Allan, an only son, was not by any means ill provided for when his maternal uncle, Admiral the Honourable Allan Darnleigh, took it into his head to leave him his Wiltshire property; but this bequest raised him at once to independence, and altogether dispensed with any further care about that gentleman-like profession, the Bar, which had so far repaid Mr. Carew's collegiate studies, labours, outlays, and solicitude by fees amounting in all to seven pounds seven shillings, which sum represented the gross earnings of three years.
So, riding along the rustic high-road, in the clear morning air, under a sapphire sky, just gently flecked with fleecy cloudlets, Allan Carew told himself that it was a blessed escape to have done with chambers, and reading law, and waiting for briefs; and that it was a good thing to be a country gentleman; to have his own house and his own stable; not to be obliged to ride another man's horses, even though that other man were his very father; not to be told after every stiffish day across country that he had done for the grey, or that the chestnut's legs had filled as never horse's legs filled before, nor to hear any other reproachful utterances of an old and privileged stud-groom, who knew the horses he rode were not his own property. Henceforth his stable would be his own kingdom, and he would reign there absolute and unquestioned. He could choose his own horses, and they should be good ones. He naturally shared the common creed of sons, and looked upon all animals of his father's buying as "screws" and "duffers." His own stables would be something altogether different from the drowsy old stables at home, where horses were kept and cherished because they were familiar friends, rather than with a view to locomotion. His stud and his stable should be as different as if horses and grooms had been bred upon another planet.
He loved field-sports. He felt that it was in him to make a model squire, albeit two thousand a year was not a large revenue in these days of elegant living and Continental holidays, and eclectic tastes. He felt that among his numerous nephews, old Admiral Darnleigh had made a wise selection in choosing his god-son, Allan Carew, to inherit his Wiltshire estate. He meant to be prudent and economical. He had spent the previous afternoon in a leisurely inspection of Beechhurst. He had gone over house and stables, and had found all things so well planned, and in such perfect order, that he was assailed by none of those temptations to pull down and to build, to alter and to improve, which often inaugurate ruin in the very dawn of possession. He thought he might build two or three loose boxes on one side of the spacious stable-yard. There were two packs within easy reach of Matcham, to say nothing of packs accessible by rail, and he would naturally want more hunters than had sufficed for the old sailor, who had jogged out on his clever cob two or three times a week, and had gone home early, after artful riding and waiting about the lanes, or to leeward of the great bare hills, and in snug corners, where a profound knowledge of the country enabled him to make sure of the hounds. Allan's hunting-stable would be on a very different footing; and although Beechhurst provided ample accommodation for a stud of eight, Allan told himself that one of his first duties would be to build loose boxes.
"I shall often have to put up a couple of horses for a friend," he thought.
The morning was lovely, more like April than March. The bay trotted along complacently, neither lazy nor feverishly active, but with an air of knowing what he had to do for his day's wage, and meaning honestly to do it. Allan was glad that his road took him past Beechhurst. Possession had still all the charm of novelty. His heart thrilled with pride as he slackened his pace to gaze fondly at the pretty white house, low and long, with a verandah running all along the southern front, admirably placed upon a gentle elevation, against the swelling shoulder of a broad down, facing south-west, and looking over garden and shrubbery, and across a stretch of common, that lay between Beechhurst and the high-road, and gave a dignified aloofness to the situation; seclusion without dulness, a house and grounds remote, but not buried or hidden.
"Nothing manorial about it," mused Allan; "but it certainly looks a gentleman's place."
He would naturally have preferred something less essentially modern. He would have liked Tudor chimneys, panelled walls, and a family ghost. He would have liked to know that his race had taken deep root in the soil, had been lords of the manor centuries and centuries ago, when Wamba was keeping pigs in the woods, and when the jester's bells mixed with the merry music of hawk and hound. Admiral Darnleigh, so far as Wiltshire was concerned, had been a new man. He had made his money in China, speculating in tea-gardens, and other property, while pursuing his naval career with considerable distinction. He had retired from active service soon after the Chinese war, a C.B. and a rich man, had bought Beechhurst a bargain—during a period of depression—and had settled down in yonder pretty white house, with a small but admirable establishment, each member thereof a pearl of price among servants, and had there spent the tranquil even-tide of an honourable and consistently selfish life. He had never married. As a single man, he had always felt himself rich; as a married man he might often have felt himself poor. He had heard Allan at five and twenty declare that he had done with the romance of life, and that he, too, meant to be a bachelor; and it may be that this boyish assertion, carelessly made over a bottle of Lafitte, did in some measure influence the Admiral's choice of an heir.
Allan's father and mother were of a more liberal mind.
"You are in a better position than your father was at your age," said Lady Emily Carew, on her son's accession to fortune. "I hope you will marry well—and soon."
There was no thought of woman's love, or of married bliss, in Allan Carew's mind, as he rode through the lanes and over a common, and across a broad stretch of open down to the Pig and Whistle. He was full, not of his inner self, but of the outer world around and about him, pleased with the pleasant country in which his lot was cast, wondering what his new neighbours were like, and how they would receive him.