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