War to the Knife. Rolf Boldrewood
you! Pity they hadn't kept their lands; but they're not the only ones, as we know too well."
These and the like colloquies took place during the period which intervened between the direful announcement of the sale of the Court and its actual disposal by an auction sale, at which the late owner was not present.
It was then made public that the stranger who bought that "historic mansion, Massinger Court, with lands and messuages, household furniture, and farm stock, horses and carriages," was acting as agent only for Mr. Lexington, the great Australian squatter, who had made a colossal fortune in New South Wales and Queensland, numbering his sheep by the half-million and his cattle by the twenties of thousands. He had, moreover, agreed to take the furniture, books, pictures – everything – at a valuation, together with the live stock, farm implements, and – in fact, the whole place, exactly as it stood; Sir Roland, the auctioneer said, having removed his personal belongings previously to London immediately after offering the Court for sale. He only returned to bid farewell to the friends of his youth and the home of his race.
Yes! it was hard – very hard, he thought, at the last. There was the garden – old-fashioned, but rich in fruit and flower, with box-borders, clipped yew hedges, alleys of formal shape and pattern; the south wall where the fruit ripened so early, and to which his childish eyes had so often been attracted; the field wherein he had, with the old keeper in strict attendance, been permitted to blaze at a covey of partridges – he remembered now the wild delight with which he marked his first slain bird; the stream in which he had caught his first trout, and whence many a basket had been filled in later days; the village church, under the floor of which so many de Massingers lay buried – the family pew, too large for the church, but against the size and shape of which no innovating incumbent had thought fit to protest.
How well he remembered his mother's loving hand as he walked with her to church —every Sunday, unless illness or unusual weather forbade! That mother, too, so gentle, so saintly sweet, so charitable, so beloved, why should she have died when he was so young? And his father, the pattern squire, who shot and hunted, lived much at home, and was respected throughout the county as a model landlord, who did his duty to the land which had done so much for the men of his race? Why should these things be?
He recalled his mother's dear face, which grew pale, and yet more pale, during her long illness – her last words bidding him, to be a good man, to remember what she taught him, and to comfort his poor father when she was gone. And how he kneeled by her bedside, with her wasted hand in his, praying with her that he might live to carry out her last wishes, and do his duty fearlessly in the face of all men. Then the funeral – the long train of carriages, the burial service, where so many people wept, and he wished – how he wished! – that he could be buried with her. His father's set face, almost stern, yet more sorrowful than any tears. And how he went back to school in his black clothes, miserable and lonely beyond all words to describe.
In the holidays, too – how surprised he had been to find that the squire no longer shot, fished, hunted. He, that was so keen as long as he could remember, but now sat all day reading in the library, where they often used to find him asleep. And how, before the Christmas holidays came round again, he was sent for, to see his father once more before he died.
The squire spoke not – he had for days lost the power of speech – but he placed his hands upon his head and murmured an inarticulate blessing. He did not look pale or wasted like his poor mother, he remembered. The doctors said there was no particular ailment; he had simply lost all interest in life. The old housekeeper summed up the case, which coincided closely with the public feeling.
"It's my opinion," she affirmed, "that if ever a man in this world died of a broken heart, the squire did. He was never the same after the mistress died, God bless her! She's in heaven, if any one is. She was a saint on earth. And the squire, seeing they'd never been parted before – and I never saw two people more bound up in each other – well, he couldn't stay behind."
The new lord of the manor – for Massinger held manorial rights and privileges, which had been tolerably extensive in the days of "merrie England" – lost no time in taking possession.
A week had not elapsed before the Australian gentleman and his family arrived by train at the little railway station, much like any one else, to the manifest disappointment of the residents of the vicinity, who had expected all sorts of foreign appearances and belongings. Certain large trunks —not Saratogas – and portmanteaux were handed out of the brake-van and transferred to the waggonette, which they filled, while three ladies with their maid were escorted to the mail phaeton which had made so many previous journeys to the station with the visitors and friends of the Massinger family. A middle-aged, middle-sized, alert personage, fair-haired, clean-shaved, save for a moustache tinged with grey, mounted the dog-cart, followed by a tall young man who looked with an air of scrutiny at the horses and appointments. He took the reins from the groom, who got up behind, and with one of those imperceptible motions with which a practised whip communicates to well-conditioned horses that they are at liberty to go, started the eager animal along the well-kept road which led to the Court.
"Good goer," he remarked, after steadying the black mare to a medium pace. "If she's sound, she's a bargain at the money; horses seem tremendously dear in England."
"Yes, I should say so," replied his father. "And the phaeton pair are good-looking enough for anything: fair steppers also. I thought the price put on the horses and cattle high, but the agent told me they were above the average in quality. I see he was correct so far."
"Well, it's a comfort to deal with people who are straight and above-board," said the younger man. "It saves no end of trouble. I shouldn't wonder if the home-station – I mean the house and estate – followed suit in being true to description. If so, we've made a hit."
"Sir Roland wouldn't have a thing wrong described for the world, sir," here put in the groom, touching his hat. "No auctioneer would take that liberty with him; not in this county, anyhow."
"Glad to hear it. I thought as much, from seeing him once," said the elder man.
A short hour saw the black mare tearing up the neatly raked gravel in front of the façade of the Court, and by the time the dog-cart had departed for the stables, the phaeton came up to the door, with one of the young ladies in the driving seat.
"Well, this is a nice pair of horses!" said the damsel, who evidently was not unaccustomed to driving a pair, if not a more imposing team. "Fast, so well matched and well mannered; it's a pleasure to drive them. And oh! what a lovely old hall – and such darling trees! How fortunate we were to pick up such a place! It's not too large: there's not much land, but it's a perfect gem in its way. I suppose we are to have the pictures of the ancestors, too?"
"We shall have that reflected glory," said the matron with a smile. "Sir Roland would not sell them, but hoped we would give them house-room till he wanted them – which might not be for years and years."
"So they will still look down upon us – or frown, as the case may be," said the younger girl. "How savage I should be if I were an ancestor, and new people came to turn out my descendant!"
"We haven't turned him out. We only buy him out," said her mother, "which is quite a different thing. It is the modern way of taking the baron's castle – without bloodshed and unpleasantness."
"It is a great shame, all the same, that he should have to turn out," exclaimed the younger girl, indignantly. "I am sure he is a nice fellow, which makes it all the worse, because – because – "
"Because every one says so," continued her elder sister; "as if that was a reason!"
"No! because he has such good horses. When a man keeps them, in such buckle too, there can't be much wrong with him."
"What is the reason that he can't live in a place like this, I wonder?" queried Miss Lexington in a musing tone. "A bachelor, too! Men don't seem to know when they are well off. He ought to try a dry year on one of our Paroo runs, if he wants a change. That would take the nonsense out of him. Our vile sex at the bottom of it, I suppose!"
"I did catch a whisper in London, before we left," said Miss Violet, cautiously.
"You always do,"