The Coil of Carne

Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source:the Web Archive:
https://archive.org/details/cihm_75374
(University of Alberta)

THE
COIL OF CARNE

BY

JOHN OXENHAM

AUTHOR OF "THE LONG ROAD"

TORONTO
THE COPP, CLARK CO. LIMITED
1911

TO

RODERIC DUNKERLEY, B.A., B.D.

THE COIL OF CARNE

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE OF CARNE

If by any chance you should ever sail on a low ebb-tide along a certain western coast, you will, if you are of a receptive humour and new to the district, receive a somewhat startling impression of the dignity of the absolutely flat.

Your ideas of militant and resistant grandeur may have been associated hitherto with the iron frontlets and crashing thunders of Finisterre or Sark, of Cornwall or the Western Isle. Here you are faced with a repressive curbing of the waters, equal in every respect to theirs, but so quietly displayed as to be somewhat awesome, as mighty power in restraint must always be.

As far as eye can reach--sand, nothing but sand, overpowering by reason of its immensity, a very Sahara of the coast. Mighty levels stretching landward and seaward--for you are only threading a capricious channel among the banks which the equinoctials will twist at their pleasure, and away to the west the great grim sea lies growling in his sandy chains until his time comes. Then, indeed, he will swell and boil and seethe in his channels till he is full ready, and come creeping silently over his barriers, and then--up and away over the flats with the speed of a racehorse, and death to the unwary. You may see the humping back of him among the outer banks if you climb a few feet up your mast. Then, if you turn towards the land, you will see, far away across the brown ribbed flats, a long rim of yellow sand backed by bewildering ranges of low white hummocks, and farther away still a filmy blue line of distant hills.

Here and there a fisherman's cottage accentuates the loneliness of it all. At one point, as the sun dips in the west, a blaze of light flashes out as though a hidden battery had suddenly unmasked itself; and if you ask your skipper what it is, he will tell you that is Carne. Then, if he is a wise man, he will upsail and away, to make Wytham or Wynsloe before it is dark, for the shifting banks off Carne are as hungry as Death, and as tricky as the devil.

For over three hundred years the grim gray house of Carne has stood there and watched the surface of all things round about it change with the seasons and the years and yet remain in all essential things the same. When the wild equinoctials swept the flats till they hummed like a harp, the sand-hills stirred and changed their aspects as though the sleeping giants below turned uneasily in their beds. For, under the whip of the wind, grain by grain the sand-hills creep hither and thither and accommodate themselves to circumstances in strange and ghostly fashions. So that, after the fury of the night, the peace of the morning looked in vain for the landmarks of the previous day.

And the cold seabanks out beyond were twisted and tortured this way and that by the winds and waves, and within them lay many an honest seaman, and some maybe who might have found it difficult to prove their right to so honourable a title. But the banks were always there, silent and deadly even when they shimmered in the sunshine.

And generations of Carrons had held Carne, and had even occupied it at times, and had passed away and given place to others. But Carne was always there, grim and gray, and mostly silent.

The outward aspects of things might change, indeed, but at bottom they remained very much the same, and human nature changed as little as the rest, though its outward aspects varied with the times. What strange twist of brain or heart set its owner to the building of Carne has puzzled many a wayfarer coming upon it in its wide sandy solitudes for the first time. And the answer to that question answers several others, and accounts for much.

It was Denzil Carron who built the house in the year Queen Mary died. He was of the old faith, a Romanist of the Romanists, narrow in his creed, fanatical in his exercise of it, at once hot- and cold-blooded in pursuit of his aims. When Elizabeth came to the throne he looked to be done by as he had done, and had very reasonable doubts as to the quality of the mercy which might be strained towards him. So he quietly withdrew from London, sold his houses and lands in other counties, and sought out the remotest and quietest spot he could find in the most Romanist county in England. And there he built the great house of Carne, as a quiet harbourage for himself and such victims of the coming persecutions as might need his assistance.

But no retributive hand was stretched after him. He was Englishman first and Romanist afterwards. Calais, and the other national crumblings and disasters of Mary's short reign, had been bitter pills to him, and he hated a Spaniard like the devil. He saw a brighter outlook for his country, though possibly a darker one for his Church, in Elizabeth's firm grip than any her opponents could offer. So he shut his face stonily against the intriguers, who came from time to time and endeavoured to wile him into schemes for the subversion of the Crown and the advancement of the true Church, and would have none of them. And so he was left in peace and quietness by the powers that were, and found himself free to indulge to the full in those religious exercises on the strict observance of which his future state depended.

His wife died before the migration, leaving him one son, Denzil, to bring up according to his own ideas. And a dismal time the lad had of it. Surrounded by black jowls and gloomy-faced priests, tied hand and foot by ordinances which his growing spirit loathed, all the brightness and joy of life crushed out by the weight of a religion which had neither time nor place for such things, he lived a narrow monastic life till his father died. Then, being of age, and able at last to speak for himself, he quietly informed his quondam governors that he had had enough of religion to satisfy all reasonable requirements of this life and the next, and that now he intended to enjoy himself. Carne he would maintain as his father had maintained it, for the benefit of those whom his father had loved, or at all events had materially cared for. And so, good-bye, Black-Jowls! and Ho for Life and the joy of it!

He went up to London, bought an estate in Kent, ruffled it with the best of them, married and had sons and daughters, kept his head out of all political nooses, fought the Spaniards under Admiral John Hawkins and Francis Drake, and died wholesomely in his bed in his house in Kent, a very different man from what Carne would have made him.

And that is how the grim gray house of Carne came to be planted in the wilderness.

Now and again, in the years that followed, the Carron of the day, if he fell on dolorous times through extravagance of living--as happened--or suffered sudden access of religious fervour--as also happened, though less frequently--would take himself to Carne and there mortify flesh and spirit till things, financial and spiritual, came round again, either for himself or the next on the rota. And so some kind of connection was always maintained between Carne and its owners, though years might pass without their coming face to face.

The Master of Carne in the year 1833 was that Denzil Carron who came to notoriety in more ways than one during the Regency. His father had been of the quieter strain, with a miserly twist in him which commended the wide, sweet solitude and simple, inexpensive life of Carne as exactly suited to his close humour. He could feel rich there on very little; and after the death of his wife, who brought him a very ample fortune, he devoted himself to the education of his boy and the enjoyment, by accumulation, of his wealth. But a short annual visit to London on business affairs afforded the boy a glimpse of what he was missing, and his father's body was not twelve hours underground before he had shaken off the sands of Carne and was posting to London in a yellow chariot with four horses and two very elevated post-boys, like a silly moth to its candle.

There, in due course, by processes of rapid assimilation and lavish dispersion, he climbed to high altitudes, and breathed the atmosphere of royal rascality refined by the gracious presence of George, Prince of Wales. For the replenishment of his depleted exchequer he married Miss Betty Carmichael, only daughter and sole heiress of the great Calcutta nabob. She died in child-birth, leaving him a boy whose education his own diversions left him little time or disposition to attend to. He won the esteem, such as it was, of the Prince Regent by running through the heart the Duke of Astrolabe, who had, in his cups, made certain remarks of a quite unnecessarily truthful character concerning Mrs. Fitzherbert, whom he persisted in calling Madame Bellois; and lost it for ever by the injudicious insertion of a slice of skinned orange inside the royal neckcloth in a moment of undue elevation, producing thereby so great a shock to the royal system and dignity as to bring it within an ace of an apoplexy and the end of its great and glorious career.

Under the shadow of this exploit Carron found it judicious to retire for a time to the wilderness, and carried his boy with him. He had had a racketing time, and a period of rest and recuperation would be good both for himself and his fortunes.

He had hoped and believed that his trifling indiscretion would in time be forgotten and forgiven by his royal comrade. But it never was. The royal cuticle crinkled at the very mention of the name of Carron, and Sir Denzil remained in retirement, embittered somewhat at the price he had had to pay for so trivial a jest, and solacing himself as best he could.

Once only he emerged, and then solely on business bent.

In the panic year, when thousands were rushing to ruin, he gathered together his accumulated savings, girded his loins, and stepped quietly and with wide-open eyes into the wild mêlée. He played a cautious, far-sighted game, and emerged triumphant over the dry-sucked bodies of the less wary, with overflowing coffers and many gray hairs. He was prepared to greet the royal beck with showers of gold once more. But the royal neck, though it now wore the ermine in its own right, could not forget the clammy kiss of the orange, and Carron went sulkily back to Carne.

When the Sailor Prince stepped up from quarter-deck to throne, he returned to London and took his place in society once more. But ten years in the desert had placed him out of touch with things; and with reluctance he had to admit to himself that if the star of Carron was to blaze once more, it must be in the person of the next on the roll.

And so, characteristically enough, he set himself to the dispersal of the flimsy cloudlet of disgrace which attached to his name by seeking to win for his boy what the royal disfavour had denied to himself.

Now, indeed, that the royal sufferer was dead, the rising generation, when they recalled it, rather enjoyed the crinkling of the royal skin. They would even have welcomed the crinkler among them as a reminder of the hilarities of former days. But the fashion of things had changed. He did not feel at home with them as he had done with their fathers, and he who had shone as a star, though he had indeed disappeared like a rocket, had no mind to figure at their feasts as a lively old stick.

Young Denzil's education had been of the most haphazard during the years his father was starring it in London. On the retirement to Carne, however, Sir Denzil took the boy in hand himself and inculcated in him philosophies and views of life, based upon his own experiences, which, while they might tend to the production of a gentleman, as then considered, left much to be desired from some other points of view.

He bought him a cornetcy in the Hussars, supplied him freely with money, and required only that his acquaintance should be confined to those circles of which he himself had once been so bright an ornament.

The young man was a success. He was well-built and well-featured, and his manners had been his father's care. He had all the family faults, and succeeded admirably in veiling such virtues as he possessed, with the exception of one or two which happened to be fashionable. He was hot-headed, free-handed, jovial, heedless of consequences in pursuit of his own satisfactions, incapable of petty meanness, but quite capable of those graver lapses which the fashion of the times condoned. With a different upbringing, and flung on his own resources, Denzil Carron might have gone far and on a very much higher plane than he chose.

As it was, his career also ended somewhat abruptly.

At eight-and-twenty he had his captaincy in the 8th Hussars, and was in the exuberant enjoyment of health, wealth, and everything that makes for happiness--except only those things through which alone happiness may ever hope to be attained. He had been in and out of love a score of times, with results depressing enough in several cases to the objects of his ardent but short-lived affections. It was the fashion of the times, and earned him no word of censure. He loved and hated, gambled and fought, danced and drank, with the rest, and was no whit better or worse than they.

At Shole House, down in Hampshire, he met Lady Susan Sandys, sister of the Earl of Quixande--fell in love with her through pity, maybe, at the forlornness of her state, which might indeed have moved the heart of a harder man. For Quixande was a warm man, even in a warm age, and Shole was ante-room to Hades. Carron pitied her, liked her--she was not lacking in good looks--persuaded himself, indeed, that he loved her. For her sake he summarily cut himself free from his other current feminine entanglements, carried her hotfoot to Gretna--a labour of love surely, but quite unnecessary, since her brother was delighted to be rid of her, and Sir Denzil had no fault to find either with the lady or her portion--and returned to London a married, but very doubtfully a wiser, man.

Lady Susan did her best, no doubt. She was full of gratitude and affection for the gallant warrior who had picked her out of the shades, and set her life in the sunshine. But Denzil was no Bayard, and it needed a stronger nature than Lady Susan's to lift him to the higher level.

For quite a month--for thirty whole days and nights, counting those spent on the road to and from Gretna--Lady Susan kept her hold on her husband. Then his regimental duties could no longer be neglected. They grew more and more exigent as time passed, and the young wife was left more and more to the society of her father-in-law. Sir Denzil accepted the position with the grace of an old courtier, and did his duty by her, palliated Captain Denzil's defections with cynical kindness, and softened her lot as best he might. And the gallant captain, exhausted somewhat with the strain of his thirty days' conservatism, resumed his liberal progression through the more exhilarating circles of fashionable folly, and went the pace the faster for his temporary withdrawal.

The end came abruptly, and eight months after that quite unnecessary ride to Gretna Lady Susan was again speeding up the North Road, but this time with her father-in-law, their destination Carne. Captain Denzil was hiding for his life, with a man's blood on his hands; and his father's hopes for the blazing star of Carron were in the dust.

CHAPTER II

THE STAR IN THE DUST

And the cause of it all?--Madame Damaris, of Covent Garden Theatre, the most bewitching woman and the most exquisite dancer of her time. Perhaps Captain Denzil's handsome face and gallant bearing carried him farther into her good graces than the others. Perhaps their jealous tongues wagged more freely than circumstances actually justified. Anyway, the rumours which, as usual, came last of all to Lady Susan's ears caused her very great distress. She was in that state of health in which depression of spirits may have lasting and ulterior consequences. There were rumours too of a return of the cholera, and she was nervous about it; and Sir Denzil was already considering the advisability of a quiet journey to that quietest of retreats: the great house of Carne, when that happened which left him no time for consideration, but sent him speeding thither with the forlorn young wife as fast as horses could carry them.

There was in London at this time a certain Count d'Aumont attached to the French Embassy. He was a man of some note, and was understood to be related in some roundabout way to that branch of the Orleans family which force of circumstance had just succeeded in seating on the precarious throne of France. He cut a considerable figure in society, and had most remarkable luck at play. He possessed also a quick tongue and a flexibility of wrist which so far had served to guard his reputation from open assault.

He had known Madame Damaris prior to her triumphant descent on London, and was much piqued when he found himself ousted from her good graces by men whom he could have run through with his left hand, but who could squander on her caprices thousands to his hundreds. Head and front of the offenders, by reason of the lady's partiality, was Denzil Carron, and the two men hated one another like poison.

Denzil was playing at Black's one night, when a vacancy was occasioned in the party by the unexpected call to some official duty of one of the players. D'Aumont was standing by, and to Denzil's disgust was invited by one of the others to take the vacant chair.

He had watched the Frenchman's play more than once, and had found it extremely interesting. In fact, on one occasion he had been restrained with difficulty from creating a disturbance which must inevitably have led to an inquiry and endless unpleasantness. Then, too, but a short time before, hearing of some remarks D'Aumont had made concerning Madame Damaris and himself, Denzil, in his hot-headed way, had sworn that he would break the Frenchman's neck the very first time they met.

It is possible that these matters were within the recollection of Captain O'Halloran when he boisterously invited D'Aumont to his partnership at the whist-table that night. For O'Halloran delighted in rows, and was ready for a "jule," either as principal or second, at any hour of the day or night. He was also very friendly with D'Aumont, and it is possible that the latter desired a collision with Carron as a pretext for his summary dismissal at the point of the sword. However it came about, the meeting ended in disaster.

The play ran smoothly for a time, and the onlookers had begun to believe the sitting would end without any explosion, when Carron rose suddenly to his feet, saying:

"At your old tricks, M. le Comte. You cheated!"

"Liar!" said the Count.

Then Carron laid hold of the card-table, swung it up in his powerful arms, and brought it down with a crash on the Frenchman's head. The remnants of it were hanging round his neck like a new kind of clown's ruffle before the guineas had ceased spinning in the corners of the room.

"He knows where to find me," said Denzil, and marched out and went thoughtfully home to his quarters to await the Frenchman's challenge, which for most men had proved equivalent to a death-warrant.

Instead, there came to him in the gray of the dawn one of his friends, in haste, and with a face like the morning's.

"Ha, Pole! I hardly expected you to carry for a damned Frenchman. Where do we meet, and when?" said Carron brusquely, for he had been waiting all night, and he hated waiting.

"God knows," said young Pole, with a grim humour which none would have looked to find in him. "He's gone to find out. He's dead!"

"Dead!--Of a crack on the head!"

"A splinter ran through his throat, and he bled out before they could stop it. You had better get away, Carron. There'll be a deuce of a row, because of his connections, you see."

"I'll stay and see it through. I'd no intent to kill the man--not that way, at any rate."

"You'll see it through from the outside a sight easier than from the inside," said young Pole. "You get away. We'll see to the rest. It's easier to keep out of the jug than to get out of it."

Carron pondered the question.

"I'll see my father," he said, with an accession of wisdom.

"That's right," said young Pole. "He'll know. Go at once. I'm off."

It was a week since Denzil had been to the house in Grosvenor Square, and when he got there he was surprised to find, early as it was, a travelling-chariot at the door, with trunks strapped on, all ready for the road.

He met his father's man coming down the stairs with an armful of shawls.

"Sir Denzil, Kennet. At once, please."

"Just in time, sir. Another ten minutes and we'd been gone. He's all dressed, Mr. Denzil. Will you come up, sir?"

"Ah, Denzil, you got my note," said Sir Denzil at sight of him. "We settled it somewhat hurriedly. But Lady Susan is nervous over this cholera business. What's wrong?" he asked quickly, as Kennet quitted the room.

Denzil quietly told him the whole matter, and his father took snuff very gravely. He saw all his hopes ruined at a blow; but he gave no sign, except the tightening of the bones under the clear white skin of his face, and a deepening of the furrows in his brow and at the sides of his mouth.

"The man's death is a misfortune--as was his birth, I believe," he said, as he snuffed gravely again. "Had you any quarrel with him previously?"

"I had threatened, in a general way, to break his head for wagging his tongue about me."

"They may twist that to your hurt," said his father, nodding gravely. "In any case it means much unpleasantness. I am inclined to think you would be better out of the way for a time."

"I will do as you think best, sir. I am quite ready to wait and see it through."

"You never can tell how things may go," said his father thoughtfully. "It all depends on the judge's humour at the time, and that is beyond any man's calculation. . . . Yes, you will be more comfortable away, and I will hasten back and see how things go here. . . . And if you are to go, the sooner the better. . . . You can start with us. We will drop you at St. Albans, and you will make your way across to Antwerp. You had better take Kennet," he continued, with the first visible twinge of regret, as his plans evolved bit by bit. "He is safe, and I don't trust that man of yours--he has a foxy face. If they follow us to Carne, you will be at Antwerp by that time. Send us your address, and I will send you funds there. Here is enough for the time being. Oblige me by ringing the bell. And, by the way, Denzil, say a kind word or two to Susan. You have been neglecting her somewhat of late, and she has felt it. . . . Kennet, tell Lady Susan I am ready, and inform her ladyship that Mr. Denzil is here, and will accompany us."

And ten minutes later the travelling-chariot was bowling away along the Edgware Road; and the hope which had shone in Lady Susan's eyes at sight of her husband was dying out with every beat of the horses' hoofs and every word that passed between the two men. For the matter had to be told, and the time was short. Sir Denzil had intended to stop for a time at Carne. Now he must get back at the earliest possible moment. And, though they made light of the matter, and described Denzil's hurried journey as a simple measure of precaution, and a means of escaping unnecessary annoyance, Lady Susan's jangled nerves adopted gloomier views, and naturally went farther even than the truth.

Denzil did his best to follow his father's suggestion. His conscience smote him at sight of his wife's pinched face and the shadows under her eyes--shadows which told of days of sorrow and nights of lonely weeping, shadows for which he knew he was as responsible as if his fists had placed them there.

"I am sorry, dear, to bring this trouble on you," he said, pressing her hand.

"Let me go with you, Denzil," she cried, with a catch of hope in her voice. "Let me go with you, and the trouble will be as nothing."

How she would have welcomed any trouble that drove him to her arms again! But she knew, even as she said it, that it was not possible. That lay before her, looming large in the vagueness of its mystery, which sickened her, body and soul, with apprehension. But it was a path which she must travel alone, and already, almost before they were fairly started, she was longing for the end of the journey and for rest. The jolting of the carriage was dreadful to her. The trees and hedges tumbled over one another in a hazy rout which set her brain whirling and made her eyes close wearily. She longed for the end of the journey and for rest--peace and quiet and rest, and the end of the journey.

"We will hope the trouble will soon blow over," said Sir Denzil. "But we lose nothing by taking precautions. I shall return to town at once and keep an eye on matters, and as soon as things smooth down Denzil will join you at Carne." At which Denzil's jaw tightened lugubriously. He had his own reasons for not desiring to visit Carne.

"Old Mrs. Lee," continued Sir Denzil--for the sake of making talk, since it seemed to him that silence would surely lead to hysterics on the part of Lady Susan--"will make you very comfortable. She is a motherly old soul, though you may find her a trifle uncouth at first; and Carne is very restful at this time of year. That woman of yours always struck me as a fool, my dear. I think it is just as well she decided not to come, but she might have had the grace to give you a little longer warning. That class of person is compounded of selfishness and duplicity. They are worse, I think, than the men, and God knows the men are bad enough. Your man is another of the same pattern, Denzil. They ought to marry. The result might be interesting, but I should prefer not having any of it in my service."

At St. Albans they parted company. Denzil pressed his wife's hand for the last time in this world, hired a post-chaise, and started across country in company with the discomfited Kennet, who regarded the matter with extreme disfavour both on his own account and his master's, and Sir Denzil and Lady Susan went bumping along on the way to Carne.