Still, Arnold Banneret and his wife disliked hotel life en permanence. The continual change of acquaintances, with whom a certain sort of association was almost impossible to avoid, was distasteful to them. They did not, as their experience matured, think it, in all respects, beneficial to the girls. For them and their brothers they [311] ]wished to re-create the home feeling. They longed for the change once more to peaceful country life—where they might live among such neighbours as made the chief rural luxury, and secure, if such might be, valuable and enduring friendships.
To this end it was decided to buy an estate. Leased houses, with perhaps suitable grounds, furniture, and belongings, were all very well in their way. But people’s ideas about furniture and other matters differed widely sometimes. And, at the delivering-up day, misunderstandings were likely to arise—had arisen within their experience. Thus it was decided to buy. They could then comfort themselves with knowing that they were safely settled for years to come—could not be turned out by the whim of the proprietor, or any one else. And if the worst came to the worst, and circumstances compelled them to return to their own country, they could, of course, re-sell; and as estates in England, valuable and well placed, did not vary much in value, they could get their money back without serious deduction.
The girls at first did not take kindly to the idea. They found their present mode of existence much to their taste. But their mother had with some regret observed that a subtle change was taking place in the character of her daughters. Constant amusement, of course, they had no difficulty in procuring. It was furnished without effort on their part. But it pained her to discover that an alteration of taste was even now showing itself. They did not care so much for the more [312] ]rational forms of amusement; they began to crave more and more for excitement; and provided that it was of a sufficiently novel and bizarre nature, they seemed, to her watchful eye, to be growing more and more careless of surroundings, and of the status of the people with whom they were necessarily associated.
In order to combat this feeling, and to render the departure from the Hotel Cecil, and its continuous round of gaieties, less depressing, Mrs. Banneret began diplomatically to descant upon the more permanently attractive features of English country life,—the ancient trees, the historical associations of the manor-house and the grounds; the neighbouring gentry, the hunting fixtures, the pleasant parties made up for shooting, coursing, fishing, and other time-honoured sports, for the performance of which desirable guests would be brought down from town or invited from neighbouring families; the archery meetings, after which it was the fashion of the county to have impromptu dances; the hounds on the lawn, the distinguished personages, the aristocratic M.F.H., the ‘coffee-house’ feature of the meets, the hunting women, the road riders, their friends, and other people’s friends, the garden parties—in short, all the hundred and one pleasant meetings, half sport, half business, which only a country life could adequately provide.
‘Think,’ she said, ‘my dear girls, what a different life it would be for us all! Your father is pining for a return to regular home life, such [313] ]as he and I enjoyed when you were little, and which, in spite of the troubles of a Gold Commissioner’s life, we even now look back upon as our happiest days. He wants to have a decent stable, a couple of hacks, a brace or two of hunters; his phaeton pair, and a dogcart horse; a landau for me and you on great occasions; a safe hunter apiece for you girls, and perhaps another, or so, for a friend. Besides, with a moderate-sized estate—ten or twelve thousand acres—he can enjoy some shooting and amateur farming, which will give him healthy exercise—he doesn’t get enough now, and it’s bad for him. He’s getting too stout; you see that yourselves, don’t you? Then we shall be the Bannerets of Hexham Hall. I feel quite like the Lady of the Manor already.’
As the good matron kept summing up the joys of this ideal life—the glorious awakening in the fresh, sweet atmosphere of the country, the song of the birds, the dewy lawns—the girls watched her face glow and her eyes sparkle with almost youthful lustre. They could bear the situation no longer.
‘Mother! dear mother!’ cried Hermione, ‘don’t go on—I can’t bear it. We have been wicked, selfish girls not to have seen it before. I thought you and father had been looking out of spirits lately. I see now how it was telling on you. We’ll go, Vanda, wherever we are told. It’s a shame that we should have had to be asked. Only we must have a family council before the place—the manor, the castle, or whatever it is to [314] ]be—is finally decided upon. It can’t be so very dreadful after all.’
‘Dreadful!’ cried Vanda; ‘it’s delicious. I’ll undertake the dairy—and we must have lots of lovely tiles, and such cream-pans, and a floor like glass, and walls that can be washed down twice a day. The next thing is to find the Castle of Otranto. Will there be ruins, ghosts, and a helmet to fall down with a crash? I must have vaults, too, and a secret passage, where the former lord of the castle was concealed when the Roundheads sacked it. And such a range of stabling, too! I must have two hunters if I am to keep up my riding.’
The sons gave their unhesitating opinion in favour of the estate. Land was cheap in England at present—many of the owners being only too glad to get rid of property which paid ridiculously low in interest on capital, and was year by year involving the so-called proprietor in heavier expense. As to the value of a large historic family mansion, it was looked upon as the proverbial white elephant, which the owners would be only too pleased to get rid of, once and for ever.
Then the choice—that was the difficulty. Arnold Banneret shuddered when he thought of the scores of desirable places, old and half-ruinous, ill-drained, decayed, damp, smothered in ivy, shaded by vast growths of world-old groves that it would be sacrilege to cut down, and death by slow and gradual process to leave unaltered. The new mansion ghastly with stucco—redolent of fresh paint—the mistaken ambition of the [315] ]manufacturer, tired of so soon after the contractor was paid, and disgracefully new like the baronetcy; these and other failures, like Banquo’s line of shadowy kings, passed before him in review, until he almost resolved to cut the whole concern and go back to Australia, where, at any rate, one could enjoy one’s life in peace. This was after a long day’s rail to examine an over-praised, over-valued, highly unsuitable investment, with too much house and too little land—both being indecently inferior in quality, besides being in a dull and undesirable county.