CAIRNS FARM.
JOHN CAIRNS was, as Mrs. Brooke had said of him, “quite a respectable
farmer.” Nobody except disdainful Mrs. St. John would have thought
of applying the term “milkman” to that gray-headed well-to-do old
man, owner of many broad acres, even though he did largely supply the
“gentry” of the neighborhood with butter and milk.
The farm occupied a position about equally distant from Woodleigh Hall
and Mr. St. John’s residence, being within three miles of either. It
was an aged, ivy-grown house, with divers sheds and out-buildings hard
by, and several hay ricks in the near background.
A smart little drawing-room, swathed in brown holland and yellow
gauze, was so seldom employed as to be practically useless. There was,
however, a small cosy parlor, close to the big kitchen, where the
farmer permitted himself to sit and smoke. Occasionally his son did
the same; but Jervis was more of a reader than a smoker. The daughter,
Hannah, might also be found there, darning stockings, once in a while;
not often, since she had no great love for sitting still, and was
commonly busy about the house and farm.
Hannah Cairns was not the old farmer’s only daughter, and Jervis Cairns
was not the only son. Many years back there had been, twice over, times
of great trouble at the farm—trouble of a kind which tends either to
break the heart or to harden the nature.
First, the eldest son, William Cairns, the pride and hope of his
parents, went wrong. Up to the age of twenty all seemed well. He had
always had an aversion to farming; but he was rising to a position
of trust in the employ of a neighboring gentleman of property—no
other than George Rutherford, himself in those days a young man. Then
William was led astray by bad companions, ran into debt, and fell under
temptation into dire and deliberate dishonesty.
The generous kindness of George Rutherford averted the more terrible
disgrace of open trial and condemnation; but remorse in his case did
not mean reformation, and from that day to this, his face had never
been shown in his own land. John Cairns never wrote to him or invited
his return.
The eldest daughter, Marian, commonly known as “Polly,” was an
unusually pretty girl, her father’s especial darling, and not a
little spoilt by him. When William so disgraced himself at the age of
twenty-one, Polly was only seventeen, while Hannah and Jervis were not
more than twelve and six years old.
Five years passed, and the second great family trouble came. Polly
went to pay a long visit to a farmer-uncle in the next county. While
she was there a young Cantab,* Hubert Brooke by name, who was spending
part of his long vacation at a large country house near, fell in with
her accidentally, and speedily lost his heart and head. Polly was
very taking, no doubt, and Hubert was very young—more than a year her
junior. Polly went home, and Hubert followed her, taking up his abode
for a week at an inn, not far off. He did not show himself to Polly’s
parents, but contrived to meet her two or three times; and a runaway
marriage was an early ending to the brief, foolish affair. Hubert’s
family immediately cut all connection with him, and Hubert insisted on
the entire separation of his wife from her family. He had friends who
helped him to find work, and while her husband lived Polly knew no lack
of tolerable comfort.
* Undergraduate in Cambridge University
Had Hubert openly sought Marian as his wife from her parents they might
not have objected. But that she should marry without leave, and should
give them to understand that all intercourse between herself and them
must thenceforth cease—this did come with a terribly heavy blow. The
farmer grew hard and cold in his hurt pride, and forbade the mention
of Marian’s name; and Hannah, young as she was, sternly followed suit.
The mother said little, but quietly drooped and died. Only Jervis still
cherished loving recollections of the sister who had always been kind
to him.
Strange as it may seem, George Rutherford had never heard the details
of this story. From the time of William’s disgrace—the facts of which
had oozed out in some measure, though not through George Rutherford,
the Cairns family had lived as far as possible in strict seclusion. No
neighbors were admitted to intimacy at the farm, and few among their
few acquaintances knew how Marian left her home, or conjectured the
cause of her absence.
When Marian wrote to George Rutherford, “You will not know my married
name,” she was rather making a happy shot than asserting what she knew
to be a fact. It really was so, however. The Cairnses, as a family,
were grateful to George Rutherford for his forbearance, but the very
sight of him was by association painful, and they had quietly dropped
themselves as far as possible out of his ken. The farm lay beyond
Woodleigh parish limits; and while they often heard of him, he did not
hear of them. In a passing way it came to his ears that the eldest
daughter of old Cairns had married and gone away, but that was all. If
her “married name” was ever mentioned to him, it made no impression.
He could recall “Polly” as a pretty sweet-mannered girl, overwhelmed
with grief, at the time of her brother’s wrong-doing; but he had not
exchanged a word with her since; and he could not guess the deep
girlish admiration and gratitude with which she had ever regarded him
for William’s sake.
During all the seventeen years that Joan, the granddaughter of old John
Cairns, had lived at Woodleigh Hall, no passing breeze had ever brought
to light the fact of this unsuspected connection. Perhaps it was not
surprising. Intercourse between George Rutherford and the Cairns family
had become absolutely nothing in amount. John Cairns did not know that
he had a granddaughter. When he or his met Joan—as doubtless they did
in the country lanes—they could have seen nothing in her face or manner
to recall the vanished Marian.
The Brooke family did know of the probable existence of a grandchild,
and of her relationship to the Cairnses of Cairns farm. But they had
not the slightest wish to know more, always excepting Hubert’s mother,
whose desires were overborne by her husband’s determination. They were
under no anxiety to rake up the smouldering ashes of a past fire. Until
their old friend Mrs. St. John had come to live near Woodleigh none
of them had ever wished to visit the neighborhood. Thus it had come
to pass, both easily and naturally, that the matter had slumbered all
these long years.
John Cairns at seventy-five was a fine old man still, tall and
massive, with strong features, and unsmiling expression. He overlooked
everything on the farm himself, trusting to nobody’s memory except his
own, and tramping about in all weathers, with a hardy disdain of cold
and wet not often to be surpassed by younger men.
Hannah Cairns resembled her father, alike in appearance and in
character. She too was tall and big-boned, with harsh mouth and
cold eyes. Within a few months of forty in age, she might have been
taken for ten years older, judging from the marked features and deep
intervening hollows.
Jervis Cairns, her brother, six years her junior in reality, and
fifteen years her junior in look, was a widely different subject from
the other two. Delicate in health from babyhood; always more or less
a sufferer from alternations of asthma and bronchitis; an intelligent
reader and thinker, and a man of warm affections; he seemed to be
singularly planted in the unsympathetic companionship of a silent
father and a morose sister. He would have enjoyed the kindly warmth
of real family life; but from this he had been debarred ever since
the loss of his sister Marian, and the death of his mother. The farm
servants all loved Jervis Cairns; but their affection could not make up
for the lack of loving-kindness from his own people.
They did not mean to be otherwise than good to him. Cairns and Hannah
would alike have been amazed at any complaint on his part. All his
bodily wants were attended to; and in illness no expense was spared.
Nevertheless, Jervis was keenly conscious of a want.
“It’s going to be a boisterous night,” old Cairns said, coming in late
one evening. A lamp was on the little parlor table, and he sat down,
pulling off a woollen comforter, and drawing out a short pipe, which he
proceeded to light. “Have up the shutters, Hannah. The wind blows in
cold.”
“Winter seems coming before its time,” remarked Jervis. “I never knew
it turn suddenly cold like this, quite so early. Well, we’ve had a
lovely autumn till to-day, so we needn’t complain.”
“At your books for ever,” said Cairns discontentedly. “And whatever in
the world is the use?”
“Hannah wouldn’t let me go out, and one can’t sit idle. Reading keeps
me happy, father, if there’s no other use.”
“I should just think I wouldn’t,” responded Hannah.
“It’s a sharp wind. Best take care,” said old Cairns. He seemed to fall
into a musing fit; his brows knitted. Hannah presently moved out of the
room, and he said then—“Met old Elton just now; and he couldn’t let me
pass without stopping.”
“Elton?” said Jervis.
“You don’t remember him, of course. Used to be butler at Woodleigh
Hall—time our troubles began. You were a little chap then. He broke
down in his health after, and Mr. Rutherford pensioned him off. That’s
some eighteen years ago, I should reckon. I didn’t know but he might be
dead before this; but he isn’t. I shouldn’t have known him, but he knew
me.”
“Staying near here?” asked Jervis.
“Yes; he’s got a daughter married and come lately to live in Woodleigh.
I met him near there.”
“Have you been so far? And did he tell you any news?” Jervis, in his
secluded, sickly life, liked an occasional voice from the outside world.
“Not much. Mr. and Mrs. Rutherford’s been away, he said—to Wales, I
think—and they’re expected back this evening. I told him I hadn’t
spoken to Mr. Rutherford for years, and he said he could hardly believe
it. He asked why I didn’t go to the Hall; and I said I’d no wish. I cut
it short, and got away as soon as I could.”
Jervis bent his head, looking on the ground. “Elton—yes, I remember him
now. Polly took me once to the Hall, when I was a little fellow, and I
saw him there. Did he ask after Polly?”
“Yes,” the old man said shortly.
“And you told him—?”
“The truth, of course—that she was married and gone off more than
twenty years ago, and I’d never seen her since. He asked if she had
any children. I said I didn’t know—Polly hadn’t thought it worth her
while to write and tell us. He said he was sorry to hear it. He’s been
to stay at the Hall two or three times, and always thought of us, but
he couldn’t walk so far as here, and nobody seemed to know how we were
getting on. I said—so much the better; we didn’t want to be talked
about; and then I went away.”
Hannah had not come back. Jervis lifted his face, speaking quietly.
“Sometimes I have a downright craving for Polly come over me,” he
said—“as if I’d do anything to get hold of her again. She was more like
mother in her ways than any.”
“Your mother was a good woman, if ever there was one,” said the old
farmer, with an accent which seemed to imply that he counted Polly the
reverse.
“They were like in their ways,” repeated Jervis.
John Cairns made no answer. He only smoked vigorously, till a deepening
blue mist began to pervade the room. Father and son sank into their
usual evening silence.
This day it was not to remain uninterrupted. Perhaps an hour had
passed, when a ring sounded faintly. After a pause it was heard again,
and Hannah’s voice called—
“Do see what’s wanted, Jervis. My hands are in the flour, and that
girl’s loitering somewhere upstairs.”
Jervis obeyed. It afterwards seemed singular that he should have been
the one to respond to the bell on this particular occasion, for he was
very seldom called upon to do so.