When I did him at this advantage take,
An ass’s nowl I fixed upon his head.
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In the early spring an unlooked-for obstacle arose to all wanderings in
the Belforest woods. The owner returned and closed the gates. From
time that seemed immemorial, the inhabitants of Kenminster had disported
themselves there as if the grounds had been kept up for their sole
behoof, and their indignation at the monopoly knew no bounds.
Nobody saw Mr. Barnes save his doctor, whose carriage was the only one
admitted within the lodge gates, intending visitors being there informed
that Mr. Barnes was too unwell to be disturbed.
Mrs. “Folly” Brownlow’s aberrations lost their interest in the Coffinkey
world beside the mystery of Belforest. Opinions varied as to his being
a miser, or a lunatic, a prey to conscience, disease, or deformity; and
reports were so diverse, that at the “Folly” a journal was kept of them,
with their dates, as a matter of curiosity--their authorities marked:--
March 4th.--Mr. Barnes eats nothing but fresh turtle. Brings them down
in tubs alive and flapping. Mrs. Coffinkey’s Jane heard them cooing at
the station. Gives his cook three hundred pounds per annum.
5th.--Mr. Barnes so miserly, that he turned away the housemaid for
burning candles eight to the pound. (H. S. H.)
6th.--Mr. B. keeps a bloodhound trained to hunt Indians, and has six
pounds of prime beef steaks for it every day. (Emma.)
8th.--Mr. B.’s library is decorated with a string of human ears, the
clippings of his slaves in “the Indies.” (Nurse.)
12th.--Mr. B. whipped a little black boy to death, and is so haunted by
remorse, that he can’t sleep without wax-candles burning all round him.
(Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.)
14th.--Mr. Barnes’s income is five hundred thousand pounds, and he does
not live at the rate of two hundred pounds. (Col. Brownlow.)
l5th.--He has turned off all his gardeners, and the place will be
desolation. (H. S. H.)
16th.--He did turn off one gardener’s boy for staring at him when he was
being wheeled about in his bath-chair. (Alfred Richards.)
17th.--He threw a stone, which cut the boy’s head open, and he lies at
the hospital in a dangerous state. (Emma.)
18th.--Mr. Barnes was crossed in love when he was a young man by one
Miss Anne Thorpe, and has never been the same man since, but has hated
all society. (Query: Is this a version of being a misanthrope?)
19th.--He is a most unhappy man, who has sacrificed all family
affections and all humanity to gold, and whose conscience will not let
him rest. He is worn to a shadow, and is at war with mankind. In fine,
he is a lesson to weak human nature. (Mrs. Rigby.)
22nd.--All his toilet apparatus is of “virgin gold;” he lets nothing
else touch him. (Jessie.)
“Exactly like King Midas.” (Babie.)
The exclusion from the grounds was a serious grievance, entailing much
loss of time and hindrance to the many who had profited by the private
roads. The Sunday promenade was a great deprivation; nurses and children
were cut off from grass and shade, and Mother Carey and her brood from
all the delights of the enchanted ground.
She could bear the loss better than in that first wild restlessness,
which only free nature could allay. She had made her occupations, and
knew of other haunts, though many a longing eye was cast at the sweet
green wilderness, and many regrets spent on the rambles, the sketches,
the plants, and the creatures that had seemed the certain entertainment
of the summer.
To one class of the population the prohibition only gave greater
zest--namely, the boys. Should there be birds’ nests in Belforest
unscathed by the youth of St. Kenelm’s? What were notice-boards,
palings, or walls to boys with arms and legs ready to defy even the
celebrated man-traps of Ellangowan, “which, if a man goes in, they will
break a horse’s leg?” The terrific bloodhound alarmed a few till his
existence was denied by Alfred Richards, the agent’s son; and dodging
the keepers was a new and exciting sport. At first, these men were not
solicitous for captures, but their negligence was so often detected,
that they began to believe that their master kept telescopes that could
penetrate through trees, and their vigilance increased.
Bobus, in quest of green hellebore, got off with a warning; but a week
later, Robin and Jock were inspecting the heronry, when they caught
sight of a keeper, and dashed off to find themselves running into the
jaws of another. Swift as lightning, Jock sprung up into an ivied ash;
but the less ready Bob was caught by the leg as he mounted, and pulled
down again, while his captor shouted, “If there’s any more of you young
varmint up yonder, you’d best come down before I fires up into the
hoivy.”
He made a click and pointed his gun, and Robin shrieked, “Oh, don’t!
We are Colonel Brownlow’s sons; at least, I mean nephews. Don’t! I say.
Skipjack, come down.”
“You ass!” muttered Jack, as he crackled down, and was collared by the
keeper. “Hollo! what’s that for?”
“Now, young gents, why will you come larking here to get a poor chap out
of his situation. It’s as much as my place is worth not to summons you,
and yet I don’t half like to do it to young gents like you.”
“What could they do to us?” asked Jock.
“Well, sir, may be they’d keep you in the lock-up all night; and what
would your papa and mamma say to that?”
“My father is Colonel Brownlow,” growled Robin.
“More shame for you, sir, to want to get a poor man out of his place.”
“Look here, my man,” said Jock with London sharpness and impudence, “if
you want to bully us into tipping you, it’s no go. We’ve only got one
copper between us, and nothing else but our knives; and if we had, we
wouldn’t do such a sneaking thing!”
“I never meant no such thing, sir,” said the keeper; “only in case Mr.
Barnes should hear of our good nature.”
“Come along, Robin,” said Jock; “if we are had up, we’ll let ‘em know
how Leggings wanted us to buy off!”
Wherewith Jock made a rush, Rob plunged after him into the brambles, and
they never halted till they had tumbled over the park wall, and lay in a
breathless heap on the other side. The adventure was the fruitful cause
of mirth at the Folly, but not a word was breathed of it at Kencroft.
A few other lads did actually pay toll to the keepers, and some
penniless ones were brought before the magistrates and fined for
trespass, “because they could not afford it,” as Caroline said, and
to the Colonel’s great disgust she sent two sovereigns by Allen to pay
their fines and set them free.
“It was my own money,” she said, in self-defence, “earned by my models
of fungi.”
The Colonel thought it an unsatisfactory justification, and told
her that she would lay up trouble for herself by thus encouraging
insubordination. He little thought that the laugh in her eyes was at his
complacent ignorance of his own son’s narrow escape.
Allen was at home for Easter, when Eton gave longer holidays than did
St. Kenelm, so that his brothers were at work again long before he
was. One afternoon, which had ended in a soaking mist, the two pairs of
Roberts and Johns encountered him at the Folly gate so disguised in mud
that they hardly recognised the dainty Etonian.
“That brute Barnes,” he ejaculated; “I had to come miles round through a
disgusting lane. I wish I had gone on. I’d have proved the right of way
if he chose to prosecute me!”
“Father says that’s no go,” said Robin.
“I say, Allen, what a guy you are,” added Johnny.
“And he’s got his swell trousers on,” cried Jock, capering with glee.
“I see,” gravely observed Bobus, “he had got himself up regardless of
expense for his Undine, and she has treated him to another dose of her
native element.
“She had nothing to do with it,” asseverated Allen, “she was as good as
gold--”
“Ah! I knew he wasn’t figged out for nothing,” put in Jock.
“Don’t be ashamed, Ali, my boy,” added Bobus. “We all understand her
little tokens.”
“Stop that!” cried Allen, catching hold of Jock’s ear so as to end his
war-dance in a howl, bringing the ponderous Rob to the rescue, and there
was a general melee, ending by all the five rolling promiscuously on the
gravel drive. They scrambled up with recovered tempers, and at the sight
of an indignant housemaid rushed in a general stampede to the two large
attics opening into one another, which served as the lair of the Folly
lads. There, while struggling, with Jock’s assistance, to pull off
his boots, Allen explained how he had been waylaid “by a beast in
velveteens,” and walked off to the nearest gate.
“Will he summons you, Ali? We’ll all go and see the Grand Turk in the
dock,” cried Jock.
“Don’t flatter yourself; he wouldn’t think of it.”
“How much did you fork out?” asked Bobus.
Allen declaimed in the last refinement of Eton slang (carefully
treasured up by the others for reproduction) against the spite of the
keeper, who he declared had grinned with malice as he turned him out at
a little back gate into a lane with a high stone wall on each side,
and two ruts running like torrents with water, leading in the opposite
direction to Kenminster, and ending in a bottom where he was up to the
ankles in red clay.
“The Eton boots, oh my!” cried Jock, falling backwards with one of them,
which he had just pulled off.
“And then,” added Allen, “as I tried to get along under the wall by the
bank, what should a miserable stone do, but turn round with me and send
me squash into the mud and mire, floundering like a hippopotamus. I
should like to get damages from that villain! I should!”
Allen was much more angry than was usual with him, and the others,
though laughing at his Etonian airs, fully sympathised with his wrath.
“He ought to be served out.”
“We will serve him out!”
“How?”
“Get all our fellows and make a jolly good row under his windows,” said
Robin.
“Decidedly low,” said Allen.
“And impracticable besides,” said Bobus. “They’d kick you out before you
could say Jack Robinson.”
“There was an old book of father’s,” suggested Jock, “with an old scamp
who starved and licked his apprentices, till one of them dressed himself
up in a bullock’s hide, horns and hoofs, and tail and all, and stood
over his bed at night and shouted--
“‘Old man, old man, for thy cruelty,
Body and soul thou art given to me;
Let me but hear those apprentices’ cries,
And I’ll toss thee, and gore thee, and bore out thine eyes.’
And he was quite mild to the apprentices ever after.”
Jock acted and roared with such effect as to be encored, but Rob
objected. “He ain’t got any apprentices.”
“It might be altered,” said Allen.
“Old man, old man, thy gates thou must ope,”
Bobus chimed in.
“Nor force Eton swells in quagmire to grope.”
“Bother you, don’t humbug and put me out.
“Old man, old man, if for aught thou wouldst hope,
Thy heart, purse, and gates thou must instantly ope.
Let me but--”
“Get Mother Carey to write it,” suggested his cousin John.
“No; she must know nothing about it,” said Bobus.
“She’d think it a jolly lark,” said Jock.
“When it’s over,” said Allen. “But it’s one of the things that the old
ones are sure to stick at beforehand, if they are ever so rational and
jolly.”
“‘Tis a horrid pity she is not a fellow,” sighed Johnny.
“And who’ll do the verses?” said Rob.
“Oh, any fool can do them,” returned Bobus. “The point is to bell the
cat.”
“There’d be no getting in to act the midnight ghost,” said Allen.
“No,” said Jock; “but one could hide in the big rhododendron in the
wolf-skin rug, and jump out on him in his chair.”
In Allen’s railway rug, Jock rehearsed the scene, and was imitated if
not surpassed by both cousins; but Allen and Bobus declared that it
could not be carried out in the daylight.
“I could do it still better,” said Jock, “if I blacked myself all
over, not only my face, but all the rest, and put on nothing but my red
flannel drawers and a turban. They’d take me for the ghost of the little
nigger he flogged to death, and Allen could write something pathetic and
stunning.”
“You might cut human ears out of rabbit-skins and hang them round your
neck,” added Bobus.
“You’d be awfully cold,” said Allen.
“You could mix in a little iodine,” suggested Bobus. “That stings like
fun, and a coppery tinge would be more natural.”
There was great acclamation, but the difficulty was that the only time
for effecting an entrance into the garden was between four and five in
the morning, and it would be needful to lurk there in this light costume
till Mr. Barnes went out. No one would be at liberty from school but
Allen, and he declined the oil and lamp-black even though warmed up with
iodine.
“Could it not be done by deputy?” said Bobus; “we might blacken the
little fat boy riding on a swan, the statue, I mean.”
“What, and gild the swan, to show how far his golden goose can carry
him?” said Jock.
“Or,” said Allen, “there’s the statue they say is himself, though that’s
all nonsense. We could make a pair of donkey’s ears in Mother Carey’s
clay, and clap them on him, and gild the thing in his hand.”
“What would be the good of that?” asked Robert.
However, the fun was irresistible, and the only wonder was that the
secret was kept for the whole day, while Allen moulded in the studio
two things that might pass for ass’s ears, and secreted cement enough to
fasten them on. The performance elicited such a rapture of applause that
the door had to be fast locked against the incursion of the little ones
to learn the cause of the mirth. When Mother Carey asked at tea what
they were having so much fun about they only blushed, sniggled, and
wriggled in their chairs in a way that would have alarmed a more
suspicious mother, but only made her conclude that some delightful
surprise was preparing, for which she must keep her curiosity in
abeyance.
“Nor was she dismayed by the creaking of boots on the attic stairs
before dawn, and when the boys appeared at breakfast with hellebore,
blue periwinkle, and daffodils, clear indications of where they had
been, she only exclaimed--
“Forbidden sweets! O you naughty boys!” when ecstatic laughter alone
replied.
She heard no more till the afternoon, when the return from school was
notified by shouts from Allen, and the boys rushed up to the verandah
where he was reading.
“I say! here’s a go. He thinks Richards has done it, and has written to
Ogilvie to have him expelled.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me himself.”
“But Ogilvie has too much sense to expel him!”
“Of course, but there’s worse, for old Barnes means to turn off his
father. Nothing will persuade the old fellow that it wasn’t his work,
for he says that it must be a grammar-school boy.”
“Does Dicky Bird guess?”
“Yes, but he’s all right, as close as wax. He says he was sure no one
but ourselves could have done it, for nobody else could have thought of
such things or made them either.”
“Then he has seen it?”
“Yes, and he was fit to kill himself with laughing, though his father
and old Barnes were mad with rage and fury. His father believes him, but
old Barnes believes neither of them, and swears his father shall go.”
“We shall have to split on ourselves,” elegantly observed Johnny.
“We had better tell Mother Carey. Hullo! here she is, inside the
window.”
“Didn’t you know that,” said Allen.
Therefore the boys, leaning and sprawling round her, half in and
half out of the window, told the story, the triumph overcoming all
compunction, as they described the morning raid, the successful scaling
of the park-wall, the rush across the sward, the silence of the garden,
the hoisting up of Allen to fasten on the ears, and the wonderful charms
of the figure when it wore them and held a golden apple in its hand.
“Right of Way,” and “Let us in,” had been written in black on all the
pedestals.
“It is a peculiar way of recommending your admission,” said Caroline.
“That’s Rob’s doing,” said Allen. “I couldn’t look after him while I
was gilding the apple or I would have stopped him. He half blacked the
little boy on the swan too--”
“And broke the swan’s bill off, worse luck,” added Johnny.
“Yes,” said Allen, “that was altogether low and unlucky! I meant the old
fellow simply to have thought that his statue had grown a pair of ears
in the night.”
“And what would have been the use of that?” said Robin.
“What was the use of all your scrawling,” said Allen, “except just to
show it was not the natural development of statues.”
“Yes,” added Bobus, “it all came of you that poor Dickey Bird is
suspected and it is all blown up.”
“As if he would have thought it was done by nobody,” said Rob.
“Why not?” said Jock. “I’m sure I’d never wonder to see ass’s ears
growing on you. I think they are coming.”
There was a shout of laughter as Rob hastily put up his hands to feel
for them, adding in his slow, gruff voice--“A statue ain’t alive.”
“It made a fool of the whole matter,” proceeded Bobus. “I wish we’d kept
a lout like you out of it.”
“Hush, hush, Bobus,” put in his mother, “no matter about that. The
question is what is to be done about poor Mr. Richards and Alfred.”
“Write a poetical letter,” said Allen, beginning to extemporise in
Hiawatha measure.
“O thou mighty man of money,
Barnes, of Belforest, Esquire,
Innocent is Alfred Richards;
Innocent his honest father;
Innocent as unborn baby
Of development of Midas,
Of the smearing of the Cupid,
Of the fracture of the goose-bill,
Of the writing of the mottoes.
All the Brownlows of St. Kenelm’s,
From the Folly and from Kencroft.
Robert, the aspiring soldier,
Robert, too, the sucking chemist,
John, the Skipjack full of mischief,
John, the great originator,
Allen, the--”
“Allen the uncommon gaby,” broke in Bobus. “Come, don’t waste time,
something must be done.”
“Yes, a rational letter must be written and signed by you all,” said
his mother. “The question is whether it would be better to do it through
your uncle or Mr. Ogilvie.”
“I don’t see why my father should hear of it, or Mr. Ogilvie either,”
growled Rob. “I didn’t do those donkeyfied ears.”
“You did the writing, which was five hundred times more donkeyfied,”
said Jock.
“It is quite impossible to keep either of them in ignorance,” said
Caroline.
“Yes,” repeated all her own three; Jock adding “Father would have known
it as soon as you, and I don’t see that my uncle is much worse.”
“He ain’t so soft,” exclaimed Johnny, roused to loyal defence of his
parent.
“Soft!” cried Jock, indignantly; “I can tell you father did pitch
into me when I caught the old lady’s bonnet out at the window with a
fishing-rod.”
“He never flogged you,” said Johnny contemptuously.
“He did!” cried Jock, triumphantly. “At least he flogged Bobus, when--”
“Shut up, you little ape,” thundered Bobus, not choosing to be offered
up to the manes of his father’s discipline.
“You think you must explain it to my uncle, mother,” said Allen, rather
ruefully.
“Certainly. He ought to be told first, and Mr. Ogilvie next. Depend upon
it, he will be far less angry if it is freely confessed and put into
his hands and what is more important, Mr. Barnes must attend to him, and
acquit the Richardses.”
The general voice agreed, but Rob writhed and muttered, “Can’t you be
the one to tell him, Mother Carey?”
“That’s cool,” said Allen, “to ask her to do what you’re afraid of.”
“He couldn’t do anything to her,” said Rob.
However, public opinion went against Rob, and the party of boys
dragged him off in their train the less reluctantly that Allen would be
spokesman, and he always got on well with his uncle. No one could tell
how it was, but the boy had a frank manner, with a sort of address in
the manner of narration, that always went far to disarm displeasure, and
protected his comrades as well as himself. So it was that, instead of
meeting with unmitigated wrath, the boys found that they were allowed
the honours and graces of voluntary confession. Allen even thought that
his uncle showed a little veiled appreciation of the joke, but this was
not deemed possible by the rest.
To exonerate young Richards was the first requisite, and Allen, under
his uncle’s eye, drew up a brief note to this effect:--
“SIR,--We beg to apologise for the mischief done in your grounds, and to
assure you on our word and honour that it was suggested by no one, that
no one admitted us, and no one had any share in it except ourselves.
“ALLEN BROWNLOW.
“ROBERT FRIAR BROWNLOW.
“ROBERT OTWAY BROWNLOW.
“JOHN FRIAR BROWNLOW.
“JOHN LUCAS BROWNLOW.”
This letter was taken up the next morning to Belforest by Colonel
Brownlow, and the two eldest delinquents, one, curious, amused, and with
only compunction enough to flavour an apology, the other cross, dogged,
and sheepish, dragged along like a cur in a sling, “just as though he
were going to be hanged,” said Janet.
The report of the expedition as given by Allen was thus:--“The servant
showed us into a sort of anteroom, and said he would see whether his
master would see us. Uncle Robert sent in his card and my letter, and
we waited with the door open, and a great screen in front, so that we
couldn’t help hearing every word. First there was a great snarl, and
then a deferential voice, ‘This alters the case, sir.’ But the old man
swore down in his throat that he didn’t care for Colonel Brownlow or
Colonel anybody. ‘A gentleman, sir; one of the most respected.’ ‘Then he
should bring up his family better.’ ‘Indeed, sir, it might be better
to accept the apology. This might not be considered actionable damage.’
‘We’ll see that!’ ‘Indeed, don’t you agree with me, Mr. Richards, the
magistrates would hardly entertain the case.’ ‘Then I’ll appeal; I’ll
send a representation to the Home Office.’ ‘Is it not to be considered,
sir, whether some of these low papers might not put it in a ludicrous
light?’ Then,” continued Allen, who had been most dramatically mimicking
the two voices, “we heard a crackling as if he were opening my letter,
and after an odd noise or two he sent to call us in to where he was
sitting with Richards, and the attorney he had got to prosecute us.
He is a regular old wizened stick, the perfect image of an old miser;
almost hump-backed, and as yellow as a mummy. He looked just ready to
bite off our heads, but he was amazingly set on finding out which was
which among us, and seemed uncommonly struck with my name and Bobus’s.
My uncle told him I was called after your father, and he made a snarl
just like a dog over a bone. He ended with, ‘So you are Allen Brownlow!
You’ll remember this day’s work, youngster.’ I humbly said I should, and
so the matter ended.”
“He did not mean any prosecution?”
“O no, that was all quashed, even if it was begun. He must have been
under an hallucination that he was a stern parent, cutting me off with a
shilling.”
The words had also struck the Colonel, who sought the first opportunity
of asking his sister-in-law whether she knew the names of any of her
mother’s relations.
“Only that her name was Otway,” said Caroline. “You know I lived with my
father’s aunt, who knew nothing about her, and I have never been able to
find anything out. Do you know of any connection? Not this old man? Then
you would have known.”
“That does not follow, for I was scarcely in Jamaica at all. I had a
long illness immediately after going there, was sent home on leave, and
then to the depot, and only joined again after the regiment had gone to
Canada, when the marriage had taken place. I may have heard the name of
Mrs. Allen’s uncle, but I never bore it in my mind.”
“Is there any way of finding out?”
“I will write to Norton. If he does not remember all about it, his wife
will.”
“He is the present lieutenant-colonel, I think.”
“Yes, and he was your father’s chief friend. Now that they are at home
again, we must have him here one of these days.”
“It would be a wonderful thing if this freak were an introduction to a
relation,” said Caroline.
“There was no doubt of his being struck by the combination of Allen and
Otway. He chose to understand which were my sons and which my nephews,
and when I said that Allen bore your maiden name he assented as if he
knew it before, and spoke of your boy having cause to remember this; I
am afraid it will not be pleasantly.”
“No,” said Caroline, “it sounded much like a threat. But one would like
to know, only I thought Farmer Gould’s little granddaughter was his
niece.”
“That might be without preventing your relationship; I will do my best
to ascertain it.”
Colonel Norton’s letter gave decisive information that Barnes was the
name of the uncle with whom Caroline Otway had been living at the time
of her marriage. She had been treated as a poor relation, and seemed to
be half-slave, half-governess to the children of the favoured sister,
little semi-Spanish tyrants. This had roused Captain Allen’s chivalry,
and his friend remembered his saying that, though he had little or
nothing of his own, he could at least make her happier than she was in
such a family. The uncle was reported to have grown rich in the mahogany
trade, and likewise by steamboat speculations, coupled with judicious
stock-jobbing among the distressed West Indians, after the emancipation.
“He was a sinister-looking old fellow,” ended Colonel Norton, “and I
should think not very particular; but I should be glad to hear that he
had done justice to poor Allen’s daughter. He was written to when she
was left an orphan, but vouchsafed no answer.”
“Still he may have kept an eye upon you,” added Uncle Robert. “I do not
think it was new to him that you had married into our family.”
“If only those unfortunate boys have not ruined everything,” sighed
Ellen.
“Little Elvira’s father must have been one of those cousins,” said
Caroline. “I wonder what became of the others? She must be--let me
see--my second cousin.”
“Not very near,” said Ellen.
“I never had a blood relation before since my old aunt died. I am so
glad that brilliant child belongs to me!”
“I daresay old Gould could tell you more,” said the Colonel.
“Is it wise to revive the connection?” asked his wife.
“The Goulds are not likely to presume,” said the Colonel; “and I think
that if Caroline takes up the one connection, she is bound to take up
the other.”
“How am I to make up to this cross old man?” said Carey. “I can’t go and
fawn on him.”
“Certainly not,” said her brother-in-law; “but I think you ought to make
some advance, merely as a relation.”
On the family vote, Caroline rather unwillingly wrote a note, explaining
that she had only just discovered her kinship with Mr. Barnes, and
offering to come and see him; but not the smallest notice was taken of
her letter, rather to her relief, though she did not like to hear Ellen
augur ill for the future.
Another letter, to old Mr. Gould, begging him to call upon her next
market day, met with a far more ready response. When at his entrance she
greeted him with outstretched hands, and--“I never thought you were a
connection;” the fine old weather-beaten face was strangely moved, as
the rugged hand took hers, and the voice was husky that said--
“I thought there was a likeness in the voice, but I never imagined you
were grandchild to poor Carey Barnes; I beg your pardon, to Mrs. Otway.”
“You knew her? You must let me see something of my little cousin! I know
nothing of my relations and my brother-in-law said he thought you could
tell me.”
“I ought to be able, for the family lived at Woodbridge all my young
days,” said the farmer.
The history was then given. The present lord of the manor had been the
son of a land surveyor. He was a stunted, sickly, slightly deformed lad,
noted chiefly for skill in cyphering, and therefore had been placed in
a clerkship. Here a successful lottery ticket had been the foundation of
his fortunes; he had invested it in the mahogany trade, and had been one
of those men with whom everything turned up a prize. When a little over
thirty, he had returned to his own neighbourhood, looking any imaginable
age. He had then purchased Belforest, furnished it sumptuously, and laid
out magnificent gardens in preparation for his bride, a charming young
lady of quality. But she had had a young Lochinvar, and even in her
wedding dress, favoured by sympathising servants, had escaped down the
back stairs of a London hotel, and been married at the nearest Church,
leaving poor Mr. Barnes in the case of the poor craven bridegroom, into
whose feelings no one ever inquired.
Mr. Barnes had gone back to the West Indies at once, and never appeared
in England again till he came home, a broken and soured old man, to die.
There had been two sisters, and Caroline fancied that the old farmer had
had some tenderness for the elder one, but she had married, before
her brother’s prosperity, a poor struggling builder, and both had died
young, leaving their child dependent on her uncle. His younger sister
had been the favourite; he had taken her back with him to America, and,
married her to a man of Spanish blood, connected with him in business.
The only one of her children who survived childhood was educated
in England, treated as his uncle’s heir, and came to Belforest for
shooting. Thus it was that he had fallen in love with Farmer Gould’s
pretty daughter, and as it seemed, by her mother’s contrivance, though
without her father’s consent, had made her his wife.
The wrath of Mr. Barnes was implacable. He cast off the favourite nephew
as entirely as he had cast off the despised niece, and deprived him of
all the means he had been led to look on as his right. The young man had
nothing of his own but an estate in the small island of San Ildefonso,
of very little value, and some of his former friends made interest to
obtain a vice-consulship for him at the Spanish town. Then, after a few
years, both husband and wife died, leaving this little orphan to the
care of her grandfather, who had written to Mr. Barnes on her father’s
death, but had heard nothing from him, and had too much honest pride to
make any further application.
“My little cousin,” said Caroline, “the first I ever knew. Pray bring
her to see me, and let her stay with me long enough for me to know her.”
The old man began to prepare her for the child’s being shy and wild,
though perhaps her aunt was too particular with her, and expected too
much. Perhaps she would be homesick, he said, so wistfully that it was
plain that he did not know how to exist without his darling; but he was
charmed with the invitation, and Caroline was pleased to see that he
did not regard her as his grandchild’s rival, but as representing the
cherished playmate of his youth.