It is difficult to imagine any study that would prove more fascinating
in itself or more instructive in its issues, than the examination of
the leading characteristics of individual families as displayed through
a series of generations. But it is a subject that from its very nature
is more or less unapproachable, since it is but little that we know
even of our immediate ancestors. Occasionally in glancing at the
cracking squares of canvas, many of which cannot even boast a name, but
which alone remain to speak of the real and active life, the joys and
griefs, the sins and virtues that centred in the originals of those
hard daubs and of ourselves, we may light upon a face that about six
generations since was the counterpart of the little boy upon our
shoulder, or the daughter standing at our side. In the same way, too,
partly through tradition and partly by other means, we are sometimes
able to trace in ourselves and in our children the strong development
of characteristics that distinguished the race centuries ago.
If local tradition and such records of their individual lives as
remained are worthy of any faith, it is beyond a doubt that the
Caresfoots of Bratham Abbey had handed down their own hard and peculiar
cast of character from father to son unaffected in the main by the
continual introduction of alien blood on the side of the mother.
The history of the Caresfoot family had nothing remarkable about it.
They had been yeomen at Bratham from time immemorial, perhaps ever
since the village had become a geographical fact; but it was on the
dissolution of the monasteries that they first became of any importance
in the county. Bratham Abbey, which had shared the common fate, was
granted by Henry VIII. to a certain courtier, Sir Charles Varry by
name. For two years the owner never came near his new possession, but
one day he appeared in the village, and riding to the house of Farmer
Caresfoot, which was its most respectable tenement, he begged him to
show him the Abbey house and the lands attached. It was a dark November
afternoon, and by the time the farmer and his wearied guest had crossed
the soaked lands and reached the great grey house, the damps and
shadows of the night had begun to curtain it and to render its
appearance, forsaken as it was, inexpressibly dreary and lonesome.
“Damp here, my friend, is it not?” said Sir Charles with a shudder,
looking towards the lake, into which the rain was splashing.
“You are right, it be.”
“And lonely too, now that the old monks have gone.”
“Ay, but they do say that the house be mostly full of the spirits of
the dead,” and the yeoman sank his voice to an awed whisper.
Sir Charles crossed himself and muttered, “I can well believe it,” and
then, addressing his companion—
“You do not know of any man who would buy an abbey with all its rights
and franchises, do you, friend?”
“Not rightly, sir; the land be so poor it hath no heart in it; it doth
scarce repay the tillage, and what the house is you may see. The curse
of the monks is on it. But still, sir, if you have a mind to be rid of
the place, I have a little laid by and a natural love for the land,
having been bred on it, and taken the colour of my mind and my stubby
growth therefrom, and I will give you—” and this astutest of all the
Caresfoots whispered a very small sum into Sir Charles’ ear.
“Your price is very small, good friend, it doth almost vanish into
nothing; and methinks the land that reared you cannot be so unkind as
you would have me think. The monks did not love bad land, but yet, if
thou hast it in the gold, I will take it; it will pay off a debt or
two, and I care not for the burden of the land.”
And so Farmer Caresfoot became the lawful owner of Bratham Abbey with
its two advowsons, its royal franchises of treasure-trove and deodand,
and more than a thousand acres of the best land in Marlshire.
The same astuteness that had enabled this wise progenitor to acquire
the estate enabled his descendants to stick tightly to it, and though,
like other families, they had at times met with reverses, they never
lost their grip of the Abbey property. During the course of the first
half of the nineteenth century the land increased largely in value, and
its acreage was considerably added to by the father of the present
owner, a man of frugal mind, but with the family mania for the
collection of all sorts of plate strongly developed. But it was
Philip’s father, “Devil Caresfoot,” who had, during his fifty years’
tenure of the property, raised the family to its present opulent
condition, firstly, by a strict attention to business and the large
accumulations resulting from his practice of always living upon half
his income, and secondly, by his marriage late in middle life with Miss
Bland, the heiress of the neighbouring Isleworth estates, that
stretched over some two thousand acres of land.
This lady, who was Philip’s mother, did not live long to enjoy her
wealth and station. Her husband never spoke a rough word to her, and
yet it is no exaggeration to say that she died of fear of him. The
marriage had been one of convenience, not of affection; indeed poor
Anna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr.
Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, to
feel that till she died that glance was always playing round her like a
rapier in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die, Mr.
Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the same exquisite
and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had
made to him in the course of their married life. Having satisfactorily
eyed Mrs. Caresfoot off into a better world, her husband gave up all
idea of further matrimonial ventures, and set himself to heap up
riches. But a little before his wife’s death, and just after his son’s
birth, an event had occurred in the family that had disturbed him not a
little.
His father had left two sons, himself and a brother, many years his
junior. Now this brother was very dear to Mr. Caresfoot; his affection
for him was the one weak point in his armour; nor was it rendered any
the less sincere, but rather the more touching, by the fact that its
object was little better than half-witted. It is therefore easy to
imagine his distress and anger when he heard that a woman who had till
shortly before been kitchen-maid at the Abbey House, and was now living
in the village, had been confined of a son which she fixed upon his
brother, whose wife she declared herself to be. Investigation only
brought out the truth of the story; his weak-minded brother had been
entrapped into a glaring _mésalliance_.
But Mr. Caresfoot proved himself equal to the occasion. So soon as his
“sister-in-law,” as it pleased him to call her sardonically, had
sufficiently recovered, he called upon her. What took place at the
visit never transpired, but next day Mrs. E. Caresfoot left her native
place never to return, the child remaining with the father, or rather
with the uncle. That boy was George. At the time when this story opens
both his parents were dead: his father from illness resulting from
entire failure of brain power, the mother from drink.
Whether it was that he considered the circumstance of the lad’s birth
entitled him to peculiar consideration, or that he transferred to him
the affection he bore his father, the result was that his nephew was
quite as dear if not even dearer to Mr. Caresfoot than his own son.
Not, however, that he allowed his preference to be apparent, save in
the negative way that he was blind to faults in George that he was
sufficiently quick to note in Philip. To observers this partiality
seemed the more strange when they thought upon Philip’s bonny face and
form, and then noted how the weak-brained father and coarse-blooded
mother had left their mark in George’s thick lips, small, restless
eyes, pallid complexion, and loose-jointed form.
When Philip shook off his cousin’s grasp and vanished towards the lake,
he did so with bitter wrath and hatred in his heart, for he saw but too
clearly that he had deeply injured himself in his father’s estimation,
and, what was more, he felt that so much as he had sunk his side of the
balance, by so much he had raised up that of George. He was inculpated;
a Bellamy came upon the scene to save George, and, what was worse, an
untruthful Bellamy; he was the aggressor, and George the meek in spirit
with the soft answer that turneth away wrath. It was intolerable; he
hated his father, he hated George. There was no justice in the world,
and he had not wit to play rogue with such a one as his cousin.
Appearances were always against him; he hated everybody.
And then he began to think that there was in the very next parish
somebody whom he did not hate, but who, on the contrary, interested
him, and was always ready to listen to his troubles, and he also became
aware of the fact that whilst his mind had been thinking his legs had
been walking, and that he was very near the abode of that person—almost
at its gates, in short. He paused and looked at his watch; it had
stopped at half-past eleven, the one blow that George had succeeded in
planting upon him having landed on it, to the great detriment of both
the watch and the striker’s knuckles; but the sun told him that it was
about half-past twelve, not too early to call. So he opened the gate,
and, advancing up an avenue of old beeches to a square, red-brick house
of the time of Queen Anne, boldly rang the bell.
Was Miss Lee at home? Yes, Miss Lee was in the greenhouse; perhaps Mr.
Philip would step into the garden, which Mr. Philip did accordingly.
“How do you do, Philip? I’m delighted to see you; you’ve just come in
time to help in the slaughter.”
“Slaughter, slaughter of what—a pig?”
“No, green fly. I’m going to kill thousands.”
“You cruel girl.”
“I daresay it is cruel, but I don’t care. Grumps always said that I had
no heart, and, so far as green fly are concerned, Grumps was certainly
right. Now, just look at this lily. It is an auratum. I gave
three-and-six (out of my own money) for that bulb last autumn, and now
the bloom is not worth twopence, all through green fly. If I were a man
I declare I should swear. Please swear for me, Philip. Go outside and
do it, so that I mayn’t have it on my conscience. But now for
vengeance. Oh, I say, I forgot, you know, I suppose. I ought to be
looking very sorry——”
“Why, what’s the matter? Any one dead?”
“Oh, no, so much better than that. _It’s got Grumps._”
“Got her, what has got her? What is ‘it’?”
“Why, Chancery, of course. I always call Chancery ‘it.’ I wouldn’t take
its name in vain for worlds. I am too much afraid. I might be made to
‘show a cause why,’ and then be locked up for contempt, which
frequently happens after you have tried to ‘show a cause.’ That is what
has happened to Grumps. She is now showing a cause; shortly she will be
locked up. When she comes out, if she ever does come out, I think that
she will avoid wards in Chancery in future; she will have too much
sympathy with them, and too much practical experience of their
position.”
“But what on earth do you mean, Maria? What has happened to Miss
Gregson?” (_anglice_ Grumps).
“Well, you remember one of my guardians, or rather his wife, got ‘it’
to appoint her my chaperon, but my other guardian wanted to appoint
somebody else, and after taking eighteen months to do it, he has moved
the court to show that Grumps is not a ‘fit and proper person.’ The
idea of calling Grumps improper. She nearly fainted at it, and swore
that, whether she lived through it or whether she didn’t, she would
never come within a mile of me or any other ward if she could help it,
not even the ward of an hospital. I told her to be careful, or she
would be ‘committing contempt,’ which frightened her so that she hardly
spoke again till she left yesterday. Poor Grumps! I expect she is on
bread and water now; but if she makes herself half as disagreeable to
the Vice-Chancellor as she did to me, I don’t believe that they will
keep her long. She’ll wear the gaolers out; she will wear the walls
out; she will wear ‘it’ down to the bone; and then they will let her
loose upon the world again. Why, there is the bell for lunch, and not a
single green fly the less! Never mind, I will do for them to-morrow.
How it would add to her sufferings in her lonely cell if she could see
us going to a _tête-à-tête_ lunch. Come on, Philip, come quick, or the
cutlets will get cold, and I hate cold cutlets.” And off she tripped,
followed by the laughing Philip, who, by the way, was now looking quite
handsome again.
Maria Lee was not very pretty at her then age—just eighteen—but she was
a perfect specimen of a young English country girl; fresh as a rose,
and sound as a bell, and endowed besides with a quick wit and a ready
sympathy. She was essentially one of that class of Englishwomen who
make the English upper middle class what it is—one of the finest and
soundest in the world. Philip, following her into the house, thought
that she was charming; nor, being a Caresfoot, and therefore having a
considerable eye to the main chance, did the fact of her being the
heiress to fifteen hundred a year in land detract from her charms.
The cutlets were excellent, and Maria ate three, and was very comical
about the departed Grumps; indeed, anybody not acquainted with the
circumstances would have gathered that that excellent lady was to be
shortly put to the question. Philip was not quite so merry; he was
oppressed both by recollections of what had happened and apprehensions
of what might happen.
“What is the matter, Philip?” she asked, when they had left the table
to sit under the trees on the lawn. “I can see that something is the
matter. Tell me all about it, Philip.”
And Philip told her what had happened that morning, laying bare all his
heart-aches, and not even concealing his evil deeds. When he had done,
she pondered awhile, tapping her little foot upon the turf.
“Philip,” she said at last, in quite a changed voice, “I do not think
that you are being well treated. I do not think that your cousin means
kindly by you, but—but I do not think that you have behaved rightly
either. I don’t like that about the ten pounds; and I think that you
should not have touched George; he is not so strong as you. Please try
to do as your father—dear me, I am sure I don’t wonder that you are
afraid of him; I am—tells you, and regain his affection, and make it up
with George; and, if you get into any more troubles, come and tell me
about them before you do anything foolish; for though, according to
Grumps, I am silly enough, two heads are better than one.”
The tears stood in the lad’s brown eyes as he listened to her. He
gulped them down, however, and said—
“You are awfully kind to me; you are the only friend I have. Sometimes
I think that you are an angel.”
“Nonsense, Philip. If ‘it’ heard you talk like that, you would join
Grumps. Don’t let me hear any more such stuff,” but, though she spoke
sharply, somehow she did not look displeased.
“I must be off,” he said at length. “I promised to go with my father to
see a new building on Reynold’s farm. I have only twenty minutes to get
home;” and rising they went into the house through a French window
opening on to the lawn.
In the dining-room he turned, and, after a moment’s hesitation,
stuttered out—
“Maria, don’t be angry with me, but may I give you a kiss?”
She blushed vividly.
“How dare you suggest such a thing?—but—but as Grumps has gone, and
there is no new Grumps to refer to, and therefore I can only consult my
own wishes, perhaps if you really wish to, Philip, why, Philip, you
may.”
And he did.
When he was gone she leant her head against the cold marble
mantelpiece.
“I do love him,” she murmured, “yes, that I do.”