From Squire to Squatter Part 14

Next morning stackyards, barn-yards, farm-steading, machinery-house, and everything pertaining to Burley Old Farm, presented but a smouldering, blackened heap of ruins.

Squire Broadbent entertained his poor, frightened people to an early breakfast in the servants' hall, and the most cheerful face there was that of the Squire. Here is his little speech:

"My good folks, sit down and eat; and let us be thankful we're all here, and that no human lives are lost. My good kinswoman Kate here will tell you that there never yet was an ill but there might be a worse. Let us pray the worse may never come."

CHAPTER TEN.

"AFTER ALL, IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH TO MAKE A MAN HAPPY."

For weeks to come neither Uncle Ramsay nor Walton had the heart to add another sorrow to the Squire's cup of misery. They knew that the fire had but brought on a little sooner a catastrophe which was already fulling; they knew that Squire Broadbent was virtually a ruined man.

All the machinery had been rendered useless; the most of the cattle were dead; the stacks were gone; and yet, strange to say, the Squire hoped on. Those horses and cattle which had been saved were housed now in rudely-built sheds, among the fire-blackened ruins of their former wholesome stables and byres.

One day Branson, who had always been a confidential servant, sent Mary in to say he wished to speak to the Squire. His master came out at once.

"Nothing else, Branson," he said. "You carry a long face, man."

"The wet weather and the cold have done their work, sir. Will you walk down with me to the cattle-sheds?"

Arrived there, he pointed to a splendid fat ox, who stood in his stall before his untouched turnips with hanging head and dry, parched nose.

His hot breath was visible when he threw his head now and then uneasily round towards his loin, as if in pain. There was a visible swelling on the rump. Branson placed a hand on it, and the Squire could hear it "bog" and crackle.

"What is that, Branson? Has he been hurt?"

"No, sir, worse. I'll show you."

He took out his sharp hunting-knife.

"It won't hurt the poor beast," he said.

Then he cut deep into the swelling. The animal never moved. No blood followed the incision, but the gaping wound was black, and filled with air-bubbles.

"The quarter-ill," said the cowman, who stood mournfully by.

That ox was dead in a few hours. Another died next day, two the next, and so on, though not in an increasing ratio; but in a month there was hardly an animal alive about the place except the horses.

It was time now the Squire should know all, and he did. He looked a chastened man when he came out from that interview with his brother and Walton. But he put a right cheery face on matters when he told his wife.

"We'll have to retrench," he said. "It'll be a struggle for a time, but we'll get over it right enough."

Present money, however, was wanted, and raised it must be.

And now came the hardest blow the Squire had yet received. It was a staggering one, though he met it boldly. There was then at Burley Old Mansion a long picture gallery. It was a room in an upper story, and extended the whole length of the house--a hall in fact, and one that more than one Squire Broadbent had entertained his friends right royally in. From the walls not only did portraits of ancestors bold and gay, smile or frown down, but there hung there also many a splendid landscape and seascape by old masters.

Most of the latter had to be sold, and the gallery was closed, for the simple reason that Squire Broadbent, courageous though he was, could not look upon its bare and desecrated walls without a feeling of sorrow.

Pictures even from the drawing-room had to go also, and that room too was closed. But the breakfast-room, which opened to the lawn and rose gardens, where the wild birds sang so sweetly in summer, was left intact; so was the dining-room, and that cosy, wee green parlour in which the family delighted to a.s.semble around the fire in the winter's evenings.

Squire Broadbent had been always a favourite in the county--somewhat of an upstart and iconoclast though he was--so the sympathy he received was universal.

Iconoclast? Yes, he had delighted in s.h.i.+vering the humble idols of others, and now his own were cast down. n.o.body, however, deserted him.

Farmers and Squires might have said among themselves that they always knew Broadbent was "going the pace," and that his new-fangled American notions were poorly suited to England, but in his presence they did all they could to cheer him.

When the ploughing time came round they gave him what is called in the far North "a love-darg." Men with teams of horses came from every farm for miles around and tilled his ground. They had luncheon in a marquee, but they would not hear of stopping to dinner. They were indeed thoughtful and kind.

The parson of the parish and the doctor were particular friends of the Squire. They often dropped in of an evening to talk of old times with the family by the fireside.

"I'm right glad," the doctor said one evening, "to see that you don't lose heart, Squire."

"Bless me, sir, why should I? To be sure we're poor now, but G.o.d has left us a deal of comfort, doctor, and, after all, _it doesn't take much to make a man happy_."

Boys will be boys. Yes, we all know that. But there comes a time in the life of every right-thinking lad when another truth strikes home to him, that boys will be men.

I rather think that the sooner a boy becomes cognisant of this fact the better. Life is not all a dream; it must sooner or later become a stern reality. Life is not all pleasant parade and show, like a field-day at Aldershot; no, for sooner or later pomp and panoply have to be exchanged for camp-life and action, and bright uniforms are either rolled in blood and dust, or come triumphant, though tarnished, from the field of glory.

Life is not all plain sailing over sunlit seas, for by-and-by the clouds bank up, storms come on, and the good s.h.i.+p has to do battle with wind and wave.

But who would have it otherwise? No one would who possesses the slightest ray of honest ambition, or a single spark of that pride of self which we need not blush to own.

One day, about the beginning of autumn, Rupert and Archie, and their sister Elsie, were in the room in the tower. They sat together in a turret chamber, Elsie gazing dreamily from the window at the beautiful scenery spread out beneath. The woods and wilds, the rolling hills, the silvery stream, the half-ripe grain moving in the wind, as waves at sea move, and the silvery suns.h.i.+ne over all. She was in a kind of a daydream, her fingers listlessly touching a chord on the harp now and then. A pretty picture she looked, too, with her bonnie brown hair, and her bonnie blue eyes, and thorough English face, thorough English beauty. Perhaps Archie had been thinking something of this sort as he sat there looking at her, while Rupert half-lay in the rocking-chair, which his brother had made for him, engrossed as usual in a book.

Whether Archie did think thus or not, certain it is that presently he drew his chair close to his sister's, and laying one arm fondly on her shoulder.

"What is sissie looking at?" he asked.

"Oh, Archie," she replied, "I don't think I've been looking at anything; but I've been seeing everything and wis.h.i.+ng!"

"Wis.h.i.+ng, Elsie? Well, you don't look merry. What were you wis.h.i.+ng?"

"I was wis.h.i.+ng the old days were back again, when--when father was rich; before the awful fire came, and the plague, and everything. It has made us all old, I think. Wouldn't you like father was rich again?"

"I am not certain; but wishes are not horses, you know."

"_No_," said Elsie; "only if it could even be always like this, and if you and Rupert and I could be always as we are now. I think that, poor though we are, everything just now is so pretty and so pleasant. But you are going away to the university, and the place won't be the same.

I shall get older faster than ever then."

"Well, Elsie," said Archie, laughing, "I am so old that I am going to make my will."

Rupert put down his book with a quiet smile.

"What are you going to leave me, old man? Scallowa?"

"No, Rupert, you're too long in the legs for Scallowa, you have no idea what a bodkin of a boy you are growing. Scallowa I will and bequeath to my pretty sister here, and I'll buy her a side-saddle, and two pennyworth of carrot seed. Elsie will also have Bounder, and you, Rupert, shall have Fuss."

"Anything else for me?"

"Don't be greedy. But I'll tell you. You shall have my tool-house, and all my tools, and my gun besides. Well, this room is to be sister's own, and she shall also have my fis.h.i.+ng-rod, and the book of flies that poor Bob Cooper made for me. Oh, don't despise them, they are all wonders!"