CHAPTER II
It is difficult to imagine any study that would prove more fascinatingin itself or more instructive in its issues, than the examination ofthe leading characteristics of individual families as displayedthrough a series of generations. But it is a subject that from itsvery nature is more or less unapproachable, since it is but littlethat we know even of our immediate ancestors. Occasionally in glancingat the cracking squares of canvas, many of which cannot even boast aname, but which alone remain to speak of the real and active life, thejoys and griefs, the sins and virtues that centred in the originals ofthose hard daubs and of ourselves, we may light upon a face that aboutsix generations since was the counterpart of the little boy upon ourshoulder, or the daughter standing at our side. In the same way, too,partly through tradition and partly by other means, we are sometimesable to trace in ourselves and in our children the strong developmentof characteristics that distinguished the race centuries ago.
If local tradition and such records of their individual lives asremained are worthy of any faith, it is beyond a doubt that theCaresfoots of Bratham Abbey had handed down their own hard andpeculiar cast of character from father to son unaffected in the mainby the continual introduction of alien blood on the side of themother.
The history of the Caresfoot family had nothing remarkable about it.They had been yeomen at Bratham from time immemorial, perhaps eversince the village had become a geographical fact; but it was on thedissolution of the monasteries that they first became of anyimportance in the county. Bratham Abbey, which had shared the commonfate, was granted by Henry VIII. to a certain courtier, Sir CharlesVarry by name. For two years the owner never came near his newpossession, but one day he appeared in the village, and riding to thehouse of Farmer Caresfoot, which was its most respectable tenement, hebegged him to show him the Abbey house and the lands attached. It wasa dark November afternoon, and by the time the farmer and his weariedguest had crossed the soaked lands and reached the great grey house,the damps and shadows of the night had begun to curtain it and torender its appearance, forsaken as it was, inexpressibly dreary andlonesome.
"Damp here, my friend, is it not?" said Sir Charles with a shudder,looking towards the lake, into which the rain was splashing.
"You are right, it be."
"And lonely too, now that the old monks have gone."
"Ay, but they do say that the house be mostly full of the spirits ofthe dead," and the yeoman sank his voice to an awed whisper.
Sir Charles crossed himself and muttered, "I can well believe it," andthen, addressing his companion--
"You do not know of any man who would buy an abbey with all its rightsand franchises, do you, friend?"
"Not rightly, sir; the land be so poor it hath no heart in it; it dothscarce repay the tillage, and what the house is you may see. The curseof the monks is on it. But still, sir, if you have a mind to be rid ofthe place, I have a little laid by and a natural love for the land,having been bred on it, and taken the colour of my mind and my stubbygrowth therefrom, and I will give you--" and this astutest of all theCaresfoots whispered a very small sum into Sir Charles' ear.
"Your price is very small, good friend, it doth almost vanish intonothing; and methinks the land that reared you cannot be so unkind asyou would have me think. The monks did not love bad land, but yet, ifthou hast it in the gold, I will take it; it will pay off a debt ortwo, and I care not for the burden of the land."
And so Farmer Caresfoot became the lawful owner of Bratham Abbey withits two advowsons, its royal franchises of treasure-trove and deodand,and more than a thousand acres of the best land in Marlshire.
The same astuteness that had enabled this wise progenitor to acquirethe estate enabled his descendants to stick tightly to it, and though,like other families, they had at times met with reverses, they neverlost their grip of the Abbey property. During the course of the firsthalf of the nineteenth century the land increased largely in value,and its acreage was considerably added to by the father of the presentowner, a man of frugal mind, but with the family mania for thecollection of all sorts of plate strongly developed. But it wasPhilip's father, "Devil Caresfoot," who had, during his fifty years'tenure of the property, raised the family to its present opulentcondition, firstly, by a strict attention to business and the largeaccumulations resulting from his practice of always living upon halfhis income, and secondly, by his marriage late in middle life withMiss Bland, the heiress of the neighbouring Isleworth estates, thatstretched over some two thousand acres of land.
This lady, who was Philip's mother, did not live long to enjoy herwealth and station. Her husband never spoke a rough word to her, andyet it is no exaggeration to say that she died of fear of him. Themarriage had been one of convenience, not of affection; indeed poorAnna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr.Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, tofeel that till she died that glance was always playing round her likea rapier in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die,Mr. Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the sameexquisite and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remarkshe had made to him in the course of their married life. Havingsatisfactorily eyed Mrs. Caresfoot off into a better world, herhusband gave up all idea of further matrimonial ventures, and sethimself to heap up riches. But a little before his wife's death, andjust after his son's birth, an event had occurred in the family thathad disturbed him not a little.
His father had left two sons, himself and a brother, many years hisjunior. Now this brother was very dear to Mr. Caresfoot; his affectionfor him was the one weak point in his armour; nor was it rendered anythe less sincere, but rather the more touching, by the fact that itsobject was little better than half-witted. It is therefore easy toimagine his distress and anger when he heard that a woman who had tillshortly before been kitchen-maid at the Abbey House, and was nowliving in the village, had been confined of a son which she fixed uponhis brother, whose wife she declared herself to be. Investigation onlybrought out the truth of the story; his weak-minded brother had beenentrapped into a glaring _mesalliance_.
But Mr. Caresfoot proved himself equal to the occasion. So soon as his"sister-in-law," as it pleased him to call her sardonically, hadsufficiently recovered, he called upon her. What took place at thevisit never transpired, but next day Mrs. E. Caresfoot left her nativeplace never to return, the child remaining with the father, or ratherwith the uncle. That boy was George. At the time when this story opensboth his parents were dead: his father from illness resulting fromentire failure of brain power, the mother from drink.
Whether it was that he considered the circumstance of the lad's birthentitled him to peculiar consideration, or that he transferred to himthe affection he bore his father, the result was that his nephew wasquite as dear if not even dearer to Mr. Caresfoot than his own son.Not, however, that he allowed his preference to be apparent, save inthe negative way that he was blind to faults in George that he wassufficiently quick to note in Philip. To observers this partialityseemed the more strange when they thought upon Philip's bonny face andform, and then noted how the weak-brained father and coarse-bloodedmother had left their mark in George's thick lips, small, restlesseyes, pallid complexion, and loose-jointed form.
When Philip shook off his cousin's grasp and vanished towards thelake, he did so with bitter wrath and hatred in his heart, for he sawbut too clearly that he had deeply injured himself in his father'sestimation, and, what was more, he felt that so much as he had sunkhis side of the balance, by so much he had raised up that of George.He was inculpated; a Bellamy came upon the scene to save George, and,what was worse, an untruthful Bellamy; he was the aggressor, andGeorge the meek in spirit with the soft answer that turneth awaywrath. It was intolerable; he hated his father, he hated George. Therewas no justice in the world, and he had not wit to play rogue withsuch a one as his cousin. Appearances were always against him; hehated everybody.
And t
hen he began to think that there was in the very next parishsomebody whom he did not hate, but who, on the contrary, interestedhim, and was always ready to listen to his troubles, and he alsobecame aware of the fact that whilst his mind had been thinking hislegs had been walking, and that he was very near the abode of thatperson--almost at its gates, in short. He paused and looked at hiswatch; it had stopped at half-past eleven, the one blow that Georgehad succeeded in planting upon him having landed on it, to the greatdetriment of both the watch and the striker's knuckles; but the suntold him that it was about half-past twelve, not too early to call. Sohe opened the gate, and, advancing up an avenue of old beeches to asquare, red-brick house of the time of Queen Anne, boldly rang thebell.
Was Miss Lee at home? Yes, Miss Lee was in the greenhouse; perhaps Mr.Philip would step into the garden, which Mr. Philip did accordingly.
"How do you do, Philip? I'm delighted to see you; you've just come intime to help in the slaughter."
"Slaughter, slaughter of what--a pig?"
"No, green fly. I'm going to kill thousands."
"You cruel girl."
"I daresay it is cruel, but I don't care. Grumps always said that Ihad no heart, and, so far as green fly are concerned, Grumps wascertainly right. Now, just look at this lily. It is an auratum. I gavethree-and-six (out of my own money) for that bulb last autumn, and nowthe bloom is not worth twopence, all through green fly. If I were aman I declare I should swear. Please swear for me, Philip. Go outsideand do it, so that I mayn't have it on my conscience. But now forvengeance. Oh, I say, I forgot, you know, I suppose. I ought to belooking very sorry----"
"Why, what's the matter? Any one dead?"
"Oh, no, so much better than that. _It's got Grumps._"
"Got her, what has got her? What is 'it'?"
"Why, Chancery, of course. I always call Chancery 'it.' I wouldn'ttake its name in vain for worlds. I am too much afraid. I might bemade to 'show a cause why,' and then be locked up for contempt, whichfrequently happens after you have tried to 'show a cause.' That iswhat has happened to Grumps. She is now showing a cause; shortly shewill be locked up. When she comes out, if she ever does come out, Ithink that she will avoid wards in Chancery in future; she will havetoo much sympathy with them, and too much practical experience oftheir position."
"But what on earth do you mean, Maria? What has happened to MissGregson?" (_anglice_ Grumps).
"Well, you remember one of my guardians, or rather his wife, got 'it'to appoint her my chaperon, but my other guardian wanted to appointsomebody else, and after taking eighteen months to do it, he has movedthe court to show that Grumps is not a 'fit and proper person.' Theidea of calling Grumps improper. She nearly fainted at it, and sworethat, whether she lived through it or whether she didn't, she wouldnever come within a mile of me or any other ward if she could help it,not even the ward of an hospital. I told her to be careful, or shewould be 'committing contempt,' which frightened her so that shehardly spoke again till she left yesterday. Poor Grumps! I expect sheis on bread and water now; but if she makes herself half asdisagreeable to the Vice-Chancellor as she did to me, I don't believethat they will keep her long. She'll wear the gaolers out; she willwear the walls out; she will wear 'it' down to the bone; and then theywill let her loose upon the world again. Why, there is the bell forlunch, and not a single green fly the less! Never mind, I will do forthem to-morrow. How it would add to her sufferings in her lonely cellif she could see us going to a _tete-a-tete_ lunch. Come on, Philip,come quick, or the cutlets will get cold, and I hate cold cutlets."And off she tripped, followed by the laughing Philip, who, by the way,was now looking quite handsome again.
Maria Lee was not very pretty at her then age--just eighteen--but shewas a perfect specimen of a young English country girl; fresh as arose, and sound as a bell, and endowed besides with a quick wit and aready sympathy. She was essentially one of that class of Englishwomenwho make the English upper middle class what it is--one of the finestand soundest in the world. Philip, following her into the house,thought that she was charming; nor, being a Caresfoot, and thereforehaving a considerable eye to the main chance, did the fact of herbeing the heiress to fifteen hundred a year in land detract from hercharms.
The cutlets were excellent, and Maria ate three, and was very comicalabout the departed Grumps; indeed, anybody not acquainted with thecircumstances would have gathered that that excellent lady was to beshortly put to the question. Philip was not quite so merry; he wasoppressed both by recollections of what had happened and apprehensionsof what might happen.
"What is the matter, Philip?" she asked, when they had left the tableto sit under the trees on the lawn. "I can see that something is thematter. Tell me all about it, Philip."
And Philip told her what had happened that morning, laying bare allhis heart-aches, and not even concealing his evil deeds. When he haddone, she pondered awhile, tapping her little foot upon the turf.
"Philip," she said at last, in quite a changed voice, "I do not thinkthat you are being well treated. I do not think that your cousin meanskindly by you, but--but I do not think that you have behaved rightlyeither. I don't like that about the ten pounds; and I think that youshould not have touched George; he is not so strong as you. Please tryto do as your father--dear me, I am sure I don't wonder that you areafraid of him; I am--tells you, and regain his affection, and make itup with George; and, if you get into any more troubles, come and tellme about them before you do anything foolish; for though, according toGrumps, I am silly enough, two heads are better than one."
The tears stood in the lad's brown eyes as he listened to her. Hegulped them down, however, and said--
"You are awfully kind to me; you are the only friend I have. SometimesI think that you are an angel."
"Nonsense, Philip. If 'it' heard you talk like that, you would joinGrumps. Don't let me hear any more such stuff," but, though she spokesharply, somehow she did not look displeased.
"I must be off," he said at length. "I promised to go with my fatherto see a new building on Reynold's farm. I have only twenty minutes toget home;" and rising they went into the house through a French windowopening on to the lawn.
In the dining-room he turned, and, after a moment's hesitation,stuttered out--
"Maria, don't be angry with me, but may I give you a kiss?"
She blushed vividly.
"How dare you suggest such a thing?--but--but as Grumps has gone, andthere is no new Grumps to refer to, and therefore I can only consultmy own wishes, perhaps if you really wish to, Philip, why, Philip, youmay."
And he did.
When he was gone she leant her head against the cold marblemantelpiece.
"I do love him," she murmured, "yes, that I do."
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