THE FAMILY
It is said, and seems worthy of belief--though denied quite lately by a
great Frenchman--that there are in the world no fairer damsels than
those of our own dear island. Graceful, elegant, straight and goodly,
gentle--which is the first point of all--yet lively and able to take
their own part, eager moreover to please, and clever to obtain what they
want by doing so, they have no cause to envy their brothers, or feel
ungrateful to Providence for making them fair. If any of them do that
sometimes, when led astray every now and then by feminine agitators, for
the most part they will come back to themselves, if left without
contradiction.
My sister Grace, for instance, was one of the best and kindest-hearted
English girls that ever blushed. Far in front of me, I confess, in
quickness of apprehension, and perception of character, and readiness of
answer, and I might almost say in common-sense; though I never quite
conceded that, because I had so much need of it. Nevertheless she looked
up to me, as her elder by five years, and a man. Therefore, it was my
custom always to listen with much toleration to her, and often adopt her
views in practice, after shaking my head for the time at them. For she
always finished her orations with, "Well, brother George, you are sure
to know the best."
Now, if we had none but Grace to deal with, things would have been very
different. Not that we could have retrieved our fortunes--of that there
was no possibility; still, we might have carried on in our humble way,
and kept my father, Sir Harold Cranleigh, comfortable in his old age,
and even happy among his books and collection of minerals, and seals and
coins. My mother also might have had all she could wish; for she was in
truth a very quiet soul, bound up in her children, and fond of little
else, unless it were county histories, and the fulfilment of prophecy.
Sometimes she was grieved that we occupied now the old cottage in a
corner of the Park, which had once been the house of our agent; also at
having but a pony-cart, instead of what she was accustomed to. But the
grief was not on her own account, and simply for our sake, as we knew
well; and we kept on telling her that we liked it better so.
For after all, if one comes to think, those very wealthy folk have no
true enjoyment, and no keen relish for anything good. In the first
place, they can never feel the satisfaction of having earned, by honest
work, their pleasure. It comes to them but as an everyday matter,
wearisome, vapid, insipid, and dull. Many of them have a noble spirit,
and that makes it all the worse for them. They see and they feel the
misery of the poverty around them, but all they can do is of no avail.
They are cheated and wronged in their best endeavours; if they show
discernment, they are called niggards; if they are profuse, it is
ostentation. And if they are large enough not to be soured by any of
these expressions, they begin to feel more and more, as time goes on,
that the money should stop in the family.
Remembering this, we should have regarded with delicate compassion that
very wealthy individual, Mr. Jackson Stoneman. This eminent stockbroker
claimed not only our sympathy for his vast riches, but also some
goodwill by the relief afforded us in a cumbrous difficulty. My father
had long been casting about, as matters went from bad to worse, and farm
after farm was thrown up by insolvent tenants, for some one to occupy
our old house, Crogate Hall, and the Park as well, for he could not bear
to let them separately, and have the old place cut into patches. But
there was no one left among the old families of the county, still
possessing cash enough to add this to the homes already on their hands.
There is much fine feeling and warmth of heart toward one another,
among those who have never had much to do, from one generation to
another, except to encourage the good people who love order, by
punishing those of an opposite turn, and to keep up the line which has
always been drawn between landed estate and commerce; as well as to be
heartily kind to the poor--even though they do encroach a little on
preserves--and above all to be hospitable not to one another only, but
to people of business who know their position.
Our family, one of the oldest in Surrey, and of Saxon lineage, requiring
no mixed Norman blood of outsea cutthroats to better it, had always kept
its proper place, and been beloved for its justice, generosity, and
modesty. Our tenants had never made any pretension to own the lands they
held of us, any more than a man to whom I had lent a thousand pounds at
interest--supposing that I owned such a sum--would set up a claim to my
capital. We were very kind to them as long as they could pay; and
throughout their long struggle with the foreign deluge, we made every
effort to keep them afloat, reducing their rent to the vanishing point,
and plunging with them into poverty. But what can be done, when the best
land in England will not pay for working, and is burdened as heavily as
ever?
"Cut your coat according to your cloth," is a very fine old precept; and
we went on doing so, as Heaven only knows. But when there is no cloth
left at all, and the climate is not good enough to supply fig-leaves,
wherewithal shall a man be clothed? And for a woman, how much
worse--though they sometimes exaggerate their trials. My sister Grace
was as lovely a maiden as ever was born of Saxon race, which at its best
is the fairest of all. To my mind she was far more beautiful than her
sister Elfrida, the eldest of us, now the wife of Lord Fitzragon, who
had children of her own, and very seldom came to see us, being taken up
with her own world. And one of the things that grieved me most was to
see my favourite sister dressed in some common blue serge, with a brown
leather belt round her waist, and thick shoes on her delicate feet, like
a boy elected by Twickenham parish to the Blue-coat School. For a boy it
is all very well, and may lead to the highest honours of the realm; but
with a maiden of gentle breed it is not so encouraging.
Notwithstanding this, I say that you might put a lady of any rank you
please, and of any wealth to back it up, by the side of my sister Grace;
and I know to which of them your eyes would turn. The Lord may see fit,
for some good purpose, to set one of His children high and to pluck down
another; but He never undoes what He did at the first, and His goodness
remains in the trouble. Many girls lowered from their proper line of
life, and obliged to do things that seemed hard for them, would have
turned sour, and tossed their heads, or at the very least would have
taken unkindly to what they were forced to do. And if anybody blamed
them for it, the chances are that it would be some one who would have
done the very same. But to see our Grace now, you would have thought
that she had been born a small yeoman's daughter, or apprenticed quite
young to a dairyman. What I mean is--unless you looked at her twice; and
to fail of doing that would be quite sufficient proof that you care not
for the most interesting thing in all human nature--except perhaps a
loving mother--to wit, a gentle, truthful, lively, sweet, and
affectionate young maid.
It is not in a man to be so good, and luckily it is not expected of him.
Certainly I did speak strongly sometimes, and find fault with the luck,
and the world, and the law, and above all with the Government, which
every Englishman has a right to do. At such times my sister would
scarcely say a word,--which alone is enough to prove her
self-command,--but draw down her golden hair between her fingers, and
look at me softly from her deep blue eyes, and clearly be trying to
think as I thought. When any one whose opinion is at all worth having
does that sort of thing, almost any man is pleased with the silence he
has created; and his temper improves, as he approves of himself. And so
I always felt with Grace, that she might be right, because I was right;
and it helped me more than any one might think, to know that my words
made a stronger impression on another mind than they left upon my own.
Happy beyond all chance of fortune would be the man who could win such a
heart, and be looked at with even deeper love than a sister has for a
brother, and feel himself lifted more nigh to heaven than he had any
power, or perhaps even any desire of his own to go. But no man so gifted
had appeared as yet, neither did we want him to turn up, for the very
good reason that Grace Cranleigh was the heart and soul of our little
household, just as I, George, was the hand and head, for all practical
purposes, though much against my liking.
Because my elder brother Harold, heir to the title and the dwindled
heritage, was the proper person to come forward, and take the lead of
our forlorn hope, and stand up bravely in the gap, and encourage the
elders when thus stricken down and impoverished. But as I have hinted
before, we had a trouble almost as bad as mortgages, loss of invested
money, and even the ruinous price of corn, and that was a Genius in the
family, without any cash to support him. Truly in almost every family
the seeds of genius may be found, but most of them are nipped in early
days, or start in some harmless direction. But Harold's was not to be
cured like this, for it started in every direction, with a force that
left nothing to be desired, except the completion of something. There
was no conceit in this brother of mine, neither any defect of energy. No
matter what he took up, not only was he full of it for the time, but
perfectly certain that nothing of equal grandeur had dawned upon the
human race till now. Time would fail me to begin the list of his
manifold inventions, for every one was greater than the one before it,
and in justice to him I should have to go through all. While there were
difficulties in the way, his perseverance was boundless. But the moment
he had vanquished them, and proved that there was little more to do, as
sure as eggs are eggs he would stop short, exclaim, "Oh, any fool can do
that!" and turn his great powers to something even greater.
We all admired him, as no one could help doing, for he was a wonderfully
taking fellow, gentle, handsome, generous, and upright, a lover of
Shakespeare, a very fine scholar, as tender to animals as if he knew
their thoughts, and in every way a gentleman, though not fond of
society. But the worst of it was that we had to pay for him; and this
was uncommonly hard to do, under our present circumstances. For
inventors must have the very best material, as well as the finest tools
for their work, and some one of skill to hold things in their place, and
to bear the whole blame when the job miscarries. We were grieved, when
instead of the untold gold which was to have set us staggering, a
basketful of bills was all that came, with headings that sent us to the
Cyclopædia, and footings that spelled the workhouse.
"What is all this about letting the old house?" Harold had asked me,
without indignation, but still with some sadness at our want of faith,
the very last time I had seen him. "You have so very little foresight,
George! You forget altogether how easy it is to let a man in; but to get
him out again, there's the rub; and how often the landlord is forced to
take the roof off!"
"The rub has been to get him in, this time," I answered in my dry
submissive way, for I never tried to reason with such a clever fellow.
"The doors are scarcely large enough for a man of such substance. And as
for the roof, it was taking itself off, after three years without any
repairs, and no one to ask where the leaks were. I think it is a
wonderful piece of luck that Mr. Jackson Stoneman, a man of
extraordinary wealth, has taken such a fancy to the poor old place. It
was Grace who showed him round, for there was no one else to do it. And
she says that although he may not be quite accustomed----"
"Oh, I don't wish to hear any more about him. I detest the idea of
letting our old house, and the Park, and the stables, I suppose he wants
them all. And just when I am at the very point of securing a patent,
which must restore us to our proper position in the county; for the
model is as good as finished. No lease, no lease, my dear George. If you
let him in, have a binding agreement to get him out at any time, with
three months' notice. And when you speak of roofing, have you quite
forgotten that I have discovered a material which must supersede all our
barbarous plans for keeping the sun and the rain out?"
"Oh, yes, I remember. You mean to let them in," I replied, without any
attempt at sarcasm, but having a vague recollection of something.
"Undoubtedly I do, to a certain extent; and then to utilise them. Every
great idea must be in accordance with nature, instead of repelling her.
Now the sun and the rain--but just give me that sheet of paper, and in
two minutes you will see it all. It is the most simple and beautiful
idea. All I fear is that some one else may hit upon it. But, George, I
can trust you, because you are so slow."
With pencil and compass he was sure to be happy for an hour or more and
come beaming to dinner; so I left him, and went to tell my father that
his eldest son, whose consent he required, had given it to that most
necessary step, the letting of Crogate Hall and Park to some eligible
tenant. Not only was a very great burden removed,--for we could not bear
to see the old place lapse into ruin,--but also a welcome addition was
made to our very scanty income. For the great stockbroker paid a
handsome rent without any demur, and began for his own sake to put
everything into good order. Once more the windows shone with light
instead of being grimed with dust and fog; and the Park was mown, and
the deer replaced, and the broad expanse of lawn was gay with cricket
colours and the pretty ways of women.
But we in our corner kept ourselves at a distance from such enjoyment.
Not through any false pride, or jealousy of a condition which had once
been ours; but simply because, as my father said, and my mother agreed
with him warmly, it had never been the habit of our family to receive
entertainment which it could not return. Our home-made bread was (for
relish and for nurture) worth fifty of their snowy Vienna stuff, and a
pint of the ale which I brewed myself was better than a dozen of their
dry champagne, or a vintage of their Chateau this and that. But they
would never think so; and if Englishmen choose to run down their own
blessings, as they do their merits, let the fashion prevail, while the
few who can judge for themselves hold fast their convictions.