Dariel: A Romance of Surrey
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Title: Dariel: A Romance of Surrey
Author: R. D. Blackmore
Illustrator: active 1886-1910 Christine M. Demain Hammond
Release date: April 14, 2013 [eBook #42529]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DARIEL: A ROMANCE OF SURREY ***
DARIEL
NOVELS BY MR R. D. BLACKMORE.
THE MAID OF SKER. Cheap Edition. Small crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. WITH
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[Illustration: "_Between whose jagged mullions flowed the silvery
light._"]
DARIEL
A Romance of Surrey
BY
R. D. BLACKMORE
AUTHOR OF "LORNA DOONE"
WITH DRAWINGS BY CHRIS HAMMOND
[Illustration: Decoration]
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
1897
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I A NIGHTINGALE 1
II THE FAMILY 9
III TOM ERRICKER 16
IV MR. STONEMAN 26
V TICKNOR'S MEW 39
VI TRUE HYGIENE 54
VII KUBAN 63
VIII THROUGH THE CORN 74
IX STRANGE SENSATIONS 89
X UPON THE GROUND 94
XI SÛR IMAR 102
XII IN THE BACKGROUND 109
XIII SMILES AND TEARS 119
XIV THE RUBY CROSS 132
XV SISTER _v._ SWEETHEART 143
XVI INTERNATIONAL ELEMENTS 149
XVII PEPPERCORNS 158
XVIII A LOVEBIRD 170
XIX TO CLEAR THE WAY 181
XX NOT FOR SALE 188
XXI VOICES OF THE VALLEY 192
XXII IMAR'S TALE--WAR 197
XXIII IMAR'S TALE--LOVE 208
XXIV IMAR'S TALE--PEACE 220
XXV IMAR'S TALE--CRIME 227
XXVI IMAR'S TALE--REVENGE 232
XXVII IMAR'S TALE--EXILE 241
XXVIII SANGUINE STILL 244
XXIX LARGE AND LONG VIEWS 252
XXX IN THE QUIET PLACES 261
XXXI PIT-A-PAT 266
XXXII A PAINFUL DUTY 276
XXXIII TREMBLING 282
XXXIV REJOICING 292
XXXV A RACE OF PLATERS 302
XXXVI GONE, GONE, GONE 313
XXXVII LOVERS MAKE MOAN 321
XXXVIII BLACK FRIDAY 334
XXXIX FRANGI, NON FLECTI 344
XL TWAIN MORE THAN TWIN 352
XLI A CROOKED BILLET 363
XLII FAREWELL, SMILER 373
XLIII THE LAND OF MEDEA 382
XLIV THE LAND OF PROMETHEUS 390
XLV AMONG THE GEMS 399
XLVI QUEEN MARVA 409
XLVII WOLF'S MEAT 420
XLVIII USI, THE SVÂN 427
XLIX THE EYE OF GOD 433
L TWO OLD FRIENDS 441
LI THE ROOT OF EVIL 448
LII STILL IN THE DARK 455
LIII A RUTHLESS SCHEME 464
LIV THE VALLEY OF RETRIBUTION 472
LV AT THE BAR 481
LVI HARD IS THE FIGHT 488
LVII BUT NOT IN VAIN 492
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
"BETWEEN WHOSE JAGGED MULLIONS FLOWED THE
SILVERY LIGHT"; _Frontispiece_
"'ALLOW ME ONE MOMENT,' I SAID"; _Facing page_ 70
"SPRAWLING IN THE YELLOW STUBBLE"; 90
"WHY, IT MUST AT LEAST BE A PRINCESS"; 146
"HER SWEET, KIND FACE AS WHITE AS A SHROUD"; 168
"SHE TURNED AWAY HER FACE"; 218
"AT THE DOOR SHE TURNED, WITH A PROUD AND CALM
FAREWELL TO ME"; 238
"WHAT LITTLE THERE IS, IS ENTIRELY A GENUINE ARTICLE"; 274
"SÛR IMAR RECEIVED US WITH A LOVING SMILE"; 300
"A WOMAN OF GREAT SUBSTANCE RUSHED UP AND CAUGHT HER"; 308
"'ROT!' I REPLIED, WITH LESS ELEGANCE THAN TERSENESS"; 340
"'I TELL YOU WHAT,' HE SAID, TURNING ROUND AND
LOOKING AT ME WITH AUTHORITY"; 378
"GAZED AT THE CAPTAIN TILL HE SCARCE KNEW WHERE HE WAS"; 416
"'YES, I SEE,' HE ANSWERED SOFTLY"; 504
DARIEL: A ROMANCE OF SURREY
CHAPTER I
A NIGHTINGALE
If any man came to me, and said, "You are going to tell your tale, good
sir, without knowing how to handle it," I should look at him first with
some surprise, and anger at his interference, yet in a very few minutes,
unless he wanted to argue about it, probably he would have my
confession, and a prayer for his assistance. For every one knows how to
do a thing, much better than the one who does it.
In spite of all that, I will declare in a truthful manner unabashed,
whatever I know concerning the strange affairs which have befallen me;
and perhaps if you care to look into them, you will admit that even now,
when the world supposes itself to be in a state of proud civilization,
there are things to be found near its centre of perfection which are not
quite up to the standard of the Lord.
Towards the middle of the month of May, in a year which I never shall
forget, I happened to be riding home from Guildford in the county of
Surrey, after a long but vain attempt to do a little business for my
father. For we were not, as we used to be, people of wealth and large
estates, and such as the world looks up to; but sadly reduced, and
crippled, and hard-pushed to make a living. And the burden of this task
had fallen most heavily upon me, because I was the only son at home, and
my father's mind was much too large to be cramped with petty troubles.
So that when he had been deprived of nine-tenths of his property, and
could not procure any tenants for the rest, it became my duty to work
the best of the land that still remained, and make both ends meet, if
possible.
To a young man this was no great hardship unless he were spoiled for
country life by ambition, or sloth, or luxury; and it seemed to me at
first a welcome change, to be recalled from Oxford and from Lincoln's
Inn, and set to watch the earth and sky, instead of ink and paper. And
although there were storms and swamps of loss and disaster, to cross
continually, I was always at the point of getting on, if only there came
just a little turn of luck. But that which seemed to baffle mainly my
most choice endeavours, was that when I had done good work, and made
good staple--as it seemed to me--never a man to whom I showed it (at the
most reasonable figure) would stop to look at it for a moment in a
reasonable spirit; because, whatever I had to offer was, by strange
coincidence, the very thing my fellow-creatures happened not to want
just then.
What had I done, this very day, but carried into Guildford market, more
than twelve miles from our home, samples of as fair, and fat, and
thoroughly solid grain, as ever was grown to be ground in England? And
what had the dealers said to me? "Tut, tut! what call you that? Not so
bad for an amateur. Try again, sir, try again. Sir Harold must grow it
cheaper." And they made me not a single offer, such as I could think of
twice; while the farmers looked askance, and smiled very kindly and
respectfully, yet as if I had no business there, and must soon discover
my sad mistake.
"Never mind what they think," I exclaimed to myself, "or how they laugh
at all I can do. Wait a bit, wait a bit, my friends. We are not come to
the bottom of the basket yet. Hold up, ancient Joseph."
Ancient Joseph was the only horse now remaining with us, who could get
along at all, without a plough or waggon at his heels or tail. Like us,
he had seen better days; and like us he did not dwell upon them.
Faithful, generous, and conscientious, he kept up to his own standard
still, and insisted upon his twelve miles an hour, whenever his head was
homeward. It was in that pleasant direction now; and much as I longed
for a gentle glide of the soft May breeze around me, and a leisurely
gaze at the love of the year, now telling its tale in the valleys, that
old fellow (sniffing his oats leagues away) cared for nothing but a
quick stroke towards them. Much as I wanted to think about the money
that I ought to have got, but couldn't, this horse between my legs was
so full of what he meant to be filled with, that I was compelled to
attend to his mood, instead of giving rein to my own; lest haply a ditch
should be our conclusion.
Without any heed we scoured past the loveliest views in England, as
people in a train are forced to do; till Old Joe's wind became a gale,
more adverse now than favourable. His four legs, which had been going
like two, began to go like a figure of four, and he gave me to
understand through the flaps of leather, that his heart was repentant of
having its own way. On the ridge of the hills at the four cross-roads, I
allowed him therefore a welcome rest, having the worst of the road
before us, and the shadows growing deeper.
Perhaps I had prided myself too much upon seldom indulging in whims and
freaks, as my elder brother Harold did, to his great disadvantage and
our own; and now at the age of twenty-five, I should have known better
than to begin. But some strange impulse (which changed the whole course
of my life from that hour) seized me, as I stopped to breathe my horse
opposite that old direction-post.
"To Cobham and Esher" was on the left arm; the forward one pointed to a
village near our home, and that was the road I had always taken. But the
arm that would have pointed to the right, if it had been in its duty,
was not there now, though a double mortice-hole gave token of its late
existence. And the lane towards the right, of which it should have told
us, seemed rather desirous of evading notice, and certainly had received
very little for years from any road-surveyor. Narrow, and overhung, and
sinking into sleepy shadows with a fringe of old roots and dead bracken,
it afforded a pleasant sense of passing into quietude and loneliness.
Time was more plentiful than money with me, and why should I hurry to
tell my father the old tale of failure, so often repeated, but none the
more welcome--as an old joke is--by reason of familiarity? I knew the
chief outlines of the country pretty well, because an old fox had been
fond of it, whom we never brought to book, when the hounds were kept at
Crogate Park. How he had beaten us we never knew, beyond having fifty
opinions about it, of which only two were in favour with the wise
ones--the first that he sank into the bowels of the earth, and the other
that he vanished into the clouds of heaven. And the place was lonely
enough for him to have taken whichever course he chose, leaving nothing
but negative evidence.
Knowing that if I could cross that valley I should probably strike into
a bridle-lane which would take me home at leisure, I turned my old
horse, much against his liking, into this dark and downhill course, away
from the main road, which according to the wisdom of our forefathers
followed the backbone of the ridge. Soon we began to descend steep
places broken with slippery falls of rock, while branches of thicket and
sapling trees shook hands overhead, and shut out the sky. My horse, who
had never been down on his knees, and knew perhaps by instinct the
result of that attitude in the eyes of men, was beginning to tremble
exceedingly; and in fairness to him and myself as well, I jumped off and
led him. He looked at me gratefully, and followed without fear, though
sometimes sliding with all four feet, and throwing back his head for
balance. And perhaps he observed, as soon as I did, that no horse had
ever tried that descent, since the rains of winter washed it.
When I was ready to think myself a fool, and wish both of us well out of
it, the sweetest and clearest note, that ever turned the air into melody
and the dull world into poetry, came through the arching bowers of
spring, and made the crisp leaves tremulous. Then as a bud, with its
point released, breaks into a fountain of flower, the silvery overture
broke into a myriad petals of sensitive song.
"What a stunning nightingale," said I, as a matter-of-fact young Briton
might, with never an inkling of idea that the bird meant anything to me.
But he seemed to be one of those that love mankind (as the genial
robin-redbreast does), or at any rate desire to be thought of kindly,
and to finish well what is well begun; for he flitted before me down
the hill, and enlivened the gloom with vicissitudes of love.
Listening to this little fellow, and trying to catch sight of him, I was
standing with Old Joe's nose in my hand--for he was always
friendly--when the music that should lead my life, in the purest strain
came through the air. It was not the voice of a bird this time, but a
sound that made my heart beat fast and then held me in rapture of
wonder.
Dew of the morning in a moss-rose bud, crystal drops beading a frond of
fern, lustre of a fountain in full moonlight--none of these seem to me
fit to compare with the limpid beauty of that voice. And more than the
sweetest sounds can do, that indite of things beyond us, and fall from a
sphere where no man dwells, this voice came home to my heart, and filled
it with a vivid sorrow and a vague delight.
Sturdy as I was, and robust, and hardy, and apt to laugh at all
sentimental stuff, the force of the time overcame me, as if I had never
been educated; and as soon as I rather felt than knew that I was
listening to some simple hymn, I became almost as a little child
inhaling his first ideas of God. The words that fell upon my ears so
softly were as unknown as the tune itself, voice and verse and air
combining into a harmony of heaven.
Ought any man to be called a snob, for doing a thing that is below
himself, on the impulse of the moment, and without a halt of thought? It
is not for me to argue that; but I hope that fair ladies will forgive
me, when I confess that I stepped very gently, avoiding every dry twig
and stone, across the brown hollow that is generally found at the foot
of any steep fall of wood. By this time the lane was gone to grass, and
I slipped Old Joe's bit that he might have a graze, while I went in
quest of my Siren.
On the further brink of the spongy trough, a dark frizzle of alder and
close brushwood was overhanging a bright swift stream, which I
recognised as the Pebblebourne, a copious brook, beloved of trout, and
as yet little harassed by anglers. Through this dark screen I peered,
and beheld a vision that amazed me. Along a fair meadow that bent
towards the west, and offered a slim tree here and there--like a
walking-stick for evening--the gentle light of day's departure came
quite horizontally. There was, as there often is in nature, some deep
peace of sadness, which rebukes mankind for its petty cares, and
perpetual fuss about itself. And yet there was something in front of all
this, to set the heart of a young man fluttering.
On the opposite bank, and within fair distance for the eyes to make out
everything, was a niche of dark wall shagged with ivy, and still
supporting the grey stonework of a ruined chapel-window, between whose
jagged mullions flowed the silvery light of the west and fell upon the
face of a kneeling maiden. The profile, as perfect as that of a statue,
yet with the tender curves of youth, more like the softness of a cameo,
was outlined as in a frame of light against the black curtain of the
ivied wall. Beside the kneeling figure lay a head-tire of some strange
design, removed perhaps when the hymn was followed by the attitude of
prayer.
The beauty and rapture of this devotion made me hold my breath, and feel
as if I were profaning it. "Get away, you low intruder," said my better
self to me. But it is all very well to talk. It was out of my power to
go away. Under this spell I stood, until that gentle worshipper arose
with a bend of her graceful neck, and gathered her pale grey robe around
her. It was not such a dress as English ladies according to the fashion
of the moment wear, with pumpkin sleeves, or with wens upon their
shoulders, and puckers, and gathers, and frizzles and scollops, in a
mangle of angles and zig-zags. What it was made of is more than I can
say; I only know that it was beautiful; drawn in at the waist with a
narrow belt, and following rather than trying to lead the harmony of the
living form. But one thing caught my attention even so, and that was the
flash of a bright red cross on the delicate curve of the bosom.
It appeared to me that tears were sparkling under the fringe of large
dark eyes, as the lonely maiden glanced around, while preparing for
departure. Then to my surprise--if anything could surprise me
further--with a rapid movement she laid bare a gleaming shoulder, and
set upon it the tip of a long straight finger. Her face was partly
obscured to me by the bend of her arm, but I fancied that she smiled,
and was opening her lips to pronounce some words, when suddenly that
horse Old Joe, who had been doing his best to lessen the burden of his
maintenance, gave vent to a snort of approbation, not of the fair sight
across the water--for that was hidden by bushes from him--but at the
juiciness of his graze. My guilty conscience made me start, for I fully
expected to be found out in a thing I had never done before; and I felt
ashamed to look again, till I knew there was no suspicion. Then a breath
of wind turned up a leaf; and who could help glancing under it?
I saw that the beautiful and mysterious damsel had taken some little
alarm at the grunt of the greedy quadruped. From the foot of the old
chapel-window she was taking something white like a crucifix--though I
could not be certain about that; meanwhile she had placed on her head
that strange affair which I had seen lying on the ground. To me it
looked like an octagonal hat, with a long veil of gauze descending from
it, resembling nothing that I had ever seen on a lady's head, to the
best of my remembrance; although in bright fact they wear such strange
things, and trim them anew so wondrously, that no man must be positive.
Whatever it was, it looked very sweet--as the ladies themselves express
it--but I grieved that I could see her face no more.
She placed that white object very carefully in the folds of her dress
beneath the veil which covered her down to the waist; and then to my
great disappointment she was gone, seeming rather to float on the air
than to walk with a definite stride, as our ladies make their way. But
the quivering points of some pendulous leafage showed that a bodily form
had passed there.
I was left in a conflict of wonder, and doubt, and intense desire to
know more, mingled with some self-reproach--though the worst of that
came afterwards--and a hollow feeling in my heart as if I should never
fill it with myself again. Something told me that the proper course, and
the most manly and business-like, was to jump on my horse and make him
climb the hill anew, and take the high road, and get home at full speed,
and never say a word about what I had seen, nor even think about it, if
it could be helped.
But I assure you (and I hope again that allowance will be made for me,
as a young man not much accustomed to the world, and hitherto heedless
of feminine charms) that I found it impossible to do the right thing
now. Instead of a lofty and resolute withdrawal, in I went for more of
that, of which I had taken too much already. I stuck Old Joe's bit into
the hungry leather of his most voracious mouth, and came down on his
back with a ponderous swing, and girded him with a hard grip of his
belly, to show me some more of what he had scared away. Much against his
liking--for if ever a horse was totally destitute of romance, here he
was and no mistake--with a grunt of remonstrance he plodded into the
pebbly ford at the bottom of the hill.
But when we struck into the silence of the meadow, what was I the wiser?
Lo, the dusk was settling down in the most indifferent manner, the
sunset flush was fading into a faint and chill neutrality, the trees had
no shadow, and, worst of all, no sign or even memory of any sweet
passage among them. Only on the left hand some hundred yards away was a
black door set in an old grey wall, which curved along leisurely as far
as I could see, and offered no other entrance.
"I am not the sort of fellow to put up with this," I exclaimed to myself
impatiently; and yet there was no way to help it just now. And if it
came to reason, what business had I there? Still the whole of this land
had been ours not more than a century ago, and a true Briton feels that
he has his rights, however long he may have lost them. But it is not in
his nature to lose sight of reason, though I am not quite so certain how
that was with me, as I wandered home slowly along forgotten ways, and
knew that my life was changed thenceforth.
CHAPTER II
THE FAMILY
It is said, and seems worthy of belief--though denied quite lately by a
great Frenchman--that there are in the world no fairer damsels than
those of our own dear island. Graceful, elegant, straight and goodly,
gentle--which is the first point of all--yet lively and able to take
their own part, eager moreover to please, and clever to obtain what they
want by doing so, they have no cause to envy their brothers, or feel
ungrateful to Providence for making them fair. If any of them do that
sometimes, when led astray every now and then by feminine agitators, for
the most part they will come back to themselves, if left without
contradiction.
My sister Grace, for instance, was one of the best and kindest-hearted
English girls that ever blushed. Far in front of me, I confess, in
quickness of apprehension, and perception of character, and readiness of
answer, and I might almost say in common-sense; though I never quite
conceded that, because I had so much need of it. Nevertheless she looked
up to me, as her elder by five years, and a man. Therefore, it was my
custom always to listen with much toleration to her, and often adopt her
views in practice, after shaking my head for the time at them. For she
always finished her orations with, "Well, brother George, you are sure
to know the best."
Now, if we had none but Grace to deal with, things would have been very
different. Not that we could have retrieved our fortunes--of that there
was no possibility; still, we might have carried on in our humble way,
and kept my father, Sir Harold Cranleigh, comfortable in his old age,
and even happy among his books and collection of minerals, and seals and
coins. My mother also might have had all she could wish; for she was in
truth a very quiet soul, bound up in her children, and fond of little
else, unless it were county histories, and the fulfilment of prophecy.
Sometimes she was grieved that we occupied now the old cottage in a
corner of the Park, which had once been the house of our agent; also at
having but a pony-cart, instead of what she was accustomed to. But the
grief was not on her own account, and simply for our sake, as we knew
well; and we kept on telling her that we liked it better so.
For after all, if one comes to think, those very wealthy folk have no
true enjoyment, and no keen relish for anything good. In the first
place, they can never feel the satisfaction of having earned, by honest
work, their pleasure. It comes to them but as an everyday matter,
wearisome, vapid, insipid, and dull. Many of them have a noble spirit,
and that makes it all the worse for them. They see and they feel the
misery of the poverty around them, but all they can do is of no avail.
They are cheated and wronged in their best endeavours; if they show
discernment, they are called niggards; if they are profuse, it is
ostentation. And if they are large enough not to be soured by any of
these expressions, they begin to feel more and more, as time goes on,
that the money should stop in the family.
Remembering this, we should have regarded with delicate compassion that
very wealthy individual, Mr. Jackson Stoneman. This eminent stockbroker
claimed not only our sympathy for his vast riches, but also some
goodwill by the relief afforded us in a cumbrous difficulty. My father
had long been casting about, as matters went from bad to worse, and farm
after farm was thrown up by insolvent tenants, for some one to occupy
our old house, Crogate Hall, and the Park as well, for he could not bear
to let them separately, and have the old place cut into patches. But
there was no one left among the old families of the county, still
possessing cash enough to add this to the homes already on their hands.
There is much fine feeling and warmth of heart toward one another,
among those who have never had much to do, from one generation to
another, except to encourage the good people who love order, by
punishing those of an opposite turn, and to keep up the line which has
always been drawn between landed estate and commerce; as well as to be
heartily kind to the poor--even though they do encroach a little on
preserves--and above all to be hospitable not to one another only, but
to people of business who know their position.
Our family, one of the oldest in Surrey, and of Saxon lineage, requiring
no mixed Norman blood of outsea cutthroats to better it, had always kept
its proper place, and been beloved for its justice, generosity, and
modesty. Our tenants had never made any pretension to own the lands they
held of us, any more than a man to whom I had lent a thousand pounds at
interest--supposing that I owned such a sum--would set up a claim to my
capital. We were very kind to them as long as they could pay; and
throughout their long struggle with the foreign deluge, we made every
effort to keep them afloat, reducing their rent to the vanishing point,
and plunging with them into poverty. But what can be done, when the best
land in England will not pay for working, and is burdened as heavily as
ever?
"Cut your coat according to your cloth," is a very fine old precept; and
we went on doing so, as Heaven only knows. But when there is no cloth
left at all, and the climate is not good enough to supply fig-leaves,
wherewithal shall a man be clothed? And for a woman, how much
worse--though they sometimes exaggerate their trials. My sister Grace
was as lovely a maiden as ever was born of Saxon race, which at its best
is the fairest of all. To my mind she was far more beautiful than her
sister Elfrida, the eldest of us, now the wife of Lord Fitzragon, who
had children of her own, and very seldom came to see us, being taken up
with her own world. And one of the things that grieved me most was to
see my favourite sister dressed in some common blue serge, with a brown
leather belt round her waist, and thick shoes on her delicate feet, like
a boy elected by Twickenham parish to the Blue-coat School. For a boy it
is all very well, and may lead to the highest honours of the realm; but
with a maiden of gentle breed it is not so encouraging.
Notwithstanding this, I say that you might put a lady of any rank you
please, and of any wealth to back it up, by the side of my sister Grace;
and I know to which of them your eyes would turn. The Lord may see fit,
for some good purpose, to set one of His children high and to pluck down
another; but He never undoes what He did at the first, and His goodness
remains in the trouble. Many girls lowered from their proper line of
life, and obliged to do things that seemed hard for them, would have
turned sour, and tossed their heads, or at the very least would have
taken unkindly to what they were forced to do. And if anybody blamed
them for it, the chances are that it would be some one who would have
done the very same. But to see our Grace now, you would have thought
that she had been born a small yeoman's daughter, or apprenticed quite
young to a dairyman. What I mean is--unless you looked at her twice; and
to fail of doing that would be quite sufficient proof that you care not
for the most interesting thing in all human nature--except perhaps a
loving mother--to wit, a gentle, truthful, lively, sweet, and
affectionate young maid.
It is not in a man to be so good, and luckily it is not expected of him.
Certainly I did speak strongly sometimes, and find fault with the luck,
and the world, and the law, and above all with the Government, which
every Englishman has a right to do. At such times my sister would
scarcely say a word,--which alone is enough to prove her
self-command,--but draw down her golden hair between her fingers, and
look at me softly from her deep blue eyes, and clearly be trying to
think as I thought. When any one whose opinion is at all worth having
does that sort of thing, almost any man is pleased with the silence he
has created; and his temper improves, as he approves of himself. And so
I always felt with Grace, that she might be right, because I was right;
and it helped me more than any one might think, to know that my words
made a stronger impression on another mind than they left upon my own.
Happy beyond all chance of fortune would be the man who could win such a
heart, and be looked at with even deeper love than a sister has for a
brother, and feel himself lifted more nigh to heaven than he had any
power, or perhaps even any desire of his own to go. But no man so gifted
had appeared as yet, neither did we want him to turn up, for the very
good reason that Grace Cranleigh was the heart and soul of our little
household, just as I, George, was the hand and head, for all practical
purposes, though much against my liking.
Because my elder brother Harold, heir to the title and the dwindled
heritage, was the proper person to come forward, and take the lead of
our forlorn hope, and stand up bravely in the gap, and encourage the
elders when thus stricken down and impoverished. But as I have hinted
before, we had a trouble almost as bad as mortgages, loss of invested
money, and even the ruinous price of corn, and that was a Genius in the
family, without any cash to support him. Truly in almost every family
the seeds of genius may be found, but most of them are nipped in early
days, or start in some harmless direction. But Harold's was not to be
cured like this, for it started in every direction, with a force that
left nothing to be desired, except the completion of something. There
was no conceit in this brother of mine, neither any defect of energy. No
matter what he took up, not only was he full of it for the time, but
perfectly certain that nothing of equal grandeur had dawned upon the
human race till now. Time would fail me to begin the list of his
manifold inventions, for every one was greater than the one before it,
and in justice to him I should have to go through all. While there were
difficulties in the way, his perseverance was boundless. But the moment
he had vanquished them, and proved that there was little more to do, as
sure as eggs are eggs he would stop short, exclaim, "Oh, any fool can do
that!" and turn his great powers to something even greater.
We all admired him, as no one could help doing, for he was a wonderfully
taking fellow, gentle, handsome, generous, and upright, a lover of
Shakespeare, a very fine scholar, as tender to animals as if he knew
their thoughts, and in every way a gentleman, though not fond of
society. But the worst of it was that we had to pay for him; and this
was uncommonly hard to do, under our present circumstances. For
inventors must have the very best material, as well as the finest tools
for their work, and some one of skill to hold things in their place, and
to bear the whole blame when the job miscarries. We were grieved, when
instead of the untold gold which was to have set us staggering, a
basketful of bills was all that came, with headings that sent us to the
Cyclopædia, and footings that spelled the workhouse.
"What is all this about letting the old house?" Harold had asked me,
without indignation, but still with some sadness at our want of faith,
the very last time I had seen him. "You have so very little foresight,
George! You forget altogether how easy it is to let a man in; but to get
him out again, there's the rub; and how often the landlord is forced to
take the roof off!"
"The rub has been to get him in, this time," I answered in my dry
submissive way, for I never tried to reason with such a clever fellow.
"The doors are scarcely large enough for a man of such substance. And as
for the roof, it was taking itself off, after three years without any
repairs, and no one to ask where the leaks were. I think it is a
wonderful piece of luck that Mr. Jackson Stoneman, a man of
extraordinary wealth, has taken such a fancy to the poor old place. It
was Grace who showed him round, for there was no one else to do it. And
she says that although he may not be quite accustomed----"
"Oh, I don't wish to hear any more about him. I detest the idea of
letting our old house, and the Park, and the stables, I suppose he wants
them all. And just when I am at the very point of securing a patent,
which must restore us to our proper position in the county; for the
model is as good as finished. No lease, no lease, my dear George. If you
let him in, have a binding agreement to get him out at any time, with
three months' notice. And when you speak of roofing, have you quite
forgotten that I have discovered a material which must supersede all our
barbarous plans for keeping the sun and the rain out?"
"Oh, yes, I remember. You mean to let them in," I replied, without any
attempt at sarcasm, but having a vague recollection of something.
"Undoubtedly I do, to a certain extent; and then to utilise them. Every
great idea must be in accordance with nature, instead of repelling her.
Now the sun and the rain--but just give me that sheet of paper, and in
two minutes you will see it all. It is the most simple and beautiful
idea. All I fear is that some one else may hit upon it. But, George, I
can trust you, because you are so slow."
With pencil and compass he was sure to be happy for an hour or more and
come beaming to dinner; so I left him, and went to tell my father that
his eldest son, whose consent he required, had given it to that most
necessary step, the letting of Crogate Hall and Park to some eligible
tenant. Not only was a very great burden removed,--for we could not bear
to see the old place lapse into ruin,--but also a welcome addition was
made to our very scanty income. For the great stockbroker paid a
handsome rent without any demur, and began for his own sake to put
everything into good order. Once more the windows shone with light
instead of being grimed with dust and fog; and the Park was mown, and
the deer replaced, and the broad expanse of lawn was gay with cricket
colours and the pretty ways of women.
But we in our corner kept ourselves at a distance from such enjoyment.
Not through any false pride, or jealousy of a condition which had once
been ours; but simply because, as my father said, and my mother agreed
with him warmly, it had never been the habit of our family to receive
entertainment which it could not return. Our home-made bread was (for
relish and for nurture) worth fifty of their snowy Vienna stuff, and a
pint of the ale which I brewed myself was better than a dozen of their
dry champagne, or a vintage of their Chateau this and that. But they
would never think so; and if Englishmen choose to run down their own
blessings, as they do their merits, let the fashion prevail, while the
few who can judge for themselves hold fast their convictions.
CHAPTER III
TOM ERRICKER
Mr. Jackson Stoneman was--so far as I could make him out, without having
had six words with him--a very clever City-man, yet keeping two sides to
his life, as he could well afford to do. At an early age he had come
into the chief control of a long-established firm, one of those that
venture little, but keep on rolling from age to age the ball of
accumulating gold. This globe of all human delight was not at all likely
to slip between such legs as his; though the wicked metal will do that
sometimes, and roll away down the great hill of despair. He attended
very strictly to the main chance of all humanity, the object for which
we were born and die. That of course ruled his existence; but the people
who met him outside the covert, or rode with him when the scent was hot,
declared that he was a most excellent fellow, ready at an answer,
intelligent of hounds, skilful of hand and full of pluck, neither
showing off nor shirking work, and as courteous to a farmer as to the
Lord-Lieutenant.
This was high praise for a man of his position. And we found before long
that every one confirmed it. He took a large farm off our hands which
had long been begging anybody to take it; and though his solicitor was
keen enough to grind down the rent to the lowest figure, and insist upon
many new conditions, we could not blame his principal for that, and were
well aware that landlords nowadays must be grateful to any who will
patronise them. In fact, we had no other grievance against him, except
that he was rich and we were poor; and I am sure that we were not so
narrow-minded as to feel any grudge on that account. My mother
especially--as behoved one of the most charitable of women--found many
good excuses for a practice of his, which some might have taken as a
proof of want of taste. Our cottage was beside the direct road from the
Hall to the nearest railway station, for no line had cut up our
neighbourhood as yet. Every morning, at least except on Saturday and
Sunday, when we were sitting down to breakfast, a rattle of wheels and
clank of silver harness would explain itself into Mr. Jackson Stoneman,
sitting bolt-upright with a cigar in his mouth, and flourishing a long
tandem-whip, while a couple of glittering chestnuts whirled him along
the smooth road, and a groom in white buckskins and top-boots
accordingly sat behind, and folded his arms in contempt of the world.
Grace like a child, though she was dignity itself when any stranger
looked at her, used to run to the window and exclaim, "Oh, what loves of
horses! How everything shines, and how well he drives!"
"Who couldn't drive a team of circus horses?" was the first thing I
said, but she took no notice. And the next morning, when the thing came
jingling by, and she stopped my sugar to stare at it--"Perhaps you long
to be upon that spare cushion," I remarked; for what man can put up with
his sister's nonsense? And after that, she never knew when the brilliant
tandem passed, which made me feel a little ashamed of myself.
However, I will not blame the great stockbroker--"Stocks-and-Stones" was
the name I gave him, without meaning harm, but the nickname spread, and
gave him some trifling annoyance, I fear--what right has any man to
blame another for a little bit of thoughtlessness, redressed at first
perception? Somebody told Stoneman, or perhaps he found it out, for
nothing escaped him, that I was displeased at his flashing by like that,
not on my own account, as scarcely need be said; and the next week he
took another road to the station, half a mile longer and much worse for
his horses. And so we lost sight of his handsome turn-out, to which we
were getting accustomed and began to set our time-piece by it.
All these things are small; but what is truly great, unless it be
concerned with love, or valour, freedom, piety, or self-denial, and
desire to benefit the world at large? And yet, as a rule, we care most
about those who dwell little upon such big matters, but carry on
pleasantly, and suit us, and amuse us, and seem to be rather below than
above us, in mind, and ambition, and standard of life. Tom Erricker
knows that he is of that class, and I am welcome to say what I like of
him, without any danger to our friendship. And if I describe him exactly
as he is, he will take the better part as a compliment, and tell me that
the rest is of my imagination.
As he came to and fro from his chambers in the Temple, my friend Tom was
a very bright young fellow, indolent yet restless, perpetually in love,
though his loves were of brief continuity, light of heart, impulsive,
very eager to oblige, and gifted with a very high opinion of himself,
and a profound scorn of everything that he could not understand. He was
generous, bold, and adventurous, a keen judge of character according to
his own idea, yet a thorough hero-worshipper, very fond of addressing
himself in the mirror, and trying to give an impartial account of his
own appearance and qualities.
"Well, Tom, my boy," I heard him say one day, for he was confidential to
others, as well as to himself, about himself, "you are not looking quite
the thing this morning. A few cigars less, Tom, would suit you better.
And little crow's-feet already coming! What business have they there at
five-and-twenty? It can't be reading too hard, or you would have got
through, last time. Never mind, Tom, you are not a bad-looking fellow,
though you mustn't suppose you are handsome. There is not enough of you;
that's the great fault,--not enough of you to look dignified."
In all this he was perfectly correct, though he might have supposed
himself handsome without any very great partiality; for his eyes were of
a rich and lively brown, such as many a maiden might have envied. And
his features quite regular enough, and short, and full of genial
vivacity. He was right enough also in the observation that there was not
enough of him to enforce the impression which such wisdom as his should
create; for although not by any means a dwarf, he was of less than
average stature, while exceedingly active and very well built. But he
never said a truer thing in the purest of all self-commune, than that
his crow's-feet, if any there were, could not have owed their origin to
excess of mental labour. Such is the sort of man one likes; because he
can never put one right, when a plague of accuracy comes on.
Now what was my inducement, who shall say? And the reasons come too late
to make much difference, when a man has done a very foolish thing. It
may have been partly because I had never kept any secret back from Tom,
after my long time at school and college with him, and I did not like to
do so now; and it may have been also that I felt uneasy about my own
behaviour, and longed for some encouragement. Be that as it will, when
Tom Erricker came down, as he never failed to do at least once every
month, to spend Saturday and Sunday with us, no sooner had I got him in
my little den at the back of our cottage where the harness was kept,
than I bundled old Croaker, our only stableman, away to his dinner, and
with proper introductions poured forth to my friend the whole narrative
of that strange affair which I had witnessed as above, but spoken of as
yet to no one.
My friend's interjections and frequent questions need not be set down,
for he was of the many who can never hear a story without interruption.
But when I had assured him for the fiftieth time that there was nothing
more to tell, his face, which had been a fine study of amazement, became
equally full of oracular wisdom.
"Leave it to me," he said; "leave it to me, George. I will soon get to
the bottom of it. I never speak rashly. You know what I am. There is
something very deep behind all this. You, who live so near, and are only
acquainted with country ways, must not move in the matter. I shall find
the key to it. You can do nothing. I get about among people so much; and
I know nearly all that goes on in Soho. You have never done a wiser
thing than to keep this dark and consult me about it. And a wonderfully
lovely girl, you say!"
"Dark let it be if you please," I answered; though I had never even
thought about that before, for I do detest all mystery. "Erricker, I
told you this in confidence. It looks as if I was wrong in doing even
that, when you begin talking in that sort of way. Is it likely that I
would let you take it up? If I cannot myself, as a gentleman, pry into a
thing I was not meant to see, do you suppose I would let a young
fellow"--Tom was my junior by about three months--"a young fellow like
you meddle with it?"
"Now don't be in a huff, George;" he spoke with a smile, as if I were
making a fuss about nothing. "I have far more important things than this
to think of. It was only for your sake that I said a word. But I always
try to be straightforward. Why did I go down in the last exam? They
asked me to describe a contingent remainder; and I said it was a
remainder that was contingent. Could anything be more correct than that?
And yet the infernal old Q. C. said that I must pursue my studies. And
now, if I don't get through next time, the glorious tinman will cut
short my allowance. But, thank God, I have got a maiden aunt."
The glorious tinman was Tom's worthy father, the head of a great plating
firm at Sheffield. Being perpetually involved in law-suits concerning
trade-marks and patents, and finding silver and gold enough for a
month's heavy plating sink into the long robe, this gentleman had said
to his wife, "Why not keep it in the family?" And she had replied, "Oh,
how clever our Tom is! None of those councillors understand the trade."
Therefore was Tom at the Temple now.
When my friend once began upon his own affairs, and the ignorance of his
examiners, he was ready to go on for ever; and so I cut him short with
the question which had chiefly induced me to unburden my mind to him.
"The point is this, my dear boy. Ought I to feel ashamed, do you feel
ashamed of me, for acting the spy upon a young lady who had no idea I
was looking at her? Speak plainly, I won't be offended."
"If I ever get through, I am sure to be a judge," Tom Erricker replied,
with a glance of deprecation at his rather "loud" suit of red-and-white
plaid "Dittoes;" "my aunt Gertrude has said so fifty times; and I feel
the making of it in me, though it takes a long time in development. And
I sum up the merits thus, George Cranleigh. You had no right to begin;
but when you had begun, I am blowed if I can see how you could help
going on. And I should like to go on a lot further with it."
My mind (which was larger then than now, for nothing loses more by wear
and tear) was relieved, much more than it would be now by even some
valid pronouncement.
"Tom Erricker, you are a brick," I said; "and I don't mind showing you
the place. There is plenty of time before dinner yet. Only you must give
me your word of honour--not a syllable about it to any one."
"Hands up. That's what we say in our corps,"--for he was a member of the
"Devil's Own," and a very zealous one, for such a lazy fellow,--"but I
could not walk so far without a gun."
This difficulty did not last long; for I ran to the door, and asked my
sister to lend her pony Amabel to my friend Tom for an hour or two.
Grace was the most obliging girl that was ever too good to be married,
and although she felt some kind disdain, as it seemed to me sometimes,
for Tom, her pony was heartily at his service, if he would promise not
to whip her. Tom came out of our little hole, when this stipulation
reached his ears, and he put on his hat for the pleasure and glory of
taking it off again to my sister. Among his many tendernesses, the
sweetest and biggest of all perhaps was one with our Grace at the end of
it. But he knew, as we know such things by instinct, that she never
would come in to share it; and though he fetched many a sigh, they were
shallow, because hope had never been beneath them.
Off we set in the summer afternoon, for the month was come to June
already, with everything going on as if we were nothing. Because I have
not said much about it,--as behoves an average young Englishman,--if
anybody reads this, he may think that nothing to dwell upon had come
home to me, by reason of what I had seen that day when the millers made
light of my samples. But this I can declare, and would have done so long
ago except for some sense that it was my affair alone, the whole world
had been quite a different thing to me, ever since I set eyes
upon--well, there is but one to any man worth anything; and does he ever
get her?
Tom Erricker was the last fellow in the world to whom one could offer
any fine gush of feeling; because he was sadly sentimental sometimes,
when his veins of thought were varicose, and when something nasty had
happened to himself; but when his spirits were up, you would think there
had never been a tear shed in the world, except by some brat who knew
not how to cut his teeth. He was now in great exaltation at having
fetched me, as he thought, to his level; for I had always regarded his
light flirtations with a pleasant turn of humour, and he could not see
the difference between himself and me. So I rode Old Joseph, who was a
good tall horse; and he on little Amabel looked up at me, with no more
reverence than Sancho Panza showed to the immortal knight, who ever
failed to elevate him.
"Give me an open country, not your slash and scratch-pins." There was
nothing Tom loved more than talking as if he had followed hounds from
his infancy, instead of growing up under a dish-cover; but romancing on
such subjects would not go down with me.
"Surely you might have brought us by a better road than this, George. I
have had my bad times, I don't mind them in a burst; but I'm blessed if
I like being scratched to pieces, with nothing whatever to show for it."
"To talk about, you mean, Tom. Well, here we get out into as pretty a
bit of firland as can be found even in Surrey; and that may challenge
all England to equal it. But I never go in for the picturesque."
"To be sure, not. The ladies do it ever so much better. To own the land,
or at any rate the shooting, is the chief thing for us to care about.
And the shooting is worth twice as much as the crops, in the present
condition of the market. Never mind, George, I won't talk about that,
for I know it is a very sore subject. Do you mean to say that all this
belonged to you, not more than fifty years ago?"
"Out of the frying-pan into the fire, as regards the subject," I
answered with a smile, for I knew that he never meant to vex me. "But I
am sorry that we cannot give you leave even to poke about here with your
gun, and pot blackbirds and magpies. There go two magpies! You don't
often get so near them."
"Two for a wedding--don't they say? A good omen for you, George. But
where the deuce does your nymph hang out? Aha! good hit of mine! A nymph
means a bride, doesn't she, in Greek?"
"Shut up!" I said, for this talk was very paltry, and perhaps Tom
Erricker's appearance was not quite up to the mark of a romantic moment.
My chief desire was to gaze across the valley, down the further side of
which, about a mile away, I could trace pretty clearly by its fringe of
bushes the windings of the brook which I had crossed that day on my
return from Guildford. It seemed to be ages ago, whereas it was only
four weeks; but I had thought about it enough to make a very broad space
of time. And here was Tom chaffing, and eager to make fun, with his red
plaid trousers forced up to his knees by his jerking about in the
saddle, and his loftiest air of acquaintance with the world, and his
largest smiles of superiority to women. For the moment I longed to
deposit him in an ant-hill.
"Well, what can I see? Or what am I to look for?" He spoke as if he had
paid me for a view and I was bound to make it worth the money. Whereas,
though I did ask his opinion at a distance, it was the last thing I
should think of now; and in plain truth, what business had he here at
all, and spying about through a shilling eyeglass? But it was not for me
to take things as he did. Let him long to enter into them.
"All right," I said. "We will come another day. This may or it may not
be the place. Look at your poor legs. They are fat enough; but what a
sight for a lady! What a fool you were, not to take my straps!"
"Bless the fellow! Well, you are hard hit, or you would not carry on in
this style." Tom turned his eyeglass upon me in a manner which might
have provoked me, if I had been capable of thinking twice about him now.
"In a blue study, George? Everything looks blue, even the mist in the
valley. Has she got blue eyes? Ah! there is nothing like them."
"Blue eyes have no depth. What do you know about eyes?" I spoke with
some warmth, as was natural. And then, just to show him how calmly I
took his childish and shallow observation, I proceeded as if he had
never spoken.
"You see that long mass of black ivy to the right, cutting a sort of
jag, or perhaps it is a great curve out of the flat steep line of the
meadow?"
"Yes, to be sure I do. Nothing could be plainer. A jag which is a curve
at the same time; and a flat meadow which is also steep!"
"Never mind the meadow. You are not so stupid that you can't see the
wall, and the ivy on it. Now, Tom Erricker, what do you suppose that to
be?"
"How can I tell, about two miles away? Let us go on, and make it out,
old chap."
"Not another step. I am not at all sure that I ought to have brought you
so far as this. However, you can hold your tongue, I know; and you are
upon your honour about all this. Well, that is the wall of an old
monastery, more than five hundred years old, I believe, and connected
with that ancient chapel on the hills. Naturally, it is all in ruins
now, and there has been an attempt to set a mill up in its place."
"The best thing to be done with it," Tom replied, for his nature was not
reverent. "But a mill should have paid, if it had any water. Free trade
has not had time to destroy the pounders yet, although it has killed the
producers. But I don't want to hear about monks and mills. The lovely
nuns are more to my taste."
"What nuns could there be in a monastery, Tom? You are even more abroad
than usual. But though I have not been near the place, since the time I
told you of, and we have nothing to do with that valley now, I have put
a few quiet questions here and there, and I find that the old place has
been sold to a foreign gentleman, whose name our fine fellows cannot
pronounce."
"Oho! That becomes very interesting. He's papa of the beautiful nymph,
no doubt. But you never mean to say that you left off there?"
"Certainly I do. How could I go prying? What Englishman would ever think
of meddling with his neighbours? And a foreigner, too, who has come here
for quiet----"
"Bother!" replied Tom. "If they have lovely daughters, everybody has a
right to find out all about them. I'll bet you a hat it is some wicked
old conspirator, a Nihilist perhaps, or at least an Anarchist, taking
advantage of our stupid hospitality, to hatch some fiendish plot, and
blow up some foreign monarch, with whom we pretend to be in strict
friendship. Why, only a few months ago----"
"No more of that. I hoped to have found a little common-sense in you. As
if it were possible that that--that perfect----"
"Angel!" cried Tom. "You can't get beyond that. And I am blessed if I
ever could have believed that a sensible, slow-going bloke like you,
George----"
I took hold of his bridle, and turned Amabel homeward, and gave her such
a sharp little flick behind that my friend had as much as he could do to
keep in the saddle, for the best part of the way back to our cottage.
For we never grudged oats to our horses.
CHAPTER IV
MR. STONEMAN
No man who has to contend with the world, and support those he loves
against it, cares twopence about being taken for a fool by the people he
has to contend with. Their opinion to this effect frequently is of some
service to him, and very seldom hurts him, unless he wants to get into
their employment, or to borrow money from them. And in the latter point
it even helps him, when he has good security to give.
There is a certain worm, whose name I know not, being all abroad in
natural history, whose habit it is to come out of the ground and give
himself an airing late at night. And then if you moisten him from above,
in September or October, so grateful is he--or, if you deny him that
lofty feeling, so sensitive--that he glitters like any glow-worm.
With no less amplitude, perhaps, a man who has deep emotions, such as
shy ambition, or literary yearnings, or passionate humanity, or true
love of a woman, sometimes lets himself out at night, when small things
are lost to the eyes, and the larger objects begin to assert themselves.
For after all, what are the toys of the day, for which we sweat, and
fight, and crawl, and rack our poor brains till they cry for the
revolver--even if we get such gauds, what are they, to make up for the
gentle delight we have lost, of the days when we loved all the world,
and the moments when some one tried to do the like to us?
Now nothing of this kind comes in here, for verily I had been cheated
too often to rush into the embrace of the universe. But for the life of
me, I cannot tell how to explain the behaviour of a man, keener by a
thousandfold, and harder than in my worst moments I could long to be,
except by such principles, or (if they are not that) such want of
principle, such backsliding, such loosening of texture, and relapse into
nature, as we feel even in ourselves sometimes, and are more ashamed of
them in voice than heart. However, let every one judge for himself.
It must have been close upon St. Swithin's Day, for people were watching
the weather as they do, to keep up the fine old legend, when after a
long turn among the hay, which was very late that year, I sat in my
little den after dark, considering my pipe, or perhaps allowing it to
consider for me, because I was tired with a hard day's work, and fit for
nothing but putting my legs up. While we were so busy with the only
thing worth growing now in England, because it grows itself, the wisest
plan was to dine, or at least to feed, among it, and be content. And to
feed upon it is what the true Briton must come to, whenever a great war
arises. The man who has shut his eyes, must also shut his mouth, as the
proverb hath it.
While I was nodding at every puff, and full of the sleepy scent of hay,
the sound of a step, and the darkening of my open doorway, aroused me.
"Come in, Bob," I said, "anything the matter?" For some of our ricks had
been carried rather green, and we were still obliged to watch them.
"Excuse me for taking you thus by surprise. If you can spare me a few
minutes, Mr. Cranleigh, you will do a great favour. It is Jackson
Stoneman."
Having seen this rich gentleman chiefly at a distance, and not cared
much to look at him, I wondered at his coming in upon me thus, and was
rather inclined to resent it. But the thought of my father and mother,
and of the great help that his tenancy was to them, compelled me to drop
such little points, and receive him with all civility. My snuggery was
but a very little place, forming a part of the harness-room, and
resigned (whenever the door was shut) to a very modest share of daylight
coming through leaded diamonds, which were certainly not brilliants. So
I lit my candles, still having a pair, and offered him my one armchair,
an ancient Windsor, with a cushion in the bottom, more cosy than most of
the easy-chairs made now to be gazed at rather than sat upon. He thanked
me, but took his seat upon an oaken bench, and looked at me steadily, as
if to search my humour. Being of an equable and by no means rapid
temper, I returned his gaze with interest, and left him to begin.
"First of all, I must have this settled,"--his voice was very clear and
rather pleasant, though he showed some signs of nervousness; "it must be
understood that whether I am right or wrong in coming to you like this,
you will not be annoyed, and turn against me."
"Very well," I said, for the promise was a light one. What harm could I
do to a man of his wealth? And if a man offends me, I let him alone,
until it is cowardice to do so.
"You attach much importance, I think, Mr. Cranleigh, to questions of
birth, and position in the county, and ancient family, and so on?"
"I am not at all aware that I do so. The fact is, that I am too busy now
to dwell much upon such things. And their period seems to be over."
I knew that I was talking stuff, and that bitterness made me do it. One
glance from his swift eyes showed me that he thought none the more of me
for taking such a tone, although for the moment it was genuine.
"If you make little of such matters, I do not," said Stoneman; "neither
will any one of common-sense, for many generations yet to come. At least
if those who are born to such advantage have the wisdom not to overdo
it. But I want to put a few plain questions to you; and from what I have
heard and seen of you, I am sure that you will answer them plainly, when
you know that they are not impertinent. And I give you my word that they
are not that."
"Anything you please, to the best of my knowledge, of anything a
stranger has a right to know."
"I am not a stranger altogether; though I have no privilege of
friendship. When I tell you what I have come about, you may think that
I should have gone to your father first. But I thought it better to give
you the chance of saving him from annoyance. In almost every way, you
act as the manager now for the family. Am I right in believing that?"
"Yes, as regards all local business. My brother, Harold, would be the
proper man; but he is seldom here, and he is not fond of
business--business of a small kind, I mean of course."
My visitor smiled, as if he doubted that ever there could be any but
small business here; and remembering what we must have been once, I
regarded him rather sternly. He was tall, and strongly built, and
straight, and plainly dressed, as a man should be, leaving beauty to the
beautiful. Not that he was an unsightly fellow, but very good-looking in
a certain way. His forehead was large and square, and gave the idea of
strength and steadfastness, and his eyes, perhaps too deeply set, but
full of vigour and decision. His complexion was dark for an
Englishman's, and his close-cropped hair as black as jet, and so was his
short moustache, the only growth allowed upon his face. A good clear
countenance upon the whole, without any sign of weakness in it, neither
of more hardness than a man of the world requires, to hold his own and
enlarge it.
He saw that I was "taking stock" of him,--as his own phrase might have
been perhaps,--and he waited the result with confidence. Then he put me
to some little confusion.
"Well, Mr. Cranleigh, I hope that some of your prejudices are not
confirmed. I know that my position here is not very likely to produce
goodwill, especially with young men of high spirit. But I will not go
into that question now, beyond asking you this as a favour. Have I done
anything, since I occupied the Hall, that a stranger should not have
done among--among the real owners?"
"Not that I know of. I may say more than that. I may say that you have
shown us in every way very kind consideration."
"Thank you. I have tried to do so in everything round here. But now as
to taking the hounds, I have given no promise, until I knew your
opinion. Would it annoy Sir Harold, or any of your family?"
"Not in the least; especially after you have been so kind as to ask us.
They have long left our hands, as you know. My grandfather kept them on,
long after he could afford it; but my father never cared for them, and
gave it up as soon as possible. As for my brother, he would have nothing
to do with them, if he were made of money. And my liking matters of
course neither way."
"That seems hard when you do all the work. You mean, I suppose, that you
would like to keep them under different circumstances."
"If I were head of the family, and could afford it handsomely. As it is,
I would not, even if I could afford it. I should seem to be putting
myself too forward."
"Exactly so. And shall not I appear to be putting myself too forward, if
I bring them back to the old place, just because I can afford it? Your
candid opinion about that."
"Then I think not. No one could take it amiss but ourselves; and we are
not so small as that."
"Not even the ladies? Sometimes ladies do not see things quite as we do.
They might take it into their heads--I mean, they might think, not
unreasonably, that I was of the upstart order."
"There is very little fear of that," I said; "in our family the ladies
are never difficult to deal with. They have always been consulted, and
therefore they are shy about forming their opinions. It is not as if
they had no weight, as among the less solid Norman race. They know that
what they say is something; and that makes them like to hear our
opinions first."
"That state of things is most interesting, as well as rather unusual."
Mr. Stoneman spoke with a smile of calm inquiry, entirely free from
irony, and evidently wished me to go on. But I did not see how it
concerned a stranger; so I left him to his own affairs.
"He seems a very decent sort of fellow. But if he has come to pump me,"
thought I, "he will find that the water has gone from the sucker." And
he saw that he could not pursue that subject.
"I have lately received a requisition, or whatever is the proper name
for it, from several of the people about here, whose acquaintance I made
last season, that I should take over the old Crogate hounds, as Lord
Wiedeland has resigned them. It was signed by yourself and your brother
Harold. That made me think more about it. It seems rather absurd for a
busy man like me, who could never be out more than twice a-week, and
very seldom as much as that. And I am not such a fool as to care two
raps about random popularity; but I want to do what I ought to do; and I
will, whenever I know it."
"Then I think that you ought to do this," I answered, seeing that he was
in earnest. "You ride very well, you enjoy it thoroughly, and you know
quite enough about it to keep things in good order. There is not a man
in the neighbourhood who dares take any liberties with you. Joe Stevens,
of course, will come over with the pack. He is a host in himself. The
kennels are as good as they ever were. And perhaps the hounds will
recognise their duty to their ancestors, who lived so happily in the old
place."
"Ah, there you touch me up; although I am sure that you never meant it.
And that brings me to my second point. If I undertake this affair, upon
the distinct conditions which I shall make, will you join me, and be in
effect the real master, although my name is used? You are here always, I
am generally away. Everybody knows and values you. I am a mere
interloper. If you would only help me thus, everything would go
beautifully."
Not being very quick of thought, which is upon the whole a benefit,
while on the other hand I am uncommonly fond of hunting, I was not far
from saying yes, when luckily my pipe went out. With that I arose to get
another, and as I stood by the mantelpiece a clearer waft of mind came
to me, and showed me the many objections.
"Your offer is wonderfully kind and tempting, and shows more confidence
in me than I have earned." I spoke with some emotion, because I felt
that last point strongly, having shown no friendship towards this man.
"But I cannot accept it, Mr. Stoneman. I will do all I can to make
things easy, and to help you to the utmost of my power. But my first
duty is to my father and mother. And I could not do this without
neglecting that."
"You are right. I was wrong in proposing it. My stable, of course, would
have been at your service. But the inroads upon your time, and the many
derangements--well, never mind, so long as you are not angry with me for
proposing it. But if you will come out with us now and then----"
"Certainly I will, upon our Old Joseph. He ran away with me not very
long ago. Some of your young cracks would find him not so very far
behind; for he is wonderfully knowing."
"Good for you, I know how that tells up; though I am not a 'Parson
Jack,' who laid £5 that he would be in at the death upon his old donkey,
and won it. Very well, all that is settled--not exactly as I should
wish, but as much as we ever get things. But the next thing I shall
never get. And it is the only thing in life I care for."
"I should have thought that a man like you, resolute, very clear-headed,
and wealthy, might make sure of everything that in reason he required.
With life and health, I mean, of course, and the will of the Lord not
against him."
"We never know what is the will of the Lord, until we console ourselves
with it. Not that I am a scoffer or even a sceptic, Mr. Cranleigh. And
in some of the greatest moments of my life--but I will not bother you
with them. Only I may say that I look upon this as the very greatest of
them all. I don't want to make a fool of myself--but--perhaps the Lord
has done it for me."
He tried to make a little smile of this, and looked as if he wanted me
to help him out. But I could only stare, and wonder whether any man ever
born is at all times right in his head. For if anybody could be expected
to know what he is about at all times, I should have thought that man
would be Jackson Stoneman of the Stock Exchange. So I waited, as my
manner is, for him to make good sense of this.
Then he got up from his bench and set his face (which had been
quivering) as firm as the Funds, and looked down at me--for I was in my
Windsor chair again--and his eyes seemed to flash defiance at me,
although his voice was tender.
"George Cranleigh, you may think what you like. I care not a rap what
anybody thinks. I love your sister Grace, as no man ever loved a woman,
or ever will."
My amazement was so great and sudden that I looked at him without a
word. For a moment I was beaten out of time by this strong man's
intensity.
"I know all the stuff that you will say," he went on with scanty
politeness. "That I have not seen her more than half-a-dozen times. That
I have no right to lift my eyes to her. That even a mint of money can
never make up for the want of birth. That I am nothing but an upstart.
That I may be a rogue for all you know. That she is a million times too
good, and pure, and beautiful for such a fellow. Go on, go on; I would
rather have it over."
"But I have not begun yet, and you give me no time," I answered very
steadily, having now recovered myself, and objecting to have my
arguments forestalled. "You seem to forget yourself, Mr. Stoneman. There
is no necessity for excitement. That a man of the world like you----"
"That is the very point. That's what makes my chance so bad. There is
nothing of romance or sweet sentiment about me. I don't know anything
about hearts and darts. I have no poetical ideas. I could not fling
myself off a rock--if there was one. I don't know how to couch a lance.
I am pretty sure, though I have never tried, that I couldn't do a
sonnet, at any price. And if I did, and it leaked out, it would be the
ruin of my business."
"You can buy a sweet sonnet for five shillings, as good as they make
them nowadays, but a little common-sense is better than a thousand
sonnets; and of that, when you are at all yourself, you must have a very
large supply. Now sit down, and let us talk this out. At first it came
to me as a very great surprise. It was about the last thing that I could
have expected. But I think you were wise in coming first to me."
When I look back upon this interview, it often astonishes me that I
should have been able so quietly to take the upper hand with a man not
only my elder and of tenfold experience in the world, but also before me
in natural gifts, and everything that one could think of, except bodily
strength and the accident of birth. Nevertheless I did at once, after
that weak confession of his, take a decided lead upon him. Why? Because
he was plunged into love--a quicksand out of which no man attempts to
pull another, being well aware what he would get for his pains, and
rather inclined to make sport of him, whenever it may be done, without
harm to oneself.
"Well," I said, after waiting to see whether he would make another
start; but even his vigour was unequal to that, and he felt that he had
trespassed over the British bounds of self-control--"well, let us look
at this affair like men, and as if there were no woman in it." He lifted
his hand, by way of protest, as if I were begging the question; but
seeing how judicious my view was, and desiring perhaps to conciliate me,
he pulled out a large cigar and did his best to light it. "You may take
it," I proceeded, with much magnanimity and some contempt, little
presaging my own condition in less than a month from that very day,
"that I look at these subjects sensibly. I have every reason so far to
like you, because you have behaved very well to us. You behaved very
handsomely and justly, long before--well, long before you could possibly
have taken this strange turn."
"What a way to put it! But let everything be straight. I should never
have taken the Hall unless--I mean if anybody else had been there to
show me--to show me what a nice place it was."
"I see. Well, never mind how it began. But I will be as straight as you
are. It is difficult for me to do that, without saying some things to
offend you."
"Say what you please, Mr. Cranleigh. Say what you will, I shall not
forget whose brother you are, and that you mean to do your duty to her."
"To the best of my power. In the first place, then, do you know what the
character of our Grace is? She is gentle, and shy, and affectionate, and
unselfish as a girl alone can be. On the other hand, she is proud, and
high-spirited, and as obstinate as the very devil. Of money she never
thinks twice, except for the sake of those around her. She has the very
loftiest ideals, which she cherishes, but never speaks of them. Can a
money-maker realise them?"
This I ought never to have said; for it pained him very bitterly. He
made no answer; but the expression of his face showed that I had hit his
own misgivings.
"Not that I would make too great a point of that," I proceeded more
politely; "for a woman is not like a man altogether, however consistent
she may be. And Grace is only a girl after all, so that no one must be
too certain. She forms her own opinions to some extent, and nothing will
work her out of them. She takes likes and dislikes at first sight, and
she declares they are always justified----"
"You don't happen to know, I suppose--I mean you have not formed any
idea----"
"What she thought of you, Mr. Stoneman? No. I was rather surprised that
she never said a word that day she was sent for to give you the keys.
The utmost I could get out of her was, 'Oh, yes, he was very polite,
very polite, I assure you.' And so it is still; as if your entire nature
was politeness, and you consisted of good manners."
"Manners maketh man." My visitor spoke for the first time lightly, and
the smile on his face was no small improvement. "But you will think that
I cannot claim them, if I delay any longer to thank you. You have taken
what I had to tell you much better than I could have expected; and for
that I am very grateful. But I want to know this. I have heard a good
deal of the importance attached by the Cranleighs to their very old
lineage--Saxon, I believe. But my family has no such claims. We can
boast no more than this--for three, or four generations at the most, we
have been well educated and well off. All business men, no lords of the
land, no knights with coats of mail, and legs crossed upon a slab. Now
does that make you look down upon me from the height of Salisbury
steeple?"
Without any knowledge of his wealth, such as most of us look up to, it
would have been hard for any one to look down upon the man before me.
And sooth to say, there are plenty of men in his position, and of far
lower birth than his, who would have considered themselves at the top,
and me at the bottom of the tower. But before I could answer, a sudden
flush came over his face, and he rose in haste--for I had made him sit
down again--and he seemed to be trying very hard to look as if he were
not where he was. Perhaps his conscience told him that he was caught in
the attempt to steal a march.
But my sister Grace (who had just come in with her usual light step, to
tempt me to have at least a glass of beer before despising everything),
by some extraordinary gift of sight--though there never have been
straighter eyes--Grace never saw that great stockbroker, who wanted her
not to look at him.
"George, this is too bad of you again," she began with a smile, almost
too sweet for home-consumption only. "Work, work, all day, double,
double, toil and trouble; and scarcely a morsel of nourishment!"
"Not a bit to eat, is what you generally say, and ever so much better
English." I spoke in that way, because I really do dislike all
affectation, and I was sure that she had espied the stockbroker.
"Never mind how I express it," said Grace, and I thought that rather
independent of her, and it confirmed my conviction that she knew of some
one too ready to make too much of her. "If you understand it, that is
enough. But do come, darling George, you make us so sadly anxious about
you. What should we do, if you fell ill? And your poor dear eyes that
were so blue--the loveliest blue--oh, such a blue----"
She knew that her own were tenfold bluer, and mine no more than
cigar-ash to them. Now a man can put up with a lot of humbug from a
sister who is good to him; but he must be allowed to break out
sometimes, or she herself will soon make nought of him. And all this
unusual gush from Grace, because I had missed my supper beer. When she
offered to kiss my poor lonely brow, it annoyed me, as I thought of
being superseded.
"My dear child," I said, waving my hand towards the corner where
Stoneman looked envious, "the light is very dim; but I really should
have thought that you must have seen Mr. Stoneman there. Mr. Stoneman,
allow me to apologise for my sister's apparent rudeness. I fear that she
over-tries her eyes sometimes."
The stockbroker favoured me with a glance, as if he longed to over-try
my eyes too; and then he came forward and offered his hand to my
discomfited sister, with the lowest bow I ever did behold. All this was
a delight to me; but neither of them for the moment seemed to be
enjoying it.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Stoneman," said our Grace, recovering
herself with a curtsey, as profound as his bow, and a thousand times
more graceful. "Really I must take to spectacles. But I hope, as you
have heard my little lecture, you will join me in persuading my dear
brother to take a little more care of himself. He works all day long;
and then at night he sits all by himself and thinks--as I thought he was
doing when I came so in the dark."
After a few more words she left us, departing with a dignity which
showed how wrong I must have been in suspecting her of levity.
"She is--she is----" Mr. Stoneman stopped, for he could not find
anything grand enough. "Oh, I wish I might only call you _George_."
"With all my heart," I replied quite humbly, perceiving a touch of
bathos, which in human affairs is almost sure to mean a return to
common-sense. "All over the farm they call me _George_, at any rate
behind my back."
"Then, my dear George, I will leave you now. I have had a most
delightful visit; and I wish to go and think about it. But do not
suppose for a moment that I shall cherish any foolish hopes. I know what
I am, and what she is. Did you see how she walked from the table? And my
cigar was smoking on it."
"Shall I tell you what to do, my friend?" I answered rather pettishly;
"you are famous for strong decision, as well as quick sagacity. Exert a
little of them now, and put away this weakness."
"It is not my weakness. It is my strength."
Before I could speak again, he was gone. And verily, when I went out of
doors, and saw the stars in their distant gaze, and felt the deep
loneliness of night, it struck me that perhaps this man was wise--to set
his heart upon a constant love, some warmth and truth not far to seek,
and one at least who would never fail to feel his thoughts and endear
his deeds.
CHAPTER V
TICKNOR'S MEW
Some men there are whom it is a pleasure to observe at their daily work.
How they swing their shoulders, and sway their arms, and strain the
strong cordage of the bulky thigh, casting weight as well as muscle into
the fight they are waging! And this pleasure should be made the most of,
because it is growing very rare. I have heard my grandfather say, that
when he was a boy, one man could do, ay and would insist on doing, more
work in a day, than is now to be got out of three by looking hard at
them--three men of the very same stock and breed, perhaps even that
grandfather's own grandchildren. And the cause which he always assigned
for this, though not a bad scholar himself, and even capable of some
Latin, was the wild cram and pressure of pugnacious education. "The more
a jug gurgles, the less it pours," was his simple explanation.
There is much to be said on the other side, especially as the things put
into their heads are quick enough to go out again, and the Muses as yet
have not turned the village-boy into a Ganymede; but the only man, on
our little farm, who ever worked with might and main had never been at
school at all, and his name was Robert Slemmick. To this man nothing
came amiss, if only there was enough of it. He was not particularly
strong, nor large of frame, nor well put together; but rather of a
clumsy build and gait, walking always with a stoop, as if he were
driving a full wheel-barrow, and swinging both arms at full speed with
his legs. But set him at a job that seemed almost too heavy for him,
and he never would speak, nor even grunt, nor throw down his tool and
flap his arms, but tear away at it, without looking right or left, till
you saw with surprise that this middle-sized man had moved a bigger bulk
in the course of a day than a couple of hulking navvies.
But one fault he had, and a very sad fault, which had lost him many a
good place ere now, and would probably bring him to the workhouse--he
was what is called by those who understand such matters a "black
buster." At the nearest approach I could make to this subject, sidling
very carefully--for the British workman would be confidential rather to
a ghost than to his own employer--it seems that there are two kinds of
"busters." The white one, who only leaves work for a spree of a day or
two, meaning to jollify, and to come back in a chastened vein, after
treating all his friends, and then going upon trust; and the black, who
is of a stronger mind. This man knows better than to waste his cash upon
clinking glasses with a bubble at the top. He is a pattern for weeks and
months together, pours every shilling on a Saturday night into the hands
of his excellent wife--for it is his luck to have a good one--sits in a
corner with his quiet pipe at home, and smiles the smile of memory when
the little ones appeal to his wisdom. And so he goes on, without much
regret for adventure, or even for beer, beyond the half-pint to which
his wife coerces him.
Everybody says, "What a steady fellow Bob is! He is fit for a Guild, if
he would only go to Church." He ties the Canary creeper up, and he sees
to his cabbages, upon a Sunday morning. And the next-door lady shakes
her head over the four-feet palings, with her husband upstairs roaring
out for a fresher, after a tumble-down night of it. "Oh, if my Tom was
like your Mr. Robert!" But Mrs. Bob also shakes her head. "Oh, yes, he
is wonderful good _just now_."
Then comes the sudden break down, and breakaway. Without a word to any
one, or whisper to his family, off sets Mr. Robert, on a Monday morning
generally, after doing two good hours' work, before breakfast. Perhaps
he has been touched on the virtuous road home, by a fine smell of beer
at the corner, where the potboy was washing the pewters, and setting
them in the sun for an airing; perhaps it was a flower that set him off,
a scarlet Geranium, who can tell? Under some wild impulse he bolts and
makes away; he is in the next parish, before his poor wife has given up
keeping the tea-pot warm; and by the time she has knocked at the
tool-house door, in the forlorn hope that he may be ill, he is rousing
the dust of the adjoining county, still going straight ahead, as if the
Devil were after him. And that last authority alone can tell how Bob
lives, what he thinks of, where his legs and arms are, whence his beer
flows down to him, for a month, or even half-a-year, or nobody knows how
long it is.
This Robert Slemmick had been in our employment ever since last
Candlemas, and had only broken out once as yet, in the manner above
described. Excepting only that little flaw, his character was excellent,
and a more hard-working, obliging, intelligent man never came on any
premises. When I took him back after his escapade, I told him very
plainly that it would not be done again; and he promised to stick to his
work, and did so. But not a word to me, or anybody else, as to why he
went away, or whither, or what he had been doing, or how he got his
living. Knowing how peculiar the best men are--otherwise could they be
good at all?--I tried not to intrude upon the romance of his Beerhaven,
but showed myself rather cold to him, though I longed to know about it.
"Master Jarge," said this man one day, when he was treading a hayrick,
and I was in the waggon with the fork below; and it must according to
the times have been the very day after Jackson Stoneman came to me,
"Master Jarge, what would 'e give to know summut as I could tell 'e?"
He had had a little beer, as was needful for the hay; and I looked at
him very seriously; reminding him thus, without harshness, of my opinion
of his tendencies. But he did not see it in that light.
"You shape the rick," I said. "I don't want to hear nothing." For you
must use double negations if you wish them to understand you. We were
finishing a little rick of very choice short staple, with a lot of
clover in it, and _Old Joe_ in the shafts was likely to think of it many
a winter night. At such a juncture, it will not do to encourage even a
silent man.
Bob went cleverly round and round, dealing an armful here and there, for
a very small round rick is the hardest of all for scientific building,
and then he came back to the brink close to me, till I thought he was
going to slide down upon my knees.
"What would 'e give, Master Jarge," he whispered, making a tube of his
brown, bristly hand, "to hear all about the most bootifullest maiden as
ever come out of the heavens?"
Although I felt a tingle in my heart at this, I answered him very
firmly. "Get on with your work. Don't talk rubbish to me."
"You be the steadiest of the steady. Every fool knows that. But I
reckon, Master Jarge hath his turn to come, same as every young man the
Lord hath made with a pair of eyes. Oh! our Miss Grace, she be bootiful
enough. But this one over yonner--O Lord! O Lord!"
He waved his hand towards the valley in the distance, whose outline was
visible from where we stood. And dignified as I tried to be, he saw my
glance go wandering.
"Why, you knows all about it, Master Jarge! You be clapping your eyes
upon the very place! Why, ne'er a man in England hath ever seed the
like. And who could a'thought it, a'standing outside!"
"Nonsense!" I said. "Why, you must have been dreaming. Who knows what
comes over you sometimes?"
This reference to his "busting" weakness was not in good taste, when the
crime had been forgiven, and the subject was known to be hateful to him.
But this was the sure way to let his tongue loose; and when a reserved
man once breaks forth, he is like a teetotaller going on the spree.
"I could show 'e the place now just, Master Jarge; the place can't run
away I reckon. All over ivy-leaves the same as a church-tower. You
can't deny of they, when you sees them, can 'e? And the bootiful young
gal--why, you've seed her, Master Jarge! By the twinkle of your eyes, I
could swear to it."
"Robert Slemmick, you are off your head;" I answered with a very
steadfast gaze at him, for his keen little eyes were ready to play "I
spy" with mine. "I insist upon knowing where you have been, and what you
have done, and what people you have met. If they knew that you were in
Sir Harold Cranleigh's service, you may have done us great discredit."
With some indignation he told his tale, and finished it before the other
men came back; for his tongue was as brisk as his arms and legs, which
had rare gifts of locomotion. But I must fill in what he left out, for
it would be neither just nor wise to expect him to inform against
himself.
It seems that he was walking very fast, discharging himself from
domestic bonds, and responsibility, and temperance, when he came to a
black door in a big wall; and rapid as he was, this brought him up. His
thoughts, if any, were always far in advance of him at such moments, and
perhaps his main object was to overtake them. This he could not explain,
and had never thought about it, but at any rate that door should not
stop him. It was locked, or bolted, and without a bell, but he worked
all his members together against it, as he alone of mankind could do,
and what could withstand such progressive power? The door flew open, and
in rushed Slemmick, like the London County Council.
But there are powers that pay no heed to the noblest psychical impulse.
Two dogs of extraordinary bulk and stature had him prostrate between
them in an instant, and stood over him, grinding enormous jaws. Dazed as
he was, cold terror kept his restless members quiet, and perhaps he
felt--though he did not so confess it--that conjugal law was vindicated.
"I were in too terrible a funk to think," was his statement of the
position.
But the two dogs appeared to enjoy the situation, and being of prime
sagacity were discussing his character between them. If he had been a
mere "white buster," that is to say a common tramp, they would have
stopped his tramp for ever. But they saw that he was a respectable man,
a sound home-liver in his proper state of mind; and although they would
not hear of his getting up, they deliberated what they ought to do with
him. Slemmick in the meanwhile was watching their great eyes, and their
tails flourished high with triumphant duty, and worst of all their
tremendous white fangs, quivering if he even dared to shudder.
"Abashed I were to the last degree," he told me, and I could well
believe it; "my last thought was to my poor wife Sally." A good partner,
to whom his first thoughts should have been. But while he was thus truly
penitent I hope, a clear sound as of a silver whistle came to his ears,
and the dogs stood up, and took the crush of their paws from his breast,
and one of them sat by him, in strict vigilance still, while the other
bounded off for instructions.
Then, according to Slemmick, there appeared to him the most beautiful
vision he had ever seen. "Straight from heaven. Don't tell me, Master
Jarge, for never will I hear a word agin it. Straight from heaven, with
the big hound a'jumping at her side, and him looking like an angel now.
If you was to see her, you'd just go mad, and never care to look at any
other maid no more."
"What was she like, Bob?" It had not been my intention to put any
question of this kind, but Slemmick was in such a state of excitement,
that I had a right to know the reason.
"Don't 'e ask me, sir; for good, don't 'e ask me. There never was no
words in any Dixunary, and if there was, I couldn't lay to them. There
then, you go and judge for yourself, Master Jarge."
"But she can't be there all by herself, my friend. Surely you must have
seen some one else. And what language did she speak in?"
"Blowed if I can tell 'e, sir. All I know is, 't were a mixture of a
flute and a blackbird, and the play-'em-out-of-Church pipes of the
horgan. Not that she were singing, only to the ear, my meaning is; and
never mind the words no more than folk does in a hanthem. Lor, to hear
poor Sally's voice, after coming home from that--even in the wisest
frame of mind, with all the wages in her lap!"
"But you did not come home, Bob Slemmick, for I know not how long. Did
you spend the whole of your time in that enchanted valley?"
"Ah, a chant it were, by gum! A chant as I could listen to--why, Master
Jarge, I'll take 'e there; for two skips of a flea I would. Won't 'e?
Very well. Best not, I reckon. Never look at no English maids no more."
This was nearly all that I could get from Bob, without putting hundreds
of questions; for instead of straight answers, he went off into ravings
about this most ravishing young lady, who must have contrived to make
out what he wanted, for after having saved him from the dogs, she led
him directly to the lower door, and sped him on his way with
half-a-crown. But that, as he assured me, was of no account in his
estimate of her qualities. "You ask Farmer Ticknor, sir, if you think I
be a'lying. Farmer Ticknor hath seed her, more at his comfort than ever
I did; and Ticknor come hotter than I do. 'Hold your blessed jaw'--he
say, when I goeth to ask about her, knowing as he were
neighbourly--'What call for you, Bob Slemmick?' he saith, 'to come
running like a dog on end down here? I'll give you a charge of shot,' he
saith, 'if I catch you in the little lane again. 'T is the Royal Family,
and no mistake, that knoweth all about this here. And don't you make no
palaver of it, to come stealing of my mushrooms.' As if we hadn't better
as we kicks up every day!"
Now all this talk of Bob's, although it may have told upon my mind a
little, was not enough to set me running straight away from my home and
friends, at a very busy time of year, as Slemmick was so fond of doing.
But betwixt the green and yellow, as our people call the times of hay
and corn, it seemed to me that I might as well have a talk with that
Farmer Ticknor, who was known to be a man of great authority about the
weather and the crops, and had held land under us as long as he could
afford to do so. He was rather crusty now, as a man is apt to be when he
lives upon a crust for the benefit of foreigners, and receives his
exchange in coloured tallow. It was two or three years since I had seen
him now; for "Ticknor's Mew," as he called his place, was out of the
general course of traffic, and as lonely among the woods as a dead
fern-frond. I found him at home on a fine summer evening, and he put up
my horse, and received me very kindly, for he was not a bad sort of man,
though rough. And if any pleasure yet remained in Farmer's lane to
workhouse, this man made the most of it by looking at the sky, as if it
still could help him against the imbecility of the earth.
"Yes, I have been a fine hand at it," he said, after sending for a jug
of ale, and two bell-rummers; "there never was a cloud, but I know the
meaning of 'un, though without they long names they has now. Bessie, my
dear, fetch _Ticknor's marks_. Don't care much to do it now--nought to
lose or gain of it. Not much odds to this land of England now, what
weather God Almighty please to send. 'And when they shamed the Lord out
of caring to mind the harvest, the Government goeth for to hirritate Him
more, with a Hoffice to tell us what sort of hat to put upon our heads,
when us can't pay for none. But I'll bet my Sunday beaver against his
band of gold. What say to that, Mr. Cranleigh? I stuck 'un on the
barn-door every marnin' as long as there was anything to care for in the
whitfields. It covereth a whole year, don't it, Bessie? Cross stands for
wrong, and straight line for right."
_Ticknor's marks_, as he called his calendar, certainly seemed to hit
the mark more often than the men of science did. On a great blackboard
were pasted in parallel columns the "Daily forecasts" and Farmer
Ticknor's predictions entered at noon of each preceding day. His pretty
daughter Bessie, the editor, no doubt, of his oracles, displayed them
with no little pride.
"If you will be pleased to observe, Mr. Cranleigh"--Bessie had been at a
boarding-school--"my father's predictions are in manuscript of
course,"--and much better than he could write, thought I,--"while the
authorised forecasts are in type. Now the crosses on the manuscript are
not quite five per cent; while those upon the printing exceed
seventy-five. If there were any impartiality in politics, don't you
think, Mr. Cranleigh, they would give father the appointment? And he
would be glad to do it in these bad times, for less than half the money.
Though we must not blame the gentlemen who have to do it all through the
window."
"You never hear me boast," interrupted the farmer; "there never was that
gift in our family. But I'll go bail to give that Meatyard man, or
whatever they calls 'un, five pips out of ten--all this reckoning by
scents hath come after my time--and give 'un twelve hours longer with
his arrows and his dots; and then I'll name the day agin him, for the
best joint in his yard. But bless your heart and mine too, Master Jarge,
what odds for the weather now? Why, even the hay, they tell me now, is
to come in little blocks from foreign parts. Make a ton of it they say
they can by hyderaulic something come out not a morsel bigger than the
parish-Bible. Well, well! Well, well!"
Knowing that if he once began upon "Free Trade," there would be many
changes of weather before he stopped, I brought him back to the other
subject, and contrived to lead him as far as the margin of the wood,
where the clouds by which he made his divinations could be contemplated
more completely; but he told me a great deal about their meanings,
although he knew nothing of their names; all of which I forget, though I
tried to attend.
It was not for any knowledge of clouds, or weather, or politics, or even
harvest-prospects, that I was come to see this Prophet Ticknor in the
woods. My mother's favourite subject was the "Fulfilment of Prophecy;"
but what I cared for now, and thought myself bound to follow out, was
the vision (seen by others as well as myself) of a foreign young
maiden--if it must be so--unequalled by any of English birth. The
prevalence of loose commercial ideas, and the prostitution of Britannia
(so highly respected while she locked her own gate), had given me a turn
against things foreign, though none but my enemies could call me
narrow-minded. And here I was open to conviction, as usual, with a
strong prepossession against my country, or, at any rate, against her
girls, however lovely.
"I suppose you don't happen to know," I said to that excellent Ticknor,
while still among his clouds, "whether anybody lives in that old place,
where there seems to be such a lot of black stuff? What is it? Ivy it
looks like. And old walls behind it, or something very old. I think I
have heard of some old Monastery there; and it was part of our property
long and long ago. Oh, Farmer Ticknor, how everything does change!"
The farmer afforded me a glance of some suspicion. Narrow
trade-interests had got the better of him. "You be gone into the retail
line," he said. "To think of the Cranleighs coming down to that. But you
don't sell milk by the quart now, do 'e?"
Though I did not see how it could bear upon the subject, I assured him
that most of our milk went to London, under contract with a great man,
whose name I mentioned; and the rest we kept for making butter.
"Well, then, I does a good little stroke of business there. Though not
much profit out of that, of course. They takes in a gallon-can every
morning. And they asked the boy whether I didn't keep no goats."
"Goats! Why then they must be foreigners," I said. "No English people
care about goat's milk. At least, unless their doctor orders it."
"They ha'n't got no doctor, and don't want none. A rare strong lot
according to all I hear. Toorks I call them, and I put it on the bill,
'Toork Esquire, debtor to John Ticknor.' Having raised no objection, why
it stands they must be Toorks."
"But people can't live on milk alone, Mr. Ticknor. And they must have
some other name besides Turks. Even if they are Turks, which I scarcely
can believe."
"Well, you knows more about them than I do, sir. I never form an
opinion, so long as they pays me good English money. But they never has
no butcher's meat, nor no beer; and that proves that they bain't English
folk. If you want to know more about them, Mr. Cranleigh, the one as can
teach you is my dog _Grab_. _Grab_ feeleth great curiosity about them,
because of the big dogs inside the old wall. He hath drashed every other
dog in the parish; and it goeth very hard with him to have no chance to
drash they. Never mind, old boy, your time will come."
An atrocious bull-dog of the fiercest fighting type, who had followed
us from the farmhouse, was nuzzling into his master's grey whiskers. Now
I love nearly all dogs, and, as a rule, they are very good to me; but
that surly fellow, who is supposed to be the type of our national
character, does not appear to me, by any means, adorable. Very faithful
he may be, and consistent, and straightforward, and devoted to his duty.
But why should he hold it a part of his duty to kill every gentle and
accomplished dog he meets, unless the other dips his tail, the canine
ensign, to him? And of all the bull-dogs I have ever seen, this _Grab_
was the least urbane and polished. A white beast with three grisly
patches destroying all candour of even blood-thirstiness, red eyes
leering with treacherous ill-will, hideous nostrils, like ulcers cut
off, and enormous jowls sagging from the stark white fangs. He saw that
I disliked him, and a hearty desire to feel his tusks meet in my throat
was displayed in the lift of his lips, and the gleam of his eyes.
"Wonnerful big hounds they furriners has, according to what my milk-boy
says," the farmer continued, with a plaintive air; "but they never lets
them free of the big wall hardly, to let _Grab_ see what they be made
of. But come back to house, and have a bit of supper with us, before you
go home, Mr. Cranleigh. 'T is a roughish ride even in summer-time."
"Thank you; not a bit to eat; but perhaps before I go, another glass of
your very fine home-brewed. But I see a tree down in the valley there,
that I should like to know more about. I'll follow you back to the house
in a few minutes. But how long did you say that those strangers have
been here? It seems such an odd thing that nobody appears to know
anything about them."
"Well, a goodish long while they must have been there now. And they
don't seem to make no secret of it. Bakes their own bread, if they have
any; never has any carriage-folk to see them, never comes out with a gun
to pot a hare; don't have no fishmonger, butcher, grocer, nor any boy to
call out 'papper' at the door. My boy Charlie is uncommon proud, because
he have got into their 'Good-morning.' They says it like Christians, so
far as he can judge, and naturally he sticketh up for them. You can ask
him, Master Jarge, if you think fit. Nothing clandestical about
Ticknor's Mew. But none of them Inspectors to pump into our milk, and
swear as we did it. That's why I keep you, _Grab_."
Farmer Ticknor made off with this little grumble, lifting his hat to me,
until I should return. For he did not look down upon the "Gentry of the
land," for being out at elbows. After thinking for a minute of all that
I had heard, which was not very much to dwell upon, I twirled my
riding-crop (which I had brought from habit, and been glad to have when
I watched _Grab's_ teeth), and set off with a light foot, to explore
that lonely valley.
I was now on the opposite side from that by which I had entered it to
the tune of the nightingale, and at first I could scarcely make out my
bearings. For though I had seen it afar with Tom Erricker, something
prevented me from letting him come near it. Tom was an excellent fellow
in his way; but of reverence and lofty regard for women no decent
Englishman could have much less. Decent I say, because if such
sentiments are cast by, and scoffed at--as fools think it clever to
do--the only thing left is indecency.
This valley was not like many places, that are tempting only at a
distance. The deeper I found myself in it, the more I was filled with
its gentleness and beauty. It has never been in my line at all to be
able to convey what comes across me,--when I see things that look as if
they called upon us to be grateful for the pleasure they contribute to
our minds. Certain people can do this, as some can make fine
after-dinner speeches, while others are more fitted to rejoice inside.
And if I were to fail in depicting a landscape, such as any Surrey man
may see by walking a few miles, how would you care to follow me into the
grandest scenery the Maker of the earth has made anywhere, unless it be
in His own temple of the heavens?
Enough that it was a very lovely valley, winding wherever it ought to
wind, and timbered just where it should be, with the music of a bright
brook to make it lively, and the distance of the hills to keep it
sheltered from the world. And towards the upper end where first the
stream came wimpling into it, that ancient wall, which had baffled me,
enclosed a large piece of land as well as some length of watercourse,
but gave no other token of its purpose. This was what I cared most
about; for stupid and unreasonable as it must appear, a sharp spur had
been clapped to my imagination by the vague talk of Slemmick and
Ticknor. And not only that, but to some extent, the zeal and the ardour
of Jackson Stoneman, and his downright policy, had set me thinking that
poor as I was, while he was rolling in money, the right of my manhood
was the same as his--to pursue by all honest means the one fair image
which a gracious power had disclosed to me. Therefore, after looking at
the tree to soothe my conscience, I followed the course of that
wandering wall, by no means in a sneaking manner, but showing myself
fairly in the open meadows, and walking as one who takes exercise for
health.
The wall was on my left hand, all the way from the track (in which the
steep road ended after crossing the brook) and although I would rather
sink into a bog than seek to be spying impertinently, nothing could have
come upon that wall, and no one could have peeped over it without my
taking it in at a side-flick. But I only had sense of one thing moving
throughout all my circuit, and that was but little to comfort me. Just
as I was slipping by the upper door (which Slemmick had burst open), and
taking long strides--for if some one had opened it and asked what I
wanted there, how could I, as a gentleman, tell the whole
truth?--suddenly there appeared within a square embrasure, and above the
parapet among the ivy, the most magnificent head I ever saw. Mighty
eyes, full of deep intelligence, regarded me, noble ears (such as no man
is blest with) quivered with dignified inquiry, while a majestic pair of
nostrils, as black as night, took sensitive quest of the wind, whether
any of the wickedness of man were in it.
Knowing that I only intended for the best, though doubtful if that would
stand me in much stead, supposing that this glorious dog took another
view of it, I addressed him from below with words of praise, which he
evidently put aside with some contempt. He was considering me
impartially and at leisure; and if I had moved he would have bounded
down upon me. Luckily I had the sense to stand stock-still, and afford
him every facility for study of my character. At the same time I looked
at him, not combatively, but as if I felt similar interest in him, which
I had excellent reason for doing. To my great relief his eyes assumed a
kind expression; by the pleasant waving of his ears I could tell that
his tail was wagging, and he showed a bright dimple beneath his black
whiskers, and smiled with the humour which is far beyond our ken.
Whereupon I nodded to him, and made off.
When I came to think of him, in that coarser frame of mind in which we
explain everything so meanly, it occurred to me that those noble
nostrils, curving like the shell of Amphitrite, were scarcely moved so
much perhaps by the influence of my goodness, as by the fragrance of my
sister's spaniel, _Lady Silky_, who had nestled in my hairy jacket,
while I was casting up accounts that day. However, be his motive large
or small, he had formed a friendly opinion of me, and when I disappeared
among the trees, a low whine followed me as if the place had grown more
lonely.
Upon the whole I had made some progress towards the solution of this
strange affair. Within those walls there must be living a settlement of
foreigners, an establishment of some size, to judge by the quantity of
milk they used. Some of them could speak English, but they did not seem
to associate with any of their neighbours, and probably procured from
London the main part of what they needed. To Farmer Ticknor, as to most
of the rustics round about us, all who were not of British birth were
either Turks or Frenchmen. To my mind these were neither; and the
possession of those noble dogs--a breed entirely new to me--showed that
they were not dwelling here to conceal their identity, or to retrench
from poverty. For there were at least two dogs, perhaps more, worth a
hundred guineas each to any London dealer at the lowest computation, and
not by any means qualified to live on scanty rations. Another point I
had ascertained--that the old Mill, out of use for many years, was now
at work again. This had been built, no one knows how long ago, among
the monastic ruins upon the never-failing Pebblebourne. And while I was
counting the moments for that gigantic dog to spring down on me, I heard
very clearly the plash of the wheel, and the boom and murmur of the
works inside.
As a last chance of picking up something more, when I was getting on my
horse, I said across his mane to the fair Bessie Ticknor, that
"highly-cultured" maiden,--"A little bird has told me, though I would
not listen to him, that a young lady almost as pretty as Miss Ticknor
lives in a valley not a hundred miles from here." Bessie raised her
jet-black eyes, and blushed, and simpered, and whispered, so that her
father could not hear it:--
"Oh, I 'd give anything to know! It is such a romantic mystery! Culture
does put such a cruel curb upon curiosity. But it does not take much to
surpass _me_, Mr. Cranleigh."
"We are not all quite blind in this world, Miss Ticknor; though some may
try to contradict their looking-glass."
CHAPTER VI
TRUE HYGIENE
Whenever my brother Harold deigned to visit us from London, we had not
much time to do anything more than try to understand his last idea. If
he had only been fond of society, or philosophy, or even ladies, we
could have got on with him ever so much better; for he really never
meant any harm at all. Pity for the pressure he was putting on his brain
saddened to some extent the pride which he inspired; and when he came
down to announce his last _eureka_, the first thing my mother did was to
make him show his tongue. My mother did think mighty things of this the
first-born child she had; and him a son--endowed beyond all
sister-babies with everything. Nevertheless she did her utmost to be
fair to all of us; and sometimes when her eyes went round us, at
Christmastime, or birthdays, any stranger would have thought that we all
were gifted equally.
I am happy to say that this was not the case. Never has it been my gift
to invent anything whatever; not even a single incident in this tale
which I am telling you. Everything is exactly as it happened; and
according to some great authorities, we too are exactly as we happened.
But my brother Harold can never have happened. He must have been
designed with a definite purpose, and a spirit to work his way
throughout, although it turned to Proteus. He had been through every
craze and fad,--I beg his pardon,--Liberation of the Age, Enlightenment,
Amelioration of Humanity, &c. &c., and now in indignation at the Pump
Court drains, he was gone upon what he called _Hygiene_.
"What the devil do you mean, by this blessed Hygiene?" Though by no
means strong at poetry, I turned out this very neat couplet one day,
with the indignation that makes verses, when I saw that he had a big
trunk in the passage, which certain of us still called the hall.
"George, will you never have any large ideas?" he replied with equal
rudeness, such as brothers always use. "This time, even you will find it
hard to be indifferent to my new discovery. The ardour of truth has
triumphed."
"Go ahead," I said, for he had had his dinner, though that made very
little difference to him, his ardour of truth being toast and water now.
"But if you won't have a pipe, I will. Is the smell anti-hygienic?"
"Undoubtedly it is. About that there cannot be two sane opinions. Puff
away; but be well assured that at every pull you are inhaling, and at
every expiration spreading--"
"All right. Tell us something new, and you are never far to seek in
that--Pennyroyal, fenugreek, ruta nigra, tin-tacks hydrised, hyoscyamus,
colocasia, geopordon carbonised--what is the next panacea?"
"Tabacum Nicotianum." Nothing pleased my brother more than the charge of
inconsistency and self-contradiction. Seeing that he lay in wait for
this, I would not let him have it, but answered with indifference--
"That is right, old fellow. I am glad that you have come to a sensible
view of Tobacco. Any very choice cigars in your trunk, old chap? But I
should fear that you had invented them."
No one could help liking Harold at first sight. He was simply the most
amiable fellow ever seen. Amiable chiefly in a passive way, although he
was ready for any kind action, when the claims of discovery permitted.
And now as we were strolling in the park, and the fine Surrey air had
brightened his handsome face with more "hygiene" than he ever would
produce, I was not surprised at the amount of money he extracted even
from our groans.
"Would you like to know what is in my trunk?" he asked with that simple
smile, which was at once the effect and the cause of his magnetism. "I
have done it for the sake of the family first, and then of the
neighbourhood, and then of the county. I shall offer the advantages to
Surrey first. As an old County family, that is our duty. There is some
low typhoid in the valleys still. Run and fetch my trunk, George. It is
heavy for me, but nothing for your great shoulders. Bring it to the
bower here; I don't want to open it in the house, because,
because--well, you'll soon know why, when you follow my course of
reasoning."
I brought him his trunk, and he put it on a table, where people had tea
in the park sometimes, to watch a game of cricket from a sheltered
place. "Come quite close," he said very kindly, throwing open the trunk,
and then making for the door, while I rashly stooped over his property.
In another minute I was lying down, actually sneezed off my legs, and
unable to open my eyes from some spasmodic affection or affliction.
"That's right," said Harold, in a tone of satisfaction; "don't be
uneasy, my dear brother. For at least a fortnight you are immune from
the biggest enterprises of the most active Local Board. You may sit upon
the manholes of the best sanitated town; you may sleep in the House of
Commons; you may pay a medical fee, and survive it. It is my own
discovery. See those boxes?"
"Not yet. But I shall as soon as my eyes get right!" I was able now to
leave off sneezing, almost for a second. And when I had chewed a bit of
leaf he gave me, there seemed to be something great in this new idea.
"You are concluding with your usual slur"--my brother began again, as
soon as I was fit to receive reason instead of sympathy--"that this is
nothing more than an adaptation of _Lundy Foote_, _Irish blackguard_, or
_Welsh Harp_. George, you are wrong, as usual. You need not be capable
of speech for that. Your gifts of error can express themselves in
silence."
"Cowardly reasoner," I began, but the movement of larynx, or whatever it
might be, threw me out of "ratiocination." He had me at his mercy, and
he kept me so. To attempt to repeat what he said would convict me of
crankiness equal to his own, and worse--because he could do it, and I
cannot. But the point he insisted on most of all, and which after my
experience I could not but concede, was that no known preparation of
snuff without his special chemistry could have achieved this excellence.
"Pteroxylon, euphorbium, and another irritant unknown as yet to
Chemists, have brought this to the power needful. But this is not a
merely speculative thing. You feel a true interest in it now, George."
"As men praise mustard, with tears in their eyes. But let me never hear
of it, think of it, most of all never smell the like again. My nose will
be red, and my eyes sore for a fortnight."
Harold tucked my arm under his, with a very affectionate manner of his
own, which he knew that I never could resist. "Four pockets always in
your waistcoat," he observed, "and a flap over every one to keep it dry.
Now I very seldom ask a favour, do I, George, of you? Here are three
hundred little boxes here, as well as the bulk of my preparation. The
boxes are perfectly air-tight, made from my own design, very little
larger and not much thicker than an old crown-piece. You touch a spring
here, and the box flies open. Without that you never would know that it
was there. Promise me that you will always carry this, and open it
whenever you come to a place where the Local Boards have got the roads
up. One of my best friends, and I have not many, has lost his only
little girl,--such a darling, she used to sit upon my knee and promise
to marry me the moment she was big enough,--but now she has gone to a
better world, through the new parish authorities. Diphtheria in the
worst form, my dear boy!"
His eyes filled with tears, for he was very tender-hearted, and in the
warmth of the moment, I promised to carry that little box of his, as a
safeguard against sanitation.
"My dear George, you will never regret it. You will find it most useful,
I can assure you." He spoke with some gratitude, for he knew how much I
hated all such chemistry. Little did I think how true his words would
prove.
"Why, there goes that extraordinary fellow Stoneman!" I exclaimed
suddenly, to change the subject. "What a first-rate horse he always
rides! But there is something I ought to tell you about that great
Stockbroker. I have not told the Governor yet, because I was not meant
to do so, and must not, without the man's consent. But you ought to know
it, and he would not object to that."
"What has he discovered? I have often thought that men, who fall into
the thick of humanity, ought to get their minds into an extremely active
state; like mariners straining their eyes to discover--"
"The Gold Coast. There is nothing else they care for. But there I am
wronging Jackson Stoneman. He is a man of the world, if there ever was
one; and yet he is taken above the world, by love."
"Love of what?" asked my brother, who was sometimes hard upon people who
despised all the things he cared for. "Love of gold? Love of rank? Love
of dainty feeding? Love of his own fat self perhaps?"
"He is not fat. He is scarcely round enough. He is one of the most
active men in the kingdom. There are very few things that he cannot do.
And now he is deeply and permanently in love--"
"With filthy lucre. If there is anything I hate, it is the scorn of
humanity that goes with that." Harold, in a lofty mood, began to strap
up the trunk that was to save mankind.
"If filthy lucre means our Grace," I said with much emphasis, for it was
good to floor him, "you have hit the mark. But our Grace has not a
farthing." I very nearly added--"thanks to you." But it would have been
cruel, and too far beyond the truth.
"Ridiculous!" he answered, trying not to look surprised, though I knew
that I had got him there. "Why, his grandfather kept a shoe-shop."
"That is a vile bit of lying gossip. But even if it were so, the love of
humanity should not stop short of their shoes. I am afraid you are a
snob, Harold, with all your vast ideas."
"I am a little inclined to that opinion myself," he answered very
cordially. "But come, this is very strange news about Grace. Has she any
idea of the honour done her?"
"Not the smallest. So far as I know at least. And I think it is better
that she should not know. Just at present, I mean, until he has had
time."
"But surely, George, you would not encourage such a thing. Putting aside
the man's occupation, which may be very honourable if he is so himself,
what do we know of his character, except that he gives himself airs, and
is rather ostentatious?"
"He gives himself no airs. What you call ostentation is simply his
generosity. You forget that in right of his wealth he stands in the
place we have lost through our poverty. That makes it a delicate
position for him, especially in his behaviour to us. And do what he
will, we should scarcely do our duty to ourselves, unless we made the
worst of it."
"How long have you turned Cynic? Why, you put that rather neatly; I did
not think it was in you, George." It should be explained that my brother
Harold could never be brought to see that it was possible for me to do
anything even fairly well; unless it were in manual labour, or sporting,
or something else that he despised. And this was all I got for my
admiration of his powers!
"Never mind about me," I replied; "I am not a Cynic, and I never shall
be one. And when I spoke thus, I had not the least intention of
including my father, who is above all such stuff. But mother, and you
and I, and no doubt Grace herself, although she thinks so well of
everybody,--it would be against all human nature for us to take a kind
or even candid view of our successor's doings. And as for his station in
life, as you might call it, you must live entirely out of the world,
even in the heart of London, not to know that he is placed far above us
now. Everywhere, except among the old-fashioned people who call
themselves the County families, a man of his wealth would be thought
much more of, than we should have a chance of being. What good could we
do to anybody now? you must learn to look up to him, Harold my boy."
"Very well. I'll study him, whenever I get the chance. I can't look up
to any man for his luck alone; though I may for the way he employs it.
But he must not suppose that his money will buy Grace. If ever there
was a girl who tried to think for herself and sometimes succeeded,
probably it is our Grace. She cannot do much. What woman has ever yet
made any real discovery, although they are so inquisitive? But she has a
right to her own opinion."
"At any rate as to the disposal of herself." Here I was on strong
ground; though I never could argue with Harold upon scientific
questions. But I knew my dear Grace much better than he did; and she
always said that she liked me best, whenever I put that question to her;
not only to make up for mother's preferences in the wrong direction, but
also because she could understand me,--which did not require much
intelligence,--not to mention that I was much bigger and stronger than
Harold, though nothing like so good-looking, as anybody could see with
half an eye.
"Leave it so," said Harold; for he liked sometimes to assert himself, as
he had the right to do, when he cast away scientific weaknesses. "Let
such things take their course, old fellow. If Grace takes a liking to
him, that will prove that he is worthy of it. For she is uncommonly hard
to please. And she never seems to care about understanding me; perhaps
because she knows it would be hopeless. I want to go on to Godalming
to-morrow. There will be a meeting of Sanitary Engineers--the largest
minds of the period. I speak of them with deference; though as yet I am
unable to make out what the dickens they are up to. Can you get me the
one-horse trap from _The Bell_?"
"Most likely. I will go and see about it by-and-by. Old Jacob will
always oblige me if he can. But you won't take away your sneezing trunk?
You owe it to your native parish first."
"My native parish must abide its time. In country places there is seldom
any outbreak of virulent diseases, until they set up a Local Board. I
shall leave a score of Hygioptarmic boxes in your charge. The rest are
meant for places where the authorities stir up the dregs of infection,
and set them in slow circulation. And the first thing a Local Board
always does is that."
I did not contradict him, for the subject was beyond me. And fond as I
was of him, and always much enlarged by his visits, and the stirring up
of my dull ideas, it so happened that I did not want him now, when so
many things had to be considered, in which none of his discoveries would
help me. In fact it seemed to me that he thought much more of his
hygienic boxes, than of his and my dear sister.
When he was gone in the old rattle-trap from _The Bell_, with his trunk
beneath his feet, my mother seemed inclined at first to think that no
one had made enough of him.
"All for the benefit of others!" she exclaimed, after searching the
distance for one last view of him, if, haply, the sun might come out for
the purpose of showing his hat above some envious hedge; "Does that poor
boy ever think of himself? What makes it the more remarkable is that
this age is becoming so selfish, so wedded to all the smaller principles
of action, so incapable of taking a large view of anything. But Harold,
my Harold"--no words of the requisite goodness and greatness occurred to
my dear mother, and so she resorted to her handkerchief. "It seems as if
we always must be parted. It is for the good of mankind, no doubt; but
it does seem hard, though no one except myself seems so to regard it. It
was five o'clock yesterday before he came. It is not yet half-past ten,
and to think of the rapidly-increasing distance--"
"I defy him to get more than five miles an hour out of that old screw,"
I said. "Not even with one of his Hygioptarmic boxes tied beneath the
old chap's tail. Why, you can hear his old scuffle still, mother."
She listened intently, as if for a holy voice; while Grace looked at me
with a pleasant mixture of reproach and sympathy. For who did all the
real work? Who kept the relics of the property together? Who relieved
the little household of nearly all its trouble? Who went to market to
buy things without money, and (which is even harder still) to sell them
when nobody wanted them? Who toiled like a horse, and much longer than a
horse--however, I never cared to speak up for myself. As a general rule,
I would rather not be praised. And as for being thanked, it is pleasant
in its way, but apt to hurt the feelings of a very modest man; and, of
course, he knows that it will not last. After such a speech from my dear
mother, no one could have blamed me very severely, if I had put my
fishing-rod together and refused to do another stroke of work that day.
CHAPTER VII
_KUBAN_
That evening we stuck to our work, like Britons, and got all the ricks
combed down so well, and topped up ready for thatching, that the weather
was welcome to do what it pleased, short of a very heavy gale of wind.
Not a mowing-machine, nor a patent haymaker, had been into our meadows,
nor any other of those costly implements, which farmers are ordered by
their critics to employ, when they can barely pay for scythe and rake.
All was the work of man and horse, if maids may be counted among the
men--for, in truth, they had turned out by the dozen, from cottage, and
farm, and the great house itself, to help the poor gentleman who had
been rich, and had shown himself no prouder then than now.
For about three weeks, while the corn began to kern, and Nature wove the
fringe before she spread the yellow banner, a man of the farm, though
still wanted near at hand, might take a little change and look about him
more at leisure, and ask how his neighbours were getting on, or even
indulge in some distractions of his own. Now, in summer, a fellow of a
quiet turn, who has no time to keep up his cricket, and has never heard
of golf,--as was then the case with most of us,--and takes no delight in
green tea-parties, neither runs after moths and butterflies, however
attractive such society may be, this man finds a riverbank, or, better
still, a fair brook-side, the source of the sweetest voices to him. Here
he may find such pleasure as the indulgence of Nature has vouchsafed to
those who are her children still, and love to wander where she offers
leisure, health, and large delights. So gracious is she in doing this,
and so pleased at pleasing us, that she stays with us all the time, and
breathes her beauty all around us, while we forget all pains and
passions, and administer the like relief to fish.
Worms, however, were outside my taste. To see a sad creature go
wriggling in the air, and then, cursing the day of its birth, descend
upon the wet storm of the waters, and there go tossing up and down,
without any perception of scenery--this (which is now become a very
scientific and delicate art in delusion of trout) to me is a thing below
our duty to our kin. A fish is a fellow that ought to be caught, if a
man has sufficient skill for it. But not with any cruelty on either
side; though the Lord knows that they torment us more, when they won't
bite on any conditions, than some little annoyance we may cause
them--when we do pull them out--can balance.
Certain of the soundness of these views, if, indeed, they had ever
occurred to me, but despairing to convince my sister of them,--for women
have so little logic,--I fetched out a very ancient fly-book, with most
of the hackles devoured by moth-grubs, and every barb as rusty as old
enmity should grow. Harold never fished; he had no patience for it; and
as for enjoying nature, his only enjoyment was to improve it. Tom
Erricker, who was lazy enough to saunter all day by a river, while he
talked as if examiners were scalping him, not an atom did he know of any
sort of fishing, except sitting in a punt, and pulling roach in, like a
pod of seedy beans upon a long beanstick. Therefore was everything in my
book gone rusty, and grimy, and maggoty, and looped into tangles of
yellow gut,--that very book which had been the most congenial love of
boyhood. If I had only taken half as well to Homer, Virgil, Horace, I
might have been a Fellow of All Souls now (Bene natus, bene vestitus)
and brought my sister Grace to turn the heads of Heads of Houses, in the
grand old avenue, where the Dons behold the joys that have slipped away
from them.
But perhaps I should never have been half as happy. To battle with the
world, instead of battening in luxury, is the joy of life, while there
is any pluck and pith. And I almost felt, as a man is apt to feel, when
in his full harness, and fond of it, that to step outside of it, even
for a few hours, was a bit of self-indulgence unworthy of myself.
However, I patched up a cast of two flies, which was quite enough, and
more than enough, for a little stream like the Pebblebourne, wherein I
had resolved to wet my line.
This was a swift bright stream, as yet ungriddled by any railway works,
and unblocked by any notice-boards menacing frightful penalties. For
although the time was well-nigh come when the sporting rights over
English land should exceed the rental in value, the wary trout was not
yet made of gold and rubies; and in many places any one, with permission
of the farmers, was welcome to wander by the babbling brook, and add to
its music, if the skill were in him, the silvery tinkle of the leaping
fish. And though all this valley was but little known to me, a call at a
lonely farm-house on the hill, a mile or two further on than Ticknor's
Mew, made me free of the water and them that dwelled therein.
Now why should I go to this Pebblebourne, rather than to some other
Surrey stream, fishful, picturesque, and better known to anglers? Partly
I believe through what Robert Slemmick said, and Farmer Ticknor after
him, and partly through my own memories. There can be no prying air, or
pushing appearance about a gentle fisherman, who shows himself intent
upon the abstract beauties of a rivulet, or the concrete excellence of
the fish it holds. My mother liked nothing better than a dish of trout,
my father (though obliged to be very careful about the bones) considered
that fish much superior to salmon, ever since salmon had been propagated
into such amazing rarity. So I buckled on a basket, which would hold
some 50lb., took an unlimited supply of victuals, and set forth to clear
the Pebblebourne of trout.
My mother had no supper except toasted cheese that night, although I
returned pretty early; neither did my father find occasion to descant
upon the inferiority of salmon. And the same thing happened when I went
again. I could see great abundance of those very pleasing fish, and they
saw an equal abundance of me. They would come and look at my fly, with
an aspect of gratifying approval, as at a laudable specimen of clever
plagiarism, and then off with them into the sparkles and wrinkles of the
frisky shallows, with a quick flop of tail, and yours truly till next
time. And yet I kept out of sight and cast up-stream, and made less mark
than a drop of rain on the silver of the stream.
I was half inclined to drop any third attempt, having daintily treated
some meadows of brook, without any token of fish to carry home, or of
human presence to stow away in heart, although I had persisted to the
very door, which had swallowed that fair vision, in the twilight of the
May. Her little shrine and holy place I never had profaned, feeling that
a stranger had no business there; neither could I bring myself to hang
about in ambush, and lurk for the hour of her evening prayer and hymn.
But my dear mother seemed to lose her fine faith in my skill; for ladies
are certain to judge by the event; moreover to accept a beating lightly
was entirely against my rules. So I set forth once again, saying to
myself--"the third time is lucky. Let us have one more trial."
On that third evening of my labour against stream, I was standing on the
bank, where the bridle-track came through, and packing up my rod, after
better luck with fish, for I had found a fly which puzzled them, and had
taken a good dozen--when who should come up gambolling round my heels,
and asking, as it seemed to me, for a good word, or a pat, but that
magnificent and very noble dog who had reviewed, and so kindly approved
of me, from the battlements near the upper door? "What is your name, my
stately friend?" I said to him, not without some misgivings that he
might resent this overture. But he threw up his tail like a sheaf of
golden wheat, and made the deep valley ring, and the heights resound,
with a voice of vast rejoicing, and a shout of glorious freedom.
But was it this triumph that provoked the fates? While the echoes still
were eddying in the dimples of the hills, a white form arose on the
crest of the slope some fifty yards behind us. A vast broad head, with
ears prickled up like horns of an owl, and sullen eyes under patches of
shade, regarded us; while great teeth glimmered under bulging jowls, and
squat red nostrils were quivering with disdain. It was _Grab_, Farmer
Ticknor's savage bull-dog; and hoping that he would be scared, as most
dogs are, when they have no business, by the cast of a stone, I threw a
pebble at him, which struck the ground under his burly chest. He noticed
it no more than he would heed a grasshopper, but began to draw upon us,
as a pointer draws on game, with his wiry form rigid, and his hackles
like a tooth-brush, and every roll of muscle like an oak burr-knot.
I drew the last loops of my line through the rings, and wound up the
reel in all haste, and detaching the butt of my rod stood ready, for it
looked as if he meant to fly at me. But no, he marched straight up to my
noble friend, with blazing eyes fixed on him, and saluted him with a
snarl of fiendish malice. Clearly my dog, as I began to consider him,
had no experience of such low life. He was a gentleman by birth and
social habits, not a coarse prize-fighter; so he stood looking down with
some surprise at this under-bred animal, yet glancing pleasantly as if
he would accept a challenge to a bout of gambols, as my lord will play
cricket with a pot-boy. Nay, he even went so far as to wag his courtly
tail, and draw his taper fore-legs, which shone like sable, a little
beneath the arch of his body, to be ready for a bound, if this other
chap meant play. _Grab_ spied the mean chance, and leaped straight at
his throat, but missed it at first, or only plunged his hot fangs into a
soft rich bed of curls. My dog was amazed, and scarcely took it in
earnest yet. His attitude was that of our truly peaceful nation--"I
don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, if I must, it won't be long before
this little bully bites the dust."
"At him, _Grab_, at him, boy! Show 'un what you be made of! Tip 'un a
taste of British oak. Give 'un a bellyful. By the Lord in Heaven, would
you though?"
I stretched my rod in front of Ticknor, as he appeared from behind a
ridge, dancing on his heavy heels at the richness of the combat, and
then rushing at the dog, my friend, with a loaded crab-stick, because he
had got the bull-dog down and was throwing his great weight upon him. He
had tossed him up two or three times as if in play, for he seemed even
now not to enter into the deadliness of the enemy.
"Fair play, farmer!" I said sternly. "It was your beast that began it.
Let him have a lesson. I hope the foreign dog will kill him."
No fair-minded person could help perceiving the chivalry of the one, and
bestiality of the other; while the combat grew furious for life or
death, with tossing and whirlings, and whackings of ribs, and roars of
deep rage on the part of my friend, while the other scarcely puffed or
panted, but fought his fight steadily from the ground, and in deadly
silence.
"Furriner can't hurt 'un much," said the farmer, as I vainly strove to
get between them; "made of iron and guttaperk our _Grab_ is. I've been
a'biding for this, for two months. I sent 'e fair warning, Master
George, by that fellow Slemmick, that you might not lose it. Fair play,
you says; and I say the very same. Halloa! our _Grab_ hath got his hold
at last. Won't be long in this world for your furriner now. Well done,
our _Grab_! Needn't tell 'un to hold fast."
To my dismay, I saw that it was even so. My noble foreign friend was
still above the other, but his great frame was panting and his hind-legs
twitching, and long sobs of exhaustion fetching up his golden flanks.
The sleuth foe, the murderer, had him by his gasping throat, and was
sucking out his breath with bloody fangs deep-buried.
"Let 'un kill 'un. Let 'un kill 'un!" shouted Farmer Ticknor. "Serve 'un
right for showing cheek to an honest English dog--"
But I sent Ticknor backwards, with a push upon his breast, and then with
both hands I tugged at his brutal beast. As well might I have striven,
though I am not made of kid gloves, to pull an oak in its prime from the
root-hold. The harder I tugged the deeper went the bulldog's teeth, the
faster fell the gouts of red into his blazing eyes, and the feebler grew
the gasps of his exhausted victim. Then I picked up my ashen butt and
broke it on the backbone of the tyrant, but he never even yielded for
the rebate of a snarl. Death was closing over those magnificent brown
eyes, as they turned to me faintly their last appeal.
A sudden thought struck me. I stood up for a moment, although I could
scarcely keep my legs, and whipping out of my waistcoat my brother's
patent box, I touched the spring and poured the whole contents into the
bloody nostrils of that tenacious beast. Aha, what a change! His grim
set visage puckered back to his very ears, as if he were scalped by
lightning; the flukes of his teeth fell away from their grip, as an
anchor sags out of a quicksand, he quivered all over, and rolled on his
back, and his gnarled legs fell in on the drum of his chest, while he
tried to scrub his squat nose in an agony of blisters. Then he rolled on
his panting side, and sneezed till I thought he would have turned all
his body inside out.
As for me, I set both hands upon my hips, though conscious of some pain
in doing so, and laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks. My
enjoyment was becoming actual anguish when the pensive Ticknor stooping
over his poor pet inhaled enough of the superfluous snuff to send him
dancing and spluttering across the meadow, vainly endeavouring between
his sneezes to make an interval for a heartfelt damn.
But suddenly this buffoonery received a tragic turn. From the door in
the ivied wall came forth a gliding figure well known to me, but not in
its present aspect. The calm glory of the eyes was changed to grief and
terror, the damask of the cheeks was blurred with tears, the sweet lips
quivered with distress and indignation.
"Ah, _Kuban, Kuban_, Daretza, Dula, _Kuban_!" This, or something like
this, was her melancholy cry, as she sank on her knees without a glance
at us, and covered that palpitating golden form with a shower of dark
tresses, waving with sobs like a willow in the breeze.
"Ah, _Kuban, Kuban_!" and then some soft words uttered into his ear, as
if to speed his flight.
I ran to the brook and filled my hat with water, for I did not believe
that this great dog could be dead. When I came back the young lady was
sitting with the massive head helpless on her lap, and stroking the soft
dotted cheeks, and murmuring, as if to touch the conscience of Farmer
Ticknor, "Ah, cruel, cruel! How men are cruel!"
"Allow me one moment," I said, for she seemed not even to know that I
was near. "Be kind enough to leave the dog to me. I may be able yet to
save his life. Do you understand English, Mademoiselle?"
[Illustration: "_'Allow me one moment,' I said._"]
"His life, it is gone?" Another sob stopped her voice, as she put her
little hand, where she thought his heart must be. "Yes, sir, I
understand English too well."
"Then if you will be quick, we may save his life yet. I am used to dogs;
this noble fellow is not dead; though he will be very soon, unless we
help him. There is a wound here that I cannot bind up with anything I
have about me. Bring bandages and anything long and soft. Also bring
wool, and a pot of grease, and a sponge with hot water, and a bowl or
two. I will not let him die, till you come back!"
"If that could be trusted for, when would I come back?" She glanced at
me, having no time to do more, with a soft thrill of light, such as hope
was born in; and before I could answer it she was gone, leaving me
unable to follow with my eyes; for it was the turning-point of _Kuban's_
life--if that were the name of this high-souled dog. The throttling was
gone, and the barbed strangulation, and devil's own tug at his windpipe;
but the free power of breath was not restored, and the heart was
scarcely stirring. Lifting his eyelids, I saw also that there was
concussion of the brain to deal with; but the danger of all was the
exhaustion.
Luckily in the breast-pocket of my coat was a little silver flask with a
cup at the bottom, Tom Erricker's present on my last birthday. I had
filled it with whiskey, though I seldom took spirits in those young
days, but carried this dram in case of accidents, when fishing. Instead
of dashing cold water out of my hat on the poor dog's face, as I had
meant to do,--which must in such a case have been his last sensation,--I
poured a little whiskey into the silver cup, and filled it with the
residue of water that was leaking quickly from my guaranteed felt. Then
I held up the poor helpless head, and let the contents of the cup
trickle gently over the black roots of the tongue. Down it went, and a
short gurgle followed, and then a twitch of the eyelids, and a long soft
gasp. The great heart gave a throb, and the brown eyes looked at me,
and a faint snort came from the flabby nostrils, and I shouted aloud,
"_Kuban_ is saved."
There was nobody to hear me, except the dog himself, and he was too weak
to know what I meant. Ticknor was gone, with that beast at his heels,
for at the end of the meadow I saw _Grab_, the British champion,
slouching along, like a vanquished cur, with his ropy stomach venting
heavy sneezes; and to the credit of his wisdom, I may add that even a
lamb in that valley ever after was sacred from a glance of his
bloodthirsty goggles.
With his long form laid between my legs, while I sat down on the sod and
nursed him, my wounded dog began more and more to recover his
acquaintance with the world, and to wonder what marvel had befallen him.
He even put out his tongue, and tried to give me a lick, and his grand
tail made one or two beats upon the ground; but I held up my hand, for
he had several frightful wounds, and he laid down his ears with a
grateful little whine. For the main point was to keep him quite still
now, until the dangerous holes could be stopped from bleeding.
So intent was I upon doing this, that before I was at all aware of it,
three or four people were around me. But I had eyes for only one, the
lovely mistress of the injured dog; while she for her part had no
thought whatever of anything, or any one, except that blessed _Kuban_.
That was right enough of course, and what else could be expected? Still
I must admit that this great fellow rose even higher in my estimation,
when he showed that he knew well enough where to find the proper course
of treatment, and was not to be misled even by the warmest loyalty into
faith in feminine therapeutics.
"He has turned his eyes away from me. Oh, _Kuban, Kuban_! But I care not
what you do, beloved one, if only you preserve your life. Do you think
that he can do that, sir, with all these cruel damages?"
Now that she was more herself, I thought that I had never heard any
music like her voice, nor read any poetry to be compared to the
brilliant depths of her expressive eyes. And the sweetness of her voice
was made doubly charming by the harsh and high tones of her attendants,
who were jabbering in some foreign tongue, probably longing to
interfere, and take the case out of my management.
"If they would not make such a noise," I said, "it would be all the
better for my patient. Can you persuade them to stand out of my light,
and let the fresh air flow in upon us? Oh, thank you, that is a great
deal better. There! I think now if we let him rest a minute, and then
carry him home, he will be all right. How clever you must be, to bring
the right things so well!"
For this bit of praise I was rewarded with a smile more lovely than I
should have thought possible, since the fair cheeks of Eve took the
fatal bite, and human eyes imbibed Satan. But she was truthful, as Eve
was false.
"Without Stepan I could have done nothing. Stepan, come forth, and
receive the praise yours. You must now take _Kuban_ in your arms, and
follow this gentleman into the fort. Understand you? He has very little
English yet. He can do everything except learn. Stepan is too strong for
that. But he has not the experience that I have. Nevertheless, he is
very good. I am praising thee, oh, Stepan. Lose not the opportunity of
thanking me."
Stepan, a huge fellow, dressed very wonderfully according to my present
ideas, stood forth in silence, and held up his arms, to show that they
were ready for anything. But I saw that a hard leather bandoleer, or
something of that kind, with a frill of leather cases, hung before his
great chest, and beneath the red cross which all of them were wearing.
"Stepan is strong as the ox," said the lady.
That he might be, and he looked it too. "Can he pull off that great
leather frill?" I asked, seeing that it would scrub the poor dog sadly,
as well as catch and jerk his bandages.
"He cannot remove it. That is part of Stepan." His young mistress smiled
at him, as she said this.
"Then put him up here," I said, holding out my arms, though not sure
that I could manage it, for the dog must weigh some twelve stone at
least, and one of my arms had been injured. Stepan lifted him with the
greatest ease; but not so did I carry him, for he must be kept in one
position, and most of his weight came on my bad arm. So difficult was my
task indeed, that I saw nothing of the place they led me through, but
feared that I should drop down at every rough spot--which would have
meant the death of poor _Kuban_. And down I must have come, I am quite
sure of that, if I had not heard the soft sweet voice behind me--"It is
too much for the kind gentleman. I pray you, sir, to handle him to the
great Stepan."
When I was all but compelled to give in, by the failure of the weak arm,
and the fear of dropping my patient fatally, a man of magnificent
appearance stood before me, and saw my sad plight at a glance.
"Permit me," he said, in a deep rich tone, yet as gentle as a woman's
voice. "This is over-trying your good will. I see what it is. I have
only just heard. I will bear him very gently. Take _Orla_ away."
For another dog was jumping about me now, most anxious to know what on
earth had befallen that poor _Kuban_, and displaying, as I thought, even
more curiosity than sympathy. But when the weight was taken from me, and
my companions went on, I turned aside with pains and aches, which came
upon me all the worse.
"I have done all I can. I am wanted no more; the sooner I get home the
better."
Thinking thus I made my way towards the black door of our entrance, now
standing wide open in the distance; and I felt low at heart through the
failure of my strength, and after such a burst of excitement.
"I am not wanted here. I have no right here. What have I to do with
these strange people?" I said to myself, as I sat for a moment to
recover my breath, on a bench near the door. "I have quite enough to do
at home, and my arm is very sore. They evidently wish to live in strict
seclusion; and as far as concerns me, so they may. If they wanted me,
they would send after me. A dog is more to them than a Christian
perhaps. What on earth do they wear those crosses for?"
I would not even look around, to see what sort of a place it was; but
slipped through the door, and picked up my shattered rod and half-filled
creel, and set off, as the dusk was deepening, on the long walk to my
father's cottage.
CHAPTER VIII
THROUGH THE CORN
According to Farmer Bandilow (who was now our last old tenant, striving
to escape from the wreck of plough, by paddling with spade and trowel),
the London season begins with turnip-tops, and ends with cabbage-grubs.
But this year it must have lasted well into the time of turnip-bottoms;
otherwise how could my sister, Lady Fitzragon, have been in London? Not
that we knew very much about the movements of her ladyship, for she
found our cottage beyond the reach of her fat and glittering horses;
only that she must have been now in town, because our Grace was with
her. And this was a lucky thing for me; for if Grace had been at home,
she must have known all about my wounded arm, and a nice fuss she would
have made of it. But my mother, though equally kind and good, was not
very quick of perception; and being out of doors nearly all the day now,
and keeping my own hours, I found it easy enough to avoid all notice and
escape all questions. For the people at the cottage very seldom came to
my special den, the harness-room; and I kept my own little larder in
what had once been a kennel close at hand, and my own little bed up a
flat-runged ladder, and so troubled none but a sweetly deaf old dame.
And this arrangement grew and prospered, whenever there was no Grace to
break through it.
However, there is no luck for some people. One night, when I felt sure
that all the cottage was asleep, I had taken off the bandages, and was
pumping very happily on my left forearm, where the flesh had been torn,
when there in the stableyard before me, conspicuous in the moonlight,
with a blazing satin waistcoat, stood the only man who could do justice
to it. For this gallant fellow had a style of his own, which added new
brilliance to the most brilliant apparel.
"Why, Tom," I cried, "where on earth do you come from? I can't shake
hands, or I shall spoil some of your charms. Why, you must have been
dining with the governor. New togs again! What a coxcomb it is!"
"Never would I have sported these, and indeed I would never have come
down at all, if I had known Grace was out of the way."
He was allowed to call her _Grace_ to me.
"How slow it is without her! But I say, old chap, what a frightful arm
you've got! Pitchfork again, I suppose"--for I had received a scratch
before--"only ten times as bad. Why, you mustn't neglect this. You'll
have it off at the elbow, if you do. Why, even by this light--By Jove,
what a whacking arm you've got! Why, it is twice the size of mine. I
could never have believed it. Let me pull off my coat, and show you."
"But you cannot want one the size of mine"--I answered with a laugh, for
it was thoroughly like Tom to fetch everything into his own person; "you
could never put it into a waistcoat like that."
"George, you are an ass," was his very rude reply, and it seemed to ring
into me far beyond his meaning. "My dear fellow, you will be, in your
own parish, what nobody has seen anywhere,--a dead jackass,--if you go
on like this. There is a black stripe down your arm; the same as you see
on a 'mild-cured-haddy' when he shines by moonlight. What does that
mean? Putrefaction."
"Rot!" I replied, meaning his own words. "I'll pump on you, waistcoat
and all, my dear Tom, if you go on with this sort of rubbish." And yet I
had some idea that he might be right. But the worst--as I need not tell
any strong young fellow--of the absurdities our worthy doctors try to
screw into us now--that a man must not draw the breath the Lord breathed
into him, for fear of myrio-mycelia-micro-somethings, neither dare to
put his fork into the grand haunch of mutton which his Maker ordered
him to arise and eat--of all such infantile stuff the harm is this, that
it makes a healthy man deride the better sense that is in them.
"Come to my hole, and have a smoke," I said to my dear friend. "And mind
you, not a word about this scratch to my good people. To-morrow we shall
cut our first field of wheat. Though it won't pay for cutting and
binding, Tom, the sight is as glorious as ever. What a pity for our
descendants, if we ever have any, to get no chance of ever seeing the
noblest sight of Old England! Come to this gate, and take a look. In a
few more years, there will be no such sight."
"Poetry is all very fine in its way," replied Tom, who had about as much
as I possess, although he could make a hook and eye of rhyme sometimes.
"But the moon will go on all the same, I suppose; and she does most of
our poetry."
She was doing plenty of it now, in silence, such as any man may feel,
but none can make another feel. We waited a minute or two by the gate,
till a white cloud veiled the quivering disc, and then all the lustre
flowed softly to our eyes, like a sea of silver playing smoothly on a
shore of gold.
"After all, love is rot," said Tom, carried away by larger beauty, after
some snub of the day before. "I should like to see any girl who could
compare with that. And a man must be a muff who could look at this, and
then trouble his head about their stupid little tricks. Look at the
breadth of this, look at the depth of it! Why, it lifts one; it makes
one feel larger, George; that is the way to take things."
"Especially when some one has been making you feel small," I answered at
a venture, for I understood my friend; and this abstract worship of
beauty was not so satisfactory to me now. "But come into my place, and
tell me all about it, my dear Tom. You were so mysterious the other day,
that I knew you were after some other wild goose."
"I am happy, most happy," Tom went on to say, after pouring forth the
sorrows of his last love-tale, through many a blue eye and bright curl
of smoke; "I feel that I cannot be thankful enough at the amount of
side that girl puts on. And the beauty of it is, that she hasn't got a
rap, and her husband would have to help to keep her mother. How lucky
for me she never can have heard of the glorious Tinman, or my oofy
maiden-aunt; wouldn't she have jumped at me, if she had? A fellow can't
be too careful, George, when you come to think. But you'll never make a
fool of yourself. Not a bit of romance about you, Farmer Jarge; and a
fellow of your size and family has a right to go in for ten thousand
a-year. How about those gipsies in the valley, though? You mustn't go on
with that, even if you could, my friend. Great swells, I daresay, but no
tin."
"What business of yours? What do you know about them? I'll thank you to
hold your tongue upon subjects that are above you."
"Ha, ha! Ho, ho! Tinmen must look up to tinkers, must they? How dare I
call them tinkers? Well, it is just like this. These people are gipsies,
all gipsies are tinkers, therefore these people are tinkers. But don't
get in a wax, George. I was only chaffing. It may be Cleopatra herself,
for all I know, come to look after her needle--would not look at it,
while her own, will look at nothing else, when lost. Oh, I know what
women are."
"And I know what idiots are," I answered with a superior smile; not
being quite such a fool, I trust, as to pretend to that knowledge which
even the highest genius denies to man. "And an idiot you are to-night,
Tom."
"Well, I may be a little upset," said he, striking his glorious
waistcoat, and then stroking it to remove the mark. "I confess I did
like that girl. And she liked me; I am sure of that. Why, bless her
little heart, she cried, my boy! However, it was not to be. And when I
told her that I must look higher (meaning only up to heaven) for gradual
consolation, what a wax she did get in! Never mind. Let it pass. There
are lots of pretty girls about. And no man can be called mercenary, for
I am blest if any of them have got a bit of tin. I thank the Lord, every
night of my life, that my old aunt never was a beauty. And that makes
her think all the more of me. Sir, your most obedient!"
Behind my chair was an old looking-glass, which Grace had insisted upon
hanging there, to make the place look rather smart; and Tom, who had not
seen himself for some hours, stood up before it in the weak
candle-light, and proceeded in his usual manner. "Tom, my friend, you
don't look so much amiss. If your heart is broken, there is enough of it
left to do a little breaking on its own account. Don't be cast down, my
boy. You may not be a beauty, though beautiful girls think better of you
than your modesty allows you to proclaim. But one thing you may say,
Tom; whoever has the luck to get you, will find you a model husband."
This I thought likely enough; if only he should get a wife with plenty
of sense and love to guide him. But what was the opinion of a tall, hard
man who stood in the doorway with a long gun on his arm, criticising
Erricker's sweet self-commune with a puzzled and yet a very
well-contented gaze?
"Mr. Stoneman!" I exclaimed, giving Tom a little push, for he stood with
his back to him, in happy innocence of critics. "We did not expect this
pleasure so late at night. This is an old friend of mine--Mr. Erricker.
Allow me to introduce you, Tom, to Mr. Jackson Stoneman." My old friend
turned round, without a symptom of embarrassment, and bowed almost as
gracefully as he had been salaaming to himself.
"I have heard of Mr. Erricker, and have great pleasure in making his
acquaintance," our new visitor replied, and I saw that the pleasure was
genuine, and knew why; to wit, that he was thinking in his heart, "That
little fop to make up to Grace Cranleigh!" For no doubt he had heard of
Tom's frequent visits, and the inference drawn by neighbours. "But I
must beg pardon," he continued, "for daring to look in at such a time.
It was only this, I have been down to the pond at the bottom of the long
shrubbery, to look for some shoveller ducks I heard of, and see that no
poachers are after them. I don't want to shoot them, though I brought my
gun; and going back, I happened to see your light up here."
"Sit down, Mr. Stoneman," said Tom, as if he were the master of the
place. "I have often wished to see you, and I will tell you why. I am a
bit of a sportsman, when I can get the chance. But this fellow,
Cranleigh, is so hard at work always that he never will come anywhere to
show me where to go."
"And he has not many places to take you to now." I spoke without
thinking, for to beg permission from this new landowner was about the
last thing I would do. And I was vexed with my friend for his
effrontery.
"Of course I should never dream," proceeded Tom, for he had some reason
in him after all, "to ask leave to shoot on any land of yours, or where
you have taken the shooting rights. But there is a little warren with a
lot of rabbits, on Bandilow's farm, where Sir Harold gives me leave. But
I must go a mile round to get at it, unless I may cross the park with my
gun. May I do so, without firing, of course?"
"To be sure. As often as you like. Any friend of Mr. Cranleigh may do
much more than that. And I am come to ask a favour, too. I have three
fellows doing next to nothing. They have just finished bundling a lot of
furze. Capital fellows with a hook, I believe; and so I don't want to
turn them off. I hear you intend to begin reaping to-morrow. Can you
find a job for them, just for a few days?"
This was a very pretty way to put it. I knew that he had plenty of work
for the men, but wanted to help us with our harvest labour, having
heard, no doubt, that we were short of hands. I thanked him warmly, for
these men would be of the greatest service to us. And then he turned
upon me severely, as if my health were under his superintendence, and I
was trying to elude it, by keeping my arm from his notice.
"You are doing a very stupid thing. You have a shocking wound in your
left arm, caused by the tooth or the claws of a dog; and instead of
having it treated properly, all you do is to pump upon it."
"Halloa!" cried Tom Erricker, "a dog. I wouldn't have that for a
thousand pounds. George, how could you play me such a trick? You told me
it was a pitchfork."
"I told you nothing of the kind. I simply said nothing whatever about
it. It can concern nobody but myself. And I will thank Mr. Stoneman, and
you, too, to attend to your own business."
"It may be no business of mine, perhaps," the stockbroker answered
severely; "but it is the undoubted business of any intimate friend of
yours, and most of all that of your family. Such behaviour of yours is
not true manliness, as I daresay you suppose, but foolhardy
recklessness, and want of consideration for your friends. And what does
that come to but selfishness, under one of its many disguises?"
Tom chimed in to the same effect, even going so far as to ask me what my
father and mother could do without me, even if they survived the trial
of seeing me smothered under a feather-bed. But when both my friends had
killed me of rabies to their entire satisfaction, I showed them in very
few words how little they knew about what they were talking of. For I
had done for myself all that could be done, as well as any doctor could
have managed it, and now there was nothing for it but cold water, and an
easy mind, and trust in Providence.
As soon as Tom Erricker heard of Providence, he began to yawn, as if he
were in church; so I begged him to go to bed, for which he was quite
ready, while I had a little talk with our tenant.
"How did you hear of this affair?" I asked, hoping for some light upon
other matters; "none of our people know it. They make such a fuss about
a dog-bite, that I was obliged to keep it close. I will beg you to do
the same, if you wish to oblige me."
"There is nothing I wish for more than that." Stoneman drew his chair
over as he spoke, and offered me one of his grand cigars; and I was not
above accepting it, with my knowledge of his feelings. "I have your
permission to call you _George_. I will do so, now that your bright
young friend is gone. When I think of the reports that reached me--but I
will say no more. A fine young fellow, no doubt, or he would not be a
friend of yours." The vision of Tom Erricker at the mirror brought a
smile to his firm lips; but for my sake he suppressed it. "Now I want to
talk to you seriously, George. And you will not take it as a liberty,
knowing my very warm regard for--for you."
"You may say what you like. I shall take it kindly. I am well aware that
you know a thousand times as much of the world as I do."
"And a very poor knowledge it is," he replied, gazing at a cloud of his
own smoke. "When the question is of deeper matters, the wisdom of the
world is a broken reed. And yet I want to bring it into play just now.
In the case of another, that is so much easier; just as any fool can
pass judgment on the labour he has never tried with his own hand. Excuse
me, George, if I speak amiss, I do it out of good-will, as some of them
do not, but to show their own superiority. To cut the matter short--I
know all about--no, not all, but a lot about your new friends down in
the valley."
"They can scarcely be called my friends, if I require to be informed
about them." My mind had been full of them, although it was clear that
they cared not to hear any more of me.
"You are surprised, perhaps, at my knowledge of what occurred the other
day. That was by the purest accident; for I am not the sort of man to
play the spy. You know that, I hope. Very well, I took the liberty then
of inquiring for my own sake, and that of the neighbourhood, who these
mysterious settlers were, and I knew where to go for my information.
Like most things, when you get nearer to them, there is no real mystery
at all. The only wonder is that they can have been there so long,
without attracting notice. If the country had been hunted, as it used to
be, when people could afford to keep up the pack, they would never have
been left so quiet. The parson of the parish, as a general rule, routs
up every newcomer for church purposes, no matter what his creed may be;
and I know that they seldom give much start even to the tax-collectors.
But the parson of that parish is a very old man, and has no one to look
after him, and the country is very thinly peopled. Well, they seem to
have bought the place for an old song, so that nobody can interfere with
them. And they soon put it into better order--"
"But who are they? And what are they doing there? And how long do they
mean to stop?"
"Don't be in a hurry, my good friend. There is plenty of time for
another cigar. Pipes you prefer? Very well, fill again. However, for
fear of being knocked on the head, I will resume my parable. Nothing can
be done without paying for it. That is the golden rule in England, and
everywhere else upon this planet. And wherever money passes, it can be
followed up. The strange thing is that these people seem to care very
little about concealment, though they are not sociable. What their
native language is, we do not know, though they seem to be great
linguists. French, German, Russian, Arabic, and I don't know what else,
and some of them very good in our beloved tongue, the hardest to learn
of all the lot. They are of Eastern race, that appears quite certain,
though neither Jews, Turks, nor Armenians. But what they are here for
seems pretty plain--forgery!"
"Ridiculous!" I exclaimed, though without showing any wrath. "They are
people of high rank, I am sure of that. Political exiles, refugees,
Anarchists, or even Nihilists--though I cannot think that. But as for
forgers--"
"It scarcely sounds nice; and yet I have little doubt about it; and the
police have come to that conclusion, and are keeping a sharp eye upon
them. For what other purpose can they want a mill? And a mill which they
have set up themselves, to suit themselves. The old water-wheel they
had, and the cogs and all that, left from the old corn-grinding time;
but they have refitted it for quite a different purpose, and done almost
all of it with their own hands. What for? Plain as a pikestaff--to make
their own paper, and get stamping power, and turn out forged notes,
foreign of course, Russian rouble, the simplest of all."
He had made up his mind. He was sure of this solution. He had no doubt
whatever. Ah, but he had never seen the majestic man who met me, much
less that beautiful nymph of the shrine!
"Stoneman, all this sounds very fine." I met his smile of confidence,
and as it seemed to me of heartless triumph, with a gaze of faith in
humanity--which some people might call romance. "But there is not a word
of truth in it. What inference does a policeman draw? The worst he can
imagine--grist for his own mill. They make the world a black chapter, to
suit their own book. But I have no motive. What motive could I have, to
make out that people are better than they seem? I tell you, and you may
take my word for it, that this little colony, of whatever race it may
be, has no evil purpose in coming among us. I might even go further and
say that I am sure of their having an excellent object, a noble object,
some great discovery, perhaps surpassing all my brother's, and something
that will be of service to entire humanity."
"Money, to wit. You know what the last great forger who was hanged,
before we left off that wise plan, what he said when exhorted to
repentance, 'You make money for yourself, sir, I make it for the good of
the public.' No doubt they take that view of the case."
"Very well, you take a lesson from them, and improve the morals of the
Stock Exchange."
The stockbroker smiled very pleasantly, as one who was thoroughly at
home with that old joke; then he took up his gun, and marched off for
the Hall, leaving me to make the best of things.
Feeling how small are the minds of mankind, even the best of them, when
they listen to the police, and knowing that I could not sleep as yet, I
went once more to the gate at the top of the yard, and gazed over the
wheat which was to lie low on the morrow. Although I had just received
proof of friendship, from two very nice fellows better than myself,
which should have encouraged me to think the best, sadness came into my
heart, and a sombre view of life depressed me. There are two things only
that can save a man from deep dejection occasionally. One of them is to
have no thought whatever, except for affairs of the moment; and the
other and surer is to believe with unchangeable conviction that all is
ordered by a Higher Power, benevolent ever, and ever watchful for those
who commit themselves to it. That atom of humanity, which is myself, has
never been able to sink to the depth of the one condition, or soar to
the height of the other. So there must be frequent ups and downs with
ordinary mortals, gleams of light, and bars of shade; and happy is the
man who can keep the latter from deepening as his steps go on. But who
am I to moralise?
Enough that any fellow worth his salt must be grieved and lowered, when
suspicions arise, concerning those of whom he has formed a high opinion.
How much worse, when his own judgment owns that things look rather
black, and memory quotes against his wishes more than one such
disappointment. If it were so, if those who had made so deep an
impression on me were skulking rogues and stealthy felons, no wonder
they had not cared to ask what became of the stranger, who by remarkable
presence of mind had saved the life of their valued warder, and then
with a modesty no less rare, had vanished before they could thank him,
if they ever had the grace to intend it. "All the better," I said to
myself, with the acumen of the wisest fox that ever entered vineyard,
"even if all had been right, it never could have led to any good; and
see what a vast amount of work is coming on all at once, with no one
else to do it! And all the time is there any one but myself to see to my
young sister's doings? Here is this fellow Stoneman sweet upon her,
wonderfully sweet, quite spoony--who could have believed it of a
stockbroker? What do I know about him? Nothing, except that he has
endless tin, and spends it certainly like a brick. Is he worthy of her,
and if he is, will she even look at him? Rather a romantic girl, too
fond of her own opinions, and yet a little prone to hero-worship. She
might fall in love with some hero in London who hasn't got a
half-penny--halloa, what can that be, winding in and out so, through the
wheat?"
The moon, now very nearly full, was making that low round of the sky
which is all it can manage in August, and seemed rather to look along
the field than heartily down upon it. The effect was very different now
from that which Tom and I had watched. For the surface of the luxuriant
corn, instead of imbibing and simpering with light, was flawed and
patched (like a flowing tide) with flittings and hoverings of light and
shade. And along a sweep of darkness near the shadow of a tree, there
was something moving stealthily like the figure of a man.
For a moment or two, I did not enjoy that calmness of mind which is
believed (by Britons) to be the prerogative of Britons. The period of
the night, and the posture of the moon, and peculiar tone of things not
to be told, as well as some dread of a mischief to my brain--through
what had befallen me recently--took away from me that superior gift
which had enabled me to beat the bull-dog. However, I might just as well
not have been afraid--as we generally find out afterwards--for the other
apparition, whatever it might be, was ever so much more afraid of me.
"What on earth are you about there?" I shouted bravely, when this
welcome truth came to my knowledge. "Can't you stand up like a man, and
say what you are about?"
In reply to my challenge an undersized figure scarcely any taller than
the corn arose, showing a very strange head-dress and other outlandish
garments, and a loose idea generally of being all abroad. "You are the
little chap I saw the other day," said I.
He nodded his head, and said something altogether outside of my
classical attainments; and then he pulled forth from a long coat, whose
colours no moon, or even rainbow could render, a small square package,
which he lifted to his eyes. With a rush of my heart into the situation,
I seized him by his collar, or the thing that represented it, and
twisted him over the gate; and he looked thankful, having some fear
perhaps of English five-bars.
In half a minute, I had this little fellow in my den, where he trembled
and blinked at the light, and then grinned, as if to propitiate a
cannibal. And I was pleased to see that he had pluck enough to put one
hand upon the hilt of a little blue skewer which he wore in his belt,
and then he looked at me boldly. With a smile to reassure him, I offered
to take the missive from his other hand. But that was not the proper
style of doing business with him. He drew back for a pace or two, and
made the utmost of his puny figure, and then with a low bow stretched
forth both hands, and behold there was a letter in the end of a cleft
stick! Where he found the cleft stick is more than I can tell. At the
same time, he said _Allai_, which turned out afterwards to be his own
name.
"Sit down in that corner, little chap," I said as graciously as if he
knew English. "And make yourself at home, while I get on with this."
Perhaps he was out of practice in the art of sitting down, for instead
of accepting the chair I offered, he clapped himself in some wonderful
manner upon a hassock. But it was impossible for me to attend to him
much, until I knew what he had brought.
Now there was nothing particularly foreign about this. It looked like an
ordinary English letter, except that the paper was not like ours, and
the envelope was secured with silk, as well as sealed. But the writing
was the daintiest that ever I did see; and I longed to get rid of that
"darkie" in the corner, whose eyes flashed at me from the gloomy floor.
And his hand was playing with his _kinjal_ all the time, for so they
call those deadly bits of steel, without which they never think their
attire complete. Being unaccustomed to be looked at so, I could not
enter into my fair letter as I wished; though that little fellow would
have flown up to the slates, before he could get near me with that
hateful snakish thing. And to tell the truth, I did him wrong by any
such suspicion; for there could never be a more loyal, honest, and
zealous retainer than Allai. "Here you are," I said, addressing him in
English, though well aware now that he was none the wiser; "here's a
drop of good beer for you, young man. You take a pull at that, while I
write my answer. Ah, you won't get such stuff as that in--well, I don't
know where you hail from; but all over the world I defy you to get
anything like it."
Allai gave a grunt which I took for acquiescence; and leaving him to
enjoy himself, I wrote a few lines and enclosed them in a cover. Then I
found a bit of sealing wax, and sealed it very carefully, and fixed it
in the cleft wand, and handed it to Allai.
"You go straight away, quick-sticks, with this, and don't you lose it,
or I'll break your neck. Why, I'm blest if the pagan has drunk a drop of
his beer! Can such a race ever be brought up to date? Why, he takes it
for virulent poison!"
The young savage had poured my good ale upon the floor, and was soaking
the point of his dagger in it. He had put the glass to his lips no
doubt, and arrived at the sage conclusion that here was swift death for
his enemies. However, he possessed some civilisation as to the meaning
of a broad crown-piece, which in the fervour of my joy I set before him.
To a rich man it would have been well worth the money, to see the glad
sparkle of those black eyes, and the grin upon those swarthy cheeks.
Suddenly with a deep salaam his slender form turned and was gone like a
shadow.
And then I was able at last to dwell upon this very beautiful letter,
which might to the outward eye appear to convey not a token of anything
more than "Miss Mary Jones presents her compliments;" but to my deeper
perception, and hopes higher than any telescope may carry, it showed the
sky cast open at the zenith, like a lily, and a host of golden angels
letting down a ladder for me. For no longer could I hide my state of
mind, or disguise it from myself. Henceforth I shall be open about it,
though hitherto ashamed to say half of what I thought, while I had such
a little to go upon. But here is my key to Paradise. Let every man judge
for himself, bearing in mind that he never can be wise until he has been
a fool seventy times seven.
"SIR,--My dear father, Sûr Imar, of Daghestan, has been injured
very greatly by your alien conduct to him. Your actions were of
high bravery, and great benevolence to us. But when we desired very
largely to inform you of our much gratitude, we could not discover
you in any place, and we sought for you vainly, with great
eagerness of sorrow. And then, for a long space of time, we made
endeavour to find out the name of the gentleman who had done us so
great a service, but would not permit us to thank him. We are
strangers here, and have not much knowledge. After that, a man who
possesses three goats pronounced to us that he understood the
matter. According to his words, I take the liberty of letter,
entreating you, if it is right, to come, and permit us to see to
whom we owe so much. And my father is afraid that the gentleman was
injured in the conflict with a furious English beast. If, then,
this should have happened, he can remedy it, as perhaps you cannot
in this country. I desire also, if it is right, to join my own
entreaties. I am, Sir, Yours very faithfully,
DARIEL."
CHAPTER IX
STRANGE SENSATIONS
"Yours very faithfully." Oh, if that were only written in earnest,
instead of cold convention! To have, faithfully mine, the most lovely,
and perfect, entrancing, enslaving, poetical, celestial--tush, what word
is there in our language? None of course; because there has never been
anything like it until now. Gentleness, sweetness, gracefulness, purity,
simplicity, warmth of heart, gratitude for even such a trifling
service--all these were very fine things in their way; but away with
them all, if they want to tell me why I love my darling! Because I
cannot help it, is the only reason. It must be so, because it is so.
Surely this is their own fair logic, and they must feel the force of it.
All this jumped with reason well, and was plainer than a pikestaff. But
the path of true love still was crossed by one little bar, without a
sign-post. In the name of the zodiac, where was Daghestan?
Man had not quite hatched board-schools yet; though already, under the
tread of Progress, incubating of them. Having been only at a public
school, and then for two years at Oxford, no opportunity had I found for
hearing of Modern Geography. That such a thing existed, I could well
believe, from the talk of undergraduates, whose lot it was to cram for
competition of a lower kind. I had been a prefect at Winchester, and
passed my little-go at Oxford, and might have gone in for honours there,
though very likely not to get them. But in all this thoroughly sound
education, I had never dreamed of Modern Geography. I could have told
you, though it is all gone now, the name of every village in
Peloponnese, and of every hill in Attica, and the shape of every bay and
island, and a pestilent lot of them there was, from the Hellespont to
Tænarus. But if you had asked me the names and number of the counties of
England, and other wild questions of that sort, I should have answered,
as a friend of mine did, who got an open scholarship at Oxford, and then
went in for something in London, "There are about half a hundred, more
or less; but Parliament is always changing them." And this man got the
highest marks in the geography of that year; because the examiner was a
Welshman, and therefore laid claim to Monmouth.
But wherever Daghestan might be, I felt sure of its being the noblest
country (outside the British dominions) of all the sun could shine upon.
Moreover, it sounded as if it had no little to do with the Garden of
Eden. Ispahan, and Teheran, and other rhymes for caravan, had a gorgeous
oriental sound, as of regions of romance, inhabited by Peris, and paved
with gold and diamonds. And the glow that flickered through the wheat
that day, as the mellow fountains danced before the blue half-moon of
sickle, was warmer than an English sun can throw, and quickened with a
brilliance of heavenly tints, such as Hope alone, the Iris of the heart,
may cast.
"Farmer Jarge, here's nuts for you. What do you suppose I have found out
now?"
This was that lazy fellow Tom, sprawling in the yellow stubble, with his
back against a stook, and a pipe in his mouth, and a dog's-eared novel
on his lap. We had knocked off work for half an hour in the middle of
the day, just to get a bit to eat; and I was not best pleased with
Erricker, because of the difference between the noble promise of the
breakfast table, and the trumpery performance in the field.
[Illustration: "_Sprawling in the yellow stubble._"]
"Get away," I said; "you can talk, and nothing else. All you have found
out is where the beer-can is; you are not even worthy of your bread and
cheese." However, I gave him some, and he began to munch.
"Won't you laugh, when I tell you about this? And it upsets all your
theories that you are so wonderfully wise with. I must have heard you
say a thousand times, that it is only a fool that ever falls in love."
"You never understand a thing that anybody says. There are limitations,
and conditions, and a whole variety of circumstances, that may make all
the difference; otherwise a man would be a fool to talk like that."
"Fool to do it? Or fool to talk about it? You seem to be getting a bit
mixed, friend George. It's the stooping that has done it. By Jove! I
couldn't stand that. Nature never meant me for a reaper, George. And you
may thank the Lord that I did not cut your legs off. But what do you
think 'Stocks and Stones' has done? And you can't call him a fool
altogether. Head over heels, 'Stocks and Stones' has fallen in love with
our Grace!"
"_Our Grace_, indeed! Have you a sister of that name? If you should
happen to refer to my sister, I will thank you to call her 'Miss
Cranleigh'! Is there anything this fellow does not meddle with?"
"Mr. George Cranleigh, Mr. Jackson Stoneman aspires to the hand of Miss
Grace Cranleigh, daughter of Sir Harold Cranleigh, Bart. Is that grand
enough, Mr. Cranleigh? And if so, what do you think of it?"
What I thought of it was that there scarcely could have been a more
unlucky complication than was likely now to be brought about by Tom's
confounded discovery. It was not in his nature to hold his tongue; and
if he should once let this knowledge escape him, in the presence of my
father and mother, or worst of all in that of my sister, it would be all
up with Stoneman's chance of marrying Grace Cranleigh. And as to binding
Tom to secrecy, as well might one blow the kitchen bellows at a
dandelion ball, and beg it not to part with a particle of its plumage.
On the spur of the moment, I said more than facts would bear me out in,
when they came up at leisure.
"Don't tell me, you stupid fellow. How many more mare's nests must come
out of your eyes, before you see anything? But if you must take in such
rubbish, just do this, Tom, will you? Keep your eyes wide open, my boy.
You know how sharp you are, Tom. But not a word to any one, or it would
spoil your game altogether. By the by, where is Daghestan, Tom? You are
such a swell at geography."
"Daghestan! I seem to have heard of it, and yet I can't be certain.
Persian, I think. No, that is Ispahan. Tut, tut, what a fool I am!--of
course I know all about it. Why it's in the United States, a prime place
for scalping and buffaloes."
"No, you old muff, that is Dakota. Quite another pair of shoes. I don't
want to disturb the Governor, or I could find out in a moment. Never
mind, it doesn't matter; and here we go to work again. Now what is the
sweetest smell, do you think, in all the world of farming? Not a great
over-powering scent, but a delicate freshness through the air."
"I should say the hay on an upland meadow, when it begins to make. Or
perhaps a field of new bean-blossom. I never knew that till this year;
but upon my word it was stunning."
"No, the most delicate of all scents is from the clover first laid bare
among the wheat where it was sown. No blossom of course; but the
fragrance of the leaf, among the glossy quills that sheltered it. But
come along; if you can't swing hook without peril of manslaughter, you
can bind, or you can set up stooks, or earn your keep some little. Why,
Grace is worth a score of you! Poor Tom, is your finger bleeding? You
must come harvesting in kid gloves."
"I will tell you what it is," said Tom, after keeping his place among
the binders for about five minutes. "I am a thoroughgoing countryman,
and I know a lot about farming; and you know how I can jump and run, and
a good light weight with the gloves I am; but this job beats me
altogether. 'Pay your footing, sir, pay your footing!' You'll have to
pay for my headstone, George, if you keep me on much longer. How you can
go on all day long--but I want you to do something for me, and by the
Powers, I have earned it."
He wanted me to promise, in return for all his labours, to give up my
plans for the evening, and present myself at dinner-time for the
ceremony at the cottage. This, though a very simple business, must be
done in the proper form; and then it would be my duty perhaps to offer
to take a hand at whist, and be ready for the wearisome wrangle, which
even well-bred people make of it. But I had nobler fish to fry.
"Tom, I can't do it. You like that sort of thing; and my mother is
delighted with your sprightly little tales. Go and put your brave
apparel on. Everybody admires you; and you love that."
He knew that he did. Why should he deny it? The happiness of mankind is
pleasure, though it passes without our knowledge, because we never can
stop to think of it,--as a man in a coach sees the hedges race by; and
if it comes to that, where may you find true bliss so near at home, as
in being pleased with your own good self? Our Tom had a happy time.
Nothing long tormented him. He carried a lofty standard with him, and
flopped its white folds joyously at little gnats and buzzing bees; and
he never failed to come up to it, because that standard was himself.
"What else could it be?" he says to me. "And that is why everybody likes
me."
CHAPTER X
UPON THE GROUND
Alas! to come down from those pleasant heights, if ever I did attain to
them, to the turbulent dissatisfaction with oneself, and contempt of
every creature in the world, save one, which lonely love engenders!
Never had I seemed to myself so low, so awfully prosaic and
unpicturesque, as when I was trying to make myself look decent that very
evening. Since then I have learned that even pretty girls, who are roses
to thistles in comparison with us, are never quite certain at their
looking-glass that another touch might not improve them. And what did I
behold? A square-built fellow, with a stubby yellow moustache, and a
nose fit for the ring,--or to have a ring through it,--a great bulky
forehead, like Ticknor's bull-dog, and cheeks like a roasted
coffee-berry. The only thing decent was the eyes, firm and strong, of a
steadfast blue, and the broad full chin that kept the lips from drooping
in a tremble even now. Proud as I was of my Saxon breed, and English
build and character, in the abasement of the moment I almost longed for
a trace of the comely Norman traits. "As if any girl could love you!" I
exclaimed, in parody of that handsome Tom's self-commune.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Without a trial, there's no denial.
Handsome is that handsome does. Beauty is only skin-deep. And so on--I
laboured to fetch myself up to the mark, but it was a very low one. The
neap of the tide, or the low spring water,--which goes ever so much
further out,--was ebbing away on the shores of self-esteem as I entered
the glen of St. Winifred. Tom Erricker would have descended, as if the
valley and its contents belonged to him. Heaviness of heart may
sometimes visit even a healthy and robust young man, living the life
intended for us, working in the open air all day, and sleeping on a hard
palliasse at night. Heaviness and diffidence, and clownish hesitation,
and fear of losing precious landmarks in a desert-dazzle. Surely it were
better to turn back before they can have seen me, set the sheepish face
to the quiet hill, and thank my stars that not one of them yet has
turned into a comet.
Sadly was I perpending this, slower and slower at every step, while the
shadows of the trees grew longer, and the voice of birds was lower, and
the babble of the brook began to sink into the lisping of a cradled
child, as the draught of the valley hushed it; and falling into harmony
with all these signs, my breath was beginning to abate me, when along a
trough of sliding mist like a trysting track for the dusk, appeared the
form of my friend _Kuban_. Courage at once arose within me, and spirit
of true patronage. To men and women I may be nought, but to him I am a
hero. Lo, how he licks my hand, and whines, as if he had never seen my
like, and would never believe it, if he did! He longs to roll upon his
back, and offer himself a prostrate sacrifice. But he knows that I
should be vexed at that, because it would not be safe for him. The
labour of his great heart is to show me all his damages, and make me
understand that, but for me, he could not display them. What with love,
and what with fear, and the utter unsettlement of my mind, down I went
on the grass beside him, and took him paw by paw, to feel how much of
him was still existing.
Now if I had thought of it in the coldest blood--if there still were
cold blood in me--there was nothing in the world I could have done so
wise as this abasement. What says Ovid in the "Art of Love"? Many low
things, I am afraid, that no Englishman would stoop to. But if that
great Master arose anew, to give lessons to an age of milder passion,
probably he would have said to me, "Water those wounds with your tears,
my friend."
My eyes, being British, were dry as a bone; but upon them fell, as they
looked up, the lustre of a very different pair, like bright stars
extinguishing a glow-worm. And the glory of these was deepened by the
suffusion of their sparkle with a tender mist of tears. No blush was
lurking in the petal of the cheeks, no smile in the brilliant bud of
lips; pity and gentle sorrow seemed to be the sole expression.
I dropped the dog's great legs, and rose, and with all the grace that in
me lay--and that was very little--took off my hat, and made a bow, the
former being of the bowler order, and the latter of the British.
"No, no. Please not to do that," she said, "it is so very grievous.
Forgive me, if I am sad to look at. It always comes upon me so, when I
behold things beautiful."
"But," I replied, being quite unable to consider myself of that number,
even upon such authority, "it is I that should be shedding tears; it is
I that behold things beautiful."
"It was of the dog I meant my words,"--this was rather a settler for
me,--"and the beautiful tokens he manifests of gratitude to the kind
gentleman. And we have been desiring always; but the place we could not
find. It is my father who will best speak, for he has great talent of
languages. He was hoping greatly that you would come. I also have been
troubling in my mind heavily, that we must appear so ungrateful. It is
now ten days that have passed away. But we could not learn to what place
to send; neither did we know the name of Mr.--but I will not spoil it,
until you have told me how to pronounce."
"_Cranleigh, Cran-lee_; as if it were spelled with a double e coming
after the letter l," said I to her. While to my all abroad self I
whispered, "May the kind powers teach her to spell it, by making it her
own, while she looks like that."
For sometimes it is vain to think, and to talk is worse than lunacy. Her
attitude and manner now, and her way of looking at me,--as if I were
what she might come to like, but would rather know more about it,--and
the touches of foreign style (which it is so sweet to domicile), and the
exquisite music which her breath made, or it may have been her lips,
with our stringy words--I am lost in my sentence, and care not how or
why, any more than I cared how I was lost then, so long as it was in
Dariel's eyes.
If Dariel's eyes will find me there, and send me down into her heart,
what odds to me of the earth or heaven, the stars, the sun, or the moon
itself--wherein I am qualified to walk with her?
Possibly that sweet Dariel saw, but could not comprehend my catastrophe.
She drew back, as if from something strange, and utterly beyond her
knowledge. Then she cast down those eyes, that were so upsetting me; and
I felt that as yet I had no right to perceive the tint, as of heaven,
before the earth has glimpsed the dawn, which awoke in welcome wonder on
the wavering of her face. See it I did however, and a glow went through
me.
Who can measure time when time acts thus? _Kuban_ arose, as if his
wounds were all a sham, or as if we at least were taking them in that
light, and hating--as a good dog always does--to play second fiddle,
turned his eyes from one to the other of the twain, in a manner so
tragic that we both began to laugh. And when Dariel laughed, there could
be nothing more divine, unless it were Dariel crying.
"Oh, how he does love you, Mr. Cran-lee!" she exclaimed with a little
pout, pretending to be vexed. "What a wicked dog he is to depart from
his mind so! Why, he always used to think that there was nobody like
me."
"If he would only think that I am like you, or at any rate try to make
you like me, what a blessed animal he would be!" This I said with
pathos, and vainly looking at her.
"I am not very strong of the English language yet. It has so many words
that are of turns incomprehensible. And when one thinks to have learned
them all, behold they are quite different! To you I seem to speak it
very, very far from native."
"To me you seem to speak it so that it is full of music, of soft clear
sounds, and melody, that no English voice can make of it. It is like the
nightingale I heard when first--I mean one summer evening long ago;
only your voice is sweeter."
"Is it? Then I am glad, because my father hears it always. And he knows
everything I think, before I have time to tell him. And he can speak the
English well,--as well as those who were born in it. Seven different
languages he can speak. Oh, how he is learned! To hear me talk is
nothing--nothing--folly, trifles, nothing more than deficiency of
wisdom, and yet of himself he thinks no more, perhaps not so much as you
do."
"I think nothing of myself at all. How can I, when I am with you? Yet a
great many different people think highly of me, and I do my best to
deserve it." This was no vain word, although it is not like my usual
manner to r
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