Sawn Off: A Tale of a Family Tree

Fenn George Manville

Sawn Off: A Tale of a Family Tree

Volume One – Chapter One.

Naboth and his Vineyard

“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.”

Volume One – Chapter Two.

His Lordship is Angry

“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.”

“Silence, sir!” roared his lordship. “Listen to what I say. Insult you! Puppy! How dare you! The father’s an adventurer, and you’re mad after a big-eyed adventuress.”

“She is a lady, sir.”

“Silence! And as for you, Lady Pinemount, you must have been mad to call upon them. That was the beginning of the mischief.”

“Miss Salado is a very sweet, refined girl, Edward,” said her ladyship quietly, “and it was a social duty to call.”

“Then you’ve done your duty, and there’s an end of it. I won’t have it, and I won’t have the fellow staring over into my park. Coming and sticking himself there! Won’t sell the place again, won’t he? Never another inch of timber or head of beasts does that auctioneer sell for me.”

The Honourable Denis Rolleston was about to speak, but a meaning look from handsome, dignified Lady Pinemount silenced him, and the angry head of the family rose from his half finished lunch and paced the room.

“Taken a fancy to the place, has he? I’ll make him take a fancy to go. The sooner he’s out of Lescombe the better. Like to buy the manor, perhaps? But I’ll make it too hot for him. And you, Denis, understand me at once. I can’t interfere about the title; but look here, sir, you marry as I wish you to, – keep up the dignity of our family tree. You are the head, sir, but if you don’t do as I tell you, sir, not a penny do you have to support the title, for I’ll disinherit you. Yes, sir, you think you’re a devilish fine branch, no doubt, but damme, I’ll saw you off!”

As his lordship spoke, he bounced out of the dining-room, banged the door, and directly after mother and son saw him going straight across the fields to inspect the hoarding he had ordered to be put up.

“I am very sorry, Denis, my dear,” said Lady Pinemount.

“Can’t be helped, mother dear,” said the young man, passing his arm round her and walking up towards the window, where they stood watching his lordship’s diminishing figure. “I want to be a good son, and I never kick against the dad’s eccentricities, except when they are too bad. That is such a petty, ungentlemanly trick – an insult to as fine a fellow as ever breathed, and – ”

“You do love Veronica, my boy?” said Lady Pinemount, gazing wistfully at her son.

“Love her?” said the young man, with his frank, handsome English face lighting. “Mother dear, could I pick out a sweeter wife?”

Lady Pinemount sighed, and kissed her son.

Volume One – Chapter Three.

How the Doctor Hit

“Down again, Very!” cried the Doctor, a week later, as he came in from a botanical ramble to breakfast. “Why, eh? – yes – no: it has been burned.”

“Yes, papa: didn’t you see the flames?”

“Not I. Slept like a top, and I went out through the sandpits and among the fir trees this morning.”

He hurried out of the French window, and out into the road, and looked over the hedge into the park and then returned.

“Seems to have been splashed with petroleum or paraffin. Twice cut down, and once burned. Well, somebody else does not like the hoarding.”

“But, papa, you gave orders for it to be destroyed!”

“I? Hang it all, Very, am I the sort of man to do such a shabby thing?”

“No, papa: I beg your pardon.”

“Granted, pet. Some one in the village thinks it’s a paltry thing to do, and has constituted himself our champion. Confound his insolence! What did he say in his letter?”

“That if you dared to destroy his property, he would prosecute you, papa,” said Veronica.

“Yes, and he has sent me a summons.”

“Oh, papa!”

“Fact, my dear; and I shall be puzzled as to how to defend myself and prove my innocency. I say, Very, my dear, this looks bad for you.”

The girl sighed, and bent over her cup.

“Wouldn’t be a pleasant alliance, my dear, even if it could come off,” continued the Doctor, watching his child furtively. “Ah, dear me! how strangely things do work! Who’d have thought, when we landed in England, that there was the heir to a baron bold waiting to go down on bended knee to my little tyrant, and make her an offer of his heart and hand?”

“Oh, papa, how you do delight in teasing me!”

“Teasing you? Well, isn’t it a fact? You shot him through and through first time we were at church, and your victim has been our humble servant ever since.”

“But, papa, do you think Thomas could have destroyed the hoarding?”

“Well, I don’t know, my dear. He was very indignant about it, and said if this was his place he would soon down with the obstruction.”

“Then it must have been he. You ought to scold him well.”

“What, for getting rid of a nuisance?”

“No: for getting you into such trouble with Lord Pinemount.”

“Hah!” said the Doctor dreamily; “it’s a strange world, Very. Perhaps we had better go back to Iquique.”

“Oh, papa!” cried the girl in dismay.

“Don’t you want to go?”

“What, leave this lovely place, where it is always green, and the flowers are everywhere, for that dreadful dry desert place where one is parched to death? Ah, no, no, no!”

“Humph!” said the Doctor – “always green. Don’t seem so, Very: something, to my mind, is getting ripe at a tremendous rate.”

“I don’t know what you mean, dear,” said the girl consciously.

“Don’t you? Ah well, never mind. But you need not be uneasy, – I do not mean to go back: this place will just suit me to write my book, and I’m not going to stir for all the Lord Pinemounts in England.”

“I wonder how you could ever leave so beautiful a country as England, papa,” said Veronica, as the breakfast went on.

“You wouldn’t wonder, if you knew all,” said the Doctor thoughtfully.

“All, papa? – all what?”

The Doctor was silent, and his child respected his silence. The breakfast was ended, and the paper was thrown down.

“I don’t see why you should not know, my dear. You are a woman now, and thinking about such things.”

Veronica looked across at him wonderingly.

“You asked me why I left England, or some such question. It was because of the woman I loved, my dear.”

“Mamma? To join her at Iquique?”

“No,” said the Doctor thoughtfully; “it was before I knew of her existence.”

“Ah, papa!”

“Yes, my dear. I was desperately in love with a lady before I knew your dear mother.”

Veronica rose with wondering eyes, and knelt down beside her father, resting her elbows on his knees and gazing up in his face.

“Do people – ? You loved mamma very dearly, papa?” she whispered.

“Very, my child; and we were very happy till it pleased Heaven to take her away. She taught a poor, weak, foolish man what a good woman really is.”

There was a long pause, and then Veronica said, —

“Do people love more than once, papa?”

“I don’t know, dear,” he said, smiling. “I loved here in England very desperately, and when the lady I worshipped threw me over for another, I swore I would never look a woman in the face again with the idea of wedding; and in utter disgust left England, and all I knew, to roam for a time in the Malay Archipelago; and from thence I went to South America, following out my natural history tasks. Then I found out I had been a fool.”

“I do not understand you, papa.”

“I found, my darling, that I had wasted the strength of a young man’s first love upon a miserable handsome coquette.”

“How did you find that out, papa?”

“By meeting your dear mother, who was everything a true woman should be; and instead of my life proving to be a miserable state of exile, it was all that joy could give till the day of the great pain.”

There was another long pause, and then the Doctor said cheerfully, —

“And that’s why Doctor Salado went away from England. By the way, Very, I’m not a regular doctor, though I studied medicine after I left England very hard.”

“How can you say so, dear, when you know how all the poor people cried at your going away? They said no one would ever cure them of the fever again as you did. Why, they always called you the great doctor.”

“Yes, my dear: but people here would call me the great quack. There, I’m going for my walk round. But – hullo! here’s his lordship to see the burnt hoarding.”

For just at that moment Lord Pinemount’s loud, harsh voice floated in at the window.

“Disgraceful!” he cried.

Then there was a murmur of another voice, and again of another, as if two men were respectfully addressing his lordship.

“An old scoundrel!” came in at the window again.

“He means me!” cried the Doctor excitedly, rising.

“No, no, papa – please, please!” whispered Veronica, clinging to him.

“But I’m sure he does, Very.”

“I mean, don’t go out, papa dear: you would be so angry.”

“Would be? I am! – furiously angry. How dare he call me an old scoundrel!”

“Pray, pray don’t quarrel with him, dear.”

“I’m not going to, pet; but I’ll knock his head off for him.”

“No, no; you shall not go out, dear. I will not have my dear father disgrace himself like that.”

“I declare, Very, you are worse than your poor mother used to be. I must go and hit him, or I shall explode.”

“Then please explode here, papa dear, at me.”

“You’re a strange girl, Very, ’pon my soul,” cried the Doctor.

“Yes, papa dear,” she said quietly, but clinging tightly to his arm.

“How dare he come and damage my property!” floated in through the window.

“Buzz-buzz-buzz,” from another voice.

“But I will, sir. How dare he? I’ll lay the horsewhip across the scoundrel’s back!”

“Buzz-buzz – buzz-buzz.”

“Law or no law, he shall have the horsewhip first and the fine or imprisonment afterwards. These foreign rowdy ways shall not be tolerated here.”

“Let go, Very. I can’t stand it, I tell you,” said the Doctor. But Veronica threw her arms now about his neck, and laid her head close to his cheek, and clung there.

“Will you let go?”

“No, papa.”

“Do you want me to hit you?”

“Yes, papa dear.”

“Hang it, Very, it’s too bad! You’re a coward. You know I can’t.”

“Yes, papa dear; I know you’d sooner cut off your hand.”

“A blackguardly old scoundrel!” floated through the window.

“Yes? my lord.”

“Ah! I am, am I?” cried the Doctor. “Let go, Very.”

“No, papa dear: never.”

“Out, I suppose?” came, as if shouted for the inmates of the cottage to hear.

“I will be directly, you pompous, titled bully,” muttered the Doctor.

“Buzz-buzz – buzz-buzz,” in two different keys.

“Yes, I suppose so,” cried his lordship; “but if he thinks he is going to defeat me he is sadly mistaken.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Very! will you untie those wretched little arms of yours from about my neck?”

“No, papa dear; and I’m not afraid of your hitting me.”

“Then, if you don’t let go, I’ll hit myself.”

Veronica raised her head a little, and kissed him.

“No: at home, and dare not show his face!” roared Lord Pinemount.

“There!” cried the Doctor. “Every word is a stinging blow in the face, Very.”

“Yes, papa; but I’m kissing the places to make them well,” said Veronica, suiting the action to the word.

“But I’ll let him see.”

“Buzz-buzz-buzz, – boozz-boozz-boozz,” and the sound of horse’s hoofs slowly dying away.

“Gone!” cried the Doctor passionately. “Very, you’ve made me seem like a miserable cowards that man will despise me, and insult us more than ever.”

“You are angry, papa dear; but when you grow calm you will tell me I’ve done quite right.”

“Humph! I’ll tell you so now, my darling,” said the Doctor, kissing her affectionately; “but my fingers itched to knock him down.”

“And when you had done so, you would have been very sorry, papa dear; for you would have hurt yourself.”

“What, my knuckles?”

“No, papa – your dignity as a gentleman; and you would have hurt me, too, very much.”

“You’re a witch, Very,” said the Doctor, drawing a long sigh. “What an overbearing brute it is! and I’ll be bound to say that son of his will develop into just such another animal.”

“Papa!”

“Hallo! what have I said?” cried the Doctor, with his eyes winking.

“Hit me after all,” said Very to herself, as she ran sobbing out of the room, but only to be caught upon the stairs and tenderly kissed and petted till her eyes grew dry, and the hysterical sobs which would rise to her lips had cleared.

Volume One – Chapter Four.

Stop!

About a couple of hours later the Doctor was down in his garden with a large note-book in his hand, a pen behind his ear, and an exciseman’s ink-bottle suspended by a piece of silk ribbon to his button-hole. Every now and then, as he walked up and down the gravel walk, he stopped to gaze away south at the lovely prospect, his eyes resting longest on a magnificent clump of fir trees which grew just beyond the bottom of the grounds, and hid from sight some very, shabby sand pits, which had something to do with the place being called “Sandleighs.”

They were splendid old trees, every one having grown straight and clean, for the sandy soil suited them, and a timber merchant would have looked at them longingly, and thought what fine sticks of timber they were, and what fine broad planks they would make if borne to a saw-mill.

Veronica was busy too, but not too busy to run to her father from time to time, as she saw that he took his pen from behind his ear, dipped it, and carefully wrote some note for his work. This note he would read aloud to her, and ask her opinion; after which Veronica hurried back to her work, pricking her fingers in spite of her thick gloves, as she carefully went over her rose trees to free them from the enemies with which they swarmed.

Close at hand, upon his knees, which were protected by an old mat, was Thomas, the old gardener, who was diligently extracting little tufts of weed from the gravel walk, and making observations to his young mistress as he went on.

“Make a deal o’ fuss at the Manor ’bout her ladyship’s roses; but they ain’t nowt to yourn.”

“Indeed!”

“Nowt, miss. You see that this guaney jooce as I waters ’em with is reg’lar hessence, and I saves it up. Seven gard’ners, ’cloodin’ a boy, they keeps there; but they can’t touch us in roses, miss.”

Chod!

“What’s that?” said Veronica, looking up as a peculiar sound struck her ear.

Chud! Then chad! and directly after, chod!

Thomas was kneeling bolt upright now, and took off his very shabby cap, and began from habit to scratch his head with the blunt point of the old weed knife.

“Don’t you hear, Thomas?” cried Veronica, keeping a rose grub in suspense between her finger and thumb; and as she spoke the sounds came at regular intervals.

“Ay, miss: sounds like some ’un a choppin’ ’ard.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Veronica, as she caught sight of a couple of men through an opening in the shrubbery at the bottom of the lawn, and she ran to where her father was busily writing down a note, speaking aloud as he went on.

“In the half-ruined capsule – ”

“Papa!”

“One moment, my dear. ‘The sun causes the outer covering to contract, and assume the form of a shiny and – ’”

“Papa, they’re cutting down those beautiful old trees.”

“What!” cried the Doctor, turning in the direction of the clump. “Oh no; it must be a mistake.”

Chod! A tremendous chop.

“By Gladstone!” he roared; and, thrusting his book into his pocket, he ran down the lawn, and, leaping the hedge, passed through to the open, furzy piece of land, where, full in view now, two men were plying their woodmen’s axes rapidly, and making the white chips fly as a ghastly notch began to appear in the side of one of the outer trees.

“Hi! what are you doing?” roared the Doctor, just as Veronica reached the bottom and looked over.

The two men stopped, and rested the heads of their axes on the ground as they grinned.

“Cuttin’ down the trees, sir,” said one of the men.

“What! By whose orders?”

“Lordship’s, sir. Sent us up, and he’s comin’ hisself soon.”

“Do you mean to say that his lordship gave orders for this beautiful clump of trees to be cut down?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But it will disfigure the estate horribly.”

“Well, sir, my mate and the head gardener said as it were a pity.”

“Oh, it’s a mistake, man. You are cutting down the wrong trees.”

“Nay, sir; these here’s right. Lordship said bottom o’ the Sandleighs garden. Can’t be no mistake about that.”

“Then it’s an insult to me,” said the Doctor furiously; “and it shall not be done. Here, come away directly.”

The men looked at one another, and smiled uneasily.

“Do you hear? I say it shall not be done.”

“But his lordship said – ”

“Something his lordship!” roared the Doctor. “You strike a blow, either of you, again on one of those trees, and I’ll strike you. There!”

“Papa!” cried Veronica from the garden; but the Doctor was too angry to hear that or anything else.