From Squire to Squatter Part 6

"Well, I must be going, Bob Cooper. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Master Archie. Ah! lad, if there were more o' your kind and your father's in the country, there would be fewer bad men like--like me."

"I don't like to hear you saying that, Bob. Couldn't you be a good man if you liked? You're big enough."

The poacher laughed.

"Yes," he replied, "I'm big enough; but, somehow, goodness don't strike right home to me like. It don't come natural--that's it."

"My brother Rupert says it is so easy to be good, if you read and pray G.o.d to teach and help you."

"Ah, Master Archie, your brother is good himself, but he doesn't know all."

"My brother Rupert bade me tell you that; but, oh, Bob, how nice he can speak. I can't. I can fish and shoot, and ride 'Eider Duck;' but I can't say things so pretty as he can. Well, good-bye again."

"Good-bye again, and tell your brother that I can't be good all at one jump like, but I'll begin to try mebbe. So long."

Archie Broadbent might have been said to have two kinds of home education; one was thoroughly scholastic, the other very practical indeed. The Squire was one in a hundred perhaps. He was devoted to his farm, and busied himself in the field, manually as well as orally. I mean to say that he was of such an active disposition that, while superintending and giving advice and orders, he put his hand to the wheel himself. So did Mr Walton, and whether it was harvest-time or haymaking, you would have found Squire Broadbent, the tutor, and Archie hard at it, and even little Elsie doing a little.

I would not like to say that the Squire was a radical, but he certainly was no believer in the benefits of too much cla.s.s distinction. He thought Burns was right when he said--

"A man's a man for a' that."

Was he any the less liked or less respected by his servants, because he and his boy tossed hay in the same field with them? I do not think so, and I know that the work always went more merrily on when they were there; and that laughing and even singing could be heard all day long.

Moreover, there was less beer drank, and more tea. The Squire supplied both liberally, and any man might have which he chose. Consequently there was less, far less, tired-headedness and languor in the evening.

Why, it was nothing uncommon for the lads and la.s.ses of Burley Old Farm to meet together on the lawn, after a hard day's toil, and dance for hours to the merry notes of Branson's fiddle.

We have heard of model farms; this Squire's was one; but the servants, wonderful to say, were contented. There was never such a thing as grumbling heard from one year's end to the other.

Christmas too was always kept in the good, grand old style. Even a yule log, drawn from the wood, was considered a property of the performances; and as for good cheer, why there was "lashins" of it, as an Irishman would say, and fun "galore," to borrow a word from beyond the Border.

Mr Walton was a scholarly person, though you might not have thought so, had you seen him mowing turnips with his coat off. He, however, taught nothing to Archie or Rupert that might not have some practical bearing on his after life. Such studies as mathematics and algebra were dull, in a manner of speaking; Latin was taught because no one can understand English without it; French and German conversationally; geography not by rote, but thoroughly; and everything else was either very practical and useful, or very pleasant.

Music Archie loved, but did not care to play; his father did not force him; but poor Rupert played the zither. He loved it, and took to it naturally.

Rupert got stronger as he grew older, and when Archie was fourteen and he thirteen, the physician gave good hopes; and he was even able to walk by himself a little. But to some extent he would be "Poor Rupert" as long as he lived.

He read and thought far more than Archie, and--let me whisper it--he prayed more fervently.

"Oh, Roup," Archie would say, "I should like to be as good as you!

Somehow, I don't feel to need to pray so much, and to have the Lord Jesus so close to me."

It was a strange conceit this, but Rupert's answer was a good one.

"Yes, Archie, I need comfort more; but mind you, brother, the day may come when you'll want comfort of this kind too."

Old Kate really was a queer old witch of a creature, superst.i.tious to a degree. Here is an example: One day she came rushing--without taking time to knock even--into the breakfast parlour.

"Oh, Mistress Broadbent, what a ghast I've gotten!"

"Dear me!" said the Squire's wife; "sit down and tell us. What is it, poor Kate?"

"Oh! Oh!" she sighed. "Nae wonder my puir legs ached. Oh! sirs! sirs!

"Ye ken my little pantry? Well, there's been a board doon on the fleer for ages o' man, and to-day it was taken out to be scrubbit, and what think ye was reveeled?"

"I couldn't guess."

"Words, 'oman; words, printed and painted on the timmer--'_Sacred to the Memory of Dinah Brown, Aged 99_.' A tombstone, 'oman--a wooden gravestone, and me standin' on't a' these years."

Here the Squire was forced to burst out into a hearty laugh, for which his wife reprimanded him by a look.

There was no mistake about the "wooden tombstone," but that this was the cause of old Kate's rheumatism one might take the liberty to doubt.

Kate was a staunch believer in ghosts, goblins, fairies, kelpies, brownies, s.p.u.n.kies, and all the rest of the supernatural family; and I have something to relate in connection with this, though it is not altogether to the credit of my hero, Archie.

Old Kate and young Peter were frequent visitors to the room in the tower, for the tea Archie made, and the fires he kept on, were both most excellent in their way.

"Boys will be boys," and Archie was a little inclined to practical joking. It made him laugh, so he said, and laughing made one fat.

It happened that, one dark winter's evening, old Kate was invited up into the tower, and Branson with Peter came also. Archie volunteered a song, and Branson played many a fine old air on his fiddle, so that the first part of the evening pa.s.sed away pleasantly and even merrily enough. Old Kate drank cup after cup of tea as she sat in that weird old chair, and, by-and-by, Archie, the naughty boy that he was, led the conversation round to ghosts. The ancient dame was in her element now; she launched forth into story after story, and each was more hair-stirring than its predecessor.

Elsie and Archie occupied their favourite place on a bear's skin in front of the low fire; and while Kate still droned on, and Branson listened with eyes and mouth wide open, the boy might have been noticed to stoop down, and whisper something in his sister's ear.

Almost immediately after a rattling of chains could be heard in one of the turrets. Both Kate and Branson started, and the former could not be prevailed upon to resume her story till Archie lit a candle and walked all round the room, drawing back the turret curtains to show no one was there.

Once again old Kate began, and once again chains were heard to rattle, and a still more awesome sound followed--a long, low, deep-ba.s.s groan, while at the same time, strange to say, the candle in Archie's hand burnt blue. To add to the fearsomeness of the situation, while the chain continued to rattle, and the groaning now and then, there was a very appreciable odour of sulphur in the apartment. This was the climax. Old Kate screamed, and the big keeper, Branson, fell on his knees in terror. Even Elsie, though she had an inkling of what was to happen, began to feel afraid.

"There now, granny," cried Archie, having carried the joke far enough, "here is the groaning ghost." As he spoke he produced a pair of kitchen bellows, with a musical reed in the pipe, which he proceeded to sound in old Kate's very face, looking a very mischievous imp while he did so.

"Oh," said old Kate, "what a scare the laddie has given me. But the chain?"

Archie pulled a string, and the chain rattled again. "And the candle?

That was na canny."

"A dust of sulphur in the wick, granny." Big Branson looked ashamed of himself, and old Kate herself began to smile once more.

"But how could ye hae the heart to scare an old wife sae, Master Archie?"

"Oh, granny, we got up the fun just to show you there were no such things as ghosts. Rupert says--and he should know, because he's always reading--that ghosts are always rats or something."

"Ye maunna frichten me again, laddie. Will ye promise?"

"Yes, granny, there's my hand on it. Now sit down and have another cup of tea, and Elsie will play and sing."

Elsie could sing now, and sweet young voice she had, that seemed to carry you to happier lands. Branson always said it made him feel a boy again, wandering through the woods in summer, or chasing the b.u.t.terflies over flowery beds.