THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

OCTOBER, 1873.

Young Brown.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LAW OF ENTAIL.

ULL eighteen years after the Duke of Courthope's marriage, his Grace was seated one morning in the library of his hereditary Castle of Beaumanoir, which had been a monarch's residence, and was part of the dowry of a king's daughter, who had brought royal blood into the blue veins of Revel. It was a noble apartment, where generations of bygone princes and statesmen had wrought and pondered. It seemed still big with the silent memories of history; and about it were grave dark pictures and mute marble busts of captains, judges, and ministers who had illustrated the lofty house of Wyldwyl from generation to generation, being born into place and honours. It had served many purposes, that grand old room with its fretted roof, sculptured and painted by cunning hands long cold. It had deep embayed windows which looked over tall woods with the antlered deer that dwelt there; and a broad expanse of silver lake where

VOL. XXVIII.-NO. 166.

19.

the sluggish tench and the hoary carp slept in dim hollows under tideless waves, while the stately cygnet sailed grandly over them. It was here that Henry II. made his first appeal to Sir Raoul Wyldwyl, of Courthope, against the arrogance of Beckett, and that Richard III. brooded over his dark and thorny path to power. Here that the eighth Henry, moved by Thomas Lord Revel, resolved upon his lawless divorce, which changed the faith of England; and that Charles I. determined on the arrest of the Five Members, influenced, as was supposed, by the secret advice of Archibald Wyldwyl, first Marquis of Kinsgear.

On the northern wall, behind a long row of folio volumes marked with the names of theologians and philosophers, a sliding door opened which led through secret passages into one of the most sylvan parts of the park. You pressed the back of Jeremy Taylor in the centre of his Ductor Dubitantium, and the well-made panel moved noiselessly backwards in its groove. In the passages beyond the Jacobite emissaries from St. Germains had lain concealed in the days of William and Anne, while their cause was still worth a risk, because it had still a hope. It was in a niche of a bow window which commanded the widest view of the country round that the last hopes of the young Pretender had been ruined after the defeat of Culloden; and Sir Robert Walpole had won over the most powerful of his remaining adherents to the House of Hanover. They were keen-sighted men, those nobles of the long prosperous line of Wyldwyl, and seldom found themselves on the losing side in politics; while politics were the business of gentlemen and patriots. But the present Duke finding them given over to the commercial classes, and become more or less a game of all fours between stock-jobbers, speculators, contractors, and the permanent clerks of departments, had early learned to feel the same contempt for them which is entertained by most men of high rank and large fortune for the pettifoggery of modern administration. He considered truly that office was not worth the vexations and annoyances which inevitably accompanied it; and after having been for a few weeks a member of the club which formed Sir Robert Peel's first cabinet, he would never consent to be mixed up with any other, nor was he asked for his advice by any future Minister of the Crown. Latterly he had resided a large part of the year at Beaumanoir, because he was a much greater man there than in London; and he might have lived on his estates in dignity and happiness had he not been seized with an incurable greed and thirst for land. His Grace's agents had orders to buy up every acre, perch, and rood that was for sale in the county; and it was well known that he would give any price for it, rather than allow it to pass into other hands. The first news that an estate in his Grace's neighbourhood might be bought was as good as a fortune to any one. Sometimes land was bought and sold half-a-dozen times by his own agents or their coadjutors before it was ultimately conveyed to him, and the bills of surveyors, solicitors, and conveyancers employed in these purchases were prodigious. The nominal rent-roll of the Duke of Courthope, when he had suc

ceeded to the title and estates of his family, amounted to about ninety thousand a year. Since then, however, it had enormously increased, and his Grace thought with some complacency that whereas, at his accession to the dukedom, his possessions had barely exceeded ten thousand a year in land within his own county, he could now show by figures that his rents should not be less than seventy thousand a year there. To be sure, the liabilities upon these large estates had necessarily accumulated. It had been deemed expedient to destroy the late Duke's will to avoid the payment of legacy duty, and his Grace had left behind him such directions as he had to leave by word of mouth. It had also been considered peculiarly fortunate for the family honour that a son and successor had been born to him just in the nick of time; for had not the present Duke made himself responsible for about eleven hundred thousand pounds of the family debt on coming of age, there were some rough-tongued creditors who talked of impeaching his late Grace for misdemeanour. However, all this was ancient history. The living Duke had always been able to obtain loans for his immediate needs. He had borrowed money at fifteen per cent. of usury to buy land which yielded two per cent. of income; and when he wanted more to uphold his rank and dignity, he had deferred the payment of the late Duke's bequests which had been committed to his honour till a convenient season, and applied the family trusts which had devolved upon him to his own use. In most cases the cestuique trust had unhestitatingly confided their possessions to his keeping, in others he had not thought it worth while to ask their consent, because inquiry is never made about trust property, while the usual rates of interest can be paid, or disputed upon specious grounds; and if it should ever become necessary, argued his Grace with perfect reason, the capital sums taken could be always replaced, or some satisfactory arrangement made respecting them. The powerful head of a noble house, with places, pensions, and a score of church livings at his disposal, invariably finds his poor relations manageable--and if not, there was the Court of Chancery, where suits lasted till the original cause of them was forgotten.

Therefore his Grace, who knew well what he was about, and was fully aware that an English duke can do no wrong, granted life annuities by the dozen; and made debt support debt, as his ancestors had done before him which is an easy thing to do for any one who has the world's respect, his friends' credit, his kinsmen's hopes and property in custody, and is legally provided with a life-interest in false appearances. He signed his name to more papers than he could remember, as his father and grandfather had always done, giving greedy people large shadows for their substance. If his affairs were in inextricable confusion, if he was utterly insolvent, he was neither better nor worse off than most other noblemen, and it was really no business of his. When his son came of age the estates must be resettled, as was usual and convenient; and money could be raised in this way, as it had been when he

himself attained his majority. By-and-by a rich marriage would put everything to rights. Indeed there was a banker's daughter in the market. She had a fortune of five millions sterling; and the Duke had been privately informed by Lady Overlaw, his friend, relative, and very intimate counsellor, that the banker longed to have his child martyred and glorified as duchess presumptive of Courthope. He was not sure, if the banker behaved himself, that his son, Lord Kinsgear, should not marry her; though this son had been engaged from his cradle, by a family compact the Duke had never quite understood, to Amabel, daughter and sole heiress of Lord George Wyldwyl, his Grace's uncle, commander-in-chief, by birth and patronage, of her Majesty's forces in India. Mr. Mortmain, the Duke's family solicitor, knew more of this compact, and the Duke thought it might be well to consult him.

CHAPTER V.

MR. MORTMAIN.

MEANTIME his Grace the Duke of Courthope, while revolving these and other projects in his mind at leisure, had taken a fancy to an estate in Chancery, which might be got out of it with a little money and interest; so he had sent for Mr. Mortmain, his family solicitor, to pull the strings of his new puppet. Mr. Mortmain hastened to obey the summons of his illustrious client, and the Duke ordered a dog-cart to fetch him from the station. As he sat in the library looking at a pair of new guns which had just arrived from Manton's, he heard the wheels of the dog-cart returning with the lawyer in it; and he pressed a large hand bell which stood upon the carved oak table before him.

An Italian valet answered the loud silver sound of the bell. No country but Italy now produces servants illiterate enough to do their duty contentedly. The Duke told his valet to show Mr. Mortmain up at once, and to take care that he did not tumble against anything. Mr. Mortmain was near-sighted, and the Duke ordered Giovanni to bring him, just as he would have asked for a parcel containing something fragile.

"How are you, Alderman?" said his Grace, in a high falsetto voice between a squeak and a roar; for most of the Wyldwyls spoke not only loudly, but had an intonation peculiar to themselves, which part of speech. may be observed to characterize whole noble families, who borrow it the one from the other.

"I hope I see your Grace quite well?" answered Mr. Mortmain, in more conventional notes, replying after the custom of his age and profession by a question to a question.

"Pretty well, thank you, Alderman," returned the Duke, without looking up from his gun-case. "A little gout at times, but that is good for the complexion." It may be here observed that Alderman was not Mr. Mortmain's Christian name, but it pleased the Duke to call him Alderman