THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE. JULY, 1878. Voung Brown. CHAPTER I. DUKE OF COURTHOPE. IR Odo-Plantagenet-Clansgold-Kins gear-Revel-Wyldwyl, K.G., Duke of Courthope and Revel, in the peerage of the United Kingdom; Marquis of Oldmyth, Earl of Allswon, and Baron Partizan, in the peerage of Great Britain; Earl and Viscount Kingsland in the peerage of Ireland; Earl of Winguid, in the peerage of Scotland; and a baronet, was naturally a great man before the first Reform Bill. He sent eleven Members to Parliament, and persons who owed everything to his patronage were to be found by those who sought after them, in every department of State. He had once condescended to accept the Vice-royalty of Ireland at the personal request of the Prince Regent, who liked to be splendidly represented; and had been for a short time a member of a Courtier Cabinet, which had loyally paid some of his Royal Highness's debts; but he was too magnifi VOL. XXVIII.-NO. 163. 1. cent a personage to care for office. He was a leader of that mighty oligarchy which controlled successive Ministries, and no party leader would have ventured to form a government without counting on his support or forbearance. He left his nominees in the House of Commons to vote much as they pleased on questions affecting their private interests; but directly any measure was brought forward which concerned himself or the privileges of nobility in general, his Grace, and some dozen or two of his personal friends, issued orders for its immediate withdrawal, and marched a compact body of their retainers down to Westminster to see that the business did not go any further. Neither the Duke, nor any of his political connections, were unkind men. They kept great state in their country houses. They went abroad with trains of carriages, and set the populace agape with awe. They exacted an awe-stricken respect from every one who approached them, in an easy unaffected way, just as they expected that even a beefsteak, which was their favourite dish, should be served to them on gold plate, by a footman in livery. Those who paid them in full, and without haggling, all the deference they claimed as their birthright, had substantial reasons to be thankful for what they got in return. There was nothing out of the reach of the Wyldwyl influence. Places and pensions, bishoprics, commands in the army and navy, the enormouslypaid sinecures of the law, and the best berths in the Civil service, which was then called the Service of the Crown, were among the least of the good things which depended on their favour; and they could demolish troublesome people as easily as they could crack nuts. Every one who had dealings with them knew as a fact beyond dispute, and concerning which even dispute was in a manner inexpedient, that they could make their displeasure felt when crossed too boldly. The stocks and the pillory were still in existence. A man might be whipped at the cart's tail by a resolute judge; and even justices of the peace could do strange things. Appeals might be made to the higher courts of law by stubborn people, but they were always costly and seldom successful; for witnesses were to be publicly seen walking about in the neighbourhood of the Old Bailey, with straws in their shoes, as a sign that they were to be hired, and a democrat who persistently made himself disagreeable and refused to mend his manners, might come to be hanged. The nobility were affable and condescending when amused, or indifferent; but not a few of them had shewn at odd times how sternly, and by what unscrupulous methods, they could avenge an affront without appearing openly in the matter. The sentiments of fear or gratitude they inspired, the universal servility with which they were treated by inferiors, did not depend on a slavish adherence to ancient custom: they were feelings based upon solid realities, and all sensible persons were aware that an abject subservience of the whims or interests of the hereditary masters of the country was the shortest way to wealth and honours. A nobleman could help or harm whomsoever he pleased, and if he meant to be mischievous, there was no escape from him at home or abroad. A private note sent out in a king's messenger's bag received as much attention from Prince Metternich and Prince Polignac, or from Count Nesselrode, the Duke of Coutrofiano and the Italian courts, as a letter marked "confidential," despatched by mounted express to Lord Grenville or Lord Liverpool. Somehow or other, by hook or by crook, disaffected people, however cautious, got into difficulties and never got out of them. Noblemen were simply of opinion that the world, and all that in it is, was made for them, and nothing occurred for many years to shake their faith in that belief. The Duke of Courthope, who lived at the close of the first quarter of the present century, had gone through the usual round of the pleasures and pains of a duke of the period. It was said that his youth had been wild; but this, if it meant anything, could only be supposed to signify that he formerly was rich and light-hearted. Old Mr. Mortmain indeed, the family solicitor, would sometimes look grave when the stories of twenty years before were mentioned in his hearing; a report had at one time been industriously circulated about a Scotch marriage and a daughter who had mysteriously disappeared, but who might, nevertheless, some day be proved heiress to the estates which mostly descended with the Scotch earldom of Winguid which his Grace had inherited from his mother. But this rumour died out, and the duke had long since been married by a prelate, whom he had placed on the Episcopal Bench, to Lady Mary Overlaw, sole heiress and representative of another duke, whose posterity were named as successors to the crown of England, under certain contingencies, by the will of Henry VIII. It was said in polite society, but it was not always said, that they had one son, a fine handsome young man with the family taste for enjoyment, and that the duchess had died without giving birth to any other children. Other people, perhaps better informed, averred that the duchess never had a son at all. It did not matter much. The Peerage printed that there was a Duke of Courthope, and that was enough for polite society's purposes. The bereaved widower did not take his wife's death much to heart; perhaps he was otherwise engaged, for there were many things which occupied his attention just then. He entertained Louis XVIII., and many of the French lords who followed him into exile, with such princely splendour that heavy charges on his property, and troublesome annuities, which subsequently inconvenienced his Grace considerably, began to take a vexatious shape about this time. Also he contested several elections to keep the disciples of Hunt and Cobbett out of public life, as Members for constituencies which were disposed to show an awkward hankering after independence. Notably, one Brown, a Scotch merchant, who had made a fortune from very humble beginnings in the East Indies, opposed the duke's nominee for a family borough, with a rancour and bitterness which seemed to arise from personal antipathy. The violent goings-on of this Brown, who had impudently bought some land in the neighbourhood of one of the duke's estates, were at last men. tioned to his Grace by a confidential agent charged with his election business; but the duke evinced no desire to continue the conversation. The struggle, however, was protracted with such obstinacy, that Mr. Brown was half ruined, and had to set out again upon his travels to repair his damaged fortune. Then the duke smiled in a peculiar hard, wry way he had, drawing down one side of his handsome mouth, when he had taken a determination; but he never visited the borough again, though all the shopkeepers in the place implored him to do so in the name of injured trade. great bitterness The new power The latter years of his life were passed in retirement. He was old, he was gouty, and even poor. He never quite got over the political changes which occurred in 1831-2, and spoke of Lord Grey with for having taken away so much of what belonged to him. which had been set up in the state was money, and of that he had none at all. Mr. Brown came back, and turned his own uncle, Lord Rupert Wyldwyl, out of his seat for Skipworth, which pestilent town was built within a stone's-throw of his park gates. And what was worse, he could no longer punish his tenantry, because he was in the hands of trustees, and his rents were assigned or anticipated. The past of but a short while ago, when he was all potent, seemed so far off that he sometimes doubted whether he had not dreamed that he once was great. He, who was now shelved and forgotten, while men spoke with bated breath of one O'Connell, an obscure Irishman, and a French Count D'Orsay whom he had good-humouredly patronised was king of London. The only pleasure left to his Grace was that of cleaning his china, which connoisseurs esteemed highly; and feeding his peacocks who knew him, and perhaps sympathised with him, for they too were excluded from the state banquets of the sailor king, who had succeeded the tailor king. Once, when he went to London for a few days, a banker presumed to speak to him, the Duke of Courthope and Revel, a Knight of the Garter! His Grace looked at the banker with a surprise almost pathetic, but the rich man was in no way impressed by it; and whether it was this unheard-of impertinence, or the gout, or a constitution impaired by the dinners of Carlton House and the Pavilion, there soon afterwards appeared an article in The Times which credited his Grace with all the virtues, and told a thoughtless world that he was dead. Possibly the virtues may have died with him, to show a becoming respect for the memory of the last of our great nobles. CHAPTER II. In the centre of a sleepy village on the borders of Oxfordshire there stood a small public-house, which was known to all the waggoners on the road for its sound beer and sweet hay. There were many waggoners about thirty-five years ago, and the "Chequers," which appeared from a large signboard, set in a clumsy framework upon a post, to be the sign of the inn, might have done a good business. But John Giles, the landlord, was for ever boozing with his customers on a bench before the door, and did not keep very clear accounts. He was a dull, good-natured fellow, who meant no harm to any one; and after his wife died there was no one to see into his gains. If he had his dinner ready at one o'clock, and a brown jug of mild ale at his elbow all day, he thought there was no need to trouble himself about anything else. A girl, who was said to be his wife's niece, kept these domestic arrangements in remarkably good order, and there was no one else on the premises but a contented ostler, who held his tongue whenever he could do so without offence, and did his work in a satisfactory manner, though not briskly; for whatever he might happen to be about, his eyes seemed to be always wandering in search of the girl, who evidently gave him subjects of reflection too deep for words. His name was Tom Brown, and he too was a connection of the deceased landlady, for she had taken care to people the inn before her departure, though she left no children of her own. He came from Northumberland, and had a deal of north-country shrewdness under his stolid looks. The girl was known as Madge Giles for every-day purposes. The curate, however, called her Miss Margaret,' and she laughed at him for doing so, but was secretly pleased; and it was pretty enough to see her come out demurely when he was likely to pass that way, and blush to hear herself treated with so much respect. All that was known with certainty about her, was that her mother had arrived some nineteen years before at the "Chequers" in a state of utter destitution, and had died soon after her birth. Such incidents are common enough among the poor, and if perhaps the gossips formed their own conclusions, the Giles's were decent folk, and there was no call to worry them with bad words about it. So the orphan child grew up to womanhood about the house, made herself useful, and John Giles, who was usually in a hazy state, thought that very likely she was a daughter he and his wife had had without knowing it. Madge called him father, and things were very well as they were. She was extraordinarily beautiful, and equally ignorant; a perfect type of bodily perfection uninformed by a mind; an English peasant girl with no memory, no clear ideas about anything. She could recollect that there was a pudding for dinner last Christmas-day, and that she had fallen into the fire when a child; but she could not remember anything that was said to her yesterday, unless it directly concerned herself. She could not read or write, or count up to twenty without blundering, and could not tell the way to the next town, though carts and coaches going thither passed the inn many times daily. It would have been impossible to explain the commonest thing to her; and she could not pronounce the name even of her friend the curate. She called him "t' parson," whereas he appeared in the Clergy List as the Reverend Marmaduke |