LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1722, 27 August 1879, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE FATE OF FOSBBOOKB. Though possessed of no actual patent of nobility, the Fosbrookes of Foabrooke Manor held their heads as high, and were as proud of their long pedigree, as any baronet in the country. And with good cause ;so many inter marriages with right noble dames were emblazoned on that roll, so broad were the acres over which the squire held manorial and territorial sway, so fine a specimen of Tudor architecture was his grand old mansion, that the lord of the manor It represented might well be pardoned if he boasted of the bine blood which had come to him through successive maternal veins, and forgot that he had no other lordship. The Foabrookea of Foabrooke, however, were not given to boasting. They had been squires of the land for so many generations that their position was assured, and needed no trumpet tongue to proclaim it. lam myself a Foabrooke, and perhaps inherit the old leaven, if I inherit nothing more. For it happens I am but the descendant of a degenerate and disowned Foabrooke, who struck a deadly blow at the family pride, and my name —neither Rupert nor Reginald, but blunt, plain John, barrister-at-law—may be found on the lintels of a door in the Inner Temple ; and three months ago Foabrooke Manor was known to me only through tradition.

My grandfather’s grandfather, so I have been told, was the squire’s second son, and destined for the army, In accordance with established precedent. But Rupert had no mind to gird a warrior’s sword upon his thigh. He watched the family portraits grow life-like under the hand of Gainsborough ; had gone with the artist into the woods and terraced gardens in quest of fitting backgrounds ; and, lingering by his side, the longing grew within himself to be a painter, and reproduce on the lifeless canvas the loveliness of life and nature. Unknown to squire or dame, their son sketched by Q-ains-borough’s side; and he, proud of his art, fostered the youth’s enthusiasm, all unwitting of mischief. Thus it chanced that, when the rising painter returned to the metropolis, after a prolonged stay In the ancient manor-house, he left behind a pupil longing to emulate his master, as well as a group of pictures in the oaken gallery. Then it was discovered that Rupert dabbled in pigments ; but so long as he only handled the brush for amusement, he might copy the old pictures on the wall, group together cottage children, or case a groom in armour from the staircase, and transfer to the panels of bis chamber his crude imaginings of art, with no further token of disapprobation than the contemptuous laughter of his father and brother, who regaided a fox’s brush as a trophy, but a painter’s as the mere tool of a craftsman. Yet, the very taunts and sarcasms which followed the young laggard in tho hunting-field, the unsportsmanlike shot in the woods or stubble, drove him for refuge to the solitude of his own chamber, and for solace to the art contemned by those around him. But not until Rupert declined to be a soldier, did oppression culminate and wrath grow fierce. In vain did the good mother plead with son and sire ; in vain did Reginald urge his brother to renounce his degrading pursuit as a slur on their ancient lineage and escutcheon, holding up the army as the only escape for a Fosbrooke. Rupert was as persistent as his elder brother, as resolute as his father was vehement ; all argumentation ending with the same resolve : * I will not lay down my paint-brush for a sword.’ < Then, by heaven, I’ll make a bonfire of your painting rattletraps ! No son of mine shall spend his days in daubing canvas to disgrace us all!’ cried tho old squire in his wrath. Presently there was a great blaze in the court-yard, that seemed to flame again in the dark eyes of Rupert, who stood in the door-way with knitted brow and folded arms, a fire kindling in his heart as all his treasures went to feed the holocaust. His lip curled. * Ay, burn them an’ you will ; I shall ho a painter notwithstanding.’ . „ . , ~ ‘You paint no more in Fosbrooke Manor, Master Rupert,’ replied his father, with decision. ‘ There is your commission ; take it or leave it. But if you leave it, you quit Fosbrooke at once and for ever. See then If brush or sword be best to fight your way with,’ . • You may cast the commission among tne burning rattletraps,’ retorted! the Jyoung man, proudly. *l’n none of It; You have kindled a fire to destroy, and it will die in ashes; but the fire of genius is unquench* able, and that creates,’

‘No weeping, madam,’ shouted the squire, as Dame Fosbrooke’s kerchief went to her tearful eyes. ‘Let him carry his genius elsewhere. He paints no more under this roof. And look you, sir,’ he called after Rupert, who was following his distressed mother, ‘if ever yon put a living foot under this threshold while I’m above ground, I’JI have you pitched out neck and crop, yon ungrateful whelp.’ Reginald stood apart, but made no sign of interposition, Rupert turned. *At your bidding, sir, I go. But living or dead, I shall coirio back to my home, some day, and none will say me nay when next I paint beneath its roof.'

He sought his sorrowing mother, and clung to her embrace, but proud and persistent as his kin, tore himself away. In half an hour he was on the road to London, with nought but what his steed could carry, and his mother’s tearful blessing. Squire Foabrooke closed the chamber of his degenerated son, and the avenues of his heart. He made a will, in which ho utterly renounced him, and thenceforth woe betide the luckless wight who dared to speak of Rupert in his hearing. He had been his favorite child, the son of his degenerate age—a posse of girls had come between Reginald and him—and the wrench made in a moment of anger, set his heartstrings quivering for ever. But a Foabrook of Foabrooke was never known to yield where the family honor was concerned, and silence as of the grave closed over Rupert’s name within the shadow of the manor. If ever a whisper reached the mother’s car that he had found a welcome in Gainsborough’s atuly, the whisper never had an echo from her lips. The squire, once bluff and hearty, grow stern—the blow he had dealt at his boy had fallen on himself.

Nothing was heard of Rupert for many years. His sisters married, and went their several ways to distant homes. Reginald alone was left. Then he took to himself a wife, and grandchildren ran in and out of the tapestried rooms with a pleasant patter on the oaken floor, and climbed the old squire’s knee, and won smiles from the sadeyed grandmother, who sighed so heavily as she watched their childish gambols. The seasons came and went. It was the tenth anniversary of the day on which a prejudiced father drove forth his son (as stubborn as himself) to shape a future In an untried world. Ten years since Rupert, with the double fire of genius and obstinacy in his eye, rode away down the long beech avenue without one backward glance at battlements or mullioned window to stir the deeper emotions of his soul and change his purpose. Squire Foabrooke and his son had been out with the hounds since dawn. The London carrier’s waggon creaked slowly along a by-lane to the back of the great house, and there surrendered a square unwieldy, flat packing case, over which conjecture wasted itself until the white-haired dame, yielding less to the curiosity of her grandchildren and their mother, Lady Annabel, than to some unconquerable impulse within herself, gave orders for a forcing of the lid. Whatever lay within was covered by a thick cloth, on which was inscribed in bold characters : ‘bupert fosbrookb’s addition to the FAMILY PORTRAITS. The elderly lady blanched to her very lips. With gesture rather than words, she ordered the removal of the cover, the while the children crowded around in wonderment, and Lady Annabel drew herself np disdainfully. There, limed by no tryo, the discarded son of the house looked out from the canvas, older, manlier, nobler than of old, palette and brushes in hand, a fine boy’s head before him on an easel, and by his side, with fingers lightly resting on his shoulder, a woman lovely as a painter’s dream. No need the written legend to declare that Rupert’s wife and sou were also there portrayed, or that his had been the artist hand. * Rupert Foabrooke, Maud, his wife, and Rupert, his son,’ read Reginald’s eldest boy. • Why, grandmother, who are they V ‘ Your uncle and your annt and cousin, child,’ sobbed the bereaved old lady in broken accents, while the servants drew respectfully apart, and whispered beneath their breath. Lady Annabel plucked her children away, saying : ‘ Uncle and aunt, forsooth !’ They are neither kith nor kin of mine, boy. No common painter’s doll-faced wife claims affinity with me.’ ‘Lady Annabel,’ said the elder, gathering np her form, • Rupert Foabrooke is my dear son. I did not disown him. I will not disown the fair mate he has chosen. He would never stoop to one unworthy.’ ‘ Stoop! He had sunk to the portrait painter’s level ere he wedded his master’s niece. I heard so much, madam, when I was last in town.’ So saying, Lady Annabel swept away to give her little ones a lesson in pride of birth, and obliterate, if possible, the pictured relatives from remembrance. Lady Annabel was no favourite with the old servants, and dark-eyed Rupert had been. Reverently they obeyed Dame Fosbrooke’s behest, and carrying the picture into the long dining room, set it upright against the tapestied wall by the carved buffet. As the squire entered with a troop of hungry hunting friends, the picture caught his sight. For a few moments he stood gazing upon it with changing colour and breath that came and went; then raising the whip he held, he struck at the figures fiercely, while he demanded hoarsely who had dared to brave him thus, and bade the servants haul it forth and burn it. There was a bonfire blazing in the yard while the squire and his friends supped, and Lady Annabel looked with stern satisfaction from an upper window. But the packing case alone was burned. The picture had been smuggled into the closed chamber of the young artist, and the good dame’s secret was well kept; not for fee or reward, but for the love of Barbara Foabrooke and her youngest bom. Four years Dame Barbara kept that secret along with others, in heart; and then, lying on her death-bed, she broke the long silence, and prayed that Rupert might bo summoned to close her dying eyes. It may be that the squire was likewise wearying for a sight of his discarded son, and only lacked a precept for his recall, for he was no longer obdurate. No, doubt, in his hidden soul he had long repented his hasty order anent the picture, and blamed the too obedient executants of his will. With barely a show of hesitation ho consented. But Reginald >nd Lady Annabel, too crafty to demur, too proud to own a painter for a brother, threw obstacles in the way, ‘ There was no clue to the vagabond’s whereabouts.’ From a locket worn concealed, the feeble mother produced a tiny slip of paper. It held Rupert Fosbrooko’s name and address. Here was an unlooked-for revelation, Annabel and Regioald exchanged glances. ‘Ah! this implies correspondence. I presume, sir, you had no knowledge of any communication with my brother.’ Once this would have been a spark on tow. It passed unheeded. All the squire seemed to hear was his wife’s appeal for haste; which his own voice seconded on her account, he said. He, himself, wrote a hurried letter of recall. At once Reginald became officiously active He despatched a trusty messenger with the missive ; so trusty that he failed to return before the dame’s ears were closed to any message ho might bring. Days went by. The white-haired squire paced the corridors as anxiously expectant as the sick lady in the state bed. But the shifty or irritable answers of Reginald to her inquiries had aroused suspicion of treachery. As the end drew nigh she insisted on being carried to Rupert’s chamber as the only chance of seeing the face of her lost son, They thought her mind was wandering. Her meaning was clear enough to them all when her chair was placed in front of Rupert’s picture, which yet bore the marks of the squire’s whip across its surface. Not more eagerly did Barbara Fosbrook’s filming eyes trace the well-remem-bered lineaments of her banished son than did those of the old squire, in whom affection had been so long dead ; while Reginald and Annibol were lost in amazement. Life’s fire relit in Barbara’s wan features as she gazed; strength came anew. She kissed the squire’s brown hand as the other dashed from her eyes the fast gathering tears j and then, marking the scowl on Reginald’s swart face as ho slunk behind her chair, she lifted her withered right hand, and extending it toward the picture, said impressively, in a voice that seemed to have gathered preternatural|strength for the effort: ‘ Rupert, my son, I call and thou dost not answer; I

hare longed for thee, and thou dost not come. But thou shalt come, and thou and thine shall be masters of Fosbrook when treachery has done its worst, I cannot die in my bed for lack of thy presence. But if there is treachery, let those who keep thee back answer it, for never shall a Foabrooke die in his bed till the lost bo recalled, end younger and elder join hands in love and friendship under the old rooftree. And mark you, Reginald! my curse shall cling to him who dares destroy or disturb the picture I have preserved and cherished } the solace of my old ago.’ The flickering flame was spent. Barbara Foabrooke fall back in her chair ; and there, with the painted eyes of son, grandson, and daughter-in-law fixedly set upon her, she closed her own for ever.

He ‘ would never sot living foot in Fobb ooke Manor again/ was the verbal message said to come from Rupert; the old man winced as ho listened, for the words were his own—never forgotten, it seemed, by either. He had no doubt of the messenger’s fidelity, no thoughts of duplicity in his eldest-born. He accepted the answer as final; made no second attempt to reconciliation ; never again mentioned Rupert’s name. But from that hour a change fell upon him. All his old sports were neglected, Reginald might hunt and shoot, and fill the manor-house with roystering squires; he kept himself aloof, and would pace the long corridor between his own chamber and Rupert’s by the hour together, not seldom turning into the unused room and lingering there alone with his regretful memories. The servants said he was bewitched, and Reginald threatened to burn Rupert’s picture in earnest, since it seemed to turn his father’s brain. And no doubt he would have carried his threat into execution but for an appalling incident, which made the very room and all within it a very terror to him. _ The only sport to which the squire had clung was angling. It was quiet, and all noise and bluster had, as it were, died out of his life. Reginald strode in and about with heavy tread and resonant tones ; he came and went as silently as the silver hairs fell from his thinning scalp, and sat in the shade of the alders and willows by the moat-side, heedless of the flight of time. At first his youngest grandson bore him constant company, and fished by his side with a willow wand for a rod, prattling in boy fashion, with or without reply. One memorable evening, as Lady Annabel was about to retire for the night, and the housekeeper bore a lamp before her along the corridor, they saw a pale light streaming under the closed door of Rupert’s room, then there was a moan and a fall. Both women screamed; Reginald and a ticop of servants rushed up the W 'e staircase. The latter hung back when told the cause of alarm, but Reginald dashed open the door and found, as he had expected, his father lying senseless on the floor. (To be continued.)