Blent

“ Perhaps I think myself as good a man as you. But"—he laughed a little—"I'm Broadley of Mingham, not Tristram of Blent."
"I see. That's it? And our friend the Major?"
"I shouldn't so much mind having a turn-up with the Major."
"But Tristram of Blent is—is too much?"
"It's not your fault, you can't help it," smiled Bob. "You're born to it and——" He ended with a shrug.
"You're very fond of her?" Harry asked, frowning a little.
"I've been in love with her all my life—ever since they came to Seaview. Fairholme wasn't dreamed of then." ”

“ But the more lax, who base their views on what men generally are, may spare him one of those less bitter tears which they appropriate to the misfortunes of others. If the tear as it falls meets a smile,—why not? Such encounters are hardly unexpected and may well prove agreeable.
There was another disconsolate person in the valley of the Blent—little Mr Gainsborough, left alone in the big house with a note from his daughter commanding him to stay there and to say nothing to anybody. ”

“ He awoke with a start to the fact that he was still, in the main, living with and moving among people who smacked strong of Blent, who had known him as Tristram of Blent, whose lives had crossed his because he was Addie Tristram's son. That was true of even his new acquaintance Lady Evenswood—truer still of Neeld, of Southend, aye, of Sloyd and the Major—most true of his cousin Cecily. This interdependence of its periods is what welds life into a whole; even able and wilful young men have, for good and evil, to reckon with it. ”

“ But he was good enough to me until Rufus Blent came rummagin' round. Somehow he got Uncle Pete to ragin'."
"Who is this Rufus Blent?" asked Ruth, curiously.
"He's a real estate man. He lives at Logwood. That's the landin' at the east end o' the lake."
"What lake?"
"Tallahaska. You've heard tell on't?" he asked.
"Yes. But I was never there, of course."
"Well, Miss, Cliff Island is just the purtiest place! And Uncle Pete must have had some title to it, for he's lived there all his life—and he's old. Fifty-odd year he was there, I know. He was more than a squatter. ”

“ He shrugged his shoulders and relighted his cigar. He was decidedly a reasonable man, thought Neeld.
The evening came—Neeld had been impatient for it—and they drove over to Blent, where Bob was to meet them.
"It's a fine place for a girl to have," said Iver, stirred to a sudden sense of the beauty of the old house as it came into view.
They were all silent for a moment. Such a place to have, such a place to lose! Neeld heard Mrs Iver [Pg 363] sighing in her good-natured motherly fashion. But still Harry was not mentioned. ”

“ He sprang to his feet. "If Blent was yours, what would you do to keep it?"
"Everything," she answered. "Everything—except sell myself, Harry."
She was superb. By a natural instinct, all affectation forgotten, she had thrown herself into Addie Tristram's attitude. There was the head on the bend of the arm, there was the dainty foot stuck out. There was all the defiance of a world insensate to love, greedy to find sin, dull to see grace and beauty, blind to a woman's self while it cavilled at a woman's deeds. ”

“ Who cares about such things in London, about anybody's family, or anybody himself? There is no time for such things in London. It is very different in the valley of the Blent when the sun is low and the cry of a bird makes a sound too shrill to be welcome.
Turning by chance to look up the road toward Mingham, she saw a man coming down the hill. ”

“ Harry Tristram had come back to Blent in the mood which belonged to the place as of old—the mood that claimed as his right what had become his by love, knew no scruples if only he could gain and keep it, was ready to play a bold game and take a great chance. He did not argue about what he was going to do. He did not justify it, and perhaps could not. Yet to him what he purposed was so clearly the best thing that Cecily must be forced into it. She could not be forced by force; if he told her the truth, he would meet at the outset a resistance which he could not quell. ”

“ Hope devotes so much serious and sympathetic study to the man called Tristram of Blent, a man who throughout burning boyhood thought of nothing but a silly old estate, we feel even in Mr. Hope the hint of this excessive concern about the oligarchic idea. It is hard for any ordinary person to feel so much interest in a young man whose whole aim is to own the house of Blent at the time when every other young man is owning the stars. ”

“ Things will come home to a man at last, strive he never so desperately against them—if the things are true and the man ever honest with himself. It was one night, a little while after this conversation, that the truth came to Harry Tristram and found acceptance or at least surrender. His mind had wandered back to that scene in the Long Gallery, and he had fallen to questioning about his own action. There was a new light on it, and the new light showed him truth. "I must face it; it's not Blent," he said aloud. If it were Blent, it was now Blent only as a scene, a frame, a background. ”

“ Ah, well, you're human in the end. You're absolutely forgetting Blent—and you spend your time with an old woman because she can talk to you about it! Go away and arrange your life, and come back and tell me all about it. And if you're discontented with life, remember that you too will reach the stage of being just told about it some day. ”

“ Neeld reminded her.
"Then give me a cigarette," she implored despairingly.
"I am not a smoker," said Mr Neeld.
"Oh, you really are the very last man——! Well, come on the bridge," groaned Mina.
They waited on the bridge, and the wheels drew near. They spoke no more. They had found nothing to do. They could only wait. A fly came down the road.
There they sat, side by side. Cecily was leaning forward, her eyes were eager, and there was a bright touch of color on her cheeks; Harry leant back, looking at her, not at Blent. He wore a quiet smile; his air was very calm. ”

“ Don't think because Tingley's a rich man, and your fathers have probably more money than is good for them, that you will escape," said Blent.
"I don't believe he's so powerful as he makes out to be," grumbled Tom, later, to Ruth. "I was the one who caught Jerry and whispered for him to get out. ”

“ Blent could always find somebody to handle pitch for him.
It was later discovered that when Lem Daggett had opened the jail to Jerry, several of Blent's ruffians had rushed the boy to the railroad yard, put him aboard a moving freight, given a brakeman a two-dollar bill as per instructions from the real estate man, and Jerry wasn't likely to get off the train, unless he jumped while it was moving, until it was fifty miles farther west. ”

“ His voice shook, but Iver was absorbed.
"An enormous difference," said Iver (Lady Tristram herself had once said the same) . "I marry my daughter to Lord Tristram of Blent or to—to whom? You'll call that snobbishness, or some people would. I say it's not snobbish in us new men to consider that. It's the right thing for us to do, Neeld. Other things equal—if the man's a decent fellow and the girl likes him—I say it's the right thing for us to do. That's the way it always has happened, and the right way too." ”

“ Aye, Lord Tristram of Blent! Precisely! Deep despair settled on Mr Neeld's baffled mind.
Meanwhile, Duplay walked home, the happier for having crossed his Rubicon. He had opened his campaign with all the success he could have expected. Like a wise man, Iver held nothing true till it was proved; but like a wise man also he dubbed nothing a lie merely because it was new or improbable. And on the whole he had done the Major justice. He had smiled for a moment when he hinted that Duplay and Harry were not very cordial ”

“ Content yourself with discussing it with Mina or Mr Neeld."
"I'm tired of both of them," she cried. "They do nothing but talk about you."
That night as he sat in the garden at Blent with his wife, Harry returned the compliment by talking of the Imp. He looked up toward Merrion and saw the lights in the windows.
"I think Mina is with us for life, Cecily," said he.
"I like her to be," she answered with a laugh. "First because I like being loved, and she loves me. And then I like you to be loved, and she loves you. ”

“ Mina flushed. The conspiracy was put before her—not by one of the conspirators but by her who was the object of it. She remembered Lady Evenswood's question and Southend's. She had answered that it might not much matter whether Harry liked his cousin or not. He had not loved Janie Iver. Where was the difference?
"He won't want anything if he can't have Blent. Mina, did they say anything about me to Mr Disney?" ”

“ Harry jumped into the saddle, waved his hand to them, and started at a gallop for Blent. The groom, with another touch of his hat, trudged off in his master's track. Janie Iver stood looking as long as Harry was in sight.
"He won't spare the horse," said Iver.
"Well, he can't this time; and anyhow he wouldn't, if he wanted to get there." She took her father's arm and pressed it. "Father, Harry Tristram has just asked me to marry him. He said Lady Tristram wanted it settled before—before she died, or he wouldn't have spoken so soon." ”

“ And now Cecily goes about looking just like you—hard and proud and grim; and she's begun to move things about and alter arrangements at Blent. That's what brings it home to me most of all. ('And to me,' interposed Harry as he read.) If I was the sort of woman you think me, I should go on writing to you. But I shan't write again. I am going to stay at Merrion through the winter, and since you won't come here, this is the last of me for a long time anyhow. Oh, you Tristrams! Good-by,
Mina Zabriska."
"Poor little Imp!" said Harry. "She's a very good sort; and she seems about right. ”

“ Mr. Preston, the foreman, was there.
"I have been making inquiries," the lady explained to Ruth, "and I find that this Rufus Blent has not a very enviable reputation. At least, he is considered, locally, a sharper."
"Is this the girl who is interested in Jerry?" asked the foreman. "Well! he ought to be all right if she sticks up for him."
"I believe his story is true," Ruth said, shaking her head.
"And if that's so, then the boss hasn't got a clear title to Cliff Island—eh?" returned the big foreman, smiling at her quizzically.
"That isn't Mr. Tingley's fault," cried Ruth, quickly. ”

“ But Lady Evenswood herself made a greater impression still. An unusual timidity assaulted and conquered Mina when she found herself with the white-haired old lady who never seemed to do more than gently suggest and yet exercised command. Southend watched them together with keen amusement, while Lady Evenswood drew out of Mina some account of Cecily's feelings and of the scene at Blent.
"Well, that's Tristram all over," sighed Lady Evenswood at the end.
"Yes, isn't it?" cried Mina, emboldened by a sympathy that spoke her own thought. "She hates to feel she's taken everything away from him. ”

“ And he is one man that ain't under Blent's thumb."
"I don't believe Mr. Tingley is a man who would stand idle and see you cheated even if he lost money through defending you," said Ruth, firmly.
"Do you know him?"
"No. I have never met him," Ruth admitted. "But his wife is a very nice lady. And Belle and the boys——"
"Business is business," interrupted Jerry, shaking his head. "I don't want Tingley to know where I be—yet awhile, anyway." ”

“ I must marry her now."
"Better fling Blent away!" she flashed out in a brilliant indignation.
"And if I did that?"
"A woman would love you for yourself," she cried, leaning forward to him with hands clasped.
Again he rose and paced the length of the Long Gallery. The moment was come. There was a great alliance against him. He fought still. At every step he took he came to something that still was his, that he prized, that he loved, that meant much to him, that typified his position as Tristram of Blent. ”

“ Ruth felt so unhappy she wept openly. It seemed too bad that Jerry Sheming should be taken away to the mainland a prisoner.
"They'll find some way of driving him out of this country again," remarked Preston, the foreman. "You don't know Blent, Mr. Tingley, as well as the rest of us do. Other city men have come up here and bucked against him in times past—and they were sorry before they got through." ”

“ Even Mrs Trumbler made her cast, declaring that she had always known (the source of the information was left in obscurity) that pride such as Harry Tristram's was the sure precursor of a fall. None of them could compete with Mina Zabriska. To her alone the doors of Blent were open; she held exclusive right of access to its hidden mistress. The fact caused unmeasured indignation, the reason excited unresting curiosity. This state of things ought to have made Mina very happy. What more could woman want? ”

“ After an instant Mina asked, "Why?" Neeld was surprised at the baldness of the question, but Harry took it as natural.
"It's like going off guard—I mean, rather, off duty—to her, I think." He made the correction thoughtfully and with no haste. "Life has always seemed rather like an obligation to do things you don't want to—not that she did them all—and now she's tired, she's glad to leave it to me. Only she wishes I was a bit better-looking, though she won't admit it. She couldn't stand a downright ugly man at Blent, you know. ”

“ He looked at the old gentleman with great amazement.
"Neeld was in an exceedingly difficult position," said Iver. "I've come to see that." He paused, looking at Southend with an amused air. "You introduced us to one another," he reminded him with a smile.
"Bless my soul, so I did! I'd forgotten. Well, it seems my fate too to be mixed up in the affair." Just at present, however, he was assisting fate rather actively.
"It's everybody's. The Blent's on fire from Mingham to the sea."
"I've seen Harry Tristram."
"Ah, how is he?" asked Neeld.
"Never saw a young man more composed in all my life. ”