Susanna Moodie - Mark Hurdlestone

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MARK HURDLESTONE:

OR,

THE TWO BROTHERS.

BY MRS. MOODIE,

(_Sister of Agnes Strickland._)

AUTHOR OF "ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH," "ENTHUSIASM," ETC

The fire burns low, these winter nights are cold;
I'd fain to bed, and take my usual rest,
But duty cries, "There's work for thee to do;
Stir up the embers, fetch another log,
To cheer the empty hearth. This is the hour
When fancy calls to life her busy train,
And thou must note the vision ere it flies."

* * * * *

COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME.

* * * * *

THIRD EDITION.

NEW YORK:

DE WITT & DAVENPORT, PUBLISHERS,

162 NASSAU STREET.

MARK HURDLESTONE;

OR,

THE TWO BROTHERS.

CHAPTER I.

Say, who art thou--thou lean and haggard wretch!
Thou living satire on the name of man!
Thou that hast made a god of sordid gold,
And to thine idol offered up thy soul?
Oh, how I pity thee thy wasted years:
Age without comfort--youth that had no prime.
To thy dull gaze the earth was never green;
The face of nature wore no cheering smile,
For ever groping, groping in the dark;
Making the soulless object of thy search
The grave of all enjoyment.--S.M.

Towards the close of the last century, there lived in the extensive
parish of Ashton, in the county of ----, a hard-hearted, eccentric old
man, called Mark Hurdlestone, the lord of the manor, the wealthy owner
of Oak Hall and its wide demesne, the richest commoner in England, the
celebrated miser.

Mark Hurdlestone was the wonder of the place; people were never tired of
talking about him--of describing his strange appearance, his odd ways
and penurious habits. He formed a lasting theme of conversation to the
gossips of the village, with whom the great man at the Hall enjoyed no
enviable notoriety. That Mark Hurdlestone was an object of curiosity,
fear, and hatred, to his humble dependents, created no feeling of
surprise in those who were acquainted with him, and had studied the
repulsive features of his singular character.

There was not a drop of the milk of human kindness in his composition.
Regardless of his own physical wants, he despised the same wants in
others. Charity sued to him in vain, and the tear of sorrow made no
impression on his stony heart. Passion he had felt--cruel, ungovernable
passion. Tenderness was foreign to his nature--the sweet influences of
the social virtues he had never known.

Mark Hurdlestone hated society, and never mingled in festive scenes. To
his neighbors he was a stranger; and he had no friends. With power to
command, and wealth to purchase enjoyment, he had never travelled a
hundred miles beyond the smoke of his own chimneys; and was as much a
stranger to the world and its usages as a savage, born and brought up in
the wilderness. There were very few persons in his native place with
whom he had exchanged a friendly greeting; and though his person was as
well known as the village spire or the town pump, no one could boast
that he had shaken hands with him.

One passion, for the last fifty years of his unhonored life, had
absorbed every faculty of his mind, and, like Aaron's serpent, had
swallowed all the rest. His money-chest was his world; there the gold he
worshipped so devoutly was enshrined; and his heart, if ever he
possessed one, was buried with it: waking or sleeping, his spirit for
ever hovered around this mysterious spot. There nightly he knelt, but
not to pray: prayer had never enlightened the darkened soul of the
gold-worshipper. Favored by the solitude and silence of the night, he
stole thither, to gloat over his hidden treasure. There, during the day,
he sat for hours entranced, gazing upon the enormous mass of useless
metal, which he had accumulated through a long worthless life, to wish
it more, and to lay fresh schemes for its increase. "Vanity of vanities,
all is vanity," saith the preacher; but this hoarding of money is the
very madness of vanity.

Mark Hurdlestone's remarkable person would have formed a good subject
for a painter--it was both singular and striking.

His features in youth had been handsome, but of that peculiar Jewish
cast which age renders harsh and prominent. The high narrow wrinkled
forehead, the small deep-set jet-black eyes, gleaming like living coals
from beneath straight shaggy eyebrows, the thin aquiline nose, the long
upper lip, the small fleshless mouth and projecting chin, the expression
of habitual cunning and mental reservation, mingled with sullen pride
and morose ill-humor, gave to his marked countenance a repulsive and
sinister character. Those who looked upon him once involuntarily turned
to look upon him again, and marvelled and speculated upon the
disposition and calling of the stranger.

His dress, composed of the coarsest materials, generally hung in tatters
about his tall spare figure, and he had been known to wear the cast-off
shoes of a beggar; yet, in spite of such absurd acts, he maintained a
proud and upright carriage, and never, by his speech or manners, seemed
to forget for one moment that he held the rank of a gentleman. His hands
and face were always scrupulously clean, for water costs nothing, and
time, to him, was an object of little value. The frequency of these
ablutions he considered conducive to health. Cold water was his only
beverage--the only medicine he ever condescended to use.

The stranger who encountered Mark Hurdlestone, wandering barefooted on
the heath or along the dusty road, marvelled that a creature so wretched
did not stop him to solicit charity; and, struck with the haughty
bearing which his squalid dress could not wholly disguise, naturally
imagined that he had seen better days, and was too proud to beg;
influenced by this supposition, he had offered the lord of many manors
the relief which his miserable condition seemed to demand; and such was
the powerful effect of the ruling passion, that the man of gold, the
possessor of millions, the sordid wretch who, in after years, wept at
having to pay four thousand a year to the property tax, calmly pocketed
the affront.

The history of Mark Hurdlestone, up to the present period, had been
marked by few, but they were striking incidents. Those bright links,
interwoven in the rusty chain of his existence, which might have
rendered him a wiser and a better man, had conduced very little to his
own happiness, but they had influenced, in a remarkable degree, the
happiness and misery of others, and form another melancholy proof of the
mysterious manner in which the crimes of some men act, like fate, upon
the destinies of others.

Avarice palsies mental exertion. The tide of generous feeling, the holy
sympathies, still common to our fallen nature, freeze beneath its torpid
influence. The heart becomes stone--the eyes blinded to all that once
awakened the soul to admiration and delight. He that has placed the idol
of gold upon the pure altar of nature has debased his own, and sinks
below the brute, whose actions are guided by a higher instinct, the
simple law of necessity.

The love of accumulating had been a prominent feature of Mark's
character from his earliest years; but there was a time when it had not
been his ruling passion. Love, hatred, and revenge, had alternately
swayed his breast, and formed the main-spring of his actions. He had
loved and mistrusted, had betrayed and destroyed the victim of his
jealous regard; yet his hatred remained unextinguished--his revenge
ungratified. The malice of envy and the gnawings of disappointed vanity
were now concealed beneath the sullen apathy of age; but the spark
slumbered in the grey ashes, although the heart had out-lived its fires.
To make his character more intelligible it will be necessary to trace
his history from the first page of his life.

Born heir to a vast inheritance, Mark Hurdlestone had not a solitary
excuse to offer for his avarice. His father had improved the old
paternal estate, and trebled its original value; and shared, in no
common degree, the parsimonious disposition of his son. From the time of
the Norman Conquest his ancestors had inherited this tract of country;
and as they were not famous for any particular talents or virtues, had
passed into dust and oblivion in the vault of the old gothic church,
which lifted its ivy-covered tower above the venerable oaks and yews
that were coeval with its existence.

In proportion to their valueless existence was the pride of the
Hurdlestone family. Their wealth gained for them the respect of the
world; their ancient name the respect of those who place an undue
importance on such things; and their own vanity and self-importance
maintained the rank and consequence which they derived from these
adventitious claims.

Squire Hurdlestone the elder was a shrewd worldly minded man, whose
natural _hauteur_ concealed from common observers the paucity of his
intellect. His good qualities were confined to his love of Church and
State; and to do him justice, in this respect he was a loyal man and
true--the dread of every hapless Jacobite in the country. In his early
days he had fought under the banners of the Duke of Cumberland as a
gentleman volunteer; and had received the public thanks of that worthy
for the courage he displayed at the memorable battle of Culloden, and
for the activity and zeal with which he afterwards assisted in
apprehending certain gentlemen in his own neighborhood, who were
suspected of secretly befriending the unfortunate cause. At every public
meeting the Squire was eloquent in his own praise.

"Who can doubt _my_ patriotism, _my_ loyalty?" he would exclaim. "I did
not confine my sentiments upon the subject to mere words. I showed by my
deeds, gentlemen, what those sentiments were. I took an active part in
suppressing the rebellion, and restoring peace to these realms. And what
did I obtain, gentlemen?--the thanks--yes, gentlemen, the public thanks
of the noble Duke!" He would then resume his seat, amidst the plaudits
of his time-serving friends, who, judging the rich man by his own
standard of excellence, declared that there was not his equal in the
county.

Not content with an income far beyond his sordid powers of enjoyment,
Squire Hurdlestone the elder married, without any particular preference,
the daughter of a rich London merchant, whose fortune nearly doubled his
own. The fruits of this union were two sons, who happened in the economy
of nature to be twins. This double blessing rather alarmed the
parsimonious Squire; but as the act of maternal extravagance was never
again repeated on the part of Mrs. Hurdlestone, he used to rub his hands
and tell as a good joke, whenever his heart was warmed by an extra
glass of wine, that his wife was the best manager in the world, as the
same trouble and expense did for both.

A greater difference did not exist between the celebrated sons of Isaac
than was discernible in these modern twins. Unlike in person, talents,
heart, and disposition, from their very birth, they formed a striking
contrast to each other. Mark, the elder by half-an-hour, was an
exaggeration of his father, inheriting in a stronger degree all his
narrow notions and chilling parsimony; but, unlike his progenitor in one
respect, he was a young man of excellent natural capacity. He possessed
strong passions, linked to a dogged obstinacy of purpose, which rendered
him at all times a dangerous and implacable enemy; while the stern
unyielding nature of his temper, and the habitual selfishness which
characterised all his dealings with others, excluded him from the
friendship and companionship of his kind.

Tall and slightly made, with a proud and gentlemanly carriage, he looked
well though dressed in the most homely and unfashionable garb. Beyond
scrupulous cleanliness he paid little attention to the mysteries of the
toilet, for even in the bloom of youth, "Gallio cared for none of those
things." In spite of the disadvantages of dress, his bright brown
complexion, straight features, dark glancing eyes, and rich curling
hair, gave him a striking appearance. By many he was considered
eminently handsome; to those accustomed to read the mind in the face,
Mark Hurdlestone's countenance was everything but prepossessing.

The sunshine of a smiling heart never illumined the dark depth of those
deep-seated cunning eyes; and those of his own kin, who most wished to
entertain a favorable opinion of the young heir of Oak Hall, agreed in
pronouncing him a very disagreeable selfish young man.

He hated society, was shy and reserved in his manners, and never spoke
on any subject without his opinion was solicited. This extraordinary
taciturnity, in one who possessed no ordinary powers of mind, gave
double weight to all that he advanced, till what he said became a law in
the family. Even his mother, with whom he was no favorite, listened with
profound attention to his shrewd biting remarks. From his father, Mark
early imbibed a love of hoarding; and his favorite studies, those in
which he most excelled, and which appeared almost intuitive to him, were
those connected with figures. The old Squire, who idolised his handsome
sullen boy, was never weary of boasting of his abilities, and his great
knowledge in mathematics and algebra.

"Aye," he would exclaim, "that lad was born to make a fortune; not
merely to keep one ready made. 'Tis a thousand pities that he is not a
poor man's son; I would bet half my estate, that if he lives to my age
he will be the richest man in England."

Having settled this matter in his own way, the old Squire took much
pains to impress upon the boy's mind that _poverty_ was the most
dreadful of all evils--that, if he wished to stand well with the world,
riches alone could effect that object, and ensure the respect and homage
of his fellow-men. "Wealth," he was wont jocosely to say, "would do all
but carry him to heaven,"--and how the journey thither was to be
accomplished, never disturbed the thoughts of the rich man.

Courted and flattered by those beneath him, Mark found his father's
precepts borne out by experience, and he quickly adopted his advice, and
entered with alacrity into all his money-getting speculations.

The handsome income allowed him by the Squire was never expended in the
pursuit of pleasures natural to his rank and age, but carefully
invested in the funds, whilst the young miser relied upon the generosity
of his mother to find him in clothes and pocket-money. When Mrs.
Hurdlestone remonstrated with him on his meanness, his father would
laugh and bid her hold her tongue.

"Let him alone, Lucy; the lad cannot help it; 'tis born in him. The
Hurdlestones are a money-making, money-loving race. Besides, what does
it matter? If he is saving a fortune at our expense, 'tis all in the
family. He knows how to take care of it better than we do. There will be
more for Algernon, you know!"

And this saying quieted the fond mother. "Yes," she repeated, "there
will be more for Algernon,--my handsome generous Algernon. Let his
sordid brother go on saving,--there will be more for Algernon."

These words, injudiciously spoken within the hearing of Mark
Hurdlestone, converted the small share of brotherly love, which hitherto
had existed between the brothers, into bitter hatred; and he secretly
settled in his own mind the distribution of his father's property.

And Algernon, the gay thoughtless favorite of his kind but imprudent
mother, was perfectly indifferent to the love or hatred of his elder
brother. He did not himself regard him with affection, and he expected
nothing from him, beyond the passive acquiescence in his welfare which
the ties of consanguinity generally give. If he did not seek in his twin
brother a friend and bosom-counsellor, he never imagined it possible
that he could act the part of an enemy. Possessing less talent than
Mark, he was generous, frank, and confiding. He loved society, in which
he was formed by nature to shine and become a general favorite. His
passion for amusement led him into extravagance and dissipation; and it
was apparent to all who knew him, best that he was more likely to spend
a fortune than acquire one.

Algernon had received, with his brother, a good classical education from
his uncle, a younger brother of his father's, who had been brought up
for the Church, and taken several degrees at Oxford, but had reduced
himself to comparative indigence by his imprudence and extravagance.
Alfred Hurdlestone would have made a good soldier, but, unfortunately
for him, there were several valuable church-livings in the family; and
his father refused to provide for him in any other way. The young man's
habits and inclinations being at war with the sacred profession chosen
for him, he declined entering upon holy orders, which so enraged his
father, that he forbade him the house; and at his death, left him a
small life-annuity, sufficient with economy to keep him from starvation,
but not enough to maintain him respectably without some profession.

For several years, Alfred Hurdlestone depended upon the generosity of a
rich maternal uncle, who gave him the run of the house, and who left him
at his death a good legacy. This the ne'er-do-well soon ran through, and
finding himself in middle life, destitute of funds and friends, he
consented for a trifling salary to superintend the education of his
brother's children.

It was impossible for the Squire to have chosen a more injudicious
instructor for his sons--a man, who in not one instance of his life had
ever regulated his actions by the common rules of prudence. He possessed
talents without judgment, and was kind-hearted without principle; and
though a general favorite with all classes, was respected by none.
Having passed much of his time on the continent of Europe, he had
acquired an ease and courtesy of manner, which rendered him quite an
acquisition to the country drawing-room, where he settled all matters
of fashion and etiquette, to the general satisfaction of the ladies; and
in spite of his reduced circumstances and dependent situation, he was
warmly welcomed by all the mammas in the parish. They knew him to be a
confirmed old bachelor, and they trusted their daughters with him
without a thought that any mis-alliance could take place. Mr. Alfred was
such a dear, good, obliging creature! He talked French with the girls,
and examined the Latin exercises of the boys, and arranged all the
parties and pic-nics in the neighborhood; and showed such a willingness
to oblige, that he led people to imagine that he was receiving, instead
of conferring a favor. His cheerful temper, agreeable person, and
well-cultivated mind, rendered him the life and soul of the Hall;
nothing went on well without him. His occupations were various--his
tasks never ended; he read prayers--instructed the young gentlemen--shot
game for the larder, and supplied the cook with fish--had the charge of
the garden and poultry-yard, and was inspector-general of the stables
and kennels; he carved at dinner--decanted the wine--mixed the punch,
and manufactured puns and jokes to amuse his saturnine brother. When the
dessert was removed he read the newspapers to the old Squire, until he
dosed in his easy chair; and when the sleepy fit was over, he played
with him at cribbage or back-gammon, until the tea equipage appeared.

Then, he was an admirable cook, and helped his sister-in-law, with whom
he was an especial favorite, to put up pickles and preserves, and prided
himself upon catsup and elderberry-wine. He had always some useful
receipt for the old ladies; some pretty pattern for embroidery, or copy
of amatory verses for the young, who never purchased a new dress without
duly consulting Mr. Alfred as to the fashion of the material and the
becomingness of the color. Besides all these useful accomplishments, he
visited the poor when they were sick, occasionally acting as their
medical and ghostly adviser, and would take infinite pains in carrying
about subscriptions for distressed individuals, whom he was unable to
assist out of his own scanty funds. He sang Italian and French songs
with great taste and execution, and was a fine performer on the violin.
Such was the careless being to whom Mr. Hurdlestone, for the sake of
saving a few pounds per annum, entrusted the education of his sons.

As far as the mere technicalities of education went, they could not have
had a more conscientious or efficient teacher; but his morality and
theology were alike defective, and, instead of endeavoring to make them
good men, Uncle Alfred's grand aim was to make them fine gentlemen. With
Algernon, he succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations, for there
was a strong family likeness between that young gentleman and his uncle,
and a great similarity in their tastes and pursuits. Mark, however,
proved a most dogged and refractory pupil, and though he certainly owed
the fine upright carriage, by which he was distinguished, to Uncle
Alfred's indefatigable drilling, yet, like Lord Chesterfield's son, he
profited very little by his lessons in politeness.

When the time arrived for him to finish his studies, by going to college
and travelling abroad, the young heir of the Hurdlestones obstinately
refused to avail himself of these advantages. He declared that the
money, so uselessly bestowed, would add nothing to his present stock of
knowledge, but only serve to decrease his patrimony; that all the
learning that books could convey, could be better acquired in the quiet
and solitude of home; that he knew already as much of the dead
languages as he ever would have occasion for, as he did not mean to
enter the church or to plead at the bar; and there was no character he
held in greater abhorrence than a fashionable beau or a learned pedant.
His uncle had earned a right to both these characters; and, though a
clever man, he was dependent in his old age on the charity of his rich
relations. For his part, he was contented with his country and his home,
and had already seen as much of the world as he wished to see, without
travelling beyond the precincts of his native village.

Mr. Hurdlestone greatly applauded his son's resolution, which, he
declared, displayed a degree of prudence and sagacity remarkable at his
age. But his mother, who still retained a vivid recollection of the
pleasures and gaiety of a town life, from which she had long been
banished by her avaricious lord, listened to the sordid sentiments
expressed by her first-born with contempt, and transferred all her
maternal regard to his brother, whom she secretly determined should be
the gentleman of the family.

In her schemes for the aggrandizement of Algernon, she was greatly
assisted by Uncle Alfred, who loved the handsome, free-spirited boy for
his own sake, as well as for a certain degree of resemblance, which he
fancied existed between them in mental as well as personal endowments.
In this he was not mistaken; for Algernon was but an improvement on his
uncle, with less selfishness and more activity of mind. He early imbibed
all his notions, and entered with avidity into all his pursuits and
pleasures. In spite of the hard usage that Uncle Alfred had received
from the world, he panted to mingle once more in its busy scenes, which
he described to his attentive pupil, in the most glowing terms.

Eager to secure for her darling Algernon those advantages which his
brother Mark had so uncourteously declined, Mrs. Hurdlestone laid close
siege to the heart of the old Squire, over whom she possessed an
influence only second to that of her eldest son. In this daring assault
upon the old man's purse and prejudices, she was vigorously assisted by
Uncle Alfred, who had a double object to attain in carrying his point.
Many were the desperate battles they had to fight with the old Squire's
love of money, and his misanthropic disposition, before their object was
accomplished, or he would deign to pay the least attention to their
proposition. Defeated a thousand times, they returned with unwearied
perseverance to the charge, often laughing in secret over their defeat,
or exulting in the least advantage they fancied that they had gained.

Time, which levels mountains and overthrows man's proudest structures,
at length sapped the resolutions of the old man, although they appeared
at first to have been written upon his heart in adamant. The truth is,
that he was a man of few words, and, next to talking himself, he hated
to be talked to, and still more to be talked at; and Mrs. Hurdlestone
and brother Alfred had never ceased to talk to him, and at him, for the
last three months, and always upon the one eternal theme--Algernon's
removal to college, and his travels abroad.

His patience was exhausted; human endurance could stand it no longer;
and he felt that if Ear-gate was to be stormed much longer on the same
subject, he should go mad, and be driven from the field. A magic word
had been whispered in his ear by his eldest son. "Father, let him go:
think how happy and quiet we shall be at home, when this hopeful uncle
and nephew are away."

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