Of a naturally gloomy and austere disposition, and strongly biased towards the cold and uncompromising religious views which a large section of the English people have had transmitted to them through many generations from the old Puritans, the squire believed the blow which had fallen upon him was dealt by a Divine hand.
He had, in his unsympathetic way, been very proud of his son George. The harshness that the young man so bitterly resented was only the result of a mistaken idea of parental duty.
When his son showed a taste not only for the frivolities but also for what the squire considered the vices of the age, he felt that stern repression was necessary. In the old days of parental despotism he would have flung his son into prison; in the enlightened times which forbade the head of a family to declare his domestic circle in a state of siege and proclaim military law, he contented himself by reprimanding the prodigal, treating him with icy displeasure, and eventually renouncing all ties of kinship with him.
By an ordinarily constituted father George’s misdeeds would have been treated as youthful follies, and though the parental anger might have been fierce when the parental pocket was touched, it is probable far less drastic remedies would have been considered necessary.
When George, trembling with passion, left his father’s presence vowing to see his face no more, Squire Heritage did not reproach himself for having goaded the young man to such a frame of mind.
When that night the old lodge-keeper came to him and told him that the young squire had ordered his things to be sent after him to London, his master simply said, ‘Send them,’ in a tone which prohibited any further discussion.
But when, a fortnight later, Bess Marks disappeared, leaving a note for her father which pointed to only one conclusion, and the squire heard of it, he went to the grief-stricken man and took him kindly by the hand and comforted him.
Never was there a greater contrast than between the two fathers—the plebeian and the patrician.
The lodge-keeper, a prey to violent grief and heartbroken at his child’s conduct, never breathed a word of reproach against her. He only prayed that, however guilty she might be, no suffering might come near her, but that God would give her back again to his loving and protecting arms.
Squire Heritage spoke of his absent son coldly, almost cruelly. It was no secret among the people on the estate that Bess Marks had ‘run away’ with the young squire, and this added to the intensity of his father’s indignation and shame.