It was years before we came to the place, but the room the old Squire lay in seemed a sacred place to me directly I had heard the story, and over and over again when I’ve had a fire lighted there for a guest who was expected, I’ve stood and watched the firelight flickering on the old oak panels, and I’ve seen the old Squire’s handsome face lying on the pillow of the great four-post bedstead.
He had come back from abroad, terribly broken and ill and poor. He said he knew he was dying, and he wanted to die as near the old place as possible. He wouldn’t have anything to do with his daughter, Mrs. Owen, and would never take a penny from her, though she was very rich; and when he came back, and she wanted to see him and get him to consent to be taken to her house, he said, “No, he didn’t want to die in pawn. He’d as soon have the sheriff’s officer or a Jew money-lender sitting by his death-bed as a pawnbroker or a pawnbroker’s wife.”
It’s wonderful how with some people this family pride will keep up to the last. Of course it isn’t so much nowadays, when ladies of title marry rich tradesmen, and are very glad to get them, and noblemen don’t mind making a marine-store dealer’s daughter a lady, if her pa has enough money to give her a fine dowry.
But the Squire was one of the proud old sort that began to go out when railways began to come in. That’s how Mr. Wilkins, the parish clerk, who uses our parlour regularly of an evening, puts it. It was Mr. Wilkins—quite a character in his way, as you’ll say when you know more about him—who told me the story of the old Squire after whose Arms our house is named.
The people who had our house at the time were the Squire’s butler and his wife, and of course they made their dear old master as comfortable as they could, and made his bill as light as possible, for he would pay for everything with the little bit of money he’d got, and would swear just as he used to do in former days if they didn’t let him have his bill regularly.
One day he said to the doctor, “Doctor, how long do you think I shall live?”
“Why do you ask?” said the doctor.
“Because I must cut my cloth according to my measure,” said the Squire. “I want to know how long I’ve got to spread my money over. My funeral will be all right, because I’ve paid for that beforehand.”
Which he had, as was found out afterwards.
Well, the doctor was in a fix. He knew if he said a long time the poor old gentleman would begin to starve himself and do without his wine, and if he said a short time he thought it would be cruel; so he said that it all depended upon the turn his illness took.