Farnham

“ Arthur Farnham awoke the next day with a flight of sweet hopes and fancies singing in his heart and brain. He felt cheerfully and kindly toward the whole human race. As he walked down into the city to transact some business he had there with his lawyer, he went out of his way to speak to little children. ”

“ I could not remember when I had experienced two such keen emotions as my surprised admiration for the girl, and the dislike, almost amounting to disgust, which I felt for Farnham's friend, Carson Wildred. Something deeper than mere annoyance surged in my breast, that that dark personality should lurk so near to the spotless whiteness of the gauzy drapery, which vaguely seemed to me a part of the girl's self. ”

“ As Farnham disappeared, the chief magistrate of the city tilted his hat to one side, shut an eye with profoundly humorous significance, and said to the two or three loungers who had been enjoying the scene:
"That is the sort of T-rail I am. That young gentleman voted agin me, on the ground I wasn't high-toned enough."
Farnham walked rapidly to the office of the evening newspaper. He found a man in the counting-room, catching flies and trimming their wings with a large pair of office shears. ”

“ The breeze could be heard in the quiet, stirring the young, soft leaves. Farnham felt sore, beaten, discomfited. He smiled a little bitterly to himself when he considered that the cause of his feeling of discouragement was that Alice Belding had spoken to him with coldness and shyness when she opened her door. ”

“ Winston stood as though carven from stone, his face deathly white, his lips compressed, his gray eyes burning, never wavering from that mocking face. With all his strength of will he battled back the first mad impulse to throttle the man, to crush him into shapeless pulp. For one awful moment his mind became a chaos, his blood throbbing fire. To kill would be joy, a relief inexpressible. Farnham realized the impulse, and drew back, not shrinking away, but bracing for the contest. But the engineer gripped himself in time. ”

“ Farnham, reflecting upon the steward’s rather startling announcement, found his irritation giving way to a vague foreboding of evil, with which came a disturbing recollection of Leath’s hurried return to his room the night before. Could the man tell anything? He looked out into the passageway, but the door of the opposite room was closed and Farnham could not bring himself to knock and learn he knew not what; and he dressed with feverish haste, and went on deck with an increasing sense of an agitation which he could not shake off. ”

“ Though there is evidence of an early settlement in the neighbourhood, the town of Farnham (Ferneham) seems to have grown up round the castle of the bishops of Winchester, who possessed the manor at the Domesday Survey. Its position at the junction of the Pilgrim’s Way and the road from Southampton to London was important. In 1205 Farnham had bailiffs, and in 1207 it was definitely a mesne borough under the bishops of Winchester. In 1247 the bishop granted the first charter, giving, among other privileges, a fair on All Saints’ Day. ”

“ This is the young lady who turns her bright, keen, beautiful face upon Farnham, with eyes eager to criticise, a tongue quick to flatter and to condemn, a head stuffed full of poetry and artificial passion, and a heart saved from all danger by its idolatry of her father and herself. ”

“ Farnham's will, which has but lately come into my hands, I find myself called upon to resign my guardianship over you both; for—with the exception of his widow's dower, and ten thousand dollars left to this young lady, Isabel Chester, with direction that she should be brought up and educated in his own family—Mr. Farnham's property was divided equally between his own son and the son of Joseph and Anna Esmond. I rejoice at this, and congratulate you, young man. You have each proved worthy, and God has blessed you. ”

“ I was greatly disturbed, and walked for two or three hours about the quiet neighborhood of Farnham, revolving a hundred fragments of schemes for bringing the truth to light, without arriving at any feasible conclusion. One only mode of procedure seemed to offer, and that but dimly, a hope of success. It was, however, the best I could hit upon, and I directed my steps towards the Farnham orison. Sarah Purday had not yet, I remembered, been removed to the county jail at Guilford. ”

“ Farnham's greatest man was not an ecclesiastic, but a politician. William Cobbett, soldier, farmer, Radical, editor of Peter Porcupine and the Weekly Political Register, and author of a diary unequalled of its kind in English writing, was born at Farnham on March 9, 1762. The house in which he was born, once a farmhouse and now the Jolly Farmer inn, stands on the outskirts of the town near the Wey, conspicuous with a white gable. As a boy, he must have been one of the busiest on any farm in the neighbourhood. ”

“ In resisting an attack made by the bishop in 1660 on their right of toll, the burgesses could only claim Farnham as a borough by prescription as their charters had been mislaid, but the charters were subsequently found, and after some litigation their rights were established. In the 18th century the corporation, a close body, declined, its duties being performed by the vestry, and in 1789 the one survivor resigned and handed over the town papers to the bishop. Farnham sent representatives to parliament in 1311 and 1460, on both occasions being practically the bishop’s pocket borough. ”

“ One of the finest avenues of elms I know, is to be seen at the Palace of the Bishop of Winchester at Farnham in Surrey, but the land is quite exceptionally good, and in the palmy days of hop-growing, the adjoining fields commanded a rent of £20 an acre for what is known as the "Heart land of Farnham," where hops of the most superlative quality were grown. When the dappled deer are grouped under this noble avenue, in the light and shade beneath the elms, they form an old English picture of country life not to be surpassed. ”

“ Farnham smiled in his comical American way, which was a humorous sentence in itself.
"Well, I guess it's not so easy to forget a face like yours. You are a little browner, your eyes rather keener perhaps, your head held a bit higher, your shoulders broader and drawn back more like a soldier's than ever ”

“ By the middle of the eighteenth century the hops of Farnham were already distinguished—“always at the top of the market;” and the agricultural writers of that day wax eloquent over the praises of the pleasing, fertile vale, and its “hazel-coloured,” loamy soil, and the yearly-increasing number of acres given up to hop-culture. Arthur Young calls the district between Farnham and Alton the finest in England. ”

“ With him is old Lord Farnham, who has one leg in his grave, literally speaking, having lost it in battle more years ago than one cares to count, but who rides wonderfully nevertheless, and is as young to speak to, or rather younger, than any nineteenth-century man. ”

“ He preached on Sundays in the villages around, and at length was asked to occupy a pulpit in Farnham itself. "I remember," says one of his friends, "his first sermon in the old Congregational Chapel. The place was crammed to excess, by people too who were not in the habit of attending such places."
All this time, this "carpenter, and son of a carpenter," worked diligently at his trade; but a sudden vacancy occurring in the management of the Farnham British Schools, he was asked to become the master. He did so. ”

“ Farnham would meet it with reproof to herself or insult to Mary, and she could not force herself to speak of this, as a cause of her sadness, or ask permission to visit her friend.
For two or three days she was compelled to follow Mrs. Farnham about her sumptuous home—sumptuous and yet replete with discomfort—to pick up her handkerchief, bring her eye-glass and listen to the confusion of commands with which the lady tormented her servants from morning till night. It was an irksome life, this forced companionship with a person whom she could neither respect nor even like. ”

“ Except for the fact of having remarked that he still wore the ring, and that his finger looked as pinched as a woman's waist beneath its clasp, I could not in any way have described Harvey Farnham's hand. I had doubtless a general impression of its shape and contour in my mind, but I did not now recall that there had been any recognisable likeness between it and the dead hand my dream had shown me. ”

“ Miss Farnham, how came you by it?" he cried out in such a startled, eager voice that she quivered with deadly fear, recalling in dismay the old miser's malicious words:
"People will recognize the ring—they will ask you questions that you will not dare to answer."
"The ring—I—oh—you must have made a mistake," she faltered, almost imploringly.
"Impossible! I know the jewel perfectly. I will prove it to you. Inside the serpent-ring there is carved a name—'Pepita'—is it not true? You know it. Come, Miss Farnham, you have solved the mystery of that woman's fate, or you would not wear her ring. ”

“ He heard their pleasant last words, as the ladies resumed their wraps and Farnham accompanied them to the door. Mrs. Belding asked him to dinner, "with nobody but ourselves," and he accepted with a pleased eagerness. Sleeny got one more glimpse of the beautiful face under the gray hat and feather, and blessed it as it vanished out of the door. As Farnham came back to the library, he stood for a moment by Sam, and examined what he had done.
"That's a good job. I like your work on the green-house, too. I know good work when I see it. I worked one winter as a boss carpenter myself." ”

“ But now he reflected, with a joyful surprise, that in this world of rich people there were others equally beautiful, and that here, under Farnham's roof, on terms of familiar acquaintance with him, was a girl as faultless as an angel,—one of his own kind. ”

“ Farnham's son now?" inquired uncle Nathan, to whose genial heart the sharp opinions of his visitor came unpleasantly; "he ought to be a smart young fellow by this time."
"I don't know who he'd take after then," observed the housekeeper, drily.
"His father was an enterprising man, understood business, knew how to take care of what he made," said uncle Nathan. "We never had many smarter men than Farnham here in the mountains."
"Farnham was a villain!" exclaimed aunt Hannah, whose face to the very lips had been growing white as she listened. ”

“ Lord and Lady Farnham saw and invited them to the house, and they are full of admiration and almost affection, I think, for Lord and Lady Farnham: they are so charmed by their hospitality, their goodness to the poor, their care of the young Foxes, their magnificent establishment, their neat cottages for their tenants, and, as Lord Gardner sensibly said, "their judicious economy in the midst of magnificence." ”

“ The fissures of the sheath widened visibly and turned white as the two men looked at them.
"It is a shame to watch this beautiful thing happening for only us," Farnham said to the gardener. "Go and tell Mrs. Belding, with my compliments, and ask her and Miss Belding to come down." But observing his crestfallen expression, he took compassion on him and said: "No, you had better remain, for fear something should happen in your absence. I will go for the ladies." ”

“ Naturally he was afraid of all men, strangers to him, who claimed knowledge of him as Harvey Farnham. He was playing a bold and dangerous game, and no doubt he was aware that, unless he kept himself in hand, and never for an instant lost his presence of mind, any moment might find him beaten. ”

“ Beautiful women were plenty, but none of them could compare with the young girl standing there in the dust of their carriage-wheels talking to the old miser.
"Look at those handsome creatures in their magnificent carriages with liveried servants—look at their silks and jewels. Do you not envy them?" demanded Farnham. "You are more beautiful than they are. It is very foolish [Pg 8] of you to drown yourself for lack of bread when I offer you wealth and splendor as my wife." ”

“ With the man who faced him Farnham had no concern; but he was instantly and strangely interested in the other, who stood with his back toward him. The subtile individuality which occasionally asserts itself in the human back told him that he knew this man, and the consciousness sent an unaccountable thrill through his veins. A moment after, the other of the two walked away and the owner of the expressive back turned to enter the hotel. As Farnham caught sight of his face his first impression was that he had been mistaken ”

“ Farnham!" said the good-natured lady. "So glad to see you. I began to be alarmed. So did the young ladies. They were afraid you had not returned. Show yourself in the drawing-room and dispel their fears. Oh, Mr. Harrison, I am so glad you resolved to stay over."
Farnham gave way to the next comer, and said to Mr. Temple, who had pressed his hand in silence ”

“ Farnham's eye who could not choose but remark the contrast between those white hands and the dark kid, while she coquetted with the folds of her shawl.
"Come!" repeated Salina, thrusting her arm through that of the lawyer, and bearing him forward in spite of all opposition. "Just a beau apiece. Mr. Farnham will take care of the old lady, and I can get along with you. Half a loaf is better than no bread, at any time. ”