“It is worse than useless to talk any more,” Sir Roland said to Mr. Hales, who by entreaty of Alice had come to dine there that day, and to soften things: “Struan, you know that I have not one atom of obstinacy about me. I often doubt what is right, and wonder at people who are so positive. In this case there is no room for doubt. Were you pleased with your badger yesterday?”
“A capital brock, a most wonderful brock! His teeth were like a rat-trap. Fox, however, was too much for him. The dear little dog, how he did go in! I gave the ten guineas to my three girls. Good girls, thoroughly good girls all. They never fall in love with anybody. And when have they had a new dress—although they are getting now quite old enough?”
“I never notice those things much,” Sir Roland (who had given them many dresses) answered, most inhumanly; “but they always look very good and pretty. Struan, let us drink their healths, and happy wedlock to them.”
The rector looked at Sir Roland with a surprise of geniality. His custom was always to help himself; while his host enjoyed by proxy. This went against his fine feelings sadly. Still it was better to have to help himself, than be unhelped altogether.
“But about that young fellow,” Mr. Hales continued, after the toast had been duly honoured; “it is possible to be too hard, you know.”
“That sentiment is not new to me. Struan, you like a capeling with your port.”
“Better than any olive always. And now there are no olives to be had. Wars everywhere, wars universal! The powers of hell gat hold of me. Antichrist in triumph roaring! Bloodshed weltering everywhere! And I am too old myself; and I have no son to—too fight for Old England.”
“A melancholy thought, but you were always pugnacious, Struan.”
“Now, Roland, Roland, you know me better. ‘To seek peace and to ensue it,’ is my text and my tactic everywhere. And with them that be of one household, what saith St. Paul the apostle in his Epistle to the Ephesians? You think that I know no theology, Roland, because I can sit a horse and shoot?”
“Nay, nay, Struan, be not thus hurt by imaginary lesions. The great range of your powers is well known to me, as it is to every one. Particularly to that boy whom you shot in the hedge last season.”
“No more of that, an you love me. I believe the little rascal peppered himself to get a guinea out of me. But as to Hilary, will you allow me to say a few words without any offence? I am his own mother’s brother, as you seem very often to forget, and I cannot bear to see a fine young fellow condemned and turned out of house and home for what any young fellow is sure to do. Boys are sure to go falling in love until their whiskers are fully grown. And the very way to turn fools into heroes (in their own opinion) is to be violent with them.”
“Perhaps those truths are not new to me. But I was not violent—I never am.”
“At any rate you were harsh and stern. And who are you to find fault with him? I care not if I offend you, Roland, until your better sense returns. But did you marry exactly in your own rank of life, yourself?”
“I married a lady, Struan Hales—your sister—unless I am misinformed.”
“To be sure, to be sure! I know well enough what you mean by that; though you have the most infernal way of keeping your temper, and hinting things. What you mean is that I am making little of my own sister’s memory, by saying that she was not your equal.”
“I meant nothing of the sort. How very hot your temper is! I showed my respect for your family, Struan, and simply implied that it was not graceful, at any rate, on your part——”
“Graceful, be hanged! Sir Roland, I cannot express myself as you can—and perhaps I ought to thank God for that—but none the less for all that, I know when I am in the right. I feel when I am in the right, sir, and I snap my fingers at every one.”
“That is right. You have an unequalled power of explosion in your thumb-joint—I heard it through three oaken doors the last time you were at all in a passion; and now it will go through a wall at least. Nature has granted you this power to exhibit your contempt of wrong.”
“Roland, I have no power at all. I do not pretend to be clever at words; and I know that you laugh at my preaching. I am but a peg in a hole, I know, compared with all your learning; though my churchwarden, Gates, won’t hear of it. What did he say last Sunday?”
“Something very good, of course. Help yourself, Struan, and out with it.”
“Well, it was nothing very wonderful. And as he holds under you, Sir Roland——”
“I will not turn him out, for even the most brilliant flash of his bramble-hook.”
“You never turn anybody out. I wish to goodness you would sometimes. You don’t care about your rents. But I do care about my tithes.”
“This is deeply disappointing, after the wit you were laden with. What was the epigram of Churchwarden Gates?”
“Never you mind. That will keep—like some of your own mysteries. You want to know everything and tell nothing, as the old fox did in the fable.”
“It is an ancient aphorism,” Sir Roland answered, gently, “that knowledge is tenfold better than speech. Let us endeavour to know things, Struan, and to satisfy ourselves with knowledge.”
“Yes, yes, let us know things, Roland. But you never want us to know anything. That is just the point, you see. Now as sure as I hold this glass in my hand, you will grieve for what you are doing.”
“I am doing nothing, Struan; only wondering at your excitement.”
“Doing nothing! Do you call it nothing to drive your only son from your doors, and to exasperate your brother-in-law until he blames the Lord for being the incumbent instead of a curate, to swear more freely? There, there! I will say no more. None but my own people ever seem to know what is inside of me. No more wine, Sir Roland, thank you. Not so much as a single drop more. I will go, while there is good light down the hill.”
“You will do nothing of the kind, Struan Hales,” his host replied, in that clear voice which is so certain to have its own clear way; “you will sit down and take another glass of port, and talk with me in a friendly manner.”
“Well, well, anything to please you. You are marvellous hard to please of late.”
“You will find me most easy to please, if only (without any further reproaches, or hinting at things which cannot concern you) you will favour me with your calm opinion in this foolish affair of poor Hilary.”
“The whole thing is one. You so limit me,” said the parson, delighted to give advice, but loth to be too cheap with it; “you must perceive, Roland, that all this matter is bound up, so to speak, altogether. You shake your head? Well, then, let us suppose that poor Hilary stands on his own floor only. Every tub on its own bottom. Then what I should do about him would be this: I would not write him a single line, but let him abide in his breaches or breeches—whichever the true version is—and there he will soon have no halfpence to rattle, and therefore must grow penitent. Meanwhile I should send into Kent an envoy, a man of penetration, to see what manner of people it is that he is so taken up with. And according to his report I should act. And thus we might very soon break it off; without any action for damages. You know what those blessed attorneys are.”
Sir Roland thought for a little while; and then he answered pleasantly.
“Struan, your advice is good. I had thought of that course before you came. The stupid boy soon will be brought to reason; because he is frightened of credit now; he was so singed at Oxford. And I can trust him to do nothing dishonourable, or cold-blooded. But the difficulty of the whole plan is this. Whom have I that I can trust to go into Kent, and give a fair report about this mercenary Grower, and his crafty daughter?”
“Could you trust me, Roland?”
“Of course I could. But, Struan, you never would do such a thing?”
“Why not? I should like to know, why not? I could get to the place in two days’ time; and the change would do me a world of good. You laity can never understand what it is to be a parson. A deacon would come for a guinea, and take my Sunday morning duty, and the congregation for the afternoon would rejoice to be disappointed. And when I come back, they will dwell on my words, because the other man will have preached so much worse. Times are hard with me, Roland, just now. If I go, will you pay the piper?”
“Not only that, Struan; but I shall thank you to the uttermost stretch of gratitude.”
“There will be no gratitude on either side. I am bound to look after my nephew’s affairs: and I sadly want to get away from home. I have heard that there is a nice trout stream there. If Hilary, who knows all he knows from me, could catch a fine fish, as Alice told me,—what am I likely to do, after panting up in this red-hot chalk so long? Roland, I must have a pipe, though you hate it. I let you sneeze; and you must let me blow.”
“Well, Struan, you can do what you like, for this once. This is so very kind of you.”
“I believe if you had let that boy Hilary smoke,” said the Rector, warming unto his pipe, “you never would have had all this bother with him about this trumpery love-affair. Cupid hates tobacco.”
On the second evening after the above discourse, a solitary horseman might have been seen (or, to put it more indicatively, a lonely ponyman was seen) pricking gallantly over the plains, and into the good town of Tonbridge, in the land of Kent. Behind him, and strapped to his saddle, he bore what used to be called a “vady;” that is to say, a small leather cylinder, containing change of raiment, and other small comforts of the traveller. The pony he bestrode was black, with a white star on her forehead, a sturdy trudger, of a spirited nature, and proud of the name of “Maggie.” She had now recovered entirely from her ten-guinea feast of dahlias, and was as pleased as the Rector himself, to whisk her tail in a change of air. Her pace was quite brisk, and her ears well pricked, especially when she smelled the smell which all country towns have of horses, and of rubbing down, hissing, and bucketing, and (best of all) of good oats jumping in a sieve among the chaff.
Maggie was proud of her master, and thought him the noblest man that ever cracked a whip, having imbibed this opinion from the young smart hunter, who was up to everything. And it might have fared ill with Jack the donkey, if Maggie had carried her master when that vile assault was perpetrated. But if Maggie was now in good spirits, what lofty flight of words can rise to the elation of her rider?
The Rector now, week after week, had been longing for a bit of sport. His open and jovial nature had been shut up, pinched, and almost poisoned for want of proper outlet. He hated books, and he hated a pen, and he hated doing nothing; and he never would have horse-whipped Bonny, if he had been as he ought to be. Moreover, he had been greatly bothered, although he could not clearly put it, by all these reports about Coombe Lorraine, and Sir Roland’s manner of scorning them.
But now here he was, in a wayfaring dress, free from the knowledge of any one, able to turn to the right or the left, as either side might predominate; with a bagful of guineas to spend as his own, and yet feel no remorse about them. Tush! that does not express it at all. With a bagful of guineas to spend as he chose, and rejoice in the knowledge that he was spending another man’s money, for his own good, and the benefit of humanity. This is a fine feeling, and a rare one to get the luck of. Therefore, whosoever gets it, let him lift up his heart, and be joyful.
Whether from that fine diffidence, which so surely accompanies merit, or from honourable economy in the distribution of trust-funds, or from whatever other cause it was,—in the face of all the town of Tonbridge, this desirable traveller turned his pony into the quiet yard of the old-fashioned inn, “The Chequers.” All the other ostlers grunted disapprobation, and chewed straws; while the one ostler of “The Chequers” rattled his pail with a swing of his elbow, hissed in the most enticing attitude, and made believe to expect it.
Mr. Hales, in the manner of a cattle-jobber (which was his presentment now), lifted his right leg over the mane of the pony, and so came downward. Everybody in the yard at once knew thoroughly well what his business was. And nobody attempted to cheat him in the inn; because it is known to be a hopeless thing to cheat a cattle-jobber, in any other way than by gambling. So that with little to say, or be said, this unclerkly clerk had a good supper, and smoked a wise pipe with his landlord.
Of course he made earnest inquiries about all the farmers of the neighbourhood, and led the conversation gently to the Grower and his affairs; and as this chanced to be Master Lovejoy’s own “house of call” at Tonbridge, the landlord gave him the highest character, and even the title of “Esquire.”
“Ah, yes,” he exclaimed, with his rummer in one hand, and waving his pipe with the other; “there be few in these here parts to compare with Squire Lovejoy. One of the true old Kentish stock, sir; none of your come-and-go bagmen. I have heered say that that land have been a thousand year in the family.”
“Lord bless me!” cried Mr. Hales; “why, we get back to the time of the Danes and Saxons!”
“There now!” said the landlord, giving him a poke of admiration with his pipe; “you knows all about it, as well as if I had told ’ee. And his family brought up so respectable! None of your sitting on pillions. A horse for his self, and a horse for his son, and a horse for his pretty darter. Ah, if I were a young man again—but there, she be above me altogether! Though ‘The Chequers,’ to my thinking, is more to the purpose, than a bigger inn might be, sir.”
“You are right, I believe,” replied his guest. “How far may it be to Old Applewood farm?”
“Well, sir, how far? Why, let me see: a matter of about five mile, perhaps. You’ve heered tell of the Garden of Eden, perhaps?”
“To be sure! Don’t I read about it”—he was going to say “every Sunday,” but stopped, in time to dissemble the parson.
“And the finest ten mile of turnpike in England. You turns off from it, about four mile out. And then you keeps on straight forrard.”
“Thank you, my good friend. I shall ask the way to-morrow. Your excellent punch is as good as a nightcap. But I want to combine a little pleasure with business, if I can, to-morrow. I am a bit of a sportsman, in a small way. Would Mr. Lovejoy allow me to cast a fly in his water, think you?”
“Ay, that he will, if you only tell him that you be staying at the ‘Chequers Inn.’”
The Rector went to bed that night in a placid humour, with himself, and his landlord, and all the country. And sleeping well after change of air, a long ride, and a good supper, he awoke in the morning, as fresh as a lark, in a good state of mind for his breakfast.
Old Applewood farm was just “taking it easy,” in the betwixt and between of hard work. The berry season was over now, and the hay was stacked, and the hops were dressed; John Shorne and his horses were resting freely, and gathering strength for another campaign—to cannonade London with apples and pears. All things had the smell of summer, passing rich, and the smell of autumn, without its weight leaning over the air. The nights were as warm as the days almost, yet soft with a mellow briskness; and any young man who looked out of his window said it was a shame to go to bed. Some people have called this the “saddest time of the whole sad twelvemonth;” the middle or end of July, when all things droop with heavy leafiness. But who be these to find fault with the richest and goodliest prime of nature’s strength? Peradventure the fault is in themselves. All seasons of the year are good to those who bring their seasoning.
And now, when field, and wood, and hedge stand up in flush of summering, and every bird, and bat, and insect of our British island is as active as he ought to be (and sometimes much too much so); also, when good people look at one another in hot weather, and feel that they may have worked too hard, or been too snappish when the frosts were on (which they always are, except in July), and then begin to wonder whether their children would like to play with the children of one another, because they cannot catch cold in such weather; and after that, begin to speak of a rubber in the bower, and a great spread of delightfulness,—when all this comes to pass, what right have we to make the worst of it?
That is neither here nor there. Only one thing is certain, that our good parson, looking as unlike a parson as he could—and he had a good deal of capacity in that way—steered his pony Maggie round the corner into the Grower’s yard, and looked about to see how the land lay. The appearance of everything pleased him well; for comfort, simplicity, and hospitality shared the good quarters between them. Even a captious man could hardly, if he understood the matter, find much fault with anything. The parson was not a captious man, and he knew what a good farm-yard should be, and so he said “Capital, capital!” twice, before he handed Maggie’s bridle to Paddy from Cork, who of course had run out with a sanguine sense of a shilling arrived.
“Is Squire Lovejoy at home?” asked the visitor, being determined to “spake the biggest,” as Paddy described it afterwards. For the moment, however, he only stared, while the parson repeated the question.
“Is it the maisther ye mane?” said Paddy; “faix then, I’ll go, and ax the missus.”
But before there was time to do this, the Grower appeared with a spud on his shoulder. He had been in the hop-ground; and hearing a horse, came up to know what was toward. The two men looked at one another, with mutual approval. The parson tall, and strong, and lusty, and with that straightforward aspect which is conferred, or at least confirmed, by life in the open air, field sports, good living, and social gatherings. His features, too, were clear and bold, and his jaws just obstinate enough to manage a parish; without that heavy squareness which sets church and parish by the ears. The Grower was of moderate height, and sturdy, and thoroughly useful; his face told of many dealings with the world; but his eyes were frank, and his mouth was pleasant. His custom was to let other people have their say before he spoke; and now he saluted Mr. Hales in silence, and waited for him to begin.
“I hope,” said his visitor, “you will excuse my freedom in coming to see you thus. I am trying this part of the country, for the first time, for a holiday. And the landlord of the ‘Chequers Inn’ at Tonbridge, where I am staying for a day or two, told me that you perhaps would allow me to try for a fish in your river, sir.”
“In our little brook! There be none left, I think. You are kindly welcome to try, sir. But I fear you will have a fool’s errand of it. We have had a young gentleman from London here, a wonderful angler, sure enough, and I do believe he hath caught every one.”
“Well, sir, with your kind permission, there can be no harm in trying,” said the Rector, laughing, in his sleeve, at Hilary’s crude art compared with his own. “The day is not very promising, and the water of course is strange to me. But have I your leave to do my best?”
“Ay, ay, as long as you like. My ground goes as far up as there is any water, and down the brook to the turnpike road. We will see to your nag; and if you would like a bit to eat, sir, we dine at one, and we sup at seven; and there be always a bit in the larder ’tween whiles. Wil’t come into house before starting?”
“I thank you for the kind offer; but I think I’d better ask you the way, and be off. There is just a nice little coil of cloud now; in an hour it may be gone; and the brook, of course, is very low and clear. Whatever my sport is, I shall call in and thank you, when I come back for my pony. My name is Hales, sir, a clerk from Sussex; very much at your service and obliged to you.”
“The same to you, Master Halls; and I wish you more sport than you will get, sir. Your best way is over that stile; and then when you come to the water, go where you will.”
“One more question, which I always ask; what size do you allow your fish to be taken?”
“What size? Why, as big, to be sure, as ever you can catch them. The bigger they are, the less bones they have.”
With a laugh at this answer, the parson set off, with his old fly-book in his pocket, and a rod in his hand which he had borrowed (by grace of his landlord) in Tonbridge. His step was brisk, and his eyes were bright, and he thought much more of the sport in prospect than of the business that brought him there.
“Aha!” he exclaimed, as he hit on the brook, where an elbow of bank jutted over it, “very fine tackle will be wanted here, and one fly is quite enough for it. It must be fished downward, of course, because it cannot be fished upward. It will take all I know to tackle them.”
So it did; and a great deal more than he knew. He changed his fly every quarter of an hour, and he tried every dodge of experience; he even tried dapping with the natural fly, and then the blue-bottle and grasshopper; but not a trout could he get to rise, or even to hesitate, or show the very least sign of temptation.
So great was his annoyance (from surety of his own skill, and vain reliance upon it), that after fishing for about ten hours, and catching a new-born minnow, the Rector vehemently came to a halt, and repented that he had exhausted already his whole stock of strong language. When a good man has done this, a kind of reaction (either of the stomach or conscience) arises, and leads him astray from his usual sign-posts, whether of speech, or deed, or thought.
The Rev. Struan Hales sate down, marvelling if he were a clumsy oaf, and gave Hilary no small credit for catching such deeply sagacious and wary trout. Then he dwelled bitterly over his fate, for having to go and fetch his pony, and let every yokel look into his basket and grin at its beautiful emptiness. Moreover, he found himself face to face with starvation of the saddest kind; that which a man has challenged, and superciliously talked about, and then has to meet very quietly.
Not to exaggerate—if that were possible—Mr. Hales found his inner man (thus rashly exposed to new Kentish air) “absolutely barking at him,” as he strongly expressed it to his wife, as soon as he was truly at home again. But here he was fifty miles from home, with not a fishing-basket only, but a much nearer and dearer receptacle, full of the purest vacuity. “This is very sad,” he said; and all his system echoed it.
While the Rector still was sitting on the mossy hump of an apple-tree, weary and disconsolate, listening to the murmuring brook, with louder murmurings of his own, he espied a light, well-balanced figure crossing the water on a narrow plank some hundred yards up the streamway.
“A pretty girl!” said the parson; “I am sure of it, by the way she carries herself. Plain girls never walk like that. O that she were coming to my relief! But the board looks rather dangerous. I must go and help her. Ah, here she comes! What a quick light foot! My stars, if she hasn’t got a basket! Nothing for me, of course. No such luck, on this most luckless of all days.”
Meanwhile she was making the best of her way, as straight as the winding stream allowed, towards this ungrateful and sceptical grumbler; and presently she turned full upon him, and looked at him, and he at her.
“What a lovely creature!” thought Mr. Hales; “and how wonderfully her dress becomes her! Why, the mere sight of her hat is enough to drive a young fellow out of his mind almost! Now I should like to make her acquaintance; if I were not starving so. ‘Acrior illum cura domat,’ as Sir Roland says.”
“If you please, sir,” the maiden began, with a bright and modestly playful glance, “are you Mr. Halls, who asked my father for leave to fish this morning?”
“Hales, fair mistress, is my name; a poor and unworthy clerk from Sussex.”
“Then, Mr. Hales, you must not be angry with me for thinking that you might be hungry.”
“And—and thirsty!” gasped the Rector. “Goodness me, if you only knew my condition, how you would pity me!”
“It occurred to me that you might be thirsty too,” she answered, producing from her basket, a napkin, a plate, a knife and fork, half a loaf, and something tied up in a cloth, whose fragrance went to the bottom of the parson’s heart; and after that a stone pipkin, and a half-pint horn, and last of all a pinch of salt. All these she spread on a natural table of grass, which her clever eyes discovered over against a mossy seat.
“I never was so thankful in all my life—I never was; I never was. My pretty dear, what is your name, that I may bless you every night?”
“My name is Mabel Lovejoy, sir. And I hope that you will excuse me, for having nothing better to bring than this. Most fishermen prefer duck, I know; but we happened only to have in the larder this half, or so, of a young roast goose——”
“A goose! An infinitely finer bird. And so much more upon it! Thank God it wasn’t a duck, my dear. Half a duck would scarcely be large enough to set my poor mouth watering. For goodness’ sake, give me a drop to drink! What is it—water?”
“No, sir, ale; some of our own brewing. But you must please to eat a mouthful first. I have heard that it is bad to begin with a drink.”
“Right speedily will I qualify,” said the parson, with his mouth quite full of goose; “delicious,—most delicious! You must be the good Samaritan, my dear; or at any rate you ought to be his wife. Your very best health, Mistress Mabel Lovejoy; may you never do a worse action than you have done this day; and I never shall forget your kindness.”
“Oh, I am so glad to see you enjoy it. But you must not talk till you have eaten every mouthful. Why, you ought to be quite famishing.”
“In that respect I fulfil my duty. Nay more, I am downright famished.”
“There is a little stuffing in here, sir; let me show you; underneath the apron. I put it there myself, and so I know.”
“What most noble, most glorious, most transcendent stuffing! Whoever made that was born to benefit, retrieve, and exalt humanity.”
“You must not say that, sir; because I made it.”
“Oh, Dea certe! I recover my Latin under such enchantment. But how could you have found me out? And what made you so generously think of me?”
“Well, sir, I take the greatest interest in fishermen, because—oh, because of my brother Charlie: and one of our men passed you this afternoon, and he said he was sure that you had caught nothing, because he heard you—he thought he heard you——”
“No, no, come now, complaining mildly,—not ‘swearing,’ don’t say ‘swearing.’”
“I was not going to say ‘swearing,’ sir. What made you think of such a thing? I am sure you never could have done it; could you? And so when you did not even come to supper, it came into my head that you must want refreshment; especially if you had caught no fish to comfort you for so many hours. And then I thought of a plan for that, which I would tell you in case I should find you unlucky enough to deserve it.”
“I am unlucky enough to deserve it thoroughly; only look here, pretty Mistress Mabel.” With these words he lifted the flap of his basket, and showed its piteous emptiness.
“West Lorraine!” she cried—“West Lorraine!” For his name and address were painted on the inside wicker of the lid. “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Hales: I had no right to notice it.”
“Yes, you had. But you have no right to turn away your head so. What harm has West Lorraine done you, that you won’t even look at its rector?”
“Oh, please not; oh, please don’t! I never would have come, if I could have only dreamed——”
“If you could have dreamed what? Pretty Mistress Mabel, a parson has a right to an explanation, when he makes a young lady blush so.”
“Oh, it was so cruel of you! You said you were a clerk, of the name of ‘Halls!’”
“So I am, a clerk in holy orders; but not of the name of ‘Halls.’ That was your father’s mistake. I gave my true name; and here you see me very much at your service, ma’am. The uncle of a fine young fellow, whose name you never heard, I daresay. Have you ever happened to hear of a youth called Hilary Lorraine?”
“Oh, now I know why you are come! Oh dear! It was not for the fishing, after all! And perhaps you never fished before. And everything must be going wrong. And you are come to tell me what they think of me. And very likely you would be glad if you could put me in prison!”
“That would be nice gratitude; would it not? You are wrong in almost every point. It happens that I have fished before; and that I did come for the fishing partly. It happens that nothing is going wrong; and I am not come to say what they think of you; but to see what I think of you—which is a very different thing.”
“And what do you think of me?” asked Mabel, casting down her eyes, standing saucily, and yet with such a demure expression, that his first impulse was to kiss her.
“I think that you are rogue enough to turn the head of anybody. And I think that you are good enough to make him happy ever afterwards.”
“I am not at all sure of that,” she answered, raising her sweet eyes, and openly blushing; “I only know that I would try. But every one is not like a clergyman, to understand good stuffing. But if I had only known who you were, I would never have brought you any dinner, sir.”
“What a disloyal thing to say! Please to tell me why I ought to starve, for being Hilary’s uncle.”
“Because you would think that I wanted to coax you to—to be on my side, at least.”
“To make a goose of me, with your goose! Well, you have me at your mercy, Mabel. I shall congratulate Hilary on having won the heart of the loveliest, best, and cleverest girl in the county of Kent.”
“Oh no, sir, you must not say that, because I am nothing of the sort; and you must not laugh at me, like that. And how do you know that he has done it? And what will every one say, when they hear that he—that he would like to marry the daughter of a Grower?”
“What does his father say? That is the point. It matters very little what others say. And I will not conceal from you, pretty Mabel, that his father is bitterly set against it, and turned him out of doors, when he heard of it.”
“Oh, that is why he has never written. He did not know how to break it to me. I was sure there was something bad. But of course I could expect nothing else. Poor, poor sillies, both of us! I must give him up, I see I must. I felt all along that I should have to do it.”
“Don’t cry so; don’t cry, my dear, like that. There is plenty of time to talk of it. Things will come right in the end, no doubt. But what does your father say to it?”
“I scarcely know whether he knows it yet. Hilary wanted to tell him; but I persuaded him to leave it altogether to me. And so I told my mother first; and she thought we had better not disturb my father about it, until we heard from Hilary. But I am almost sure sometimes that he knows it, and is not at all pleased about it; for he looks at me very strangely. He is the best and kindest man living, almost; but he has very odd ways sometimes; and it is most difficult to turn him.”
“So it is with most men who are worth their salt. I despise a weathercock. Would you like me to come in and see him; or shall I fish a little more first? I am quite a new man since you fed me so well; and I scarcely can put up with this disgrace.”
“If you would like to fish a little longer,” said Mabel, following the loving gaze, which (with true angling obstinacy) lingered still on the coy fair stream, “there is plenty of time to spare. My father rode off to Maidstone, as soon as he found that you were not coming in to supper; and he will not be back till it is quite dark. And I should have time for a talk with my mother, while you are attempting to catch a trout.”
“Now, Mabel, Mabel, you are too disdainful. Because I am not my own nephew (who learned what little he knows altogether from me), and because I have been so unsuccessful, you think that I know nothing; women always judge by the event, having taken the trick from their fathers perhaps. But you were going to tell me something, to make up for my want of skill.”
“Yes; but you must promise not to tell any one else, upon any account. My brother Charlie found it out; and I have not told even Hilary of it, because he could catch fish without it.”
“You most insulting of all pretty maidens; if you despise my science thus, I will tell Sir Roland that you are vain and haughty.”
“Oh dear!”
“Very ill-tempered.”
“No, now, you never could say that.”
“Clumsy, ill-dressed, and slatternly.”
“Well done, well done, Mr. Hales!”
“Yes, and fearfully ugly.”
“Oh!”
“Aha! I have taken your breath away with absolute amazement. I wish Hilary could see you now; he’d steal something very delightful, and then knock his excellent uncle down. But now, make it up like a dear good girl; and tell me this great secret.”
“It is the simplest thing in the world. You just take a little bit of this—see here, I have some in my basket; and cut a little delicate strip, and whip it on the lower part of your fly. I have done it for Charlie many a time. I will do one for you, if you like, sir.”
“Very well. I will try it, to please you; and for the sake of an experiment. Good-bye, good-bye till dark, my dear. We shall see whether a clerk can catch fish or no.”
When Mr. Hales returned at night to the hospitable old farm-house, he carried on his ample back between two and three dozen goodly trout; for many of which he confessed himself indebted to Mabel’s clever fingers. Mrs. Lovejoy had been prepared by her daughter to receive him; but the Grower was not yet come home from Maidstone; which, on the whole, was a fortunate thing. For thus the Rector had time enough to settle with his hostess what should be done on his part and on hers, towards the removal, or at any rate the gradual reduction, of the many stumbling-blocks that lay, as usual, upon true love’s course. For both foresaw that if the franklin’s pride should once be wounded, he would be certain to bar the way more sternly than even the baronet himself. And even without that, he could hardly be expected to forego, all in a moment, his favourite scheme above described, that Mabel’s husband should carry on the ancestral farm, and the growth of fruit. In his blunt old fashion, he cared very little for baronets, or for Norman blood; and like a son of Tuscan soil, was well content to lead his life in cleaving paternal fields with the hoe, and nourishing household gods, and hearth.
It is a fine thing to have quarters in an English country-town, where nobody knows who the sojourner is, and nobody cares who he may be. To begin (at gentle leisure) to feel interest in the place, and quicken up to the vein of humour throbbing through the High Street. The third evening cannot go over one’s head without a general sense being gained of the politics of the town, and, far more important—the politicians; and if there only is a corporation, wisdom cries in the streets, and nobody can get on with anybody. However, when the fights are over, generally speaking, all cool down.
But this is about the last thing that a stranger should exert his intellect to understand. It would be pure waste of time; unless he means to buy a house and settle down, and try to be an alderman in two years’ time, and mount ambition’s ladder even to the giddy height of mayoralty; till the hand of death comes between the rungs and vertically drags him downward. And even then, for three months shall he be, “our deeply lamented townsman.”
But if this visitor firmly declines (as, for his health, he is bound to do) these mighty combats, which always have the eyes of the nation fixed on them—if he is satisfied to lounge about, and say “good morning” here and there, to ascertain public sentiment concerning the state of the weather, and to lay out sixpence judiciously in cultivating good society—then speedily will he get draughts of knowledge enough to quench the most ardent thirst; while the yawn of indolence merges in the quickening smile of interest. Then shall he get an insight into the commerce, fashion, religious feeling, jealousies, and literature of the town, its just and pleasant self-esteem, its tolerance and intolerance (often equally inexplicable), its quiet enjoyments, and, best of all, its elegant flirtations.
These things enabled Mr. Hales to pass an agreeable week at Tonbridge, and to form acquaintance with some of its leading inhabitants; which in pursuit of his object he was resolved, as far as he could, to do. And from all of these he obtained very excellent tidings of the Lovejoys, as being a quiet, well-conducted, and highly respectable family, admitted (whenever they cared to be so) to the best society of the neighbourhood, and forgiven for growing cherries, and even for keeping a three-horsed van.
Also, as regarded his own impressions, the more he saw of Old Applewood farm, the more he was pleased with it and with its owners; and calling upon his brother parson, the incumbent of the parish, he found in him a congenial soul, who wanted to get a service out of him. For this Mr. Hales was too wide awake, having taken good care to leave sermons at home; because he had been long enough in holy orders to know what delight all parsons find in spoiling one another’s holidays. Moreover, he had promised himself the pleasure of sitting in a pew, for once, repossessing the right to yawn ad libitum, and even fall into a murmurous nap, after exhausting the sweetness of the well-known Lucretian sentiment—to gaze in safety at another’s labours; or, as the navvy more tersely put it, when asked of his summum bonum, to “look on at t’other beggars.”
Meanwhile, however, many little things were beginning to go crosswise. For instance, Hilary walked down headlong, being exceedingly short of cash, to comfort Mabel, and to get good quarters, and perhaps to go on about everything. Luckily, his uncle Struan met him in the street of Sevenoaks (whither he had ridden for a little change), and amazed him with very strong language, and begged him not to make a confounded fool of himself, and so took him into a public-house. The young man, of course, was astonished to see his uncle carrying on so, dressed as a layman, and roving about without any wife or family.
But when he knew for whose sake it was done, and how strongly his uncle was siding with him, his gratitude and good emotions were such that he scarcely could finish his quart of beer.
“My boy, I am thoroughly ashamed of you,” said his uncle, looking queerly at him. “You are most immature for married life, if you give way to your feelings so.”
“But uncle, when a man is down so much, and turned out of doors by his own father——”
“When a ‘man’! When a ‘boy’ is what you mean, I suppose. A man would take it differently.”
“I am sure I take it very well,” said Hilary, trying to smile at it. “There, I will drink up my beer; for I know that sort of thing always vexes you. Now, can you say that I have kicked up a row, or done anything that I might have done?”
“No, my boy, no; quite the opposite thing; you have taken it most angelically.”
“Angelically, without an angelus, uncle, or even a stiver in my pocket! Only the cherub aloft, you know——”
“I don’t know anything about him; and the allusion, to my mind, is profane.”
“Now, uncle, you are hyperclerical, because I have caught you dressed as a bagman!”
“I don’t understand your big Oxford words. In my days they taught theology.”
“And hunting; come now, Uncle Struan, didn’t they teach you hunting?”
“Well,” said the Rector, stroking his chin; “I was a poor young man, of course, and could not afford that sort of thing.”
“Yes, but you did, you know, Uncle Struan; I have heard you boast of it fifty times.”
“What a plague you are, Hilary! There may have been times—however, you are going on quite as if we were sitting and having a cozy talk after dinner at West Lorraine.”
“I wish to goodness we were, my dear uncle. I never shall have such a pleasure again.”
“My dear boy, my dear boy; to talk like that, at your time of life! What a thing love is, to be sure! However, in that state, a dinner is no matter.”
“Well, I shall be off now for London again. A bit of bread and cheese, after all, is as good as anything. Good-bye, my dear uncle, I shall always thank you.”
“You shall thank me for two things before you start. And you should not start, except that I know it to be at present best for you. You shall thank me for as good a dinner as can be got in a place like this; and after that for five gold guineas, just to go on for a bit with.”
Thus the Rector had his way, and fed his nephew beautifully, and sent him back with a better heart in his breast, to meet the future. Hilary of course was much aggrieved, and inclined to be outrageous, at having walked four-and-twenty miles, with eager proceeding at every step, and then being balked of a sight of his love. However, he saw that it was for the best; and five guineas (feel as you will) are something.
His good uncle paid his fare back by the stage, and saw him go off, and kissed hands to him; feeling greatly relieved as soon as ever he was round the corner; for he must have spoiled everything at the farm. Therefore this excellent uncle returned to his snug little sanded parlour, to smoke a fresh pipe; and to think, in its influence, how to get on with these new affairs.
Here were heaps of trouble rising; as peaks of volcanoes come out of the sea. And who was to know how to manage things, so as to make them all subside again? Hilary might seem easy to deal with, so long as he had no money; but even he was apt to take strange whims into his head, although he might feel that he could not pay for them. And then there was the Grower, an obstinate factor in any calculation; and then the Grower’s wife, who might appeal perhaps to the Attorney-General; also Sir Roland, with his dry unaccountable manner of regarding things; and last, not least, the Rector’s own superior part of his household. If he could not manage them, anybody at first sight would say that the fault must be altogether his own—that a man who cannot lay down the law to his own wife and daughters, really is no man, and deserves to be treated accordingly. Yet this depends upon special gifts. The Rector could carry on very well, when he understood the subject, even with his wife and daughters, till it came to crying. Still in the end (as he knew in his heart), he always got the worst of it.
Now what would all these ladies say, if the incumbent of the parish, the rector of the rectory, the very husband or father of all of themselves—as the case might be—were to depart from his sense of right, and the principles he had laid down to them, to such an extent as to cherish Hilary in black rebellion against his own father? Suasion would be lost among them. It is a thing that may be tried, under favourable circumstances, as against one lady, when quite alone; but with four ladies all taking different views of the matter in question, yet ready in a moment to combine against any form of reason,—a bachelor must be Quixotic, a husband and father idiotic, if he relies upon any other motive power than that of his legs. But the Rector was not the man to run away, even from his own family. So, on the whole, he resolved to let things follow their own course, until something new should begin to rise. Except at least upon two little points—one, that Hilary should be kept from visiting the farm just now; and the other, that the Grower must be told of all this love-affair.
Mr. Hales, as an owner of daughters, felt that it was but a father’s due, to know what his favourite child was about in such important matters; and he thought it the surest way to set him bitterly against any moderation, if he were left to find out by surprise what was going on at his own hearth. It happened, however, that the Grower had a shrewd suspicion of the whole of it, and was laughing in his sleeve, and winking (in his own determined way) at his good wife’s manœuvres. “I shall stop it all, when I please,” he said to himself, every night at bed-time; “let them have their little game, and make up their minds to astonish me.” For he, like almost every man who has attained the age of sixty, looked back upon love as a brief excrescence, of about as much importance as a wart.
“Ay, ay, no need to tell me,” he answered, when Mrs. Lovejoy, under the parson’s advice, and at Mabel’s entreaty, broke the matter to him. “I don’t go about with my eyes shut, wife. A man that knows every pear that grows, can tell the colour on a maiden’s cheek. I have settled to send her away to-morrow to her Uncle Catherow. The old mare will be ready at ten o’clock. I meant to leave you to guess the reason; you are so clever all of you. Ha, ha! you thought the old Grower was as blind as a bat; now, didn’t you?”
“Well, at any rate,” replied Mrs. Lovejoy, giving her pillow an angry thump, “I think you might have consulted me, Martin: with half her clothes in the wash-tub, and a frayed ribbon on her Sunday hat! Men are so hot and inconsiderate. All to be done in a moment, of course! The least you could have done, I am sure, would have been to tell me beforehand, Martin; and not to pack her off like that.”
“To be sure! Just as you told me, good wife, your plan for packing her off, for life! Now just go to sleep; and don’t beat about so. When I say a thing I do it.”