“How do you mean?” said Cheriton. “Is anything specially amiss?”
“Come in and have a pipe. A glass of wine won’t come amiss after so much tea and gingerbread.”
They went into the dining-room, and the parson poked up the fire into a blaze, for even August afternoons were not too warm at Elderthwaite for a fire to be pleasant, and as he subsided into his arm-chair, he said gravely,—
“Eh, Cherry, we Seytons have been a bad lot—a bad lot—and the end of it’ll be we shall be kicked out of the country.”
“Oh, I hope not!” said Cherry, quite sincerely. “What is the matter?”
“Well, look round about you. Is there a wall that’s mended, or a plantation preserved as it ought to be? Look at the timber—what is there left of it? and what’s felled lies rotting on the ground for want of carting. There’s acres of my brother’s hay never was led till the rain came and spoiled it. Look at the cottages. Queenie gets the windows mended, but she can’t make the roofs water-tight. Look at those woods down by the stream, why, there’s not a head of game in them, and once they were the best preserves in the country!”
“Things are bad, certainly,” said Cherry.
“And yet, Cherry, we’ve loved the place, and never have sold an acre of it, spite of mortgages and everything. Well, my brother’s not long for this world. He has been failing and failing before his time, and though he has led a decent life enough, things have gone more to the bad with years of doing nothing, than with all the scandals of my father’s time.”
“Is Mr Seyton ill?” said Cheriton.
“Not ill altogether; but mark my words, he’ll not last long. Well, at last, he was so hard up that he wrote to Roland—and I know, Cheriton, it was the bitterest pill he ever swallowed—and asked his consent to selling Uplands Farm. What does Roland do but write back and say, with all his heart; so soon as it came into his hands he should sell every acre, house and lands, advowson of living and all, and pay his debts. He hated the place, he said, and would never live there. Sell it to the highest bidder. There were plenty of fortunes made in trade, says he, that would give anything for land and position. So there, the old place’ll go into the hands of some purse-proud stranger. But not the church—he shan’t go restoring and improving that with his money. I’m only fifty-nine, and a good life yet, and I’ll stick in the church till I’m put into the churchyard!”