Vandon was considered by many people to be the most beautiful house in
----shire.
In these days of great brand-new imitation of intensely old houses,
where the amount of ground covered measures the purse of the builder, it
is pleasant to come upon a place like Vandon, a quiet old manor-house,
neither large nor small, built of ancient bricks, blent to a dim purple
and a dim red by that subtle craftsman Time.
Whoever in the years that were no more had chosen the place whereon to
build had chosen well. Vandon stood on the slope of a gentle hill,
looking across a sweep of green valley to the rising woods beyond, which
in days gone by had been a Roman camp, and where the curious might still
trace the wide ledges cut among the regular lines of the trees.
Some careful hand had planned the hanging gardens in front of the house,
which fell away to the stream below. Flights of wide stone steps led
down from terrace to terrace, each built up by its south wall covered
with a wealth of jasmine and ivy and climbing roses. But all was wild
and deserted now. Weeds had started up between the stone slabs of the
steps, and the roses blossomed out sweet and profuse, for it was the
time of roses, amid convolvulus and campion. The quaint old dove-cot
near the house had almost disappeared behind the trees that had crowded
up round it, and held aloft its weathercock in silent protest at their
encroachment. The stables close at hand, with their worn-out clock and
silent bell, were tenantless. The coach-houses were full of useless old
chariots and carriages. Into one splendid court coach the pigeons had
found their way through an open window, and had made nests, somewhat to
the detriment of the green-and-white satin fittings.
Great cedars, bent beneath the weight of years, grew round the house.
The patriarch among them had let fall one of his gnarled supplicating
arms in the winter, and there it still lay where it had fallen.
Anything more out of keeping with the dignified old place than its owner
could hardly be imagined, as he stood in his eternal light gray suit
(with a badge of affliction lightly borne on his left arm), looking at
his heritage, with his cropped head a little on one side.
The sun was shining, but, like a smile on a serious face, Vandon caught
the light on all its shuttered windows, and remained grave, looking out
across its terraces to the forest.
"If it were but a villa on the Mediterranean, or a house in London," he
said to himself; "but I have no chance." And he shrugged his shoulders,
and wandered back into the house again. But, if the outside oppressed
him, the interior was not calculated to raise his spirits.
Dare had an elegant taste, which he had never hitherto been able to
gratify, for blue satin furniture and gilding; for large mirrors and
painted ceilings of lovers and cupids, and similar small deer. The old
square hall at Vandon, with its great stained glass windows,
representing the various quarterings of the Dare arms, about which he
knew nothing and cared less, oppressed him. So did the black polished
oak floor, and the walls with their white bass-reliefs of twisting
wreaths and scrolls, with busts at intervals of Cicero and Dante, and
other severe and melancholy personages. The rapiers upon the high white
chimney-piece were more to his taste. He had taken them down the first
day after his arrival, and had stamped and cut and thrust in the most
approved style, in the presence of Faust, the black poodle.
Dare was not the kind of man to be touched by it; but to many minds
there would have been something pathetic in seeing a house, which had
evidently been an object of the tender love and care of a by-gone
generation, going to rack and ruin from neglect. Careful hands had
embroidered, in the fine exquisite work of former days, marvellous
coverlets and hangings, which still adorned the long suites of empty
bedrooms. Some one had taken an elaborate pleasure in fitting up those
rooms, had put _pot-pourri_ in tall Oriental jars in the passages, had
covered the old inlaid Dutch chairs with dim needle-work.
The Dare who had lived at court, whose chariot was now the refuge of
pigeons, whose court suits, with the tissue paper still in the sleeves,
yet remained in one of the old oak chests, and whose jewelled swords
still hung in the hall, had filled one of the rooms with engravings of
the royal family and ministers of his day. The Dare who had been an
admiral had left his miniature surrounded by prints of the naval
engagements he had taken part in, and on the oak staircase a tattered
flag still hung, a trophy of unremembered victory.
But they were past and forgotten. The hands which had arranged their
memorials with such pride and love had long since gone down to idleness,
and forgetfulness also. Who cared for the family legends now? They, too,
had gone down into silence. There was no one to tell Dare that the old
blue enamel bowl in the hall, in which he gave Faust refreshment, had
been brought back from the loot of the Winter Palace of Pekin; or that
the drawer in the Reisener table in the drawing-room was full of
treasured medals and miniatures, and that the key thereof was rusting in
a silver patch-box on the writing-table.
The iron-clamped boxes in the lumber-room kept the history to themselves
of all the silver plate that had lived in them once upon a time,
although the few odd pieces remaining hinted at the splendor of what had
been. In one corner of the dining-room the mahogany tomb still stood of
a great gold racing cup, under the portrait of the horse that had won
it; but the cup had followed the silver dinner service, had followed the
diamonds, had followed in the wake of a handsome fortune, leaving the
after generations impoverished. If their money is taken from them, some
families are left poor indeed, and to this class the Dares belonged. It
is curious to notice the occasional real equality underlying the
apparent inequality of different conditions of life. The unconscious
poverty, and even bankruptcy, of some rich people in every kind of
wealth except money affords an interesting study; and it seems doubly
hard when those who have nothing to live upon, and be loved and
respected for, except their money, have even that taken from them. As
Dare wandered through the deserted rooms the want of money of his
predecessors, and consequently of himself, was borne in upon him. It
fell like a shadow across his light pleasure-loving soul. He had
expected so much from this unlooked-for inheritance, and all he had
found was a melancholy house with a past.
He went aimlessly through the hall into the library. It was there that
his uncle had lived; there that he had been found when death came to
look for him; among the books which he had been unable to carry away
with him at his departure; rare old tomes and first editions, long
shelves of dead authors, who, it is to be hoped, continue to write in
other worlds for those who read their lives away in this. Old Mr. Dare's
interests and affections had all been bound in morocco and vellum. A
volume lay open on the table, where the old man had put it down beside
the leather arm-chair where he had sat, with his back to the light,
summer and winter, winter and summer, for so many years.
No one had moved it since. A wavering pencil-mark had scored the page
here and there. Dare shut it up, and replaced it among its brethren. How
_triste_ and silent the house seemed! He wondered what the old uncle had
been like, and sauntered into the staircase hall, much in need of
varnish, where the Dares that had gone before him lived. But these were
too ancient to have his predecessor among them. He went into the long
oak-panelled dining-room, where above the high carved dado were more
Dares. Perhaps that man with the book was his namesake, the departed
Alfred Dare. He wondered vaguely how he should look when he also took
his place among his relations. Nature had favored him with a better
mustache than most men, but he had a premonitory feeling that the very
mustache itself, though undeniable in real life, would look out of
keeping among these bluff, frank, light-haired people, of whom it seemed
he--he who had never been near them before--was the living
representative.
A sudden access of pleasurable dignity came over him as he sat on the
dining-table, the great mahogany dining-table, which still showed
vestiges of a by-gone polish, and was heavily dented by long years of
hammered applause. These ancestors of his! He would not disgrace them. A
few minutes ago he had been wondering whether Vandon might not be let.
Now, with one of the rapid transitions habitual to him, he resolved that
he would live at Vandon, that in all things he would be as they had
been. He would become that vague, indefinable, to him mythical
personage--a "country squire." Fortunately, he had a neat leg for a
stocking. It was lost, so to speak, in his present mode of dress; but he
felt that it would appear to advantage in the perpetual knickerbockers
which he supposed it would be his lot to wear. It would also become his
duty and his pleasure to marry. For those who tread in safety the
slippery heights of married life he felt a true esteem. It would be a
strain, no doubt, a great effort; but at this moment he was capable of
anything. The finger of duty was plain. And with that adorable Miss
Ruth, with or without a fortune--Alas! he trusted she had a fortune,
for, as he came to think thereon, he remembered that he was desperately
poor. As far as he could make out from his agent, a grim, silent man,
who had taken an evident dislike to him from the first, there was no
money anywhere. The rents would come in at Michaelmas; but the interest
of heavy mortgages had to be paid, the estate had to be kept up. There
was succession duty; there were debts--long outstanding debts--which
came pouring in now, which Waters spread before him with an iron smile,
and which poor Dare contemplated with his head on one side, and solemn,
arched eyebrows. When Dare was not smiling he was always preternaturally
solemn. There was no happy medium in his face, or consequently in his
mind, which was generally gay, but, if not, was involved in a tragic
gloom.
"These bills, my friend," he would say at last, tapping them in deep
dejection, and raising his eyebrows into his hair, "how do we pay them?"
But Waters did not know. How should he, Waters, know? Waters only knew
that the farmers would want a reduction in these bad times--Mr. Dare
might be sure of _that_. And what with arrears, and one thing and
another, he need not expect more than two-thirds of his rents when they
did arrive. Mr. Dare might lay his account for _that_.
The only money which Dare received to carry on with, on his accession to
the great honor and dignity of proprietor of Vandon, was brought to him
by the old dairywoman of the house, a faithful creature, who produced
out of an old stocking the actual coins which she had received for the
butter and cheese she had sold, of which she showed Dare an account,
chalked up in some dead language on the dairy door.
She was a little doubled-up woman, who had served the family all her
life. Dare's ready smile and handsome face had won her heart before he
had been many days at Vandon, in spite of "his foreign ways," and he
found himself constantly meeting her unexpectedly round corners, where
she had been lying in wait for him, each time with a secret revelation
to whisper respecting what she called the "goin's on."
"You'll not tell on me, sir, but it's only right you should know as Mrs.
Smith" (the house-keeper, of whom Dare stood in mortal terror) "has them
fine damask table-cloths out for the house-keeper's room; I see 'em
myself; and everything going to rag and ruin in the linen closet!" Or,
"Joseph has took in another flitch this very day, sir, as Mrs. Smith
sent for, and the old flitch all cut to waste. Do'e go and look at the
flitches, sir, and the hams. They're in the room over the stables. And
it's always butter, butter, butter, in the kitchen! Not a bit o'
dripping used! There's not a pot of dripping in the larder, or so much
as a skin of lard. Where does it all go to? You ask Mrs. Smith; and how
she sleeps in her bed at night I don't know!"
Dare listened, nodded, made his escape, and did nothing. In the village
it was as bad. Time, which had dealt so kindly with Vandon itself, had
taken the straggling village in hand too. Nothing could be more
picturesque than the crazy black-and-white houses, with lichen on their
broken-in thatch, and the plaster peeling off from between the irregular
beams of black wood; nothing more picturesque--and nothing more
miserable.
When Time puts in his burnt umbers and brown madders with a lavish hand,
and introduces his beautiful irregularities of outline, and his artistic
disrepair, he does not look to the drainage, and takes no thought for
holes in the roof.
Dare could not go out without eager women sallying out of cottages as he
passed, begging him just to come in and walk up-stairs. They would say
no more--but would the new squire walk up-stairs? And Dare would stumble
up and see enough to promise. Alas! how much he promised in those early
days. And in the gloaming, heavy dull-eyed men met him in the lanes
coming back from their work, and followed him to "beg pardon, sir," and
lay before the new squire things that would never reach him through
Waters--bitter things, small injustices, too trivial to seem worthy of
mention, which serve to widen the gulf between class and class. They
looked to Dare to help them, to make the crooked straight, to begin a
new régime. They looked to the new king to administer his little realm;
the new king, who, alas! cared for none of these things. And Dare
promised that he would do what he could, and looked anxious and
interested, and held out his brown hand, and raised hopes. But he had no
money--no money.
He spoke to Waters at first; but he soon found that it was no good. The
houses were bad? Of course they were bad. Cottage property did not pay;
and would Mr. Dare kindly tell him where the money for repairing them
was to come from? Perhaps Mr. Dare might like to put a little of his
private fortune into the cottages and the drains and the new pumps? Dare
winced. His fortune had not gone the time-honored way of the fortunes of
spirited young men of narrow means with souls above a sordid economy,
but still it had gone all the same, and in a manner he did not care to
think of.
It was after one of these depressing interviews with Waters that Ralph
and Evelyn found the new owner of Vandon, when they rode over together
to call, a day or two after the school-feast. Poor Dare was sitting on
the low ivy-covered wall of the topmost terrace, a prey to the deepest
dejection. If he had lived in Spartan days, when it was possible to
conceal gnawing foxes under wearing apparel, he would have made no use
of the advantages of Grecian dress for such a purpose. Captivated by
Evelyn's gentleness and sympathetic manner (strangers always thought
Evelyn sympathetic), and impressed by Ralph's kindly, honest face, he
soon found himself telling them something of his difficulties, of the
maze in which he found himself, of the snubs which Waters had
administered.
Ralph slapped himself with his whip, whistled, and gave other masculine
signs of interest and sympathy. Evelyn looked from one to the other,
amiably distressed in her well-fitting habit. After a long conversation,
in which Evelyn disclosed that Ralph was possessed of the most
extraordinary knowledge and experience in such matters, the two
good-natured young people, seeing he was depressed and lonely, begged
him to come and stay with them at Atherstone the very next day, when he
might discuss his affairs with Ralph, if so disposed, and take counsel
with him. Dare accepted with the most genuine pleasure, and his speaking
countenance was in a moment radiant with smiles. Was not the little
Molly of the school-feast their child? and was not Miss Deyncourt
likewise staying with them?
When his visitors departed, Dare took a turn at the rapiers; then opened
the piano with the internal derangement, and sang to his own
accompaniment a series of little confidential French songs, which would
have made the hair of his ancestors stand on end, if painted hair could
do such a thing. And the "new squire," as he was already called,
shrugged his shoulders, and lowered his voice, and spread out his
expressive rapid hands, and introduced to Vandon, one after another,
some of those choice little ditties, French and English, which had made
him such a favorite companion in Paris, so popular in a certain society
in America.