Farmer Wilberforce gave his landlord the pleasure of supposing that he had not yet read the account, whereupon Sir Richard took a cutting from his waistcoat pocket and read aloud as follows:
Lieutenant (now Captain) John Flower, Royal Artillery.
Date of act of bravery, 5th November, 1854.
For having at the Battle of Inkerman personally attacked three Russians, and, with the gunners of his Division of the battery, prevented the Russians from doing mischief to the guns which they had surrounded.
Part of a regiment of English infantry had previously retired through the battery in front of this body of Russians.
"He had to wait a long time for his deed to be recognized," said the father, replacing the slip of paper in his pocket with a sigh of satisfaction. "Good morning to you, Wilberforce. I mustn't stay gossiping here any longer. I've a good many miles in front of me, you know."
Sir Richard rode on, his mind full of his elder son's valor. He should be thinking about marriage, though. It was time to see a grandson at the Hall. One was apt to forget how fast the years were going by. How old was John now? Thirty. So he was, by gad, thirty. Yes, he must be getting married. Not much difficulty about that, the proud father laughed to himself. Handsome, brave, the heir to Barton Flowers! It was right that he should take his profession seriously, but after the Crimea and the Mutiny he could claim to have served his country well, could afford to sell out and prepare himself to administer the property he would one day inherit. One day ... but not just yet. "No, not just yet," Sir Richard murmured, gripping the flanks of the gray horse tightly in pride of his own strength. And perhaps at this moment when the electric telegram was almost daily bringing news of French victories in Italy, and when that rascal Napoleon might be forming who knows what schemes to invade England, yes, perhaps at this moment, Captain John Flower should stick to his guns. Still, he would talk to his wife about the boy's marriage. He hoped that when he arrived home again he should find that headache sufficiently improved to let her discuss the subject with keenness and intelligence. The right plan was to invite some eligible young women to visit the Hall during John's next furlough, and if luck should station him at Aldershot to take care that whenever he drove over to Barton he should find an attraction at home. Luckily there were plenty of eligible young women in the neighborhood. Sir Richard was enumerating the possible wives for his heir when the disquieting thought occurred to him that John, like his father before him, might look beyond Hampshire for a wife. Not that for a single moment he had regretted his own choice; but what might be done once with success might end in disaster if fortune were tempted again. Anybody who had been made aware of Sir Richard's thoughts at this moment might have been pardoned for supposing that he had found a wife of beauty, merit, and ability in a lower stratum of society. As a matter of fact, the present Lady Flower was the daughter of one of Wellington's most gallant officers and a French lady of rank whose father had taken refuge from the Terror in England, where he had preferred to remain during the Napoleonic tyranny. It was the French blood that made Sir Richard feel he was committing a breach of tradition in marrying Miss Helen Baxter. To have introduced French blood into the Flowers, notwithstanding the pride of the family in their Norman origin, still seemed to him an astonishing piece of audacity; and even now he could shudder to think what his father would have said, had his father been alive when he married. Yet his wedded life had been one of unbroken happiness, and Helen had not betrayed the least sign of her mixed origin unless perhaps in an incurable propensity to succumb to violent headaches, which she dignified, or as her husband preferred to think, Frenchified by calling migraines. The old family doctor attributed them to nerves, and nerves, Sir Richard felt, were French, not English, so that if Doctor Wilkinson was right, the headaches must have been inherited from her French mother. There was nothing of the Frenchman in the elder son John. He never had a headache in his life, and he had won the Victoria Cross. English to the backbone was John. But Edward...?
Sir Richard, who had been trotting gaily along his boundaries, pulled up his horse to a walk, because the personality and character of his younger son perplexed him. Edward had headaches, was prone to day-dreaming, and at twenty-eight showed no sign of making any progress at the Bar, to which without apparently the slightest taste for a legal career he had recently been called. Headaches, day-dreams, instability, these were not English qualities. What had Edward been doing down at home all the summer? How could he expect to be a successful barrister if he left his chambers in Pump Court to take care of themselves? If John had been a barrister, he would have made his mark by now. Yet Edward had been endowed with more brains than John. John was diligent, determined; but Edward had the brains. It had been the ancient custom of the Flowers to send the eldest son to Winchester, the others to Eton. Sir Richard, who was a Wykhamist, had broken the tradition by sending John to Eton and Edward to Winchester, partly because he thought that Winchester would eradicate more sternly any French symptoms that appeared in Edward, partly because he believed that what was known as cleverness in a boy would receive more encouragement at the older foundation. But Edward had been a disappointment. His career at Winchester had been undistinguished, and he had gone down from New College without taking a degree. That was the moment when his father should have been firm with him, when he should have insisted upon his making his own way in the world without parental assistance. But Helen had intervened, and she intervened so rarely that when she did her husband was always defeated. Edward had expressed a half-hearted desire to read for the Bar, and he had allowed himself to be persuaded into making the necessary allowance. What was the result? Edward at twenty-eight as little able to provide for himself as he was at eight! It had been all very well for his mother to plead for his company over long months at Barton to console her for the absence of her elder son first in the Crimea and then in India. But John had been back a year now, and Edward spent more time than ever at home. Confound it, the problem of Edward's future was spoiling the day, and in a burst of irritation the baronet spurred his horse to a canter.
At this point the boundary of Sir Richard's estate might have been the subject of litigation had there been enough people interested to litigate. It was the old dispute over common land which had been gradually enclosed by the lord of the manor. In this case the issue was complicated by the fact that the head of the Flowers was as such himself a commoner, and it was difficult to prove that a commoner had no right to plant beechwoods if he was so minded. This had been the Flower method of encroachment. At this date there were only three other families of commoners left, and inasmuch as these gained a miserable livelihood by poaching Sir Richard's coverts rather than by pasturing a few scrawny geese, there was no doubt that before long the landlord would succeed in fixing his boundary on the far side of the common. At present the common extended for a mile, a narrow strip of coarse grass land two hundred yards wide at its greatest breadth along the baronet's dark beechwoods. Beyond the common the railway cut its track through the meadows of another landowner, and Sir Richard laughed to think how twenty years ago he had refused to let the line run through his land.
"That's the way good estates are ruined," he thought complacently, urging his horse from a canter to a gallop.
The wild commoners came out from their hovels to stare at him as he flew past, and congratulated themselves that he had not noticed how much turf in excess of their allowance had recently been cut.
At the end of the gallop Sir Richard reined in his horse to a walk that he might move slowly and admiringly through a plantation of larches he had put in ten years ago, which now in its symmetry and silence impressed him as a painter might be impressed by the beauty of an early work he had forgotten. Sir Richard regretted that he had not made a similar plantation near the Hall, so that his wife might enjoy walking upon this pale grass where the sun shone with so dim and so diffused a light. He was convinced that the experience would appeal to that romantic side of her character which expressed itself in migraines. Yes, it was a pity he had not thought of planting another within access of the Hall. He was now in the most remote corner of his demesne, and it would be difficult to drive her to this place without considerable discomfort. This plantation must be making a fine screen for old Taylor's orchard by now, thought Sir Richard. The old man had grumbled when first his landlord had insisted upon afforesting that useless field, covered with thistles and ragwort; he would admit now that his landlord had been right. But the old man was always grumbling. No doubt if he met him to-day he would be full of woe over the thunder and hail of last month, vowing that none of his blossom had set and that the season would be a dead loss in consequence. How different from Wilberforce, who had recognized most sensibly the promise of the arable crops! The fact of it was, old Taylor was growing too old for the responsibility of a large farm. Of course he had not the slightest intention of turning him out, but he did wish that old Taylor showed more signs of appreciating his landlord's consideration. That was the trouble with people, Sir Richard sighed to himself, one did all that was possible for them and received nothing in return. If only some of the tenants who grumbled at the least delay in carrying out necessary repairs would try to understand the point of view of the landlord. Nowadays people only tried to understand their own point of view. Yes, the age was degenerating, humanity was not what it was.