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.