Not many weeks afterwards we went to live at Longfield, which
henceforth became the family home for many years.
Longfield! happy Longfield! little nest of love, and joy, and peace—
where the children grew up, and we grew old—where season after
season brought some new change ripening in us and around us—where
summer and winter, day and night, the hand of God's providence was
over our roof, blessing our goings out and our comings in, our basket
and our store; crowning us with the richest blessing of all, that we
were made a household where "brethren dwelt together in unity." Beloved Longfield! my heart, slow pulsing as befits one near the grave, thrills warm and young as I remember thee!
Yet how shall I describe it—the familiar spot; so familiar that it
seems to need no description at all.
It was but a small place when we first came there. It led out of the
high-road by a field-gate—the White Gate; from which a narrow path
wound down to a stream, thence up a green slope to the house; a mere
farm-house, nothing more. It had one parlour, three decent bed-
rooms, kitchen and out-houses; we built extempore chambers out of the
barn and cheese-room. In one of these the boys, Guy and Edwin, slept, against the low roof of which the father generally knocked his head every morning when he came to call the lads. Its windows were open all summer round, and birds and bats used oftentimes to fly in, to the great delight of the youthful inmates.
Another infinite pleasure to the little folk was that for the first
year, the farm-house kitchen was made our dining-room. There, through the open door, Edwin's pigeons, Muriel's two doves, and sometimes a stately hen, walked in and out at pleasure. Whether our live stock, brought up in the law of kindness, were as well-trained and well-behaved as our children, I cannot tell; but certain it is that we never found any harm from this system, necessitated by our early straits at Longfield—this "liberty, fraternity, and equality."
Those words, in themselves true and lovely, but wrested to false
meaning, whose fatal sound was now dying out of Europe, merged in the
equally false and fatal shout of "Gloire! gloire!" remind me of an
event which I believe was the first that broke the delicious monotony
of our new life.
It was one September morning. Mrs. Halifax, the children, and I were
down at the stream, planning a bridge across it, and a sort of
stable, where John's horse might be put up—the mother had steadily
resisted the long-tailed grey ponies. For with all the necessary
improvements at Longfield, with the large settlement that John
insisted upon making on his wife and children, before he would use in
his business any portion of her fortune, we found we were by no means
so rich as to make any great change in our way of life advisable. And, after all, the mother's best luxuries were to see her children merry and strong, her husband's face lightened of its care, and to know he was now placed beyond doubt in the position he had always longed for; for was he not this very day gone to sign the lease of Enderley Mills?
Mrs. Halifax had just looked at her watch, and she and I were
wondering, with quite a childish pleasure, whether he were not now
signing the important deed, when Guy came running to say a coach-
and-four was trying to enter the White Gate.
"Who can it be?—But they must be stopped, or they'll spoil John's
new gravel road that he takes such pride in. Uncle Phineas, would
you mind going to see?"
Who should I see, but almost the last person I expected—who had not
been beheld, hardly spoken of, in our household these ten years—Lady
Caroline Brithwood, in her travelling-habit of green cloth, her
velvet riding-hat, with its Prince of Wales' feathers, gayer than
ever—though her pretty face was withering under the paint, and her
lively manner growing coarse and bold.
"Is this Longfield?—Does Mr. Halifax—mon Dieu, Mr. Fletcher, is
that you?"
She held out her hand with the frankest condescension, and in the
brightest humour in the world. She insisted on sending on the
carriage, and accompanying me down to the stream, for a "surprise"—a
"scene."
