The eldest, Arthur, chafed bitterly under this treatment, for he appears, from the scanty records that remain of him, to have been a lad of spirit and energy.
The second son, James, was of a grosser nature, and his mind was chiefly occupied with eating and drinking. He had an implicit faith in the wealth of his father, and submitted patiently to all these hardships and rough treatment in the hope of ingratiating himself with the old man, and perhaps supplanting Arthur in his will—that is, so far as his money was concerned, for the land, as the villagers said, “went by heirship”—i.e. was entailed—but who would care for such land?
Arthur saw the game and did nothing to prevent it; on the contrary, he took a certain pleasure in irritating the savage and morose old man, whom he thoroughly despised. Perhaps what happened in the future was a punishment for this unfilial conduct, however much it was provoked.
The mother, it must be understood, had long been dead, and there was no mediator between the stern old man and his fiery-tempered son. Old Sibbold was descended of a good family—one that had once held a position, not only in the county but in the country—and he dwelt much on the past, recalling the time when a Sibbold had held a bishop a prisoner for King John.
He pored over the deeds in his old oak chest—a press, which stood on four carved legs, and was closed with a ponderous padlock. That chest, if it could be found now, would be worth its weight, not in gold merely, but in diamonds. At that time these deeds and parchments were of little value; they related mostly to by-gone days, and Arthur ridiculed his father’s patient study of their crabbed handwriting.
What was the use of dwelling on the past?—up and speculate on the present!
Irritated beyond measure, old Sibbold would reply that half the county belonged to him, and he could prove it. All that they could see from that window was his.
“Why,” said Arthur, “all we can see is the Lea, which is as barren as the crown of my hat, except in weeds and bulrushes!”
“Barren or not, they’re mine,” said Sibbold, closing his chest; “and I will make those squatters pay!”
For the Lea was that piece of waste ground which the brook had overflowed, and in a sense rendered fertile.