From Squire to Squatter: A Tale of the Old Land and the New

Stables Gordon

From Squire to Squatter: A Tale of the Old Land and the New

Chapter One

Book I – At Burley Old Farm

“Ten to-morrow, Archie.”

“So you’ll be ten years old to-morrow, Archie?”

“Yes, father; ten to-morrow. Quite old, isn’t it? I’ll soon be a man, dad. Won’t it be fun, just?”

His father laughed, simply because Archie laughed. “I don’t know about the fun of it,” he said; “for, Archie lad, your growing a man will result in my getting old. Don’t you see?”

Archie turned his handsome brown face towards the fire, and gazed at it – or rather into it – for a few moments thoughtfully. Then he gave his head a little negative kind of a shake, and, still looking towards the fire as if addressing it, replied:

“No, no, no; I don’t see it. Other boys’ fathers may grow old; mine won’t, mine couldn’t, never, never.”

“Dad,” said a voice from the corner. It was a very weary, rather feeble, voice. The owner of it occupied a kind of invalid couch, on which he half sat and half reclined – a lad of only nine years, with a thin, pale, old-fashioned face, and big, dark, dreamy eyes that seemed to look you through and through as you talked to him.

“Dad.”

“Yes, my dear.”

“Wouldn’t you like to be old really?”

“Wel – ,” the father was beginning.

“Oh,” the boy went on, “I should dearly love to be old, very old, and very wise, like one of these!” Here his glance reverted to a story-book he had been reading, and which now lay on his lap.

His father and mother were used to the boy’s odd remarks. Both parents sat here to-night, and both looked at him with a sort of fond pity; but the child’s eyes had half closed, and presently he dropped out of the conversation, and to all intents and purposes out of the company.

“Yes,” said Archie, “ten is terribly old, I know; but is it quite a man though? Because mummie there said, that when Solomon became a man, he thought, and spoke, and did everything manly, and put away all his boy’s things. I shouldn’t like to put away my bow and arrow – what say, mum? I shan’t be altogether quite a man to-morrow, shall I?”

“No, child. Who put that in your head?”

“Oh, Rupert, of course! Rupert tells me everything, and dreams such strange dreams for me.”

“You’re a strange boy yourself, Archie.”

His mother had been leaning back in her chair. She now slowly resumed her knitting. The firelight fell on her face: it was still young, still beautiful – for the lady was but little over thirty – yet a shade of melancholy had overspread it to-night.

The firelight came from huge logs of wood, mingled with large pieces of blazing coals and masses of half-incandescent peat. A more cheerful fire surely never before burned on a hearth. It seemed to take a pride in being cheerful, and in making all sorts of pleasant noises and splutterings. There had been bark on those logs when first heaped on, and long white bunches of lichen, that looked like old men’s beards; but tongues of fire from the bubbling, caking coals had soon licked those off, so that both sticks and peat were soon aglow, and the whole looked as glorious as an autumn sunset.

And firelight surely never before fell on cosier room, nor on cosier old-world furniture. Dark pictures, in great gilt frames, hung on the walls, almost hiding it; dark pictures, but with bright colours standing out in them, which Time himself had not been able to dim; albeit he had cracked the varnish. Pictures you could look into – look in through almost – and imagine figures that perhaps were not in them at all; pictures of old-fashioned places, with quaint, old-fashioned people and animals; pictures in which every creature or human being looked contented and happy. Pictures from masters’ hands many of them, and worth far more than their weight in solid gold.

And the firelight fell on curious brackets, and on a tall corner-cabinet filled with old delf and china; fell on high, narrow-backed chairs, and on one huge carved-oak chest that took your mind away back to centuries long gone by and made you half believe that there must have been “giants in those days.”

The firelight fell and was reflected from silver cups, and goblets, and candlesticks, and a glittering shield that stood on a sideboard, their presence giving relief to the eye. Heavy, cosy-looking curtains depended from the window cornices, and the door itself was darkly draped.

“Ten to-morrow. How time does fly!”

It was the father who now spoke, and as he did so his hand was stretched out as if instinctively, till it lay on the mother’s lap. Their eyes met, and there seemed something of sadness in the smile of each.

“How time does fly!”

“Dad!”

The voice came once more from the corner.

“Dad! For years and years I’ve noticed that you always take mummie’s hand and just look like that on the night before Archie’s birthday. Father, why – ”

But at that very moment the firelight found something else to fall upon – something brighter and fairer by far than anything it had lit up to-night. For the door-curtain was drawn back, and a little, wee, girlish figure advanced on tiptoe and stood smiling in the middle of the room, looking from one to the other. This was Elsie, Rupert’s twin-sister. His “beautiful sister” the boy called her, and she was well worthy of the compliment. Only for a moment did she stand there, but as she did so, with her bonnie bright face, she seemed the one thing that had been needed to complete the picture, the centre figure against the sombre, almost solemn, background.

The fire blazed more merrily now; a jet of white smoke, that had been spinning forth from a little mound of melting coal, jumped suddenly into flame; while the biggest log cracked like a popgun, and threw off a great red spark, which flew half-way across the room.

Next instant a wealth of dark-brown hair fell on Archie’s shoulder, and soft lips were pressed to his sun-dyed cheek, then bright, laughing eyes looked into his.

“Ten to-morrow, Archie! Aren’t you proud?”

Elsie now took a footstool, and sat down close beside her invalid brother, stretching one arm across his chest protectingly; but she shook her head at Archie from her corner.

“Ten to-morrow, you great big, big brother Archie,” she said.

Archie laughed right merrily.

“What are you going to do all?”

“Oh, such a lot of things! First of all, if it snows – ”

“It is snowing now, Archie, fast.”

“Well then I’m going to shoot the fox that stole poor Cock Jock. Oh, my poor Cock Jock! We’ll never see him again.”

“Shooting foxes isn’t sport, Archie.”

“No, dad; it’s revenge.”

The father shook his head.

“Well, I mean something else.”

“Justice?”

“Yes, that is it. Justice, dad. Oh, I did love that cock so! He was so gentlemanly and gallant, father. Oh, so kind! And the fox seized him just as poor Jock was carrying a crust of bread to the old hen Ann. He threw my bonnie bird over his shoulder and ran off, looking so sly and wicked. But I mean to kill him!

“Last time I fired off Branson’s gun was at a magpie, a nasty, chattering, unlucky magpie. Old Kate says they’re unlucky.”

“Did you kill the magpie, Archie?”

“No, I don’t think I hurt the magpie. The gun must have gone off when I wasn’t looking; but it knocked me down, and blackened all my shoulder, because it pushed so. Branson said I didn’t grasp it tight enough. But I will to-morrow, when I’m killing the fox. Rupert, you’ll stuff the head, and we’ll hang it in the hall. Won’t you, Roup?” Rupert smiled and nodded.

“And I’m sure,” he continued, “the Ann hen was so sorry when she saw poor Cock Jock carried away.”

“Did the Ann hen eat the crust?”

“What, father? Oh, yes, she did eat the crust! But I think that was only out of politeness. I’m sure it nearly choked her.”

“Well, Archie, what will you do else to-morrow?”

“Oh, then, you know, Elsie, the fun will only just be beginning, because we’re going to open the north tower of the castle. It’s already furnished.”

“And you’re going to be installed as King of the North Tower?” said his father.

“Installed, father? Rupert, what does that mean?”

“Led in with honours, I suppose.”

“Oh, father, I’ll instal myself; or Sissie there will; or old Kate; or Branson, the keeper, will instal me. That’s easy. The fun will all come after that.”

Burley Old Farm, as it was called – and sometimes Burley Castle – was, at the time our story opens, in the heyday of its glory and beauty. Squire Broadbent, Archie’s father, had been on it for a dozen years and over. It was all his own, and had belonged to a bachelor uncle before his time. This uncle had never made the slightest attempt to cause two blades of grass to grow where only one had grown before. Not he. He was well content to live on the little estate, as his father had done before him, so long as things paid their way; so long as plenty of sleek beasts were seen in the fields in summer, or wading knee-deep in the straw-yard in winter; so long as pigs, and poultry, and feather stock of every conceivable sort, made plenty of noise about the farm-steading, and there was plenty of human life about, the old Squire had been content. And why shouldn’t he have been? What does a North-country farmer need, or what has he any right to long for, if his larder and coffers are both well filled, and he can have a day on the stubble or moor, and ride to the hounds when the crops are in?

But his nephew was more ambitious. The truth is he came from the South, and brought with him what the honest farmer folks of the Northumbrian borders call a deal of new-fangled notions. He had come from the South himself, and he had not been a year in the place before he went back, and in due time returned to Burley Old Farm with a bonnie young bride. Of course there were people in the neighbourhood who did not hesitate to say, that the Squire might have married nearer home, and that there was no accounting for taste. For all this and all that, both the Squire and his wife were not long in making themselves universal favourites all round the countryside; for they went everywhere, and did everything; and the neighbours were all welcome to call at Burley when they liked, and had to call when Mrs Broadbent issued invitations.

Well, the Squire’s dinners were truly excellent, and when afterwards the men folk joined the ladies in the big drawing-room, the evenings flew away so quickly that, as carriage time came, nobody could ever believe it was anything like so late.

The question of what the Squire had been previously to his coming to Burley was sometimes asked by comparative strangers, but as nobody could or cared to answer explicitly, it was let drop. Something in the South, in or about London, or Deal, or Dover, but what did it matter? he was “a jolly good fellow – ay, and a gentleman every inch.” Such was the verdict.

A gentleman the Squire undoubtedly was, though not quite the type of build, either in body or mind, of the tall, bony, and burly men of the North – men descended from a race of ever-unconquered soldiers, and probably more akin to the Scotch than the English.

Sitting here in the green parlour to-night, with the firelight playing on his smiling face as he talked to or teased his eldest boy, Squire Broadbent was seen to advantage. Not big in body, and rather round than angular, inclining even to the portly, with a frank, rosy face and a bold blue eye, you could not have been in his company ten minutes without feeling sorry you had not known him all his life.

Amiability was the chief characteristic of Mrs Broadbent. She was a refined and genuine English lady. There is little more to say after that.

But what about the Squire’s new-fangled notions? Well, they were really what they call “fads” now-a-days, or, taken collectively, they were one gigantic fad. Although he had never been in the agricultural interest before he became Squire, even while in city chambers theoretical farming had been his pet study, and he made no secret of it to his fellow-men.

“This uncle of mine,” he would say, “whom I go to see every Christmas, is pretty old, and I’m his heir. Mind,” he would add, “he is a genuine, good man, and I’ll be genuinely sorry for him when he goes under. But that is the way of the world, and then I’ll have my fling. My uncle hasn’t done the best for his land; he has been content to go – not run; there is little running about the dear old boy – in the same groove as his fathers, but I’m going to cut out a new one.”

The week that the then Mr Broadbent was in the habit of spending with his uncle, in the festive season, was not the only holiday he took in the year. No; for regularly as the month of April came round, he started for the States of America, and England saw no more of him till well on in June, by which time the hot weather had driven him home.

But he swore by the Yankees; that is, he would have sworn by them, had he sworn at all. The Yankees in Mr Broadbent’s opinion were far ahead of the English in everything pertaining to the economy of life, and the best manner of living. He was too much of a John Bull to admit that the Americans possessed any superiority over this tight little isle, in the matter of either politics or knowledge of warfare. England always had been, and always would be, mistress of the seas, and master of and over every country with a foreshore on it. “But,” he would say, “look at the Yanks as inventors. Why, sir, they beat us in everything from button-hook. Look at them as farmers, especially as wheat growers and fruit raisers. They are as far above Englishmen, with their insular prejudices, and insular dread of taking a step forward for fear of going into a hole, as a Berkshire steam ploughman is ahead of a Skyeman with his wooden turf-turner. And look at them at home round their own firesides, or look at their houses outside and in, and you will have some faint notion of what comfort combined with luxury really means.”

It will be observed that Mr Broadbent had a bold, straightforward way of talking to his peers. He really had, and it will be seen presently that he had, “the courage of his own convictions,” to use a hackneyed phrase.

He brought those convictions with him to Burley, and the courage also.

Why, in a single year – and a busy, bustling one it had been – the new Squire had worked a revolution about the place. Lucky for him, he had a well-lined purse to begin with, or he could hardly have come to the root of things, or made such radical reforms as he did.

When he first took a look round the farm-steading, he felt puzzled where to begin first. But he went to work steadily, and kept it up, and it is truly wonderful what an amount of solid usefulness can be effected by either man or boy, if he has the courage to adopt such a plan.

Chapter Two

A Chip of the Old Block

It was no part of Squire Broadbent’s plan to turn away old and faithful servants. He had to weed them though, and this meant thinning out to such an extent that not over many were left.

The young and healthy creatures of inutility had to shift; but the very old, the decrepit – those who had become stiff and grey in his uncle’s service – were pensioned off. They were to stay for the rest of their lives in the rural village adown the glen – bask in the sun in summer, sit by the fire of a winter, and talk of the times when “t’old Squire was aboot.”

The servants settled with, and fresh ones with suitable “go” in them established in their place, the live stock came in for reformation.

“Saint Mary! what a medley!” exclaimed the Squire, as he walked through the byres and stables, and past the styes. “Everything bred anyhow. No method in my uncle’s madness. No rules followed, no type. Why the quickest plan will be to put them all to the hammer.”

This was cutting the Gordian-knot with a vengeance, but it was perhaps best in the long run.

Next came renovation of the farm-steading itself; pulling down and building, enlarging, and what not, and while this was going on, the land itself was not being forgotten. Fences were levelled and carted away, and newer and airier ones put up, and for the most part three and sometimes even five fields were opened into one. There were woods also to be seen to. The new Squire liked woods, but the trees in some of these were positively poisoning each other. Here was a larch-wood, for instance – those logs with the long, grey lichens on them are part of some of the trees. So closely do the larches grow together, so white with moss, so stunted and old-looking, that it would have made a merry-andrew melancholy to walk among them. What good were they? Down they must come, and down they had come; and after the ground had been stirred up a bit, and left for a summer to let the sunshine and air into it, all the hill was replanted with young, green, smiling pines, larches, and spruces, and that was assuredly an improvement. In a few years the trees were well advanced; grass and primroses grew where the moss had crept about, and the wood in spring was alive with the song of birds.

The mansion-house had been left intact. Nothing could have added much to the beauty of that. It stood high up on a knoll, with rising park-like fields behind, and at some considerable distance the blue slate roofs of the farm-steading peeping up through the greenery of the trees. A solid yellow-grey house, with sturdy porch before the hall door, and sturdy mullioned windows, one wing ivy-clad, a broad sweep of gravel in front, and beyond that, lawns and terraces, and flower and rose gardens. And the whole overlooked a river or stream, that went winding away clear and silvery till it lost itself in wooded glens.

The scenery was really beautiful all round, and in some parts even wild; while the distant views of the Cheviot Hills lent a charm to everything.

There was something else held sacred by the Squire as well as the habitable mansion, and that was Burley Old Castle. Undoubtedly a fortress of considerable strength it had been in bygone days, when the wild Scots used to come raiding here, but there was no name for it now save that of a “ruin.” The great north tower still stood firm and bold, and three walls of the lordly hall, its floor green with long, rank grass; the walls themselves partly covered with ivy, with broom growing on the top, which was broad enough for the half-wild goats to scamper along.

There was also the donjon keep, and the remains of a fosse; but all the rest of this feudal castle had been unceremoniously carted away, to erect cowsheds and pig-styes with it.

“So sinks the pride of former days,When glory’s thrill is o’er.”

No, Squire Broadbent did not interfere with the castle; he left it to the goats and to Archie, who took to it as a favourite resort from the time he could crawl.

But these – all these – new-fangled notions the neighbouring squires and farmers bold could easily have forgiven, had Broadbent not carried his craze for machinery to the very verge of folly. So they thought. Such things might be all very well in America, but they were not called for here. Extraordinary mills driven by steam, no less wonderful-looking harrows, uncanny-like drags and drilling machines, sowing and reaping machines that were fearfully and wonderfully made, and ploughs that, like the mills, were worked by steam.

Terrible inventions these; and even the men that were connected with them had to be brought from the far South, and did not talk a homely, wholesome lingua, nor live in a homely, wholesome way.

His neighbours confessed that his crops were heavier, and the cereals and roots finer; but they said to each other knowingly, “What about the expense of down-put?” And as far as their own fields went, the plough-boy still whistled to and from his work.

Then the new live stock, why, type was followed; type was everything in the Squire’s eye and opinion. No matter what they were, horses, cattle, pigs, sheep, and feather stock, even the dogs and birds were the best and purest of the sort to be had.

But for all the head-shaking there had been at first, things really appeared to prosper with the Squire; his big, yellow-painted wagons, with their fine Clydesdale horses, were as well known in the district and town of B – as the brewer’s dray itself. The “nags” were capitally harnessed. What with jet-black, shining leather, brass-work that shone like burnished gold, and crimson-flashing fringes, it was no wonder that the men who drove them were proud, and that they were favourites at every house of call. Even the bailiff himself, on his spirited hunter, looked imposing with his whip in his hand, and in his spotless cords.

Breakfast at Burley was a favourite meal, and a pretty early one, and the capital habit of inviting friends thereto was kept up. Mrs Broadbent’s tea was something to taste and remember; while the cold beef, or that early spring lamb on the sideboard, would have converted the veriest vegetarian as soon as he clapped eyes on it.

On his spring lamb the Squire rather prided himself, and he liked his due meed of praise for having reared it. To be sure he got it; though some of the straightforward Northumbrians would occasionally quizzingly enquire what it cost him to put on the table.

Squire Broadbent would not get out of temper whatever was said, and really, to do the man justice, it must be allowed that there was a glorious halo of self-reliance around his head; and altogether such spirit, dash, and independence with all he said and did, that those who breakfasted with him seemed to catch the infection. Their farms and they themselves appeared quite behind the times, when viewed in comparison with Broadbent’s and with Broadbent himself.

If ever a father was loved and admired by a son, the Squire was that man, and Archie was that particular son. His father was Archie’s beau ideal indeed of all that was worth being, or saying, or knowing, in this world; and Rupert’s as well.

He really was his boys’ hero, but behaved more to them as if he had been just a big brother. It was a great grief to both of them that Rupert could not join in their games out on the lawn in summer – the little cricket matches, the tennis tournaments, the jumping, and romping, and racing. The tutor was younger than the Squire by many years, but he could not beat him in any manly game you could mention.

Yes, it was sad about Rupert; but with all the little lad’s suffering and weariness, he was such a sunny-faced chap. He never complained, and when sturdy, great, brown-faced Archie carried him out as if he had been a baby, and laid him on the couch where he could witness the games, he was delighted beyond description.

I’m quite sure that the Squire often and often kept on playing longer than he would otherwise have done just to please the child, as he was generally called. As for Elsie, she did all her brother did, and a good deal more besides, and yet no one could have called her a tom girl.

As the Squire was Archie’s hero, I suppose the boy could not help taking after his hero to some extent; but it was not only surprising but even amusing to notice how like to his “dad” in all his ways Archie had at the age of ten become. The same in walk, the same in talk, the same in giving his opinion, and the same in bright, determined looks. Archie really was what his father’s friends called him, “a chip of the old block.”

He was a kind of a lad, too, that grown-up men folks could not help having a good, romping lark with. Not a young farmer that ever came to the place could have beaten Archie at a race; but when some of them did get hold of him out on the lawn of an evening, then there would be a bit of fun, and Archie was in it.

These burly Northumbrians would positively play a kind of pitch and toss with him, standing in a square or triangle and throwing him back and fore as if he had been a cricket ball. And there was one very tall, wiry young fellow who treated Archie as if he had been a sort of dumb-bell, and took any amount of exercise out of him; holding him high aloft with one hand, swaying him round and round and up and down, changing hands, and, in a word, going through as many motions with the laughing boy as if he had been inanimate.

I do not think that Archie ever dressed more quickly in his life, than he did on the morning of that auspicious day which saw him ten years old. To tell the truth, he had never been very much struck over the benefits of early rising, especially on mornings in winter. The parting between the boy and his warm bed was often of a most affecting character. The servant would knock, and the gong would go, and sometimes he would even hear his father’s voice in the hall before he made up his mind to tear himself away.