Trapped in a Miser’s Mansion: Two Brothers Plot Their Escape

Amongst the fens of Lincolnshire—in the dreariest portion of that miserable county, where all is barren and, if not unprofitable, at least uninteresting—stood, at the period this history commences, an old-fashioned, dingy-looking mansion, tenanted by Sir Ernest Ivraine, the miser-descendant of a long line of contemptible ancestors.

The house, situated near the centre of a large quagmiry park, commanded a mournful view over marshy lands, stagnant pools, and a river, so sluggish in its course that all kinds of water-plants grew and flourished on the surface; connecting it, in reality as in appearance, with the low flat fields bordering it—for they were terrestrial swamps, while it was an aquatic one.

2How far the roots of the poplar and willow trees, standing like spectral sentinels at regular intervals along the margin of the “stream”—as the natives, with a species of satire, none the less melancholy because unconscious, called it—had to penetrate before reaching a solid foundation, was a mystery nobody ever cared to fathom; for the damp stagnated the curiosity as well as the blood of the inhabitants: and whilst the guardians of the sorrowful river throve upon its banks, it was deemed, and justly, a matter of secondary importance how they managed to effect it.

Of all trees in the world poplars are, surely, the least beautiful; particularly when, as is the most approved mode in Lincolnshire, they are clipped and pruned, and stuck like sinful spirits along the edges of stagnant rivers, to make the desolate landscape look—if that were possible—doubly desolate and forlorn.

What an unspeakably wretched place that “Paradise” was where Sir Ernest Ivraine lived and sinned: or rather, starved and sinned! Who could have dreamed that, in times long past, it was so christened, not by a grim old cynic, but by a fair young bride; who soon, pining away broken hearted, sickened, died, and sought a brighter and a happier 3home? What mortal man, seeing the baronet’s abode on a December’s day, would have credited, had verbal testimony not been corroborated by additional evidence, that any human being could choose to inhabit such a spot, if it were possible for him, by dint of labour or stratagem, to escape from it?

In the glorious summer days, indeed, when most of the fields were covered with waving corn, and the swamps donned a brownish-greenish mantle, and draining was spoken of by theoretical persons as possible; when water-lilies bloomed on the bosom of the slimy river, and everything looked its very best; it became just palpable to the vivid imaginations of a few, that, with an immense expenditure of money, something might be made of the place: and people suggested that, when the old baronet died, great improvements might be anticipated; for, of course, Sir Ernest the younger, when he came to his estate and title, would render the home of his boyhood worthy of its name and his ancestors. In plain words, Lincolnshire sages expected he would waste a fortune in endeavouring to beautify that which nature and climate decreed should never be beautiful, or habitable for more than three brief months out of the twelve universally admitted to “make one year.”

4Very little doubt ever remains on the minds of unprejudiced individuals, after visiting the favoured county referred to, that when Dr. Syntax set out on his memorable journey in search of the picturesque, it was through Lincolnshire he wandered; and, in support of the above proposition, it may briefly be stated, that the only pretty or cheering object visible from the windows of Paradise was the grey primitive church spire of Lorton; which always, solemnly though silently, reminded him whose eye fell upon it, that sooner or later he would have finished gazing wearily over the swampy earth, and be lying, with closed lids and quiet heart, under it.

It might have been imagined that years spent in a place like this, must have reduced any human being to a state of utter hopelessness: have paled his cheek, crushed his spirit, emaciated his body, and enfeebled his mind; but such was not the case with a single inhabitant of that dreary pile, whose interior indeed more resembled Tartarus than what the poor gentle lady had fancied it would prove to her—Paradise.

But some people, like some plants, seem able to flourish anywhere; and the minds of a few, instead of stagnating by reason of dwelling among swamps, either prey incessantly on themselves or else become restlessly active in striking out, on the anvils of their 5imaginations, burning plans, presenting a remote chance of escape from the bonds wherewith destiny has bound them.

The first effect had apparently been produced, by place and circumstances, upon Ernest Ivraine, the elder son of the baronet, heir apparent to the old man’s title, and to the swamps and waters and poplars of Paradise,—heir presumptive to the gold, and bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds which his father kept under lock and key so rigidly, that relative nor stranger never knew what might be the precise amount of the wealth in the midst of which he denied himself and his sons everything, save the poorest and barest necessaries of existence. It appeared, indeed, as if the stern and gloomy young man had at length come to the conclusion that it was desirable for him to relinquish altogether a habit wherein, even at his best, he could scarcely have been deemed proficient—that of thinking aloud. He very rarely spoke: two or three persons, besides his brother, had, it is true, a vague recollection of having, at some remote period, heard Ernest Ivraine talk; but the recollection was so very vague, that they frequently felt inclined to believe it a delusion.

He seemed to have finally retired into himself, in the conviction that life, under such circumstances, 6was a curse, and grumbling would not mend the matter. If he could have grown callous and insensible, it would have been better for him; but not having been endowed by nature with the invaluable faculty of converting himself à plaisir into a vegetable, he decided on taking refuge in silence.

Personally he was what that portion of Her Majesty’s subjects disrespectfully termed “bogtrotters,” so expressively style “a dark solitary looking man,” who might readily enough have passed for thirty, ere twenty-three years had set their stamp upon his brow. His hair was black, long, and innocent of the remotest intention of curling; his whiskers were also of the same raven shade, and as he considered it a useless labour to make more than a very moderate use of the razor, the lower portion of his face looked blue; thus affording a strange contrast to the remainder of his countenance, which was of a clear olive. Large melancholy eyes, seeming to be perpetually gazing forth, bitterly and sorrowfully, over the world in which he had been so unhappily placed; a straight nose; a mouth, which, when he did open it, displayed teeth white and regular; these were the main features of a face, whose characteristic expression was that of proud, quiet, despairing grief. It would have been impossible 7to determine from it, whether he were possessed of talent, of the capability to love, of the desire to struggle; whether he cared for anything or nothing; if his temper were good or bad; if his principles were noble or the reverse; what his rules of action might be, or whether he had any. Only three things could positively be ascertained from his countenance, namely, that he thought about something, and felt a vast deal; and that what he thought about, and upon what subject he felt so deeply, mortal man would never learn from those firmly-compressed lips, which he only opened when dire necessity compelled the disagreeable task.

He lived in himself; whether for himself alone was a mystery, which, like the roots of the poplar trees, no one cared to solve: perhaps his thoughts remained in the swamps; perhaps they went further, and struck deep in better soil beyond; some few suggested they stayed in his father’s coffers: at all events, nobody knew where they dwelt, or what they were.

Two years and six brief months of disparity in their ages did not solely make the vast difference betwixt him and his only brother, Henry. We must bear in mind the dissimilarity of their characters—wide as the poles asunder: the elder endured, the younger chafed; the former thought, the latter 8acted; Ernest was prudent, Henry rash; the one was stern and melancholy by nature, the other had been rendered indignant and desperate by circumstances. Ernest seemed older than he actually was, his brother younger; the hair of the latter was light, his step rapid, his manner frank, his complexion fair, his character energetic, his temper amiable, though hasty. He was disposed to look on the bright side of things; and assuredly it was not his fault that there was nothing bright or happy about Paradise, excepting the birds singing in the neglected gardens, and the water-lilies when they were in bloom: nothing bright nor happy,—no one to talk to, to love, to cling to, to confide in, to sympathise with, save Ernest, his silent brother. But, notwithstanding his silence and his melancholy, and the dissimilarity of their natures, it was quite touching to note the affection these two young men entertained for one another; to hear how for hours the younger would talk and the elder listen; to see how completely Henry seemed to understand Ernest, not by the power of knowledge, but by the force of faith and confiding love.

The unwavering, sterling attachment the miser’s sons felt and retained in their hearts, from infancy to age, was for many and many a year the only moral 9flower which bloomed and flourished in the withering, pestilential atmosphere of Paradise.

“Ernest,” said the younger, as they sat together one gloomy November’s evening over the smouldering embers of a wood fire, “Ernest.”

The person so addressed removed his steadfast gaze from the ashes on the hearth, and fixing it, as was his wont, earnestly on his brother, briefly answered, “Well!”

“I want you to attend to me for five minutes.”

“I am attending, pray go on,” said Ernest.

“I wish to tell you I have finally made up my mind that this state of things can be endured no longer: what say you?”

“Nothing,” was the rejoinder.

“Yes, but I want you to say something: you do not think we ought to bear it?”

“I do not see how we can avoid it.”

“We are not forced to bear it,” remarked the younger.

“How do you make that out?” demanded Ernest.

“I will explain,” Henry continued; “but first let me throw a little light on your face before proceeding to throw some light on my subject. Now you need not say no, nor look so grave, for I am not going to be frozen for any man living, even though 10he be my father; there are as many branches and twigs and sticks about the park as would keep us years. I expect one of these days to be ordered out to gather them: I saw my father picking some up the other morning: but, at all events, while the fuel lasts, we will have a rousing fire for once: so here goes.”

As he spoke, he flung two or three short logs of wood on the embers, and laughed bitterly to see how speedily they ignited, and how the flames went crackling and blazing up the chimney.

“Now I can go on,” he said, looking fixedly at Ernest, whose face seemed to grow graver and sterner by the changing light. “I say we are not forced to bear it, and you want to know how I make that out; and I explain that, as nobody asks us to stay here, and no duty requires that we should do so—as no one wants us to remain, as we are incumbrances rather than blessings, sources of irritation instead of joy, or satisfaction, or comfort—we are at perfect liberty to go.”

“Where?” demanded Ernest.

“Where!” repeated his brother, “anywhere, away from here—out into the world, to some place where we can make money, or save it, or spend it, or give it, as we like.”

11“How?” was the brief question.

“Now you come to what has puzzled and kept me lounging here for so long a time. I thought of that, you know, Ernest, till I got first angry, and then sick, and at last furious. We are not well educated: that is, though we have done a little for ourselves, and read and thought, still we are not well educated. We could not enter any profession even if we were, for law and physic and theology, all require money: soul and body and mind—there is no use attempting to cure any of them unless you are prepared to pay a preliminary fee, in some shape or another, for the privilege. Besides, I do not like lawyers, and I have a horror of doctors, and I am sure when I find it so difficult to listen to a sermon, I should never be able to write one; and a man must have means to live on till he gets into practice or orders: in brief, black is not the colour for me; I saw that plainly enough long ago.”

“You have told me all this before,” remarked Ernest, in a tone of disappointment, as his brother paused, “fifty times.”

“Well, I know that,” said Henry, laughing; “but I want to impress upon you that we are unfitted by nature and education to make money in the pulpit, the sick room, or at the bar.”

12“You do not speak reverentially of the Church, Henry; you jumble everything together,—add all up in columns of pounds, shillings, and pence, and——”

“Find the sum total nil,” interposed the younger. “You may preach if you like, but you know as well as I do that if you thought you could make money by becoming a parson, you would don a surplice to-morrow, even though you had no vocation, as people call it. Now would you not?”

“I have sometimes thought if a good situation as hangman were offered to me I would accept it,” Ernest confessed; “but it was only a thought: so now, having settled what you are not fit for, pray proceed.”

“No, I have only settled some of the callings for which I am unfitted; there are plenty more.”

“Spare me their recital,” said Ernest; “I know them off by heart.”

“To sum up all,” began Henry, “we have not the means to be landed gentlemen, or gentlemen who frequent clubs, or even small gentry; we cannot become professionals of any kind, or men of business, or farmers, or artizans, or shopkeepers: it is a living death to stay here, a wasting of existence and strength and youth; so, as I said, or 13at least implied, before, I have finally resolved to go.”

“And, for the second time, I ask you where?”

“And I answer, in all sincerity, I do not know. My present plan is this—I wish that you also could be induced to adopt it—to start off, say to-morrow or the next day, for London, see if there be any single thing I am fit for there, and if not—if no other opening present itself—enter the army.”

“You have no money to purchase a commission; how will you obtain it? to whom do you mean to apply?”

“Friends and connections, you know we have, Ernest, possessed of sufficient influence to obtain more than that for both of us, if they would; but they are not the men to encourage the son in rebellion against his parent; to offend the powers that be; to lose, by a single false step, their chance, however remote, of a portion of the old man’s gold. No, I mean to apply to none of them: I despise my relations. I will gain a name by my own unassisted efforts: no man shall say ‘No’ to me, or keep me hanging on for months, waiting for a civil or uncivil answer to my request. It disgusts me to hear people speculating on the chances of my father’s demise, expatiating on the folly of offending him, on the 14probabilities of whether you or I shall be left the best off. I don’t pretend to entertain any great amount of affection for my father, but I cannot bear to think of his death as a matter of importance and rejoicing to myself: I had rather win a fortune than wait for one: I cannot stay here to play the part of a hypocrite, in order that, at some remote period, wealth, which in the interim I might make for myself, may perhaps be bequeathed to me. I do not desire to bring the sin on my soul of wishing for any man’s death—how much more that of a parent! and I dread that if I remain here much longer, I should look forward with impatience to even that event as to my only chance of freedom from bondage and misery.”

There was a long pause, during which Ernest Ivraine gazed moodily into the fire; but at length, turning abruptly towards his brother, he said,

“You have hitherto merely told me what you are neither competent, nor intending, to do: now what is your plan? always supposing you have one.”

“I will beg favours, I have said, from no man,” returned Henry, who apparently was incapable of giving a short direct answer to any question; “bitter and scanty enough, Heaven knows, has seemed the bread of dependence I have eaten under my father’s 15roof: how, therefore, should I relish that doled out to me by the hands of strangers? If I win a name, parent and friends shall hear of me again; if not, I shall never revisit the land of my birth. I will either make a happy home for myself on the earth, or else seek a quiet one in it; but I will make that home for myself by my own exertions. I am young, healthy, and active; why should I not rise to fame and fortune yet? I am resolved, however, not to gain them by patronage—that fickle thing which lifts a man up one moment far above his true position, and flings him, the next, down many degrees below it: I will be the sole architect of my own fortunes; no one shall ever say of me, ‘I made him what he is:’ I will do it all myself, Ernest. What do you think?”

“That the project sounds wonderfully well; but I am still in ignorance of how you expect to accomplish it,” replied the elder brother.

“If nothing better turn up, by entering the army,” was the response.

“But as you have neither money nor influence, how can you enter it?” demanded Ernest.

“Simply enough: I inquire for a regiment bound for India or any other fighting place, seek an interview with a recruiting serjeant, explain to him that 16I want to go where hard knocks are more plentiful than fine words, remark that I am six feet high, fear death in no shape, dread no man living, desire to serve my country and myself, finally receive from him one shilling of the current coin of the realm—and the deed is done. I am the son of Sir Ernest Ivraine no longer; fling overboard all useless gentility, all absurd expectations; and start, before I am quite one-and-twenty, as plain Henry Ivraine, private in His Majesty’s—regiment of foot.”

“Bound to serve His Majesty for years as a private, with no friend to buy you off, no one to help you up.”

“Except God and myself,” rejoined the youth.

There was a long pause.

“And so, Henry, this is your last plan,” said his brother, at length, with a melancholy and rather sweet smile.

“And final one,” replied the other. “Will you adopt it too, Ernest? let us be brothers in arms as well as brothers in reality: we will enjoy life together, we will dare death side by side, and when you come to your title, who will ask what Sir Ernest Ivraine and his rash brother Henry did when they were youths? We could fight our way up the 17rugged steep to fortune if we were but united in soul. If you were wounded I would nurse you tenderly, as our mother might have done had she been living now, Ernest: if I died, you would look me out a quiet grave in that distant land: and if it pleased God to bless our efforts, we might return triumphantly together to our native country, and show our friends how wisely we had acted, and let the old man leave his money to whom he listed. We might make happy homes for ourselves in some place; in the name of sense and manliness and independence, let us be up and doing.”

The impetuous young man had risen from his seat in the middle of his hurried appeal, and he now laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder, as if he would have dragged him away from that house to a more brilliant destiny; but Ernest, sadly disengaging himself, said:

“Sit down, Henry; endeavour to be calm and rational, and look at this matter from a reasonable point of view. Do not permit imagination to run away with judgment; contemplate the probable consequences of the step you are now dreaming of. You offend our father’s pride, which is second only to his avarice; you destroy your only chance of independence by thus irritating him; you embrace 18a life of hardship and misery; war is a trade at which you can never make money; you will be thrown with low companions. This is bad I admit, but that would be worse. You are free to leave your father’s roof at any hour, upon any pretence; you cannot quit the King’s service, were your heart breaking, without the certainty of punishment and disgrace ensuing. You are wretched here; you would be still more wretched there. Wait still a little longer, till we see if nothing arise likely to better our position in any way. Will you wait?”

“No,” said Henry, “I will not; no life, not that of a galley-slave, could be worse than this. I tell you, Ernest, I will make a name, a home, a fortune for myself; and, oh! how much better I could struggle if you would come with me, were you but by my side.”

His brother only shook his head in reply.

“Do not say no, Ernest,” resumed the other; “let us go forth together fearlessly and hopefully; let us shake the shackles of this accursed gold from us, and see whether there be not in life something more precious than money—liberty. How happy we should be, exploring foreign climes together! We could seek our fortunes in some other way, if you like not the idea of the army: the estate must 19come to you, whether at home or absent; our father may leave his gold to his most distant relative. Why, in plain words, brother, should we waste the best portion of our lives here, waiting for his death—the death of him my mother loved, whose children we are, who is the nearest, and should be the dearest, living connection we have? I feel the guilt of the idea, Ernest, oppress me; let us flee from the great temptation—in God’s name, let us be gone!”

The elder turned deadly pale as his brother spoke, but gave no answer.

“It cannot be that you thirst for gold,” continued Henry, “that the epidemic of our race has smitten you also. No, no; I do not, could never believe that: surely you love liberty. I know you do not mind privation or hardship, or dread death: neither of us is a coward, Ernest. Oh! bravely we could fight our way to rank and wealth; only say you will come, brother—only say you will come.”

“To be for years a common soldier, and then a pauper baronet?” Ernest added bitterly. “You are not aware what you are throwing away, Henry; you do not know what you are talking about.”

“I know I am talking of throwing away a weight from my heart, a sin from my conscience,” returned the younger, hastily; “think of it, think of this 20wretched life and that dreadful guilt, of what it may all end in; that, after waiting, watching, and enduring, when we are middle-aged men he can leave us utterly penniless. The estate must be yours, as I said before: staying or going, we are sure of nothing else. I hear my father coming now. Ponder upon it, Ernest, well.”