Tristram of Blent: An Episode in the Story of an Ancient HouseHope, Anthony
General
Tristram of Blent: An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House
Hope, Anthony
England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Young men -- Fiction
After he had left her room, he walked through the house, carrying a
shaded candle in his hand along the dark corridors of shining oak. He
bent his steps toward the long gallery which filled all the upper floor
of the left wing. Here were the Valhalla and the treasure-house of the
Tristrams, the pictures of ancestors, the cases of precious things which
the ancestors had amassed. At the end of this gallery Addie Tristram had
used to sit when she was well, in a large high-backed arm-chair by the
big window that commanded the gardens and the river. He flung the
window open and stood looking out. The wind swished in the trees and
the Blent washed along leisurely. A beautiful stillness was about him.
It was as though she were by his side, her fair head resting against the
old brocade cover of the arm-chair, her eyes wandering in delighted
employment round the room she had loved so well. Who should sit there
next? As he looked now at the room, now out into the night, his eyes
filled suddenly with tears; the love of the place came back to him, his
pride in it lived again, he would keep it not only because it was his
but because it had been hers before him. His blood spoke strong in him.
Suddenly he smiled. It was at the thought that all this belonged in law
to Miss Cecily Gainsborough--the house, the gallery, the pictures, the
treasures, the very chair where Addie Tristram had used to sit. Every
stick and stone about the place was Cecily Gainsborough's, aye, and the
bed of the Blent from shore to shore. He had nothing at all--according
to law.
Well, the law must have some honor, some recognition, at all events. The
Gainsboroughs should, as he had promised, be asked to the funeral. They
should be invited with all honor and most formally, in the name of
Tristram of Blent--which, by the by was, according to law, also Miss
Cecily Gainsborough's. Harry had no name according to law; no more than
he had houses or pictures or treasures, any stick or stone, or the
smallest heritage in the bed of the Blent. He had been son to the
mistress of it all; she was gone and he was nobody--according to law. It
was, after all, a reasonable concession that his mother had urged on
him; the Gainsboroughs ought to be asked to the funeral. The last of his
vexation on this score died away into a sense of grim amusement at Addie
Tristram's wish and his own appreciation of it. He had no sense of
danger; Tristram had succeeded to Tristram; all was well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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