A Complete Story. By J. F. Rowbotham, Author of "Solomon Built Him an House," Etc.
It was twenty years since I left Hambleton as the curate, and on the identical day I returned as vicar. I sat meditating in the little village inn, while a gig was being harnessed to draw me to the vicarage. I wondered how the place would look. I wondered whom I should see and recognise. Twenty years produce innumerable changes. Those whom I had known as boys would have grown to men, and men and women would have become silver-haired and wrinkled, and perhaps past the power of recognition, until a familiar voice in dubious accents should say, "I am such a one. Do you not know me?" To such a query I felt I should have to reply, "I knew you twenty years ago, and if you assure me you are the very same person, I know you now. But the identification must come from yourself."
"The gig's ready, sir," cried the man at the hotel parlour door, and in obedience to this admonition I shut up my tablets and took my seat in the vehicle. Off went the horse. I whizzed past all the familiar places en route, and at last was landed safe and sound at the vicarage, but somewhat dazed and bewildered by the sudden panorama of a vanished past presented to me during the ride.
My experiences of the next few days proved to be exactly as I predicted. I saw innumerable people who turned out to be old acquaintances, though it was on the strength of their telling that I found them to be so. I should never have known them again in a crowd, nor would they, I imagine, despite their assertions, have known me. I saw old Haynes once again, Smart the gardener, England the bell-ringer who was so fond of frequenting "The Rose," Higgs, Nutcher, and many more.
Localities had not altered so much as people. I noticed that the old apple-tree in the vicarage garden bent down with the identical curve in its trunk, and seemed to have the exact number of apples upon it which it had when I left it. The vicarage had much altered, though, and so had its surroundings—several new cottages being built which quite shut out the pretty prospect from the study window which once was.
I found the circumstances of many of the inhabitants, like the "extension" of the vicarage, to have altered likewise. I found several people poor and reduced in circumstances whom I left fairly well-to-do. I met some people now in comparative opulence whom I remembered so poor that they were glad of doles from the curate. All this is a striking instance of a very great truth in English life, which is that circumstances, as generations pass, are on a sliding scale. If you look for the descendants of the nobility of some centuries ago, you will find them in the humblest cottagers of to-day. And if you search for the descendants of the former cottagers of our land, you will find them in its present nobility. Life fluctuates so in great cycles of time; and in the little cycle during which I had been absent from Hambleton, thus had existence fluctuated and changed.
Two visits in particular I intended to pay, namely, to the squire, and to Farmer Brownlow; and before many days elapsed I contrived to pay them. I saw the squire and the farmer, and I must confess I was very much struck by the change that had come over them both, but particularly Mr. Brownlow, whom I remember tall, erect, and jovial. I concluded there must have been more dissensions in his family since I last knew them, and that trouble was impending. I made such domestic inquiries as I could without receiving much satisfaction; but I took care to observe the greatest reticence about his son Arthur.
I must mention, in explanation of my last sentence, that when I was curate here Arthur Brownlow was a boy of about twelve or fourteen, and one of the brightest and most ingenuous lads it has ever been my lot to know. He was also blessed with a beautiful voice, and sang in the choir of the church all the solos in the anthems. Shall I ever forget the melodious tones that floated from that boy's lips? Neither I nor any who heard him can cease to remember them.
The popularity which the boy gained, the favour which he received from everybody and anybody, was so marked and so universal that it ultimately excited the envy and hostility of his elder brothers, who were young men of twenty and over, and who were, moreover, prompted to their animosity by the suspicion that their father intended to bequeath the farm (which was his freehold) and all his money to his favourite son, and leave them unprovided for.
Arthur's mother was Mr. Brownlow's second wife, who had been very dear to him, but had only lived about three years, and then had passed away, leaving as a legacy to her husband the little baby boy scarce two years old. The child became the farmer's idol, and was more and more worshipped as he grew to boyhood.
The elder sons being in the main clownish, stupid fellows, it was a common speech, half in joke, half in earnest, with the farmer:—
"You lads are strong of build and dull of wit. Why don't you exert your strength in other spheres than this, and leave the farm to little Arthur when he grows up? You, Hugh, might, for instance, go to America. William, you might take a piece of land of your own—you are old enough to manage it and strong enough to work it. You, Robert, should apply for the post of farm bailiff with Mr. Weatherstone or somewhere else; and you, Thomas, should go in for sheep farming in the colonies. There is your life mapped out for you all. It will be many years before I am laid on the shelf; and you are all getting too old to be anything but drags on me; while by the time I am about settling down in my chimney corner, to take my ease henceforth, Arthur will be just of an age to take the farm off my hands and commence the management of it. This will, moreover, keep the land in one piece, instead of chopping it up into five."
These words, I say, were often used by Mr. Brownlow in jest to his sons, who were a lazy lot, and who ought, moreover, to have been on their own hands by now. He possibly meant little more than jest, for he was not the sort of man to cut any of his family adrift at that time; but his sons chose to take the remarks in thorough earnest, and they one and all wreaked their bitterest spite on poor Arthur in consequence, till his life became almost intolerable to him.
He would often come to me in those days, and say:
"Mr. Calthorpe, I don't think I can stand it any longer, sir—at least, without telling father; and then, if I do that, I don't know what might be the consequences. He would certainly be so angry that he would send all my brothers away, which I should never wish to be done. Or, if he did not, they would persecute me still worse than they are doing. So between the two things I don't know what to do."
I strove as hard as I could to exhort the boy to patience, giving him what comfort I could, and I even offered to intercede between him and his brothers; but this proposal he would not listen to, and finally he decided that he would bear all in silence and would not tell his father. So that matters were at a deadlock, and remained so, until a new development began in the persecution of Arthur Brownlow by his brothers—which consisted in the deliberate attempt on their part to poison his father's mind against him by all sorts of stories and fabrications, and so get rid of him.
The diabolical attempt was made with greater and more elaborate cunning than I should have imagined such stupid young men as the Brownlows to be capable of. They not only carried on the plot themselves but got their neighbours—the young Spencers of Bray—to assist them, and from all sides Farmer Brownlow kept continually hearing of the precocious vices and bad manners of his darling son, which were at first discredited by him, but afterwards believed, and then greedily sought after.
"It is all this incense that comes to the boy along of his singing that is spoiling him," he said to me one day. "And you, Mr. Calthorpe, are partly to blame for encouraging it. What good can all that howling and caterwauling do the lad? Not a bit, that I can see, except that it takes him into company from which he would be better away. It stuffs the boy's head with nonsense, sir, and it will never bring him to any good."
It was in vain that I pointed out that there was practically no foundation for any of these charges against his son, who was one of the model boys of the parish. The farmer regarded me as a biased witness, and kept his own opinion of the matter, which was more and more inimical to poor Arthur every day. Do what I could in the way of mediation, it was all no good. The ball once set rolling, continued to roll in the same direction, until one day I heard, to my unspeakable concern, that Arthur Brownlow had broken into his father's bureau and extracted five pounds from it, that the money had been found in his possession, and that he was now in the custody of the police.
"I disown him, sir."
I remember what a sensation the trial made at the assizes in the neighbouring town of C——. I appeared as a witness in the boy's behalf, and spoke up for him right gallantly; but all intercession and testimony were of no avail—the evidence was held to be quite conclusive. Although the father did not appear against him, the brothers did, and their testimony was sufficient to convict the boy, who was found guilty and sent to a reformatory for two years.
I saw him before he went, and he said to me—
"Tell father, sir, that I am unjustly condemned. Tell him it was a plot of my brothers, and that I would scorn to do such an action. But tell him, moreover, that after this disgrace I could never bear to show my face in the village again, and when I come out of this place I shall go beyond the seas or somewhere, but certainly shall never come to Hambleton, nor shall he be troubled by seeing my face again."
I wondered what effect this message would have on the old farmer, but to my surprise he received it with the greatest nonchalance.
"Aye, aye, sir," he said in reply, as with black face and lowering brow he sat in his parlour with his sons around him. "The lad has brought disgrace on the family. I disown him, sir. I knew what all this singing and caterwauling would lead to: I said so from the first, and my words have come true. He need never seek to see my face again until he has redeemed his character. Then I'll see him, but not till then. Meantime, as you are going to the reformatory occasionally to visit him, tell the lad—for, although a thief, he is a son of mine—that I will provide him with what money is necessary, when he leaves that home of thieves and vagabonds, to set up in something or to go away to some colony, or anything he likes; and then, as I say, when he has redeemed his character, he can come and see me—but not till then. Tell him he shall have the money, sir, when he wants it; but tell him that till he has redeemed his character I disown him."
The money, however, was never applied for by Arthur Brownlow. I saw him several times at the reformatory, and, indeed, tried to get him released on the ground of insufficient evidence, but in vain. When the end of his time came, he obtained some employment—I know not how—went to London, and then I lost sight of him; for a month or two afterwards I left my curacy in Wiltshire and took another in Northumberland.
I saw the Brownlows now for the first time since that event of twenty years ago. I was informed incidentally that they had never heard anything more of Arthur. "I suppose," said one of them, "he's gone to the bad long ago."
The old man in the chimney corner now white-haired and bowed down with age, suffered a wistful look to pass over his face occasionally, but that was all. No more was said, and no more did I say. In a short time I had forgotten the story of twenty years ago as completely as they had and as the village had; but there was one remark alone of that afternoon's conversation which dwelt in my mind: "I suppose he's gone to the bad."
"Gone to the bad!" Why, there was one thing plain. All the Brownlows seemed to have gone to the bad—not Arthur alone—for a more besotted, lazy-looking set of men it had never been my lot to see.
It is the experience of every clergyman, when he comes to a new parish, that he can soon find by a sort of intuition where the troublesome spot in that parish is likely to be; and I very soon knew by instinct that the troublesome people in my parish would be the Brownlows—as was amply proved immediately after my arrival. Scarcely a day passed but one or other of them was at the vicarage. Now it was Robert—now it was Hugh—now it was Thomas. One came requesting me to go to see their father, who was "in dreadful low spirits." Another told me they had a horse for sale, and asked me if I would like to buy it. The third, Thomas Brownlow, wanted to borrow a little money of me; and this was the first actual hint I got of the hazardous state of their affairs.
"No, Thomas," I said, "I cannot lend you that money; for, in the first place, it is your father, not you, who ought to have asked for it, if the object is to make repairs on your farm; and, in the second place, I think I am considerably poorer than you. A well-to-do farmer has considerably more cash than a poor parson, and so for the second reason I must absolutely decline."
But this rebuff produced no diminution in the importunity of the Brownlows, which at last culminated in the appearance of the eldest brother and the father one day at the vicarage, when they told me, with much display of emotion, that the farm was heavily mortgaged, and, indeed, had been so for some time, and that the mortgagee, to whom no payments had been made for some time past, threatened to foreclose. Could I therefore either lend them the money, or get it from a friend, or ask the squire to oblige them, or, in fact, help them in any way whatever?
At the moment I could think of no way in which I might be of service to them in the manner indicated; but as, despite their importunity, I was sincerely sorry for them, I said I would turn the matter over in my mind, make inquiries, and let them know by the morrow if I could do aught for them.
The same afternoon my old college friend, Vincent Harrowby, who was vicar of a neighbouring parish, drove over to see me, and dine with me. It was the first time we had met for twenty years or more, and it was to celebrate our meeting that I had given orders to my housekeeper to prepare a somewhat elaborate repast in his honour and for our mutual delectation. As we sat over dessert, Harrowby talked of a score of subjects to which I paid a vague and partial attention; but at last, as his "inextinguishable tongue," as we used to call it at college, kept up its eternal stream of talk, I found myself listening with rapt attention to what he was saying, which sounded incredible to my ears.
"You remember that young choir boy of yours, Arthur Brownlow?" Harrowby was remarking. "Well, I saw him some years ago—about ten years, I think—and he had developed then into a man of means. He had plenty of money, I was told, and was in every respect a fine fellow. I often wondered what it was in his private history which you used to allude to in such a guarded manner——"
But before my friend had been able to finish his sentence I, to his great surprise, brought down my fist upon the table with the remark—
"The very man that is wanted! Where does he live, Harrowby, and what is his address?"
"As to that," replied my friend, with a look of amused surprise, "I cannot tell you to a street now. But I suppose he will be somewhere in the neighbourhood where I knew him, and that was in such and such a street, Bloomsbury" (naming it), "where he was practising as a solicitor. Doubtless he may have changed his residence, but Bedford Row ought to know him."
I then briefly explained to my friend the circumstances which would make Arthur Brownlow's appearance at the present juncture a godsend for the distressed family; for I must add that one or two of the sons were married and had families, on which innocents, even more than on the men, the blow would fall.
"The very man that is wanted!"
"We must apply to him at all costs for the money," I remarked. "He will never refuse to help his father, even if his brothers were traitors. One of them must go to London to-morrow and search out Arthur and obtain the funds needed."
And so it was agreed, and the agreement was acted on; but our best efforts, the personal search of Thomas Brownlow, the most diligent inquiries of myself and my friend Harrowby, during the short time at our disposal, were unable to discover any trace of the missing Arthur, who was gone, like the wind, without a vestige to mark his flight. No one seemed to know or remember much about him. Those who affected to, said some one thing, some another, and in the Law List his name was not to be found.
The condition of the Brownlows had meanwhile become worse. The little ready money which they had, had been expended in the journey to London and the prosecution of the inquiries after Arthur. They looked hungry and dejected, and I was informed that the mortgagee, incensed at their inattention to his applications for money, had definitely decided to put someone in possession of the farm by the last day of May.
I recommended the brothers to make a last appeal personally before the end of May arrived, and see if by their united rhetoric they could soften the inflexible heart of Mr. Suamarez. This with rustic reluctance they ultimately consented to do.
The four brothers, Hugh, William, Robert, and Thomas, proceeded to Ashcroft. I believed they walked there, as their last horse had been sold some months ago, and they had not a sixpence left to pay railway fare. They arrived at the mansion of the inexorable mortgagee, and were summarily refused admission by the servant, as I had been. But with a pertinacity worthy of a better cause the four men hung about the place hour after hour, with the intention of securing a parley with Mr. Saumarez, with whom they were quite unacquainted, having hitherto conducted their negotiations through his agent.
Towards the evening, as they prowled about the coppice surrounding the house, they saw the owner of the manor, accompanied by his wife and their young children, come on to the lawn, and no sooner was the opportunity presented than the four men burst through the bushes and approached him.
Mrs. Saumarez turned deadly pale, and threw her arms round her children at the sight of these four ill-clad and travel-stained loafers, for so they looked, so suddenly appearing on the lawn of the house, while Mr. Saumarez stood in front of his wife and children and angrily demanded what they wanted.
"It is just this, sir," said Hugh, rubbing his mouth with his sleeve preparatory to making a speech, "we are the Brownlows, sir, and we have travelled fifty miles to see you, sir. You're going to evict us from our little farm that we have had in our family for years and years without number. Give us some delay, sir—forgo your intention for this year—till after the harvest, at least, until we see what sort of crops we may have, and out of the profit of them we can pay you your demands."
Mr. Saumarez angrily demanded what they wanted.
"These speeches are all idle," responded Mr. Saumarez testily. "I made up my mind long ago. I know you to be good-for-nothing men, through whose laziness your old father's farm has got into its present condition. You deserve no pity, and you deserve no delay. For the present state of affairs you have only yourselves to blame. You must take the consequences of your conduct."
"Oh, sir." began Hugh, who was the spokesman of the rest, "think of our circumstances. We have children, as you have; they will all be thrown on the world——"
"Into this," replied Mr. Saumarez, "I cannot go. When the mortgage came into my hands—which it did along with some adjoining property about a year ago, on my return from abroad—I made a particular point of asking my agent what sort of men conducted the farm. And hearing from him that they were four brothers, all men of questionable character, named Brownlow, who owed their present degradation to their own laziness and folly, I said I wished to hear no more, and that the farm, which stood conveniently adjacent to a manor which is also mine, must be appropriated with no more delay than the usual legal routine permitted of. That is what I said to my agent. I presume—in fact, I know—he has acted on my orders. I have nothing more to say about it, so I wish you a good evening."
"We have children—two of us are married men," exclaimed Hugh, appealing to Mrs. Saumarez.
"We have had sickness in the family for months past," added Robert.
"It is not our fault—the harvests have been bad year after year."
But they were speaking to deaf ears. Mr. Saumarez, motioning to his wife and children, was turning away to enter the house.
"I don't know," said Thomas, who had not hitherto spoken, "what will become of our old father——"
"What?" inquired Mr. Saumarez sharply, turning round, "Is your old father still alive?"
"Yes, he is," they all replied at once, staring at him with most unfeigned surprise.
"I understood from my agent," replied Mr. Saumarez, his voice getting thick as he spoke, "that there were only you four brothers—men who deserved—men whom I knew to be——Look here, you Brownlows. You tell me your old father is still living. Is he well? Is he in fair health? Does his memory remain good? And how—how do you treat him in his old age?"
"How do we treat him, sir?" inquired Hugh Brownlow and the rest, speaking slowly and gazing at Mr. Saumarez as if they had seen a ghost. "Why, as to that——"
"As to that," I said, appearing from the drawing-room with old Mr. Brownlow on my arm—for in deference to his expressed wish, after the departure of his sons, I had travelled with him by train to Ashcroft in order that he too might plead, and we had just arrived—"as to that, Mr. Saumarez, the father can best answer for himself. See if he is not still an honoured and reverend sire. Look at him yourself, sir; for before heaven I believe you are Arthur Brownlow."
"Yes," exclaimed the old man on my arm, his eyes streaming with tears, "it is my son, my own son Arthur, at last! My former ruin is nothing to my present joy, for I see the boy whom I have wronged, whose reproaching image has been present with me for years—I see him at last before me; I hold him in my arms; I ask pardon of him, profoundest pardon, for all the injustice I have done him; and I rejoice to think that at last my lifelong sorrow is at an end."
Arthur was weeping on his father's neck. The brothers stood around petrified with astonishment.
"It is true," said Arthur Brownlow in a voice choked with emotion; "it is true that, had my brothers been the only parties concerned, I might perhaps—nay, I am sure I should—without compunction have retaliated as the world retaliates. But I never knew—I never suspected—that you, my father, were among them. I have wept for you as dead, for such tidings reached me some time ago. I have mourned for the unjust opinion you held of me, mourned since my boyhood, and even as a man I mourned. But now I hold you in my arms—alive, God be thanked! and forgiving, Christ be praised! And greater happiness can I not know, save if one of my own children should bring me the same experience, and then my felicity might be as great."
The mystery of the lost identity of Arthur Brownlow was easily explained. He had prospered in the world as Arthur Brownlow, when my friend Harrowby knew him; but shortly after that date he had married a Miss Saumarez, who held large estates in Jamaica, and whose name he was compelled to take for the sake of securing the entail of her property to the children. He had lived in Jamaica for nearly ten years, and had recently come back, to find some property near Hambleton added to his possessions, and with it the mortgage over Brownlow's farm. His agent only knew that Brownlow's farm was managed by the young Brownlows, since the old father had long retired from active participation in it; and with this account of the place Arthur Brownlow was naturally satisfied, since he believed his father had died some years ago. He intended to punish his brothers for their treachery and cruelty, but it is questionable whether his intention would ever have gone beyond reading them a severe, salutary lesson and then reinstating them in their freehold. At any rate, as circumstances happened, it had no chance of doing so, for the sight of his father so overwhelmed poor Arthur with joy, that all was forgotten, all was forgiven, in that happy moment; and now in the whole of my parish there is not a happier or better conducted place than Brownlow's farm.
