Tumbledown Farm. A novel

Front matter

B iRovel BY ALAN MUIR AUTHOR OF 'children's children,' 'lady beauty,' 'golden GIRLS,' etc. IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON SPENCER BLACKETT [Queers sor to J. ■& |B. JttaxtotU] MILTON HOUSE, 35, ST. BRIDE STREET, LUDGATE CIRCUS, E.C. 1889 [All rights reserved] CONTENTS OF VOL. I. CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTORY - - - - I I. IN WHICH WE CRY TO OUR NOVEL, 'OPEN, SESAME !'---- 8 II. PORTRAIT OF ' A VIRTUOUS AND MODEST YOUNG MAN - - - 23 III. A LOVER'S FANTASIES - - 36 IV. IN WHICH ONE CORNER OF VANITY HARD- WARE'S DREADFUL SECRET PEEPS OUT - 49 V. IN WHICH WILLIE REFLECTS, I REMONSTRATE, AND VANITY WEEPS - 62 VI. MISS AND I TALK THINGS OVER - - 77 VII. GUILTY, OR NOT GUILTY? - - • 8l VIII. FROM WEEPING TO LAUGHTER - 9 1 IX. A STRANGE DIALOGUE - - 1 07 X. ALL FOR HER - - - - 121 XI. VANITY ASKS A HARD THING - - I37 XII.

MISS AND I TALK THINGS OVER - - I46 XIII. VANITY HARDWARE'S DIARY - 15 I XIV. THE PLOT IS THICKENED BY MR. GRACIOUS ME CONTENTS. VI CHAPTER PAGE XV. MASKS AND FACES - - - - 200 XVI. MISS AND I TALK THINGS OVER - - 2 20 XVII. VANITY'S DIARY - - - 225 XVIII. MAN PROPOSES ... - 233 XIX. OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE - - - 247 XX. VANITY'S HEART BREAKS - - - 261 XXI. A VISITOR COMES TO HAMPTON - " 273 XXII. MISS AND I TALK THINGS OVER - - >XK> INTRODUCTORY. ' I do remember an apothecary, And hereabouts he dwells.' Romeo and fuliet. I have lived in the village of Hampton, as child, boy, and man, for nearly seventy years. If you were to start from Exeter, and travel northward a matter of, say, fifty miles, and were then to look around, you would see a circle of pleasant hills ; afar the spires and the smoke of a city, and at hand a large well to-do village.

That village is Hampton, my native place. Supposing the month July, and the time ten o'clock of a sunshiny morn ing, you might also see a shabby-genteel old vol. i. r fellow, with white hair, a stoop, good strong shoulders, five foot eight from the beginning to the end of him, leaning on a sixpenny oak stick, and altogether giving you the impres sion of a man eking out a not uncomfortable existence on something like a pound a week. You might be interested enough to ask some passer-by who the old gentleman might be, shuffling along for his morning air and sun shine. The answer would be, ' Dr. Book.' The shabby-genteel old fellow would be my self. I kept a small chemist's shop in Hampton for many years, and the inhabitants called me ' doctor.' Doctor is that doctor does, and I have cured half the village, first and last ; but I tell you plainly that I never wrote M.R.C.S. or F.C.P., or any such rubbish, after my plain John Book, matters which, at the end of a man's lawful name, always put me in mind of an old lady's pattens, which keep her precious feet from touching the common ground.

Chapter I. In Which We Cry To Our Novel

' OPEN, SESAME !' ' I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled, A queen, with swarthy looks and bold black eyes, Brow bound with burning gold. She, flashing back a haughty smile, began : " I governed men by change, and so I swayed All moods. The ever-shifting currents of the blood According to my humour ebb and flow." ' A Dream of Fair Women. Nestling half-way down the slope of one of our low hills stands a small farmhouse, which in my memory lay vacant for many years. The situation was bleak or pleasant according to the weather and season. Cold and dreary it must have been in a driving winter storm, unless, indeed, a man liked to look out of his TUMBLEDO WN FARM. 9 window and watch the snow whirling round the hills, or found his pleasure at his fireside, where the night wind, whistling under the door or rattling at the casement, made the fagot on the hearth ruddier and hotter by contrast.

Spring-time, however, was not long in paying back winter's debt of dreariness. Thereabout the earliest primrose blew, and the sunshine had more light in it and the air a sweeter smell around that spot than any where in the neighbourhood. Let a bright day come in February, when there was plenty of water about, dripping from the hedges or gurgling at the roadside, and for acres on every side you might have thought the world was clad in green and decked in diamonds. Even now I crawl up there sometimes and taste the breath of spring, which runs into my old blood like wine, and I feel something of the young man tingling in my crazy limbs. Then in summer — in autumn — what a spot it was ! Shady trees, green or golden fields sloping downwards to the river two miles away, or sloping up again, green and gold as before, to the hill-tops on the farther side, from which cool winds blew straight across to you without dipping into the hazy valley that dozed in the hot sunshine below.

It was one hard season against three genial. And I often wondered how it came to pass that the house lay* empty so long that it began to fall into decay. But decay was the word. Some times a roving boy, seeing nobody about, would shy a stone and smash a window ; or half a dozen would play Aunt Sally with the red chimney-pot, or rush and scuffle about in the little garden. And in the growing weather the weeds came up around the door, and the moss would quietly steal into crevices of walls and roof. And in the winter rain would beat through the windows aforesaid, or the snow would melt on the roof and drip through, carrying the ceiling down and leav ing the skeleton of the house with no flesh on its bones. So garden and house, windows and ceilings, were all going to the bad to gether, and at last we called the place Tumbledown Farm, and we used to say that even the rats knew better than to live in Tumbledown Farm.

One day, however, my boy, who was up to his eyes in gossip, came rushing in, basket in hand, and called out, ' The farm's taken !' ' Tumbledown Farm ?' I said ; ' never !' ' I've seen the people,' cried he ; 'an old fellow in a nightcap and spectacles — hooray ! and a young lady in Oh my !' ' No more than two in family, Bob ?' I asked. ' Only two,' he replied. ' And to see him ! Hooray ! And to see her ! Oh my !' ' Heard the name, Bob ?' ' Hardware.' ' And have you heard anything else, Bob ?' ' Nothing else, sir.' ' Bob,' said I, ' what business is this of yours ? Attend to your duties and deliver your medicines. Can I ever teach you to think about your work, and leave other people alone ? Bob,' I said, ' you will never rise. But if your profession was anything sinful you would take to it, and work your way up.

(For, you see, the boy was an orphan ; so I used to talk to him like a father, and hear him his Catechism on Sunday afternoon beside.) Mysterious tenants these new-comers turned out. As for the old man, he scarcely ever went outside his little garden, and all we knew about him amounted to this : he was tall, decrepit, with a long white beard and heavy spectacles, and seemed in wretched health. But his daughter came into the village almost every day, and soon became a well-known character. She was a striking young woman. From what I afterwards learned, her age can hardly have been more than twenty-two, but she looked six years older. Her figure was that of one in the fulness of womanhood, her bust the most shapely I ever saw, and her neck and head wonderfully graceful. She was mindful of the beauty of her figure, and wore her shawl cleverly so as to set herself off; and she knew that she had a pretty pair of feet, and let other people know it too.

Her step was quick, and her carriage lively and alert. She had the whitest skin possible, a handsome face boldly cut, and two dark eyes, easier noticed than forgotten. No doubt you will say this catalogue would set up half a dozen women in the beauty business, and if I were painting a heroine I might be satisfied with something less ; but I soberly assure you that time after time, when she went by my shop-window, I have said to myself, ' I have seen a handsome duchess, and a score of handsome -dairymaids, but, duchess or dairy maid, your like I never saw. And how is it, miss or ma'am,' I would think, ' that, living TUMBLEDO WN FARM. 14 in that shabby home, you can afford to wear boots as spruce and new as if those feet of yours were shoemaker's patterns set out in a shop-window ?' Remember, I admired this young woman's appearance, and that was all.

Something in her manner gave me a turn against her. There was wickedness in her eyes — I express myself awkwardly, but my way of putting it is this : her eyes seemed such that, when you looked into them, your own were fastened for a moment, and in withdrawing your glance you seemed to draw the wicked eyes after you. Not that she tried any arts on me, graybeard as I was ; but I could see how she laid herself out to fascinate others, and suc ceeded. Upon consideration, I put her down for an actress ; evidently she had been at some work that had made her easy and familiar, and had rubbed the blushes off her cheeks. Perhaps she never crossed the line that divided propriety from impropriety, but she was pretty well used to skating close to the thin ice, if I may so speak. Our Rector, who made a point of calling on every new parishioner, poor or rich, very soon found his way to Tumbledown Farm.

Rector, a gentleman born, never asked im pertinent questions, but had such a knack of extracting information that, without any appearance of curiosity, he would find out all about a man — from his own lips, too. In this case, however, he came home as wise as he went, and no wiser. It had slipped out — through the postmaster, I believe — that the new-comers' name was Hardware ; and when, by way of commencing a conversation about them, I asked the Rector one morning who they were, all he could tell me was the name, which I knew already. I said all ; but he had one bit of news. ' The young woman is his daughter, I suppose ?' I said. ' She is ; he calls her Vanity,' replied the Rector. What ?' cried I. Vanity. 'Strangest name for a Christian I ever heard,' I remarked. ' Miss Vanity Hardware — sounds odd enough.

Well, Vanity is that Vanity does.' Somehow I am fond of that phrase, and often use it. The Rector looked a little sharp at me ; he always frowned at the smallest beginnings of what in his sermons he used to call evil speaking, and I instantly saw I must hold my tongue. But that name 'Vanity Hard ware ' kept ringing in my ears, and made me more curious than ever to know something of the young woman who bore it. ' Bide your time, John Book,' said I to myself. ' Every thing will come to light if you wait long enough.' And I was right. Once or twice Mr. Hardware was seen in the village. He was very infirm, and used to drive down in Jupp's fly, which was as much an institution in our village as the parish church, both structures being about the same age. Hardware was tall, and looked venerable.

He wore a brown cap with lappets over the ears, and a long blue cloak with a cape, fastened at the neck by a little brass chain and catch — the oddest I ever saw. His hair you could scarcely see, but his beard was long and white ; and his shoes were large, with knobs on the toes, which caught my eye as from my window I watched him lumbering out of the carriage. ' Bunions,' said I. He could hardly rise from his seat, falling back twice, and helped out at last by his daughter and the flyman. ' Lumbago,' said I again. Then he was seized with a coughing fit that nearly shook him to pieces. 'Asthma,' cried I the third time. ' I should say your physic, inside and out, would cost vlo. i. you five shillings a week — supposing you were good for that much money.' Almost immediately after the father and daughter crossed over the street and entered my shop, he supporting himself on her arm, and leaning heavily on his stick besides.

He fell into a chair with a great sigh of relief, and Miss Vanity came to the counter and made one or two purchases, the old man wheezing and mumbling to himself all the time. I wondered if his mind was all right ; as to his body, that was the most striking image of decrepitude I ever beheld. ' Their strength is but labour and sorrow,' thinks I. ' May the Lord take me before my joints are stiff!' In my little garden there was a blossomy sweet-smelling rose, which grew close beside a gnarled withered elder-bush. Do you know, Miss Vanity, dressy and handsome and young, standing beside this grumbling Antiquity, made me think of the rose and the elder ! Now begins the story proper. Just as I was thinking of the rose and the elder, a young fellow, whom I dearly loved, named Willie Snow, stepped into my shop.

He wanted sixpennyworth of spirits of wine, in haste ; so, with one of his easy pleasant nods, he asked Miss Vanity to allow him to be served before her, upon which she drew aside. While I was measuring out the spirit, they thought old gray-hair saw nothing ; but ' Oho, my lass, or my lady !' thinks I ; for I marked her watching him while he stood leaning care lessly against the counter, as taking a young fellow as one would meet in a day's walk. There came over her face that look I spoke of before, as if she would snare him, or try to snare him, when she got a chance. She got the chance soon ; for as Willie put the phial in his pocket, he turned to thank her. She smiled, showing a set of fine white teeth, and, having fixed her dark eyes upon him just for an instant, withdrew her gaze in 2 — affected confusion.

How those tell-tale eyes sank down beneath their long dark lashes with an air of tender modesty that might melt any man's heart ! 'Well done, Miss Vanity !' thinks I. 'Next to being bashful, the prettiest thing in a pretty woman is to seem so.' But Willie, being not half my age, could not be expected to take the thing in this cool way. A light flashed in his soft gray eyes, surprise and pleasure mixing their rays, and the colour deepened on his cheek. He hesitated. 'Good — good — morning,' said he, with stammering lips. ' Thank you !' Vanity raised her downcast eyes, and when their looks met her face kindled into a smile, the sweetest in the world. ' You are very welcome.' Only four words, mark you. But how charming she looked ! A thousand soft and winning beams played over her face, her voice had a melancholy ring, and her eyes drooped to the ground again.

Actress — actress, from her pretty cheek to her heart's core ! Willie seemed struck and dazed ; he passed out silently, and she turned to me again. No more lifting and dropping of the eyes, I pro mise you. Sixty years of age, and an old coat sprinkled with snuff, guard one against these tricks. And when I, in my stupid way, counted thirteenpence-halfpenny and sixpence and one and ninepence to be three and fivepence-halfpenny : 'Three and fourpence -halfpenny !' cried she, with a sharp shake of the head, and eyes as cold as steel. ' I beg your pardon,' said I. Then to my self I went on : ' Love or money, it's all the same to you, my lady — sharp's the word !' The old man hobbled out to the fly again, dragging at his daughter's arm. I must say she seemed kind to him. He managed to TUMBLEDO WN FARM. 22 get seated, and the carriage-door was fastened up with a bit of string.

The handle had dropped off a year before, and had never been replaced, in consequence, Jupp explained to his customers, of the iron trade in the north being choked with foreign orders. So crazy old carriage and crazy old gentleman went off together, creaking and groaning, jolting and ejaculating. And I here declare to you that though I disliked that young woman and de spised her artful ways, yet when she was gone out of the shop I suddenly discovered that a certain Thing in my breast, which I had believed to be dead as a cinder twenty years ago, was hot and lively, just like a young coal new kindled.

Chapter II. Portrait Of

A VIRTUOUS AND MODEST YOUNG MAN. 'Such looks, such bashfulness might well adorn The cheeks of youth that are more nobly born.' DRYDEN. Willie Snow' taking him all round, was one of the finest young men I ever knew. When he was only fifteen his father, a bank clerk, died suddenly, leaving behind him a widow, one son, and seventy pounds a year. Mrs. Snow lived decently on her income and gave her son a good education ; and in due time he got a situation at an iron-worker's in the City, where he rapidly rose in the esteem of his employers, being clever with head and hand, and well conducted. Willie had been a good son, and when, a year before this time, his mother died of pleurisy, he showed remarkable sorrow, and, indeed, did not pick up his spirits for many months. He was now in an excellent position.

Everyone who knew the concern in which he was employed declared that Willie Snow must be a junior partner before long — the business could not get on without him. In addition to all this he was good-looking. Handsome is scarcely the word to use ; for, applied to a man, it denotes a style rather more masculine than his. Without being the least womanish, there was an indescribable delicacy in Willie's face which prepared you for an address the most engaging in the world. His eyes were clear gray ; his hair dark, and thrown across his left temple in becoming irregularity ; he was tall, but not too tall, and a particular melancholy in his expression made his kind frank smile very pleasant to see. You may laugh at old Dr. Book hanging over his portrait, but I loved the lad — everyone loved the lad.

The girls especially. A more heart-breaking fellow you could not find in all the West of England ; and he broke hearts, for one reason, just because he never tried. His ' how-d'you-do ' was always cheerful ; and perhaps, without intending it, when he saluted young women he let an unusual softness slant out in the odd sidelong look it was his habit to give. However that may have been, he won the girls' affections everywhere ; and if I were to count up the one-sided love affairs in which he was hero — he who never troubled his head about love — I should not find the fingers of two pairs of hands sufficient for the purpose. Willie had been a favourite of mine as child and boy, and now, though he had reached the age when young men are apt to forget early friends, he kept up an unbroken intimacy with me, and I knew all the ins and outs of his life.

Have I said he did not trouble his head about love ? I ought to qualify that state ment ; for just now he was on the point of being engaged, and a very prudent choice he was about to make. There was a young woman, an orphan like himself, and good looking, giving (it is true) a promise of turning out rather bony when the plumpness of youth wore off. Her manners were pleasant, though people said that the less she knew of you the more she seemed to like you, and that her ways with near friends and relations were ungracious. But she was a thrifty managing girl, and had a small fortune of her own, which already, by her prudence and good sense, had begun to roll over and in crease like a great snowball, as is money's way when one knows how to deal with it. This Miss Nancy Steele, of her own free will, fell desperately in love with Willie, and let him know it — cleverly, for she was clever in all things.

I was not quite sure that he loved TUMBLEDO WN FARM. 27 her back again. And whether he felt flattered at the conquest, or was too good-natured to repel such an advance, or whether motives of prudence weighed with the lad, I need not inquire. The upshot was that affairs between the two were plainly nearing that point where the measure of the young woman's finger is taken. Nancy showed her feelings of triumph by tightening her lips into a smile that told of a strong will rejoicing in its own success ; the other girls began to flag, seeing that the race was already won, and Willie went his common round, easy, good-natured, and as taking as ever. Only the final word had not been spoken. The fish had nibbled, was hooked, and Miss Nancy was just gathering her wrist to swish him on to the land. At that point their love-story halts for the present.

The evening of the day upon which Willie met Miss Vanity Hardware in my shop he looked in to see me. Something was on that young man's mind that he was afraid to mention, and he kept talking about a score of matters in which he was not the least in terested. But he felt interested in some thing, and deeply too, for his cheek showed an unusual flush, and he was restless, sitting down, rising up, opening and shutting books, but never looking himself for a moment. At last the secret came out. ' Singular old man I saw in your shop this morning.' ' You thought so ?' I replied, resolved to give him no help. ' That young woman is his daughter, I suppose ?' ' So I understand.' Nothing more for a moment or two. ' He is the most singular-looking person I ever saw,' said Willie, appearing prodigiously interested in the old man. ' Quite a curiosity.' ' You thought so ?' I remarked again. ' A total stranger in Hampton, of course ?' Willie went on. ' He did not say he had ever been here before.' The boy looked nonplussed, but soon took courage. ' What is his name ?' he asked. ' Hardware.' ' What an extraordinary name !

And where does he live ?' ' In the old farm uphill.' ' Well,' said Willie, rising to leave, 'he is a remarkable-looking man, and I confess I felt curious to know something about him.' ' Quite right, Will,' replied I. ' Better be curious about old men than about young women. You saw nothing striking in the daughter, did you ?' He took me to be serious, speaking as I did in my dry way. ' Pretty sort of girl,' he said, with make believe indifference. ' A very tolerable girl indeed.' ' I call her a woman — full grown,' said I emphatically. ' Knows more than nine men out of ten, I'll be bound.' But Willie did not seem to hear me : he left the shop without another word. From this time forward, whenever he came to see me, his talk was about the Hardwares, and nothing else, except when he branched off on the neighbouring subject, Nancy Steele.

Willie told me, in one form or another, a con siderable portion of the story I am going to repeat to y-ou ; and all I have to do is to keep the events and conversations in their proper order, which (as I am writing second-hand, and not from myown observation) is not so easy as it may seem to those who have never tried to reproduce a long narrative which they heard from another, and that years ago. A few days after, as Willie was goino home to his dinner, he met Miss Vanity walking at her usual active pace, and lookino as handsome as ever, and (ought I to say it ?) as brazen. The pair might have changed sexes for a moment : the young man blushed like a girl fallen in love for the first time ; the young woman preserved her easy rakish air, like a man pretty well used to love and its etceteras.

Willie would have given a ten pound note for any decent pretext under which he might have spoken to her. As a matter of fact, he stole only one sly glance in passing. Poor boy ! he was dressing her in all the tenderness and modesty of his own passion, blind to what everyone else could see. I dare say, if he had gone straight up to her and patted her on the cheek, she would have laughed and thought him a pleasant young fellow. It was by no means easy to climb the fence of mystery that shut the Hardwares from public view. You perhaps are used to a large town, and know nothing of life in a country village ; but I assure you where two thousand people live in a neighbourhood, everybody knowing everything about everybody else, if all of a sudden two strangers of striking appearance come there and make their abode in an out-of-the-way house, and go on from week to week paying their bills and living respectably, but never giving the smallest account of themselves — under cir cumstances like these, elderly ladies of in quisitive disposition, whose chief amusement in life is to watch their neighbours through the parlour-blind, are apt to get as excited as gamblers when play is deep.

One of these excellent ladies, named Miss Axford, was especially anxious to discover everything about the Hardwares. Though nearly eighty years of age, she was still sharp and active, with a palate for spiced gossip. Morning by morning she went the round of the village, hearing all she could, telling all she could with uplifted hands and eyes that now and then offered to leap from their sockets. She carried an old red satchel hunoover her arm by a steel chain — scandal-satchel I called it ; and wherever she and her bag went, names and fames were in danger. Miss Axford, as I have said, ran crazy about the Hardwares. Once every week she would call in upon me. ' Have you heard anything yet, Dr. Book?' ' About what, ma'am ?' I would say, know ing quite well all the time. ' About those people in the farm on the hill.' ' Not a word, ma'am, no more than if they were ghosts.' ' I expect you to be able to tell me news,' she would say sharply.

She had a hold on me, her quarter's account running from three pounds to three pounds ten, for she doctored the poor — or thought she did, rather. Generally her medicines were thrown out of the back window as soon as she herself went out of the front door. 3 VOL. I. ' When I hear anything, ma'am,' my reply would be, 'you shall know it at once.' But one day she looked in fluttering with excitement. - I have heard some news at last,' she cried. ' What may it be, ma'am ?' ' He drinks !' ' Old man ?' ' Yes.' She leaned across the counter, and said, in an eager whisper : ' Two dozen bottles of gin went up there last week — cordial gin !' ' Bless me !' said I, which is a remark I often make, because it commits you to nothing. ' Cordial gin is the strongest of all, I be lieve,' she went on. ' Bless me !' said I again, for reason as before. ' He is an old sot — a brute beast !' cried TUMBLEDO WN FARM. 35 Miss Axford as she left me, satisfied for the time with her discovery.

Strange old lady ! But I have not inserted her bit of news merely to fill up the page. That would be bad story-telling. No, long enough after, on one awful day, I remembered Miss Axford and her discovery about the quarts of cordial gin. 3—2