Ilia CHILD OF STAFFERTON.*
Tars story is a companion to the author's previous volume, The Broken Vow ; but it is not, like The Broken Vow, wholly a ghost-story. A ghost, or rather two ghosts, play an im- portant part in the story, but the story itself is on the ordinary lines of a matter-of-fact noveL It offers, therefore, a better test than its predecessor of Canon Knox Little's powers as a writer of fiction. It is not a religious novel in the hackneyed .sense of the phrase, although it is written from a distinctly religious point of view. It has no obtrusive moral, midis merely intended to illustrate the truth "that sure happiness is found
anliil whatever trouble—in the path of service for others, and of honour, and truth, and duty." The author undoubtedly possesses some of the most essential qualifications for success in this kind of composition. He commands a clear and flowing style, considerable talent in the management of a dialogue, great powers of picturesque description, and a faculty of invention which gives promise of something far better than his present achievement. The story turns on one of those hereditary malisons which are believed to descend through generations from some ancestral crime. Two brothers, in the time of Elizabeth, had fallen in love with the same lady. Repelled by the fierce, wild character of the younger and handsomer, whom she had at first favoured, she married the elder, by name Sir William Darrell. The rejected lover thereupon vowed that no child born of that union should ever inherit Stafferton. Court, the family seat. The vow came true, for the only child born to Sir William Darrell mys- teriously disappeared at the age of five, and his body was found some months afterwards "in a cleft in the fells." Hugh Darrell succeeded in convincing his now childless brother that he had no hand. in the child's death; bat some degree of suspicion still rested upon him, and after his death Stafferton Court became haunted by his presence as well as by that of a crying child; and these apparitions generally portended some calamity to the family. The incident was also the cause of a curious custom in the Durrell family,—the heir to the title and property was henceforward known as "the Child of Staffer- ton." A rhyming prophecy, moreover, came down through generations of Durrells which said
Only if child with child embrace,
The curse can pass from Durrell's race."
The story opens when the race of Durrell is apparently on the verge of extinction. The last baronet marries a peer's widow, who has an only daughter by her first husband, but no child by the second. Sir William Durrell, believing himself to be the last of his race, and being devoted to his step-daughter, adopts her as his heir, and Lady May Roseby thus becomes " the Child of Stafferton." Sir William had a younger brother, an artist of somewhat Bohemian habits, whom his father consequently disowned, thinking the profession of an artist incompatible with the dignity of the Durrells. The disowned son betook himself to Italy, and married a well- born but poor Italian lady of great beauty. A son, the hero of the story, is born of this marriage ; but he grows up to
* The Child of Stafferton a Chapter from a Family Chronicle. By W. 3. Knox Little. Canon Residentiary of Worcester and Vicar of Hoax Cross. London : Chapman and Hall. 1888.
manhood without any knowledge of his parentage. His parents die when he is a child, and his father commits him to the care of an English doctor resident in Rome, whom the child, as he grows up, learns to regard as his uncle. Dr. Pendrell, in due time, brings the boy to England in order to give him an English education, and eventually young Durrell, under the name of William Vincent, becomes a neighbour of the Stafferton family, and is thrown much into the society of Lady May R,oseby, with the natural result of a mutual attachment. The lovers exchange promises of reciprocal fidelity, but the baronet has other views. He is anxious to bring about a marriage between his adopted heir and an elderly squire whose property is contiguous to the Stafferton estate. He rejects and resents the suit of the supposed nephew of Dr. Pendrell ; but, being an amiable man, yields to Lady Roseby's entreaty so far as to agree not to urge her marriage with her sexagenarian lover while Willie Vincent lives. Meanwhile, young Vincent (i.e., Darrell) learns from the doctor that he is the nephew of the baronet of Stafferton ; but the doctor has no proof of his legitimacy. The rest of the story turns on the young man's adventures in quest of this missing link in his family history. He is wrecked on his way to Italy, and is picked up senseless on the shore by an Italian peasant, with whom he lives on the mountains, hovering between life and death, for weeks. News of the shipwreck reached Stafferton, and Willie Vincent is believed to have perished. Sir William Durrell meanwhile, feeling his end approaching, urges Lady May to marry old Sir William Marston. She yields reluctantly, and in a year after her betrothed's supposed death she becomes Lady May Marston, having previously warned her husband that she had no heart to give him. Canon Knox Little apparently does not regard. this as a serious flaw in Lady May's character. We do. No deep character could have acted as Lady May acted. Her mother was still living; she had, therefore, no need of "a protector," and neither duty nor honour required her to sacrifice herself to a man whom she did not love. This weakness, moreover, is inconsistent with her character, which is otherwise as firm as it is charming. Her marriage gives young Durrell, after establishing his legitimacy, an opportunity of proving his unselfishness. He determines to let his unstable lady-love continue to believe him dead, thus sparing her the pain of an embarrassing discovery, and leaving her at the same time in possession of an estate which was no longer hers. The story ends happily, for Sir William Marston comes to an untimely end, and Lady May and young Durrell are eventually married. But we regard the first marriage of Lady May, so soon after the supposed death of her betrothed, as a mistake, both ethically and from the point of view of literary art.
There is another incident in the story which raises a ques- tion both of law and casuistry. Young Durrell, while still un- certain about his legitimacy, discovers in the Stafferton library an unopened letter addressed to his grandfather. He knows that the letter is from his own father, written during his last flying visit to Stafferton, and left by his own hand in the library. Suspecting that the letter contained conclusive evidence as to his own birth, young Durrell carried it off, read it at his leisure, and never restored it. Was this justifiable legally and morally? Whose property was the letter? The man to whom it was
addressed was dead. and he had never seen it. The man who wrote it was also dead. His son was living ; but so was the son and heir of the man to whom the letter was addressed.
Was young Durrell justified under these circumstances in appropriating the letter surreptitiously? We leave lawyers and casuists to decide ; but " the Child of Stafferton " would have risen in our estimation if he had resisted the temptation. Surely he ought to hare given the letter to his uncle, or at least to have opened it in his presence.
But these are small blemishes in a volume of great promise. Mr. Knox Little carries his readers easily along with him, and we shall be glad to welcome him again in a more sustained effort than he has yet attempted.
Previous page
