CHAPTER IV.
Shakspeare.
Oakley was left preparing to obey the summons of his uncle, Lord Rockington, to pay him a first visit. It has been stated that he had been educated with the idea of great expectations from this quarter, but these were still uncertain, as Lord Rockington was only his uncle on the mother’s side, and though he had no nearer relation, the property was entirely in his own power. His character, too, was remarkable for singularity, and his intentions had never been formally announced.
The manner in which Oakley’s attendance had now for the first time been required, was in itself strange: he had received a letter at Paris desiring him immediately to proceed to London, where he would hear further. Upon his arrival there, he found another letter, desiring him to present himself at Rockington Castle by four o’clock in the afternoon of a certain day, and on no account to fail in observing the time prescribed. It was to fulfil this injunction that Oakley was now about to pursue his journey.
Lord Rockington’s was a name that had once made considerable noise in the political world. His military achievements had in youth, for a time, even entitled his head to swing on signs at ale-house doors. But his glories had been suddenly overcast—he had had his reverses, which had caused a reaction of public opinion. Impeachment had been threatened, but not persevered in. His name, however, was scratched out of the Red Book, and his head painted over on the sign-posts. Disgrace had driven him to seek his present retirement, and his former reputation, as well as his more recent infamy, were speedily alike forgotten in the quick succession which followed of greater events, and perhaps greater men. Few ever inquired whether he was physically, as well as politically dead. All know how soon the attention of the world is turned, even from characters yet undeveloped, and events yet unravelled; and here was a man whom the public voice had alternately praised and vituperated, each in its highest degree. What more could be made of him? Indeed, for many years, Lord Rockington’s name was never mentioned, even in those circles where it had once been “familiar in their mouths as household words,” save when now and then it was brought on the tapis incidentally at Lord Latimer’s, as that of a crabbed old curmudgeon who spoilt sport on the 12th of August.
When Oakley arrived at the last stage on the main road, from whence he was to turn off to his uncle’s, great indeed was the wonderment expressed at his ordering horses for Rockington Castle; it could not have caused more confusion in the whole stable-establishment, if he had desired to be driven to the North Pole.
“Why, is not this Lord Rockington’s post town?” inquired Oakley of the landlord.
“Yes, Sir, but it’s a matter of twenty miles off,” answered mine host, “and as to letters, why for years that I have been post-master, there has never come a single one for him, nor have I so much as seen the like of his frank.”
After extracting from the tap-room a drunken ostler, who was reported once to have driven Lord Rockington’s leaders when a lad, and appealing in vain to his recollections on the subject of the road then, and receiving only the uniform answer—“Na, he never gi’ed I a drop of owt when I’s gitten them,” the stable conclave at length decided, that after Bill had turned out of the main road, down Ruggedrut-lane, he must inquire the way.
Accordingly, after Bill had at length succeeded in convincing his puzzled posters that they were not going their regular stage to ——, and had made the turning down Ruggedrut-lane, constant inquiry was necessary, but not always easy, as after quitting the attractive neighbourhood of the great road, population became thinner, and straggling houses were seen but at considerable intervals. Sometimes their questions were only answered by a stupid stare—at others, by “Rockington Castle! Na, you munna gang there;” but whenever they succeeded in obtaining a direct answer, the road evidently the most overgrown, and apparently the least frequented, was the one pointed out to them.
Profiting by this hint, when, from no symptoms remaining of neighbouring habitation further verbal inquiries became impossible, Oakley adopted the plan of always taking the turning over which he saw written, “No road this way; trespassers will be punished;” construing, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, this regular warning as a direction-post to Rockington Castle, and the threat which followed into an invitation to choose that path.
As he advanced, it was impossible that Oakley should not be struck with astonishment at the extraordinary appearance of the whole face of the country: that which had once been a well-cultivated estate was now one vast wilderness. The hedges were unclipped; the more vigorous plants, of which they were composed, had shot up into wild over-growth, and now remained dotted about in irregular clumps, appearing like a dwarfish forest wood. The ground, which had once been tilled to yield its varied and successive produce, now offered, over all its wide extent of surface, only the rank growth of uncropped herbage; and now and then among the trees were seen at intervals the broken remnants of apparently ruined buildings.
As Oakley’s progress brought him under one of those, he was at a loss to account for the present state of the dilapidated dwelling, which seemed neither decayed by the mouldering hand of time, nor crushed by the sudden wrath of the elements, nor yet stripped by the spoliation of human hands. It had been rendered utterly uninhabitable; the covering of the roof was scattered around; and beams and rafters, torn from their resting-place, were confusedly leaning against the bared walls.
But in the lower rooms, the yet unbroken state of the casements showed that no wanton mischief had been allowed to intrude upon its deserted state since the hour of its demolition; and that this had not been recent, appeared from the size of two goodly trees, the unchecked growth of which obscured the whole front, and sent their topmost shoots over the broken roof, but when saplings, had, it seemed, lent their supple twigs to form an arbour over the heads of those who had last reposed, where were still left the rotten remains of a worm-eaten bench.
Oakley afterwards learnt, that upon Lord Rockington’s first seclusion, the whole of his estate had been laid waste for the purpose merely of stopping to its utmost limits his wanderings, without the chance of his being offended with the sight of a fellow-creature. Extravagant as this may seem, yet solitude was his mania; and though he paid fifteen thousand a-year for it, yet, what is not paid by many to secure the constant presence of the “human face divine?” and none ever sought society with half the eagerness that he shunned it. The preposterous extent too of this sacrifice to a ruling passion, was somewhat diminished by his deriving thirty thousand a-year from other estates which he never visited.
But though all this may account for the act on the mere ground of self-indulgence, yet must deep disappointment, and consequent misanthropy, have conspired to harden the heart that could without a pang have given the order, and unmoved have beheld its execution; for it was just one of those primitive, secluded spots, where, in proportion as the social sympathies are undeveloped, attachment to the soil is strongest; and the ejectment which left untenanted that one deserted arbour which Oakley had passed, destroyed more endearing ties and more cherished associations, than would have been disturbed by a whole century of improvements in a crowded metropolis.
Now however, that time had hallowed the work, the effect it had produced was wild and picturesque. The outline of the country was bold and abruptly broken: it had always been one of those rugged regions over which man seems to hold his control but by a feeble tenure; and, in this instance, the moment of his abdication had been quickly followed by the disappearance of any traces of his authority, and Nature, in her wildest garb, had as speedily resumed undivided dominion. Even quickset hedges, those badges of man’s superintending presence, had thrown off the rectangular livery of art; and, scattered about in irregular and tangled brakes, beneath the wide-spreading arms of loftier trees, added to the wildness of the scene.
All this harmonized peculiarly with Oakley’s existing feelings, and prepared his mind for the events which were to follow. After driving through many miles of this depopulated desert, he arrived at the gate of Rockington Castle. No softening symptoms of return to civilization had marked his approach: it rose upon the sight like a mighty vessel out of the bosom of the troubled waters, and stood in the midst of the wide waste in solitary grandeur, the only work of man for miles around.
Rockington Castle was an edifice which really deserved its cognomen of Castle, not assumed merely on the strength of latticed windows or a flag-staff, but deriving its title from a period prior to the Conquest, crowned as it then was with the identical turrets which still overhung its eastern summit, and bearing about in different parts the distinguishing marks of each succeeding century except the present; for it had fortunately escaped the mongrel patch-work of modern improvements. With the present day, it seemed to hold no connexion. The shades of mailed knights and warriors of the olden time might have been expected to hover about so congenial a spot, but that it should contain a living modern master, seemed almost incredible.
Oakley’s postilion was obliged by main strength to force back the great gate upon its rusty hinges, and he found himself in the grass-grown court-yard at the moment that a deep-toned bell, the first symptom of inhabitancy, struck the appointed hour for his arrival.
“My lord has just been asking for you,” said a veteran attendant who met him at the door; “it is well you had not arrived too late—he is sadly changed within these two days.” With this, he ushered him through a suite of dilapidated rooms.
Oakley (to whom the idea of immediate danger had never suggested itself, from the methodical manner in which his presence had been desired) was not a little shocked at this declaration. The aged attendant left him alone for a minute in a sort of picture-gallery, whilst he proceeded to announce his arrival.
There would have been much for a genealogist, and somewhat for a connoisseur to study in the gallery, which seemed devoted alone to commemorate the martial representatives of the family. There were seen warriors of every age, from the first rudiments of the art of painting, when coats of mail were sketched with a pencil as hard and as stiff as the substance it depicted. After them appeared a valuable specimen or two of the matchless time of Vandyke; then came a profusion of the flowing periwigs and shining breast-plates of the vain and frivolous age which followed, and which owes its immortality to the colouring of Lely and of Kneller.
One alone was to be seen of a more recent date, which rivetted the attention of Oakley: it was a full-length portrait of his uncle on horseback—he was represented in the prime of manhood, at the moment of victory. As a work of art it had few recommendations, but as a portrait it was perfect; for it conveyed the expression so often experienced, without knowing the person pourtrayed, of an indisputable likeness. It was an admirable head, surviving even the almost overpowering profusion of daubed canvas with which it was surrounded. True, the horse was wooden, and the landscape woolly. The retiring foe was rather shadowy, and the smoke somewhat substantial, but the countenance atoned for all defects: it was the living man himself, and every muscle told a tale of triumphant pride, and gratified love of glory; and as this must all have been drawn from life at a subsequent period, it was evident that the character of the man had been one in which the habitual indulgence of these feelings had long outlived the moment of their excitement.
Oakley was still gazing intently upon this all but speaking portrait, with a feeling that it was impossible not to acknowledge the superiority that it seemed to claim, and to partake of the enthusiasm that it exhibited, when he was summoned into the presence of the original. The sudden shock of the contrast was appalling. He might have even been prepared to see a person from age and disease wasted in frame, and worn in feature, but not to behold a countenance which had long lost every trace of the action—of that mind which had given life to the picture—nor to find that a piece of colored canvas could appear animated by that commanding soul, which no longer inspired the living form where it still lingered.
Lord Rockington had been remarkable for the height of his person, and the stateliness of his deportment; and his emaciated figure now seemed to recover a momentary elasticity, as he half attempted to rise to receive his nephew. A stranger-smile for an instant hovered about his lips—how unlike the conscious curl of proud superiority which marked the mouth of the portrait! A confused and unsettled stare had succeeded to the piercing glance of the fiery eye which had fixed Oakley in that picture, with which he could not help comparing the unhappy object before him.
Lord Rockington addressed his nephew courteously. “Punctuality, I see, has become a practice as well as precept in the world. It is twenty years since I last made an appointment, and I had my own reasons for wishing this not to be broken.”
He paused from the exhaustion which followed this first effort, and which seemed so excessive as to confirm the prediction with which he resumed.
“Mr. Oakley, you have faithfully obeyed the summons of a dying man.”
Oakley expressed, in reply, an earnest hope that in this he might be deceived.
“Words, worthless words,” interrupted Lord Rockington, evidently irritated. “After so long a holiday, must my insulted ear again echo back empty professions before its failing sense is for ever delivered from the sickening sounds of human hypocrisy and falsehood. I am a stranger to you, odious by name, loathsome in person; I have given you no cause to hope my life. You are my heir. Have I given you none to wish my death?”
Oakley would have endeavoured to soothe him, and to check these wayward ebullitions of a distempered mind; but Lord Rockington, assuming more composure, motioned him to silence.
“I have much to tell and little time to tell it in. You doubt my accuracy in predicting the impending dissolution of this care-worn frame. Dispute with the pedant as to his knowledge of that author whom he has spent a life in expounding. Teach the carrier’s drudge his daily course; but doubt me not in that which has long been my only study. For twenty long years life has been a burden; I have sighed to yield, yet still have been doomed to bear it. To foresee some end to this lingering torment has been my only care. Many a time have I mocked myself with false hopes, and the first welcome symptoms of disease have yielded to an unfortunately strong constitution. At last I am rewarded; I have watched from their first doubtful appearance the certain seeds of decay. I have studied all that science has ever recorded, or experience taught of its symptoms, its gradual progress, and final consummation. And this is the day, almost the hour, I have fondly anticipated.”
Another protracted pause, from increasing weakness, succeeded, uninterrupted by Oakley, whose attention was absorbed by the singular declaration he had just heard. The stillness of this mutual silence was broken by the successive tones of various time-pieces which Oakley for the first time observed were placed in different parts of the house. It would have puzzled him to account for the presence of these generally unheeded warnings of the monotony of the life they witnessed, but that from what he had just been told, it seemed to be Lord Rockington’s occupation, to mark with studied accuracy the creeping pace of time, that he might foretell with certainty when its finger pointed to his own last hours. Roused, by these much-noted sounds, to a consciousness that time was not to be lost, Lord Rockington resumed.
“It was not merely to exhibit myself a common-place memento of mortality that I summoned you here. I will you heir to my feelings, as I have done to my fortunes; I would bequeath you, not merely that wealth with which I have been wretched, but that experience with which you may be happy. I would have you despise the world as I do now, not yield its easy victim as I once did. I would leave as the best legacy this world can contain, the consciousness that flattery is but the cloak of envy—confidence but a premium for treachery—that riches are but the means of purchasing disappointment—and that fame is the mark set up by fools to be the sport of knaves.”
There was enough of constitutional distrust in the nature of Oakley, as has been already stated, to make him a deeply-interested, almost an assenting auditor of the misanthropic dogmas of his dying uncle.
“I would for this,” continued Lord Rockington, “dedicate my last moments to recording the events and actions which marked the first part of a long life and the reflections which have accumulated from them in the latter portion of it; but all this must I crowd into a score of sentences, and half as many minutes. My task is harder too, because from long disuse words now refuse to follow at the beck of thought. I had always enjoyed the substantial favours of fortune: for a time I had strutted in the tinsel trappings of fame. I had fought for my country, and conquered. I was the people’s idol; courted, caressed, and rewarded—it was the heaven of an hour. At this time a distant and disturbed colony required control; I was selected, from the difficulty of the task, and at once incurred the greatest curse that can befall the native of a free state—responsibility for the exercise of arbitrary powers. I know not now whether my acts were right or wrong: success did not sanction them. One reverse succeeded another, exaggerated accounts of which were sent to England. Distance magnified my delinquencies, and delayed my defence.
“The reaction of public opinion was overwhelming: I became the object of universal odium. The most subservient of my creatures, who had participated in my every action, sought to save themselves at my expense; and when I thought I had been confiding in faithful followers, I found I had been harbouring pseudo-patriot spies. I was openly accused of cruelty, indirectly taunted with cowardice; and even the most improbable suspicion of peculation was widely circulated and readily believed. I hastened to England to clear my character—every ear was shut against my discredited defence, every door was closed against my disgraced person.
“I sought the minister whose verbally expressed intentions I had fulfilled, but as my powers had been discretionary, I had no written instructions to plead. I was freezingly received. He remembered nothing of the past, and for the future referred me to the issue of a threatened motion in parliament. On that anxiously-expected night, skulking in an obscure corner, I saw my accuser arrive. I had last beheld him presiding at a public-dinner given in honour of my victory. He was quickly surrounded by troops of eager friends giving assurances of success, which his confident look confirmed. He was loudly called on by name to commence, when amidst much confusion, the minister interposed, and stated that he had something to communicate which might render further proceedings unnecessary. Breathless attention succeeded. He then announced that it had pleased his Majesty to dismiss Lord Rockington from all his situations and appointments.
“The inhuman yell of delight, which under the technical appellation of universal cheering, burst from all sides at this declaration, fell upon my ear like the cry of blood-hounds fastening upon their victim. Instinctively I sought to escape the sound by flight, and yet it seemed to linger in the distance. ’Twas the last greeting of my fellow-men. Twenty years have since elapsed—I hear them still!”
Lord Rockington became violently agitated, as if to exclude these imaginary sounds; he raised to his ears his withered hands—his wild and haggard eyes seemed for a moment to start beneath their pressure, then became fixed—the universal shudder with which he had concluded the sentence was succeeded by strong convulsions, and he remained for some time senseless.
Oakley summoned the ancient attendant whom he had before seen, and who was the only one allowed to approach his master, and demanded whether medical aid could not be procured; but the old man shook his head, and said he dared not so offend his dying Lord.
After a time, Lord Rockington seemed by a strong effort to recover his speech; he raised himself upright, then bending towards Oakley, collected his remaining strength, and thus addressed him—
“Let those, who would scoff at the steadiness of my misanthropy, triumph in the idea that once again before I die I have sought the relief of kindred feelings, that in my last moments I have secured the congenial presence of one whose sincerity even I cannot doubt—Yes, I have found one who shall rejoice in my release, as I do myself. My expectant heir shall as eagerly count my ebbing pulse. His ready hand shall in sympathising pleasure return the convulsive grasp of death.”
These were the last words Lord Rockington spoke. He had seized Oakley’s hand as he uttered them. He then sunk senseless on the sofa, and in a few hours this strange being was no more.