The Outcast

Book 21: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Benedict Morland's comfortable life is overset when an old enemy's dying wish leaves him guardian of an orphaned boy. No-one, including his wife Sibella, can understand why Benedict accepts Lennox Mynott into his household and, amid growing hostility at Morland Place, he takes the boy to America, to join his daughter Mary at Twelvetrees Plantation. Here, Benedict, as well as Lennox, fall in love with the Southern way of life, just at the moment when bitter civil war is about to destroy it forever.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 608

Sample

April 1857

As they walked down the steps and out into the sunshine, Harry Anstey looked at Benedict Morland and chuckled. ‘Your face
speaks volumes!’


Benedict stopped on the last step, his beaver in his hand. The sun pressed on the crown of his head like a warm hand; he lifted
his face to it, and allowed his scowl to melt. The air was full of the delicious odour of hot chocolate from Terry’s manufactory
in St Helen’s Square: it was hard to smell that and go on feeling cross.


Harry paused too, and taking out a cigar, spoke in phrases punctuated by the process of biting off the end and lighting it.
‘I don’t know – what you expect – from a committee. Even when – they do see the benefit—’ A lengthy pause here while he applied
the flame and got the cigar drawing satisfactorily. ‘Twelve men,’ he concluded, blowing a cloud of fragrant smoke towards
the hot blue sky, ‘can never act as one.’


Now Benedict smiled. ‘Tell that to the Archbishop!’

‘You must keep pegging away at it, that’s all,’ Harry said. ‘The Corporation will come round in time.’

‘Time,’ Benedict repeated, as though it were an exotic ingredient unlikely to come to hand. But he was in no hurry to move.
Standing on the steps, they were elevated slightly out of the flow of pedestrians who filled the flagway from side to side.
Substantial people strolled, young men in a hurry dodged between, clutching their hats and leaning well out of the perpendicular.
Beyond the flagway the press of traffic jammed the road almost solid: carts laden with vegetables, chickens, flour, baskets,
furniture, dung; coal wagons, brewers’ drays, gigs, flies and floats; private coaches with fidgety high-steppers and hired
cabriolets with lean and stoical hacks.


‘Look at that,’ Benedict said, waving his hand. ‘What do you see?’

Harry scanned the scene, drawing contentedly on his smoke like a sucking-calf. ‘I see that every vehicle has at least one
horse between the shafts, which means excellent business for horse-breeders like my old friend Bendy Morland,’ he said at
last.


‘Ha! But don’t you see that the traffic is hardly moving?’

‘I’ve lived in York nearly fifty years, and in all that time the traffic has never moved at more than two miles an hour.’

Benedict turned to him eagerly. ‘All this press of vehicles proves that the city is thriving—’

‘Doesn’t it just!’ Harry interrupted. ‘I was talking to Smith in the club the other day – you know, the registrar – and he
said the population has practically doubled since the railway came.’ He smacked Benedict affectionately on the shoulder. ‘You
can take a lot of the credit for that, old man.’


‘Oh, stuff! You did just as much yourself to bring the railway here. But that supports my point, Harry! Look how all the
old fuss-pots were against the railway, and we had to coax and bully them into supporting it. But the railway’s brought trade
and wealth to York, and now the roads are so congested that it can take half an hour to move a wagon-load of goods half a
mile from the station. And what can you expect, with a city built on a river which only has one bridge?’


‘Me?’ Harry said, stuffing his hands in his pocket and jutting his cigar towards the sky. ‘I don’t expect anything.’

‘Everything that moves has to squeeze over Ouse Bridge, like sand through an hour-glass. When I ask for a new bridge direct to the railway station, you’d think plain common sense would say yes, wouldn’t you? But what response
do I get? “We’ll think about it. Come back next year.”’


‘“Where’s the brass coming from, young man?”’ Anstey parodied one of the Corporation members. And he laughed, ‘I don’t think
you should have called Fothergill a benighted old fossil, though! I don’t think he liked it.’


Benedict barely smiled, reluctant to give up his complaint. ‘If we replaced the Lendal ferry with a bridge, all this,’ he
waved his hand at the traffic again, ‘wouldn’t have to go through the centre of the city. Haven’t they got eyes?’


‘Eh, tha’s nowt but an impetuous youth! When you get to my age,’ Harry said comfortably, ‘you’ll have more patience. Give
it another five years and I predict we’ll have our bridge.’ He changed the subject; living in the city, he noticed the traffic
less than Benedict, who came in from the quiet of the fields. ‘Where are you off to now? Are you going home?’


‘Not at once. I was going to have a look at the building work down at Bishophill. How about you? Back to the office?’

Harry squinted up at the sky, and then down at the length of his cigar. ‘I don’t feel like going back just yet. Shall I stroll
along with you? And, who knows, somewhere along the way we may be taken with the desire for a spot of something agreeable.’


‘I thought you men of business never took luncheon? That’s what you told me last week.’

‘One has to keep a sense of proportion,’ Anstey said wisely. ‘Besides, I’ve got my boy working for me now. Arthur can take
care of the office. What do we breed up sons for, if not to give us an easier life in old age?’


They assumed their hats and inserted themselves carefully into the river of pedestrians. They strolled with their hands permanently
at their hat-brims, for the Ansteys and Morlands were among York’s leading families, and they were returning greetings every
few steps. Benedict was head of the Morland family of Morland Place, whose large estate lay just outside the city; Harry, a cadet
of the large Anstey clan, was a respected lawyer. The Ansteys and Morlands had always been connected, and Harry and Benedict
had gone to school together.


Benedict was forty-five, Harry forty-nine; both now had a sufficiency of grey hairs and a dignified amount of curvature under
their waistcoats. They were, in fact, two sober, middle-aged gentlemen of substance; yet when they reached the three-way corner
of St Helen’s Square with Lendal and Coney Street they stopped of one accord and almost gawped like messenger boys.


Within a small compass were the post office, Hargrove’s Library and Mrs Pomfret’s millinery shop; and today the warm weather
was causing the largely female customers to linger and chatter out of doors, like pigeons basking on the slope of a sunny
roof. They were stepping on and off the kerb, climbing in and out of carriages, squeezing past each other in doorways, turning
to greet each other and waving to acquaintances across the road; and every gesture, every movement, provided the gentlemen
with a moment of palpitating interest.


‘I wonder if we’ll ever get used to it?’ Harry said.

‘Oh, I hope not,’ Benedict murmured devoutly.

The wide skirts demanded by fashion had always been supported by a multitude of stiffened petticoats, but last year there
had been a revolution. The cage-crinoline had arrived: a frame made of a series of thin steel hoops held together by tapes,
and either sewn into a petticoat or tied with tapes around the waist. The difference to the wearer could hardly have been
greater. Instead of heavy, cumbersome layers of linen, padded calico or horsehair, there was a light and airy cage within
whose hollow shell a lady could move her legs with a freedom before undreamed-of.


But for the observer, particularly when he was a solid, middle-aged gentleman, the difference was even more profound. Before,
a female had looked as though from the waist down she was carved out of a solid block of wood. But the cage-crinoline was a beast of a very different nature: the slightest movement set it swinging, so that ladies
seemed to bob and sway and ripple like so many silken marquees in an unseen breeze. And any pressure on the hoops caused an
opposite reaction on the other side, swinging the cage up like the mouth of a bell to give a tantalising glimpse of feet and
ankles.


Measures had been adopted against such accidental exposure, but the measures proved more provocative than the problem: long
linen drawers decorated with lace and frills and bows, and instead of the universal flat slippers of heretofore, delicious
little high-heeled lace-up boots. A lady’s least action had become fraught with fascination to the opposite sex. It was disconcerting.
It was tantalising. It made standing on the corner of a fashionable street an extremely rewarding pastime.


‘I saw a pair of boots in Peckitt’s window the other day,’ Harry mentioned. ‘Green glacé morocco, laced all the way up to
the calf.’


They paused for a moment in reverent thought, then sighed and roused themselves, and went on their way.

Halfway down Coney Street was Booker’s, one of York’s gentlemen’s clubs. It was rather old-fashioned and stuffy, and in the
past Harry and Benedict had both preferred more lively establishments like the Maccabbees; but now they were approaching the
age of discretion they could see the value of a quiet place dedicated to comfortable chairs, solid meals and well-ironed newspapers.
They slowed and turned towards the door, and at the same moment a lanky young man came bursting out and almost collided with
them. He made a grab for his very tall grey hat, almost dropped his cane, and said, ‘Dad! I was looking for you! And Uncle
Ben too!’


The courtesy-uncle smiled at Arthur Anstey, who had once sworn undying love for Benedict’s daughter Mary, but was now courting
Maria Bayliss, the newspaper proprietor’s daughter, with equal single-mindedness. ‘No need to knock us down,’ he said. ‘A
how-d’e-do would suffice to get our attention.’


Harry said sternly, ‘You’re always scampering about, Arthur. It’s time you learned some dignity.’ Arthur blushed, something his fair skin was prone to (and something, had he known
it, which greatly endeared him to his Maria). ‘What is it?’ Harry went on. ‘Something wrong?’


‘Um, rather,’ Arthur said, looking from one to the other. ‘Would you please come back to the office, both of you? Something
queer’s come up.’


‘Something queer’ was a woman accompanied by a child, who had come asking for the Mr Anstey as was Mr Benedict Morland’s attorney;
she would not tell her business to anyone else. Harry, Benedict and Arthur all refrained from discussion on their brisk walk
back to the office, but the haste with which Arthur had sought them out and the interested glances he kept snatching at Benedict’s
face, as they dodged through the crowds, told clearly enough what he thought. Harry, keeping his eyes to himself, was thinking
the same. Benedict had had an adventurous youth, including some years as a railway engineer leading the irregular life of
the workings; and he had always been attractive to women.


Benedict, his face inscrutable, was racking his brain to think who it might be, and coming to no conclusions. He didn’t think
he’d left any unfinished business behind him; but then, a rich man with a colourful past would always be a target for the
unscrupulous. He was only glad that this female had made the first approach to Harry, rather than turning up on the doorstep
at Morland Place: he was happily married and a father of five.


The woman was in the outer office of Anstey, Greaves and Russell, sitting on one of the small, hard chairs which were designed
to test the resolve of less favoured supplicants. She was a plump female of respectable appearance, in her fifties perhaps,
wearing an old-fashioned bonnet and heavy shawl, clutching a large, shabby reticule on her lap, and with two carpet bags at
her feet. Benedict didn’t know her; and as they entered, she looked at him and Harry equally without sign of recognition.


The boy, who was sitting on the chair beyond her, stood when she stood. He seemed to shiver, not with cold – it was warm,
almost stuffy, in the office – but as an overbred horse shivers simply at the touch of the air. He was about twelve; a tall
lad, pale-faced and golden-haired. He looked up briefly at the three men and down again at his boots, his mouth bowed in an
expression of misery. His clothes were in the style of a gentleman’s son’s, but cheaply made and ill fitting. He wore mourning-bands,
which presumably accounted for his unhappy expression. In the brief glimpse Harry had caught of his face, there seemed to
be something faintly familiar about him which he couldn’t quite place. Harry gave Benedict an enquiring look, and Benedict
shook his head minutely. He had not particularly looked at the boy: it was the woman who interested him, and the woman, he
was sure, was a stranger.


Reassured, Harry said briskly, ‘Now then, my good woman, what’s all this about?’

She made a civil bob, but returned his look with determination. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but are you Mr Anstey, the man o’ law I’m
a-seekin’ for?’


‘Yes, yes, I am he, Mrs—?’

‘Tomlinson, sir.’

‘Very well, Mrs Tomlinson, and what was it that was so important you could not tell it to my clerk or my son? I’m a very busy
man, you know.’


She was not to be intimidated. ‘My business is for your ears only, sir,’ she said firmly, with a significant glance at the
outer-office clerk, Naylor. He was listening blatantly, his eyes on stalks. A strange woman with a child demanding to see
a gentleman without delay could only mean one thing, as far as Naylor could see, and it was a welcome bit of excitement in
his monotonous round of conveyances and wills.


Harry glanced too, and said, ‘Very well, Mrs Tomlinson, you had better come through into my office. You can leave your bags
here. They’ll be quite safe.’


He gestured with his head to Arthur to return to his own desk, which Arthur did, hiding his disappointment. Mrs Tomlinson shoved the boy ungently back onto his chair, bid him stay, and prepared to follow Harry. Then she paused, looking
at Benedict, to say, ‘Beg pardon, sir, but who might this gentleman be?’


Harry said impatiently, ‘This is the Mr Morland you were enquiring for.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ she said, looking at Benedict with round interest, and then passed before him into the inner office, leaving
Naylor with a new puzzle to seethe over.


In his office, Harry took his seat behind his desk and gestured the woman to the penitent’s hard chair on the other side.
Benedict walked over to the window and lounged against it, seeming to give only half his attention to the woman, and the other
half to the pigeons burbling on the roof-tiles. If this woman was after money, Harry would see her off. Her story would be
full of holes a coach-and-four could drive through.


‘Well, now, Mrs Tomlinson, let’s hear what you have to say,’ Harry said. ‘And make it quick, please, because I’m a very busy
man.’


She answered with spirit. ‘Indeed, sir, busy you may be, but I shouldn’t be here, I assure you, if there was any other way. I’m a respectable woman, and I have never had to do with lawyers, and nor has anyone in my family,
so don’t you think it!’


Harry blinked at this assault on his profession, and Benedict hid a smile.

Mrs Tomlinson went on, ‘But trouble you I must, for the money is all run out, and I spent the last of it getting here, so
I haven’t a penny for lodgings or such. I can’t go back and I can’t go forrard, as you might say. I didn’t rightly know what
to do, and a rare pucker I was in, until I came upon a letter a-mentioning of you, and Mr Morland.’


‘A letter?’ Harry Anstey said. He glanced at Benedict. Here comes blackmail, his look said. Benedict raised an eyebrow and
shook his head again. His conscience was clear.


Mrs Tomlinson was rummaging in her reticule. ‘I have it here, sir, if you’d be so kind as to look at it. It was in a omberlope with your name on the outside, but not sealed nor directed, so I made bold to read it, in case it could
help, which I was glad I did, as you will see. It’s from Mr Mynott all right, for I know his hand, though he signs himself
a bit different at the bottom – there, sir, Miniott he spells it there. Carlton Miniott.’


‘Good God,’ Harry said under his breath. Now he knew why the boy had looked oddly familiar.

By the window, Benedict had grown very still. His stomach knotted and his heart was beating a horrid tattoo. Of all the chickens
to come home to roost! But it was not his business, he thought savagely. He didn’t want to know!


‘It was always by the name of Mynott I knew him,’ Mrs Tomlinson went on, unaware of the palpitations she had caused. ‘Which
I was employed by Mr Mynott to housekeep and take care of the boy these five years – six come Michaelmas – and a more proper
gentleman I couldn’t have wished to work for, God rest his soul.’


Harry cocked an eyebrow. ‘He’s dead?’

‘This fortnight last Tuesday – quite sudden, else I’m sure he would have left his affairs as a gentleman should. Always very
considerate, he was. But as it stood, sir, I had no-one to turn to, Mr Mynott having no friends nor no relatives that I ever
heard of, and me having nothing in my purse but the last of the housekeeping he gave me, which once it was gone – well, sir,
I was at my wits’ end! I could have taken myself off to my sister’s in Pickering, but what was I to do with the boy? And then
I found this letter in a drawer, addressed to Mr Henry Anstey, Attorney-at-Law, saying he hoped as how Mr Morland would find
it in his heart to look after young Lennox. That’s the boy, sir. So I asked around a bit until I found out who Mr Anstey was,
sir, begging your pardon, and so I came to York on the train and pretty soon found out your direction. So here I am.’


‘The deuce you are,’ Harry muttered.

She shot him a suspicious look. ‘And now, sir,’ she continued firmly, making a preliminary getting-up-to-go movement, ‘if
you would very kindly take charge of the boy, I should like to be on my way. And if you could see your way to paying my wages for this last fortnight, I should
count it Christian, for otherwise I shall have to walk all the way to Pickering, which for a woman of my age is a cruel thing
to contemplate.’


She gave a quick and curious glance towards Benedict, evidently wondering how he came into all this, and then fixed Harry
with a hopeful eye.


Harry read and re-read the letter she had given him, his mind working furiously. The envelope had written on it Henry Anstey, Esq., Attorney-at-Law, but nothing else, and it showed no sign of ever having been sealed. Presumably Miniott had been interrupted before he had
added the direction, and had never returned to the task. The letter bore at the top Miniott’s direction in Scarborough, and
the date was three weeks back.


Mr Anstey,

Sir,

I would not now be troubling you, knowing in what little esteem you hold me, were it not that I bear a responsibility I am
unable properly to discharge. It is not on my own behalf that I implore you to do what you can for Lennox, but for his sake,
who is innocent of any crime but being my son. I am an old man, and my health is indifferent, and I fear I will not long survive
to protect him. Indeed, I can barely do so now, being almost penniless. I have no-one to turn to, no family, no friends. What
will happen to him when I die? I ask you, in the name of mercy, to intercede for me with Mr Benedict Morland, beg him for
her sake, for the love he once bore her, to take care of her son. But a little expenditure would place him in a school where
he could learn to be useful and support himself in a gentlemanly way: that is all I ask. I beg you, sir, I beg you. Benedict
Morland is a good man, with some greatness of heart, as I have cause to know. Let him show his mercy to this innocent child,
who will otherwise be destitute and friendless. Intercede for me, I entreat you.


Your servant, sir,

Carlton Miniott.

The she of the letter was, of course, Benedict’s first wife, Rosalind. It was an odd story, Harry reflected, and one which only he,
apart from the present Mrs Morland, knew. Rosalind had been in love with Sir Carlton Miniott – a friend of her father’s and
twenty years her senior – since her childhood, but he had not been rich enough to suit her ambition. When Benedict came into
his fortune she had accepted him with alacrity, declaring herself in love with him; yet all the time, both before and after
her marriage to Benedict, she and Miniott had been lovers. Benedict’s adored daughter Mary was in reality Miniott’s child,
a discovery which had broken his heart. Meanwhile Miniott, from being not rich enough to tempt Rosalind, had sunk through
reversals to being only just able to support himself, having lost his fortune and his handsome estate at Ledston through bad
business. Yet still Rosalind loved him. Again and again she had cuckolded Benedict, again and again he had forgiven her, until
eventually she had conceived another child by her lover; and Benedict had finally declared enough, and sent her away. Miniott
had taken her to Scarborough, where the couple lived on a pension from Benedict – that was presumably what Miniott had meant
by the greatness of Benedict’s heart. Benedict had meant eventually to divorce Rosalind, but she had died in childbed before
he could make any decision about it, and that was that.


That was twelve years ago, of course, Harry reflected. Since that day Benedict had cut off all connection with Miniott, and
had never spoken of him or the boy; whether he had thought of them, God only knew. But now here was the problem rearing its
head again. There was a kind of insane logic about Miniott’s appealing, in extremis, to Benedict. Their lives were connected in this peculiar way, tangled together with the thread of Rosalind’s beauty and
frailty. And who else was there?


The human side of Harry Anstey saw the logic, acknowledged the bond, but the attorney in him revolted. Benedict should have
nothing to do with this. To touch it would be to mire himself deeper in something that had already cost him dear. Yet there
was Exhibit A, so to speak, in the outer office – the boy Lennox. Clearly something had to be done about him.


He roused himself and addressed himself to Exhibit B. ‘Very well, Mrs Tomlinson. Would you please wait outside with the boy
while I discuss the matter with Mr Morland.’


She stood obediently, but looked doubtful, fearing she was to be fobbed off. ‘Very good, sir, but you won’t keep me long?
I’ve done my duty bringing the boy here, and I’ve a long way to go if I’m to get to my sister’s house tonight, which I must
do if I’m not to starve to death, for I haven’t had a bite to eat since yesterday and not a penny to buy myself anything until
I get there.’


Benedict over by the window made a movement of impatience, and Harry rang the bell for the clerk. ‘Naylor, Mrs Tomlinson will
wait in the outer office with the boy until I call for them again. They are both hungry, so send someone out to the Swan for
some bread and meat for them. Take it out of petty cash.’


‘I could go myself, sir,’ Naylor offered, longing for the chance to spread the news of the visitation.

‘No, you’re to stay and take care of them,’ Harry said firmly, with a significant look that Naylor read correctly as meaning,
‘and if they skip, you’re for it, my lad!’


‘Very good, sir.’

When the door had closed behind them, Harry came out from behind his desk and walked across to Benedict with the letter. He
put a hand on Benedict’s shoulder. ‘Do you want to read this?’


Benedict still had his back turned, facing the window. His body was rigid, his voice strange as he said, ‘You can tell me
what it says.’


Harry was not prepared to read out those words, afraid of their power. He shrugged. ‘It says he’s penniless and dying, and begs you to take care of the boy for her sake.’


‘For her sake? He says that? Does he use her name?’

‘No. Would it matter?’

‘To me, it would.’ He turned with a desperate look. ‘God, Harry, I’ve tried to forget. All these years I’ve tried. I thought
I’d succeeded. And now this! I never thought it could still hurt so much.’


Harry said, ‘You need pay no attention to his request. In fact, as your lawyer I must recommend you not to become involved.’

‘You don’t understand. He knew the power he had over me. That boy out there—’


‘That boy is not your son! He’s not your responsibility.’

‘I didn’t see his face. Harry, you saw his face, didn’t you? He looks like her, doesn’t he?’

‘He has a faint look of her, perhaps,’ Harry said reluctantly, ‘but why should that make any difference? After what she did—’

Benedict shook his head, thoughts and words not connecting, trying to shake the blockage free. ‘It’s not what Rosalind did
that matters, not now. It still hurts me, but it’s over. She’s dead. It’s not her, and it’s not me – it’s the boy.’


‘Yes, but—’

Benedict gripped his arm. ‘He’s Mary’s brother, don’t you see? And now he’s her only relative in the world. I can’t just ignore
it and walk away. I owe it to Mary to do something.’


Harry frowned at this tortured reasoning, sensing trouble ahead. ‘Well, at all events, I must advise you not to do anything
precipitate. Take time, think about it, don’t commit yourself to any course of action until you’ve considered the consequences
fully.’


Benedict released Harry’s arm in order to gesture helplessly towards the closed door. ‘That’s all very well, but there he
is, you know. What’s to be done about him – now, this minute?’


‘Exhibit A,’ Harry sighed in agreement.

‘What?’


Harry waved the question away. ‘We’ll find lodgings for them for the time being. Enquiries will have to be made to see if
Miniott had a man of business, whether he left a Will, whether he in fact had any other relatives. All that will take time.
That female can take care of him for a bit longer. Do you want to pay her the wages she says she’s owed?’


‘Yes, I suppose so. She seems to have done her best, and we can’t leave her penniless.’

Harry gave him a look of lawyerly cynicism. ‘I doubt whether she’s as destitute as she says she is. If Miniott died suddenly,
I dare say she went through the house before calling anyone, and tucked away anything of value.’


‘You think so?’ Benedict said, startled.

‘I wouldn’t wager a groat on the contents of her luggage. But it’s up to you.’

‘Oh, well, I hate to be paltry. Pay her a month’s wages and have done with it.’

‘As you please,’ said Harry. ‘Now why don’t you go home and talk things over with Sibella? She’ll be able to bring a rational
mind to the problem.’


‘You think I’m not rational?’

‘Not in this case. Go on, Bendy, take yourself off. Here, let me show you out the back way, so that you don’t have to see
them again. Come, don’t argue, old fellow – much better not to torture yourself.’


He showed Benedict out through the rear lobby onto the outside staircase, which led down into a tiny back yard. A narrow arched
tunnel running under the upper storey of the house next door led out to High Ousegate. The old part of York was a jumble of
such hidden yards, alleys, tunnels, wynds and staircases, interlinked in a hinterland of secret routes – useful to the criminal
element, but also, on more than one occasion, to clients with delicate business to conduct.


Returning to his office, Harry rang the bell for Naylor, asked him if the visitors had been fed, and explained in detail what
arrangements he wanted made for their accommodation. Naylor noted them, and went out, to return almost