Princess Puck

Mr. Wagnall was an antiquary, avowedly an antiquary. A man of means and leisure, he had ample time to devote to his subject, and so well had he devoted it that there was unknown to him little that was strange in family tradition and village history throughout the Eastern Counties, which, as his birthplace and home, were the principal scenes of his research. He never studied architecture or building to any great extent; churches, Druidical stones, and Roman remains had little charm for him; the land and those who owned it chiefly claimed his attention. He had at one time intended to follow the profession of the law, and had spent his earlier days in a solicitor’s office; it was this early training, possibly, which gave him his taste for family histories and involved land tenures. One other thing he owed to it,—and that was of more obvious value than his love of land-lore—a friend, in the person of a former fellow-student now developed into Stevens, solicitor of Wrugglesby, consulted by Mr. Johnson on the subject of the Harborough chapel and the service held therein.

Now and again Mr. Wagnall visited his friend at Wrugglesby, and it happened that this very subject of the Harborough chapel and service brought him there at the time that Gilchrist Harborough was arranging his matrimonial affairs at Ashelton. About this time Mr. Stevens, remembering that he had not seen his friend lately, wrote to invite him to the little town, at the same time mentioning such affairs of interest as had recently taken place. The Harborough service was not a recent event, but he had not written since it occurred, and, knowing his friend’s love of such things, he used it, and the chance of investigating it, as an inducement to his friend to visit Wrugglesby. Events justified his expectations; Mr. Wagnall accepted his invitation, came to Wrugglesby at the earliest possible date, and plagued his host with questions, seeking information about “this most interesting revival.”

Mr. Stevens was obliged to confess himself not very well informed on the subject, but in a happy moment Mrs. Stevens thought of inviting Mr. and Mrs. Johnson to meet the antiquary. She had no notion of satisfying his thirst for information, her idea being solely to give an entertainment. She was a lady of aspiring mind, and longed for society on other lines than those obtainable at the solemn dinners and more humble teas which were in vogue in Wrugglesby. Mr. Johnson was particularly flattered by the pointed way in which Mr. Wagnall singled him out for conversation, and the interest with which he listened to all he had to say about the Harborough chapel and service. Considering the warmth his feelings still retained on these subjects, he was a little disappointed to find his patient listener of the opinion that the family had a right to hold a service in their own chapel, according to their professed religion, even during the time of morning prayer.

“Mind, I do not say they have a legal right,” the antiquary said, “though I am of opinion it would be difficult to get a decision against them; but whatever their legal right, they have a moral right, most decidedly a moral right. I think your rector was wise in his determination to take no steps in the matter; it is not an occurrence likely to be repeated. It has not been done within anyone’s memory until this time; it has not been repeated since then, and take my word for it, sir, it never will be. It was done to revive an old right, my dear sir, that is what it was done for, to revive an old right and establish a claim; an old family does not like to let its traditions lapse entirely.”

Mr. Johnson thought this was a very probable explanation of the “outrage,” though, as he pointed out, there was no necessity for the mass to have been said during morning-service; the claim could have been established without that.

“Well, yes, yes,” Mr. Wagnall admitted; “still it would hardly have been so emphatic; no, under those circumstances, it would not have been so emphatic.”

Mr. Johnson again agreed with him. He also asked Mr. Wagnall if he would care to walk over some day and have a look at the Harborough chapel, offering to act as cicerone should he do so. Mr. Wagnall accepted the offer with pleasure, and from that they got to talking about the Harboroughs and their family history, with which Mr. Wagnall was very well acquainted, though he did not attempt to set the clergyman right even when he gave sundry strange pieces of information about them. There was, however, one piece of information given which was both new and interesting to Mr. Wagnall,—the existence of Gilchrist Harborough of Crows’ Farm.

“A member of the family he—” “may be,” Mr. Johnson was going to say, preparatory to enlarging upon his nature and pursuits, but Mr. Wagnall cut him short.

“Of course he is a member of the family,” he said; “Gilchrist is a family name, the next heir to the property is a Gilchrist. You would not get Gilchrist and Harborough in combination without some connection with the old stock.”

“Just so,” said Mr. Johnson, “just so, a member of the family, although he comes from Australia; a younger branch, I have heard it suggested, though he claims no connection with the Harboroughs of Gurnett.”

“Not a younger branch,” Mr. Wagnall’s tone was emphatic; “not a younger branch, or he could claim something more than a connection.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Johnson’s further enlightenment the conversation was interrupted here, not to be resumed again that evening, and he had to content himself with waiting to hear more until Mr. Wagnall should come to Ashelton. But Mr. Wagnall did not have to wait so long for his enlightenment, for he questioned his host at the earliest opportunity. From him he learnt little, for Mr. Stevens was not professionally connected with Harborough of Gurnett, although he had sometimes done a little legal work for the agent during the master’s long absences abroad. Owing to this he knew something of the affairs of the estate, and, like most people in the neighbourhood, he also knew the name, age, and whereabouts of the next heir, and sundry of the reports concerning Mr. Harborough besides. But of Harborough of Crows’ Farm he knew little, except that he was an Australian with a theory, that he worked his own farm, and that he himself had been favourably impressed by the young man on the occasion when he had personally come across him. “But,” he concluded, “I shouldn’t wonder if he was in at the office to-morrow as it is market-day. He is thinking of buying a bit of meadow which cuts into his land, and I should not wonder if he were to look in during the afternoon to see me about it. You might drop in and meet him if you like; but I tell you beforehand that he won’t repay investigation or appreciate it either, and he certainly won’t know anything about the affair of the mass.”

Mr. Wagnall was by no means discouraged, and determined to look in at the office on Thursday afternoon in case the lawyer’s anticipation proved correct. It did so: Harborough presented himself somewhere about four o’clock, and almost before his business was discussed, Mr. Wagnall also presented himself and was duly introduced to the younger man as one interested in antiquities in general and family histories in particular. Harborough himself had small interest in such things, but he was quite willing to sympathise with another, and obligingly gave all the information he could concerning himself and his family. Of the Harboroughs of Gurnett, their history and chapel, he knew even less than Mr. Johnson, but of himself and his own people he told all he could.

“But,” he asked, “what purpose does it serve? We are a long way from this part of the family, a younger branch who emigrated years ago.”

“If you are a younger branch in direct line, if you can prove such a thing,—and I cannot help saying I think it would be difficult—it would be—very interesting.”

“Why? Is there no younger branch? You mean to say you think we come of bastard stock?”

“No, oh dear no, not at all, not necessarily. Only the Harboroughs used to hold their estates according to an old tenure by which the property goes to the youngest instead of the eldest son, and if you really were the representative of a younger branch than those in possession—”

“I could claim?”

“Nonsense,” the lawyer here broke in, “the Harboroughs have given up that manner of succession for several generations.”

“It could be revived,” Mr. Wagnall suggested; “it would be interesting to revive it, as interesting as reviving the right to hold service in the chapel.”

“Interesting from an antiquarian point of view it might be,” Mr. Stevens observed drily; “but Mr. Harborough here would find it an expensive form of amusement. Old Mr. Harborough has been in possession at Wood Hall for over fifty years, and it would take something considerable to turn him out now. Why, bless you, my friend, if I had squatted unmolested at Wood Hall for all those years you would find it difficult to turn me out, though I had not a shadow of right to the place originally. Possession is rather more than nine points of the law if you only have it long enough; whatever the weakness of old Harborough’s original claim you would find it a tough and expensive job to make your own good now.”

Gilchrist Harborough laughed at the lawyer’s warmth. “I was not thinking of making a claim,” he said; “I would rather invest my surplus cash in other and more profitable ways than fighting for encumbered estates.”

Mr. Stevens applauded such a decision. “Quite right,” he said, “quite right, though the estate is hardly so much encumbered as people think; of late years old Harborough has lived carefully, and things are not so bad as they are made out to be. I don’t mean to say the place is free; it is not, and no doubt the next man will get into a worse state than ever, for they are all alike, an extravagant lot. But I believe a careful man with a little capital and reasonable ideas, in fact not a Harborough—beg pardon, I was not thinking of you—might do a good deal towards getting things straight.”

“You think so?” Harborough asked. “They have got to get their reasonable man first, and they don’t seem great at producing such articles. As for me, I don’t belong to them; and if I did I don’t know that I can lay claim to all your requirements, small capital and reasonable ideas as well. At any rate, I don’t think I am the man for the job; it does not seem that I am within measurable distance of the base of operations.”

He turned to Mr. Wagnall as he spoke, but the lawyer answered for him. “No, no, certainly not,” he said; but Mr. Wagnall asked: “Are you sure that your family is a younger branch? May it not be an elder, but, owing to the fact that the idea of disqualification is usually associated with the younger ones, you have in the course of time come to consider yourself as such?”

Harborough allowed this to be possible, though he hardly thought it the case. Mr. Wagnall hardly thought it likely either. “So far as I know anything about the family,” he said, “it is not very likely, the Harboroughs have not been such a prolific family that the elder and younger ones need be confused. There never have been many of them; the heads of the house, as a rule, lived hard and died young, their legitimate children have been few in number. Indeed,” the antiquary went on turning to Stevens, “when you say the old manner of succession has fallen into disuse you are hardly doing them justice, for there has not been much choice lately. The family is practically extinct when the old man dies; he has no children living; the heir is the grandson of his only sister, not a Harborough at all except that he has been given the name. He is an only son, too, the sole representative of the younger generation,—strange how these old families seem to wear themselves out.”

Gilchrist Harborough did not think it strange at all, neither did he think it to be regretted; the only thing which surprised him in the matter was the interest felt in them and the detailed record kept of their history. “It is not as if they were anything much,” he said, “or had done anything much; they are only twopenny-halfpenny country squires who have never done anything worth remembering; in fact, the only thing which can be said about them is that they have been a little more rich and a good deal less respectable than their yeoman neighbours.”

Such a view was not likely to commend itself to the antiquary, but as he was unable to make his own view any more commendable to young Harborough, he had to content himself with admitting the family under discussion to be country squires, and to have been country squires so long that they counted themselves at least the equals of the newer nobility; and moreover to have kept their own records and traditions with jealous care from the days when their manor was first granted to them, at which time, doubtless, they were far other than they now were in the days of their decadence.

“If the records are kept with such care,” Harborough observed, “it should be easy to see where I come in, if come in I do.”

“Yes,” Mr. Wagnall agreed; “I can put my finger on the only spot where at all recently we can expect to find that your people joined the common stock. I know something about the Harborough history; I was enabled through the good offices of a friend to study it at the time that I was writing my little volume on East Anglian Heirships. You have perhaps seen the book? It was noticed in several of the papers.”

Harborough had not seen it, and it is to be feared he was less interested in it than in the family history. Mr. Stevens, seeing that his friend was now well mounted on his hobby, suggested that he and his listener should go into the private room, and leave the office clear for other visitors.

He half regretted being obliged to do so, for he felt he was giving the elder man an admirable opportunity for firing the imagination and ambition of the younger. Still, as the kind-hearted lawyer reflected, the young Australian was a cool and well-balanced individual, with a not too exalted opinion of the value of landed property and old families to depreciate his idea of the prize at stake. “He won’t take fire like a young fellow from about here,” thought the lawyer, “but if he does he’ll fight and fight to the end.” And again he wished he could have prevented this unearthing of family history. But it was too late, as he found when, after the young man had gone, he asked the elder one what had passed.

“He was very interested, very interested indeed,” Mr. Wagnall said. “He seems to think it highly probable that he derives from the Gilchrist Harborough who turned Protestant and left England in 1843.”

“In 1843,” the lawyer said raising his eyebrows; “that brings it very near.”

“Very near indeed,” Mr. Wagnall replied with satisfaction; “but so he seems to think.”

“Seems to think,” Stevens repeated; “that is not worth much.”

“To think that he is legitimately derived I should have said; he is positive that he is derived, he has excellent reasons for thinking so; it is a mere question of legitimacy.”

“It often is with these respectable old families,” Stevens observed drily. “What did you want to put all these ideas in his head for? You had much better have left him alone.”

Mr. Wagnall did not think so; he considered the whole subject most interesting, and, as he pointed out, there was a good deal of information he could not have obtained without this talk with young Harborough.

“Who,” Mr. Stevens said, “naturally does not regard the matter in the same placid way in which you do, seeing that he has a personal interest in it. By Jove, though, if it is as you say, and he can prove the legitimacy, he would have a good case, a very good case indeed. But he won’t be able to prove it, sure not,—he would have an infernally good case if he could!”

From a purely legal point of view the subject had less interest for Mr. Wagnall, who had no particular desire that the right man should come to his own; and in spite of a genial nature, he felt small compunction about the trouble which might possibly arise from his investigations.

“A nice hornet’s nest you are likely to have routed out,” said Mr. Stevens, who was differently constituted, “and a nice squabble there will be! If Harborough of Crows’ Farm waits till the old man dies (and the chances are he won’t last another winter), I should say it will be a bad look-out for young Kit Harborough. Not that the place is worth such a great deal, and I dare say he would muddle it if he got it; but it is hard to lose what you have always looked upon as your own. The Australian—” the lawyer laughed a little—“he’s the man I described after all, the man with a little capital and reasonable ideas. He might pull the place round, cut down the timber, put some of the park-land under cultivation, drive the plough—”

But Mr. Wagnall cried out in dismay at such impossible barbarity. Nevertheless it was exactly what Gilchrist Harborough was thinking as he drove home by way of Gurnett, and looked thoughtfully at the woods and broad park-lands which surrounded the hall. It was exactly too what he said to Bill in the orchard on the next Sunday afternoon.