Philip was not very fond of taking walks with his father, since he found that in nine cases out of ten they afforded opportunities for inculcation of facts of the driest description with reference to estate management, or to the narration1 by his parent of little histories of which his conduct upon some recent occasion would adorn2 the moral. On this particular occasion the prospect3 was particularly unpleasant, for his father would, he was well aware, overflow4 with awful politeness, indeed, after the scene of the morning, it could not be otherwise. Oh, how much rather would he have spent that lovely afternoon with Maria Lee! Dear Maria, he would go and see her again the very next day.
When he arrived, some ten minutes after time in the antler-hung hall of the Abbey House, he found his father standing5, watch in hand, exactly under the big clock, as though he was determined6 to make a note by double entry of every passing second.
“When I asked you to walk with me this afternoon, Philip, I, if my memory does not deceive me, was careful to say that I had no wish to interfere7 with any prior engagement. I was aware how little interest, compared to your cousin George, you take in the estate, and I had no wish to impose an uncongenial task. But, as you kindly8 volunteered to accompany me, I regret that you did not find it convenient to be punctual to the time you fixed9. I have now waited for you for seventeen minutes, and let me tell you that at my time of life I cannot afford to lose seventeen minutes. May I ask what has delayed you?”
This long speech had given Philip the opportunity of recovering the breath that he had lost in running home. He replied promptly10 —
“I have been lunching with Miss Lee.”
“Oh, indeed, then I no longer wonder that you kept me waiting, and I must say that in this particular I commend your taste. Miss Lee is a young lady of good family, good manners, and good means. If her estate went with this property it would complete as pretty a five thousand acres of mixed soil as there is in the county. Those are beautiful old meadows of hers, beautiful. Perhaps ——” but here the old man checked himself.
On leaving the house they had passed together down a walk called the tunnel walk, on account of the arching boughs11 of the lime-trees that interlaced themselves overhead. At the end of this avenue, and on the borders of the lake, there stood an enormous but still growing oak, known as Caresfoot’s Staff. It was the old squire12’s favourite tree, and the best topped piece of timber for many miles round.
“I wonder,” said Philip, by way of making a little pleasant conversation, “why that tree was called Caresfoot’s Staff.”
“Your ignorance astonishes me, Philip, but I suppose that there are some people who can live for years in a place and yet imbibe13 nothing of its traditions. Perhaps you know that the monks14 were driven out of these ruins by Henry VIII. Well, on the spot where that tree now stands there grew a still greater oak, a giant tree, its trunk measured sixteen loads of timber; which had, as tradition said, been planted by the first prior of the Abbey when England was still Saxon. The night the monks left a great gale15 raged over England. It was in October, when the trees were full of leaf, and its fiercest gust16 tore the great oak from its roothold, and flung it into the lake. Look! do you see that rise in the sand, there, by the edge of the deep pool, in the eight foot water? That is there it is supposed to lie. Well, the whole country-side said that it was a sign that the monks had gone for ever from Bratham Abbey, and the country-side was right. But when your ancestor, old yeoman Caresfoot, bought this place and came to live here, in a year when there was a great black frost that set the waters of the lake like one of the new-fangled roads, he asked his neighbours, ay, and his labouring folk, to come and dine with him and drink to the success of his purchase. It was a proud day for him, and when dinner was done and they were all mellow17 with strong ale, he bade them step down to the borders of the lake, as he would have them be witness to a ceremony. When they reached the spot they saw a curious sight, for there on a strong dray, and dragged by Farmer Caresfoot’s six best horses, was an oak of fifty years’ growth coming across the ice, earth, roots and all.
“On that spot where it now stands there had been a great hole, ten feet deep by fourteen feet square, dug to receive it, and into that hole Caresfoot Staff was tilted18 and levered off the dray. And when it had been planted, and the frozen earth well trodden in, your grandfather in the ninth degree brought his guests back to the old banqueting-hall, and made a speech which, as it was the first and last he ever made, was long remembered in the country-side. It was, put into modern English, something like this:
“‘Neighbours,— Prior’s Oak has gone into the water, and folks said that it was for a sign that the monks would never come back to Bratham, and that it was the Lord’s wind that put it there. And, neighbours, as ye know, the broad Bratham lands and the fat marshes19 down by the brook20 passed by king’s grant to a man that knew not clay from loam21, or layer from pasturage, and from him they passed by the Lord’s will to me, as I have asked you here today to celebrate. And now, neighbours, I have a mind, and though it seem to you but a childish thing, yet I have a mind, and have set myself to fulfil it. When I was yet a little lad, and drove the swine out to feed on the hill yonder, when the acorns23 had fallen, afore Farmer Gyrton’s father had gracious leave from the feoffees to put up the fence that doth now so sorely vex24 us, I found one day a great acorn22, as big as a dow’s egg, and of a rich and wondrous25 brown, and this acorn I bore home and planted in kind earth in the corner of my dad’s garden, thinking that it would grow, and that one day I would hew26 its growth and use it for a staff. Now that was fifty long years ago, lads, and there where grew Prior’s Oak, there, neighbours, I have set my Staff today. The monks have told us how in Israel every man planted his fig27 and his vine. For the fig I know not rightly what that is; but for the vine, I will plant no creeping, clinging vine, but a hearty28 English oak, that, if they do but give it good room to breathe in, and save their heirloom from the axe29, shall cast shade and grow acorns, and burst into leaf in the spring and grow naked in the winter, when ten generations of our children, and our children’s children, shall have mixed their dust with ours yonder in the graveyard30. And now, neighbours, I have talked too long, though I am better at doing than talking; but ye will even forgive me, for I will not talk to you again, though on this the great day of my life I was minded to speak. But I will bid you every man pledge a health to the Caresfoot’s Staff, and ask a prayer that, so long as it shall push its leaves, so long may the race of my loins be here to sit beneath its shade, and even mayhap when the corn is ripe and the moon is up, and their hearts grow soft towards the past, to talk with kinsman31 or with sweetheart of the old man who struck it in this kindly soil.’”
The old squire’s face grew tender as he told this legend of the forgotten dead, and Philip’s young imagination summoned up the strange old-world scene of the crowd of rustics32 gathered in the snow and frost round this very tree.
“Philip,” said his father, suddenly, “you will hold the yeoman’s Staff one day; be like it of an oaken English heart, and you will defy wind and weather as it has done, and as your forbears have done. Come, we must go on.”
“By the way, Philip,” he continued, after a while, “you will remember what I said to you this morning — I hope that you will remember it, though I spoke33 in anger — never try to deceive me again, or you will regret it. And now I have something to say to you. I wish you to go to college and receive an education that will fit you to hold the position you must in the course of Nature one day fill in the county. The Oxford34 term begins in a few days, and you have for some years been entered at Magdalen College. I do not expect you to be a scholar, but I do expect you to brush off your rough ways and your local ideas, and to learn to become such a person both in your conduct and your mind as a gentleman of your station should be.”
“Is George to go to college too?”
“No; I have spoken to him on the subject, and he does not wish it. He says very wisely that, with his small prospects35, he would rather spend the time in learning how to earn his living. So he is going to be articled to the Roxham lawyers, Foster and Son, or rather Foster and Bellamy, for young Bellamy, who is a lawyer by profession, came here this morning, not to speak about you, but on a message from the firm to say that he is now a junior partner, and that they will be very happy to take George as an articled clerk. He is a hard-working, shrewd young man, and it will be a great advantage to George to have his advice and example before him.”
Philip assented36, and went on in silence, reflecting on the curious change in his immediate37 prospects that this walk had brought to light. He was much rejoiced at the prospect of losing sight of George for a while, and was sufficiently38 intelligent to appreciate the advantages, social and mental, that the University would offer him; but it struck him that there were two things which he did not like about the scheme. The first of these was, that whilst he was pursuing his academical studies, George would practically be left on the spot — for Roxham was only six miles off — to put in motion any schemes he might have devised; and Philip was sure that he had devised schemes. And the second, that Oxford was a long way from Maria Lee. However, he kept his objections to himself. In due course they reached the buildings they had set out to examine, and the old squire, having settled what was to be done, and what was to be left undone39, with characteristic promptitude and shrewdness, they turned homewards.
In passing through the shrubberies, on their way back to the house, they suddenly came upon a stolid-looking lad of about fifteen, emerging from a side-walk with a nest full of young blackbirds in his hand. Now, if there was one thing in this world more calculated than another to rouse the most objectionable traits of the old squire’s character into rapid action, it was the discovery of boys, and more especially bird-nesting boys, in his plantations40. In the first place, he hated trespassers; and in the second, it was one of his simple pleasures to walk in the early morning and listen to the singing of the birds that swarmed41 around. Accordingly, at the obnoxious42 sight he stopped suddenly, and, drawing himself up to his full height, addressed the trembling youth in his sweetest voice.
“Your name is, I believe — Brady — Jim Brady — correct me if I am wrong — and you have come here, you — you — young — villain43 — to steal my birds.”
The frightened boy walked slowly backwards45, followed by the old man with his fiery46 eyes fixed upon his face, till at last concussion47 against the trunk of a great tree prevented further retreat. Here he stood for about thirty seconds, writhing48 under the glance that seemed to pierce him through and through, till at last he could stand it no longer, but flung himself on the ground, roaring:
“Oh! don’t ee, squire; don’t ee now look at me with that ’ere eye. Take and thrash me, squire, but don’t ee fix me so! I hayn’t had no more nor twenty this year, and a nest of spinxes, and Tom Smith he’s had fifty-two and a young owl44. Oh! oh!”
Enraged49 beyond measure at this last piece of information, Mr. Caresfoot took his victim at his word, and, ceasing his ocular experiments, laid into the less honourable50 portion of his form with the gold-headed malacca cane51 in a way that astonished the prostrate52 Jim, though he was afterwards heard to declare that the squire’s cane “warn’t not nothing compared with the squire’s eye, which wore a hot coal, it wore, and frizzled your innards as sich.”
When Jim Brady had departed, never to return again, and the old man had recovered his usual suavity53 of manner, he remarked to his son:
“There is some curious property in the human eye; a property that is, I believe, very much developed in my own. Did you observe the effect of my glance upon that boy? I was trying an experiment on him. I remember it was always the same with your poor mother. She could never bear me to look at her.”
Philip made no reply, but he thought that, if she had been the object of experiments of that nature, it was not very wonderful.
Shortly after their return home he received a note from Miss Lee. It ran thus:
“My dear Philip,
“What do you think? Just after you had gone away, I got by the mid-day post, which Jones (the butcher) brought from Roxham, several letters, amongst them one from Grumps and one from Uncle Tom. Grumps has shown a cause. Why? ‘It’ said she was not an improper54 person; but, for all that, she is so angry with Uncle Tom that she will not come back, but has accepted an offer to go to Canada as companion to a lady; so farewell Grumps.
“Now for Uncle Tom. ‘It’ suggested that I should live with some of my relations till I came of age, and pay them four hundred a year, which I think a good deal. I am sure it can’t cost four hundred a year to feed me, though I have such an appetite. I had no idea they were all so fond of me before; they all want me to come and live with them, except Aunt Chambers55, who, you know, lives in Jersey56. Uncle Tom says in his letter that he shall be glad if his daughters can have the advantage of my example, and of studying my polished manners (just fancy my polished manners; and I know, because little Tom, who is a brick, told me, that only last year he heard his father tell Emily — that’s the eldest57 — that I was a dowdy58, snub-nosed, ill-mannered miss, but that she must keep in with me and flatter me up). No, I will not live with Uncle Tom, and I will tell ‘it’ so. If I must leave my home, I will go to Aunt Chambers at Jersey. Jersey is a beautiful place for flowers, and one learns French there without the trouble of learning it; and I like Aunt Chambers, and she has no children, and nothing but the memory of a dear departed. But I don’t like leaving home, and feel very much inclined to cry. Hang the Court of Chancery, and Uncle Tom and his interference too!— there. I suppose you can’t find time to come over tomorrow morning to see me off? Good-bye, dear Philip,
“Your affectionate friend,
“Maria Lee.”
Philip did manage to find time next morning, and came back looking very disconsolate59.
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narration
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| n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体 | |
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adorn
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| vt.使美化，装饰 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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imbibe
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| v.喝，饮；吸入，吸收 | |
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monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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mellow
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| adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟 | |
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tilted
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| v. 倾斜的 | |
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marshes
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| n.沼泽，湿地( marsh的名词复数 ) | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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loam
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| n.沃土 | |
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acorn
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| n.橡实，橡子 | |
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acorns
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| n.橡子，栎实( acorn的名词复数 ) | |
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vex
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| vt.使烦恼，使苦恼 | |
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wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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hew
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| v.砍；伐；削 | |
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fig
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| n.无花果(树) | |
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hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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kinsman
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| n.男亲属 | |
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rustics
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| n.有农村或村民特色的( rustic的名词复数 )；粗野的；不雅的；用粗糙的木材或树枝制作的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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undone
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| a.未做完的，未完成的 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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obnoxious
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| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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owl
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| n.猫头鹰，枭 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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concussion
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| n.脑震荡；震动 | |
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48
writhing
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的现在分词 ) | |
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enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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51
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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suavity
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| n.温和；殷勤 | |
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improper
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| adj.不适当的，不合适的，不正确的，不合礼仪的 | |
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55
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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jersey
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| n.运动衫 | |
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57
eldest
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| adj.最年长的，最年老的 | |
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dowdy
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| adj.不整洁的；过旧的 | |
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disconsolate
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| adj.忧郁的，不快的 | |
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