Black Sheep: A Novel

"I'm to keep to the right?"

"Keep on a bearin' to the right, sir, 'cross Watch Common, and down One Ash Hill, and that'll bring you straight on to Poynings, sir! No luggage, sir?"

"None, thank you!"

"Luggage! no! I should think not! party's without a overcoat, don't you see, Thomas?--without a overcoat, and it freezin' like mad! Poynings, indeed! What's he doin' there? He don't look much like one of the company! More like after the spoons, I should say!"

The polite porter who had made the inquiry, and the satirical station-master who had commented on the reply, remained gazing for a minute or two at the stranger who had just arrived at the Amherst station of the South-Eastern Railway, and then went back to the occupations from which the premonitory whistle had called them; which, in the porter's case, consisted of a retirement to a little wooden watch-box where, surrounded by oil-cans, grease-boxes, dirty swabs of cloth, and luggage-barrows reared on end and threatening with their fore-feet, he proceeded to the mending of his shoes with a bit of tin and a few tacks, while the stationmaster turned to the accounts which extracted the marrow from his very soul, and carried on what he called the "tottle" of a drove of two hundred and sixty oxen, conveyed at per head.

"Freezing like mad." The station-master was right. The frost, which of late years holds aloof, utterly destroying the pictorial prophecies of the artists of the illustrated periodicals regarding Christmas Day, and which, with the exception of a two days' light rime, had left January a moist and muggy month, had set in with the commencement of February, hard, black, and evidently lasting. The iron-bound roads rang again, even under the thin boots of the stranger, who hurried over them with a light and fleeting step. The sharp keen air whirling over bleak Watch Common so penetrated his light, Londonish clothing, that he shivered horribly, and, stopping for an instant, beat his sides with his hands in an awkward manner, as one to whom the process was new, and who was vainly endeavouring to imitate some action he had seen. Then he hurried on with a short rapid jerking step, essentially different from the league-swallowing swinging pace of the regular pedestrian accustomed to exercise; stumbling over the frozen solid ruts made by the heavy cart-wheels, slipping on the icy puddles, and ever and anon pausing to take fresh breath, or to place his hand against his loudly-beating heart. As he skirted the further edge of the common, and arrived at the brow of the hill which the porter had mentioned to him, and which he recognized by the solitary tree whose branches rustled above him in the night wind, he heard, by the chimes of a distant church, ten o'clock rung out sharp and clear through the frosty air. He stopped, counted each chime, and then set off again at a quickened pace, his progress down the descent being easier now, muttering to himself as he went:

"Ten o'clock! I must press on, or they'll all be in bed, I suppose. Beastly respectable, old Carruthers, from what I can make out from my mother, and what little I saw of him! Servants up to prayers and all that kind of thing. No chance of getting hold of her, if I can't make her know I am there, before those prayers come off. Glass of cold water and flat candlestick directly they're over, I suppose, and a kiss to Missy and God bless you all round, and off to bed! By George, what a life! What an infernal, moping, ghostly, dreary existence! And yet they've got money, these scoundrels, and old Carruthers could give you a cheque that would make you wink. Could! Yes, but wouldn't, especially to me! Ba, ba, black sheep, and all the rest of it! Here's a poor tainted mutton for you, without the wind being in the least tempered to him! Jove, it goes through me like a knife! There'll be a public somewhere near, I suppose, and when I have seen my mother, I'll step off there and have some hot rum-and-water before turning in. Hold up, there, you hawbuck brute, pull your other rein! What's the use of your lamps, if they don't show you people in the road?"

He had sprung aside as he spoke, and now stood flat against and pushing into the leafless hedge as a carriage with flashing lamps and steaming horses whirled so closely by him as almost to brush his arm. The coachman paid no attention to his outcry, nor did the footman, who, almost hidden in overcoats, was fast asleep in the rumble behind. The next instant the carriage was whirling away; but the pedestrian, seeing the condition of the footman, had swung himself on to the hind step, and, crouching down behind the rumble and its unconscious occupant, obtained a shelter from the bitter wind, and simultaneously a lift on his road. There he crouched, clinging firmly with both hands in close proximity to the enshrouded knees of the unconscious footman--knees which, during their owner's sleep, were very helpless and rather comic, which smote each other in the passage of every rut, and occasionally parted and displayed a dreary gulf of horsecloth between them, to be brought together at the next jolt with a very smart concussion--and there he remained until the stopping of the carriage, and a sharp cry of "Gate" from the coachman, induced him to descend from his perch, and to survey the state of affairs from that side of the carriage most removed from a certain light and bustle into which they had entered. For, on the other side of the carriage to that on which the stranger stood, was an old-fashioned stone lodge with twinkling lights in its little mullioned windows, and all its thousand ivy-leaves gleaming in the carriage-lamps, and happy faces grouped around its door. There was the buxom lodge-keeper the centre of the group, with her comely red face all aglow with smiles; and there was her light-haired, sheep-faced husband standing by the swinging iron gates; and there were the sturdy children, indulged with the unwonted dissipation of "sitting up;" and there was the gardener's wife awaiting to see company come in, while her master had gone up to look at fires in hothouses; and there were Kidd, the head keeper, and little Tom, his poor idiot boy, who clapped his hands at the whirling lights of the carriages, and kept up an incessant boom of imbecile happiness. Sheep-faced male lodge-keeper bobbing so furiously as to insist on recognition, down goes window of carriage furthest from the stranger, and crisp on the night air cries a sharp curt voice,

"How do, Bulger? Not late, eh? hum--ah! not late?"

To which Bulger, pulling at invisible lock of hair on forehead:

"No, Sir Thomas! Lots company, Sir Thomas! Seasonable weather, Sir--"

But the carriage was whirled away before Bulger could conclude, and before the stranger could resume his place under the sheltering lee of the now conscious footman. He shrank back into the darkness--darkness deeper and thicker than ever under the shadow of the tall elms forming the avenue leading to the house, and remained for a minute buried in thought.

The night was clear, and even light, with the hard chilly light of stars, and the air was full of cold--sharp, pitiless, and piercing. The wind made itself heard but rarely, but spared the wayfarer not one pang of its presence. He shrank and shivered, as he peered from under the gaunt branches of the trees after the carriage with its glittering lights.

"Just like my luck!" he thought bitterly. "Nothing is to be wanting to make me feel myself the outcast that I am. A stranger in my mother's house, disowned und proscribed by my mother's husband, slinking like a thief behind the carriages of my mother's fine friends. I will see my mother, I must see her; it is a desperate chance, but surely it must succeed. I have no doubt of her, God bless her! but I have my doubts of her power to do what I want."

He emerged from the shadow of the trees again, and struck into the avenue. He quickened his pace, shivering, and seeing the long line of way lying level before him in the sombre glimmer of the night, he went on with a more assured step. Angry and bitter thoughts were keeping the young man company, a gloomy wrath was in his dark, deep-set eyes, and the hands which he thrust into his coat-pockets clenched themselves with an almost fierce impatience. He strode on, muttering, and trying to keep up an air of hardihood (though there was no one to be deceived but himself), which was belied by the misgivings and remorse at his heart.

"A fine place and a grand house, plenty of money, and all that money gives, and no place for her only son! I wonder how she likes it all! No, no, I don't; I know she is not happy, and it's my fault, and HIS." His face grew darker and more angry, and he shook his clenched hand towards a stately house, whose long lighted façade now became visible.

"And _his_--_his_ who married my mother and deceived her, who gave her hopes he never intended to fulfil--my ill conduct the cause of his forbidding her to bring me here!--he always hated me; he hated me before he saw me, before he ever knew that I was not a sucking dove for gentleness and a pattern of filial obedience and propriety; he hated me because I existed--because I was my mother's son; and if I had been the most amenable of stepsons, he would have hated me all the same, only he would have shown his hatred differently, that's all. I should have been brought here, and made to feel insignificance, instead of being left to beg or starve, for all he cares. I am better off as it is."

A harsh smile came over his face for a moment. "Quite a blackguard, and all but a beggar. All but? No, quite a beggar, for I am coming to beg of my mother--coming to your fine house, Capel Carruthers, like a thief or a spy; slinking in at your gates, under cover of your fine friends' fine carriages; a prodigal stepson, by Jove, without the faintest chance of a welcome, and every probability of being turned out, if discovered. Company here, too, of all nights in the year, to make it more difficult to get hold of old Brookes unsuspected, but not so unfortunate either, if I'm seen. Hangers about are to be found even in the country, I suppose, on festive occasions. There's the house at last! A grand place, grim as it is under the stars, with a twinkling firmament of its own on the ground floor. The lights look warm. Good God, how cold it is out here!" Again he drew back close to the tall dark stems of the trees, to let a carriage pass; when it had discharged its load under the portico, he emerged cautiously upon the broad carriage sweep by which the company were arriving.

The house was an old one, and was surrounded by a narrow fosse or ditch, which in former days might have been full of water, and used for defensive purposes, but which was now drained and dry, and served as a kind of area, looked into by the windows in the basement. Above this fosse, and stretching away on either side of the heavy portico, was a broad and handsome stone terrace, the left hand portion of which lay in deep shadow, while the right hand portion was chequered with occasional light, which made its way through the partially closed shutters of the ball-room. Cautiously crossing the broad drive, and slipping behind a carriage which was just discharging its load at the hall door, George Dallas, the stranger whose fortunes we have so far followed, crept into a dark angle of the porch until the crunching of the gravel and the clanging of the door announced the departure of the carriage, and then, climbing the balustrade of the terrace, and carefully avoiding the lines of light, made his way to the window of the room, and peered in. At first, he shook so with the cold, that he could not concentrate his attention on what was passing before his eyes; but having groped about and found a small tree which was carefully protected with a large piece of matting, and which flanked one end of the balustrade, he quietly removed the matting, and, wrapping it round him, returned to his position, watching and commenting on the scene of which he was a spectator.