As might be expected, old Squire Kirkstone was by no means pleased with his son, and did not relish leaving his large fortune to one who probably would waste it in a few years. The Hall and its surrounding acres were entailed, and were bound to pass into John Kirkstone's hands; but the old man possessed a large income acquired by speculation, which was at his own disposal. Wrathful at his spendthrift son, he resolved to leave this personal property to his only daughter; and accordingly, when John became Squire on the death of his father, he found that his sister Laura was in possession of a good income, while he had to be content with a dwelling far too large for his means, and several farms whose tenants did not always pay their rents. The shock of this discovery was unpleasant, but salutary.
In the first place Kirkstone renounced his London profligacy and associates, and came to live at the Hall; in the second, he insisted that his sister should dwell with him, and pay a handsome yearly sum for the privilege; and in the third, he invited his first cousin, Ellen Gilmar, to be his housekeeper. Laura Kirkstone, who was a weak-bodied and weak-natured girl, readily consented to remain at the Hall, and pay what her brother demanded, and as readily welcomed her cousin Ellen as mistress of the household, a post for which she herself had no great love. Having thus arranged matters, Kirkstone--though not yet forty--became as penurious as formerly he had been wasteful; and in this system of economy was ably assisted by his new housekeeper, a shrewd, cold-hearted skinflint.
Laura, in derision, called Ellen Mrs. Harpagon, after Molière's miser; and well did Miss Gilmar deserve the name. She was a little, black, active woman, with a neat figure and a somewhat pinched white face. Her eyes were hard-looking, her lips were thin, and she was a perfect skinflint in the management of the household. Even Kirkstone, inclined as he was to economy, grumbled at times about her excessive economy; but as the months went by, he fell gradually into her saving way of living, and the Hall soon gained a name in the county for all that was mean and niggardly. The larder was always kept locked, the servants were ill fed, and the occasional beggars who came to that forbidden door were not fed at all. Scraping, and screwing, and hoarding of money became the order of the day; and Kirkstone soon found that he was redeeming his former waste, at the cost of a hard and somewhat hungry life. However, the habit of living thus penuriously became confirmed, and both he and Mrs. Harpagon vied with one another in discovering new methods of saving money. The only person in the Hall who did not relish this extreme economy was Laura Kirkstone.
The attitude adopted by Kirkstone towards his wealthy sister was a fairly amiable one. Having a strong will, he compelled her weaker one to bow to it; and kept a sharp watch on her, lest she should marry some one of whom he did not approve, and so take the money--which he looked upon as rightfully his own--out of the family. Many a young man would have been glad to marry Miss Kirkstone, both for her money and good looks; for in a pink-and-white sort of way the girl was pretty; but Kirkstone invited none of these would-be suitors to the house, and turned a cold shoulder to them in public. Laura was forbidden even to speak to them; and being kept closely to her own home, lived in the gaunt, grim Hall, like an enchanted princess guarded by two ogres. And none of the young knights who wished to marry her had sufficient courage to brave the black looks of Kirkstone, or the acidulated sneers of his amiable housekeeper and cousin. Such was the position of affairs at Kirkstone Hall when Marmaduke Dean again entered into the life of his former friend.
It was the death of his wife which led to Dean's visit to Kirkstone Hall. He had squandered the fortune of the unhappy lady, and had treated her with so much coldness and neglect that she had died of a broken heart, leaving him a little son. Dean promptly placed the child with some distant relatives, and being poor again, looked about him for some means whereby he could procure money. Recalling the easy-going and generous disposition of Kirkstone, he resolved to apply to him for aid, quite oblivious to the fact that he was already in his debt. To this end he one day presented himself at the Hall, and was astonished to find that its owner, from a generous friend, had changed into a miserly curmudgeon. Kirkstone not only refused to help Dean, but demanded immediate repayment of the monies already due. Dean, seeing that only trouble would come of his application, was on the point of withdrawing, so as to save himself the danger of being sued for the lent money, when a new idea entered into Kirkstone's knavish brain which made him detain Dean at the Hall as a necessary element to bring it to fruition. The scheme was none other than the marriage of Laura to the disconsolate widower, and comprehended a division of her fortune between the brother and the proposed husband, an amiable arrangement which really amounted to robbery.
Laura herself forced Kirkstone to adopt this plan by reason of her refusal to let him handle the fortune which had been left to her by their father. Like most weak-minded people she was singularly obstinate on some points, and, being cunning enough to see that her sole hold over her brother lay in retaining command of her money, she always evaded his proposals to manage her investments. Beyond the income he derived from the sum she paid for board and lodging, Kirkstone had nothing to do with these monies, of which, as he frequently stated, he had been robbed. Naturally he was angered to think of his loss, and tried several times to bully Laura into surrendering her fortune. The result of this ill-judged conduct was that Laura met force by cunning, and, taking a dislike to her brother, executed a secret will, whereby she left the whole of the money to Ellen Gilmar.
In this case there was no honour among thieves, for the housekeeper tricked her master and cousin by keeping secret the fact of the will, and when Kirkstone tried to marry his sister to Dean, he was quite unaware that Ellen, for her own selfish ends, intended to thwart the match if she could. Furthermore a new and unforeseen obstacle arose to complicate matters, for it chanced that both Laura and Ellen fell in love with Dean. The scamp was a handsome man, with a plausible manner, and Laura was quite willing to marry him, and to settle half her fortune on him, receiving in return a presentable husband with a damaged reputation. It was agreed between Kirkstone and Dean that when the marriage took place the latter should discharge his debt to the former, and also pay over a certain sum of money by way of commission on the marriage settlement. So far all went well, and Kirkstone invited Dean to stay at the Hall until the marriage took place, and all pecuniary arrangements between them were settled. It was then that Ellen threw prudence to the wind, and lost her heart to Dean.
The result of this feminine weakness was that Ellen did violence to her instincts by relaxing her stingy rule. She kept the table supplied with better food while Dean stayed at the Hall, she paid more attention to her dress, humoured the man she loved in every way, and altogether behaved in a manner so alien to her natural self that Laura became suspicious. The end of this folly was that Laura discovered Ellen's secret, and lost her temper over it. She accused Dean of making love to Ellen, and Ellen of encouraging his advances. Kirkstone was told this by his sister, and he, seeing a chance of his losing money by the marriage not taking place, had a stormy scene with Ellen. He threatened to turn her out of the Hall as a pauper; whereat the woman turned at bay on her cousin, and revealed the truth about the secret will.
"If this marriage takes place," she declared, "I lose money as well as you, and if I can influence Laura to refuse Dean I shall certainly do so. If it comes to the point, we shall see who is the stronger, you or I."
The upshot of this conversation was that Kirkstone lost his temper altogether, and went to bully his sister into revoking her will. Had he only remembered that the same result would be attained by the marriage taking place, he would have urged on the match and defied Ellen. Instead of acting thus sensibly, he vented his rage on Dean, and accused him of encouraging the folly of the housekeeper. Then Dean lost his temper in his turn, and quarrelled with Kirkstone and Laura; so in the month of July, '76, it chanced that the four people inhabiting Kirkstone Hall quite misunderstood one another, and, for the time being, were hardly on speaking terms. Dean stormed at Kirkstone as trying to thwart the proposed marriage; Kirkstone blamed Dean as having encouraged the love of Ellen; and Laura, in her weak way, fretted herself ill over the whole disturbance. Only Ellen, the cause of all the trouble, retained her placidity. She did not move an inch from her position. She had an end to gain, and in one way or another she was determined to gain it. It was while things were in this unhappy state that the country was startled by the news that Kirkstone had been murdered by Dean.