Before the great building (like a factory, the Squire said) was thought of, Moorlands had been a picturesque stretch of poor ground, pleasant for strolling in the summer’s evenings, pleasant for picnics, pleasant to ride across, without leave asked or granted.
It was bare, meagre land, which had not been turned up for years and years, the grass of which was nibbled close down by the sheep that could scarcely get a scanty living off it. There the daisies grew in the summer-time, there the children could gather enough to make chains for a whole village, there in the low parts the rushes sprang likewise in sufficient quantities to provide butterfly cages, swords, helmets, and umbrellas for the juvenile population of North Kemms and its vicinity. There was a wood where nuts grew abundantly, a little coppice wood on the side of a sloping hill, at the base of which the Kemm flowed on its way rejoicingly. In the Kemm were silver-backed trout and tench and perch. Many a time Arthur had angled in it, and there was a pleasant old lane, wide and grassy, almost like a forest glade, bordered by fine old timber, and entered by a gate swinging on one hinge, which led away not merely to the coppice, but to a little piece of rising ground where tradition said there had once been a mansion belonging to a certain wicked Sir Giles, whose heirs were now in foreign parts, and whose bones had been mouldering for a hundred years or more in the vaults underneath North Kemms church.
Certainly the lane led straight up to the hillock, on which some remains of walls, some traces of a former building, were to be found; but there was nothing much to confirm the idea of a mansion ever having occupied the site, though the gossips affirmed Sir Giles’ had once been a great house, which was razed to the ground on account of the wickedness enacted within it. Rather hard on the house, certainly, considering Sir Giles, the perpetrator of so much wickedness, lay in consecrated ground, snugly incased in lead and oak; but none the less likely to be true on that account, perhaps.
A few rose-trees grew in what tradition said had once been Sir Giles’ pleasure garden; and there was a goodly bush of sweet briar, to say nothing of a few evergreens and flowers, such as London pride, Canterbury bells, Solomon’s seal, double daisies, and such like, scattered about in beds that had apparently been laid out in the Dutch style. But still there was no trace of winding walks, or sweeping drive, of yew hedges, courtyard or pleasaunce; nothing left to tell of a great man’s residence ever having occupied the site where Mr. Raidsford’s palace was afterwards erected.
Lord Kemms’ idea of the matter was, perhaps, more correct than the popular one. He thought it most probable Sir Giles’ house had been elsewhere, and this smaller abode but a mere country cottage, in which the baronet might have drunk, and gambled, and sinned, and fought, as was averred. It was known that this same wicked Sir Giles, the last baronet, had a fine mansion in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there was a report of his having been possessed of some broad manors in the North; but the awful stories which were told of his wild life always had for their scene Moorlands, where there was scarcely one stone left upon another, where the daisies sprang and the rushes grew, where the nuts ripened on the hazel bushes, and the birds built in the hedgerows and laurels, spring after spring.
This place Mr. Raidsford saw, liked, purchased cheap, and spoiled—so Arthur Dudley said. Perhaps the Squire was right. No doubt the grassy lane, with its gate hanging on one hinge, with the branches of its overhanging trees almost touching any pedestrian who passed beneath them, was more picturesque than Mr. Raidsford’s gravelled drive and wide sweeping entrance, than the lodges, than all the new-cut stone and fresh mortar.
Doubtless, the daisies were more lovely to the eyes than fields of corn and mangold-wurzel. Without question, the spot where the rushes and the yellow lilies grew, did not gain anything in artistic effect when drain-tiles and labourers had done their work, and the place, “dry as a bone,” produced crops of barley better than any Squire Dudley could show. It was not to be disputed that the scattered stones, the desolate flowers, the neglected garden, the tangled little corner of wilderness, were more suggestive than Mr. Raidsford’s bran new mansion; nor that the wood had been more enjoyable in its former neglected condition than it seemed when paths were made through it, and a summer-house perched above the Kemm; but still, people must live somewhere, and the tents they dwell in must be new at some time. Even Berrie Down Hollow had been built once; it did not come into existence with the Creation—brambles had been cleared away for it, the turf had been turned up in the fields which were now Arthur’s, the picturesque common had been divided into meadows and corn-fields, into pastures and arable land.
For all of which reasons, Squire Dudley should not have complained when the lane at Moorlands was metamorphosed into a drive; when the ground which barely yielded pasturage for a few sheep, was ploughed and ploughed again, and finally laid down in grass for a deer park; when wheat sprang up where the daisies had grown; when a new house showed its face amongst the trees; when gardens were laid out, and conservatories erected, and stables built, and employment given; and a new neighbour, not such an one as the old wicked Sir Giles, who, it was stated, cared neither for God nor devil, came to dwell at Moorlands, which he had sense enough not to re-christen.
A different man from Mr. Dudley would have held out the right hand of fellowship to the stranger, walked over and called upon him, and been cordially welcomed in return; for if Arthur were poor, he was of gentle blood, and if Mr. Raidsford had risen, he was none the less, indeed perhaps all the more, friendly disposed towards one better born than himself; but the Squire did nothing of the kind. Rather he stood on the lawn at Berrie Down and cursed his day, lamenting that Compton Raidsford—a mushroom, an upstart, a snob—should be so much, while he, Arthur Dudley, was nothing.
Had Arthur been possessed of ten thousand a year, he would never have said a word against Compton Raidsford, or the alterations at Moorlands; he would have proffered him the hospitalities of Berrie Down, and shed the light of his countenance on the new comer; but then, Arthur had not ten thousand a year, which made all the difference.