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"MY NOVEL."
BOOK FIRST.
INITIAL CHAPTER.
SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE WRITTEN.
Scene, the hall in UNCLE ROLAND'S tower; time, niyht; season, winter.
MR. CAXTON is seated before a great geographical globe, which he is
turning round leisurely, and "for his own recreation," as, according to
Sir Thomas Browne, a philosopher should turn round the orb of which that
globe professes to be the representation and effigies. My mother having
just adorned a very small frock with a very smart braid, is holding it
out at arm's length, the more to admire the effect. Blanche, though
leaning both hands on my mother's shoulder, is not regarding the frock,
but glances towards PISISTRATUS, who, seated near the fire, leaning back
in the chair, and his head bent over his breast, seems in a very bad
humour. Uncle Roland, who has become a great novel-reader, is deep in
the mysteries of some fascinating Third Volume. Mr. Squills has brought
the "Times" in his pocket for his own special profit and delectation, and
is now bending his brows over "the state of the money market," in great
doubt whether railway shares can possibly fall lower,--for Mr. Squills,
happy man! has large savings, and does not know what to do with his
money, or, to use his own phrase, "how to buy in at the cheapest in order
to sell out at the dearest."
MR. CAXTON (musingly).--"It must have been a monstrous long journey. It
would be somewhere hereabouts, I take it, that they would split off."
MY MOTHER (mechanically, and in order to show Austin that she paid him
the compliment of attending to his remarks).--"Who split off, my dear?"
"Bless me, Kitty," said my father, in great admiration, "you ask just the
question which it is most difficult to answer. An ingenious speculator
on races contends that the Danes, whose descendants make the chief part
of our northern population (and indeed, if his hypothesis could be
correct, we must suppose all the ancient worshippers of Odin), are of the
same origin as the Etrurians. And why, Kitty,--I just ask you, why?"
My mother shook her head thoughtfully, and turned the frock to the other
side of the light.
"Because, forsooth," cried my father, exploding,--"because the Etrurians
called their gods the 'AEsar,' and the Scandinavians called theirs the
'AEsir,' or 'Aser'! And where do you think this adventurous scholar puts
their cradle?"
"Cradle!" said my mother, dreamily, "it must be in the nursery."
MR. CAXTON.--"Exactly,--in the nursery of the human race, just here," and
my father pointed to the globe; "bounded, you see, by the river Halys,
and in that region which, taking its name from Ees, or As (a word
designating light or fire), has been immemorially called Asia. Now,
Kitty, from Ees, or As, our ethnological speculator would derive not only
Asia, the land, but AEsar, or Aser, its primitive inhabitants. Hence he
supposes the origin of the Etrurians and the Scandinavians. But if we
give him so much, we must give him more, and deduce from the same origin
the Es of the Celt and the Ized of the Persian, and--what will be of more
use to him, I dare say, poor man, than all the rest put together--the AEs
of the Romans,--that is, the God of Copper-money--a very powerful
household god he is to this day!"
My mother looked musingly at her frock, as if she were taking my father's
proposition into serious consideration.
"So perhaps," resumed my father, "and not unconformably with sacred
records, from one great parent horde came all those various tribes,
carrying with them the name of their beloved Asia; and whether they
wandered north, south, or west, exalting their own emphatic designation
of 'Children of the Land of Light' into the title of gods. And to think"
(added Mr. Caxton pathetically, gazing upon that speck on the globe on
which his forefinger rested),--"to think how little they changed for the
better when they got to the Don, or entangled their rafts amidst the
icebergs of the Baltic,--so comfortably off as they were here, if they
could but have stayed quiet."
"And why the deuce could not they?" asked Mr. Squills. "Pressure of
population, and not enough to live upon, I suppose," said my father.
PISISTRATUS (sulkily).--"More probably they did away with the Corn Laws,
sir."
"/Papae!/" quoth my father, "that throws a new light on the subject."
PISISTRATUS (full of his grievances, and not caring three straws about
the origin of the Scandinavians).--"I know that if we are to lose L500
every year on a farm which we hold rent-free, and which the best judges
allow to be a perfect model for the whole country, we had better make
haste and turn AEsir, or Aser, or whatever you call them, and fix a
settlement on the property of other nations, otherwise, I suspect, our
probable settlement will be on the parish."
MR. SQUILLS (who, it must be remembered, is an enthusiastic Free-trader).
"You have only got to put more capital on the land."
PISISTRATUS.--"Well, Mr. Squills, as you think so well of that
investment, put your capital on it. I promise that you shall have every
shilling of profit."
MR. SQUILLS (hastily retreating behind the "Times")- "I don't think the
Great Western can fall any lower, though it is hazardous; I can but
venture a few hundreds--"
PISISTRATUS.--"On our land, Squills?---Thank you."
MR. SQUILLS.--"No, no,--anything but that; on the Great Western."
Pisistratus relaxes into gloom. Blanche steals up coaxingly, and gets
snubbed for her pains.
A pause.
MR. CAXTON.--"There are two golden rules of life; one relates to the
mind, and the other to the pockets. The first is, If our thoughts get
into a low, nervous, aguish condition, we should make them change the
air; the second is comprised in the proverb, 'It is good to have two
strings to one's bow.' Therefore, Pisistratus, I tell you what you must
do,--Write a book!"
PISISTRATUS.--"Write a book! Against the abolition of the Corn Laws?
Faith, sir, the mischief's done! It takes a much better pen than mine to
write down an act of parliament."
MR. CAXTON.--"I only said, 'Write a book.' All the rest is the addition
of your own headlong imagination."
PISISTRATUS (with the recollection of The Great Book rising before him).
--"Indeed, sir, I should think that that would just finish us!"
MR. CAXTON (not seeming to heed the interruption).---"A book that will
sell; a book that will prop up the fall of prices; a book that will
distract your mind from its dismal apprehensions, and restore your
affection to your species and your hopes in the ultimate triumph of sound
principles--by the sight of a favourable balance at the end of the yearly
accounts. It is astonishing what a difference that little circumstance
makes in our views of things in general. I remember when the bank in
which Squills had incautiously left L1000 broke, one remarkably healthy
year, that he became a great alarmist, and said that the country was on
the verge of ruin; whereas you see now, when, thanks to a long succession
of sickly seasons, he has a surplus capital to risk in the Great Western,
he is firmly persuaded that England was never in so prosperous a
condition."
MR. SQUILLS (rather sullenly).--"Pooh, pooh."
MR. CAXTON.--"Write a book, my son,--write a book. Need I tell you that
Money or Moneta, according to Hyginus, was the mother of the Muses?
Write a book."
BLANCHE and my MOTHER (in full chorus).--"O yes, Sisty, a book! a book!
you must write a book."
"I am sure," quoth my Uncle Roland, slamming down the volume he had just
concluded, "he could write a devilish deal better book than this; and how
I come to read such trash night after night is more than I could possibly
explain to the satisfaction of any intelligent jury, if I were put into a
witness-box, and examined in the mildest manner by my own counsel."
MR. CAXTON.--"You see that Roland tells us exactly what sort of a book it
shall be."
PISISTRATUS.---"Trash, sir?"
MR. CAXTON.--"No,--that is, not necessarily trash; but a book of that
class which, whether trash or not, people can't help reading. Novels
have become a necessity of the age. You must write a novel."
PISISTRATUS (flattered, but dubious).-"A novel! But every subject on
which novels can be written is preoccupied. There are novels of low
life, novels of high life, military novels, naval novels, novels
philosophical, novels religious, novels historical, novels descriptive of
India, the Colonies, Ancient Rome, and the Egyptian Pyramids. From what
bird, wild eagle, or barn-door fowl, can I
"'Pluck one unwearied plume from Fancy's wing?'"
MR. CAXTON (after a little thought).--"You remember the story which
Trevanion (I beg his pardon, Lord Ulswater) told us the other night?
That gives you something of the romance of real life for your plot, puts
you chiefly among scenes with which you are familiar, and furnishes you
with characters which have been very sparingly dealt with since the time
of Fielding. You can give us the country Squire, as you remember him in
your youth; it is a specimen of a race worth preserving, the old
idiosyncrasies of which are rapidly dying off, as the railways bring
Norfolk and Yorkshire within easy reach of the manners of London. You
can give us the old-fashioned Parson, as in all essentials he may yet be
found--but before you had to drag him out of the great Tractarian bog;
and, for the rest, I really think that while, as I am told, many popular
writers are doing their best, especially in France, and perhaps a little
in England, to set class against class, and pick up every stone in the
kennel to shy at a gentleman with a good coat on his back, something
useful might be done by a few good-humoured sketches of those innocent
criminals a little better off than their neighbours, whom, however we
dislike them, I take it for granted we shall have to endure, in one shape
or another, as long as civilization exists; and they seem, on the whole,
as good in their present shape as we are likely to get, shake the dice-
box of society how we will."
PISISTRATUS.--"Very well said, sir; but this rural country gentleman life
is not so new as you think. There's Washington Irving--"
MR. CAXTON.--"Charming; but rather the manners of the last century than
this. You may as well cite Addison and Sir Roger de Coverley."
PISISTRATUS.--"'Tremaine' and 'De Vere.'"
MR. CAXTON.--"Nothing can be more graceful, nor more unlike what I mean.
The Pales and Terminus I wish you to put up in the fields are familiar
images, that you may cut out of an oak tree,--not beautiful marble
statues, on porphyry pedestals, twenty feet high."
PISISTRATUS.--"Miss Austen; Mrs. Gore, in her masterpiece of 'Mrs.
Armytage;' Mrs. Marsh, too; and then (for Scottish manners) Miss
Ferrier!"
MR. CAXTON (growing cross).--"Oh, if you cannot treat on bucolics but
what you must hear some Virgil or other cry 'Stop thief,' you deserve to
be tossed by one of your own 'short-horns.'" (Still more
contemptuously)--"I am sure I don't know why we spend so much money on
sending our sons to school to learn Latin, when that Anachronism of
yours, Mrs. Caxton, can't even construe a line and a half of Phaedrus,--
Phaedrus, Mrs. Caxton, a book which is in Latin what Goody Two-Shoes is
in the vernacular!"
MRS. CAXTON (alarmed and indignant).--"Fie! Austin I I am sure you can
construe Phaedrus, dear!"
Pisistratus prudently preserves silence.
MR. CAXTON.--"I'll try him--
"'Sua cuique quum sit animi cogitatio
Colurque proprius.'
"What does that mean?"
PISISTRATITS (smiling)--"That every man has some colouring matter within
him, to give his own tinge to--"
"His own novel," interrupted my father. "/Contentus peragis!/"
During the latter part of this dialogue, Blanche had sewn together three
quires of the best Bath paper, and she now placed them on a little table
before me, with her own inkstand and steel pen.
My mother put her finger to her lip, and said, "Hush!" my father returned
to the cradle of the AEsas; Captain Roland leaned his cheek on his hand,
and gazed abstractedly on the fire; Mr. Squills fell into a placid doze;
and, after three sighs that would have melted a heart of stone, I rushed
into--MY NOVEL.
CHAPTER II.
"There has never been occasion to use them since I've been in the
parish," said Parson Dale.
"What does that prove?" quoth the squire, sharply, and looking the parson
full in the face.
"Prove!" repeated Mr. Dale, with a smile of benign, yet too conscious
superiority, "what does experience prove?"
"That your forefathers were great blockheads, and that their descendant
is not a whit the wiser."
"Squire," replied the parson, "although that is a melancholy conclusion,
yet if you mean it to apply universally, and not to the family of the
Dales in particular; it is not one which my candour as a reasoner, and my
humility as a mortal, will permit me to challenge."
"I defy you," said Mr. Hazeldean, triumphantly. "But to stick to the
subject (which it is monstrous hard to do when one talks with a parson),
I only just ask you to look yonder, and tell me on your conscience--I
don't even say as a parson, but as a parishioner--whether you ever saw a
more disreputable spectacle?"
While he spoke, the squire, leaning heavily on the parson's left
shoulder, extended his cane in a line parallel with the right eye of that
disputatious ecclesiastic, so that he might guide the organ of sight to
the object he had thus unflatteringly described.
"I confess," said the parson, "that, regarded by the eye of the senses,
it is a thing that in its best day had small pretensions to beauty, and
is not elevated into the picturesque even by neglect and decay. But, my
friend, regarded by the eye of the inner man,--of the rural philosopher
and parochial legislator,--I say it is by neglect and decay that it is
rendered a very pleasing feature in what I may call 'the moral topography
of a parish.'"
The squire looked at the parson as if he could have beaten him; and,
indeed, regarding the object in dispute not only with the eye of the
outer man, but the eye of law and order, the eye of a country gentleman
and a justice of the peace, the spectacle was scandalously disreputable.
It was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right in the middle;
through its four socketless eyes, neighboured by the nettle, peered the
thistle,--the thistle! a forest of thistles!--and, to complete the
degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the donkey of an
itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very act of taking
his luncheon out of the eyes and jaws of--THE PARISH STOCKS.
The squire looked as if he could have beaten the parson; but as he was
not without some slight command of temper, and a substitute was luckily
at hand, he gulped down his resentment, and made a rush--at the donkey!
Now the donkey was hampered by a rope to its fore-feet, to the which was
attached a billet of wood, called technically "a clog," so that it had no
fair chance of escape from the assault its sacrilegious luncheon had
justly provoked. But the ass turning round with unusual nimbleness at
the first stroke of the cane, the squire caught his foot in the rope, and
went head over heels among the thistles. The donkey gravely bent down,
and thrice smelt or sniffed its prostrate foe; then, having convinced
itself that it had nothing further to apprehend for the present, and very
willing to make the best of the reprieve, according to the poetical
admonition, "Gather your rosebuds while you may," it cropped a thistle in
full bloom, close to the ear of the squire,--so close, indeed, that the
parson thought the ear was gone; and with the more probability, inasmuch
as the squire, feeling the warm breath of the creature, bellowed out with
all the force of lungs accustomed to give a View-hallo!
"Bless me, is it gone?" said the parson, thrusting his person between the
ass and the squire.
"Zounds and the devil!" cried the squire, rubbing himself, as he rose to
his feet.
"Hush!" said the parson, gently. "What a horrible oath!"
"Horrible oath! If you had my nankeens on," said the squire, still
rubbing himself, "and had fallen into a thicket of thistles, with a
donkey's teeth within an inch of your ear--"
"It is not gone, then?" interrupted the parson.
"No,--that is, I think not," said the squire, dubiously; and he clapped
his hand to the organ in question. "No! it is not gone!"
"Thank Heaven!" said the good clergyman, kindly. "Hum," growled the
squire, who was now once more engaged in rubbing himself. "Thank Heaven
indeed, when I am as full of thorns as a porcupine! I should just like
to know what use thistles are in the world."
"For donkeys to eat, if you will let them, Squire," answered the parson.
"Ugh, you beast!" cried Mr. Hazeldean, all his wrath reawakened, whether
by the reference to the donkey species, or his inability to reply to the
parson, or perhaps by some sudden prick too sharp for humanity--
especially humanity in nankeens--to endure without kicking. "Ugh, you
beast!" he exclaimed, shaking his cane at the donkey, which, at the
interposition of the parson, had respectfully recoiled a few paces, and
now stood switching its thin tail, and trying vainly to lift one of its
fore-legs--for the flies teased it.
"Poor thing!" said the parson, pityingly. "See, it has a raw place on
the shoulder, and the flies have found out the sore."
"I am devilish glad to hear it," said the squire, vindictively.
"Fie, fie!"
"It is very well to say 'Fie, fie.' It was not you who fell among the
thistles. What 's the man about now, I wonder?"
The parson had walked towards a chestnut-tree that stood on the village
green; he broke off a bough, returned to the donkey, whisked away the
flies, and then tenderly placed the broad leaves over the sore, as a
protection from the swarms. The donkey turned round its head, and looked
at him with mild wonder.
"I would bet a shilling," said the parson, softly, "that this is the
first act of kindness thou hast met with this many a day. And slight
enough it is, Heaven knows."
With that the parson put his hand into his pocket, and drew out an apple.
It was a fine large rose-cheeked apple, one of the last winter's store
from the celebrated tree in the parsonage garden, and he was taking it as
a present to a little boy in the village who had notably distinguished
himself in the Sunday-school. "Nay, in common justice, Lenny Fairfield
should have the preference," muttered the parson. The ass pricked up one
of its ears, and advanced its head timidly. "But Lenny Fairfield would
be as much pleased with twopence; and what could twopence do to thee?"
The ass's nose now touched the apple. "Take it, in the name of Charity,"
quoth the parson; "Justice is accustomed to be served last;" and the ass
took the apple. "How had you the heart!" said the parson, pointing to
the squire's cane.
The ass stopped munching, and looked askant at the squire. "Pooh! eat
on; he'll not beat thee now."
"No," said the squire, apologetically. "But after all, he is not an ass
of the parish; he is a vagrant, and he ought to be pounded. But the
pound is in as bad a state as the stocks, thanks to your new-fashioned
doctrines."
"New-fashioned!" cried the parson, almost indignantly, for he had a great
disdain of new fashions. "They are as old as Christianity; nay, as old
as Paradise, which you will observe is derived from a Greek, or rather a
Persian word, and means something more than 'garden,' corresponding"
(pursued the parson, rather pedantically) "with the Latin--vivarium,--
namely, grove or park full of innocent dumb creatures. Depend on it,
donkeys were allowed to eat thistles there."
"Very possibly," said the squire, dryly. "But Hazeldeau, though a very
pretty village, is not Paradise. The stocks shall be mended
to-morrow,--ay, and the pound too, and the next donkey found trespassing
shall go into it, as sure as my name's Hazeldean."
"Then," said the parson, gravely, "I can only hope that the next parish
may not follow your example; or that you and I may never be caught
straying."
CHAPTER III.
Parson Dale and Squire Hazeldean parted company; the latter to inspect
his sheep, the former to visit some of his parishioners, including Lenny
Fairfield, whom the donkey had defrauded of his apple.
Lenny Fairfield was sure to be in the way, for his mother rented a few
acres of grass-land from the squire, and it was now hay-time. And
Leonard, commonly called Lenny, was an only son, and his mother a widow.
The cottage stood apart, and somewhat remote, in one of the many nooks of
the long, green village lane. And a thoroughly English cottage it was,
three centuries old at least; with walls of rubble let into oak frames,
and duly whitewashed every summer, a thatched roof, small panes of glass,
an old doorway raised from the ground by two steps. There was about this
little dwelling all the homely rustic elegance which peasant life admits
of; a honeysuckle was trained over the door; a few flower-pots were
placed on the window-sills; the small plot of ground in front of the
house was kept with great neatness, and even taste; some large rough
stones on either side the little path having been formed into a sort of
rockwork, with creepers that were now in flower; and the potato-ground
was screened from the eye by sweet peas and lupine. Simple elegance, all
this, it is true; but how well it speaks for peasant and landlord, when
you see that the peasant is fond of his home, and has some spare time and
heart to bestow upon mere embellishment! Such a peasant is sure to be a
bad customer to the alehouse, and a safe neighbour to the squire's
preserves. All honour and praise to him, except a small tax upon both,
which is due to the landlord!
Such sights were as pleasant to the parson as the most beautiful
landscapes of Italy can be to the dilettante. He paused a moment at the
wicket to look around him, and distended his nostrils voluptuously to
inhale the smell of the sweet peas, mixed with that of the new-mown hay
in the fields behind, which a slight breeze bore to him. He then moved
on, carefully scraped his shoes, clean and well-polished as they were,--
for Mr. Dale was rather a beau in his own clerical way,--on the scraper
without the door, and lifted the latch.
Your virtuoso looks with artistical delight on the figure of some nymph
painted on an Etruscan vase, engaged in pouring out the juice of the
grape from her classic urn. And the parson felt as harmless, if not as
elegant a pleasure, in contemplating Widow Fairfield brimming high a
glittering can, which she designed for the refreshment of the thirsty
haymakers.
Mrs. Fairfield was a middle-aged, tidy woman, with that alert precision
of movement which seems to come from an active, orderly mind; and as she
now turned her head briskly at the sound of the parson's footstep, she
showed a countenance prepossessing though not handsome,--a countenance
from which a pleasant, hearty smile, breaking forth at that moment,
effaced some lines that, in repose, spoke "of sorrows, but of sorrows
past;" and her cheek, paler than is common to the complexions even of the
fair sex, when born and bred amidst a rural population, might have
favoured the guess that the earlier part of her life had been spent in
the languid air and "within-doors" occupations of a town.
"Never mind me," said the parson, as Mrs. Fairfield dropped her quick
courtesy, and smoothed her apron; "if you are going into the hayfield, I
will go with you; I have something to say to Lenny,--an excellent boy."
WIDOW.--"Well, sir, and you are kind to say it,--but so he is."
PARSON.--"He reads uncommonly well, he writes tolerably; he is the best
lad in the whole school at his Catechism and in the Bible lessons; and I
assure you, when I see his face at church, looking up so attentively, I
fancy that I shall read my sermon all the better for such a listener!"
WIDOW (wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron).--"'Deed, sir, when
my poor Mark died, I never thought I could have lived on as I have done.
But that boy is so kind and good, that when I look at him sitting there
in dear Mark's chair, and remember how Mark loved him, and all he used to
say to me about him, I feel somehow or other as if my good man smiled on
me, and would rather I was not with him yet, till the lad had grown up,
and did not want me any more."
PARSON (looking away, and after a pause).--"You never hear anything of
the old folks at Lansmere?"
"'Deed, sir, sin' poor Mark died, they han't noticed me nor the boy;
but," added the widow, with all a peasant's pride, "it isn't that I wants
their money; only it's hard to feel strange like to one's own father and
mother!"
PARSON.--"You must excuse them. Your father, Mr. Avenel, was never quite
the same man after that sad event which--but you are weeping, my friend,
pardon me; your mother is a little proud; but so are you, though in
another way."
WIDOW.--"I proud! Lord love ye, sir, I have not a bit o' pride in me!
and that's the reason they always looked down on me."
PARSON.--"Your parents must be well off; and I shall apply to them in a
year or two on behalf of Lenny, for they promised me to provide for him
when he grew up, as they ought."
WIDOW (with flashing eyes).--"I am sure, sir, I hope you will do no such
thing; for I would not have Lenny beholden to them as has never given him
a kind word sin' he was born!"
The parson smiled gravely, and shook his head at poor Mrs. Fairfield's
hasty confutation of her own self-acquittal from the charge of pride; but
he saw that it was not the time or moment for effectual peace-making in
the most irritable of all rancours,--namely, that nourished against one's
nearest relations. He therefore dropped the subject, and said, "Well,
time enough to think of Lenny's future prospects; meanwhile we are
forgetting the haymakers. Come."
The widow opened the back door, which led across a little apple orchard
into the fields.
PARSON.--"You have a pleasant place here; and I see that my friend Lenny
should be in no want of apples. I had brought him one, but I have given
it away on the road."
WIDOW.--"Oh, sir, it is not the deed,--it is the will; as I felt when the
squire, God bless him! took two pounds off the rent the year he--that is,
Mark--died."
PARSON.--"If Lenny continues to be such a help to you, it will not be
long before the squire may put the two pounds on again."
"Yes, sir," said the widow, simply; "I hope he will."
"Silly woman!" muttered the parson. "That's not exactly what the
schoolmistress would have said. You don't read nor write, Mrs.
Fairfield; yet you express yourself with great propriety."
"You know Mark was a schollard, sir, like my poor, poor sister; and
though I was a sad stupid girl afore I married, I tried to take after him
when we came together."
CHAPTER IV.
They were now in the hayfield, and a boy of about sixteen, but, like most
country lads, to appearance much younger than he was, looked up from his
rake, with lively blue eyes beaming forth under a profusion of brown
curly hair.
Leonard Fairfield was indeed a very handsome boy,--not so stout nor so
ruddy as one would choose for the ideal of rustic beauty, nor yet so
delicate in limb and keen in expression as are those children of cities,
in whom the mind is cultivated at the expense of the body; but still he
had the health of the country in his cheeks, and was not without the
grace of the city in his compact figure and easy movements. There was in
his physiognomy something interesting from its peculiar character of
innocence and simplicity. You could see that he had been brought up by a
woman, and much apart from familiar contact with other children; and such
intelligence as was yet developed in him was not ripened by the jokes and
cuffs of his coevals, but fostered by decorous lecturings from his
elders, and good-little-boy maxims in good-little-boy books.
PARSON.--"Come hither, Lenny. You know the benefit of school, I see: it
can teach you nothing better than to be a support to your mother."
LENNY (looking down sheepishly, and with a heightened glow over his
face).--"Please, sir, that may come one of these days."
PARSON.--"That's right, Lenny. Let me see! why, you must be nearly a
man. How old are you?"
Lenny looks up inquiringly at his mother.
PARSON.--"You ought to know, Lenny: speak for yourself. Hold your
tongue, Mrs. Fairfield."
LENNY (twirling his hat, and in great perplexity).--"Well, and there is
Flop, neighbour Dutton's old sheep-dog. He be very old now."
PARSON.--"I am not asking Flop's age, but your own."
LENNY.--"'Deed, sir, I have heard say as how Flop and I were pups
together. That is, I--I--"
For the parson is laughing, and so is Mrs. Fairfield; and the haymakers,
who have stood still to listen, are laughing too. And poor Lenny has
quite lost his head, and looks as if he would like to cry.
PARSON (patting the curly locks, encouragingly).--"Never mind; it is not
so badly answered, after all. And how old is Flop?"
LENNY.--"Why, he must be fifteen year and more.."
PARSON.--"How old, then, are you?"
LENNY (looking up, with a beam of intelligence).--"Fifteen year and
more."
Widow sighs and nods her head.
"That's what we call putting two and two together," said the parson.
"Or, in other words," and here be raised his eyes majestically towards
the haymakers--"in other words, thanks to his love for his book, simple
as he stands here, Lenny Fairfield has shown himself capable of INDUCTIVE
RATIOCINATION."
At those words, delivered /ore rotundo/, the haymakers ceased laughing;
for even in lay matters they held the parson to be an oracle, and words
so long must have a great deal in them. Lenny drew up his head proudly.
"You are very fond of Flop, I suppose?"
"'Deed he is," said the widow, "and of all poor dumb creatures."
"Very good. Suppose, my lad, that you had a fine apple, and that you met
a friend who wanted it more than you, what would you do with it?"
"Please you, sir, I would give him half of it."
The parson's face fell. "Not the whole, Lenny?"
Lenny considered. "If he was a friend, sir, he would not like me to give
him all."
"Upon my word, Master Leonard, you speak so well that I must e'en tell
the truth. I brought you an apple, as a prize for good conduct in
school. But I met by the way a poor donkey, and some one beat him for
eating a thistle, so I thought I would make it up by giving him the
apple. Ought I only to have given him the half?"
Lenny's innocent face became all smile; his interest was aroused. "And
did the donkey like the apple?"
"Very much," said the parson, fumbling in his pocket; but thinking of
Leonard Fairfield's years and understanding, and moreover observing, in
the pride of his heart, that there were many spectators to his deed, he
thought the meditated twopence not sufficient, and he generously produced
a silver sixpence.
"There, my man, that will pay for the half apple which you would have
kept for yourself." The parson again patted the curly locks, and after a
hearty word or two with the other haymakers, and a friendly "Good-day" to
Mrs. Fairfield, struck into a path that led towards his own glebe.
He had just crossed the stile, when he heard hasty but timorous feet
behind him. He turned, and saw his friend Lenny.
LENNY (half-crying, and holding out the sixpence).--"Indeed, sir, I would
rather not. I would have given all to the Neddy."
PARSON.--"Why, then, my man, you have a still greater right to the
sixpence."
LENNY.--"No, sir; 'cause you only gave it to make up for the half apple.
And if I had given the whole, as I ought to have done, why, I should have
had no right to the sixpence. Please, sir, don't be offended; do take it
back, will you?"
The parson hesitated. And the boy thrust the sixpence into his hand, as
the ass had poked its nose there before in quest of the apple.
"I see," said Parson Dale, soliloquizing, "that if one don't give Justice
the first place at the table, all the other Virtues eat up her share."
Indeed, the case was perplexing. Charity, like a forward, impudent
baggage as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, and taking other
people's apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his
due; and now Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward
Virtue in her teens--but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in picking
the pockets of her sisters--tried to filch from him his lawful
recompense. The case was perplexing; for the parson held Susceptibility
in great honour, despite her hypocritical tricks, and did not like to
give her a slap in the face, which might frighten her away forever. So
Mr. Dale stood irresolute, glancing from the sixpence to Lenny, and from
Lenny to the sixpence.
"Buon giorno, Good-day to you," said a voice behind, in an accent
slightly but unmistakably foreign, and a strange-looking figure presented
itself at the stile.
Imagine a tall and exceedingly meagre man, dressed in a rusty suit of
black,--the pantaloons tight at the calf and ankle, and there forming a
loose gaiter over thick shoes, buckled high at the instep; an old cloak,
lined with red, was thrown over one shoulder, though the day was sultry;
a quaint, red, outlandish umbrella, with a carved brass handle, was
thrust under one arm, though the sky was cloudless: a profusion of raven
hair, in waving curls that seemed as fine as silk, escaped from the sides
of a straw hat of prodigious brim; a complexion sallow and swarthy, and
features which, though not without considerable beauty to the eye of the
artist, were not only unlike what we fair, well-fed, neat-faced
Englishmen are wont to consider comely, but exceedingly like what we are
disposed to regard as awful and Satanic,--to wit, a long hooked nose,
sunken cheeks, black eyes, whose piercing brilliancy took something
wizard-like and mystical from the large spectacles through which they
shone; a mouth round which played an ironical smile, and in which a
physiognomist would have remarked singular shrewdness, and some
closeness, complete the picture. Imagine this figure, grotesque,
peregrinate, and to the eye of a peasant certainly diabolical; then perch
it on the stile in the midst of those green English fields, and in sight
of that primitive English village; there let it sit straddling, its long
legs dangling down, a short German pipe emitting clouds from one corner
of those sardonic lips, its dark eyes glaring through the spectacles full
upon the parson, yet askant upon Lenny Fairfield. Lenny Fairfield looked
exceedingly frightened.
"Upon my word, Dr. Riccabocca," said Mr. Dale, smiling, "you come in good
time to solve a very nice question in casuistry;" and herewith the parson
explained the case, and put the question, "Ought Lenny Fairfield to have
the sixpence, or ought he not?"
"Cospetto!" said the doctor, "if the hen would but hold her tongue,
nobody would know that she had laid an egg."
CHAPTER V.
"Granted," said the parson; "but what follows? The saying is good, but I
don't see the application."
"A thousand pardons!" replied Dr. Riccabocca, with all the urbanity of an
Italian; "but it seems to me that if you had given the sixpence to the
/fanciullo/, that is, to this good little boy, without telling him the
story about the donkey, you would never have put him and yourself into
this awkward dilemma."
"But, my dear sir," whispered the parson, mildly, as he inclined his lips
to the doctor's ear, "I should then have lost the opportunity of
inculcating a moral lesson--you understand?"
Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth,
and took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical,--a whiff
peculiar to your philosophical smoker, a whiff that implied the most
absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the parson's
moral lesson.
"Still you have not given us your decision," said the parson, after a
pause.
The doctor withdrew the pipe. "Cospetto!" said he,--"he who scrubs the
head of an ass wastes his soap."
"If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of
yours," said the parson, testily, "you would not make it any the wiser."
"My good sir," said the doctor, bowing low from his perch on the stile,
"I never presumed to say that there were more asses than one in the
story; but I thought that I could not better explain my meaning, which is
simply this,--you scrubbed the ass's head, and therefore you must lose
the soap. Let the /fanciullo/ have the sixpence; and a great sum it is,
too, for a little boy, who may spend it all as pocketmoney!"
"There, Lenny, you hear?" said the parson, stretching out the sixpence.
But Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a look of great aversion and
disgust.
"Please, Master Dale," said he, obstinately, "I'd rather not.
"It is a matter of feeling, you see," said the parson, turning to the
umpire; "and I believe the boy is right."
"If it be a matter of feeling," replied Dr. Riccabocca, "there is no more
to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, Reason has nothing
to do but to jump out of the window."
"Go, my good boy," said the parson, pocketing the coin; "but, stop! give
me your hand first. There--I understand you;--good-by!"
Lenny's eyes glistened as the parson shook him by the hand, and, not
trusting himself to speak, he walked off sturdily. The parson wiped his
forehead, and sat himself down on the stile beside the Italian. The view
before them was lovely, and both enjoyed it (though not equally) enough
to be silent for some moments. On the other side the lane, seen between
gaps in the old oaks and chestnuts that hung over the mossgrown pales of
Hazeldean Park, rose gentle, verdant slopes, dotted with sheep and herds
of deer. A stately avenue stretched far away to the left, and ended at
the right hand within a few yards of a ha-ha that divided the park from a
level sward of tableland, gay with shrubs and flower-pots, relieved by
the shade of two mighty cedars. And on this platform, only seen in part,
stood the squire's old-fashioned house, red-brick, with stone mullions,
gable-ends, and quaint chimney-pots. On this side the road, immediately
facing the two gentlemen, cottage after cottage whitely emerged from the
curves in the lane, while, beyond, the ground declining gave an extensive
prospect of woods and cornfields, spires and farms. Behind, from a belt
of lilacs and evergreens, you caught a peep of the parsonage-house,
backed by woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The birds
were still in the hedgerows,--only (as if from the very heart of the most
distant woods), there came now and then the mellow note of the cuckoo.
"Verily," said Mr. Dale, softly, "my lot has fallen on a goodly
heritage."
The Italian twitched his cloak over him, and sighed almost inaudibly.
Perhaps he thought of his own Summer Land, and felt that, amidst all that
fresh verdure of the North, there was no heritage for the stranger.
However, before the parson could notice the sigh or conjecture the cause,
Dr. Riccabocca's thin lips took an expression almost malignant.
"Per Bacco!" said he; "in every country I observe that the rooks settle
where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, when Noah first landed
on Ararat, he must have found some gentleman in black already settled in
the pleasantest part of the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the
cattle as they came out of the Ark."
The parson fixed his meek eyes on the philosopher, and there
was in them something so deprecating rather than reproachful that
Dr. Riccabocca turned away his face, and refilled his pipe. Dr.
Riccabocca abhorred priests; but though Parson Dale was emphatically
a parson, he seemed at that moment so little of what Dr. Riccabocca
understood by a priest that the Italian's heart smote him for his
irreverent jest on the cloth. Luckily at this moment there was a
diversion to that untoward commencement of conversation in the appearance
of no less a personage than the donkey himself--I mean the donkey who ate
the apple.
CHAPTER VI.
The tinker was a stout, swarthy fellow, jovial and musical withal, for he
was singing a stave as he flourished his staff, and at the end of each
refrain down came the staff on the quarters of the donkey. The tinker
went behind and sang, the donkey went before and was thwacked.
"Yours is a droll country," quoth Dr. Riccabocca; "in mine, it is not the
ass that walks first in the procession that gets the blows."
The parson jumped from the stile, and looking over the hedge that divided
the field from the road--"Gently, gently," said he; "the sound of the
stick spoils the singing! Oh, Mr. Sprott, Mr. Sprott! a good man is
merciful to his beast."
The donkey seemed to recognize the voice of its friend, for it stopped
short, pricked one ear wistfully, and looked up. The tinker touched his
hat, and looked up too. "Lord bless your reverence! he does not mind
it,--he likes it. I vould not hurt thee; would I, Neddy?"
The donkey shook his head and shivered; perhaps a fly had settled on the
sore, which the chestnut leaves no longer protected.
"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him, Sprott," said the parson, more
politely I fear than honestly,--for he had seen enough of that cross-
grained thing called the human heart, even in the little world of a
country parish, to know that it requires management and coaxing and
flattering, to interfere successfully between a man and his own donkey,--
"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him; but he has already got a sore on
his shoulder as big as my hand, poor thing!"
"Lord love 'un! yes; that was done a playing with the manger the day I
gave 'un oats!" said the tinker.
Dr. Riccabocca adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the ass. The ass
pricked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr. Riccabocca. In that mutual
survey of physical qualifications, each being regarded according to the
average symmetry of its species, it may be doubted whether the advantage
was on the side of the philosopher.
The parson had a great notion of the wisdom of his friend in all matters
not purely ecclesiastical.
"Say a good word for the donkey!" whispered he.
"Sir," said the doctor, addressing Mr. Sprott, with a respectful
salutation, "there's a great kettle at my house--the Casino--which wants
soldering: can you recommend me a tinker?"
"Why, that's all in my line," said Sprott; "and there ben't a tinker in
the county that I vould recommend like myself, thof I say it."
"You jest, good sir," said the doctor, smiling pleasantly. "A man who
can't mend a hole in his own donkey can never demean himself by patching
up my great kettle."
"Lord, sir!" said the tinker, archly, "if I had known that poor Neddy had
had two sitch friends in court, I'd have seen he vas a gintleman, and
treated him as sitch."
"/Corpo di Bacco!/" quoth the doctor, "though that jest's not new, I
think the tinker comes very well out of it."
"True; but the donkey!" said the parson; "I've a great mind to buy it."
"Permit me to tell you an anecdote in point," said Dr. Riccabocca.
"Well?" said the parson, interrogatively.
"Once on a time," pursued Riccabocca, "the Emperor Adrian, going to the
public baths, saw an old soldier, who had served under him, rubbing his
back against the marble wall. The emperor, who was a wise, and therefore
a curious, inquisitive man, sent for the soldier, and asked him why he
resorted to that sort of friction. 'Because,' answered the veteran, 'I
am too poor to have slaves to rub me down.' The emperor was touched, and
gave him slaves and money. The next day, when Adrian went to the baths,
all the old men in the city were to be seen rubbing themselves against
the marble as hard as they could. The emperor sent for them, and asked
them the same question which he had put to the soldier; the cunning old
rogues, of course, made the same answer. 'Friends,' said Adrian, 'since
there are so many of you, you will just rub one another!' Mr. Dale, if
you don't want to have all the donkeys in the county with holes in their
shoulders, you had better not buy the tinker's!"
"It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of good,"
groaned the parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped
it in two, and flung away the fragments: one of them hit the donkey on
the nose. If the ass could have spoken Latin he would have said, "/Et
tu, Brute!/" As it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on.
"Gee hup," said the tinker, and he followed the ass. Then stopping, he
looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the parson's eyes were gazing
mournfully on his /protege/, "Never fear, your reverence," cried the
tinker, kindly, "I'll not spite 'un."
CHAPTER VII.
"Four, o'clock," cried the parson, looking at his watch; "half an hour
after dinner-time, and Mrs. Dale particularly begged me to be punctual,
because of the fine trout the squire sent us. Will you venture on what
our homely language calls 'pot-luck,' Doctor?"
Now Riccabocca was a professed philosopher, and valued himself on his
penetration into the motives of human conduct. And when the parson thus
invited him to pot-luck, he smiled with a kind of lofty complacency; for
Mrs. Dale enjoyed the reputation of having what her friends styled "her
little tempers." And, as well-bred ladies rarely indulge "little
tempers" in the presence of a third person not of the family, so Dr.
Riccabocca instantly concluded that he was invited to stand between the
pot and the luck! Nevertheless--as he was fond of trout, and a much more
good-natured man than he ought to have been according to his principles--
he accepted the hospitality; but he did so with a sly look from over his
spectacles, which brought a blush into the guilty cheeks of the parson.
Certainly Riccabocca had for once guessed right in his estimate of human
motives.
The two walked on, crossed a little bridge that spanned the rill, and
entered the parsonage lawn. Two dogs, that seemed to have sat on watch
for their master, sprang towards him, barking; and the sound drew the
notice of Mrs. Dale, who, with parasol in hand, sallied out from the sash
window which opened on the lawn. Now, O reader! I know that, in thy
secret heart, thou art chuckling over the want of knowledge in the sacred
arcana of the domestic hearth betrayed by the author; thou art saying to
thyself, "A pretty way to conciliate 'little tempers' indeed, to add to
the offence of spoiling the fish the crime of bringing an unexpected
friend to eat it. Pot-luck, quotha, when the pot 's boiled over this
half hour!"
But, to thy utter shame and confusion, O reader! learn that both the
author and Parson Dale knew very well what they were about.
Dr. Riccabocca was the special favourite of Mrs. Dale, and the only
person in the whole county who never put her out, by dropping in. In
fact, strange though it may seem at first glance, Dr. Riccabocca had that
mysterious something about him, which we of his own sex can so little
comprehend, but which always propitiates the other. He owed this, in
part, to his own profound but hypocritical policy; for he looked upon
woman as the natural enemy to man, against whom it was necessary to be
always on the guard; whom it was prudent to disarm by every species of
fawning servility and abject complaisance. He owed it also, in part, to
the compassionate and heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts
thus villanously traduced--for women like one whom they can pity without
despising; and there was something in Signor Riccabocca's poverty, in his
loneliness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited
pity; while, despite his threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and the wild
hair, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that air of gentleman
and cavalier, which is or was more innate in an educated Italian, of
whatever rank, than perhaps in the highest aristocracy of any other
country in Europe. For, though I grant that nothing is more exquisite
than the politeness of your French marquis of the old regime, nothing
more frankly gracious than the cordial address of a high-bred English
gentleman, nothing more kindly prepossessing than the genial good-nature
of some patriarchal German, who will condescend to forget his sixteen
quarterings in the pleasure of doing you a favour,--yet these specimens
of the suavity of their several nations are rare; whereas blandness and
polish are common attributes with your Italian. They seem to have been
immemorially handed down to him, from ancestors emulating the urbanity of
Caesar, and refined by the grace of Horace.
"Dr. Riccabocca consents to dine with us," cried the parson, hastily.
"If Madame permit?" said the Italian, bowing over the hand extended to
him, which, however, he forbore to take, seeing it was already full of
the watch.
"I am only sorry that the trout must be quite spoiled," began Mrs. Dale,
plaintively.
"It is not the trout one thinks of when one dines with Mrs. Dale," said
the infamous dissimulator.
"But I see James coming to say that dinner is ready," observed the
parson.
"He said that three-quarters of an hour ago, Charles dear," retorted Mrs.
Dale, taking the arm of Dr. Riccabocca.
CHAPTER VIII.
While the parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to
regale the reader with a small treatise /a propos/ of that "Charles
dear," murmured by Mrs. Dale,--a treatise expressly written for the
benefit of The Domestic Circle.
It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys
so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself,
like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to
the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import
comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the
experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much
proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding
indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the
close, as in that "Charles dear" of Mrs. Dale, it has spilled so much of
its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, "amara
lento temperet risu." Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch.
For example:--
(Plaintive.) "I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles
dear."
"Nay, I am very glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles
dear."
"Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear," etc.
(Arch.) "If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best tablecloth,
Charles dear!"
"But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite
faultless, own, Charles dear," etc.
When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is
naturally less exhausted. For example:--
"Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,"
etc.
"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should
just like to know whose fault it was--that's all."
"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the
children than--" etc.
But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head
of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty
of "my" before it; it is generally more than simple objurgation,--it
prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the
mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the
marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious
assumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias--the head of the family--
boding, not perhaps "peace and love, and quiet life," but certainly
"awful rule and right supremacy." For example:--
"My dear Jane, I wish you would just put by that everlasting crochet, and
listen to me for a few moments," etc. "My dear Jane, I wish you would
understand me for once; don't think I am angry,--no, but I am hurt! You
must consider," etc.
"My dear Jane, I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I
only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for
their husband's property," etc.
"My dear Jane, I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the
world to be jealous; but I'll be d---d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman,"
etc.
Now, few so carefully cultivate the connubial garden, as to feel much
surprise at the occasional sting of a homely nettle or two; but who ever
expected, before entering that garden, to find himself pricked and
lacerated by an insidious exotical "dear," which he had been taught to
believe only lived in a hothouse, along with myrtles and other tender and
sensitive shrubs which poets appropriate to Venus? Nevertheless Parson
Dale, being a patient man, and a pattern to all husbands, would have
found no fault with his garden, though there had not been a single
specimen of "dear,"--whether the dear /humilis/ or the dear /superba/;
the dear /pallida, rubra/, or /nigra/; the dear /suavis/ or the dear
/horrida/,--no, not a single "dear" in the whole horticulture of
matrimony, which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection. But this was
far from being the case; Mrs. Dale, living much in retirement, was
unaware of the modern improvements, in variety of colour and sharpness of
prickle, which have rewarded the persevering skill of our female
florists.
CHAPTER IX.
In the cool of the evening Dr. Riccabocca walked home across the fields.
Mr. and Mrs. Dale had accompanied him half-way, and as they now turned
back to the parsonage, they looked behind to catch a glimpse of the tall,
outlandish figure, winding slowly through the path amidst the waves of
the green corn.
"Poor man!" said Mrs. Dale, feelingly; "and the button was off his
wristband! What a pity he has nobody to take care of him! He seems very
domestic. Don't you think, Charles, it would be a great blessing if we
could get him a good wife?"
"Um," said the parson; "I doubt if he values the married state as he
ought."
"What do you mean, Charles? I never saw a man more polite to ladies in
my life."
"Yes, but--"
"But what? "You are always so mysterious, Charles dear."
"Mysterious! No, Carry; but if you could hear what the doctor says of
the ladies sometimes."
"Ay, when you men get together, my dear. I know what that means--pretty
things you say of us! But you are all alike; you know you are, love!"
"I am sure," said the parson, simply, "that I have good cause to speak
well of the sex--when I think of you and my poor mother."
Mrs. Dale, who, with all her "tempers," was an excellent woman, and loved
her husband with the whole of her quick little heart, was touched. She
pressed his hand, and did not call him dear all the way home.
Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the high road
about two miles from Hazeldean. On one side stood an old-fashioned
solitary inn, such as English inns used to be before they became railway
hotels,--square, solid, old-fashioned, looking so hospitable and
comfortable, with their great signs swinging from some elm-tree in front,
and the long row of stables standing a little back, with a chaise or two
in the yard, and the jolly landlord talking of the crops to some stout
farmer, whose rough pony halts of itself at the well-known door.
Opposite this inn, on the other side of the road, stood the habitation of
Dr. Riecabocca.
A few years before the date of these annals, the stage-coach on its way
to London from a seaport town stopped at the inn, as was its wont, for a
good hour, that its passengers might dine like Christian Englishmen--not
gulp down a basin of scalding soup, like everlasting heathen Yankees,
with that cursed railway-whistle shrieking like a fiend in their ears!
It was the best dining-place on the whole road, for the trout in the
neighbouring rill were famous, and so was the mutton which came from
Hazeldean Park.
From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers, who, alone
insensible to the attractions of mutton and trout, refused to dine,--two
melancholy-looking foreigners, of whom one was Signor Riccabocca, much
the same as we see him now, only that the black suit was less threadbare,
the tall form less meagre, and he did not then wear spectacles; and the
other was his servant. "They would walk about while the coach stopped."
Now the Italian's eye had been caught by a mouldering, dismantled house
on the other side the road, which nevertheless was well situated; half-
way up a green hill, with its aspect due south, a little cascade falling
down artificial rockwork, a terrace with a balustrade, and a few broken
urns and statues before its Ionic portico, while on the roadside stood a
board, with characters already half effaced, implying that the house was
"To be let unfurnished, with or without land."
The abode that looked so cheerless, and which had so evidently hung long
on hand, was the property of Squire Hazeldean. It had been built by his
grandfather on the female side,--a country gentleman who had actually
been in Italy (a journey rare enough to boast of in those days), and who,
on his return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian
villa. He left an only daughter and sole heiress, who married Squire
Hazeldean's father; and since that time, the house, abandoned by its
proprietors for the larger residence of the Hazeldeans, had been
uninhabited and neglected. Several tenants, indeed, had offered
themselves; but your true country squire is slow in admitting upon his
own property a rival neighbour. Some wanted shooting. "That," said the
Hazeldeans, who were great sportsmen and strict preservers, "was quite
out of the question." Others were fine folks from London. "London
servants," said the Hazeldeans, who were moral and prudent people, "would
corrupt their own, and bring London prices." Others, again, were retired
manufacturers, at whom the Hazeldeans turned up their agricultural noses.
In short, some were too grand, and others too vulgar. Some were refused
because they were known so well: "Friends were best at a distance," said
the Hazeldeans; others because they were not known at all: "No good
comes of strangers," said the Hazeldeans. And finally, as the house fell
more and more into decay, no one would take it unless it was put into
thorough repair: "As if one was made of money!" said the Hazeldeans. In
short, there stood the house unoccupied and ruinous; and there, on its
terrace, stood the two forlorn Italians, surveying it with a smile at
each other, as for the first time since they set foot in England, they
recognized, in dilapidated pilasters and broken statues, in a weed-grown
terrace and the remains of an orangery, something that reminded them of
the land they had left behind.
On returning to the inn, Dr. Riccabocca took the occasion to learn from
the innkeeper (who was indeed a tenant of the squire) such particulars as
he could collect; and a few days afterwards Mr. Hazeldean received a
letter from a solicitor of repute in London, stating that a very
respectable foreign gentleman had commissioned him to treat for Clump
Lodge, otherwise called the "Casino;" that the said gentleman did not
shoot, lived in great seclusion, and, having no family, did not care
about the repairs of the place, provided only it were made weather-
proof,--if the omission of more expensive reparations could render the
rent suitable to his finances, which were very limited. The offer came
at a fortunate moment, when the steward had just been representing to the
squire the necessity of doing something to keep the Casino from falling
into positive ruin, and the squire was cursing the fates which had put
the Casino into an entail--so that he could not pull it down for the
building materials. Mr. Hazeldean therefore caught at the proposal even
as a fair lady, who has refused the best offers in the kingdom, catches,
at last, at some battered old captain on half-pay, and replied that, as
for rent, if the solicitor's client was a quiet, respectable man, he did
not care for that, but that the gentleman might have it for the first
year rent-free, on condition of paying the taxes, and putting the place
a little in order. If they suited each other, they could then come
to terms. Ten days subsequently to this gracious reply, Signor
Riccabocca and his servant arrived; and, before the year's end, the
squire was so contented with his tenant that he gave him a running lease
of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at a rent merely nominal, on
condition that Signor Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in
repair, barring the roof and fences, which the squire generously renewed
at his own expense. It was astonishing, by little and little, what a
pretty place the Italian had made of it, and, what is more astonishing,
how little it had cost him. He had, indeed, painted the walls of the
hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own
hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two
between them had got the garden into order.
The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck
it as they would have done some favourite chapel to their Madonna.
It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of
the foreign settlers. The first thing that offended them was the
exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven,
indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in
the garden, and the fishes in the neighbouring rill; when no trout could
be caught they fried the minnows (and certainly, even in the best
streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trout). The next thing
which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of
the neighbourhood, was the very sparing employment the two he creatures
gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters. At
first, indeed, they had no woman-servant at all. But this created such
horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca
took in very good part; and an old woman was forthwith engaged after some
bargaining--at three shillings a week--to wash and scrub as much as she
liked during the daytime. She always returned to her own cottage to
sleep. The man-servant, who was styled in the neighbourhood "Jackeymo,"
did all else for his master,--smoothed his room, dusted his papers,
prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned
his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection. But however close
a man's character, it generally creeps out in driblets; and on many
little occasions the Italian had shown acts of kindness, and, on some
more rare occasions, even of generosity, which had served to silence his
calumniators, and by degrees he had established a very fair reputation,--
suspected, it is true, of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and
of a strange inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself, in other
respects harmless enough.
Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the
Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though the squire was inclined
to be very friendly to all his neighbours, he was, like most country
gentlemen, rather easily /huffed/. Riccabocca had, with great
politeness, still with great obstinacy, refused Mr. Hazeldean's earlier
invitations to dinner; and when the squire found that the Italian rarely
declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his weak
points,--namely, his pride in the hospitality of Hazeldean Hall,--and he
ceased altogether invitations so churlishly rejected. Nevertheless, as
it was impossible for the squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now
and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and
would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca
received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country
gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say that "to call on
Rickeybockey was as bad as going to Court."
But we have left Dr. Riccabocca on the high road. By this time he has
ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of the cascade, he has
passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from which Jackeymo has
positively succeeded in making what he calls wine,--a liquid, indeed,
that if the cholera had been popularly known in those days, would have
soured the mildest member of the Board of Health; for Squire Hazeldean,
though a robust man who daily carried off his bottle of port with
impunity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect till
he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own arm. Passing
this trellis, Dr. Riccabocca entered upon the terrace, with its stone
pavement as smoothed and trimmed as hands could make it. Here, on neat
stands, all his favourite flowers were arranged; here four orange trees
were in full blossom; here a kind of summer-house, or belvidere, built by
Jackeymo and himself, made his chosen morning room from May till October;
and from this belvidere there was as beautiful an expanse of prospect as
if our English Nature had hospitably spread on her green board all that
she had to offer as a banquet to the exile.
A man without his coat, which was thrown over the balustrade, was
employed in watering the flowers,--a man with movements so mechanical,
with a face so rigidly grave in its tawny hues, that he seemed like an
automaton made out of mahogany.
"Giacomo," said Dr. Riccabocca, softly.
The automaton stopped its hand, and turned its head.
"Put by the watering-pot, and come hither," continued Riccabocca, in
Italian; and, moving towards the balustrade, he leaned over it. Mr.
Mitford, the historian, calls Jean Jacques "John James." Following that
illustrious example, Giacomo shall be Anglified into Jackeymo. Jackeymo
came to the balustrade also, and stood a little behind his master.
"Friend," said Riccabocca, "enterprises have not always succeeded with
us. Don't you think, after all, it is tempting our evil star to rent
those fields from the landlord?" Jackeymo crossed himself, and made some
strange movement with a little coral charm which he wore set in a ring on
his finger.
"If the Madonna send us luck, and we could hire a lad cheap?" said
Jackeymo, doubtfully.
"Piu vale un presente che dui futuri,"--["A bird in the hand is worth two
in the bush."]--said Riccabocca.
"Chi non fa quando pub, non pub, fare quando vuole,"--["He who will not
when he may, when he wills it shall have nay."]--answered Jackeymo, as
sententiously as his master. "And the Padrone should think in time that
he must lay by for the dower of the poor signorina."
Riccabocca sighed, and made no reply.
"She must be that high now!" said Jackeymo, putting his hand on some
imaginary line a little above the balustrade. Riccabocca's eyes, raised
over the spectacles, followed the hand.
"If the Padrone could but see her here--"
"I thought I did," muttered the Italian.
"He would never let her go from his side till she went to a husband's,"
continued Jackeymo.
"But this climate,--she could never stand it," said Riccabocca, drawing
his cloak round him, as a north wind took him in the rear.
"The orange trees blossom even here with care," said Jackeymo, turning
back to draw down an awning where the orange trees faced the north.
"See!" he added, as he returned with a sprig in full bud.
Dr. Riccabocca bent over the blossom, and then placed it in his bosom.
"The other one should be there too," said Jackeymo.
"To die--as this does already!" answered Riccabocca. "Say no more."
Jackeymo shrugged his shoulders; and then, glancing at his master, drew
his hand over his eyes.
There was a pause. Jackeymo was the first to break it. "But, whether
here or there, beauty without money is the orange tree without shelter.
If a lad could be got cheap, I would hire the land, and trust for the
crop to the Madonna."
"I think I know of such a lad," said Riccabocca, recovering himself, and
with his sardonic smile once more lurking about the corners of his
mouth,--"a lad made for us."
"/Diavolo!/"
"No, not the Diavolo! Friend, I have this day seen a boy who--refused
sixpence!"
"/Cosa stupenda!/" exclaimed Jackeymo, opening his eyes, and letting fall
the watering-pot.
"It is true, my friend."
"Take him, Padrone, in Heaven's name, and the fields will grow gold."
"I will think of it, for it must require management to catch such a boy,"
said Riccabocca. "Meanwhile, light a candle in the parlour, and bring
from my bedroom that great folio of Machiavelli."
CHAPTER X.
In my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patriarchal
state,--not exactly under the fig-tree he has planted, but before the
stocks he has reconstructed,--Squire Hazeldean and his family on the
village green! The canvas is all ready for the colours.
But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into antecedents as to
let the reader know that there is one member of the family whom he is not
likely to meet at present, if ever, on the village green at Hazeldean.
Our squire lost his father two years after his birth; his mother was very
handsome--and so was her jointure; she married again at the expiration of
her year of mourning; the object of her second choice was Colonel
Egerton.
In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of
Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the
milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel
Egerton was one of these /terque quaterque beati/, and dwelt apart on a
top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish--not bestowed upon vulgar
buttermilk--which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was
the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park Lane, when
this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband.
But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly; he had the provident
instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed from him, and carried
off much solid property in its flight; he saw that a time was fast coming
when a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would be
conducive to his comforts, and an occasional hum-drum evening by the
fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst of one season at
Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the Prince of Wales, he
saw a widow, who, though in the weeds of mourning, did not appear
inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste; the accounts of her jointure
satisfied his understanding; he contrived an introduction, and brought a
brief wooing to a happy close. The late Mr. Hazeldean had so far
anticipated the chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in
case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the
guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom he
had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties
somewhat to alienate Mrs. Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves;
and when she had borne a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child
that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.
William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial
academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out
of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs. Egerton; but as she
now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton, to
partake of the gayeties at the Pavilion, so as he grew older, William,
who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners
and rural breeding Mrs. Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was
openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations
either with his guardians or at the old Hall. He went late to a small
college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral
Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A few
years afterwards he married a young lady, country born and bred like
himself.
Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun his
initiation into the /beau monde/ before he had well cast aside his coral
and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and had galloped
across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and princes. For
Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected, not only one of the
/Dii majores/ of fashion, but he had the still rarer good fortune to be
an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him,--so popular, that even
the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned forgave him for marrying
out of "the set," and continued to be as friendly as if he had not
married at all. People who were commonly called heartless were never
weary of doing kind things to the Egertons. When the time came for
Audley to leave the preparatory school at which his infancy budded forth
amongst the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to Eton,
half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil
to young Egerton. The boy soon showed that he inherited his father's
talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those
which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic
distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable
reputation which a boy can obtain,--namely, that among his own
contemporaries, the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when
he grew to be a man. As a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford,
he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes,
and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something"
became more defined,--it was "something in public life" that this young
man was to do.
While he was yet at the University, both his parents died, within a few
months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded
to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and indeed had
once been so; but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his
heir, and about L1500 a year was all that sales and mortgages left of an
estate that had formerly approached a rental of L10,000.
Still, Audley was considered to be opulent; and he did not dispel that
favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering
the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him, and he woke one
morning to find himself, not indeed famous--but the fashion. To this
fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value, he associated as
much as possible with public men and political ladies, he succeeded in
confirming the notion that he was "born to ruin or to rule the State."
The dearest and most intimate friend of Audley Egerton was Lord
L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton, and who now, if
Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.
Harley, Lord L'Estrange, was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a
nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied, by intermarriages, to the
loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere,
nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived
chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a
great proprietor, and when he came to the metropolis, it was rather to
save than to spend; so that he could afford to give his son a very ample
allowance, when Harley, at the age of sixteen (having already attained to
the sixth form at Eton), left school for one of the regiments of the
Guards.
Few knew what to make of Harley L'Estrange,--and that was, perhaps, the
reason why he was so much thought of. He had been by far the most
brilliant boy of his time at Eton,--not only the boast of the cricket-
ground, but the marvel of the schoolroom; yet so full of whims and
oddities, and seeming to achieve his triumphs with so little aid from
steadfast application, that he had not left behind him the same
expectations of solid eminence which his friend and senior, Audley
Egerton, had excited. His eccentricities, his quaint sayings, and out-
of-the-way actions, became as notable in the great world as they had been
in the small one of a public school. That he was very clever there was
no doubt, and that the cleverness was of a high order might be surmised,
not only from the originality but the independence of his character. He
dazzled the world, without seeming to care for its praise or its
censure,--dazzled it, as it were, because he could not help shining. He
had some strange notions, whether political or social, which rather
frightened his father. According to Southey, "A man should be no more
ashamed of having been a republican than of having been young." Youth
and extravagant opinions naturally go together. I don't know whether
Harley L'Estrange was a republican at the age of eighteen; but there was
no young man in London who seemed to care less for being heir to an
illustrious name and some forty or fifty thousand pounds a year. It was
a vulgar fashion in that day to play the exclusive, and cut persons who
wore bad neckcloths, and called themselves Smith or Johnson. Lord
L'Estrange never cut any one, and it was quite enough to slight some
worthy man because of his neckcloth or his birth to insure to the
offender the pointed civilities of this eccentric successor to the
Belforts and the Wildairs.
It was the wish of his father that Harley, as soon as he came of age,
should represent the borough of Lansmere (which said borough was the
single plague of the earl's life). But this wish was never realized.
Suddenly, when the young idol of London still wanted some two or three
years of his majority, a new whim appeared to seize him. He withdrew
entirely from society; he left unanswered the most pressing three-
cornered notes of inquiry and invitation that ever strewed the table of a
young Guardsman; he was rarely seen anywhere in his former haunts,--when
seen, was either alone or with Egerton; and his gay spirits seemed wholly
to have left him. A profound melancholy was written in his countenance,
and breathed in the listless tones of his voice. About this time a
vacancy happening to occur for the representation of Lansmere, Harley
made it his special request to his father that the family interest might
be given to Audley Egerton,--a request which was backed by all the
influence of his lady mother, who shared in the esteem which her son felt
for his friend. The earl yielded; and Egerton, accompanied by Harley,
went down to Lansmere Park, which adjoined the borough, in order to be
introduced to the electors. This visit made a notable epoch in the
history of many personages who figure in my narrative; but at present I
content myself with saying that circumstances arose which, just as the
canvass for the new election commenced, caused both L'Estrange and Audley
to absent themselves from the scene of action, and that the last even
wrote to Lord Lansmere expressing his intention of declining to contest
the borough.
Fortunately for the parliamentary career of Audley Egerton, the election
had become to Lord Lansmere not only a matter of public importance, but
of personal feeling. He resolved that the battle should be fought out,
even in the absence of the candidate, and at his own expense. Hitherto
the contest for this distinguished borough had been, to use the language
of Lord Lansmere, "conducted in the spirit of gentlemen,"--that is to
say, the only opponents to the Lansmere interest had been found in one or
the other of the two rival families in the same county; and as the earl
was a hospitable, courteous man, much respected and liked by the
neighbouring gentry, so the hostile candidate had always interlarded his
speeches with profuse compliments to his Lordship's high character, and
civil expressions as to his Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to
successive elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and
its actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the Bench;
the head of the other family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable
agreement with the Lansinere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in
the power of any sitting member to be amidst the passions of an
intractable committee. Accordingly it had been hoped that Egerton would
come in without opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly
left the place, a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R. N.,
Baker Street, Portman Square," announced, in very spirited language, the
intention of that gentleman "to emancipate the borough from the
unconstitutional domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view
to his own political aggrandizement,--indeed at great personal
inconvenience,--but actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and
patriotic passion for the purity of election."
This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the arrival of
Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage and four, covered with yellow
favours, and filled, inside and out, with harumscarum-looking friends,
who had come down with him to share the canvass and partake the fun.
Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, conceived a
disgust to the profession from the date in which a minister's nephew had
been appointed to the command of a ship to which the captain considered
himself unquestionably entitled. It is just to the minister to add that
Captain Dashmore had shown as little regard for orders from a distance as
had immortalized Nelson himself; but then the disobedience had not
achieved the same redeeming success as that of Nelson, and Captain
Dashmore ought to have thought himself fortunate in escaping a severer
treatment than the loss of promotion. But no man knows when he is well
off; and retiring on half pay, just as he came into unexpected possession
of some forty or fifty thousand pounds, bequeathed by a distant relation,
Captain Dashmore was seized with a vindictive desire to enter parliament,
and inflict oratorical chastisement on the Administration.
A very few hours sufficed to show the sea-captain to be a most capital
electioneerer for a popular but not enlightened constituency. It is true
that he talked the saddest nonsense ever heard from an open window; but
then his jokes were so broad, his manner so hearty, his voice so big,
that in those dark days, before the schoolmaster was abroad, he would
have beaten your philosophical Radical and moralizing Democrat hollow.
Moreover, he kissed all the women, old and young, with the zest of a
sailor who has known what it is to be three years at sea without sight of
a beardless lip; he threw open all the public-houses, asked a numerous
committee every day to dinner, and, chucking his purse up in the air,
declared "he would stick to his guns while there was a shot in the
locker." Till then, there had been but little political difference
between the candidate supported by Lord Lansmere's interest and the
opposing parties; for country gentlemen, in those days, were pretty much
of the same way of thinking, and the question had been really local,--
namely, whether the Lansmere interest should or should not prevail over
that of the two squire-archical families who had alone, hitherto,
ventured to oppose it. But though Captain Dashmore was really a very
loyal man, and much too old a sailor to think that the State (which,
according to established metaphor, is a vessel par excellence) should
admit Jack upon quarterdeck, yet, what with talking against lords and
aristocracy, jobs and abuses, and searching through no very refined
vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating nouns-
substantive, his bile had got the better of his understanding, and he
became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. Thus, though as
innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was incapable of setting the Thames
on fire, you would have guessed him, by his speeches, to be one of the
most determined incendiaries that ever applied a match to the combustible
materials of a contested election; while, being by no means accustomed to
respect his adversaries, he could not have treated the Earl of Lansmere
with less ceremony if his Lordship had been a Frenchman. He usually
designated that respectable nobleman, who was still in the prime of life,
by the title of "Old Pompous;" and the mayor, who was never seen abroad
but in top-boots, and the solicitor, who was of a large build, received
from his irreverent wit the joint sobriquet of "Tops and Bottoms"! Hence
the election had now become, as I said before, a personal matter with my
Lord, and, indeed, with the great heads of the Lansmere interest. The
earl seemed to consider his very coronet at stake in the question. "The
Man from Baker Street," with his preternatural audacity, appeared to him
a being ominous and awful--not so much to be regarded with resentment as
with superstitious terror. He felt as felt the dignified Montezuma, when
that ruffianly Cortez, with his handful of Spanish rapscallions, bearded
him in his own capital, and in the midst of his Mexican splendour. The
gods were menaced if man could be so insolent! wherefore, said my Lord
tremulously, "The Constitution is gone if the Man from Baker Street comes
in for Lansmere!"
But in the absence of Audley Egerton, the election looked extremely ugly,
and Captain Dashmore gained ground hourly, when the Lansmere solicitor
happily bethought him of a notable proxy for the missing candidate. The
Squire of Hazeldean, with his young wife, had been invited by the earl in
honour of Audley; and in the squire the solicitor beheld the only mortal
who could cope with the sea-captain,--a man with a voice as burly and a
face as bold; a man who, if permitted for the nonce by Mrs. Hazeldean,
would kiss all the women no less heartily than the captain kissed them;
and who was, moreover, a taller and a handsomer and a younger man,--all
three great recommendations in the kissing department of a contested
election. Yes, to canvass the borough, and to speak from the window,
Squire Hazeldean would be even more popularly presentable than the
London-bred and accomplished Audley Egerton himself.
The squire, applied to and urged on all sides, at first said bluntly that
he would do anything in reason to serve his brother, but that he did not
like, for his own part, appearing, even in proxy, as a lord's nominee;
and moreover, if he was to be sponsor for his brother, why, he must
promise and vow, in his name, to be stanch and true to the land they
lived by! And how could he tell that Audley, when once he got into the
House, would not forget the land, and then he, William Hazeldean, would
be made a liar, and look like a turncoat!
But these scruples being overruled by the arguments of the gentlemen and
the entreaties of the ladies, who took in the election that intense
interest which those gentle creatures usually do take in all matters of
strife and contest, the squire at length consented to confront the Man
from Baker Street, and went accordingly into the thing with that good
heart and old English spirit with which he went into everything whereon
he had once made up his mind.
The expectations formed of the squire's capacities for popular
electioneering were fully realized. He talked quite as much nonsense as
Captain Dashmore on every subject except the landed interest; there he
was great, for he knew the subject well,--knew it by the instinct that
comes with practice, and compared to which all your showy theories are
mere cobwebs and moonshine.
The agricultural outvoters--many of whom, not living under Lord Lansmere,
but being small yeomen, had hitherto prided themselves on their
independence, and gone against my Lord--could not in their hearts go
against one who was every inch the farmer's friend. They began to share
in the earl's personal interest against the Man from Baker Street; and
big fellows, with legs bigger round than Captain Dashmore's tight little
body, and huge whips in their hands, were soon seen entering the shops,
"intimidating the electors," as Captain Dashmore indignantly declared.
These new recruits made a great difference in the musterroll of the
Lansmere books; and when the day for polling arrived, the result was a
fair question for even betting. At the last hour, after a neck-and-neck
contest, Mr. Audley Egerton beat the captain by two votes; and the names
of these voters were John Avenel, resident freeman, and his son-in-law,
Mark Fairfield, an outvoter, who, though a Lansmere freeman, had settled
in Hazeldean, where he had obtained the situation of head carpenter on
the squire's estate.
These votes were unexpected; for though Mark Fairfield had come to
Lansmere on purpose to support the squire's brother, and though the
Avenels had been always stanch supporters of the Lansmere Blue interest,
yet a severe affliction (as to the nature of which, not desiring to
sadden the opening of my story, I am considerately silent) had befallen
both these persons, and they had left the town on the very day after Lord
L'Estrange and Mr. Egerton had quitted Lansmere Park.
Whatever might have been the gratification of the squire, as a canvasser
and a brother, at Mr. Egerton's triumph, it was much damped when, on
leaving the dinner given in honour of the victory at the Lansmere Arms,
and about, with no steady step, to enter a carriage which was to convey
him to his Lordship's house, a letter was put into his hands by one of
the gentlemen who had accompanied the captain to the scene of action; and
the perusal of that letter, and a few whispered words from the bearer
thereof, sent the squire back to Mrs. Hazeldean a much soberer man than
she had ventured to hope for. The fact was, that on the day of
nomination, the captain having honoured Mr. Hazeldean with many poetical
and figurative appellations,--such as "Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin," "Blood-
sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly Warming-Pan,"--the squire had retorted
by a joke about "Saltwater Jack;" and the captain, who like all satirists
was extremely susceptible and thin-skinned, could not consent to be
called "Salt-water Jack" by a "Prize Ox" and a "Bloodsucking Vampire."
The letter, therefore, now conveyed to Mr. Hazeldean by a gentleman, who,
being from the Sister Country, was deemed the most fitting accomplice in
the honourable destruction of a brother mortal, contained nothing more
nor less than an invitation to single combat; and the bearer thereof,
with the suave politeness enjoined by etiquette on such well-bred
homicidal occasions, suggested the expediency of appointing the place of
meeting in the neighbourhood of London, in order to prevent interference
from the suspicious authorities of Lansmere.
The natives of some countries--the warlike French in particular--think
little of that formal operation which goes by the name of DUELLING.
Indeed, they seem rather to like it than otherwise. But there is nothing
your thorough-paced Englishman--a Hazeldean of Hazeldean--considers with
more repugnance and aversion than that same cold-blooded ceremonial. It
is not within the range of an Englishman's ordinary habits of thinking.
He prefers going to law,--a much more destructive proceeding of the two.
Nevertheless, if an Englishman must fight, why, he will fight. He says
"It is very foolish;" he is sure "it is most unchristianlike;" he agrees
with all that Philosophy, Preacher, and Press have laid down on the
subject; but he makes his will, says his prayers, and goes out--like a
heathen.
It never, therefore, occurred to the squire to show the white feather
upon this unpleasant occasion. The next day, feigning excuse to attend
the sale of a hunting stud at Tattersall's, he ruefully went up to
London, after taking a peculiarly affectionate leave of his wife.
Indeed, the squire felt convinced that he should never return home except
in a coffin. "It stands to reason," said he to himself, "that a man who
has been actually paid by the King's Government for shooting people ever
since he was a little boy in a midshipman's jacket, must be a dead hand
at the job. I should not mind if it was with double-barrelled Mantons
and small shot; but ball and pistol, they are n't human nor
sportsmanlike!" However, the squire, after settling his worldly affairs,
and hunting up an old college friend who undertook to be his second,
proceeded to a sequestered corner of Wimbledon Common, and planted
himself, not sideways, as one ought to do in such encounters (the which
posture the squire swore was an unmanly way of shirking), but full front
to the mouth of his adversary's pistol, with such sturdy composure that
Captain Dashmore, who, though an excellent shot, was at bottom as good-
natured a fellow as ever lived, testified his admiration by letting off
his gallant opponent with a ball in the fleshy part of the shoulder,
after which he declared himself perfectly satisfied. The parties then
shook hands, mutual apologies were exchanged, and the squire, much to his
astonishment to find himself still alive, was conveyed to Limmer's Hotel,
where, after a considerable amount of anguish, the ball was extracted and
the wound healed. Now it was all over, the squire felt very much raised
in his own conceit; and when he was in a humour more than ordinarily
fierce, that perilous event became a favourite allusion with him.
He considered, moreover, that his brother had incurred at his hand the
most lasting obligations; and that, having procured Audley's return to
parliament, and defended his interests at risk of his own life, he had an
absolute right to dictate to that gentleman how to vote,--upon all
matters, at least, connected with the landed interest. And when, not
very long after Audley took his seat in parliament (which he did not do
for some months), he thought proper both to vote and to speak in a manner
wholly belying the promises the squire had made on his behalf, Mr.
Hazeldean wrote him such a trimmer that it could not but produce an
unconciliatory reply. Shortly afterwards the squire's exasperation
reached the culminating point; for, having to pass through Lansmere on a
market-day, he was hooted by the very farmers whom he had induced to vote
for his brother; and, justly imputing the disgrace to Audley, he never
heard the name of that traitor to the land mentioned without a heightened
colour and an indignant expletive. M. de Ruqueville--who was the
greatest wit of his day--had, like the squire, a half-brother, with whom
he was not on the best of terms, and of whom he always spoke as his
"frere de loin!" Audley Egerton was thus Squire Hazeldean's "distant-
brother"!
Enough of these explanatory antecedents,--let us return to the stocks.
CHAPTER XI.
The squire's carpenters were taken from the park pales and set to work at
the parish stocks. Then came the painter and coloured them a beautiful
dark blue, with white border--and a white rim round the holes--with an
ornamental flourish in the middle. It was the gayest public edifice in
the whole village, though the village possessed no less than three other
monuments of the Vitruvian genius of the Hazeldeans,--to wit, the
almshouse, the school, and the parish pump.
A more elegant, enticing, coquettish pair of stocks never gladdened the
eye of a justice of the peace.
And Squire Hazeldean's eye was gladdened. In the pride of his heart he
brought all the family down to look at the stocks. The squire's family
(omitting the /frere de loin/) consisted of Mrs. Hazeldean, his wife;
next, of Miss Jemima Hazeldean, his first cousin; thirdly, of Mr. Francis
Hazeldean, his only son; and fourthly, of Captain Barnabas Higginbotham,
a distant relation,--who, indeed, strictly speaking, was not of the
family, but only a visitor ten months in the year. Mrs. Hazeldean was
every inch the lady,--the lady of the parish. In her comely, florid, and
somewhat sunburned countenance, there was an equal expression of majesty
and benevolence; she had a blue eye that invited liking, and an aquiline
nose that commanded respect. Mrs. Hazeldean had no affectation of fine
airs, no wish to be greater and handsomer and cleverer than she was. She
knew herself, and her station, and thanked Heaven for it. There was
about her speech and manner something of the shortness and bluntness
which often characterizes royalty; and if the lady of a parish is not a
queen in her own circle, it is never the fault of a parish. Mrs.
Hazeldean dressed her part to perfection. She wore silks that seemed
heirlooms,--so thick were they, so substantial and imposing; and over
these, when she was in her own domain, the whitest of aprons; while at
her waist was seen no fiddle-faddle /chatelaine/, with /breloques/ and
trumpery, but a good honest gold watch to mark the time, and a long pair
of scissors to cut off the dead leaves from her flowers,--for she was a
great horticulturalist. When occasion needed, Mrs. Hazeldean could,
however, lay by her more sumptuous and imperial raiment for a stout
riding-habit, of blue Saxony, and canter by her husband's side to see the
hounds throw off. Nay, on the days on which Mr. Hazeldean drove his
famous fast-trotting cob to the market town, it was rarely that you did
not see his wife on the left side of the gig. She cared as little as her
lord did for wind and weather, and in the midst of some pelting shower
her pleasant face peeped over the collar and capes of a stout
dreadnought, expanding into smiles and bloom as some frank rose, that
opens from its petals, and rejoices in the dews. It was easy to see that
the worthy couple had married for love; they were as little apart as they
could help it. And still, on the first of September, if the house was
not full of company which demanded her cares, Mrs. Hazeldean "stepped
out" over the stubbles by her husband's side, with as light a tread and
as blithe an eye as when, in the first bridal year, she had enchanted the
squire by her genial sympathy with his sports.
So there now stands Harriet Hazeldean, one hand leaning on the squire's
broad shoulder, the other thrust into her apron, and trying her best to
share her husband's enthusiasm for his own public-spirited patriotism, in
the renovation of the parish stocks. A little behind, with two fingers
resting on the thin arm of Captain Barnabas, stood Miss Jemima, the
orphan daughter of the squire's uncle, by a runaway imprudent marriage
with a young lady who belonged to a family which had been at war with the
Hazeldeans since the reign of Charles the First respecting a right of way
to a small wood (or rather spring) of about an acre, through a piece of
furze land, which was let to a brickmaker at twelve shillings a year.
The wood belonged to the Hazeldeans, the furze land to the Sticktorights
(an old Saxon family, if ever there was one). Every twelfth year, when
the fagots and timber were felled, this feud broke out afresh; for the
Sticktorights refused to the Hazeldeans the right to cart off the said
fagots and timber through the only way by which a cart could possibly
pass. It is just to the Hazeldeans to say that they had offered to buy
the land at ten times its value. But the Sticktorights, with equal
magnanimity, had declared that they would not "alienate the family
property for the convenience of the best squire that ever stood upon shoe
leather." Therefore, every twelfth year, there was always a great breach
of the peace on the part of both Hazeldeans and Sticktorights,
magistrates and deputy-lieutenants though they were. The question was
fairly fought out by their respective dependants, and followed by various
actions for assault and trespass. As the legal question of right was
extremely obscure, it never had been properly decided; and, indeed,
neither party wished it to be decided, each at heart having some doubt of
the propriety of its own claim. A marriage between a younger son of the
Hazeldeans and a younger daughter of the Sticktorights was viewed with
equal indignation by both families; and the consequence had been that the
runaway couple, unblessed and unforgiven, had scrambled through life as
they could, upon the scanty pay of the husband, who was in a marching
regiment, and the interest of L1000, which was the wife's fortune
independent of her parents. They died and left an only daughter (upon
whom the maternal L1000 had been settled), about the time that the squire
came of age and into possession of his estates. And though he inherited
all the ancestral hostility towards the Sticktorights, it was not in his
nature to be unkind to a poor orphan, who was, after all, the child of a
Hazeldean. Therefore he had educated and fostered Jemima with as much
tenderness as if she had been his sister; put out her L1000 at nurse, and
devoted, from the ready money which had accrued from the rents during his
minority, as much as made her fortune (with her own accumulated at
compound interest) no less than L4000, the ordinary marriage portion of
the daughters of Hazeldean. On her coming of age, he transferred this
sum to her absolute disposal, in order that she might feel herself
independent, see a little more of the world than she could at Hazeldean,
have candidates to choose from if she deigned to marry; or enough to live
upon, if she chose to remain single. Miss Jemima had somewhat availed
herself of this liberty, by occasional visits to Cheltenham and other
watering-places. But her grateful affection to the squire was such that
she could never bear to be long away from the Hall. And this was the
more praise to her heart, inasmuch as she was far from taking kindly to
the prospect of being an old maid; and there were so few bachelors in the
neighbourhood of Hazeldean, that she could not but have that prospect
before her eyes whenever she looked out of the Hall windows. Miss Jemima
was indeed one of the most kindly and affectionate of beings feminine;
and if she disliked the thought of single blessedness, it really was from
those innocent and womanly instincts towards the tender charities of
hearth and home, without which a lady, however otherwise estimable, is
little better than a Minerva in bronze. But, whether or not, despite her
fortune and her face, which last, though not strictly handsome, was
pleasing, and would have been positively pretty if she had laughed more
often (for when she laughed, there appeared three charming dimples,
invisible when she was grave),--whether or not, I say, it was the fault
of our insensibility or her own fastidiousness, Miss Jemima approached
her thirtieth year, and was still Miss Jemima. Now, therefore, that
beautifying laugh of hers was very rarely heard, and she had of late
become confirmed in two opinions, not at all conducive to laughter. One
was a conviction of the general and progressive wickedness of the male
sex, and the other was a decided and lugubrious belief that the world was
coming to an end. Miss Jemima was now accompanied by a small canine
favourite, true Blenheim, with a snub nose. It was advanced in life, and
somewhat obese. It sat on its haunches, with its tongue out of its
mouth, except when it snapped at the flies. There was a strong platonic
friendship between Miss Jemima and Captain Barnabas Higginbotham; for he,
too, was unmarried, and he had the same ill opinion of your sex, my dear
madam, that Miss Jemima had of, ours. The captain was a man of a slim
and elegant figure; the less said about the face the better, a truth of
which the captain himself was sensible, for it was a favourite maxim of
his, "that in a man, everything is a slight, gentlemanlike figure."
Captain Barnabas did not absolutely deny that the world was coming to an
end, only he thought it would last his time.
Quite apart from all the rest, with the /nonchalant/ survey of virgin
dandyism, Francis Hazeldean looked over one of the high starched
neckcloths which were then the fashion,--a handsome lad, fresh from Eton
for the summer holidays, but at that ambiguous age when one disdains the
sports of the boy, and has not yet arrived at the resources of the man.
"I should be glad, Frank," said the squire, suddenly turning round to his
son, "to see you take a little more interest in duties which, one day or
other, you may be called upon to discharge. I can't bear to think that
the property should fall into the hands of a fine gentleman, who will let
things go to rack and ruin, instead of keeping them up as I do."
And the squire pointed to the stocks.
Master Frank's eye followed the direction of the cane, as well as his
cravat would permit; and he said dryly,--
"Yes, sir; but how came the stocks to be so long out of repair?"
"Because one can't see to everything at once," retorted the squire,
tartly. "When a man has got eight thousand acres to look after, he must
do a bit at a time."
"Yes," said Captain Barnabas. "I know that by experience."
"The deuce you do!" cried the squire, bluntly. "Experience in eight
thousand acres!"
"No; in my apartments in the Albany,--No. 3 A. I have had them ten
years, and it was only last Christmas that I bought my Japan cat."
"Dear me," said Miss Jemima; "a Japan cat! that must be very curious.
What sort of a creature is it?"
"Don't you know? Bless me, a thing with three legs, and holds toast! I
never thought of it, I assure you, till my friend Cosey said to me one
morning when he was breakfasting at my rooms, 'Higginbotham, how is it
that you, who like to have things comfortable about you, don't have a
cat?' 'Upon my life,' said I, 'one can't think of everything at a
time,'--just like you, Squire."
"Pshaw," said Mr. Hazeldean, gruffly, "not at all like me. And I'll
thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to put me out when I'm
speaking on matters of importance; poking your cat into my stocks! They
look something like now, my stocks, don't they, Harry? I declare that
the whole village seems more respectable. It is astonishing how much a
little improvement adds to the--to the--"
"Charm of the landscape," put in Miss Jemina, sentimentally.
The squire neither accepted nor rejected the suggested termination; but
leaving his sentence uncompleted, broke suddenly off with--
"And if I had listened to Parson Dale--"
"You would have done a very wise thing," said a voice behind, as the
parson presented himself in the rear.
"Wise thing? Why, surely, Mr. Dale," said Mrs. Hazeldean, with spirit,
for she always resented the least contradiction to her lord and master--
perhaps as an interference with her own special right and prerogative!--
"why, surely if it is necessary to have stocks, it is necessary to repair
them."
"That's right! go it, Harry!" cried the squire, chuckling, and rubbing
his hands as if he had been setting his terrier at the parson: "St--St--
at him! Well, Master Dale, what do you say to that?"
"My dear ma'am," said the parson, replying in preference to the lady,
"there are many institutions in the country which are very old, look very
decayed, and don't seem of much use; but I would not pull them down for
all that."
"You would reform them, then," said Mrs. Hazeldean, doubtfully, and with
a look at her husband, as much as to say, "He is on politics now,--that's
your business."
"No, I would not, ma'am," said the parson, stoutly. "What on earth would
you do, then?" quoth the squire. "Just let 'em alone," said the parson.
"Master Frank, there's a Latin maxim which was often put in the mouth of
Sir Robert Walpole, and which they ought to put into the Eton grammar,
'Quieta non movere.' If things are quiet, let them be quiet! I would
not destroy the stocks, because that might seem to the ill-disposed like
a license to offend; and I would not repair the stocks, because that puts
it into people's heads to get into them."
The squire was a stanch politician of the old school, and be did not like
to think that, in repairing the stocks, he had perhaps been conniving at
revolutionary principles.
"This constant desire of innovation," said Miss Jemima, suddenly mounting
the more funereal of her two favourite hobbies, "is one of the great
symptoms of the approaching crash. We are altering and mending and
reforming, when in twenty years at the utmost the world itself may be
destroyed!" The fair speaker paused, and Captain Barnabas said
thoughtfully, "Twenty years!--the insurance officers rarely compute the
best life at more than fourteen." He struck his hand on the stocks as he
spoke, and added, with his usual consolatory conclusion, "The odds are
that it will last our time, Squire."
But whether Captain Barnabas meant the stocks or the world he did not
clearly explain, and no one took the trouble to inquire.
"Sir," said Master Frank to his father, with that furtive spirit of
quizzing, which he had acquired amongst other polite accomplishments at
Eton,--"sir, it is no use now considering whether the stocks should or
should not have been repaired. The only question is, whom you will get
to put into them."
"True," said the squire, with much gravity.
"Yes, there it is!" said the parson, mournfully. "If you would but learn
'non quieta movere'!"
"Don't spout your Latin at me, Parson," cried the squire, angrily; "I can
give you as good as you bring, any day.
"'Propria quae maribus tribuuntur mascula dicas.--
As in praesenti, perfectum format in avi.'
There," added the squire, turning triumphantly towards his Harry, who
looked with great admiration at this unprecedented burst of learning on
the part of Mr. Hazeldean,--"there, two can play at that game! And now
that we have all seen the stocks, we may as well go home and drink tea.
Will you come up and play a rubber, Dale? No! hang it, man, I've not
offended you?--you know my ways."
"That I do, and they are among the things I would not have altered,"
cried the parson, holding out his hand cheerfully. The squire gave it a
hearty shake, and Mrs. Hazeldean hastened to do the same.
"Do come; I am afraid we've been very rude: we are sad blunt folks. Do
come; that's a dear good man; and of course poor Mrs. Dale too." Mrs.
Hazeldean's favourite epithet for Mrs. Dale was poor, and that for
reasons to be explained hereafter.
"I fear my wife has got one of her bad headaches, but I will give her
your kind message, and at all events you may depend upon me."
"That's right," said the squire; "in half an hour, eh? How d' ye do, my
little man?" as Lenny Fairfield, on his way home from some errand in the
village, drew aside and pulled off his hat with both hands. "Stop; you
see those stocks, eh? Tell all the bad boys in the parish to take care
how they get into them--a sad disgrace--you'll never be in such a
quandary?"
"That at least I will answer for," said the parson.
"And I too," added Mrs. Hazeldean, patting the boy's curly head. "Tell
your mother I shall come and have a good chat with her to-morrow
evening."
And so the party passed on, and Lenny stood still on the road, staring
hard at the stocks, which stared back at him from its four great eyes.
Put Lenny did not remain long alone. As soon as the great folks had
fairly disappeared, a large number of small folks emerged timorously from
the neighbouring cottages, and approached the site of the stocks with
much marvel, fear, and curiosity.
In fact, the renovated appearance of this monster /a propos de bottes/,
as one may say--had already excited considerable sensation among the
population of Hazeldean. And even as when an unexpected owl makes his
appearance in broad daylight all the little birds rise from tree and
hedgerow, and cluster round their ominous enemy, so now gathered all the
much-excited villagers round the intrusive and portentous phenomenon.
"D' ye know what the diggins the squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?"
asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three
years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally holding
back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to thrust his
head into one of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to a sage old
man, the oracle of the village, who, leaning both hands on his crutch,
shook his head bodingly.
"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some of the boys ha' been robbing the
orchards."
"Orchards!" cried a big lad, who seemed to think himself personally
appealed to; "why, the bud's scarce off the trees yet!"
"No more it ain't," said the dame with many children, and she breathed
more freely.
"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some o' ye has been sitting snares."
"What for?" said a stout, sullen-looking young fellow, whom conscience
possibly pricked to reply,--"what for, when it bean't the season? And if
a poor man did find a hear in his pocket i' the haytime, I should like to
know if ever a squire in the world would let 'un off with the stocks,
eh?"
This last question seemed a settler, and the wisdom of Gaffer Solomons
went down fifty per cent in the public opinion of Hazeldean.
"Maw be," said the gaffer--this time with a thrilling effect, which
restored his reputation,--"maw be some o' ye ha' been getting drunk, and
making beestises o' yoursel's!"
There was a dead pause, for this suggestion applied too generally to be
met with a solitary response. At last one of the women said, with a
meaning glance at her husband,
"God bless the squire; he'll make some on us happy women if that's all!"
There then arose an almost unanimous murmur of approbation among the
female part of the audience; and the men looked at each other, and then
at the phenomenon, with a very hang-dog expression of countenance.
"Or, maw be," resumed Gaffer Solomons, encouraged to a fourth suggestion
by the success of its predecessor,--"maw be some o' the misseses ha' been
making a rumpus, and scolding their good men. I heard say in my
granfeyther's time, arter old Mother Bang nigh died o' the ducking-stool,
them 'ere stocks were first made for the women, out o' compassion like!
And every one knows the squire is a koind-hearted man, God bless 'un!"
"God bless 'un!" cried the men, heartily; and they gathered lovingly
round the phenomenon, like heathens of old round a tutelary temple. But
then there rose one shrill clamour among the females as they retreated
with involuntary steps towards the verge of the green, whence they glared
at Solomons and the phenomenon with eyes so sparkling, and pointed at
both with gestures so menacing, that Heaven only knows if a morsel of
either would have remained much longer to offend the eyes of the justly-
enraged matronage of Hazeldean, if fortunately Master Stirn, the squire's
right-hand man, had not come up in the nick of time.
Master Stirn was a formidable personage,--more formidable than the squire
himself,--as, indeed, a squire's right hand is generally more formidable
than the head can pretend to be. He inspired the greater awe, because,
like the stocks of which he was deputed guardian, his powers were
undefined and obscure, and he had no particular place in the out-of-door
establishment. He was not the steward, yet he did much of what ought to
be the steward's work; he was not the farm-bailiff, for the squire called
himself his own farm-bailiff; nevertheless, Mr. Hazeldean sowed and
ploughed, cropped and stocked, bought and sold, very much as Mr. Stirn
condescended to advise. He was not the park-keeper, for he neither shot
the deer nor superintended the preserves; but it was he who always found
out who had broken a park pale or snared a rabbit. In short, what may be
called all the harsher duties of a large landed proprietor devolved, by
custom and choice, upon Mr. Stirn. If a labourer was to be discharged or
a rent enforced, and the squire knew that he should be talked over, and
that the steward would be as soft as himself, Mr. Stirn was sure to be
the avenging messenger, to pronounce the words of fate; so that he
appeared to the inhabitants of Hazeldean like the poet's /Saeva
Necessitas/, a vague incarnation of remorseless power, armed with whips,
nails, and wedges. The very brute creation stood in awe of Mr. Stirn.
The calves knew that it was he who singled out which should be sold to
the butcher, and huddled up into a corner with beating hearts at his grim
footstep; the sow grunted, the duck quacked, the hen bristled her
feathers and called to her chicks when Mr. Stirn drew near. Nature had
set her stamp upon him. Indeed, it may be questioned whether the great
M. de Chambray himself, surnamed the brave, had an aspect so awe-
inspiring as that of Mr. Stirn; albeit the face of that hero was so
terrible, that a man who had been his lackey, seeing his portrait after
he had been dead twenty years, fell a trembling all over like a leaf!
"And what the plague are you doing here?" said Mr. Stirn, as he waved and
smacked a great cart-whip which he held in his hand, "making such a
hullabaloo, you women, you! that I suspect the squire will be sending out
to know if the village is on fire. Go home, will ye? High time indeed
to have the stocks ready, when you get squalling and conspiring under the
very nose of a justice of the peace, just as the French revolutioners did
afore they cut off their king's head! My hair stands on end to look at
ye." But already, before half this address was delivered, the crowd had
dispersed in all directions,--the women still keeping together, and the
men sneaking off towards the ale-house. Such was the beneficent effect
of the fatal stocks on the first day of their resuscitation. However, in
the break up of every crowd there must always be one who gets off the
last; and it so happened that our friend Lenny Fairfield, who had
mechanically approached close to the stocks, the better to hear the
oracular opinions of Gaffer Solomons, had no less mechanically, on the
abrupt appearance of Mr. Stirn, crept, as he hoped, out of sight behind
the trunk of the elm-tree which partially shaded the stocks; and there
now, as if fascinated, he still cowered, not daring to emerge in full
view of Mr. Stirn, and in immediate reach of the cartwhip, when the quick
eye of the right-hand man detected his retreat.
"Hallo, sir--what the deuce, laying a mine to blow up the stocks! just
like Guy Fox and the Gunpowder Plot, I declares! What ha' you got in
your willanous little fist there?"
"Nothing, sir," said Lenny, opening his palm. "Nothing--um!" said Mr.
Stirn, much dissatisfied; and then, as he gazed more deliberately,
recognizing the pattern boy of the village, a cloud yet darker gathered
over his brow; for Mr. Stirn, who valued himself much on his learning,
and who, indeed, by dint of more knowledge as well as more wit than his
neighbours, had attained his present eminent station of life, was
extremely anxious that his only son should also be a scholar.
That wish--
"The gods dispersed in empty air."
Master Stirn was a notable dunce at the parson's school, while Lenny
Fairfield was the pride and boast of it; therefore Mr. Stirn was
naturally, and almost justifiably, ill-disposed towards Lenny Fairfield,
who had appropriated to himself the praises which Mr. Stirn had designed
for his son.
"Um!" said the right-hand man, glowering on Lenny malignantly, "you are
the pattern boy of the village, are you? Very well, sir! then I put
these here stocks under your care, and you'll keep off the other boys
from sitting on 'em, and picking off the paint, and playing three-holes
and chuck-farthing, as I declare they've been a doing, just in front of
the elewation. Now, you knows your 'sponsibilities, little boy,--and a
great honour they are too, for the like o' you.
If any damage be done, it is to you I shall look; d' ye understand?--and
that's what the squire says to me. So you sees what it is to be a
pattern boy, Master Lenny!" With that Mr. Stirn gave a loud crack of the
cart-whip, by way of military honours, over the head of the vicegerent he
had thus created, and strode off to pay a visit to two young unsuspecting
pups, whose ears and tails he had graciously promised their proprietors
to crop that evening. Nor, albeit few charges could be more obnoxious
than that of deputy-governor or /charge-d'affaires extraordinaires/ to
the parish stocks, nor one more likely to render Lenny Fairfield odious
to his contemporaries, ought he to have been insensible to the signal
advantage of his condition over that of the two sufferers, against whose
ears and tails Mr. Stirn had no special motives of resentment. To every
bad there is a worse; and fortunately for little boys, and even for grown
men, whom the Stirns of the world regard malignly, the majesty and law
protect their ears, and the merciful forethought of nature deprived their
remote ancestors of the privilege of entailing tails upon them. Had it
been otherwise--considering what handles tails would have given to the
oppressor, how many traps envy would have laid for them, how often they
must have been scratched and mutilated by the briars of life, how many
good excuses would have been found for lopping, docking, and trimming
them--I fear that only the lap-dogs of Fortune would have gone to the
grave tail-whole.
CHAPTER XII.
The card-table was set out in the drawing-room at Hazeldean Hall; though
the little party were still lingering in the deep recess of the large bay
window, which (in itself of dimensions that would have swallowed up a
moderate-sized London parlour) held the great round tea-table, with all
appliances and means to boot,--for the beautiful summer moon shed on the
sward so silvery a lustre, and the trees cast so quiet a shadow, and the
flowers and new-mown hay sent up so grateful a perfume, that to close the
windows, draw the curtains, and call for other lights than those of
heaven would have been an abuse of the prose of life which even Captain
Barnabas, who regarded whist as the business of town and the holiday of
the country, shrank from suggesting. Without, the scene, beheld by the
clear moonlight, had the beauty peculiar to the garden-ground round those
old-fashioned country residences which, though a little modernized, still
preserve their original character,--the velvet lawn, studded with large
plots of flowers, shaded and scented, here to the left by lilacs,
laburnums, and rich syringas; there, to the right, giving glimpses, over
low clipped yews, of a green bowling-alley, with the white columns of a
summer-house built after the Dutch taste, in the reign of William III.;
and in front stealing away under covert of those still cedars, into the
wilder landscape of the well-wooded undulating park. Within, viewed by
the placid glimmer of the moon, the scene was no less characteristic of
the abodes of that race which has no parallel in other lands, and which,
alas! is somewhat losing its native idiosyncrasies in this,--the stout
country gentleman, not the fine gentleman of the country; the country
gentleman somewhat softened and civilized from the mere sportsman or
farmer, but still plain and homely; relinquishing the old hall for the
drawing-room, and with books not three months old on his table, instead
of Fox's "Martyrs" and Baker's "Chronicle," yet still retaining many a
sacred old prejudice, that, like the knots in his native oak, rather adds
to the ornament of the grain than takes from the strength of the tree.
Opposite to the window, the high chimneypiece rose to the heavy cornice
of the ceiling, with dark panels glistening against the moonlight. The
broad and rather clumsy chintz sofas and settees of the reign of George
III. contrasted at intervals with the tall-backed chairs of a far more
distant generation, when ladies in fardingales and gentlemen in trunk-
hose seem never to have indulged in horizontal positions. The walls, of
shining wainscot, were thickly covered, chiefly with family pictures;
though now and then some Dutch fair or battle-piece showed that a former
proprietor had been less exclusive in his taste for the arts. The
pianoforte stood open near the fireplace; a long dwarf bookcase at the
far end added its sober smile to the room. That bookcase contained what
was called "The Lady's Library,"--a collection commenced by the squire's
grandmother, of pious memory, and completed by his mother, who had more
taste for the lighter letters, with but little addition from the
bibliomaniac tendencies of the present Mrs. Hazeldean, who, being no
great reader, contented herself with subscribing to the Book Club. In
this feminine Bodleian, the sermons collected by Mrs. Hazeldean, the
grandmother, stood cheek-by-jowl beside the novels purchased by Mrs.
Hazeldean, the mother,--
"Mixtaque ridenti colocasia fundet acantho!"
But, to be sure, the novels, in spite of very inflammatory titles, such
as "Fatal Sensibility," "Errors of the Heart," etc., were so harmless
that I doubt if the sermons could have had much to say against their
next-door neighbours,--and that is all that can be expected by the best
of us.
A parrot dozing on his perch; some goldfish fast asleep in their
glass bowl; two or three dogs on the rug, and Flimsey, Miss Jemima's
spaniel, curled into a ball on the softest sofa; Mrs. Hazeldean's work-
table rather in disorder, as if it had been lately used; the
"St. James's Chronicle" dangling down from a little tripod near the
squire's armchair; a high screen of gilt and stamped leather fencing off
the card-table,--all these, dispersed about a room large enough to hold
them all and not seem crowded, offered many a pleasant resting-place for
the eye, when it turned from the world of nature to the home of man.
But see, Captain Barnabas, fortified by his fourth cup of tea, has at
length summoned courage to whisper to Mrs. Hazeldean, "Don't you think
the parson will be impatient for his rubber?" Mrs. Hazeldean glanced at
the parson and smiled; but she gave the signal to the captain, and the
bell was rung, lights were brought in, the curtains let down; in a few
moments more, the group had collected round the cardtable. The best of
us are but human--that is not a new truth, I confess, but yet people
forget it every day of their lives--and I dare say there are many who are
charitably thinking at this very moment that my parson ought not to be
playing at whist. All I can say to those rigid disciplinarians is,
"Every man has his favourite sin: whist was Parson Dale's!--ladies and
gentlemen, what is yours?" In truth, I must not set up my poor parson,
nowadays, as a pattern parson,--it is enough to have one pattern in a
village no bigger than Hazeldean, and we all know that Lenny Fairfield
has bespoken that place, and got the patronage of the stocks for his
emoluments! Parson Dale was ordained, not indeed so very long ago, but
still at a time when Churchmen took it a great deal more easily than they
do now. The elderly parson of that day played his rubber as a matter of
course, the middle-aged parson was sometimes seen riding to cover (I knew
a schoolmaster, a doctor of divinity, and an excellent man, whose pupils
were chiefly taken from the highest families in England, who hunted
regularly three times a week during the season), and the young parson
would often sing a capital song--not composed by David--and join in those
rotatory dances, which certainly David never danced before the ark.
Does it need so long an exordium to excuse thee, poor Parson Dale, for
turning up that ace of spades with so triumphant a smile at thy partner?
I must own that nothing which could well add to the parson's offence was
wanting. In the first place, he did not play charitably, and merely to
oblige other people. He delighted in the game, he rejoiced in the game,
his whole heart was in the game,--neither was he indifferent to the
mammon of the thing, as a Christian pastor ought to have been. He looked
very sad when he took his shillings out of his purse, and exceedingly
pleased when he put the shillings that had just before belonged to other
people into it. Finally, by one of those arrangements common with
married people who play at the same table, 'Mr. and--Mrs. Hazeldean were
invariably partners, and no two people could play worse; while Captain
Barnabas, who had played at Graham's with honour and profit, necessarily
became partner to Parson Dale, who himself played a good steady parsonic
game. So that, in strict truth, it was hardly fair play; it was almost
swindling,--the combination of these two great dons against that innocent
married couple! Mr. Dale, it is true, was aware of this disproportion of
force, and had often proposed either to change partners or to give odds,
--propositions always scornfully scouted by the squire and his lady, so
that the parson was obliged to pocket his conscience, together with the
ten points which made his average winnings.
The strangest thing in the world is the different way in which whist
affects the temper. It is no test of temper, as some pretend,--not at
all! The best-tempered people in the world grow snappish at whist; and I
have seen the most testy and peevish in the ordinary affairs of life bear
their losses with the stoicism of Epictetus. This was notably manifested
in the contrast between the present adversaries of the Hall and the
Rectory. The squire, who was esteemed as choleric a gentleman as most in
the county, was the best-humoured fellow you could imagine when you set
him down to whist opposite the sunny face of his wife. You never heard
one of those incorrigible blunderers scold each other; on the contrary,
they only laughed when they threw away the game, with four by honours in
their hands. The utmost that was ever said was a "Well, Harry, that was
the oddest trump of yours. Ho, ho, ho!" or a "Bless me, Hazeldean--why,
they made three tricks in clubs, and you had the ace in your hand all the
time! Ha, ha, ha!"
Upon which occasions Captain Barnabas, with great goodhumour, always
echoed both the squire's Ho, ho, ho! and Mrs. Hazeldean's Ha, ha, ha!
Not so the parson. He had so keen and sportsmanlike an interest in the
game, that even his adversaries' mistakes ruffled him. And you would
hear him, with elevated voice and agitated gestures, laying down the law,
quoting Hoyle, appealing to all the powers of memory and common-sense
against the very delinquencies by which he was enriched,
---a waste of eloquence that always heightened the hilarity of Mr. and
Mrs. Hazeldean. While these four were thus engaged, Mrs. Dale, who had
come with her husband despite her headache, sat on the sofa beside Miss
Jemima, or rather beside Miss Jemima's Flimsey, which had already secured
the centre of the sofa, and snarled at the very idea of being disturbed.
And Master Frank--at a table by himself--was employed sometimes in
looking at his pumps and sometimes at Gilray's Caricatures, which his
mother had provided for his intellectual requirements. Mrs. Dale, in her
heart, liked Miss Jemima better than Mrs. Hazeldean, of whom she was
rather in awe, notwithstanding they had been little girls together, and
occasionally still called each other Harry and Carry. But those tender
diminutives belonged to the "Dear" genus, and were rarely employed by the
ladies, except at times when, had they been little girls still, and the
governess out of the way, they would have slapped and pinched each other.
Mrs. Dale was still a very pretty woman, as Mrs. Hazeldean was still a
very fine woman. Mrs. Dale painted in water-colours, and sang, and made
card-racks and penholders, and was called an "elegant, accomplished
woman;" Mrs. Hazeldean cast up the squire's accounts, wrote the best part
of his letters, kept a large establishment in excellent order, and was
called "a clever, sensible woman." Mrs. Dale had headaches and nerves;
Mrs. Hazeldean had neither nerves nor headaches. Mrs. Dale said, "Harry
had no real harm in her, but was certainly very masculine;" Mrs.
Hazeldean said, "Carry would be a good creature but for her airs and
graces." Mrs. Dale said Mrs. Hazeldean was "just made to be a country
squire's lady;" Mrs. Hazeldean said, "Mrs. Dale was the last person in
the world who ought to have been a parson's wife." Carry, when she spoke
of Harry to a third person, said, "Dear Mrs. Hazeldean;" Harry, when she
referred incidentally to Carry, said, "Poor Mrs. Dale." And now the
reader knows why Mrs. Hazeldean called Mrs. Dale "poor,"--at least as
well as I do. For, after all, the word belonged to that class in the
female vocabulary which may be called "obscure significants," resembling
the Konx Ompax, which hath so puzzled the inquirers into the Eleusinian
Mysteries: the application is rather to be illustrated than the meaning
to be exactly explained.
"That's really a sweet little dog of yours, Jemima," said Mrs. Dale, who
was embroidering the word CAROLINE on the border of a cambric pocket
handkerchief; but edging a little farther off, as she added, "he'll not
bite, will he?"
"Dear me, no!" said Miss Jemima; "but" (she added in a confidential
whisper) "don't say he,--'t is a lady dog!"
"Oh," said Mrs. Dale, edging off still farther, as if that confession of
the creature's sex did not serve to allay her apprehensions,--"oh, then,
you carry your aversion to the gentlemen even to lap-dogs,--that is being
consistent indeed, Jemima!"
MISS JEMIMA.--"I had a gentleman dog once,--a pug!--pugs are getting very
scarce now. I thought he was so fond of me--he snapped at every one
else; the battles I fought for him! Well, will you believe--I had been
staying with my friend Miss Smilecox at Cheltenham. Knowing that William
is so hasty, and his boots are so thick, I trembled to think what a kick
might do. So, on coming here I left Bluff--that was his name--with Miss
Smilecox." (A pause.)
MRS. DALE (looking up languidly).--"Well, my love?"
MISS JEMIMA.--"Will you believe it, I say, when I returned to Cheltenham,
only three months afterwards, Miss Smilecox had seduced his affections
from me, and the ungrateful creature did not even know me again? A pug,
too--yet people say pugs are faithful! I am sure they ought to be, nasty
things! I have never had a gentleman dog since,--they are all alike,
believe me, heartless, selfish creatures."
MRS. DALE.--"Pugs? I dare say they are!"
MISS JEMIMA (with spirit).-"MEN!--I told you it was a gentleman dog!"
MRS. DALE (apologetically).--"True, my love, but the whole thing was so
mixed up!"
MISS JEMIMA.--"You saw that cold-blooded case of Breach of Promise of
Marriage in the papers,--an old wretch, too, of sixty-four. No age makes
them a bit better. And when one thinks that the end of all flesh is
approaching, and that--"
MRS. DALE (quickly, for she prefers Miss Jemima's other hobby to that
black one upon which she is preparing to precede the bier of the
universe).--"Yes, my love, we'll avoid that subject, if you please. Mr.
Dale has his own opinions, and it becomes me, you know, as a parson's
wife" (said smilingly: Mrs. Dale has as pretty a dimple as any of Miss
Jemima's, and makes more of that one than Miss Jemima of three), "to
agree with him,--that is, in theology."
MISS JEMIMA (earnestly).---"But the thing is so clear, if you will but
look into--"
MRS. DALE (putting her hand on Miss Jemima's lips playfully).---"Not a
word more. Pray, what do you think of the squire's tenant at the Casino,
Signor Riccabocca? An interesting creature, is he not?"
MISS JEMIMA.--"Interesting! not to me. Interesting? Why is he
interesting?"
Mrs. Dale is silent, and turns her handkerchief in her pretty little
white hands, appearing to contemplate the R in Caroline.
MISS JEMIMA (half pettishly, half coaxingly).--"Why is he interesting? I
scarcely ever looked at him; they say he smokes, and never eats. Ugly,
too!"
MRS. DALE.--"Ugly,--no. A fine bead,--very like Dante's; but what is
beauty?"
MISS JEMIMA.--"Very true: what is it indeed? Yes, as you say, I think
there is something interesting about him; he looks melancholy, but that
may be because he is poor."
MRS. DALE.--"It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one
loves. Charles and I were very poor once,--before the squire--" Mrs.
Dale paused, looked towards the squire, and murmured a blessing, the
warmth of which brought tears into her eyes. "Yes," she added, after a
pause, "we were very poor, but we were happy even then,--more thanks to
Charles than to me;" and tears from a new source again dimmed those
quick, lively eyes, as the little woman gazed fondly on her husband,
whose brows were knit into a black frown over a bad hand.
MISS JEMIMA.--"It is only those horrid men who think of money as a source
of happiness. I should be the last person to esteem a gentleman less
because he was poor."
MRS. DALE.--"I wonder the squire does not ask Signor Riccabocca here more
often. Such an acquisition we find him!"
The squire's voice from the card-table.--"Whom ought I to ask more often,
Mrs. Dale?"
Parson's voice, impatiently.--"Come, come, come, squire: play to my queen
of diamonds,--do!"
SQUIRE.--"There, I trump it! pick up the trick, Mrs. H."
PARSON.--"Stop! Stop! trump my diamond?"
THE CAPTAIN (solemnly).--"'Trick turned; play on, Squire."
SQUIRE.--"The king of diamonds."
MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"Lord! Hazeldean, why, that's the most barefaced
revoke,--ha, ha, ha! trump the queen of diamonds and play out the king!
well, I never! ha, ha, ha!"
CAPTAIN BARNABAS (in tenor).--"Ha, ha, ha!"
SQUIRE.--"Ho, ho, ho! bless my soul! ho, ho, ho!"
CAPTAIN BARNABAS (in bass).--"Ho, ho, ho!"
Parson's voice raised, but drowned by the laughter of his adversaries and
the firm, clear tone of Captain Barnabas.--"Three to our score!--game!"
SQUIRE (wiping his eyes).--"No help for it; Harry, deal for me. Whom
ought I to ask, Mrs. Dale?" (Waxing angry.) "First time I ever heard the
hospitality of Hazeldean called in question!"
MRS. DALE.--"My dear sir, I beg a thousand pardons, but listeners--you
know the proverb."
SQUIRE (growling like a bear).--"I hear nothing but proverbs ever since
we had that Mounseer among us. Please to speak plainly, ma'am."
Mrs. DALE (sliding into a little temper at being thus roughly accosted).
--"It was of Mounseer, as you call him, that I spoke, Mr. Hazeldean."
SQUIRE.--"What! Rickeybockey?"
MRS. DALE (attempting the pure Italian accentuation).--"Signor
Riccabocca."
PARSON (slapping his cards on the table in despair).--"Are we playing at
whist, or are we not?"
The squire, who is fourth player, drops the king to Captain
Higginbotham's lead of the ace of hearts. Now the captain has left
queen, knave, and two other hearts, four trumps to the queen, and nothing
to win a trick with in the two other suits. This hand is therefore
precisely one of those in which, especially after the fall of that king
of hearts in the adversary's hand, it becomes a matter of reasonable
doubt whether to lead trumps or not. The captain hesitates, and not
liking to play out his good hearts with the certainty of their being
trumped by the squire, nor, on the other hand, liking to open the other
suits, in which he has not a card that can assist his partner, resolves,
as becomes a military man in such dilemma, to make a bold push and lead
out trumps in the chance of finding his partner strong and so bringing in
his long suit.
SQUIRE (taking advantage of the much meditating pause made by the
captain).--"Mrs. Dale, it is not my fault. I have asked Rickeybockey,--
time out of mind. But I suppose I am not fine enough for those foreign
chaps. He'll not come,--that's all I know."
PARSON (aghast at seeing the captain play out trumps, of which he, Mr.
Dale, has only two, wherewith he expects to ruff the suit of spades, of
which he has only one, the cards all falling in suits, while he has not a
single other chance of a trick in his hand).--"Really, Squire, we had
better give up playing if you put out my partner in this extraordinary
way,--jabber, jabber, jabber!"
SQUIRE.--"Well, we must be good children, Harry. What!--trumps, Barney?
Thank ye for that!" And the squire might well be grateful, for the
unfortunate adversary has led up to ace king knave, with two other
trumps. Squire takes the parson's ten with his knave, and plays out ace
king; then, having cleared all the trumps except the captain's queen and
his own remaining two, leads off tierce major in that very suit of spades
of which the parson has only one,--and the captain, indeed, but two,--
forces out the captain's queen, and wins the game in a canter.
PARSON (with a look at the captain which might have become the awful
brows of Jove, when about to thunder).--"That, I suppose, is the new-
fashioned London play! In my time the rule was, 'First save the game,
then try to win it.'"
CAPTAIN.--"Could not save it, sir."
PARSON (exploding)--"Not save it!--two ruffs in my own hand,--two tricks
certain till you took them out! Monstrous! The rashest trump."--Seizes
the cards, spreads them on the table, lip quivering, hands trembling,
tries to show how five tricks could have been gained,--N.B. It is
/short/ whist which Captain Barnabas had introduced at the Hall,--can't
make out more than four; Captain smiles triumphantly; Parson in a
passion, and not at all convinced, mixes all the cards together again,
and falling back in his chair, groans, with tears in his voice.--"The
cruellest trump! the most wanton cruelty!"
The Hazeldeans in chorus.--"Ho, ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha!" The captain, who
does not laugh this time, and whose turn it is to deal, shuffles the
cards for the conquering game of the rubber with as much caution and
prolixity as Fabius might have employed in posting his men. The squire
gets up to stretch his legs, and, the insinuation against his hospitality
recurring to his thoughts, calls out to his wife, "Write to Rickeybockey
to-morrow yourself, Harry, and ask him to come and spend two or three
days here. There, Mrs. Dale, you hear me?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Dale, putting her hands to her ears in implied rebuke at
the loudness of the squire's tone. "My dear sir, do remember that I'm a
sad nervous creature."
"Beg pardon," muttered Mr. Hazeldean, turning to his son, who having got
tired of the caricatures, had fished out for himself the great folio
County History, which was the only book in the library that the squire
much valued, and which he usually kept under lock and key, in his study,
together with the field-books and steward's accounts, but which he had
reluctantly taken into the drawing-room that day, in order to oblige
Captain Higginbotham. For the Higginbothams--an old Saxon family, as the
name evidently denotes--had once possessed lands in that very county; and
the captain, during his visits to Hazeldean Hall, was regularly in the
habit of asking to look into the County History, for the purpose of
refreshing his eyes, and renovating his sense of ancestral dignity, with
the following paragraph therein:
To the left of the village of Dunder, and pleasantly situated in a
hollow, lies Botham Hall, the residence of the ancient family of
Higginbotham, as it is now commonly called. Yet it appears by the
county rolls, and sundry old deeds, that the family formerly styled
itself Higges, till the Manor House lying in Botham, they gradually
assumed the appellation of Higges-in-Botham, and in process of time,
yielding to the corruptions of the vulgar, Higginbotham."
"What, Frank! my County History!" cried the squire. "Mrs. H., he has got
my County History!"
"Well, Hazeldean, it is time he should know something about the county."
"Ay, and history too," said Mrs. Dale, malevolently, for the little
temper was by no means blown over.
FRANK.--"I'll not hurt it, I assure you, sir. But I'm very much
interested just at present."
THE CAPTAIN (putting down the cards to cut).--"You've got hold of that
passage about Botham Hall, page 706, eh?"
FRANK.--"No; I was trying to make out how far it is to Mr. Leslie's
place, Rood Hall. Do you know, Mother?"
MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"I can't say I do. The Leslies don't mix with the
county; and Rood lies very much out of the way."
FRANK.--"Why don't they mix with the county?"
MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"I believe they are poor, and therefore I suppose they
are proud; they are an old family."
PARSON (thrumming on the table with great impatience).--" Old fiddle-
dee!--talking of old families when the cards have been shuffled this
half-hour!"
CAPTAIN BARNABAS.--"Will you cut for your partner, ma'am?"
SQUIRE (who has been listening to Frank's inquiries with a musing air).--
"Why do you want to know the distance to Rood Hall?"
FRANK (rather hesitatingly).--"Because Randal Leslie is there for the
holidays, sir."
PARSON.---"Your wife has cut for you, Mr. Hazeldean. I don't think it
was quite fair; and my partner has turned up a deuce,--deuce of hearts.
Please to come and play, if you mean to play."
The squire returns to the table, and in a few minutes the game is decided
by a dexterous finesse of the captain against the Hazeldeans. The clock
strikes ten; the servants enter with a tray; the squire counts up his own
and his wife's losings; and the captain and parson divide sixteen
shillings between them.
SQUIRE.--"There, Parson, I hope you'll be in a better humour. You win
enough out of us to set up a coach-and-four."
"Tut!" muttered the parson; "at the end of the year, I'm not a penny the
richer for it all."
And, indeed, monstrous as that assertion seemed, it was perfectly true,
for the parson portioned out his gains into three divisions. One-third
he gave to Mrs. Dale, for her own special pocket-money; what became of
the second third he never owned even to his better half,--but certain it
was, that every time the parson won seven-and-sixpence, half-a-crown,
which nobody could account for, found its way to the poor-box; while the
remaining third, the parson, it is true, openly and avowedly retained;
but I have no manner of doubt that, at the year's end, it got to the poor
quite as safely as if it had been put into the box.
The party had now gathered round the tray, and were helping themselves to
wine and water, or wine without water,--except Frank, who still remained
poring over the map in the County History, with his head leaning on his
hands, and his fingers plunged in his hair.
"Frank," said Mrs. Hazeldean, "I never saw you so studious before."
Frank started up and coloured, as if ashamed of being accused of too much
study in anything.
SQUIRE (with a little embarrassment in his voice).--"Pray, Frank, what do
you know of Randal Leslie?"
"Why, sir, he is at Eton."
"What sort of a boy is he?" asked Mrs. Hazeldean.
Frank hesitated, as if reflecting, and then answered, "They say he is the
cleverest boy in the school. But then he saps."
"In other words," said Mr. Dale, with proper parsonic gravity, "he
understands that he was sent to school to learn his lessons, and he
learns them. You call that sapping? call it doing his duty. But pray,
who and what is this Randal Leslie, that you look so discomposed,
Squire?"
"Who and what is he?" repeated the squire, in a low growl. "Why, you
know Mr. Audley Egerton married Miss Leslie, the great heiress; and this
boy is a relation of hers. I may say," added the squire, "that he is a
near relation of mine, for his grandmother was a Hazeldean; but all I
know about the Leslies is, that Mr. Egerton, as I am told, having no
children of his own, took up young Randal (when his wife died, poor
woman), pays for his schooling, and has, I suppose, adopted the boy as
his heir. Quite welcome. Frank and I want nothing from Mr. Audley
Egerton, thank Heaven!"
"I can well believe in your brother's generosity to his wife's kindred,"
said the parson, sturdily, "for I am sure Mr. Egerton is a man of strong
feeling."
"What the deuce do you know about Mr. Egerton? I don't suppose you could
ever have even spoken to him."
"Yes," said the parson, colouring up, and looking confused. "I had some
conversation with him once;" and observing the squire's surprise, he
added--"when I was curate at Lansmere, and about a painful business
connected with the family of one of my parishioners."
"Oh, one of your parishioners at Lansmere,--one of the constituents Mr.
Audley Egerton threw over, after all the pains I had taken to get him his
seat. Rather odd you should never have mentioned this before, Mr. Dale!"
"My dear sir," said the parson, sinking his voice, and in a mild tone of
conciliatory expostulation, "you are so irritable whenever Mr. Egerton's
name is mentioned at all."
"Irritable!" exclaimed the squire, whose wrath had been long simmering,
and now fairly boiled over,--"irritable, sir! I should think so: a man
for whom I stood godfather at the hustings, Mr. Dale! a man for whose
sake I was called a 'prize ox,' Mr. Dale! a man for whom I was hissed in
a market-place, Mr. Dale! a man for whom I was shot at, in cold blood,
by an officer in His Majesty's service, who lodged a ball in my right
shoulder, Mr. Dale! a man who had the ingratitude, after all this, to
turn his back on the landed interest,--to deny that there was any
agricultural distress in a year which broke three of the best farmers I
ever had, Mr. Dale!--a man, sir, who made a speech on the Currency which
was complimented by Ricardo, a Jew! Good heavens! a pretty parson you
are, to stand up for a fellow complimented by a Jew! Nice ideas you must
have of Christianity! Irritable, sir!" now fairly roared the squire,
adding to the thunder of his voice the cloud of a brow, which evinced a
menacing ferocity that might have done honour to Bussy d'Amboise or
Fighting Fitzgerald. "Sir, if that man had not been my own half-brother,
I'd have called him out. I have stood my ground before now. I have had
a ball in my right shoulder. Sir, I'd have called him out."
"Mr. Hazeldean! Mr. Hazeldean! I'm shocked at you," cried the parson;
and, putting his lips close to the squire's ear, he went on in a whisper,
"What an example to your son! You'll have him fighting duels one of
these days, and nobody to blame but yourself."
This warning cooled Mr. Hazeldean; and muttering, "Why the deuce did you
set me off?" he fell back into his chair, and began to fan himself with
his pocket-handkerchief.
The parson skilfully and remorselessly pursued the advantage he had
gained. "And now that you may have it in your power to show civility and
kindness to a boy whom Mr. Egerton has taken up, out of respect to his
wife's memory,--a kinsman, you say, of your own, and who has never
offended you,--a boy whose diligence in his studies proves him to be
an excellent companion to your son-Frank" (here the parson raised his
voice), "I suppose you would like to call on young Leslie, as you were
studying the county map so attentively."
"Yes, yes," answered Frank, rather timidly, "if my father does not object
to it. Leslie has been very kind tome, though he is in the sixth form,
and, indeed, almost the head of the school."
"Ah!" said Mrs. Hazeldean, "one studious boy has a fellow feeling for
another; and though you enjoy your holidays, Frank, I am sure you read
hard at school."
Mrs. Dale opened her eyes very wide, and stared in astonishment.
Mrs. Hazeldean retorted that look, with great animation. "Yes, Carry,"
said she, tossing her head, "though you may not think Frank clever, his
masters find him so. He got a prize last half. That beautiful book,
Frank--hold up your head, my love--what did you get it for?"
FRANK (reluctantly).--"Verses, ma'am."
MRS. HAZELDEAN (with triumph).--" Verses!--there, Carry, verses!"
FRANK (in a hurried tone).--"Yes, but Leslie wrote them for me."
MRS. HAZELDEAN (recoiling).--"O Frank! a prize for what another did for
you--that was mean."
FRANK (ingenuously).--"You can't be more ashamed, Mother, than I was when
they gave me the prize."
MRS. DALE (though previously provoked at being snubbed by Harry, now
showing the triumph of generosity over temper).--"I beg your pardon,
Frank. Your mother must be as proud of that shame as she was of the
prize."
Mrs. Hazeldean puts her arm round Frank's neck, smiles beamingly on Mrs.
Dale, and converses with her son in a low tone about Randal Leslie. Miss
Jemima now approached Carry, and said in an "aside," "But we are
forgetting poor Mr. Riccabocca. Mrs. Hazeldean, though the dearest
creature in the world, has such a blunt way of inviting people--don't you
think if you were to say a word to him, Carry?"
MRS. DALE (kindly, as she wraps her shawl round her).--" Suppose you
write the note yourself? Meanwhile I shall see him, no doubt."
PARSON (putting his hand on the squire's shoulder).--"You forgive my
impertinence, my kind friend. We parsons, you know, are apt to take
strange liberties, when we honour and love folks as I do."
"Fish," said the squire; but his hearty smile came to his lips in spite
of himself. "You always get your own way, and I suppose Frank must ride
over and see this pet of my--"
"Brother's," quoth the parson, concluding the sentence in a tone which
gave to the sweet word so sweet a sound that the squire would not correct
the parson, as he had been about to correct himself.
Mr. Dale moved on; but as he passed Captain Barnabas, the benignant
character of his countenance changed sadly. "The cruellest trump,
Captain Higginbotham!" said he sternly, and stalked by-majestic.
The night was so fine that the parson and his wife, as they walked home,
made a little detour through the shrubbery.
MRS. DALE.--"I think I have done a good piece of work to-night."
PARSON (rousing himself from a revery).--"Have you, Carry?--it will be a
very pretty handkerchief."
MRS. DALE.--"Handkerchief?--nonsense, dear. Don't you think it would be
a very happy thing for both if Jemima and Signor Riccabocca could be
brought together?"
PARSON.--"Brought together!"
MRS. DALE.--"You do snap up one so, my dear; I mean if I could make a
match of it."
PARSON.--"I think Riccabocca is a match already, not only for Jemima, but
yourself into the bargain."
MRS. DALE (smiling loftily).--"Well, we shall see. Was not Jemima's
fortune about L4000?"
PARSON (dreamily, for he is relapsing fast into his interrupted revery).
--"Ay--ay--I dare say."
MRS. DALE.--"And she must have saved! I dare say it is nearly L6000 by
this time; eh! Charles dear, you really are so--good gracious, what's
that!"
As Mrs. Dale made this exclamation, they had just emerged from the
shrubbery into the village green.
PARSON.--"What's what?"
MRS. DALE (pinching her husband's arm very nippingly). "That thing--
there--there."
PARSON.--"Only the new stocks, Carry; I don't wonder they frighten you,
for you are a very sensible woman. I only wish they would frighten the
squire."
CHAPTER XIII.
[Supposed to be a letter from Mrs. Hazeldean to A. Riccabocca, Esq.,
The Casino; but, edited, and indeed composed, by Miss Jemima
Hazeldean.]
HAZELDEAN HALL.
DEAR SIR,--To a feeling heart it must always be painful to give pain to
another, and (though I am sure unconsciously) you have given the greatest
pain to poor Mr. Hazeldean and myself, indeed to all our little circle,
in so cruelly refusing our attempts to become better acquainted with a
gentleman we so highly ESTEEM. Do, pray, dear sir, make us the amende
honorable, and give us the pleasure of your company for a few days at the
Hall. May we expect you Saturday next?---our dinner hour is six o'clock.
With the best compliments of Mr. and Miss Jemima Hazeldean, believe me,
my dear sir,
Yours truly, H. H.
Miss Jemima having carefully sealed this note, which Mrs. Hazeldean had
very willingly deputed her to write, took it herself into the stable-
yard, in order to give the groom proper instructions to wait for an
answer. But while she was speaking to the man, Frank, equipped for
riding, with more than his usual dandyism, came into the yard, calling
for his pony in a loud voice; and singling out the very groom whom Miss
Jemima was addressing--for, indeed, he was the smartest of all in the
squire's stables--told him to saddle the gray pad and accompany the pony.
"No, Frank," said Miss Jemima, you can't have George; your father wants
him to go on a message,--you can take Mat."
"Mat, indeed!" said Frank, grumbling with some reason; for Mat was a
surly old fellow, who tied a most indefensible neckcloth, and always
contrived to have a great patch on his boots,--besides, he called Frank
"Master," and obstinately refused to trot down hill,--"Mat, indeed! let
Mat take the message, and George go with me."
But Miss Jemima had also her reasons for rejecting Mat. Mat's foible was
not servility, and he always showed true English independence in all
houses where he was not invited to take his ale in the servants' hall.
Mat might offend Signor Riccabocca, and spoil all. An animated
altercation ensued, in the midst of which the squire and his wife entered
the yard, with the intention of driving in the conjugal gig to the market
town. The matter was referred to the natural umpire by both the
contending parties.
The squire looked with great contempt on his son. "And what do you want
a groom at all for? Are you afraid of tumbling off the pony?"
FRANK.--"No, Sir; but I like to go as a gentleman, when I pay a visit to
a gentleman!"
SQUIRE (in high wrath).---"You precious puppy! I think I'm as good a
gentleman as you any day, and I should like to know when you ever saw me
ride to call on a neighbour with a fellow jingling at my heels, like that
upstart Ned Spankie, whose father kept a cotton mill. First time I ever
heard of a Hazeldean thinking a livery coat was necessary to prove his
gentility!"
MRS. HAZELDEAN (observing Frank colouring, and about to reply).--"Hush,
Frank, never answer your father,--and you are going to call on Mr.
Leslie?"
"Yes, ma'am, and I am very much obliged to my father for letting me,"
said Frank, taking the squire's hand.
"Well, but, Frank," continued Mrs. Hazeldean, "I think you heard that the
Leslies were very poor."
FRANK.--"Eh, Mother?"
MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"And would you run the chance of wounding the pride of a
gentleman as well born as yourself by affecting any show of being richer
than he is?"
SQUIRE (with great admiration).--"Harry, I'd give L10 to have said that!"
FRANK (leaving the squire's hand to take his mother's).--"You're quite
right, Mother; nothing could be more snobbish!"
SQUIRE. "Give us your fist, too, sir; you'll be a chip of the old block,
after all."
Frank smiled, and walked off to his pony.
MRS. HAZELDEAN (to Miss Jemima).--"Is that the note you were to write for
me?"
MISS JEMIMA.--"Yes; I supposed you did not care about seeing it, so I
have sealed it, and given it to George."
MRS. HAZELDEAN.--"But Frank will pass close by the Casino on his way to
the Leslies'. It may be more civil if he leaves the note himself."
MISS JEMIMA (hesitatingly).--"Do you think so?"
MRS. HAZELDEAN.--" Yes, certainly. Frank, Frank, as you pass by the
Casino, call on Mr. Riccabocca, give this note, and say we shall be
heartily glad if he will come." Frank nods.
"Stop a bit," cried the squire. "If Rickeybockey is at home, 't is ten
to one if he don't ask you to take a glass of wine! If he does, mind,
't is worse than asking you to take a turn on the rack. Faugh! you
remember, Harry?--I thought it was all up with me."
"Yes," cried Mrs. Hazeldean; "for Heaven's sake not a drop. Wine,
indeed!"
"Don't talk of it," cried the squire, making a wry face.
"I'll take care, Sir!" said Frank, laughing as he disappeared within the
stable, followed by Miss Jemima, who now coaxingly makes it up with him,
and does not leave off her admonitions to be extremely polite to the poor
foreign gentleman till Frank gets his foot into the stirrup, and the
pony, who knows whom he has got to deal with, gives a preparatory plunge
or two, and then darts out of the yard.
BOOK SECOND.
INITIAL CHAPTER.
INFORMING THE READER HOW THIS WORK CAME TO HAVE INITIAL CHAPTERS.
"There can't be a doubt," said my father, "that to each of the main
divisions of your work--whether you call them Books or Parts--you should
prefix an Initial or Introductory Chapter."
PISISTRATUS.--"Can't be a doubt, sir? Why so?"
MR. CAXTON.--"Fielding lays it down as an indispensable rule, which he
supports by his example; and Fielding was an artistical writer, and knew
what he was about."
PISISTRATUS.--"Do you remember any of his reasons, sir?"
MR. CAXTON.--"Why, indeed, Fielding says, very justly, that he is not
bound to assign any reason; but he does assign a good many, here and
there,--to find which I refer you to 'Tom Jones.' I will only observe,
that one of his reasons, which is unanswerable, runs to the effect that
thus, in every Part or Book, the reader has the advantage of beginning at
the fourth or fifth page instead of the first,--'a matter by no means of
trivial consequence,' saith Fielding, 'to persons who read books with no
other view than to say they have read them,--a more general motive to
reading than is commonly imagined; and from which not only law books and
good books, but the pages of Homer and Virgil, Swift and Cervantes, have
been often turned Over.' There," cried my father, triumphantly, "I will
lay a shilling to twopence that I have quoted the very words."
MRS. CANTON.--"Dear me, that only means skipping; I don't see any great
advantage in writing a chapter, merely for people to skip it."
PISISTRATUS.--"Neither do I!"
MR. CANTON (dogmatically).--"It is the repose in the picture,--Fielding
calls it 'contrast.'--(Still more dogmatically.)--I say there can't be a
doubt about it. Besides" added my father after a pause,--"besides, this
usage gives you opportunities to explain what has gone before, or to
prepare for what's coming; or, since Fielding contends, with great truth,
that some learning is necessary for this kind of historical composition,
it allows you, naturally and easily, the introduction of light and
pleasant ornaments of that nature. At each flight in the terrace you may
give the eye the relief of an urn or a statue. Moreover, when so
inclined, you create proper pausing-places for reflection; and complete
by a separate, yet harmonious ethical department, the design of a work,
which is but a mere Mother Goose's tale if it does not embrace a general
view of the thoughts and actions of mankind."
PISISTRATUS.--"But then, in these initial chapters, the author thrusts
himself forward; and just when you want to get on with the /dramatis
personae/, you find yourself face to face with the poet himself."
MR. CANTON.--"Pooh! you can contrive to prevent that! Imitate the
chorus of the Greek stage, who fill up the intervals between the action
by saying what the author would otherwise say in his own person."
PISISTRATUS (slyly).--"That's a good idea, sir,--and I have a chorus, and
a choregus too, already in my eye."
MR. CANTON (unsuspectingly).--"Aha! you are not so dull a fellow as you
would make yourself out to be; and, even if an author did thrust himself
forward, what objection is there to that? It is a mere affectation to
suppose that a book can come into the world without an author. Every
child has a father,--one father at least,--as the great Conde says very
well in his poem."
PISISTRATUS.--"The great Conde a poet! I never heard that before."
MR. CANTON.--"I don't say he was a poet, but he sent a poem to Madame de
Montansier. Envious critics think that he must have paid somebody else
to write it; but there is no reason why a great captain should not write
a poem,--I don't say a good poem, but a poem. I wonder, Roland, if the
duke ever tried his hand at 'Stanzas to Mary,' or 'Lines to a Sleeping
Babe.'"
CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"Austin, I'm ashamed of you. Of course the duke could
write poetry if he pleased,--something, I dare say, in the way of the
great Conde; that is, something warlike and heroic, I'll be bound. Let's
hear!"
MR. CAXTON (reciting).--
"Telle est du Ciel la loi severe
Qu'il faut qu'un enfant ait un pere;
On dit meme quelquefois
Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois."
["That each child has a father
Is Nature's decree;
But, to judge by a rumour,
Some children have three."]
CAPTAIN ROLAND (greatly disgusted).--"Conde write such stuff!--I don't
believe it."
PISISTRATUS.--"I do, and accept the quotations; you and Roland shall be
joint fathers to my child as well as myself.
"'Tel enfant en a jusqu'a trois.'"
MR. CAXTON (solemnly).--"I refuse the proffered paternity; but so far as
administering a little wholesome castigation now and then, I have no
objection to join in the discharge of a father's duty."
PISISTRATUS.--"Agreed. Have you anything to say against the infant
hitherto?"
MR. CAXTON.--"He is in long clothes at present; let us wait till he can
walk."
BLANCHE.--"But pray whom do you mean for a hero? And is Miss Jemima your
heroine?"
CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"There is some mystery about the--"
PISISTRATUS (hastily).-"Hush, Uncle: no letting the cat out of the bag
yet. Listen, all of you! I left Frank Hazeldean on his way to the
Casino."
CHAPTER II.
"It is a sweet pretty place," thought Frank, as he opened the gate which
led across the fields to the Casino, that smiled down upon him with its
plaster pilasters. "I wonder, though, that my father, who is so
particular in general, suffers the carriage-road to be so full of holes
and weeds. Mounseer does not receive many visits, I take it."
But when Frank got into the ground immediately before the house, he saw
no cause of complaint as to want of order and repair. Nothing could be
kept more neatly. Frank was ashamed of the dint made by the pony's hoofs
on the smooth gravel: he dismounted, tied the animal to the wicket, and
went on foot towards the glass door in front.
He rang the bell once, twice, but nobody came, for the old woman-servant,
who was hard of hearing, was far away in the yard, searching for any eggs
which the hen might have scandalously hidden for culinary purposes; and
Jackeymo was fishing for the sticklebacks and minnows which were, when
caught, to assist the eggs, when found, in keeping together the bodies
and souls of himself and his master. The old woman had been lately put
upon board wages. Lucky old woman! Frank rang a third time, and with
the impetuosity of his age. A face peeped from the belvidere on the
terrace. "Diavolo!" said Dr. Riccabocca to himself. "Young cocks crow
hard on their own dunghill; it must be a cock of a high race to crow so
loud at another's."
Therewith he shambled out of the summer-house, and appeared suddenly
before Frank, in a very wizard-like dressing-robe of black serge, a red
cap on his head, and a cloud of smoke coming rapidly from his lips, as a
final consolatory whiff, before he removed the pipe from them. Frank had
indeed seen the doctor before, but never in so scholastic a costume, and
he was a little startled by the apparition at his elbow, as he turned
round.
"Signorino," said the Italian, taking off his cap with his usual
urbanity, "pardon the negligence of my people; I am too happy to receive
your commands in person."
"Dr. Rickeybockey?" stammered Frank, much confused by this polite
address, and the low, yet stately, bow with which it was accompanied.
"I--I have a note from the Hall. Mamma--that is, my mother--and aunt
Jemima beg their best compliments, and hope you will come, sir."
The doctor took the note with another bow, and, opening the glass door,
invited Frank to enter.
The young gentleman, with a schoolboy's usual bluntness, was about to say
that he was in a hurry, and had rather not; but Dr. Riccabocca's grand
manner awed him, while a glimpse of the hall excited his curiosity, so he
silently obeyed the invitation.
The hall, which was of an octagon shape, had been originally panelled off
into compartments, and in these the Italian had painted landscapes, rich
with the warm sunny light of his native climate. Frank was no judge of
the art displayed; but he was greatly struck with the scenes depicted:
they were all views of some lake, real or imaginary; in all, dark-blue
shining waters reflected dark-blue placid skies. In one, a flight of
steps ascended to the lake, and a gay group was seen feasting on the
margin; in another, sunset threw its rose-hues over a vast villa or
palace, backed by Alpine hills, and flanked by long arcades of vines,
while pleasure-boats skimmed over the waves below. In short, throughout
all the eight compartments, the scene, though it differed in details,
preserved the same general character, as if illustrating some favourite
locality. The Italian did not, however, evince any desire to do the
honours of his own art, but, preceding Frank across the hall, opened the
door of his usual sitting-room, and requested him to enter. Frank did so
rather reluctantly, and seated himself with unwonted bashfulness on the
edge of a chair. But here new specimens of the doctor's handicraft soon
riveted attention. The room had been originally papered, but Riccabocca
had stretched canvas over the walls, and painted thereon sundry satirical
devices, each separated from the other by scroll-works of fantastic
arabesques. Here a Cupid was trundling a wheelbarrow full of hearts,
which he appeared to be selling to an ugly old fellow, with a money-bag
in his hand--probably Plutus. There Diogenes might be seen walking
through a market-place, with his lantern in his hand, in search of an
honest man, whilst the children jeered at him, and the curs snapped at
his heels. In another place a lion was seen half dressed in a fox's
hide, while a wolf in a sheep's mask was conversing very amicably with
a young lamb. Here again might be seen the geese stretching out their
necks from the Roman Capitol in full cackle, while the stout invaders
were beheld in the distance, running off as hard as they could.
In short, in all these quaint entablatures some pithy sarcasm was
symbolically conveyed; only over the mantel piece was the design graver
and more touching. It was the figure of a man in a pilgrim's garb,
chained to the earth by small but innumerable ligaments, while a phantom
likeness of himself, his shadow, was seen hastening down what seemed an
interminable vista; and underneath were written the pathetic words of
Horace--
"Patriae quis exul
Se quoque fugit?"
["What exile from his country can also fly from himself?"]
The furniture of the room was extremely simple, and somewhat scanty; yet
it was arranged so as to impart an air of taste and elegance to the room.
Even a few plaster busts and statues, though bought but of some humble
itinerant, had their classical effect, glistening from out stands of
flowers that were grouped around them, or backed by graceful screen-works
formed from twisted osiers, which, by the simple contrivance of trays at
the bottom filled with earth, served for living parasitical plants, with
gay flowers contrasting thick ivy leaves, and gave to the whole room the
aspect of a bower. "May I ask your permission?" said the Italian, with
his finger on the seal of the letter.
"Oh, yes," said Frank, with naivete.
Riccabocca broke the seal, and a slight smile stole over his countenance.
Then he turned a little aside from Frank, shaded his face with his hand,
and seemed to muse. "Mrs. Hazeldean," said he, at last, "does me very
great honour. I hardly recognize her handwriting, or I should have been
more impatient to open the letter." The dark eyes were lifted over the
spectacles and went right into Frank's unprotected and undiplomatic
heart. The doctor raised the note, and pointed to the characters with
his forefinger.
"Cousin Jemima's hand," said Frank, as directly as if the question had
been put to him.
The Italian smiled. "Mr. Hazeldean has company staying with him?"
"No; that is, only Barney,--the captain. There's seldom much company
before the shooting season," added Frank, with a slight sigh; "and then,
you know, the holidays are over. For my part, I think we ought to break
up a month later."
The doctor seemed reassured by the first sentence in Frank's reply, and,
seating himself at the table, wrote his answer,--not hastily, as we
English write, but with care and precision, like one accustomed to weigh
the nature of words,--in that stiff Italian hand, which allows the writer
so much time to think while he forms his letters. He did not, therefore,
reply at once to Frank's remark about the holidays, but was silent till
he had concluded his note, read it three times over, sealed it by the
taper he slowly lighted, and then, giving it to Frank, he said,
"For your sake, young gentleman, I regret that your holidays are so
early; for mine, I must rejoice, since I accept the kind invitation you
have rendered doubly gratifying by bringing it yourself."
"Deuce take the fellow and his fine speeches! One don't know which way
to look," thought English Frank.
The Italian smiled again, as if this time he had read the boy's heart,
without need of those piercing black eyes, and said, less ceremoniously
than before, "You don't care much for compliments, young gentleman?"
"No, I don't indeed," said Frank, heartily.
"So much the better for you, since your way in the world is made: it
would be so much the worse if you had to make it!"
Frank looked puzzled: the thought was too deep for him, so he turned to
the pictures.
"Those are very funny," said he; "they seem capitally done. Who did
'em?"
"Signoriuo Hazeldean, you are giving me what you refused yourself."
"Eh?" said Frank, inquiringly.
"Compliments!"
"Oh--I--no; but they are well done: are n't they, sir?"--
"Not particularly: you speak to the artist."
"What! you painted them?"
"Yes."
"And the pictures in the hall?"
"Those too."
"Taken from nature, eh?"
"Nature," said the Italian, sententiously, perhaps evasively, "lets
nothing be taken from her."
"Oh!" said Frank, puzzled again. "Well, I must wish you good morning,
sir; I am very glad you are coming."
"Without compliment?"
"Without compliment."
"A rivedersi--good-by for the present, my young signorino. This way,"
observing Frank make a bolt towards the wrong door. "Can I offer you a
glass of wine?--it is pure, of our own making."
"No, thank you, indeed, sir," cried Frank, suddenly recollecting his
father's admonition. "Good-by, don't trouble yourself, sir; I know any
way now."
But the bland Italian followed his guest to the wicket, where Frank had
left the pony. The young gentleman, afraid lest so courteous a host
should hold the stirrup for him, twitched off the bridle, and mounted in
haste, not even staying to ask if the Italian could put him in the way to
Rood Hall, of which way he was profoundly ignorant. The Italian's eye
followed the boy as he rode up the ascent in the lane, and the doctor
sighed heavily. "The wiser we grow," said he to himself, "the more we
regret the age of our follies: it is better to gallop with a light heart
up the stony hill than sit in the summer-house and cry 'How true!' to the
stony truths of Machiavelli!"
With that he turned back into the belvidere; but he could not resume his
studies. He remained some minutes gazing on the prospect, till the
prospect reminded him of the fields which Jackeymo was bent on his
hiring, and the fields reminded him of Lenny Fairfield. He returned to
the house, and in a few moments re-emerged in his out-of-door trim, with
cloak and umbrella, re-lighted his pipe, and strolled towards Hazeldean
village.
Meanwhile Frank, after cantering on for some distance, stopped at a
cottage, and there learned that there was a short cut across the fields
to Rood Hall, by which he could save nearly three miles. Frank, however,
missed the short cut, and came out into the high road; a turnpike-keeper,
after first taking his toll, put him back again into the short cut; and
finally, he got into some green lanes, where a dilapidated finger-post
directed him to Rood. Late at noon, having ridden fifteen miles in the
desire to reduce ten to seven, he came suddenly upon a wild and primitive
piece of ground, that seemed half chase, half common, with crazy
tumbledown cottages of villanous aspect scattered about in odd nooks and
corners. Idle, dirty children were making mud-pies on the road;
slovenly-looking women were plaiting straw at the threshold; a large but
forlorn and decayed church, that seemed to say that the generation which
saw it built was more pious than the generation which now resorted to it,
stood boldly and nakedly out by the roadside.
"Is this the village of Rood?" asked Frank of a stout young man breaking
stones on the road--sad sign that no better labour could be found for
him!
The man sullenly nodded, and continued his work. "And where's the Hall--
Mr. Leslie's?"
The man looked up in stolid surprise, and this time touched his hat.
"Be you going there?"
"Yes, if I can find out where it is."
"I'll show your honour," said the boor, alertly.
Frank reined in the pony, and the man walked by his side. Frank was much
of his father's son, despite the difference of age, and that more
fastidious change of manner which characterizes each succeeding race in
the progress of civilization. Despite all his Eton finery, he was
familiar with peasants, and had the quick eye of one country-born as to
country matters.
"You don't seem very well off in this village, my man?" said he,
knowingly.
"Noa; there be a deal of distress here in the winter time, and summer
too, for that matter; and the parish ben't much help to a single man."
"But surely the farmers want work here as well as elsewhere?"
"'Deed, and there ben't much farming work here,--most o' the parish be
all wild ground loike."
"The poor have a right of common, I suppose," said Frank, surveying a
large assortment of vagabond birds and quadrupeds.
"Yes; neighbour Timmins keeps his geese on the common, and some has a
cow, and them be neighbour Jowlas's pigs. I don't know if there's a
right, loike; but the folks at the Hall does all they can to help us, and
that ben't much: they ben't as rich as some folks; but," added the
peasant, proudly, "they be as good blood as any in the shire."
"I 'm glad to see you like them, at all events."
"Oh, yes, I likes them well eno'; mayhap you are at school with the young
gentleman?"
"Yes," said Frank.
"Ah, I heard the clergyman say as how Master Randal was a mighty clever
lad, and would get rich some day. I 'se sure I wish he would, for a poor
squire makes a poor parish. There's the Hall, sir."
CHAPTER III.
Frank looked right ahead, and saw a square house that, in spite of modern
sash windows, was evidently of remote antiquity. A high conical roof; a
stack of tall quaint chimney-pots of red-baked clay (like those at Sutton
Place in Surrey) dominating over isolated vulgar smoke-conductors, of the
ignoble fashion of present times; a dilapidated groin-work, encasing
within a Tudor arch a door of the comfortable date of George III., and
the peculiarly dingy and weather-stained appearance of the small finely-
finished bricks, of which the habitation was built,--all showed the abode
of former generations adapted with tasteless irreverence to the habits of
descendants unenlightened by Pugin, or indifferent to the poetry of the
past. The house had emerged suddenly upon Frank out of the gloomy waste
land, for it was placed in a hollow, and sheltered from sight by a
disorderly group of ragged, dismal, valetudinarian fir-trees, until an
abrupt turn of the road cleared that screen, and left the desolate abode
bare to the discontented eye. Frank dismounted; the man held his pony;
and after smoothing his cravat, the smart Etonian sauntered up to the
door, and startled the solitude of the place with a loud peal from the
modern brass knocker,--a knock which instantly brought forth an
astonished starling who had built under the eaves of the gable roof, and
called up a cloud of sparrows, tomtits, and yellow-hammers, who had been
regaling themselves amongst the litter of a slovenly farmyard that lay in
full sight to the right of the house, fenced off by a primitive paintless
wooden rail. In process of time a sow, accompanied by a thriving and
inquisitive family, strolled up to the gate of the fence, and, leaning
her nose on the lower bar of the gate, contemplated the visitor with much
curiosity and some suspicion.
While Frank is still without, impatiently swingeing his white trousers
with his whip, we will steal a hurried glance towards the respective
members of the family within. Mr. Leslie, the paterfamilias, is in a
little room called his "study," to which he regularly retires every
morning after breakfast, rarely reappearing till one o'clock, which is
his unfashionable hour for dinner. In what mysterious occupations Mr.
Leslie passes those hours no one ever formed a conjecture. At the
present moment he is seated before a little rickety bureau, one leg of
which being shorter than the other is propped up by sundry old letters
and scraps of newspapers; and the bureau is open, and reveals a great
number of pigeonholes and divisions, filled with various odds and ends,
the collection of many years. In some of these compartments are bundles
of letters, very yellow, and tied in packets with faded tape; in another,
all by itself, is a fragment of plum-pudding stone, which Mr. Leslie has
picked up in his walks, and considered a rare mineral. It is neatly
labelled, "Found in Hollow Lane, May 21st, 1804, by Maunder Slugge
Leslie, Esq." The next division holds several bits of iron in the shape
of nails, fragments of horse-shoes, etc., which Mr. Leslie has also met
with in his rambles, and, according to a harmless popular superstition,
deemed it highly unlucky not to pick up, and, once picked up, no less
unlucky to throw away. Item, in the adjoining pigeon-hole, a goodly
collection of pebbles with holes in them, preserved for the same reason,
in company with a crooked sixpence; item, neatly arranged in fanciful
mosaics, several periwinkles, Blackamoor's teeth (I mean the shell so
called), and other specimens of the conchiferous ingenuity of Nature,
partly inherited from some ancestral spinster, partly amassed by Mr.
Leslie himself in a youthful excursion to the seaside. There were the
farm-bailiff's accounts, several files of bills, an old stirrup, three
sets of knee and shoe buckles which had belonged to Mr. Leslie's father,
a few seals tied together by a shoe-string, a shagreen toothpick case, a
tortoise shell magnifying-glass to read with, his eldest son's first
copybooks, his second son's ditto, his daughter's ditto, and a lock of
his wife's hair arranged in a true lover's knot, framed and glazed.
There were also a small mousetrap; a, patent corkscrew too good to be
used in common; fragments of a silver teaspoon, that had, by natural
decay, arrived at a dissolution of its parts; a small brown holland bag,
containing halfpence of various dates, as far back as Queen Anne,
accompanied by two French /sous/ and a German /silber gros/,--the which
miscellany Mr. Leslie magniloquently called "his coins," and had left in
his will as a family heirloom. There were many other curiosities of
congenial nature and equal value--/quae nunc describere longum est/.
Mr. Leslie was engaged at this time in what is termed "putting things to
rights,"--an occupation he performed with exemplary care once a week.
This was his day; and he had just counted his coins, and was slowly tying
them up again in the brown holland bag, when Frank's knock reached his
ears.
Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie paused, shook his head as if incredulously, and
was about to resume his occupation, when he was seized with a fit of
yawning which prevented the bag being tied for full two minutes.
While such the employment of the study, let us turn to the recreations in
the drawing-room, or rather parlour. A drawing-room there was on the
first floor, with a charming look-out, not on the dreary fir-trees, but
on the romantic undulating forest-land; but the drawing-room had not been
used since the death of the last Mrs. Leslie. It was deemed too good to
sit in, except when there was company: there never being company, it was
never sat in. Indeed, now the paper was falling off the walls with the
damp, and the rats, mice, and moths--those /"edaces rerum"/--had eaten,
between them, most of the chair-bottoms and a considerable part of the
floor. Therefore, the parlour was the sole general sitting-room; and
being breakfasted in, dined, and supped in, and, after supper, smoked in
by Mr. Leslie to the accompaniment of rum-and-water, it is impossible to
deny that it had what is called "a smell,"--a comfortable, wholesome
family smell, speaking of numbers, meals, and miscellaneous social
habitation. There were two windows: one looked full on the fir-trees;
the other on the farmyard, with the pigsty closing the view. Near the
fir-tree window sat Mrs. Leslie; before her, on a high stool, was a
basket of the children's clothes that wanted mending. A work-table of
rosewood inlaid with brass, which had been a wedding-present, and was a
costly thing originally, but in that peculiar taste which is vulgarly
called "Brummagem," stood at hand: the brass had started in several
places, and occasionally made great havoc in the children's fingers and
in Mrs. Leslie's gown; in fact it was the liveliest piece of furniture in
the house, thanks to the petulant brasswork, and could not have been more
mischievous if it had been a monkey. Upon the work-table lay a housewife
and thimble, and scissors, and skeins of worsted and thread, and little
scraps of linen and cloth for patches. But Mrs. Leslie was not actually
working,--she was preparing to work; she had been preparing to work for
the last hour and a half. Upon her lap she supported a novel, by a lady
who wrote much for a former generation, under the name of "Mrs. Bridget
Blue Mantle." She had a small needle in her left hand, and a very thick
piece of thread in her right; occasionally she applied the end of the
said thread to her lips, and then--her eyes fixed on the novel--made a
blind, vacillating attack at the eye of the needle. But a camel would
have gone through it with quite as much ease. Nor did the novel alone
engage Mrs. Leslie's attention, for ever and anon she interrupted herself
to scold the children, to inquire "what o'clock it was;" to observe that
"Sarah would never suit;" and to wonder "why Mr. Leslie would not see
that the work-table was mended." Mrs. Leslie has been rather a pretty
woman. In spite of a dress at once slatternly and economical, she has
still the air of a lady,--rather too much so, the hard duties of her
situation considered. She is proud of the antiquity of her family on
both sides; her mother was of the venerable stock of the Daudlers of
Daudle Place, a race that existed before the Conquest. Indeed, one has
only to read our earliest chronicles, and to glance over some of those
long-winded moralizing poems which delighted the thanes and ealdermen of
old, in order to see that the Daudles must have been a very influential
family before William the First turned the country topsy-turvy. While
the mother's race was thus indubitably Saxon, the father's had not only
the name but the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the Normans, and went far to
establish that crotchet of the brilliant author of "Sybil; or, The Two
Nations," as to the continued distinction between the conquering and
conquered populations. Mrs. Leslie's father boasted the name of
Montfichet,--doubtless of the same kith and kin as those great barons of
Alontfichet, who once owned such broad lands and such turbulent castles.
A high-nosed, thin, nervous, excitable progeny, those same Montfydgets,
as the most troublesome Norman could pretend to be. This fusion of race
was notable to the most ordinary physiognomist in the physique and in the
morale of Mrs. Leslie. She had the speculative blue eye of the Saxon,
and the passionate high nose of the Norman; she had the musing do-
nothingness of the Daudlers, and the reckless have-at-every-thingness of
the Montfydgets. At Mrs. Leslie's feet, a little girl with her hair
about her ears (and beautiful hair it was too) was amusing herself with a
broken-nosed doll. At the far end of the room, before a high desk, sat
Frank's Eton schoolfellow, the eldest son. A minute or two before
Frank's alarum had disturbed the tranquillity of the household, he had
raised his eyes from the books on the desk to glance at a very tattered
copy of the Greek Testament, in which his brother Oliver had found a
difficulty that he came to Randal to solve. As the young Etonian's face
was turned to the light, your first impression on seeing it would have
been melancholy, but respectful, interest,--for the face had already lost
the joyous character of youth; there was a wrinkle between the brows; and
the lines that speak of fatigue were already visible under the eyes and
about the mouth; the complexion was sallow, the lips were pale. Years of
study had already sown in the delicate organization the seeds of many an
infirmity and many a pain; but if your look had rested longer on that
countenance, gradually your compassion might have given place to some
feeling uneasy and sinister,--a feeling akin to fear. There was in the
whole expression so much of cold calm force, that it belied the debility
of the frame. You saw there the evidence of a mind that was cultivated,
and you felt that in that cultivation there was something formidable.
A notable contrast to this countenance, prematurely worn and eminently
intelligent, was the round healthy face of Oliver, with slow blue eyes
fixed hard on the penetrating orbs of his brother, as if trying with
might and main to catch from them a gleam of that knowledge with which
they shone clear and frigid as a star.
At Frank's knock, Oliver's slow blue eyes sparkled into animation, and he
sprang from his brother's side. The little girl flung back the hair from
her face, and stared at her mother with a look which spoke wonder and
fright.
The young student knit his brows, and then turned wearily back to the
books on his desk.
"Dear me," cried Mrs. Leslie, "who can that possibly be? Oliver, come
from the window, sir, this instant: you will be seen! Juliet, run, ring
the bell; no, go to the head of the kitchen stairs, and call out to Jenny
'Not at home.' Not at home, on any account," repeated Mrs. Leslie,
nervously, for the Montfydget blood was now in full flow.
In another minute or so, Frank's loud boyish voice was distinctly heard
at the outer door.
Randal slightly started.
"Frank Hazeldean's voice," said he; "I should like to see him, Mother."
"See him," repeated Mrs. Leslie, in amaze; "see him! and the room in this
state!"
Randal might have replied that the room was in no worse state than usual;
but he said nothing. A slight flush came and went over his pale face;
and then he leaned his check on his hand, and compressed his lips firmly.
The outer door closed with a sullen, inhospitable jar, and a slip-shod
female servant entered with a card between her finger and thumb.
"Who is that for?--give it to me. Jenny," cried Mrs. Leslie.
But Jenny shook her head, laid the card on the desk beside Randal, and
vanished without saying a word.
"Oh, look, Randal, look up," cried Oliver, who had again rushed to the
window; "such a pretty gray pony!"
Randal did look up; nay, he went deliberately to the window, and gazed a
moment on the high-mettled pony and the well-dressed, spirited rider. In
that moment changes passed over Randal's countenance more rapidly than
clouds over the sky in a gusty day. Now envy and discontent, with the
curled lip and the gloomy scowl; now hope and proud self-esteem, with the
clearing brow and the lofty smile; and then again all became cold, firm,
and close, as he walked back to his books, seated himself resolutely, and
said, half aloud,--"Well, KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!"
CHAPTER IV.
Mrs. Leslie came up in fidget and in fuss; she leaned over Randal's
shoulder and read the card. Written in pen and ink, with an attempt at
imitation of printed Roman character, there appeared first "MR. FRANK
HAZELDEAN;" but just over these letters, and scribbled hastily and less
legibly in pencil, was,--
"DEAR LESLIE,--Sorry you were out; come and see us,--do!"
"You will go, Randal?" said Mrs. Leslie, after a pause.
"I am not sure."
"Yes, you can go; you have clothes like a gentleman; you can go anywhere,
not like those children;" and Mrs. Leslie glanced almost spitefully at
poor Oliver's coarse threadbare jacket, and little Juliet's torn frock.
"What I have I owe at present to Mr. Egerton, and I should consult his
wishes; he is not on good terms with these Hazeldeans." Then turning
towards his brother, who looked mortified, he added, with a strange sort
of haughty kindness, "What I may have hereafter, Oliver, I shall owe to
myself; and then if I rise, I will raise my family."
"Dear Randal," said Mrs. Leslie, fondly kissing him on the forehead,
"what a good heart you have!"
"No, Mother; my books don't tell me that it is a good heart that gets on
in the world: it is a hard head," replied Randal, with a rude and
scornful candour. "But I can read no more just now: come out, Oliver."
So saying, he slid from his mother's hand and left the room. When Oliver
joined him, Randal was already on the common; and, without seeming to
notice his brother, he continued to walk quickly, and with long strides,
in profound silence. At length he paused under the shade of an old oak,
that, too old to be of value save for firewood, had escaped the axe. The
tree stood on a knoll, and the spot commanded a view of the decayed
house, the dilapidated church, the dreary village.
"Oliver," said Randal, between his teeth, so that his voice had the sound
of a hiss, "it was under this tree that I first resolved to--"
He paused.
"What, Randal?"
"Read hard: knowledge is power!"
"But you are so fond of reading."
"I!" cried Randal. "Do you think, when Wolsey and Thomas-a-Becket became
priests, they were fond of telling their beads and pattering Aves? I
fond of reading!"
Oliver stared; the historical allusions were beyond his comprehension.
"You know," continued Randal, "that we Leslies were not always the
beggarly poor gentlemen we are now. You know that there is a man who
lives in Grosvenor Square, and is very rich,--very. His riches come to
him from a Leslie; that man is my patron, Oliver, and he--is very good to
me."
Randal's smile was withering as he spoke. "Come on," he said, after a
pause,--"come on." Again the walk was quick, and the brothers were
silent.
They came at length to a little shallow brook, across which some large
stones had been placed at short intervals, so that the boys walked over
the ford dryshod. "Will you pull down that bough, Oliver?" said Randal,
abruptly, pointing to a tree. Oliver obeyed mechanically; and Randal,
stripping the leaves and snapping off the twigs, left a fork at the end;
with this he began to remove the stepping-stones.
"What are you about, Randal?" asked Oliver, wonderingly.
"We are on the other side of the brook now, and we shall not come back
this way. We don't want the stepping-stones any more!---away with them!"
CHAPTER V.
The morning after this visit of Frank Hazeldean's to Rood Hall, the Right
Honourable Audley Egerton, member of parliament, privy councillor, and
minister of a high department in the State,--just below the rank of the
cabinet,--was seated in his library, awaiting the delivery of the post,
before he walked down to his office. In the mean while he sipped his
tea, and glanced over the newspapers with that quick and half-disdainful
eye with which your practical man in public life is wont to regard the
abuse or the eulogium of the Fourth Estate.
There is very little likeness between Mr. Egerton and his half-brother;
none, indeed, except that they are both of tall stature, and strong,
sinewy, English build. But even in this last they do not resemble each
other; for the squire's athletic shape is already beginning to expand
into that portly embonpoint which seems the natural development of
contented men as they approach middle life. Audley, on the contrary, is
inclined to be spare; and his figure, though the muscles are as firm as
iron, has enough of the slender to satisfy metropolitan ideas of
elegance. His dress, his look, his /tout ensemble/, are those of the
London man. In the first, there is more attention to fashion than is
usual amongst the busy members of the House of Commons; but then Audley
Egerton has always been something more than a mere busy member of the
House of Commons. He has always been a person of mark in the best
society; and one secret of his success in life has been his high
reputation as "a gentleman."
As he now bends over the journals, there is an air of distinction in the
turn of the well-shaped head, with the dark brown hair,--dark in spite of
a reddish tinge,--cut close behind, and worn away a little towards the
crown, so as to give an additional height to a commanding forehead. His
profile is very handsome, and of that kind of beauty which imposes on men
if it pleases women; and is, therefore, unlike that of your mere pretty
fellows, a positive advantage in public life. It is a profile with large
features clearly cut, masculine, and somewhat severe. The expression of
his face is not open, like the squire's, nor has it the cold closeness
which accompanies the intellectual character of young Leslie's; but it is
reserved and dignified, and significant of self-control, as should be the
physiognomy of a man accustomed to think before he speaks. When you look
at him, you are not surprised to learn that he is not a florid orator nor
a smart debater,--he is a, "weighty speaker." He is fairly read,
but without any great range either of ornamental scholarship or
constitutional lore. He has not much humour; but he has that kind
of wit which is essential to grave and serious irony. He has not much
imagination, nor remarkable subtlety in reasoning; but if he does not
dazzle he does not bore,--he is too much of the man of the world for
that. He is considered to have sound sense and accurate judgment.
Withal, as he now lays aside the journals, and his face relaxes its
austerer lines, you will not be astonished to hear that he is a man who
is said to have been greatly beloved by women, and still to exercise much
influence in drawing-rooms and boudoirs. At least, no one was surprised
when the great heiress, Clementina Leslie, kinswoman and ward to Lord
Lansmere,--a young lady who had refused three earls and the heir apparent
to a dukedom,--was declared by her dearest friends to be dying of love
for Audley Egerton. It had been the natural wish of the Lansmeres that
this lady should marry their son, Lord L'Estrange. But that young
gentleman, whose opinions on matrimony partook of the eccentricity of his
general character, could never be induced to propose, and had, according
to the /on-dits/ of town, been the principal party to make up the match
between Clementina and his friend Audley; for the match required making-
up, despite the predilections of the young heiress. Mr. Egerton had had
scruples of delicacy. He avowed, for the first time, that his fortune
was much less than had been generally supposed, and he did not like the
idea of owing all to a wife, however highly be might esteem and admire
her. Now, Lord L'Estrange (not long after the election at Lansmere,
which had given to Audley his first seat in parliament) had suddenly
exchanged from the battalion of the Guards to which be belonged, and
which was detained at home, into a cavalry regiment on active service in
the Peninsula. Nevertheless, even abroad, and amidst the distractions of
war, his interest in all that could forward Egerton's career was
unabated; and by letters to his father and to his cousin Clementina, he
assisted in the negotiations for the marriage between Miss Leslie and his
friend; and before the year in which Audley was returned for Lansmere had
expired, the young senator received the hand of the great heiress. The
settlement of her fortune, which was chiefly in the Funds, had been
unusually advantageous to the husband; for though the capital was tied up
so long as both survived, for the benefit of any children they might
have, yet in the event of one of the parties dying without issue by the
marriage, the whole passed without limitation to the survivor. Miss
Leslie, in spite of all remonstrance from her own legal adviser, had
settled this clause with Egerton's confidential solicitor, one Mr. Levy,
of whom we shall see more hereafter; and Egerton was to be kept in
ignorance of it till after the marriage. If in this Miss Leslie showed a
generous trust in Mr. Egerton, she still inflicted no positive wrong on
her relations, for she had none sufficiently near to her to warrant their
claim to the succession. Her nearest kinsman, and therefore her natural
heir, was Harley L'Estrange; and if he was contented, no one had a right
to complain. The tie of blood between herself and the Leslies of Rood
Hall was, as we shall see presently, extremely distant.
It was not till after his marriage that Mr. Egerton took an active part
in the business of the House of Commons. He was then at the most
advantageous starting-point for the career of ambition. His words on the
state of the country took importance from his stake in it. His talents
found accessories in the opulence of Grosvenor Square, the dignity of a
princely establishment, the respectability of one firmly settled in life,
the reputation of a fortune in reality very large, and which was
magnified by popular report into the revenues of a Croesus. Audley
Egerton succeeded in parliament beyond the early expectations formed of
him. He took, from the first, that station in the House which it
requires tact to establish, and great knowledge of the world to free from
the charge of impracticability and crotchet, but which, once established,
is peculiarly imposing from the rarity of its independence; that is to
say, the station of the moderate man who belongs sufficiently to a party
to obtain its support, but is yet sufficiently disengaged from a party to
make his vote and word, on certain questions, matter of anxiety and
speculation.
Professing Toryism (the word Conservative, which would have suited him
better, was not then known), he separated himself from the country party,
and always avowed great respect for the opinions of the large towns. The
epithet given to the views of Audley Egerton was "enlightened." Never
too much in advance of the passion of the day, yet never behind its
movement, he had that shrewd calculation of odds which a consummate
mastery of the world sometimes bestows upon politicians,--perceived the
chances for and against a certain question being carried within a certain
time, and nicked the question between wind and water. He was so good a
barometer of that changeful weather called Public Opinion, that he might
have had a hand in the "Times" newspaper. He soon quarrelled, and
purposely, with his Lansmere constituents; nor had he ever revisited that
borough,--perhaps because it was associated with unpleasant reminiscences
in the shape of the squire's epistolary trimmer, and in that of his own
effigies which his agricultural constituents had burned in the corn-
market. But the speeches that produced such indignation at Lansmere had
delighted one of the greatest of our commercial towns, which at the next
general election honoured him with its representation. In those days,
before the Reform Bill, great commercial towns chose men of high mark for
their member; and a proud station it was for him who was delegated to
speak the voice of the princely merchants of England.
Mrs. Egerton survived her marriage but a few years. She left no
children; two had been born, but died in their first infancy. The
property of the wife, therefore, passed without control or limit to the
husband.
Whatever might have been the grief of the widower, he disdained to betray
it to the world. Indeed, Audley Egerton was a man who had early taught
himself to conceal emotion. He buried himself in the country, none knew
where, for some months. When he returned, there was a deep wrinkle on
his brow,--but no change in his habits and avocations, except that,
shortly afterwards, he accepted office, and thus became more busy than
ever.
Mr. Egerton had always been lavish and magnificent in money spatters.
A rich man in public life has many claims on his fortune, and no one
yielded to those claims with in air so regal as Audley Egerton. But
amongst his many liberal actions, there was none which seemed more worthy
of panegyric than the generous favour he extended to the son of his
wife's poor and distant kinsfolk, the Leslies of Rood Hall.
Some four generations back, there had lived a certain Squire Leslie, a
man of large acres and active mind. He had cause to be displeased with
his elder son, and though he did not disinherit him, he left half his
property to a younger.
The younger had capacity and spirit, which justified the parental
provision. He increased his fortune; lifted himself into notice and
consideration by public services and a noble alliance. His descendants
followed his example, and took rank among the first commoners in England,
till the last male, dying, left his sole heiress and representative in
one daughter, Clementina, afterwards married to Mr. Egerton.
Meanwhile the elder son of the fore-mentioned squire had muddled and
sotted away much of his share in the Leslie property; and, by low habits
and mean society, lowered in repute his representation of the name.
His successors imitated him, till nothing was left to Randal's father,
Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the decayed house, which was what the
Germans call the /stamm schloss/, or "stem hall," of the race, and the
wretched lands immediately around it.
Still, though all intercourse between the two branches of the family had
ceased, the younger had always felt a respect for the elder, as the head
of the House. And it was supposed that, on her death-bed, Mrs. Egerton
had recommended her impoverished namesakes and kindred to the care of her
husband; for when he returned to town, after Mrs. Egerton's death, Audley
had sent to Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie the sum of L5000, which he said his
wife, leaving no written will, had orally bequeathed as a legacy to that
gentleman; and he requested permission to charge himself with the
education of the eldest son.
Mr. Maunder Slugge Leslie might have done great things for his little
property with those L5000, or even kept in the three-per-cents the
interest would have afforded a material addition to his comforts. But a
neighbouring solicitor, having caught scent of the legacy, hunted it down
into his own hands, on pretence of having found a capital investment in a
canal; and when the solicitor had got possession of the L5000, he went
off with them to America.
Meanwhile Randal, placed by Mr. Egerton at an excellent preparatory
school, at first gave no signs of industry or talent; but just before he
left it, there came to the school, as classical tutor, an ambitious young
Oxford man; and his zeal--for he was a capital teacher--produced a great
effect generally on the pupils, and especially on Randal Leslie. He
talked to them much in private on the advantages of learning, and shortly
afterwards he exhibited those advantages in his own person; for, having
edited a Greek play with much subtle scholarship, his college, which some
slight irregularities of his had displeased, recalled him to its
venerable bosom by the presentation of a fellowship. After this he took
orders, became a college tutor, distinguished himself yet more by a
treatise on the Greek accent, got a capital living, and was considered
on the high road to a bishopric. This young man, then, communicated to
Randal the thirst for knowledge; and when the boy went afterwards to
Eton, he applied with such earnestness and resolve that his fame soon
reached the ears of Audley; and that person, who had the sympathy for
talent, and yet more for purpose, which often characterizes ambitious
men, went to Eton to see him. From that time Audley evinced great and
almost fatherly interest in the brilliant Etonian; and Randal always
spent with him some days in each vacation.
I have said that Egerton's conduct with respect to this boy was more
praiseworthy than most of those generous actions for which he was
renowned, since to this the world gave no applause. What a man does
within the range of his family connections does not carry with it that
eclat which invests a munificence exhibited on public occasions. Either
people care nothing about it, or tacitly suppose it to be but his duty.
It was true, too, as the squire had observed, that Randal Leslie was even
less distantly related to the Hazeldeans than to Mrs. Egerton, since
Randal's grandfather had actually married a Miss Hazeldean (the highest
worldly connection that branch of the family had formed since the great
split I have commemorated). But Audley Egerton never appeared aware of
that fact. As he was not himself descended from the Hazeldeans, he did
not trouble himself about their genealogy; and he took care to impress it
upon the Leslies that his generosity on their behalf was solely to be
ascribed to his respect for his wife's memory and kindred. Still the
squire had felt as if his "distant brother" implied a rebuke on his own
neglect of these poor Leslies, by the liberality Audley evinced towards
them; and this had made him doubly sore when the name of Randal Leslie
was mentioned. But the fact really was, that the Leslies of Rood had so
shrunk out of all notice that the squire had actually forgotten their
existence, until Randal became thus indebted to his brother; and then he
felt a pang of remorse that any one save himself, the head of the
Hazeldeans, should lend a helping hand to the grandson of a Hazeldean.
But having thus, somewhat too tediously, explained the position of Audley
Egerton, whether in the world or in relation to his young protege, I may
now permit him to receive and to read his letters.
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. Egerton glanced over the pile of letters placed beside him, and first
he tore up some, scarcely read, and threw them into the waste-basket.
Public men have such odd, out-of-the-way letters, that their waste-
baskets are never empty,--letters from amateur financiers proposing new
ways to pay off the National Debt; letters from America (never free!)
asking for autographs; letters from fond mothers in country villages,
recommending some miracle of a son for a place in the king's service;
letters from free-thinkers in reproof of bigotry; letters from bigots in
reproof of free-thinking; letters signed Brutus Redivivus, containing the
agreeable information that the writer has a dagger for tyrants, if the
Danish claims are not forthwith adjusted; letters signed Matilda or
Caroline, stating that Caroline or Matilda has seen the public man's
portrait at the Exhibition, and that a heart sensible to its attractions
may be found at No. -- Piccadilly; letters from beggars, impostors,
monomaniacs, speculators, jobbers,--all food for the waste-basket.
From the correspondence thus winnowed, Mr. Egerton first selected those
on business, which he put methodically together in one division of his
pocket-book; and secondly, those of a private nature, which he as
carefully put into another. Of these last there were but three,--one
from his steward, one from Harley L'Estrange, one from Randal Leslie.
It was his custom to answer his correspondence at his office; and to his
office, a few minutes afterwards, he slowly took his way. Many a
passenger turned back to look again at the firm figure, which, despite
the hot summer day, was buttoned up to the throat; and the black frock-
coat thus worn well became the erect air and the deep, full chest of the
handsome senator. When he entered Parliament Street, Audley Egerton was
joined by one of his colleagues, also on his way to the cares of office.
After a few observations on the last debate this gentleman said,--
"By the way, can you dine with me next Saturday, to meet Lansmere? He
comes up to town to vote for us on Monday."
"I had asked some people to dine with me," answered Egerton, "but I will
put them off. I see Lord Lansmere too seldom to miss any occasion to
meet a man whom I respect so much."
"So seldom! True, he is very little in town; but why don't you go and
see him in the country? Good shooting,--pleasant, old-fashioned house."
"My dear Westbourne, his house is 'nimium vicina Cremonae,' close to a
borough in which I have been burned in effigy."
"Ha! ha! yes, I remember you first came into parliament for that snug
little place; but Lansmere himself never found fault with your votes, did
he?"
"He behaved very handsomely, and said he had not presumed to consider me
his mouthpiece; and then, too, I am so intimate with L'Estrange."
"Is that queer fellow ever coming back to England?"
"He comes, generally, every year, for a few days, just to see his father
and mother, and then returns to the Continent."
"I never meet him."
"He comes in September or October, when you, of course, are not in town,
and it is in town that the Lansmeres meet him."
"Why does he not go to them?"
"A man in England but once a year, and for a few days, has so much to do
in London, I suppose."
"Is he as amusing as ever?" Egerton nodded.
"So distinguished as he might be!" remarked Lord Westbourne.
"So distinguished as he is!" said Egerton, formally; "an officer selected
for praise, even in such fields as Quatre Bras and Waterloo; a scholar,
too, of the finest taste; and as an accomplished gentleman matchless!"
"I like to hear one man praise another so warmly in these ill-natured
days," answered Lord Westbourne. "But still, though L'Estrange is
doubtless all you say, don't you think he rather wastes his life living
abroad?"
"And trying to be happy, Westbourne? Are you sure it is not we who waste
our lives? But I can't stay to hear your answer. Here we are at the
door of my prison."
"On Saturday, then?"
"On Saturday. Good day."
For the next hour or more, Mr. Egerton was engaged on the affairs of the
State. He then snatched an interval of leisure (while awaiting a report,
which he had instructed a clerk to make him), in order to reply to his
letters. Those on public business were soon despatched; and throwing his
replies aside to be sealed by a subordinate hand, he drew out the letters
which he had put apart as private.
He attended first to that of his steward: the steward's letter was long,
the reply was contained in three lines. Pitt himself was scarcely more
negligent of his private interests and concerns than Audley Egerton; yet,
withal, Audley Egerton was said by his enemies to be an egotist.
The next letter he wrote was to Randal, and that, though longer, was far
from prolix: it ran thus:--
DEAR MR. LESLIE,--I appreciate your delicacy in consulting me
whether you should accept Frank Hazeldean's invitation to call at
the Hall. Since you are asked, I can see no objection to it. I
should be sorry if you appeared to force yourself there; and for the
rest, as a general rule, I think a young man who has his own way to
make in life had better avoid all intimacy with those of his own age
who have no kindred objects nor congenial pursuits.
As soon as this visit is paid, I wish you to come to London. The
report I receive of your progress at Eton renders it unnecessary, in
my judgment, that you should return there. If your father has no
objection, I propose that you should go to Oxford at the ensuing
term. Meanwhile, I have engaged a gentleman, who is a fellow of
Balliol, to read with you. He is of opinion, judging only by your
high repute at Eton, that you may at once obtain a scholarship in
that college. If you do so, I shall look upon your career in life
as assured.
Your affectionate friend, and sincere well-wisher, A. E.
The reader will remark that in this letter there is a certain tone of
formality. Mr. Egerton does not call his protege "Dear Randal," as would
seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, "Dear Mr. Leslie." He hints, also,
that the boy has his own way to make in life. Is this meant to guard
against too sanguine notions of inheritance, which his generosity may
have excited? The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind
from the others. It was long, and full of such little scraps of news and
gossip as may interest friends in a foreign land; it was written gayly,
and as with a wish to cheer his friend; you could see that it was a reply
to a melancholy letter; and in the whole tone and spirit there was an
affection, even to tenderness, of which those who most liked Audley
Egerton would have scarcely supposed him capable. Yet, notwithstanding,
there was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the fine
tact of a woman would detect. It had not that abandon, that hearty self-
outpouring, which you might expect would characterize the letters of two
such friends, who had been boys at school together, and which did breathe
indeed in all the abrupt rambling sentences of his correspondent. But
where was the evidence of the constraint? Egerton is off-hand enough
where his pen runs glibly through paragraphs that relate to others; it is
simply that he says nothing about himself,--that he avoids all reference
to the inner world of sentiment and feeling! But perhaps, after all, the
man has no sentiment and feeling! How can you expect that a steady
personage in practical life, whose mornings are spent in Downing Street,
and whose nights are consumed in watching Government bills through a
committee, can write in the same style as an idle dreamer amidst the
pines of Ravenna, or on the banks of Como?
Audley had just finished this epistle, such as it was, when the attendant
in waiting announced the arrival of a deputation from a provincial
trading town, the members of which deputation he had appointed to meet at
two o'clock. There was no office in London at which deputations were
kept waiting less than at that over which Mr. Egerton presided.
The deputation entered,--some score or so of middle-aged, comfortable-
looking persons, who, nevertheless, had their grievance, and considered
their own interest, and those of the country, menaced by a certain clause
in a bill brought in by Mr. Egerton.
The mayor of the town was the chief spokesman, and he spoke well,--but in
a style to which the dignified official was not accustomed. It was a
slap-dash style,--unceremonious, free and easy,--an American style. And,
indeed, there was something altogether in the appearance and bearing of
the mayor which savoured of residence in the Great Republic. He was a
very handsome man, but with a look sharp and domineering,--the look of a
man who did not care a straw for president or monarch, and who enjoyed
the liberty to speak his mind and "wallop his own nigger!"
His fellow-burghers evidently regarded him with great respect; and Mr.
Egerton had penetration enough to perceive that Mr. Mayor must be a rich
man, as well as an eloquent one, to have overcome those impressions of
soreness or jealousy which his tone was calculated to create in the self-
love of his equals.
Mr. Egerton was far too wise to be easily offended by mere manner; and
though he stared somewhat haughtily when he found his observations
actually pooh-poohed, he was not above being convinced. There was much
sense and much justice in Mr. Mayor's arguments, and the statesman
civilly promised to take them into full consideration.
He then bowed out the deputation; but scarcely had the door closed before
it opened again, and Mr. Mayor presented himself alone, saying aloud to
his companions in the passage, "I forgot something I had to say to Mr.
Egerton; wait below for me."
"Well, Mr. Mayor," said Audley, pointing to a seat, "what else would you
suggest?"
The mayor looked round to see that the door was closed; and then, drawing
his chair close to Mr. Egerton's, laid his forefinger on that gentleman's
arm, and said, "I think I speak to a man of the world, sir?"
Mr. Egerton bowed, and made no reply by word, but he gently removed his
arm from the touch of the forefinger.
MR. MAYOR.---"You observe, sir, that I did not ask the members whom we
return to parliament to accompany us. Do better without 'em. You know
they are both in Opposition,--out-and-outers."
MR. EGERTON.--"It is a misfortune which the Government cannot remember
when the question is whether the trade of the town itself is to be served
or injured."
MR. MAYOR.---"Well, I guess you speak handsome, sir. But you'd be glad
to have two members to support ministers after the next election."
MR. EGERTON (smiling).--"Unquestionably, Mr. Mayor."
MR. MAYOR.--"And I can do it, Mr. Egerton. I may say I have the town in
my pocket; so I ought,--I spend a great deal of money in it. Now, you
see, Mr. Egerton, I have passed a part of my life in a land of liberty--
the United States--and I come to the point when I speak to a man of the
world. I'm a man of the world myself, sir. And so, if the Government
will do something for me, why, I'll do something for the Government. Two
votes for a free and independent town like ours,--that's something, isn't
it?"
MR. EGERTON (taken by surprise).--"Really, I--"
MR. MAYOR (advancing his chair still nearer, and interrupting the
official).--"No nonsense, you see, on one side or the other. The fact
is, that I've taken it into my head that I should like to be knighted.
You may well look surprised, Mr. Egerton,--trumpery thing enough, I dare
say; still, every man has his weakness, and I should like to be Sir
Richard. Well, if you can get me made Sir Richard, you may just name
your two members for the next election,--that is, if they belong to your
own set, enlightened men, up to the times. That's speaking fair and
manful, is n't it?"
MR. EGERTON (drawing himself up).--"I am at a loss to guess why you
should select me, sir, for this very extraordinary proposition."
MR. MAYOR (nodding good-humouredly).--"Why, you see, I don't go along
with the Government; you're the best of the bunch. And may be you'd like
to strengthen your own party. This is quite between you and me, you
understand; honour's a jewel!"
MR. EGERTON (with great gravity).--"Sir, I am obliged by your good
opinion; but I agree with my colleagues in all the great questions that
affect the government of the country, and--"
MR. MAYOR (interrupting him).--"Ah, of course, you must say so; very
right. But I guess things would go differently if you were Prime
Minister. However, I have another reason for speaking to you about my
little job. You see you were member for Lansmere once, and I think you
only came in by a majority of two, eh?"
MR. EGERTON.--"I know nothing of the particulars of that election; I was
not present."
MR. MAYOR.--"No; but luckily for you, two relations of mine were, and
they voted for you. Two votes, and you came in by two. Since then, you
have got into very snug quarters here, and I think we have a claim on
you--"
MR. EGERTON.--"Sir, I acknowledge no such claim; I was and am a stranger
to Lansmere; and if the electors did me the honour to return me to
parliament, it was in compliment rather to--"
MR. MAYOR (again interrupting the official).--"Rather to Lord Lansmere,
you were going to say; unconstitutional doctrine that, I fancy. Peer of
the realm. But never mind, I know the world; and I'd ask Lord Lansmere
to do my affair for me, only he is a pompous sort of man; might be
qualmish: antiquated notions. Not up to snuff like you and me."
MR. EGERTON (in great disgust, and settling his papers before him).--
"Sir, it is not in my department to recommend to his Majesty candidates
for the honour of knighthood, and it is still less in my department to
make bargains for seats in parliament."
MR. MAYOR.--"Oh, if that's the case, you'll excuse me; I don't know much
of the etiquette in these matters. But I thought that if I put two seats
in your hands for your own friends, you might contrive to take the affair
into your department, whatever it was. But since you say you agree with
your colleagues, perhaps it comes to the same thing. Now, you must not
suppose I want to sell the town, and that I can change and chop my
politics for my own purpose. No such thing! I don't like the sitting
members; I'm all for progressing, but they go too much ahead for me; and
since the Government is disposed to move a little, why, I'd as lief
support them as not. But, in common gratitude, you see," added the
mayor, coaxingly, "I ought to be knighted! I can keep up the dignity,
and do credit to his Majesty."
MR. EGERTON (without looking up from his papers).--"I can only refer you,
sir, to the proper quarter."
MR. MAYOR (impatiently).--"Proper quarter! Well, since there is so much
humbug in this old country of ours, that one must go through all the
forms and get at the job regularly, just tell me whom I ought to go to."
MR. EGERTON (beginning to be amused as well as indignant).--"If you want
a knighthood, Mr. Mayor, you must ask the Prime Minister; if you want to
give the Government information relative to seats in parliament, you must
introduce yourself to Mr. ------, the Secretary of the Treasury."
MR. MAYOR.--"And if I go to the last chap, what do you think he'll say?"
MR. EGERTON (the amusement preponderating over the indignation).--"He
will say, I suppose, that you must not put the thing in the light in
which you have put it to me; that the Government will be very proud to
have the confidence of yourself and your brother electors; and that a
gentleman like you, in the proud position of mayor, may well hope to be
knighted on some fitting occasion; but that you must not talk about the
knighthood just at present, and must confine yourself to converting the
unfortunate political opinions of the town."
MR. MAYOR.--"Well, I guess that chap there would want to do me! Not
quite so green, Mr. Egerton. Perhaps I'd better go at once to the
fountain-head. How d' ye think the Premier would take it?"
MR. EGERTON (the indignation preponderating over the amusement).--
"Probably just as I am about to do."
Mr. Egerton rang the bell; the attendant appeared. "Show Mr. Mayor the
way out," said the minister.
The mayor turned round sharply, and his face was purple. He walked
straight to the door; but suffering the attendant to precede him along
the corridor, he came back with a rapid stride, and clenching his hands,
and with a voice thick with passion, cried, "Some day or other I will
make you smart for this, as sure as my name's Dick Avenel!"
"Avenel!" repeated Egerton, recoiling,--"Avenel!" But the mayor was gone.
Audley fell into a deep and musing revery, which seemed gloomy, and
lasted till the attendant announced that the horses were at the door.
He then looked up, still abstractedly, and saw his letter to Harley
L'Estrange open on the table. He drew it towards him, and wrote, "A man
has just left me, who calls himself Aven--" In the middle of the name
his pen stopped. "No, no," muttered the writer, "what folly to reopen
the old wounds there!" and he carefully erased the words.
Audley Egerton did not ride in the Park that day, as was his wont, but
dismissed his groom; and, turning his horse's head towards Westminster
Bridge, took his solitary way into the country. He rode at first slowly,
as if in thought; then fast, as if trying to escape from thought. He was
later than usual at the House that evening, and he looked pale and
fatigued. But he had to speak, and he spoke well.
CHAPTER VII.
In spite of all his Machiavellian wisdom, Dr. Riccabocca had been foiled
in his attempt to seduce Leonard Fairfield into his service, even though
he succeeded in partially winning over the widow to his views. For to
her he represented the worldly advantages of the thing. Lenny would
learn to be fit for more than a day-labourer; he would learn gardening,
in all its branches,--rise some day to be a head gardener. "And," said
Riccabocca, "I will take care of his book-learning, and teach him
whatever he has a head for."
"He has a head for everything," said the widow.
"Then," said the wise man, "everything shall go into it." The widow was
certainly dazzled; for, as we have seen, she highly prized scholarly
distinction, and she knew that the parson looked upon Riccabocca as a
wondrous learned man. But still Riccabocca was said to be a Papist, and
suspected to be a conjuror. Her scruples on both these points, the
Italian, who was an adept in the art of talking over the fair sex, would
no doubt have dissipated, if there had been any use in it; but Lenny put
a dead stop to all negotiations. He had taken a mortal dislike to
Riccabocca: he was very much frightened by him,--and the spectacles, the
pipe, the cloak, the long hair, and the red umbrella; and said so
sturdily, in reply to every overture, "Please, sir, I'd rather not; I'd
rather stay along with Mother," that Riccabocca was forced to suspend all
further experiments in his Machiavellian diplomacy. He was not at all
cast down, however, by his first failure; on the contrary, he was one of
those men whom opposition stimulates; and what before had been but a
suggestion of prudence, became an object of desire. Plenty of other lads
might no doubt be had on as reasonable terms as Lenny Fairfield; but the
moment Lenny presumed to baffle the Italian's designs upon him, the
special acquisition, of Lenny became of paramount importance in the
eyes of Signor Riccabocca.
Jackeymo, however, lost all his interest in the traps, snares, and gins
which his master proposed to lay for Leonard Fairfield, in the more
immediate surprise that awaited him on learning that Dr. Riccabocca had
accepted an invitation to pass a few days at the Hall.
"There will be no one there but the family," said Riccabocca. "Poor
Giacomo, a little chat in the servants' hall will do you good; and the
squire's beef is more nourishing, after all, than the sticklebacks and
minnows. It will lengthen your life."
"The padrone jests," said Jackeymo, statelily; "as if any one could
starve in his service."
"Um," said Riccabocca. "At least, faithful friend, you have tried that
experiment as far as human nature will permit;" and he extended his hand
to his fellow-exile with that familiarity which exists between servant
and master in the usages of the Continent. Jackeymo bent low, and a tear
fell upon the hand he kissed.
"Cospetto!" said Dr. Riccabocca, "a thousand mock pearls do not make up
the cost of a single true one! The tears of women--we know their worth;
but the tears of an honest man---Fie, Giacomo!--at least I can never
repay you this! Go and see to our wardrobe."
So far as his master's wardrobe was concerned, that order was pleasing to
Jackeymo; for the doctor had in his drawers suits which Jackeymo
pronounced to be as good as new, though many a long year had passed since
they left the tailor's hands. But when Jackeymo came to examine the
state of his own clothing department, his face grew considerably longer.
It was not that he was without other clothes than those on his back,--
quantity was there, but the quality! Mournfully he gazed on two suits,
complete in three separate members of which man's raiments are composed:
the one suit extended at length upon his bed, like a veteran stretched by
pious hands after death; the other brought piecemeal to the invidious
light,--the torso placed upon a chair, the limbs dangling down from
Jackeymo's melancholy arm. No bodies long exposed at the Morgue could
evince less sign of resuscitation than those respectable defuncts! For,
indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his apparel, more /profusus
sui/, than his master. In the earliest days of their exile, he preserved
the decorous habit of dressing for dinner,--it was a respect due to the
padrone,--and that habit had lasted till the two habits on which it
necessarily depended had evinced the first symptoms of decay; then the
evening clothes had been taken into morning wear, in which hard service
they had breathed their last.
The doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from
such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to
Jackeymo than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of the
servant reflects on the dignity of the master, "Giacomo, thou wantest
clothes; fit thyself out of mine!"
And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been
accepted; but the fact was that that same fitting out was easier said
than done. For though-thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks
and minnows--both Jackeymo and Riccabocca had arrived at that state which
the longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the human frame,--
namely, skin and bone,--yet the bones contained in the skin of Riccabocca
all took longitudinal directions; while those in the skin of Jackeymo
spread out latitudinally. And you might as well have made the bark of a
Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and pollarded oak--in
whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at their ease--as
have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca. Moreover, if the
skill of the tailor could have accomplished that undertaking, the
faithful Jackeymo would never have had the heart to avail himself of the
generosity of his master. He had a sort of religious sentiment, too,
about those vestments of the padrone. The ancients, we know, when
escaping from shipwreck, suspended in the votive temple the garments in
which they had struggled through the wave. Jackeymo looked on those
relics of the past with a kindred superstition. "This coat the padrone
wore on such an occasion. I remember the very evening the padrone last
put on those pantaloons!" And coat and pantaloons were tenderly dusted,
and carefully restored to their sacred rest.
But now, after all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to
exhibit his person to the eyes of the squire's butler in habiliments
discreditable to himself and the padrone. In the midst of his perplexity
the bell rang, and he went down into the parlour.
Riccabocca was standing on the hearth under his symbolical representation
of the "Patriae Exul."
"Giacomo," quoth he, "I have been thinking that thou hast never done what
I told thee, and fitted thyself out from my superfluities. But we are
going now into the great world: visiting once begun, Heaven knows where
it may stop. Go to the nearest town and get thyself clothes. Things are
dear in England. Will this suffice?" And Riccabocca extended a five-
pound note.
Jackeymo, we have seen, was more familiar with his master than we formal
English permit our domestics to be with us; but in his familiarity he was
usually respectful. This time, however, respect deserted him.
"The padrone is mad!" he exclaimed; "he would fling away his whole
fortune if I would let him. Five pounds English, or a hundred and
twenty-six pounds Milanese! Santa Maria! unnatural father! And what is
to become of the poor signorina? Is this the way you are to marry her in
the foreign land?"
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, bowing his head to the storm, "the signorina
to-morrow; to-day the honour of the House. Thy small-clothes, Giacomo,--
miserable man, thy small-clothes!"
"It is just," said Jackeymo, recovering himself, and with humility; "and
the padrone does right to blame me, but not in so cruel a way. It is
just,--the padrone lodges and boards me, and gives me handsome wages, and
he has a right to expect that I should not go in this figure."
"For the board and the lodgment, good," said Riccabocca. For the
handsome wages, they are the visions of thy fancy!"
"They are no such thing," said Jackeymo, "they are only in arrear. As if
the padrone could not pay them some day or other; as if I was demeaning
myself by serving a master who did not intend to pay his servants! And
can't I wait? Have I not my savings too? But be cheered, be cheered;
you shall be contented with me. I have two beautiful suits still. I was
arranging them when you rang for me. You shall see, you shall see."
And Jackeymo hurried from the room, hurried back into his own chamber,
unlocked a little trunk which he kept at his bed-head, tossed out a
variety of small articles, and from the deepest depth extracted a
leathern purse. He emptied the contents on the bed. They were chiefly
Italian coins, some five-franc pieces, a silver medallion inclosing a
little image of his patron saint,--San Giacomo,--one solid English
guinea, and somewhat more than a pound's worth in English silver.
Jackeymo put back the foreign coins, saying prudently, "One will lose on
them here;" he seized the English coins, and counted them out. "But are
you enough, you rascals?" quoth he, angrily, giving them a good shake.
His eye caught sight of the medallion,--he paused; and after eying the
tiny representation of the saint with great deliberation, he added, in a
sentence which he must have picked up from the proverbial aphorisms of
his master,--
"What's the difference between the enemy who does not hurt me, and the
friend who does not serve me? Monsignore San Giacomo, my patron saint,
you are of very little use to me in the leathern bag; but if you help me
to get into a new pair of small-clothes on this important occasion, you
will be a friend indeed. /Alla bisogna, Monsignore./" Then, gravely
kissing the medallion, he thrust it into one pocket, the coins into the
other, made up a bundle of the two defunct suits, and muttering to
himself, "Beast, miser, that I am, to disgrace the padrone with all these
savings in his service!" ran downstairs into his pantry, caught up his
hat and stick, and in a few moments more was seen trudging off to the
neighbouring town of L--------.
Apparently the poor Italian succeeded, for he came back that evening in
time to prepare the thin gruel which made his master's supper, with a
suit of black,--a little threadbare, but still highly respectable,--two
shirt fronts, and two white cravats. But out of all this finery,
Jackeymo held the small-clothes in especial veneration; for as they had
cost exactly what the medallion had sold for, so it seemed to him that
San Giacomo had heard his prayer in that quarter to which he had more
exclusively directed the saint's direction. The other habiliments came
to him in the merely human process of sale and barter; the small-clothes
were the personal gratuity of San Giacomo!
CHAPTER VIII.
Life has been subjected to many ingenious comparisons; and if we do not
understand it any better, it is not for want of what is called "reasoning
by illustration." Amongst other resemblances, there are moments when, to
a quiet contemplator, it suggests the image of one of those rotatory
entertainments commonly seen in fairs, and known by the name of
"whirligigs," or "roundabouts," in which each participator of the
pastime, seated on his hobby, is always apparently in the act of pursuing
some one before him, while he is pursued by some one behind. Man, and
woman too, are naturally animals of chase; the greatest still find
something to follow, and there is no one too humble not to be an object
of prey to another. Thus, confining our view to the village of
Hazeldean, we behold in this whirligig Dr. Riccabocca spurring his hobby
after Lenny Fairfield; and Miss Jemima, on her decorous side-saddle,
whipping after Dr. Riccabocca. Why, with so long and intimate a
conviction of the villany of our sex, Miss Jemima should resolve upon
giving the male animal one more chance of redeeming itself in her eyes,
I leave to the explanation of those gentlemen who profess to find "their
only books in woman's looks." Perhaps it might be from the over-
tenderness and clemency of Miss Jemima's nature; perhaps it might be that
as yet she had only experienced the villany of man born and reared in
these cold northern climates, and in the land of Petrarch and Romeo, of
the citron and myrtle, there was reason to expect that the native monster
would be more amenable to gentle influences, less obstinately hardened in
his iniquities. Without entering further into these hypotheses, it is
sufficient to say that, on Signor Riccabocca's appearance in the drawing-
room at Hazeldean, Miss Jemima felt more than ever rejoiced that she had
relaxed in his favour her general hostility to men. In truth, though
Frank saw something quizzical in the old-fashioned and outlandish cut of
the Italian's sober dress; in his long hair, and the /chapeau bras/, over
which he bowed so gracefully, and then pressed it, as if to his heart,
before tucking it under his arm, after the fashion in which the gizzard
reposes under the wing of a roasted pullet,--yet it was impossible that
even Frank could deny to Riccabocca that praise which is due to the air
and manner of an unmistakable gentleman. And certainly as, after dinner,
conversation grew more familiar, and the parson and Mrs. Dale, who had
been invited to meet their friend, did their best to draw him out, his
talk, though sometimes a little too wise for his listeners, became
eminently animated and agreeable. It was the conversation of a man who,
besides the knowledge which is acquired from books and life, had studied
the art which becomes a gentleman,--that of pleasing in polite society.
The result was that all were charmed with him; and that even Captain
Barnabas postponed the whist-table for a full hour after the usual time.
The doctor did not play; he thus became the property of the two ladies,
Miss Jemima and Mrs. Dale.
Seated between the two, in the place rightfully appertaining to Flimsey,
who this time was fairly dislodged, to her great wonder and discontent,
the doctor was the emblem of true Domestic Felicity, placed between
Friendship and Love.
Friendship, as became her, worked quietly at the embroidered pocket-
handkerchief and left Love to more animated operations.
"You must be very lonely at the Casino," said Love, in a sympathizing
tone.
"Madam," replied Riccabocca, gallantly, "I shall think so when I leave
you."
Friendship cast a sly glance at Love; Love blushed, or looked down on the
carpet,--which comes to the same thing. "Yet," began Love again,--"yet
solitude to a feeling heart--"
Riccabocca thought of the note of invitation, and involuntarily buttoned
his coat, as if to protect the individual organ thus alarmingly referred
to.
"Solitude to a feeling heart has its charms. It is so hard even for us
poor ignorant women to find a congenial companion--but for YOU!" Love
stopped short, as if it had said too much, and smelt confusedly at its
bouquet.
Dr. Riccabocca cautiously lowered his spectacles, and darted one glance
which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of lightning, seemed to
envelop and take in, as it were, the whole inventory of Miss Jemima's
personal attractions. Now Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a
mild and pensive expression of countenance; and she would have been
positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the
pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though Miss Jemima was
constitutionally mild, she was not /de natura/ pensive; she had too much
of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen and viscid humour
called melancholy, and therefore this assumption of pensiveness really
spoiled her character of features, which only wanted to be lighted up by
a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing. The same remark might
apply to the figure, which--thanks to the same pensiveness--lost all the
undulating grace which movement and animation bestow on the fluent curves
of the feminine form. The figure was a good figure, examined in detail,
--a little thin, perhaps, but by no means emaciated, with just and
elegant proportions, and naturally light and flexible. But the same
unfortunate pensiveness gave to the whole a character of inertness and
languor; and when Miss Jemima reclined on the sofa, so complete seemed
the relaxation of nerve and muscle that you would have thought she had
lost the use of her limbs. Over her face and form, thus defrauded of the
charms Providence had bestowed on them, Dr. Riccabocca's eye glanced
rapidly; and then moving nearer to Mrs. Dale--"Defend me" (he stopped a
moment, and added) "from the charge of not being able to appreciate
congenial companionship."
"Oh, I did not say that!" cried Miss Jemima.
"Pardon me," said the Italian, "if I am so dull as to misunderstand you.
One may well lose one's head, at least, in such a neighbourhood as this."
He rose as he spoke, and bent over Frank's shoulder to examine some views
of Italy, which Miss Jemima (with what, if wholly unselfish, would have
been an attention truly delicate) had extracted from the library in order
to gratify the guest.
"Most interesting creature, indeed," sighed Miss Jemima, but too--too
flattering."
"Tell me," said Mrs. Dale, gravely, "do you think, love, that you could
put off the end of the world a little longer, or must we make haste in
order to be in time?"
"How wicked you are!" said Miss Jemima, turning aside. Some few minutes
afterwards, Mrs. Dale contrived it so that Dr. Riccabocca and herself
were in a farther corner of the room, looking at a picture said to be by
Wouvermans.
MRS. DALE.--"She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?"
RICCABOCCA.--"Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece!"
MRS. DALE.--"So kind-hearted."
RICCABOCCA.--"All ladies are. How naturally that warrior makes his
desperate cut at the runaway!"
MRS. DALE.--"She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has
something very winning."
RICCABOCCA (with a smile).--"So winning, that it is strange she is not
won. That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!"
MRS. DALE (distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more
effective grape-charge).--"Not won yet; and it is strange! she will have
a very pretty fortune."
RICCABOCCA.--"Ah!"
MRS. DALE. "Six thousand pounds, I dare say,--certainly four."
RICCABOCCA (suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address).--"If Mrs.
Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her
portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is
not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still--Miss Jemima!"
The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sat himself down beside the
whist-players.
Mrs. Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended. It would be such
a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly.
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing that night in the large,
comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great English four-
posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks out of single
blessedness, "Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer of probably
L6000, certainly of four thousand."
"Cosa meravigliosa!"--["Miraculous thing."]--exclaimed Jackeymo, and he
crossed himself with great fervour. "Six thousand pounds English! why,
that must be a hundred thousand--blockhead that I am!--more than L150,000
Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the squire's
ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of
which he stopped and cried, "But not for nothing?"
"Nothing! no!"
"These mercenary English! the Government wants to bribe you?"
"That's not it."
"The priests want you to turn heretic?"
"Worse than that!" said the philosopher.
"Worse than that! O Padrone! for shame!"
"Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons--they want me never to wear
THESE again!"
"Never to wear what?" exclaimed Jackeymo, staring outright at his
master's long legs in their linen drawers,--"never to wear--"
"The breeches," said Riccabocca, laconically.
"The barbarians!" faltered Jackeymo.
"My nightcap! and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca,
drawing on the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in
that," pointing to the four-posted bed; "and to be a bondsman and a
slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and
purred at, and pawed and clawed, and scolded and fondled, and blinded and
deafened, and bridled and saddled--bedevilled and--married!"
"Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately--"that's very bad,
certainly; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand lire, and perhaps a
pretty young lady, and--"
"Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into bed and drawing the
clothes fiercely over him. "Put out the candle, and get along with you,
--do, you villanous old incendiary!"
CHAPTER IX.
It was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks,
and it was evident already, to an ordinary observer, that something wrong
had got into the village. The peasants wore a sullen expression of
countenance; when the squire passed, they took off their hats with more
than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad smile to
his quick, hearty "Good-day, my man." The women peered at him from the
threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont (as least the
wont of the prettiest), take occasion to come out to catch his passing
compliment on their own good looks, or their tidy cottages. And the
children, who used to play after work on the site of the old stocks, now
shunned the place, and, indeed, seemed to cease play altogether.
On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great public work
for nothing. Now that the squire had resuscitated the stocks, and made
them so exceedingly handsome, it was natural that he should wish to put
somebody into them. Moreover, his pride and self-esteem had been wounded
by the parson's opposition; and it would be a justification to his own
forethought, and a triumph over the parson's understanding, if he could
satisfactorily and practically establish a proof that the stocks had not
been repaired before they were wanted.
Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the squire
more burly and authoritative and menacing than heretofore. Old Gaffer
Solomons observed, "that they had better moind well what they were about,
for that the squire had a wicked look in the tail of his eye,--just as
the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbour Barnes's little boy."
For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the
atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any positive
overt act of tyranny on the one hand or rebellion on the other. But on
the very Saturday night in which Dr. Riccabocca was installed in the
four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened revolution
commenced. In the dead of that night personal outrage was committed on
the stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr. Stirn, who was the earliest
riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, that the knob
of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously broken off;
that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some jacobinical
villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish or scroll-work,
"Dam the stoks!" Mr. Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much
too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings
with horror and alarm. And when the squire came into his dressing-room
at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet)
informed him, with a mysterious air, that Mr. Stirn had something "very
partikler to communicate about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and
'sault."
The squire stared, and bade Mr. Stirn be admitted.
"Well?" cried the squire, suspending the operation of stropping his
razor.
Mr. Stirn groaned.
"Well, man, what now?"
"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr.
Stirn; "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign
Papishers have been semminating--"
"Been what?"
"Semminating--"
"Disseminating, you blockhead,--disseminating what?"
"Damn the stocks," began Mr. Stirn, plunging right /in medias res/, and
by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric.
"Mr. Stirn!" cried the squire, reddening, "did you say, 'Damn the
stocks'?--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"
"Lord forbid, sir; that's what they say: that's what they have digged on
it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four holes,
and broken the capital of the elewation."
The squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor;
he seated himself in his armchair majestically, crossed his legs, and, in
a voice that affected tranquillity, said,--
"Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an
assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks. Compose
yourself; be calm. Now! What the devil is come to the parish?"
"Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr. Stirn: and then laying the forefinger
of the right hand on the palm of the left he narrated the case.
"And whom do you suspect? Be calm now; don't speak in a passion. You
are a witness, sir,--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and
fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do you
suspect, I say?" Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his
thumb over his shoulder, and whispered, "I hear as how the two Papishers
slept at your honour's last night."
"What, dolt! do you suppose Dr. Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to
bung up the holes in my new stocks?"
"Noa; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have been
semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honour knows
as how the parson set his face agin the stocks. Wait a bit, sir,--don't
fly at me yet. There be a boy in this here parish--"
"A boy! ah, fool, now you are nearer the mark. The parson write 'Damn
the stocks,' indeed! What boy do you mean?"
"And that boy be cockered up much by Mr. Dale; and the Papisher went and
sat with him and his mother a whole hour t' other day; and that boy is as
deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and hiding
hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up,--and that 'ere boy
is Lenny Fairfield."
"Whew," said the squire, whistling, "you have not your usual senses about
you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield,--pattern boy of the village. Hold
your tongue. I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish, after
all: some good-for-nothing vagrant--that cursed tinker, who goes about
with a very vicious donkey,--a donkey that I caught picking thistles out
of the very eyes of the old stocks! Shows how the tinker brings up his
donkeys! Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day is Sunday; worst day of
the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows and depredations.
Between the services, and after evening church, there are always idle
fellows from all the neighbouring country about, as you know too well.
Depend on it, the real culprits will be found gathering round the stocks,
and will betray themselves; have your eyes, ears, and wits about you, and
I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the matter before the day's
out. And if we do," added the squire, "we'll make an example of the
ruffian!"
"In course," said Stirn: "and if we don't find him we must make an
example all the same. That's what it is, sir. That's why the stocks
ben't respected; they has not had an example yet,--we wants an example."
"On my word I believe that's very true; and we'll clap in the first idle
fellow you catch in anything wrong, and keep him there for two hours at
least."
"With the biggest pleasure, your honour,--that's what it is."
And Mr. Stirn having now got what he considered a complete and
unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean parish,
/quoad/ the stocks, took his departure.
CHAPTER X.
"Randal," said Mrs. Leslie on this memorable Sunday,--"Randal, do you
think of going to Mr. Hazeldean's?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr. Egerton does not object to it; and
as I do not return to Eton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing
Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr. Egerton's
natural heir."
"Gracious me!" cried Mrs. Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and
kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced
in her conduct,--"gracious me! natural heir to the old Leslie property!"
"He is Mr. Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out
his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr. Egerton at all."
"But," said poor Mrs. Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be a
shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to Oxford,
and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not mean
anything by it."
"Anything, Mother, yes,--but not the thing you suppose. No matter. It
is enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as
seems to me best."
Here the dialogue was suspended by the entrance of the other members of
the family, dressed for church.
"It can't be time for church! No, it can't," exclaimed Mrs. Leslie. She
was never in time for anything,
"Last bell ringing," said Mr. Leslie, who, though a slow man, was
methodical and punctual. Mrs. Leslie made a frantic rush at the door,
the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze, dashed up the stairs, burst
into her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest
shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl
on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to
conceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back
like a whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in
waiting; and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the
shabby house to the dilapidated church.
The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was
the income of the parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had
belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The
vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than L100 a
year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a
good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious
cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary
confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged
creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can
exchange one extra-parochial thought, had lulled him into a lazy
mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income
allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or
charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond the
example of his sinless life, and such negative effect as might be
produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners
troubled him very little; and but for the influence which, in hours of
Montfydget activity, Mrs. Leslie exercised over the most tractable,--that
is, the children and the aged,--not half-a-dozen persons would have known
or cared whether he shut up his church or not.
But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr.
Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and
the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet
learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the
choral frogs in Aristophanes; and there was a long sermon a propos to
nothing which could possibly interest the congregation,--being, in fact,
some controversial homily which Mr. Dumdrum had composed and preached
years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud
universal grunt, as if of relief and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of
shoes, and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church door.
Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and as soon as dinner
was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall.
Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and
quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he
tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a guide
for the first two or three miles. Though Randal had not the gracious
open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was
still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice at war with the character
of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his
inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the
boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic
comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some
compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his
brows. There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding in your agricultural
peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish specimen of the class,
he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain. He paused, scratched his
head, and, glancing affectionately towards his companion, exclaimed,--
"But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little
pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman as
any in the land."
"Thank you," said Randal. "But I like walking better than riding,--I am
more used to it."
"Well, and you walk bra'ly,--there ben't a better walker in the county.
And very pleasant it is walking; and 't is a pretty country afore you,
all the way to the Hall."
Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to
soothe; and coming at length into a broader lane, said, "I think I can
find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into
Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his
eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's
liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot
his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.
He stayed lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of
sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued to walk on at
a quick pace. With all his intellectual culture and his restless
aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no sentiment
so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept slouchingly
homeward.
As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of
waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened. Just then a
gig emerged from one of these byroads, and took the same direction as the
pedestrian. The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded at a
foot's pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well abreast.
"You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer of the
higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the boy's
pale countenance and weary stride. "Perhaps we are going the same way,
and I can give you a lift?"
It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advantage proffered
to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please the honest
farmer.
"A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. "Have you
come far?"
"From Rood Hall."
"Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more respectfully, and
lifting his hat.
"Yes, my name is Leslie. You know Rood, then?"
"I was brought up on your father's land, sir. You may have heard of
Farmer Bruce?"
RANDAL.--"I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr. Bruce who rented,
I believe, the best part of our land, and who used to bring us cakes when
he called to see my father. He is a relation of yours?"
FARMER BRUCE.--"He was my uncle. He is dead now, poor man."
RANDAL.-"Dead! I am grieved to hear it. He was very kind to us
children. But it is long since he left my father's farm."
FARMER BRUCE (apologetically).--"I am sure he was very sorry to go. But,
you see, he had an unexpected legacy--"
RANDAL.--"And retired from business?"
FARMER BRUCE.--"No. But, having capital, he could afford to pay a good
rent for a real good farm."
RANDAL (bitterly).--"All capital seems to fly from the lands of Rood.
And whose farm did he take?"
FARMER BRUCE.--" He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazeldean. I rent it
now. We've laid out a power o' money on it. But I don't complain. It
pays well."
RANDAL.--"Would the money have paid as well sunk on my father's land?"
FARMER BRUCE.---"Perhaps it might, in the long run. But then, sir, we
wanted new premises,--barns and cattlesheds, and a deal more,--which the
landlord should do; but it is not every landlord as can afford that.
Squire Hazeldean's a rich man."
RANDAL.---"Ay!"
The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his horse into a
brisk trot.
"But which way be you going, sir? I don't care for a few miles more or
less, if I can be of service."
"I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself from a revery.
"Don't let me take you out of your way."
"O, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so it be quite my
way, sir."
The farmer, then, who was really a smart young fellow,--one of that race
which the application of capital to land has produced, and which, in
point of education and refinement, are at least on a par with the squires
of a former generation,--began to talk about his handsome horse, about
horses in general, about hunting and coursing: he handled all these
subjects with spirit, yet with modesty. Randal pulled his hat still
lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt him till they passed the
Casino, when, struck by the classic air of the place, and catching a
scent from the orange-trees, the boy asked abruptly, "Whose house is
that?"
"Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent to a foreign
mounseer. They say he is quite the gentleman, but uncommonly poor."
"Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim garden, the neat
terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door of the house being open)
catching a glimpse of the painted hall within,--"poor? The place seems
well kept. What do you call poor, Mr. Bruce?"
The farmer laughed. "Well, that's a home question, sir. But I believe
the mounseer is as poor as a man can be who makes no debts and does not
actually starve."
"As poor as my father?" asked Randal, openly and abruptly.
"Lord, sir! your father be a very rich man compared to him." Randal
continued to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast of his
slovenly shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances. No trim
garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms. Here poverty
at least was elegant,--there, how squalid! He did not comprehend at how
cheap a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected. They now
approached the extremity of the squire's park pales; and Randal, seeing a
little gate, bade the farmer stop his gig, and descended. The boy
plunged amidst the thick oak groves; the farmer went his way blithely,
and his mellow merry whistle came to Randal's moody ear as he glided
quick under the shadow of the trees.
He arrived at the Hall to find that all the family were at church; and,
according to the patriarchal custom, the churchgoing family embraced
nearly all the servants. It was therefore an old invalid housemaid who
opened the door to him. She was rather deaf, and seemed so stupid that
Randal did not ask leave to enter and wait for Frank's return. He
therefore said briefly that he would just stroll on the lawn, and call
again when church was over.
The old woman stared, and strove to hear him; meanwhile Randal turned
round abruptly, and sauntered towards the garden side of the handsome old
house.
There was enough to attract any eye in the smooth greensward of the
spacious lawn, in the numerous parterres of variegated flowers, in the
venerable grandeur of the two mighty cedars, which threw their still
shadows over the grass, and in the picturesque building, with its
projecting mullions and heavy gables; yet I fear that it was with no
poet's nor painter's eye that this young old man gazed on the scene
before him.
He beheld the evidence of wealth--and the envy of wealth jaundiced his
soul.
Folding his arms on his breast, he stood a while, looking all around him,
with closed lips and lowering brow; then he walked slowly on, his eyes
fixed on the ground, and muttered to himself,--
"The heir to this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell
me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim,
'Knowledge is power.' And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge
ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born? I
don't wonder that the poor should hate the rich. But of all the poor,
who should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman? I suppose Audley
Egerton means me to come into parliament, and be a Tory like himself?
What! keep things as they are! No; for me not even Democracy, unless
there first come Revolution. I understand the cry of a Marat,--'More
blood!' Marat had lived as a poor man, and cultivated science--in the
sight of a prince's palace."
He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor old Hall,
which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace;
and, with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backward, as if
not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it conjured up.
"But," he continued to soliloquize,--"but of revolution there is no
chance. Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in revolutions
should thrive in this commonplace life. Knowledge is power. Well, then,
shall I have no power to oust this blockhead? Oust him--what from? His
father's halls? Well, but if he were dead, who would be the heir of
Hazeldean? Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in blood to
this squire as any one, if he had no children? Oh, but the boy's life is
worth ten of mine! Oust him from what? At least from the thoughts of
his Uncle Egerton,--an uncle who has never even seen him! That, at
least, is more feasible. 'Make my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley
Egerton? Ay,--and to the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors.
Simulation! simulation! Lord Bacon allows simulation. Lord Bacon
practised it, and--"
Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts,
the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where
the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha; and just as he was
fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the
ground went from under him, and--slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie!
It so happened that the squire, whose active genius was always at some
repair or improvement, had been but a few days before widening and
sloping off the ditch just in that part, so that the earth was fresh and
damp, and not yet either turfed or flattened down. Thus when Randal,
recovering his first surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he found his
clothes covered with mud; while the rudeness of the fall was evinced by
the fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat, which, hollowed
here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition generally, was as
little like the hat of a decorous, hard-reading young gentleman--protege
of the dignified Mr. Audley Egerton--as any hat picked out of a kennel
after some drunken brawl possibly could be.
Randal was dizzy and stunned and bruised, and it was some moments before
he took heed of his raiment. When he did so his spleen was greatly
aggravated. He was still boy enough not to like the idea of presenting
himself to the unknown squire and the dandy Frank in such a trim: he
resolved incontinently to regain the lane and return home, without
accomplishing the object of his journey; and seeing the footpath right
before him, which led to a gate that he conceived would admit him into
the highway sooner than the path by which he had come, he took it at
once.
It is surprising how little we human creatures heed the warnings of our
good genius. I have no doubt that some benignant power had precipitated
Randal Leslie into the ditch, as a significant hint of the fate of all
who choose what is, nowadays; by no means an uncommon step in the march
of intellect,--namely, the walking backwards, in order to gratify a
vindictive view of one's neighbour's property! I suspect that, before
this century is out, many a fine fellow will thus have found his ha-ha,
and scrambled out of the ditch with a much shabbier coat than he had on
when he fell into it. But Randal did not thank his good genius for
giving him a premonitory tumble,--and I never yet knew a man who did!
CHAPTER, XI.
The squire was greatly ruffled at breakfast that morning. He was too
much of an Englishman to bear insult patiently, and he considered that he
had been personally insulted in the outrage offered to his recent
donation to the parish. His feelings, too, were hurt as well as his
pride. There was something so ungrateful in the whole thing, just after
he had taken so much pains, not only in the resuscitation but the
embellishment of the stocks. It was not, however, so rare an occurrence
for the squire to be ruffled as to create any remark. Riccabocca,
indeed, as a stranger, and Mrs. Hazeldean, as a wife, had the quick tact
to perceive that the host was glum and the husband snappish; but the one
was too discreet, and the other too sensible, to chafe the new sore,
whatever it might be, and shortly after breakfast the squire retired into
his study, and absented himself from morning service. In his delightful
"Life of Oliver Goldsmith," Mr. Forster takes care to touch our hearts by
introducing his hero's excuse for not entering the priesthood. "He did
not feel himself good enough." Thy Vicar of Wakefield, poor Goldsmith,
was an excellent substitute for thee; and Dr. Primrose, at least, will be
good enough for the world until Miss Jemima's fears are realized. Now,
Squire Hazeldean had a tenderness of conscience much less reasonable than
Goldsmith's. There were occasionally days in which he did not feel good
enough--I don't say for a priest, but even for one of the congregation,--
"days in which," said the squire in his own blunt way, "as I have never
in my life met a worse devil than a devil of a temper, I'll not carry
mine into the family pew. He sha'n't be growling out hypocritical
responses from my poor grandmother's prayer-book." So the squire and his
demon stayed at home. But the demon was generally cast out before the
day was over: and on this occasion, when the bell rang for afternoon
service, it may be presumed that the squire had reasoned or fretted
himself into a proper state of mind; for he was then seen sallying forth
from the porch of his hall, arm-in-arm with his wife, and at the head of
his household. The second service was (as is commonly the case in rural
districts) more numerously attended than the first one; and it was our
parson's wont to devote to this service his most effective discourse.
Parson Dale, though a very fair scholar, had neither the deep theology
nor the archaeological learning that distinguish the rising generation of
the clergy. I much doubt if he could have passed what would now be
called a creditable examination in the Fathers; and as for all the nice
formalities in the rubric, he would never have been the man to divide a
congregation or puzzle a bishop. Neither was Parson Dale very erudite in
ecclesiastical architecture. He did not much care whether all the
details in the church were purely Gothic or not; crockets and finials,
round arch and pointed arch, were matters, I fear, on which he had never
troubled his head.
But one secret Parson Dale did possess, which is perhaps of equal
importance with those subtler mysteries,--he knew how to fill his church!
Even at morning service no pews were empty, and at evening service the
church overflowed.
Parson Dale, too, may be considered nowadays to hold but a mean idea of
the spiritual authority of the Church. He had never been known to
dispute on its exact bearing with the State,--whether it was incorporated
with the State or above the State, whether it was antecedent to the
Papacy or formed from the Papacy, etc. According to his favourite maxim,
"Quieta non movere,"--["Not to disturb things that are quiet."]--I have
no doubt that he would have thought that the less discussion is provoked
upon such matters the better for both Church and laity. Nor had he ever
been known to regret the disuse of the ancient custom of excommunication,
nor any other diminution of the powers of the priesthood, whether
minatory or militant; yet for all this, Parson Dale had a great notion of
the sacred privilege of a minister of the gospel,--to advise, to deter,
to persuade, to reprove. And it was for the evening service that he
prepared those sermons which may be called "sermons that preach at you."
He preferred the evening for that salutary discipline, not only because
the congregation was more numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man
in his own innocent way, he knew that people bear better to be preached
at after dinner than before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the
heart when the stomach is at peace. There was a genial kindness in
Parson Dale's way of preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible,
fatherly, a manner that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with so
much art that nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the
sinner he was exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached
at the squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock, the churchwarden,
as boldly as at Hodge the ploughman and Scrub the hedger. As for
Mr. Stirn, he had preached at him more often than at any one in the
parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the
grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale's sermons something of
that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had
not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder
divines. Like them, he did not scruple now and then to introduce an
anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural
author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an
argument more plain. And the good man had an object in this, a little
distinct from, though wholly subordinate to, the main purpose of his
discourse. He was a friend to knowledge,--but to knowledge accompanied
by religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the
ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son,
with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the parson for further
explanation, and so to be lured on to a little solid or graceful
instruction, under a safe guide.
Now, on the present occasion, the parson, who had always his eye and
heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of
his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent
was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and
inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the
squire,--seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the
precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor,
meditated nothing less than a great Political Sermon,--a sermon that
should extract from the roots of social truths a healing virtue for the
wound that lay sore, but latent, in the breast of his parish of
Hazeldean.
And thus ran--
THE POLITICAL SERMON OF PARSON DALE.
CHAPTER XII.
For every man shall bear his own burden.--Gal. vi. 5.
"BRETHREN! every man has his burden. If God designed our lives to end at
the grave, may we not believe that He would have freed an existence so
brief from the cares and sorrows to which, since the beginning of the
world, mankind has been subjected? Suppose that I am a kind father, and
have a child whom I dearly love, but I know by a divine revelation that
he will die at the age of eight years, surely I should not vex his
infancy by needless preparations for the duties of life? If I am a rich
man, I should not send him from the caresses of his mother to the stern
discipline of school. If I am a poor man, I should not take him with me
to hedge and dig, to scorch in the sun, to freeze in the winter's cold:
why inflict hardships on his childhood for the purpose of fitting him for
manhood, when I know that he is doomed not to grow into man? But if, on
the other hand, I believe my child is reserved for a more durable
existence, then should I not, out of the very love I bear to him, prepare
his childhood for the struggle of life, according to that station in
which he is born, giving many a toil, many a pain, to the infant, in
order to rear and strengthen him for his duties as man? So it is with
our Father that is in heaven. Viewing this life as our infancy and the
next as our spiritual maturity, where 'in the ages to come He may show
the exceeding riches of His grace,' it is in His tenderness, as in His
wisdom; to permit the toil and the pain which, in tasking the powers and
developing the virtue of the soul, prepare it for 'the earnest of our
inheritance.' Hence it is that every man has his burden. Brethren, if
you believe that God is good, yea, but as tender as a human father, you
will know that your troubles in life are a proof that you are reared for
an eternity. But each man thinks his own burden the hardest to bear: the
poor-man groans under his poverty, the rich man under the cares that
multiply with wealth. For so far from wealth freeing us from trouble,
all the wise men who have written in all ages have repeated, with one
voice, the words of the wisest, 'When goods increase, they are increased
that eat them: and what good is there to the owners thereof, saving the
beholding of them with their eyes?' And this is literally true, my
brethren: for, let a man be as rich as was the great King Solomon
himself, unless he lock up all his gold in a chest, it must go abroad to
be divided amongst others; yea, though, like Solomon, he make him great
works,--though he build houses and plant vineyards, and make him gardens
and orchards,--still the gold that he spends feeds but the mouths he
employs; and Solomon himself could not eat with a better relish than the
poorest mason who builded the house, or the humblest labourer who planted
the vineyard. Therefore 'when goods increase, they are increased that
eat them.' And this, my brethren, may teach us toleration and compassion
for the rich. We share their riches, whether they will or not; we do not
share their cares. The profane history of our own country tells us that
a princess, destined to be the greatest queen that ever sat on this
throne, envied the milk-maid singing; and a profane poet, whose wisdom
was only less than that of the inspired writers, represents the man who,
by force--and wit, had risen to be a king sighing for the sleep
vouchsafed to the meanest of his subjects,--all bearing out the words of
the son of David, 'The sleep of the labouring man is sweet, whether he
eat little or much; but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to
sleep.'
"Amongst my brethren now present there is, doubtless, some one who has
been poor, and by honest industry has made himself comparatively rich.
Let his heart answer me while I speak: are not the chief cares that now
disturb him to be found in the goods he hath acquired? Has he not both
vexations to his spirit and trials to his virtue, which he knew not when
he went forth to his labour, and took no heed of the morrow? But it is
right, my brethren, that to every station there should be its care, to
every man his burden; for if the poor did not sometimes so far feel
poverty to be a burden as to desire to better their condition, and (to
use the language of the world) 'seek to rise in life,' their most
valuable energies would never be aroused; and we should not witness that
spectacle, which is so common in the land we live in,--namely, the
successful struggle of manly labour against adverse fortune,--a struggle
in which the triumph of one gives hope to thousands. It is said that
necessity is the mother of invention; and the social blessings which are
now as common to us as air and sunshine have come from that law of our
nature which makes us aspire towards indefinite improvement, enriches
each successive generation by the labours of the last, and in free
countries often lifts the child of the labourer to a place amongst the
rulers of the land. Nay, if necessity is the mother of invention,
poverty is the creator of the arts. If there had been no poverty, and no
sense of poverty, where would have been that which we call the wealth of
a country? Subtract from civilization all that has been produced by the
poor, and what remains?--the state of the savage. Where you now see
labourer and prince, you would see equality indeed,--the equality of wild
men. No; not even equality there! for there brute force becomes
lordship, and woe to the weak! Where you now see some in frieze, some in
purple, you would see nakedness in all. Where stands the palace and the
cot, you would behold but mud huts and caves. As far as the peasant
excels the king among savages, so far does the society exalted and
enriched by the struggles of labour excel the state in which Poverty
feels no disparity, and Toil sighs for no ease. On the other hand, if
the rich were perfectly contented with their wealth, their hearts would
become hardened in the sensual enjoyments it procures. It is that
feeling, by Divine Wisdom implanted in the soul, that there is vanity and
vexation of spirit in the things of Mammon, which still leaves the rich
man sensitive to the instincts of Heaven, and teaches him to seek for
happiness in those beneficent virtues which distribute his wealth to the
profit of others. If you could exclude the air from the rays of the
fire, the fire itself would soon languish and die in the midst of its
fuel; and so a man's joy in his wealth is kept alive by the air which it
warms; and if pent within itself, is extinguished.
"And this, my brethren, leads me to another view of the vast subject
opened to us by the words of the apostle, 'Every man shall bear his own
burden.' The worldly conditions of life are unequal. Why are they
unequal? O my brethren, do you not perceive? Think you that, if it had
been better for our spiritual probation that there should be neither
great nor lowly, rich nor poor, Providence would not so have ordered the
dispensations of the world, and so, by its mysterious but merciful
agencies, have influenced the framework and foundations of society? But
if from the remotest period of human annals, and in all the numberless
experiments of government which the wit of man has devised, still this
inequality is ever found to exist, may we not suspect that there is
something in the very principles of our nature to which that inequality
is necessary and essential? Ask why this inequality? Why?--as well ask
why life is the sphere of duty and the nursery of virtues! For if all
men were equal, if there were no suffering and no ease, no poverty and no
wealth, would you not sweep with one blow the half, at least, of human
virtues from the world? If there were no penury and no pain, what would
become of fortitude; what of patience; what of resignation? If there
were no greatness and no wealth, what would become of benevolence, of
charity, of the blessed human pity, of temperance in the midst of luxury,
of justice in the exercise of power? Carry the question further; grant
all conditions the same,--no reverse, no rise, and no fall, nothing to
hope for, nothing to fear,--what a moral death you would at once inflict
upon all the energies of the soul, and what a link between the Heart of
Man and the Providence of God would be snapped asunder! If we could
annihilate evil, we should annihilate hope; and hope, my brethren, is the
avenue to faith. If there be 'a time to weep and a time to laugh,' it is
that he who mourns may turn to eternity for comfort, and he who rejoices
may bless God for the happy hour. Ah, my brethren, were it possible to
annihilate the inequalities of human life, it would be the banishment of
our worthiest virtues, the torpor of our spiritual nature, the palsy of
our mental faculties. The moral world, like the world without us,
derives its health and its beauty from diversity and contrast.
"'Every man shall bear his own burden.' True; but now turn to an earlier
verse in the same chapter,--'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil
the law of Christ.' Yes, while Heaven ordains to each his peculiar
suffering, it connects the family of man into one household, by that
feeling which, more perhaps than any other, distinguishes us from the
brute creation,--I mean the feeling to which we give the name of
sympathy,--the feeling for each other! The herd of deer shun the stag
that is marked by the gunner; the flock heedeth not the sheep that creeps
into the shade to die; but man has sorrow and joy not in himself alone,
but in the joy and sorrow of those around him. He who feels only for
himself abjures his very nature as man; for do we not say of one who has
no tenderness for mankind that he is inhuman; and do we not call him who
sorrows with the sorrowful humane?
"Now, brethren, that which especially marked the divine mission of our
Lord is the direct appeal to this sympathy which distinguishes us from
the brute. He seizes, not upon some faculty of genii given but to few,
but upon that ready impulse of heart which is given to us all; and in
saying, 'Love one another,' 'Bear ye one another's burdens,' he elevates
the most delightful of our emotions into the most sacred of His laws.
The lawyer asks our Lord, 'Who is my neighbour?' Our Lord replies by the
parable of the good Samaritan. The priest and the Levite saw the wounded
man that fell among the thieves and passed by on the other side. That
priest might have been austere in his doctrine, that Levite might have
been learned in the law; but neither to the learning of the Levite nor to
the doctrine of the priest does our Saviour even deign to allude. He
cites but the action of the Samaritan, and saith to the lawyer, 'Which
now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbour unto him that fell among
the thieves? And he said, He that showed mercy unto him. Then said
Jesus unto him, Go, and do thou likewise.'
"O shallowness of human judgments! It was enough to be born a Samaritan
in order to be rejected by the priest, and despised by the Levite. Yet
now, what to us the priest and the Levite, of God's chosen race though
they were? They passed from the hearts of men when they passed the
sufferer by the wayside; while this loathed Samaritan, half thrust from
the pale of the Hebrew, becomes of our family, of our kindred; a brother
amongst the brotherhood of Love, so long as Mercy and Affliction shall
meet in the common thoroughfare of Life!
"'Bear ye one another's burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Think
not, O my brethren, that this applies only to almsgiving, to that relief
of distress which is commonly called charity, to the obvious duty of
devoting from our superfluities something that we scarcely miss to the
wants of a starving brother. No. I appeal to the poorest amongst ye, if
the worst burdens are those of the body,--if the kind word and the tender
thought have not often lightened your hearts more than bread bestowed
with a grudge, and charity that humbles you by a frown. Sympathy is a
beneficence at the command of us all,--yea, of the pauper as of the king;
and sympathy is Christ's wealth. Sympathy is brotherhood. The rich are
told to have charity for the poor, and the poor are enjoined to respect
their superiors. Good: I say not to the contrary. But I say also to the
poor, '/In your turn have charity for the rich/;' and I say to the rich,
'/In your turn respect the poor/.'
"'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' Thou,
O poor man, envy not nor grudge thy brother his larger portion of worldly
goods. Believe that he hath his sorrows and crosses like thyself, and
perhaps, as more delicately nurtured, he feels them more; nay, hath he
not temptations so great that our Lord hath exclaimed, 'How hardly shall
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of heaven'? And what are
temptations but trials; what are trials but perils and sorrows? Think
not that you can bestow no charity on the rich man, even while you take
your sustenance from his hands. A heathen writer, often cited by the
earliest preachers of the gospel, hath truly said, 'Wherever there is
room for a man there is place for a benefit.'
"And I ask any rich brother amongst you, when he hath gone forth to
survey his barns and his granaries, his gardens and orchards, if suddenly
in the vain pride of his heart, he sees the scowl on the brow of the
labourer,--if he deems himself hated in the midst of his wealth, if he
feels that his least faults are treasured up against him with the
hardness of malice, and his plainest benefits received with the
ingratitude of envy,--I ask, I say, any rich man, whether straightway all
pleasure in his worldly possessions does not fade from his heart, and
whether he does not feel what a wealth of gladness it is in the power of
the poor man to bestow! For all these things of Mammon pass away; but
there is in the smile of him whom we have served a something that we may
take with us into heaven. If, then, ye bear one another's burdens, they
who are poor will have mercy on the errors and compassion for the griefs
of the rich. To all men it was said--yes, to Lazarus as to Dives--'Judge
not, that ye be not judged.' But think not, O rich man, that we preach
only to the poor. If it be their duty not to grudge thee thy substance,
it is thine to do all that may sweeten their labour. Remember that when
our Lord said, 'How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the
kingdom of heaven,' He replied also to them who asked, 'Who then can be
saved?' 'The things which are impossible with men are possible with
God,' that is, man left to his own temptations would fail; but,
strengthened by God, he shall be saved. If thy riches are the tests of
thy trial, so may they also be the instruments of thy virtues. Prove by
thy riches that thou art compassionate and tender, temperate and benign,
and thy riches themselves may become the evidence at once of thy faith
and of thy works.
"We have constantly on our lips the simple precept, 'Do unto others as
you would be done by.' Why do we fail so often in the practice? Because
we neglect to cultivate that SYMPATHY which nature implants as an
instinct, and the Saviour exalts as a command. If thou wouldst do unto
thy neighbour as thou wouldst be done by, ponder well how thy neighbour
will regard the action thou art about to do to him. Put thyself into his
place. If thou art strong and he is weak, descend from thy strength and
enter into his weakness; lay aside thy burden for the while, and buckle
on his own; let thy sight see as through his eyes, thy heart beat as in
his bosom. Do this, and thou wilt often confess that what had seemed
just to thy power will seem harsh to his weakness. For 'as a zealous man
hath not done his duty when he calls his brother drunkard and beast,'
even so an administrator of the law mistakes his object if he writes on
the grand column of society only warnings that irritate the bold and
terrify the timid; and a man will be no more in love with law than with
virtue, 'if he be forced to it with rudeness and incivilities.' If,
then, ye would bear the burden of the lowly, O ye great, feel not only
for them, but with! Watch that your pride does not chafe them, your
power does not wantonly gall. Your worldly inferior is of the class from
which the Apostles were chosen, amidst which the Lord of Creation
descended from a throne above the seraphs."
The parson here paused a moment, and his eye glanced towards the pew near
the pulpit, where sat the magnate of Hazeldean. The squire was leaning
his chin thoughtfully on his hand, his brow inclined downwards, and the
natural glow of his complexion much heightened.
"But," resumed the parson, softly, without turning to his book, and
rather as if prompted by the suggestion of the moment--"but he who has
cultivated sympathy commits not these errors, or, if committing them,
hastens to retract. So natural is sympathy to the good man that he obeys
it mechanically when he suffers his heart to be the monitor of his
conscience. In this sympathy, behold the bond between rich and poor! By
this sympathy, whatever our varying worldly lots, they become what they
were meant to be,--exercises for the virtues more peculiar to each; and
thus, if in the body each man bear his own burden, yet in the fellowship
of the soul all have common relief in bearing the burdens of each other.
This is the law of Christ,--fulfil it, O my flock!"
Here the parson closed his sermon, and the congregation bowed their
heads.
BOOK THIRD.
INITIAL CHAPTER.
SHOWING HOW MY NOVEL CAME TO BE CALLED "MY NOVEL."
"I am not displeased with your novel, so far as it has gone," said my
father, graciously; "though as for the Sermon--" Here I trembled; but
the ladies, Heaven bless them! had taken Parson Dale under their special
protection; and observing that my father was puckering up his brows
critically, they rushed forward boldly in defence of The Sermon, and Mr.
Caxton was forced to beat a retreat. However, like a skilful general,
he renewed the assault upon outposts less gallantly guarded. But as it
is not my business to betray my weak points, I leave it to the ingenuity
of cavillers to discover the places at which the Author of "Human Error"
directed his great guns.
"But," said the captain, "you are a lad of too much spirit, Pisistratus,
to keep us always in the obscure country quarters of Hazeldean,--you will
march us out into open service before you have done with us?"
PISISTRATUS (magisterially, for he has been somewhat nettled by Mr.
Caxton's remarks, and he puts on an air of dignity in order to awe away
minor assailants).--"Yes, Captain Roland; not yet a while, but all in
good time. I have not stinted myself in canvas, and behind my foreground
of the Hall and the Parsonage I propose hereafter to open some lengthened
perspective of the varieties of English life--"
MR. CAXTON.--"Hum!"
BLANCHE (putting her hand on my father's lip).--"We shall know better the
design, perhaps, when we know the title. Pray, Mr. Author, what is the
title?"
MY MOTHER (with more animation than usual).--"Ay, Sisty, the title!"
PISISTRATUS (startled).--"The title! By the soul of Cervantes! I have
never yet thought of a title!"
CAPTAIN ROLAND (solemnly).--"There is a great deal in a good title. As a
novel reader, I know that by experience."
MR. SQUILLS.--"Certainly; there is not a catchpenny in the world but what
goes down, if the title be apt and seductive. Witness 'Old Parr's Life
Pills.' Sell by the thousand, Sir, when my 'Pills for Weak Stomachs,'
which I believe to be just the same compound, never paid for the
advertising."
MR. CAXTON.--"Parr's Life Pills! a fine stroke of genius. It is not
every one who has a weak stomach, or time to attend to it if he have.
But who would not swallow a pill to live to a hundred and fifty-two?"
PISISTRATUS (stirring the fire in great excitement).--"My title! my
title!--what shall be my title?"
MR. CAXTON (thrusting his hand into his waistcoat, and in his most
didactic of tones).--"From a remote period, the choice of a title has
perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their
invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. To
begin with the Hebrews. 'The Lips of the Sleeping' (Labia Dormientium)--
what book did you suppose that title to designate?--A Catalogue of
Rabbinical Writers! Again, imagine some young lady of old captivated by
the sentimental title of 'The Pomegranate with its Flower,' and opening
on a Treatise on the Jewish Ceremonials! Let us turn to the Romans.
Aulus Gellius commences his pleasant gossipping 'Noctes' with a list of
the titles in fashion in his day. For instance, 'The Muses' and 'The
Veil,' 'The Cornucopia,' 'The Beehive,' and 'The Meadow.' Some titles,
indeed, were more truculent, and promised food to those who love to sup
upon horrors,--such as 'The Torch,' 'The Poniard,' 'The Stiletto'--"
PISISTRATUS (impatiently).--"Yes, sir, but to come to My Novel."
MR. CAXTON (unheeding the interruption).--"You see you have a fine choice
here, and of a nature pleasing, and not unfamiliar, to a classical
reader; or you may borrow a hint from the early dramatic writers."
PISISTRATUS (more hopefully).--"Ay, there is something in the Drama akin
to the Novel. Now, perhaps, I may catch an idea."
MR. CAXTON.--"For instance, the author of the 'Curiosities of Literature'
(from whom, by the way, I am plagiarizing much of the information I
bestow upon you) tells us of a Spanish gentleman who wrote a Comedy, by
which he intended to serve what he took for Moral Philosophy."
PISISTRATUS (eagerly).--"Well, sir?"
MR. CAXTON.---"And called it 'The Pain of the Sleep of the World.'"
PISISTRATUS.--"Very comic, indeed, sir."
MR. CAXTON.--"Grave things were then called Comedies, as old things are
now called Novels. Then there are all the titles of early Romance itself
at your disposal,--'Theagenes and Chariclea' or 'The Ass' of Longus, or
'The Golden Ass' of Apuleius, or the titles of Gothic Romance, such as
'The most elegant, delicious, mellifluous, and delightful History of
Perceforest, King of Great Britain.'" And therewith my father ran over a
list of names as long as the Directory, and about as amusing.
"Well, to my taste," said my mother, "the novels I used to read when a
girl (for I have not read many since, I am ashamed to say)--"
MR. CAXTON.--"No, you need not be at all ashamed of it, Kitty."
MY MOTHER (proceeding).--"Were much more inviting than any you mention,
Austin."
THE CAPTAIN.--"True."
MR. SQUILLS.--"Certainly. Nothing like them nowadays!"
MY MOTHER.--"'Says she to her Neighbour, What?'"
THE CAPTAIN.--"'The Unknown, or the Northern Gallery'--"
MR. SQUILLS.--"'There is a Secret; Find it out!'"
PISISTRATUS (pushed to the verge of human endurance, and upsetting tongs,
poker, and fire-shovel).--" What nonsense you are talking, all of you!
For Heaven's sake consider what an important matter we are called upon to
decide. It is not now the titles of those very respectable works which
issued from the Minerva Press that I ask you to remember,--it is to
invent a title for mine,--My Novel!"
MR. CAXTON (clapping his hands gently).--"Excellent! capital! Nothing
can be better; simple, natural, pertinent, concise--"
PISISTRATUS.--"What is it, sir, what is it? Have you really thought of a
title to My Novel?"
MR. CAXTON.--"You have hit it yourself,--'My Novel.' It is your Novel;
people will know it is your Novel. Turn and twist the English language
as you will, be as allegorical as Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Fabulist, or
Puritan, still, after all, it is your Novel, and nothing more nor less
than your Novel."
PISISTRATUS (thoughtfully, and sounding the words various ways).--"'My
Novel!'--um-um! 'My Novel!' rather bold--and curt, eh?"
MR. CAXTON.--"Add what you say you intend it to depict,--Varieties in
English Life."
MY MOTHER.--"'My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life'--I don't think it
sounds amiss. What say you, Roland? Would it attract you in a
catalogue?"
My uncle hesitates, when Mr. Caxton exclaims imperiously.--"The thing is
settled! Don't disturb Camarina."
SQUILLS.--"If it be not too great a liberty, pray who or what is
Camarina?"
MR. CAXTON.--"Camarina, Mr. Squills, was a lake, apt to be low, and then
liable to be muddy; and 'Don't disturb Camarina' was a Greek proverb
derived from an oracle of Apollo; and from that Greek proverb, no doubt,
comes the origin of the injunction, 'Quieta non movere,' which became the
favourite maxim of Sir Robert Walpole and Parson Dale. The Greek line,
Mr. Squills" (here my father's memory began to warm), "is preserved by
Stephanus Byzantinus, 'De Urbibus,'
[Greek proverb]
Zenobius explains it in his proverbs; Suidas repeats Zenobius; Lucian
alludes to it; so does Virgil in the Third Book of the AEneid; and Silius
Italicus imitates Virgil,--
"'Et cui non licitum fatis Camarina moveri.'
"Parson Dale, as a clergyman and a scholar, had, no doubt, these
authorities at his fingers' end. And I wonder he did not quote them,"
quoth my father; "but to be sure he is represented as a mild man, and so
might not wish to humble the squire over-much in the presence of his
family. Meanwhile, My Novel is My Novel; and now that, that matter is
settled, perhaps the tongs, poker, and shovel may be picked up, the
children may go to bed, Blanche and Kitty may speculate apart upon the
future dignities of the Neogilos,--taking care, nevertheless, to finish
the new pinbefores he requires for the present; Roland may cast up his
account book, Mr. Squills have his brandy and water, and all the world be
comfortable, each in his own way. Blanche, come away from the screen,
get me my slippers, and leave Pisistratus to himself. [Greek line]--don't
disturb Camarina. You see, my dear," added my father kindly, as, after
settling himself into his slippers, he detained Blanche's hand in his
own,--"you see, my dear, every house has its Camarina. Alan, who is a
lazy animal, is quite content to let it alone; but woman, being the more
active, bustling, curious creature, is always for giving it a sly stir."
BLANCHE (with female dignity).--"I assure you, that if Pisistratus had
not called me, I should not have--"
MR. CAXTON (interrupting her, without lifting his eyes from the book he
had already taken).--"Certainly you would not. I am now in the midst of
the great Oxford Controversy. [The same Greek proverb]--don't disturb
Camarina."
A dead silence for half-an-hour, at the end of which--
PISISTRATUS (from behind the screen).--"Blanche, my dear, I want to
consult you."
Blanche does not stir.
PISISTRATUS.--"Blanche, I say." Blanche glances in triumph towards Mr.
Caxton.
MR. CAXTON (laying down his theological tract, and rubbing his spectacles
mournfully).--"I hear him, child; I hear him. I retract my vindication
of man. Oracles warn in vain: so long as there is a woman on the other
side of the screen, it is all up with Camarina."
CHAPTER II.
It is greatly to be regretted that Mr. Stirn was not present at the
parson's Discourse; but that valuable functionary was far otherwise
engaged,--indeed, during the summer months he was rarely seen at the
afternoon service. Not that he cared for being preached at,--not he;
Mr. Stirn would have snapped his fingers at the thunders of the Vatican.
But the fact was, that Mr. Stirn chose to do a great deal of gratuitous
business upon the day of rest. The squire allowed all persons who chose
to walk about the park on a Sunday; and many came from a distance to
stroll by the lake, or recline under the elms. These visitors were
objects of great suspicion, nay, of positive annoyance, to Mr. Stirn--
and, indeed, not altogether without reason, for we English have a natural
love of liberty, which we are even more apt to display in the grounds of
other people than in those which we cultivate ourselves. Sometimes, to
his inexpressible and fierce satisfaction, Mr. Stirn fell upon a knot of
boys pelting the swans; sometimes he missed a young sapling, and found it
in felonious hands, converted into a walking-stick; sometimes he caught a
hulking fellow scrambling up the ha-ha to gather a nosegay for his
sweetheart from one of poor Mrs. Hazeldean's pet parterres; not
infrequently, indeed, when all the family were fairly at church, some
curious impertinents forced or sneaked their way into the gardens, in
order to peep in at the windows. For these, and various other offences
of like magnitude, Mr. Stirn had long, but vainly, sought to induce the
squire to withdraw a permission so villanously abused. But though there
were times when Mr. Hazeldean grunted and growled, and swore "that he
would shut up the park, and fill it [illegally] with mantraps and spring-
guns," his anger always evaporated in words. The park was still open to
all the world on a Sunday; and that blessed day was therefore converted
into a day of travail and wrath to Mr. Stirn. But it was from the last
chime of the afternoon-service bell until dusk that the spirit of this
vigilant functionary was most perturbed; for, amidst the flocks that
gathered from the little hamlets round to the voice of the pastor, there
were always some stray sheep, or rather climbing, desultory, vagabond
goats, who struck off in all perverse directions, as if for the special
purpose of distracting the energetic watchfulness of Mr. Stirn. As soon
as church was over, if the day were fine, the whole park became a scene
animated with red cloaks or lively shawls, Sunday waistcoats and hats
stuck full of wildflowers--which last Mr. Stirn often stoutly maintained
to be Mrs. Hazeldean's newest geraniums. Now, on this Sunday,
especially, there was an imperative call upon an extra exertion of
vigilance on the part of the superintendent,--he had not only to detect
ordinary depredators and trespassers; but, first, to discover the authors
of the conspiracy against the stocks; and, secondly, to "make an
example."
He had begun his rounds, therefore, from the early morning; and just as
the afternoon bell was sounding its final peal, he emerged upon the
village green from a hedgerow, behind which he had been at watch to
observe who had the most suspiciously gathered round the stocks. At that
moment the place was deserted. At a distance, the superintendent saw the
fast disappearing forms of some belated groups hastening towards the
church; in front, the stocks stood staring at him mournfully from its
four great eyes, which had been cleansed from the mud, but still looked
bleared and stained with the inarks of the recent outrage. Here Mr.
Stirn paused, took off his hat, and wiped his brows.
"If I had sum 'un to watch here," thought he, "while I takes a turn by
the water-side, p'r'aps summat might come out; p'r'aps them as did it
ben't gone to church, but will come sneaking round to look on their
willany! as they says murderers are always led back to the place where
they ha' left the body. But in this here willage there ben't a man,
woman, or child as has any consarn for squire or parish, barring myself."
It was just as he arrived at that misanthropical conclusion that Mr.
Stirn beheld Leonard Fairfield walking very fast from his own home. The
superintendent clapped on his hat, and stuck his right arm akimbo.
"Hollo, you, sir," said he, as Lenny now came in hearing, "where be you
going at that rate?"
"Please, sir, I be going to church."
"Stop, sir,--stop, Master Lenny. Going to church!---why, the bell's
done; and you knows the parson is very angry at them as comes in late,
disturbing the congregation. You can't go to church now!"
"Please, sir--"
"I says you can't go to church now. You must learn to think a little of
others, lad. You sees how I sweats to serve the squire! and you must
serve him too. Why, your mother's got the house and premishes almost
rent-free; you ought to have a grateful heart, Leonard Fairfield, and
feel for his honour! Poor man! his heart is well-nigh bruk, I am sure,
with the goings on."
Leonard opened his innocent blue eyes, while Mr. Stirn dolorously wiped
his own.
"Look at that 'ere dumb cretur," said Stirn, suddenly, pointing to the
stocks,--" look at it. If it could speak, what would it say, Leonard
Fairfield? Answer me that! 'Damn the stocks,' indeed!"
"It was very bad in them to write such naughty words," said Lenny,
gravely. "Mother was quite shocked when she heard of it this morning."
MR. STIRN.--"I dare say she was, considering what she pays for the
premishes;" (insinuatingly) "you does not know who did it,--eh, Lenny?"
LENNY.--"No, sir; indeed I does not!"
MR. STIRN.--"Well, you see, you can't go to church,--prayers half over
by this time. You recollex that I put them stocks under your
'sponsibility,' and see the way you's done your duty by 'em! I've half a
mind to--"
Mr. Stirn cast his eyes on the eyes of the stocks. "Please, sir," began
Lenny again, rather frightened.
"No, I won't please; it ben't pleasing at all. But I forgives you this
time, only keep a sharp lookout, lad, in future. Now you must stay here
--no, there--under the hedge, and you watches if any persons comes to
loiter about, or looks at the stocks, or laughs to hisself, while I go my
rounds. I shall be back either afore church is over or just arter; so
you stay till I comes, and give me your report. Be sharp, boy, or it
will be worse for you and your mother; I can let the premishes for L4 a
year more to-morrow."
Concluding with that somewhat menacing and very significant remark, and
not staying for an answer, Mr. Stirn waved his hand and walked off.
Poor Lenny remained by the stocks, very much dejected, and greatly
disliking the neighbourhood to which the was consigned. At length he
slowly crept off to the hedge, and sat himself down in the place of
espionage pointed out to him. Now, philosophers tell us that what is
called the point of honour is a barbarous feudal prejudice. Amongst the
higher classes, wherein those feudal prejudices may be supposed to
prevail, Lenny Fairfield's occupation would not have been considered
peculiarly honourable; neither would it have seemed so to the more
turbulent spirits among the humbler orders, who have a point of honour of
their own, which consists in the adherence to each other in defiance of
all lawful authority. But to Lenny Fairfield, brought up much apart from
other boys, and with a profound and grateful reverence for the squire
instilled into all his habits of thought, notions of honour bounded
themselves to simple honesty and straightforward truth; and as he
cherished an unquestioning awe of order and constitutional authority, so
it did not appear to him that there was anything derogatory and debasing
in being thus set to watch for an offender. On the contrary, as he began
to reconcile himself to the loss of the church service, and to enjoy the
cool of the summer shade and the occasional chirp of the birds, he got to
look on the bright side of the commission to which he was deputed. In
youth, at least, everything has its bright side,--even the appointment of
Protector to the Parish Stocks. For the stocks itself Leonard had no
affection, it is true; but he had no sympathy with its aggressors, and he
could well conceive that the squire would be very much hurt at the
revolutionary event of the night. "So," thought poor Leonard in his
simple heart,--"so, if I can serve his honour, by keeping off mischievous
boys, or letting him know who did the thing, I'm sure it would be a proud
day for Mother." Then he began to consider that, however ungraciously
Mr. Stirn had bestowed on him the appointment, still it was a compliment
to him,--showed trust and confidence in him, picked him out from his
contemporaries as the sober, moral, pattern boy; and Lenny had a great
deal of pride in him, especially in matters of repute and character.
All these things considered, I say, Leonard Fairfield reclined on his
lurking-place, if not with positive delight and intoxicating rapture, at
least with tolerable content and some complacency.
Mr. Stirn might have been gone a quarter of an hour, when a boy came
through a little gate in the park, just opposite to Lenny's retreat in
the hedge, and, as if fatigued with walking, or oppressed by the heat of
the day, paused on the green for a moment or so, and then advanced under
the shade of the great tree which overhung the stocks.
Lenny pricked up his ears, and peeped out jealously.
He had never seen the boy before: it was a strange face to him.
Leonard Fairfield was not fond of strangers; moreover, he had a vague
belief that strangers were at the bottom of that desecration of the
stocks. The boy, then, was a stranger; but what was his rank? Was he of
that grade in society in which the natural offences are or are not
consonant to, or harmonious with, outrages upon stocks? On that Lenny
Fairfield did not feel quite assured. According to all the experience of
the villager, the boy was not dressed like a young gentleman. Leonard's
notions of such aristocratic costume were naturally fashioned upon the
model of Frank Hazeldean. They represented to him a dazzling vision of
snow-white trousers and beautiful blue coats and incomparable cravats.
Now the dress of this stranger, though not that of a peasant or of a
farmer, did not in any way correspond with Lenny's notion of the costume
of a young gentleman. It looked to him highly disreputable: the coat was
covered with mud, and the hat was all manner of shapes, with a gap
between the side and crown.
Lenny was puzzled, till it suddenly occurred to him that the gate through
which the boy had passed was in the direct path across the park from a
small town, the inhabitants of which were in very bad odour at the Hall,
--they had immemorially furnished the most daring poachers to the
preserves, the most troublesome trespassers on the park, the most
unprincipled orchard robbers, and the most disputatious asserters of
various problematical rights of way, which, according to the Town, were
public, and, according to the Hall, had been private since the Conquest.
It was true that the same path led also directly from the squire's house,
but it was not probable that the wearer of attire so equivocal had been
visiting there. All things considered, Lenny had no doubt in his mind
but that the stranger was a shop-boy or 'prentice from the town of
Thorndyke; and the notorious repute of that town, coupled with this
presumption, made it probable that Lenny now saw before him one of the
midnight desecrators of the stocks. As if to confirm the suspicion,
which passed through Lenny's mind with a rapidity wholly disproportionate
to the number of lines it costs me to convey it, the boy, now standing
right before the stocks, bent down and read that pithy anathema with
which it was defaced. And having read it, he repeated it aloud, and
Lenny actually saw him smile,--such a smile! so disagreeable and
sinister! Lenny had never before seen the smile sardonic.
But what were Lenny's pious horror and dismay when this ominous stranger
fairly seated himself on the stocks, rested his heels profanely on the
lids of two of the four round eyes, and taking out a pencil and a pocket-
book, began to write.
Was this audacious Unknown taking an inventory of the church and the Hall
for the purposes of conflagration? He looked at one and at the other,
with a strange fixed stare as he wrote,--not keeping his eyes on the
paper, as Lenny had been taught to do when he sat down to his copy-book.
The fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the
shock of his fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, so that he
was glad to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to
write a line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending
to tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocket-book and leave it at
the first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall.
While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him, with the
firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may, to do
his duty. And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he
felt and the suspicions he entertained only exhibited themselves in the
following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety,--"Ben't you
ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the squire's new stocks! Do get up, and
go along with you!"
Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would
have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false
position, yet /Nemo mortalium, etc/. No one is always wise. And Randal
was in an exceedingly bad humour. The affability towards his inferiors,
for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for
impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian.
Therefore, eying Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,--
"You are an insolent young blackguard."
So curt a rejoinder made Lenny's blood fly to his face. Persuaded before
that the intruder was some lawless apprentice or shop-lad, he was now
more confirmed in that judgment, not only by language so uncivil, but by
the truculent glance which accompanied it, and which certainly did not
derive any imposing dignity from the mutilated, rakish, hang-dog, ruinous
hat, under which it shot its sullen and menacing fire.
Of all the various articles of which our male attire is composed, there
is perhaps not one which has so much character and expression as the top
covering. A neat, well-brushed, short-napped, gentlemanlike hat, put on
with a certain air, gives a distinction and respectability to the whole
exterior; whereas, a broken, squashed, higgledy-piggledy sort of a hat,
such as Randal Leslie had on, would go far towards transforming the
stateliest gentleman who ever walked down St. James's Street into the
ideal of a ruffianly scamp.
Now, it is well known that there is nothing more antipathetic to your
peasant-boy than a shop-boy. Even on grand political occasions, the
rural working-class can rarely be coaxed into sympathy with the trading
town class. Your true English peasant is always an aristocrat.
Moreover, and irrespectively of this immemorial grudge of class, there is
something peculiarly hostile in the relationship between boy and boy when
their backs are once up, and they are alone on a quiet bit of green,--
something of the game-cock feeling; something that tends to keep alive,
in the population of this island (otherwise so lamblike and peaceful),
the martial propensity to double the thumb tightly over the four fingers,
and make what is called "a fist of it." Dangerous symptoms of these
mingled and aggressive sentiments were visible in Lenny Fairfield at the
words and the look of the unprepossessing stranger. And the stranger
seemed aware of them; for his pale face grew more pale, and his sullen
eye more fixed and more vigilant.
"You get off them stocks," said Lenny, disdaining to reply to the coarse
expressions bestowed on him; and, suiting the action to the word, he gave
the intruder what he meant for a shove, but what Randal took for a blow.
The Etonian sprang up, and the quickness of his movement, aided but by a
slight touch of his hand, made Lenny lose his balance, and sent him neck-
and-crop over the stocks. Burning with rage, the young villager rose
alertly, and, flying at Randal, struck out right and left.
CHAPTER III.
Aid me, O ye Nine! whom the incomparable Persius satirized his
contemporaries for invoking, and then, all of a sudden, invoked on his
own behalf,--aid me to describe that famous battle by the stocks, and in
defence of the stocks, which was waged by the two representatives of
Saxon and Norman England. Here, sober support of law and duty and
delegated trust,--/pro aris et focis/; there, haughty invasion and
bellicose spirit of knighthood and that respect for name and person which
we call "honour." Here, too, hardy physical force,--there, skilful
discipline. Here--The Nine are as deaf as a post, and as cold as a
stone! Plague take the jades! I can do better without them.
Randal was a year or two older than Lenny, but he was not so tall nor so
strong, nor even so active; and after the first blind rush, when the two
boys paused, and drew back to breathe, Lenny, eying the slight form and
hueless cheek of his opponent, and seeing blood trickling from Randal's
lip, was seized with an instantaneous and generous remorse. "It was not
fair," he thought, "to fight one whom he could beat so easily." So,
retreating still farther, and letting his arms fall to his side, he said
mildly, "There, let's have no more of it; but go home and be good."
Randal Leslie had no remarkable degree of that constitutional quality
called physical courage; but he had some of those moral qualities which
supply its place. He was proud, he was vindictive, he had high self-
esteem, he had the destructive organ more than the combative,--what had
once provoked his wrath it became his instinct to sweep away. Therefore,
though all his nerves were quivering, and hot tears were in his eyes, he
approached Lenny with the sternness of a gladiator, and said between his
teeth, which he set hard, choking back the sob of rage and pain,--
"You have struck me--and you shall not stir from this ground till I have
made you repent it. Put up your hands,--defend yourself."
Lenny mechanically obeyed; and he had good need of the admonition; for if
before he had had the advantage, now that Randal had recovered the
surprise to his nerves, the battle was not to the strong.
Though Leslie had not been a fighting boy at Eton, still his temper had
involved him in some conflicts when he was in the lower forms, and he had
learned something of the art as well as the practice in pugilism,--an
excellent thing too, I am barbarous enough to believe, and which I hope
will never quite die out of our public schools. Ah, many a young duke
has been a better fellow for life from a fair set-to with a trader's son;
and many a trader's son has learned to look a lord more manfully in the
face on the hustings, from the recollection of the sound thrashing he
once gave to some little Lord Leopold Dawdle.
So Randal now brought his experience and art to bear; put aside those
heavy roundabout blows, and darted in his own, quick and sharp, supplying
to the natural feebleness of his arm the due momentum of pugilistic
mechanics. Ay, and the arm, too, was no longer so feeble; for strange is
the strength that comes from passion and pluck!
Poor Lenny, who had never fought before, was bewildered; his sensations
grew so entangled that he could never recall them distinctly; he had a
dim reminiscence of some breathless impotent rush, of a sudden blindness
followed by quick flashes of intolerable light, of a deadly faintness,
from which he was roused by sharp pangs--here--there--everywhere; and
then all he could remember was, that he was lying on the ground, huddled
up and panting hard, while his adversary bent over him with a countenance
as dark and livid as Lara himself might have bent over the fallen Otho.
For Randal Leslie was not one who, by impulse and nature, subscribed to
the noble English maxim, "Never hit a foe when he is down;" and it cost
him a strong, if brief, self-struggle not to set his heel on that
prostrate form. It was the mind, not the heart, that subdued the savage
within him, as muttering something inwardly--certainly not Christian
forgiveness--the victor turned gloomily away.
CHAPTER IV.
Just at that precise moment, who should appear but Mr. Stirn! For, in
fact, being extremely anxious to get Lenny into disgrace, he had hoped
that he should have found the young villager had shirked the commission
intrusted to him; and the right-hand man had slily come back to see if
that amiable expectation were realized. He now beheld Lenny rising with
some difficulty, still panting hard, and with hysterical sounds akin to
what is vulgarly called blubbering, his fine new waistcoat sprinkled with
his own blood, which flowed from his nose,--nose that seemed to Lenny
Fairfield's feelings to be a nose no more, but a swollen, gigantic,
mountainous Slawkenbergian excrescence; in fact, he felt all nose!
Turning aghast from this spectacle, Mr. Stirn surveyed, with no more
respect than Lenny had manifested, the stranger boy, who had again seated
himself on the stocks (whether to recover his breath, or whether to show
that his victory was consummated, and that he was in his rights of
possession). "Hollo," said Mr. Stirn, "what is all this? What's the
matter, Lenny, you blockhead?"
"He will sit there," answered Lenny, in broken gasps, "and he has beat me
because I would not let him; but I doesn't mind that," added the
villager, trying hard to suppress his tears, "and I am ready again for
him--that I am."
"And what do you do lollopoping there on them blessed stocks?"
"Looking at the landscape; out of my light, man!"
This tone instantly inspired Mr. Stirn with misgivings: it was a tone so
disrespectful to him that he was seized with involuntary respect; who but
a gentleman could speak so to Mr. Stirn?
"And may I ask who you be?" said Stirn, falteringly, and half inclined to
touch his hat. "What Is your name, pray? What's your bizness?"
"My name is Randal Leslie, and my business was to visit your master's
family,--that is, if you are, as I guess from your manner, Mr.
Hazeldean's ploughman!"
So saying, Randal rose; and moving on a few paces, turned, and throwing
half-a-crown on the road, said to Lenny, "Let that pay you for your
bruises, and remember another time how you speak to a gentleman. As for
you, fellow,"--and he pointed his scornful hand towards Mr. Stirn, who,
with his mouth open, and his hat now fairly off, stood bowing to the
earth,--"as for you, give my compliments to Mr. Hazeldean, and say that
when he does us the honour to visit us at Rood Hall, I trust that the
manners of our villagers will make him ashamed of Hazeldean."
Oh, my poor Squire! Rood Hall ashamed of Hazeldean! If that message had
been delivered to you, you would never have looked up again!
With those bitter words, Randal swung himself over the stile that led
into the parson's glebe, and left Lenny Fairfield still feeling his nose,
and Mr. Stirn still bowing to the earth.
CHAPTER V.
Randal Leslie had a very long walk home; he was bruised and sore from
head to foot, and his mind was still more sore and more bruised than his
body. But if Randal Leslie had rested himself in the squire's gardens,
without walking backwards and indulging in speculations suggested by
Marat, and warranted by my Lord Bacon, he would have passed a most
agreeable evening, and really availed himself of the squire's wealth by
going home in the squire's carriage. But because he chose to take so
intellectual a view of property, he tumbled into a ditch; because he
tumbled into a ditch, he spoiled his clothes; because he spoiled his
clothes, he gave up his visit; because he gave up his visit, he got into
the village green, and sat on the stocks with a hat that gave him the air
of a fugitive from the treadmill; because he sat on the stocks--with that
hat, and a cross face under it--he had been forced into the most
discreditable squabble with a clodhopper, and was now limping home, at
war with gods and men; ergo (this is a moral that will bear repetition),
--ergo, when you walk in a rich man's grounds, be contented to enjoy what
is yours, namely, the prospect,--I dare say you will enjoy it more than
he does!
CHAPTER VI.
If, in the simplicity of his heart and the crudity of his experience,
Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr. Stirn would address to
him some words in approbation of his gallantry and in sympathy for his
bruises, he soon found himself wofully mistaken. That truly great man,
worthy prime minister of Hazeldean, might perhaps pardon a dereliction
from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the interests
of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief; but he was
inexorable to that worst of diplomatic offences,--an ill-timed, stupid,
over-zealous obedience to orders, which, if it established the devotion
of the employee, got the employer into what is popularly called a scrape!
And though, by those unversed in the intricacies of the human heart, and
unacquainted with the especial hearts of prime ministers and right-hand
men, it might have seemed natural that Mr. Stirn, as he stood still, hat
in hand, in the middle of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by
the mortification he had received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would
have felt that that young gentleman was the proper object of his
resentment, yet such a breach of all the etiquette of diplomatic life as
resentment towards a superior power was the last idea that would have
suggested itself to the profound intellect of the premier of Hazeldean.
Still, as rage, like steam, must escape somewhere, Mr. Stirn, on feeling
--as he afterwards expressed it to his wife--that his "buzzom was a
burstin'," turned with the natural instinct of self-preservation to the
safety-valve provided for the explosion; and the vapours within him
rushed into vent upon Lenny Fairfield. He clapped his hat on his head
fiercely, and thus relieved his "buzzom."
"You young willain! you howdaeious wiper! and so all this blessed Sabbath
afternoon, when you ought to have been in church on your marrow-bones, a
praying for your betters, you has been a fitting with a young gentleman,
and a wisiter to your master, on the wery place of the parridge
hinstitution that you was to guard and pertect; and a bloodying it all
over, I declares, with your blaggard little nose!" Thus saying, and as
if to mend the matter, Mr. Stirn aimed an additional stroke at the
offending member; but Lenny mechanically putting up both arms to defend
his face, Mr. Stirn struck his knuckles against the large brass buttons
that adorned the cuff of the boy's coat-sleeve,--an incident which
considerably aggravated his indignation. And Lenny, whose spirit was
fairly roused at what the narrowness of his education conceived to be a
signal injustice, placing the trunk of the tree between Mr. Stirn and
himself, began that task of self-justification which it was equally
impolitic to conceive and imprudent to execute, since, in such a case,
to justify was to recriminate.
"I wonder at you, Master Stirn,--if Mother could hear you! You know it
was you who would not let me go to church; it was you who told me to--"
"Fit a young gentleman, and break the Sabbath," said Mr. Stirn,
interrupting him with a withering sneer. "Oh, yes! I told you to
disgrace his honour the squire, and me, and the parridge, and bring us
all into trouble. But the squire told me to make an example, and I
will!" With those words, quick as lightning flashed upon Mr. Stirn's
mind the luminous idea of setting Lenny in the very stocks which he had
too faithfully guarded. Eureka! the "example" was before him! Here he
could gratify his long grudge against the pattern boy; here, by such a
selection of the very best lad in the parish, he could strike terror into
the worst; here he could appease the offended dignity of Randal Leslie;
here was a practical apology to the squire for the affront put upon his
young visitor; here, too, there was prompt obedience to the squire's own
wish that the stocks should be provided as soon as possible with a
tenant. Suiting the action to the thought, Mr. Stirn made a rapid plunge
at his victim, caught him by the skirt of his jacket; and in a few
seconds more, the jaws of the stocks had opened, and Lenny Fairfield was
thrust therein,--a sad spectacle of the reverses of fortune. This done,
and while the boy was too astounded, too stupefied, by the suddenness of
the calamity, for the resistance he might otherwise have made,--nay, for
more than a few inaudible words,--Mr. Stirn hurried from the spot, but
not without first picking up and pocketing the half-crown designed for
Lenny, and which, so great had been his first emotions, he had hitherto
even almost forgotten. He then made his way towards the church, with the
intention to place himself close by the door, catch the squire as he came
out, whisper to him what had passed, and lead him, with the whole
congregation at his heels, to gaze upon the sacrifice offered up to the
joint powers of Nemesis and Themis.
CHAPTER VII.
Unaffectedly I say it--upon the honour of a gentleman, and the reputation
of an author,--unaffectedly I say it, no words of mine can do justice to
the sensations experienced by Lenny Fairfield, as be sat alone in that
place of penance. He felt no more the physical pain of his bruises; the
anguish of his mind stifled and overbore all corporeal suffering,--an
anguish as great as the childish breast is capable of holding.
For first and deepest of all, and earliest felt, was the burning sense
of injustice. He had, it might be with erring judgment, but with all
honesty, earnestness, and zeal, executed the commission entrusted to him;
he had stood forth manfully in discharge of his duty; he had fought for
it, suffered for it, bled for it. This was his reward! Now in Lenny's
mind there was pre-eminently that quality which distinguishes the Anglo
Saxon race,--the sense of justice. It was perhaps the strongest
principle in his moral constitution; and the principle had never lost its
virgin bloom and freshness by any of the minor acts of oppression and
iniquity which boys of higher birth often suffer from harsh parents, or
in tyrannical schools. So that it was for the first time that that iron
entered into his soul, and with it came its attendant feeling,--the
wrathful, galling sense of impotence. He had been wronged, and he had no
means to right himself. Then came another sensation, if not so deep, yet
more smarting and envenomed for the time,--shame! He, the good boy of
all good boys; he, the pattern of the school, and the pride of the
parson; he, whom the squire, in sight of all his contemporaries, had
often singled out to slap on the back, and the grand squire's lady to pat
on the head, with a smiling gratulation on his young and fair repute; he,
who had already learned so dearly to prize the sweets of an honourable
name,--he to be made, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye, a mark for
opprobrium, a butt of scorn, a jeer, and a byword! The streams of his
life were poisoned at the fountain. And then came a tenderer thought of
his mother! of the shock this would be to her,--she who had already begun
to look up to him as her stay and support; he bowed his head, and the
tears, long suppressed, rolled down.
Then he wrestled and struggled, and strove to wrench his limbs from that
hateful bondage,--for he heard steps approaching. And he began to
picture to himself the arrival of all the villagers from church, the sad
gaze of the parson, the bent brow of the squire, the idle, ill-suppressed
titter of all the boys, jealous of his unspotted character,--character of
which the original whiteness could never, never be restored!
He would always be the boy who had sat in the stocks! And the words
uttered by the squire came back on his soul, like the voice of conscience
in the ears of some doomed Macbeth: "A sad disgrace, Lenny,--you'll never
be in such a quandary." "Quandary"--the word was unfamiliar to him; it
must mean something awfully discreditable. The poor boy could have
prayed for the earth to swallow him.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Kettles and frying-pans! what has us here?" cried the tinker.
This time Mr. Sprott was without his donkey; for it being Sunday, it is
presumed that the donkey was enjoying his Sabbath on the common. The
tinker was in his Sunday's best, clean and smart, about to take his
lounge in the park.
Lenny Fairfield made no answer to the appeal.
"You in the wood, my baby! Well, that's the last sight I should ha'
thought to see. But we all lives to larn," added the tinker,
sententiously. "Who gave you them leggins? Can't you speak, lad?"
"Nick Stirn."
"Nick Stirn! Ay, I'd ha' ta'en my davy on that: and cos vy?"
"'Cause I did as he told me, and fought a boy as was trespassing on these
very stocks; and he beat me--but I don't care for that; and that boy was
a young gentleman, and going to visit the squire; and so Nick Stirn--"
Lenny stopped short, choked by rage and humiliation.
"Augh," said the tinker, starting, "you fit with a young gentleman, did
you? Sorry to hear you confess that, my lad! Sit there and be thankful
you ha' got off so cheap. 'T is salt and battery to fit with your
betters, and a Lunnon justice o' peace would have given you two months o'
the treadmill.
"But vy should you fit cos he trespassed on the stocks? It ben't your
natural side for fitting, I takes it."
Lenny murmured something not very distinguishable about serving the
squire, and doing as he was bid.
"Oh, I sees, Lenny," interrupted the tinker, in a tone of great contempt,
"you be one of those who would rayther 'unt with the 'ounds than run with
the 'are! You be's the good pattern boy, and would peach agin your own
border to curry favour with the grand folks. Fie, lad! you be sarved
right; stick by your border, then you'll be 'spected when you gets into
trouble, and not be 'varsally 'spised,--as you'll be arter church-time!
Vell, I can't be seen 'sorting with you, now you are in this d'rogotary
fix; it might hurt my c'r'acter, both with them as built the stocks and
them as wants to pull 'em down. Old kettles to mend! Vy, you makes me
forgit the Sabbath! Sarvent, my lad, and wish you well out of it;
'specks to your mother, and say we can deal for the pan and shovel all
the same for your misfortin."
The tinker went his way. Lenny's eye followed him with the sullenness of
despair. The tinker, like all the tribe of human comforters, had only
watered the brambles to invigorate the prick of the horns. Yes, if Lenny
had been caught breaking the stocks, some at least would have pitied him;
but to be incarcerated for defending them! You might as well have
expected that the widows and orphans of the Reign of Terror would have
pitied Dr. Guillotin when he slid through the grooves of his own deadly
machine. And even the tinker, itinerant, ragamuffin vagabond as he was,
felt ashamed to be found with the pattern boy! Lenny's head sank again
on his breast heavily, as if it had been of lead. Some few minutes thus
passed, when the unhappy prisoner became aware of the presence of another
spectator to his shame; he heard no step, but he saw a shadow thrown over
the sward. He held his breath, and would not look up, with some vague
idea that if he refused to see he might escape being seen.
CHAPTER IX.
"/Per Bacco/!" said Dr. Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny's shoulder,
and bending down to look into his face,--"/per Bacco/! my young friend,
do you sit here from choice or necessity?"
Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had
hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence.
"I fear," resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer to his
question, "that though the situation is charming, you did not select it
yourself. What is this?"--and the irony of the tone vanished--"what is
this, my poor boy? You have been bleeding, and I see that those tears
which you try to check come from a deep well. Tell me, /povero fanciullo
mio/" (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not understand them,
sounded softly and soothingly),--"tell me, my child, how all this
happened. Perhaps I can help you; we have all erred,--we should all help
each other."
Lenny's heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself a
way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but he
again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,--
"I have not done no wrong; it ben't my fault,--and 't is that which kills
me!" concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy.
"You have not done wrong? Then," said the philosopher, drawing out his
pocket-handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the
ground,--"then I may sit beside you. I could only stoop pityingly over
sin, but I can lie down on equal terms with misfortune."
Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their
general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the
Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief, "I
have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been afflicted in
my day; yet I too say with thee, 'I have not done wrong.' /Cospetto/!"
(and here the doctor seated himself deliberately, resting one arm on the
side column of the stocks, in familiar contact with the captive's
shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene around)--
"/Cospetto/! my prison, if they had caught me, would not have had so fair
a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all one; there are no ugly
loves, and no handsome prisons."
With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native
Italian, Riccabocca turned round and renewed his soothing invitations to
confidence. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in the
guise of a Papist and wizard. All Lenny's ancient dislike to the
foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale.
Dr. Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives
which had induced Mr. Stirn to incarcerate his agent (barring only that
of personal grudge, to which Lenny's account gave him no clew). That a
man high in office should make a scapegoat of his own watch-dog for an
unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the
wisdom of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the
task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He began by
reminding, or rather informing, Leonard Fairfield of all the instances of
illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred to his
own excellent memory. He told him how the great Epictetus, when in
slavery, had a master whose favourite amusement was pinching his leg,
which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse than the
stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny's own gallant countryman,
Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire's celebrated
witticism, "En Angleterre on tue un admiral pour encourager les autres."
["In England they execute one admiral in order to encourage the
others."]
Many other illustrations, still more pertinent to the case in point, his
erudition supplied from the stores of history. But on seeing that Lenny
did not seem in the slightest degree consoled by these memorable
examples, he shifted his ground, and reducing his logic to the strict
/argumentum ad rem/, began to prove, first, that there was no disgrace at
all in Lenny's present position, that every equitable person would
recognize the tyranny of Stirn and the innocence of its victim; secondly,
that if even here he were mistaken, for public opinion was not always
righteous, what was public opinion after all?--"A breath, a puff," cried
Dr. Riccabocca, "a thing without matter,--without length, breadth, or
substance,--a shadow, a goblin of our own creating. A man's own
conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that
phantom 'opinion' than he should fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the
churchyard at dark."
Now, as Lenny did very much fear meeting a ghost if he crossed the
churchyard at dark, the simile spoiled the argument, and he shook his
head very mournfully. Dr. Riccabocca, was about to enter into a third
course of reasoning, which, had it come to an end, would doubtless have
settled the matter, and reconciled Lenny to sitting in the stocks till
doomsday, when the captive, with the quick ear and eye of terror and
calamity, became conscious that church was over, that the congregation in
a few seconds more would be flocking thitherwards. He saw visionary hats
and bonnets through the trees, which Riccabocca saw not, despite all the
excellence of his spectacles; heard phantasmal rustlings and murmurings
which Riccabocca heard not, despite all that theoretical experience in
plots, stratagems, and treasons, which should have made the Italian's ear
as fine as a conspirator's or a mole's. And with another violent but
vain effort at escape, the prisoner exclaimed,--
"Oh, if I could but get out before they come! Let me out, let me out!
Oh, kind sir, have pity,--let me out!"
"Diavolo!" said the philosopher, startled, "I wonder that I never thought
of that before. After all, I believe he has hit the right nail on the
head," and, looking close, he perceived that though the partition of wood
had hitched firmly into a sort of spring-clasp, which defied Lenny's
unaided struggles, still it was not locked (for, indeed, the padlock and
key were snug in the justice-room of the squire, who never dreamed that
his orders would be executed so literally and summarily as to dispense
with all formal appeal to himself). As soon as Dr. Riccabocca made that
discovery, it occurred to him that all the wisdom of all the schools that
ever existed can't reconcile man or boy to a bad position--the moment
there is a fair opportunity of letting him out of it. Accordingly,
without more ado, he lifted up the creaking board, and Lenny Fairfield
darted forth like a bird from a cage, halted a moment as if for breath,
or in joy; and then, taking at once to his heels, fled, as a hare to its
form, fast to his mother's home.
Dr. Riccabocca dropped the yawning wood into its place, picked up his
handkerchief and restored it to his pocket; and then, with some
curiosity, began to examine the nature of that place of duress which had
caused so much painful emotion to its rescued victim. "Man is a very
irrational animal at best," quoth the sage, soliloquizing, "and is
frightened by strange buggaboos! 'T is but a piece of wood! how little
it really injures! And, after all, the holes are but rests to the legs,
and keep the feet out of the dirt. And this green bank to sit upon,
under the shade of the elm-tree-verily the position must be more pleasant
than otherwise! I've a; great mind--" Here the doctor looked around,
and seeing the coast still clear, the oddest notion imaginable took
possession of him; yet, not indeed a notion so odd, considered
philosophically,--for all philosophy is based on practical experiment,--
and Dr. Riccabocca felt an irresistible desire practically to experience
what manner of thing that punishment of the stocks really was. "I can
but try! only for a moment," said he apologetically to his own
expostulating sense of dignity. "I have time to do it, before any one
comes." He lifted up the partition again: but stocks are built on the
true principle of English law, and don't easily allow a man to criminate
himself,--it was hard to get into them without the help of a friend.
However, as we before noticed, obstacles only whetted Dr. Riccabocca's
invention. He looked round, and saw a withered bit of stick under the
tree; this he inserted in the division of the stocks, somewhat in the
manner in which boys place a stick under a sieve for the purpose of
ensnaring sparrows; the fatal wood thus propped, Dr. Riceabocca sat
gravely down on the bank, and thrust his feet through the apertures.
"Nothing in it!" cried he, triumphantly, after a moment's deliberation.
"The evil is only in idea. Such is the boasted reason of mortals!" With
that reflection, nevertheless, he was about to withdraw his feet from
their voluntary dilemma, when the crazy stick suddenly gave way and the
partition fell back into its clasp. Dr. Riceabocca was fairly caught,--
"Facilis descensus--sed revocare gradum!" True, his hands were at
liberty, but his legs were so long that, being thus fixed, they kept the
hands from the rescue; and as Dr. Riccabocca's form was by no means
supple, and the twin parts of the wood stuck together with that firmness
of adhesion which things newly painted possess, so, after some vain
twists and contortions, in which he succeeded at length (not without a
stretch of the sinews that made them crack again) in finding the clasp
and breaking his nails thereon, the victim of his own rash experiment
resigned himself to his fate. Dr. Riceabocca was one of those men who
never do things by halves. When I say he resigned himself, I mean not
only Christian but philosophical resignation. The position was not quite
so pleasant as, theoretically, he had deemed it; but he resolved to make
himself as comfortable as he could. At first, as is natural in all
troubles to men who have grown familiar with that odoriferous comforter
which Sir Walter Raleigh is said first to have bestowed upon the
Caucasian races, the doctor made use of his hands to extract from his
pocket his pipe, match-box, and tobacco-pouch. After a few whiffs he
would have been quite reconciled to his situation, but for the discovery
that the sun had shifted its place in the heavens, and was no longer
shaded from his face by the elm-tree. The doctor again looked round, and
perceived that his red silk umbrella, which he had laid aside when he had
seated himself by Lenny, was within arm's reach. Possessing himself of
this treasure, he soon expanded its friendly folds. And thus, doubly
fortified within and without, under shade of the umbrella, and his pipe
composedly between his lips, Dr. Riceabocca gazed on his own incarcerated
legs, even with complacency.
"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native
proverbs, "'possesses all things!'--if one despises freedom, one is free!
This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed,
soliloquizing, after a pause,--"I am not sure that there is not something
more witty than manly and philosophical in that national proverb of mine
which I quoted to the fanciullo, 'that there are no handsome prisons'!
Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamed Bras de Fer, write
a book not only to prove that adversities are more necessary than
prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison is the most
pleasant and profitable? But is not this condition of mine, voluntarily
and experimentally incurred, a type of my life? Is it the first time
that I have thrust myself into a hobble? And if in a hobble of mine own
choosing, why should I blame the gods?"
Upon this, Dr. Riceabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time
and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in the
parish stocks than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser that
mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity. Dr.
Riccabocca was in the clouds.
CHAPTER X.
The dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and, /entre nous/, reader)--but
let it go no further,--we have a good many dogs among the fraternity that
are not Munitos might have seen with half an eye that the parson's
discourse had produced a very genial and humanizing effect upon his
audience.
[Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a
dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs nowadays.]
When all was over, and the congregation stood up to let Mr. Hazeldean
and his family walk first down the aisle (for that was the custom at
Hazeldean), moistened eyes glanced at the squire's sun-burned manly face,
with a kindness that bespoke revived memory of many a generous benefit
and ready service. The head might be wrong now and then,--the heart was
in the right place after all. And the lady leaning on his arm came in
for a large share of that gracious good feeling. True, she now and then
gave a little offence when the cottages were not so clean as she fancied
they ought to be,--and poor folks don't like a liberty taken with their
houses any more than the rich do; true that she was not quite so popular
with the women as the squire was, for, if the husband went too often to
the ale-house, she always laid the fault on the wife, and said, "No man
would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had a smiling face and a
clean hearth at his home;" whereas the squire maintained the more gallant
opinion that "If Gill was a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in
duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss!" Still, notwithstanding these
more obnoxious notions on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the
stiff silk gown and the handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible,
especially in the softened tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to
associate the honest, comely, beaming countenance of Mrs. Hazeldean with
comfortable recollections of soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves
and blankets in winter, cheering words and ready visits in every little
distress, and pretexts afforded by improvement in the grounds and gardens
(improvements which, as the squire, who preferred productive labour,
justly complained, "would never finish") for little timely jobs of work
to some veteran grandsire, who still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy
urchin in a family that "came too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked a
little behind, in the whitest of trousers and the stiffest of
neckcloths,--with a look of suppressed roguery in his bright hazel eye,
that contrasted his assumed stateliness of mien,--without his portion of
the silent blessing. Not that he had done anything yet to deserve it;
but we all give youth so large a credit in the future. As for Miss
Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose from too soft and feminine a
susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for some masculine oak whereon to
entwine her tendrils; and so little confined to self was the natural
lovingness of her disposition, that she had helped many a village lass to
find a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift from her own privy purse;
notwithstanding the assurances with which she accompanied the marriage
gift,--namely, that "the bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his
ungrateful sex; but that it was a comfort to think that it would be all
one in the approaching crash!" So that she had her warm partisans,
especially amongst the young; while the slim captain, on whose arm she
rested her forefinger, was at least a civil-spoken gentleman, who had
never done any harm, and who would doubtless do a deal of good if he
belonged to the parish. Nay, even the fat footman who came last, with
the family Prayer-book, had his due share in the general association of
neighbourly kindness between hall and hamlet. Few were there present to
whom he had not extended the right-hand of fellowship with a full horn of
October in the clasp of it; and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and
bred, as two-thirds of the squire's household (now letting themselves out
from their large pew under the gallery) were.
On his part, too, you could see that the squire "was moved withal," and a
little humbled moreover. Instead of walking erect, and taking bow and
courtesy as a matter of course, and of no meaning, he hung his head
somewhat, and there was a slight blush on his cheek; and as he glanced
upward and round him--shyly, as it were--and his eye met those friendly
looks, it returned them with an earnestness that had in it something
touching as well as cordial,--an eye that said, as well as eye could say,
"I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbours; but I thank you for your
good-will with my whole heart." And so readily was that glance of the
eye understood, that I think, if that scene had taken place out of doors
instead of in the church, there would have been a hurrah as the squire
passed out of sight.
Scarcely had Mr. Hazeldean got clear of the churchyard, ere Mr. Stirn was
whispering in his ear. As Stirn whispered, the squire's face grew long,
and his colour rose. The congregation, now flocking out of the church,
exchanged looks with each other; that ominous conjunction between squire
and man chilled back all the effects of the parson's sermon. The
squire struck his cane violently into the ground. "I would rather you
had told me Black Bess had got the glanders. A young gentleman, coming
to visit my son, struck and insulted in Hazeldean; a young gentleman,--
's death, sir, a relation--his grandmother was a Hazeldean. I do believe
Jemima's right, and the world's coming to an end! But Leonard Fairfield
in the stocks! What will the parson say? and after such a sermon!
'Rich man, respect the poor!' And the good widow too; and poor Mark, who
almost died in my arms! Stirn, you have a heart of stone! You
confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the deuce gave you the
right to imprison man or boy in my parish of Hazeldean without trial,
sentence, or warrant? Run and let the boy out before any one sees him:
run, or I shall--"
The squire elevated the cane, and his eyes shot fire. Mr. Stirn did not
run, but he walked off very fast. The squire drew back a few paces, and
again took his wife's arm. "Just wait a bit for the parson, while I talk
to the congregation. I want to stop 'em all, if I can, from going into
the village; but how?"
Frank heard, and replied readily,--"Give 'em some beer, sir."
"Beer! on a Sunday! For shame, Frank!" cried Mrs. Hazeldean.
"Hold your tongue, Harry. Thank you, Frank," said the squire, and his
brow grew as clear as the blue sky above him. I doubt if Riccabocca
could have got him out of his dilemma with the same ease as Frank had
done.
"Halt there, my men,--lads and lasses too,--there, halt a bit. Mrs.
Fairfield, do you hear?--halt. I think his reverence has given us a
capital sermon. Go up to the Great House all of you, and drink a glass
to his health. Frank, go with them, and tell Spruce to tap one of the
casks kept for the haymakers. Harry" (this in a whisper), "catch the
parson, and tell him to come to me instantly."
"My dear Hazeldean, what has happened? You are mad."
"Don't bother; do what I tell you."
"But where is the parson to find you?"
"Where? gadzooks, Mrs. H.,--at the stocks, to be sure!"
CHAPTER XI.
Dr. Riccabocca, awakened out of his revery by the sound of footsteps,
was still so little sensible of the indignity of his position, that he
enjoyed exceedingly, and with all the malice of his natural humour, the
astonishment and stupor manifested by Stirn, when that functionary beheld
the extraordinary substitute which fate and philosophy had found for
Lenny Fairfield. Instead of the weeping, crushed, broken-hearted captive
whom he had reluctantly come to deliver, he stared speechless and aghast
upon the grotesque but tranquil figure of the doctor enjoying his pipe,
and cooling himself under his umbrella, with a sangfroid that was truly
appalling and diabolical. Indeed, considering that Stirn always
suspected the Papisher of having had a hand in the whole of that black
and midnight business, in which the stocks had been broken, bunged up,
and consigned to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation
of dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he
had incarcerated was transformed into the doctor he found, conjoined with
the peculiarly strange eldrich and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person
of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into
the breast of the parochial tyrant; while to his first confused and
stammered exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca replied with so
tragic an air, such ominous shakes of the head, such mysterious
equivocating, long-worded sentences, that Stirn every moment felt more
and more convinced that the boy had sold himself to the Powers of
Darkness, and that he himself, prematurely and in the flesh, stood face
to face with the Arch-Enemy.
Mr. Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, which, to do him
justice, was usually prompt enough, when the squire, followed hard by the
parson, arrived at the spot. Indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean's report of the
squire's urgent message, disturbed manner, and most unparalleled
invitation to the parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's
ordinarily slow and sedate movements. And while the squire, sharing
Stirn's amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from the
stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Dr. Riccabocca under the
majestic shade of the umbrella, but not a vestige of the only being his
mind could identify with the tenancy of the stocks, Mr. Dale, catching
him by the arm, and panting hard, exclaimed with a petulance he had never
before been known to display,--except at the whisttable,--
"Mr. Hazeldean, Mr. Hazeldean, I am scandalized,--I am shocked at you.
I can bear a great deal from you, sir, as I ought to do; but to ask my
whole congregation, the moment after divine service, to go up and guzzle
ale at the Hall, and drink my health, as if a clergyman's sermon had been
a speech at a cattle-fair! I am ashamed of you, and of the parish! What
on earth has come to you all?"
"That's the very question I wish to Heaven I could answer," groaned the
squire, quite mildly and pathetically,--"What on earth has come to us
all? Ask Stirn:" (then bursting out) "Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't
you hear? What on earth has come to us all?"
"The Papisher is at the bottom of it, sir," said Stirn, provoked out of
all temper. "I does my duty, but I is but a mortal man, arter all."
"A mortal fiddlestick! Where's Leonard Fairfield, I say?"
"Him knows best," answered Stirn, retreating mechanically for safety's
sake behind the parson, and pointing to Dr. Riccabocca. Hitherto, though
both the squire and parson had indeed recognized the Italian, they had
merely supposed him to be seated on the bank. It never entered into
their heads that so respectable and dignified a man could by any
possibility be an inmate, compelled or voluntary, of the parish stocks.
No, not even though, as I before said, the squire had seen, just under
his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted in the apertures, that sight
had only confused and bewildered him, unaccompanied, as it ought to have
been, with the trunk and face of Lenny Fairfield. Those soles seemed to
him optical delusions, phantoms of the overheated brain; but now,
catching hold of Stirn, while the parson in equal astonishment caught
hold of him, the squire faltered out, "Well, this beats cock-fighting!
The man's as mad as a March hare, and has taken Dr. Rickeybockey for
Little Lenny!"
"Perhaps," said the doctor, breaking silence with a bland smile, and
attempting an inclination of the head as courteous as his position would
permit,--"perhaps, if it be quite the same to you, before you proceed to
explanations, you will just help me out of the stocks."
The parson, despite his perplexity and anger, could not repress a smile,
as he approached his learned friend, and bent down for the purpose of
extricating him.
"Lord love your reverence, you'd better not!" cried Mr. Stirn. "Don't be
tempted,--he only wants to get you into is claws. I would not go a near
him for all the--"
The speech was interrupted by Dr. Riccabocca himself, who now, thanks to
the parson, had risen into his full height, and half a head taller than
all present--even than the tall squire--approached Mr. Stirn, with a
gracious wave of the hand. Mr. Stirn retreated rapidly towards the
hedge, amidst the brambles of which he plunged himself incontinently.
"I guess whom you take me for, Mr. Stirn," said the Italian, lifting his
hat with his characteristic politeness. "It is certainly a great honour;
but you will know better one of these days, when the gentleman in
question admits you to a personal interview in another--and a hotter
world."
CHAPTER XII.
"But how on earth did you get into my new stocks?" asked the squire,
scratching his head.
"My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna."
"Did he, and what for?"
"To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca. The squire
burst out a laughing.
"And so you got into the stocks to try what it was like. Well, I can't
wonder,--it is a very handsome pair of stocks," continued the squire,
with a loving look at the object of his praise. "Nobody need be ashamed
of being seen in those stocks,--I'should not mind it myself."
"We had better move on," said the parson, dryly, "or we shall have the
whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in the same
predicament as that from which we have just extricated the doctor. Now,
pray, what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield? I can't understand a word
of what has passed. You don't mean to say that good Lenny Fairfield (who
was absent from church, by the by) can have done anything to get into
disgrace?"
"Yes, he has though," cried the squire. "Stirn, I say, Stirn!" But
Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to
his own powers of narrative at secondhand, Mr. Hazeldean now told all he
had to communicate,--the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt
punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his
young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the culprit
from public humiliation.
The parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention of the beer-
drinking, took the squire by the hand. "Ah, Mr. Hazeldean, forgive me,"
he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was only some
ebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of decorum. But
this is a sad story about Lenny brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day.
So unlike him, too. I don't know what to make of it."
"Like or unlike," said the squire, "it has been a gross insult to young
Leslie, and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the
best friends in the world. I can't think what it is," continued Mr.
Hazeldean, musingly; "but it seems that there must be always some
association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine.
There was I, son of his own mother,--who might have been shot through the
lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder! and now his wife's kinsman--
my kinsman, too--grandmother a Hazeldean,--a hard-reading, sober lad, as
I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest parish in
the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen makes a
rush at him like a mad bull. It is FATALITY!" cried the squire,
solemnly.
"Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain houses,"
observed Riccabocca. "There was the House of Pelops, and Polynices and
Eteocles, the sons of OEdipus."
"Pshaw!" said the parson; "but what's to be done?"
"Done?" said the squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie.
And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace
--for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs. Fairfield's--yet a good caning in
private--"
"Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca, mildly, "and hear me." The Italian then,
with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor
protege, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal
for the squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received
from Mr. Stirn.
"That alters the matter," said the squire, softened; "and all that is
necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman."
"Yes, that is just," rejoined the parson; "but I still don't learn how he
got out of the stocks."
Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal
share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and
honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians
when they heard Demosthenes--
"Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the parson, before
Riccabocca could finish.
With that benevolent intention all three quickened their pace, and soon
arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of their
approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of
Riccabocca's intercession, the parson was come to upbraid and the squire
to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and
lay there perdu all the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that
his mother--who sat wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and trying
in vain to listen to the parson and Mrs. Dale, who (after sending in
search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother--heard a
timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch. She started
up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his
face, sobbing aloud.
"No harm, my boy," said the parson, tenderly; "you have nothing to fear,
--all is explained and forgiven."
Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen. "Sir,"
said he, sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven,--I ain't done no wrong.
And--I've been disgraced--and I won't go to school, never no more."
"Hush, Carry!" said the parson to his wife, who with the usual liveliness
of her little temper, was about to expostulate. "Good-night, Mrs.
Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time
you will think better of it."
The parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to
report Lenny's safe return; for the squire was very uneasy about him, and
had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was
safe--"Well," said the squire," let him go the first thing in the morning
to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and
smooth again."
"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet;
"to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on me!
But I wonder Randal let him off so well,--any other boy in the sixth form
would have killed him!"
"Frank," said the parson, sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what
should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath,
but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of
another's?"
The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed
abashed, while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for
when the parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall
stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's
inquisitive eye, Mr. Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to
him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg
Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy
would not digest the stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of
philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon
interrupted by a direct appeal to the doctor respecting the number of
years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the
world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.
"Ma'am," said the doctor, reluctantly summoned away to look at a passage
in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject,--"ma'am, it
is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world,
since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its
existence."
Miss Jemima's cheeks were suffused with a deeper scarlet than Frank's
had been a few minutes before. Certainly that deceitful, heartless
compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet--such is
human blindness--it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and
too confiding soul.
"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped
majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy for
the garden now!"
Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean
whirligig.
CHAPTER XIII.
Whatever, may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs
upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian
had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily
and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the parson's,
charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask
pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was
bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful incarceration; and, to
Mrs. Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part. She was deeply
offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the
stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit. Nor was it
without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his
lessons at school,--nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his
mother's holding. The point of the school at last he yielded, though
sullenly; and the parson thought it better to temporize as to the more
unpalatable demand. Unluckily, Lenny's apprehensions of the mockery that
awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realized. Though
Stirn at first kept his own counsel the tinker blabbed the whole affair.
And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt
to hush up what had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn
told his story, as the tinker had told his own; both tales were very
unfavourable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern-boy had broken the
Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain;
the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out
the misdemeanours of his equals therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both
capacities of degraded pattern-boy and baffled spy, could expect no
mercy,--he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.
It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster and under the eye of
Mr. Dale, no one openly gave vent to malignant feelings; but the moment
those checks were removed, popular persecution bcgan.
Some pointed and mowed at him, some cursed him for a sneak, and all
shunned his society; voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he passed
through the village at dusk, "Who was put into the stocks?--baa!" "Who
got a bloody nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn?--baa!" To resist this
species of aggression would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and
a colder temper than our poor pattern-boy's. He took his resolution at
once, and his mother approved it; and the second or third day after Dr.
Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on
the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. "Please, sir," said he to
the doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red
silk umbrella over his head,--"please, sir, if you'll be good enough to
take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honour
night and day; and as for wages, Mother says, 'just suit yourself, sir.'"
"My child," said the doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him
with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo
is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk of them by and by."
Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the
vacant chair, where he had so long sat in the place of her beloved Mark;
and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to
itself, that she could bear it no longer.
Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny,--perhaps
more so; and one morning she hailed the steward as he was trotting his
hog-maued cob beside the door, and bade him tell the squire that "she
would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice
for the land and premises she held; there were plenty to step into the
place at a much better rent."
"You're a fool," said the good-natured steward; "and I'm very glad you
did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to me. You've been doing
extremely well here, and have the place, I may say, for nothing."
"Nothin' as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feelin'," said the
widow. "And now Lenny has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I
should like to go and live near him."
"Ah, yes, I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino, more fool
he; but, bless your heart, 't is no distance,--two miles or so. Can't he
come home every night after work?"
"No, sir," exclaimed the widow, almost fiercely; "he sha'n't come home
here, to be called bad names and jeered at!--he whom my dead good man was
so fond and proud of. No, sir; we poor folks have our feelings, as I
said to Mrs. Dale, and as I will say to the squire hisself. Not that I
don't thank him for all favours,--he be a good gentleman if let alone;
but he says he won't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin.
Pardin for what, I should like to know? Poor lamb! I wish you could ha'
seen his nose, sir,--as big as your two fists. Ax pardin! if the squire
had had such a nose as that, I don't think it's pardin he'd been ha'
axing. But I let the passion get the better of me,--I humbly beg you'll
excuse it, sir. I'm no schollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have
been, if the Lord had not visited us otherways. Therefore just get the
squire to let me go as soon as may be; and as for the bit o' hay and
what's on the grounds and orchard, the new comer will no doubt settle
that."
The steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the widow to
relinquish her resolution, took her message to the squire. Mr.
Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the boy's obstinate refusal
to make the /amende honorable/ to Randal Leslie, at first only bestowed a
hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude both of mother and son.
It may be supposed, however, that his second thoughts were more gentle,
since that evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent
his "Harry." Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and brusque enough
on her own account, and in such business as might especially be
transacted between herself and the cottagers, yet she never appeared as
the delegate of her lord except in the capacity of a herald of peace and
mediating angel. It was with good heart, too, that she undertook this
mission, since, as we have seen, both mother and son were great
favourites of hers. She entered the cottage with the friendliest beam
in her bright blue eye, and it was with the softest tone of her frank
cordial voice that she accosted the widow. But she was no more
successful than the steward had been. The truth is, that I don't believe
the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your
plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to propitiate and deal with
when his sense of dignity is ruffled. Nor are there many of my own
literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though we are) so sensitively
alive to the Public Opinion, wisely despised by Dr. Riccabocca, as that
same peasant. He can endure a good deal of contumely sometimes, it is
true, from his superiors (though, thank Heaven! that he rarely meets with
unjustly); but to be looked down upon and mocked and pointed at by his
own equals--his own little world--cuts him to the soul. And if you can
succeed in breaking this pride and destroying this sensitiveness, then he
is a lost being. He can never recover his self-esteem, and you have
chucked him half-way--a stolid, inert, sullen victim--to the perdition of
the prison or the convict-ship.
Of this stuff was the nature both of the widow and her son. Had the
honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not
have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended.
But Mrs. Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff, plain-
spoken one; and after all she had some little feeling for the son of a
gentleman, and a decayed, fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account,
had been assailed without any intelligible provocation; nor could she,
with her strong common-sense, attach all the importance which Mrs.
Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence of a few young cubs, which
she said truly, "would soon die away if no notice was taken of it." The
widow's mind was made up, and Mrs. Hazeldean departed,--with much chagrin
and some displeasure.
Mrs. Fairfield, however, tacitly understood that the request she had made
was granted, and early one morning her door was found locked, the key
left at a neighbour's to be given to the steward; and, on further
inquiry, it was ascertained that her furniture and effects had been
removed by the errand cart in the dead of the night. Lenny had succeeded
in finding a cottage on the road-side, not far from the Casino; and
there, with a joyous face, he waited to welcome his mother to breakfast,
and show how he had spent the night in arranging her furniture.
"Parson!" cried the squire, when all this news came upon him, as he was
walking arm in arm with Mr. Dale to inspect some proposed improvement in
the Almshouse, "this is all your fault. Why did you not go and talk to
that brute of a boy and that dolt of a woman? You've got 'soft sawder
enough,' as Frank calls it in his new-fashioned slang."
"As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both!" said the parson, in a
tone of reproachful surprise at the accusation. "But it was in vain!
O Squire, if you had taken my advice about the stocks,--'quieta non
movere'!"
"Bother!" said the squire. "I suppose I am to be held up as a tyrant, a
Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having
things smart and tidy! Stocks indeed! Your friend Rickeybockey said he
was never more comfortable in his life,--quite enjoyed sitting there.
And what did not hurt Rickeybockey's dignity (a very gentlemanlike man he
is, when he pleases) ought to be no such great matter to Master Leonard
Fairfield. But 't is no use talking! What's to be done now? The woman
must not starve; and I'm sure she can't live out of Rickeybockey's wages
to Lenny,--by the way, I hope he don't board the boy upon his and
Jackeymo's leavings: I hear they dine upon newts and sticklebacks, faugh!
I'll tell you what, Parson, now I think of it, at the back of the cottage
which she has taken there are some fields of capital land just vacant.
Rickeybockey wants to have 'em, and sounded me as to the rent when he was
at the Hall. I only half promised him the refusal. And he must give up
four or five acres of the best land round the cottage to the widow--just
enough for her to manage--and she can keep a dairy. If she want capital,
I'll lend her some in your name,--only don't tell Stirn; and as for the
rent--we'll talk of that when we see how she gets on, thankless,
obstinate jade that she is! You see," added the squire, as if he felt
there was some apology due for this generosity to an object whom he
professed to consider so ungrateful, "her husband was a faithful servant,
and so--I wish you would not stand there staring me out of countenance,
but go down to the woman at once, or Stirn will have let the land to
Rickeybockey, as sure as a gun. And hark ye, Dale, perhaps you can
contrive, if the woman is so cursedly stiffbacked, not to say the land is
mine, or that it is any favour I want to do her--or, in short, manage it
as you can for the best." Still even this charitable message failed.
The widow knew that the land was the squire's, and worth a good L3 an
acre. "She thanked him humbly for that and all favours; but she could
not afford to buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden to any one
for her living. And Lenny was well off at Mr. Rickeybockey's, and coming
on wonderfully in the garden way, and she did not doubt she could get
some washing; at all events, her haystack would bring in a good bit of
money, and she should do nicely, thank their honours."
Nothing further could be done in the direct way, but the remark about the
washing suggested some mode of indirectly benefiting the widow; and a
little time afterwards, the sole laundress in that immediate
neighbourhood happening to die, a hint from the squire obtained from the
landlady of the inn opposite the Casino such custom as she had to bestow,
which at times was not inconsiderable. And what with Lenny's wages
(whatever that mysterious item might be), the mother and son contrived to
live without exhibiting any of those physical signs of fast and
abstinence which Riccabocca and his valet gratuitously afforded to the
student in animal anatomy.
CHAPTER XIV.
Of all the wares and commodities in exchange and barter, wherein so
mainly consists the civilization of our modern world, there is not one
which is so carefully weighed, so accurately measured, so plumbed and
gauged, so doled and scraped, so poured out in minima and balanced with
scruples,--as that necessary of social commerce called "an apology"! If
the chemists were half so careful in vending their poisons, there would
be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and
oxalic acid. But, alas! in the matter of apology, it is not from the
excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it
is dispensed, that poor Humanity is hurried off to the Styx! How many
times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology! Is it
a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it? Make
your will,--you are a dead man! A life do I say?--a hecatomb of lives!
How many wars would have been prevented, how many thrones would be
standing, dynasties flourishing, commonwealths brawling round a /bema/,
or fitting out galleys for corn and cotton, if an inch or two more of
apology had been added to the proffered ell! But then that plaguy,
jealous, suspicious, old vinegar-faced Honour, and her partner Pride--as
penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint as herself--have the
monopoly of the article. And what with the time they lose in adjusting
their spectacles, hunting in the precise shelf for the precise quality
demanded, then (quality found) the haggling as to quantum,--considering
whether it should be Apothecary's weight or Avoirdupois, or English
measure or Flemish,--and, finally, the hullabuloo they make if the
customer is not perfectly satisfied with the monstrous little he gets
for his money, I don't wonder, for my part, how one loses temper and
patience, and sends Pride, Honour, and Apology all to the devil.
Aristophanes, in his comedy of "Peace," insinuates a beautiful allegory
by only suffering that goddess, though in fact she is his heroine, to
appear as a mute. She takes care never to open her lips. The shrewd
Greek knew very well that she would cease to be Peace, if she once began
to chatter. Wherefore, O reader, if ever you find your pump under the
iron heel of another man's boot, Heaven grant that you may hold your
tongue, and not make things past all endurance and forgiveness by bawling
out for an apology!
CHAPTER XV.
But the squire and his son, Frank, were large-hearted generous creatures
in the article of apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt out.
And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would offer no plaster to Randal
Leslie, they made amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality.
The squire accompanied his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family
choosing to be at home, the squire in his own hand, and from his own
head, indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied all the
wounds which the dignity of the Leslies had ever received.
This letter of apology ended with a hearty request that Randal would come
and spend a few days with his son. Frank's epistle was to the same
purport, only more Etonian and less legible.
It was some days before Randal's replies to these epistles were received.
The replies bore the address of a village near London; and stated that
the writer was now reading with a tutor preparatory to entrance to
Oxford, and could not, therefore, accept the invitation extended to him.
For the rest, Randal expressed himself with good sense, though not with
much generosity. He excused his participation in the vulgarity of such a
conflict by a bitter, but short allusion to the obstinacy and ignorance
of the village boor; and did not do what you, my kind reader, certainly
would have done under similar circumstances,--namely, intercede in behalf
of a brave and unfortunate antagonist. Most of us like a foe better
after we have fought him,--that is, if we are the conquering party; this
was not the case with Randal Leslie. There, so far as the Etonian was
concerned, the matter rested. And the squire, irritated that he could
not repair whatever wrong that young gentleman had sustained, no longer
felt a pang of regret as he passed by Mrs. Fairfield's deserted cottage.
CHAPTER XVl.
Lenny Fairfield continued to give great satisfaction to his new
employers, and to profit in many respects by the familiar kindness with
which he was treated. Riccabocca, who valued himself on penetrating into
character, had from the first seen that much stuff of no common quality
and texture was to be found in the disposition and mind of the English
village boy. On further acquaintance, he perceived that, under a child's
innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness that
required but development and direction. He ascertained that the pattern-
boy's progress at the village school proceeded from something more than
mechanical docility and readiness of comprehension. Lenny had a keen
thirst for knowledge, and through all the disadvantages of birth and
circumstance, there were the indications of that natural genius which
converts disadvantages themselves into stimulants. Still, with the germs
of good qualities lay the embryos of those which, difficult to separate,
and hard to destroy, often mar the produce of the soil. With a
remarkable and generous pride in self-repute, there was some
stubbornness; with great sensibility to kindness, there was also strong
reluctance to forgive affront.
This mixed nature in an uncultivated peasant's breast interested
Riccabocca, who, though long secluded from the commerce of mankind, still
looked upon man as the most various and entertaining volume which
philosophical research can explore. He soon accustomed the boy to the
tone of a conversation generally subtle and suggestive; and Lenny's
language and ideas became insensibly less rustic and more refined. Then
Riccabocca selected from his library, small as it was, books that, though
elementary, were of a higher cast than Lenny could have found within his
reach at Hazeldean. Riccabocca knew the English language well,--better
in grammar, construction, and genius than many a not ill-educated
Englishman; for he had studied it with the minuteness with which a
scholar studies a dead language, and amidst his collection he had many of
the books which had formerly served him for that purpose. These were the
first works he lent to Lenny. Meanwhile Jackeymo imparted to the boy
many secrets in practical gardening and minute husbandry, for at that day
farming in England (some favoured counties and estates excepted) was far
below the nicety to which the art has been immemorially carried in the
north of Italy,--where, indeed, you may travel for miles and miles as
through a series of market-gardens; so that, all these things considered,
Leonard Fairfield might be said to have made a change for the better.
Yet, in truth, and looking below the surface, that might be fair matter
of doubt. For the same reason which had induced the boy to fly his
native village, he no longer repaired to the church of Hazeldean. The
old intimate intercourse between him and the parson became necessarily
suspended, or bounded to an occasional kindly visit from the latter,--
visits which grew more rare and less familiar, as he found his former
pupil in no want of his services, and wholly deaf to his mild entreaties
to forget and forgive the past, and come at least to his old seat in the
parish church. Lenny still went to church,--a church a long way off in
another parish,--but the sermons did not do him the same good as Parson
Dale's had done; and the clergyman, who had his own flock to attend to,
did not condescend, as Parson Dale would have done, to explain what
seemed obscure, and enforce what was profitable, in private talk, with
that stray lamb from another's fold.
Now I question much if all Dr. Riccabocca's maxims, though they were
often very moral and generally very wise, served to expand the peasant
boy's native good qualities, and correct his bad, half so well as the few
simple words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli, which Leonard had once
reverently listened to when he stood by Mark's elbow-chair, yielded up
for the moment to the good parson, worthy to sit in it; for Mr. Dale had
a heart in which all the fatherless of the parish found their place. Nor
was this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual lore so counterbalanced by
the greater facilities for purely intellectual instruction as modern
enlightenment might presume. For, without disputing the advantage of
knowledge in a general way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to
content. Its tendency, of course, is to increase the desires, to
dissatisfy us with what is, in order to urge progress to what may be; and
in that progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall baffled
and crushed by the way! To how large a number will be given desires they
will never realize, dissatisfaction of the lot from which they will never
rise! Allons! one is viewing the dark side of the question. It is all
the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny
Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and
seeing no one near him, groan out querulously,--"And am I born to dig a
potato ground?"
Pardieu, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and ride in your
carriage, and by the help of a dinner-pill digest a spoonful of curry,
you may sigh to think what a relish there was in potatoes, roasted in
ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout
young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on! Dr. Riccabocca will tell
you that there was once an illustrious personage--[The Emperor
Diocletian]--who made experience of two very different occupations,--one
was ruling men, the other was planting cabbages; he thought planting
cabbages much the pleasanter of the two!
CHAPTER XVIL
Dr. Riccabocca had secured Lenny Fairfield, and might therefore be
considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirligig with
adroitness and success. But Miss Jemima was still driving round in her
car, handling the reins, and flourishing the whip, without apparently
having got an inch nearer to the flying form of Dr. Riccabocca.
Indeed, that excellent and only too susceptible spinster, with all her
experience of the villany of man, had never conceived the wretch to be so
thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption as when Dr. Riccabocca took his
leave, and once more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the Casino,
and without having made any formal renunciation of his criminal celibacy.
For some days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and brooded with
more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty of the
approaching crash. Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity, which,
while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had permitted herself to
consider ambiguous, now became luminously apparent. Even the newspaper,
which during that credulous and happy period had given half a column to
Births and Marriages, now bore an ominously long catalogue of Deaths; so
that it seemed as if the whole population had lost heart, and had no
chance of repairing its daily losses. The leading article spoke, with
the obscurity of a Pythian, of an impending CRISIS. Monstrous turnips
sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted to General News. Cows bore
calves with two heads, whales were stranded in the Humber, showers of
frogs descended in the High Street of Cheltenham.
All these symptoms of the world's decrepitude and consummation, which by
the side of the fascinating Riccabocca might admit of some doubt as to
their origin and cause, now, conjoined with the worst of all, namely, the
frightfully progressive wickedness of man,--left to Miss Jemima no ray of
hope save that afforded by the reflection that she could contemplate the
wreck of matter without a single sentiment of regret.
Mrs. Dale, however, by no means shared the despondency of her fair
friend, and having gained access to Miss Jemima's chamber, succeeded,
though not without difficulty, in her kindly attempts to cheer the
drooping spirits of that female misanthropist. Nor, in her benevolent
desire to speed the car of Miss Jemima to its hymeneal goal, was Mrs.
Dale so cruel towards her male friend, Dr. Riccabocca, as she seemed to
her husband. For Mrs. Dale was a woman of shrewdness and penetration, as
most quick-tempered women are; and she knew that Miss Jemima was one of
those excellent young ladies who are likely to value a husband in
proportion to the difficulty of obtaining him. In fact, my readers of
both sexes must often have met, in the course of their experience, with
that peculiar sort of feminine disposition, which requires the warmth of
the conjugal hearth to develop all its native good qualities; nor is it
to be blamed overmuch if, innocently aware of this tendency in its
nature, it turns towards what is best fitted for its growth and
improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sunflower turn to
the sun, or the willow to the stream. Ladies of this disposition,
permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, gradually languish
away into intellectual inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal
eccentricities which are classed under the general name of "oddity" or
"character." But once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing
what healthful improvement takes place,--how the poor heart, before
starved and stinted of nourishment, throws out its suckers, and bursts
into bloom and fruit. And thus many a belle from whom the beaux have
stood aloof, only because the puppies think she could be had for the
asking, they see afterwards settled down into true wife and fond mother,
with amaze at their former disparagement, and a sigh at their blind
hardness of heart.
In all probability Mrs. Dale took this view of the subject; and
certainly, in addition to all the hitherto dormant virtues which would be
awakened in Miss Jemima when fairly Mrs. Riccabocca, she counted somewhat
upon the mere worldly advantage which such a match would bestow upon the
exile. So respectable a connection with one of the oldest, wealthiest,
and most popular families in the shire would in itself give him a
position not to be despised by a poor stranger in the land; and though
the interest of Miss Jemima's dowry might not be much, regarded in the
light of English pounds (not Milanese lire), still it would suffice to
prevent that gradual process of dematerialization which the lengthened
diet upon minnows and sticklebacks had already made apparent in the fine
and slow-evanishing form of the philosopher.
Like all persons convinced of the expediency of a thing, Mrs. Dale saw
nothing wanting but opportunities to insure its success. And that these
might be forthcoming she not only renewed with greater frequency, and
more urgent instance than ever, her friendly invitations to Riccabocca to
drink tea and spend the evening, but she so artfully chafed the squire on
his sore point of hospitality, that the doctor received weekly a pressing
solicitation to dine and sleep at the Hall.
At first the Italian pished and grunted, and said /Cospetto/, and /Per
Bacco/, and /Diavolo/, and tried to creep out of so much proffered
courtesy. But like all single gentlemen, he was a little under the
tyrannical influence of his faithful servant; and Jackeymo, though he
could bear starving as well as his master when necessary, still, when he
had the option, preferred roast beef and plum-pudding. Moreover, that
vain and incautious confidence of Riccabocca touching the vast sum at his
command, and with no heavier drawback than that of so amiable a lady as
Miss Jemima--who had already shown him (Jackeymo) many little delicate
attentions--had greatly whetted the cupidity which was in the servant's
Italian nature,--a cupidity the more keen because, long debarred its
legitimate exercise on his own mercenary interests, he carried it all to
the account of his master's!
Thus tempted by his enemy and betrayed by his servant, the unfortunate
Riccabocca fell, though with eyes not unblinded, into the hospitable
snares extended for the destruction of his--celibacy! He went often to
the Parsonage, often to the Hall, and by degrees the sweets of the social
domestic life, long denied him, began to exercise their enervating charm
upon the stoicism of our poor exile. Frank had now returned to Eton. An
unexpected invitation had carried off Captain Higginbotham to pass a few
weeks at Bath with a distant relation, who had lately returned from
India, and who, as rich as Creesus, felt so estranged and solitary in his
native isle that, when the captain "claimed kindred there," to his own
amaze "he had his claims allowed;" while a very protracted sitting of
parliament still delayed in London the squire's habitual visitors during
the later summer; so that--a chasm thus made in his society--
Mr. Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality the diversion or
distraction he found in the foreigner's companionship. Thus, with
pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the two female conspirators,
the intimacy between the Casino and Hall rapidly thickened; but still not
a word resembling a distinct proposal did Dr. Riccabocca breathe. And
still, if such an idea obtruded itself on his mind, it was chased
therefrom with so determined a Diavolo that perhaps, if not the end of
the world, at least the end of Miss Jemima's tenure in it, might have
approached and seen her still Miss Jemima, but for a certain letter with
a foreign postmark that reached the doctor one Tuesday morning.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The servant saw that something had gone wrong, and, under pretence of
syringing the orange-trees, he lingered near his master, and peered
through the sunny leaves upon Riccabocca's melancholy brows.
The doctor sighed heavily. Nor did he, as was his wont after some such
sigh, mechanically take up that dear comforter the pipe. But though the
tobacco-pouch lay by his side on the balustrade, and the pipe stood
against the wall between his knees, childlike lifting up its lips to the
customary caress, he heeded neither the one nor the other, but laid the
letter silently on his lap, and fixed his eyes upon the ground.
"It must be bad news indeed!" thought Jackeymo, and desisted from his
work. Approaching his master, he took up the pipe and the tobacco-pouch,
and filled the bowl slowly, glancing all the while towards that dark
musing face on which, when abandoned by the expression of intellectual
vivacity or the exquisite smile of Italian courtesy, the deep downward
lines revealed the characters of sorrow. Jackeymo did not venture to
speak; but the continued silence of his master disturbed him much. He
laid that peculiar tinder which your smokers use upon the steel, and
struck the spark,--still not a word, nor did Riccabocca stretch forth his
hand.
"I never knew him in this taking before," thought Jackeymo; and
delicately he insinuated the neck of the pipe into the nerveless fingers
of the band that lay supine on those quiet knees. The pipe fell to the
ground.
Jackeymo crossed himself, and began praying to his sainted namesake with
great fervour.
The doctor rose slowly, and as if with effort; he walked once or twice to
and fro the terrace; and then he halted abruptly and said,--
"Friend!"
"Blessed Monsignore San Giacomo, I knew thou wouldst hear me!" cried the
servant; and he raised his master's hand to his lips, then abruptly
turned away and wiped his eyes.
"Friend," repeated Riccabocca, and this time with a tremulous emphasis,
and in the softest tone of a voice never wholly without the music of the
sweet South, "I would talk to thee of my child."
CHAPTER XIX.
"The letter, then, relates to the signorina. She is well?"
"Yes, she is well now. She is in our native Italy." Jackeymo raised his
eyes involuntarily towards the orange-trees, and the morning breeze swept
by and bore to him the odour of their blossoms.
"Those are sweet even here, with care," said he, pointing to the trees.
"I think I have said that before to the padrone."
But Riccabocca was now looking again at the letter, and did not notice
either the gesture or the remark of his servant. "My aunt is no more!"
said he, after a pause.
"We will pray for her soul!" answered Jackeymo, solemnly. "But she was
very old, and had been a long time ailing. Let it not grieve the padrone
too keenly: at that age, and with those infirmities, death comes as a
friend."
"Peace be to her dust!" returned the Italian. "If she had her faults, be
they now forgotten forever; and in the hour of my danger and distress she
sheltered my infant! That shelter is destroyed. This letter is from the
priest, her confessor. And the home of which my child is bereaved falls
to the inheritance of my enemy."
"Traitor!" muttered Jackeymo; and his right hand seemed to feel for the
weapon which the Italians of lower rank often openly wear in their
girdles.
"The priest," resumed Riccabocca, calmly, "has rightly judged in removing
my child as a guest from the house in which that traitor enters as lord."
"And where is the signorina?"
"With the poor priest. See, Giacomo, here, here--this is her handwriting
at the end of the letter,--the first lines she ever yet traced to me."
Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently on the large characters
of a child's writing. But large as they were, they seemed indistinct,
for the paper was blistered with the child's tears; and on the place
where they had not fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of the
tear that had dropped from the lids of the father. Riccabocca renewed,
"The priest recommends a convent."
"To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then crossing himself
rapidly, he added, "I did not mean that, Monsignore San Giacomo,--forgive
me! But your Excellency does not think of making a nun of his only
child!"
[The title of Excellency does not, in Italian, necessarily express
any exalted rank, but is often given by servants to their masters.]
"And yet why not?" said Riccabocca, mournfully; "what can I give her in
the world? Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of
peace in her native clime?"
"In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!"
"And if that beat were stilled, what then? Ill fares the life that a
single death can bereave of all. In a convent at least (and the priest's
influence can obtain her that asylum amongst her equals and amidst her
sex) she is safe from trial and from penury--to her grave!"
"Penury! Just see how rich we shall be when we take those fields at
Michaelmas."
"/Pazzie/!"--[Follies]--said Riccabocca, listlessly. "Are these suns
more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy,
saith the proverb, 'He who sows land reaps more care than corn.' It were
different," continued the father, after a pause, and in a more resolute
tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on,--nay, if
among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one female who
would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth,--Ishmael had his Hagar.
But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless wants
and cares of a frail female child? And she has been so delicately
reared,--the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender eye of a
woman."
"And with a word," said Jackeymo, resolutely, "the padrone might secure
to his child all that he needs to save her from the sepulchre of a
convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she might be sitting on his
knee. Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that
you love your child better than all things in the world,--now the Patria
is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers,--and your heart-strings
would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a
convent. Padrone, never again to hear her voice, never again to see her
face! Those little arms that twined round your neck that dark night,
when we fled fast for life and freedom, and you said, as you felt their
clasp, 'Friend, all is not yet lost.'"
"Giacomo!" exclaimed the father, reproachfully, and his voice seemed to
choke him. Riccabocca turned away, and walked restlessly to and fro the
terrace; then, lifting his arms with a wild gesture, as he still
continued his long irregular strides, he muttered, "Yes, Heaven is my
witness that I could have borne reverse and banishment without a murmur,
had I permitted myself that young partner in exile and privation. Heaven
is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it is because I would not listen
to my own selfish heart. Yet never, never to see her again,--my child!
And it was but as the infant that I beheld her! O friend, friend!" (and,
stopping short with a burst of uncontrollable emotion, he bowed his head
upon his servant's shoulder), "thou knowest what I have endured and
suffered at my hearth, as in my country; the wrong, the perfidy, the--
the--" His voice again failed him; be clung to his servant's breast, and
his whole frame shook.
"But your child, the innocent one--think now only of her!" faltered
Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs. "True, only of her," replied the
exile, raising his face, "only of her. Put aside thy thoughts for
thyself, friend,--counsel me. If I were to send for Violante, and if,
transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and died--Look, look, the
priest says that she needs such tender care; or if I myself were summoned
from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, breadless
perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest trial against temptation, would
she not live to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her infant
innocence the gates of the House of God?"
Jackeymo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never
before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. In his hours of
philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and
superstition. But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion
reclaimed her empire; and the sceptical world-wise man, thinking only
of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith.
CHAPTER XX.
"But again I say," murmured Jackeymo, scarce audibly, and after a long
silence, "if the padrone would make up his mind--to marry!"
He expected that his master would start up in his customary indignation
at such a suggestion,--nay, he might not have been sorry so to have
changed the current of feeling; but the poor Italian only winced
slightly, and mildly withdrawing himself from his servant's supporting
arm, again paced the terrace, but this time quietly and in silence. A
quarter of an hour thus passed. "Give me the pipe," said Dr. Riccabocca,
passing into the belvidere.
Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully relieved at the
padrone's return to the habitual adviser, mentally besought his sainted
namesake to bestow a double portion of soothing wisdom on the benignant
influences of the weed.
CHAPTER XXI.
Dr. Riccabocca had been some little time in the solitude of the
belvidere, when Lenny Fairfield, not knowing that his employer was
therein, entered to lay down a book which the doctor had lent him, with
injunctions to leave it on a certain table when done with. Riccabocca
looked up at the sound of the young peasant's step.
"I beg your honour's pardon, I did not know--"
"Never mind: lay the book there. I wish to speak with you. You look
well, my child: this air agrees with you as well as that of Hazeldean?"
"Oh, yes, Sir!"
"Yet it is higher ground,--more exposed?"
"That can hardly be, sir," said Lenny; "there are many plants grow here
which don't flourish at the squire's. The hill yonder keeps off the east
wind, and the place lays to the south."
"Lies, not lays, Lenny. What are the principal complaints in these
parts?"
"Eh, sir?"
"I mean what maladies, what diseases?"
"I never heard tell of any, sir, except the rheumatism."
"No low fevers, no consumption?"
"Never heard of them, sir."
Riccabocca drew a long breath, as if relieved. "That seems a very kind
family at the Hall."
"I have nothing to say against it," answered Lenny, bluntly. "I have not
been treated justly. But as that book says, sir, 'It is not every one
who comes into the world with a silver spoon in his mouth.'"
Little thought the doctor that those wise maxims may leave sore thoughts
behind them! He was too occupied with the subject most at his own heart
to think then of what was in Lenny Fairfield's.
"Yes; a kind, English domestic family. Did you see much of Miss
Hazeldean?"
"Not so much as of the Lady."
"Is she liked in the village, think you?"
"Miss Jemima? Yes. She never did harm. Her little dog bit me once,--
she did not ask me to beg its pardon, she asked mine! She's a very nice
young lady; the girls say she is very affable; and," added Lenny, with a
smile, "there are always more weddings going on when she is down at the
Hall."
"Oh!" said Riccabocca. Then, after a long whiff, "Did you ever see her
play with the little children? Is she fond of children, do you think?"
"Lord, sir, you guess everything! She's never so pleased as when she's
playing with the babies."
"Humph!" grunted Riccabocca. "Babies! well, that's woman-like. I don't
mean exactly babies, but when they're older,--little girls?"
"Indeed, Sir, I dare say; but," said Lenny, primly, "I never as yet kept
company with the little girls."
"Quite right, Lenny; be equally discreet all your life. Mrs. Dale is
very intimate with Miss Hazeldean,--more than with the squire's lady.
Why is that, think you?"
"Well, sir," said Leonard, shrewdly, "Mrs. Dale has her little tempers,
though she's a very good lady; and Madame Hazeldean is rather high, and
has a spirit. But Miss Jemima is so soft: any one could live with Miss
Jemima, as Joe and the servants say at the Hall."
"Indeed! get my hat out of the parlour, and--just bring a clothes-brush,
Lenny. A fine sunny day for a walk."
After this most mean and dishonourable inquisition into the character
and popular repute of Miss Hazeldean, Signor Riccabocca seemed as much
cheered up and elated as if he had committed some very noble action; and
he walked forth in the direction of the Hall with a far lighter and
livelier step than that with which he had paced the terrace.
"Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and the pipe's, the padrone shall
have his child!" muttered the servant, looking up from the garden.
CHAPTER XXII.
Yet Dr. Riccabocca was not rash. The man who wants his wedding-garment
to fit him must allow plenty of time for the measure. But from that day,
the Italian notably changed his manner towards Miss Hazeldean. He ceased
that profusion of compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in
safety all serious meaning. For indeed the doctor considered that
compliments to a single gentleman were what the inky liquid it dispenses
is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water sails away from its
enemy. Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations with the
young lady, and contrive to escape from all solitary rambles by her side.
On the contrary, he now sought every occasion to be in her society; and
entirely dropping the language of gallantry, he assumed something of the
earnest tone of friendship. He bent down his intellect to examine and
plumb her own. To use a very homely simile, he blew away that froth
which there is on the surface of mere acquaintanceships, especially with
the opposite sex; and which, while it lasts, scarce allows you to
distinguish between small beer and double X. Apparently Dr. Riccabocca
was satisfied with his scrutiny,--at all events under that froth there
was no taste of bitter. The Italian might not find any great strength of
intellect in Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled from many
little whims and foibles,--which he had himself the sense to perceive
were harmless enough if they lasted, and not so absolutely constitutional
but what they might be removed by a tender hand,--Miss Hazeldean had
quite enough sense to comprehend the plain duties of married life; and if
the sense could fail, it found a substitute in good old homely English
principles, and the instincts of amiable, kindly feelings.
I know not how it is, but your very clever man never seems to care so
much as your less gifted mortals for cleverness in his helpmate. Your
scholars and poets and ministers of state are more often than not found
assorted with exceedingly humdrum, good sort of women, and apparently
like them all the better for their deficiencies. Just see how happily
Racine lived with his wife, and what an angel he thought her, and yet she
had never read his plays. Certainly Goethe never troubled the lady who
called him "Mr. Privy Councillor" with whims about "monads," and
speculations on colour, nor those stiff metaphysical problems on which
one breaks one's shins in the Second Past of the "Faust." Probably it
may be that such great geniuses--knowing that, as compared with
themselves, there is little difference between your clever woman and your
humdrum woman--merge at once all minor distinctions, relinquish all
attempts at sympathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are quite
satisfied to establish that tie which, after all, best resists wear and
tear,--namely, the tough household bond between one human heart and
another.
At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning of Dr. Riccabocca, when
one morning, after a long walk with Miss Hazeldean, he muttered to
himself,--
"Duro con duro
Non fete mai buon muro,"--
which may bear the paraphrase, "Bricks without mortar would make a very
bad wall." There was quite enough in Miss Jemima's disposition to make
excellent mortar: the doctor took the bricks to himself.
When his examination was concluded, our philosopher symbolically evinced
the result he had arrived at by a very simple proceeding on his part,
which would have puzzled you greatly if you had not paused, and meditated
thereon, till you saw all that it implied. /Dr. Riccabocca, took of his
spectacles!/ He wiped them carefully, put them into their shagreen case,
and locked them in his bureau,--that is to say, he left off wearing his
spectacles.
You will observe that there was a wonderful depth of meaning in that
critical symptom, whether it be regarded as a sign outward, positive, and
explicit, or a sign metaphysical, mystical, and esoteric. For, as to the
last, it denoted that the task of the spectacles was over; that, when a
philosopher has made up his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be
shortsighted--nay, even somewhat purblind--than to be always scrutinizing
the domestic felicity, to which he is about to resign himself, through a
pair of cold, unillusory barnacles. As for the things beyond the hearth,
if he cannot see without spectacles, is he not about to ally to his own
defective vision a good sharp pair of eyes, never at fault where his
interests are concerned? On the other hand, regarded positively,
categorically, and explicitly, Dr. Roccabocca, by laying aside those
spectacles, signified that he was about to commence that happy initiation
of courtship when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, wishes to
look as young and as handsome as time and nature will allow. Vain task
to speed the soft language of the eyes through the medium of those glassy
interpreters! I remember, for my own part, that once, on a visit to the
town of Adelaide, I--Pisistratus Caxton--was in great danger of falling
in love,--with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very good
fortune,--when she suddenly produced from her reticule a very neat pair
of No. 4, set in tortoiseshell, and fixing upon me their Gorgon gaze,
froze the astonished Cupid into stone! And I hold it a great proof of
the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of his vast experience in mankind, that he
was not above the consideration of what your pseudo-sages would have
regarded as foppish and ridiculous trifles. It argued all the better for
that happiness which is our being's end and aim that in condescending to
play the lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers under lock and key.
And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned, it was impossible to
deny that the Italian had remarkably handsome eyes. Even through the
spectacles, or lifted a little above them, they were always bright and
expressive; but without those adjuncts, the blaze was softer and more
tempered: they had that look which the French call veloute, or velvety;
and he appeared altogether ten years younger. If our Ulysses, thus
rejuvenated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to make a
Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than
Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos,--
He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a Gynopophagite!
CHAPTER XXIII.
"And you commission me, then, to speak to our dear Jemima?" said Mrs.
Dale, joyfully, and without any bitterness whatever in that "dear."
DR. RICCABOCCA.--"Nay, before speaking to Miss Hazeldean, it would surely
be proper to know how far my addresses would be acceptable to the
family."
MRS. DALE.--"Ah!"
DR. RICCAROCCA.--"The squire is of course the head of the family."
MRS. DALE (absent and distraite).--"The squire--yes, very true--quite
proper." (Then, looking up, and with naivete) "Can you believe me? I
never thought of the squire. And he is such an odd man, and has so many
English prejudices, that really--dear me, how vexatious that it should
never once have occurred to me that Mr. Hazeldean had a voice in the
matter! Indeed, the relationship is so distant, it is not like being her
father; and Jemima is of age, and can do as she pleases; and--but, as you
say, it is quite proper that he should be consulted as the head of the
family."
DR. RICCASOCCA.--"And you think that the Squire of Hazeldean might reject
my alliance! Pshaw! that's a grand word indeed,--I mean, that he might
object very reasonably to his cousin's marriage with a foreigner, of whom
he can know nothing, except that which in all countries is disreputable,
and is said in this to be criminal,--poverty."
MRS. DALE (kindly)--"You misjudge us poor English people, and you wrong
the squire, Heaven bless him! for we were poor enough when he singled out
my husband from a hundred for the minister of his parish, for his
neighbour and his friend. I will speak to him fearlessly--"
DR. RICCABOCCA.---"And frankly. And now I have used that word, let me go
on with the confession which your kindly readiness, my fair friend,
somewhat interrupted. I said that if I might presume to think my
addresses would be acceptable to Miss Hazeldean and her family, I was too
sensible of her amiable qualities not to--not to--"
MRS. DALE (with demure archness).--"Not to be the happiest of men,--
that's the customary English phrase, Doctor."
RICCABOCCA (gallantly).--"There cannot be a better. But," continued he,
seriously, "I wish it first to be understood that I have--been married
before!"
MRS. DALE (astonished).--"Married before!"
RICCABOCCA.--"And that I have an only child, dear to me,--inexpressibly
dear. That child, a daughter, has hitherto lived abroad; circumstances
now render it desirable that she should make her home with me; and I own
fairly that nothing has so attached me to Miss Hazeldean, nor so induced
my desire for our matrimonial connection, as my belief that she has the
heart and the temper to become a kind mother to my little one."
MRS. DALE (with feeling and warmth).--"You judge her rightly there."
RICCABOCCA.--"Now, in pecuniary matters, as you may conjecture from my
mode of life, I have nothing to offer to Miss Hazeldean correspondent
with her own fortune, whatever that may be!"
MRS. DALE.--"That difficulty is obviated by settling Miss Hazeldean's
fortune on herself, which is customary in such cases."
Dr. Riccabocca's face lengthened. "And my child, then?" said he,
feelingly. There was something in that appeal so alien from all sordid
and merely personal mercenary motives, that Mrs. Dale could not have had
the heart to make the very rational suggestion, "But that child is not
Jemima's, and you may have children by her."
She was touched, and replied hesitatingly, "But from what you and Jemima
may jointly possess you can save something annually,--you can insure your
life for your child. We did so when our poor child whom we lost was
born" (the tears rushed into Mrs. Dale's eyes); "and I fear that Charles
still insures his life for my sake, though Heaven knows that--that--"
The tears burst out. That little heart, quick and petulant though it
was, had not a fibre of the elastic muscular tissues which are mercifully
bestowed on the hearts of predestined widows. Dr. Riccabocca could not
pursue the subject of life insurances further. But the idea--which had
never occurred to the foreigner before, though so familiar with us
English people when only possessed of a life income--pleased him greatly.
I will do him the justice to say that he preferred it to the thought of
actually appropriating to himself and to his child a portion of Miss
Hazeldean's dower.
Shortly afterwards he took his leave, and Mrs. Dale hastened to seek her
husband in his study, inform him of the success of her matrimonial
scheme, and consult him as to the chance of the squire's acquiescence
therein. "You see," said she, hesitatingly, "though the squire might be
glad to see Jemima married to some Englishman, yet if he asks who and
what is this Dr. Riccabocca, how am I to answer him?"
"You should have thought of that before," said Mr. Dale, with unwonted
asperity; "and, indeed, if I had ever believed anything serious could
come out of what seemed to me so absurd, I should long since have
requested you not to interfere in such matters. Good heavens!" continued
the parson, changing colour, "if we should have assisted, underhand as it
were, to introduce into the family of a man to whom we owe so much a
connection that he would dislike, how base we should be, how ungrateful!"
Poor Mrs. Dale was frightened by this speech, and still more by her
husband's consternation and displeasure. To do Mrs. Dale justice,
whenever her mild partner was really either grieved or offended, her
little temper vanished,--she became as meek as a lamb. As soon as she
recovered the first shock she experienced, she hastened to dissipate the
parson's apprehensions. She assured him that she was convinced that,
if the squire disapproved of Riccabocca's pretensions, the Italian would
withdraw them at once, and Miss Hazeldean would never know of his
proposals. Therefore, in that case, no harm would be done.
This assurance, coinciding with Mr. Dale's convictions as to Riccabocca's
scruples on the point of honour, tended much to compose the good man; and
if he did not, as my reader of the gentler sex would expect from him,
feel alarm lest Miss Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably
engaged, and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the squire's refusal,
it was not that the parson wanted tenderness of heart, but experience in
womankind; and he believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima Hazeldean
was not one upon whom a disappointment of that kind would produce a
lasting impression. Therefore Mr. Dale, after a pause of consideration,
said kindly,--
"Well, don't vex yourself,--and I was to blame quite as much as you.
But, indeed, I should have thought it easier for the squire to have
transplanted one of his tall cedars into his kitchen-garden than for you
to inveigle Dr. Riccabocca into matrimonial intentions. But a man who
could voluntarily put himself into the parish stocks for the sake of
experiment must be capable of anything! However, I think it better that
I, rather than yourself, should speak to the squire, and I will go at
once."
CHAPTER XXIV.
The parson put on the shovel-hat, which--conjoined with other details in
his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, beginning to be
out of fashion with Churchmen--had served to fix upon him emphatically
the dignified but antiquated style and cognomen of "Parson;" and took his
way towards the Home Farm, at which he expected to find the squire. But
he had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr.
Hazeldean, leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the
parish stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that, ever since the Hegira of
Lenny and his mother, the Anti-Stockian and Revolutionary spirit in
Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our parson had a while averted
or suspended, had broken forth afresh. For though while Lenny was
present to be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no
sooner was he removed from the scene of trial than a universal compassion
for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is called "the
reaction of public opinion." Not that those who had mowed and jeered
repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in the slightest
degree the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with the rest of the
villagers, laid all the blame upon the stocks. It was not to be expected
that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of
ignominy, and not be sensible to the affront. And who, in the whole
village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated
in silence, and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the
village had ever known? Thus, a few days after the widow's departure,
the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed
and bescratched, it was hacked and hewed, it was scrawled over with pithy
lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants. Night after
night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the
vindictive sentiment of the parish. And perhaps the stocks was only
spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice
of the disaffected: it became the Pasquin of Hazeldean.
As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority,
so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had
been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the squire and his predecessors.
Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported to
his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with
ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and
stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards, gradually yielding to the
baleful influence of Stirn, the squire grumbled forth "that he did not
see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show
kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference
between the good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had
conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith and
kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged to his character. For
some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy and vegetables from the
gardens were surlily suspended; others were informed that their pigs were
always trespassing on the woods in search of acorns, or that they were
violating the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house, popular in
the neighbourhood, but of late resorted to over-much by the grievance-
mongers (and no wonder, since they had become the popular party), was
threatened with an application to the magistrates for the withdrawal of
its license. Sundry old women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-
disposed towards the stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks
under the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; and,
what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the parish than most
other retaliatory measures, three chestnut-trees, one walnut, and two
cherry-trees, standing at the bottom of the Park, and which had, from
time immemorial, been given up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now
solemnly placed under the general defence of "private property." And the
crier had announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit trees
in Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigour of the law.
Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent proceedings than all these
indications of a change of policy, which, he averred, would soon bring
the parish to its senses,--such as discontinuing many little jobs of
unprofitable work that employed the surplus labour of the village. But
there the squire, falling into the department and under the benigner
influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened. When it came
to a question that affected the absolute quantity of loaves to be
consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon him, the milk of human
kindness--with which Providence has so bountifully supplied that class of
the mammalia called the "Bucolic," and of which our squire had an extra
"yield"--burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the harsher
Adam.
Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates without crushing its
victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-
handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely
successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than
Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was
ripe for any enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and
composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the
popular beer-house,--Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of
being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused
the Papishers. And, finally, there appeared amongst the other graphic
embellishments which the poor stocks had received, the rude gravure of a
gentleman in a broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet,
with the inscription beneath, "A warnin to hall tirans--mind your hi!---
sighnde Captin sTraw."
It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that the squire
was gazing when the parson joined him. "Well, Parson," said Mr.
Hazeldean, with a smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy, but which
was exceedingly bitter and grim, "I wish you joy of your flock,--you see
they have just hanged me in effigy!"
The parson stared, and though greatly shocked, smothered his emotion; and
attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove,
to find another original for the effigy.
"It is very bad," quoth he, "but not so bad as all that, Squire; that's
not the shape of your bat. It is evidently meant for Mr. Stirn."
"Do you think so?" said the squire, softened. "Yet the top-boots--Stirn
never wears top-boots."
"No more do you, except in the hunting-field. If you look again, those
are not tops, they are leggings,--Stirn wears leggings. Besides, that
flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of hook, like Stirn's;
whereas your nose--though by no means a snub--rather turns up than not,
as the Apollo's does, according to the plaster cast in Riccabocca's
parlour."
"Poor Stirn!" said the squire, in a tone that evinced complacency, not
unmingled with compassion, "that's what a man gets in this world by being
a faithful servant, and doing his duty with zeal for his employer. But
you see things have come to a strange pass, and the question now is, what
course to pursue. The miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance, and
Stirn recommends the employment of a regular nightwatch, with a lanthorn
and bludgeon."
"That may protect the stocks certainly; but will it keep those detestable
tracts out of the beer-house?"
"We shall shut the beer-house up the next sessions."
"The tracts will break out elsewhere,--the humour's in the blood!"
"I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamingtongood hunting at
Leamington--for a year, just to let the rogues see how they can get on
without me!"
The squire's lip trembled.
"My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said the parson, taking his friend's hand, "I
don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but, if you had taken my advice,
'quieta non movere!' Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a
country gentleman so beloved as you were, before you undertook the task
which has dethroned kings and ruined States,--that of wantonly meddling
with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs, or the
revival of obsolete uses."
At this rebuke, the squire did not manifest his constitutional tendencies
to choler; but he replied almost meekly, "If it were to do again, faith,
I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of the shabbiest pair of stocks
that ever disgraced a village. Certainly I meant it for the best,--an
ornament to the green; however, now the stocks is rebuilt, the stocks
must be supported. Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of
thankless rapscallions."
"I think," said the parson, "that you will allow that the House of Tudor,
whatever its faults, was a determined, resolute dynasty enough,--high-
hearted and strong-headed. A Tudor would never have fallen into the same
calamities as the poor Stuart did!"
"What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my stocks?"
"A great deal. Henry VIII. found a subsidy so unpopular that he gave it
up; and the people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many heads as he
pleased, besides those in his own family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know,
is your idol in history--"
"To be sure!--she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort."
"Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain a certain monopoly; she saw
it would not do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness which
becomes a sovereign, and makes surrender a grace."
"Ha! and you would have me give up the stocks?"
"I would much rather the stocks had remained as it was before you touched
it; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext--and there
is an excellent one at hand,--the sternest kings open prisons, and grant
favours, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of
course a joyful occasion! and so it should be in that of the King of
Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the parson's eloquence!---it was
worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr. Dale had profited much by his
companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.
"A marriage,--yes; but Frank has only just got into coattails!"
"I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima!"
CHAPTER XXV.
The squire staggered as if the breath had been knocked out of him, and,
for want of a better seat, sat down on the stocks. All the female heads
in the neighbouring cottages peered, themselves unseen, through the
casements. What could the squire be about? What new mischief did he
meditate? Did he mean to fortify the stocks? Old Gaffer Solomons, who
had an indefinite idea of the lawful power of squires, and who had been
for the last ten minutes at watch on his threshold, shook his head and
said, "Them as a cut out the mon a hanging, as a put it in the squire's
head!"
"Put what?" asked his grand-daughter.
"The gallus!" answered Solomons,--"he be a going to have it hung from the
great elfin-tree. And the parson, good mon, is a quoting Scripter agin
it; you see he's a taking off his gloves, and a putting his two han's
together, as he do when he pray for the sick, Jeany."
That description of the parson's mien and manner, which with his usual
niceness of observation, Gaffer Solomons thus sketched off, will convey
to you some idea of the earnestness with which the parson pleaded the
cause he had undertaken to advocate. He dwelt much upon the sense of
propriety which the foreigner had evinced in requesting that the squire
might be consulted before any formal communication to his cousin; and he
repeated Mrs. Dale's assurance, that such were Riccabocca's high standard
of honour and belief in the sacred rights of hospitality, that, if the
squire withheld his consent to his proposals, the parson was convinced
that the Italian would instantly retract them. Now, considering that
Miss Hazeldean was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, and
the squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own
disposal, Mr. Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the parson's corollary
remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every
English pretender to the lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared
the ground, the parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that
since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later (and, indeed, that
the squire could not wish to prevent her), it might be better for all
parties concerned that it should be with some one who, though a
foreigner, was settled in the neighbourhood, and of whose character what
was known was certainly favourable, rather than run the hazard of her
being married for her money by some adventurer, or Irish fortune-hunter,
at the watering-places she yearly visited. Then he touched lightly on
Riccabocca's agreeable and companionable qualities; and concluded with a
skilful peroration upon the excellent occasion the wedding would afford
to reconcile Hall and parish, by making a voluntary holocaust of the
stocks.
As he concluded, the squire's brow, before thoughtful, though not sullen,
cleared up benignly. To say truth, the squire was dying to get rid of
the stocks, if he could but do so handsomely and with dignity; and had
all the stars in the astrological horoscope conjoined together to give
Miss Jemima "assurance of a husband," they could not so have served her
with the squire as that conjunction between the altar and the stocks
which the parson had effected!
Accordingly, when Mr. Dale had come to an end, the squire replied, with
great placidity and good sense, "That Mr. Rickeybockey had behaved very
much like a gentleman, and that he was very much obliged to him; that he
[the squire] had no right to interfere in the matter, further than with
his advice; that Jemima was old enough to choose for herself, and that,
as the parson had implied, after all she might go farther and fare
worse,--indeed, the farther she went (that is, the longer she waited) the
worse she was likely to fare. I own, for my part," continued the squire,
"that though I like Rickeybockey very much, I never suspected that Jemima
was caught with his long face; but there's no accounting for tastes. My
Harry, indeed, was more shrewd, and gave me many a hint, for which I only
laughed at her. Still I ought to have thought it looked queer when
Mounseer took to disguising himself by leaving off his glasses, ha, ha!
I wonder what Harry will say; let's go and talk to her."
The parson, rejoiced at this easy way of taking the matter, hooked his
arm into the squire's, and they walked amicably towards the Hall. But on
coming first into the gardens they found Mrs. Hazeldean herself, clipping
dead leaves or fading flowers from her rose-trees. The squire stole
slyly behind her, and startled her in her turn by putting his arm round
her waist, and saluting her smooth cheek with one of his heart |
