The Belton Estate

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This eBook was produced by Andrew Turek.

THE BELTON ESTATE

by Anthony Trollope

CHAPTER I

Mrs Amedroz, the wife of Bernard Amedroz, Esq, of Belton Castle, and
mother of Charles and Clara Amedroz, died when those children were only
eight and six years old, thereby subjecting them to the greatest
misfortune which children born in that sphere of life can be made to
suffer. And, in the case of this boy and girl, the misfortune was
aggravated greatly by the peculiarities of the father's character. Mr
Amedroz was not a bad man as men are held to be bad in the world's
esteem. He was not vicious was not a gambler or a drunkard was not
self-indulgent to a degree that brought upon him any reproach; nor was
he regardless of his children. But he was an idle, thriftless man, who,
at the age of sixty-seven, when the reader will first make his
acquaintance, had as yet done no good in the world whatever. Indeed he
had done terrible evil; for his son Charles was now dead had perished
by his own hand and the state of things which had brought about this
woeful event had been chiefly due to the father's neglect.

Belton Castle is a pretty country seat, standing in a small but
beautifully wooded park, close under the Quantock hills in
Somersetshire; and the little town of Belton clusters round the park
gates. Few Englishmen know the scenery of England well, and the
prettinesses of Somersetshire are among those which are the least
known. But the Quantock hills are very lovely, with their rich valleys
lying close among them, and their outlying moorlands running off
towards Dulverton and the borders of Devonshire moorlands which are not
flat, like Salisbury Plain, but are broken into ravines and deep
watercourses and rugged dells hither and thither; where old oaks are
standing, in which life seems to have dwindled down to the last spark;
but the last spark is still there, and the old oaks give forth their
scanty leaves from year to year.

In among the hills, somewhat off the high road from Minehead to
Taunton, and about five miles from the sea, stands the little town, or
village, of Belton, and the modern house of Mr Amedroz, which is called
Belton Castle. The village for it is in truth no more, though it still
maintains a charter for a market, and there still exists on Tuesdays
some pretence of an open sale of grain and butcher's meat in the square
before the church-gate contains about two thousand persons. That and
the whole parish of Belton did once and that not long ago belong to the
Amedroz family. They had inherited it from the Beltons of old, an
Amedroz having married the heiress of the family. And as the parish is
large, stretching away to Exmoor on one side and almost to the sea on
the other, containing the hamlet of Redicote, lying on the Taunton high
road Redicote, where the post-office is placed, a town almost in
itself, and one which is now much more prosperous than Belton as the
property when it came to the first Amedroz had limits such as these,
the family had been considerable in the county. But these limits had
been straitened in the days of the grandfather and the father of
Bernard Amedroz; and he, when he married a Miss Winterfield of Taunton,
was thought to have done very well, in that mortgages were paid off the
property with his wife's money to such an extent as to leave him in
clear possession of an estate that gave him two thousand a year. As Mr
Amedroz had no grand neighbours near him, as the place is remote and
the living therefore cheap, and as with this income there was no
question of annual visits to London, Mr and Mrs Amedroz might have done
very well with such of the good things of the world as had fallen to
their lot. And had the wife lived, such would probably have been the
case; for the Winterfields were known to be prudent people. But Mrs
Amedroz had died young, and things with Bernard Amedroz had gone badly.

And yet the evil had not been so much with him as with that terrible
boy of his. The father had been nearly forty when he married. He had
then never done any good; but as neither had he done much harm, the
friends of the family had argued well of his future career. After him,
unless he should leave a son behind him, there would be no Amedroz left
among the Quantock hills; and by some arrangement in respect to that
Winterfield money which came to him on his marriage the Winterfields
having a long-dated connexion with the Beltons of old the Amedroz
property was, at Bernard's marriage, entailed back upon a distant
Belton cousin, one Will Belton, whom no one had seen for many years,
but who was by blood nearer the squire in default of children of his
own than any other of his relatives. And now Will Belton was the heir
to Belton Castle; for Charles Amedroz, at the age of twenty-seven, had
found the miseries of the world to be too many for him, and had put an
end to them and to himself.

Charles had been a clever fellow a very clever fellow in the eyes of
his father. Bernard Amedroz knew that he himself was not a clever
fellow, and admired his son accordingly; and when Charles had been
expelled from Harrow for some boyish freak in his vengeance against a
neighbouring farmer, who had reported to the school authorities the
doings of a few beagles upon his land, Charles had cut off the heads of
all the trees in a young fir plantation his father was proud of the
exploit. When he was rusticated a second time from Trinity, and when
the father received an intimation that his son's name had better be
taken from the College books, the squire was not so well pleased; but
even then he found some delight in the stories which reached him of his
son's vagaries; and when the young man commenced Bohemian life in
London, his father did nothing to restrain him. Then there came the old
story debts, endless debts; and lies, endless lies. During the two
years before his death, his father paid for him, or undertook to pay,
nearly ten thousand pounds, sacrificing the life assurances which were
to have made provision for his daughter; sacrificing, to a great
extent, his own life income sacrificing everything, so that the
property might not be utterly ruined at his death. That Charles Amedroz
should be a brighter, greater man than any other Amedroz, had still
been the father's pride. At the last visit which Charles had paid to
Belton his father had called upon him to pledge himself solemnly that
his sister should not be made to suffer by what had been done for him.
Within a month of that time he had blown his brains out in his London
lodgings, thus making over the entire property to Will Belton at his
father's death. At that last pretended settlement with his father and
his father's lawyer, he had kept back the mention of debts as heavy
nearly as those to which he had owned; and there were debts of honour,
too, of which he had not spoken, trusting to the next event at
Newmarket to set him right. The next event at Newmarket had set him
more wrong than ever, and so there had come an end to everything with
Charles Amedroz.

This had happened in the spring, and the afflicted father afflicted
with the double sorrow of his son's terrible death and his daughter's
ruin had declared that he would turn his face to the wall and die. But
the old squire's health, though far from strong, was stronger than he
had deemed it, and his feelings, sharp enough, were less sharp than he
thought them; and when a month had passed by, he had discovered that it
would be better that he should live, in order that his daughter might
still have bread to eat and a house of her own over her head. Though he
was now an impoverished man, there was still left to him the means of
keeping up the old home; and he told himself that it must, if possible,
be so kept that a few pounds annually might be put by for Clara. The
old carriage-horses were sold, and the park was let to a farmer, up to
the hall door of the castle. So much the squire could do; but as to the
putting by of the few pounds, any dependence on such exertion as that
on his part would, we may say, be very precarious.

Belton Castle was not in truth a castle. Immediately before the front
door, so near to the house as merely to allow of a broad road running
between it and the entrance porch, there stood an old tower, which gave
its name to the residence an old square tower, up which the Amedroz
boys for three generations had been able to climb by means of the ivy
and broken stones in one of the inner corners and this tower was a
remnant of a real castle that had once protected the village of Belton.
The house itself was an ugly residence, three stories high, built in
the time of George II, with low rooms and long passages, and an immense
number of doors. It was a large unattractive house unattractive that
is, as regarded its own attributes but made interesting by the beauty
of the small park in which it stood. Belton Park did not, perhaps,
contain much above a hundred acres, but the land was so broken into
knolls and valleys, in so many places was the rock seen to be cropping
up through the verdure, there were in it so many stunted old oaks, so
many points of vantage for the lover of scenery, that no one would
believe it to be other than a considerable domain. The farmer who took
it, and who would not under any circumstances undertake to pay more
than seventeen shillings an acre for it, could not be made to think
that it was in any way considerable. But Belton Park, since first it
was made a park, had never before been regarded in this fashion. Farmer
Stovey, of the Grange, was the first man of that class who had ever
assumed the right to pasture his sheep in Belton chase as the people
around were still accustomed to call the woodlands of the estate.

It was full summer at Belton, and four months had now passed since the
dreadful tidings had reached the castle. It was full summer, and the
people of the village were again going about their ordinary business;
and the shop-girls with their lovers from Redicote were again to be
seen walking among the oaks in the park on a Sunday evening; and the
world in that district of Somersetshire was getting itself back into
its grooves. The fate of the young heir had disturbed the grooves
greatly, and had taught many in those parts to feel that the world was
coming to an end. They had not loved young Amedroz, for he had been
haughty when among them, and there had been wrongs committed by the
dissolute young squire, and grief had come from his misdoings upon more
than one household; but to think that he should have destroyed himself
with his own hand! And then, to think that Miss Clara would become a
beggar when the old squire should die! All the neighbours around
understood the whole history of the entail, and knew that the property
was to go to Will Belton. Now Will Belton was not a gentleman! So, at
least, said the Belton folk, who had heard that the heir had been
brought up as a farmer somewhere in Norfolk. Will Belton had once been
at the Castle as a boy, now some fifteen years ago, and then there had
sprung up a great quarrel between him and his distant cousin Charles
and Will, who was rough and large of stature, had thrashed the smaller
boy severely; and the thing had grown to have dimensions larger than
those which generally attend the quarrels of boys; and Will had said
something which had shown how well he understood his position in
reference to the estate and Charles had hated him. So Will had gone,
and had been no more seen among the oaks whose name he bore. And the
people, in spite of his name, regarded him as an interloper. To them,
with their short memories and scanty knowledge of the past, Amedroz was
more honourable than Belton, and they looked upon the coming man as an
intruder. Why should not Miss Clara have the property? Miss Clara had
never done harm to any one!

Things got back into their old grooves, and at the end of the third
month the squire was once more seen in the old family pew at church. He
was a large man, who had been very handsome, and who now, in his yellow
leaf, was not without a certain beauty of manliness. He wore his hair
and his beard long; before his son's death they were grey, but now they
were very white. And though he stooped, there was still a dignity in
his slow step a dignity that came to him from nature rather than from
any effort. He was a man who, in fact, did little or nothing in the
world whose life had been very useless; but he had been gifted with
such a presence that he looked as though he were one of God's nobler
creatures. Though always dignified he was ever affable, and the poor
liked him better than they might have done had he passed his time in
searching out their wants and supplying them. They were proud of their
squire, though he had done nothing for them. It was something to them
to have a man who could so carry himself sitting in the family pew in
their parish church. They knew that he was poor, but they all declared
that he was never mean. He was a real gentleman was this last Amedroz
of the family; therefore they curtsied low, and bowed on his
reappearance among them, and made all those signs of reverential awe
which are common to the poor when they feel reverence for the presence
of a superior.

Clara was there with him, but she had shown herself in the pew for four
or five weeks before this. She had not been at home when the fearful
news had reached Belton, being at that time with a certain lady who
lived on the farther side of the county, at Perivale a certain Mrs
Winterfield, born a Folliot, a widow, who stood to Miss Amedroz in the
place of an aunt. Mrs Winterfield was, in truth, the sister of a
gentleman who had married Clara's aunt there having been marriages and
intermarriages between the Winterfields and the Folliots and the
Belton-Amedroz families. With this lady in Perivale, which I maintain
to be the dullest little town in England, Miss Amedroz was staying when
the news reached her father, and when it was brought direct from London
to herself. Instantly she had hurried home, taking the journey with all
imaginable speed though her heart was all but broken within her bosom.
She had found her father stricken to the ground, and it was the more
necessary, therefore, that she should exert herself. It would not do
that she also should yield to that longing for death which terrible
calamities often produce for a season.

Clara Amedroz, when she first heard. the news of her brother's fate,
had felt that she was for ever crushed to the ground. She had known too
well what had been the nature of her brother's life, but she had not
expected or feared any such termination to his career as this which had
now come upon him to the terrible affliction of all belonging to him.
She felt at first, as did also her father, that she and he were
annihilated as regards this world, not only by an enduring grief, but
also by a disgrace which would never allow her again to hold up her
head. And for many a long year much of this feeling clung to her clung
to her much more strongly than to her father. But strength was hers to
perceive, even before she had reached her home, that it was her duty to
repress both the feeling of shame and the sorrow, as far as they were
capable of repression. Her brother had been weak, and in his weakness
had sought a coward's escape from the ills of the world around him. She
must not also be a coward! Bad as life might be to her henceforth, she
must endure it with such fortitude as she could muster. So resolving
she returned to her father, and was able to listen to his railings with
a fortitude that was essentially serviceable both to him and to herself.

'Both of you! Both of you!' the unhappy father had said in his woe.
'The wretched boy has destroyed you as much as himself!' 'No, sir,' she
had answered, with a forbearance in her misery, which, terrible as was
the effort, she forced herself to accomplish for his sake. 'It is not
so. No thought of that need add to your grief. My poor brother has not
hurt me not in the way you mean.' 'He has ruined us all,' said the
father; 'root and branch, man and woman, old and young, house and land.
He has brought the family to an end ah me, to such an end!' After that
the name of him who had taken himself from among them was not mentioned
between the father and daughter, and Clara settled herself to the
duties of her new life, striving to live as though there was no great
sorrow around her as though no cloud-storm had burst over her head.

The family lawyer, who lived at Taunton, had communicated the fact of
Charles's death to Mr Belton, and Belton had acknowledged the letter
with the ordinary expressions of regret. The lawyer had alluded to the
entail, saying that it was improbable that Mr Amedroz would have
another son. To this Belton had replied that for his cousin Clara's
sake he hoped that the squire's life might be long spared. The lawyer
smiled as he read the wish, thinking to himself that luckily no wish on
the part of Will Belton could influence his old client either for good
or evil. What man, let alone what lawyer, will ever believe in the
sincerity of such a wish as that expressed by the heir to a property?
And yet where is the man who will not declare to himself that such,
under such circumstances, would be his own wish?

Clara Amedroz at this time was not a very young lady. She had already
passed her twenty-fifth birthday, and in manners, appearance, and
habits was, at any rate, as old as her age. She made no pretence to
youth, speaking of herself always as one whom circumstances required to
take upon herself age in advance of her years. She did not dress young,
or live much with young people, or correspond with other girls by means
of crossed letters; nor expect that, for her, young pleasures should be
provided. Life had always been serious with her; but now, we may say,
since the terrible tragedy lit the family, it must be solemn as well as
serious. The memory of her brother must always be upon her; and the
memory also of the fact that her father was now an impoverished man, on
whose behalf it was her duty to care that every shilling spent in the
house did its full twelve pennies' worth of work. There was a mixture
in this of deep tragedy and of little cares, which seemed to destroy
for her the poetry as well as the pleasure of life. The poetry and
tragedy might have gone hand in hand together; and so might the cares
and pleasures of life have done, had there been no black sorrow of
which she must be ever mindful. But it was her lot to have to
scrutinize the butcher's bill as she was thinking of her brother's
fate; and to work daily among small household things while the spectre
of her brother's corpse was ever before her eyes.

A word must be said to explain how it had come to pass that the life
led by Miss Amedroz had been more than commonly serious before that
tragedy had befallen the family. The name of the lady who stood to
Clara in the place of an aunt has been already mentioned. When a girl
has a mother, her aunt may be little or nothing to her. But when the
mother is gone, if there be an aunt unimpeded with other family duties,
then the family duties of that aunt begin and are assumed sometimes
with great vigour. Such had been the case with Mrs Winterfield. No
woman ever lived, perhaps, with more conscientious ideas of her duty as
a woman than Mrs Winterfield of Prospect Place, Perivale. And this, as
I say it, is intended to convey no scoff against that excellent lady.
She was an excellent lady unselfish, given to self-restraint, generous,
pious, looking to find in her religion a safe path through life a path
as safe as the facts of Adam's fall would allow her feet to find. She
was a woman fearing much for others, but fearing also much for herself,
striving to maintain her house in godliness, hating sin, and struggling
with the weakness of her humanity so that she might not allow herself
to hate the sinners. But her hatred for the sin she found herself bound
at all times to pronounce to show it by some act at all seasons. To
fight the devil was her work was the appointed work of every living
soul, if only living souls could be made to acknowledge the necessity
of the task. Now an aunt of that kind, when she assumes her duties
towards a motherless niece, is apt to make life serious.

But, it will be said, Clara Amedroz could have rebelled; and Clara's
father was hardly made of such stuff that obedience to the aunt would
be enforced on her by parental authority. Doubtless Clara could have
rebelled against her aunt. Indeed, I do not know that she had hitherto
been very obedient. But there were family facts about these Winterfield
connexions which would have made it difficult for her to ignore her
so-called aunt, even had she wished to do so. Mrs Winterfield had
twelve hundred a year at her own disposal, and she was the only person
related to the Amedroz family from whom Mr Amedroz had a right to have
expectations on his daughter's behalf. Clara had, in a measure, been
claimed by the lady, and the father had made good the lady's claim, and
Clara had acknowledged that a portion of her life was due to the
demands of Perivale. These demands had undoubtedly made her life
serious.

Life at Perivale was a very serious thing. As regards amusement,
ordinarily so called, the need of any such institution was not
acknowledged at Prospect House. Food, drink, and raiment were
acknowledged to be necessary to humanity, and, in accordance with the
rules of that house, they were supplied in plenty, and good of their
kind. Such ladies as Mrs Winterfield generally keep good tables,
thinking no doubt that the eatables should do honour to the grace that
is said for them. And Mrs Winterfield herself always wore a thick black
silk dress not rusty or dowdy with age but with some gloss of the silk
on it; giving away, with secret, underhand, undiscovered charity, her
old dresses to another lady of her own sort, on whom fortune had not
bestowed twelve hundred a year. And Mrs Winterfield kept a low,
four-wheeled, one-horsed phaeton, in which she made her pilgrimages
among the poor of Perivale, driven by the most solemn of stable-boys,
dressed up in a great white coat, the most priggish of hats, and white
cotton gloves. At the rate of five miles an hour was she driven about,
and this driving was to her the amusement of life. But such an
occupation to Clara Amedroz assisted to make life serious.

In person Mrs Winterfield was tall and thin, wearing on her brow thin
braids of false hair. She had suffered much from acute ill health, and
her jaws were sunken, and her eyes were hollow, and there was a look of
woe about her which seemed ever to be telling of her own sorrows in
this world and of the sorrows of others in the world to come.
Ill-nature was written on her face, but in this her face was a false
face. She had the manners of a cross, peevish woman; but her manners
also were false, and gave no proper idea of her character. But still,
such as she was, she made life very serious to those who were called
upon to dwell with her.

I need, I hope, hardly say that a young lady such as Miss Amedroz, even
though she had reached the age of twenty-five for at the time to which
I am now alluding she had nearly done so and was not young of her age,
had formed for herself no plan of life in which her aunt's money
figured as a motive power. She had gone to Perivale when she was very
young, because she had been told to do so, and had continued to go,
partly from obedience, partly from habit, and partly from affection. An
aunt's. dominion, when once well established in early years, cannot
easily be thrown altogether aside even though a young lady have a will
of her own. Now Clara Amedroz had a strong will of her own, and did not
at all at any rate in these latter days belong to that school of
divinity in which her aunt shone almost as a professor. And this
circumstance, also, added to the seriousness of her life. But in regard
to her aunt's money she had entertained no established hopes; and when
her aunt opened her mind to her, on that subject, a few days before the
arrival of the fatal news at Perivale, Clara, though she was somewhat
surprised, was by no means disappointed. Now there was a certain
Captain Aylmer in the question, of whom in this opening chapter it will
be necessary to say a few words.

Captain Frederic Folliott Aylmer was, in truth, the nephew of Mrs
Winterfield, whereas Clara Amedroz was not, in truth, her niece. And
Captain Aylmer was also Member of Parliament for the little borough of
Perivale, returned altogether on the Low Church interest for a devotion
to which, and for that alone, Perivale was noted among boroughs. These
facts together added not a little to Mrs Winterfield's influence and
professorial power in the place, and gave a dignity to the one-horse
chaise which it might not otherwise have possessed. But Captain Aylmer
was only the second son of his father, Sir Anthony Aylmer, who had
married a Miss Folliott, sister of our Mrs Winterfield. On Frederic
Aylmer his mother's estate was settled. That and Mrs Winterfield's
property lay in the neighbourhood of Perivale; and now, on the occasion
to which I am alluding, Mrs Winterfield thought it necessary to tell
Clara that the property must all go together. She had thought about it,
and had doubted about it, and had prayed about it, and now she found
that such a disposition of it was her duty.

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