The House of Egremont

by Molly Elliot Seawell

He had learned much, and he had suffered much,—two great improvers of the human countenance. And the same improvers had been at work on Bess Lukens, to her advantage. Moreover, having a quick ear, her speech had become far more polished. Their relations had not altered in the least, except that the longer Roger knew her, the more he loved her, and the longer Bess knew him, the more she was in love with him,—two very different things, be it observed.

The two attempts of Lord Danby having failed to get Roger Egremont out of Newgate, and there being a considerable agitation in many quarters concerning him, King William himself bent his shrewd head to the business. And the result was that in April, 1692, after Roger Egremont had been nearly three years in prison, he was roused one night from a deep sleep, by armed men, and forced to dress himself, blindfolded, taken out of the prison, set and tied on horseback, and ridden southward at a smart pace.

All through the mild spring night the party travelled. Blindfolded as Roger was, and tied to his horse, a kind of intoxication of bliss came with the pungent sweet air of the budding spring, and the steady trot of a good horse under him. He did not apprehend any violence; no one threatened or offered to harm him, and he was by nature devoid of fear.

All through the night they rode, and when the day was breaking rosily, and the rooks cawing loudly, and the low of kine was heard, they stopped in a wood. This being the first horse exercise Roger had taken since he chased King William, he was overpowered with fatigue, and after having eaten ravenously he threw himself on the ground, and fell into a delicious slumber.

When he waked, although he was still blindfolded, he knew it was in the afternoon. He lay quite still, listening partly to the scant conversation of the men with him, from whom he could learn nothing, though they were civil enough. They gave him food again, and told him they would not start until sunset. Roger lay on his back on the new-springing grass, and drank in greedily all the sweet sounds, and imagined the fair sights of nature around him. He remembered Red Bess, and his heart softened when he knew how lonely she must be then, and, no doubt, anxious about him. He conjectured what was to be done with him, and concluded that he was to be put aboard a ship for France or Holland. Either would be an agreeable change from Newgate.

At sunset they again took the road, and travelled all the second night, and rested all the second day, and again set forth at sunset on the second day.

Roger felt the strangeness of this kind of travel, this blindness to night and day, and to the faces of his companions. But he was travelling steadily away from prison walls, and sweet to him were the cool dews of night, the silence and the softness as his horse’s hoofs beat the highroad; and sweeter was the coming of the dawn, the wide sweep of the wind across fields and woods and hedges, and the day sleep in the heart of the woods, the scent of the leaves and grasses, the mellow drumming of the insects in the sun.

On the last stages of the third night there was something curiously familiar to Roger, in the way he was blindly travelling. He knew instinctively the character of the roadway, the sound of the streams under the bridges; he tasted on his lips the faint saltness which the sea wafts across the Devon hills. The cry of the birds was like the greeting of old friends; the scents of the woods and fields were known to him. At midnight the party stopped in a thicket, rising a hill. Roger was told to dismount, and when his foot touched the earth his companions turned and galloped off, leading with them the horse he had ridden. As Roger struggled to tear away the bandage over his eyes, he could hear the disappearing hoof-beats of their horses echoing in the silent night.

In another moment his eyes were free, and he found himself alone upon a hillside, and on the ground by him a small portmanteau containing clothes and a considerable sum of money. As he would not accept of his liberty any other way, King William had simply flung him out of prison.

Roger recognized his surroundings at once. He was at Egremont. The night was radiant with moon and stars, and before him was a great rich beautiful moonlit landscape, the line of distant hills rising cloudlike upon the faint horizon, the masses of woods solemnly dark, the river making its way musically through copses and thickets, and then resting silently in broad black pools. Before him on the crest of a gentle hill, was a group of rustling elms, that he knew lay between him and the view of the mansion. Dashing through the trees he came in full sight of his home, lying in the plateau below. The house was lighted up, although it was late, and he could see servants and many persons moving about. Evidently some festivity was in progress. The rows of great windows blazed brilliantly, and the faint echo of music and the beating of the feet of the dancers was borne on the wandering wind of night. Roger Egremont stood and watched it, with a face pale with imprisonment, and pale with unspeakable wrath and anguish. The dazzling moon showed him that the oak avenue was gone, every tree cut down, and he struck his hands together in an agony of rage at what he considered robbery and mutilation of what was his. They thought, no doubt, that he would go, like a beaten hound, and ask his half-brother for a dole of money, and a roof to shelter him. Such indeed had been the King’s hope, knowing very well that it would be as much as Hugo Egremont’s life was worth, in the state of feeling of the country, to refuse a share of all he had with Roger. But Roger was of the temper which will have all or nothing. He would make no terms with those who had robbed him.