CHAPTER II.

"Three hundred years, isn't it, Addie, since the Lefroys first settled

at Nutsgrove?"

"Three hundred years," repeats Addie automatically. "Since the year of

the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, A.D., 1572, when Tristran le

Froi, Sieur de Beaulieu, fled from his patrimonial estates in Anjou to

England, where he settled at Nutsgrove, and married, in 1574, Adelaide

Marion, daughter and heiress of Sir Robert Tisdale of Flockton, by whom

he had issue, three sons and two daughters--Stephen, Robert, Tristran,

who--"

"Three hundred years!" repeats Robert, with fierce bitterness, a lurid

light gleaming in his eyes. "What right had he to treat me like that?

He got it from his father, who got it from his, and so on backward from

son to father for generations. Why should I be made to suffer for his

iniquity? Why should I lose what he inherited in solemn trust for his

son or next of kin? It is infamous, it is monstrous! I suppose it would

be wrong to wish that one's own father--"

"Oh, hush, Robert--hush!"

Addie's hand is placed over the boy's quivering mouth; he is silenced.

Eight months have gone by, and the great evil foreseen by poor Aunt Jo

has come to pass.

Colonel Lefroy, out of reach of remonstrance or appeal, has let the old

home of his forefathers pass out of his hands and his son's forever.

The Jews have seized on the estate, evicted its nominal possessors,

sold by public auction the goods and chattels, the pictures, china,

plate, moldy tapestries, tattered carpets, curtains, scratched

and time stained Chippendale; even the worthless relics of their

nursery-days the homeless wretched children have not been allowed to

take with them. The house and immediately surrounding land, after

some brisk competition, has been purchased by Tom Armstrong, the

great manufacturer, owner of some half-dozen of the most unsavory

chimneys in Kelvick, which at times, when the wind is blowing due

south, carry their noxious effluvia over the dewy acres of Nutsgrove

and the surrounding estates, and most unpleasantly tickle the noses of

aristocratic county proprietors, who have nothing in common with the

busy plebeian heart of commerce and inventive industry throbbing in the

very center of their pastures.

And now Tom Armstrong of Kelvick, a man of the people, who has risen

from the lowest rung of the social ladder, is master of Nutsgrove. And

the dark-eyed, blue-blooded Lefroys stand, some two months after his

installation, leaning against a five-barred gate in an upland meadow,

gazing mournfully, and, oh! how bitterly down on the beloved home they

have lost forever!

"Three hundred years," repeats Robert, with a dreary laugh. "Well, at

any rate, it will take some time to wash the stains of our tenancy

out of the old house, to remove all traces of our footsteps from the

well-worn paths! By Jove, the wretched snob is at work already! Yes,

look at his people hacking away at the flower-beds, ripping up the

avenue, hammering away at the venerable walls! It's--it's enough to

make one's blood boil in one's veins! He might at least have had the

decency to wait until we had gone. I'd like to kick him from here to

Kelvick."

"I don't think he'd let you, Bob," says matter-of-fact Hal. "He's a

bigger man than you."

"Yes, but a plowman can't fight a gentleman; they're out of it in the

first round. Look at the way I polished off the butcher's boy the day

he insulted you--and he's twice my weight. I shouldn't be afraid to

tackle Armstrong if I only had the chance, and souse him in one of his

vile vitriol-tanks, too. That would stop his hacking and hammering

until I was at least out of hearing."

"But, Bob," interposed Lottie, awed by her brother's lordly threats,

"you're mistaken. That man on the ladder by the west wall is not

hammering or hacking anything; he's only trying to clean the big lobby

window outside the housekeeper's room, which, I heard Aunt Jo say one

day, hasn't been cleaned since the year poor mamma died, when I was

a wee baby. It's so hard to reach, and doesn't open; and--and, Bob,

you can hardly blame Mr. Armstrong for weeding those beds, for there

were more dandelions and nettles in them last year than stocks or

mignonette."

"You mark my words," continues Robert, with lowering impressiveness,

heedless of his sister's explanation; "should any of us Lefroys stand

in this meadow, say, this time five years, we shall not recognize the

face of our old home. All its beloved landmarks will be swept away;

the flickering foliage of the grove will have disappeared to make way

for stunted shrubs, starveling pines, and prim Portuguese laurels: the

ivied walls, the mossy stonework, the straggling wealth of creeper,

will have been carted away to display the gaudy rawness of modern

landscape-gardening; the little river gurgling through the tangled fern

and scented thorn-bushes will be treated like the canal of a people's

park; the whole place will reek of vitriol, of chemical manures and

commercial improvements. So say good-by to Nutsgrove while you may, for

you will never see it again--never again!"

"Oh, Robert, Robert, do you think it will be as bad as that?" cries

Addie, turning her soft gray eyes to his wrathful face in wistful

appeal.

"Of course I do! What chance has it of escaping moneyed Vandalism? If

even a gentleman had bought it, no matter how poor--But what quarter

can one expect from the hands of an illiterate vitriol-monger, a

low-bred upstart, like that Armstrong?"

"Do you know, I think you are exaggerating his defects a little, Bob?"

says Addie, languidly. "He's a plain kind of man certainly, both in

manner and appearance; but--but he would not give me the idea of being

exactly ill-bred. He does not talk very loud or drop his 'h's,' for

instance."

"No, that's just it. I'd respect him far more if he did; it's the

painful veneer, the vague, nameless vulgarity of the man that repels

me so, that gives me the idea of his being perpetually on the watch

in case an 'h' might slip from him unawares. If he were an honest

horny-handed son of toil, not ashamed of his shop or his origin, not

ashamed to talk of his 'orse and 'is 'ouse like Higgins and Joe Smith,

I should not dislike him so much; but he's not that style of man--he

belongs to the breed of the pompous upstart, the sort of man stocked

with long caddish words that no gentleman uses, the man to call a

house a domicile, a horse a quadruped, a trench an excavation, and so

on. Talk of the--There goes the beggar, quadruped and all! I dare say

he fancies himself a type of the genuine country squire. Ugh! Down,

Hal--down, Goggles; he'd spot you in a moment! I wouldn't give him the

satisfaction of thinking we'd look at him."

They descend from the gate and stand together, the five abreast, taking

their farewell look, with swelling hearts, at the home where they have

spent their happy careless youth in sheltered union. They are not a

demonstrative family, the Lefroys--not given to moments of "gushing"

or caressing; they quarrel frequently among themselves, coming of

a hot-blooded race; yet, they are deeply attached to one another,

having shared all the joys and sorrows of each others' lives, having

no interests, no sympathies outside their immediate circle; and the

thought of coming separation weighs heavily on their young hearts, as

heavily as the pall of death.

"Well, we'd best make tracks," says Robert, turning away, his hands

shading his eyes, "we'll not forget the 29th of May--your birthday,

Hal, old chap. Last year, you remember we had tea in the grove, and

old Sarah baked us a stunning cake; this year we have made our last

pilgrimage together. Next year I wonder where we shall be? Scattered as

far and as wide as the graves of a household, I fear."

At this point Addie, the most hot tempered but the most tender-hearted

member of the family, breaks down, and flinging her arms round her

brother's neck, sobs out piteously--

"O, Bob, Bob, my own darling boy, I--I can't bear it--I can't bear to

have you go away over that cruel cold sea! I shall never sleep at night

thinking of you. Don't go away, don't go away; let's all stick together

and--and--go--die--somewhere--together! Oh, Bob, Bob, my darling, my

darling!"

There is another general break-down; they all cling one to another,

Hal and Lottie howling dismally, Robert's haughty eyes swimming too in

tears, until the sound of voices in a neighboring field forces them to

compose themselves, and they walk slowly across the upland meadow, at

the furthest corner of which they separate, the boys, at the urgent

invitation of their terriers, making for a rat-haunted ditch in the

neighborhood, the girls strolling toward Nutsford through the northern

end of the grove.

Miss Lefroy stalks on moodily in front, Lottie, still battling with her

emotion, clinging to her firm young arm. Pauline walks behind alone,

full of bitter thought, her straight brows painfully puckered. On the

morrow a new, strange life is to begin for her, one that she knows will

be eminently distasteful; her free young spirit is to be "cribbed,

cabined, confined," in the narrow path of conventionality at last, and

the prospect dismays her. Look as far ahead as she can, she can see no

break in the gathering gloom--can see only that at seventeen the summer

of her life is over and the long winter about to begin. Hope tells her

no flattering tale; she does not know that in herself she holds the

key of a triumphant liberty, of a future of sunlight, of glory, of all

that is sweet too, and coveted by womanhood. Pauline does not know

that she is beautiful, does not feel the shadow of her coming power,

or guess that the lithe willowy grace of her straight young form, the

glorious black of her eyes, the pure glow of her brunette skin, the

chiseled outline of her small features, will purchase for her goods and

pleasures of which her careless innocent girlhood has never dreamed.

No lover has whispered in her ear "the music of his honey vows," and

the cracked, fly-stained mirrors at Nutsgrove have told her nothing;

and so she is sad and sorrow-laden, and the burden of dependence and

uncongenial companionship looming before her seems to her almost more

than she can bear.

In silence they pass out of the green gloom of the grove, where "fair

enjeweled May" has touched with balmy breath each tiny bud, each tender

leaf,

"Half prankt with spring, with summer half embrowned."

Under a scented hawthorn-hedge, skirting the main road that leads into

the High Street of Nutsford, the Misses Lefroy pause for a moment to

adjust the sylvan vagaries of their toilet.

Addie pulls a long limp plume of hartstongue and branch of "woodbine

faintly streaked with red" from the battered leaf of her straw hat,

which she pitches lightly over her straggling locks, then gives her

pelerine a hasty unmeaning twitch that carries the center hook from

the right to the left shoulder, and feels perfectly satisfied with

her appearance. Pauline steps in front of her sister, with a request

to stand on a troublesome bramble caught in her skirt. Addie without

hesitation puts forth a patched unlovely boot, and the other moves

forward with a brisk jerk, leaving not only the incumbrance well

behind, but also a flounce of muddy lining hanging below her skirt; and

thus the descendants of the Sieur de Beaulieu saunter down the High

Street, with heads erect, callous, haughtily indifferent to public

opinion, looking as it the whole county belonged to them.

"Look, mother--look at those poor Lefroys!" cried Miss Ethel Challice,

the banker's daughter, as she drives past in her elegantly appointed

C-spring landau, perfectly gloved, veiled, and shod. "Aren't they

awful? Not a pair of gloves among them! And their boots--elastic

sides--what my maid wouldn't wear! Patched at the toes, too! You would

never say they were ladies, would you?"

"Poor children! They have no mother, you know, darling, and a bad, bad

father."

"Oh, yes, I know! But he was such a handsome, attractive man! Don't you

remember, mother, at Ascot, three years ago, when he asked us to lunch

on his drag, and introduced me to Lord Squanderford, how fascinating we

all thought him?"

Mrs. Challice shrugs her portly shoulders.

"Fascinating, but thoroughly unprincipled, my dear. I do pity his poor

children. What will become of them, thrown destitute on the world?

Well, I have nothing for which to blame myself. I tried to do my best

for them; but--whether it was from want of manner or through senseless

pride I can not tell--Miss Lefroy did not respond to my attempted

civility, and the last day I called--about a year ago--I saw the whole

family flying from the house across the wilderness like a crowd of

scared savages, when the carriage stopped at the hall door."

"Oh, it was all want of manners, of course, mother dear! That poor girl

would not know how to receive a visitor or enter a drawing-room. She

has never been in any society, you know. All the county people have

left off calling on them too; they treated them just in the same way

that they treated you. They're perfect savages!"

"The second girl promises to be rather good-looking."

"Do you think so? She's too gypsified for my taste--looks as if she

would be in keeping at a country fair, with a tambourine and a scarlet

cap."

"She's a remarkably good-looking girl--that's what she is," Mr. Percy

Challice puts in, with a knowing smile--"steps out like a thoroughbred,

she does. 'Twould be well for you, my dear sister, if you had her

action on the pavement."

"So I could have, if I wore boots and skirts like hers," retorts Miss

Ethel sullenly.

"Then I'd strongly advise you, my dear, to get the address of her

milliner and bootmaker at once."