The Squire's Daughter
By Michaelmas Day David was ready to take his departure. Since his interview with the squire he had never been seen to smile. He made no complaint to anyone, neither did he sit in idleness and mope. There was a good deal to be done before the final scene, and he did his full share of it. The corn was threshed and sold. The cattle were disposed of at Summercourt Fair. The root crops and hay were taken at a valuation by the incoming tenant. The farm implements were disposed of at a public auction, and when all the accounts had been squared, and the mortgage cleared off, and the ground rent paid, David found himself in possession of his household furniture and thirty pounds in hard cash.
David's neighbours sympathised with him greatly, but none of them gave any more for what they bought than they could help. They admitted that things went dirt cheap, that the cattle and implements were sold for a great deal less than their real value; but that was inevitable in a forced sale. When the seller was compelled to sell, and there was no reserve, and the buyers were not compelled to buy, and there was very little competition, the seller was bound to get the worst of it.
David looked sadly at the little heap of sovereigns – all that was left out of the savings of a lifetime. He had spent a thousand pounds on the farm, and, in addition, had put in twelve years of the hardest work of his life, and this was all that was left. What he thought no one knew, not even his wife, for he kept his thoughts and his feelings to himself.
The day before their departure, David took Ralph for a walk to the extreme end of the farm.
"I have something to tell you, my boy, and something to show you."
Ralph wondered what there was to see that he had not already seen, but he asked no questions.
"You may remember, Ralph," David said, when they had got some distance from the house, "that I told you once that I had discovered a tin lode running across the farm?"
"Yes, I remember well," Ralph answered, looking up with an interested light in his eyes.
"I want to show it to you, my boy."
"Why, what's the use?" Ralph questioned, after a momentary pause. "If it were a reef of gold it would be of no value to us."
"Yes, that seems true enough now," David answered sadly, "but there's no knowing what may happen in the future."
"I don't see how we can ever benefit by it, whatever may happen."
"I am not thinking of myself, Ralph. My day's work is nearly over. But new conditions may arise, new discoveries may be made, and if you know, you may be able to sell your knowledge for something."
Ralph shook his head dubiously, and for several minutes they tramped along side by side in silence.
Then David spoke again.
"It is farewell to-day, my boy. We shall toil in these fields no more."
"That fact by itself does not trouble me," Ralph said.
"You do not like farming," his father answered. "You never did; and sometimes I have felt sorry to keep you here, and yet I could not spare you. You have done the work of two, and you have done it for your bare keep."
"I have done it for the squire," Ralph answered, with a cynical laugh.
"Ah, well, it is over now, my boy, and we know the worst. In a few years nothing will matter, for we shall all be asleep."
Ralph glanced suddenly at his father, but quickly withdrew his eyes. There was a look upon his face that hurt him – a look as of some hunted creature that was appealing piteously for life.
For weeks past Ralph had wished that his father would get angry. If he would only storm and rave at fortune generally, and at the squire in particular, he believed that it would do him good. Such calm and quiet resignation did not seem natural or healthy. Ralph sometimes wondered if what his father predicted had come true – that the loss had broken his heart.
They reached the outer edge of the farm at length, and David paused in the shadow of a tree.
"Come here, my boy," he said. And Ralph went and stood by his side. "You see the parlour chimney?" David questioned.
"Yes."
"Well, now draw a straight line from this tree to the parlour chimney, and what do you strike?"
"Well, nothing except a gatepost over there in Stone Close."
"That's just it. It was while I was digging a pit to sink that post in that I struck the back of the lode."
"And you say it's rich in tin?"
"Very. It intersects the big Helvin lode at that point, and the junction makes for wealth. There'll be a fortune made out of this little farm some day – not out of what grows on the surface, but out of what is dug up from underground."
"And in which direction does the lode run?"
"Due east and west. We are standing on it now, and it passes under the house."
"Then it passes under Peter Ladock's farm also?" Ralph questioned. And he turned and looked over the boundary hedge across their neighbour's farm.
"Ay; but the lode's no use out there," David said.
"Why?"
"Well, you see, 'tisn't mineral-bearing strata, that's all. I dug a pit just where you are standing, and came upon the lode two feet below the surface. But there's no tin in it here scarcely. It's the same lode that the spring comes out of down in the delf, and I've sampled it there. But all along that high ridge where it cuts through the Helvin it's richer than anything I know in this part of the county."
"But the tin might give out as you sink."
"It might, but it would be something unheard of, if it did. If I know anything about mining – and I think I know a bit – that lode will be twenty per cent. richer a hundred fathoms down than it is at the surface."
"Oh, well!" Ralph said, with a sigh, "rich or poor, it can make no difference to us."
"Perhaps not – perhaps not," David said wistfully. "But it may be valuable to somebody some day. I have passed the secret to you. Some day you may pass it on to another. The future is with God," and he drew a long breath, and turned his face toward home, which in a few hours would be his home no more.
Ralph turned his face in another direction.
"I think I will go on to St. Goram," he said, "and see how they are getting on with the cottage. You see we have to move into it to-morrow."
"As you will," David answered, and he strode away across the stubble.
Ralph struck across the fields into Dingley Bottom, and then up the gentle slant toward Treliskey Plantation. When he reached the stile he rested for several minutes, and recalled the meeting and conversation between Dorothy Hamblyn and himself. How long ago it seemed, and how much had happened since then.
Though he loathed the very name of Hamblyn, he was, nevertheless, thankful that the squire's daughter was getting slowly better. She had been seen once or twice in St. Goram in a bath-chair, drawn by a donkey. "Looking very pale and so much older," the villagers said.
By all the rules of logic and common sense, Ralph felt that he ought not only to hate the squire, but everybody belonging to him. Sir John was the tyrant of the parish, the oppressor of the poor, the obstructor of everything that was for the good of the people, and no doubt his daughter had inherited his temper and disposition; while as for the son, people said that he gave promise of being worse than his father.
But for some reason Ralph was never able to work up any angry feeling against Dorothy. He hardly knew why. She had given evidence of being as imperious and dictatorial as any autocrat could desire. She had spoken to him as if he were her stable boy.
And yet —
He recalled how he had rested her fair head upon his lap, how he had carried her in his arms and felt her heart beating feebly against his, how he had given her to drink down in the hollow, and when he lifted her up again she clasped her arms feebly about his neck, and he felt her cheek almost close to his.
It is true he did not know then that she was the squire's daughter, and so he let his sympathies go out to her unawares. But the curious thing was he had not been able to recall his sympathy, though he had discovered directly after that she was the daughter of the man he hated above all others.
As he made his way across the broad and billowy common towards the high road, he found himself wondering what Lord Probus was like. By all the laws and considerations of self-interest, he ought to have been wondering how he and his father were to earn their living – for, as yet, that was a problem that neither of them had solved. But for a moment it was a relief to forget the sorrowful side of life, and think of something else. And, as he had carried Dorothy Hamblyn in his arms every step of the way down the high road, it was the most natural thing in the world that his thoughts should turn in her direction, and from her to the man she had promised to marry.
For some reason or other he felt a little thrill of satisfaction that the wedding had not taken place, and that there was no prospect of its taking place for several months to come.
Not that it could possibly make any difference to him; only he did not see why the rich and strong should always have their heart's desire, while others, who had as much right to live as they had, were cheated all along the line.
Who Lord Probus was Ralph had not the slightest idea. He was a comparatively new importation. He had bought Rostrevor Castle from the Penwarricks, who had fallen upon evil times, and had restored it at great expense. But beyond that Ralph knew nothing.
That he was a young man Ralph took for granted. An elderly bachelor would not want to marry, and a young girl like Dorothy Hamblyn would never dream of marrying an elderly man.
To Ralph Penlogan it seemed almost a sin that a mere child, as Dorothy seemed to be, should think of marriage at all. But since she was going to get married, it was perfectly natural to assume that she was going to marry a young man.
He reached the high road at length, and then hurried forward with long strides in the direction of St. Goram.
The cottage they had taken was at the extreme end of the village, and, curiously enough, was in the neighbouring parish of St. Ivel.
CHAPTER IX
PREPARING TO GO
Almost close to St. Goram were the lodge gates of Hamblyn Manor. The manor itself was at the end of a long and winding avenue, and behind a wide belt of trees. As Ralph reached the lodge gates he walked a little more slowly, then paused for a moment and looked at the lodge with its quaint gables, its thatched roof and overhanging eaves. Beyond the gates the broad avenue looked very majestic and magnificently rich in colour. The yellow leaves were only just beginning to fall, while the evergreens looked all the greener by contrast with the reds and browns.
He turned away at length, and came suddenly face to face with "the squire's little maid." She was seated in her rubber-tyred bath-chair, which was drawn by a white donkey. By the side of the donkey walked a boy in buttons. Ralph almost gasped. So great a change in so short a time he had never witnessed before. Only eight or nine weeks had passed since the accident, and yet they seemed to have added years to her life. She was only a girl when he carried her from Treliskey Plantation down to the high road. Now she was a woman with deep, pathetic eyes, and cheeks hollowed with pain.
Ralph felt the colour mount to his face in a moment, and his heart stabbed him with a sudden poignancy of regret. He wished again, as he had wished many times during the last two months, that he had pocketed his pride and opened the gate. It might be quite true that she had no right to speak to him as she did, quite true also that it was the most natural and human thing in the world to resent being spoken to as though he were a serf. Nevertheless, the heroic thing – the divine thing – would have been to return good for evil, and meet arrogance with generosity.
He would have passed on without presuming to recognise her, but she would not let him.
"Stop, James," she called to the boy; and then she smiled on Ralph ever so sweetly, and held out her hand.
For a moment a hot wave of humiliation swept over him from head to foot. He seemed to realise for the first time in his life what was meant by heaping coals of fire on one's head. He had the whole contents of a burning fiery furnace thrown over him. He was being scorched through every fibre of his being.
At first he almost resented the humiliation. Then another feeling took possession of him, a feeling of admiration, almost of reverence. Here was nobleness such as he himself had failed to reach. Here was one high in the social scale, and higher still in grace and goodness, condescending to him, who had indirectly been the cause of all her suffering. Then in a moment his mood changed again to resentment. This was the daughter of the man who had broken his father's heart. But a moment ago he had looked into his father's hopeless, suffering eyes, and felt as though it would be the sweetest drop of his life if he could make John Hamblyn and all his tribe suffer as he had made them suffer.
But even as he reached out his hard brown hand to take the pale and wasted one that was extended to him, the pendulum swung back once more; the better and nobler feeling came back. The large sad eyes that looked up into his had in them no flash of pride or arrogance. The smile that played over her wan, pale face seemed as richly benevolent as the sunshine of God. Possibly she knew nothing of the calamity that had overtaken him and his, a calamity that her father might have so wonderfully lightened, and at scarcely any cost to himself, had he been so disposed. But it was not his place to blame the child for what her father had done or left undone.
The soft, thin fingers were enveloped in his big strong palm, and then his eyes filled. A lump came up into his throat and prevented him from speaking. Never in all his life before had he seemed so little master of himself.
Then a low, sweet voice broke the silence, and all his self-possession came back to him.
"I am so glad I have met you."
"Yes?" he questioned.
"I wanted to thank you for saving my life."
He dropped his eyes slowly, and a hot wave swept over him from head to foot.
"Dr. Barrow says if you had not found me when you did I should have died." And she looked at him as if expecting an answer. But he did not reply or even raise his head.
"And you carried me such a long distance, too," she went on, after a pause; "and I heard Dr. Barrow tell the nurse that you bound up my head splendidly."
"You were not much to carry," he said, raising his head suddenly. "But – but you are less now." And his voice sank almost to a whisper.
"I have grown very thin," she said, with a wan smile. "But the doctor says I shall get all right again with time and patience."
"I hoped you would have got well much sooner," he said, looking timidly into her face. "I have suffered a good deal during your illness."
"You?" she questioned, raising her eyebrows. "Why?"
"Because if I had not been surly and boorish, the accident would not have happened. If you had died, I should never have forgiven myself."
"No, no; it was not your fault at all," she said quickly. "I have thought a good deal about it while I have been ill, and I have learnt some things that I might never have learnt any other way, and I see now that – that – " And she dropped her eyes to hide the moisture that had suddenly gathered. "I see now that it was very wrong of me to speak to you as I did."
"You were reared to command," he said, ready in a moment to champion her cause, "and I ought to have considered that. Besides, it isn't a man's place to be rude to a girl – I beg your pardon, miss, I mean to a – "
"No, no," she interrupted, with a laugh; "don't alter the word, please. If I feel almost an old woman now, I was only a girl then. How much we may live in a few weeks! Don't you think so?"
"You have found that out, have you?" he questioned. And a troubled look came into his eyes.
"You see, lying in bed, day after day and week after week, gives one time to think – "
"Yes?" he questioned, after a brief pause.
She did not reply for several seconds; then she went on as if there had been no break. "I don't think I ever thought seriously about anything before I was ill. I took everything as it came, and as most things were good, I just enjoyed myself, and there seemed nothing else in the world but just to enjoy one's self – "
"There's not much enjoyment for most people," he said, seeing she hesitated.
"I don't think enjoyment ought to be the end of life," she replied seriously. Then, suddenly raising her eyes, she said —
"Do you ever get perplexed about the future?"
"I never get anything else," he stammered. "I'm all at sea this very moment."
"You? Tell me about it," she said eagerly.
He shrugged his shoulders, and looked along the road toward the village. Should he tell her? Should he open her eyes to the doings of her own father? Should he point out some of the oppressive conditions under which the poor lived?
For a moment or two there was silence. He felt that her eyes were fixed intently on his face, that she was waiting for him to speak.
"I suppose your father has never told you that we have lost our little farm?" he questioned abruptly, turning his head and looking hard at her at the same time.
"No. How have you lost it? I do not understand."
"Well, it was this way." And he went on to explain the nature of the tenure on which his father leased his farm, but he was careful to avoid any mention of her father's name.
"And you say that in twelve years all the three 'lives' have died?"
"That is unfortunately the case."
"And you have no longer any right to the house you built, nor to the fields you reclaimed from the downs?"
"That is so."
"And the lord of the manor has taken possession?"
"He has let it to another man, who takes possession the day after to-morrow."
"And the lord of the manor puts the rent into his own pocket?"
"Yes."
"And your father has to go out into the world and start afresh?"
"We leave Hillside to-morrow. I'm going to St. Goram now, to see if the little cottage is ready. After to-morrow father starts life afresh, in his old age, having lost everything."
"But wasn't your father very foolish to risk his all on such a chance? Life is always such an uncertain thing."
"I think he was very foolish; and he thinks so now. But at the time he was very hopeful. He thought the cost of bringing the land under cultivation would be much less than it has proved to be. He hoped, too, that the crops would be much heavier. Then, you see, he was born in the parish, and he wanted to end his days in it – in a little home of his own."
"It seems very hard," she said, with a distant look in her eyes.
"It's terribly hard," he answered; "and made all the harder by the landlord letting the farm over father's head."
"He could have let you remain?"
"Of course he could, if he had been disposed to be generous, or even just."
"I've often heard that Lord St. Goram is a very hard man."
He started, and looked at her with a questioning light in his eyes.
"He needn't have claimed all his pound of flesh," she went on. "Law isn't everything. Nobody would have expected that all three 'lives' would have died in a dozen years."
"I believe the law of average works out to about forty-seven years," he said.
"In which case your father ought to have his farm another thirty-five years."
"He ought. In fact, no lease ought to be less than ninety-nine years. However, the chances of life have gone against father, and so we must submit."
"I don't understand any man exacting all his rights in such a case," she said sympathetically. "If only people would do to others as they would be done unto, how much happier the world would be!"
"Ah, if that were the case," he said, with a smile, "soldiers and policemen and lawyers would find all their occupations gone."
"But, all the same, what's religion worth if we don't try to put it into practice? The lord of the manor has, no doubt, the law on his side. He can legally claim his pound of flesh, but there's no justice in it."
"It seems to me the strong do not often know what justice means," he said, with an icy tone in his voice.
"No; don't say that," she replied, looking at him reproachfully. "I think most people are really kind and good, and would like to help people if they only knew how."
"I'm afraid most people think only of themselves," he answered.
"No, no; I'm sure – " Then she paused suddenly, while a look of distress or of annoyance swept over her face. "Why, here comes Lord Probus," she said, in a lower tone of voice, while the hot blood flamed up into her pale cheeks in a moment.
Ralph turned quickly round and looked towards the park gates.
"Is that Lord Probus?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Good – " But he did not finish the sentence. She looked up into his face, and saw that it was dark with anger or disgust. Then she glanced again at the approaching figure of her affianced husband, then back again to the tall, handsome youth who stood by her side, and for a moment she involuntarily contrasted the two men. The lord and the commoner; the rich brewer and the poor, ejected tenant.
"Please pardon me for detaining you so long," he said hurriedly.
"You have not detained me at all," she replied. "It has been a pleasure to talk to you, for the days are very long and very dull."
"I hope you will soon be as well as ever," he answered; and he turned quickly on his heel and strode away.
"And I hope your father will soon – " But the end of the sentence did not reach his ears. For the moment he was not concerned about himself. The tragedy of his own life seemed of small account. It was the tragedy of her life that troubled him. It seemed a wicked thing that this fragile girl – not yet out of her teens – should marry a man old enough almost to be her grandfather.
What lay behind it, he wondered? What influences had been brought to bear upon her to win her consent? Was she going of her own free will into this alliance, or had she been tricked or coerced?
He recalled again the picture of her when she sat on her horse in the glow of the summer sunshine. She was only a girl then – a heedless, thoughtless, happy girl, who did not know what life meant, and who in all probability had never given five minutes' serious thought to its duties and responsibilities. But eight or nine weeks of suffering had wrought a great change in her. She was a woman now, facing life seriously and thoughtfully. Did she regret, he wondered, the promise she had made? Was she still willing to be the wife of this old man?
Ralph felt the blood tingling to his finger-tips. It was no business of his. What did it matter to him what Sir John Hamblyn or any of his tribe did, or neglected to do? If Dorothy Hamblyn chose to marry a Chinaman or a Hindoo, that was no concern of his. He had no interest in her, and never would have.
He pulled himself up again at that point. He had no interest in her, it was true, and yet he was interested – more interested than in any other girl he had ever seen. So interested, in fact, that nothing could happen to her without it affecting him.
He reached the cottage at length at the far end of the village. It was but a tiny crib, but it was the best they could get at so short a notice, and they would not have got that if Sir John Hamblyn could have had his way.
Ralph could hardly repress a groan when he stepped over the threshold. It was so painfully small after their roomy house at Hillside. The whitewashers and paperhangers had just finished, and were gathering up their tools, and a couple of charwomen were scouring the floors.
A few minutes later there was a patter on the uncarpeted stairs, and Ruth appeared, with red eyes and dishevelled hair.
"There seems nothing that I can do," he said, without appearing to notice that she had been crying.
"Not to-day," she answered, looking past him; "but there will be plenty for you to do to-morrow."
Half an hour later they walked away together toward Hillside Farm, but neither was in the mood for conversation. Ralph looked up the drive towards Hamblyn Manor as they passed the park gates, but no one was about, and the name of Hamblyn was not mentioned.