Evelyn Everett-Green - Fallen Fortunes

Grey sat silent and baffled. It was little he knew of the law; but he had heard before this of men who had left nothing save debts and troubles for those who came after them. Many a fair manor and estate passed into alien hands for years, or even for generations, when trouble fell upon the owners. He understood only too well how it had been here at Hartsbourne – everything squeezed out of the estate, nothing put in, till at last the house was falling into ruin, and the rights of the lord of the manor had passed away from the owner. It was no consolation to Grey that a Dumaresq had supplanted him. He was cut to the heart by the selfish extravagance of his father, and the way in which he had played into the hands of this schemer. He saw how impossible it would be to attempt to live here himself, even if he could establish a legal right to do so. He was not certain if his father could have done anything which should actually hinder him from claiming possession of the house which was his, but to find money to pay off the mortgages – he might as well have sought for money to buy the moon! And even then, how could he live in a house without money, without servants, without friends? No; he must seek to carve out a fortune for himself. His fair dream of a peaceful life in England as a country squire was shattered into a thousand pieces. Some day perhaps – some day in the dim and distant future, when fortune and fame were his – he might come back to take possession of his own. It should be his dream – the goal of his ambition – to dwell at Hartsbourne as its lord and master. But for the present he could call nothing his own save the good horse cropping the lush June grass in the paddock, and that casket so carefully hidden beneath the hearthstone of old Jock's living-room. He would look at the papers. He would make careful study of them. He would take notes as to the amount necessary to clear the estate and make him master in reality. And then he would go; he would not be beholden to this kinsman, whose shifty face he distrusted heart and soul, though his words were smooth and fair. He would ride forth into the fair world of an English midsummer, and would see what the future held there for him.

It was not an exhilarating hour which he spent over the parchments spread out before his eyes, which were eagerly explained to him by the lynx-eyed kinsman, who seemed half afraid to trust them out of his own claw-like clutches. But Grey perused them with attention, making notes the while; and after studying these at the close, whilst the deeds were being locked away, he said, —

"Then when I return with thirty thousand pounds in my pocket, I can take over Hartsbourne, house and lands and all, and be master of my own estate in deed as well as in word?"

"And how are you to come by this thirty thousand pounds, fair coz?" asked Mr. Dumaresq, with something slightly uneasy in his shifty glance. "Right gladly would I receive mine own, and make way for a gallant gentleman like you; but where are these riches of Aladdin to come from?"

"Perchance from the same source as yours did come, sir," answered Grey, looking full at his interlocutor. "The Dumaresqs have not ranked as a wealthy family since the days of the Civil War, when they lost so much. But you seem to have found fortune's golden key; and if you, why not I?"

Did he shrink and cower under these words, or was it only Grey's fancy that he did so? The young man could not be sure, though he had his suspicions. At any rate he spoke suavely enough.

"Thrift and care, my young friend, care and thrift – these qualities are better than any golden key of hazard. My father was a careful, saving man, and at his death bequeathed me greater wealth than I dreamed he did possess. I followed in his footsteps until, for your father's sake, I elected to prop the falling fortunes of the house rather than live in selfish affluence on my own revenues. Well, I did what seemed right; and my reward shall be the hope of seeing Hartsbourne one day restored to its former glories. But for the present I must needs live like a poor man, though that is no trouble to one who has ever made thrift the law of life."

Grey went forth from the presence of his kinsman with a cloud on his brow and a fire in his heart.

"Why doth he speak of himself as poor?" he asked of himself. "He takes to himself all the revenues of the estate; and when I was a boy, I always heard that the farms were prosperous, the land fertile, the timber fine, game and deer plentiful, and the tenants able to pay their dues. If all that comes in goes into his pocket, wherefore doth he live like a miser? wherefore doth he let the house fall into decay? he ruined himself for my father's sake? Tush! A man with that face sacrifice himself for another! Nay; but he is hoarding up gold for himself, or I greatly mistake me. Truly do I believe that he is playing some deep game of his own. Well, I can but wait and see what time will bring forth. It is a shame that the old house should be left to go to ruin like this, with its revenues falling regularly into the hands of a Dumaresq! Why doth he not spend them upon the fine old structure, to make it what it was before? Why, now I see. He thinks it would stimulate me to fresh desire to make myself master. He may haply think that I care not for a habitation given up to rats and ghosts and cobwebs. He little thinks that every fallen stone seems to cry out aloud to me, and that the lower falls the old house in ruin and neglect, the more urgent is the voice with which it urges me to come and save it."

The young man was walking up and down the grass-grown avenue as he thus mused. From thence he could see in perspective the long south front, with its many mullioned windows, its beautiful oriels, and the terrace up and down which he had raced in the days of his happy childhood. Straight in front was the eastern portion of the house, with its great entrance doors, led up to by a fine double stairway, beneath which a coach could stand, and its occupants in wet weather enter by a lower door. But the stone work was chipped and broken; the balustrade had lost many of its balls, which lay mouldering in the long grass that grew up to the very walls. Moss and lichen and stone-crop clothed all, and the creepers which clung about the house itself were wild and tangled, and in many cases had completely overgrown the very windows, so that scarce a trace of them could be seen.

Yet even in its decay the old house was strangely beautiful, and Grey's heart was stirred to its depths. He wandered through the tangled garden, and out towards the fish-ponds beyond and then by a winding pathway he made his way to the churchyard, and stood bare-headed at his mother's grave.

"I will win it back, mother; I will win it back!" He spoke the words aloud, in a low-toned, earnest voice. "You loved the place, and you taught me to love it. For that alone I would seek to call it one day mine own. I will win it back, and methinks your heart will rejoice when your son is ruling there at last."

Grey had meant to leave that very day; but there was much he longed to see, and his kinsman had given him an earnest invitation to pass the night beneath the old roof-tree. Repugnant as this man was to him, and bitterly as he resented his conduct and distrusted his motives, it was not in the young man's nature to be churlish. Every hour of daylight he spent wandering about the place, revisiting his boyish haunts, and chatting with old Jock, who, without being able to give any exact reason for it, distrusted and despised the present master as heartily as Grey himself.

"The old master did too, at the last. I am main sure of it," he said; "else for why should he have given me yon box, sir? And why should he have bidden me hide it and guard it, and let none see it till Sir Grey should claim it himself? For years he had thought him a friend; but I trow he knew him for a false one at the last. You'll best him yet, Sir Grey – see if you don't. A villain always outwits himself in the end. You'll be master here one day, please God, or my name's not Jock Jarvis!"