An Eye for an Eye | Page 3

and
which seemed to belong exclusively to the gardener. The papers on the
walls were dark and sombre. The mirrors were small and lustreless. The
carpets were old and dingy. The windows did not open on to the terrace.

The furniture was hardly ancient, but yet antiquated and uncomfortable.
Throughout the house, and indeed throughout the estate, there was
sufficient evidence of wealth; and there certainly was no evidence of
parsimony; but at Scroope Manor money seemed never to have
produced luxury. The household was very large. There was a butler,
and a housekeeper, and various footmen, and a cook with large wages,
and maidens in tribes to wait upon each other, and a colony of
gardeners, and a coachman, and a head-groom, and under-grooms. All
these lived well under the old Earl, and knew the value of their
privileges. There was much to get, and almost nothing to do. A servant
might live for ever at Scroope Manor,--if only sufficiently submissive
to Mrs. Bunce the housekeeper. There was certainly no parsimony at
the Manor, but the luxurious living of the household was confined to
the servants' department.
To a stranger, and perhaps also to the inmates, the idea of gloom about
the place was greatly increased by the absence of any garden or lawn
near the house. Immediately in front of the mansion, and between it and
the park, there ran two broad gravel terraces, one above another; and
below these the deer would come and browse. To the left of the house,
at nearly a quarter of a mile distant from it, there was a very large
garden indeed,--flower-gardens, and kitchen-gardens, and orchards; all
ugly, and old-fashioned, but producing excellent crops in their kind.
But they were away, and were not seen. Oat flowers were occasionally
brought into the house,--but the place was never filled with flowers as
country houses are filled with them now-a-days. No doubt had Lady
Scroope wished for more she might have had more.
Scroope itself, though a large village, stood a good deal out of the
world. Within the last year or two a railway has been opened, with a
Scroope Road Station, not above three miles from the place; but in the
old lord's time it was eleven miles from its nearest station, at
Dorchester, with which it had communication once a day by an
omnibus. Unless a man had business with Scroope nothing would take
him there; and very few people had business with Scroope. Now and
then a commercial traveller would visit the place with but faint hopes
as to trade. A post-office inspector once in twelve months would call

upon plethoric old Mrs. Applejohn, who kept the small shop for
stationery, and was known as the postmistress. The two sons of the
vicar, Mr. Greenmarsh, would pass backwards and forwards between
their father's vicarage and Marlbro' school. And occasionally the men
and women of Scroope would make a journey to their county town. But
the Earl was told that old Mrs. Brock of the Scroope Arms could not
keep the omnibus on the road unless he would subscribe to aid it. Of
course he subscribed. If he had been told by his steward to subscribe to
keep the cap on Mrs. Brock's head, he would have done so. Twelve
pounds a year his Lordship paid towards the omnibus, and Scroope was
not absolutely dissevered from the world.
The Earl himself was never seen out of his own domain, except when
he attended church. This he did twice every Sunday in the year, the
coachman driving him there in the morning and the head-groom in the
afternoon. Throughout the household it was known to be the Earl's
request to his servants that they would attend divine service at least
once every Sunday. None were taken into service but they who were or
who called themselves members of the Church Establishment. It is
hardly probable that many dissenters threw away the chance of such
promotion on any frivolous pretext of religion. Beyond this request,
which, coming from the mouth of Mrs. Bunce, became very imperative,
the Earl hardly ever interfered with his domestics. His own valet had
attended him for the last thirty years; but, beyond his valet and the
butler, he hardly knew the face of one of them. There was a
gamekeeper at Scroope Manor, with two under-gamekeepers; and yet,
for, some years, no one, except the gamekeepers, had ever shot over the
lands. Some partridges and a few pheasants were, however, sent into
the house when Mrs. Bunce, moved to wrath, would speak her mind on
that subject.
The Earl of Scroope himself was a tall, thin man, something over
seventy at the time of which I will now begin to speak. His shoulders
were much bent, but otherwise he