The House of Egremont

THE summer and the winter, and again the summer and the winter came and went, and still Robert Egremont lay in prison. There was some murmuring about his case, but King William was in the midst of his Irish campaign, and had little thought of one contumacious Jacobite more or less. When William returned to England, he inaugurated a policy of conciliation toward the disaffected, and most of the Jacobites in prison were offered their liberty on easy terms.

Roger Egremont’s case had always been a perplexing one, the more so as he continued to be an object of popular sympathy. A parliamentary inquiry was threatened by the Tory parliament of 1690, in particular concerning the giving away of his estate to his half-brother. The Danby ministry thought it had found a solution of the problem in this particular case, by causing Roger Egremont to be informed that if he would make an application for pardon, it would be readily granted, together with a considerable sum of money, and that he might eventually hope for the restitution of his land.

To this, Roger made no answer except by a contemptuous silence. The offer was therefore repeated, and the reply, in Roger Egremont’s handwriting,—very beautiful by this time,—was:—

Clearly, imprisonment had not broken the spirit of this rash and headstrong young man. In truth, although Roger could never have brought his haughty spirit to ask pardon for what he had done, yet, at that very time, a Jacobite rising was daily expected in England, and Roger fully expected to have the pleasure of shortly telling King James at his palace of Whitehall, of the manner in which the Earl of Danby’s offer had been spurned.

The years that had passed had improved Roger’s looks as well as his mind, although not to so great a degree.

He had learned much, and he had suffered much,—two great improvers of the human countenance. And the same improvers had been at work on Bess Lukens, to her advantage. Moreover, having a quick ear, her speech had become far more polished. Their relations had not altered in the least, except that the longer Roger knew her, the more he loved her, and the longer Bess knew him, the more she was in love with him,—two very different things, be it observed.

The two attempts of Lord Danby having failed to get Roger Egremont out of Newgate, and there being a considerable agitation in many quarters concerning him, King William himself bent his shrewd head to the business. And the result was that in April, 1692, after Roger Egremont had been nearly three years in prison, he was roused one night from a deep sleep, by armed men, and forced to dress himself, blindfolded, taken out of the prison, set and tied on horseback, and ridden southward at a smart pace.

All through the mild spring night the party travelled. Blindfolded as Roger was, and tied to his horse, a kind of intoxication of bliss came with the pungent sweet air of the budding spring, and the steady trot of a good horse under him. He did not apprehend any violence; no one threatened or offered to harm him, and he was by nature devoid of fear.

All through the night they rode, and when the day was breaking rosily, and the rooks cawing loudly, and the low of kine was heard, they stopped in a wood. This being the first horse exercise Roger had taken since he chased King William, he was overpowered with fatigue, and after having eaten ravenously he threw himself on the ground, and fell into a delicious slumber.

When he waked, although he was still blindfolded, he knew it was in the afternoon. He lay quite still, listening partly to the scant conversation of the men with him, from whom he could learn nothing, though they were civil enough. They gave him food again, and told him they would not start until sunset. Roger lay on his back on the new-springing grass, and drank in greedily all the sweet sounds, and imagined the fair sights of nature around him. He remembered Red Bess, and his heart softened when he knew how lonely she must be then, and, no doubt, anxious about him. He conjectured what was to be done with him, and concluded that he was to be put aboard a ship for France or Holland. Either would be an agreeable change from Newgate.

At sunset they again took the road, and travelled all the second night, and rested all the second day, and again set forth at sunset on the second day.

Roger felt the strangeness of this kind of travel, this blindness to night and day, and to the faces of his companions. But he was travelling steadily away from prison walls, and sweet to him were the cool dews of night, the silence and the softness as his horse’s hoofs beat the highroad; and sweeter was the coming of the dawn, the wide sweep of the wind across fields and woods and hedges, and the day sleep in the heart of the woods, the scent of the leaves and grasses, the mellow drumming of the insects in the sun.

On the last stages of the third night there was something curiously familiar to Roger, in the way he was blindly travelling. He knew instinctively the character of the roadway, the sound of the streams under the bridges; he tasted on his lips the faint saltness which the sea wafts across the Devon hills. The cry of the birds was like the greeting of old friends; the scents of the woods and fields were known to him. At midnight the party stopped in a thicket, rising a hill. Roger was told to dismount, and when his foot touched the earth his companions turned and galloped off, leading with them the horse he had ridden. As Roger struggled to tear away the bandage over his eyes, he could hear the disappearing hoof-beats of their horses echoing in the silent night.

In another moment his eyes were free, and he found himself alone upon a hillside, and on the ground by him a small portmanteau containing clothes and a considerable sum of money. As he would not accept of his liberty any other way, King William had simply flung him out of prison.

Roger recognized his surroundings at once. He was at Egremont. The night was radiant with moon and stars, and before him was a great rich beautiful moonlit landscape, the line of distant hills rising cloudlike upon the faint horizon, the masses of woods solemnly dark, the river making its way musically through copses and thickets, and then resting silently in broad black pools. Before him on the crest of a gentle hill, was a group of rustling elms, that he knew lay between him and the view of the mansion. Dashing through the trees he came in full sight of his home, lying in the plateau below. The house was lighted up, although it was late, and he could see servants and many persons moving about. Evidently some festivity was in progress. The rows of great windows blazed brilliantly, and the faint echo of music and the beating of the feet of the dancers was borne on the wandering wind of night. Roger Egremont stood and watched it, with a face pale with imprisonment, and pale with unspeakable wrath and anguish. The dazzling moon showed him that the oak avenue was gone, every tree cut down, and he struck his hands together in an agony of rage at what he considered robbery and mutilation of what was his. They thought, no doubt, that he would go, like a beaten hound, and ask his half-brother for a dole of money, and a roof to shelter him. Such indeed had been the King’s hope, knowing very well that it would be as much as Hugo Egremont’s life was worth, in the state of feeling of the country, to refuse a share of all he had with Roger. But Roger was of the temper which will have all or nothing. He would make no terms with those who had robbed him.

After an hour or two of anguish, he became calm. One of the things which he had found out, as the result of his newly acquired knowledge of books, was that he had more control over himself, more philosophy in short. He knew, sad as was his own case, that there had been worse. He recalled them to his mind, and fortified himself with them.

The moonlit hours were spent by Roger Egremont on the lonely hillside, contemplating the noble patrimony which he considered had been filched from him. Until his late introduction to the great new world of thought and books, Egremont had been his world. How to get it back unless the Dutchmen were driven from England, he did not know, but the sooner the actual struggle was begun, the better. He would go over to France, whither most of the active partisans of King James had gone, and would ask the honor of leading the very vanguard of the reconquering army.

The vivid moon grew pale and sank, leaving only the trembling stars set in the blue-black sky; the lights in the distant house went out; the earth and all its creatures slept; and Roger Egremont, throwing himself on the ground, fell into a heavy slumber. The night grew chill; he had no fire but the distant stars; he was hungry, but he had nothing to sup on except rage and sorrow. And at the same hour Bess Lukens, lying on her hard bed in Newgate, was crying her eyes out for him.

He awaked with the break of day. If the sight of Egremont by moonlight had pierced his soul with its beauty, it seemed to him even more beautiful in the still, pale loveliness of the early dawn. A faint rosy light lay over the green fields and stately woods; the little river, laughing between its alder banks, was like a young child in its first merry awakening. The larks and thrushes—Egremont had ever been celebrated for its birds—made themselves heard in sweet, soft chirpings before bursting into full-throated song. The deer, red and dun, came forth from the dells and thickets in the park, and tossing their delicate heads sniffed the freshness of the morning.

Roger Egremont noted all these things with a heart near to breaking. They had been his, and they were his enemy’s—and that enemy was the half-brother he had befriended.

He perceived, however, that he must determine upon his course. He concluded that he had been flung down at Egremont in hopes that the sight of the place might induce him to open some communication, friendly or otherwise, with Hugo; and he shrewdly suspected that, much as Hugo might wish to kick him away from Egremont, the terror of public opinion would force him to do the handsome thing. But Roger could by no means endure the thought of accepting anything from his half-brother’s bounty. He wished for nothing short of turning Hugo out, neck and crop, with such other vengeance as he might compass.

He could think of no place in England to go. In his prison he had gained no accurate account of who were the accredited agents of King James. He was near the sea, and he had money in his pocket; and in a little while he determined to make for France. But first he would go to his own village people and get food and a horse.

Before leaving the spot, he knelt down, and made what men call a prayer, but which was simply, as such prayers are, an outcry against his enemy and an appeal for God to lift His hand against that enemy. Nevertheless, Roger Egremont was a man of reverential heart, and devoutly believed that punishment would fall on him for his misdeeds, as he ardently hoped and believed it would fall on his half-brother.

Then, scraping up a handful of Egremont earth, he tied it up in a handkerchief, shouldered his portmanteau, and made for the village of Egremont, from whose cottage chimneys the light-blue smoke was rising in the golden morning.

He walked through the edge of the park, steadfastly keeping his eyes in front of him.

As soon as he struck the highroad leading to the village, he met some laborers going to their work. They hesitated a moment, and then ran toward him.

“Is it that you have come back to your own, sir?” they cried, crowding around him.

“No,” said Roger. “Our King, King James, has had his heritage filched from him,—why should I complain? But mark, all you men who till the fields of Egremont, that I shall yet come into my own. And I shall take no vengeance on any of you who eat the bread of my bastard brother,—you are poor men, laboring for your daily wage,—but I shall take vengeance on him.”

The rustics looked at each other with meaning in their dull faces. One of them, an old man who had taught Roger the lore of birds and rabbits and hares and other wild things, spoke up, respectfully but freely.

“Hodge, the shoemaker, sir, and myself, we have often talked of that thing; and Hodge, who can read like a clerk, says no good ever came to a man from taking his father’s or his mother’s or his own bastard under his roof.”

“Hodge is a philosopher,” replied Roger, with a wan smile. “Which of you has a good horse to sell?”

There was a silence, until a young ploughman in a smock frock spoke up.

“None of us, master Roger, have a horse to sell you, but I have a good one for your worship to ride. He has not been always at the plough tail, and so is fitter than the others.”

“Thank you,” said Roger, showing some money. “After having robbed me of Egremont, the Dutchman gave me fifty pounds. The horse is worth three pounds.”

“Nay, sir,” replied the young ploughman, “I would rather have it that you took Merrylegs, and would give me the lease on the barn field when you come back. The lease is more to me than the horse.”

Roger smiled again, not so sadly; these people expected him to come into his own; it was impossible that this topsy-turvy state of things should last.

While they had been standing in the road, talking, the word seemed to have spread like wildfire that Roger Egremont had come back. The general belief among the ignorant was that he would go straight to the mansion, and oust the interloper. As if by magic, every cottage on the estate was emptied, and in half an hour the whole tenantry had assembled in the village.

Roger, at the head of a kind of triumphal procession of ploughmen, ditchers, carters, and such humble people, walked to the village. There the women and children awaited him. Hodge, the shoemaker, more practical than the rest, made his wife stay indoors to prepare some breakfast for their former master; and then, announcing the fact in a stentorian voice, pushed his way through the crowd, and carried Roger off to his house at the end of the lane leading toward Egremont. That breakfast, of brown bread, a rasher of bacon, and cheese and ale, was something like the breakfast of royalty. Roger sat at a little table, in full sight of the village people, who clustered about the doors and windows, watching him eat as the courtiers watched Louis le Grand. His appetite was good, and, as he told Hodge and his wife, it was the best mouthful he had tasted since he left Egremont.

At the conclusion of his meal he rose, and taking the pewter tankard of home-brewed ale in his hand, he came to the door, and said in a loud voice,—

“My friends, I do not ask you to drink the health that I shall drink; but I call you all to witness that I drink death and destruction to the Prince of Orange, and health and long life to his Majesty King James.”

The crowd knew little of the merits of either, but King James was an Englishman, and King William was not; in King James’s time the true owner of Egremont was their lord; in King William’s time, they were under the rule of an alien and a bastard; so they hurrahed cheerfully for King James; the women, who were more partisan than the men, striking in with their piercing treble, and even the children raising their shrill cries.

In the midst of it, a gentleman on a fine bay horse was seen trotting down the lane that led from the park gates of Egremont. It was Hugo Egremont. He had ever been an early riser,—for Hugo had all the virtues that bring success to a bad man as well as a good one,—and it was his practice, like Roger’s, to ride over the estate before breakfast.

The vulgar dearly love a sensation, and so the crowd parted as the rider came nearer, and he rode directly up to the door of the shoemaker’s cottage. The ploughman, meanwhile, had fetched his horse, Merrylegs, a well fed but clumsy cart horse, and by no means bearing out his master’s high opinion of him as a roadster. A rusty bridle and a moth-eaten saddle, and Roger’s portmanteau strapped on the crupper completed his equipment.

“What is all this racket about?” asked Hugo Egremont, as he drew up his handsome bay among the people.

“Master Roger has come back, sir,” said Hodge, pointing to Roger standing in the low doorway.

Hugo Egremont’s handsome florid face turned a sickly green. He got off his horse, advanced toward Roger with outstretched hand, and said the speech he had been rehearsing for three years past.

“Welcome, brother. I see you are in bad case; but trust me, you shall never want while I have a shilling.”

For answer, Roger’s wide mouth came open in a wider grin, and he did what he had not done since the day he was sent to prison with his chains clanking about his legs,—he laughed loudly and merrily. Dull and stupid as the rustics were around him, some magnetic thrill was instantly communicated to them, and they at the same moment burst into hoarse haw-haws.

Hugo Egremont’s face grew greener. He was a man of great intelligence, and he knew the tremendous power of ridicule. He would have mounted his horse and ridden boldly through a stick-flinging and stone-throwing mob, but this grinning crew disconcerted him. He spoke again, however, covering his chagrin with much art.

“Your own imprudence, brother, has brought you to this pass,” he said with an inimitable air of brotherly reproof. “The violent and unprovoked attack you made upon the King at your own table was bound to do you a mischief. As a younger brother, I was helpless to prevent, but I was alarmed for you.”

Roger said not one word, but laughed again. He could not but admire the ineffable impudence of his half-brother.

Finding it difficult to carry on a one-sided conversation, Hugo turned, and his eye fell on the ploughman who held the horse by the bridle. The beast’s equipment for the road was certainly ridiculous, and Hugo Egremont found in it an excuse to laugh himself, as everybody around him was laughing.

“For whose journey,” he asked, “is that miserable hack intended?”

“For Master Roger’s, sir,” civilly replied the man. Hugo Egremont, still by a great effort, kept a scornful smile on his face; and then every other face grew grave, and the ploughman added,—

“If your honor smiles, sir, at the notion that such a horse is good enough for Master Roger, we all do smile with you. But if you smile because he has no better—well, sir, ’tis because there is no better one in this village.”

Hugo, always master of himself, and better able to see himself as others saw him than many worthier men, knew that his triumph would be to conquer Roger’s ill-will. So, taking his hat off, and showing a closely cropped black poll, to be surmounted later in the day by a handsome periwig, he said smoothly, as he patted his horse’s neck,—

“Whatever hard feelings, Roger, you may have for me, I cannot forget that you are my brother; nor do I wish to forget all the kindness I had from you. So I trust you will not refuse to come to Egremont. The estate was sequestered; what more right than that it should come to a younger brother, who could maintain the family name, and who would do by you as liberal a part as you could wish? So do not feed your resentment, but return with me.”

Roger’s reply to this was what might have been expected from that headstrong and determined young man.

“No!” he shouted, his voice ringing so loud that it frightened the cawing rooks from the trees overhead, “I go not to my house as long as you, bastard, and your brood are in it. Some day I will come and turn you out on the roadside. Look out for that time.”

Roger Egremont mounted his awkward beast, and taking off his hat, made a low bow to the people, who returned it with shouts and cheers and tears,—some of the women sobbing loudly.

“I take with me,” he said, “a handful of earth from Egremont. Every night of my life shall it lie under my head, so that I may ever sleep on English ground. When the King returns and comes into his own, then will I come too. Until then, fare you well.”