A Son of Ishmael: A Novel

Not many years ago in the neighbourhood of Andover stood a lonely house, which went by the name of the Grange. It was enclosed in walled-in gardens, and people who passed by on the high road saw nothing of it. The house itself was squarely built—its windows were small, with old-fashioned latticed panes, and its thick walls were closely covered with ivy and other creepers of the hardy species.

It was a lonely place, standing solitary and bleak all the year round, its sole inhabitants being an old man, a young girl, and one servant.

These three inhabited a corner of the old house, living very sparsely and frugally, doing without warmth and comfort in winter and without all the gay things of life in summer. The grounds round the Grange had gone to rack and ruin; the huge kitchen garden was full of weeds, and the lawn in front of the house had been attended to by no gardener since Dr. Follett and his daughter, Nancy, took possession of the place six years ago.

People who saw them at church on Sunday said that Nancy Follett was a handsome girl; she had bright grey eyes, good features, and quantities of beautiful hair; her face had strength about it, her lips were firmly moulded; she had a very upright and erect carriage, but she looked like a girl who lived under a shadow, and during the six years of her residence at the Grange she made but one acquaintance.

The neighbours would have been kind to her if she had let them, but Dr. Follett received no visitors, and strictly forbade his daughter to make friends for herself in the neighbourhood of her dismal home. How she got to know Adrian Rowton was a mystery; how he obtained a footing in the dismal old house was the wonder of the country side. But then Rowton was a man who seemed to do what he liked wherever he went. He saw Nance one day in church, observed the turn of her head, noticed the exquisite curves of her soft neck and throat, commented with a quickening of his heart’s pulses on the lovely shades of her hair, determined to get a nearer view of her, met her by accident the next morning, spoke to her, caught the glint of her bright eyes, and fell madly in love with her on the spot.

Adrian Rowton had never yet seen any reason to check his inclinations, whatever they might be. Nancy Follett’s father was an ogre, but Rowton was clever enough quickly to gain an entrance into the deserted old house. He made love to the father for the sake of the daughter, and to the surprise of everyone in the place, was soon allowed to visit at the Grange as often as he liked.

It was just Rowton’s luck, said other young men who also admired pretty Nancy Follett, but then they looked at one another and wondered what they meant, for if people knew nothing of Dr. Follett and his daughter, they knew still less of Adrian Rowton. He rented a little shooting lodge about half a mile away from the Grange. It was called the Bungalow, and would have been to most men a singularly unattractive place. The house was tumble-down and out of repair, and Rowton took no pains to keep the grounds in order.

He arrived at the Bungalow two years before this story opens, accompanied by a man-servant, a rough-looking fellow with a bulldog head and a singularly unprepossessing face; also by several dogs, and a large supply of guns and ammunition. Rowton had taken the shooting of a large neighbouring estate and in the autumn he occupied himself with his favourite pastime as long as daylight permitted. When the shooting season was over he generally shut up the Bungalow and disappeared, returning, however, any day or night quite unexpectedly and for no apparent reason. He supplied Nancy Follett with plenty of game, but what he did with the rest he never told to anyone. He used to drive about the country on a high dog-cart, and one day brought two or three thoroughbred horses with him from London.