A Fatal Silence, Vol. 1 (of 3) by Florence Marryat

HIGHBRIDGE FARM.

Highbridge Farm stood on the summit of the hill which formed one side of the valley of Deepdale, and was by far the most important building in the neighbourhood. It had been in the possession of the Herefords (Hal Rushton's mother's family) for upwards of two centuries before it fell, by marriage, into old Mr Rushton's hands, and it was he who had changed its name from Highbridge Hall to Highbridge Farm, as more consonant with his occupation. It was a long, low house of red brick, darkened to shades of brown and purple with the progress of the centuries, and possessed a slated roof overlaid with a thick thatch. Its outer walls were covered with creepers, which clung lovingly to it without the help of list or nails. Its windows were gabled and lattice-paned, the front door was protected by a deep porch, and the stables and outhouses were all in keeping with the principal edifice. Inside, the rooms were large and lofty -- the sitting-rooms greatly exceeding in number those usually required for a farmer's establishment, and the sleeping apartments built all round the upper portion of the house, with each one opening into the other, as used to be the custom in the days of night alarms from highwaymen. Outside, the grounds were capacious, although much of that formerly devoted to pleasure had been annexed by the late owner for agricultural purposes. Still, enough of the old shrubberies remained to make a very decent clump of trees around the garden, which bloomed with all sorts of old-fashioned flowers. The house was rather sparsely furnished, and the furniture was old-fashioned and worn. Young Mr Rushton had not cared to renovate the place for the convenience of his stepmother and her son, and as for himself, he was scarcely ever in it. His great hobby was riding to hounds, and during the hunting season he spent half his time out of doors. The stables were consequently what he took interest in (leaving most of the farming operations to the sagacity of his bailiff), and Mrs Rushton was always prophesying that he would live to repent of his folly. But, then, everything that the young owner of Highbridge Farm did was folly in the eyes of his stepmother. How he came to keep so unpleasant a person about the premises was a matter of wonder to most of his acquaintance -- and how his father had ever established her there, a still greater. But old Mr Rushton had not been of such good blood as his first wife, and after her death he dropt into the habit of associating with persons of a much lower grade. Mrs Snaley had been one of them. Her first husband was nothing better than a herdsman, and she had been a laundress and sick-nurse, and accustomed since her widowhood to come in and superintend the domestic affairs of Highbridge Farm when the owner had one of his spells of sickness. She was a cross-eyed, cat-like creature, ugly to a degree, and still more coarse than she was ugly, but she made excellent beef-tea and custard puddings, and knew exactly how much sugar and port wine to put into a cup of arrowroot -- how to minister, in fact, to all those little comforts the neglect of which convert a sickbed into a purgatory. And Mr Rushton had been very sick for many years before he died -- ailing from an internal disease which rendered his life miserable, whilst it did not confine him to his bed. Mrs Snaley, with her freckled complexion, green eyes and sandy hair, may not have appeared an angel in his eyes, but he was certainly much more comfortable and better looked after when she was by his side. And so the foolish old man, instead of engaging her as a housekeeper, took it into his head to marry her. Hal had been a lad at school at the time, and was, moreover, too young to express an opinion upon the matter, but Deepdale expressed it for him. Everybody of any respectability in the place, from the vicar (who had _not_ married him, for the widow had been deep enough to persuade him to have the knot tied in the neighbouring parish), to the magistrate of Haltham, were _down_ on the old man for his infatuation; but it was useless shutting the stable door when the steed was stolen. Mrs Snaley, the herdsmen's widow, had been transformed into Mrs Rushton, the rich farmer's wife, and drove about in her phaeton like a lady. She held her head very high in those days, and Edward Snaley, her ugly son, who was the image of herself, boasted of the luxuries he enjoyed, and the prospects he looked forward to, as if he had been the heir to Highbridge Farm itself. And so, at one time, he threatened to be. Whence comes the mysterious influence that ill-favoured and unpleasant and coarse women -- yes, and even stupid women -- sometimes gain over the most sober-minded and clear-headed of men, until they can actually twist them round their little finger? It is not only the lower classes who are taken in this way. Men of high birth have often been known to live and die under such an influence; and whatever it may be, Eliza Snaley possessed it to a large degree, so it is no wonder that old Rushton succumbed to her desires like a lamb. She so worked upon his feelings, and his belief in her integrity, that not long after their marriage he made a will leaving the whole of the property at her disposition, and his son Hal completely at her mercy. But Mrs Rushton's exultation in this fact overrode her prudence. She could not keep it to herself. She boasted of it everywhere, and soon went so far, when in an ill-temper, as to taunt the rightful heir with his dependence on herself, and to promise him, as soon as his father was gone, she would turn him out of Highbridge Farm. Hal was a tall stripling of eighteen at that time, well able to understand the rights and wrongs of such a matter, and he carried his stepmother's story to the unbelieving ears of Mr Measures. The good vicar could not comprehend any parent being so totally unjust, and he took an early opportunity to question the old farmer on the subject.