John Caldigate | Page 2

might bring him rather than to present happiness
from that source. When the boy came home for his holidays, the father
would sometimes walk with him, and discourse on certain chosen
subjects,--on the politics of the day, in regard to which Mr. Caldigate
was an advanced Liberal, on the abomination of the Game Laws, on the
folly of Protection, on the antiquated absurdity of a State Church;--as to
all which matters his son John lent him a very inattentive ear. Then the
lad would escape and kill rabbits, or rats, or even take birds' nests, with
a zest for such pursuits which was disgusting to the father, though he
would not absolutely forbid them. Then John would be allured to go to
his uncle Babington's house, where there was a pony on which he could
hunt, and fishing-rods, and a lake with a boat, and three fine bouncing
girl-cousins, who made much of him, and called him Jack; so that he
soon preferred his uncle Babington's house, and would spend much of
his holidays at Babington House.
Mr. Caldigate was a country squire with a moderate income, living in a

moderate house called Folking, in the parish of Utterden, about ten
miles from Cambridge. Here he owned nearly the entire parish, and
some portion of Netherden, which lay next to it, having the reputation
of an income of L3,000 a-year. It probably amounted to about
two-thirds of that. Early in life he had been a very poor man, owing to
the improvidence of his father; but he had soon quarrelled with his
father,--as he had with almost everyone else,--and had for some ten
years earned his own bread in the metropolis among the magazines and
newspapers. Then, when his father died, the property was his own, with
such encumbrances as the old squire had been able to impose upon it.
Daniel Caldigate had married when he was a poor man, but did not go
to Folking to live till the estate was clear, at which time he was forty
years old. When he was endeavouring to inculcate good Liberal
principles into that son of his, who was burning the while to get off to a
battle of rats among the corn-stacks, he was not yet fifty. There might
therefore be some time left to him for the promised joys of
companionship if he could only convince the boy that politics were
better than rats.
But he did not long make himself any such promise. It seemed to him
that his son's mind was of a nature very different from his own; and
much like to that of his grandfather. The lad could be awakened to no
enthusiasm in the abuse of Conservative leaders. And those Babingtons
were such fools! He despised the whole race of them,--especially those
thick-legged, romping, cherry-cheeked damsels, of whom, no doubt,
his son would marry one. They were all of the earth earthy, without an
idea among them. And yet he did not dare to forbid his son to go to the
house, lest people should say of him that his sternness was
unendurable.
Folking is not a place having many attractions of its own, beyond the
rats. It lies in the middle of the Cambridgeshire fens, between St. Ives,
Cambridge, and Ely. In the two parishes of Utterden and Netherden
there is no rise of ground which can by any stretch of complaisance be
called a hill. The property is bisected by an immense straight dike,
which is called the Middle Wash, and which is so sluggish, so straight,
so ugly, and so deep, as to impress the mind of a stranger with the ideas
of suicide. And there are straight roads and straight dikes, with ugly
names on all sides, and passages through the country called droves,

also with ugly appellations of their own, which certainly are not worthy
of the name of roads. The Folking Causeway possesses a bridge across
the Wash, and is said to be the remains of an old Roman Way which
ran in a perfectly direct line from St. Neots to Ely. When you have
crossed the bridge going northward,--or north-westward,--there is a
lodge at your right hand, and a private road running, as straight as a line
can be drawn, through pollard poplars, up to Mr. Caldigate's house.
Round the house there are meadows, and a large old-fashioned kitchen
garden, and a small dark flower-garden, with clipt hedges and straight
walks, quite in the old fashion. The house itself is dark, picturesque,
well-built, low, and uncomfortable. Part of it is as old as the time of
Charles II., and part dates from Queen Anne. Something was added at a
later date,--perhaps early in the Georges; but it was all done with good
materials, and no stint of labour. Shoddy had