glorious red-fire in the large room of the George Inn, Grilling Abbots.
Would the old gentleman last through the night? Was old Mr. Hadfield of the Grange really going? So they asked each other in low, awful whispers. The question went buzzing round as though it had been part of a fireside forfeit game, and each man was bound to propose it to his neighbour, and to give to it an evasive answer when his turn came to be examined on the subject. Indeed, it might have been a game. It was the season of the year for forfeits, and such amusements. The day after Christmas Day. There was merriment enough and to spare at other places. There was a grand ball at Mowle, for instance; while up in London, very likely, there were thousands shrieking with laughter at the clown's first leap on to the stage—at his soiling his new clean motley in his first slip and tumble. There was little mirth, though, at Grilling Abbots. They were warm and snug, the fire glowing splendidly, the kettle always proffering boiling water, the mugs full, and the rummers emitting most deliciously inebriating perfume. But there was no mirth. This question about old Mr. Hadfield oppressed all terribly. Already there seemed to be a gloom as of crape covering and saddening them.
It was a small enough event from any other than a Grilling Abbots point of view, it must be admitted. It was like an explosion in a room—it would break the windows possibly, and make the children next door scream and clutch their mother's skirts; but out of a certain small radius it would be quite inaudible. Yes, they would hear it at Mowle; they would be moved by it at Mowle—not, of course, so much as at Grilling Abbots, but still considerably. You know he had sat for Mowle—in the old times before the Reform Bill. No, he never set foot in the House after the Bill. He swore he never would, and he kept his oath. There was no mistake about him. If he once said a thing, he kept to it through thick and thin,—aye, that he did. A true, staunch, stout old English gentleman—that he was. There was no mistake about him. They were all agreed upon that. Yes, they would feel his loss at Mowle. But in London? Those Cockney chaps would read it in the newspaper at breakfast over their eggs, their precious London milk and eggs: (how derisive the rural inhabitant is always on the state in which the town-dweller receives these dainties!) they would read in the paper a simple line or two—
On the 26th December, George Richard Saxon Carew Hadfield, of Hadfield Grange, Grilling Abbots, Uplandshire, in the 72nd year of his age, deeply lamented—
and think and care nothing about the matter, and never know how valued was the old man in the neighbourhood of his estate, how good a friend he had been to the poor of Grilling Abbots; how treasured was his name and his memory amongst them; how old a family he came of, and how many pages were devoted to the chronicles of his house in that interesting work, the "History of Uplandshire."
There must of course be limits to grief. The bereavement which crushes one heart so cruelly is mere gossamer weight to another. The life to that man all in all is as nothing to this. Can we truly sorrow for one we have never heard of even, much less seen? Perhaps it is as well that we have some invulnerable places in our hearts. Were we to mourn each time that Death strikes down a victim, when should we joy?
"When did the Hadfields come into the county?" they were asking in the large room at the George. Was it in the time of the Henrys or the Edwards? They referred to the schoolmaster. He drew hard at his pipe. If the answer was worth having, it is presumable that it was worth waiting for. He appeared to be counting, as though he were obedient to that direction in music which requires you to wait so many bars before you come in again with your contribution to the harmony. But the schoolmaster waited too long, especially as the answer he was finally able to give was of so vague and incomplete a character. He wasn't sure, he said. You see, he'd only come into the county himself within the last twenty years. Woodlandshire, that was his native county. But he thought the Edwards. Yes, he was nearly sure about it—it must be the Edwards. Still, his uncertainty sent him down terribly—regarded as a man of general information—in the estimation of the assembly. For some considerable time afterwards he ruled very low—as the money-market people phrase it—and was indeed, I should say, quoted at quite a nominal price.
However, they were a very old family, the Hadfields, there was no doubt about that.
"A reverend thing," says Bacon, "to see an ancient castle or building not in decay, or to see a fair timber tree sound and perfect. How much more to behold an ancient family, which hath stood against the waves and weathers of time!"
A very old family—the schoolmaster told no one news when he told that. They had been seated at a very early period in Uplandshire—that was no great news either. Surely all Grilling Abbots knew that. They had received territorial grants from Henry VIII. at the dissolution of the Monasteries—that was certain also. And there was a Richard Hadfield, barrister-at-law, Recorder of the city of Oldport, Serjeant-at-Law, and Queen's Serjeant (38th Elizabeth, 1596), who had purchased additional adjoining lands (the Broadmede estates, indeed, which had belonged originally to Broadmede Priory) of Henry, third Earl of Chevedale, the grantee at the dissolution. Sir Hugh Hadfield was sheriff of the county in the tenth year of James I., and received the honour of knighthood at the coronation of Charles I. He erected the family seat on the site of an ancient Grange of the old Abbey of Grilling. Sir Hugh's house was a noble building, in the form, it was said as regarded its ground-plan, of a I, in compliment to James I. Since that period, however, the house had undergone considerable alteration, and the idea of its founder had been greatly departed from. Part had been pulled down and rebuilt. A George Hadfield, in the reign of Anne, had embraced the Roman Catholic faith, and erected a chapel attached to the house. His son and grandson had reverted to the religion of their