The House of Egremont

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Your aff. cousin,
Richd. Egremont.

Roger was, indeed, very angry with Dicky. He went to the yellow parlor, and drawing back a panel of the wainscoting, revealed the well-known place in the wall,—pierced with auger-holes for air and light,—and there lay Dicky’s beloved fiddle; and in the midst of Roger’s wrath the sight made him smile.

Egremont was lonely to Roger for a long while after Dicky’s departure, for although he and Hugo were upon perfectly friendly terms, there was little sympathy between them. And troublous times were ahead for all Englishmen, for it was then the summer of 1688. England seethed like a pot over the repeal of the Test Act, and the substitution of the Act of Toleration. Naturally, Roger Egremont was strongly predisposed toward the abolition of the Test Act, which, as long as it lasted, excluded him not only from the universities and the learned professions, for which he cared nothing, but from the profession of arms, for which he cared a great deal. Few, even of the strongest advocates of King James, went as far as Roger Egremont in his views. Reasoning naturally, his ideas were lofty, but often impractical. He dared assert that it was inherently wrong to molest any man, in his person or estate, for his religious belief. This was but a step removed from treason, according to the lights of his time, when, everywhere, a difference in religion was considered a crime against the State. This and many other ideas, which Robert Egremont was accused of getting from game-keepers and poachers, he really drew from the thoughts that flooded his mind when he saw the pale glory of the stars gleaming in the serene sky of evening, or felt the vagrant wind blowing, or watched the awakening of the spring, or the solemn farewell that nature takes in the dying time of year.

These notions mattered little as long as Roger was a minor, living idly and pleasantly at Egremont. But when he came of age, and openly advocated the cause of dissenters and papists, it was altogether different. The Egremont estates gave him great political interest, and he made no secret of the way he meant to use it,—in treasonable practices, so his world thought, but really in the advancement of human liberty.

Meanwhile things were going badly for another advocate of the Act of Toleration—to wit, his Majesty, James the Second. It grew toward the autumn of the year 1688, and England was filled with rumors of revolution, while the gaols were filled with dissenters, and the Catholics shivered at the prospect of soon joining them. At Exeter, not far from Egremont, a number of dissenting ministers had been imprisoned, and typhus fever broke out among them. One of them had preached in the parish of Egremont, and great complaint had been made of Roger Egremont’s indifference to the maintenance of the law concerning dissenters. Some of the followers of these poor men had visited these unfortunates in gaol and brought away the infection of fever, which raged thereafter in the country round about. When the trial came off, a few weeks later, one of the judges and several of the jury and of the spectators caught the fever from the prisoners, and many deaths resulted.

Roger Egremont and his half-brother were speaking of this one November afternoon in 1688, as they sat at dinner in the great dining-hall at Egremont. The main entrance opened directly into this vast hall, hung with portraits, with ancient armor, and with hunting trophies. A fine musicians’ gallery faced a huge fireplace in which a coach and four could have turned around. Innumerable tall slits of windows let in the light, and faintly illuminated the carved ceiling almost lost in the gloom of the dull autumn afternoon.

The pretence, so carefully cultivated by their father, that Roger was the elder had become more obvious as the young men grew older. Hugo, tall, dark, and well made, was at least twenty-three years old, and everybody but himself laughed when he gravely spoke of himself as barely twenty. Hugo always uttered it with the utmost seriousness. Roger had never been so regularly handsome as Hugo, but he retained the charming, arch expression of his boyish days in his dark eyes, and his was one of those faces on which both women and men look with favor.

The two brothers were seated at a small square table, close by the fireplace. They talked together of the parliamentary struggles, and of the chances of the King’s party. The conflict between James the Second and William of Orange was on, and every day news was expected of the landing of the Dutch Prince.

“For my part,” said Roger, very earnestly, “I look in amazement at this England of ours. The people prate of liberty, and yet are panic-stricken at the mere notion that a man should have liberty of conscience to worship God as he likes. I am for the repeal of the Test Act, and the penal laws, and in favor of the Act of Toleration, not simply because it will make me a free man, but because it will mean the breaking of the dawn to many who have stumbled along in the darkness, thinking the figures of their fellow-men huge, misshapen devils menacing them. And if all Englishmen were equally free, we would see each other as we are and have no fear.”

“What book did you get that fine speech out of, brother?” asked Hugo, smiling indulgently, as he always did, at the views of the unlettered Roger. A dull flush came into Roger’s face.