OrnamentationTHE YOUNG MASTER OFHYSON HALLCHAPTER I.OLD BRUDEN.
Ornamentation
THE YOUNG MASTER OFHYSON HALL
I mayas well say at once that Old Bruden was the name of a double-barrelled shot-gun. It had originally belonged to a man by the name of Bruden, and by him had been traded for a cow to one of his neighbors.
From this person it had come, by purchase, into the possession of old Mr. Berkeley, of Hyson Hall, of whom I shall speak presently.
This double-barrelled shot-gun—which was now called by the name of its original owner—was not, at the time our story begins, a very valuable piece of property.
The hammer of the left-hand barrel had a hitch in it, so that it could not always be depended upon to come down when the trigger was pulled. There was also a tradition that a piece of this left-hand barrel had been blown out by Mr. Bruden, who, by accident, had put a double load into it, and that a new piece had been welded in; but, as no mark of such gunsmithery could be found on the barrel, this story was generally disregarded, especially by the younger persons who occasionally used the weapon.
Hyson Hall, the residence of Godfrey Berkeley, the present owner of the gun, was a large, square house, standing about a quarter of a mile back from the Delaware River in Pennsylvania.
It had been built by Godfrey’s father, who was engaged, for the greater part of his life, in the Chinese tea-trade. When he retired from business he bought an estate of two hundred acres, on which he erected the great house, which he called Hyson Hall.
Old Mr. Berkeley was a very peculiar man, and his house was a peculiar house. The rooms were very large,—so spacious, indeed, and with such high ceilings, that it was sometimes almost impossible to warm them in winter.
The halls, stairways, and outer entrance were grand and imposing, and in some respects it lookedmore like a public edifice than a private residence. The roof was flat, and was surrounded by a parapet, at various points upon which bells had been hung, in the Chinese fashion, which tinkled when the wind blew hard enough, and which probably reminded the old tea-merchant of the days and nights he had passed, when a younger man, in the land of the yellow-skinned Celestials.
But when his son, Godfrey Berkeley, came into possession of the house, he took down all the bells. He was an odd man himself, and could excuse a good deal of oddity, but these bells seemed ridiculous and absurd even to him.
At the time our story begins, the present owner of the property had not lived very long at Hyson Hall. It had been but three years since his father died, and during that time Godfrey Berkeley, then forty years old and a bachelor, devoted himself, as well as he knew how, to the management and improvement of the estate. He had been very much of a traveller ever since he was a boy, and he did not understand a great deal about farming or gardening, or the care of cows and beehives.
A wide pasture-field sloped up from the river to the bottom of the lawn, and there was an old-fashioned garden and some arable land behind the house; and Mr. Berkeley took a good deal of interest in looking after the operations of his small farm.
Some of his neighbors, however, said that he was spending a great deal more money than he would ever get back again, and laughed a good deal at his notions about poultry-raising and improved fertilizers.
Nothing of this kind, however, disturbed the easy-going Godfrey. Sometimes he laughed at his mistakes, and sometimes he growled at them, but he asked for no advice, and took very little that was offered to him.
It is not likely, however, that Mr. Berkeley would have been satisfied at Hyson Hall had it not been for the company of Philip Berkeley, his only brother’s orphan son.
Philip was a boy about fifteen years old. He and his Uncle Godfrey were great friends, and there could be no doubt about Philip’s enjoyment of the life at Hyson Hall. During the greater part of the year he went to school in Boontown, a small town about three miles distant, riding there and back on a horse his uncle gave him; and during the long summer vacation there was plenty of rowing and fishing, and rambles with a gun through the Green Swamp, a wide extent of marshy forest-land, about a mile from the house.
There were neighbors not very far away, and some of these neighbors had boys; and so, sometimes with a companion or two of his own age, andsometimes with his uncle, Philip’s days passed pleasantly enough.
Godfrey Berkeley had some very positive ideas about what a boy ought to do and ought to learn, but there was nothing of undue strictness or severity in his treatment of his nephew, whom he looked upon as his adopted son.
One pleasant evening in July, Godfrey Berkeley was stretched out upon a cane-seated lounge in the great hall, quietly smoking his after-supper pipe, when Philip came hurriedly tramping in.
“Uncle,” he said, “won’t you lend me Old Bruden to-morrow? Chap Webster and I want to go up the creek, and, if this weather lasts, perhaps we’ll camp out for a night, if you’ll let us have the little tent.”
Now, Philip had a gun of his own, but it was a small gun and a single-barrelled one; and as Chapman Webster, his best-loved friend, always carried a double-barrelled gun when they went out on their expeditions, Philip on such occasions generally borrowed Old Bruden.
To be sure, he seldom used the left-hand barrel, but it was always there if he needed it and chose to take the chances of the hammer coming down.
It might have been supposed that Mr. Godfrey Berkeley, who in former years had done so much travelling and hunting, would have had a betterfowling-piece than Old Bruden; but as he now often wandered all day with a gun upon his shoulder without firing a single shot, Old Bruden would have served him very well, even if neither hammer ever came down.
Philip’s requests were generally very reasonable, and his uncle seldom refused them, but this evening Mr. Berkeley seemed disturbed by the boy’s words.
For a few moments he said nothing, and then he took his pipe from his mouth and sat up.
“It seems curious, Phil,” he said, “that you should want Old Bruden to-morrow, and should be thinking of camping out. It’s really remarkable; you haven’t done such a thing for ever so long!”
“That’s because the weather hasn’t been good enough,” said Philip, “or else Chap Webster couldn’t go. But if you are going to use Old Bruden yourself, uncle, of course I don’t want it.”
“Oh, it isn’t that,” said Mr. Berkeley, laughing a little. “But I do not want you to take the gun to-morrow, especially on any long expedition.”
“Is anything the matter with it?” asked Phil, his eyes wide open. “Has it cracked anywhere?”
“I don’t know, indeed,” said Mr. Berkeley, “for it is so long since I fired Old Bruden that I can say very little about it. But I want you to understand,my boy,” he said, more seriously, “that you should never use a gun unless you know for yourself that it is in good condition. You ought to be able to tell me whether or not there is anything the matter with Old Bruden.”
“Oh, I always look it over before I take it out,” said Phil. “But I thought you might just have found out something about the gun.”
“Not at all,” said Mr. Berkeley. “As far as I know, Old Bruden is exactly the same clumsy shot-gun that it was when I first bought it. But I don’t want you to go off with it to-morrow on any expedition with Chap Webster. I can’t give you my reasons for this now, but you shall know all about it to-morrow. That satisfies you, don’t it, my boy?”
“Oh, yes,” said Phil, trying to smile a little, though not feeling a bit like it.
His uncle’s discipline, whenever it was exercised at all, was of a military nature. He commanded, and Phil obeyed. The boy had learned to take a pride in that kind of soldierly obedience, about which his uncle talked so often, and it seldom bore very hard upon him.
He and Mr. Berkeley were generally of the same way of thinking, but to-night his disappointment was very hard to bear.
Several days before he had planned this expeditionwith Chap Webster. They had had high anticipations in regard to it, and Phil did not suppose for a moment that his uncle would offer any objection to their plans. But he had objected, and there was an end to the whole affair.
Philip walked to the front door and gazed out over the moonlighted landscape.
“It will be a splendid day to-morrow,” he said to himself, “and as dry as a chip to-night, but all that amounts to nothing.”
And he turned on his heel and went into the house.