CHAPTER III--BURNLEY HALL, OLD AND NEW

I have noticed more than once that although the life-story of some good old families in England may run long stagnant, still, when one important event does take place, strange thing after strange thing may happen, and the story rushes on with heedless speed, like rippling brooklets to the sea.

The St. Clairs may have been originally a Scottish family, or branch of some Highland clan, but they had been settled on a beautiful estate, far away in the wilds of Cornwall, for over one hundred and fifty years.

Stay, though, we are not going back so far as that. Old history, like old parchment, has a musty odour. Let us come down to more modern times.

When, then, young Roland's grandfather died, and died intestate, the whole of the large estate devolved upon his eldest son, with its fat rentals of fully four thousand a-year. Peggy St. Clair, our little heroine, was his only child, and said to be, even in her infancy, the very image of her dead-and-gone mother.

No wonder her father loved her.

But soon the first great event happened in the life-story of the St. Clairs. For, one sad day Peggy's father was borne home from the hunting-field grievously wounded.

All hope of recovery was abandoned by the doctor shortly after he had examined his patient.

Were Herbert to die intestate, as his father had done, his second brother John, according to the old law, could have stepped into his shoes and become lord of Burnley Hall and all its broad acres.

But, alive to the peril of his situation, which the surgeon with tears in his eyes pointed out to him, the dying man sent at once for his solicitor, and a will was drawn up and placed in this lawyer's hands, and moreover he was appointed one of the executors. This will was to be kept in a safe until Peggy should be seventeen years of age, when it was to be opened and read.

I must tell you that between the brothers Herbert and John there had long existed a sort of blood-feud, and it was as well they never met.

Thomas, however, was quickly at his wounded brother's bedside, and never left it until--

"Clay-cold Death had closed his eye".

The surgeon had never given any hopes, yet during the week that intervened between the terrible accident and Herbert's death there were many hours in which the doomed man appeared as well as ever, though scarce able to move hand or foot. His mind was clear at such times, and he talked much with Thomas about the dear old times when all were young.

Up till now this youngest son and brother, Thomas, had led rather an uneasy and eventful life. Nothing prospered with him, though he had tried most things.

He was married, and had the one child, Roland, to whom the reader has already been introduced.

"Now, dear Tom," said Herbert, one evening after he had lain still with closed eyes for quite a long time, and he placed a white cold hand in that of his brother as he spoke, "I am going to leave you. We have always been good friends and loved each other well. All I need tell you now, and I tell you in confidence, is that Peggy, at the age of seventeen, will be my heir, with you, dear Tom, as her guardian."

Tom could not reply for the gathering tears. He just pressed Herbert's hand in silence.

"Well," continued the latter, "things have not gone over well with you, I know, but I have often heard you say you could do capitally if you emigrated to an almost new land--a land you said figuratively 'flowing with milk and honey'. I confess I made no attempt to assist you to go to the great valley of the Amazon. It was for a selfish reason I detained you. My brother John being nobody to me, my desire was to have you near."

He paused, almost exhausted, and Tom held a little cup of wine to his lips.

Presently he spoke again.

"My little Peggy!" he moaned. "Oh, it is hard, hard to leave my darling!

"Tom, listen. You are to take Peggy to your home. You are to care for her as the apple of your eye. You must be her father, your wife her mother."

"I will! I will! Oh, brother, can you doubt me!"

"No, no, Tom. And now you may emigrate. I leave you thirty thousand pounds, all my deposit account at Messrs. Bullion & Co.'s bank. This is for Peggy and you. My real will is a secret at present, and that which will be read after--I go, is a mere epitome. But in future it will be found that I have not forgotten even John."

Poor Peggy had run in just then, and perched upon the bed, wondering much that her father should lie there so pale and still, and make no attempt to romp with her. At this time her hair was as yellow as the first approach of dawn in the eastern sky.

----

That very week poor Squire St. Clair breathed his last.

John came to the funeral with a long face and a crape-covered hat, looking more like a mute than anything else.

He sipped his wine while the epitomized will was read; but a wicked light flashed from his eyes, and he ground out an oath at its conclusion.

All the information anyone received was that though sums varying from five hundred pounds to a thousand were left as little legacies to distant relations and to John, as well as _douceurs_ to the servants, the whole of the estates were willed in a way that could not be divulged for many a long year.

John seized his hat, tore from it the crape, and dashed it on the floor. The crape on his arm followed suit. He trampled on both and strode away slamming the door behind him.

Years had flown away.

Tom and his wife had emigrated to the banks of the Amazon. They settled but a short time at or near one of its mouths, and then Tom, who had no lack of enterprise, determined to journey far, far into the interior, where the land was not so level, where mountains nodded to the moon, and giant forests stretched illimitably to the southward and west.

At first Tom and his men, with faithful Bill as overseer, were mere squatters, but squatters by the banks of the queen of waters, and in a far more lovely place than dreams of elfinland. Labour was very cheap here, and the Indians soon learned from the white men how to work.

Tom St. Clair had imported carpenters and artificers of many sorts from the old country, to say nothing of steam plant and machinery, and that great resounding steel buzz-saw.

Now, although not really extravagant, he had an eye for the beautiful, and determined to build himself a house and home that, although not costing a deal, would be in reality a miniature Burnley Hall. And what a truly joyous time Peggy and her cousin, or adopted brother, had of it while the house was gradually being built by the busy hands of the trained Indians and their white brethren!

Not they alone, but also a boy called Dick Temple, whose uncle was Tom St. Clair's nearest neighbour, That is, he lived a trifle over seven miles higher up the river. Dick was about the same age and build as Roland.

There was a good road between Temple's ranch and Tom St. Clair's place, and when, after a time, Tom and Peggy had a tutor imported for their own especial benefit, the two families became very friendly indeed.

Dick Temple was a well-set-up and really brave and good-looking lad. Little Peggy averred that there never had been, or never could be, another boy half so nice as Dick.

But I may as well state here at once and be done with it--Dick was simply a reckless, wild dare-devil. Nothing else would suffice to describe young Dick's character even at this early age. And he soon taught Roland to be as reckless as himself.

----

Time rolled on, and the new Burnley Hall was a _fait accompli_.

The site chosen by Tom for his home by the river was a rounded and wooded hill about a quarter of a mile back from the immediate bank of the stream. But all the land between the hill and the Amazon was cultivated, and not only this, but up and down the river as well for over a mile, for St. Clair wanted to avoid too close contact with unfriendly alligators, and these scaly reptiles avoid land on which crops are growing.

The tall trees were first and foremost cleared off the hill; not all though. Many of the most beautiful were left for effect, not to say shade, and it was pleasant indeed to hear the wind whispering through their foliage, and the bees murmuring in their branches, in this flowery land of eternal summer.

Nor was the undergrowth of splendid shrubs and bushes and fruit-trees cleared away. They were thinned, however, and beautiful broad winding walks led up through them towards the mansion.

The house was one of many gables; altogether English, built of quartz for the most part, and having a tower to it of great height.

From this tower one could catch glimpses of the most charming scenery, up and down the river, and far away on the other shore, where forests swam in the liquid air and giant hills raised their blue tops far into the sky.

So well had Tom St. Clair flourished since taking up his quarters here that his capital was returning him at least one hundred per cent, after allowing for wear and tear of plant.

I could not say for certain how many white men he had with him. The number must have been close on fifty, to say nothing of the scores and scores of Indians.

Jake Solomons and Burly Bill were his overseers, but they delighted in hard work themselves, as we have already seen. So, too, did Roland's father himself, and as visitors to the district were few, you may be certain he never wore a London hat nor evening dress.

Like those of Jake and Bill, his sleeves were always rolled up, and his muscular arms and brave square face showed that he was fit for anything. No, a London hat would have been sadly out of place; but the broad-brimmed Buffalo Bill he wore became him admirably.

That big buzz-saw was a triumph. The clearing of the forest commenced from close under the hill where stood the mansion, and strong horses and bullocks were used to drag the gigantic trees towards the mill.

Splendid timber it was!

No one could have guessed the age of these trees until they were cut down and sawn into lengths, when their concentric rings might be counted.

The saw-mill itself was a long way from the mansion-house, with the villages for the whites and Indians between, but quite separate from each other.

The habitations of the whites were raised on piles well above the somewhat damp ground, and steps led up to them. Two-roomed most of them were, but that of Jake was of a more pretentious character. So, too, was Burly Bill's hut.

It would have been difficult to say what the Indians lived on. Cakes, fruit, fish, and meat of any kind might form the best answer to the question. They ate roasted snakes with great relish, and many of these were of the deadly-poisonous class. The heads were cut off and buried first, however, and thus all danger was prevented. Young alligators were frequently caught, too, and made into a stew.

The huts these faithful creatures lived in were chiefly composed of bamboo, timber, and leaves. Sometimes they caught fire. That did not trouble the savages much, and certainly did not keep them awake at night. For, had the whole village been burned down, they could have built another in a surprisingly short time.

When our hero and heroine got lost in the great primeval forest, Burnley Hall was in the most perfect and beautiful order, and its walks, its flower-garden, and shrubberies were a most pleasing sight. All was under the superintendence of a Scotch gardener, whom St. Clair had imported for the purpose.

By this time, too, a very large portion of the adjoining forest had been cut down, and the land on which those lofty trees had grown was under cultivation.

If the country which St. Clair had made his home was not in reality a land flowing with milk and honey, it yielded many commodities equally valuable. Every now and then--especially when the river was more or less in flood--immense rafts were sent down stream to distant Para, where the valuable timber found ready market.

Several white men in boats always went in charge of these, and the boats served to assist in steering, and towing as well.

These rafts used often to be built close to the river before an expected rising of the stream, which, when it did come, floated them off and away.

But timber was not the only commodity that St. Clair sent down from his great estate. There were splendid quinine-trees. There was coca and cocoa, too.

There was a sugar plantation which yielded the best results, to say nothing of coffee and tobacco, Brazil-nuts and many other kinds of nuts, and last, but not least, there was gold.

This latter was invariably sent in charge of a reliable white man, and St. Clair lived in hope that he would yet manage to position a really paying gold-mine.

More than once St. Clair had permitted Roland and Peggy to journey down to Para on a great raft. But only at the season when no storms blew. They had an old Indian servant to cook and "do" for them, and the centre of the raft was hollowed out into a kind of cabin roofed over with bamboo and leaves. Steps led up from this on to a railed platform, which was called the deck.

Burly Bill would be in charge of boats and all, and in the evenings he would enter the children's cabin to sing them songs and tell them strange, weird tales of forest life.

He had a banjo, and right sweetly could he play. Old Beeboo the Indian, would invariably light his meerschaum for him, smoking it herself for a good five minutes first and foremost, under pretence of getting it well alight.

Beeboo, indeed, was altogether a character. Both Mr. and Mrs. St. Clair liked her very much, however, for she had been in the family, and nursed both Peggy and Roland, from the day they had first come to the country. As for her age, she might have been any age between five-and-twenty and one hundred and ten. She was dark in skin--oh, no! not black, but more of copper colour, and showed a few wrinkles at early morn. But when Beeboo was figged out in her nicest white frock and her deep-blue or crimson blouse, with her hair hanging down in two huge plaits, then, with the smile that always hovered around her lips and went dancing away up her face till it flickered about her eyes, she was very pleasant indeed. The wrinkles had all flown up to the moon or somewhere, and Beeboo was five-and-twenty once again.

I must tell you something, however, regarding her, and that is the worst. Beeboo came from a race of cannibals who inhabit one of the wildest and almost inaccessible regions of Bolivia, and her teeth had been filed by flints into a triangular shape, the form best adapted for tearing flesh. She had been brought thence, along with a couple of wonderful monkeys and several parrots, when only sixteen, by an English traveller who had intended to make her a present to his wife.

Beeboo never got as far as England, however. She had watched her chance, and one day escaped to the woods, taking with her one of the monkeys, who was an especial favourite with this strange, wild girl.

She was frequently seen for many years after this. It was supposed she had lived on roots and rats--I'm not joking--and slept at night in trees. She managed to clothe herself, too, with the inner rind of the bark of certain shrubs. But how she had escaped death from the talons of jaguars and other wild beasts no one could imagine.

Well, one day, shortly after the arrival of St. Clair, hunters found the jaguar queen, as they called her, lying in the jungle at the foot of a tree.

There was a jaguar not far off, and a huge piece of sodden flesh lay near Beeboo's cheek, undoubtedly placed there by this strange, wild pet, while close beside her stood a tapir.

Beeboo was carried to the nearest village, and the tapir followed as gently as a lamb. My informant does not know what became of the tapir, but Beeboo was tamed, turned a Christian too, and never evinced any inclination to return to the woods.

Yet, strangely enough, no puma nor jaguar would ever even growl or snarl at Beeboo.

These statements can all be verified.