The full light of the sun falls upon the courtyard of the farmhouse. It has a broad frontage, long and low and quaint, with irregular gables and overhanging eaves and deep, mullioned windows. The house runs queerly on two sides of the courtyard, one wing being at right angles to the other. It is beautifully clean and prim, with its whitewashed walls, its freshly painted woodwork, and its geraniums growing in green boxes on every window-sill. On the third side of the yard run the granary and the cider-house; while the fourth, save for an ivy-covered wall, which gives way to the entrance gates in one corner, is open to the gentle vista of countryside which stretches away before the house. What a pleasant old courtyard it is—so cool in the summer that the panting dogs love to throw themselves upon its stones; so sheltered in winter that the blustering nor'-easters touch it not; so prosperous-looking always, with its well-kept flags laid from end to end, as level and smooth as a billiard-table, and as spotless as the floor of the farm kitchen. How the polished milk-cans glisten and blink upon the wall! How the white sills of the old-fashioned windows gleam in the sunlight! The whole place seems to breathe of scouring and buckets, and scrubbing brushes and vigorous arms. Every morning the yard is washed down by the house-boy (it used to be Elijah in my day, but he is now a bearded man, and labours outside, and a young Ezra is the present knight of the bucket); every morning the cans are scoured and the tubs are scrubbed, and the step before the door is free-stoned, and the flowers are watered, and the house seems to smile a glistening, watery smile, as though it had just lifted its head from its morning dip to bid you the time of day. There was ever a charm to me about Pettingdale and its paved courtyard. I mind me well what a brave and romantic sound to my young ears was that of the horse's hoofs ringing and clamping upon the stones as he was brought up to the door on market days with the high yellow dogcart behind him; or the clatter of the wheels across the yard as Roger Pettingdale drove out through the broad gateway, a fine old figure with his white hair, and his aquiline nose, and his broad, well-set shoulders.
His hair went snow-white early in life.
He is still outwardly the same. One could hardly detect a single point of change in him, save that his face is more furrowed and his eyes deeper set. His hair went snow-white early in life. Generations of Pettingdales have been subject to the same peculiarity. Thus it is that the long step from forty to sixty-five has wrought little difference in Roger Pettingdale. His body is as erect, his step as firm, his voice as sonorous as ever. He was ever a well-known figure at all the county markets and agricultural meetings, and it might be twenty-five years agone for all the change that one can see in him. Among other men he was always noticeable, with his tall figure, his white hair, his clean-shaven, well-cut face, and that wide-rimmed silk hat which he always affected. As he moved amongst the crowd I have heard men say, "Who is that?" and others answer, "Don't you know him? Why, surely everybody knows him? He's Roger Pettingdale."
He is elected on all the local bodies. Thus he is a guardian of the poor, a member of the School Board, vice-chairman of the County Council, and the people's churchwarden at the parish church. There is no man amongst all those he meets in these capacities whose words are listened to with more respect. That solid weight, that hallmark of sound judgment which always attends upon sheer common-sense, is apparent in every opinion he utters. He forms his judgments first, and speaks afterwards. While other men are impulsively throwing themselves into useless controversy on this or that vexed question, Roger Pettingdale is silently weighing the pros and cons of the matter in his own mind; and when he speaks there is usually nothing more to be said. He chops no logic; he simply argues with the sledge-hammer of common-sense, backed up by the blunt, uncompromising sincerity of an honest and fair-dealing mind. His tolerance, his breadth of vision, his power of seeing the other side of the question, his scorn of all shams and pretences, have made his name a password for integrity and sound judgment. "You will always get a fair hearing from Roger Pettingdale," people say. "Does Roger Pettingdale think so? Oh, then, there must be something in it."
In his home life, in the control of his farm, in his own daily affairs, there is the same straightforwardness, the same sincerity, the same well-balanced judgment and acumen. "There never was a year, as I remember, when we didn't have plenty of hay to begin conditioning on," said one of his labourers the other day. "Now, at the next farm they've never got enough." That is only a small instance of the perfection of method which marks every department of the prosperous farm.
At home he is essentially a plain man, this sturdy farmer. There is no nonsense about him, although he can claim blood with one of the oldest families in the county. Yet he has a proper pride, in a manly, direct kind of way, as you shall see. He has had four children, two boys and two girls, in giving birth to the youngest of whom his wife died. James, the eldest, is his right hand in the farm management, and will some day be head of the family, as the Pettingdales have succeeded, son to father, for generations out of mind. Mary, the second, you shall hear more of anon. Frank, the third, my old playmate, early in life took the fancy that he would like to be a soldier. Roger Pettingdale has ever been a wise and a tolerant father, studying well the nature of each of his children. He unerringly knew Frank's proud and stubborn character.
"You want to be a soldier?" he said. "Well, I could have wished it otherwise, Frank. It would have been a pleasure to me to see you settle down on the farm. But we will not argue the point. Let it stand for twelve months, and then talk to me about it."
Twelve months did not change Frank's resolve. When he mentioned it again, a drawn look passed over Roger Pettingdale's face for a moment—a look of keen pain—for he loved his children. Then he drew himself up to his full height.
"You are still of the same mind, Frank! Then I have nothing more to say. I am not going to attempt to dictate to you what your calling should be. You have to live your own life, and as you make your bed you must lie on it. Remember that, my lad. If you decide to go as a soldier, you shall go in a proper fashion, lad. You shall have your commission. No son of mine shall enter the ranks."