THE HAUNTED HOUSE
CHESTER-BELLOCS
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The Green Overcoat
Mr. Petre
The Emerald
The Haunted House
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[Illustration: _An early portrait of Lord de Beaurivage (then Mr.
George Huggins) as an open-air merchant of vegetables and orchard
produce in 1883_]
THE
HAUNTED HOUSE
BY
HILAIRE BELLOC
_With Illustrations by
G. K. CHESTERTON_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK · _Harper & Brothers_ · LONDON
1928
THE HAUNTED HOUSE
COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY HILAIRE BELLOC
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
FIRST EDITION
M-B
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
An early portrait of Lord de Beaurivage (then Mr. George
Huggins) as an open-air merchant of vegetables and orchard
produce in 1883 _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
The brothers at Rackham 20
Aunt Hilda settling everything 38
Neighbour Hellup and Neighbour Jake 56
“Our younger hostesses” 60
The Ancestor 68
Progress of Sir Harry Murtenshaw, Knight, to his ancestral home 70
John Maple as Lieutenant Allegri 78
The atheist Gaul 122
“Twenty thousand pounds? You haven’t got twenty thousand pence!”
said Aunt Hilda 130
Fond embrace of Hilda, relict of the late William Maple,
Esquire, of Rackham Catchings in the County of Sussex, and
Amathea, wife of George, First Baron de Beaurivage (pronounced
Bruvvish) 146
Lord Hambourne is astonished at the modern habits of the
fifteenth century 156
Mr. Corton reads _The Spectator_ 188
John Maple explains his plan 194
Growing nervousness of Lord de Beaurivage 226
Lord Hellup accepting from Lord Hambourne the interesting
scientific discovery that motor-cars are less susceptible to
psychic influence than horses 236
Partial, but representative deputation of the domestic staff of
Rackham Catchings protesting against the Headless Thing 238
Unaffected emotion of George, First Baron de Beaurivage on the
appearance of an historic figure 242
Distraction of Lord Hambourne on being offered the usual terms 248
Effect of the other world on Miss Broom, housemaid 250
Solid satisfaction of Mr. Pretherton at the pressed pace of
Columbus 256
Genuine pleasure of Columbus on observing the haste of Mr.
Pretherton 258
Wifely protest of Amathea, Lady de Beaurivage, at the unworthy
treatment of her lord 268
Hilda Maple admits that she is a sinful woman 270
“Hannibal!... I mean, Hamilcar!” 272
THE
HAUNTED HOUSE
CHAPTER I
In the English County of Sussex, upon the clay thereof, and upon a
slight eminence of that clay, stood and stands a squire’s house called
Rackham.
Rackham is a common enough name in that part of the world, attached to
perhaps half a dozen widely-different places and things; downs, woods,
fields. But no one had ever bothered to call Rackham anything extra to
make it a special Rackham. Rackham it had been and remained during its
three hundred years as a cell of Lewes Priory and its four hundred of
various lay owners.
Its master at the end of the nineteenth century was a certain Mr. Henry
Maple, of a good ordinary position, born to no great fortune, but a
sufficient master of his countryside.
By birth he was what one might expect, a great-grandson. A Maple who
had begun as a smith and cattle dealer and had gone on as a general
broker, sometimes advancing cash to his fellows and sometimes making a
lucky purchase and sale in stock, had bought out the former immemorial
squires of Rackham when George III. was king. Those whom he had bought
out were an impoverished line, whose founder (a Lewes tallow chandler)
had got it, rather more than a century before, after the Civil Wars,
from a ruined cavalier family, which, in its turn, had been started by
a scullion in Thomas Cromwell’s kitchen, who, yet a century earlier,
had nobbled this parcel of his master’s loot during the great break-up.
So you see that Rackham was just like scores and hundreds of its kind
up and down England, and possessed, after the fashion of any one of the
others, by a very amiable man, a gentleman (which is saying a great
deal), a man formed by Public School and University, and having behind
him two generations of Public School and University, and three of
sufficient wealth.
Rackham was a rather absurd looking house, but dignified. Half of it
was the original Elizabethan living house, with a few stones left of
the earlier monastic building and great oak beams for its framework,
but transmogrified by eighteenth-century additions and internal
changes. From the lawn in front you saw at one end two low stories of
wood and plaster, a tiled roof above that; at the other a brick wall
pierced at regular intervals by a particularly ugly set of windows. At
the back, looking north, was a dreary stucco addition of kitchens and
offices, greenish with damp weather. The later half of the house, all
brick, had been added, as had certain changes in the older part, before
1790, by the fortunate smith and cattle dealer. The stucco offices to
the north had been built by his son during the high corn prices of the
Napoleonic wars.
Inside, the house was what you would expect from such a history.
Nothing whatever told you, even in its oldest part, that there was work
many hundred years old, save the few stones of the monastic building
at the base of a wall, certain beams still exposed in the servants’
quarters, a box room, and one of the smaller bedrooms. The other beams
had been covered long ago with plaster ceilings. Some of them had
been cut clean away to raise the height of the living-rooms after the
later fashion. There was a bathroom with hot and cold water, which
was thought a fine new thing in the middle of the nineteenth century,
when it had been fitted up. There was a small, rather dingy hall; a
passage running from this to the various living-rooms; one simple
staircase for the family, with rather nicely carved oaken banisters,
and a very much worn and very ugly carpet. There were plenty of books
and plenty of pictures—pictures of all sorts and kinds; many a bad
watercolour by ladies of the place, living and dead; a few portraits
in the drawing-room, one of which, almost black, was reputed to be a
Gainsborough. The house was comfortable, it was homely, and it exactly
suited its master, who was, in the first years of the twentieth
century, a man of about forty, very much liked in the neighbourhood,
and with something of a reputation for scholarship; a widower with one
young child—a boy called John.
Thus lived Henry Maple, on what he felt, as all such men feel, to be
ancestral land descended to him from beyond all human record; and in
sober truth possessed by his own blood for a good deal more than a
hundred years; which is quite a long succession for such English land.
He was part of it: of the outlook from that slight eminence towards the
Downs ten miles off along the southern sky; of the rather dishevelled
little park (if you liked to call it that) with its ill-kept gravel
way and its little lodge at the gates; of half a dozen farms which had
provided an income sufficient for his father and grandfather before
him, and the rents of which heavily reduced during the depression of
the 80’s had since remained unchanged; sleeping, like most things in
that good world. Part of him also were the two or three horses in
his stables, the two or three vehicles, and particularly the little
brougham in which he drove to the domestic country station three miles
off, where the very asphalt and palings seemed to talk with the Sussex
burr and to think of London, forty miles away, as a place utterly
remote.
London was not properly part of Henry Maple’s life. He had his club, of
course, for which his father had put him down when he was born, just as
he had put him down for his Public School and for his College. He used
it perhaps twenty times in a year.
The staff of Rackham was consonant with all the rest. A butler of much
the same age as his master, and of twenty years’ standing, knowing the
names of wines, but far more familiar with beer. A lad who cleaned
boots, ran messages, and took the blame for mishaps; a few maids; a
fixed, elderly cook called Mrs. Marwell, and a kitchenmaid; and she
that had been the child’s nurse, and still was after a fashion (even
after he had begun to go to a Preparatory School). She was kept on, and
would be kept on till she died.
There was Rackham; and (one would have said) the benediction of God
upon it. I knew it well enough.
The first thing that began to threaten such unchangeable things with
change was an unaccountable creeping oddity in the relation of income
to expenditure. Henry Maple, in the intervals of his reading and his
quiet entertainment, heard of it vaguely as “these times.” It might
also be called certain new habits of a changing age; rather more
travel, a few more visitors, farmers coming shame-facedly and very
privately to ask for some small reduction in rent, or rather heavy
piece of repair, which was granted as a matter of course; coming again
a year or two later to ask for another, which was also granted as a
matter of course, but at last with a little misgiving.
The century was thus nine years old, and his lonely, affectionate
little son, of whom his father made a close companion, was nine years
old also, when Henry Maple realised that there were a good many things
he ought to have done to the house and did not from lack of funds—wear
and tear come so gradually. He was used to the fences beginning to look
tumbled down, and to a good deal of grass on the few paths; for the
gardener was getting old, and not over lively.
Henry Maple had grown used also to an overdraft at his bank; though he
was rather disturbed when, a few years earlier, the manager had told
him in a pleasant conversation that it would be well to fix a limit—and
did so. But he got used to that too.
He very reluctantly and in rather haphazard, expensive fashion
mortgaged two of the outlying farms; then a third. There came a moment
when he had a little difficulty in meeting the full interest, though it
was in the hands of a family lawyer who was as much a part of his life
as anything else, and had jogged along comfortably enough with him. But
he did at one moment in the year 1905, rather suddenly, need £1,000.
It had not occurred to him how easily his younger brother, William
Maple, a London solicitor in good practice whom he saw fairly often,
could meet the case, or how willing he would be to do it. It was
William Maple himself who suggested the thing (how he could have heard
of the embarrassment Henry was at a loss to guess, and, indeed, did not
waste much time in guessing). It was after a quiet dinner which the two
brothers had had together, when William was spending a week-end at
Rackham, that the proposal was made, and the elder brother accepted it
with real gratitude.
A second thousand followed, and a third. William came oftener—a
frequent guest. He had married a handsome, rather pushing wife of
a birth like his own, the daughter of the Dean of Lamborough, the
grand-daughter of a large coal-owner of the Midlands; a woman who liked
to know the world and whose increasing acquaintance with sundry rich
people and other sundry talked-of people in London increased, very much
to her husband’s content, and not a little to his advantage.
Henry Maple had no great liking for his sister-in-law. Her worldliness
jarred on him and she knew nothing of the things he loved. But he never
thought of her unjustly. He invited her frequently enough, and they
were fairly good friends.
William Maple was what Henry would no doubt have been if Fate had
compelled him (as it never did) to earn his living. But in the twenty
odd years since their common boyhood the difference in habit of mind
and activity had become pronounced. William was precise and methodical;
not unjust, but long grown incapable of anything unbusinesslike or
slack. A bargain was a bargain, and a contract a contract; and the
results of it, if they were turned out to the other man’s loss, were
the other man’s look-out. He could no more separate his family from the
rest of the world in this general view than he could have separated
one set of figures from another in the jottings of his notebooks. These
he kept carefully from year to year; no one saw them but himself, and
they did all the work that the most elaborate keeping of accounts can
do in a large business.
It was natural enough in Henry’s eyes that his brother should be easy
in the matter of interest and allow it to be added to the main debt. It
was natural in William’s that this attitude on his own part, which was
not ungenerous, should yet be precisely regulated and never allowed to
breed confusion.
The losses on all English agricultural work continued; the new habits
continued with them; the slightly increased expenditure; the vague idea
permeating Henry Maple’s mind that the old state of affairs was the
natural and permanent one and would in due course return.
He knew roughly—after a few more years had passed—that his total
indebtedness to his brother had now come to £7,000; he knew that
the interest had fallen into arrears—to how much the total of the
new interest on those arrears might amount he had but a very rough
conception, and he did not dwell upon it.
When it had been suggested by William that the mortgages on the
farms might be taken over, so as to make one simple body of all the
obligations, he was more than willing—it kept things in the family.
The fixed figure in his mind of £7,000 thus became £10,000; and the
arrears of interest crept on. There was one or two further loans, and
one fine day in 1913 William thought it only right to have a clear
statement, and go into everything in detail with his brother. It was
thus upon a Sunday in August, a year before the quite unimaginable war,
that the critical moment came.
William had turned over in his own mind during the previous week what
he would say and do. He had everything fixed, tabulated and arranged.
William Maple had prospered; he had bought one of the dignified old
freehold houses on the river in Cheyne Walk, spending on it rather
more than he would have done, perhaps, had not his wife urged him. The
house was becoming something of a centre in London for people who wrote
and painted and were talked of, for the more important people who had
gone into politics, and even for a few of the very much more important
people whose point was their new wealth. Mrs. William Maple had decided
that the time had come for a proper house in the country as well; but
her husband, for all his success, hesitated at the expense. It was Mrs.
William Maple who suggested that the opportunity lay ready to hand in
Rackham.
“Henry will never marry again,” she had said. “The longer he keeps that
place the more it will go to pieces. I don’t believe that boy, John,
will come to any good with it. He’s a nice bright child and I am as
fond of him as you are; but I see what the end of it will be.”
And William, after a rather long pause, had agreed that she was
right—at any rate as far as his brother’s incapacity for management was
concerned, and the probability of a break-down if things continued as
they were.
There was no need to do anything harsh or unpleasant, Mrs. William had
said. After all, what with the capital sums advanced and the really
absurd arrears of interest, and the interest on those arrears—let her
husband remember that he very often had to find that himself, when he
was making new investments, and depending upon the bank—the total must
be getting close on £18,000.
“Not quite that,” William Maple had answered.
“Well!” Mrs. William had taken him up with a rather sharp sigh, “close
on it, anyhow! And we can’t afford it—you know we can’t. Besides which,
as I say, it would be a blessing all round; and there’s no need to do
anything harsh or unpleasant. You can suggest some arrangement. Henry
might travel for a bit, on whatever more you could let him have, and we
might pay him rent for a while and then see what could be done when we
had room to turn round.”
“Yes,” her husband had answered, “Yes.... Something of that sort could
be done.... Certainly.”
Something of that sort had occurred to him also, Had it not? Vaguely?
All but £18,000 was due: allow Henry another £2,000 odd. After all, as
land now was, £20,000 was a very fair amount to allow for Rackham: if
anything too much. There was an enormous amount wanted doing to the
place—he was already beginning to think of it almost as his own. As for
his wife, she was there in spirit already; ordering the place about,
renewing it from cellar to roof, and a squire’s wife, as she should be.
Moreover, she was the good angel of poor Henry, and of his unfortunate
little son. She was saving them from a terrible future.
William had sat up late that night in his study, getting all the papers
in order, setting down the main figures in an exceedingly clear and
plain fashion. The next day, he had invited himself to Rackham, and the
day after he had driven from the station in the old brougham behind the
old horse with the old coachman, up the dilapidated drive, to the door
which had not been painted since the triumphant conquest of the Boer
Republics, and the nasty slump in Chartereds.
So there William Maple was, on that Sunday evening of August, 1913,
sitting over brother Henry’s wine and making himself ready for an
explanation.
“Is that the same port?” he said.
“Yes,” Henry answered, taking up his glass and looking through it at a
candle.
“I thought it had gone off. Father laid it down the day you got into
the Eight,” said William.
Henry nodded.
“There is no reason why it should have gone off, though it wasn’t a
particularly good year. Anyhow, it’s all right still.”
The curtains were not drawn, the big ugly windows of the dining-room
were open to the warm August night. The mahogany reflected the glass
ware and the silver. Henry’s eye rested, unseeing, upon the crest the
fortunate smith and cattle dealer had arranged for, more than a century
ago. It was a scene unchanged; just what it had been for the last
thirty years and more, as far back as the two men could remember, save
for the slightly dingier tint of the walls and the irregular, patchy
fading of the red damask of the curtains. Other little details William
now oddly noticed, though Henry could not have told him they were
there: one of the bell handles had gone from the side of the fire-place
leaving an iron stump, and poor old helmeted Minerva upon a bracket
(Italian she had been, and brought over after the French wars) had lost
the tip of her nose.
The silence could not go on for ever, and William braced himself to
speak. It was no great effort for him, after all. He had had to do such
things twenty times before, though never in such surroundings nor with
the difficulty—slight to him, but still present—of imperilling the
associations of childhood.
[Illustration: _The brothers at Rackham_]
“Henry,” he said rather too suddenly, “I want to talk to you about
your own affairs.”
“Yes,” said Henry gently. “Yes ... what?”
He had no particular dread of what was coming; he thought it might be
another loan, and that would not be unwelcome. There had been another
little trouble. The water-mill absolutely must be seen to, and he was
afraid it would cost a good deal. George Barrett, the miller, had
spoken of it twice.
“Henry,” continued William, “I think the time really has come when we
must take stock.”
It was not quite what Henry had expected. He looked up rather startled
and a little bewildered. But he felt the justice of it. After all,
they had not “taken stock” at all at any time. William took from his
mouth the end of the cigar he had been smoking and ground it slowly on
his plate. He felt in his pocket for papers, but thought better of it.
Looking down at the cloth, so as to avoid his brother’s eye, he said:
“The total amount, Henry, counting the arrears of interest, you know,
is £17,324 odd.” He paused a minute—“£17,324 ... odd.” Then he pulled
out a half sheet of paper which he had hesitated at just before, pushed
his plate aside, spread the figures out before him, and repeated, “Yes,
£17,324 14s. and 3d.”
What had floated in Henry’s mind for so long was a fixed figure in
large print—£10,000. And after it—in a sort of blur—something or other
that might be a few thousand more. £17,324 pulled him up. It was a
good deal more than he had bargained for. Then he remembered sundry
odd sums which, after all, he ought to have added to that £10,000.
There had been the cleaning out of what they called “the Lake” but
the villagers “the Pond”; and yet—now he remembered it—there had been
the big subscription which he had thought only right for the building
of the new bit on to the church. That was years ago and somehow or
other he had not connected it with the main debt. And then, of course,
arrears did mount up. After all, 5 per cent. on £10,000 was £500 a
year, was it not? And there is interest on that interest when it is
not paid. Yes, it was right enough, no doubt. Such was the course of
Henry’s rambling mind, before which now stood a new figure, large,
dominant, £17,324.
“Yes,” he said gently, looking up a little timidly, “yes, William, I am
sure you’re right. I’ll look up my figures.” He had not an idea where
they were, nor whether he had them all. “£17,324. I’m sure you are
right.”
William began scribbling at the paper meaninglessly with the point of a
little gold pencil he carried on his watch-chain.
“You know, Henry, to tell you the honest truth,” he said, “I could not
go beyond £20,000. I will be quite plain with you. We have never had
any secrets from each other. I am not badly off. I don’t say I am. But
what a man is worth is one thing, and the free money at his disposal
is another. And Hilda, you know—not that I blame her—but she likes to
have her house full of people....” He paused.
“Yes,” said Henry gently, “yes, she’s the wife of a rising man. She’s
quite right.”
“Well, you see,” went on William, with his eyes still averted from his
brother’s, and scribbling away furiously making circles round and round
that figure of £17,324, “the fact is, that I can’t help thinking you
and I might come to an arrangement which would suit both of us....”
“I don’t doubt it, William,” said Henry gently, and with some
admiration in his voice. He had no idea how these good business men got
on; he felt about them a little as he had felt about the big boys in
the Eleven when he had been a little boy at school. “You have always
been very generous to me, William.”
“I don’t want you to say that, Henry,” said William, decently and
soberly. “I wish I could have done more. At any rate, there it is. And
quite honestly, I shall not be able to go beyond £20,000.”
What now stood up in Henry’s mind out of the mist was the fact
that there was a margin, a margin of well over £2,000, which he
characteristically put down as “about three.” He was just going to
suggest something about that margin, and how useful it would be to him,
when William spoke again.
“Henry,” he said, lowering his voice by a tone or two, and speaking
more slowly, “I don’t want to seem to be giving advice; but I am more
used to precise business perhaps than you are; that is inevitable,
seeing the different kind of life I have had to lead.... But ... I am
rather afraid that if we do not look out, the next few years might be
disastrous to you.”
“Oh,” answered his brother uneasily, “things are bound to turn, you
know. Only this morning I was reading that wheat had gone up another
2s.—it’s true it’s the time of year for that, but....”
William interrupted him firmly, looking him straight in the face for
the first time in all his conversation, and bringing his right hand
firmly down upon the table.
“My dear Henry, _no_,” he said, “_no_. I have seen any amount of this
kind of thing. Honestly, it can’t go on. It’s your business, of course;
I don’t want to interfere. But it would relieve me (and I know I am
doing right in suggesting it) if you would undertake the only form of
retrenchment you can.”
“What?” said Henry bewildered and alarmed. “Sell the place? William?
Sell the place? Sell Rackham?”
“Oh, no!” answered William a little wearily, but trying to use a
soothing tone. “No! No! No! Nothing tragic! But why shouldn’t you
see that the place is properly kept in good hands, and you yourself
_travel_? Travel with the boy? You used to like travelling, and it
would do _him_ all the good in the world, at his age. A gap between the
Preparatory School and the Public School does no harm, and he is just
in the years when a boy takes in what he sees. It is astonishing what
one can save if one travels for a year or two.”
“Travel?” repeated Henry, as though in hesitation. He had loved what
little travelling he had had when he was young; the word appealed to
him. But the ties of his own old place suddenly called him back, as did
the now deep rut of daily habit into which his middle age had fallen.
“I couldn’t bear to let it,” he said sadly, shaking his head. “I
couldn’t let Rackham. Besides, who would take it? Who would keep it up?”
“My dear fellow, I didn’t suggest that you should let it exactly. I
have an idea, and I want to put it before you, and I want you to think
it over really carefully. There’s no hurry. _I_ would look after the
place. I could be here off and on the whole time, week-ends and what
not. I have got the means and I should like the job. I am fond of the
country, you know; and Hilda....”
“Do you mean—_live_ here?” said Henry.
“Well, my dear fellow, only off and on, of course, coming down from
London. But it would be kept up and cost you nothing, and I would see
that it was more or less put to rights, you know. It is a good idea.
And I would set what sum you liked, in reason, as my rent to you
against your interest as it falls due. And then your farm rentals
would come to you—at least, they’d be set against the interest also.”
“The rents don’t come to much now,” said Henry gloomily.
“No; but come—it makes a difference. And you know when one is in a
place one always does something to keep it going and even improve
it. And, you know, as for the balance, I mean _up_ to £20,000, as I
said....”
“Yes, yes,” answered his brother, a little shortly. Then he mused.
William followed up. He rose from his chair and paced the room.
“Look here, Henry,” he said, “the long and the short of it is that
something must be done, and surely this is the sensible thing to
do. You know you like it as far as the travelling goes; it would be
delightful for the boy; and then perhaps when the time comes things
will have taken a turn for the better.” For it was William now who
chose to be vague. He was restless, and sat down again, once more
looking his brother in the face. “I have told you, Henry, and surely
you must see it, there _must_ be a crash if you don’t look out. Living
abroad wouldn’t cost you a half—not a third—of what it costs you to
live here, and I’d take it all over—just for the time; and it will save
the boy’s schooling as well. There’s everything to be said for it, and
nothing against it. Come! Think it over.”
There was a very long silence. By the end of it the elder brother had
taken one of those curiously rapid decisions which the undetermined do
take when they are brought up suddenly against realities.
He simply said:
“Very well, William.” Then he sighed, and added: “Yes ... I think
you’re right.”
Another silence followed, during which the younger and more prosperous
man felt like an exhausted swimmer who touches the shore with his feet.
His speech was lighter when he resumed.
“Well, I am heartily glad of that, Henry. I thank God for it. I do
really think it is the best thing. It is obviously the best thing. If
you had seen what I have seen....”
“Yes, I know,” said Henry gently. “I know.”
“My dear fellow, we see tragedies in my business which....”
“Yes, I know,” said Henry again. “I know.”
“Two years, say, or perhaps three; we could talk about that in good
time. There’s no sort of hurry.”
“There’s no hurry, of course,” said Henry. “But I would make it this
autumn. These things had better be done soon if they’re to be done at
all.”
His tone was not hopeless, nor even cheerless: he knew that he would
have to face a very sad day, but it was natural in such a man to expect
an early return of all that he had known.
“I’ll go south,” he said. “It won’t take you long to make out the
thing in black and white, will it?”
“Oh, we shan’t need anything very formal, letters will do,” said his
brother. “I tell you what,” he added, “you had better have that balance
of £20,000 pretty soon, so that you can make all your arrangements
before you start; and then we’ll draw up some idea of what annual
balance there may be between the rental and what is due, you know, and
we’ll estimate the rest of your income—there is still a good wad of
father’s German Government loan untouched, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” said Henry simply. “I’ve still got that, it’s in the bank at
Lewes. They never brought in much—I don’t know how much—about £400 I
think—or £450. I don’t know.”
“Well,” answered William, “it’s only the usual first-class government
loan rates, but anyhow, German stuff is as safe as gold.”
“Yes,” said Henry.
“You will find the margin ample,” his brother assured him. “Things will
be all quite simple.” They were beginning to seem quite simple to Henry.
He remembered how cheaply he had travelled in the past, and how he
had enjoyed the little places and the simple habits. He thought of a
year of his own boyhood with his own father in Italy just after the
unification. He began to make pictures in his mind of his boy’s delight
at the mountains and at the beauties of the new lands.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “It’s the best thing. Write me the letters when
you choose, and I’ll look over them.”
And that was the way in which Rackham began its fourth transfer—but,
after all, remained under the same blood.