KINCTON HALL
In the parlour of Kincton Hall the family were assembled at breakfast;
Mrs. Kincton Knox dispensed tea and coffee in a queenlike way hardly
called for, seeing that her husband, daughter, and little son, formed
the entire party.
Mrs. Kincton Knox was what some people call a clever woman—that is, she
did nearly everything with an object, but somehow she had not succeeded.
Mr. Kincton Knox was not deputy lieutenant or a member for his county.
Her daughter Clara—with blue eyes and golden hair—a handsome girl, now
leaning back in her chair and looking listlessly through the window
across the table—was admitted confidentially to be near five-and-twenty,
and was in fact past eight-and-twenty, and unmarried still. There was
not that intimacy between the Croydon family and the Kincton Knoxes for
which she had laboured so cleverly and industriously. She was not among
the patronesses, and only one of the committee, of the great county
ball, at which the Prince figured, and which, on the plea of illness,
she had with proper dignity declined attending. She blamed her daughter,
she blamed her husband, she blamed the envy and combination of
neighbours, for her failures. There was nothing that the wit and
industry of women could do she had not done. She was the best bred and
most far-seeing woman in the country round, radiant with a grave sort of
fascination, always in supreme command, never for a moment losing sight
of her object, yet, great or small, somehow never compassing it—a
Vanderdecken, thwarted invisibly, and her crew growing old around her.
Was ever admirable woman so persecuted by fortune?
Perhaps if the accomplished Mrs. Kincton Knox had been some twenty years
before bereft of her brilliant intellect and shut up in a remote
madhouse, or consigned under an unexceptionable epitaph to the family
vault in Smolderton Church, the afflicted family might have prospered;
for Miss Clara was really pretty, and could draw and sing better than
most well-married young ladies of her rank in life. And, though he was
not very bright, no man was more inoffensive and genial than portly old
Kincton Knox, if only she had permitted his popularity to grow, and had
left him and his belongings a little to nature.
“Hollo! What are those fellows doing?” exclaimed Kincton Knox, attracted
by a sound of chopping from without. “Hollo! ho!” and with his arms
extended, he made a rush at the window, which he threw up, shouting,
“Hollo there! stop that.”
A man stood erect with an axe in his hand, by the trunk of one of the
great walnut trees.
“What the devil are you doing, Sir, cutting down my trees!” cried the
old gentleman, his handsome face flushed with wrath, and his silver
fork, with a bit of ham on the end of it, grasped fiercely in his left
hand. “Who the devil ordered you, Sir, to—to how—pow—cut down my trees,
Sir?”
“I’ve spoken to you till I’m tired, Kincton, about that tree; it buries
us in perfect damp and darkness,” began the dignified lady in purple
silk, and lace coif.
“Don’t you presume, Sir, to cut down a tree of mine without my orders;
don’t you dare Sir; don’t—don’t attempt it, Sir, or it will be worse for
you; take that hatchet away, Sir, and send Wall the gardener here this
moment, Sir, to see what can be done, and I’ve a mind to send you about
your business, and egad if I find you’ve injured the tree, I _will_ too,
Sir; send him this moment; get out of my sight, Sir.”
It was not more than once in two years that Mr. Kincton Knox broke out
in this way, and only on extraordinary and sudden provocation. He
returned to the table and sat down in his chair, having shut the windows
with an unnecessary display of physical force. His countenance was red
and lowering, and his eyes still staring and blinking rapidly, and his
white waistcoat heaving, and even the brass buttons of his blue coat
uneasy. You might have observed the tremulous shuffle of his fingers as
his fist rested on the tablecloth, while he gazed through the window and
muttered and puffed to the agitation of his chops.
Upon such unusual occasions Mrs. Kincton Knox was a little alarmed and
even crestfallen. It was a sudden accession of mania in an animal
usually perfectly docile, and therefore it was startling, and called not
for chastisement so much as management.
“I may be permitted to mention, now that there’s a little quiet, that it
was I who ordered that tree to be removed—of course if it makes you
violent to take it down, let it stand; let the house be darkened and the
inhabitants take the ague. I’ve simply endeavoured to do what I thought
right. I’m never thanked; I don’t expect thanks: I hope I know my duty,
and do it from higher motives. But this I know, and you’ll see it when
I’m in my grave, that if it were not for me, every single individual
thing connected with you and yours would be in a state of the most
inextricable neglect and confusion, and I may say ruin.”
“I object to the place being denuded. There is not much in that,”
blustered Mr. Kincton Knox, plaintively.
He was now subsiding; and she, availing herself of this frame of mind,
proceeded with even more force, and dignity, till interrupted by Miss
Clara, who observed serenely—
“Mamma, that greedy little pig will choke himself with apricot-stones,
if you allow him.”
Master Howard Seymour Knox—a stunted and bilious boy—scowled at Miss
Clara, with muddy eyes, his mouth being too full for convenient
articulation, and clutched his plate with both hands.
“My precious rosebud, be careful,” remonstrated his mamma with gentle
fervour.
Stooping over his plate, a clatter of fruit-stones was heard upon it,
and Master Howard ejaculated—
“You lie, you do, you tell-tale tit!”
“Oh! my love,” remonstrated Mrs. Kincton.
“Briggs shall box your ears for that, my fine fellow,” said Miss Clara.
“There’s another cram! I’d like to see her,” retorted the youth.
“Greedy little beast!” observed Clara.
“Clara, my love!” suggested her mamma.
“Not half so greedy as you. Who took the woodcock pie up to her
bed-room? Ah-ha!” vociferated the young gentleman.
“Now I’ll do it myself!” exclaimed the languid young lady, rising with
sudden energy.
“I’ll fling these in your ugly face, if you come near me,” cried he,
jumping up, and behind his mamma’s chair, with a knife and fork in his
right hand covered with Savory pie.
“I won’t have this; I won’t have it,” said Mrs. Kincton Knox with
peremptory dignity. “Howard, be quiet, my love; Clara, sit down.”
“The _imp_! he’ll never stop till he murders some one,” exclaimed Miss
Clara, with intense feeling, as she sat down with brilliant cheeks and
flashing eyes. “Look at him, mamma; he’s saying ha-ha, and shaking his
knife he struck at me, the little murderer; and the liar!”
“Clara, I _insist_,” interposed Mrs. Kincton Knox.
“Yes, I do believe he’s an actual devil,” persisted the young lady.
“I _won’t_ have this,” continued the _mater familias_, peremptorily.
“Ha, ha!” whispered the imp obliquely, from the other side, wagging his
head, and clutching his knife and fork, while he touched the points of
the fork, with a horrid significance, with the finger-tip of his
disengaged hand.
Miss Clara raised her hand, and opened her mouth to exclaim; but at this
moment the servant entered with the letters, and the current of
conversation was diverted.
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