Chapter VI: Highbridge Farm

Highbridge Farm stood on the summit of the hill which formed one side of the valley of Deepdale, and was by far the most important building in the neighbourhood. It had been in the possession of the Herefords (Hal Rushton’s mother’s family) for upwards of two centuries before it fell, by marriage, into old Mr Rushton’s hands, and it was he who had changed its name from Highbridge Hall to Highbridge Farm, as more consonant with his occupation. It was a long, low house of red brick, darkened to shades of brown and purple with the progress of the centuries, and possessed a slated roof overlaid with a thick thatch. Its outer walls were covered with creepers, which clung lovingly to it without the help of list or nails. Its windows were gabled and lattice-paned, the front door was protected by a deep porch, and the stables and outhouses were all in keeping with the principal edifice. Inside, the rooms were large and lofty--the sitting-rooms greatly exceeding in number those usually required for a farmer’s establishment, and the sleeping apartments built all round the upper portion of the house, with each one opening into the other, as used to be the custom in the days of night alarms from highwaymen. Outside, the grounds were capacious, although much of that formerly devoted to pleasure had been annexed by the late owner for agricultural purposes. Still, enough of the old shrubberies remained to make a very decent clump of trees around the garden, which bloomed with all sorts of old-fashioned flowers. The house was rather sparsely furnished, and the furniture was old-fashioned and worn. Young Mr Rushton had not cared to renovate the place for the convenience of his stepmother and her son, and as for himself, he was scarcely ever in it. His great hobby was riding to hounds, and during the hunting season he spent half his time out of doors. The stables were consequently what he took interest in (leaving most of the farming operations to the sagacity of his bailiff), and Mrs Rushton was always prophesying that he would live to repent of his folly. But, then, everything that the young owner of Highbridge Farm did was folly in the eyes of his stepmother. How he came to keep so unpleasant a person about the premises was a matter of wonder to most of his acquaintance--and how his father had ever established her there, a still greater. But old Mr Rushton had not been of such good blood as his first wife, and after her death he dropt into the habit of associating with persons of a much lower grade. Mrs Snaley had been one of them. Her first husband was nothing better than a herdsman, and she had been a laundress and sick-nurse, and accustomed since her widowhood to come in and superintend the domestic affairs of Highbridge Farm when the owner had one of his spells of sickness. She was a cross-eyed, cat-like creature, ugly to a degree, and still more coarse than she was ugly, but she made excellent beef-tea and custard puddings, and knew exactly how much sugar and port wine to put into a cup of arrowroot--how to minister, in fact, to all those little comforts the neglect of which convert a sickbed into a purgatory. And Mr Rushton had been very sick for many years before he died--ailing from an internal disease which rendered his life miserable, whilst it did not confine him to his bed. Mrs Snaley, with her freckled complexion, green eyes and sandy hair, may not have appeared an angel in his eyes, but he was certainly much more comfortable and better looked after when she was by his side. And so the foolish old man, instead of engaging her as a housekeeper, took it into his head to marry her. Hal had been a lad at school at the time, and was, moreover, too young to express an opinion upon the matter, but Deepdale expressed it for him. Everybody of any respectability in the place, from the vicar (who had _not_ married him, for the widow had been deep enough to persuade him to have the knot tied in the neighbouring parish), to the magistrate of Haltham, were _down_ on the old man for his infatuation; but it was useless shutting the stable door when the steed was stolen. Mrs Snaley, the herdsmen’s widow, had been transformed into Mrs Rushton, the rich farmer’s wife, and drove about in her phaeton like a lady. She held her head very high in those days, and Edward Snaley, her ugly son, who was the image of herself, boasted of the luxuries he enjoyed, and the prospects he looked forward to, as if he had been the heir to Highbridge Farm itself. And so, at one time, he threatened to be. Whence comes the mysterious influence that ill-favoured and unpleasant and coarse women--yes, and even stupid women--sometimes gain over the most sober-minded and clear-headed of men, until they can actually twist them round their little finger? It is not only the lower classes who are taken in this way. Men of high birth have often been known to live and die under such an influence; and whatever it may be, Eliza Snaley possessed it to a large degree, so it is no wonder that old Rushton succumbed to her desires like a lamb. She so worked upon his feelings, and his belief in her integrity, that not long after their marriage he made a will leaving the whole of the property at her disposition, and his son Hal completely at her mercy. But Mrs Rushton’s exultation in this fact overrode her prudence. She could not keep it to herself. She boasted of it everywhere, and soon went so far, when in an ill-temper, as to taunt the rightful heir with his dependence on herself, and to promise him, as soon as his father was gone, she would turn him out of Highbridge Farm. Hal was a tall stripling of eighteen at that time, well able to understand the rights and wrongs of such a matter, and he carried his stepmother’s story to the unbelieving ears of Mr Measures. The good vicar could not comprehend any parent being so totally unjust, and he took an early opportunity to question the old farmer on the subject.

‘There’s an ugly report going about Deepdale concerning you, Mr Rushton,’ he commenced.

‘Indeed, Mr Measures, and what may that be?’

‘That you have left your house and all your farm property to your present wife.’

‘Well, sir, and who has a better right to it?’

‘Your son--most decidedly, your son, Mr Rushton. Do you forget that Highbridge Farm is Hereford property? It will be a perfect scandal if Hal doesn’t inherit what his mother brought to you.’

Mr Rushton was a very obstinate man. He closed his lips firmly together, and was silent.

‘I sincerely trust I have been wrongly informed,’ continued Mr Measures, ‘for all Deepdale would be up in arms against you--in fact, I am not sure that it might not be made a question of law.’

‘You don’t know anything about it, Mr Measures,’ replied the old man roughly; ‘the property came to me without any conditions, and is mine to do exactly as I like with, and I shall leave it to whom I choose.’

The vicar grew very indignant.

‘No, Mr Rushton,’ he exclaimed, rising from his chair. ‘It is _not_ yours to do exactly as you like with, and if you persist in leaving an unjust will behind you, you will hear these words repeated before the Judgment-seat of God. There are many fathers like you in the world, who consider they owe no obligation to the children they have brought into it; but they will find hereafter that as they have sown so they will reap, and they will receive the same justice they have meted out to others. You are an old man, Mr Rushton, and you are a very sick man, who may be called away any day. I hope, before your summons comes, that you will think better of this most iniquitous intention.’

And, seething with righteous indignation, Mr Measures left the old farmer to ponder over what he had said. It was not a pleasant retrospection. Mr Rushton knew he was dying, but he was exceedingly frightened of death, and still more of what might come after it, and the vicar’s words had great weight with him. He thought them over until he made himself quite ill, and his wife discovered the cause of his distress. At that ensued such a violent scene that she quite ‘put herself out of court’ (as the saying is), and made her husband’s opinions veer round like a weathercock. He sent, all in a hurry, for the solicitor from Haltham, had a fresh will (in which he bequeathed his late wife’s property to her son) drawn up, and it was signed and witnessed in the vicar’s presence the same day.

‘But don’t leave me alone with Eliza after this,’ said old Rushton querulously to Mr Measures, ‘for it would kill me. I couldn’t stand it. Promise to stay with me till the end.’ The vicar did promise him, and fulfilled his promise, for the end came all too soon. Before nightfall the excited and weakened invalid had passed away, and Highbridge Farm was the property of Hal Rushton, his stepmother being left one hundred a year for life, chargeable to the estate, and her son Edward Snaley--nothing. How much the widow loved the vicar after this episode may be well imagined. She hated the very ground he walked on, and never lost an opportunity of abusing him and his inoffensive, kind-hearted wife, who she designated as a couple of vipers who had turned her poor dear husband’s heart against her at the last, and shut his eyes to the vices of her stepson Hal Rushton. But she was far too cunning to air her opinions before anybody better disposed than Mrs Gribble or Mrs Axworthy. At the time of his father’s death, Hal Rushton had been too young to foresee the disadvantages that might accrue from this woman and her son remaining at Highbridge Farm, and though Mr Measures saw it for him, he did not like to check the generosity that dictated the oversight. The young man had obtained his rights, and his was not a heart to harbour enmity. So, without any positive understanding being arrived at on the subject, Mrs Rushton and Ted Snaley had stayed on and on, until they had come to consider their occupation of the farm as a right. It was now eight years since his father had died, and his stepmother was complete mistress of his establishment. She ordered the dinners, engaged or dismissed the servants, bought or exchanged articles as seemed good to her, and behaved in every respect as she had done during the lifetime of his father. Of late years, indeed, Hal had sometimes contemplated the advisability of a change in this respect, but the immediate necessity had not arisen, and meanwhile, like most young men, he was glad enough to have the petty cares of domestic life taken off his hands, and to be able to spend his time as he chose. So Mrs Rushton considered her position impregnable. Even if her stepson took it into his head to marry Miss Stafford (and his frequent visits to the schoolhouse had not been unnoticed by Ted Snaley, who carried every tale he could hear against Hal to his mother), she did not anticipate being ousted from her place of honour. But it was her object to prevent such a marriage taking place by every means in her power, and had she known how many sweet dreams Hal had indulged in of late of having the old house all to himself, with Paula moving about it as sole mistress, she would have been still more anxious to make a rupture between them. It was two mornings after their last troubled interview, and poor Hal was not in the best of humours. In his idea, all hope was over, and the girl he loved had disappeared to make way for a woman who had deceived him. What else might not be hidden in that dark background which Paula had taken such pains to conceal? He had brooded over it all night, and at breakfast time he was moody and depressed. The breakfast parlour at Highbridge Farm was a charming, low-roofed, long room, with six windows, all on one side, looking into the garden. Each of these windows, with their diamond-latticed panes, had a broad seat beneath it, that opened like a box, and was supposed to store the table linen. Outside the latticed panes hung vine tendrils and clematis flowers and the baby fruit of an old pear tree, and the windows were open, and the sweet breath of the roses and mignonette of June passed through them and etherealised everything. Mrs Rushton needed etherealising. Her iron-grey hair, coarse and thin, looked as if it had never been brushed before it was tucked away under a dirty widow’s cap, which she still persisted in wearing, and her black gown was rusty with age. Her son Ted was not more festively attired. He wore a patched suit of tweed, and his red-rimmed ferrety eyes kept turning quickly from his mother to his handsome stalwart stepbrother, who, clothed in a suit of grey knickerbockers, was perhaps looking his best, although the dogged mood with which he stuck to the perusal of his morning paper proved he was not in an amiable frame of mind. The contrast between the two young men was very great, and all the more so because Ted Snaley was deformed, having been let fall as an infant, and a subsequent weakness of the spine developing into a hump back. Persons thus afflicted are seldom sweet-tempered. The difference between themselves and their more fortunate fellow-creatures strikes them with a sense of injustice, and Ted was no exception to the rule. Indeed, his deformity, added to a naturally evil nature, made him positively malevolent.

‘Well, and what’s the matter with _you_?’ inquired Mrs Rushton in an unpleasant tone as she jerked a cup of tea towards her stepson.

‘Nothing,’ he answered curtly.

‘Indeed. You’re very silent for _nothing_, it strikes me,’ rejoined the lady.

‘If you wish me to speak, I have something to say,’ said Hal. ‘Who ordered Sam to put my new mare into the tax-cart yesterday evening to fetch home bread from Haltham?’

‘_I_ did,’ replied Mrs Rushton coolly. ‘I left my baking for half-an-hour to that fool Sarah, and she spoilt the whole batch. We had no bread for supper. I was obliged to send to Haltham.’

‘But not by my mare, that I’ve just paid sixty pounds for.’

‘Well, Sam said she would go quickest, and there was no time to spare. What are horses for if not to use?’

‘Perhaps. But I don’t allow my stables to be used at random, and in future, if anything is required from Haltham, the pony must go for it.’

The widow tossed her head.

‘Dear me,’ she ejaculated, ‘one would think I wasn’t mistress in my own house.’

‘You took the mare fast enough when you wanted to drive the school teacher into Haltham,’ said Ted Snaley maliciously.

‘Thank you, Ted. I don’t want any of your remarks upon the subject. My stables are my own, and I shall do as I please with them.’

‘Oh, yes, your stables are your own, and everything else is your own,’ exclaimed Mrs Rushton. ‘We know that well enough without your telling us, Hal, though it was the last thing _I_ expected when I devoted my life to your sick father, and I and my poor child have no part in it all. But I think you might consider the necessities of your relatives before the comfort of your horses. But, of course, _we_ are not Miss Stafford.’

‘I don’t know why you keep on harping upon Miss Stafford,’ replied Hal quietly. ‘I suppose one may offer a neighbour a seat in one’s carriage without being called upon to account for it. Miss Stafford and I are nothing to each other, and I beg you will cease your allusions to her.’

‘I should hope, indeed, that you _are_ nothing to each other,’ retorted his stepmother. ‘An arrant hussy, who is going to be turned out of her situation for improper conduct.’

Hal sprung to his feet with his face all aflame.

‘How _dare_ you speak of her like that? What do you know about Miss Stafford or her conduct?’

‘You needn’t flare up about it so. We know a great deal too much. Mr and Mrs Gribble--’

‘Mr and Mrs Gribble,’ interrupted Hal, ‘a couple of low-minded slanderers.’

‘I won’t hear two godly, pious people talked of after that fashion, Hal. They have only spoken the truth, and though I’ve no opinion of Mr Measures, he knows it to be so, and the young woman is to go.’

‘Yes, because she had two men in to supper with her last Tuesday, at twelve o’clock at night,’ added young Snaley eagerly, ‘and she picked them up in the streets at Haltham.’

‘_It’s a lie!_’ cried Hal fiercely, ‘a barefaced and unmitigated lie! Miss Stafford is as pure and good a woman as ever stepped God’s earth. I can swear to it!’

Her wrong against himself seemed to dwindle into nothing compared with this infamous slander. He felt as if he could do battle against the whole world to clear her name and reputation.

‘Oh, it’s no good denying it,’ replied Mrs Rushton, ‘for facts is facts, and Mr Gribble saw the men with his own eyes. But why should you make such a to-do about it? You say she’s nothing to you, and a good job too, for though you’ve robbed me of my rightful dues, Hal Rushton, I don’t want to see you fooled into bringing a girl like that into the house. In fact, I wouldn’t stand it.’

‘You would have the alternative,’ said Hal curtly; ‘you could choose another home.’

‘Oh, where’s the call to talk such nonsense, when she’s nothing to you?’ returned his stepmother, thinking she had gone too far. ‘She’s a disgrace to the parish, and she’s turned out of it. I hear there was thirty scholars less than usual at school this morning, and Mr Axworthy says he shouldn’t wonder if to-morrow it was shut up altogether. However, she’ll be gone soon enough, I reckon. She’s not likely to stay to the end of her month with nothing to do. She’ll take her money and be off--and a good riddance, I say.’

‘_Who_ told you she was going at once?’ demanded Hal.

‘Well, it isn’t likely she’ll stay to be hooted at. The boys are ready to break her windows already, for the way she’s gone on.’

‘The boys had better let me catch them at anything of the sort. They won’t have a whole bone left in their bodies,’ growled Hal. ‘The fact is, none of you can appreciate Miss Stafford, because she’s so far above you. She’s a lady, and I don’t know another in Deepdale, except Mrs Measures. None of you know what ladies’ habits are. You judge of her actions by your own.’

‘_Ladies’ habits_,’ reiterated Mrs Rushton, with a sneer, ‘I hope not, indeed, if they’re such as _hers_. Receiving men at dead of night, and refusing to give up their names. It’s infamous, in my ideas, but I was always brought up respectable and pious.’

‘You couldn’t have been brought up more respectably than Miss Stafford,’ retorted Hal. ‘_I_ know who the men were well enough.’

‘_You_ know!’ cried the widow, ‘and when she wouldn’t tell the parson.’

‘It was Mr Gribble and Mr Axworthy whom she refused to tell, and not Mr Measures.’

‘And who might they be, then, pray?’

Hal hesitated a moment. He knew no more than she did who Seth Brunt was, or why he came to the schoolhouse, but Paula’s obstinacy was likely to peril a reputation that was still dear to him, and for her sake he resorted to a subterfuge.

‘One was an old servant of her family, who visited her to ask for charity, and the other was--myself. Now, you can make what you like out of it.’

‘He! he! he!’ giggled Ted Snaley, ‘I always said you was sweet on the teacher.’

‘Hold your tongue!’ thundered Hal, ‘unless you want to have your ears boxed. I will have no liberties taken with her name or mine. I have told you before that Miss Stafford is a lady, and in my presence you must speak of her as such.’

And so saying he threw down his newspaper and stalked out of the room.

‘There’s a temper for you!’ cried the widow.

‘He _is_ sweet on her, mother, you mark my words. I’ve watched him leaning on her window sill of an evening, and talking to her through the open window, scores of times. And what a wax he gets in if her name’s mentioned. I wonder if he’ll speak to her before she leaves Deepdale.’

‘Not he,’ replied his mother contemptuously; ‘he’s too much like his old fool of a father. It takes him a precious time to make up his mind.’

‘The old man wasn’t long making up his mind to alter his will,’ observed Ted slily.

‘No, drat him! but the parson was at the bottom of that. But, bless you! Hal’s not a marrying man. He thinks too much of his horses and his hunting. He ought to have been brought up a stable boy. And why should he marry? I’m sure he’s comfortable enough as he is.’

‘It’ll be a bad day for me if he does. There’ll be no chance of my coming into the farm then.’

‘My poor wronged boy,’ quoth Mrs Rushton compassionately, ‘if he’d any idea of justice, he’d have halved it with you. But there, he’s his father over again, so where’s the use of talking? The only thing we can do is to lay by a little for you against you want it.’

And in truth Mrs Rushton _was_ laying by, _not_ a little, for the use of her own son. Hal Rushton paid such bills as she presented to him without inquiring into their items, though he sometimes fancied in a vague way that the house should be more comfortable for the expenditure. Meanwhile nearly half of his ready-money went into the savings bank to make a nest egg for Edward Snaley. The shabby attire of both mother and son was due to the same cause. Every penny that could be scraped together went to swell the little hoard. Even under the widow’s repulsive face and manners there burned the Divine, inextinguishable flame of a mother’s love.