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 assemble 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 shivering the humble idols of others, and now his own were cast down. Nobody, 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 God 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 ship 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 sunshine 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 wishing!”
“Wishing, Elsie? Well, you don’t look merry. What were you wishing?”
“I was wishing 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 fishing-rod, and the book of flies that poor Bob Cooper made for me. Oh, don’t despise them, they are all wonders!”
“Well really, Archie,” said Elsie, “you talk as earnestly as if you actually were going to die.”
“Who said I was going to die? No, I don’t mean to die till I’ve done much more mischief.”
“Hush! Archie.”
“Well, I’m hushed.”
“Why do you want to make your will?”
“Oh, it isn’t wanting to make my will! I am—I’ve done it. And the ‘why’ is this, I’m going away.”
“To Oxford?”
“No, Elsie, not to Oxford. I’ve got quite enough Latin and Greek out of Walton to last me all my life. I couldn’t be a doctor; besides father is hardly rich enough to make me one at present. I couldn’t be a doctor, and I’m not good enough to be a parson.”
“Archie, how you talk.”
There were tears in Elsie’s eyes now.
“I can’t help it. I’m going away to enter life in a new land. Uncle Ramsay has told me all about Australia. He says the old country is used up, and fortunes can be made in a few years on the other side of the globe.”
There was silence in the turret for long minutes; the whispering of the wind in the elm trees beneath could be heard, the murmuring of the river, and far away in the woods the cawing of rooks.
“Don’t you cry, Elsie,” said Archie. “I’ve been thinking about all this for some time, and my mind is made up. I’m going, Elsie, and I know it is for the best. You don’t imagine for a single moment, do you, that I’ll forget the dear old times, and you all? No, no, no. I’ll think about you every night, and all day long, and I’ll come back rich. You don’t think that I won’t make my fortune, do you? Because I mean to, and will. So there. Don’t cry, Elsie.”
“I’m not going to cry, Archie,” said Rupert.
“Right, Rupert, you’re a brick, as Branson says.”
“I’m not old enough,” continued Rupert, “to give you my blessing, though I suppose Kate would give you hers; but we’ll all pray for you.”
“Well,” said Archie thoughtfully, “that will help some.”
“Why, you silly boy, it will help a lot.”
“I wish I were as good as you, Rupert. But I’m just going to try hard to do my best, and I feel certain I’ll be all right.”
“You know, Roup, how well I can play cricket, and how I often easily bowl father out. Well, that is because I’ve just tried my very hardest to become a good player; and I’m going to try my very hardest again in another way. Oh, I shall win! I’m cocksure I shall. Come, Elsie, dry your eyes. Here’s my handkie. Don’t be a little old wife.”
“You won’t get killed, or anything, Archie?”
“No; I won’t get killed, or eaten either.”
“They do tell me,” said Elsie—“that is, old Kate told me—that the streets in Australia are all paved with gold, and that the roofs of the houses are all solid silver.”
“Well, I don’t think she is quite right,” said Archie, laughing. “Anyhow, uncle says there is a fortune to be made, and I’m going to make it. That’s all.”
Archie went straight away down from that boy’s room feeling every inch a man, and had an interview with his father and uncle.
It is needless to relate what took place there, or to report the conversation which the older folks had that evening in the little green parlour. Both father and uncle looked upon Archie’s request as something only natural. For both these men, singular to say, had been boys once themselves; and, in the Squire’s own words, Archie was a son to be proud of.
“We can’t keep the lad always with us, mother,” said Squire Broadbent; “and the wide world is the best of schools. I feel certain that, go where he will, he won’t lose heart. If he does, I should be ashamed to own him as a son. So there! My only regret is, Ramsay, that I cannot send the lad away with a better lined pocket.”
“My dear silly old brother, he will be better as he is. And I’m really not sure that he would not be better still if he went away, as many have gone before him, with only a stick and a bundle over his shoulder. You have a deal too much of the Broadbent pride; and Archie had better leave that all behind at home, or be careful to conceal it when he gets to the land of his adoption.”
The following is a brief list of Archie’s stock-in-trade when he sailed away in the good ship Dugong to begin the world alone: 1. A good stock of clothes. 2. A good stock of assurance. 3. Plenty of hope. 4. Good health and abundance of strength. 5. A little nest egg at an Australian bank to keep him partly independent till he should be able to establish a footing. 6. Letters of introduction, blessings, and a little pocket Bible.
His uncle chose his ship, and sent him away round the Cape in a good old-fashioned sailing vessel. And his uncle went to Glasgow to see him off, his last words being, “Keep up your heart, boy, whatever happens; and keep calm in every difficulty. Good-bye.”
Away sailed the ship, and away went Archie to see the cities that are paved with gold, and whose houses have roofs of solid silver.