Ralph the Heir Part 12

I am, dear sir, Faithfully yours,

GREGORY NEWTON, Senior.

When Sir Thomas read this he was almost in greater doubt and difficulty than before. The measure proposed by the elder Newton was no doubt legal and honourable, but it could hardly be so carried out as to be efficacious. Ralph could only sell his share of the inheritance;--or rather his chance of inheriting the estate. Were he to die without a son before his uncle, then his brother would be the heir. The arrangement, however, if practicable, would at once make all things comfortable for Ralph, and would give him, probably, a large unembarra.s.sed revenue,--so large, that the owner of it need certainly have recourse to no discreditable marriage as the means of extricating himself from present calamity. But then Sir Thomas had very strong ideas about a family property. Were Ralph's affairs, indeed, in such disorder as to make it necessary for him to abandon the great prospect of being Newton of Newton? If the breeches-maker's twenty thousand would suffice, surely the thing could be done on cheaper terms than those suggested by the old Squire,--and done without the intervention of Polly Neefit!

CHAPTER XI.

NEWTON PRIORY.

Newton Priory was at this time inhabited by two gentlemen,--old Gregory Newton, who for miles round was known as the Squire; and his son, Ralph Newton,--his son, but not his heir; a son, however, whom he loved as well as though he had been born with an undoubted right to inherit all those dearly-valued acres. A few lines will tell all that need be told of the Squire's early life,--and indeed of his life down to the present period. In very early days, immediately upon his leaving college, he had travelled abroad and had formed an attachment with a German lady, who by him became the mother of a child. He intended to marry her, hoping to reconcile his father to the match; but before either marriage or reconciliation could take place the young mother, whose babe's life could then only be counted by months, was dead. In the hope that the old man might yield in all things, the infant had been christened Ralph; for the old Squire's name was Ralph, and there had been a Ralph among the Newtons since Newton Priory had existed. But the old Squire had a Ralph of his own,--the father of our Ralph and of the present parson,--who in his time was rector of Peele Newton; and when the tidings of this foreign baby and of the proposed foreign marriage reached the old Squire,--then he urged his second son to marry, and made the settlement of the estate of which the reader has heard. The settlement was natural enough. It simply entailed the property on the male heir of the family in the second generation. It deprived the eldest son of nothing that would be his in accordance with the usual tenure of English primogeniture.

Had he married and become the father of a family, his eldest son would have been the heir. But heretofore there had been no such entails in the Newton family; or, at least, he was pleased to think that there had been none such. And when he himself inherited the property early in life,--before he had reached his thirtieth year,--he thought that his father had injured him. His boy was as dear to him, as though the mother had been his honest wife. Then he endeavoured to come to some terms with his brother. He would do anything in order that his child might be Newton of Newton after him. But the parson would come to no terms at all, and was powerless to make any such terms as those which the elder brother required.

The parson was honest, self-denying, and proud on behalf of his own children; but he was intrusive in regard to the property, and apt to claim privileges of interference beyond his right as the guardian of his own or of his children's future interests. And so the brothers had quarrelled;--and so the story of Newton Priory is told up to the period at which our story begins.

Gregory Newton and his son Ralph had lived together at the Priory for the last six-and-twenty years, and the young man had grown up as a Newton within the knowledge of all the gentry around them. The story of his birth was public, and it was of course understood that he was not the heir. His father had been too wise on the son's behalf to encourage any concealment. The son was very popular, and deserved to be so; but it was known to all the young men round, and also to all the maidens, that he would not be Newton of Newton. There had been no ill-contrived secret, sufficient to make a difficulty, but not sufficient to save the lad from the pains of his position. Everybody knew it; and yet it can hardly be said that he was treated otherwise than he would have been treated had he been the heir. In the hunting-field there was no more popular man. A point had been stretched in his favour, and he was a magistrate. Mothers were kind to him, for it was known that his father loved him well, and that his father had been a prudent man. In all respects he was treated as though he were the heir. He managed the shooting, and was the trusted friend of all the tenants. Doubtless his father was the more indulgent to him because of the injury that had been done to him.

After all, his life promised well as to material prosperity; for, though the Squire, in writing to Sir Thomas, had spoken of selling half the property with the view of keeping the other half for his son, he was already possessed of means that would enable him to make the proposed arrangement without such sacrifice as that. For twenty-four years he had felt that he was bound to make a fortune for his son out of his own income. And he had made a fortune, and mothers knew it, and everybody in the county was very civil to Ralph,--to that Ralph who was not the heir.

But the Squire had never yet quite abandoned the hope that Ralph who was not the heir might yet possess the place; and when he heard of his nephew's doings, heard falsehood as well as truth, from day to day he built up new hopes. He had not expected any such overture as that which had come from Sir Thomas; but if, as he did expect, Ralph the heir should go to the Jews, why should not the Squire purchase the Jews' interest in his own estate? Or, if Ralph the heir should, more wisely, deal with some great money-lending office, why should not he redeem the property through the same? Ralph the heir would surely throw what interest he had into the market, and if so, that interest might be bought by the person to whom it must be of more value than to any other. He had said little about it even to his son;--but he had hoped; and now had come this letter from Sir Thomas.

The reader knows the letter and the Squire's answer.

The Squire himself was a very handsome man, tall, broad-shouldered, square-faced, with hair and whiskers almost snow-white already, but which nevertheless gave to him but little sign of age. He was very strong, and could sit in the saddle all day without fatigue. He was given much to farming, and thoroughly understood the duties of a country gentleman. He was hospitable, too; for, though money had been saved, the Priory had ever been kept as one of the pleasantest houses in the county. There had been no wife, no child but the one, and no house in London. The stables, however, had been full of hunters: and it was generally said that no men in Hampshire were better mounted than Gregory the father and Ralph the son. Of the father we will only further say that he was a generous, pa.s.sionate, persistent, vindictive, and unforgiving man, a bitter enemy and a staunch friend; a thorough-going Tory, who, much as he loved England and Hampshire and Newton Priory, feared that they were all going to the dogs because of Mr. Disraeli and household suffrage; but who felt, in spite of those fears, that to make his son master of Newton Priory after him would be the greatest glory of his life. He had sworn to the young mother on her death-bed that the boy should be to him as though he had been born in wedlock. He had been as good as his word;--and we may say that he was one who had at least that virtue, that he was always as good as his word.

The son was very like the father in face and gait and bearing,--so like that the parentage was marked to the glance of any observer. He was tall, as was his father, and broad across the chest, and strong and active, as his father had ever been. But his face was of a n.o.bler stamp, bearing a surer impress of intellect, and in that respect telling certainly the truth. This Ralph Newton had been educated abroad, his father, with a morbid feeling which he had since done much to conquer, having feared to send him among other young men, the sons of squires and n.o.blemen, who would have known that their comrade was debarred by the disgrace of his birth from inheriting the property of his father. But it may be doubted whether he had not gained as much as he had lost. German and French were the same to him as his native tongue; and he returned to the life of an English country gentleman young enough to learn to ride to hounds, and to live as he found others living around him.

Very little was said, or indeed ever had been said, between the father and son as to their relative position in reference to the property. Ralph,--the illegitimate Ralph,--knew well enough and had always known, that the estate was not to be his. He had known this so long that he did not remember the day when he had not known it.

Occasionally the Squire would observe with a curse that this or that could not be done with the property,--such a house pulled down, or such another built, this copse grupped up, or those trees cut down,--because of that reprobate up in London. As to pulling down, there was no probability of interference now, though there had been much of such interference in the life of the old rector. "Ralph,"

he had once said to his brother the rector, "I'll marry and have a family yet if there is another word about the timber." "I have not the slightest right or even wish to object to your doing so," said the rector; "but as long as things are on their present footing, I shall continue to do my duty." Soon after that it had come to pa.s.s that the brothers so quarrelled that all intercourse between them was at an end. Such revenge, such absolute punishment as that which the Squire had threatened, would have been very pleasant to him;--but not even for such pleasure as that would he ruin the boy whom he loved.

He did not marry, but saved money, and dreamed of buying up the reversion of his nephew's interest.

His son was just two years older than our Ralph up in London, and his father was desirous that he should marry. "Your wife would be mistress of the house,--as long as I live, at least," he had once said. "There are difficulties about it," said the son. Of course there were difficulties. "I do not know whether it is not better that I should remain unmarried," he said, a few minutes later. "There are men whom marriage does not seem to suit,--I mean as regards their position." The father turned away, and groaned aloud when he was alone. On the evening of that day, as they were sitting together over their wine, the son alluded, not exactly to the same subject, but to the thoughts which had arisen from it within his own mind. "Father,"

he said, "I don't know whether it wouldn't be better for you to make it up with my cousin, and have him down here."

"What cousin?" said the Squire, turning sharply round.

"With Gregory's eldest brother." The reader will perhaps remember that the Gregory of that day was the parson. "I believe he is a good fellow, and he has done you no harm."

"He has done me all harm."

"No; father; no. We cannot help ourselves, you know. Were he to die, Gregory would be in the same position. It would be better that the family should be kept together."

"I would sooner have the devil here. No consideration on earth shall induce me to allow him to put his foot upon this place. No;--not whilst I live." The son said nothing further, and they sat together in silence for some quarter of an hour,--after which the elder of the two rose from his chair, and, coming round the table, put his hand on the son's shoulder, and kissed his son's brow. "Father," said the young man, "you think that I am troubled by things which hardly touch me at all." "By G.o.d, they touch me close enough!" said the elder. This had taken place some month or two before the date of Sir Thomas's letter;--but any reference to the matter of which they were both no doubt always thinking was very rare between them.

Newton Priory was a place which a father might well wish to leave unimpaired to his son. It lay in the north of Hampshire, where that county is joined to Berkshire; and perhaps in England there is no prettier district, no country in which moorland and woodland and pasture are more daintily thrown together to please the eye, in which there is a sweeter air, or a more thorough seeming of English wealth and English beauty and English comfort. Those who know Eversley and Bramshill and Heckfield and Strathfieldsaye will acknowledge that it is so. But then how few are the Englishmen who travel to see the beauties of their own country! Newton Priory, or Newton Peele as the parish was called, lay somewhat west of these places, but was as charming as any of them. The entire parish belonged to Mr. Newton, as did portions of three or four parishes adjoining. The house itself was neither large nor remarkable for its architecture;--but it was comfortable. The rooms indeed were low, for it had been built in the ungainly days of Queen Anne, with additions in the equally ungainly time of George II., and the pa.s.sages were long and narrow, and the bedrooms were up and down stairs, as though pains had been taken that no two should be on a level; and the windows were of ugly shape, and the whole ma.s.s was uncouth and formless,--partaking neither of the Gothic beauty of the Stuart architecture, nor of the palatial grandeur which has sprung up in our days; and it stood low, giving but little view from the windows. But, nevertheless, there was a family comfort and a warm solidity about the house, which endeared it to those who knew it well. There had been a time in which the present Squire had thought of building for himself an entirely new house, on another site,--on the rising brow of a hill, some quarter of a mile away from his present residence;--but he had remembered that as he could not leave his estate to his son, it behoved him to spend nothing on the property which duty did not demand from him.

The house stood in a park of some two hundred acres, in which the ground was poor, indeed, but beautifully diversified by rising knolls and little ravines, which seemed to make the s.p.a.ce almost unlimited.

And then the pines which waved in the Newton woods sighed and moaned with a melody which, in the ears of their owner, was equalled by that of no other fir trees in the world. And the broom was yellower at Newton than elsewhere, and more plentiful; and the heather was sweeter;--and wild thyme on the gra.s.s more fragrant. So at least Mr.

Newton was always ready to swear. And all this he could not leave behind him to his son;--but must die with the knowledge, that as soon as the breath was out of his body, it would become the property of a young man whom he hated! He might not cut down the pine woods, nor disturb those venerable single trees which were the glory of his park;--but there were moments in which he thought that he could take a delight in ploughing up the furze, and in stripping the hill-sides of the heather. Why should his estate be so beautiful for one who was nothing to him? Would it not be well that he should sell everything that was saleable in order that his own son might be the richer?

On the day after he had written his reply to Sir Thomas he was rambling in the evening with his son through the woods. Nothing could be more beautiful than the park was now;--and Ralph had been speaking of the glory of the place. But something had occurred to make his father revert to the condition of a certain tenant, whose holding on the property was by no means satisfactory either to himself or to his landlord. "You know, sir," said the son, "I told you last year that Darvell would have to go."

"Where's he to go to?"

"He'll go to the workhouse if he stays here. It will be much better for him to be bought out while there is still something left for him to sell. Nothing can be worse than a man sticking on to land without a shilling of capital."

"Of course it's bad. His father did very well there."

"His father did very well there till he took to drink and died of it.

You know where the road parts Darvell's farm and Brownriggs? Just look at the difference of the crops. There's a place with wheat on each side of you. I was looking at them before dinner."

"Brownriggs is in a different parish. Brownriggs is in Bostock."

"But the land is of the same quality. Of course Walker is a different sort of man from Darvell. I believe there are nearly four hundred acres in Brownriggs."

"All that," said the father.

"And Darvell has about seventy;--but the land should be made to bear the same produce per acre."

The Squire paused a moment, and then asked a question. "What should you say if I proposed to sell Brownriggs?" Now there were two or three matters which made the proposition to sell Brownriggs a very wonderful proposition to come from the Squire. In the first place he couldn't sell an acre of the property at all,--of which fact his son was very well aware; and then, of all the farms on the estate it was, perhaps, the best and most prosperous. Mr. Walker, the tenant, was a man in very good circ.u.mstances, who hunted, and was popular, and was just the man of whose tenancy no landlord would be ashamed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "What should you say if I proposed to sell Brownriggs?"]

"Sell Brownriggs!" said the young man. "Well, yes; I should be surprised. Could you sell it?"

"Not at present," said the Squire.

"How could it be sold at all?" They were now standing at a gate leading out of the park into a field held by the Squire in his own hands, and were both leaning on it. "Father," said the son, "I wish you would not trouble yourself about the estate, but let things come and go just as they have been arranged."

"I prefer to arrange them for myself,--if I can. It comes to this, that it may be possible to buy the reversion of the property. I could not buy it all;--or if I did, must sell a portion of it to raise the money. I have been thinking it over and making calculations. If we let Walker's farm go, and Ingram's, I think I could manage the rest.

Of course it would depend on the value of my own life."

There was a long pause, during which they both were still leaning on the gate. "It is a phantom, sir!" the young man said at last.

"What do you mean by a phantom? I don't see any phantom. A reversion can be bought and sold as well as any other property. And if it be sold in this case, I am as free to buy it as any other man."

"Who says it is to be sold, sir?"

"I say so. That prig of a barrister, Sir Thomas Underwood, has already made overtures to me to do something for that young scoundrel in London. He is a scoundrel, for he is spending money that is not his own. And he is now about to make a marriage that will disgrace his family." The Squire probably did not at the moment think of the disgrace which he had brought upon the family by not marrying. "The fact is, that he will have to sell all that he can sell. Why should I not buy it!"

"If he were to die?" suggested the son.

"I wish he would," said the father.

"Don't say that, sir. But if he were to die, Gregory here, who is as good a fellow as ever lived, would come into his shoes. Ralph could sell no more than his own chance."