Читать книгу From Squire to Squatter: A Tale of the Old Land and the New - Stables Gordon - Страница 1

“So you’ll be ten years old to-morrow, Archie?”

“Yes, father; ten to-morrow. Quite old, isn’t it? I’ll soon be a man, dad. Won’t it be fun, just?”

His father laughed, simply because Archie laughed. “I don’t know about the fun of it,” he said; “for, Archie lad, your growing a man will result in my getting old. Don’t you see?”

Archie turned his handsome brown face towards the fire, and gazed at it – or rather into it – for a few moments thoughtfully. Then he gave his head a little negative kind of a shake, and, still looking towards the fire as if addressing it, replied:

“No, no, no; I don’t see it. Other boys’ fathers may grow old; mine won’t, mine couldn’t, never, never.”

“Dad,” said a voice from the corner. It was a very weary, rather feeble, voice. The owner of it occupied a kind of invalid couch, on which he half sat and half reclined – a lad of only nine years, with a thin, pale, old-fashioned face, and big, dark, dreamy eyes that seemed to look you through and through as you talked to him.

“Dad.”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Wouldn’t you like to be old really?”

“Wel – ,” the father was beginning.

“Oh,” the boy went on, “I should dearly love to be old, very old, and very wise, like one of these!” Here his glance reverted to a story-book he had been reading, and which now lay on his lap.

His father and mother were used to the boy’s odd remarks. Both parents sat here to-night, and both looked at him with a sort of fond pity; but the child’s eyes had half closed, and presently he dropped out of the conversation, and to all intents and purposes out of the company.

“Yes,” said Archie, “ten is terribly old, I know; but is it quite a man though? Because mummie there said, that when Solomon became a man, he thought, and spoke, and did everything manly, and put away all his boy’s things. I shouldn’t like to put away my bow and arrow – what say, mum? I shan’t be altogether quite a man to-morrow, shall I?”

“No, child. Who put that in your head?”

“Oh, Rupert, of course! Rupert tells me everything, and dreams such strange dreams for me.”

“You’re a strange boy yourself, Archie.”

His mother had been leaning back in her chair. She now slowly resumed her knitting. The firelight fell on her face: it was still young, still beautiful – for the lady was but little over thirty – yet a shade of melancholy had overspread it to-night.

The firelight came from huge logs of wood, mingled with large pieces of blazing coals and masses of half-incandescent peat. A more cheerful fire surely never before burned on a hearth. It seemed to take a pride in being cheerful, and in making all sorts of pleasant noises and splutterings. There had been bark on those logs when first heaped on, and long white bunches of lichen, that looked like old men’s beards; but tongues of fire from the bubbling, caking coals had soon licked those off, so that both sticks and peat were soon aglow, and the whole looked as glorious as an autumn sunset.

And firelight surely never before fell on cosier room, nor on cosier old-world furniture. Dark pictures, in great gilt frames, hung on the walls, almost hiding it; dark pictures, but with bright colours standing out in them, which Time himself had not been able to dim; albeit he had cracked the varnish. Pictures you could look into – look in through almost – and imagine figures that perhaps were not in them at all; pictures of old-fashioned places, with quaint, old-fashioned people and animals; pictures in which every creature or human being looked contented and happy. Pictures from masters’ hands many of them, and worth far more than their weight in solid gold.

And the firelight fell on curious brackets, and on a tall corner-cabinet filled with old delf and china; fell on high, narrow-backed chairs, and on one huge carved-oak chest that took your mind away back to centuries long gone by and made you half believe that there must have been “giants in those days.”

The firelight fell and was reflected from silver cups, and goblets, and candlesticks, and a glittering shield that stood on a sideboard, their presence giving relief to the eye. Heavy, cosy-looking curtains depended from the window cornices, and the door itself was darkly draped.

“Ten to-morrow. How time does fly!”

It was the father who now spoke, and as he did so his hand was stretched out as if instinctively, till it lay on the mother’s lap. Their eyes met, and there seemed something of sadness in the smile of each.

“How time does fly!”

“Dad!”

The voice came once more from the corner.

“Dad! For years and years I’ve noticed that you always take mummie’s hand and just look like that on the night before Archie’s birthday. Father, why – ”

But at that very moment the firelight found something else to fall upon – something brighter and fairer by far than anything it had lit up to-night. For the door-curtain was drawn back, and a little, wee, girlish figure advanced on tiptoe and stood smiling in the middle of the room, looking from one to the other. This was Elsie, Rupert’s twin-sister. His “beautiful sister” the boy called her, and she was well worthy of the compliment. Only for a moment did she stand there, but as she did so, with her bonnie bright face, she seemed the one thing that had been needed to complete the picture, the centre figure against the sombre, almost solemn, background.

The fire blazed more merrily now; a jet of white smoke, that had been spinning forth from a little mound of melting coal, jumped suddenly into flame; while the biggest log cracked like a popgun, and threw off a great red spark, which flew half-way across the room.

Next instant a wealth of dark-brown hair fell on Archie’s shoulder, and soft lips were pressed to his sun-dyed cheek, then bright, laughing eyes looked into his.

“Ten to-morrow, Archie! Aren’t you proud?”

Elsie now took a footstool, and sat down close beside her invalid brother, stretching one arm across his chest protectingly; but she shook her head at Archie from her corner.

“Ten to-morrow, you great big, big brother Archie,” she said.

Archie laughed right merrily.

“What are you going to do all?”

“Oh, such a lot of things! First of all, if it snows – ”

“It is snowing now, Archie, fast.”

“Well then I’m going to shoot the fox that stole poor Cock Jock. Oh, my poor Cock Jock! We’ll never see him again.”

“Shooting foxes isn’t sport, Archie.”

“No, dad; it’s revenge.”

The father shook his head.

“Well, I mean something else.”

“Justice?”

“Yes, that is it. Justice, dad. Oh, I did love that cock so! He was so gentlemanly and gallant, father. Oh, so kind! And the fox seized him just as poor Jock was carrying a crust of bread to the old hen Ann. He threw my bonnie bird over his shoulder and ran off, looking so sly and wicked. But I mean to kill him!

“Last time I fired off Branson’s gun was at a magpie, a nasty, chattering, unlucky magpie. Old Kate says they’re unlucky.”

“Did you kill the magpie, Archie?”

“No, I don’t think I hurt the magpie. The gun must have gone off when I wasn’t looking; but it knocked me down, and blackened all my shoulder, because it pushed so. Branson said I didn’t grasp it tight enough. But I will to-morrow, when I’m killing the fox. Rupert, you’ll stuff the head, and we’ll hang it in the hall. Won’t you, Roup?” Rupert smiled and nodded.

“And I’m sure,” he continued, “the Ann hen was so sorry when she saw poor Cock Jock carried away.”

“Did the Ann hen eat the crust?”

“What, father? Oh, yes, she did eat the crust! But I think that was only out of politeness. I’m sure it nearly choked her.”

“Well, Archie, what will you do else to-morrow?”

“Oh, then, you know, Elsie, the fun will only just be beginning, because we’re going to open the north tower of the castle. It’s already furnished.”

“And you’re going to be installed as King of the North Tower?” said his father.

“Installed, father? Rupert, what does that mean?”

“Led in with honours, I suppose.”

“Oh, father, I’ll instal myself; or Sissie there will; or old Kate; or Branson, the keeper, will instal me. That’s easy. The fun will all come after that.”

Burley Old Farm, as it was called – and sometimes Burley Castle – was, at the time our story opens, in the heyday of its glory and beauty. Squire Broadbent, Archie’s father, had been on it for a dozen years and over. It was all his own, and had belonged to a bachelor uncle before his time. This uncle had never made the slightest attempt to cause two blades of grass to grow where only one had grown before. Not he. He was well content to live on the little estate, as his father had done before him, so long as things paid their way; so long as plenty of sleek beasts were seen in the fields in summer, or wading knee-deep in the straw-yard in winter; so long as pigs, and poultry, and feather stock of every conceivable sort, made plenty of noise about the farm-steading, and there was plenty of human life about, the old Squire had been content. And why shouldn’t he have been? What does a North-country farmer need, or what has he any right to long for, if his larder and coffers are both well filled, and he can have a day on the stubble or moor, and ride to the hounds when the crops are in?

But his nephew was more ambitious. The truth is he came from the South, and brought with him what the honest farmer folks of the Northumbrian borders call a deal of new-fangled notions. He had come from the South himself, and he had not been a year in the place before he went back, and in due time returned to Burley Old Farm with a bonnie young bride. Of course there were people in the neighbourhood who did not hesitate to say, that the Squire might have married nearer home, and that there was no accounting for taste. For all this and all that, both the Squire and his wife were not long in making themselves universal favourites all round the countryside; for they went everywhere, and did everything; and the neighbours were all welcome to call at Burley when they liked, and had to call when Mrs Broadbent issued invitations.

Well, the Squire’s dinners were truly excellent, and when afterwards the men folk joined the ladies in the big drawing-room, the evenings flew away so quickly that, as carriage time came, nobody could ever believe it was anything like so late.

The question of what the Squire had been previously to his coming to Burley was sometimes asked by comparative strangers, but as nobody could or cared to answer explicitly, it was let drop. Something in the South, in or about London, or Deal, or Dover, but what did it matter? he was “a jolly good fellow – ay, and a gentleman every inch.” Such was the verdict.

A gentleman the Squire undoubtedly was, though not quite the type of build, either in body or mind, of the tall, bony, and burly men of the North – men descended from a race of ever-unconquered soldiers, and probably more akin to the Scotch than the English.

Sitting here in the green parlour to-night, with the firelight playing on his smiling face as he talked to or teased his eldest boy, Squire Broadbent was seen to advantage. Not big in body, and rather round than angular, inclining even to the portly, with a frank, rosy face and a bold blue eye, you could not have been in his company ten minutes without feeling sorry you had not known him all his life.

Amiability was the chief characteristic of Mrs Broadbent. She was a refined and genuine English lady. There is little more to say after that.

But what about the Squire’s new-fangled notions? Well, they were really what they call “fads” now-a-days, or, taken collectively, they were one gigantic fad. Although he had never been in the agricultural interest before he became Squire, even while in city chambers theoretical farming had been his pet study, and he made no secret of it to his fellow-men.

“This uncle of mine,” he would say, “whom I go to see every Christmas, is pretty old, and I’m his heir. Mind,” he would add, “he is a genuine, good man, and I’ll be genuinely sorry for him when he goes under. But that is the way of the world, and then I’ll have my fling. My uncle hasn’t done the best for his land; he has been content to go – not run; there is little running about the dear old boy – in the same groove as his fathers, but I’m going to cut out a new one.”

The week that the then Mr Broadbent was in the habit of spending with his uncle, in the festive season, was not the only holiday he took in the year. No; for regularly as the month of April came round, he started for the States of America, and England saw no more of him till well on in June, by which time the hot weather had driven him home.

But he swore by the Yankees; that is, he would have sworn by them, had he sworn at all. The Yankees in Mr Broadbent’s opinion were far ahead of the English in everything pertaining to the economy of life, and the best manner of living. He was too much of a John Bull to admit that the Americans possessed any superiority over this tight little isle, in the matter of either politics or knowledge of warfare. England always had been, and always would be, mistress of the seas, and master of and over every country with a foreshore on it. “But,” he would say, “look at the Yanks as inventors. Why, sir, they beat us in everything from button-hook. Look at them as farmers, especially as wheat growers and fruit raisers. They are as far above Englishmen, with their insular prejudices, and insular dread of taking a step forward for fear of going into a hole, as a Berkshire steam ploughman is ahead of a Skyeman with his wooden turf-turner. And look at them at home round their own firesides, or look at their houses outside and in, and you will have some faint notion of what comfort combined with luxury really means.”

It will be observed that Mr Broadbent had a bold, straightforward way of talking to his peers. He really had, and it will be seen presently that he had, “the courage of his own convictions,” to use a hackneyed phrase.

He brought those convictions with him to Burley, and the courage also.

Why, in a single year – and a busy, bustling one it had been – the new Squire had worked a revolution about the place. Lucky for him, he had a well-lined purse to begin with, or he could hardly have come to the root of things, or made such radical reforms as he did.

When he first took a look round the farm-steading, he felt puzzled where to begin first. But he went to work steadily, and kept it up, and it is truly wonderful what an amount of solid usefulness can be effected by either man or boy, if he has the courage to adopt such a plan.