a late breakfast at the Old 
 I^Ship, Brighthelmstone. 
 
 ^ an indifferent pun, " but they would scarcely 
 ^ have disturbed us, if those dissipated friends 
 '^ of yours, Sheridan and Moore, had not had 
 : such a noisy party in the room beneath us." 
 VOL. I. B 
 
 *' They are indeed a torture for all time," 
 replied the lady, committing quite innocently 
 
 r\j 
 
 u- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 *' Nor if Mrs. Fitzherbert had not chanced 
 to give lier ball last night. Nor if those 
 yelling fisherwomen had not given their bawls 
 in the morning. Strange notions hotel- 
 keepers have as to ' quiet bedrooms.' The 
 next time I write for rooms, I'll bespeak the 
 noisiest. I sometimes fancy the managers 
 of these places have a kind of grim malice 
 which tempts them to put all their visitors 
 to the utmost possible discomfort." 
 
 Now, gentle reader, do not imagine from 
 this little morning grumble, that my dear old 
 friend, Geoffrey Langdale, was an irritable, 
 highly nervous " gifted being," too sensitive 
 to live pleasantly in this rough world of ours 
 with its incessant kling, klang, klongs. A 
 more opposite character could scarcely be 
 conceived. A stalwart, broad-built knight, 
 who in olden time would have borne his 
 armour lightly, and wielded sword and lance 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 riglit manfully ; rich dark brown liair, parting 
 in graceful waves from a bold clear brow ; a 
 well-bronzed face, handsome rather from its 
 noble, manly expression than from any per- 
 fection of feature ; sparkling merry blue 
 eyes that joined heartily in the sunny smile, 
 lighted up the face with an irrepressible 
 geniality, even while indulging in the English- 
 man's birthright of a grumble. Such was 
 the outer man, and for the light within that 
 took this pleasant form, it shone from the 
 depths of as kind and generous a nature as 
 ever man was endowed withal. 'Twas this, 
 and not any special cleverness, that had iu a 
 few 3^ears won him a high position in tlie 
 Treasury, the kindly regard of his chief, and 
 the consequent knighthood from his Sovereign, 
 and finally enabled him to carry off from a 
 host of rivals the high-born and graceful 
 lady who was now his wife, a wife of whom 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 any man might well be proud. Tall and 
 statuesque in figure and feature, yet witli an 
 eloquent grace of movement tliat took off all 
 sense of undue height, and with loving eyes 
 of bright and tender hazel that converted the 
 statue into a perfect gentlewoman. 
 
 Our two friends had posted down to 
 the sea on the day before, bringing with 
 them their young daughters, Caroline and 
 Mildred, and their boyish son and heir,, 
 Gilbert. 
 
 The Prince Eegent's chariot had dashed 
 past them on the road, carrying down the 
 future King of England to his pet toy, the 
 Pavilion, as fast as four thoroughbreds could 
 travel. His Royal Highness had recognised 
 the Langdale's travelling carriage, and graci- 
 ously accorded one of his superb bows (rather 
 spoilt by the speed of his horses) to Lady 
 Langdale as he passed, and this morning an 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 invitation to a petit diner at tlie Pavilion had 
 followed the recognition. 
 
 Briglitbelmstone (before the caddish curt- 
 ness of modern slang had clipped it down to 
 two syllables) was a pleasanter little seaside 
 town than any we have in these days. Its 
 princely patron, despite his many faults, with 
 which the saturnine Jeremiah of Chelsea and 
 the satirical showman of Vanity Fair have 
 made the world sufl&ciently acquainted, 
 certainly created for a time one of the most 
 charming combinations of sea air, gaiety and 
 society that could well be desired or enjoyed. 
 Beneath his fantastic pepper-castors were 
 gathered all the wit, some of the wisdom, 
 and even a little of the poetry of the age. 
 Sheridan, with his carefully prepared im-. 
 promptus ; Fox, with his genial eloquence 
 and deep knowledge of human nature ; Byron 
 and Moore J with their diverse utterances. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Here, too, was the caustic Wilkes, with his 
 "Ugly face, which half-an-hour's converse com- 
 pletely talked away ; Mansfield, with his 
 handsome silence, and the immortal Beau 
 Brummell, with his amusing egotisms — the 
 grand antitype of the Lord Dundreary of 
 our age. 
 
 How fresh and piquant, then, were all the 
 sayings and doings of this curious Court Jester ! 
 The catarrh which he caught from being " put 
 by his man into a room with a damp stranger," 
 the sublime contempt for vegetables, ex- 
 pressed in his confession that he " had once 
 eaten a pea," the hundred and one anecdotes 
 which have unhappily passed into household 
 words, were then as eagerly looked for, and 
 as heartily relished as our weekly " Punch." 
 
 Poor Brummell ! 'Twas a bad day for him 
 when he won his bet that he would make the 
 Prince ring the bell. " Order Mr. Brummell's 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 carriage " was his death-warrant ; for a court 
 jester without a Court to jest in is indeed a 
 dead thing. 
 
 Outside the inner circle of the creme de la 
 creme might be seen Tom, Jerry and Logic 
 looking rather penitent in the morning from 
 the effect of a deep drinking match over 
 night ; dashing Dragoons and dandy Lancers, 
 with their spurs and swords clanking 
 martially as they cantered up and down ; Tom 
 Cribb, with a big stick and a bull dog, and 
 now and then a well preserved specimen of 
 Dr. Pangioss, LL.D., A.S.S., etc., etc., 
 walkino^ arm-in-arm with a totterino; old beau 
 of George the Second's time, still clinging to 
 the quaint but graceful costume of his young 
 days, with its old broidery and peach coloured 
 velvet. 
 
 But here comes Sir Geoffrey Langdale, and 
 as he shakes hands with us, His Royal High- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 ness, muffled in sables, drives past, and on 
 tlie second turn stays his carriage to inter- 
 change a few gracious words with our friends. 
 We mark, with some interest, the slight flush 
 that passes over the lady's face as the Prince 
 mentions one or two names of those whom 
 they are to meet in the evening, and it is also 
 a pleasant study to see the fine combination 
 of courteous deference and perfect manliness 
 with which Sir Geoffrey interchanges a few 
 sentences with His Eoyal Highness. We are 
 young and foolish, and sulkily keep aloof 
 from the Prince's Court (possibly not caring 
 for the grapes for the old reason) ; however 
 we either are, or pretend to be, quite content 
 to take our knowledge at second hand from 
 our old friend. So the next morning we meet 
 again, and hear all about the petit diner. 
 
 But fear not, dear reader. Have not such 
 things been so well and so minutely described 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 in 's Collections, xxx's Memoirs and the 
 
 Lord-knows- who's Biography, that we may, 
 and must in mercy spare you any description 
 of dinners that were eaten and disas^reed 
 wdth people so very long ago, although the 
 recital amused us young folks well enough 
 then. But you have had enough of Bright- 
 helmstone, and we only took you down there 
 for a breath of the refreshing sea air, and as 
 a pleasant means of introducing you to the 
 Langdales. So now you must positively 
 come down and dine and stay a few days with 
 them at their country seat in the heart of 
 the great forest of Waltham. 'Tis open 
 house always, and I have only to write and 
 say, " I'm coming down such and such a day, 
 and will take leave to bring So-and-so," and 
 an answer returns, as fast as answer can, 
 *' Come ! delighted to see you, and glad to 
 make the acquaintance of your friend ! " 
 
10 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Now, you must know I don't abuse the 
 privilege which I prize as one of the few 
 pleasures of my life, but if you will go with 
 me, dear reader, I think you will be sure to 
 like my friends, and I hope it will end by 
 their being your friends also for the remainder 
 of your life. As we drive down I will explain 
 to you how they chanced upon this out-of- 
 the-way place. 
 
 Well, many years ago, when Sir Geoffrey 
 was getting somewhat weary of the diurnal 
 ride in Eotten Eow, he ordered his horse 
 earlier than usual, and rode out with a 
 vague idea of calling on an old hunting 
 chum of his in Waltham Forest. It 
 was a lovely spring morning, he had a 
 grand Arab horse under him, and for- 
 getting all about his chum, he rode on and 
 on, deeper and deeper into the forest, until 
 he lost himself amidst its glades. He was 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 11 
 
 not in much fear of enactino- one of the 
 
 o 
 
 Babes in the TVood, but however lovely the 
 morning and however sweet the air, a man, 
 after a long ride, is apt to feel hungry. 
 
 The baying of a house-dog made his horse 
 prick up his ears, and Sir Geoffrey, turning 
 in the direction of the sound, saw a little 
 column of blue wood smoke risino' out of 
 what seemed a dense thicket. When there 
 is smoke there is o-enerallv fire, and where 
 fire, food ; so threading^ his wav down a 
 narrow bridle path, he at length came to a 
 farm orate, and unlatchinof it with his huntino-- 
 crop, rode into the lane beyond. This lane 
 had evidently been a made-road, but from 
 long disuse was now completely covered by 
 a soft mossy sward ; a row of splendid trees 
 on either side formed a charming avenue, in 
 the far vista of which he now perceived a 
 quaint old-fashioned countiy house. Riding 
 
]2 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 on, he entered a spacious fore-court, with an 
 open crescent of thickly planted firs, inter- 
 spersed with evergreens of such great size as to 
 form a leafy wall, so dense and high that not 
 a glimpse of anything beyond could be ob- 
 tained in any direction. 
 
 Turning his attention to the house, he 
 perceived it to be of great size and age, with 
 an air of repose about it as if it had been 
 lulled to sleep a hundred years ago by the 
 whispering of the leaves and the soft warmth 
 of the sun. The quiet hush of the whole 
 place was simply delicious, and it was a long 
 time (hungry as he was) before he could find 
 the heart to break its dream by pulling at the 
 great bell handle, and rousing to unwonted 
 sound a loud, far-clanging bell. The house 
 was empty, but at the sound, a scared woman 
 came from a pathway which led ofi at one 
 wing, with a huge bunch of keys in her hand. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 13 
 
 and seeing a mounted stranger, ran back 
 again, calling out, '' Joe," " Father." 
 
 In answer to her call, " Father " came into 
 view, hobbling along with that peculiar jerky 
 lift of the leg which the constant use of the 
 spade gives to old gardeners. He was a little 
 thin, wizened old man, who looked as if he 
 had not had a good full meal in the whole 
 unblessed course of a very long life, and his 
 face was drawn up into a perpetual pucker 
 that might, at first sight, have been taken 
 for a grin, but upon closer inspection it gave 
 one a strong impression that he had never 
 had much to grin about in this world. Time 
 (the still older gardener) had dug Lilliputian 
 trenches at the corners of his eyes and 
 mouth, and these were so well filled up with 
 a dark fertile soil, that it would have hardly 
 surprised you to see fine lawn-grass or 
 mustard and cress growing in them. The old 
 
14 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 man came forward to the end of tlie path, 
 shaded his eyes with his hand, and then he, too, 
 vanished, without speaking to the stranger, 
 and joined the woman in shouting for ''Joe." 
 At last the much desired " Joe" came up, 
 and happily proved to be a brisk well-witted 
 fellow, whose senses had not by any means 
 gone to sleep, even in this sleepy hollow. 
 Hence the doors were unlocked and the 
 shutters thrown open, whilst with a pleased 
 interest. Sir Greoffrey passed slowly on from 
 room to room of the rambling old house, 
 Joe's tongue rambling on meantime with a 
 running accompaniment of " who had lived 
 here, and what had been done by so-and-so, 
 or at such a time." With a keen eye to the 
 main chance, Joe saw in the stranger a future 
 possible master ; so that worthy assisted his 
 wife to prepare a rude but welcome meal of 
 bread and butter, and eggs and bacon. This, 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 15 
 
 when accompanied by some choice brandy 
 from bis flask, cooled by icy water from the 
 deep well, fortified our friend for bis ride 
 back to town. Joe piloted him out to an 
 opposite avenue from the one he had entered, 
 which opened on to a country lane, and this 
 in turn wound its undulating: length between 
 blossoming hawthorn hedges, and finally 
 merged in the high road to the great Babylon. 
 In a few weeks after this chance visit. Sir 
 Geoffrey had, with his usual decision of action, 
 purchased the old house, with all its belong- 
 ings. It was a singularly home-like place, 
 and the charm of it seemed to extend to all 
 their visitors. Amply spacious for a large 
 establishment and many guests, there was 
 yet nothing pretentious about it. It seemed 
 simply to have grown where it stood, like the 
 trees that surrounded it ; although free from 
 all bizarre or fantastic decoration, there were 
 
16 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 clear indications of an artist's eye and an 
 artist's fine taste having been skilfully at 
 work in the flowing lines of tlie garden and 
 the grouping of shrubs, trees and avenues 
 leading to the various points of view. Some 
 of the paths had been left uncleared for so 
 many years, that they were entirely over- 
 grown and hidden by the lavish growth of 
 branches, weeds and brambles, and it was 
 only by degrees that these were discovered 
 and gradually cleared. Sir Geoffrey under- 
 took some of this woodman's work himself, 
 finding in the use of the axe that most 
 excellent of all antidotes to overwork of 
 mind. 
 
 The disturbed state of Europe had of late 
 put a heavy strain on all connected with the 
 Government ; indeed, but for the occasional 
 respite which he enjoyed here, it would have 
 gone hard with our friend ; for war has many 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 17 
 
 victims otlier than tliose who fall on the battle 
 field. Night after night he had sacrificed 
 his much needed repose to aid his chief and 
 to encourage his subordinate. He made no 
 pretensions to great genius, but in that firm 
 and yet cheerful fulfilment of duty, that 
 steady and unboasting devotion to " What- 
 soever thy hand findeth to do," which is one 
 of the finest traits of our countrymen, he had 
 few equals and no superior. Hence, like all 
 willing horses, he had all the " trace work," 
 and both head and shoulders had begun to 
 ache with the incessant pull. Great was his 
 refreshment at being able to sally forth after 
 breakfast, armed with well balanced axe and 
 well sharpened bill, to spend his mornings in 
 the sweet fresh air perfumed only by wood- 
 land odours and wild flowers. 
 
 These and similar health-restoring labours 
 Sir Geoffrey entered into with allthethorough- 
 
 VOL. I. c 
 
18 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 going zest of a genial nature, and whether in 
 the winter woods or the summer hayfields he 
 was ever a stalwart and cheery " doer and 
 enjoyer of all things." In his happy disposition 
 both wife and children shared largely. It 
 was a pleasant thing to see how the highly- 
 bred and hitherto somewhat delicate Lady 
 Langdale accepted with fine grace and tact 
 the duties of her new form of life. The only 
 daughter of a noble emigre^ her French 
 versatility made her equally at home as the 
 centre of attraction of a Prince's Court and 
 the centre of action in an English country 
 home, and hence it was not much to be 
 wondered at that many members of the 
 Prince's Court, and suh rosa, not infrequently 
 the Prince himself, were visitors at Wolfern 
 Chace. The Regent's brothers were still 
 more often down there without attempting or 
 wishing to attempt any muffled conceal- 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 19 
 
 ment. Fine, frank, manly fellows, whatever 
 their other shortcomings, thej were always 
 straightforward, out-speaking Englishmen, 
 with little of that jealous petty leaven of 
 pride and exclusiveness which is the sole 
 safeguard of lesser people. Sir Geoffrey 
 and Lady Langdale did not court or par- 
 ticularly enjoy these visits, for, however 
 much they had been used to such society, it 
 was rather to escape from the inevitable 
 restraint of entertaining people of so much 
 higher rank than themselves that they had 
 left London ; but he, lavishly hospitable by 
 nature, could not of course make any demur 
 when young Fallington, after a few weeks 
 shooting at the Chace, said he really must 
 persuade His Eoyal Highness to come down. 
 Equally, of course, he felt bound to entertain 
 the Prince right royally, and an outdoors fete, 
 to be followed by a banquet and a ball, was 
 
20 WOLFERN CHACR. 
 
 organised on a grand scale for the occasion 
 of the first visit. First the upholsterers 
 besieged the house and took room after room 
 by storm — clearing out vast van loads of the 
 old-world furniture, to make room for the 
 new. Then the gardeners were let loose 
 through the grounds to put everything in 
 almost painful order ; a few choice marble 
 statues and vases were permitted to peep out 
 from the dark leafery ; a partial clearance in 
 the crescented surroundings of the fore-court 
 opened up to the front windows of the house 
 a charming view of the fields, lake, hills and 
 woods in the distance. Fountains sprung up 
 here and there in quite unexpected places, 
 and when the bright morning came for which 
 all this was the prelude, snowy tents, gay 
 flags, and a profusion of flowers gave bright- 
 ness to the scene. Meantime, all the avenues 
 were festooned with little glass lamps, skil« 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 21 
 
 fully adjusted in harmonious gradations of 
 colour, ready for tlie evemng feie. 
 
 Scarcely were these preparations complete, 
 when carriages began to arrive thickly and 
 fast, and I will attempt to sketch the occu- 
 pants as they pass in. First, then, arrived 
 Dr. Maxwell, the lineal and last descendant 
 oE a nobleman who was attainted of high 
 treason in the stern Tudor age ; a small, well- 
 preserved, courtly old gentleman, with just 
 a suggestion of Dr. Pangloss about him, 
 partly perhaps from the marvellous glossiness 
 of his coat and the superlative whiteness of 
 his frilled front. But a fine-charactered old 
 fellow with a cultivated taste for the Belles 
 lettres, of irreproachable manners, and withal 
 gifted with a considerable acuteness in 
 criticism. He had had his thorn in the flesh 
 in the shape of a Xantippe, but had borne it 
 with exemplary patience, only equalled by the 
 
22 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 beautiful resignation with wbicli he had since 
 borne his bereavement. 
 
 Next came Colonel Falconer and his son 
 Pierce ; the former a fierce old Indian ofl&cer, 
 of a somewhat restless and impatient temper, 
 hot as the suns he had endured, and the 
 curries he had eaten ; the latter a fine hand- 
 some and intelligent young fellow — a complete 
 Crichton in all manly exercises and games, 
 and yet as tender-hearted as a girl, and as 
 frank and unassuming as a child. 
 
 Next came an arrival from the then 
 fashionable quarter of Bedford Square. 
 Sir Greorge and Lady Blandville. He, a 
 splendidly got-up specimen of an old-young 
 man with nearly everything false about him 
 except his heart and his diamonds ; strikingly 
 handsome, and of an unmistakably aristo- 
 cratic appearance, he lacked nothing but 
 Nature to be a really noble man. Learned 
 
WOLFEEX CHACE. 23 
 
 in the Law and a Fellow of lialf-a-dozen 
 ological societies he had a fund of information 
 at his commandj bnt unfortunately conveyed 
 it in so pompous a manner, and so artificial a 
 tone of voice, that the most exemplary listener 
 did not care to spend a second long morning 
 with him. 
 
 The lady has still more artificiality and 
 considerably less heart, which deficiency, 
 however, she somewhat oddly endeavours to 
 conceal nnder an assumption of an immense 
 amount of gushing seotiment. But you 
 know the old proverb, " Scratch a Russ, and 
 you find a Tartar," and a very slight scratch 
 would have found one in Lady Blandville. 
 Perhaps Sir George had already done so ; he 
 was certainly meeker as a married man than 
 lie was as a bachelor. 
 
 Next arrived, from his old family city 
 house in Broad Street, Sir Geoffrey's elder 
 
24 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 brother, the portly, cleliglitfully-genial William 
 Langdale and his clever wife — a strangely, 
 and yet happily matched couple. He, a large- 
 built John Bull, with a massive broad brow 
 that few men cared to provoke into a frown ; 
 a powerful but flexible mouth, capable of 
 rapid changes of expression, but ever readiest 
 for a laugh — a laugh, the mere tone and 
 heartiness of which used often to set the 
 table in a roar, even before the humour or 
 wit had been thoroughly appreciated. Of 
 wit and humour there was such an in- 
 exhaustible fund in his nature, that it could 
 hardly help showing itself in his most serious 
 transactions. A London merchant, with 
 well-earned wealth — it was a tradition of his 
 house that its hospitality was only bounded 
 by the size of the dining tables and the 
 number of its bedrooms. This tradition was 
 gracefully carried out by Mrs. Langdale. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 25 
 
 She, with her bright and gay disposition, 
 won all his friends' hearts, as well as his, in 
 the first year of their marriage, and ruled 
 him, and his, and almost every one else who 
 came under the spell of her presence, with a 
 hand at once so delicate and light, yet so firm 
 and absolute, that, as far as Langdale was 
 concerned, he gloried in his subjection. 
 Some of the wilder and more unscrupulous 
 of the hangers-on at Langdale House, who 
 had got into a habit of looking upon it as a 
 kind of private hotel, were quickly relegated 
 to their proper places by the young mistress, 
 William, meantime, enjoying immensely the 
 courteous irony with which his wife dismissed 
 a fop or rebuked an impertinent. 
 
 Whilst these were arriving by the park 
 road, clusters of villagers were crossing the 
 fields in all directions from the three adjacent 
 hamlets, and gradually forming into groups 
 
26 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 in the broad hay-field opposite the chief 
 windows of the house, for Sir Geoffrey was 
 one of those who *' whilst he feasted all the 
 great, yet ne'er forgot the small," and hence 
 a holiday to his own people and to all the 
 neighbourhood had been arranged, with all 
 the needful accessories of beef and beer. 
 
 Great was the wonderment and admiration 
 of these country folk when the Prince's out- 
 riders came up the park slopes at a hand 
 gallop, quickly followed by the four-horse 
 open barouche, with its distinguished oc- 
 cupant, looking every inch a Prince. Thicker 
 and faster followed his suite and the country 
 families ; the carriages forming for some time 
 an almost unbroken line from the lodge gates 
 to the porch. 
 
 A sumptuous luncheon in the house was 
 fairly well enjoyed, thanks to the morning 
 drive through the fresh air, but what would 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 27 
 
 Prince and Peer have given for the well-nigh 
 incredible appetite of Hodge over his plain 
 meat and pudding ! Pate de foie gras plus 
 dyspepsia is a bad exchange for beef a la 
 sauce de faim. 
 
 After both the outward and inward " man " 
 had been thus feasted in their several ways, 
 the lads from the village were incited to the 
 old English sports of bell in the ring, jumping 
 in sacks, wheeling barrows blindfold, and 
 other rough-and-ready games, whilst the 
 women and girls romped in the hay, or swung 
 in the swings, and the patriarchs sat talking 
 under the old trees, of old days in the old, 
 old way, or toddled about hand-in-hand with 
 some little pet rosy grandchild, thus all un- 
 consciously linking the past with the future. 
 
 The stately Prince sat in his favourite 
 attitude upon a magnificent sofa, which had 
 been placed under a canopy on the lawn 
 
28 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 fronting the field, and conversed graciously 
 with such of the guests as Sir Geoffrey or 
 Lady Langdale thought well to present to 
 him. He even several times condescended to 
 *' smile audibly" at some of the more comic 
 of the clownish games, as when, for example, 
 in a roped ring an agile fellow with a bell 
 evaded, by a thousand hairbreadth escapes, 
 the outstretched arms of a dozen masked 
 and blinded pursuers. The masks had been 
 effectively chosen with the most absurdly 
 melancholy expressions, and the rigid stolidity 
 of these mock faces contrasting with the 
 intense buffoonery of the game, produced an 
 irresistibly droll effect. Sometimes four or 
 five of these masquers, deluded by the bell- 
 ringer, fancied they w^ere upon the point of 
 catching him, and rushed spasmodically into 
 each other's arms instead, with a quadruple 
 embrace, hurling thus together in such wild 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 29 
 
 rout and confusion as ended in a general roll 
 over. 
 
 "William Langdale was in his element 
 amongst the rustics, and with his dry humour 
 and quaint jests, won all their hearts, from 
 the old grandsires, with whom he talked of 
 the state of the crops and the price of 
 potatoes, down to the little rosy chubby 
 children, whose astonished young eyes went 
 as round as the bright shillings which he 
 scattered amongst them. The young men 
 and lads had to win their shillings by open 
 competition in grotesquery, such as dipping 
 their faces into basins of treacle, and powder- 
 ing one another with meal-bags, racing in 
 pairs with their legs tied, and other rough 
 games. 
 
 Meantime foot races on the flat and over 
 hurdles were arranged by Sir Geoffrey and 
 Pierce, who mounted their horses, and ac- 
 
30 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 comjDanied tlie runners over the leaps. A 
 jDretty sight it was to see the horsemen 
 threading their way skilfully through the 
 crowds, keeping all in decorous order, and 
 promoting good humour and fair play. Sir 
 Geoffrey was proud and fond of his horses, 
 and had mounted Pierce on a splendid filly, 
 only just broken, whose perfect shape and 
 graceful springing bounds attracted general 
 attention to the horseman. Pierce had broken 
 her himself, and sat her as if the two were 
 one. Like a young fellow, he could not resist 
 showing her paces and her jumping powers 
 to the best advantage, until even the Prince 
 was struck by the beauty of the filly and the 
 skill of her rider, and condescended to send 
 word to Pierce that he should like to see her 
 at some trial leap. Only too pleased. Pierce 
 bade some hedgers fasten two of the wattled 
 hurdles on the top of two others so as to 
 
WOLFEEX CHACE. 31 
 
 make an impromptu fence of double height ; 
 then giving the fillj a sweeping gallop round 
 the field to warm her to her work, brought 
 her skilfully to the jump, and took her over 
 without touch of whip or spur. The beautiful 
 creature, with her archino- neck and swellins^ 
 nostrils, seeming afterwards as proud of her 
 achievement as her young rider himself. He 
 then leapt her gently over the ha ha fence 
 on to the lawn to receive the caresses of the 
 ladies, some of which he, doubtless, envied 
 her. Returning to the field, he dismounted 
 to adjust a girth, and as he was remounting, 
 somewhat carelessly, some lads running past 
 startled the filly, who, by a sudden swerve, 
 flung him dowm to the ground, with one foot 
 caught in the stirrup, and then plunged back- 
 ward in mad affright, dragging with her the 
 helpless and apparently .doomed man. 
 
 " Keep back ! keep back ! " shouted Sir 
 
32 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 Geoffrey to tlie men who, with more zeal than 
 discretion, were rushing towards the filly. 
 " If she once turns her heels to him, he's a 
 dead man." 
 
 It was a few seconds of awful suspense, 
 but, happily, Pierce had accustomed his 
 favourite to obey his voice as well as rein, 
 and now speaking to her in well-known and 
 soothing tones, the snorting terrified creature 
 paused for an instant, and gazed wildly at 
 the prostrate man. In that instant Pierce 
 curved himself up from the ground, seized 
 the stirrup leather in both his hands, and 
 flung himself into the saddle. 
 
 With the deep-drawn breath of a man 
 rescued as by a miracle from an awful death, 
 he bent low in unspeakable thankfulness to 
 God for the life thus saved. This little 
 incident threw a slight cloud over the gaiety 
 of the day, especially as Caroline Langdale 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 33 
 
 had fainted at tlie scene. But slie was soon 
 herself again, and I noticed a slight flush 
 when her eyes met Pierce's eager glance, and 
 a still deeper one when her hand touched his 
 with its silent congratulation at his escape. 
 
 Many of the guests had wandered away 
 through the deliciously shaded walks and 
 avenues, some had been boating on the lake, 
 others amusing themselves with archery, but 
 now the sfreat o^ong^ drew all too:ether as the 
 evening shades began to fall, and after a few 
 manly words of kindly farewell from Sir 
 Geoffrey to his humbler friends, calling forth 
 a cheer that rang far and wide through the 
 forest, and out faintly and more faintly to the 
 far lying hamlets, the villagers dispersed to 
 their homes. The Prince retired to his 
 apartments to dress for dinner, and the chosen 
 guests again met at the grand banquet, where 
 Satiety once more sought for its " languid 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 appetite " in an infinite variety of viands and 
 wines. 'Twas ratlier a dull and tedious 
 affair, for tlie presence of a very exalted 
 personage, unless lie lias the supreme gift 
 of putting all tlie world at its ease, is de- 
 cidedly a restraint. Very high rank must 
 either give a very high zest to society, or it 
 must dull and oppress it ; it cannot expect 
 to enjoy the happy medium of us lesser folk. 
 However, it came to an end, as even the 
 dullest dinner must, and Lady Langdale rose 
 with a well-concealed sigh of relief to pass 
 through with her lady friends into the 
 drawing-room, and be free for a time from 
 the magnificent and ponderous gallantry of 
 her illustrious right-hand guest. The men 
 (as was the custom in those bad old days) 
 stayed long and drank deeply, but as Sheridan 
 and Moore were of the party to whom wine 
 seemed like the needful fuel to the fire of 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 35" 
 
 their wit, tlie mere drinking was redeemed 
 from its unmitigated sottishness bj many a 
 sparkling epigram and gay song. 
 
 Sir Geoffrey, changing his place at the 
 table, strove his best to entertain the Prince, 
 and being so well aided, succeeded in dis- 
 pelling the dulness of dignity. Sir Geoffrey 
 had that valuable quality of mind which not 
 originating much of itself, is yet the source of 
 originality and wit in others. Those who 
 surrounded him were ever sure of his keen 
 appreciation of their efforts to amuse, without 
 which, wit burns dimly as in a fog, and the 
 raciest humour gradually dulls down into a 
 sulky silence. His power was like that of a 
 concave mirror, which receives, concentrates 
 and reflects the rays that come within its 
 circle, and it is worth while to observe how 
 many sparkling and transient rays are lost to 
 the world, for the lack of some such genial 
 
36 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 reflectors. Even tlie Prince gradually felt 
 tlie brightening influence, for, to retain tlie 
 metaphor, the host used his best skill this 
 evening to throw the reflected light fully on 
 His Royal Highness. 
 
 The ball and concert which had been 
 arranged to follow the banquet, happily pre- 
 vented the gentlemen from sitting to a dan- 
 gerous length at the dinner table. Sir 
 Geoffrey had engaged the celebrated violinist 
 Viotti, and the still more celebrated vocalist. 
 Mademoiselle Catalani, as the stars of the 
 concert, but the younger men were of course 
 led away from the table rather by the music 
 of the dance, for which two choice and well 
 selected bands had been engaged; one for 
 the ball-room, and one for the bolder fays 
 and fairies who preferred to trip it on the 
 outer lawns. 
 
 The Prince of course opened the ball with 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 37 
 
 Lady Langdale in a few courtly measures, 
 and in the course of the evening honoured 
 some two or three other ladies by his hand, 
 but for the most part relapsed into his 
 favourite attitude on his ever sacred and 
 immortal sofa. Thus Mag^nificence assumed 
 its pedestal ; Maturity flourished jewelled 
 snuffboxes, and talked politics ; Maternities 
 kept watch over promising flirtations, and Flir- 
 tation was the presiding goddess of the hour. 
 The Hon. Mr. Fallington was in a seventh 
 heaven, for with Flirtation as goddess, he 
 was assuredly high priest. Fallington of the 
 Guards, was one of the Prince's aides-de- 
 camp ; a fop every inch of him, from spur to 
 plume (as our Laureate says) but not the 
 hybrid, half -idiotic, half- cunning fop of the 
 present age. Weak-minded, and soft-hearted 
 assuredly, but not quite a drivelling booby, 
 incapable of stuttering forth half-a-dozen. 
 
38 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 consecutive words, and therefore compelled to 
 take refuge in pseudo-aristocratic silence, 
 broken only by blunt monosyllabic insolence. 
 This creation, or rather caricature of the 
 " latter-day fop " owes its temporary vitality 
 to the combined genius of Mr. Sothern, and 
 the late Mr. Robertson, who between them 
 have deluded well-nigh half the young shop- 
 men of London into the idea that it is 
 aristocratic to be as purblind as a nine-days 
 kitten, as deaf and inattentive as an omnibus 
 conductor, and as surly and gloomy as an old 
 pikeman. Poor young shams, they little 
 dream of the intense fun made of them by 
 those whom they imagine they are imitating. 
 But pardon this digression. We have 
 slidden down the years, from Mr. Fallington 
 to Lord Dundreary. Ah, well ! '^ Facilis 
 decensus averni " must plead the excuse of 
 an old gossiping chronicler. 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 39 
 
 Droll fellow, Fallington ! quite a clmracter ! 
 dressed? all, Dress after all was his first 
 divinity. Flirtation only his second. Always 
 up to the highest verge of the fashion, and 
 sometimes a little beyond it. 'Twas a study 
 with him, and at one time of his life, that life 
 would have become irrevocably extinct, if his 
 man had suffered him to appear in an ill- 
 fitting coat, or a carelessly tied cravat ; still I 
 must do him the justice to admit that when 
 once he was well-dressed, and knew it, he 
 forgot all about it. Yes, when once he had 
 been properly attired by the Graces (the said 
 Graces being his tailor, his laundress and his 
 valet), he then devoted himself wholly and 
 unreservedly to either Mars or Yenus. He 
 was not wholly a feather-bed soldier either, 
 for 'twas of him his Colonel used to tell with 
 much amusement that when Fallington was 
 serving as a cornet in his first battle, a 
 
40 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 cannon ball killed a rank and file man near 
 where they were sitting on their horses and 
 spattered them with the poor fellow's blood. 
 The Colonel turned round with a — 
 
 ''Well, my boy, what do you think of that ? " 
 
 *' Ah," replied the other with a drawing- 
 room lisp, " ith very nathty ; I wish we 
 could have thome water to wash our handth." 
 
 This was either a real or constrained cool- 
 ness under fire, that raised him much in his 
 Colonel's estimation. 
 
 His devotion to Venus was less cool, 
 and more easy, and being handsome, well- 
 born, and lavishly extravagant, he had 
 already won for himself the proud repu- 
 tation of a lady-killer — but he was fickle 
 as fond, and courted notoriety even more 
 eagerly than beauty. If any woman of 
 any class reached a high zenith in popular 
 notice or opinion, Fallington was her devoted 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 41 
 
 slave during her little day of dazzle, and 
 basked exultantly in tlie borrowed light, or 
 despaired if left in the shadow. He was a 
 kind of star-hunter or a natural-born satellite, 
 and, of course, this same trait characterised 
 his estimation of men also. He delighted in 
 beinof attached to the Prince, because he was 
 thus an integral part of the '' observed of all 
 observers," and he looked upon him as a 
 temporary demi-god, and believed he had 
 conferred an immense favour on Sir Geoffrey 
 by bring^ino^ His Royal Hio-hness to 
 Wolfern Chace, little dreaming that Sir 
 Geoffrey, in his heart of hearts, wished him 
 and His Royal Highness at the Antipodes 
 throughout the whole affair. He often con- 
 fessed to me in our after-dinner chats, that if 
 he had been placed under the influence of a 
 Warren Hastings, a Washington, a Xelson, 
 or especially of a Xapoleon, he should have 
 
42 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 worshipped tliem with the bUnd adoration of 
 a Hindoo. I inferred, therefore, that the 
 fellow had a heart, and by no means a bad 
 one, but he lacked head to control it. At 
 that time this quivering magnetic needle was 
 attracted by Caroline Langdale, and followed 
 her about with a most provoking pertinacity. 
 Hence it was not surprising that he, and not 
 Pierce, had so manoeuvred as to secure that 
 young beauty for the greater number of 
 dances. Pierce, indeed, with that sensitive 
 reserve, half-chivalry, half-pride that attends 
 on most noble natures, held himself scrupu- 
 lously aloof from the smallest suspicion of 
 presumptuous intrusion on the notice or at- 
 tention of Miss Langdale — but none the less 
 it made the blood rush to his temples with a 
 fevered heat to see the dangling dandies of 
 the Prince's Court takiug, what he in his 
 simplicity, deemed impertinent liberties with 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 43 
 
 this young goddess. Many and many a 
 bitter time had come over him of late, when 
 fervent love, passion, hate, jealousy, and scru- 
 pulous honour, each in turn, contended 
 for the mastery of the man, tore him, like 
 demons, in their wild conflict. But happily 
 the last ever prevailed, and by that beauti- 
 ful instinct in young hearts whereby noble- 
 ness is ever drawn to nobleness, his very 
 conquest of himself, and consequent reticence, 
 were precisely .what first attracted Caroline to 
 him. But '' On with the dance, let joy be 
 unconfined — no rest till morn, when youth 
 and pleasure meet, to chase the glowing 
 hours with flying feet." Thus went matters 
 at Wolfern Chace that night, whilst in the 
 intervals of the dance, dainty sounds of ex- 
 quisite music came floating out of the opened 
 window into the sweet summer night air from 
 Catalani's voice or Viotti's violin. 
 
44 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Meantime, in an outer theatre, preparations 
 were being finally made for another surprise 
 for the Prince. Sheridan had been down 
 some days before organising a picked company 
 of amateurs for the performance of one or 
 two scenes from his recently finished play — 
 " the Rivals," and as he himself took '' Sir 
 Lucius ; " Colonel Falconer, '' Sir Anthony 
 Absolute; " Fallington, "Captain Absolute ; " 
 Tom Moore, "Bob Acres; "and the minor parts 
 were also well supported, the affair was a great 
 success. Mrs. Langdale made an admirable 
 "Mrs. Malaprop," with an irresistible de- 
 rangement of epitaphs, and Caroline and 
 Mildred looked charmingly as "Lydia" and 
 "Julia." Pierce had purposely kept aloof from 
 any part in this ; he dared not trust himself 
 to play the lover to Caroline, and felt an in- 
 tolerable distaste for any other character. He 
 was wise enough, however, to avoid the tor- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 45 
 
 ture of seeing another man take that part, 
 and whilst the play was being enacted, 
 wandered alone through the grounds, finding 
 bitter comments upon his darkened hopes in 
 the clouds that began to gather in the sky, 
 and the waning light of the lamps, as they 
 flickered towards extinction. 
 
 " Thus is my life over-clouded," he ex- 
 claimed, '' and thus are my hopes lighted 
 only to be extinguished. If my father had 
 been less proud and scrupulous, less blunt 
 and hasty in temper, he might easily have ob- 
 tained for us wealth and position. If he 
 had not in a fit of ano^er and disofust thrown 
 up his own commission and forbidden me all 
 attempt to fight my own way to fortune in 
 India, I might have won it for myself. If ; — 
 a thousand devils take these ' ifs' — what a 
 fool am I to stay mourning and moaning 
 here, bewailing my hard fate and crying like 
 
46 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 a silly child for a hidden moon. Is 
 tliere no other career in life than that of 
 cutting throats ? Aye, plenty — in which a 
 man can far more nobly risk life, health, 
 energy, and put body and mind to a full 
 manly strain, and win or die in the race ! 
 But hist ! which of them am I fit for ? A 
 soldier — the son and grandson of soldiers — 
 the red blood runs in my veins and fires my 
 brain. "With little training, save that of the 
 camp and the drawing-room — a gentleman — 
 most painfully, ' a gentleman' — that is a man 
 without any ostensible means of living. This 
 is a bad starting-point for any race — but 
 start I will — I miist ! To loiter here is utter 
 folly, and will end in madness. Ah ! see 
 how Nature speaks to man in all his moods ! 
 There's a rift in the black cloud, and a bright 
 star looks straight into my eyes — my life, 
 too, saved to-day by a merciful Providence — 
 
WOLFERN CEACE. 47 
 
 saved ! Aye — for what ? Surely not to be 
 wasted in o^enteel idleness and useless resfrets. 
 This shall not be — better a score of failures 
 than no attempt." 
 
 Such was the ending of this eventful day. 
 Feasted 3.nd feted magnificence was whirled 
 back to its palace — wearied old gentlemen 
 dispersed to their homes gTumbling at 
 the length of the drive — disappointed 
 mothers scolded — and pleased ones praised, 
 their daughters. Flirtation closed her temple 
 and dismissed her votaries, and Pierce 
 Falconer awoke to action, and resolved to be 
 — a man. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 OW droll it seems that the whole of 
 the incidents in commonplace lives, 
 events of the most vital importance to the 
 l^oor players in the game of life, can all be 
 narrated in the course of a morninof chat. 
 
 As with people so with books, a work that 
 has probably cost the author years of deep 
 thought and hard study, is read by even a 
 careful reader in a few hours. What a won- 
 derful, what a splendid power of mind this 
 indicates, and what a happiness it is that men 
 possess such a power. Imagine yourself, 
 dear reader, instead of being partly beguiled 
 by this gossiping chronicle, compelled to 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 49 
 
 follow absolutely, and in the flesh as well as 
 in the spirit, the varied fortunes of a middle 
 class family in order to find out what they 
 did, said, and thought, and what ultimately 
 became of each and all. Why, a man would 
 have to be literally, as well as metaphorically 
 a '' man beside himself " to attain even such 
 poor scraps of knowledge. But where 
 Knowledge fails, there comes to us old grey- 
 headed Memory, with his calm, placid, 
 thoughtful wife Reflection, his bright-eyed 
 daughter Wit, and his laughter-loving son 
 Humour, and you and I draw our chairs 
 round the winter fires or lounge under tbe 
 shades of the summer trees, and tell 
 each other what we have seen and known 
 of the little dramas of life. 
 
 Amongst the many visitors at Wolfern 
 Chace was Dr. Koulaiton, a French emigre, a 
 great friend of Lady Langdale, and a favourite 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
60 WOLFEKN CHACE. 
 
 witli every one, a man of wide and brilliant 
 knowledge, a capital talker, with an English 
 accent so perfect that but for the slight 
 intonation of the Gaul, he might have passed 
 for a veritable John Bull. A large, corpulent 
 man of the Louis le Gros build, although very, 
 very much less " gros " than that incon- 
 veniently fat monarch — a face and head also 
 considerably of the Bourbon type, but intel- 
 lectualized. A high and capacious forehead, 
 apparently sloping back, but only seeming so 
 by reason of the prominent brow; bright eyes 
 that scintillated with fun and hearty enjoy- 
 ment, not only at his own wit and humour, 
 but at that of others as well (a pleasant trait 
 of character, and none the less so for its 
 rarity). Laughter with him was a necessity 
 of his existence ; whatever his troubles and 
 pains, and he had many, whatever baulks and 
 hindrances he met with in his career, and he 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 51 
 
 had many of those also, I do not think that 
 dear old Doctor ever let a day pass by with- 
 out getting one hearty laugh out of it, and I 
 must do his memory the justice to say that he 
 was infinitely more ready to laugh at himself 
 and his own misfortunes than at those of 
 others. With all this he was no mere Merry 
 Andrew yielding to causeless, inane cachina- 
 tions, his mirth had perfect sense in it, and 
 he could always give a reason for the fun 
 that was in him. 
 
 Now it was to this man of all others that 
 poor Pierce confided his new-born aspirations 
 to do something better with his life than 
 merely dangle it for three-score years and 
 ten, or any other shorter term that the thread 
 would hold. Dr. Noulaiton was a man of 
 science, and by his counsel Pierce threw the 
 whole energies of his mind into the study of 
 chemistry. Chemistry was then in its in- 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY! 
 
52 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 fancy. Priestly, Lavoisier, and some few of 
 tlie subtler minds of the age had just turned 
 the light of their bright intellects upon this 
 study, and revealed possibilities of fame and 
 wealth in it that were especially captivating 
 to an eager, versatile, sanguine man like 
 Noulaiton. The Doctor at once inspired the 
 young disciple with his own passion for some 
 glorious discovery that should send the world 
 along into a more brilliant future, and bring 
 renown to the discoverers. 
 
 With more seriousness, however, than was 
 his wont, he warned his young friend of the 
 hard study, the enormous and unfailing 
 patience, the sleuth-hound tenacity requisite 
 for this pursuit, nor did he fail to point out 
 the necessity for incessant practice in delicacy 
 of touch, the keen strain on all the senses, 
 and the courage requisite to bear up against 
 those cruel disappointments when the cup of 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 53 
 
 success is just raised to the lips of tlie 
 parched aspirant, and then dashed down by 
 some mere hair-breadth failure. Noul- 
 aiton was no mere charlatan, no vague 
 random questioner of IN^ature, dancing about 
 over the whole field of science for the chance 
 of finding a stray diamond in some recently 
 turned-up furrow ; gay and elastic as his 
 nature was, he had the acuteness to foresee 
 that concentration of intellect is the first 
 element of success, and that the sanguine 
 hap-hazard wanderer who follows every 
 glimmering will o' the wisp in turn, is soon 
 left plunging about in the slough of despond. 
 The master knew it — the pupil practised it — 
 a dogged tenacity, a quiet patience, an unfail- 
 ing elasticity and courage under disappoint- 
 ments were Pierce's strong points. Yet the 
 haK successes, the incessantly ruined hopes, 
 the constant fracture of the Yenetian goblet 
 
54 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 when just filled with fortune's wine, were 
 harder for Pierce than for Noulaiton, because 
 the one was playing for the higher stake Love, 
 and the other, for the lower one Renown. 
 After some of the severer trials of this kind, 
 therefore, Pierce was sometimes impelled to 
 seek a temporary change of thought and 
 action by short rushes out into the open air 
 of London life in all its motley aspects, but 
 both his purse and his inclination led him to 
 study character chiefly where it showed itself 
 in perfect unrestraint in the Toad-in-a-hole 
 wine cellars and quaint old taverns of that 
 day. He touched lightly, and with fairly 
 pure hands, many kinds of social pitch, and 
 happily with very slight defilement. Love is 
 the potent counter-spell to all low vices, and 
 except with weak or depraved natures, even 
 a young man may run the gauntlet of many 
 temptations if his head be guarded by the 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 55 
 
 helmet of an honourable love, and his heart by 
 the corslet of a noble constancy ; nor did he 
 find the so-called pitch so desperate in its 
 defiling power as some would have us think. 
 Seeking ever for the brighter side, even in 
 the darkest natures, his search was often re- 
 warded by an unexpected gleam of rough-and- 
 ready virtue which showed how truly ^' one 
 touch of nature makes the whole world 
 kin." 
 
 Amongst other sources of relief from his 
 severer studies he joined a debating club, held 
 by a few young fellows, whose pockets were 
 as low as their aspirations were high, and 
 who strove to lift themselves out of the 
 depths of mere smoke and beer into a clearer 
 intellectual atmosphere. Some of their 
 speeches were taken down by one of the 
 members in shorthand, and I have Pierce's in 
 my pocket-book. It is, I think, worth read- 
 
56 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 iog, as affording a better insight into his 
 character and tone of thought at that time 
 than any I could give by mere description. 
 
 But first figure to yourself a somewhat 
 dingily-grand, darkly-furnislied room in the 
 tavern, with a few dubious pictures, in 
 heavy gold frames, and a venerable mirror 
 on its walls, a sulky big fire in the huge grate, 
 and an equally sulky central oil-lamp on the 
 table. Around the table sat some score of 
 men, many of whom have since made their 
 mark in the world. Ronan, the tall quaint 
 metaphysician, with hard unpleasant stam- 
 mering utterance, whose words came out like 
 the blows of a sledge-hammer; his stern 
 pitiless, cast-iron logic speedily smashed up 
 any little delicate filigree sophisms that came 
 in its way. Then the stout and short 
 Avenel, glowing quickly into genial warmth 
 both of face and speech ; with his florid 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 57 
 
 periods as rounded and full as the flowing 
 curves whicli expressed his outer man. 
 Eloquent, cliarmingly eloquent, in spite of an 
 occasional nasality, an orator every inch of 
 him, aye, even though you measured him by 
 superficial inches. His power of carrying an 
 audience vrith him was immense, especially 
 with a new audience ; when you got a little 
 used to his fervent declamation and well- 
 handled play of the passions you lost much of 
 the first pleasure in hearing him, because there 
 was much more play than passion. The finest 
 fervour fails to move us if we once detect the 
 tongrue in the cheek. 
 
 Then there was straightforward, plain- 
 speaking, honest, hard-headed, practical, 
 *'factical" Summers; the man of " arithmetical 
 history," who would stolidly knock you dowm 
 with a name, a date, or a fact, splendidly un- 
 conscious that they had not the most remote 
 
58 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 influence on the intrinsic vitality of the argu- 
 ment. 
 
 He and the metaphysician were sworn 
 combatants in the wordy war, but it was like 
 the fight between a dog and a fish, they could 
 neither of them aiDjDroach the other. A 
 shrewder foe in debate to our tall friend was 
 Reding, keen and incisive in intellect, and 
 largely gifted with a never-failing dry humour, 
 and imperturbable good temper ; argument 
 never warmed him and defeat never discom- 
 posed him. A born jester — he looked upon life 
 as a joke and the world as a medium for the 
 dissemination of puns, good stories, funny 
 songs, and hon mots. No one could ever be 
 certain whether his reasonings, however 
 shrewd, were intended for jest or earnest, and 
 when he had cut down his opponent's 
 argument, he planted nothing in its place. 
 
 It was before a laro^e audience of critics 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 5^ 
 
 and opponents of this order, eacli of tliem 
 long practised in debate, that Pierce had to 
 make his first speech on the subject — '' Should 
 Cromwell have a Statue ? " and he acquitted 
 himself in the following fashion : — 
 
 ''Mr. President and gentlemen — As you will 
 very soon perceive that I am unaccustomed 
 to pubhc speaking, I will not be so ' super- 
 fluous ' as to tell jou this beforehand. It is, 
 however, in an Englishman's nature to form 
 his opinions on all great subjects, and it is 
 his birthright to speak them out, however 
 bluntly. I would therefore say that I think 
 we should pay but Httle heed to the second- 
 ary argument that Cromwell deserves a statue 
 as well as many others to whom this honour 
 is awarded. 
 
 " We have not to concern ourselves with 
 the comparative but with the positive merits 
 of the man ; not to say whether he does not 
 
60 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 deserve a statue as well as some others, but 
 whether he or they deserve one at all. Now, 
 as the main object of honouring the dead is 
 to excite the emulation of the living, it be- 
 hoves a people to be cautious how they exalt 
 qualities for imitation which they would not 
 wish to see imitated. 
 
 " I am far from advocatius^ the exclusion 
 of genius from its due honour, simply because 
 clouded by some venial failing, or tarnished 
 by trifling defect, but where its failings become 
 crimes, where its defects not only tarnish the 
 surface but corrode the substance, it deserves 
 no reverence from posterity, no statues to its 
 memory. 
 
 " Cromwell's genius was self-neutralizing ; 
 it laboured in the first part of his career to 
 demolish the strongholds of Tyranny, and 
 it laboured in the last part to build them up 
 again for his own use. 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 61 
 
 " Now, the greatness of a genius of this 
 kind merely serves to render its possessor 
 more widely mischievous, and we should pass 
 judgment with more caution upon the cha- 
 racter of the man, when we know that that 
 judgment is apt to be biassed by our admira- 
 tion of the hero. 
 
 '' No one can attentively peruse the history 
 of Cromwell without undergoing many revo- 
 tions of opinion as the different phases of his 
 character present themselves. In his earlier 
 life of riot, rudeness and debauchery, we feel 
 disgust at the coarseness of his mind and the 
 boorish violence of his manners, whilst in his 
 sudden conversion to sanctity there is much 
 ground for suspicion of hypocrisy. But 
 when in the stormy years of danger we find 
 him side by side with Pym and Hampden, 
 boldly denouncing Tyranny in all its pride of 
 place, and standing forth as the unflinching 
 
62 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 advocate of England's liberty, admiration suc- 
 ceeds disgust, and we recognise in tliat rude, 
 forcible eloquence, that overwhelming vehem- 
 ence, a Genius fitted for the times he lived 
 in — the Man that England needed. 
 
 '' Again we note him first in the field, and 
 whilst other men were thinking, he acted and 
 struck the first decisive blow before friends 
 or foes had had time to rank themselves ; we 
 follow him on from success to success, 
 through that fierce and desolating war ; we 
 see him organising that splendid regiment of 
 Ironsides, the terror even of the gallant cava- 
 liers, we see also the right and ready judg- 
 ment by which he roused in his army the 
 counterspell of religion, and thus brought 
 the higher enthusiasm of devotion to God to 
 act against the lower one of loyalty to a king. 
 By skill in the council and bravery in the 
 fight, he achieved grade after grade of mili- 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 63 
 
 tary glory, and our admiration rising with his 
 fortunes, we own in the Lord General of all 
 the forces of Great Britain and Ireland — the 
 most consummate warrior of his time, the 
 greatest man of his day. 
 
 '' Thus far, well — but now we have to fol- 
 low him through different scenes ; his career 
 no longer lies amidst camps and battlefields, 
 but amongst the statesmen of Westminster, 
 and the intrigues and politics of courts and 
 cabals. In this changed arena the man also 
 is changed. Instead of the brave and single- 
 hearted soldier we see a whinino- fawninof 
 hypocrite. Kindred, country, friends, all are 
 sacrificed with unsparing cold-blooded vil- 
 lainy to the one mad passion of selfish ambi- 
 tion. Tampering equally with all parties in 
 the State, and playing them against each other, 
 creating dissensions and fomenting discon- 
 tents, we find him still attended by successes ; 
 
64 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 but they are successes with which no honest 
 mind can any longer sympathise. It is at 
 this crisis of his history that it appears to me 
 we are called upon to decide his merits and 
 demerits, for it is at this crisis that his con- 
 duct exercised most influence over the future 
 destinies of England. 
 
 '' At this point, then, I rest my plea against 
 him upon the sole ground of his dissolution 
 of the Long Parliament. This Parliament,, 
 which, be it remembered, had been deputed 
 by the British nation to resist the encroach- 
 ments of tyranny, had shown itself most 
 worthy of that trust. By its forces, both by 
 land and sea, great achievements had been, 
 wrought. Tranquillity had been restored to 
 England ; Scotland had been humbled and 
 Ireland subdued. Under its appointment 
 the British navy first acquired that empire of 
 the seas of which we to this day are so justly 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 65 
 
 proud. By the vigour of its Grovernment 
 and the skill of its statesmen it caused Eng- 
 land to be feared and respected, and tlie 
 name of Englishmen to be honoured through- 
 out the world. 
 
 " Whilst thus conquering and negotiating 
 at home and abroad, it was carrying through 
 with unwearied energy the details of the great 
 work it had begun, that of securing by whole- 
 some laws the stability of a Government and 
 the happiness and liberty of a people. It 
 established the right of the subject to the 
 writ of habeas corpus, caused judges to hold 
 their offices free from the influence of the 
 central Government, abolished the flagrant 
 abuses of State-wardships, prohibited the im- 
 pressment of soldiers and seamen, instituted 
 the system of postage throughout the country, 
 commenced salutary reformations in the law, 
 and finally, having framed for this country a 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
66 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 most comprehensive plan of national repre- 
 sentation, had fixed a day for its dissohition, 
 thus intending to yield freely into the hands 
 of the nation that power it had wielded so 
 long and so well. 
 
 " Had this intention been allowed to run 
 its course, England's freedom would have 
 been established upon so sure a basis that no 
 after-intrigues would have disturbed it. 
 Cromwell foresaw in this the " destruction of 
 his hopes of the crown ; hence his ambition 
 prompted him to throw the State into an- 
 archy, that in the general confusion he might 
 seize upon the supreme power. History shows 
 how fully his stratagem succeeded, and the 
 remainder of his career is merely a succession 
 of acts of lawless oppression, each one more 
 violent and tyrannical than its precursor, until 
 at last the whole Empire was crushed beneath 
 the arbitrary rule of this unprincipled despot. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. ^7 
 
 " Thus did he cancel the obligations which 
 his country would have owed him, and trans- 
 formed the praises of gratitude into the curses 
 of fear. If, then, to such a man we are to 
 raise a statue, let it stand as a warning to 
 Ambition, and not as a memento of Patriot- 
 ism. And on its pedestal, beneath that 
 heavy foot that trampled upon Freedom, let 
 there be inscribed in letters of blood — 
 
 " ' This is the madman who, having fought 
 for Liberty and won her, stabbed her to the 
 heart in the hour of victory." 
 
 ) )j 
 
 A burst of applause greeted the conclusion 
 of his maiden effort, and Pierce for a few 
 triumphant minutes, had a vision of himself 
 in Parliament rivalling Burke and Sheridan. 
 
 Poor boy ! that vision was quickly trans- 
 formed into a dissolving view. When the 
 
68 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 first sliower-batli of cold criticism fell on his 
 head it nearly took his breath away. 
 
 First the tall metaphysician rose to his full 
 height, and, looking severely over his spec- 
 tacles at Pierce, stutteringly hammered away 
 at the logic of the argument until there was 
 not a syllogism left uncracked, nor a point 
 uncontested. 
 
 Then the " factical" man quoted dates with 
 an astounding accuracy to show that '' that 
 was before this, and this before that." 
 
 Then the humourist made fun of every- 
 thing, and a capital joke on the King's execu« 
 tion. 
 
 And lastly, the stout orator worked him- 
 self up into such a splendid sham frenzy, and 
 brewed such a terrific storm in a teacup, that 
 poor Pierce was completely overwhelmed in 
 it, and freely confessed that he made a shock- 
 ing muddle of his reply. 
 
WOLFERN" CHACE. 69 
 
 A modest supper followed, over which the 
 bitter opponents shook hands with the same 
 delightful geniality that is exhibited by the 
 rival counsel in a lawsuit, and their great 
 client was speedily forgotten in flowing bowls 
 of punch. 
 
 In the study of the noteworthy characters 
 of the club. Pierce found frequent amusement, 
 and learnt also his first lessons in the patient 
 and good-tempered endurance of criticism, 
 which is perhaps one of the most valuable 
 acquirements that a young man can make. 
 With one of these chance-companions he held 
 a still closer friendship for a time — a man 
 whose many noble qualities and wild humour 
 were infinitely refreshing to our over- worn 
 student, but withal so uncontrollably pug- 
 nacious, that a pitched battle somewhere or 
 at some time was sure to be the result of a 
 night-about-town, spent in his company. 
 
70 WOLFERN CHAOE. 
 
 Theatre, concert-room, supper-house, coal- 
 hole street, 'twas all the same, he would be 
 in the blandest and most genial of tempers 
 one moment, and then flash ! crack ! like a 
 spark on powder, some real or fancied affront 
 would bring a sudden explosion of wrath, 
 and before Pierce had the slightest idea of 
 what he was fighting for, he would find him- 
 self shoulder to shoulder with his excited 
 friend, the centre of a wild melee. Of course 
 he was an Irishman, and the causes of 
 quarrel, when he tried to explain them 
 afterwards, were so infinitely ridiculous that 
 the Doctor (with whom also 0' Sullivan 
 was a great favourite) used to laugh till he 
 cried at the absurdity. Sometimes '' the 
 dirty blackguard wanted to pass me on the 
 wrong side, sir," sometimes '' he touched 
 my cane in passing, sir," and " sure my cane 
 knew how to take care of itself, and pretty 
 
WOLFEPtX CHACE. 71 
 
 soon laid itself across the truculent rascal's 
 shoulders." Once "because I throd on Ins 
 toes and he didn't beg my pardon for getting 
 in my way," and once '' because the grinning 
 villain looked at me when I sneezed." This 
 last escapade was in the middle of a grand 
 tragedy at Covent Garden, to which Pierce 
 and he had o-one. The wild row that ensued 
 and the unpleasant prominence that the affair 
 assumed, made him cautious of his Hibernian 
 friend for some time ; hence the after-com- 
 panionship was limited to quiet little suppers 
 at the Doctor's chambers, which Pierce 
 now shared with the dear old fellow. It 
 was a great evening for the young men 
 when Noulaiton would join them, but he, 
 being so popular in society generally, and so 
 much in request in learned societies in parti- 
 cular, could not often give them that pleasure. 
 Many 's the pleasant evening I have had with 
 
72 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 these old friends (now alas ! no more), some- 
 times as guest, sometimes as host in my own 
 old-fashioned chambers ; for my brothers 
 deserting me early to assume the dignities 
 and duties of married life, I was left very 
 young and alone in the old city house we had 
 occupied as a family, so that I had my fencing- 
 room, billiard-room, and study, beside the 
 usual reception and bedrooms. The fencing- 
 room was an especial attraction to our pug- 
 nacious 0' Sullivan, for 'twas there he could 
 flash away with mimic rapiers the exuberant 
 fighting-power with which he had been so 
 lavishly endowed. He was a good swords- 
 man too, and we had to use eye and wrist to 
 the best of our knowledge and power to hold 
 our own against his rash impetuosity. I had 
 the gloves for my other friends, but always 
 ordered them to be locked up when O'Sullivan 
 was coming, for they were too much for his 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 73 
 
 pbilosopliy. On one occasion in a rally with 
 a tall antagonist, who knew very little about 
 boxing, he was carried away by the enthu- 
 siasm of having something big to hit at, and 
 pounded him about the room most unmerci- 
 fully, firmly believing it was a real, instead 
 of a sham fio^ht. Of course I insisted on his 
 leaving the house, and sending a written 
 apology to my unlucky visitor, but my trusty 
 factotum had strict charge henceforth to put 
 away the gloves as soon as he had shown 
 *' Mr. O'Sullivan " in. We had old-fashioned 
 customs in those days, riding or fencing 
 before breakfast, hard study or stern business 
 -after. The hour for dinner was two, three, or 
 four o'clock, according to convenience. Both 
 at this meal and supper I generally had two 
 or three chance-guests, either intimate friends 
 who knew they would always find a welcome, 
 or men from the country or abroad, bringing 
 
74 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 letters of introduction. The meals were 
 simple, seldom exceeding soup or fish and 
 joint ; a hogshead of the best ale that could 
 be had for love or money was always '' to the 
 fore " and port for our English friends, Bur- 
 gundy for our Frenchmen, Madeira for 
 Indians, and whiskey punch for the O's and 
 Mac's formed the humble list of '' drinks." 
 Thus with alternate chat and billiards, fol- 
 lowed by coffee at 6 or 8, and supper any 
 time between 10 a.m., and 2 p.m., the after- 
 days or nights used to fly past merrily enough. 
 Many and many a time men, over head and 
 ears with business affairs, and with only a 
 few days to stay in London, have come in 
 ostensibly to take a hurried meal with us on 
 promise of being let go directly afterward, 
 and yet if it so chanced that Pierce and the 
 Doctor, or O'Sullivan or William Langdale 
 
WOLFER^ CHACE. 75- 
 
 were of the party, our new acquaintances 
 would forget all about their affairs, and, 
 carried away by the light flow of gaiety and 
 the easy unforced mirth of the hour, would 
 stay on and on, far into the small hours ; and 
 many a staunch and valued friendship has 
 sprung up to grow and last through a life time, 
 whose first seed was sown amongst the wild 
 oats of those long past days. 'Tis a pity one 
 cannot realise the immortal '' Munchaasen's 
 atmosphere into which all the mirth and 
 music of one age might rise and be congealed 
 ready to be thawed into audible sounds for 
 another — but alas ! even the warm breath of 
 memory can only revive a few broken tones, 
 and to attempt to reproduce the crisp spark- 
 ling converse, the quick thrust and retort of 
 repartee, the unforced sally of wit, or the dry 
 fun of humour, would be as hopeless and in 
 
76 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 as bad taste as to offer you a glass of yester- 
 day's champagne. Hence, lest I be tempted 
 to attempt the impossible, let us ring down 
 the curtain over my bachelor-home and ring 
 it up again at " Wolfern Chace." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HILST Pierce and Xoulaiton were 
 busy seeking tlieir philosopher's 
 stone, whilst the debating club men were 
 ransacking metaphysics, science and history 
 for systems and facts, whereby they could 
 " confute, change sides, and still confute ;" 
 whilst my wilder friends were outvying each 
 other in their reckless and roUickino; wine 
 parties, and jeopardising both health and 
 pockets by many foolish doings, life had 
 not absolutely stood still at Wolfern Chace. 
 A country life is not very eventful, but still 
 time comes and goes somewhat like the 
 periodical pedlar, sometimes briuging pretty 
 
78 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 things enough for us, but always claiming 
 full payment in return, and not infrequently 
 robbing us of some of our silver spoons. For 
 the dear young girlies of the house, however, 
 he had the gallantry (or the cunning) to 
 bring dainty ornaments for mind and body, 
 until they were the recognised and undisputed 
 belles of the county, and 'twas beginning to 
 be wondered why they had not been the in- 
 nocent causes of setting a certain other kind 
 of bells ringing. Those who so wondered 
 were chiefly the married ladies, who, as you 
 know, always take a deep interest in their 
 unwedded friends. Shall we men-kind flatter 
 ourselves that it is because the wives, having 
 drawn such good prizes in the lottery of life, 
 are benevolently desirous that their young 
 friends should be equally fortunate and 
 happy, or must we rather confess to the 
 lurking suspicion that our lawful spouses 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 79 
 
 having found out their own mistake in matri- 
 mony, are maliciously scheming to lure all 
 their sex into the same troubled waters? Or 
 is there a medium motive : a mere womanly 
 desire for a change of some, or any kind, 
 whether for better or worse, combined with 
 an intense love of seeino^ '' ducks of weddins; 
 dresses, pets of bonnets and loves of 
 trinkets ? " If I might venture an opinion on 
 so delicate a question, I would infer that 
 Lady Langdale (irrespective of her affec- 
 tionate desire to retain her daughters with 
 her for so long as it could be to their good) 
 acted upon the first motive ; Lady Bland- 
 ville on the second, and Mrs. William Lang- 
 dale on the third. The followino: dialoR-ue 
 between the ladies in question may give 
 some colour to my otherwise impertinent 
 inference. 
 
 " I wonder," said Lady Blandville, "you 
 
80 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 do not bring Caroline and Mildred more into 
 society, my dear, it is really quite a sliame 
 that two such charming girls should run the 
 risk of being married to some country 
 bumpkin." 
 
 " I do not think it either needful or wise 
 at present," replied Lady Langdale. " They 
 are still young, and by no means strong 
 enouQfh to bear the racket of a London life." 
 
 '' But, my dear Lady Langdale, it is most 
 important that girls should see and be seen 
 early. I consider it the highest duty of a 
 mother to secure a good match for her 
 daughters." 
 
 " Not quite the highest, in my opinion. I 
 think some little attention might be spared 
 for their health, high principles and educa- 
 tion." 
 
 " Oh, of course ; but you have done all 
 that a merveille ; every one wonders at your 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 81 
 
 devotion to your daughters ; their ' princi- 
 ples ' they have both by inheritance and ex- 
 ample, and their education is finished." 
 
 '' There also I must differ from you; their 
 instructions are nearly completed, I allow, 
 but their education is only just commencing; 
 and I should prefer having some hand in that 
 myself, rather than leave the whole of so 
 delicate a task to a husband." 
 
 '' You are quite right," said Mrs. Langdale, 
 *' husbands are very unfit for such a task ; 
 they want educating themselves." 
 
 Lady Blandville. — " That is a task Mrs. 
 Langdale has executed most thoroughly." 
 
 " Yes, I flatter myself I have trained mine 
 well, and I think Caroline has a good deal of 
 that tact and decision which enables a woman 
 to take the reins early." 
 
 *' How old is she, dear ? " 
 
 " Only seventeen." 
 
 VOL. I. O 
 
82 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " Ah ! just the age at which I was brought 
 out. It then took me a year to collect a 
 sufficient choice of suitors, and three months 
 more to see which I liked best. Heigh-ho ! 
 I wonder whether I chose the best after all ! 
 He's a dear, good, kind, generous old monster, 
 and loves me hugely. Yes, I think, on the whole, 
 I was right. I almost agree with Lady Blandville 
 that Caroline should make a beginning ; be- 
 sides, a wedding is such fun, and would 
 waken up your dull old country house 
 famously." 
 
 " Fun, my dear sister Langdale, that ends 
 in terrible earnest sometimes. No, I cannot 
 look upon married life as the sole aim of 
 women, nor can I think of it as a mere lottery 
 box, in which a girl must dip her hand to take 
 her chance of a blank or a prize.'' 
 
 " Ah, these are, I believe, the notions of 
 your dear friend, Madame de Genlis. By- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 83 
 
 tlie-bj, what a charming little dedication of 
 her work to you this is ; you ought to be a 
 proud woman, really, for I see Sir John Carr 
 has also immortalised you in a dedication." 
 
 " They are very dear friends, and it is a 
 great pleasure to be remembered." 
 
 *' Have you read either of the works, Lady 
 Blandville ? " enquired Mrs. Langdale. 
 
 " Oh dear, no ! 1 seldom read anything but 
 the ' Morning Post.' 
 
 " Ah, I thought not. Of course you read 
 the ' Births, Deaths, and Marriages ' religi- 
 ously." 
 
 " Well, yes, the marriages always, the 
 births sometimes — the deaths I leave to the 
 old people." 
 
 " You are quite right, it is always the old 
 people who read the deaths in the papers. I 
 shuddered the other morning to see a decrepit, 
 tottering man, with scarce a tooth in his head, 
 
84 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 peering eagerly through his spectacles at what 
 the dreadful monster called the ' Dead List,' 
 and chuckling with a weak, palsied chuckle 
 when he saw the name of a former acquain- 
 tance." 
 
 '' Possibly he was merely congratulating 
 himself that his own name was not in the 
 list. But to return to m}^ point ; you know 
 I'm very pertinacious, my dear ; but seriously, 
 you must let Caroline and Mildred, or, better 
 still, one at a time come and stay with me, and 
 I'll find a good husband for her, if there's one 
 left." 
 
 " Thank you, dear Lady Blandville. You 
 have been so fortunate in your own case, that 
 it would not be reasonable to expect an equal 
 good fortune in another." 
 
 "Had her there," thought Mrs. Langdale, 
 but she only innocently enquired, "How is 
 j^oor Sir George's gout, dear?" 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 85 
 
 " Oh, verj bad indeed, very bad, and it 
 makes his temper so unendurable that I send 
 him to his club, as much as possible." 
 
 " He did not take you to Bath for the 
 gva.ndfete?'^ said Lady Langdale. 
 
 '' Wellj no, the fact was, vre knew all the 
 common folk would be flocking down, and 
 that we should be mobbed." 
 
 " Ah, that was rather a pity ; Fallington 
 tells us it was a most brilliant time there. 
 How do you like your new carriage 
 horses ?" 
 
 " Well, a — a — Sir George was very stupid 
 and obstinate in that matter, and wliilst he 
 was trying to get them for twenty guineas 
 less than the fellow demanded, some one else 
 was impertinent enough to buy them." 
 
 This little innocent cross-examination by 
 the two sisters-in-law had the desired effect 
 of checking Lady Blandville's pertinacity, 
 
86 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 and sliortlj afterwards the ladies dispersed 
 to dress for dinner. 
 
 It was a custom with Sir Geoffrey, when at 
 the Chace, to meet his guests at breakfast, 
 luncheon and dinner, but for all the inter- 
 mediate hours he took leave to follow his own 
 pursuits, whether in the field, the woods, the 
 laboratory or the study. 
 
 Any who took interest in such pursuits 
 were fully welcome to join him in whatsoever 
 was the occupation of the day or season, but 
 the mere idlers who cared for no greater feat 
 than that of killing time by passing from one 
 kind of amusement to another, he left to the 
 ladies and their own devices, simply taking 
 care that ample change of amusement was 
 always at hand for them. This enabled him 
 to extend hospitality to the aforesaid idlers 
 without being bored by them in return, and 
 to get, almost imperceptibly, through a large 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 87 
 
 amount of work, botli official, literary, and 
 scientific ; moreover, it gave tlie freshness of 
 reunion when each and all again met at table. 
 
 It is perfectly marvellous to reflect how 
 often, by what is called " standing on cere- 
 mony," men entirely defeat the real object of 
 society, and turn that which ought to be a 
 refreshment and a stimulant into an intoler- 
 able wearines to the flesh. 
 
 I think it was in the Italian dungeons that 
 they used the horrible torture of chaining 
 incongruous men together, but here, there 
 and everywhere you may see men chained to- 
 gether by ceremony until they hate each 
 other with an almost deadly hatred. This was 
 happily avoided at Wolfern Chace, so that 
 the busy and the idle kept apart, or came 
 together with a fine interchange of toleration. 
 
 Gilbert, as was natural to his age, had a 
 strong leaning for the lighter amusements, 
 
88 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 especially outdoor and athletic ; but partly by 
 inheritance, and partly by example, he had 
 already a wholesome contempt for the mere 
 frittering away of life, and an enthusiastic 
 and intelligent interest in all Sir Geoffrey's 
 varied doings. The variety of them was an 
 especial charm to a young receptive mind, 
 because, not straining it too long and wearily 
 in one direction. The intellectual contact with 
 many different classes of men gave a certain 
 piquancy to the " gatherings " at the Chace; 
 the representative men of science, literature, 
 art and drama were deftly mingled, or alter- 
 nated with statesmen, soldiers, lawyers, 
 divines and dandies. 
 
 The dinner of to-day comprised only the 
 last four — Colonel Falconer, Sir George, the 
 Rev. Thomas Maxwell and Fallington. 
 
 Caroline and Gilbert, although caring 
 very little for the grander affairs, were 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 89 
 
 well pleased to join this, and, incongruous as 
 tlie guests seemed, it ^as a bright little 
 party. 
 
 When the ladies retired, the men drew 
 together to discuss the events of the war, the 
 law, the Church, the neighbourhood, and the 
 heau-monde. Sir Geoffrey led off, touching 
 the Colonel's key-note. Bonaparte was then 
 a name at whose sound the English mane 
 stood up instantly, and to ask a soldier what 
 were the next probable successes of that mar- 
 vellous child of Fortune was a species of goad 
 to the most phlegmatic ; hence, to our hot 
 Colonel, 'twas like spark to gunpowder, and 
 produced a rapid explosion. 
 
 "Do, sir ! " he exclaimed, " what will he 
 not do ? Europe's far too small a place to 
 hold such a big little man. He'll go next 
 and pull the great Khan of Tartary by the 
 beard, and put out the brother of the Sun 
 
90 WOLFEEN CHACR. 
 
 and Moon in China, in order to put another 
 brother of his own in her place." 
 
 " I don't think he's got another brother to 
 spare," said Sir Geoffrey, " I think they have 
 all got thrones already." 
 
 " Ah, well, he'll make one;, he seems able 
 to create anything." 
 
 ''Yes, after first destroying everything," 
 said Dr. Maxwell. 
 
 " Destruction must precede creation, sir," 
 retorted the Colonel. 
 
 " Not always," said Sir George. " You are 
 aware that the creation of laws preceded 
 the destruction of justice." 
 
 " You would not hear your enemies say 
 so," observed Dr. Maxwell. 
 
 " No, we lawyers always slander ourselves 
 to prevent others from slandering us." 
 
 " Yes, like setting fire to the prairie before 
 you, to arrest the fire that is coming after," 
 said the Colonel. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 91 
 
 '' H'm ! ratlier a "svarm simile, and pain- 
 fully suggestive of a hotter one," said Gilbert 
 aside to Fallingrton. 
 
 '' Oh, never mind — however warm it may 
 be, trust Sir George for taking it coolly," re- 
 plied Fallington, '' but," he continued, aloud, 
 to the Colonel, " do you think jN^apoleon will 
 again attempt the invasion of England?" 
 
 " Of course he will — but he won't tell you 
 when — nor any one else for that matter ; the 
 secret of that man's success is that he puts 
 large confidence in his marshals, but does not 
 make confidants of them." 
 
 Dr. Maxwell. — " A fine distinction. Colonel; 
 he takes others' counsel and keeps his own." 
 
 Sir Geoffrey. — " Yes, he is rather good at 
 taking and keeping most things ; he is a fair 
 judge of pictures, for example, and thinks a 
 central world-museum in Paris will be for 
 the benefit of mankind." 
 
 Sir George. — " If his taste was merely for 
 
^92 WOLFERN OHACE. 
 
 pictures I tliink we, in England, might be 
 safe." 
 
 Sir Geoffrey. — " There is no artist here to- 
 day, happily for you. Sir George, or he would 
 infallibly paint your portrait in revenge." 
 
 Sir George. — '' Thank you, very much ! 
 Would that be so terrible a revenge ? " 
 
 Sir Geoffrey. — *' He would be able to make 
 it so, because the handsomest face is spoilt 
 by a cynical expression, but we must not 
 cross swords even in jest in the presence of a 
 common foe." 
 
 Colonel. — " A very uncommon foe, Sir 
 Geoffrey, in my opinion. An Attila, an instru- 
 ment, I believe, in the hands of a Divine 
 Providence." 
 
 " Permit me humbly to differ from you 
 there," said Dr. Maxwell. " It would show 
 little divinity in Providence to use such an 
 instrument." 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 9S 
 
 '' On a point of divinity we must, of 
 course, yield to the Cliurcli; but bad as the 
 fellow is, I believe lie has his use in knocking 
 down and burning up old rotten effete 
 systems of war and government; and even 
 if we ourselves have to pass through the fiery 
 ordeal, it will serve us right for clinging to 
 corruption and shutting our eyes and ears to 
 the needs of modern war." 
 
 Sir George. — " You talk very coolly about 
 passing through the fiery ordeal. You surely 
 don't, eh — you cannot seriously mean that 
 the attempt at invasion will be renewed." 
 
 Colonel.— '' Why not? The whole of 
 Europe is now at the feet of Xapoleon; he 
 has just given back a bit of it to Austria in 
 exchange for a wife, and seems inclined to 
 share the remainder with Alexander, most 
 probably in exchange for that romantic 
 potentate's daughter." 
 
94 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Sir Geoffrey. — " Wellesley's counter attack 
 in the Peninsula will go far to avert inva- 
 sion." 
 
 Colonel. — " Not if it ends in more 
 Cintras and exchanges of generals three times 
 in a day." 
 
 Dr. Maxwell.—" But our fleet, Colonel ! " 
 
 Colonel. — " Aye ! excellent ! unrivalled ! 
 but it is possible for fleets to be dispersed by 
 storms, or enticed away cunningly as ours 
 would havebeen if Yilleneuve andGantheaume 
 had used their wits instead of losing their 
 courage, and then what is to prevent the 
 crossing and landing of his splendidly- 
 handled veteran troops, and what have we to 
 oppose them ? Raw yokels from the plough 
 — plethoric shopkeepers, and nimble counter- 
 skippers, with an aristocratic infusion of 
 lawyers' and bankers' clerks as a contingent. 
 Pretty fellows these in their way, and useful — 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 95 
 
 in tlieir several vocations — but soldiers ? 
 Bah ! mere food for powder ?" 
 
 Dr. Maxwell. — " Might I presume to sug- 
 gest. Colonel Falconer^ that if the country is 
 in peril, England may surely expect her tried 
 and experienced officers like yourself to warn 
 her of her danger and aid her when it comes." 
 
 Colonel. — " England expects nothing of 
 the kind, sir. Warnings are looked upon as 
 unpardonable impertinences until danger 
 comes; and feather-bed officers smother the 
 veterans. When the foe is absolutely at our 
 doors my sword will again be at the service of 
 my country ; till then, she does not want me, 
 and shall not have me." 
 
 Sir Geoffrey. — '' Are not your views a little 
 too extreme, almost eccentric, dear Falconer?" 
 
 Colonel. — " My dear Sir Geoffrey, I glory 
 in the term; and I am proud to think that we 
 six men sitting round your hospitable board 
 
96 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 this evening are all eccentric. In a nation of 
 fools and knaves eccentricity means wisdom 
 and lionesty. An ordinary ' common-sense' 
 man would be a liigiily eccentric being in a 
 commonwealth of monkeys, and would stand 
 a chance of being nearly as badly treated as a 
 genius is amongst men." 
 
 Sir Geoffrey. — " But I do not pretend to 
 be a genius ! What is my eccentricity ? " 
 
 Colonel. — *' Why, you have devoted ten 
 years of your life, and half your fortune to 
 confer an immense boon on agriculture, and 
 the farmers mistake you for a fool." 
 
 Sir George. — " And mine ? " 
 
 Colonel. — '' You have dipped deeply into 
 science as well as law, and the bar makes the 
 same mistake in your case. Whilst our 
 reverend friend, Maxwell, daring to have the 
 courage of his opinions, bars himself from a 
 bishopric by his eccentricity." 
 
WOLFEEX CHACE. 97 
 
 Gilbert. — '' I hope I'm too young to have 
 that unenviable distinction." 
 
 Colonel. — " Not a bit. You have ventured 
 to write from the inspiration of your own 
 heart rather than give feeble echoes of what 
 was dinned into your ears at college, and you 
 know too well what the critics say of you. 
 Mr. FalHngton's eccentricity sits upon 
 him with an easier grace ; being chiefly ex- 
 ternal he can change it whenever he pleases 
 for one of another fashion. But come. Sir 
 Geoffrey, I must keep up my character with 
 Lady Langdale by moving an adjournment to 
 the drawing-room." 
 
 The ladies meantime had renewed their 
 discussion of the morning (much against 
 Lady Langdale' s wish) in presence of 
 Caroline and Mildred. Lady Blandville 
 could not make any better way with the girls- 
 than with their mother, and doubtless gave 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 them up in her heart of hearts as a pair of 
 impracticables. To Caroline's already won 
 affections any temptations that society might 
 otherwise have had were wholly powerless, 
 and to Mildred's sensitive pride the mere 
 suspicion of being trotted out in the matri- 
 monial market was simply revolting. So 
 they quickly took refuge from the proposals 
 in music, and avoided discord by harmony. 
 When the gentlemen entered the drawing- 
 room Mr. Fallington attached himself to 
 Caroline, and in a considerably less languid 
 voice than usual, said — 
 
 " Miss Langdale, we have been discussing 
 the chances of an invasion, and I've been 
 thinking what a delightful thing it would be 
 to have some one we loved to defend." 
 
 *' Have you not a mother, Mr. Falling- 
 ton ? " 
 
 " Oh, ah ! Yes, of course— but I didn't 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 99 
 
 mean tliat — you see she belono^s to my father 
 — not to me." 
 
 "Well, no, I did not suppose she belonged 
 to you. Mothers are not generally considered 
 the property of their children." 
 
 " I meant some one that one loved very 
 much." 
 
 " Flattering to your mother very." 
 
 "And that loved one very much in return," 
 said Fallington, not heeding the interruption. 
 
 "Is that a riddle? " said Caroline, "because 
 if so, I am a bad guesser, and must give it up." 
 
 " Women are all riddles — they ought to be 
 able to guess them." 
 
 " How ! Can a riddle guess itself ? What 
 a clever riddle it would be." 
 
 " Suppose I were a riddle, would you try 
 and guess me ? " 
 
 " I ' guess not,' as our American friends 
 would say." 
 
100 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 *' Suppose you were a riddle, would you 
 let me guess you ? " 
 
 " You would be sure to guess wrong, and 
 have to guess again." 
 
 " You are, indeed, a sphinx. Miss Langdale, 
 but can't you sympathize with me in having 
 nothing to love and no one that loves me?" 
 
 " Then self-love is not mutual, I suppose, 
 Mr. Fallington?" said Caroline, innocently. 
 
 *' Ah, but I want to love some one besides 
 myself." 
 
 " Well, perhaps you might be able, if you 
 tried very hard, but you would run the risk 
 of being nearly beside yourself if you 
 succeeded." 
 
 "Why? " 
 
 " Because love is either like genius, a 
 long madness, or like anger, a short one." 
 
 " Should I rouse your anger if I confessed 
 to such madness ? " 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 101 
 
 " I should much, prefer a lucid interval." 
 *' Ah, Miss Langdale, you are too cruel. 
 I need not seek to defend any one else, for I 
 can't defend myself against your arrows." 
 " Oh ! I only shoot folly as it flies." 
 " Folly is a very foolish bird to come 
 within range of your shot. I'll go and see if 
 your sister is less severe." 
 
 With a somewhat offended air in his bow, 
 he crossed to the piano at which Mildred was 
 sitting, having just completed one of those 
 brilliant pieces of music that enables every 
 one to talk quite unreservedly during its 
 performance. Fallington of course com- 
 plimented the young lady on her execution, 
 style, and taste, and this he was able to do 
 with the greatest sincerity, not having 
 listened to a single passage. Meantime Lady 
 Blandville had attacked Caroline, and cross- 
 examined her closely as to what Mr. Fallington 
 
102 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 had been saying to lier and why he had gone 
 away. 
 
 Caroline laughingly replied to her questioner, 
 
 " Oh, he only wanted some one to love 
 and defend in case these dreadful French try 
 to invade us again." 
 
 " Indeed ! my dear, did he tell you this ? " 
 
 '' Yes, and a good deal more than this ! 
 and he has told me a great deal like it before ! " 
 
 " Upon my word. Miss Caroline, you have 
 reason to be proud of your conquest." 
 
 " Have I ? But it is not made yet ; it is 
 only a possible invasion at present." 
 
 " Ah, but it means that you have made a 
 conquest of a very possible invader." 
 
 '' Quite unintentional, I assure you." 
 
 " Oh, young ladies, never should have 
 any intentions until the gentlemen declare 
 theirs." 
 
 Caroline did not consider it necessary to 
 
TVOLFEEN CHACE. 108 
 
 explain tliat whatever intentions the gentle- 
 man might declare, the lady would maintain 
 her own, and happily at this moment Mr. 
 Fallington had persuaded Mildred to sing a 
 ballad, which she did in a clear, fresh young 
 voice, with a grace and finish that enchanted 
 that fickle young gentleman. Looking at her 
 with a rapt attention during the song, the 
 delicate charm of her voice, and the Hebe- 
 like beauty of her face and figure began to 
 work a counter-spell on his easily-moved 
 heart. The words of the song touched his 
 present key-note; for in those days the words 
 of a song were considered of some slight 
 importance to the general effect, and they 
 were not therefore smothered under an 
 avalanche of music. It was a long, quaint 
 old legend, which had been written by 
 Gilbert to please her, and to which she her- 
 self had set a simple accompaniment — 
 
104 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " Sir Roland loved a Saxon maid 
 Gentle and fair to see, 
 But the King had called for Roland's aid 
 To his wars in Normandie. 
 
 *' Sir Roland said, * what e'er befals, 
 To my King I will be leal, 
 And love must wait when loyalty calls,' 
 For he was true as steel. 
 
 " The fight was fought, the fight was won, 
 The Knight sailed back with speed, 
 But a traitor Baron a deed had done, 
 A foul and cruel deed. 
 
 " With ruthless hand at dead of night 
 Her grandsire old he slew, 
 Then seized the maid and took to flight 
 With his lawless robber crew. 
 
 *' But a serf had marked the robbers* track, 
 
 And traced them to their lair, 
 So when Sir Roland hastened back 
 The faithful serf was there. 
 
 " There in the home deserted, lorn, 
 He spake swift words and blunt, 
 Saying * Sir Knight to-morrow mom 
 The Baron goes to hunt. 
 
 " ' If thou and threescore men, brave knight, 
 Well mounted, clad in mail, 
 Will ride with me till morning light 
 Thou canst him then assail. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 105 
 
 " ' Hid in a wood, near by the gate 
 Await thy traitor foe, 
 And if thy hate is like my hate 
 He'll need no second blow.' 
 
 " So said, so done, by early morn 
 Sir Roland waited there, 
 And when the Baron wound his horn, 
 Sprang from his leafy lair. 
 
 " With shouts and cries in fierce melee, 
 With crashing lance and brand, 
 Back thro' the gates in savage fray 
 Was driven the robber band. 
 
 " The maiden looked from her eyrie tower, 
 And uttered a joyful cry. 
 To see the Baron fall and cower, 
 And her Roland's sword flash high. 
 
 " There's the ring of a spur on the turret stair, 
 There's the crash of an iron hasp. 
 There's a joy has entered in place of despair 
 To hold her in loving clasp." 
 
 When tlie song ended, Fallington showered 
 rose-leaf compliments on the fair singer, and 
 said — 
 
 " I often wish we lived in those heroic 
 days. How delightful it must have been to 
 rescue one's lady-love." 
 
106 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 " Yerj inspiriting for the knights, but 
 scarcely so delightful for the ladies. Suppos- 
 ing some dreadful ogre of a Baron from the 
 next county were to come to-night, and put 
 me on a ''nightmare" and carry me away to a 
 very cold castle, I should not like it at all." 
 
 " But you would have a score of Sir 
 Rolands galloping up next morning to rescue 
 
 you." 
 
 *' Well, even that would be inconvenient, 
 because I could only marry one of my 
 deliverers ; so that after they had killed the 
 bad Baron, I fear they would have to kill 
 each other to determine who should have me." 
 
 " The best man would be sure to win." 
 
 *' The biggest and strongest would, but 
 suppose the lady had no liking for the biggest 
 and strongest, I think it would be rather hard 
 that she should be obliged to have him." 
 
 *' None but the brave deserve the fair." 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 107 
 
 " No great bravery for a strong, thick- 
 headed giant, who could carry dreadfully 
 heavy armour and wield a lance and a sword 
 of portentous length to poke weaker knights 
 off their horses, with a stolid grin at their 
 higher but hopeless courage. The bravery 
 was always with the weakest in those days, 
 as it often is in these." 
 
 " In our present wars your reproach does 
 not hold good." 
 
 " Well, I grant you that now the big men 
 do have an opportunity of distinguishing 
 themselves, because they offer a larger mark." 
 
 "A distinguished opportunity which sharp- 
 shooters avail themselves of very freely." 
 
 '' But even in these times size and strength 
 can take an unfair advantage. For example, 
 my father's eldest brother, when a cornet in 
 a cavalry regiment, had conceived a great 
 dislike to a small officer, and being a man of 
 
108 WOLFERN CHACR. 
 
 almost fabulous power, he, at a sliam fight, 
 rode up to tlie object of his enmity, and 
 seizing him by his belt, lifted him out of the 
 saddle, and literally 'held him up to ridicule,' 
 by riding with him thus sprawling in the air, 
 and finally dropping him into the arms, and 
 almost on to the bayonets, of the pretended 
 foe." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! JSFext to the pleasure of 
 executing such a masterly stratagem oneself, 
 would have been that of seeing it." 
 
 " For shame. You men always pretend to 
 take the weaker side in a quarrel, and yet 
 you always really do take the strongest. Now, 
 although I could not help laughing when 
 papa first told me this, we always pitied the 
 small officer." 
 
 " Pity is akin to love ; could you have 
 loved him, too ?" 
 
 " H — m, no ! and that makes the matter 
 
WOLFERN CHAOE. 109 
 
 more cruel. I'm afraid we never love a man 
 when he is once laughed at." 
 
 '' Present company always excepted, I 
 hope." 
 
 '' What do you mean ? " 
 
 " Why, you and your sister are always 
 laughing at me, you know." 
 
 " I shall do so again, if you give me such 
 a fair opportunity ; but let us revert to your 
 wish for the old chivalric days. Don't you 
 think the armour would have hurt you a 
 great deal ? You often say you don't like to 
 be hurt." 
 
 " Oh, I would have had it made to fit me 
 splendidly. Don't you think a man looks 
 very well in armour ? " 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! I wonder whether amongst 
 the armourers there was a kind of grim 
 Stultz to whom tlie dandy warriors resorted 
 for a ' perfect fit ? ' But how cold it must 
 
110 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 have been in winter, and how very hot in 
 summer; just fancy galloping about on a 
 monstrous rough-paced waggon-horse under 
 the full blaze of a July sun, knocking 
 violently with spear or sword at an iron- 
 plated warrior, and being knocked about 
 most unmercifully in turn." 
 
 " "Well, when you put it in that way, it 
 doesn't look so pleasant as at first sight, but 
 then it gave a man a chance of showing his 
 gallantry by wearing his lady's glove in his 
 helmet." 
 
 '* What an interesting collection of gloves 
 you would have made, Mr. Fallington." 
 
 '' I should have been proud of one only — if 
 I could have had your hand in it." 
 
 " I should have had much pleasure in 
 giving it to you; for one dance in an evening." 
 
 *' But would there have been any heart in 
 it?" 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. Ill 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Fallington, we do not carry our 
 hearts in our hands ; that would be an odd 
 trick." 
 
 " But you would not object to diamonds 
 on your fingers ? " 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! that's following suit very 
 cleverly, but I think you must have used a 
 spade and dug deeply for those diamonds." 
 
 " No, you inspire me with wit by the 
 brightness of another pair of diamonds." 
 
 " Meaning my eyes, of course ; very pretty, 
 but the simile is not quite original, and not 
 exactly to the purpose. Clubs were trumps 
 you know ; ' arms and the man.' " 
 
 " Let us drop the clubs." 
 
 '' Oh, by all means, but I thought you men 
 were so fond of them." 
 
 *' So we are, but we are fonder of the 
 ladies." 
 
 "Ah, 'fond' means 'foolish' in that case." 
 
112 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 *' Would you think me foolish if I were 
 fond of you ? " 
 
 *' 'Thought is free,' Mr. Fallington; but you 
 will think me so if T allow you to talk any 
 more nonsense. We have been playing with 
 cards in one way ; let us go and watch the 
 players in another." 
 
 With a slightly impatient toss of her head,. 
 Mildred moved across, so as to sit within 
 sight and hearing of her mother, who had 
 taken a hand at whist, and Fallington, being 
 thus baffled from pursuing the subject farther, 
 shortly afterwards joined Gilbert and the 
 Colonel in the billiard-room, feeling rather 
 like a shuttlecock sent to and fro between 
 two battledores. 
 
 Caroline, of course, with her love for 
 Pierce, felt a very sincere contempt for the 
 young exquisite. To Mildred, whose affec- 
 tions had not deepened into those of woman- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 113 
 
 hood, he was simply indiffereot, and yet the 
 poor fellow was passing through a diflScult 
 crisis of his life. Hitherto he had been quite 
 content to admire women, and love himself; 
 but now, drawn by a subtle attraction like a 
 moth to flame, he had fluttered about and 
 displayed bis fine wings to these two young 
 beauties until those fine wings were visibly 
 singed. He could have flirted and coquetted 
 with mere belles of the ball-room for several 
 seasons with perfect safety, but he did not 
 calculate the powerful, because wholly un- 
 conscious, fascination exercised by pure 
 young girlhood in its place of power " Home." 
 
 The simple graces of the daily life, the un- 
 forced gaiety, the unstudied play of the 
 affections, to a man accustomed only to arti- 
 ficial society, opens a new and enchanting 
 view of the possibilities of life which is 
 charming alike from its novelty and f reshness, 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 He feels like one of the inliabitants of some 
 distant planet, in which all was either frigid 
 coldness or fierce glare, suddenly permitted 
 to enter a sphere where everything is softened 
 and toned, where the frigid coldness is 
 thawed by sunny sympathies, and the fierce 
 glare moderated to a genial warmth. This 
 had stimulated within him the craving to love 
 and be loved by something higher than him- 
 self ; but the desire acting upon a fickle 
 nature, rendered still more inconstant by 
 habit, bewildered rather than ennobled it. 
 The same crisis in life comes to all men, but 
 with different influences on different char- 
 acters : to the man of chivalric honour, of 
 singleness of heart, of stability of purpose, 
 love sounds a clarion that rouses every latent 
 nobleness, exalts and intensifies every dormant 
 power ; but to the selfish it is more like the 
 twanging of an overstrung fiddle, producing 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 115 
 
 a restless uneasiness, from which the sufferer 
 makes frantic but weakUng efforts to escape. 
 The mere star-huntinsf instinct, which had 
 been hitherto alike his weakness and his 
 strength, forsook him at this conjuncture, 
 and left him wholly at the mercy of Cupid, a 
 god more capricious than the man himself. 
 
 After a sino-le o;ame of billiards, the three 
 men returned to the drawing-room, and 
 meantime the whist players had finished their 
 game and had prevailed on Sir Geoffrey to 
 sing some of their favourite old songs from 
 Herrick and Suckling, one of which, '' "^^hy 
 so pale and wan, young lover," was painfully 
 apposite to Fallington's present condition. 
 
 Sir Geoffrey's voice was a rich mellow 
 baritone, and possessed that singular charm 
 of expressing, with the clearest and most 
 bell-like truth, the genial natiire of the man 
 himself. It did not seem to come from either 
 
116 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 his head or his chest, but freshly and directly 
 from his heart ; the voice was simply the 
 *' uttered " man. In the grand old bacchana- 
 lian and hunting choruses of those days, or 
 in the half-bantering, half-tender love songs, 
 mirth and pathos were rendered with a grace 
 so perfect, that the smiles and tears of the 
 audience were felt to lie very closely together 
 by all who had any music in their souls, and 
 even the dullest and longest ears were pricked 
 up with an unwonted pleasure. 
 
 '' When forced from dear Hebe to go " was 
 another arrow all unconsciously shot at the 
 hapless lover, for on the morrow he was re- 
 turning to town, after a week's stay at the 
 Chace. Hence, in desperation, gathering 
 his wits together, he diplomatically ingra- 
 tiated himself with Mrs. Langdale so success^ 
 fully as to obtain from that lady a promise to 
 invite her nieces to London in order that 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 117 
 
 they miglit be present at the Guards' ball ; 
 fully determining that if he could once get 
 them to London, he would lay such a series 
 of bright pleasures at their feet as must pro- 
 cure him some kindness and favour in re- 
 turn. 
 
 An old tactician in such matters, having 
 planned and carried out similar campaigns 
 with a score of ''stars" in succession, his 
 spirits began to rise again after obtaining this 
 promise. Mrs. Langdale, although by no 
 means such an inveterate match-maker as Lady 
 Blandville, did not feel wholly insensible to 
 the excitement of being accessory to a probable 
 alliance for one of her two nieces, and being 
 besides still young and gay enough to enjoy 
 even girlish pleasure, she had not the slightest 
 objection to join demurely, and, of course, 
 ■quite unconsciously, in the little plot; 
 Fallington, equally of course, urging the 
 
118 WOLFEKN CHACE. 
 
 arrangement as the only means a baclielor 
 tad of returning tlie courteous hospitalities of 
 his friends at the Chace. 
 
 Transparent disguises these to the keen- 
 eyed Lady Blandville, who felt a most 
 natural and womanly anger to see the wind 
 taken out of her sails by her " dear friend." 
 
 Mrs. Langdale prevailed with her sister- 
 in-law next morning to let the girls go up 
 with her for a week or two, and Fallington, 
 thereupon, was in a seventh heaven of de- 
 light. 
 
CHAPTER ly. 
 
 LANGDALE HOUSE. 
 
 AiN^Y and bright had been our young' 
 girls' visits to the quaint capacious 
 house in Broad Street ; gloomy enough it 
 looked outside, with its smoke-begrimed red 
 bricks, its formidable spiked railings, and 
 ancient torch-extinguisher on either side of 
 the door- way, but when you once passed into 
 that door- way, however thoroughly your torch 
 of expectation had been extinguished outside, 
 it was quickly relighted within. 
 
 The softest and richest of carpets gave a 
 velvet silence to the footsteps, and the 
 mellowed light of wax candles shone plea- 
 
120 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 santly on dark oak carving and panels, tlie 
 latter partially concealed by choice pictures 
 in massive gold frames. The oak balustrades 
 and chimney pieces were marvels of quaint 
 art, from the hand of Grinling Gibbons, and 
 the old-fashioned furniture and heavy curtains 
 gave an air of repose and cosiness to every 
 room in the house ; to which, in winter time, 
 large bright fires in all the bedrooms put the 
 finishing touch. 
 
 The comfort of lady guests was zealously 
 attended to by a staid, but most kind-hearted 
 old housekeeper, whilst an old butler and an 
 old footman, carefully foresaw and quickly 
 supplied all the needs of the men visitors. 
 
 These may seem trivial matters of record, 
 but any one who has had the misfortune to 
 be a guest in a house where the servants are 
 inattentive and wholly indifferent to his com- 
 fort, will appreciate this passing tribute to the 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 121 
 
 *' antique ser\dce of the olden time." The 
 butler, Perkins, considered himself privileged 
 to imitate afar-off his master's humour and 
 love of practical jokes, and seconded his most 
 absurd assertions ^ith a gravity that would 
 have done honour to Punch's dog Toby ; 
 indeed, he vras considerablv hke that immortal 
 animal, with the same expression of pensive 
 fun in the eyes, and the same combination of 
 dignity and impudence in the mouth and 
 nose ; the same alacrity in pretending to 
 snap and snarl, and the same thoroughly 
 kindly and faithful heart under all these droll 
 outward appearances. He had assisted to 
 play off many a little hoax, even on the 
 favoured young ladies from the Chace, when 
 they were young ; but his greatest delight 
 seemed to be when his master astounded into 
 blank dismay some of the schoolboy visitants. 
 Sometimes after these unlucky youngsters 
 
122 WOLFEBN CHACE. 
 
 had been glorying in the expectation of a 
 play for the evening, William Langdale would 
 call out in stentorian tones, when Perkins 
 brought in the wine at dinner — 
 
 " Perkins, did you tell me Covent Garden 
 will be closed this evening?" whereupon 
 Perkius, taking up his cue, would reply — 
 
 "Yes, sir, John Kemble's took seriously 
 ill, sir, and Joe Grimaldi's broke his leg, sir/' 
 
 " Dear, dear, what a pity boys!" would 
 then exclaim the master of the house, and 
 down would drop knives and forks from 
 Charlie's and Harry's hands, and down would 
 drop also the corners of the mouths, and wide 
 open would go their surprised and disappointed 
 eyes at the sudden crushing of their hopes of 
 a "jolly play." 
 
 When master and man had enjoyed the 
 thorough discomfiture of the " young rascals " 
 long euough, William Langdale would fumble 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 123 
 
 in his pockets and deliberately put out the 
 tickets, with an '' Ah, well, Ann, I see it's all 
 right, our tickets are for Drury Lane." 
 
 Sometimes these arch-plotters against boyish 
 felicity would severally bring in and receive 
 letters of sudden recall to home or school for 
 one or all of them just on the eve of a 
 juvenile ball, or pretend that their dress-suits 
 had not been packed in their portmanteaux, or 
 had been sent to the tailor's and not come 
 back. Refined tortures these, but never 
 suffered to last too long, and always 
 generously healed by some after-pleasure. 
 Dear, kindly -hearted tormeutor ! I have 
 known him often carry a youngster on his 
 great shoulder through the crush into the pit 
 rather than let him be disappointed of the 
 play, even though he had more than once lost 
 his watch in doing so. 
 
 For the elder striplings approaching man- 
 
124 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 liood, subtler and more merciless practical 
 jokes were in store, especially if they made 
 tliemselves fair game by prio^gish or dandified 
 airs. In these plots the confederates secured 
 an ally in the person of a bright-witted, 
 twinkling-eyed housemaid, who, with deft 
 fingers, would sew up the tails or sleeves of 
 Mr. Dandy's dress coat, or the legs of his 
 immaculate pantaloons, or change his spot- 
 less shirt and cravats for the huge garments 
 of the same kind belono^ino^ to William Lano:- 
 dale ; then, when by reason of some or all of 
 these notable devices, our flurried and hurried 
 dandy was too late for dinner, Perkins was 
 all alert to add to his distress by ringing the 
 dinner bell at as short and rapid intervals as 
 the minute guns at sea, and by sending 
 John, James, and Mary, one after another to 
 knock at his door and tell him that dinner 
 was on the table and waiting for him. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 125^ 
 
 Descending thus, hot and excited, and looking 
 very sheepish, he was, of course, eyed 
 critically by William Langdale, with a look 
 that spoke as audibly as a tongue, '' Well, 
 young gentleman, you haven't made much of 
 your toilet, though you've taken a good while 
 to do it." 
 
 Then for the unwary, another torture was 
 in preparation. Perkins would bring in and 
 place round on the floor champagne glasses of 
 portentous length, standing, indeed, nearly as 
 high as the table, whereupon William Lang- 
 dale would address his young friend with an 
 " Ah ! Mr. Somerset, you have not seen my 
 new champagne glasses before, I think." 
 '* Well, no, sir ! " would reply our dandy, 
 " don't think I've had that pleasure." 
 
 " Ah, well, you shall convince yourself of 
 the importance of drinking champagne out 
 of long glasses. You will find the aroma of 
 
126 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 the wine much finer. The poet says that 
 ' Man wants but little here below, nor wants 
 that little long,' but I dispute this assertion 
 in toto. A man wants a good deal of cham- 
 pagne to counteract the real, and a long glass 
 is evidently a lengthened enjoyment. Perkins, 
 fill Mr. Somerset's glass." 
 
 The grave Perkins empties half a bottle 
 into our friend's glass, and the other half into 
 his master's, who, with a twinkle in his eye, 
 challenges his guest with — 
 
 " A bumper and no heel taps, Somerset." 
 
 Poor Somerset, knowing that he has 
 angered his host by his lateness, endeavours 
 now to retrieve his character by complying 
 with the challenge literally, to which he is 
 the more inclined, being thirsty with his 
 flurry. 
 
 Charming up to a certain point ! The wine 
 is as delicious as nectar ; but alas, a fatal 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 127 
 
 turning-point is passed, and the Brobdigna- 
 gian glass, once elevated above the level, 
 pours a sudden cataract of hissing, fizzing 
 wine into the unlucky victim's waistcoat. 
 
 Perkins's gravity is portentous and wholly 
 irresistible, but when the inevitable laughter 
 has subsided, Mrs. Langdale exclaims, from 
 the head of the table — 
 
 '' For shame, William; you ought to have 
 known that Mr. Somerset could not drink so 
 deeply as you." 
 
 ''My dear," retorts William, "Mr. Somerset 
 is a much deeper person than you imagine. 
 There is nothing in the whole range of ac- 
 complishments, from pitch-and-toss to man- 
 slaughter, in which he is not an adept — a 
 Crichton, a veritable Crichton, I assure 
 jou." 
 
 Meantime the poor, uncomfortably-moist 
 fop (who had been boring his host for a long 
 
128 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 hour with a flow of brag) sat looking rue- 
 fully down at his shirt-frill and spoilt waist- 
 coat, much more like a drowned rat than a 
 Crichton, and mentally resolved that he would 
 save up his brag in future for his fond mother 
 and admiring sisters. 
 
 Of course, practical jokes are "low," 
 "vulgar," ''bad form," &c., &c., but in those 
 old rough days, when wielded by a man of 
 genuine humour, and sound, penetrating 
 judgment, they were a useful, though sharp, 
 corrective to many of the surface -follies of 
 younger men. 
 
 Mr. Langdale did not, however, escape the 
 usual penalty of reprisals, from foeman 
 worthy of his steel, for Fallington, who had 
 more than once been victimised by his con- 
 federates, revenged his friend Somerset's 
 wrongs (and his own) rather cleverly. 
 
 A day or two after the girls had arrived 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 129 
 
 with Mrs. Langdale from the Chace. he won 
 their connivance and aid for a mild hoax in 
 this wise : — He and they both knew well Mr. 
 Langdale' s horror of strong, masculine 
 women, and hence it was plotted that Falling- 
 ton, who was great at masqueing, should dress 
 himself carefully in a loud and pronounced 
 feminine costume, and demand to see the 
 master of the house on urgent private busi- 
 ness. 
 
 So planned, so done ; the faithful Perkins 
 was spirited out of the way, and James bribed 
 to sustain the jest. The lady was shown 
 into the study, and Mr. Langdale glared at 
 the unwelcome visitant from under his great 
 shaggy eyebrows with uneasy eyes. Falling- 
 ton carried out his part a merveiUei and held 
 the gentle monster fascinated by a long and 
 carefully-prepared story, which, growing 
 gradually more and more emotional, was 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 climaxed bjtlie supposed ladjrising fromlier 
 chair and advancing, with an attempt to kiss 
 her victim. 
 
 In a paroxysm of fear and rage, he 
 shouted — 
 
 '' Keep off, you nasty beast ; don't yoa 
 know I'm a married man ? I'll knock you 
 down if you come another step." And then, 
 in still louder tones, he shouted — '^ Here ! hi ! 
 Ann ! Perkins ! James ! here's a mad woman 
 in the house wants to kiss me." 
 
 Fallinofton fluno^ his wio^ and bonnet hio^h 
 into the air at this signal triumph, and Mrs. 
 Langdale and her nieces, throwing wide the 
 door, through which they had been peeping, 
 the tables were thoroughly turned uj)on 
 Langdale, for that day at least. 
 
 The Guards' ball was a great success. 
 Fallington's brother-officers almost mobbed 
 him to know who the young beauties were 
 
WOLFE RX CHACE. 131 
 
 "witli wliom lie danced so mucli, and seemed 
 so intimate. 
 
 Their Royal Highnesses also, two of whom 
 were present, paid them marked attention. 
 Of course, Fallington took care to keep the 
 lion's share of the dances for himself, and 
 when he did introduce other partners, they 
 were not quite the handsomest nor the most 
 brilliant of his comrades. This was very 
 selhsh, but perhaps not wholly unnatural. 
 
 Mrs. Langd'ale had that magnificent power 
 of enjoyment which makes life a succession 
 of festivals. 
 
 In her early prime, surrounded by every- 
 thing that heart could desire, possessing a 
 most winning face and manner and a perfect 
 figure, being withal a graceful dancer and a 
 brilliant talker, it would, indeed, have been 
 singular if she had not enjoyed her life gene- 
 rally, and a Guards' ball in particular. 
 
132 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Some of tlie Guardsmen had at this time 
 taken the tone of, " We of the tenth doo't 
 dance," and one of these was overheard by 
 Mrs. Langdale replying to a friend, who 
 wished to introduce him to her, by saying with 
 a dandified air — 
 
 " Oh ! aw ! trot her out ; which is she ? '* 
 
 The friend indicated which lady it was, 
 and brought him up to ask her hand for the 
 next dance. 
 
 Mrs. Langdale measured him from head to 
 foot through her eye-glass with a critical smile, 
 and said — 
 
 " No ! no, thank you ! Trot him back again, 
 won't do." 
 
 Whereupon the discomfited " Man of the 
 Tenth " retreated, looking slightly foolish. 
 Must we confess that Caroline, despite her 
 constancy to Pierce, also enjoyed the even- 
 ing with a considerable amount of abandon 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 133 
 
 that even surprised herself; she suffered for 
 this afterwards, for the next day's headache 
 had some heartache in it also. For Mildred, 
 lier first grand ball, it had happiness without 
 regrets, and when William Langdale teased 
 her next morning at breakfast-time about her 
 partners, she saucily confessed that Mr. Fal- 
 lington danced very well and was not quite 
 so silly as usual. 
 
 This was quite enough of the thin edge of 
 the wedge for that inveterate tease, who 
 forthwith bantered her into merry blushes 
 during the remainder of the day. 
 
 For the next evenino: Fallino^ton had 
 secured a box at Covent Garden to see Mrs. 
 Sid dons, as "Lady Macbeth," with a new aspi- 
 rant for dramatic fame, named Liston, as 
 "Hamlet." This, again, was one of the joys of 
 Fallington's life — to be seen by a brilliantly- 
 filled house enacting the cavalier to two of 
 
134 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 the most beautiful girls and tlie most stylish 
 woman of the season. 
 
 But one man's Heaven was another's 
 Hades. The pit to poor Pierce on that even- 
 ing was a veritable pit of Acheron, for, as ill- 
 luck would have it, 'twas the same memor- 
 able night when 0' Sullivan had got him into 
 that sudden brawl, and just as Caroline 
 entered the box with her party, the melee was 
 at its fiercest. She recognised Pierce in- 
 stantly as a prominent actor in what seemed 
 to her eyes a most disgraceful scene, and per- 
 haps a man never looks to greater disadvan- 
 tage than in the heat and passion of a wild 
 row. 
 
 Pierce, unfortunately, even in the midst of 
 this absurd combat, saw Caroline enter, and 
 knew that he had been seen. 
 
 Caroline was intensely mortified to think 
 that one she looked on as a preux chevalier 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 135 
 
 as gentle as brave, should thus have de- 
 meaned himself in public, and her mortifica- 
 tion slowly changed to anger as she brooded 
 over the matter, making her very ungracious 
 to Fallington, and the few friends he brought 
 to present to the ladies. 
 
 The play, too, was a lamentable failure, for 
 poor Listen, who had been most oddly con- 
 sumed with an ambition to shine in tragedy, 
 was so preposterously, dismally-ridiculous in 
 the part of" Hamlet," that the audience began to 
 titter in various parts of the house, and as the 
 comic, melancholic countenance began to play 
 with involuntary grimace at the " Poor 
 Yorick" soliloquy, the tittering spread and 
 spread until it culminated in a roar of 
 laughter. 
 
 Mrs. Siddons, in a mistaken kindness, had 
 been over-persuaded to give the young 
 aspirant a chance, but, at the conclusion of 
 
T O 
 
 36 WOLFEKN CHACE. 
 
 the play (altliougli, of course, greatly an- 
 noyed), she could hardly keep her own 
 countenance Avhilst saying, in her grand, 
 tragic manner — 
 
 " Young man, never play tragedy more ! 
 Your forte is comedy ! " 
 
 And "comedy" it was, indeed, of the 
 richest kind, as the tens of thousands who, 
 since those days, saw that same Liston in 
 *' Paul Pry," will amjDly remember. 
 
 An eventful evening this, both before and 
 behind the curtain ; a great artist had made 
 a great mistake in his vocation. Pierce had 
 made a greater mistake in a friend, and was 
 himself most cruelly mistaken in turn by 
 Caroline. 
 
CHAPTER y. 
 
 AROLINE pleaded headache next 
 morning, and kept her room till late 
 in the day, commenting bitterly on the 
 events of yesterday evening, and alternately 
 upbraiding and excusing Pierce. 
 
 " Can he," she thought '' have sunk into a 
 mere reckless reveller, a half- tipsy brawler ? 
 he whom I remember (ah, too well) as the 
 gentlest, kindest of all our friends, with a 
 power of self-restraint and self-command that 
 no aggravation could move — can this be ? 
 
 '' Poor fellow ! how dull his life must be, 
 and what a hopeless will-o'-the-wisp he is 
 <jhasing. Perhaps he should be excused for 
 
138 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 now and then forgetting bis hard fate in some 
 kind of excitement ! But a vulgar fight in a 
 theatre, where every one would see and 
 recognise him. Oh, this is too bad ! Pierce, 
 Pierce, how could you lower yourself to 
 this ? " 
 
 If Pierce could have heard this question 
 asked, he could have answered it frankly, 
 and all would have been well, but he had been 
 awkwardly disfigured in the fray ; a heavy 
 blow on the lip had caused a grotesque 
 swelling, that gave him an inconvenient like- 
 ness to the pig-faced lady who was then the 
 favourite monstrosity in town. Hence, 
 although Mrs. Langdale had given Noulaiton 
 and himself invitations for the musical even- 
 ing which followed the ball and the play, the 
 unlucky fellow was obliged to send a refusal, 
 and stay (abusing his stars) in his laboratory, 
 whilst la belle Caroline was feeling more pes- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 139 
 
 tered than ever with Falliugton's attentions. 
 She was at last driven to seek a slight relief 
 from his pertinacity by patronising his 
 shadow, young Somerset. Her wit had a 
 good deal of bitterness in it this evening, so 
 she had not the slightest compunction in join- 
 ing William Langdale in a hearty flagellation 
 of this young shadow of a shade. He was so 
 thickly padded with vanity, that she knew 
 the sharpest lash could only cause a whole- 
 some twinge. 
 
 One is sometimes exercised with the ques- 
 tion why vapid young fops like this should 
 have a continuous existence in this stern 
 work-a-day world of ours, but here is a 
 glimmer of an answer to the question. They 
 exist as whipping-tops, or as the stuffed 
 dummies that are set up in the likeness of 
 a man on the archery ground, for those who 
 are so minded to shoot at. The beauty of 
 
140 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 the otherwise missiDg link in the creation is 
 manifest in the unconscious grace with which 
 the dummy strikes an attitude, and assumes 
 a perennial simper of self-satisfaction, how- 
 ever hard it may be hit, and maintains the 
 same vacant or haughty stare as one after 
 another of the arrows go "thud, thud" at its 
 heart or its head. 
 
 William Langdale, as usual, was intensely 
 droll and quaint; he had a terrible gift for 
 parody, and as the love songs of that day had 
 a good deal of meretricious sentiment in them, 
 they were fair game for his humour in this 
 respect. Mrs. Langdale used to scold him 
 for this, so that it was his custom to find a 
 good and appreciative listener like Caroline, 
 and make running comments — sotto voce — 
 upon these gushing songs. He was a born 
 actor, and could have made his fortune on 
 the stage, had it not been already made on 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 141 
 
 'CliaDge ; and the clever mimicry wliich he 
 could execute in dumb show behind the 
 backs of his unconscious victims was irre- 
 sistibly comic ; hence the evening passed over 
 Caroline's head less heavily than she had 
 feared. Mrs. Langdale had again yielded to 
 Fallington's masterly stratagems, and con- 
 sented to make up a party on the following 
 evening for Yauxhall, which was then a 
 fashionable resort during the early part of 
 the evening, and did not turn the men into 
 beasts till after midnight. The party was to 
 consist of Mr. and ]\Irs. Langdale and the two 
 girls ; Fallington and Somerset were to dine 
 at their club, and meet them at the entrance 
 to the garden. But we will leave these young- 
 rakes for a time to the pleasures of gaiety, 
 and take a passing glance at the quiet life of 
 Wolfern Chace. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 lUGUSTUS AYEXEL,thestout, florid 
 flowing orator of our debating club, 
 was the only married man of that 
 set, and as the Yankees would say, he was 
 " very much married " indeed. His better 
 half was, in point of size, nearly his better 
 three-quarters. A stern commanding matron, 
 whose nose, if it had belonged to one of 
 Wellin (y ton's officers instead of to Mr. 
 Augustus Ayenel's spouse, would have been 
 as satisfactory to that astute commander as it 
 was to Mr. AuQfustus Avenel himself. 
 Younger men used to speak of her irreverently 
 as the Roman Matron. She affected a some- 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 143 
 
 what severe classicism in costume, and being^ 
 gaunt and straiglit in figure, and guiltless of 
 stays, I am ashamed to say that the old 
 nautical simile of " a purser's shirt on a hand- 
 spike " was occasionally applied to this large 
 and estimable lady. 0' Sullivan, who of 
 course could not e^en make a simile without 
 making a blunder also, used to say that " she 
 was a man-of-war, and Avenel her tender," 
 and asserted roundly that when they walked 
 out together, she always threw him a tow 
 rope in the shape of a large pocket-hand- 
 kerchief. The simile was not altogether a 
 bad one, for he was a rounded, tubby, Dutch- 
 built craft, with something of a roll in his 
 gait ; whilst she sailed along high out of 
 the water, with a figure-head that would 
 have been invaluable for a fiofhtinof friofate. 
 Another of that wild Irishman's assertions 
 was, that whenever Augustus wanted to kiss 
 
144 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 his wife, he had to stand on a chair to ac- 
 complish that connubial duty. Happily they 
 had the good taste not to walk out together 
 more than was absolutely necessary, and I do 
 not believe 0' Sullivan or any one else ever 
 saw the " Tender " salute his " Frigate " in 
 public. 
 
 By one of those freaks of Nature, that do 
 sometimes occur in the best regulated 
 families, Mrs. Avenel had inherited the 
 lioness's share of size in hers ; for her 
 younger sister was rather petite^ and very 
 pretty ; so different were the two women, 
 that it was a matter of strong doubt with 
 many of us as to whether one or the other 
 had not been changed at nurse. 0' Sullivan 
 said both, but we did not seem to see any 
 necessity for that extreme hypothesis. Pro- 
 bably it may have been merely a chance, 
 like the law of primogeniture, that makes 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 145 
 
 the eldest son a monster, and leaves tlie 
 younger ones mannikins. Be that as it may, 
 Emily Hardacre was as charmingly feminine 
 as her sister was sternly masculine, and to 
 her attractions it was that Mr. Augustus 
 Avenel owed the immunity from the merciless 
 chaffing he would otherwise have received at 
 our hands. To the fair Emily also was 
 attributable our willingness to stroll out to 
 the genteel (painfully genteel) suburb, and 
 dine with the Frigate in her square dry- dock of 
 a prim villa. This ^T.lla, with its two trees in 
 the front garden, standing stiff and starchily 
 on either side of the door (like perpetual 
 mutes waiting for their own funeral), had its 
 parallelogram of a walled-in garden behind, 
 of the exact breadth of the villa itself, and 
 mathematically cut off, like a big ribbon, at 
 three times its breadth. A stuffy little green- 
 yard, rather than a garden, with a few 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 dislievelled and despondent trees, a mangy 
 grass-plat, and some unwholesome shrubs 
 struggling weakly one against another for 
 an undesirable and joyless existence. Mr. 
 Augustus Avenel was the most gushingly 
 hospitable man (in words) that I ever re- 
 member to have known. Meet him in the 
 street, and he would beam all over his fine 
 florid face, until it seemed literally to shine 
 with the oil of gladness, and you yourself 
 would be overwhelmed, and your two hands 
 would be seized with the most touching re- 
 proaches that — 
 
 " You never come to lunch with me at 
 my chambers. When will you come and dine 
 with us at Grange Villa ? What a ceremo- 
 nious fellow you are. Why do you want 
 asking?" and other tender adjurations to the 
 same effect. Goaded, perchance, into saying 
 you would dine with him next Wednesday, 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 147 
 
 out would come a pocket-book as big as a 
 baby-portfolio ; and with a theatrical start, 
 after consulting it, he would say — 
 
 " By Jove, how unlucky — have to read a 
 paper at the S. A.'s, you know ; by the way, 
 I'll send you a card for that evening, and we 
 can fix a day there and then;" then with 
 another, but rather less genial, shake of the 
 hand, away would roll our gushing friend, 
 until he disappeared in the surging, restless 
 crowd of London streets. 
 
 But the Roman Matron had taken a o-rim 
 likiug to Pierce, and authoritatively com- 
 manded her plump husband to invite that 
 young gentleman to dinner on a certain day 
 with the after-purpose of making a quartett 
 for Yauxhall. Pierce's face was still dis- 
 figured, but although he naturally did not 
 care to show himself to Caroline, he had not 
 the slightest compunction in facing the world 
 
148 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 in company with the Avenels, and truth to 
 say, in his present doleful condition, he was 
 not sorry for the change of thought that a 
 little mild and harmless flirtation with the 
 fair Emil}^ would afford ; so the little dinner 
 came off, and that young lady was most 
 piquantly and charmingly dressed for the 
 occasion. 'Twas a pity that this could not be 
 predicated of the dinner, also; which consisted 
 of gravy soup, a la dishwater, w^ ell-peppered; 
 brill, a la turbot, with a truly ancient and 
 fish-like smell; a venerable old hen (done 
 to death by murderous bands), and a saddle 
 of mutton, which by its elastic toughness 
 suggested riding rather than eating. 
 
 The lady of the house did fair justice to 
 the previous viands, but ber^zecec?e resistance 
 was evidently a vast globular plum-pudding- 
 of solid and substantial structure; for this 
 cjhe displayed quite a mathematical appetite^ 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 149 
 
 and after assistiog those wlio cared to partici- 
 pate in the delicacy, she sate at the head of 
 her table abstractedly cutting off slices and 
 conveying them to her plate (en route for her 
 mouth) as if she were attempting to solve 
 the difficult problems of squaring the circle or 
 extracting the cube root. 
 
 But, throuo-h all the courses, the florid host 
 glowed and shone with more oil of gladness 
 than ever, and frequently led back the con- 
 versation to the choice vintages of his (un- 
 mitigated old gooseberry) champagne, his dry 
 sherry (from the cask of a neighbouring 
 publican, and sinner), and his "comet" port 
 from the same suburban tap. In a fit of 
 fervent enthusiasm as to this last wine, he was 
 rash enough to have it in in the black bottle, 
 and make a great display about decanting it 
 himself. Xow, although the worthy Boniface 
 round the comer (knowing his cue) had 
 
150 WOLFEKN CHACE. 
 
 drawn it into a well-cobwebbed bottle, and 
 put an old deep-coloured cork in it, the little 
 ruse was defeated after all ; for on the cork 
 being drawn with due care and ceremony, a 
 perky, cheerful, little house-fly jumped 
 merrily out of the neck of the bottle, doubt- 
 less rejoicing greatly at its regained liberty. 
 Poor Avenel was staggered for a few 
 minutes, but speedily regained his presence 
 of mind, and held forth uj)on the possibilities 
 of spontaneous generation, development of 
 ova, &c., &c., in the elaboration of which in- 
 genius theories Pierce, of course, assisted, 
 and '' out-Heroded" him. 
 
 But anon coffee, and then the greengrocer's 
 fly, with the red-nosed, shabby-genteel coach- 
 man, in white Berlin gloves and rusty hat, 
 was announced by the hot and flustered maid- 
 servant, and away went the Avenels in grand 
 style to Yauxhall. Of course destiny decrees 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 151 
 
 that when it is most undesirable for lovers to 
 meet, they do meet, and hence it was equally 
 of course, that in the throng Pierce and 
 Emily were separated (not, perhaps, altogether 
 unwillingly) from the Avenels, and that at 
 the moment when Caroline and her party met 
 these two imprudent young people, the lady 
 was in rather a pretty terror at the crowd, 
 and Mr. Pierce was earnestly reassuring her, 
 and smiling at her fears. 
 
 It would be an insult to your understand- 
 ing to attempt to portray in words poor 
 Caroline's feelings at this encounter, or 
 Pierce's wild mortification at the flashing 
 glance of her sorrowful eyes. G-iven the two 
 lovers and this circumstance, and the whole 
 problem resolves itself into one of those in- 
 exorable Rule-of-Three sums of which " X" is 
 the product; meaning an "unknown quantity" 
 of misery. 
 
li 
 
 ■a 
 
 i 
 1 
 
 J 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OW hideous glare and noise and 
 buffoonery seem when the heart is 
 aching with a great sorrow. How 
 hollow and empty the shallow laughter of the 
 men and women amongst whom one is thrown 
 in a place of public entertainment. Enter- 
 tainment ! the very word jars upon the ear as 
 if uttered by a mocking fiend. That coarse, 
 loud band ; those wretchedly bedaubed 
 clowns and inane pantaloon ; that tin- 
 crowned king and queen in tawdry finery ; 
 those wretched actors shamming a ghastly 
 merriment, or tearing passion to tatters ; 
 this an *' entertainment" ? These gritty walks 
 
WOLFERiV CHACE. 153 
 
 and dust-smothered trees ; gew-gaw lamps 
 diffusing everywhere a bad light and a worse 
 odour; snaky rockets rushing to their own 
 extinction ; these brutalized men and painted, 
 foul-mouthed women — is it from such a 
 medley of hideousness, noise and confusion 
 that one can expect entertainment ? No ! 
 but when a man is desperate, it is sometimes 
 in such places that, for his passing frenzy, he 
 finds a passing relief. 
 
 Caroline and her party of course retired 
 very early from the gardens and returned 
 to one of those charmingly bright little 
 suppers at Langdale House for which the 
 lady of that house was so celebrated; 
 but Pierce, after seeing Emily to the Avenel's 
 carriage, returned to the gardens, feeling 
 that it would be equally impossible to make 
 himself even decently agreeable to that 
 young lady, or to go to his own home with 
 
154 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 any likelihood of sleep. He had the painful 
 consciousness that for the last two hours he 
 had uttered the most incoherent rubbish, 
 alternated with fits of gloomy and distrait 
 silence ; and the restraint of having this fair 
 young girl hanging on his arm during that 
 time had well-nigh driven him crazy. He 
 saw Caroline's eyes everywhere, and fancied 
 that she and Fallington were dogging his 
 footsteps wherever he went. With this 
 insane notion growing steadily upon him, he 
 would ever and anon turn fiercely round upon 
 whoever chanced to be behind, until poor 
 Emily was at last really, and with good cause 
 terrified at the prospect of a quarrel. She 
 was, for once, heartily glad to find her sister 
 and brother-in-law once more, and meekly 
 suggested that she was very tired, and would 
 be glad to go home ; but the stern Roman 
 Matron pooh-poohed the idea of anybody^ 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 155 
 
 being tired, and evidently meant that the 
 gentlemen should propose a supper in one of 
 those gaudy, blotchily-painted boxes sacred 
 to lobster-salad, miraculous ham, and head- 
 achy punch. Alas, poor Pierce ! his cup of 
 misery was as full as his bowl of punch, for 
 the Langdale party, on their retreat, passed 
 by the open den where he and the Avenels 
 were thus supping in public. Fallington 
 honoured him with a haughty nod (which 
 Pierce did not see). Somerset took a long 
 vacuous stare at Emily through his eye- 
 glass ; Mildred and Mrs. Langdale could 
 neither of them repress a smile at the Roman 
 Matron and her rotund spouse, and William 
 Langdale did not try ; but accompanied his 
 recognition of Pierce with a gigantic grin. 
 Caroline flushed angrily, and looked away, 
 but not before her eyes had again hastily 
 flashed scorn at him. He felt his own face 
 
156 WOLFERN CHACR. 
 
 flush in turn, and then go as suddenly deadly 
 pale — but, with a strong effort, he broke into 
 a painful laugh, and forced up to the surface a 
 spasmodic merriment that was painful to wit- 
 ness. Poor Emily, who, I incline to think, 
 had had a growdng kindness for Pierce, was 
 thoroughly disabused and affronted, and even 
 the Eoman Matron was conscious of a vague 
 sense of offended dignity, and haughtily 
 vetoed the proposition for another bowl of 
 punch. Left therefore to himself, was it to 
 be won dered at that Pierce, like an uneasy 
 spirit, wandered vaguely and cynically amidst 
 the crowds of noisy roysterers, now made 
 noisier by the *' fast " men from the closing 
 theatres — a veritable Mephistophelian striv- 
 ino^ to smother and fors^et his own self-scorn in 
 a more bitter, mocking scorn of man. 
 
 Does the Fiend really endow those who ac- 
 cept his hideous creed of hatred and contempt 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 157 
 
 with a supernatural vision whilst under his 
 influence ? or did Pierce merely imagine that 
 he could at a glance dive into the inmost 
 thoughts and ruling passions of the groups of 
 revellers as he wandered like a o^host amono-st 
 them ? Certain it was, he seemed to himself 
 to know as vividly what was passing in their 
 minds as if death or the devil had suddenly 
 unmasked them. Ghouls, satyrs, fauns 
 and wanton nymphs howled and grinned, 
 danced and leered around him, until the solid 
 earth seemed to reel, and the very air grew 
 foul and stiflino^ : a burnino^ thirst seized 
 him, and he drank recklessly of some liquid, 
 he neither knew nor cared, what ; for a 
 time this intensified still more vividly the 
 morbid insio^ht from which he was sufferinof, 
 and the faces around seemed so sharp and 
 distinct in their varied hideousness, that for 
 years afterwards they haunted him in his 
 
158 WOLFEEN" CHACE. 
 
 dreams ; but at last, just as the pure, cool 
 dawn sent its first sweet holy light to scare 
 away the gibbering ghosts from their fevered 
 night-orgies, faces, forms, groups became 
 blurred and mingled in bewildering confusion, 
 and the sights and sounds of the night 
 faded into an empty silence, through which 
 he was gazing on a scowling, haggard face, 
 bearing a fiendish resemblance to his own. 
 It was his own. Mechanically, he had passed 
 away from the gardens with the throng, and re- 
 o^ained his still darkened chamber in a wakinsf 
 dream. The light that he held in his wearied hand 
 threw a ghastly upward shadow on the vision 
 of himself, makiug it look more distorted 
 than it really was. For a long time he gazed 
 at this strange manifestation with the wistful 
 feeling of a sinner probing his own sin ; then, 
 yielding to some instinct, slowly raised the 
 light above his head. As he did so, it brought 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 159 
 
 into view another face; the portrait of his 
 dead mother, who herself had never been 
 more than a vision to him, having died 
 in her full prime and beauty in giving 
 birth to him, her only son. To this lovely 
 vision (with the fervour of a Catholic to his 
 Madonna) it was his daily wont to confess 
 his sins, to vow all his noblest resolutions, 
 and to appeal for help and spiritual mediation. 
 
 Hence, now, with more than usual power, 
 it worked its gentle, purifying influence on his 
 soul ; hatred, contempt, cynicism shrunk 
 away like the other dark things of the night, 
 and left his face marred, indeed, with sad- 
 ness, and pale and worn with the conflict of 
 passions, but calm and human once more. 
 
 Aye, 'tis so, the sainted dead can often re- 
 deem us by a look, if we open our hearts to 
 their loving eyes ; and can speak to us yet, if 
 we will but hear them. Far over the broad 
 
160 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 ocean of eigliteen centuries, high above all 
 hfe, sounds one Voice — 
 
 '' Come unto Me all ye that are weary and 
 heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
 
 And thus Pierce Falconer sought and found 
 rest. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ,IERCE called on me next morning, 
 and, witli tlie innocent frank- 
 ness of his nature, narrated what I have 
 endeavoured to describe, and thankfully 
 accepted my sincere sympathy and advice 
 in this his first serious sorrow and perplexity. 
 Hitherto, through all the darknesses of his 
 outward career, the splendid light of Hope 
 had cheered him ; far off, distant as a star it 
 may be, but still there. 
 
 " But now," he exclaimed, with bitter self- 
 reproach, " my double folly does not bear 
 thinking of ; a brainless idiot, to go brawling 
 in theatres with a wild Irishman, and then to 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
162 WOLrERN CHACE. 
 
 cap the climax by philandering at Yauxliall 
 with a o'irl I do not care two straws about." 
 
 " But why," I replied, " why not write or 
 see Caroline, and tell ber, as frankly as you 
 have told me, the whole circumstances ? " 
 
 '' Impossible, I have not the slightest right 
 to intrude any explanation of my conduct on 
 Miss Langdale. I am nothing to her ; if a 
 word, the merest word, implying the 
 slightest engagement, had passed between us, 
 I might have done so ; but, without this, she 
 would be perfectly justified in receiving any 
 such excuses with a ' Really, Mr. Falconer, I 
 must decline to be your confessor,' and she 
 would say it, too, or something twice as cut- 
 ting. I can just see her proud smile, and the 
 slight, impatient toss of the head with, which, 
 she would strike me dumb." 
 
 " Then there is not even a tacit under- 
 standing between you ? " 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 163 
 
 " Not the sliadow of a shade. Bad as I 
 am, I was not sucli a scoundrel as to attempt 
 to win the love of a girl before seeing a chance 
 of placing her in the position she should 
 have." 
 
 " You do not believe yourself indifferent to 
 her ? " 
 
 "Now, do not think me a conceited fool if 
 I say that I believe she would have loved me 
 when I had proved myself worth loving." 
 
 '' Good ; I can give you so much comfort 
 as to say that I fully share your behef, and, 
 moreover, I flatter myself I can help you out 
 of this slough of despond." 
 
 '' You're a right good friend — but how ? " 
 
 '* Listen ; there's to be a grand scientific 
 lunch at the Chace next week ; an Heredi- 
 tary Grand-Duke, who dabbles a little in 
 science and does not dislike champagne, aod 
 three or four other serene highnesses of 
 
164 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 various degrees of transparency are going 
 down to witness Sir Geoffrey's experiments ; 
 he will therefore want some of us to help 
 entertain the ladies, whilst the learned and 
 solemn pundits are convincing themselves 
 that ' what is, is,' and ' what isn't, isn't.' 
 ]^ow, you and I between us can probably 
 manoeuvre to have at least a quarter of an 
 hour's word-sparring with the two sisters, and 
 in that I will banter you about your two 
 misadventures, and thus give you an oppor- 
 tunity of explaining, without seeming to ex- 
 plain." 
 
 " Excellent ; I only hope my presence of 
 mind won't fail me when I get the chance." 
 
 ** Never say " fail " ; if the word is not 
 French it is still less English. But come, you 
 must shake off this doldrumish mood, or we 
 shall think you're going to follow Listen's lead 
 and enact Hamlet." 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 165 
 
 " Ah ! what a mess he made of it that 
 night." 
 
 '' Not quite so bad as an Irish amateur did 
 once." 
 
 " How was that ? " 
 
 " 'Tis one of 0' Sullivan's stories, so you 
 must take it cum grcino salis — but if you have 
 not heard him tell it, 'twill amuse you. 
 
 " The ambitious aspirant in question was a 
 certain Mr. Larry O'Rourke, who was blest 
 with a good figure, a flexible voice and a 
 melancholy cast of countenance ; with these 
 three qualifications he felt that Destiny had 
 evidently intended him to astound the uni- 
 verse in the part of the Prince of Denmark. 
 In this belief he was sustained and perenni- 
 ally refreshed by the rapturous applause with 
 which his spouting of certain passages were 
 received by his one enthusiastic and admiring 
 friend, Phelim O'More. Phelim's enthusi- 
 
166 WOLFE EN CHACE. 
 
 asm, in turn, was also perennially refreshed 
 by copious tumblers of whiskey-punch, for 
 which the magnanimous O'Rourke grandly 
 paid (or ran in debt, which to an}^ Irishman 
 means the same thing). Well, sir, by dint of 
 blarney, bullying and bribery, the two friends 
 at last prevailed on the manager of the Cork 
 Theatre to give this rising genius the oppor- 
 tunity of distinguishing himself for which he 
 had so long thirsted. 
 
 '' Poor Phelim's patience had nearly got to 
 the end of its tether before the evening 
 arrived, for he was nearly ' Hamleted ' to 
 death by his friend's private rehearsals ; but 
 at last Mr. O'Rourke had the proud satisfac- 
 tion of donning the conventional suit of black 
 cotton-velvet and silk tights, the portent- 
 ous feather, and the ' property ' black rapier. 
 Except that this botheration rapier had a 
 nasty trick of getting between his legs and 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 167 
 
 nearly tumbling liim once or twice into his 
 ' Queen mother's ' lap, the first part of the 
 performance went off pretty well. There 
 was the beefy, provincial ghost, with a sepul- 
 chral voice, and the usual difficulty of dis- 
 appearing as a ghost ought ; whilst a bit of 
 the ramparts well-nigh defied all the efforts 
 of the frantic scene-shifters to dismantle it 
 in time for the next scene ; but for O'ilourke 
 himself, he really was not playing the part 
 badly, and Phelim believed firmly that he was 
 excelling Kemble ' all to nothing.' 
 
 '' That fervent friend had stationed him- 
 self in the very middle of the pit to lead the 
 applause, which he did with an energy that 
 reflected great credit on his heart and 
 hands. 
 
 " When Hamlet came on in the ' Alas- 
 poor- Yorick " scene, alternately looking 
 down on the skull in his hand, as if it were a 
 
168 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 natural curiosity, and anon turning up the 
 T^lntes of his eyes to the drop-scene (accord- 
 ing to the exigencies of the passage), Phelim 
 unfortunately espied a strip of white under- 
 garment making itself gradually more and 
 more visible in the mid-region of the prince's 
 attire, somewhere between doublet and 
 hose. Immediately he began to fidget in his 
 seat, and to cough, and ahem, and wink, 
 with the vain hope of catching Hamlet's eye, 
 as it went up and down ; but all to no pur- 
 pose. On went the soliloquy, and little by 
 little the bit of white puckered itself more 
 prominently out of its black casing. 
 
 " Phelim half raised himself, and uttered in 
 a deep stage whisper — 
 
 " ' Larry.' 
 
 " Still, on went the soliloquy, ' To be, or 
 not to be.' 
 
 " Growing desperate, he stood straight up 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 169 
 
 in tbe midst of the pit, and placing a liand to 
 each side of his mouth, gave voice to a 
 ' Larry ' that perforce drew not only poor 
 Larry's attention, but that of the whole 
 audience, to the speaker. As soon as he had 
 thus caught his friend's eye, he continued 
 with an energetic and most audible sotto voce — 
 
 '' ' There's the laste taste in life of your 
 shirt hanofino; out !' 
 
 " Of course this set the whole house in a roar 
 louder, far, than ever Yorick set the table, and 
 the discomfited prince, with a fine Milesian 
 oath, shied the skull at Phelim and bolted. 
 The skull missed Phelim, but hit a highly 
 irascible compatriot hard by, whereupon the 
 usual free fight ensued ; which probably the 
 male part of the audience enjoyed far better 
 than the play." 
 
 The story extracted a slight, half-hearted 
 laugh from Pierce, which he tried his best to 
 
170 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 make the most of, but I could see the poor 
 fellow was too deeply touched to pass easily 
 into the lighter tone of our accustomed chat, 
 and bethinking me that few things shake off 
 a man's heavy thoughts better than a day 
 with the hounds, I offered him my spare 
 hunter for the morrow's meet of the West 
 Kent pack, to which my brother and myself 
 subscribed. 
 
 That " fetched him," as Uncle Sam has 
 taught us to say, and on the morrow early we 
 rode down to Sutton to breakfast. 'Twas a 
 fine, fresh, crisp morning, and a good night's 
 rest had restored my love-sick friend con- 
 siderably. 
 
 We met several parties of our city friends 
 riding in, with grave and sedate faces, tO' 
 business. As they greeted us, en passant, 
 they looked wistfully, at our scarlet and 
 tops, and snow white cords. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 171 
 
 Two of them fairly gave way to the strong 
 temptation of playing truant, and turned 
 their horses' heads to ride down to Sutton 
 with us, and perhaps see the throw off after- 
 wards. 
 
 One of these — Jack Bishop — was a genial 
 young giant, full of fun and good-tempered 
 mischief; the other, Evan Jones, a "point- 
 device " dandy, and a trifle tempersome, but 
 a right good fellow none the less ; the 
 warmth of his heart condoning thoroughly 
 the warmth of his temper. 
 
 Jones had been at a ball the night before, 
 and as he seemed more touchy than "usual, 
 of course we each had a gird at him as we 
 rode along ; one, attributing his touchiness to 
 having been snubbed by the belle of the 
 room ; another, to a quarrel with his lady- 
 love ; and another, to too much champagne or 
 a lost latch-key. 
 
172 WOLFEKN CHACE. 
 
 "Whilst breakfast was preparing, our point- 
 device friend reclined elegantly on the fusty 
 old sofa, whilst Bishop lolled and lolloped 
 about the room much like a great New- 
 foundland puppy, and for lack of something 
 to do, amused himself with occasionally dig- 
 ging Jones in the ribs with his hunting stock. 
 
 The latter was in no mood for being 
 teased, and somewhat angrily bade his burly 
 friend '' go hang himself," or some other 
 equally polite and incoherent adjuration. 
 But Bishop, having once discovered a really 
 tender place, could not possibly refrain from 
 touching it, until Jones's Welsh blood got too 
 hot for his discretion, and seizing a large 
 mustard pot, full of thinnish mustard, he 
 declared, with considerable energy of lan- 
 guage, that if he were touched again he would 
 fling the contents at his persecutor. 
 
 " Touched again? of course!" said Bishop, 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 173 
 
 and equally of course tlio whole contents of 
 the viscid mass were sent with such good 
 aim that Bishop's broad chest received a 
 yellow fagade, whilst little rivulets of the 
 turbid stream went meandering down vaguely 
 over his huo^e leo^s. 
 
 The varying expressions of surprise, anger 
 and mirth that passed over the giant's face 
 were excessively droll, but Jones had risen 
 up with an angry gesture, and we also rose, 
 fearing a scene ; but with a broad grin, Bishop 
 seized his friend in a close and fraternal 
 embrace, and thus imprinted on him a fac- 
 simile of his own yellow facings. The irre- 
 sistible fun and good temper with which this 
 lex talionis was achieved, nipped the quarrel 
 in the bud, and Jones had the good sense to 
 let all his annoyance explode in the hearty 
 laugh at the ridiculous figures they mutually 
 presented. 
 
174 WOLFEEN CHACB. 
 
 Two buxom cliambermaids were called in 
 to wasli them down as they stood, which task 
 they accomplished with much tittering, and 
 received for their trouble half-a-crown and a 
 kiss, each with equal equanimity. Happily 
 for Pierce, our day afforded one or two other 
 amusing episodes. Of course Bishop and 
 Jones, although not intending to hunt, could 
 not resist the temptation when the view 
 halloo rang in our ears, so away we all went 
 in the exhilarating helter-skelter of the '' gone 
 away," and for a few fields kept well to- 
 gether; but poor Bishop overweighted his 
 horse, who judiciously laid him sprawling in 
 his third ditch, and proceeded after the 
 hounds on his own account. The last we saw 
 of Bishop, therefore, was a dismal figure, 
 hopelessly plodding across a deep ploughed 
 field, with about seven pounds of affec- 
 tionate ''mother-earth" clinging to each boot. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 175 
 
 Jones's horse, being even more rash than 
 its rider, took an eccentric line of his own 
 through a gap in the pollards, which, while 
 admitting fairly the passage of the quadruped, 
 retained the biped in their strong arms in a 
 painful suspense, suggestive of Absolom. 
 
 Pierce caught the horse a few fields off, 
 and hailing a ploughboy, who was standing 
 all agape hard by, said, " Here, boy, take 
 this horse back to yonder wood, and you'll 
 find a smart little gentleman in a green coat, 
 hanging in a tree who'll give you half-a- 
 guinea for your trouble." 
 
 We kept well together, and tolerably well 
 forward through the day, for it was a pleasure 
 to me to see with what fine temper and skill 
 Pierce handled my favourite hunter (one that 
 I didn't lend to many men, you may be sure), 
 and how splendidly the horse seemed to un- 
 derstand, and do his best for, his rider in 
 
176 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 return. One jump is, perhaps, worth a 
 passing record ; 'twas a broad shallow brook, 
 with a double post-and-rail fence on the far 
 side. A large portion of the field funked it, 
 and skirted off right and left, as their fancy 
 led. Some few flew it, at great strain to 
 their horses, and a great many came to grief, 
 and 2:ot a duckino^. Pierce rode his horse 
 down into the brook (seeing a shingly bottom),, 
 and haunched him, with a standing leap, over 
 the double rail, with perfect ease and a very 
 slight expenditure of steel. 
 
 Soon after that we came to a check, and 
 were much amused to see one of the old 
 ** Characters of the Hunt," a man of immense 
 wealth, but even greater shabbiness, ride^ 
 quietly up to an old scarecrow in a ploughed 
 field, take off the hat from the stick, examine 
 it carefully, pull off his own hat and examine 
 that critically, andfinally end his examination- 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 177 
 
 by putting the scarecrow's hat on his own 
 head, and leaving his own hat on the stick. 
 
 After killing our second fox, we rode back 
 through the dusk afternoon with some other 
 men, and dined together at Sutton, where 
 many good rollicking tales of old days were 
 told, and a few hearty songs sung over our 
 punch. Then " boot and saddle," and out 
 we rode into the pleasant crisp air, lighted 
 on our homeward road by a brilliant moon. 
 
 Bishop, who had recovered his horse, and 
 amused himself during the remainder of the 
 day with hunting the huntsmen, dined with 
 us, and was returning homeward in our com- 
 pany. The road being wide and clear, we 
 were riding some five or six abreast, and 
 after a quarter-of-an-hour of foot-pace, had 
 just started into a slinging trot. Our burly 
 friend was outside man, and with his full 
 rolling voice was ringing out a few 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 snatches of an old Jacobite ballad, when 
 his horse made a bad stumble over some- 
 thing on the road side, tried to recover 
 himself, failed, and fell forward with a heavy 
 crash, utterly prone. Poor Bishop, partly 
 unseated by the first stumble and recovery, 
 was thrown, hopelessly, by the final fall. 
 Released from the weight, the horse scrambled 
 on to its legs again, but the man lay motion- 
 less. We wheeled round ; one man caught 
 the horse, and two or three others leapt from 
 their saddles, and tried to raise our friend, 
 when, to our horror, we found he was dead. 
 Alighting on his head, concussion of the 
 brain had killed him as with lightning flashj 
 
 The shock to all, was terrible, but we, who 
 knew the kindly heart that beat beneath that 
 burly form, were stunned with the sudden 
 extinction of its genial light. 
 
 His widowed mother's house (where he 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 179 
 
 chiefly resided) was not far off, and two of 
 
 our party rode on to break the dreadful news 
 
 to the poor lady. Alas for her ! to be 
 
 awakened in the dead of nio:ht to hear of such 
 
 an ending for her only son. Oh, Death, grim 
 
 Death, thou showest thy triumphs o'er thy 
 
 rival, " Life," with hideous distinctness at 
 
 such times ! Alas, poor lady, too agonised 
 
 to weep, too stricken to complain, she sate in 
 
 mute despair, and motioned us to go. As 
 
 Ave retired, our comrades brought the lifeless 
 
 body in, and laid it on a couch ; then her 
 
 grief broke forth in bitter lamentations and 
 
 wild sobs, and a great darkness fell upon her 
 
 soul — 
 
 Miserere Do mine. 
 
 * * * m * 
 
 There is something inexpressibly painful 
 and startling when a comrade plunges head- 
 long into that awful gulf, out of a gay, blithe- 
 
180 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 hearted revel. In battle, in storm and sliip- 
 wreck, aye, even from the huntiDg-field, it 
 seems but natural to leap into eternity. The 
 blood is up, the nerves well strung, the heart 
 full of courage, and a man feels almost exul- 
 tantly defiant of the grim foe ; and yet how 
 startling and strange that leap must be — a 
 leap from this strange bewildering dream, 
 that we dignify by the name of ''life," to the 
 absolute, irrevocable, never-ending real life to 
 which this world is but the vestibule ! A 
 leap out of our passions, our feelings, our 
 temptations, thoughts and actions into the 
 first inevitable " result" of them all. 
 
 Some such thoughts and words passed from 
 one to the other as Pierce and I sat late into 
 the night after this eventful day, conversing, 
 in low tones, upon the strangeness of life, 
 and death, and eternity. Pierce, still half- 
 musing, said — 
 
WOLFEKN CHACE. 181 
 
 ''Does it not seem more wonderful to you that 
 we are, rather than that we shall be? Is not 
 creation more, infinitely more, like a miracle 
 than a restoration to life ? Once possessing 
 ''life;" once endowed with the control over 
 mere material things, and acting through and 
 upon matter, the presumption would rather 
 lie in the impossibility of its death than in the 
 difficulty of its renewal after death.'' 
 
 " The sense of this last difficulty pressed 
 so strongly on the minds of the men of the 
 middle-ages that it produced the idea of pur- 
 gatory." 
 
 " I sometimes think many of us uncon- 
 sciously still hold to that idea of purgatory." 
 
 " ISTot impossible ; a belief often outlives 
 its merely formal renunciation." 
 
 " Dante perhaps helped to perpetuate it 
 more forcibly than the monks." 
 
 " Yes, the poet's religion has a more last- 
 
182 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 ing influence than tlie priest's, because it is 
 more truly Catholic in the widest and noblest 
 sense of that term. There were many grand 
 old divines in the Elizabethan age — but 
 which of them left such a splendid heritage 
 of ' sermons in stones — books in the running 
 brook, and good in everything,' as the poor, 
 and then despised player — Will Shakspeare ? " 
 
 '' Shakspeare evidently believed in pur- 
 gatory." 
 
 ■ " You infer that from the ghost's speech 
 in ' Hamlet,' but I don't think we are quite 
 justified in inferring a poet's own opinions 
 from those he puts into the mouths of his 
 dramatis fersonm^^ 
 
 " "Well, no ! upon reflection that would be 
 unfair, and would tend much to curb the 
 essential freedom of poetic utterances. These, 
 in their allowed boldness, sometimes reveal a 
 half-truth, of which after-minds make a per- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 183 
 
 feet whole ; but, shall I confess, that, how- 
 ever skilfully and kindly you try to lead away 
 my thoughts to lighter themes they will revert 
 to that dread plunge into eternity that we 
 have just seen." 
 
 " You would be wiser not to dwell too long 
 on this theme; 'tis almost too great a strain 
 for mortal thous^ht, but if it has taken such 
 strong hold on you, speak your thoughts 
 freely to me ; it is better to speak, than to 
 brood on such subjects." 
 
 "I would rather ask your thoughts than tell 
 my own. Do you think the 7nindw2LS crushed 
 and extinguished like a torch dashed against 
 the ground, and that it will have to be 
 relighted by the same stupendous power that 
 first created it out of ' nothinof ? ' " 
 
 " I do not often dare to indulge myself 
 with such speculations ; they are intensely 
 fascinating, but I incline to think dangerous. 
 
184 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 as well as useless. It ought to content us to 
 reflect that He, who did create, can re-create, 
 or sustain, as He thinks fit, and it has always 
 seemed to me, that for men to prate about 
 God's doino^s with their absolute * can' or 
 * cannot,' and ' must,' and ' laws,' would be 
 simply ludicrous if it were not also hideously 
 presumptuous." 
 
 '' I grant you that the utmost we can do as 
 to such questions is to form a mere idea, or 
 opinion — partly based on education and train- 
 ing, and partly on individual feeling — but 
 every man who thinks at all must have his 
 idea, and I desire much to hear yours, and 
 compare it with my own." 
 
 '' In that view, if you will accept it, simply 
 quantum valeat, as the mere nebulous light 
 of imagination, rather than the clear star of 
 reason, I will venture to compare ideas with 
 vou." 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 185 
 
 " Is it needful to hold with Dante and the 
 Eomanists the belief in a purgatory, or must 
 we, as the sole alternative, accept the idea of 
 •destruction and re-creation of the soul ? " 
 
 " I do not tbink we are driven to that 
 dilemma. In profound sleep, which is always 
 dreamless, and which we all enjoy sometimes, 
 no one would be hardv enough to sav that the 
 soul is dead : vet it is utterlv without con- 
 ception of time; it has no joy, no sorrow; 
 sees no sun, no moon, no earth, no stars. 
 Those we love with the deepest intensity 
 might die whilst we were in such a sleep, 
 and we should neither know nor mourn — 
 fortune or misfortune might come upon us, 
 •and we should neither rejoice nor grieve. 
 Empires might be conquered — cities burnt — 
 navies wrecked — armies destroyed, and we 
 should '' care for none of these things." Aye, 
 and there are instances of long trances, out 
 
186 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 of wliich the sleepers awake wholly uncon- 
 scious of the lapse of time, which might 
 therefore have been ten centuries as easily as 
 ten days." 
 
 " One might fairly say so — because the 
 mere destruction of the material fibres of the 
 brain, through which the soul has manifested 
 itself in this world, is no indication that the 
 soul itself has perished, any more thau if one 
 were to assert that because the harp strings 
 of the musician are worn out or broken, there- 
 fore the musician himself is dead, or that 
 the music has ceased to exist." 
 
 '' I think the parallel a fair one, because 
 even if we conceive the nerves and fibres of 
 the brain to be as fine as a spider's line, still 
 they are but threads after all ; and the most 
 wonderful combination of the most delicate 
 threads could not move, or think, or enjoy,, 
 or grieve, or feel, or in any way act of them- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 187 
 
 selves. Even the -ZEolian harp needs the 
 wind from heaven to waken it into music." 
 
 " And some such wind from heaven is the 
 soul of man ; a breath from the source of life 
 acting upon these delicate threads and evolving 
 from them all the wondrous and varied music 
 of humanity." 
 
 '' But now to change my question. Should 
 you (like Hamlet) have a greater shrinking 
 from the idea of an intermediate state of 
 dream, or from the long unconscious sleep ? 
 The vagueness and uncertainty of what such 
 dreams might be, must ever (as Shakspeare 
 has so well shown) be terrible shadows, 
 which must give us pause, lest we recklessly 
 rush into that shadowy land ; but although 
 there is more fear in this idea, there is still 
 more awe in that of the uncouscious sleep." 
 
 " I do not think I can hold with youthere» 
 Recollect what unconscious sleep involves, 
 
188 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 tlie annihilation of Time between the last 
 slumber and the awakening. Eeturn (in 
 thought) to the hunting-field of to-day and 
 suppose that either you or I at some rash 
 leap had leapt from life to death ; suppose 
 that the few, who may still love us, had shed 
 their teai-s for us, and in the course of years 
 utterly forgotten us ; and they also die, and 
 their children and their children's children 
 pass over the stage of the world for countless 
 generations — tens of thousands of years ; 
 yet to you or me, when the awakening comes, 
 it would have seemed but like to-morrow's 
 morning ; possibly even more instantaneous 
 still." 
 
 '' It would indeed be a wide leap and a 
 swift." 
 
 '' To pass thus, without conscious interval, 
 from the trivialities of this existence, into 
 the tremendous and henceforth eternal verities 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 189 
 
 of the Future, cannot but inspire men with 
 awe ; but awe is a noble emotion, fear, a mean 
 one. The soul crouches in fear before the 
 idea of a purgatorj, but stands in awe of 
 heaven." 
 
 " True ; hence mj belief that it is wiser to 
 encourao'e ourselves with the hio^her motive 
 of action, rather than scare ourselves with 
 tbe lower." 
 
 " This is a calming thought to sleep upon, 
 whether it be true or no, and so good-night." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FTER the events and the conversation 
 related in the last chapter, Pierce 
 seemed to have acquired a more earnest, and 
 yet more calm, tone of character. The 
 previously all-absorbing passion of his life 
 was less feverish and disturbing, and his 
 self-assumed career was followed with more 
 patience and stability of purpose, and with 
 fewer wild breaks of impatient reaction. 
 
 On the appointed day we rode down together 
 to Wolf ern Chace, to the scientific lunch which 
 to us young folk was a dull affair enough. 
 Foreseeing that it would be so, Sir Geoffrey 
 had only invited Fallington and ourselves to 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 191 
 
 make up a little coterie in the afternoon with 
 Gilbert and his sisters, whilst the learned 
 celebrities were busy in the laboratory or the 
 fields. 
 
 Caroline treated poor Pierce very coldly 
 and haughtily, but I used all my diplomacy, 
 and taking Gilbert and Mildred into my con- 
 fidence, these two entrapped Fallington for 
 archery, whilst I prevailed on Caroline to 
 let Pierce and myself take her for a row on 
 the lake. There and then " oarinof " our 
 little boat lazily along from islet to islet, 
 enjoying the delicious air, the restful gliding 
 motion, and the ever-varying points of 
 view, I led the conversation to the recent 
 visit to London, and made Caroline describe 
 all the doings there, as already related. I 
 noticed that she passed swiftly over with a 
 slight flush and a frown my questions as to 
 Hamlet and Yauxhall, but dwelt long and 
 
192 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 pleaseclly on the brightness and perfection 
 of the arrangements at the Guards' ball. 
 "Whereupon Mr. Pierce took upon himself to 
 flush and lower his brows in turn, and began 
 to pull at his oars so vigorously, that our 
 light craft flew into the middle of the lake. 
 Caroline's great Newfoundland dog, which 
 had been alternately paddling after us, and 
 ranging the islands after birds and rabbits, 
 was left a long way behind ; hence, pre- 
 tending great solicitude about this shaggy 
 monster, I called out to Pierce to rest on his 
 oars, and took advantage of the pause to 
 banter him about his wild Irish friend 
 O'Sullivan, and the pretty Miss Hardacre. 
 This gave him the opportunity of explaining 
 away both the delinquencies, which he did 
 in so simple and straightforward a manner, 
 that no one could have disbelieved him if 
 they had tried. Caroline did not try. I 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 193 
 
 could see the firm-set little mouth gradually 
 parting into a forgiving smile ; the slightly 
 contracted, troubled brow, smoothing over, 
 like the fair calmness of the lake when the 
 rippling wind has ceased ; the eyes softening 
 down, and the wholesome flush of pleasure 
 replacing the hot and intermittent one of 
 anger. This was simply delicious, but des- 
 perately dangerous for Pierce. I think if I 
 had been he, come what might, I must have 
 flung myself at her feet in the boat, and 
 poured out all my passionate love in maddest 
 words ; but, like a noble fellow, he gripped 
 his oars hard, set his teeth together, and 
 only looked one long deep look, full of the 
 most ardent love and wistful tenderness ; 
 and then, with a sigh, as if awakening from 
 a glorious dream, again sent the boat along 
 until the water foamed from her bows. 
 The dog had nearly reached us, and now, when 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
194 WOLFE RN CHACE. 
 
 we went forward, sent up a moan of dis- 
 appointment at being once more left behind ; 
 whereupon Pierce paused till the brute could 
 catch us up ; it had no sooner done so than 
 fearing, I suppose, to be again deserted, it 
 laid its great paws on the side of our little 
 cockleshell, and in endeavouring to leap in, 
 capsized it and turned us all into the water. 
 I could not swim a stroke, but in desperation 
 clung to the boat when I rose, and after some 
 struggling, managed to clamber on to it, and 
 sit astride, heartily thankful, for once, for 
 even a wooden horse without legs. 
 
 Caroline's dress of course so cumbered her, 
 that she was just sinking, but Pierce struck 
 out the instant he saw where she was, and 
 entreating her not to lose courage, sustained 
 her head above water with one hand, 
 whilst striking out with the other. She 
 behaved splendidly ; no screaming, no deadly 
 
WOLFERN" CHACE. 195 
 
 •convulsive grasping, but holding her rescuer 
 lightly with one little hand, and striking out, 
 as best she could, with the other, they were 
 enabled to oar themselves along slowly toward 
 the nearest point of land. This they would 
 have reached with comparatively little danger, 
 but that the brute of a doo^, far from beinof of 
 any use, impeded them in every possible 
 way. Pierce tried to grasp him once or 
 twice to make him help to bear them up, 
 and along, but cumbered as he was, the man 
 was no match for the beast, which easily 
 eluded him, and swimming after his mistress, 
 repeatedly seized her floating dress with his 
 teeth, so as to drag her back. I watched the 
 struggle, in an agony of wretched helplessness, 
 for my reiterated halloas brought no one 
 to their assistance. 
 
 I could have slain that stupid brute of a 
 dog a thousand times over ; but at last, to 
 
196 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 my infinite relief, I saw Pierce had touclied 
 the ground, and in a few seconds more, I 
 saw him take the now fainting girl in his 
 strong arms, and bear her gently to the land. 
 The safety of my two dear friends being thus 
 assured, I began to reflect on the combined 
 absurdity and danger of my own position, for 
 a wind had sprung up, and my wooden horse 
 was beginning to roll in his trot in a peculiarly 
 uncomfortable manner, and was drifting 
 alas ! farther and farther away from the 
 land. My hands and legs were much cramped 
 and my voice so hoarse with useless shoutings 
 that I could not croak much louder than an 
 athletic frog. I watched, therefore, with by 
 no means an unselfish interest, for the signs 
 of returning animation in the lady, well 
 knowing that Pierce would not think of, or 
 care for, the dearest friend in life until 
 Carohne was in assured safety. 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 197 
 
 Tlie suspense seemed long, but at last the 
 dear girl opened her eyes, and although I 
 dare swear the first use she made of them 
 was to look speechless thanks at her deliverer, 
 the second was to see my peril, and I ob- 
 served, by a gesture of her arm, that she was 
 pointing me out to him, and entreating him 
 to go to my rescue also. I quite forgive him 
 for wishing me at the bottom of the lake, 
 just at that supreme height of delicious hap- 
 piness. I taxed him with that wish after- 
 wards, and he evaded rather than denied it ; 
 but whatever his wishes, his acts, were those 
 of a staunch friend, as well as a true lover ; 
 for, spent and exhausted as he was, he ran 
 along the shore till he found another boat, 
 and pulling out to the wreck, rescued the 
 -salvage. 
 
 He was glad enough to resign the oars to 
 me for our homeward voyage, and I made 
 
198 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 what litde reparation I could by sending the 
 boat along to where Caroline was watching 
 for us of course not Am, as fast as my 
 cramped arms could move. 
 
 The meeting again of these two, as we 
 leapt ashore, was charming to see, for in that 
 eventful moment of revival from the mimic 
 death, after, the escape from the actual, the 
 lightning flash of avowed and accepted love 
 had sped upon the whispered word from heart 
 to heart and found its echo ; and then and 
 there, for these two noble young hearts, no 
 harping of angels on golden harps would 
 have been music to compare to those soft 
 half- articulate tones ; no spot on earth so 
 fair as the wooded margin of that lake, no 
 air of '' Arcady the blest" so delicious, no 
 water so sparkling, no sky so blue, no sun so 
 glorious as that which illumed all things with, 
 a rapturous and excelHng beauty ! 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 199 
 
 Poor dupes ! for some sliort space, the 
 enchanter, '' Love," led them hand-in -hand 
 through the garden of Eden, and I ? — I simplj 
 felt myself like the old serpent, condemned to 
 whisper in the ear of Eve's daughters that 
 their destiny is to eat of the fruit of the tree 
 of knowledge, and to know thereby both 
 good and evil things. 
 
 Not that I by any means enacted that 
 part at that time ; on the contrary, I 
 rejoiced in their joy, and would have 
 given half my life to make that joy longer 
 for them. I sent them on to the house, 
 and pulled out again to fetch the other boat ; 
 and saved up my serpentine and disagreeable 
 wisdom for another generation, not caring to 
 burden my own with it. I watched them 
 musingly as they wandered slowly away 
 through their fast fleeting Paradise, and 
 vaguely wondered if a like glimpse of 
 
200 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " Heaven on Earth " would ever be vouch- 
 safed to me. 
 
 Caroline was still weak, and evidently re- 
 quired the support of Pierce's arm round her 
 waist ; they often stopped and turned, pre- 
 tending (the dissemblers) that they were 
 waiting for me to join them. Thus standing, 
 they themselves gave the beauty of young 
 life and love to the already exquisite beauty 
 of that sylvan scene — a scene of wood and 
 lake, and of waving fields of green and golden 
 harvests. The sun was declining, and its 
 dazzling whiteness was beginning to break 
 itself up into gorgeous colours, and to fling 
 rubies and amethysts broadcast over the 
 cloud-islets of the sea of air adorning them 
 thus with orient gems and gold — the first 
 breathings of the dewy air of evening were 
 just perceptible to the senses, descending with 
 the cool freshness so reviving and dehcious 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 201 
 
 after summer heats ; distant music floated 
 like an audible fragrance from the gardens, 
 alternated with occasional splashes of merrilj- 
 rung bells from the distant Abbey. 
 
 The great columns and stems of the forest 
 trees were touched with the spears of light, 
 and shone like burnished gold — whilst other 
 spears and arrows flew far and wide over the 
 fields on to the dark masses of the forest on 
 the horizon, and seemed to set it ablaze 
 with brilliant but unconsuming fire ; aye, 
 even the great prosaic hawthorn bushes 
 seemed dazzHngly alight with the glory of 
 the descending god of day, recalling vididly 
 to the mind that wondrous Bible-scene, when 
 the great leader of Israel hid his face, and 
 listened to the awful Toice. 
 
 The path from the lake, up which they were 
 slowly ascending, faced the west, and thus the 
 all-vivifying light shone upon them as ever 
 
202 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 and anon they turned — with their young 
 hearts newly opened by love, to that other 
 inner light ; the sweetest light possible to us 
 poor mortals. 
 
 Such a sunshine and so fair a scene 
 seemed at once an augury and a foretaste of 
 the higher joys of Heaven. 'Tis pity these 
 bright dreams must be followed by night- 
 mares ; or vanish at the cloudy dawn of a rough 
 matter-of-fact day of cold stern realities ! 
 
 I joined them as they passed into the 
 gardens from the fields, and we all entered 
 the house too:ether. Great was the conster- 
 nation, but greater still the joy of Sir Geoffrey 
 and Lady Langdale, when our little adventure 
 was told, and a fervent " God bless you,. 
 Pierce" came fresh from the hearts of both 
 when they heard how manfully he had saved 
 their loved Caroline. She retired to change 
 her dress and to rest awhile after the strain 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 203 
 
 and fatigue, and Pierce was strongly urged 
 to change his wet clothes also, but declaring 
 that they were now nearly dry, and that he 
 had often been far wetter in a day's hunting, 
 he pooh-poohed the idea of any ill con- 
 sequences from this escapade. With a grace 
 alike simple and sincere, he deprecated the 
 praises and thanks lavished on his part in the 
 matter, asserting (what was indeed most true) 
 that Caroline had shown far more heroism 
 than himself, for if she had yielded to the 
 quick, womanly impulse of blind fear, they 
 must, undoubtedly, both have been drowned. 
 The Serenities and Savants had departed 
 some time ago, so when Caroline was rested, 
 Mildred, Fallington and Gilbert were sum- 
 moned from the drawing-room, where they 
 had been passing the time with music and 
 chat, and we sat down, a little party of eight, 
 to a late dinner, or rather supper, after which 
 
'204 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Pierce and I mounted our liorses, and rode 
 slowly and reluctantly away, lighted on our 
 track by a lovely moon. The younger people, 
 tempted by tliis moonliglit, walked across the 
 park with us, and " one," when we parted, 
 lingered for as long as we could see, on the 
 brow of the hill that commanded a view of 
 our downward road into the valley. To 
 Pierce's imagination, that " one " was the 
 angel of the moonlight, from whose sight he 
 was stooping into a " deep tremendous sea of 
 cloud." For from the valley a silvery white 
 mist had climbed nearly half way up the hill, 
 and after a last regretful wave of the hand, 
 we vanished into it as if we were indeed, this 
 time, hopelessly drowned. 
 
 On our homeward ride. Pierce confided to 
 me wholly and frankly all that I had in great 
 measure surmised ; now breaking out into 
 irrepressible joy and exultation at having 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 205 
 
 won the love of such an angel ; anon giving 
 way to fits of gloomy despair and bitter self- 
 reproach at having dared to think of dragging 
 her down to be the wife of a beggar. 
 
 *' But trust me, old friend," said he. '^ I'm 
 not such a beast as even to think of that ; I 
 don't think she cares for rank or wealth, or 
 she would have married that fool, Fallington, 
 long ago ; yet if I cannot win a fair position 
 in life for her, I'll resign her, even if it kills 
 me to do so." 
 
 *' And her fate ? " I enquired. 
 
 *' Ah, there's the rub ! What selfish brutes 
 men are at their best." 
 
 " Speak for yourself, sir," I retorted. 
 
 *' Well, I am speaking for myself" he 
 rejoined. '' I was only thinking of my life^ 
 What is my life compared to hers — aye, 
 or compared to a day's unhappiness for her ? 
 Look now — this life of mine, about which I 
 
206 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 prate, bas been twice saved — twice, as it 
 were, given back to me ; snatched by a 
 merciful Providence from the jaws of death, 
 and yet I would hold it in my hand and fling 
 it away for ever, if thus I could avert trouble 
 or sorrow from her sweet face." 
 
 " Don't talk nonsense, Pierce ; if you want 
 to avert sorrow from La Belle Caroline, keep 
 your life, man, wield it well and nobly and to 
 good purpose ; strain well at your oar ; the 
 tides have been against you, I grant, but 
 happily, the tides have a pleasant knack of 
 turning, and sometimes a good deal sooner 
 than we looked for ; besides, remember, your 
 life is not your own, it is only a gift in trust 
 to man ; it may, it must, be freely perilled in 
 a great cause, but never flung away in a 
 small one." 
 
 " What cause could be greater or nobler 
 than to save one you loved from sorrow ? " 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 207 
 
 " But I tell you to risk it now ; carelessly or 
 foolislily to waste it^ would bring sorrow, not 
 avert it." 
 
 " Well, well, I must make the best of it, I 
 suppose ; but this slow plodding after some 
 "Will-o'-the-wisp, which I had begun rather to 
 like, seems now simply maddening and in- 
 tolerable." 
 
 " Why, what better career could you have, 
 and in what other so good a chance of rapid 
 fame and wealth ? 
 
 Ah, that's what Xoulaiton preaches ; 
 he, with his eloquent hopefulness and 
 sanguine second-sight, is constantly casting 
 anchor far ahead of our age, and shadowing 
 forth some dreamy possibility on the 
 horizon; but I yearn for something near 
 and tangible to grapple with, and win. 
 Whilst love was but a mere ^4sion I was 
 content to pursue a visionary fortune, but 
 
208 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 now that love is a reality, T must make for- 
 tune a reality also, lest I lose both." 
 
 " You must take Time by the forelock,, 
 then, and compel him to work with you. By 
 the way, why did you let him slip by you 
 this evening without asking Sir Geoffrey's 
 consent ? You could not have had a more 
 favourable time for this all-important ques- 
 tion." 
 
 "Do not laugh at me for a chivalric fool. I 
 was as conscious as you could be that, having 
 just saved his daughter's life, I could not 
 have bad a better chance of assent to my 
 suit, but that very fact sealed my lips. There 
 seemed something mean in any attempt to take 
 advantage of a sudden impulse of gratitude." 
 
 " Good boy ! I'm half ashamed that I over- 
 looked that view of the case." 
 
 " Oh, I dare say I'm over scrupulous ; the 
 poor are always proud, but I don't think 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 209 
 
 it's all mere pride of poverty either. The 
 love of a noble girl like that seems to have 
 given me a sudden inspiration of nobleness 
 in my own nature. I should hate myself 
 more than ever if any temptation led me to 
 do a mean, or even a mere cunningly politic 
 action." 
 
 '' Right ! hold by that ! Eeal love exalts 
 the nature, as much as false love debases it.'' 
 
 '' Aye, and what coarse brutes we should 
 be if it did not ; the influence of a sensitively 
 delicate and pure-minded woman must banish 
 all grossness from our hearts, and awaken 
 within us the half- dulled and half -dormant 
 sense of honour to its finest issues." 
 
 " Shall we admit that that influence comes 
 upon us like a second conscience when the 
 first is getting a little the worse for wear ? " 
 
 '' Yes ; but the second conscience is the 
 stronger of the two." 
 
 VOL. I. p 
 
210 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " What, because it comes armed with a 
 pair of bright eyes that look into our own, 
 and read us off as if we were a book ? " 
 
 " By heaven, I think they do ! and then, 
 think, those eyes will, indeed, at some time 
 (who knows how soon ? ) see us, not as we 
 seem, but as we are ; when we have shuffled 
 off this mortal coil, when all our thoughts, as 
 well as all our deeds, are revealed ; will they 
 then have to close those eyes in pity and 
 contempt, or change their sweet looks of 
 love, and trustful innocent confidence, into 
 horror and aversion ? " 
 
 *' Heaven forfend ] What a fall were there 
 for our lordly vanity ! I hold that whatever 
 a man is, that he should be content to seem ; 
 rather let him feign to be worse, than better, 
 if he needs must feign at all." 
 
 " He should not feign that way either — 
 there is nothing bores either men or women 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 211 
 
 SO egregiously as a super-sensitive self-depre- 
 ciation ; to use a musical pun, one should 
 play neither B sharp nor B flat, but stick to 
 B natural. Still, if there must be the alter- 
 native, I believe in the minor key rather than 
 the major." 
 
 " Yes, that's all very well when you have 
 once struck the key-note, (as you have to- 
 day, Mr. Pierce), but beforehand ? What 
 do you say to Byron's aphorism — ' Brisk con- 
 fidence still pleases woman best.' He wrote 
 it ' impudence ' at first, and acted upon it 
 pretty freely, but it appears to have lost him 
 his wife, and provided him with some de- 
 cidedly dubious celebrities in her place." 
 
 " Or Wilkes' brag that he could win any 
 woman in the world by his talk." 
 
 " Which with him is synonymous with im- 
 pudence ; but there are women, and womeyi, 
 sir, and rest assured, the men who scoff so 
 
212 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 glibly at the sex have taken their knowledge 
 of it from the little cliques of demi-reps and 
 frivolities with whom they live, and move, 
 and have their being." 
 
 " Why, yes ; they are not usually the kind 
 of men to whom a prudent head of a family 
 would open his house, or a pure girl her 
 heart.'' 
 
 " Hence, being shut out of Paradise, they 
 revenge themselves by calling Eve's daughters 
 bad names." 
 
 " And helping them to deserve those names 
 to the worst of their power." 
 
 '' Which, happily, is not much, after all; a 
 fashionable wickedness crops up from the 
 wild oats they amuse themselves with sow- 
 ing, but even if it ' cometh up as a flower ' it 
 is soon cut down like a weed, and ends its 
 career on some congenial dungheap." 
 
 " All foulness and grossierte have the ele- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 213 
 
 ments of decay in their very nature, just as 
 strongly as all purity and nobleness liave an 
 inherited and deathless life — Milton and 
 Shakspeare live for ever, but where are the 
 f oul-naouthed authors, the brilliant Wicked- 
 nesses, who scoffed at the blind Bard in his 
 poverty and disgrace ? And where even the 
 literary stars, Beaumont and Fletcher, 
 Wycherly and Congreve, who seemed for a 
 time to eclipse the grand Master himself ? " 
 
 " Why, relegated to the shelves of a few 
 toothless old libertines, who vainly imagine 
 they can conjure back the hot passions of 
 youth by their aid ! " 
 
 '' Still, those old dramatists were grand 
 fellows, and 'tis a pity they cannot be more 
 widely read." 
 
 ''I sometimes think we of this ag^e are 
 becoming a little too mealy-mouthed, and 
 assuming a prudery, whose real origin is in 
 
214 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 a too sensitive knowledge of impurity. As a 
 youngster, I read Shakspeare, Defoe, Cer- 
 vantes, Swift, with the most perfect un- 
 consciousness of all the very ''fie-f or- shame " 
 ■words ; and at our early reading-parties, 
 in our own home, we all instinctively 
 avoided the grosser passages, or dashed 
 through them at racing speed, so as to 
 leave no trace of them on any of our minds. 
 Oddly enough, my sisters were first put to 
 the blush about them by an exceedingly 
 proper and precise old maid, who asked in 
 sotto voce horror, " how they were going to 
 read such and such a passage in the play of 
 the evening ? " 
 
 " Just so, and once their eyes being 
 opened to the sense of impropriety, it was of 
 course good-bye to all pleasure in such read- 
 ing for ever." 
 
 *' Precisely, when Eve tastes the apple, 
 adieu to the innocence of Eden ! " 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 215 
 
 '' Shall I confess to you tliat 'twas the 
 delicious ''innocence" of my darling Caroline 
 that first enchained me to her with such 
 irresistible po^er? " 
 
 " Indeed both the sisters have that most 
 wonderful combination of brilliance and 
 purity that makes them diamonds of the 
 first water." 
 
 "Now humour me by letting me come 
 back to the thoughts nearest my heart, and 
 advise how I shall act in this matter." 
 
 " Shall you see or write to Sir Geoffrey, on 
 the subject ?" 
 
 " I hardly know. I think it is better taste 
 to write, though it would be far pleasanter to 
 urge one's arguments in speech." 
 
 "Why not do both, dear boy? Write, — 
 and follow your letter down, so as to urge its 
 points by word of mouth." 
 
 " Good ! I'll do it." 
 
 Soon after we had arrived at this point 
 
216 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 of our conversation we suddenly emerged 
 from the thin light haze, and the red glare 
 of the great city rose on our horizon ; as we 
 rode on, the large old-fashioned country 
 houses, sparsely scattered here and there, 
 and standing far back from the road, gra- 
 dually gave place to trim little villas, very 
 sjDick and span with white stucco and green 
 paint, looking as if they had been built 
 wholesale by the dozen, and stuck up after- 
 wards in their little measured bits of garden- 
 ground. The great silvery moon vainly tried 
 to shed its glamour over these trim little 
 boxes. Even in that calm light their two trees 
 a-piece stuck up their heads with a perkety 
 air, as much as to say, '' look at us, we are 
 real trees, we are ; with real leaves on us, too ; 
 though you wouldn't think it ; we're so 
 proper and so well pruned, and so very tidy 
 and respectable." "Ah!" but the little 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 21' 
 
 square lawns replied — " Look at us, too ; we 
 were clean-shaved this morning, and had our 
 short hair combed and brushed as sleekly 
 as the children's indoors." 
 
 But the trim villas and lawns also floated 
 past us, and we came to long lines of dingy 
 houses, with melancholy windows in them 
 like blank sightless eyes, closed with grimy 
 shutters below, and ghastly white blinds 
 above. The idea that we were riding into 
 and through a city of the dead was dispelled 
 by a few tipsy brawlers, reeling home from 
 their feverish and unwholesome carousals, 
 looking fearfully incongruous beings beneath 
 the light of that calm and holy moon ; me- 
 thought a slight red flush, as of shame, seemed 
 to tinge its rays as they fell upon their 
 bleared and besotted faces. 
 
 *' Oh, wretched beings," it might say, 
 "*' born in the image of God, how have ye 
 
218 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 dared to deface that glorious image ! Even as 
 I, a poor dark globe, receive and reflect 
 the blessed light of the sun, so might 
 ye have received and reflected the still more 
 glorious light of an immortal spirit ; and now 
 what are ye ? the sport of demons spurring 
 ye to hell." 
 
 " Eather strono: lano^uao^e for our calm 
 friend, the moon," said Pierce, drily. 
 
 " It wouldn't be amiss for the reelers to 
 hear sucli words occasionally, 'twould sober 
 them with a vengeance, if our calm friend 
 could tell them what it sees them do with a 
 voice as round and as full as itself." 
 
 " Ah, what a history of the world the man- 
 in-the-moon could write." 
 
 " Especially of the love-making tliat has 
 gone on in it, eli ? Mr. Pierce." 
 
 " Well, yes ; if, as the old song says, ' 'tis 
 love that makes the world go round,' our 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 219 
 
 bright friend aloft must have seen a good 
 deal of that kind of thing in its time ; but 
 none of mine." 
 
 " Humph ! but it may do, in future." 
 " I hope so ; but look at that grand old 
 dome of St. Paul's, how it rears itself up, as 
 if proud to carry its cross high into the air 
 and show it to the stars, as the noblest 
 emblem of earth." 
 
 " And well may it be proud. What higher 
 emblem of the noble possibilities of life has 
 earth to show than that? 'Twas a quaint 
 idea of some one's (perhaps my own) that the 
 spires of our churches are like God's finger- 
 posts, pointing our upward way to heaven ; 
 and I have another quaint fancy that our 
 souls may climb up to these points to take 
 their final flight from earth. There's one old 
 church in the city with an arched doorway 
 surmounting its highest tower, and in my 
 
220 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 cliildisli days, when fancy was vivid, I could 
 almost believe I saw the glorious, transfigured 
 forms issuing out and spreading their wings 
 for that final flight." 
 
 ''Tell me where was Fancy bred ? " said 
 Pierce, ironically. 
 
 " Well, probably from indigestion, caused 
 by too much plum-pudding and mince-pie," 
 I humbly confessed. " You know there was 
 a poet or a painter, I forget which, who used 
 systematically to eat heavily of roast pork in 
 order to dream weird dreams. A good many 
 of our present writers assuredly follow the 
 same regimen, if we may judge them by their 
 works." 
 
 " Some seem to vary the diet with goats' 
 flesh rather extensively." 
 
 "Yes, and others with asses-milk-and- 
 water." 
 
 " Come, come, that's too severe ; have you 
 been ' braying lately ? 
 
 J >j 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 221 
 
 " No, my last exploit was to braj a fool in 
 a mortar, in otlier words to review a sham 
 poet." 
 
 " Ah, that's better fun than being brayed 
 oneself." 
 
 " Yes, it is astonishing with what cheerful 
 equanimity we can acknowledge the faults of 
 others." 
 
 " Not so easy to acknowledge their merits,, 
 eh?" 
 
 "Why, no; you see another man's merit 
 in some degree detracts from one's own, and 
 a very big poet or painter ceases to be so 
 very big, when another nearly as big comes 
 near him." 
 
 '* So like a politic monarch he pats the 
 really little men on the back, knowing he has 
 nothing to fear from them ; but does his best 
 to frown down, and ignore those who come 
 up to his shoulders, lest they finally outgrow 
 him." 
 
222 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " Exactly, 'tis simply tlie law of self-pre- 
 servation." 
 
 " Meaning tlie preservation of all the best 
 things for oneself." 
 
 " Precisely what you have done in the case 
 of Miss Caroline Langdale. Eh, Pierce ? " 
 
 " Ah, dear boy, ' there's many a slip 'twixt 
 cup and lip,' and many a long year I fear 
 before my lips may touch that cup of 
 nectar." 
 
 " Oh, never fear, ' faint heart never won 
 fair lady.' " 
 
 *' But there's a dismal proverb traverses 
 that — ' hope deferred maketh the heart sick.' " 
 " Yes, but that's a bad " proverb for 
 acting ;" and happily here we are at my old 
 house, with trusty old Joe ready as usual to 
 take our horses. You'll stay with me to- 
 night, your room is ready. I told Mrs. 
 Primrose you would come back with me." 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 223 
 
 " Tlianks, I sliall be glad, for I shall want 
 your judgment on my letter." 
 
 '' Wliat a dear good old body tliat house- 
 keeper of yours looks ! " 
 
 " Ah ! you're right there, Pierce, and she's 
 as good as she looks." 
 
 " She's quite a picture in her snow-white 
 cap and apron, and black silk gown, with 
 her silver hair neatly banded back, and her 
 exquisitely clean face, with streaks of healthy 
 red in its wrinkles, like an old ribstone pippin 
 when it besrins to shrivel.'' 
 
 " Aye, and do you note what a good fore- 
 head and intelligent eyes she has ? and yet, sir, 
 that woman can neither read nor write." 
 
 " All I can say is that she's the finest 
 specimen of ignorance I ever saw." 
 
 *' By Jove, Pierce, I'd rather have her 
 witful ignorance than a house-full of the 
 half-learned prigs that the Society for the 
 
224 ATOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 confusion of useful Knowledge is produc- 
 ing. Think what a memory the woman must 
 have. Her old husband, Joe, is what she 
 calls a ' schollard,' that is, he can scratch on 
 paper some frightful hieroglyphics which he 
 has the vanity to call words and figures, or 
 as he spells it, ' wirds and figgurs.' In accom- 
 plishing this feat, he makes, of course, as 
 many contortions with his tongue, as he is 
 making with his pen, so that the performance 
 is a most ludicrous one to watch. Well, sir, 
 the old body remembers and dictates to him 
 once a week, on a Saturday evening, every 
 distinct item, even down to the ' trehaporth o* 
 trepenny tred o' Monday." 
 
 *' What on earth is that?" 
 
 " Three halfpenny- worth of three half- 
 penny thread, which, I suppose, is some kind 
 of cotton on reels used in the repair of some 
 recondite garments of her own or her hus- 
 band's wearing." 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 225 
 
 '' I wish some of us could take up the 
 thread of our memories as deftly." 
 
 "Aye, or repair the breaches of Time as 
 easily ; but now, come, we must repair our 
 broken rest with sleep." 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 I 
 
 DON'T fancy poor Pierce got much 
 sleep, despite bis fatiguing watery 
 exploit and our long night ride ; or if he 
 did 'twas, as O'Sullivan would say, a " slape 
 of drames,'' doubtless rayed through with 
 visions of one sweet face, the lovely herald 
 of the joys of hope. 
 
 How harsh and detestable is the rough 
 awakening from such dreams, when the great 
 noisy, door-banging, wheel-rolling world jars 
 us awake and " hot water and boots, sir," 
 take the place of the angel-in-Paradise with 
 whom we had been walking. 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 227 
 
 I wonder, sliall we ever drop into such 
 dreams, once for all, and never again be dis- 
 turbed by the roar of world-work or goaded 
 into hard, brain-weary labours by the stern 
 necessities of eating, drinking, and being 
 clothed and housed ? 
 
 I believe if Pierce could have been per- 
 fectly candid on that morning, he would have 
 confessed to hating the world, with a good 
 honest, hearty hatred that would, have been 
 quite refreshing. He tried his best to be 
 amiable to me (as his host), but I could see 
 there was only one fair creature between the 
 sun and the earth that he really cared one jot 
 about ; and he believed that glorious young 
 ideal to be nearly as far above him as the sun 
 itself. His breakfast was a farce ; he was only 
 hungry and thirsty for pen and ink, so whilst 
 I leisurely finished my prosaic repast, I sug- 
 gested the lighter one to my love-sick friend. 
 
228 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Accepting the suggestion, he went to the 
 writing-table and dashed off a dozen lines like 
 a madman, halted, read them, frowned, bit 
 his lips and then his pen, seized the paper 
 and tore it into a thousand fragments. Then 
 he went at it again more steadily, and set the 
 pace more thoughtfully, but warming to his 
 work, his pen again ran away with him, and 
 when he headed back — score and score went 
 the savage pen, obliterating words and lines- 
 like a second massacre of the innocents. 
 
 '* Yes," he exclaimed, looking up ferociously 
 at me, and possibly detecting a smile, " It's 
 all very well for you to sit grinning there 
 over your eggs and chocolate, but what on 
 earth am I to do ? I can't say half what I 
 want, and yet can't help saying twice as much 
 as I ought." 
 
 " Steady, old fellow, pull yourself together ;. 
 don't let that pen of yours get the bit in his 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 229 
 
 teeth. Tliink first and write afterwards, 
 don't attempt to reverse that natural order of 
 things." 
 
 " Ah, 'tisn't easy to think when one feels 
 so deeply. Upon this letter the whole future 
 happiness of my life depends, yet I can't, 
 for the life of me, put together half-a-dozen 
 coherent sentences." 
 
 " Don't imagine the form and manner of 
 the letter to be so all-important. I dare say 
 Sir Geoffrey has had half-a-dozen incoherent 
 effusions on the same subject, and will know 
 well enough by this time what an awful mess 
 young men always make of it." 
 
 "You're a Job's comforter, any how," re- 
 torted Pierce. " Half-a-dozen proposals for 
 my Caroline! How the 'something' do you 
 know that ? have you made one yourself ? " 
 
 " Phew ! what a voice full of sound and 
 fury, signifying nothing. No, Mr. Pierce, I 
 
230 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 do not speak from personal experience, nor 
 from any exact knowledge ; but from a fair 
 loofical inference. Given one of tlie loveliest 
 girls in the county and a certain number of 
 danglers, and I don't think half-a-dozen 
 offers an extravagant calculation.'* 
 
 '' I fervently hope all the other offers were 
 ' out,' as we used to say at cricket." 
 
 " Well, now take my advice, don't imagine 
 your letter to be of such excruciating im- 
 portance, write freely ; frankly and from your 
 heart more than your head. When we 
 attempt to be supernaturally clever in such 
 matters we are sure to make a muddle." 
 
 " All right, here goes ; third time all fair." 
 
 So the letter got itself written somehow, 
 and thus it ran : — 
 
 " Dear Sir G-eoffret, 
 
 " You will need all the kindness of 
 your own most kind and generous disposition 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 231 
 
 to read with patience what I, as a man of 
 honour, must now write. First, then, recal 
 the glad memories of those bright days of 
 your early, happy, prosperous manhood, when 
 earth was changed to heaven by the love of 
 your angel-wife. Remember the exuberant 
 joy — the strain of sweet music that filled 
 your heart with gladness, and then, perhaps, 
 you will not hastily or angrily crush out all 
 possibilities of a like hope for me. TVith 
 your knowledge of human nature, you may 
 have seen — you must have seen — my love, my 
 overwhelming love for your daughter. From 
 you, from her, from all, I strove my utmost 
 to conceal it, but now, looking back upon the 
 past, I see how often I must have betrayed 
 myself. Never in word — never in intent ; 
 and never in word or intent should I have 
 been mean or weak enough to let it appear, 
 but that it rushed to my lips, with an utter- 
 
232 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 ance that would not be checked, in the agony 
 of the fear, the seeming certainty, that I had 
 lost her, for ever, in death. In that moment 
 of supreme anguish the world, with all its 
 needs and niceties — ^its codes of honour and 
 propriety — its wealth, its poverty, and its 
 prudence vanished, and there were but two 
 immortal spirits hovering between life and 
 death with a word unspoken that might 
 unite them for ever — it flashed, — and life 
 returned, and brought love with it. 
 
 " Oh, sir, smile at my over- wrought fantasy 
 if you will, but in very truth it seemed to me 
 then, and seems now, that that word drew 
 back her gentle spirit when trembling for the 
 second time on the outer verge of this world ; 
 — the first rescue was of the body, the second, 
 — of the soul. And now, sir, in sad and sober 
 earnest, what can I say ? I am a gentleman, — 
 and — a beggar. Fear not that I dream for a 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 233 
 
 moment of a presumption so absurd, a mean- 
 ness and selfislmess so vile as to take my 
 loved one from her fair home, with all its 
 elegant luxuries, to a frowsy lodging in a 
 dingy street. Until I am in a position to 
 offer her a home fit for her acceptance, I ask 
 but leave to hope. Men's fortunes are 
 mainly in their own hands — give me hope, 
 and I have a strong belief in destiny — deny 
 me hope, and I shall curse the fate that 
 denied me death. You thanked me yester- 
 day for the life of your daughter — let me 
 thank you to-day for my own — for life, hence- 
 forth, is only possible to me, — with leave to 
 * hope.' 
 
 '' Ever your devoted friend, 
 
 " PlEECE FaLCOXEE." 
 
 "Well, yes, it doesn't read badly," I said, 
 patronisingly, " a little hazy in places, and 
 
23-i WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 somewhat narrowly escaping a sort of blank- 
 verse in others." 
 
 " Pshaw," said Pierce. 
 
 " But I suppose all men have a weakness 
 for the ' form-poetic ' when they are suffering 
 from a violent attack of love." 
 
 '' You're a brute," growled Pierce. 
 
 " All right; but now I fancy another 
 kind of brute will be more useful to you. 
 Post your missive at once, and ride down so 
 as to be there an hour after post time to- 
 morrow. The gipsy mare is quite at your 
 service." 
 
 '' Thanks, old fellow ; you don't mind my 
 being a little crabbed, I dare say ? " 
 
 " Not a bit of it ; ' if it pleases you it don't 
 hurt 1,' as the bargee said to his wife when 
 she hit him." 
 
 " I wish your gipsy mare could tell me my 
 fortune," mused Pierce. 
 
WOLFEEX CHACE. 
 
 235 
 
 " Let's hope she will bear you to it ; but 
 now good-bye. I've got some letters to 
 write ; only not on such a tender subject as 
 yours.'' 
 
CHAPTEH XI. 
 
 T never rains but it pours," says 
 the proverb, and so Sir Geoffrey 
 found it at Wolfern Cbace. Mr. Fallington, 
 finding all his fine speeches and elaborate 
 flatteries quite lost upon Mildred, and being 
 seized with sudden pangs of jealousy at the 
 rescue of Caroline by Pierce, changed his 
 tactics once more, and made a formal proposal 
 to Sir Geoffrey for the hand of the latter, 
 ho^Ding to accomplish by steady siege what he 
 had failed to achieve by irregular skirmishing. 
 Sir Geoffrey was a man of the world 
 and, therefore, could not be wholly indifferent 
 to the prospect of a man of high family 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 237 
 
 and reputed fortune as a son-in-law, nor 
 to the position it would oSer to Caroline. The 
 young gentleman stuttered and stammered 
 over his proposals a good deal, though he had 
 rehearsed his part, and learnt all the words 
 he meant to use very carefully, but he found 
 acting in real life considerably more difficult 
 than private theatricals. Sir Geoffrey, 
 inwardly amused at his difficulties, maliciously 
 gave him no cue to help him through, and 
 when, at the conclusion, he gravely enquired 
 if Caroline had given him any encouragement 
 to make these proposals, or if he had any 
 reason to suppose she would accept him, 
 Fallington was obliged to confess that she had 
 not, and from that moment began to have a 
 disagreeable suspicion that he had made a 
 fool of himself. However, Sir Geoffrey 
 thanked him for his courteous propriety in 
 thus asking his sanction before proposing to 
 
238 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 Caroline, and promised to consult with her 
 and Lady Langdale on tlie subject. 
 
 Scarcely had he thus dismissed one suitor 
 when the avant-courier of the other arrived 
 by the post, in the shape of the missive des- 
 patched by Pierce. 
 
 " AYhat a contrast between the two men, 
 and what a strange pair for my poor girlie to 
 have to choose between," mused Sir Greoffrey, 
 as he read the letter. 
 
 From Pierce's hazy note, he did not at the 
 moment glean that Caroline had accepted 
 him, and thus already made her choice. So, 
 seeking Lady Langdale, he j&rst made her 
 smile with his description of Fallington's pro- 
 posal, and then, with some touch of emotion 
 in his face, handed her Pierce's letter. 
 
 There was just the start of a tear in her 
 eyes at the simple-hearted appeal of the poor 
 boy to Sir Geoffrey to recall his own high 
 
WOLFERN CHAOE. 239 
 
 noon of love, and in a moment her own 
 tlioughts fled back to that time of sunny 
 gladness that can come to us but once in a 
 lifetime. Aye, and however happy and out- 
 wardly prosperous the after-years may have 
 been, the memory of those delicious days of 
 " Love's young dream" never fails to call up 
 a sigh for the days that can never come again 
 in their fulness and freshness. But the 
 matron and the mother reasserted themselves 
 as those old memories faded out and she, 
 like Sir Greoffrey, could not but own that 
 the one would be a suitable match for their 
 daughter, and the other — well, alas ! almost 
 chimerical. For they knew that Caroline was 
 proud and fastidious, with certain lavishly- 
 extravagant notions which they had rather 
 blamed themselves for not checking. Indeed, 
 they had often rallied her about her sublime 
 indifference to affairs of money and expendi- 
 
240 WOLFEBN CHACE. 
 
 ture, and re-cliristened her by the name of 
 that Bourbon Princess who, when told that 
 the people wanted bread, enquired haughtily 
 why they were not content with buns ? They 
 had wholly under-rated the power of love to 
 change all this by the magic of the three 
 talismanic words, " I love you." Yes ! at this 
 slight spell, (like the transformation scene 
 of a pantomime), the persecuted princess is 
 changed into the agile columbine, the mana- 
 cled, humble lover into the ever-dexterous 
 and wonder-working harlequin, and away go 
 the gay couple through the bustle and blun- 
 ders of life, full of joy and happy pranks, 
 to the astonishment of dull-witted clowns,, 
 and tottering pantaloons. 
 
 And, oh, for such a joyous pair, when once 
 the curtain is up, and the transformation 
 scene entered on, how glad one would be if 
 butchers' trays, and bakers' baskets, and 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 241 
 
 drapers' stores could be emptied and ap- 
 propriated without the inexorable necessity 
 (which obtains in real life) of being paid for. 
 What a sharoe it seems that that airy, gauzy, 
 happy, human butterfly, in white muslin, and 
 roses and smiles ; and the lithe, athletic, 
 graceful fellow glittering in gold and coloured 
 spangles, should ever be in imminent peril of 
 being clutched by that stolid policeman, who 
 ought surely to be content w^ith apprehend- 
 ing clowns in general, and the wrong persons 
 in particular; but, alas, when the gas is 
 turned off from that splendid honeymoon, 
 and Mr. and Mrs. Harlequin come back to 
 the three-pair back-room in Stodge Street ; 
 then the butchers, and bakers, and candlestick 
 makers become fearful ogres once more, and 
 do the fee-fi-fo-fum business with a grim 
 reality that is very distressing. 
 
 Pierce was not quite such a fool as to 
 VOL. I. R 
 
242 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 imagine that love could survive such a shock 
 as the plunge from a life of quiet, but most 
 luxurious lavishness, to the sordid conditions 
 of genteel beggary. Moreover, he would not 
 have been long troubled with my friendship if 
 he could have endured the idea of being a 
 pensioner on Sir Geoffrey's generosity, alike 
 for himself and his wife ; he scouted that 
 notion with even greater earnestness than 
 that of draofo;ino^ his " ansfel " down into the 
 streets to share his poverty. " Think," he 
 would say, " of the utter negation of a man 
 — the poltroonery, the daily, hourly shame 
 that would come upon him if he had to 
 depend on his wife's father for his wife's 
 scanted needs, and still scantier luxuries? 
 Why, a man had better spur up what little 
 feeling of honour he might still have, and go 
 hang himself on the nearest tree, rather than 
 hang on to a wife thus." 
 
TVOLFEEN CHACE. 243 
 
 Of course all this was understood by tlie 
 Langdales, for tliey had read closely enough 
 the many noble traits in the character of the 
 young fellow, so that 'twas no question of 
 present action, but simply the anxious pro- 
 blem of the best and happiest future for their 
 daughter. No judgment of this could, 
 obviously, be formed without the young lady 
 herself, who was accordingly summoned to the 
 library. Caroline had passed two sleepless 
 nights since the eventful evening of Pierce's 
 departure. She had known long ago that 
 he loved her to distraction, and his 
 reticence had alternately charmed and 
 chafed her. For, "be it known unto all 
 men," that whatever Mr. Pierce Falconer 
 might think or assert, angels do not 
 dwell upon this lower sphere; women are 
 often a very charming imitation of them, but, 
 if truth must be spoken, they are women 
 
244 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 after all, and when a woman sees and knows 
 that a man loves her, it would be highly un- 
 natural if she did not like to hear him say so. 
 Hence, whilst intuitively perceiving the noble 
 motive of his reserve and silence, yet that 
 silence was a small, rankling point, gradually 
 becomino; more and more intolerable to her. 
 But now the silence was broken, what was to 
 come of it ? 
 
 Her first sleeplessness was that of wild, 
 tumultuous thoughts, dazzling, and mostly 
 sunlighted ; like roseate clouds driven to and 
 fro over the sky by wayward winds ; but the 
 day had brought a clear, almost painfully 
 clear light ; hence, by the second night the 
 clouds iudeed came again, but they gathered 
 in sombre grey masses on her soul's horizon ; 
 then, as the red sun sunk angrily amongst 
 them, it touched them with a fringe of lurid 
 fire, slowly darkening from gloom to gloom^ 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 245 
 
 with the presage of storm in their massive 
 wrinkled brows. For impulsive, impetuous, 
 and (as is the woman's wont), almost longing 
 for self-sacrifice, yet she could not wholly 
 conceal from herself the hopelessness and 
 apparent helplessness of any effort on Pierce's 
 part. It is true she did not shrink with his 
 scorn from the idea that her father might aid 
 them largely ; nor did she fail in her faith that 
 ultimately Pierce would win position for him- 
 self; but still, the sun was sinking, and 
 though the glorious form of love stood 
 between her and the light, that form cast a 
 long, dark shadow of chilling fear adown the 
 pathway of her life ; — and along this path- 
 way she passed into the presence of her father 
 and mother. 
 
 Lady Langdale, with the mother's instant 
 insight, saw — 
 
 *' That Love had passed, with Sorrow in his train." 
 
246 ^OLFERN CHACE. 
 
 But Sir Geoffrey, less observant, laugh- 
 ingly rallied her on her two suitors, and 
 suggested that if she had not a preference, 
 she had better draw lots for them, or wait 
 till a third one came into the tourney. 
 
 Caroline replied with a blush, but with 
 simple, outspoken frankness — 
 
 " I have, indeed, drawn my lot already, 
 dear papa ; and, although I know you must 
 think me a very silly girl, I have accepted 
 Pierce." 
 
 " Phew ; that is rather sudden, is it not, 
 my darling girlie? " 
 
 " Of course it must seem so to you, but 
 forgive me. I have known that Pierce has 
 loved me for the last two years, but his sense 
 of honour made him almost avoid me, and 
 not a word of love did he ever suffer to pass 
 his lips ; indeed, of late he would scarcely 
 venture even to look at me. I did not, of 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 247 
 
 course, permit myself to think whether or 
 not I loved him in return ; but when death 
 threatened us, the knowledge of my own 
 heart came with a sudden flash, for it told 
 me that his life was dearer to me than my 
 own." 
 
 " Ah, dear girl, may you not be deceiving 
 yourself; was it not gratitude assuming the 
 form of love ? " 
 
 " Xo, papa, because I have been thinking 
 deeply since of the almost unconscious 
 actions and feelings of the past year, and now 
 see that I must have loved him long before I 
 knew it, or would own it, even in my 
 thoughts." 
 
 *' But will your love bear the strain of 
 poverty, and a mean and humble position ? " 
 
 " I think so. You all consider me proud 
 and extravagant, and I know I have been so ; 
 but may not this very lot in life have been 
 
248 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 fore-appointed to check these faults in me ? " 
 
 '' The check would be too severe, dear 
 Carrie," said Ladj Langdale, " and I am 
 afraid jou would pass from chafing at your 
 lowered position to chafing at the cause of 
 it." 
 
 " I hope not, dear mamma ; but were 
 Pierce as wealthy as he is poor, of course I 
 should not dream of anything but a long en- 
 gagement at present. I love you both too 
 well, and Mildred, and Gilbert, and our dear 
 old home, to want to go away for a long, long 
 time, even if it were to a palace." 
 
 Sir Greoffi^ey. — *' But after all, girlie mine, 
 don't you think a palace would be a more 
 suitable place for a princess than a little 
 stucco villa in the suburb of Stick-up-ton? " 
 
 *' And then, dear," said Lady Langdale, " I 
 do not like long engagements for young 
 people. They are very harassing, and both 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 249 
 
 health and temper often give way under the 
 constant pressure of the ' hope deferred that 
 maketh the heart grow sick.' " 
 
 " Still, mamma, it is better to have hope 
 deferred than crushed." 
 
 " Yery true ; but I must warn you that 
 you will find it very much more trying than 
 you imagine. Don't you think so, Geof- 
 frey ? " 
 
 " I know it, dear wife — I do not think. I 
 remember that dreadful ' twelve months and 
 a day ' before our marriage ; it always 
 seemed exactly the twelve months too long." 
 
 '^ Ah, but then you were a man, papa ; 
 women are much more patient." 
 
 " They pretend to be ; they say less, but 
 they feel more." 
 
 " Then perhaps you had not such a dear, 
 loved father and mother as I have to help you 
 to be patient." 
 
250 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 " Well, I am afraid I must confess that a 
 father and mother don't score for much when 
 a wife is in question ; but come, dear 
 child, give yourself a few weeks to think 
 again over this matter ; it is one of such 
 terrible import to the remainder of your life 
 on earth, aye, and indeed to your future life 
 also, that it would be rash in the extreme to 
 mistake a passing impulse for a fixed resolve. 
 Pierce, I am sure, is far too honourable to 
 hold you bound by an answer made in a mo- 
 ment of intense emotion and unbounded 
 gratitude." 
 
 *' I know he is, and hence such a promise 
 is trebly sacred in my eyes." 
 
 " Mr. Fallington has many excellent quali- 
 ties, despite his foppery which your influence 
 would soon banish." 
 
 " Those excellent qualities, you must ad- 
 mit, dear papa, are very skilfully concealed. 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 251 
 
 and perhaps I detest him the more, if he pos- 
 sesses any, for the weakness of allowing his 
 folly to hide them." 
 
 '' Well, well, child, there are other people 
 in the world besides Pierce Falconer and Mr. 
 Fallington — those two extremes of poverty 
 and riches ; hold yourself free for some happy 
 medium — for some one, shall I say like me ? 
 Well, if this is too utterly distasteful for you 
 to think of, still pause for a while out of 
 your love for me. Trust me, I will not at- 
 tempt to control or force any alliance on you 
 against your will ; but it is my bounden duty 
 to warn you against committing yourself 
 irrevocably in too great haste." 
 
 " You see, dear Carrie," said Lady Lang- 
 dale, " in any case you admit it must be a 
 long engagement; it would make little 
 difference if you passed through part of the 
 time without a formal eno^a2:ement at all." 
 
252 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " May it then be understood between papa 
 and you, and me, as really an engagement ; 
 only not made known publicly ? " 
 
 *' I have no objection to that," said Sir 
 Geoffrey, " my sole care is, dear daughter, to 
 save you from deceiving either Pierce or 
 yourself. I dare say you think it strange 
 that I should not offer to settle enough on 
 you to keep you both in moderate com- 
 petence ; but I know Pierce too well to be- 
 lieve that he would consent to be a mere 
 pensioner, and I know you too well not to 
 foresee, that even were he to accept such an 
 arrangement, you would despise him for it." 
 
 " I would rather live with him in poverty 
 on what he could win for me, than in luxury 
 on what he accepted ; indeed, I think in 
 many ways I would rather be a poor man's 
 wife than a shabby-genteel one." 
 
 *' Yes, you would like to play at being poor 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 253 
 
 for a Treek or two well enougli — even to bake, 
 and cook, and cliurn, for the fun of the thing, 
 as you used, when a wild young hoyden ; but 
 then comes the grimy side of the picture ; 
 where is this little play to be acted ? Is it 
 to be love in a cottage, or love in a lodging ? 
 If the former, I will o-rant you to have 
 secured the most charming little thatched- 
 roofed, diamond-paned, rose-covered ' little 
 love of a cottage' that you or your sister 
 ever sketched ; it shall not be anything like 
 so damp, so dark, so smoky, or stuffy, or full 
 of fleas and gnats as any other cottage in the 
 three kingdoms — it shall have a charming 
 situation on the borders of a forest or park,, 
 or on a village green, with a prospect that 
 would delight Birket Foster — and quite an 
 extensive little garden, with a piggery, and a 
 duckery, and a hen-house, and a pond — and 
 Pierce shall work in the garden from four 
 
254 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 o'clock to six in the morning, and from six to 
 eight in tlie evening (always provided that 
 his back is not nearly broken with his twelve 
 hours' labour in between) — I will even grant 
 you that the pigstye and the pond shall not 
 smell very abominably, and that the ducks 
 shall not dabble wet mud over your cottage 
 floor after you have, with extreme fatigue 
 and sore chapped hands, washed it.'' 
 
 " Ob, but we will not have pigs and ducks, 
 theu." 
 
 " No, I dare say not ; nor eggs and bacon 
 either, and yet these latter will constitute the 
 chief luxuries of Mr. and Mrs. Pierce 
 Falconer in their new farce, entitled 
 ' Poverty ; or, all for love.' " 
 
 " Oh, papa, you are hard upon us — you 
 would surely help us in such straits !" 
 
 " Of course I should ; but then, that would 
 end the farce, and begin the melodrama.'' 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 255 
 
 " Well, let us see if we could not play it 
 out." 
 
 " Shall I resume my granteds 1 I have 
 already granted you a great many more 
 things than real life would " 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 " I will grant, then, that you shall both 
 enjoy robust health for the first year (I fear 
 I cannot safely extend that grant), that Pierce 
 shall have constant work and o^ood waofes, 
 and that you shall gradually get your hands 
 nice and horny inside, and tolerably proof 
 against chaps and chilblains by a chronic 
 condition of beefiness ; that your face will be 
 quite safe from any further sunburning or 
 freckling ; that your eyelids have not been 
 made very red by the wood-smoke (which 
 always prefers to make its exit by the door 
 -and the window rather than the chimney), 
 and that you have not been tormented into 
 
256 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 more than temporary insanity by the stings 
 and bites of the small- winged and springed 
 demons that lurk in the thatch and forest, 
 and pond and hen-house. I will grant that 
 Pierce is always cheerful and content with 
 your amateur attempts at cooking, bed- 
 making, wood picking, and marketing. This 
 latter duty will only involve a pleasant trudge 
 of six miles twice a week with an occasional 
 lift in a baker's or butcher's cart (if you're 
 not too proud for an arm round your waist, 
 and a kiss from the driver at the journey's 
 end)." 
 
 " No, no, papa ! how dare you think of 
 such a thing !" 
 
 "No, no, of course not; but then, there's 
 rather a heavy basket of pork or eggs to 
 carry down, and a heavier one w4th cheese 
 and sugar, and half-a-dozen other delicacies 
 of that kind to bring back, and I'm afraid 
 
WOLFERX CHACE. 257 
 
 those dainty little hands and arms, and that 
 slender waist would have to ache a o^ood deal 
 before they could do this kind of thing com- 
 fortably, eh ! " 
 
 " I'm afraid they would," said Caroline, 
 pensively. 
 
 '' But now, with all these ' granteds' are 
 you and Pierce to live absolutely and en- 
 tirely alone, isolated, self-contained, shut up 
 and out from all intercourse of any kind with 
 any being in the world ? 
 
 " If not, there's Hodge, and Molly, his 
 wife, in the next cottage — painfully near 
 to yours, as you are made aware, when 
 he beats her occasionally. Xow Hodge 
 is a most estimable ploughman — does not 
 beat his wife except when he is drunk, 
 and does not get drunk nearly so often 
 as many of his friends. Molly, also, is a 
 valuable member of society, and probably 
 
 VOL. I. s 
 
258 WOLFEEN CHACE. 
 
 does better for her husband, in the main, 
 than you can do for Pierce, because she was 
 a scullery- maid before she was Mrs. Hodge, 
 and is therefore, to the ' manner born,' of 
 rough scrubbery, and cheap cookery; but 
 Hodge has not many ideas beyond ' turmuts 
 and varmint, and skittles and beer,' and his 
 smock frock and boots do not exactly suggest 
 ' Araby the Blest.' He has the unfortunate 
 habit of chewing tobacco, and its conse- 
 quences ; also of scratching his head energeti- 
 cally ; and a too copious use of his clasp knife 
 as a tooth pick ; these little defects of manners 
 do not make him a peculiarly agreeable com- 
 panion for your husband ; whilst Molly, per- 
 haps, is hardly the person whom you would 
 choose as a bosom friend. She would be ad- 
 vantaged by a more frequent use of the bath, 
 with a soupgo7i of eau de Cologne afterward. 
 Somebody's dentrifice, would render her 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 259 
 
 cbaste and neighbourly salute less objection- 
 able, and a certain moderation in the use of 
 onions would be an improvement. She will 
 be an invaluable adviser as to the best com- 
 binations of bacon-fat and "taters" to produce 
 what she may possibly call a ' summut stowin' 
 (whatever that may mean), and as she will 
 have a fixed idea from your ' fine-lady ways' 
 that you'll soon leave your ' master' and get 
 a place in a grand house, she will be elo- 
 quent and confidential as to the best and 
 most approved methods of making up ' bags' 
 for the ' shop,' and increasing the natural 
 proportions of kitchen-stuff. 
 
 "Xow, I fear such conversation, and such 
 associates would hardly be congenial after 
 your homely, but still, to some extent, lady- 
 like training here. So shall we look next 
 at the same little farce enacted amidst life in 
 London ?" 
 
260 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " Your country picture, papa, leaves 
 sometliing to be desired, certainly ; so if you 
 are not tired I should like to see what we 
 might do in town.'' 
 
 '' Well, then, in town, dear child. Pierce 
 would not risk breaking his back or getting 
 rheumatism by the use of the spade in all 
 weathers ; but there would be the Charybdis 
 to that Scylla, for he might split his brain 
 with his pen almost as easily as split his pen 
 with his knife. You would not have to do 
 any scrubbing, because experience would 
 show you that, in the grim presence of 
 London dirt, such a proceeding was simply 
 hopeless. You would not have pigs and 
 ducks, but their absence would be amply 
 atoned for by rats and mice in more than 
 satisfactory profusion. Cooking might be 
 dispensed with, whilst you had either money 
 or credit at the nearest cook-shop, and the 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 261 
 
 tally man and potboy would supply tlie re- 
 mainder of your modest requirements. 
 Possibly you might sacrifice to gentility by 
 keeping a draggle-tail girl who, when she 
 hadn't run ronnd the corner on some mys- 
 terious errand, would save you the ignominy 
 of running down three pair of stairs in obedi- 
 ence to the three knocks that signalled your 
 altitude. 
 
 "" You would have this further advantage, 
 that you might be as genteelly shabby or as 
 shabbily genteel as you chose without any 
 one taking the slightest notice of you. 
 
 " Then, for society ? Oh yes, within certain 
 limits you could have a large range of 
 society. A broken-down coal merchant, with 
 a bad cough, would probably live in the next 
 room ; a supernumerary of the Surrey 
 ' Theayter ' in the attic above ; congenial 
 situation ! for is he not, in imagination, still in 
 
262 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 the ' flies,' even during his short repose ? His 
 daughter, a distinguished member of the 
 corps-de-ballet in the same aristocratic theatre, 
 would probably be a little too prononce in her 
 manners to be altogether delightful, and you 
 might occasionally wish that her fairy -like 
 movements overhead, when madly practising 
 some new pas-seul, were as light to listen to 
 as to look at ; but the real aristocracy of your 
 small and happy community would be the 
 occupants of the first floor ; a fast, gaudily- 
 dressed, sporting lawyer's clerk, with a dashy 
 flashy lady who, by courtesy, passes as his 
 wife. Even here, however, you may perceive 
 that life has nothing altogether perfect, since 
 your legal friend, notwithstanding his slight 
 connexion with an honourable profession, is 
 in reality a more intolerable, because a more 
 obtrusive, vulgarian than poor Hodge ; 
 whilst his ' good lady ' indulges somewhat toa 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 263 
 
 freely in coarse spirits and still, coarser lan- 
 guage, and occasionally takes her ' fling * 
 with a ' reel,' more suggestive of Irish whiskey 
 than the Scotch dance." 
 
 " But, papa, can these horrible pictures be 
 true?" 
 
 "True, my girlie? They are so true, that 
 if it were desirable I could take you, to- 
 morrow, through scores upon scores of streets 
 and houses where these, and far worse things 
 than these, were being daily and nightly 
 enacted." 
 
 " No," said Caroline, with a feeling of 
 heart sickness in her tone, " I fear I could not 
 endure such a life." 
 
 '' No, my dear, I do not think upon calm re- 
 flection that either of these forms of inde- 
 pendent poverty would be quite suitable to 
 you. If you had been born and bred in them 
 they would have been no more distasteful to 
 
264 WOLFEKN CHACE. 
 
 you than they are to those who live those 
 lives." 
 
 " But can any live such lives without dis- 
 taste, disgust, and utter misery, dear 
 Geoffrey ? " said Lady Langdale. 
 
 " Assuredly ! In the wildest Bohemian 
 life, to those who know no other, there are 
 coarse, wild pleasures, fierce excitements, a 
 stir, a passion in them which compensates 
 in large measure for much of their ex- 
 ternal and apparent discomfort ; and recollect 
 what seems to you so intolerable, is 
 wholly unnoticed, or accepted as the most 
 natural thing in the world, by your born 
 Bohemian. You, delicately born and bred 
 ladies, waste a great deal of pity (that might 
 find better objects) on these rough lives ; 
 imagining yourselves, as you are at this 
 moment, suddenly plunged into such a state. 
 You ask, with a most pitiful horror, how can 
 
WOLFEEN CHACE. 265 
 
 any one endure sucli a state of existence ? 
 How terrible ! How awful ! Poor, poor 
 ' things ! ' meantime tlie ' poor, poor things * 
 are getting considerably more animal and more 
 energetic enjoyment out of their rough lives 
 than many of the languid fine ladies who 
 pity them. Conceive what a feast, bringing 
 with it keener relish than the daintiest 
 banquet, can be made out of a savoury 
 sausage and a ' baked tater,' or a slice of ham, 
 penn'orths of butter and hot rolls ! What 
 ambrosia of the gods could equal the pot of 
 porter to thirsty lips ? What nectar could 
 rival a glass of Old Tom ? Then, after drinking 
 delight with these, can they not also ' drink 
 delight of battle with their peers;' and as a 
 sequent enjoyment, of a lesser, but more 
 domestic nature, can they not beat their 
 wives to their hearts' content?" 
 
 " To whose hearts' content. Sir Geoffrey ? " 
 
266 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 " Well, to the husbands', perhaps, chiefly ; 
 but it seems to content the wives also, if we 
 may judge from our experience on the 
 bench?" 
 
 " But now, dear husband," said Lady 
 Langdale, naturally desiring to change the 
 subject, " if Carohne will take our advice, and 
 not decide too hastily, I think it would be a 
 very good arrangement for you to take both 
 the girls a long and pleasant journey, so that 
 Carrie may have something to divert her 
 thoughts from this subject." 
 
 "And leave you at home, meantime?'* 
 enquired Sir Geoffrey. 
 
 " Why not ? You and I have travelled so 
 often together, and seen almost all that is 
 worth seeing ; and it would be so delightful 
 to me to think that the dear girls were having 
 some of the same pleasures." 
 
 " Oh ! selfish unselfishness ! " exclaimed 
 Sir Geoffrey. " In your morbid desire for 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 267 
 
 self-sacrifice, you do not consider that you 
 are involving me also ; and as my heroism 
 does not run in that direction, I must make 
 it a condition of taking them, that I take 
 you, too." 
 
 " They will not enjoy it so much as if they 
 have you all to themselves; besides, I am 
 not strong enough to travel long distances, 
 or climb mountains T\dth them, and so shall 
 be a hindrance to you all." 
 
 " The pleasure of travelling is not measured 
 by miles, and the summit of a mountain is 
 not necessarily the summit of enjoyment ; 
 therefore, lady-mine, you must go with us. 
 We will drive, and take as easy stages as you 
 please, and in any direction you like. What 
 say you, Carrie ? I'm sure you are too 
 sensible a girl to mope, because the world ^'5 
 the vjorld^ with trials in store for young 
 people, as well as old." 
 
 ^'No, dear papa; I will be as cheerful as 
 
208 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 I can, and shall be indeed glad to get away, 
 both from the scenes which vainly recall 
 Pierce, and painfully contain Mr. Fallington.'* 
 
 Thus it was promptly arranged that a route 
 should be sketched, and all prepared for a 
 long and vagrant journey through England 
 and Wales to the lakes, and, perhaps, after- 
 wards to Scotland ; for the Langdales knew 
 well that nothing would be so likely to change 
 the heady current of first love, as new scenes 
 and a rapid succession of new faces and 
 events. 
 
 Meantime, Pierce Falconer had ridden 
 down whilst the proposal in his letter was 
 being discussed, and was now received by 
 Sir Geoffrey to hear the fateful answer. 
 
 Who can well describe the tormenting 
 alternation of ecstatic hopes and miserable 
 fears during that morning ride ? and what 
 horse, or mare, of the very highest in- 
 
WOLFE RN CHACE. 26^ 
 
 telligence could possibly understand the 
 reason of tlie wild abruptness with which 
 its rider first urged it into a swinging 
 gallop, and then pulled it up to a funeral 
 walk ; as hope or fear, in turn, assumed 
 the reins. 
 
 As Pierce dashed past the library window, 
 he marked the rapid flash of a white dress 
 hurrying from the room, and in a few 
 moments afterwards he passed through 
 the corridor and across the hall into that 
 same room, to find Sir Geoffrey alone. 
 
 A wistful glance into the recesses went forth, 
 but came back with its craving unsatisfied* 
 Sir Geoffrey's part in this painful interview 
 was for the time, almost more trying than 
 Pierce's. 
 
 The necessity for saying what he felt 
 compelled to say, placed him at war with 
 himself; his generous, impetuous nature 
 
270 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 warring violently against tlie prudential 
 motives whicli forbade all present accept- 
 ance of tlie proposals, and wliicli would have 
 made it a most cruel kindness to hold out 
 much hope for the future. 
 
 Of course he touched very lightly and 
 delicately on the arguments that led to 
 this decision ; rather indeed, giving slight 
 suggestions of the picture, which Pierce, 
 in his ]Di'id6 ^-nd sensitiveness, rapidly, if 
 perhaps a little bitterly, filled in. Hence 
 the poor young fellow instead of pleading 
 all the eloquent counter-reasons, which are 
 so convincing until shattered against the 
 hard rock of circumstance, gradually turned 
 king's evidence against himself, and prepared 
 his own death warrant. 
 
 The only point on which Sir Geoffrey 
 touched with some pressure, was the possi- 
 bility of making his daughter a sufficient 
 
^OLFERX CHACE. 271 
 
 allowance to support them botli ; but Pierce 
 fired up at tlie meanness of supposing any 
 man of spirit could, be dependent on bis wife 
 or his wife's relations, and as this was the 
 sole alternative, he was self -answered. 
 
 The young people were allowed to see each 
 other once more, with the tacit understanding 
 that it was to be the last time for an indefi- 
 nite period. 
 
 Knowledge, conviction, right-reason of 
 the highest order — can these control the 
 feelings and shape the actions into such 
 complete uniformity to the judgment as to 
 exclude all rash utterances of mutual vows, 
 all wild projects for evading the inevitable ? 
 Certainly not with the impulsive nature of 
 woman; for despite all, when it came to the 
 shock of absolute parting, poor Caroline, 
 forgetting everything for the moment but 
 love and gratitude, offered in words, broken 
 
272 WOLFERN CHACE. 
 
 with tears, to sacrifice everything rather than 
 not repay him with the life he had saved ; 
 with these words came the climax of Pierce's 
 trial. The fathers refusal, or rather indefinite 
 postponement, of his suit, had been nothino^ 
 compared to this. But to see her he so loved 
 in overwhelming grief, to hear those loving 
 utterances, and to feel madly in love in 
 return, was a strain almost beyond mortal 
 endurance. 
 
 A mist came before his eyes, broken by a 
 sudden flash, and then a blank darkness, in 
 which he felt he could have plunged, with 
 Caroline in his arms, down into the deepest 
 gulf that poet ever fabled ; aye, down for 
 ever, down to blackest Acheron or fiery 
 Hades. But his better angel prevailed, and 
 once more opened his eyes, ere too late, to 
 the clear, cold, searching light of reality. 
 
 With a deep-drawn sigh, he shook off the- 
 
WOLFERN CHACE. 278 
 
 spell of the momentary mad impulse, and, 
 taking both her hands, gazed long and sadly 
 into her eyes ; then said, slowly and with 
 great effort — 
 
 '' Dearest and noblest, I must not, I dare 
 not, let you do yourself such wrong. Better 
 that I had not been near to save vour life, 
 than that I should now mar it ; better, aye 
 a thousand times better, to have dragged you 
 down into the depths of that lake, than into 
 the far more terrible, because living, death of 
 misery." 
 
 " But could not I share it, and lig^hten it 
 for you. Pierce ? " 
 
 " Xo, love ; you would share it, indeed, but 
 at the same time double it. Its weio-ht would 
 crush us both." 
 
 " Then what remains ? " 
 " Only hope ! Ah ! only hope ! " 
 There is a light graceful form fallen in 
 VOL. I. T 
 
274 WOLFE BN CHACE. 
 
 abandoned grief on a couch. There is a 
 crash of hoofs on the courtyard outside, and 
 the flash of a horseman past the hated library 
 window ; and the gypsy mare has told Pierce 
 Falconer's fortune. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 Printed by Kemington & Co., 5, Arundel Street, Strand, W.C. 
 
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