Chapter XI: Part XV (3)

A large red brick house, with a multitude of gable-ends, and rows of small, dingy-looking windows, had hidden itself for many generations in a clump of fine old trees in a large green field--almost qualified to take rank as a park--at a distance of six or seven miles from St Paul's. In the days of the good Queen Anne, the city lay comfortably huddled up round the cathedral church, and looked upon her sister of Westminster as too far removed, and of too lofty a rank, to be visited except on rare occasions. London was then contained within reasonable limits, and it was easy to walk round her boundaries; you could even point out the precise spot at which the town ended and the country began. The inhabitants of the large brick house, known by the name of Surbridge Hall, at rare intervals, and then only to visit the shops, undertook the journey into the city; and, unless in the stillest of autumn evenings, when the enormous tongue of the metropolitan clock made itself audible on the Surbridge lawn, they might have forgotten that such a place as the capital was within fifty miles. That generation died off; and London had begun to put out feelers in all directions, and had outgrown the ancient limits. Streets began to move out a little way into the country for change of air; and, in making their usual shopping-visits to the great city, the inhabitants of Surbridge Hall had now to drive through a short row of houses, where the elders of the party remembered nothing but a hedge. That generation also died out; and the city, like an old dowager who has once been a beauty, and boasted of a waist, grew out of all shape. There were squares and crescents rising in every quarter and the white tops of chimneys, and the blue dinginess of roofs, became visible from the upper windows of Surbridge Hall. The proprietor, terrified perhaps by the approach of such neighbours, advertised the Hall for sale, speedily found a purchaser, and, somewhere about the beginning of this century, the old family name of the Walronds disappeared from the country, and Surbridge Hall became the property of William Wilkins, Esq. We may observe that, much about the same time, the name of the senior partner disappeared from the door of a dingy-looking house in Riches Court, and the firm of Wilkins & Roe was deprived of its larger half. The old lion-rampant, that had stood on its hind-legs for so many years on the top of one of the piers of the entrance gates, as if in act to spring upon the deer that lay ruminating on the top of the other, was now displaced; and, in a few days, his position was taken by a plaster-of-Paris cast of Hebe, benevolently holding forth an empty goblet towards the thirsty statue of Apollo which did duty on the other side. The floors in the old hall were new laid, the windows fitted with plate glass, the painting and decoration put into the hands of a Bond-street finisher, who covered the walls with acres of gilding, and hung chandeliers from the ceilings, and placed mirrors upon the walls, till the rooms looked like the show galleries of an upholsterer, and very different from the fine solid habitable apartments they used to be in the time of the late proprietor. And a change nearly as remarkable took place on Mr Wilkins himself as in his house. He attended county meetings, and became learned in rents and agriculture. He built new houses for his tenants, and only regretted he had never learned to ride, or he would have followed the hounds. But though he was no Nimrod, he dressed like one of his sons, and encased his thick legs in top-boots, and generally carried a whip. At last, by dint of good dinners, and voting on the right side at the elections, he became a magistrate; and if Mrs Wilkins had had the politeness to die, he would have married Lady Diana O'Huggomy, the daughter of an Irish earl; but Mrs Wilkins did not die, and Lady Diana ran away with a dancing-master. His son had been eighteen years at the bar, and never had had a brief; his daughters had been twenty years on the world, and never had had an offer; but he still expected to see Richard lord chancellor, and his three girls peeresses. A country gentleman, a county magistrate, perfectly healthy and tolerably rich, was there any thing wanting to Mr Wilkins's felicity? Yes. Alexander the Great was wretched when he had conquered the world, and was ten times happier when he was breaking-in Bucephalus; and Mr Wilkins, if the truth must be told, was very like Alexander the Great, at least in his discontent, and was never so gay as he used to be in the dingy mansion in Riches Court. The dinners he gave were formal, cold affairs, where he never felt at his ease: he could not help thinking that the neighbours quizzed and looked down on him; and, in short, he felt out of his element, and longed sometimes for the free-and-easy dinners he had relished so much in the city. His farm-houses were at last all built, his improvements all completed, and there was no further occupation for either himself or his money. He sometimes drove into Harley Street to see his son, but he found that gentleman also on the rack of idleness, and went home again, wondering how Roe was getting on in the old premises, though never venturing to go near him--for his family had insisted on a dead cut between the partners, and could not endure the thoughts of Mr Roe coming between the wind and their newly acquired nobility. Time wore on. Old Wilkins grew older. He used to sit at the window of his drawing-room and look towards London, fancying to himself the bustle and stir that were going on, the crowding in Fleet Street, the crush at the Bank; and occasionally imagination conjured up to him the image of an active citizen bustling down towards the Exchange, radiant with success, and filled with activity and hope; and he could scarcely recognise his own identity with that joyous citizen, the William Wilkins of that happier time. The flood of building, which had only reached to within three miles of Surbridge when the Walronds retired to the ark of some estate they retained in Yorkshire, had now increased to such a degree, as to have submerged many of the fields and orchards that lay at very short distance from the Hall. "Willars," with Italian fronts and little greenhouses at the side, took post all along the road, and, from the open windows, sounded in summer evenings the Battle of Prague, or God save the King, so that you walked amidst perpetual music, for no house was so ungenteel as to be without a piano. Surbridge Hall itself ran a great risk of becoming a suburban villa at no distant time; and Mr Wilkins was in some hopes that his family would allow him to consider himself an inhabitant of London once more, and no longer doom him to the cold nothingness of squireship and gentility. But whether they might have relented in this respect can never be known; for while he was meditating a renewal of his acquaintance with his late partner, and an occasional dive into Riches Court, he changed his bed at the Hall for the family vault (newly built) in Surbridge church, and his great-coat and riding-whip for a Roman toga and a long gilt baton, with which he pointed to heaven from the top of a splendid monument near the south wall. Richard now succeeded to the family honours; and as he had married a Miss Gillingham--a name which he preferred to his ancestral appellation--he did her the honour to take it to himself, and was duly enrolled in the list of justices as Wilkins Gillingham, Esq. His son was sent to Christchurch, and his three daughters to a fashionable boarding-school. His mother and sisters retired to Tunbridge Wells, and they all began to persuade themselves that Surbridge had been in the family from the time of the Conquest. By way of strengthening their claims to county consideration, it was wisely determined to oppose the building invasion as powerfully as they could. Several farms and fields were bought, plantations were skilfully placed, two or three feet were added to the height of the walls all round the property; and it was hoped that some impression was made on the advancing architectural enemy; for in the speculative year of 1819, a dozen or two of builders were removed to the Queen's Bench, and whole rows of houses were left looking up to heaven, in vain expectation of a roof. Wilkins Gillingham served the office of High Sheriff, caught a surfeit in entertaining the judges, and in a few weeks gave place to his heir. Augustus had passed two years at Oxford--had then married a beauty--the daughter of a country surgeon of the name of Howard; and as he inherited his father's tastes, along with his property, he changed his family name; and poor old Widow Wilkins, who still survived, enlivened the tea-tables of the Wells with anecdotes and descriptions of her grandson, Gillingham Howard. Death seemed entirely to have forgotten the relict of the original William. She stood like an ancient pillar, to point out where the building it once belonged to was placed; and was looked upon by her descendants pretty much as a native American looks upon a venerable squaw of some Indian nation--the connecting link between New York and the woods. The widow was the sole point of union left between Surbridge Hall and Riches Court. Whether her grandson did not relish the reminiscence, or from what cause no one can hazard more than a guess, certain it is that on the death of his wife, who left him with two daughters, four or five years old, he did not summon his venerable ancestor from the Wells, but installed one of her daughters--Aunt Susannah--in the temporary charge of his house. By some secret arrangement, into the causes of which we have no time to enquire, such a change took place in Aunt Susannah, that though she left Tunbridge, having secured her place in the inside of the coach in the name of Miss S. Wilkins, she was brought out from London in Mr Howard's carriage in the name of Miss S. Gillingham; and there was no person of the name of Wilkins in the whole of the establishment. Aunt Susannah was not a person to hesitate long as to a change of name. It had been the whole object of her life, till five-and-thirty years of disappointment had almost made her despair of succeeding in her object, by the help of special license or even vulgar banns; and she accordingly made no scruple in adopting the more euphonious Gillingham, and sinking all mention of the other. Mr Gillingham Howard followed the example of his predecessors. He was a _bona fide_ country gentleman, with the one drawback to his otherwise stupendous respectability, of being the greatest drawer of the long-bow since the days of Mendez Pinto. He added two feet more to the height of his boundary walls, and bought all the disposable land round his estate; but if he had transplanted a couple of miles of the Chinese wall to Surbridge, he could no more have kept off the intrusion of the barbarian villa-builders than the Celestials have been able to shut out the same pushing, bustling, active, energetic, unabashable individuals from the Flowery land. Architecture went on, and now the gigantic city had stuck her arms so majestically on either hip, that one of her elbows actually came into contact with the park of Surbridge Hall. There was a gentle elevation--in those flat regions honoured with the name of a hill--which lay at one side of the Surbridge lands. It was a beautifully wooded little property of thirty or forty acres, which it had always been the ambition of the Surbridge owners to buy; but it was so involved with lawsuits or doubtful titles, that it had hitherto been impossible to get possession of it for love or money. The upper part of it rose high above the glades of Surbridge park, and the clump of trees on the summit formed a very fine object in the view from the drawing-room windows. It was all laid down in the richest pasture, and would have formed the most valuable addition to the property, both in making it compact and keeping it secluded. The owner of it died at last in the Fleet, and it was advertised for sale, with a perfect title and immediate possession. The sale was by auction, and the day drew rapidly near. Mr Gillingham Howard went carefully over the ground, examined the condition of his credit--for his surplus cash was gone--had the property valued; and determined to give a thousand more than its worth, to prevent it falling into any one else's hands. When the day of sale arrived, he placed himself in front of the auctioneer, and determined, by the fierceness of his "bids," to frighten any competitor from the field. The room was crowded, and the sale began. All the eloquence of the celebrated Puff was displayed on this occasion; and when he paused after his glowing description, and asked any gentleman to be kind enough to name a sum to begin with--suggesting, at the same time, four thousand pounds. "Gentlemen, shall we say four thousand guineas?" Mr Gillingham Howard, in a voice that was calculated to show that he was in earnest, and did not stand upon trifles, nodded his head, and said "seven!" The auctioneer himself was overcome with the success of his oratory, and there was a dead silence among the spectators. "Thank you, sir--seven thousand guineas," he said, "Will any gentleman make an advance?" looking round, at the same time, as if he considered it useless to waste any breath in endeavouring to enhance the price. His hammer mechanically went up, and was on the point of falling, when a weak voice near the orator's pulpit whispered "eight."

The voice proceeded from an old man wrapped up in a thick great-coat, though it was a warm day in June--a clear-eyed, small-featured, diminutive old man, who had sat the whole time, taking no apparent interest in the proceedings. All eyes were turned upon him in a moment, and he quietly repeated the awful monosyllable--"eight!" Mr Gillingham Howard looked at the old gentleman with detestation in every feature, for he felt that the person, whoever he was, was actually robbing him of a thousand pounds; and he would have had very few scruples in sending the culprit to Botany Bay for so tremendous an outrage. A sort of smile ran round the assemblage at seeing the sudden alteration produced on his countenance; and though he had determined not to give more than the original seven, he was ashamed to be cowed by an unknown individual at once; and after a few minutes' pause, and a glance of ineffable hatred at the little old man, who had relapsed into his state of contented unconcern, he looked at the auctioneer, and said, "Five hundred more!" Saying this, he put his hands into his pockets, and kept his eye fixed on his competitor. Without a moment's hesitation, the old gentleman nodded his head once more, and said, "Mr Puff, I'm in a hurry. Will this gentleman give ten thousand guineas? I will!"

The auctioneer gave one look to Mr Gillingham Howard, and saw, from the blank expression of that gentleman's countenance, that competition was at an end. The hammer fell, and seemed like a great rock on Mr Gillingham Howard's heart.

"Your name, if you please, sir," said Mr Puff.

The little old gentleman rose up and said, "Give me a pen and ink. I'll write an order for the money. My name is Thomas Roe, No. 20, Riches Court."