War to the Knife

What surprise, disapproval – indeed, almost consternation – such an announcement is calculated to create in a quiet county in rural England, those only who have lived and grown up in such "homes of ancient peace" can comprehend. A perfect chorus of wonder, pity, indignation, and disapproval arose.

The squirearchy lamented the removal of a landmark. The heir of an historic family, "a steady, well-conducted young fellow, good shot, straight-goer in the field – knew something about farming, too. Not too deep in debt either? That is, as far as anybody knew. What the deuce could he mean by cutting the county; severing himself from all his old friends – his father's friends, too?"

This was the lament of Sir Giles Weatherly, one of the oldest baronets in the county. "D – n it," he went on to say, "it ought to be prevented by law. Why, the place was entailed!"

"Entail broken years ago; but that wouldn't mend matters," his companion, Squire Topthorne, replied – a hard-riding, apple-faced old gentleman, credited with a shrewd appreciation of the value of money. "You can't force a man to live on a place, though he mustn't sell it. It wouldn't help the county much to have the Court shut up, with only the old housekeeper, a gardener, and a maid, like Haythorpe. Besides, some decent fellow might buy it – none of us could afford to do so just now. I couldn't, I know."

"Nor I either," returned Sir Giles, "with wheat at thirty shillings a quarter, and farms thrown back on your hands, like half a dozen of mine. But why couldn't Roland have stopped in England; married and settled down, if it comes to that? There are plenty of nice girls in Herefordshire; a good all-round youngster like him, with land at his back, might marry any one he pleased."

"That's the trouble, from what I hear," said Mr. Topthorne, with a quiet smile. "Young men have a way of asking the very girl that won't have them, while there are dozens that would. Same, the world over. And the girls are just as bad – won't take advice, and end up as old maids, or take to 'slumming' and Zenana work. I hear it's Hypatia Tollemache who's responsible."

"Whew-w!" whistled Sir Giles. "She's a fine girl, and knows her value, I suppose, but she's bitten by this 'New Woman' craze – wants to regenerate society, and the rest of it. In our time girls did what they were told – learned house-keeping, and thought it a fair thing to be the mistress of some good fellow's household; to rear wholesome boys and girls to keep up the honour of old England. I have no patience with these fads."

"Well! it can't be helped. Have you any idea who is likely to make a bid for the place?"

"Not the slightest. We're safe to have a manufacturer, or some infernal colonist – made his money by gold-digging or sheep-farming, drops his aitches, and won't subscribe to the hounds."

"Suppose we do? You're too hard on colonists, who, after all, are our own countrymen, with the pluck to go abroad, instead of loafing at home. Often younger sons, too – men of as good family as you or I. We're too conservative here, I often think. They always spend their money liberally, give employment, and entertain royally if they do the thing at all."

"I suppose there's something in what you say; but all the same, I don't like to see a Massinger go out of the county where his family have lived since the time of Hugh Lupus. Viscount the Sire de Massinger came out of Normandy along with Duke William. He was a marshal commanding a division of archers at Hastings. 'For which service both the Conqueror and Hugh Lupus rewarded him' (says an old chronicle) 'with vast possessions, among which was Benham Massinger in Cheshire; and the said Hamon de Massinger was the first Baron de Massinger.' There's a pedigree for 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," interrupted her sister. "I hope you don't talk to Pinson confidentially. What was it?"

"Only that a girl that every one seemed to know about wouldn't have him, and that he nearly went out of his mind about it: wouldn't hear of living in England afterwards."

"Poor fellow! he'll know better some day – won't he, mother? He must be a romantic person to go mooning about, wanting to die or emigrate, for a trifle like that."

"I sometimes wonder if you girls of the present day have hearts, from the way you talk," mused the matron. "However, I suppose they're deeper down than ours used to be. But I don't like my girls to sneer at true love. It's a sacred and holy thing, without which we women would have a sad time in this world. But, in our own country, men have done rash things in the agony of disappointment. You have heard of young Anstruther?"

"Oh yes, long ago. He went home and shot himself because of a silly girl. I suppose he's sorry for it now."

"Hearts are much the same, in all countries and ages, depend upon it, my dears; they make people do strange things. But let us hope that there will be no unruly promptings in this family."

"Quite so, mother – same here; but I suppose, as Longfellow tells us, 'as long as the heart has woes,' all sorts of droll things will happen. And now suppose we go and look at the stables before afternoon tea; I want to see the hunters and polo ponies. The garden we can see tomorrow morning."

When Sir Roland, having made final arrangements, concluded to run down to Massinger for farewell purposes, he declined courteously Mr. Lexington's invitation to stay with him, and took up his abode at the Massinger Arms, in the village, where he considered he would be quiet and more independent. He felt himself obliged to say farewell to the people he had known all his life, small and great. But he never had less inclination for conversation and the ordinary society business. A week at the outside would suffice for such leave-taking as he considered obligatory.

As to the emigration matter which had so disturbed his monde, another factor of controlling power entered into the calculation. A re-valuation of his property made it apparent that when every liability came to be paid off, the available residue would be much less than he or his men of business reckoned on. Not more, indeed, than the ridiculously small sum of thirty or forty thousand pounds. He was not going to live on the Continent, or any cheap foreign place, on this. Nor to angle for an heiress. So, having been informed that he could live like a millionaire in the colonies, and probably make a fortune out of a grazing estate which half the money would purchase, there was nothing to keep him in England. Such considerations, reinforced by the haunting memories of a "lost Lenore" in the guise of Hypatia, drove him forward on his course outre mer with such feverish force that he could scarcely bear to await the day of embarkation.