George Fenn - Sawn Off - A Tale of a Family Tree

“Well, I’m – ”

“Papa!”

“Hi! don’t, Very. Let me breathe,” cried Doctor Salado, removing a very pretty little hand from over his mouth, and kissing the owner, as pretty a little girl as ever stepped; though just then her pretty creamy face was puckered into the most lovable of dimples, and there was trouble in her great dark eyes, over which were lashes and brows as black as the great clusters and waves of luxuriant hair.

“You shall not.”

“I was only going to say ‘blessed.’”

“You were not, papa. You were going to use that dreadful word again.”

“So I was, Very, and enough to make me,” said the Doctor, passing his hand over his high bold forehead and crown. “Why, it completely cuts off our view of the park and the manor-house at the end of the beautiful vista of oaks.”

“Never mind, dear; we’ll take to the drawing-room, and look out at the back at the grand old pines.”

“Well, upon my soul,” said the Doctor again. “Of all the malicious bits of impudence! They must have been at it all night.”

“Yes, papa; I heard them knocking, and I could not sleep.”

“Hang me if I don’t take an axe and cut the old thing down,” cried the Doctor again, as he stood gazing out of his breakfast-room window at where – just across the road, and exactly opposite his delightful little cottage – half a dozen carpenters and labourers were rapidly completing a great range of hoarding fifty feet long and full twenty high.

“You mustn’t, papa. We are not in South America now.”

“No. I wish it was. But – Well, that beats all! Well, I am – Very, my pet, let me swear once. I shall feel so much better then.”

“You shall not, papa. But what a shame!”

“Worse than that, my darling. It’s all a confounded planned insult, got up by my lord and that sneaking scoundrel of an agent,” he continued, as he watched a bill-sticker busy at work pasting placards on the new raw deal boards just nailed on the rough pine poles. “Selling off, etc. To be sold by auction,” read the Doctor, “Guy Bunting’s boots.”

“Oh! is this a land of liberty, where one is to be insulted like this, and not even allowed the British prerogative of a good honest – ”

Veronica’s lips were pressed upon the speaker’s lips, as near as they could get for the crisp, grey, shaggy hair of an enormous moustache, and said, —

“You shall not say it, papa; and you are too proud and dignified to notice such contemptible treatment. Now come and have your breakfast. The cutlets are getting cold.”

“Then Teddington Weir him!” said the Doctor.

“What do you mean, dear?”

“Never mind. Hah! I am hungry. But look here, Pussy – more sugar, please – and milk. It’s all your fault.”

“It is not, papa,” said Veronica, colouring a little. “It was through your buying this cottage.”

“Well, how was I to know he wanted it? Suppose the grounds do run like a wedge into the estate. Hang the blackguardly Ahab! Can’t a poor miserable Naboth like myself have his own vineyard without his wanting it for a garden of herbs? Bitter herbs I’ll make them for him!”

“No, you will not, papa.”

“Yes, I will, tyrant. The next thing will be his confounded Jezebel of a wife setting him to – ”

“Papa! I cannot sit here and listen to you,” cried Veronica, flushing deeply now. “Lady Pinemount is a sweet, lovable woman.”

“How do you know?”

“Everybody says so.”

“Including her son?”

“Papa dear!” cried the girl, with her eyes filling with tears.

“There, my dear, I don’t want to hurt your feelings; but the old man will never consent to it, and I’m going to forbid Mr Rolleston the house.”

Veronica was silent, but such a look of hopeless misery came into her face that the Doctor got up from his chair and went and knelt on one knee by his child’s chair, drawing her beautiful head down on his shoulder and softly stroking her cheek.

“And you – after turning up this pretty little nose at all the gallant young Spanish dons and settlers about the Pampas – to come and strike your colours like this, Very! I say, are you so very fond of him?”

“I – I think so, papa; I can’t help it.”

“Humph! But he’s an Englishman born and bred, and you’re half a Spaniard, Very.”

“But you are an Englishman, papa.”

“I suppose so. But thirty years in South America seem to have altered me. Yah! hammer away. What a blackguardly trick of his father!”

“Don’t talk about it, papa. Mr Rolleston said Lord Pinemount was furious with his steward for not bidding higher and buying this estate.”

“More fool he! I’d have bid his head off. He’d never have got it.”

“And he was very angry, too, because you refused his offer afterwards to take it off your hands.”

“I don’t care for his anger. I came over to England to end my days in peace. I bought the Sandleighs, and I mean to keep it.”

“Papa!”

“There, then – there, don’t cry, and I will not make use of bad language about that hoarding; but if this is the behaviour of an English nobleman, I’m glad I’m plain Doctor Salado. Now breakfast; and my coffee’s cold.”

“I say it’s a shame, father, and a disgrace to you.”

“And I say you are a confounded insolent young puppy; and if you dare to speak to me again like that – ”

“Oh, hush, Edward dear! Denis, my boy, pray don’t!”

“But I shall be ashamed to go about the place, mamma. It is so mean and petty.”

“How dare you, sir! how dare you!” cried Lord Pinemount. “Don’t dictate to me. I’ve put up with too much, and I mean to end it all. How dare he – a confounded Yankee!”

“Doctor Salado is an English gentleman, father.”

“Nothing of the sort, sir. Look at his name. Comes here from nobody knows where.”

“Yes, they do, sir. He comes here from Iquique, and he is one of the most famous naturalists of the day.”

“I don’t care what he is. Comes here, I say; and just as at last that wretched old woman dies, and the Sandleighs is in the market – a place that ought by rights to belong to the manor – he must bid over that idiot Markby’s head, and secure the place. I told Markby distinctly that I wanted that cottage and grounds. Went at such a price, he said. Fool! And then, when I offered this miserable foreign adventurer five hundred pounds to give it up, he must send me an insulting message.”

“It was only a quiet letter, my dear,” said Lady Pinemount, “to say that he had taken a fancy to the place, and preferred to keep it.”

“You mind your own business,” said his lordship, his florid face growing slightly apoplectic of aspect. “I’m not blind. But I won’t have it. You write and ask the Elsgraves here; and you, Denis, recollect that I expect you to be civil to Hilda Elsgrave. The Earl and I quite understand each other about that.”

“If you expect me to begin paying attentions to a girl whom I dislike, and who dislikes me, sir,” said the young man firmly, “I’m afraid you will be disappointed.”

“No, sir: look here – ”

“Edward, my love – ”

“Hold – your – tongue. I’m master while I live, and I’ll have my way. You, Denis, you’ve got to marry Hilda; and if I hear of your hanging about the Sandleighs again, and talking to that half-bred Spanish hussy – ”

“Look here, father: when you insult Miss Salado, you insult me.”