The Patient Bridegroom

Chapter One ~ 1872-1

Chapter One ~ 1872“I don’t believe it!”

“I am afraid, my Lord, that is the truth, unpleasant as it may be,” the Solicitor replied.

The Earl of Rayburne could only stare at the man with an expression in his eyes that was even more dramatic than the way he had spoken.

“But surely,” he said after an uncomfortable pause, “you could have written to me.”

“We did not know that things were as bad as they do appear now,” the Solicitor replied, “and in any case. Your Lordship had given Mr. Basil Burne Power of Attorney. Therefore whatever he did was entirely within the Law.”

The Earl could not think of anything to say.

He had come back from India looking forward to living happily on his estate and he had supposed that everything would be exactly the same as when he had left.

His father had died in 1868, and he had come into the title, which was a very old one.

Majestic Rayburne Castle and its huge estate in Oxfordshire was one of the beauty spots of the area.

When Michael Burne left Oxford University he had then joined the Household Brigade in which his family had served for many generations.

He was, however, thrilled and delighted when later in the same year he was asked by his cousin, the new Viceroy of India, to go out and join him.

It had been a great surprise when the Earl of Mayo had been appointed by Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister, after Lord Lawrence’s early retirement from the post.

He was unknown to most of the English people, but Mr. Disraeli was relying, as he had done so often before, on his intuition and it proved to be a stroke of genius.

One thing everyone knew about the Earl of Mayo was that he was a brilliantly successful Master of the Kildare Hunt.

His young relative, Michael Burne, an outstanding horseman, was a frequent visitor to the Earl’s house in Ireland.

In a way Michael closely resembled the Earl, who, tall and broad-shouldered, was a fine figure of a man.

He had both a strong determination to succeed in life and a great sense of humour and his enthusiasm and his gaiety gave him a magnetism that made him friends wherever he went.

To the young Earl of Rayburne, to be in India with a man he greatly admired and whose friendship had coloured his boyhood was an invitation that he could not resist.

As he looked round his broad acres that surrounded Rayburne Castle, everything seemed to be in order.

There appeared to be nothing that especially needed attention and he could see no reason why he should not go to India.

Everything was made easier when his father’s brother, the Honourable Basil Burne, had offered to look after The Castle and the estate in his absence.

“That is very kind of you, Uncle Basil,” he said. “You are quite sure that it will not be a nuisance rather than a pleasure?”

“I think I have been in London long enough,” Basil Burne replied. “It will do me good to be in the country and I can look after everything for you, so you need have no worries when you are in India.”

The Earl then gave him Power of Attorney and set off on a tedious voyage, which took several months as it then meant going round the Cape of Good Hope.

He knew that at the end of it he would find an adventure such as he had never had the opportunity of participating in before.

He arrived in India to find that his relative had already begun to gain a popularity that no previous Viceroy had ever enjoyed.

The Earl of Mayo’s commanding presence, his smile, his joyous vigour and enthusiasm, appealed greatly to the Indians.

They also appreciated the magnificence of his splendid entertainments.

Lord Lawrence had been rather an austere Viceroy and reluctant to spend any money, but the Earl of Mayo and his wife brought back gaiety and glamour to Government House.

The fact that he had appointed a fine young and high-spirited staff made everything seem very much easier than it had been before.

Michael was entranced from the very moment he arrived.

The new Viceroy had been considerably helped by the fact that the Government at home had changed while he was actually on his voyage to Calcutta.

He was a Conservative, of course, like Mr. Disraeli, but a Liberal Government under Mr. William Gladstone had just come into power.

This might have been an embarrassment, but instead it was a help, because the Liberals did not seem inclined to interfere in any way in Indian affairs.

This gave the Viceroy a free hand to pursue his own policies and agenda.

People had sneered at him and said that he would have no idea of how to handle such a large country.

It was, however, his experience in Ireland and his sympathy for the peasants of his own country that made him such an outstanding Viceroy.

He was particularly worried about famine and this was indeed a serious problem that he had already encountered in the ‘Hungry Forties’ in Ireland.

He also wished India to build schools and hospitals as well as railways, canals and more roads and he wanted also to see everything for himself, which was another reason why he had invited his young friend, Michael, to join him.

Much of his travelling about the country was done on horseback.

The only aide-de-camp who could keep up with him was Michael and they often rode eighty miles a day.

Although he was not aware of it at the time, Michael Burne was learning to command people as well as his relative did.

The quality that the Viceroy looked for was, as he put it himself, ‘an enthusiasm which makes a man believe in the possibility of improvement and strives resolutely to obtain it.’

It was not long before Michael developed the same enthusiasm that his Chief possessed so abundantly and he was soon entrusted with difficult assignments that the other aide-de- camps were not keen on undertaking.

Everything seemed to be going well for the first four years of the Viceroy’s reign.

The Earl of Mayo had two more years to serve and it appeared as if he would be, without doubt, the most successful and the most loved Viceroy there had ever been.

It was then in February 1872 that the Viceroy arranged a visit to the Andaman Islands and a tour of the convict settlement at Port Blair.

It was the aide-de-camp’s job to see that the most stringent security measures had been taken for his visit and everything went off well.

Later in the afternoon the Viceroy visited another island of the group and then, when the official day’s arrangements were over, he crossed back to the principal island and climbed up Mount Harriet.

Only Michael was eager to go with him. It was a stiff climb to an altitude of more than one thousand feet.

The two men refused to ride ponies and walking reached the top.

They sat down for ten minutes to admire the sunset and the Viceroy exclaimed,

“How beautiful, how very beautiful!”

By the time the party had descended back to the waterfront, it was completely dark.

A launch was waiting to take the Viceroy back to his ship. The torch-bearers led the way and the Viceroy walked between Michael and the Chief Commissioner of the Andamans.

Just as the Viceroy was stepping forward to board the launch, the Commissioner gave an order.

The guards who had cordoned off the pier opened their ranks to let him through.

Before they could close up again, a tall Pathan rushed through the opening and jumped, as someone said at the time, ‘like a tiger’, on the Viceroy’s back.

He stabbed him twice between his shoulders.

The man was dragged away, but the Viceroy staggered to the side of the pier.

He raised himself out of the shallow water, saying,

“They have done it!”

A few minutes later he collapsed and the back of his coat was dark with blood.

He was lifted into the launch, but by the time the ship was reached he was dead.

To Michael it was a nightmare and he could hardly believe what had happened.

The man he had loved and admired would never again say to him,

“Come on, Michael, you and I can do it together.”

After the funeral his one thought was to get away from his memories and what had been the happiest time of his life.

He decided that he must return home and the voyage back home was very different from his passage out to India.

The Suez Canal had been opened in 1869, the year following his arrival, and so now the new ships of the P. & O. took only a little over seventeen days to reach England.

Michael had everything he possessed packed and he went aboard the first available ship.

His perturbed thoughts were still on the dead Viceroy, who was in Michael’s mind ‘the ‘Ideal Viceroy’. That was what one of his most distinguished successors was to call him.

It did not, however, ease Michael’s sense of loss.

He thought that never again would he be with someone who could arouse in him such an enthusiasm and a sense of gaiety in everything he undertook.

By the time the ship in which he was sailing had reached Tilbury, the first agony had softened a little.

He was now looking forward to seeing his own Castle and estate again.

He felt very sure that his uncle would, as he had promised him, have kept everything in perfect order.

He would go first to The Castle, which had been his home since his birth and would find it exactly as he had left it. The servants who had looked after him and had called him ‘Master Michael’ would be there waiting for him.

He would then ride the horses of which his father had always had a full and outstanding stable.

As Michael had left India so hurriedly, he had not arranged for anyone to meet him at the Port.

After the short journey from Tilbury to Central London, he took a train to Oxford and engaged a Post chaise to take him out to Rayburne Castle.

He paid for the best chaise available, which was drawn by two strong horses

He arrived at The Castle in under an hour, which he considered very good timing.

He thought as he entered the drive that the lodges appeared to be empty, which surprised him.

And the drive itself seemed rough and uncared for.

When he then saw The Castle, it seemed for a moment, in the sunshine, to look as it had always done, outstandingly beautiful and silhouetted against the fir trees behind it.

It had been a Castle since the thirteenth century, but each generation of Rayburnes had added to it and in their own way improved it.

Finally in the eighteenth century the tenth Earl had the whole façade altered.

The original Castle stood at one end of it and the rest of the building, which by now was very symmetrical, was given a new façade.

It made it not only even more beautiful but far more impressive.

The renovation was all designed by the Adam Brothers, who were known as the greatest architects of their time.

Now, with the sunshine glittering on the windows, the young Earl felt his pride swelling up within him. Not even in India had he seen a Palace more impressive or in more exquisite taste than his own home.

The Post chaise carried him over the bridge that spanned the lake and into the courtyard beside the front door.

Eagerly the Earl jumped out to pay the driver and gave him a generous tip.

As he did so, he was astonished to see that moss was growing on the steps leading up to the front door.

Several of the windows on the front of The Castle were cracked and broken.

The door was open and, as the Post chaise drove away, the Earl walked into the hall.

It was then that he stood still as if he was shocked into immobility.

The hall, which he remembered as being particularly fine, was now dirty and undusted.

There were ashes in the huge fireplace and an atmosphere of neglect, which he thought must be part of his imagination.

There appeared to be no one about and he well remembered that there were always two liveried footmen on duty in the hall and the butler was always within call.