Sons of fire, Vol. I.

A STRIKING LIKENESS.

The meet was at the Pig and Whistle, at Melbury, nine miles off. Rather a near meet--compared with the usual appointments of the South Sarum hounds--the ostler remarked, as Allan Carew mounted a hired hunter in the yard of the Duke's Head, chief, and indeed only possible inn for a gentleman to put up at, in the little village of Matcham, a small but prosperous hamlet, lying in a hollow of the hills between Salisbury and Andover. He had only arrived on the previous afternoon, and he was sallying forth in the crisp March morning, on an unknown horse in an unfamiliar country, to hunt with a pack whose master's name he had heard for the first time that day.

"Can he jump?" asked Allan, as he scrutinized the lean, upstanding bay; not a bad kind of horse by any means, but with that shabby, under-groomed and over-worked appearance common to hirelings.

"Can't he, sir? There ain't a better lepper in Wiltshire. And as clever as a cat! We had a lady staying here in the winter, Mrs. Colonel Parkyn, brought two 'acks of her own, besides the colonel's two 'unters, and liked this here horse better than any of 'em. She was right down mashed on him, as the young gents say."

"I wonder she didn't buy him," said Allan.

"She couldn't, sir. Money wouldn't buy such a hunter as this off my master. He's a fortune to us."

"I hope I may be of Mrs. Parkyn's opinion when I come home," said Allan. "Now then, ostler, just tell me which way I am to ride to get to the Pig and Whistle by eleven o'clock."

The ostler gave elaborate instructions. A public-house here, an accommodation lane there--a common to cross--a copse to skirt--three villages--one church--a post-office--and several cross-roads.

"You're safe to fall in with company before you get there," concluded the ostler, whisking a bit of straw out of the bay's off hind hoof, and eyeing him critically, previous to departure.

"If I don't, I doubt if I ever shall get there," said Allan, as he rode out of the yard.

He was a stranger in Matcham, a "foreigner," as the villagers called such alien visitors. He had never been in the village before, knew nothing of its inhabitants or its surroundings, its customs, ways, local prejudices, produce, trade, scandals, hates, loves, subserviencies, gods, or devils. And yet henceforward he was to be closely allied with Matcham, for a certain bachelor uncle had lately died and left him a small estate within a mile of the village--a relative with whom Allan Carew had held slightest commune, lunching or dining with him perhaps once in a summer, at an old family hotel in Albemarle Street, never honoured by so much as a hint at an invitation to his rural retreat, and not cherishing any expectation of a legacy, much less the bequest of all the gentleman's worldly possessions, comprising a snug, well-built house, in pretty and spacious grounds, with good and ample stabling, and with farms and homesteads covering something like fifteen hundred acres, and producing an income of a little over two thousand a year.

It need hardly be stated that Allan Carew was not a poor man when this unexpected property fell into his lap.

The children of this world are rarely false to the gospel precept--to every one which hath shall be given. Allan's father had changed his name, ten years before, from Beresford to Carew, upon his succession to a respectable estate in Suffolk, an inheritance from his maternal grandfather, old Squire Carew, of Fendyke Hall, Millfield.

Allan, an only son, was not by any means ill provided for when his maternal uncle, Admiral the Honourable Allan Darnleigh, took it into his head to leave him his Wiltshire property; but this bequest raised him at once to independence, and altogether dispensed with any further care about that gentleman-like profession, the Bar, which had so far repaid Mr. Carew's collegiate studies, labours, outlays, and solicitude by fees amounting in all to seven pounds seven shillings, which sum represented the gross earnings of three years.

So, riding along the rustic high-road, in the clear morning air, under a sapphire sky, just gently flecked with fleecy cloudlets, Allan Carew told himself that it was a blessed escape to have done with chambers, and reading law, and waiting for briefs; and that it was a good thing to be a country gentleman; to have his own house and his own stable; not to be obliged to ride another man's horses, even though that other man were his very father; not to be told after every stiffish day across country that he had done for the grey, or that the chestnut's legs had filled as never horse's legs filled before, nor to hear any other reproachful utterances of an old and privileged stud-groom, who knew the horses he rode were not his own property. Henceforth his stable would be his own kingdom, and he would reign there absolute and unquestioned. He could choose his own horses, and they should be good ones. He naturally shared the common creed of sons, and looked upon all animals of his father's buying as "screws" and "duffers." His own stables would be something altogether different from the drowsy old stables at home, where horses were kept and cherished because they were familiar friends, rather than with a view to locomotion. His stud and his stable should be as different as if horses and grooms had been bred upon another planet.

He loved field-sports. He felt that it was in him to make a model squire, albeit two thousand a year was not a large revenue in these days of elegant living and Continental holidays, and eclectic tastes. He felt that among his numerous nephews, old Admiral Darnleigh had made a wise selection in choosing his god-son, Allan Carew, to inherit his Wiltshire estate. He meant to be prudent and economical. He had spent the previous afternoon in a leisurely inspection of Beechhurst. He had gone over house and stables, and had found all things so well planned, and in such perfect order, that he was assailed by none of those temptations to pull down and to build, to alter and to improve, which often inaugurate ruin in the very dawn of possession. He thought he might build two or three loose boxes on one side of the spacious stable-yard. There were two packs within easy reach of Matcham, to say nothing of packs accessible by rail, and he would naturally want more hunters than had sufficed for the old sailor, who had jogged out on his clever cob two or three times a week, and had gone home early, after artful riding and waiting about the lanes, or to leeward of the great bare hills, and in snug corners, where a profound knowledge of the country enabled him to make sure of the hounds. Allan's hunting-stable would be on a very different footing; and although Beechhurst provided ample accommodation for a stud of eight, Allan told himself that one of his first duties would be to build loose boxes.

"I shall often have to put up a couple of horses for a friend," he thought.

The morning was lovely, more like April than March. The bay trotted along complacently, neither lazy nor feverishly active, but with an air of knowing what he had to do for his day's wage, and meaning honestly to do it. Allan was glad that his road took him past Beechhurst. Possession had still all the charm of novelty. His heart thrilled with pride as he slackened his pace to gaze fondly at the pretty white house, low and long, with a verandah running all along the southern front, admirably placed upon a gentle elevation, against the swelling shoulder of a broad down, facing south-west, and looking over garden and shrubbery, and across a stretch of common, that lay between Beechhurst and the high-road, and gave a dignified aloofness to the situation; seclusion without dulness, a house and grounds remote, but not buried or hidden.

"Nothing manorial about it," mused Allan; "but it certainly looks a gentleman's place."

He would naturally have preferred something less essentially modern. He would have liked Tudor chimneys, panelled walls, and a family ghost. He would have liked to know that his race had taken deep root in the soil, had been lords of the manor centuries and centuries ago, when Wamba was keeping pigs in the woods, and when the jester's bells mixed with the merry music of hawk and hound. Admiral Darnleigh, so far as Wiltshire was concerned, had been a new man. He had made his money in China, speculating in tea-gardens, and other property, while pursuing his naval career with considerable distinction. He had retired from active service soon after the Chinese war, a C.B. and a rich man, had bought Beechhurst a bargain--during a period of depression--and had settled down in yonder pretty white house, with a small but admirable establishment, each member thereof a pearl of price among servants, and had there spent the tranquil even-tide of an honourable and consistently selfish life. He had never married. As a single man, he had always felt himself rich; as a married man he might often have felt himself poor. He had heard Allan at five and twenty declare that he had done with the romance of life, and that he, too, meant to be a bachelor; and it may be that this boyish assertion, carelessly made over a bottle of Lafitte, did in some measure influence the Admiral's choice of an heir.

Allan's father and mother were of a more liberal mind.

"You are in a better position than your father was at your age," said Lady Emily Carew, on her son's accession to fortune. "I hope you will marry well--and soon."

There was no thought of woman's love, or of married bliss, in Allan Carew's mind, as he rode through the lanes and over a common, and across a broad stretch of open down to the Pig and Whistle. He was full, not of his inner self, but of the outer world around and about him, pleased with the pleasant country in which his lot was cast, wondering what his new neighbours were like, and how they would receive him.

"I wonder whether the South Sarum is a hospitable hunt, or whether the members are a surly lot, and look upon every stranger as a sponge and an interloper," he mused.

He had ridden alone for about half the way, when a man in grey fustian and leather gaiters, who looked like a small tenant farmer, trotted past him, turned and stared at him with obvious astonishment, touched his hat and rode on, after a few words of greeting, which were lost in the clatter of hoofs.

He had ridden right so far by the aid of memory; he now followed the man in grey, and, taking care to keep this pioneer in view, duly arrived at a small rustic inn, standing upon high ground, and overlooking an undulating sweep of woodland and common, marsh and plain, one of those picturesque oases which diversify the breadth of wind-swept downs. The inn was an isolated building, the few labourers' cottages within reach being hidden by a turn of the road.

Hounds and hunt-servants were clustered on a level green on the other side of the road, but there was no one else upon the ground.

Allan looked at his watch, and found that it was ten minutes to eleven.