“I suppose in years to come,” he thought, “I shall be walking through these gates to the church on Sundays, followed by the lady of my choice and half-a-dozen children; and the villagers will nudge one another and say ‘Here comes Squire and all his little squirrels.’ ... Good Lord!”
The exclamation was due to the sudden feeling that he had walked into a trap, that he had been caught by immemorial society, and would soon be forced to conform to its ways; and, as the car passed in at the gates of the manor, he had, for a moment, a desire to jump out and run for his life.
A short, straight drive, flanked by clipped box-trees, led to the main door of the timbered Tudor house; and here the new owner, dusty, and somewhat untidily dressed, was received by the gardener and his buxom wife, who had both grown grey in his uncle’s service. The man held his cap in his hand, and touched his wrinkled forehead with his finger a number of times, painfully anxious to find favour; while his wife curtseyed to him at least thrice.
“Are you the gardener?—what is your name?” Jim asked briskly, feeling almost as awkward as the man he addressed, but determined to go through the ordeal with honour.
“Peter, sir,” said the gardener. “Peter Longarm, sir. I rec’lect you, sir, when you was no more’n so ’igh, I do.”
“Why, of course,” Jim replied. “I remember you now. You’re the fellow who told my uncle when I broke the glass of the forcing frame.”
The old man looked sheepish. “I ’ad to do my dooty, sir,” he said. “I ask your pardon.”
“Duty,” Jim thought to himself. “I’m beginning to know that word. I wonder what it really means.” He turned to the woman. “Now, please go and open the doors of all the rooms, and then leave me to walk through the house by myself.” He wanted to be alone to realize his new possession and to dream his dream of future ease. Mrs. Longarm eyed him nervously for a moment before obeying his instructions; she told her husband afterwards, with tears in her eyes, that she felt as though she were surrendering the house to a cut-throat foreigner.
As he wandered, presently, from room to room he was at first overpowered by the feeling that he was intruding upon the privacy of some sort of family life which he did not understand. His uncle’s wife had been dead for three or four years, but there were still many traces of her influence: the drawing-room, for example, was furnished in a style which called to his mind faded pictures of feminine tea-parties. Here was the old piano upon which the good lady must have tinkled the songs of which the music still lay in the cabinet near by—songs such as My Mother Bids Me Bind My Hair, and Ah, Welladay my Poor Heart. And here was the little sewing-table where had doubtless rested the silks and needles for her embroidery. Perhaps it was she who had chosen the gilt-framed engravings upon the walls—the depressed picture of “Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness;” a youthful portrait of Alexandra, Princess of Wales; “Jacob weeping over Joseph’s coat;” the sprightly “Hawking Party,” and so forth.