“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.”