Elster's Folly: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Mr. Elster walked slowly through the village on his way to Hartledon, whose inmates he would presently take by surprise. It was about twenty months since he had been there. He had left Hartledon at the close of the last winter but one; an appointment having been obtained for him as an attaché to the Paris embassy. Ten months of service, and some scrape he fell into caused him (a good deal of private interest was brought to bear in the matter) to be removed to Vienna; but he had not remained there very long. He seemed to have a propensity for getting into trouble, or rather an inability to keep out of it. Latterly he had been staying in London with his brother.

His thoughts wandered to the past as he looked at the chimneys of Hartledon—all he could see of it—from the low-lying ground. He remembered the happy time when they had been children in it; five of them—the three boys and the two girls—he himself the youngest and the pet. His eldest sister, Margaret, had been the first to leave it. She married Sir James Cooper, and went with him to his remote home in Scotland, where she was still. The second to go was Laura, who married Captain Level, and accompanied him to India. Then he, Val, a young man in his teens, went out into the world, and did all sorts of harm in it in an unintentional sort of way; for Percival Elster never did wrong by premeditation. Next came the death of his mother. He was called home from a sojourn in Scotland—where his stay had been prolonged from the result of an accident—to bid her farewell. Then he was at home for a year or more, making love to charming Anne Ashton. The next move was his departure for Paris; close upon which, within a fortnight, occurred the calamity to his brother George. He came back from Paris to see him in London, whither George had been conveyed for medical advice, and there then seemed a chance of his recovery; but it was not borne out, and the ill-fated young man died. Lord Hartledon's death was the next. He had an incurable complaint, and his death followed close upon his son's. Lord Elster became Earl of Hartledon; and he, Val, heir-presumptive. Heir-presumptive! Val Elster was heir to all sorts of follies, but—

"Good morning to your lordship!"

The speaker was a man in a smock-frock, passing with a reaping-hook on his shoulder. Mr. Elster's sunny face and cheery voice gave back the salutation with tenfold heartiness, smiling at the title. Half the peasantry had been used to addressing the brothers so, indiscriminately; they were all lords to them.

The interruption awoke Mr. Elster from his thoughts, and he marched gaily on down the middle of the road, noting its familiar features. The small shops were on his right hand, the line of rails behind them. A few white villas lay scattered on his left, and beyond them, but not to be seen from this village street, wound the river; both running parallel with the village lying between them. Soon the houses ceased; it was a small place at best; and after an open space came the church. It lay on his right, a little way back from the road, and surrounded by a large churchyard. Almost opposite, on the other side of the road, but much further back, was a handsome modern white house; its delightful gardens sloping almost to the river. This was the residence of the Rector, Dr. Ashton, a wealthy man and a church dignitary, prebendary and sub-dean of Garchester Cathedral. Percival Elster looked at it yearningly, if haply he might see there the face of one he loved well; but the blinds were drawn, and the inmates were no doubt steeped in repose.

"If she only knew I was here!" he fondly aspirated.

On again a few steps, and a slight turn in the road brought him to a small red-brick house on the same side as the church, with green shutters attached to its lower windows. It lay in the midst of a garden well stocked with vegetables, fruit, and the more ordinary and brighter garden-flowers. A straight path led to the well-kept house-door, its paint fresh and green, and its brass-plate as bright as rubbing could make it. Mr. Elster could not read the inscription on the plate from where he was, but he knew it by heart: "Jabez Gum, Parish Clerk." And there was a smaller plate indicating other offices held by Jabez Gum.

"I wonder if Jabez is as shadowy as ever?" thought Mr. Elster, as he walked on.

One more feature, and that is the last you shall hear of until Hartledon is reached. Close to the clerk's garden, on a piece of waste land, stood a small wooden building, no better than a shed.

It had once been a stable, but so long as Percival Elster could remember, it was nothing but a receptacle for schoolboys playing at hide-and-seek. Many a time had he hidden there. Something different in this shed now caught his eye; the former doorway had been boarded up, and a long iron tube, like a thin chimney, ascended from its roof.